#mathilde geffard

“We begin anew,” Mathilde said to Francis when the ship landed in Quebec City. “This is a place to make a life.”

We begin anew, she said to the ground as they buried their daughter that cold winter morning, the sound of the church bells echoing in the frosty air.

We begin anew, she said to the mirror the morning after Francis died, his throat sliced for reluctantly doing the right thing.

He hadn’t been a bright man, but he had figured out in just enough time to shut up and listen to her. It had gotten him killed, and while Mathilde wasn’t exactly happy he was dead, she certainly wasn’t sad, either.

“We begin anew,” Mathilde said to Renardette, wiping a cloth across the young girl’s forehead. This child could not replace the one she’d lost, but Mathilde wouldn’t be able to live with herself if she let just anyone take her away.

Renardette said nothing as Mathilde repeated the sentiment like a prayer. But the child also didn’t look way from Mathilde as she’d held her hand and scrubbed away the dirt and grime.

“We begin anew,” Mathilde said to Delphine, wiping a tear from her cheek. “He is not the man for you, but he is not the only man. Come, stay with me. Help me, I’ll help you.”

How she’d become something of a mother to two young women not of her body was indeed, wholly new.

First Renardette, with her fox-shaped birthmark that she refuses to hide behind a curtain of hair any more.

“Up,” Renardette said one day, pointing at her hair as she handed Mathilde her brush.

“You want me to braid your hair?”

“Up,” Renardette repeated. Mathilde obliged. Renardette, with her quiet steps and wide, all-seeing eyes. We begin anew.

And then Delphine, her mark hidden, so marred by a man that couldn’t control her - a mark so unsettling it had driven her first husband to annul their marriage.

“Mister Cooke is kind,” Delphine said after coming back from Cooke’s place of business. “He made me tea and we sat by the fire. He showed me this.” She opened her hand and showed Mathilde a tiger’s claw. We begin anew.

Two girls marked by someone or something else, signs of their otherness etched onto and into their skin - Renardette with her birthmark and Delphine with her scarred abdomen.

And Mathilde - innkeeper’s wife now innkeeper, childless mother of two.