The Vanishing Point (16 page)

"That is done."

"You are generous," she said, "giving me all her things."

Gabriel looked away. "We leave at dawn tomorrow."

"Tell me one thing." Hannah fought down her trepidation. After this evening, she might not have another chance to ask. "Was May happy here?" She could not bring herself to ask if her sister and Gabriel had been happy together.

He stared at her, stricken. How unlike May he was, so quiet and gentle. How had he fared with her? She thought of May's boldness, her vices. Had she been true to this man, or had she carried on the way she always had? In her letters, May had told them about Adele and Nathan Washbrook, but had hardly mentioned Gabriel. With a heavy heart, she remembered Father's words:
She writes nothing tender of her husband. Not a word.

"Our life here was full of hardship." Gabriel bowed his head. "I think she missed society. Had she known how lonely it would be, I doubt she would have joined us here."

Hannah wanted to say something, but found she could not.

He raised his face to the ceiling then, as if about to make a confession to God. "I fear I was not all she hoped for, either. I could not make her happy as I should have." His voice was stark with pain.

"Gabriel, I loved her well, but I know that she could be a trying woman. You are a good man. I am sure you did everything in your power to be an honorable husband to her."

He blinked. "I know she missed you terribly, Hannah. Your letter brought her such joy."

She turned aside so he wouldn't see her eyes tear up.

***

Just as she was about to retire, Gabriel appeared with a cloth bundle.

"I know you are disappointed," he said, "not to have more keepsakes from your sister. This is a keepsake from me. Mayhap it will be of use to you this winter."

She smiled shyly as she undid the bundle. Inside was a pair of mittens, tanned hide on the outside and soft fur on the inside. "This is kind," she murmured. Putting them on, she held them up in the firelight and marveled. They fit her perfectly. How had he known the size of her hands?

"They're rabbit fur," he said.

***

She slept with the mittens under her pillow, clutching them for childish comfort. The prospect of throwing herself at the Banhams' mercy banished all hope of sleep. She pondered whether she could go to Michael and Elizabeth Sharpe's homestead on the Eastern Shore and make herself useful in exchange for a pallet to sleep on and a place at their table. Over time she could establish herself as a midwife and herb woman. Possibly Elizabeth was already pregnant again after rejoining her husband. Staying with them seemed a happy prospect until she took their poverty into account. Before she became a working midwife, she would be a burden, another mouth to feed. It would be different if she were a strong man who could help in the tobacco fields. No, she could not impose herself on them.

Tossing in bed, she tried to envision her future, laid out before her like Joan's cards. She saw only a blank.

***

At first light, she dressed behind the closed curtains. Combing her hair, she coiled it and tucked it beneath her bonnet. She was nervous about meeting Banham again, but maybe he wouldn't be there. Perhaps he was off sporting, she thought, with some other man's wife.

Gabriel had set out a single plate of cornbread and a pitcher of milk. The trunks were gone. How had he been able to take them down to the dock without waking her? The cornbread stuck in her throat. Why was she so nervous? May wouldn't be filled with trepidation. If May were with her, she would whisper in her ear that it was an adventure. May would expect her to set off in high spirits.

Before going to the dock, she visited her sister's grave. The frost-whitened grass chilled her as she pressed her palms against the turf. It pained her enough to have left her parents' grave, and now she was abandoning May's last resting place as well. She was about to set off into a world where no one knew a thing about her or her family: how beautiful her sister or how sagacious her father had been.

***

She found Gabriel in his canoe, paddle across his lap. The trunks were stowed in the middle, and he sat at the rear. "You must sit in front," he said, "to keep the balance."

She warned him of the logjams and beaver dams blocking the waterway, but he insisted they would manage. "The way downstream is easier than coming back will be."

After she had settled into the boat, he untied the rope and pushed away from the dock. The downstream current was swift. Before Hannah could catch her breath, Washbrook Landing was lost.
Oh May, what will become of me?

"You will tend her grave for me, won't you?" she asked. The churning river swallowed her words. She looked back at Gabriel. The wind blew his long hair off his brow as he worked the oar. To think that this was the last she would see of him. The thought of losing his friendship seemed unbearable. Although she had stayed in his house for barely more than a fortnight, he was the one person who knew her secrets. He had seen her in one of her fits. She had shown him her surgical instruments. This night she would sleep in the Banhams' house. How she dreaded meeting them again. How she dreaded those sneering girls.

They were heading for a patch of rough water lashing around big stones. "Hold fast," he yelled, guiding the canoe around the rocks with a dexterity that astonished her.

She had lost so much. May, Father, Joan and her childhood home, her country. Now this. Had she traveled this far to end up a servant or else married to some planter with rotten teeth, like the man who had accosted her in Anne Arundel Town and called her sister Banham's whore?

"Gabriel, stop!" Lurching in her seat, she shifted her weight so that the canoe rocked violently to one side.

"Hannah!" he shouted. "Have a care. You will tip the boat."

"Gabriel, please! Turn the canoe around. Let us go back."

"Have you lost your head?"

"Banham is a dishonorable man. He is a whoremonger. I won't go to him."

"Sit still, Hannah. Calm yourself," he pleaded, making for shore. Paddle on the river bottom, he pushed the prow onto a sandy bank. He slowly moved one foot over the side of the canoe,
then the other, stepping into the shallow water. Grunting with effort, he shoved the canoe onto land. Then he tied the rope to a tree branch hanging over the water. He stretched out his hand, helping her ashore.

"Hannah, what is this? You wanted me to take you downriver. I made the canoe for you."

She couldn't see him anymore for her tears. "Will you let me stay with you, Gabriel?"

She covered her face, waiting for him to tell her no, it was impossible, there was nothing left for her there.

"You are overwrought," he said. "If you want to go back to society, we must do it now, before the first snow."

She wiped her eyes. "You are the only family I have left. I do not want to lose you."

He moved his lips, but no words came out. She had never seen a man's face go soft like that before. Then he stiffened. "Think well on your words. Is this what you truly want?"

"They are all fops and liars, those planters. You said so yourself. They do own slaves and treat them worse than cattle. When I traveled upriver with Banham, he and Mr. Gardiner both debauched Mr. Gardiner's wife, though she was huge with child."

Gabriel looked at her as though she were raving.

"But you," she said, "are a good and honest man."

He swallowed. "You have known me only a short time."

"But I do
know
you," she said. "There is a bond of kinship. Our fathers were cousins."

He took her hand and led her up the bank to a flat granite boulder.

"Sit here a while and think of what you have said." He let go of her. "You must know your mind. If we do not travel today, you might be stranded here for winter, and our winters can be long—"

"Gabriel." She cut him off. "My sister was fortunate in at least one thing." She looked into his eyes.

His face went dark red. "Do you even know what you are saying, Hannah Powers?"

"I think I am in love with you."

They stood on the boulder, three feet apart, the river rushing past. She stepped forward and touched his arm. Before he could stop her, she embraced him, pretending for an instant that he was May and that she could wrap her arms around him without shame. How easily her head nestled against his chest. His heart pounded against her cheekbone. Yes, she was carrying on like a wanton girl, but wasn't she May's own sister? Didn't May's mischief run in her blood?

"Hannah." He sounded helpless and overwhelmed.

"I'm sorry," she said at once, backing away. But then he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her tight against him. Closing her eyes, she soaked in his warmth, the muscle and bone beneath his buckskin shirt. She began to cry again.

"Sweet Hannah." He wiped away her tears with his fingers, then rested his palm on the side of her neck. She noticed for the first time that his eyes were not black but darkest blue, like indigo ink with a glint of fire behind them.

His lips brushed her forehead. "You smell of wood smoke. And lye soap."

She laughed.

He tugged at her bonnet. "Let me see your hair."

"It's ugly," she whispered.

"It's not."

So she undid the strings of her bonnet, and he pulled it off her head. Like a living thing, her hair sprang loose from the tight coil she had wound it in. He ran his hands through it, then buried his face in it. He cupped her face in his hands and kissed her with a hunger that made her gasp. How easy it was to melt in his embrace, to let him bend her backward. This pounding inside her, was this what May had felt with her lovers? Was this what had lured May from her bed night after night and left such a glow on her skin? People said it was wicked, but this was what her May had done, her beautiful May, and this was May's widower. Did she not haunt them both? Kissing Gabriel was the only way to break through the wall of loneliness and grief, the only way she could hold on. In the entire world, only one thing remained of her family and home, and that was Gabriel Washbrook.

"Sweet Hannah," he said again as he gently drew her down on the grass. He plucked a late-blooming dandelion and rubbed it against the inside of her wrist until the pollen stained her skin gold.

***

As Gabriel had predicted, the way back upstream was much slower. Rowing furiously, he battled the current. She wished she had a paddle, too. But finally they were back at Washbrook Landing. His dogs rushed out to greet them in a noisy chorus while she helped him hoist the trunks out of the canoe bottom and set them on the dock. She let the dogs jump on her and lick her hands. Together she and Gabriel carried first the one trunk and then the other back to the house.

"It grows cold." Gabriel kindled a fire in the hearth. "Soon the first snow will come."

He pulled the animal skins in front of the fire, sat down on them, and held out his arms to her. "Come, Hannah." His fingers stroking her hair were so tender. She closed her eyes and surrendered to the warmth of his hands, the heat of the fire.
Now you are home. Now you have come home at last.
Home wasn't a place anymore. It was the love that welled up inside her.

"I hope I am not a burden to you," she said. "Have you enough provisions to get us through the winter?"

"More than enough." He wrapped his arms around her. "There are pigs and goats I might slaughter. Chickens as well. The forest is full of game, the river full of fish. We won't starve, you and I." He lay back on the bearskin and gave her a playful tug, pulling her down beside him. "Even if Banham comes to push us off the land, we will survive. We will never be servants or tenant farmers." He rolled over, lying on top of her but resting most of his weight on his arms so he didn't crush her. Hannah closed her eyes and arched her neck. So this was what it was like to lie beneath a man. The animal fur smelled of his body. He stroked her face, and she kissed his hand.

"West of here are mountains," he said. "My father once worked as a surveyor, and he drew them on a map. We could settle there, build a cabin. The planters wouldn't want that land anyway. No one grows tobacco in the hills."

We will vanish from here,
Hannah thought as he kissed her,
like smoke.
One day Banham and his men would come here and find only the shell of an abandoned house and a few dilapidated outbuildings and overgrown fields. They would wonder where she and Gabriel had gone but never find out. It would be like trying to track down a ghost.

"I will not miss the other world," she told him, "as long as I can be with you."

***

That night she slept in his arms in the bed of skins. He held her tight, molding his body to hers. He cupped her breasts and stroked her through her thin shift but didn't ask her to take it off. "We can go slowly." He ran his hands down her spine as though she were some delicate thing he feared he might break. "I don't want to frighten you," he said, his lips against her ear. "May God smite me if I ever hurt you."

***

When Gabriel went to check his traps, Hannah wandered in a warm haze despite the hard frost on the ground and the chilling north wind that tore the bright leaves from the trees. While she gathered eggs and fetched water, her feet hardly seemed to touch the earth. She had become another person, had been taken apart and put together again so that the pieces fit together in a different way than before. If she had a mirror, she knew she would see the difference in the glow of her skin and the sheen of her hair.

Bit by bit, she was becoming a part of this place, as he was already. She learned to sleep on the bed of fur instead of the dead man's mattress. One day, when gathering kindling, she broke the heel of her worn shoe. Gabriel threw her old shoes to the dogs and stitched her a pair of moccasins made of tough deerhide, lined with rabbit fur to keep her feet warm through the winter.

Though there was no receipt for it in her mother's book, she learned to make cornbread. First she mixed the cornmeal with butter, eggs, and milk, and then either baked it in a pan or fried it in the skillet.