The Vanishing Point (38 page)

Hannah regarded the bowed head of the man who had been her first and only love. The boy who had been so tender to her, opening up her heart and body.

"What did you do to my sister?" She pitched her voice above the baby's cries.

"Have mercy." He gulped for air as she strode toward him.
Rufus leapt to his feet and threw himself between her and his master. "I did not harm her."

"You think you can still tell the same lies?" Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out the plain wedding band. "Was this the ring you gave her?"

He jerked his face to one side as though she had struck him. "I did not kill her." He sweated and shivered with each word. "She ran away from me. She did step in the bear trap and perish. It was an accident, no murder."

How could he look at her like that, with those imploring eyes, as if he were the wronged one? He said her name over and over like a prayer.

"Then why did you lie to me of the childbed fever? Why the false grave?"

He collapsed against the tree trunk, eyes glassy with fever. She had left him alone for hours in this state. No doubt his throat was parched. He needed physick, but meanwhile Daniel was screaming and she could ignore the child no longer. Strapping on the packsack, she rushed away, leaving Gabriel beside the grave. Tears blurred her eyes as she broke into a headlong run. Father had told her that an opened, empty coffin was a symbol of resurrection. She could hear her sister's voice again, speaking the words of her last letter.
Forgive me if you can and then forget me, dear Hannah, for I was born under Cursed Stars.

Remembering there was no water in the house, she went to the chicken coop where she had left her pail, then filled it at the creek. She washed the grave dust from her hands and face. Once back inside, she stripped the soiled clouts off Daniel, bathed him, and wrapped him in fresh ones. There was no time to wash the soiled rags; the goats wanted their second milking. Putting Daniel back in the packsack, she took him with her. The motion of her body seemed to soothe him. When the milking was finished, she cooked him cornmeal mush with hot milk—a proper meal to fill him at last. He devoured every spoonful, her robust boy. She still had him to live for, if nothing else. She had to endure
long enough to raise him to manhood. She was thankful that he was so young: he would not remember this day. She wished she had the power to make herself forget. Sweet Daniel, the only innocence she had left. She kissed him and tucked him in his bed.

Outside, the dogs scratched at the door. Gabriel was out there somewhere, shivering and ill. Rain clouds were moving in. Following the dogs down the path, she thought of the biblical Hannah's song of praise in the first book of Samuel. The words of triumph and faith that Father had told her to commit to memory rang out like a curse.
The Lord killeth, and maketh alive: he bringeth down to the grave, and bringeth up ... The adversaries of the Lord shall be broken to pieces; out of heaven shall be thunder upon them: the Lord shall judge the ends of the earth.

She found him only a few paces from where she had left him. Evidently he had tried to drag himself back to the house and had fainted from the effort. She touched the side of his neck and felt his pulse. Though unconscious, he was breathing. She ran to the river and wet her neckcloth, then returned. Kneeling at his side, she wiped his hot face until his eyes opened.

Nearly two years before, she had been flat on the ground, coming out of her seizure to see the strange young man's face above hers, his dark eyes filled with such shy solicitude. How gentle he had been, cooking for her and comforting her while she wept for her sister.

Gabriel looked up at her without speaking. Maybe he was too ill to speak. God would take him, just as he had taken Father and May. An evil voice inside her said that if God punished him, she wouldn't have to. Hannah wept in shame. Long ago, her father had made her swear an oath to use her knowledge of physick to heal, to do everything in her power to help those who needed healing. If Gabriel died on account of her neglect, she would be as damned as he was.

"Water." His voice rasped like autumn leaves.

"Open your mouth." She squeezed out her neckcloth over
his parched tongue. It was only a trickle, but enough to moisten his throat.

"I thought you left me here to die."

Her tears fell on his face. "I must get you back to the house. Can you stand?"

She put her arms around his neck and pulled him so he sat upright. Slowly she helped him to his feet. Wrapping his arm around her shoulder, she bore as much of his weight as she could. He shuddered with each step. She had to urge him on.

"Look, you can see the porch. Just a little further."

When he faltered, she held on to him with all her strength to keep him from falling. At last they reached the house, where he collapsed into bed. Hannah piled blankets and furs on him. She brewed cinchona bark. He shivered so violently, she had to drip the brew into his mouth with a cloth.

"Just swallow." She made her voice gentle. These were her arts, and Father had insisted she use them to the best of her ability.
Love the sinner but hate the sin.
Gabriel sweated so much that she stripped the buckskin off him, sponged his body, and wrapped him in a man's nightshirt she found in the chest of drawers. It must have belonged to his father, for it dwarfed his thin body. She covered him up again, stoked up the fire, and made him onion broth. She brewed him a decoction of feverfew and sang to him as she would sing to Daniel.
Tirra lirra lirra.

"It is only the ague," she said. "You are young and strong. You will endure this." She stayed up through the night, gave him more cinchona brew, and wrapped his legs in wet cloths to lower the fever before tucking him under the blankets again. But his fever didn't break until dawn.

***

Rain fell softly, beading the hairy flank of the goat she milked. The rain wet her dress, stiff with yesterday's dirt. Her joints ached as she dragged the milk pails, then the water bucket and egg basket, back to the house. Her bones creaked like those of an old woman.

He lay in bed, still weak but out of danger. When she brought him corn mush, he ate in silence, not looking up from the trencher. She felt his eyes on her, though, as she fed Daniel his breakfast. She caught Gabriel watching them as if for the last time. After Daniel was fed and changed, she gave him his wooden rabbit and put him in his bed with its high sides to keep him from falling out. Then she took away Gabriel's empty trencher and spoon. She stood at the foot of his bed.

"You must tell me, once and for all. How did my sister die?"

"It is hard to remember. I tried so hard to forget."

Hannah crammed her fists in her pockets to keep herself from slamming them against the bedstead. "You buried her in the forest like an animal."

"Hannah, you have no inkling. She hated me, betrayed me, called me the vilest names."

"I found a letter that she hid away for me to find. She said that
you
hated
her.
"

"She had no regard for me."

"Did you kill her for it?"

"I am no murderer."

"Patrick Flynn said you stabbed her in the breast, then put her leg in the bear trap and left her there to make it look like an accident. Flynn said he found her in the trap, then turned her over to see the wound in her breast."

"I never stabbed her. Mayhap Flynn stabbed her. Or one of her other lovers."

"Don't you dare insult my sister." It was all she could do not to scream.

"I never raised my hand against her. I swore that to you again and again, but you would never believe."

"What
am
I to believe?"

"She ran away and broke her leg in the trap."

"Patrick Flynn said she fled from you in fear for her life."

He writhed beneath the blanket as though some devil were riding him. "The words of a thief."

"Why did she flee you, Gabriel? Flynn said she was still weak from childbirth."

"The woman hated me." He tilted his face to the ceiling. "When the baby died, she blamed it on me."

"Did she have cause to blame you?" Sick inside, she took her hands out of her pockets and stepped around the side of the bed, placing herself between Gabriel and Daniel. "How did the cradle break?"

He had the shakes again, but she wouldn't allow herself to be moved. "She threw it at me," he said. "I ducked and it hit the wall." He raised an unsteady hand to point at a scar in the wood near the window.

Hannah shook her head. "You would have me believe she had the strength to hurl a cradle across the room when she was still weak from childbirth?"

"Have you ever seen that woman in a temper? She cursed me and called me a murderer."

"Why?"

He sagged against the headboard. "I did not send for a midwife."

Hannah's eyes stung. She remembered the pain that had nearly destroyed her during Daniel's birth.

"What in God's name were you thinking?"

"She had the girl Adele to tend her."

Hannah couldn't speak, couldn't even look at him. She rested a hand on the high side of Daniel's bed. Absorbed in his own world, the little boy patted his hands against the blanket, pushing down into the straw mattress so it crackled. That girl Adele had been barely more than a child, with no knowledge of birth. How could she have been expected to deliver May's baby and keep the infant alive?

"You wanted her to die." Trembling in rage, she turned to face him.

He lifted his hands as if to ward her off. "The child wasn't mine."

"How can you be so sure?"

"She told me as much herself."

"Why did she run away so soon after childbirth?"

"She threw the cradle at me and called me a murderer. I told her that if she hated me so much, she must quit this place."

Hannah went cold. She remembered their fight after Banham's last visit, when he had all but ordered her to leave.
If you believe I killed her, you can go. Now take the child and run after him.
"She was still weak from childbirth, and you turned her out?"

A moment passed. He stared straight ahead, his skin the color of ash. Then his head fell forward into his hands. She watched the back of his neck bob up and down. "I rue it. I do. I don't know what devil got hold of me then. I told her to get out of my sight or I would have her publicly chastised for adultery. Every day I beg God's forgiveness." He was sobbing very quietly.

"Why did you not beg May's forgiveness?" Hannah asked him coldly.

His breathing was ragged. "When at last I came to my senses, it was too late. She was dead." He spoke with a dead man's voice. "My dogs found her in the woods, her leg in the trap."

"Did she have a stab wound in her chest?"

"Aye." His voice was hollow. "All her clothes were scattered about. I think that thief Flynn robbed her of her valuables and fled."

"What of Adele?"

"Mayhap the girl betrayed her, too. Or mayhap the girl fled Flynn and disappeared."

Hannah sank to the floor. How could Adele have just vanished? A runaway servant like Flynn might get as far as Port Tobacco before the authorities arrested him, but a black girl? Perhaps she had lost her way in the forest and been mauled by a bear. And why had May run into the forest instead of seeking refuge at the Banhams'? Had Flynn dragged her down the hollow? Hannah wept and rocked herself. May was lost forever. She would never know what had really happened.

"You believe that Flynn stabbed her." Her tone matched Gabriel's. She had entered his world of shades and ghosts.

"Aye. He hated her sorely. Once, on her account, my father gave him a savage flogging." Gabriel looked so broken down, so cornered and wounded, that she knew he spoke the truth.

"Then why did you not tell anyone? If he is a murderer, he must hang."

"It was a shallow wound, not deep enough to kill. She died from stepping in my trap. I think she was running from him, not looking where she stepped."

Hannah could not speak.

"He vanished with my father's silver, my father's ring, my father's second-best boat. His sovereigns, too. The other servants fled. After I turned her out, they thought I had gone mad. Maybe I had. By the time I did find her, animals had ravaged her body."

Tears stung her raw face. "Why the false grave?" But she already knew the answer.

He told her in his dead man's voice that by the time he had discovered her there, she so was ruined that he couldn't stomach the thought of dragging her carcass to the river to bury. So he had made do with the empty coffin. "I did not kill her," he said, "and yet I know I am to blame for her death."

"You thought no one would ever know of it?" Her eyes anchored on the rain-smeared window.

"All I ever wanted was to be left in peace. Then you came." His voice wrenched her.

Her tears marked the dusty floorboards. "That is why you would not take me to Anne Arundel Town and marry me. You feared the gossip. You feared I would hear the rumors."

"Aye."

Daniel grew restless. She took him out of his bed. "You lied to me from the beginning."

"You grieved so deeply for her," he said. "You fell in a fit when I told you she was dead. I feared what would happen if I told you the whole truth."

She buried her face in her son's thick chestnut hair, so much like her sister's.

"Hannah," he said softly, "if I could have charmed her out of the grave for you, I would. You came here and you were so sad. I couldn't bear to make you any sadder."

She remembered how he had stitched her the pair of rabbit skin mittens, how she had slept with them under her pillow for comfort the night before she was to leave for the Banhams'. "How could you think I would never find out?"

Daniel wriggled out of Hannah's grip and tottered away. She watched him tug at the bed curtains.

"I could not tell you," he said. "You were my one chance for happiness. I loved you from the first day. If you knew the truth, you would have hated me. You were my one chance to know a woman's love. I thought love could restore me. Hannah, look at me, please."