The Last Sin Eater

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The Last Sin Eater

Copyright © 1998 by Francine Rivers. All rights reserved.

Discussion questions written by Peggy Lynch.

Designed by Alyssa Force

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means—
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise— without prior written permission.

Cover photo copyright © Giuseppe Ceschi/Nonstock. All rights reserved.

Author photo by Phil Fewsmith. All rights reserved.

As with any work of fiction, the characters, incidents, and dialogues in this novel are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or to persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, King James Version.

Scripture quotations in the discussion questions are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright 1996, 2004. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.,

Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Rivers, Francine, date

The last sin eater / Francine Rivers.

          p. cm.

ISBN-13: 978-0-8423-3571-3

ISBN-10: 0-8423-3571-4 (sc edition)

          I. Title.

PS3568.I83165L3 1998                                                   98-19967

813'Œ.54—dc21

Printed in the United States of America

13 12 11 10 09 08 07

18 17 16 15 14 13 12

Content

Title Page

Copyright Page

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Discussion Questions

A
C K N O W L E D G M E N T

God has blessed me with a wonderful family and many friends who have been consistently supportive and encouraging. My husband, Rick; my agent, the late Jane Jordan Browne; and my editor, Karen Ball, have been heavily involved in seeing me through each project. Thank you for always being there.

Peggy Lynch: Thank you for listening to me and asking the hard questions that make me think more deeply.

Liz and Bill Higgs: Thank you for sending a box of resource materials!

Loveknotters: Thank you for listening, advising, sharing, and praying.

A u t h o r ’ s N o t e

T
HE SIN EATER WAS A PERSON WHO WAS PAID A FEE OR
given food to take upon himself the moral trespasses of the deceased and their consequences in the afterlife. Sin eaters were common in the early nineteenth century in England, the Lowlands of Scotland, and the Welsh border district. This custom was carried over by immigrants to the Americas and practiced in remote areas of the Appalachian Mountains.

This is a purely fictional story of one such person.

JESUS, THE CHRIST; JOHN 14:6

O N E

Great Smoky Mountains, mid-1850s

“Dunna look at the sin eater, Cadi,” I’d been told by my pa. “And no be asking why.”

Being so grievously forewarned, I tried to obey. Mama said I was acurst with curiosity. Papa said it was pure, cussed nosiness. Only Granny, with her tender spot for me, had understood.

Even the simplest queries were met with resistance.
When
you’re older. . . . It’s none of your business. . . . Why are you asking such a fool
question?
The summer before Granny died I had stopped asking questions of anyone. I reckoned if I were ever going to find answers, I’d have to go looking for myself.

Granny was the only one who seemed to understand my mind. She always said I had Ian Forbes’s questing spirit. He was my grandfather, and Granny said that spirit drove him across the sea. Then again, maybe that was not the whole truth because she said another time it was the Scotland clearances that did it.

Papa agreed about that, telling me Grandfather was driven off his land and herded onto a boat to America so sheep could have pasture. Or so he was told, though I could never make sense of it. How could animals have more value than men? As for Granny, she was the fourth daughter of a poor Welsh tinker and had no prospects. Coming to America wasn’t a matter of choice. It was one of necessity. When she first come, she worked for a wealthy gentleman in a grand house in Charleston, tending the pretty, frail wife he had met, married, and brought over from Caerdydd.

It was the wife who took such a liking to Granny. As a Welshwoman herself, the young missus was longing for home. Granny was young then, seventeen to her recollection. Unfortunately, she didn’t work for them long, as the lady died in childbirth and took her wee babe with her. The gentleman didn’t have further need of a lady’s maid—and what services he did want rendered Granny refused to provide. She’d never say what they were, only that the man released her from her contract and left Granny to her own devices in the dead of winter.

Times were very hard. She took whatever work she could find to keep body and soul together and met my grandfather while doing so. She married Ian Forbes “despite his disposition.” Never having met my grandfather, I couldn’t judge her remark on his behalf, but I heard my uncles laughing once about his high temper. Uncle Robert said Grandfather stood on the front porch and shot at Papa, not once, but twice in quick succession. Fortunately, he had been drunk at the time and Papa quick on his feet, or I never would have been born.

Grandfather Forbes died of a winter long before I was born. A heavy storm had come, and he lost his way home. Where he had been, Granny didn’t say. It was one of the things that frustrated me most, only hearing part of the story and not the whole. It was left to me to piece it all together and took years in the doing. Some of it is best not told.

When asked why she had married such a fierce man, Granny said, “He had eyes blue as a dusky sky, dearie. You have ’em, Cadi, my love, same as your papa does. And you’ve Ian’s soul hunger, God help you.”

Granny was ever saying things beyond my ken. “Papa says I take after you.”

She rubbed her knuckles lightly against my cheek. “You do, well enow.” Her smile had been sad. “Hopefully not in all ways.” She would say no more on the subject. Seemed some questions didn’t bear answering.

The morning she died, we were just sitting and looking out over the hollow. She had leaned back in her chair, rubbing her arm as though it was paining her. Mama was moving around inside the house. Granny drew in her breath with a grimace and then looked at me. “Give your mama time.”

How four words could hurt. They brought to mind all that had been before and what had caused the wall between Mama and me. Some things can’t be changed or undone.

Even at my young age, after a mere ten years of living, the future stretched bleakly out ahead of me. Resting my head against Granny’s knee, I said nothing and took what solace I could in her sweet presence, not guessing that even that would soon be taken from me. And if I could go back now and change things so that I would not have lived through such a time of desolation, would I? No. For God had his hand upon me before I knew who he was or even that he was.

In the last year I had learned tears did no good. Some pain is just too deep. Grief can’t be dissolved like rain washing dust off a roof. Sorrow knows no washing away, no easing . . . no end of time.

Granny laid her hand upon my head and began stroking me like I was one of the hounds that slept under our porch. I liked it. Some days I wished I was one of them hounds Papa loved so much. Mama never touched me anymore, nor Papa either. They didn’t speak much to one another, and even less to me. Only my brother, Iwan, showed me affection, though not often. He had too much to do helping Papa with the farm. What little time he had left over was spent in mooning over Cluny Byrnes.

Granny was my only hope, and she was slipping away.

“I love you, my dear. You remember that when winter comes and everything seems cold and dead. It won’t stay that way forever.”

Winter had come upon Mama’s heart last summer, and she was still a frozen wasteland where I was concerned.

“Spring beauties used to grow like a lavender blanket at Bear-wallow. If I could wish for one thing, it would be for a bouquet of spring beauties.”

Granny was ever saying the same thing:
If I could wish for one
thing . . .
Her wishes kept me busy, not that I did not delight in them. She was too old to go far afield. Further I ever seen Granny walk was to Elda Kendric’s house, she being our closest neighbor and near as old as Granny herself. Yet Granny’s mind could travel across oceans and over mountains and valleys, and often did so for my sake. It was Granny who pointed me to forgotten paths and treasure haunts it would have taken me longer to discover on me own. It was for her pleasure I hunted hither and yon in our high mountains to collect her precious bits of memories. And it got me away from the house—and Mama’s grief and rejection of me.

It was Granny who put me on the path to Bloomfield in springtime so that I could bring back a basket full of mountain daisies and bluets. She taught me how to make a wreath of them and put it on my head. She told me about Dragon’s Tooth, where green rock grew just like the backbone of Ian Forbes’s Scotland, or so he’d said.

More than once I’d gone there. It took all day for me to climb the mountain to bring back a chunk of that green stone for her. I traipsed to ponds filled with sunfish and hollows warm with frog song. I even found the oak tree she said must be old as time itself—or at least as old as she.

Granny was full of stories. She always took her leisure, pouring out words like honey on a cool morning, sweet and heavy. She knew everyone who came to settle into the palisades, runs, and hollows of our uptilted land. We Forbeses came early to these great smoky highlands, wanting land and possibilities. The mountains reminded Grandfather of Scotland. Laochai-land Kai led them here, along with others. Elda Kendric came with her husband, dead and gone now so long that Granny forgot his name. Even Miz Elda might have forgotten it, for she was ever saying she didn’t want to talk about him. Then came the Odaras and Trents and Sayres and Kents. The Connors and Byrneses and Smiths cleared land as well. Granny said if Grandfather Ian hadn’t died, he would have moved the family further east to Kantuckee.

They all helped one another when they could and held together against nature and God himself to build places for themselves. And they was ever on the lookout for Indians to come and murder ’em. Those that didn’t stand with the others stood alone and most often died. A few married come later, marrying in until we were a mingled lot, castoffs and cutaways and best-forgottens.

“We all got our reasons, some better than most, for sinking roots into these mountains and pulling the mists over our heads,” Granny said once. Some came to build. Some came to hide. All of them did what they knew to survive.

That morning—the morning Granny died—I went to Bear-wallow for spring beauties. She longed for them, and that was reason enough for me to go. The flowers did grow like a lavender blanket, just like Granny said she remembered. I picked a basketful and brought them back for her. She was asleep in her porch chair, or so I thought until I came close. She was white as a dogwood blossom, her mouth and eyes wide open. When I placed the flowers in her lap, she didn’t move or blink.

I knew she was gone from me.

It is an awful thing for a child to understand death in such fullness. I had already had one taste of it. This time it was a long drink of desolation that went down and spread into my very bones.

Something had departed from Granny or been stolen away in my absence. Her eyes stirred not a flicker; not a breath of air came from her parted lips. And she didn’t look herself, but rather like a shriveled husk propped up in a willow chair—a likeness of Granny Forbes, but not Granny at all. She was gone already without a by-your-leave. I understood too much and not enough in that moment, and what I knew hurt so deep inside me I thought I’d die of it. For a while I did. Or at least I let go of what faint hope had survived the summer before.

Mama stopped the clock on the mantle and covered the mirror, as was our highland custom. Papa rang the passing bell. Eighty-seven times he rung it, one for each year of Granny’s life. My brother, Iwan, was sent to tell our relatives the sorrowful news. By the next day, most of the clan of Forbeses and offshoots and graft-ins would gather to carry Granny to her final resting place on the mountainside.

Gervase Odara, the healer, was the first to come, bringing with her Elda Kendric, now the oldest woman in our highlands. Papa took the door off the hinges and set it up between two chairs. Granny was laid out on it. First the women removed her clothes, and Gervase Odara took them outside to wash. Water was warmed over the fire inside. Mama ladled some in a basin and used it to wash Granny’s body.

“Gorawen,” Elda Kendric said, brushing Granny’s long white hair. “Ye’ve left me last of the first.”

Mama didn’t say anything. She and Elda Kendric went on working in silence. The old woman would look at Mama, but Mama never once raised her head from what she was doing or said a word to anyone. When Gervase Odara came back inside, she helped Mama.

“She told me not more’n a few days ago that she had heard the mighty voice calling to her from the mountain.” Gervase Odara waited, glancing at Mama. When she still said nothing, the healer said, “She told me it was for Cadi she tarried.”

Mama’s head came up then, and she stared hard at Gervase Odara. “I hurt enough without you tearing open the wound.”

“Sometimes it does good to let it draw.”

“This isna the time.”

“When better, Fia?”

Mama turned slightly, and I felt her looking for me. I withdrew as far as I could into the corner shadows, hoping she wouldn’t blame me for the women tormenting her. I bowed my head, pulling my knees tight against my chest, wishing myself smaller or invisible.

But I was neither. Mama fixed her gaze on me. “Go outside, Cadi. This is no place for you.”

“Fia . . . ,” Gervase Odara began.

I didn’t wait to hear what she would say but cried out, “Leave her be!” for I couldn’t bear the look in my mother’s eyes. She was like a trapped and wounded animal. “Leave her be!” I cried again; then jumping up, I ran out the door.

Some of the clan was yet to be gathered, for which I was thankful. Had they been, I would have run into the lot of them staring and whispering. I looked for Papa and found him chopping down a cedar some distance away. I stood behind a tree watching him for a long while. It struck me how long it had been since I heard him laugh. His countenance was grim as he worked. He paused once and wiped the sweat from his brow. Turning, he looked straight at me. “Mama send you out of the house?”

I nodded.

Papa lifted his ax again and made another deep notch in the tree. “Get the bucket and collect the chips. Carry ’em back to her. It’ll cut the stench in the house.”

The women had already seen to that, for the doors and windows were open, a breeze carrying in the scent of spring in the mountains that married with the camphor they had rubbed on Granny’s body. A tin cup of salt sat on the windowsill, tiny white granules blowing onto the floor like sand.

Mama was kneading bread dough as I came in. When she didn’t look up, Gervase Odara took the bucket of cedar chips.

“Thank you, Cadi.” She began to sprinkle a handful alongside Granny, who was clothed again in a black wool dress. Her long white hair was cut off and coiled neatly on the table to be braided into the mourning jewelry. Perhaps Mama would add a white braid to the red-gold one she wore. Granny’s poor shorn head had been covered with a white cloth looped beneath her chin. Her mouth was closed, her lips silenced forever. A second white strip of cloth had been tied around her ankles, a third around her knees. Her hands, so thin and worn with calluses, lay one over the other on her chest. Two shiny copper pennies lay upon her eyelids.