Dominion (23 page)

When its limbs spread and began grasping for the other side of her body, though, she could no longer bear it. “This much will always be yours. All the rest belongs here to Jasper Merian and Stonehouses,” she told her first man, unhappy to have him reaching for so much from where he was.

After breakfast she sent her new girl into town with a note, which the girl left at the doctor's place at lunchtime. He came round to Stonehouses before supper. After the examination he told her she could be happy that they now had hemlock, which was much better than previous medicines to treat such things, and that this procedure was not known even two years before in London, let alone in the colonies.

She thanked him and, in the months that followed, consumed a potion of hemlock twice a day, increasing the amount of the herb bit by bit, until what she ate in the third month would have been enough to murder a bull. There was no effect on her, but neither did her condition worsen. The doctor, when he came around, said recovery was only just around the corner.

When the crab began to grow again and turn scirrhous, he recommended to then a treatment of mercury and poultices. Sanne felt her strength beginning to depart around this time, and the afternoon walks she took to breathe of the deep pine air began to grow shorter, until she could barely make a full turn through her garden. This is when she sent to town to get Adelia back from Content's. The girl came to her immediately, not thinking of Magnus but only that Sanne, that soul of piety, needed her aid.

She nursed her for six months, giving her her medicines and applying a poultice twice a day, the first made from bark, the second from mercury. When the symptoms failed to go away the doctor began to let her blood with leeches, saying such diseases were caused by malign humors that needed only to be released. He prescribed a new poultice of nightshade and told Sanne she must have her daily walk no matter how short it was.

Each morning Adelia would wrap the old woman warmly and take her arm, and they would go out into the garden in front of the house. Both Merian and Sanne had been delighted by that garden when they
finally had the luxury one spring to plant flowers instead of simply vegetables. As she walked there now, though, she saw Samuel, her first husband, walking beside her and looking continuously at the sundial as if waiting on another appointment. “Do you have somewhere else to be?” she asked him.

“No,” he replied, “I'm here at your service, but if it would please you I might finally take you back over the ocean and show you my home, as we always talked about in our youth.”

She was not frightened by this discourse as might be reasonably expected. On the contrary, it soothed her and took her mind from her pain to have such steadfast company.

When the second treatment regime failed, and the ichor began to run, the doctor advised both Sanne and Merian that the only recourse was to try to cut away the diseased tissue. By then the hand that held Sanne had become a claw, and they both knew neither poultices nor surgery was very likely save her.

“You have been very good to me,” Merian said to her that night after the doctor had gone, holding her frail hand. “I could not have made half of what I did without you.”

“And I never thought you would build so great a property when I married you,” she answered him. “Or make me so happy.”

“It has been better than we dared to hope,” Merian said, giving her hand a light, affectionate squeeze.

“What will happen to my orphans now?” she asked.

He did not answer her but smoothed her hair.

The next day she sent out on the farm to have Magnus come to her. In the years he had been there Magnus had changed immensely to anyone regarding him. Gone was the hard, weary look he carried when he first arrived, and his face, while still lean, had taken on a pleasing softness. Still, there was a hunger about him that was etched within and had never gone away completely. As he stood at Sanne's bedside, she tried to turn her head to get a better look at him but was weighed down with drowsiness from the opium tablets she now consumed four times a day.

Looking at her, Magnus could not but think how empty that house would be when she was gone from it. “Ware,” she said, unconsciously using that name that no one but his parents called him by, “Come closer.”
He sat at the edge of her bed and thought how he had once been frightened of her when he originally came. He thought then she might put Merian up to sending him away, but they had grown close enough over time.

He was completely quiet as she spoke softly, and he had to bend down over her to hear, until he found it easier to kneel at the side of the bed. He was very tense that she might require something he could not do, but whatever she asked he would strive in earnest to fulfill.

“I want you to promise me you will take care of your father,” she said. “He is old and soon will no longer be able to care for himself properly.”

“Of course I will do that,” he answered. “You never have to worry about it.”

“Do you still care for Adelia?” she asked next.

“I have not thought much about it,” he replied, taken aback.

“I want you to marry her,” Sanne said simply. “This has gone on long enough, and you will need someone.”

“Sanne, I am not certain—” he began to protest, but she started coughing violently. When her cough had quit her she told him not to disagree.

“Just do as I say,” she went on. “If you ever loved my lost son or your own mother. If I ever made a home for you, I want you to obey me in this. It is hard enough to lose one son. I don't want to think the same kind of thing could happen to you, and you just get swept away by the first wind blowing.”

“Sanne,” Magnus answered, even as his thoughts weighed heavily upon him, “I would do it even if you had done none of those things for me but only because you ask.”

“Good,” she replied, smiling. “What a good man you are becoming.” She wished nonetheless she could instruct him in those things about marriage and domestic life that only women can adequately tell, but she was overtaken by the opium and began to doze, happy for this last victory she had secured in the household.

The next morning, when the doctor came to perform surgery, Merian was by her side until the very last minute. She clasped his hand tightly as the surgeon gave her another dose of medicine to help her bear the pain, both that which she carried every day as well as that of the pending operation. As she looked at her husband, she thought about their courtship and how they used to sing to each other during their first days
of marriage. She remembered as well their strife and how close to starvation they were during those early winters. It had been at last a good marriage, and she wished to let him know how joyful he had made her, and all that is tender. The drug, though, had already begun to claim her consciousness—so that when she opened her mouth to speak, the words were all a murmuring flow. Undaunted she still held on to her husband and began to hum to him that song she learned from her grandmother so long ago. The last thing she heard as her eyes fell closed was her husband singing back to her the refrain.

The operation went poorly. The doctor managed to remove the claw that gripped her, but it was so large by that point he had also to take away the majority of her chest muscle. When she awoke from the surgery it was only very briefly and what she felt was a lightness.

She was not so strong as to move her head, but she knew her first husband was trying to claim her with even greater force than before. Sure enough, when she was finally able to look around she saw him sitting by the side of her bed holding one hand as Merian held the other.

While Merian only clung to her in brief intervals, visiting four or five times a day, her first man never left her side. “I lost you once, girl,” he said. “I have no aim of doing so a second time.”

“Yes,” she said, knowing what he wanted. “I will come away with you.”

When Merian came into her room that evening, it was three days since her operation and the ichor still had not finished draining from her wounds. She was inflamed with it and he could she what pain she endured, lying there wrapped in the covers of their marriage bed.

“How are you this evening, Sanne?” he asked.

She no longer recognized him. She saw only a very old man at her side and wondered who it was who had found his way into her room. She looked around then, wondering where Merian was, because it was the time he usually came and he was always very punctual.

When the old man took up her hand, she grew increasingly frightened and began to scream out that he would have Jasper Merian to contend with if he treated her roughly. When Merian still did not come she screamed even louder, until her first husband appeared at her side and took her finally in both his hands.

Before, he had only held her by the fingers or else offered an arm as they strolled in the garden of Stonehouses, but this time he lifted her up as he had on their wedding night and promised no harm would befall her ever.

“I will take care of you,” he pledged.

“Where we will live? Where are we going now?” she wanted to know.

“Back across the ocean, my love,” he answered to her. “Remember?”

“Will I like it there?” she asked.

“You will. We will make a house for our love.”

“What if I do not?”

“You mustn't leave me again,” he said.

“You can't ask me this.”

“I am your husband again.”

“Yes,” she said, recognizing the truth. “I will try to be a good wife and make a good home for us there across the ocean.”

“You were always the best wife ever there was.”

“That was on the coast,” she answered. “I do not know how it will be for us across the sea.”

“You know many people there,” he assured her.

“Merian is not there,” she said, “nor Purchase. Merian is still at Stonehouses, and my son Purchase is gone. Will they join us?”

“You must rest,” he told her. “It is a long journey.”

“Yes, we must start out.”

The two of them left together then, as he took Sanne in his arms away from Stonehouses, back over the ocean. Once more across the sea.

At her wake Merian spoke very little, being both too lonesome to talk and upset at having the preacher in the house. Standing afterward in the meadowland he had long ago claimed for a graveyard he only listened as the preacher finished his sermon and Magnus and the other pallbearers began to fill in her grave. He was himself too old to shovel the soil back into place but could only watch until they were finished with the task. When they were done, and the grave was stilled over with earth, he issued to them one final instruction. “Dig mine just next to it.”

“Yea, there will be time for that,” Content said, standing beside his ancient friend.

“It was you and Dorthea who brought us together,” Merian replied. “You did not tell me then it would be so short a while.”

He walked over to the preacher and pushed a handful of coins into his hand, then turned and went back toward the house.

When the other mourners entered, Adelia had laid a table with foods and tried her best to make everyone comfortable, recalling from earlier times what the visitors and inhabitants of Stonehouses each required—so that when Content called for something they were able to offer him an eau de vie, and the doctor had his claret, and Magnus, when he went to the table, found a small pot of warm milk with his coffee.

He picked it up and smiled at her as he brought the cup to his lips. This was their first intimate interaction since she had come back to the house; he had done his best to avoid her the entire time, knowing she was there on Sanne's account and not his, and he did not want her to be reminded of their troubles before.

As he looked at her he remembered what he promised Sanne on her deathbed. He knew she would not have told Adelia what had been agreed upon between the two of them, and he struggled to decide whether he was bound to an old woman's delirious request. He had managed in the time he had been there to find appropriate means of dealing with those urges he could not control, but for the rest he felt as he had all his life. Seeing Adelia then made him curse himself for being so quick to give in to what Sanne had asked of him. He did not know if he could maintain his end of the deal, or even if she would still want him should he presume to try.

“You look very pretty today, Adelia,” he said boldly, just as he had in the kitchen many years earlier.

He had not meant to invoke that memory and worried she would take offense, but Adelia only accepted the compliment with a bashful smile and withdrew into the kitchen.

Magnus realized he did not know where Merian was and searched for him throughout the house until he finally found him sitting in the parlor, where he had been counting what was lost to him and what was left. When he saw Magnus, the old man looked his son over and asked him what his plans for things were.

“No plans but what we have been doing,” Magnus answered.

“That is not what I mean,” Merian told him. “I mean what will you do with yourself when you are alone here?”

“There's always someone about,” Magnus said to him.

“Ware,” his father said, “that is not good enough. Out here by yourself, this is the loneliest place known to the world.”

“Let me help you to your room,” Magnus offered. Merian, however, continued looking out his window.

“We are exiled here. One day, when we are purified, we will be rejoined with what is beloved.”

Magnus could see then the light had gone out from Merian's eyes. He thought he knew what had propelled him in his ambition there, but he could see it die that day, and with that it seemed revealed to him that this was never what the older man really wanted but was some elaborate substitution for something that could never be attained.

For Magnus, though, this was what
he
wanted, a place of safety and security. There was nothing more behind it. Merian loved what he could create and had created, but Magnus he loved that he was without any other's claim on him.