The Vanishing Point (37 page)

Yr lost Sister May

Her sister's pain shimmered as the room around her dissolved.
My Husband hates me worse than the Devill.
May had pressed the quill so hard when writing the word
hates
that she had pierced the paper.
You must not linger in this House of Pain, for it will destroy you as it has destroyed me.
What had she meant by that? What precisely had destroyed her? The hard life, the loss of her newborn, and the childbed fever? Or was it Gabriel's hatred?

He had hated her, and she had died shortly after giving birth. Childbed fever was the perfect explanation for such a death. He had sworn that he never harmed her or raised a hand against her, but might he not have been at least partly responsible for her death? In her weakened state, May needed comfort, not hate. Had he contrived to push her over the edge? No, not Gabriel. He could never do such a thing.

The letter clutched to her chest, she wandered the room. When she stood over Gabriel's bed on the shadowy side of the room, she could barely make out his shape. She was tormented by the fact that she had found May's message in the Bible on which he had sworn his innocence.

Father had always told her that truth was a plain and straightforward thing, as solid and unmoving as a church tower.
But it wasn't. The truth was a tangled web. In her letter, May had alluded to her sins. What had her sister done to Gabriel besides being unfaithful, and what had Gabriel done to May? The only hard fact she had was that Gabriel lived and her sister was dead.

With numb hands, she folded the letter, tucked it back in its hiding place, closed the Bible, and returned it to the box. She couldn't sleep beside him that night. Taking a blanket, she curled up with Daniel in the other bed.

***

When she brought Gabriel his cinchona brew the following morning, he looked at her with clear eyes. "I think I am on the mend."

"Last night you did rave." She gave him the cup without touching his hands.

"The worst is past." He took his first sip, then made a comical face to demonstrate how bitter the brew was.

Hannah didn't smile. "Have you no memory of what you said?"

He wrinkled his brow. "What do you mean?"

"You spoke of May."

He blanched. She could see the bones beneath his skin. "What did I say?"

"Do you not remember?" Her sister's words still burned inside her. Hers was not the letter of a woman who had plotted to poison her husband, but of a woman who knew that she was going to die. Hannah didn't want to make it any easier by prompting him. Let the truth rise to the surface. If she waited long enough, he would spill it.

He went on gulping down the cinchona brew. His hands shook and he swallowed clumsily, letting some of the liquid run down his chin. His teeth rattled. "I am cold. Bring me another blanket."

"You said just now you were on the mend."

"Hannah, please."

"Speak first. Do you remember what you said about my sister last night?"

He shrank back into the pillow. "Why do you torment me?"

"Did you hate her, Gabriel? Worse than you hate the devil?"

"She hated
me.
" He shivered even harder.

"Do you deny that you hated her?"

"Hannah, bring me the blanket."

"Answer me first."

"Aye," he said finally. "I hated her in the end."

"Hated her enough to let her die?"

His breathing was shallow and fast. "Why do you do this to me?"

"Answer the question, and I will bring you the blanket." She took him by the shoulders and turned his face to hers. Cold sweat covered his skin.

"You are cruel. You would never believe me."

"Why will you not answer?"

"I answered you before and it did not satisfy."

She made her face stony and impassive. "Why did you forbid me to go into the forest beyond the creek?"

He closed his eyes, his head rolling back and forth on the pillow. "The traps." He gasped for air, fighting for each breath. "You will kill me."

His words cut to the bone. She brought him the blanket, made him some chicken broth, and spooned it into his mouth. Questioning him further would be pointless. His eyes had gone blank.

***

Hannah washed Daniel's clouts while the morning slipped by. At midday she fed Gabriel more chicken broth. He was able to sit up, his eyes unclouded once more, but he had trouble meeting her gaze.

"Are you feeling well enough to be left alone while I go to the hen house for eggs?" she asked him.

He nodded stiffly, evidently still angry for the way she had treated him the previous night.

"I must fetch water, too, and cut herbs in the garden. I may be gone an hour." She put Daniel in his leather packsack, picked up her water pail and egg basket, and let herself out the door.

The winding path took her past the garden and the shack with the carving of the heart pierced by three arrows. It was some kind of charm, she decided. Possibly a symbol to ward off evil. Yet it disturbed her to look at it and then see the foxglove growing all around. Yes, foxglove was poison. She remembered the panic on Gabriel's face when he had said,
You will kill me.
Only Joan could make sense of his ravings and the symbol on the lintel. Joan and her pack of cards could unknot the things that Father and his logic could not touch.

Hurrying away, she left her empty basket and water bucket outside the hen house, then went to the creek. She didn't know what she hoped to find, but she whistled loudly, the way Gabriel did when calling the dogs. Three sharp piercing whistles and they came rushing. Rufus, the big red-and-white-spotted hound, was the leader of the pack. She pointed to the opposite bank and the dogs plunged across the creek. They were Gabriel's dogs and yet they followed her commands, charging up the bank. She nearly had to run to keep up. Bouncing in his packsack, Daniel giggled and pulled at her hair.

The dogs knew the forest as well as their master did. Gabriel had put out the traps some days ago. When he wasn't ill, he checked them every few days. Used to the routine, the dogs led her efficiently from trap to trap. Noses to the ground, they sniffed out the scent of blood. Hannah surveyed the dead rabbits and raccoons and the single dead bobcat. At each trap, the dogs looked at her and wagged their tails. They seemed disappointed that she didn't skin the animals and throw them the meat. She just pointed and urged them on. They obeyed, drunk on the excitement of sniffing out death, leading her past the scattered remains of earlier victims. Ruby picked up a bone and loped along with it
in her mouth. Hannah counted the traps. They had visited eleven; Gabriel had twelve.

The dogs led her deeper into the forest than she had ever gone. Breathing hard, she followed them uphill. The dogs stopped abruptly, keeping their distance from the bear trap, still empty and unsprung. Rufus looked at her inquiringly, then set off in the direction from which they had come. Now he would lead her home.

Hannah whistled three times, calling them back. They wagged their tails and tilted their heads in confusion. She didn't know what order to give, just pointed blindly around. "Go!" Rufus started off again, the others at his heels.

It seemed a familiar path to Rufus, although some of the younger dogs whined and looked a little bewildered. Ruby kept glancing back at her.

Rufus led them down into a hollow where beech trees grew. A slender spring flowed from the hillside, then disappeared underground. Hannah's first thought was that it was a pretty, sheltered place. If they were driven off the land, she and Gabriel could build their new home here. It seemed so protected from the outside world. Picking her way down the steep incline, she saw the dogs sniffing and digging at a fallen log. A crow cawed harshly, then flew off a branch. When Hannah caught up, the dogs pawed at a piece of rotted fabric. Something turned in her stomach. Shrugging off the leather packsack, she set Daniel down so that he faced away from the log. He smiled at her, showing off his milk teeth.

Hannah kissed the top of his head before going to the log. "Rufus, away!" she ordered. He and the other dogs shrank back. The fallen log covered a shallow pit. Someone had buried something here, then a wolverine or raccoon had dug it up. Kneeling in the loose dirt, Hannah pulled up a piece of rotted cloth, slimy in her fingers. Bracing herself, she put it aside and dug to find more pieces of cloth underneath. They were too rotted and weather-worn to make out the original color, but their shape was still discernible. They were women's clothes. She shook them out and spread them flat on the mossy ground. Grabbing a stick, she dug deeper, finding another garment, heavier than the rest. The quality of the fabric had saved it from degrading too fast. It was filthy, beetles crawling in its folds, but Hannah recognized the lawn embroidered with roses and doves. Her sister's wedding dress. Beneath the dress was a glint of ivory. Bare bone with a bit of decayed flesh stretched taut over what had once been a face.

The bile rose to her mouth and burned her lips. On all fours, she spewed into the ferns. She roared, pummeling the fallen log until her fists were bloody. The dogs barked and whined and licked her face. Daniel howled. She wiped her hands clean on the damp moss and went to her son. "Just a while longer." She didn't dare touch him with the hands that had dug in her sister's grave. Instead she kissed him until he stopped crying. She made Ruby sit with him.

Soil tore at her fingernails as she dug with her bare hands. Only fragments of skin and rotted cloth clung to the bones. Worms lived inside May's skull. Wild animals had gnawed at her. To keep herself from screaming, Hannah thought of the ordered anatomical diagrams in her father's books, illustrated skeletons crisp and clean, clearly marked, not stinking of decay.

She could not pull the corpse out of the grave without tearing it apart, but could only dig slowly, revealing one bit of May at a time. When she unearthed her left hand, she found the wedding ring loose on the bone. She took it off and rubbed it clean on the moss. A plain gold wedding band with no ornamentation, not like the pearl and ruby ring Gabriel had given her. Her own ring was filthy from the digging. She tore it from her finger and stuffed both rings in her pocket.

At last she uncovered the legs. The tibia and fibula of the right leg were shattered. It might have come from the bear trap, matching the story Richard Banham had told her, or it might be that the bones had slowly disintegrated in their shallow grave. She
didn't have the skill to know. But the bones of the left leg, though brittle, were unbroken.

Gazing bleakly around the hollow, her eyes came to rest on a beech trunk, which bore an awful scar where someone had hacked the bark away. The scar formed a rough rectangle. Shakily she stood up and walked toward it. It was as if someone had carved something on the tree and someone else had hacked the message away. She thought of the carving of the heart pierced by three arrows.

Daniel was crying again, no doubt from hunger. She had nothing to give him.

"Just a while longer!" she called. Stumbling to the spring, she washed her fingers until they were numb. "Hush-a-bye!" She kissed Daniel, strapped his packsack on her back, and squatted on her haunches to pick up May's wedding dress. When she tried to shake the beetles out, grave dust hit her face.

Whistling to the dogs, she started back toward the creek. Barking and sniffing, they led her up the steep hill. Daniel cried all the way back. "Hush-a-bye," she sang while the tears glazed her face. Reaching through the opening of her skirt and into her pocket, she fingered the two rings. One belonged to her, the other to her sister, both given by the same man.

***

Hitching up her skirt, she splashed through the creek, not caring that her feet were soaked. The dogs made for the house, but she went to the orchard, where she found one shriveled apple still clinging to its branch. She picked it, tore off the wrinkled skin with her teeth, and bit the soft flesh into small pieces, which she fed to Daniel, letting him take each piece from her lips so she wouldn't have to feed him with her hands.

Looking at the house, she saw the thin trail of smoke rising from the chimney. The dogs would wake him up. They would want to be fed. Hoisting Daniel back on her shoulders, she picked up May's wedding dress and made her way to the tobacco barn, where she took the biggest shovel from its peg. She carried it to the graves
by the river. Setting Daniel and the wedding dress down, she dug, tearing up grass and the autumn crocuses she had planted.

Near the house, the dogs kept barking. Gabriel shouted her name. Ramming her shovel into the earth, she labored until she struck wood—the coffin lid of splintering pine. She continued until the entire coffin lid was uncovered, then forced the shovel under the lid and pried until the rotted wood and rusty nails gave way. Wrenching off the lid, she stared down into the empty coffin. To think she had planted those crocuses and pleaded so tearfully over a vacant box.

Daniel cried. The day had grown cold. He must be chilled and cramped in the confines of his packsack. His clouts wanted changing. Hannah rubbed her face with her filthy hands and stared at the river flowing past.

Unsteady footsteps moved up the path behind her. Gabriel called her again. He didn't sound like a man anymore but a ghost. Hannah watched him stagger forward, his face pale and tight with pain. He was too ill to be out walking. If he took another step, he would collapse. Part of her still wanted to run to him, take him in her arms, help him back to the house. The part of her that still loved him wept to see his body sway. He grabbed a tree trunk to hold himself upright.
They tried to kill me, but they could not. I was dead already, living in a dead man's house.

She didn't have to say a word. His eyes moved from the opened grave to May's ruined wedding dress flung on the grass. He looked at her soiled hands, face, and clothes as though she herself were the dead sister who had clawed her way out of her own grave. He sank to his knees, the dogs circling around him. Rufus took position at his side.