The Vanishing Point (31 page)

***

Adele counted the passing days while waiting for the magic to take hold. When she carried the basket of cornbread and bacon to the men in the tobacco field, she observed Gabriel closely to see if her charm had any effect. He labored shirtless, uprooting weeds with his hoe, evidently unaware of her presence. She could see the muscles in his arms and back. One thing was certain—he was a beanpole boy no longer. He had changed since his marriage, had grown into a man who was stronger and tougher than anyone would care to admit. She tried not to see the scars left by his father's bullwhip. As the sun glared on his skin, slick with sweat, she could sense something brewing inside him, simmering beneath the surface. She had heard that quiet men had the most deadly tempers.

He wiped his forehead with his hand and caught her gaping. A few months ago, she would have set down the basket of victuals and fled. Now she looked into his eyes, pretending that she had the power to trap his spirit with her gaze.
Please, let the charm do its work.

"What is it?" he asked. "Why do you look at me that way?"

She forced herself to stand her ground. May had made her bold, given her courage. If only Gabriel could forgive his wife and open his heart, allow May's beauty to conquer him, as it had conquered everyone else. If only he could grant her one more chance.

Patrick burst out laughing. "Taken a shine to the master, have you, Adele?" When she ignored him, he plowed right on. "I suppose someone has to, if his own wife won't."

Gabriel clenched his hoe in both fists. His eyes went black. He reminded her of a copperhead about to strike. For one awful moment, she thought he would go after Patrick.

Tom stepped between them. "Master, don't listen to the fool." He laid a careful hand on Gabriel's shoulder. Then he turned to Patrick. "You insult the mistress again, I'll tell Mr. Nathan."

A wary silence descended. She imagined they were thinking of the whipping Patrick would get if he overstepped his bounds again.

***

During the evening meal, Adele couldn't keep her eyes off May as she smiled and laughed with the men. Pregnancy had only made her more beautiful. Her hair had a special sheen to it. Her eyes seemed bluer than before. Finn gazed at her in adoration, as though she shone brighter than the moon and sun combined.

Gabriel bent his head over his food. When his trencher was clean, he left the table.

"Where do you go?" May called out.

"To feed the dogs." The door shuddered behind him.

Nathan merely sighed. May went on chatting with the others, taking no more notice of her husband than she would of a sulky child. Adele's eyes smarted.

She would have to talk to May, woman to woman. She struggled to gather her thoughts, translate them into English. Meanwhile the manservants filed out the door. Gabriel did not return. Nathan retired to the porch with his pipe while she and May scrubbed the trenchers and pots.

There is something I must tell you.
She held the words ripe on her tongue.

May looked up from the dishpan and peered into her eyes. "You are so quiet this day. You have been sad of late, I think. Are you lonely here, Adele?"

"I was lonely before you came."

May took the clout and dried the last pot. "In faith, I don't know what I would do without you." She spoke with such kindness. Adele reminded herself that she had May to thank that she could read and write. May had given her two of her own dresses and made them over for her. She was beautiful and generous with both her body and her things. How was anyone supposed to resist her charms?
We were all so lonely and lost,
she wanted to tell her,
before you came.

"Some creature has been into the garden," May remarked as she hung the clouts to dry. "It dug up one of my foxgloves."

Before Adele could think what to say, May took the Bible from its box and set it on the table.

"Are you ready for your lesson?"

She and May read from the Bible every night. Adele had nearly finished the book of Genesis and had memorized passages to trace in the hearth ashes. Taking the poker, she wrote:

Bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.

"Ah, yes." May's laughter rang out like music. "Adam and Eve."

Once that story had been Adele's favorite in the Bible. She loved the description of the Garden of Paradise and of how God had given Adam a companion so he wouldn't be alone. Why had it ended so sadly, then? Why had Eve gone astray and destroyed it?

"Adele, you are crying." May searched for her handkerchief. Not finding it, she yanked her neckcloth from her bodice and used it to wipe Adele's tears. "What is it? Tell me."

Her breasts moved up and down with each breath, bathed gold in the firelight. Eve herself couldn't have been lovelier.

I am afraid. You lead yourself into danger.
But Adele couldn't speak those words aloud. She could not bear the thought of causing May such distress.
Blood of my blood.
At that moment, it became clear. What her spell had accomplished was not the joining of May and Gabriel in conjugal love, but the binding of her own destiny to May's. Her blood in the ink with which she had written the charm.
Flesh of my flesh.
Their fate and fortune were intertwined, just as their fingers were as May held both her hands. It didn't matter that they were black and white, or mistress and servant. They were blood sisters.

T
HOSE LIARS HAVE POISONED YOU.
The words stuck in his throat. Hannah rocked their son in her arms, her loose hair falling around the infant's body like a ring of fire no one dare cross. She would not let him anywhere near the baby. If he picked up little Daniel when he cried, she snatched him away, as if from a thief.

Gabriel tried to look away from her, but he couldn't. She had never been more beautiful. The green of her new cotton dress set off her eyes and made her hair even more fiery. Her breasts poured over the top of the bodice. He had never loved her or wanted her more than he did now, but she froze up if he so much as touched her shoulder. Her eyes brimmed with tenderness, but not for him. She had fallen in love with Daniel, had named the boy without asking his opinion. He listened to her croon while rocking him. "Danny, my sweet Daniel." Her body and breasts, her love and attention belonged to the baby, only to the baby.

If Gabriel was fortunate enough to catch her eye, the look she gave him stabbed him like a blade in the chest. It wasn't the hurt, questioning look she used to give him. What was new in her gaze was the bald-faced dread. She feared him. It wasn't a question of doubts anymore—she had condemned him. He felt like a man at the gallows with the rope around his neck. He didn't dare argue or raise his voice lest he lose her completely. She was still frail from the birth. She needed to build back her strength.
He couldn't risk causing her any more anguish. Above all, he was afraid of her affliction—if something pushed her any closer to the edge, she might fall into one of her fits.

***

Since Daniel's birth, the moon had waxed full, then dwindled again. A new crescent hung in the sky. In that time, the child had ballooned. Gabriel could hardly believe their son had once been a tiny wrinkled thing.

When he came in for the evening meal, Hannah set his trencher of stew on the table before retreating to the carved chair, where she nursed the baby.

"Will you not eat with me, love?" All he could see were her flaming locks snaking down the back of his father's chair.

"Daniel is hungry."

"You need to eat more yourself, or you will grow too thin." As much as it shamed him to admit it, he had come to think of the fat, ruddy-faced infant as a parasite sucking the life out of her.

"I eat when I can." Her voice was distant.

"Come sit beside me." He spoke so urgently that she turned her head, eyes wide and fretful.

"He is still nursing."

"Then I will sit with you." He took his place on the floor at her feet like a supplicant while she sat enthroned in his father's chair. During the old man's lifetime, no one but Nathan Washbrook had dared sit there. After they all deserted him, Gabriel had been tempted to ax the hated thing and burn it as firewood.

Hannah drew her shawl over her breast so he wouldn't see her nursing. Was this the same girl who had let him strip her naked on the bed of furs?

"I can take no more of this," he told her. "He's my child, too, yet you never let me near him. You treat me like an intruder in my own home."

The whites of her eyes flashed in the hearth light. She cowered.

"There," he said quietly. "You give me that look again."

His father's chair dwarfed her. She seemed so helpless, so young and lost. How he longed to take her in his arms—if she would only allow it.

"Banham has turned you against me," he said. "The midwife, too. I don't know what she said to you, but it has caused you to fear me. He fed her those words, Hannah. This is his game, and he has made you his pawn. Can you not see it?"

Daniel had stopped nursing. With trembling hands, she fumbled over the lacing of her bodice. Holding the baby over her shoulder, she patted his back until he burped.

"You would have me believe it is mere slander." Her hand cupped the back of Daniel's head. Her arm shielded the baby's body. "But why?" Her voice was tight and small. "Why would any man hate you so much to say such things if they are not true?"

Her fear was palpable, a presence that filled the room. He had sensed the same terror when cornering a deer with his musket. She seemed to be too scared even to cry.

"The Banhams have plotted against my family for years. Paul Banham sold my father this leasehold for far too much. When the harvest was poor, he came to gloat. We knew he was biding his time until we were ruined, so he could play the Good Samaritan and come to our rescue, only to buy back the land at a pittance."

None of this seemed to have any impact on her. She sat rigid in his father's chair, her breathing shallow.

"Mayhap you do not believe me," he said. "Mayhap you take young Master Richard's word over mine."

As if infected by his mother's unease, Daniel started crying. "Let me rise," she pleaded. "I must walk with him."

Gabriel leaned back as she got up and paced the room with the squalling baby. He listened to her sing a broken lullaby. When the baby was quiet again, she tucked him in the bed.

"You never use the cradle," he said.

She did not reply.

He crossed the room and took her arm. White-faced, she
shuddered and let out a gasp, which made him release her in shame. Her fear tore at him.

"The Banhams did their work well. Will you let them win their game? Will you let them take away everything we have?"

This time she refused to meet his eyes. A sick taste filled his throat, and then he could contain himself no longer.

"If you fear and despise me so much, there is little point in your biding here. When the snow melts, I will take you downriver. Do you not have a friend on the Eastern Shore? You can live with her and her people."

"You would turn me out?" Her face went ghostly. All the life inside her seemed to evaporate. She sank to the floor and pressed her hands to her forehead.

"I have done my best to make you happy." He knelt at her side. "I cannot bear to go on living with you if you hate me. You and the baby are all I have in the world. Before you came, I was alone. I had nearly mastered my loneliness. Now I cannot imagine my life without you. But I fear I have already lost you. I don't care if Banham takes the house and land, but if his venom has made you turn away from me, I will not be able to bear it."

She looked down at the floorboards. "When I lay in childbed, I heard you and another man shouting. I had never heard you so angry. I was afraid of you then. I have feared you ever since." The force of her confession made her quiver. So she had been torturing herself over this for the past month.

He couldn't endure the sight of her shattered face. Rubbing his eyes, he wet his fingers. "I was afraid for you and I lost my temper," he said. "Young Richard Banham came out with the midwife. I told him off for how he troubled you while I was away. Then he said that if you did not survive the birth, the blame would be mine." He fought to keep his voice steady. "He said that no one but a criminal would have a woman living with him in such a lonely place. He said you were a good woman and I did not deserve you."

There was nothing else he could say. This was the end, he thought. He had already lost her, would never win her back. The log in the fire cracked and was consumed. The baby slept on. Buffeted by the wind outside, the house creaked like a ship on the high seas.

Then Gabriel started at the touch of her hand on his neck. His pulse rattled against her palm—the first time since Daniel's birth that she had touched him. Breathing her name, he wrapped his arms around her and held her close.

"May was not faithful," she said after a moment. "She must have caused you sorrow and pain. Perhaps you had reason for wanting her dead. Speak the truth. Did you..."

"Never." He held her at arm's length so she could read the truth in his eyes. "I could never raise my hand against a woman."

"And what of the baby?"

"You think I would harm a helpless infant? She was born sickly. She was not long for this world, but her death had nothing to do with me." He let go of her then. His head was splitting.

"What of the broken cradle?"

He held his head. "Out of grief..." His heart was pounding, his throat as dry as dust. "Out of grief and despair I did break it. Hannah, you must believe me." Her face blurred through his tears. "Though I did not love your sister, I never wanted her dead. I mourned her and the baby. I nearly lost my mind from grief."

"Let us settle this once and for all." Grave as a preacher, she fetched his father's Bible from the box and set it on the trestle table. "Swear an oath. Let's be done with it."

Gabriel laid his right hand on the dusty Bible. "I am innocent of murder. I never harmed your sister May or her baby."