Winter 1620-1624

The four sister, Madelon, Marion, Beatrice and Denisete knew that the moment to leave their father's castle for the Convent would come sooner or later, so the morning when Cornille, their wet-nurse, came to prepare them for the departure didn't took them aback.Madelon, the oldest one, secretly smiled, a little relieved by the situation: she was the only one who went to the Convent to join the order.Her sister were sent in the Convent along with her only because they were getting older and their parents were too poor to hire private tutors.They were going to learn the decorum, how to act in public and how to become proper wives.

Even since she had been a little girl, Madelon never wanted to get married and live the kind of life her parents had.Not that she considered their life a disappointment.She simply wanted to serve God and back off from the world where she had been born 18 years ago.

While her three younger sisters cried when they said good bye to their parents, brothers, sisters and servants, Madelon simply hugged her mother and got into the carriage, refusing to look back to the castle and abandoning the realms where she spent her childhood.

All this time, Marion, Beatrice and Denisete hugged each other and continued to weep their lost freedom.Madelon didn't even try to comfort them.

Their first night in the Convent passed without major events.The four girls were quietly greeted by a sister who also guided them to the dormitory.They missed the dinner, arriving too late, so they had to fall asleep still hungry and tired from the long journey.Beatrice, the youngest of the four sisters, cried herself to sleep, while Marion, who still missed her twin sister, Agnesot, tried to comfort her younger sisters.

After their first year in the Convent, Madelon finally became one of the Ursulines, while Marion, Beatrice and Denisete continued to live in the Convent, rarely receiving letters from their family.

Because of that they learned about their brother's fate only a year later, when Marion discovered a hole in one of the old stone walls and decided to run back home.Of course, after an hour of roaming through the streets of the closest town, a clergyman saw her and recognized the girl belonging to the Order because of her attire.By the evening, Marion was already back in her room, doing penitence and listening to reproofs.Of course, the fact that she almost fell asleep praying didn't improve everyone's opinion on her.(Un)Fortunately, the young girl couldn't care less about that.

While her two other sisters, Beatrice and Denisete tried to accept and fulfil their duties, Marion used every opportunity to escape and turn her tail to the manager.If the sisters told her to sleep on her back, with her hands beside her body, she would simply fell asleep with her face in the pillow.If she had to work from Monday to Saturday and spend the Sundays praying, she simply swung the lead all week long and pretend to work all Sunday long. She even slunk into the abbess' room where she knew she could find a mirror to admire herself.At least she and her other two sisters weren't coerced to cut their long hair.

But the long back wool skirts, made to measure lasses and country girls, along with the white bonnets that Beatrice said were identical with those protestant English peasant women had to wear were meant to hide any attempt of coquetry.

By the end of 1624 Marion seemed to sing a different tune, while Denisete and Beatrice already dreed their weird.

Winter 1620-1624

After almost a year spent on a ship in the Atlantic Ocean Maximilian was thankful to change the tottering mat for the stable ground.Those past few months he spent on the seas he realized that as much as he dreamed of traveling, he wasn't a man of the seas.But he was still an explorer and the North coast of the New World seemed like a good choice for a new adventure.Especially now that their ship had sinked and everyone from the Old World believed they were probably dead or enslaved and sold somewhere into the slave market.

The cold wind and the strong miasma of muck, bear grease and mud intoxicated him from the first moment when they got ashore.He heard a strong babble from somewhere in the thickets and soon ten or twelve Indians followed by women and children appeared.Maximilian soon learned that they weren't the first explorers to arrive there.

Most of the men from his crew decided to leave this place and head for Québec where they could spend the winter among more civilized people, but the road was long and dangerous, especially on a freakish weather like this.And Maximilian was still weak, recovering from the days he suffered of scorbutus, so he chose to stay here, at least through the winter.

The next few days Maximilian and some other men, helped by some Indians reconstructed one of the old log cabins built by the first colonists who arrived there few years ago, but died because of the winter frost.Even the weather seemed to take in with them, so by the last days of the fall they finished repairing and even managed to hunt some animals and conserve their meet for the winter.

By the first snow, Maximilian already befriended one of the chieftains, a young Indian named Outtaké who started spending more and more time with them, often bringing his sister, Kawa, to clean the house and cook for the men.

The young girl quickly became every man's interest, even if she didn't seem to be aware of their played manners and gallantries.Maximilian wanted to try his luck too with the young Indian, but the girl seemed more concerned with chasing away the foxes that started to slick into the kitchen, so he backed off.

Outtaké laughed at the men's strange behaviour, but pretended to ignored it, seeming more preoccupied with their latest addition.

One winter morning Maximilian and Kawa left in the woods to gather firewood, but, when trying to climb up a mound, Kawa made a slip and sprained her ankle.Maximilian refused to give ear to her protests and insisted to carry her back to the cabin, where he dresses her leg.

One week later, when Outtaké came to eat with them, he informed Maximilian that Kawa decided to get married to Maximilian.The blond explorer didn't seem surprised by the disclosure and accepted, with the condition that Kawa would move in with them.

The next day the two of them got married by the Indians' law and Kawa resumed her duties in the house.

By the end of the winter in 1624 she gave birth to a half caste baby boy, who had her skin color and Maximilian's hair and eye color.

Winter 1620-1624

Princess Blanche dashed away her tears and continued to watch her daughter, Isabelle, playing alone.Since her illness and the death of her twin sister the little girl wasn't the same.She used to be a healthy and happy baby, brimming over with vitality, but since her disease the blond baby wasn't the same anymore.She started crying every time someone tried to take her in arms, screaming and violently fussing all over until that person left her alone.She didn't even tolerate her mother anymore.Blanche couldn't do anything but watch the toddler and silently cry, because her husband didn't seem to care and everyone else was simply too busy to notice.

All this time, day by day, Maximilian, her husband, seemed to break away from everything and everyone, spending less and less time with his wife and child.Most of the days and part of the nights he spent in his apartments, bent over maps, measuring and calculating distances with different strangers.

But her husband's detachment and their daughter's strange behavior didn't stop the two spouses from to fulfilling their duties as husband and wife and in the winter of 1621 Blanche gave birth to a male heir.The baby boy was christened and named Philibert de Valois, Duke of Angoulême, receiving every nobles' best wishes.But for Blanche everything was just another tiring and painful experience.At least she accomplished her duty and gave birth to a heir, so she hoped that her husband will leave her alone from now on.

Everything happened a little different though.

One morning, only a month after the birth to their son, Blanche woke up and realized that her husband wasn't in the castle anymore.His apartments were the same but he didn't spent the night there.Only a couple of hours later some servants informed her that Maximilian had left the castle that night.Blanche wasn't sure is she should be relived or worried about this, but for the moment she got back to her work.With or without her husband, things wouldn't be too different around.

Three months later, in an official letter from her father she found that Maximilian went aboard a ship that left for the New World.Unfortunately the same letter said that the ship had been attacked by pirates somewhere around the coast and that there were no information about the crew.Blanche crumpled the letter, throwing it into the fire and watched her son.The little boy was his father's perfect copy, with his cold blue eyes and blond hair, so the Princess felt a little guilty about not feeling too attached to him.

So the little boy spent most of his time with his baby farmers or with Françoise, his mother's lady-in-waiting.

Isabelle grew up and became a beautiful and faraway blond fugitive eidolon in the white castle.She was still very distant and refused to talk to anyone, spending most of her time playing the piano or watching the frozen fountain.