The Vanishing Point (14 page)

Swinging her legs off the bed, she planted them on the cold floor. A few glowing embers in the hearth guided her path across the room. He cried and thrashed like a haunted man, so loudly that his pain took shape and substance. In the darkness, Hannah saw her sister's face, her sister's cold body in his arms as he carried her to the river to bury.
Grief has undone him. He's just as lost for her as I am.
Men were confounding creatures, as different from women as the sun was from the moon. She remembered how her father had shriveled up and withered away after May had left. Men didn't weep openly but held their sorrow inside, where it festered and poisoned them.

"Gabriel!" she cried hoarsely. "Wake up." She found his shoulder and gave it a shake before backing away.

He sat up with a gasp.

"You were dreaming, Gabriel." She hurried to her bed.

***

The next morning his face was gray. He couldn't seem to look her in the eye.

"You dream of her, too." Hannah looked down at her bowl of corn mush. "I have dreamt of her every night in this house." She put down her spoon. "I loved her more than anyone, even more than I loved my father." She had never made this confession before.

"Let's not speak of the dead, Hannah." He got up from the table. "I can't abide it. She's gone and I can't abide it." At that he walked out the door and whistled to his dogs.

***

Dispiritedly she washed the wooden bowls with the water he had fetched that morning. Gabriel had left her alone again. She had no idea what to do with herself. Rummaging through her trunk, she found her second linen cap. There was no mirror, but she tried to make herself as respectable as possible, even though it seemed rather pointless in this wilderness. May would have let her hair tumble free, but Hannah braided hers, pinned it to her head, and covered it with the cap.

She carried the dishwater to the porch and emptied it in the weeds. When she turned to go back inside, she saw the rabbit skin Gabriel had pegged up on the outer wall. Slowly she raised her hand to stroke the soft fur. Then she decided to hunt for the creek he had mentioned the day before.

Picking her way down the network of paths, she passed the garden and the servants' shacks. The path widened as it went by the chicken coop. Gabriel and his dogs were nowhere to be found, but she heard tinkling bells. Drawing to a halt, she held her breath as a goat ambled out of the bushes and gazed at her with its yellow devil's eyes. In the distance, beyond the house, smoke rose in a tall column. Had Gabriel lit a bonfire?

The earth sloped down a steep bank into a ravine where ribbons of white water gushed over rocks. She followed the footholds worn into the ground. Once May had gone down here to get water and probably to launder. She imagined her sister beating dirty clothes against the rocks, hands rough and swollen in the cold water. She remembered the way May had laughed and said,
Fancy his name being Washbrook.
Wandering downstream, she came to a still pool that reflected her forlorn face. Once Joan had told her she could look into the future by gazing into a pan of water. Hannah hovered over the pool until her neck hurt. After a time her reflection blurred. She fancied she could see her sister staring back. May had aged. Dark rings marked the skin beneath her eyes. Her hair hung loose and uncombed. Her lips were bitten and bleeding.

Hannah lifted her head at the sound of an ax striking a tree in the distance where smoke billowed in the sky. The ax blows were rhythmic as drumbeats. Gabriel must be cutting firewood for winter. He had so much work to do. Really, she should be helping him. She should weed the garden, gather eggs, prepare the evening meal. Filling the bucket, she trudged up the slope toward the house.

The sound of chopping continued. She heard an enormous creak as the tree gave way and crashed to the ground. The sound seemed to come from near the tobacco barn.

She stopped at the chicken coop and filled the water trough before marching back to the creek to fill the bucket again. The chopping resumed. Once he had felled the tree, he had to cut and split the logs. It might keep him busy till sunset. Carrying her bucket of water, she passed by the side of the house where a blood-red bird flitted through the trees. When she followed its flight, she noticed a shuttered window in the attic wall. If she wanted to search the attic for May's trunk, she only had to go to the window and open the shutters—then she would have all the light she needed.

***

She mounted the ladder and heaved open the trapdoor. Gabriel wouldn't have to know. As long as she heard the chopping, she knew he would be away from the house.

It was a straightforward proposition. The attic window was on the wall opposite the hearth. Downstairs, she had already measured the distance by pacing from the ladder to the wall and counting her steps. Twelve measured paces would bring her to the shuttered window. Candle in hand, she put her feet down cautiously, aware that unseen objects might lie in her path.

At the count of twelve, she held the candle over the cobwebbed wood until she made out shutters and a latch, which gave way with a squeak. When she pushed the shutters open, light flooded through the glassless window. Blowing out the candle, she turned.

On the floor lay a pallet speckled with mildew. Near the trapdoor, she spotted the object that she had tripped over the day before—May's spinning wheel lying on its side. She remembered Gabriel's story of the girl who called upon the faeries to help with her spinning, only to be obliged to marry one of them. How could he have stored the spinning wheel so carelessly? May's had been her most treasured possession. After righting the spinning wheel, Hannah wiped the dust and cobwebs away with her skirt. She spun the wheel and examined the spindle and gears. By some miracle, it appeared to be in good order. Leaving the wheel in midspin, she moved to the other end of the attic. In a dark corner, away from the window, she found her sister's trunk and dragged it to the window. Outside, the red bird sang with unbearable sweetness. Holding her breath, Hannah threw open the lid and went through the chest, one item at a time. She recognized the infant clothes passed down from Mother and the quilted counterpane that she and Joan had helped stitch. But there was not a single item of May's clothing. What had become of her wedding gown?

At the bottom of the trunk was the first letter Hannah had written to her. With a sinking heart, she realized that May had been dead by the time the second letter arrived—if it had arrived at all. Also at the bottom of the trunk was the leather-bound book Hannah remembered Father giving May—their mother's receipt book of cookery and household physick. Father had kept it with his private mementos of their mother until the day before May had sailed.

Hannah Thorn Powers
This her own Book
1663

Underneath, May had penned her own name in a bolder hand.

May Powers Washbrook
1689

Though the ink had faded and the pages had yellowed, the script was clear to read. Looking at the pages, Hannah tried to catch some essence of the woman who had died giving birth to her.

To make a Soop

Take a Leg of Beef, and boil it down with some Salt, a Bundle of sweet Herbes, an Onion, a few Cloves, a bit of Nutmeg; boil three Gallons of Water to one; then take two or three pounds of lean Beef cut in thin Slices; then put in your Stew-pan a Piece of Butter, as big as an Egg, and flour it. And let the Pan be hot, and shake it till the Butter be brown; then lay your Beef in your Pan over a pretty quick Fire, cover it close, give it a turn now and then, and strain in your strong Broth, and a Handfull of Spinnage and Endive boil'd green, and drained, then have Pullets ready boil'd, and cut in Pieces, and Toastes fry'd.

The pages were well fingered and stained with broth. Hannah pictured the book lying open on the trestle table as May and Adele labored over the soup pot. She turned to the physick receipts.

A Stay to prevent a sore Throat in the Small-Pox

Take Rue, shred it very fine, and give it a bruise; mix it with Honey and Album Graecum, and work it together; put it over the Fire to heat, sew it up in a Linen Stay, and apply it to the Throat pretty warm: As it dries repeat it.

 

A Receipt for a Consumptive Cough

Take of the Siroop of white and red Poppies of each three Ounces, of Barley, Cinamon-water, and red Poppy-water, of each two Ounces, of Tincture of Saffron one Ounce, Liquid Laudanum forty Drops, and as much Spirit of Sulphur as will make it acid. Take three or four Spoonfulls of it every Night going to Bed; increase or diminish the Dose, according as you find it agrees with you.

Hugging the book to her chest, Hannah knelt on the dusty attic floor until she lost sensation in her legs. The red bird with its tufted head still warbled, but the chopping had ceased. She heard the noise of sawing. As pins and needles shot through her calves, she struggled to her feet and limped to the window. Already the sun was sinking. Soon Gabriel would return. She closed May's trunk and then the shutters, but took the receipt book with her and concealed it in her own trunk.

***

Heading in the direction of the sawing, she found Gabriel in the woods behind the tobacco barn. The felled trunk of a massive pine, stripped of branches and bark, rested on split logs. Gabriel worked the top of the log with a saw. His face was grimy, marked in wood dust. When he caught sight of her, he wiped his forehead on his sleeve. "This is for you."

She looked at him blankly. "What do you mean?"

"I am making a canoe to take you downriver."

Hannah lowered her head, not knowing how to thank him. "Where did you learn how to do such a thing?"

"When we lived in Anne Arundel Town, I apprenticed as a boat builder. A good skill to have in these parts." He held up his blistered palms. "Tonight I shall rub my hands with bear grease."

"Shall I fetch eggs and vegetables for our dinner?"

He nodded and began to saw again. "There is still a little more I can do before nightfall."

***

Hannah noted she was a poor cook compared to him. Her stew consisted of cabbage, onions, and turnip simmered with salt and herbs. It wasn't nearly as rich as the rabbit stew he had made for her. She boiled eggs to serve on the side. When Gabriel dragged himself through the door, he ate three trenchers without complaint. After the meal, he took the jar of grease from the pantry and rubbed it into his raw hands.

"I have clean rags," Hannah offered, "if you want to bandage your hands for the night."

"No, I just want to sleep now."

Hannah washed up and retired early so that he could, too.

***

May sat at her spinning wheel beside the bower of white roses in Father's garden. May was an unmarried girl again, the beautiful, loose sister for whom the boys yearned. She laughed as she spun, foot pumping the treadle until the wheel spokes blurred. Then she pricked her finger on the spindle, her blood spraying the roses red.
The earth demands blood.
And the deep red roses were so heavy, so huge, that they toppled from their stems, toppled on Hannah, pinning her to the mattress so she couldn't move. She could only choke on their musky-sweet odor. The roses took the form of a man, a red man whose flesh branded her. He kissed her violently, his breath on her face like heat from a brick oven. Wrenching herself awake, Hannah threw off the heavy blankets and fought for air. The darkness clung to her like a shroud as she listened to Gabriel toss in his sleep.

***

Hannah rose with the first light, taking pains not to wake him. Putting on her cloak over her shift, she slipped into her shoes and crept out the door. She hurried to the creek, headed away from the worn path, beating her way through the brambles until she came to a still eddy enclosed in blazing red sumac. Shedding her clothes, she knelt in the cold water. Shivering and panting, she slapped the water against her belly and chest, then grabbed a fistful of ferns to scrub her skin until it chafed.

T
HE SMELL OF BUBBLING
corn mush greeted Hannah when she returned to the cabin. The trestle table was set with a pitcher of fresh goat's milk, a single trencher, and a horn spoon.

"Gabriel?" she called, but he was gone.

She took the pot off the fire before it could scorch and ladled corn mush on the trencher. She was so hungry, her appetite frightened her. Surely all these animal hungers came from the devil and not from God. Her unholy dream raged inside her. What if she had called out something shameful in her sleep? Perhaps that explained why Gabriel had abandoned the cabin so early. But he had made breakfast for her.

Running a hand across her heated face, she thought of his blistered palms. He had gone back to work on the canoe. She could hear him chipping away. As a grateful guest and kinswoman, she should prepare his midday meal and carry it out to him. It was only right, considering everything he was doing for her. After her dream, she wondered if she could bear to look at him without burning up in humiliation. The only thing she could do was pray for release. As soon as Gabriel had finished the canoe, she would leave this place and be out of temptation's way. In the meantime, she would banish unclean thoughts with hard work.

Lest the leftover goat's milk sour, she churned it into butter. In the pantry, she took some apples and the remains of what had once been a big cone of sugar. In the wooden spice box she found a single nutmeg clove, a rare treasure. She had enough ingredients on hand to make apple tansey. Opening her mother's book to the receipt, she went to work with care and concentration, as though cookery, like surgery, were an art of dangerous precision, on which life itself depended.

To make an Apple Tansey

Take three Pippins, slice them round in thin Slices, and fry them with Butter, then beat four Eggs, with six Spoonfulls of Cream, a little Rosewater, Nutmeg, and Sugar, stir them together, and pour it over the Apples, let it fry a little, and turn it with a Pye-plate. Garnish with Lemon and Sugar strew'd over it.