Silence of Stone (22 page)

Still wrapped in a blanket, I rise from the bed and open the window to the morning light. I have slept long, without dreaming, and the sun is already well above the rooftops. The narrow beam admitted by the window illuminates the woodpile and the web, which now hangs in disrepair. The spider is gone, surfeited. I have fed her well. I have nothing more to give her.

I hear a timid knocking at the door, and hold my breath. It is Saint George's Feast Day. Surely he has not come again.

“Madame de Roberval.” A small voice calling. Has she forgotten there is no school today?

I crack open the door. Isabelle holds up a bouquet of tiny blue flowers. “These are for you,” she says.

Because I do not know what else to do, I open the door wider and take the flowers she offers. The slender stems are bruised, many of them broken. The blossoms are a pure sky blue, their centres like
bright yellow suns. Forget-me-nots.

N'oubliez pas. Do not forget.

Before I can send her away, Isabelle walks boldly to the unmade bed and plops down, far more at ease than her father. “You must put them in water,” she says with authority. “Or they will dry up.” She looks around the room, her glance taking in the bench, the small table, the hearth, and the window.

“I am busy today, Isabelle. You must go.”

“What will you do?”

“I will walk in the woods and fields.” Why am I answering the questions of an impertinent child?

“May I come with you? I like to walk. Papa likes very much to walk. He says that he has his best thoughts when he is out in the woods.” Isabelle squares her shoulders importantly and holds up a small silver coin. “Look what he gave me? He sent me to buy bread. All by myself.” She giggles. “But he forgot the bakery is closed.”

She stops her chatter only long enough to point toward the window. “Oh look,” she says, “your cat.” She rushes to the window and opens it wider. The yellow-striped cat backs away. “Here, kitty, kitty,” she croons.

Slowly the cat creeps forward. Isabelle reaches out and touches her head. To my astonishment, the cat steps through the window.

“Do you have any cream?”

I shake my head.

“Have you anything?” Isabelle's voice is concerned. “I think she is very hungry.”

As if in a dream I search for a bit of cheese and then hand it to Isabelle. She offers it to the cat, who sniffs, then gnaws hungrily. Isabelle runs her hand along the cat's back, and I think the cat will turn and scratch her. Instead she begins to purr.

“What's her name?” Isabelle asks.

I stand mute and blinking.

“She doesn't have a name?”

I shake my head.

“Oh, she must have a name.” Isabelle puts a pudgy finger to her chin and stares upward, thinking hard and murmuring to herself. “Latin, I think.” She proposes several names then dismisses them with a wave of her arm.

“I have it,” she says excitedly. “
Laetitia.
Joy. That's perfect.”

“
Laetitia
,” I whisper, somehow accepting that I now have a cat named Laetitia.

Être indulgent, c'est mourir. To be soft is to die.

I hear the voices, but I also hear Lafrenière:
to be soft is to be merciful…beneath your bitterness…

Isabelle laughs. “Laetitia is skinny, but her tummy is fat.” With her hands she draws a big belly in front of her own flat one. Her eyes widen with understanding. “Oh, may I have a kitten after they're born? Please,” she pleads. “Papa will let me. I know he will.”

Light-headed, I can only sit down and nod vaguely. Isabelle comes and takes my hand. Her fingers are warm and sticky. The cat follows her and rubs against her ankles.

Isabelle studies me closely. “Why are you always
so sad?”

“Am I?”

“Very. Your face would be pretty…but it is always sad.”

I pull my hand from Isabelle's and, inexplicably, reach to touch the cat. She allows me to stroke her fur. My fingers marvel at its matted softness. I can feel the rumbling purr through my fingertips. Tears gather. I cannot protect her and her kittens.

I hear an infant whimpering, the voices mocking:
La fille faible, la fille stupide. La fille naïve.

“Is it because your husband and your baby died?”

I continue to stroke the cat and wonder if Isabelle too has heard the baby's hungry wails.

“Was he very handsome?”

“Very.”

“I am sorry, Madame de Roberval.”

“
Non
,
non
,” I say quickly. “It was not me. It was a different Madame de Roberval who lost her husband. I have lost no one.”

Isabelle frowns and remains silent for a long time, stroking the cat. “I do that too,” she confesses very quietly. “When I am very, very sad, I say to myself: ‘Isabelle's mother was beautiful. She loved Isabelle. But she died. Poor Isabelle, she has no mother.'” She rubs the cat's cheeks. “Then I can feel sorry for Isabelle, and I don't feel so sad for me.”

We sit for a while, petting the cat. “Papa says it's all right to do that,” Isabelle whispers. The cat trills softly and rubs her side against my leg. I am startled at the silkiness and the warmth. Isabelle touches the
cat's tattered ear. “How did that happen?”

“I do not know, Isabelle. I do not know who has hurt her.”

Isabelle reaches up and wipes a single tear from my cheek. Her fingers smell of grass and flowers. The cat purrs, and we are quiet once more, petting and stroking, Isabelle's small hand bumping into mine.

“Was your baby very pretty?” she finally asks.

I sit for a long time, the pain in my throat choking me. “Her…my baby was beautiful.” The words escape, sounding like hoarse croaks. “I did everything I could to save her. Everything.”

Isabelle puts a hand to both sides of my face, her open palms like a benediction. “Of course you did,” she says. “You loved her. You were her mother.”

“
Oui
, I was her mother.”

“I have learned of the poor unfortunate Damoiselle named Marguerite who was left by the Captain Roberval, her uncle, for the expiation of punishment for the scandal which she had made against the company which was voyaging to Newfoundland and Canada by the command of King Francis.”

André Thevet,
Grande insulaire,
unpublished manuscript,
as translated by Elizabeth Boyer in
A Colony of One
.

“And she told me moreover that when they embarked on these Breton ships to return to France, that a certain desire seized her not to leave, and to die in that solitary place like her husband, her child, and her servant; and that she wished she were still there, moved by sorrow as she was.”

André Thevet, 1575,
Cosmographie universelle
,
as translated by Roger Schlesinger and Arthur Stabler in
Andre Thevet's North America: A Sixteenth-Century View
.

“So living as to her body the life bestial, as to her soul the life angelical, she spent her time in reading of the Scriptures, in prayers and in meditations…The poor woman, seeing the ship draw near, went down to the strand, where she was when they came. And after praising God for it, she brought them to her hut…[T]hey took her with them to Rochelle…and made known to all that dwelt therein her faithfulness and patient long-suffering. And on this account
she was received by all the ladies with great honour, and they with goodwill gave her their daughters that she might teach them to read and write. And in this honest craft she earned a livelihood, always exhorting all men to love our Lord and put their trust in Him, setting forth by way of example the great compassion He had shown towards her.”

Marguerite d'Angoulême, Queen of Navarre, 1558,
The Heptameron
, as translated by Arthur Machen in
The
Heptameron: Tales and Novels of Marguerite Queen of Navarre
.

“Roberval had left them some food and other commodities to aid them and serve their necessity as he himself told me three months before he was killed at night near the Sainted Innocents in Paris since which time I have marked and given the name of Roberval to this island of banishment and also marked my maps for the great friendship that I bore to him while he lived.”

André Thevet,
Grande insulaire
, unpublished manuscript,
as translated by Elizabeth Boyer in
A Colony of One.

The historical documentation for the story of Marguerite de la Roque de Roberval is sketchy. Elizabeth Boyer, however, did extensive research to authenticate the documents surrounding the story and published her findings in
A Colony of One: The History of a Brave Woman
(Veritie Press: Novelty, Ohio, 1983).

Marguerite was an orphan, and Jean-François de la Roque de Roberval, a close male relative, became her guardian. It is likely that the Robervals were of the “new religion,” known after the 1550s as the Huguenots.

In 1541 King François I appointed Roberval to be Viceroy of Canada and to colonize New France. Roberval's second-in-command, Jacques Cartier, left France for Canada in the spring of 1541. Roberval's departure was delayed for nearly a year, and his ships, the
Vallentyne
,
Sainte-Anne
, and
Lèchefraye
(sometimes listed as the
Marye
), left La Rochelle on April 16, 1542. Marguerite accompanied Roberval, along with 200 felons François I had released from French prisons specifically for the expedition.

Roberval's ships arrived in the St. John's harbour in Newfoundland on June 8, 1542, and remained there
for several weeks. Jacques Cartier, having abandoned the colonizing efforts in Canada, met Roberval in St. John's and subsequently defied Roberval's order to return to Charlesbourg Royal, reportedly slipping away in the night to return to France.

Roberval's ships took a northern route from St. John's, passing through the Strait of Belle Isle into the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Somewhere along the way Roberval abandoned Marguerite, her lover, and a servant on the “Isle of Demons.” The island has variously been identified as Fogo, Fichot, Quirpon, and Bell Island, all off the coast of Newfoundland, as well as Belle Isle in the Straits of Belle Isle. The most likely location for the Isle of Demons is Harrington Harbour, the largest of the Harrington Islands, along the lower north shore of Quebec about 220 km southwest of Blanc Sablon.

Roberval was known as a spendthrift, a man perpetually in debt, and also as a cruel man, but why he abandoned Marguerite, her lover, and the servant on a desolate island in a forbidding climate can be a matter only for conjecture.

Roberval's colony was a dismal failure. He and the surviving colonists returned to France in the spring of 1543, barely a year after leaving France. King François I then appointed Roberval minister of mines.

Marguerite, having lived for at least 27 months on the island, was rescued in the fall of 1544 by a Breton fishing ship. After she returned to France, she reportedly spent the rest of her life living near Angoulême and teaching young girls.

It is likely that Marguerite did tell her story to the Queen of Navarre, sister to François I and a sympathizer with the new religion. The queen retold Marguerite's story in her collection of tales, the
Heptameron
, which was published in 1558, after the queen's death. The queen disguised the characters' names and the details of the story.

The Franciscan André Thevet, cosmographer for four French kings and an antagonist to the Huguenots, interviewed Marguerite, reportedly in Nontron. Thevet retold her story in
La Cosmographie universelle d'André Thevet, cosmographe du roy
, published in 1575. Had he known the story earlier, he almost undoubtedly would have included it in his book,
Singularitez de la France antarctique,
published in 1557.

Thevet, who was known to his contemporaries as a liar and plagiarizer, wrote that Marguerite's lover died after eight months on the island, that Marguerite bore a child about a month later, and that Damienne, the servant, died about eight months after the child was born. The baby died about a month after Damienne. Thevet did not reveal either the name of the lover or the sex of the child.

Jean-François de la Roque de Roberval was reportedly murdered at the Church of the Innocents in Paris in the winter of 1560.

Biggar, Henry P.
A Collection of Documents Relating to Jacques Cartier and the Sieur de Roberval
. Ottawa: Public Archives of Canada, 1930.

Boyer, Elizabeth.
A Colony of One: The History of a Brave Woman
. Novelty, Ohio: Veritie Press, 1983. (Can be obtained from: Women's Equity Action League, Elizabeth Boyer Books, P.O. Box 16397, Rock River, Ohio 44116 )

Garrisson, Janine.
A History of Sixteenth-Century France, 1484-1598: Renaissance, Reformation, and Rebellion
. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995.