The Hangman in the Mirror by Kate Cayley

Author:Kate Cayley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: JUV016170, book
Publisher: Annick Press Ltd
Published: 2011-07-07T04:00:00+00:00

That night, she was talkative. We spoke easily now, often, she taking pleasure in my questions if there were not too many of them, and answering them as she thought proper, and asking me of my life, of which I told what she would think fit to hear. So we were not entirely truthful together, but I think I knew that we were not, while it never occurred to her that her discretion was a kind of untruth, or that I left out what she would not like to know of me.

“Madame, why did you come here?”

“To be married.”

“Like the women who travel here hoping for a husband, Madame?”

She rapped my knuckles lightly, thinking I made fun of her.

“Not like the women who venture here alone, those poor creatures. They must be very desperate, to come so far in hope of a husband, and knowing nothing of who they will get. No, I came as an engaged woman. Though we had not met.”

“How was that, Madame?”

“The merchants of Montreal also need wives, and some prefer to take women born in France. Gentlewomen sometimes come by ship to marry men they have not seen, guided by their own parents and friends who know the man, or know of him. I did not choose blindly. I had heard of him by reputation, and I thought a life of service and wifehood to be preferred, as pleasing to God. Which it is.”

“Preferred to what, Madame?”

“Preferred to a life lived alone. I was already twenty-one, and had had no offers yet. My mother persuaded me that this was my best course, and an honor for me. And I thought I might be suitable.”

She drew the thread in and out, looking intently at her work as if to admire it. A frilled cap, white, embroidered with red and yellow flowers.

“I was not as suitable as I thought. Though I manage, Françoise. This land is a hard place, but I must endure.”

I thought of her slippers warming in the morning, her cup of chocolate, the white bread and choice meat she ate every day, her clothes, my hands combing through her hair and worrying over the lines around her eyes as if her face had been my own, and wondered what she would think of my mother and what she had endured. Then I thought of the three gravestones and the son who had no name to take to heaven, and blushed for shame.

“Françoise.”

“Madame,” I said, not lifting my head from my work.

“What is it like to be born here?”

“I don’t know, Madame, as I know nothing else.”

“Clever. Tell me about your mother, then. Tell me where you grew up.”

“In a terrible hut, Madame! Nothing but the wind to keep me company! Nothing to eat!”

She smiled, thinking I was joking, which I was and was not.

“But my mother was wise, Madame. She is dead but she knew many things. She told me many things that she remembered from when she was in France.”

“Tell me about them.”

“Well,” I said, warming to it now, “she told me all the things that she remembered from her village.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.