Authors: Lynn D'urso
Heartbroke Bay (36 page)
Hans rumbles in his throat. “That’s a damn lie.”
“God’s truth. That’s why I had to kill them. They were planning to murder you. And after I refused to join them, they would have had to kill me, too. There was no choice. I had to shoot them.”
Hannah remembers the surprised look on Michael’s face as she flung the soup, and an inch of doubt worms into her stomach. Harky had once saved Hans’s life, but he had been dark and sullen lately. And gentle Dutch, always so eager for approval—surely he could not have been capable of coldblooded killing just for gold. Could he?
“I do not believe you,” Hannah says.
“It’s true, Mrs. Nelson. Yesterday, when I was leaving. Out there by the woodpile, they said they were going to do it last night while you slept.
“You’re trying an innocent man here. It was self-defense, killing them like that.” Michael continues. “I saved your lives and my own. We’d be the ones freezing in the ground if I hadn’t done what I done.”
Hannah’s mind whirls, spinning through the facts she knows and the intuition she had, her memory of Dutch, Michael, and Harky standing at the woodpile, stiff with the attitude of conspiracy; Michael, crying for the seal; his tenderness with her and his passion in the fields.
Michael sees the doubt in her eyes and holds up his hands. “Let me go, Mrs. Nelson. There’s no need to make me a prisoner. After we’re rescued, we’ll go to the law, let them decide that what I done was necessary.” Lowering his voice, he adds, “I’m no murderer. I think you know that.”
Hans bangs to his feet and throws the bloody rag at the prisoner. “Self-defense, was it? Killed them two for us, did you?” He advances on Michael with doubled fists. “You’re a lying murderer, Severts. You would have killed me, too, if I’d let you.”
Hannah lifts the shotgun from her lap and points it at the floor—“Hans, stop”—and discovers the physical, unrefined authority of a gun, for her voice is firm, and her husband halts with one fist raised to his shoulder.
“He’s lying, Hannah. He’s trying to save his neck, that’s all.”
“No, Mrs. Nelson. It’s true, I swear. We’d be dead, I tell you.”
Hannah wavers, struck between husband and lover, desperately wanting to believe Michael, because then he can be released and the first long step back to some order in their wrecked lives can be made. Her head shakes. “I don’t know.”
Hans makes a noise like a bull deep in his chest, an ugly snort that is half laugh, muffled and distorted through the swelling of his broken nose. “True? Well, the only true thing is that Harky and Dutch are dead, sure enough.” He turns to Hannah with a sly look. “Why do you think the bastard was trying to reload the gun?”
December 1898Terrible plight. Food perilously low as Hans has little success with hunting. Bitter cold. Nights much worse. Wood scarce near cabin. Snow covers everything. Hans and I guard against Michael’s escape by turns, day and night. Leaves no time for necessities. Very exhausting. Dear God, how have we come to this? I do not feel I can trust anyone. Even you.Nauseous every morning.
Hannah strokes the green leather cover of her journal with a mittened hand and closes the book, too fatigued to be ashamed of how sloppy her handwriting has become. Besides, there is nothing to say, or at least nothing she wants to put into words. And the ink blots and skips in the cold. Her head aches from hunger, and she notices how thin her wrist looks where it emerges from the mitten. Hans hunts every hour of daylight, but is rarely successful. Yesterday he returned with a single ptarmigan, reduced by the large-bore shotgun to a fist-sized bundle of shattered white feathers and stringy meat. Stewed whole—head, feet, and organs—the bird fed each of the three survivors only a cup of weak broth apiece. This morning they had sucked at the slender bones.
Without snowshoes, travel through the forest is too difficult, limiting Hans’s hunting range to a strand of wind-beaten beach beside the sea. He cannot duplicate Michael’s success with drifting the skiff down on the seals.
Sylkie
, the Irishman calls them, and he has known their habits since he was a boy. Hans grows impatient, moves too soon, and panics the herd before the shotgun can do its work. Then he returns to the cabin sullen and shivering, the skin of his face turning red with frost, peeling away in strips and patches.
Sylkie
, the Irishman calls them, and he has known their habits since he was a boy. Hans grows impatient, moves too soon, and panics the herd before the shotgun can do its work. Then he returns to the cabin sullen and shivering, the skin of his face turning red with frost, peeling away in strips and patches.
The cold is a mortal enemy, and without sufficient food they chill easily. When the wind is strong, Hans cannot stand the exposure for even the minimal hours of daylight at hand, and instead relieves Hannah from guarding Severts. They take turns digging at driftwood buried under the snowdrifts along the beach, skidding and poling the logs to the cabin, where they are laboriously hacked and sawn into pieces to feed the ravenously hungry stove, which eats continuously. So weakened, it is more than they can do to meet its demands, and every day the stockpile of wood dwindles.
“It’s a two-man job to keep us alive,” says Hans through lips cracked with cold. “Sitting nursemaid to this murderer is sure to starve us or freeze us. And it’s a race to see which is first.”
“Let me go, Hannah.”
Hannah jerks upright from her doze, clutching at Harky’s pistol in her lap. “What?”
“Let me go. You know this isn’t right.”
Her skull feels as if it is stuffed with cotton wool, and the pulse of her thin, exhausted blood beats behind her eyes. She answers Michael with a sharp shake of her head, but pain fills the void left by lack of sleep, and nausea rolls her stomach into an empty knot.
Michael is silent for a moment, lying with his head tilted back, eyes closed, mouth agape. Hannah is slipping away, chin to her chest, before he speaks again. “Either let me go, or I will tell him about us.”
Pulling herself back to consciousness, she considers this. Her eye sockets are sinking into shadows, and her eyes are bloodshot. When she blinks, it feels like they are filled with sand. “No you won’t. It would gain you nothing.”
“I’ve nothing to lose, have I?”
“You won’t do it.”
Michael shrugs, then gasps as the motion cramps the unused muscles of his neck and shoulders. “Nothing to lose.” Sighing, almost wistful. “Nothing at all.”
“He’d kill me. And you.” His voice is flat, just stating a fact. “You think he won’t?”
Hannah shakes her head, eyes closed, willing Michael to shut up.
“He’d have all the gold then, too. Wouldn’t he?”
Michael closes his eyes, turns his face to the wall, and is silent for a long moment before saying, “The shotgun has two barrels, Hannah. Remember that.”
“Hannah,” whispers Michael. “I’m cold.”
Michael’s voice wrenches Hannah from a reverie by the fire, starting her upright in her chair. Resentment flashes through her blood. Adrift, she had been for a moment free of worry. Awakened, she is returned to the immediate hell of the hovel. The fire warms only a thin band of air near the ceiling; her feet are cold.
“The ropes are too tight. See how my hands are swelling.” Michael raises his head to look at Hannah, holding up one hand. The flesh is puffy, the color of wax. He is trembling, unable to reach down and pull up the filthy blanket that has slipped to his waist. “And I’ve got to care for myself.”
“I’m sorry, Michael. You will have to wait for Hans to return.” It has become the routine for Hans to stand guard over Severts with the shotgun while Hannah slacks the ropes so Michael may attend to the chamber pot. Bedbound and unfed, Michael’s digestive system has crawled to a near halt, making elimination a laborious and painful process, during which Hannah is relegated outdoors to chop wood.
Michael’s head drops back, and he sighs, “Jesus, Hannah, help me.” His pleading cuts Hannah like a saw. Helpless and powerless, he reaches out to her with his bound hands. “Please. Just loose enough to let my blood move. He tied me so tight.”
Hannah comes to her feet and walks to the edge of the bunk, bends down to inspect Michael’s hands. His fingers are locked in a curl like a claw, the skin tight and swollen. The cord bites into the soft flesh of his wrists. He whispers again, “It hurts.”
The lack of food has burned Michael’s face thin, accentuating his cheekbones, darkening his eyes. In the soft light of the cabin, he has the look of an Italian martyr in a Renaissance painting, beautiful in torment, and Hannah’s heart reaches back to the days of their passion.
“Yes, very well.” She tries but fails to keep her voice businesslike as she lays down the pistol and reaches for a knot. Bending over, she hesitates, fearing for a moment that an act of human kindness will undo her resolve, and her fingers will fly to free him. Avoiding Michael’s eyes, she stiffens herself and slacks the cord around first one hand, then the other. Michael gasps and flinches as the blood begins to burn its way back into his hands.
“Oh, thank you, my angel.” His brogue is soft with intimate gratitude, and Hannah rests her fingers for a moment on his shoulder. His bones announce themselves under her hand, and for a heartbeat he is not a killer, but a child.
“How long has it been?” he asks, and Hannah is not sure whether he means the duration of his confinement or time lapsed since they last lay together. The first is safe ground, and she answers, “Three weeks,” then hesitates. “I think.”
Michael sighs. “Three weeks. Jesus, Hannah. If only I could move about a bit. My back, it’s killing me to lie here on these boards.”
“No, Michael. Hans will kill you if he finds you untied.”
He groans, tries to roll onto his side, and is brought up spread-eagled and short. “Please. Can you just give me room to lower my arms a bit, then? It’s torture, really, it is.”
Hannah hesitates. Even in his suffering, Michael is smooth. Over the months she has learned to recognize his charm, but even aware, she remains vulnerable. “I’m sorry, Michael.”
“Torture, Hannah. You say you are holding me for the law, but where does law allow torture? Even if you think me a monster—and you know I’m not—you can’t believe I deserve to be tortured, can you? Even your English kings gave that up long ago.”
Hannah shakes her head. “When Hans returns.” Her breath steams in the colder air at the lower level of the bunk.
Michael’s eyes flash dark and angry. “That bastard. He enjoys seeing me suffer. You know he won’t do it.”
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