The Vanishing Point (39 page)

He held out his hand to her. She took it, sat on the edge of the bed.

"I love you," he said. "I do not dare ask if you still love me."

She touched his face, his dry lips, but still she couldn't answer.

"At least say you do not hate me." He squeezed her hand.

"I do not hate you."

"If your father had only sent you instead of May." His voice was unbearably sad. "If you had been my wife from the beginning, I could have been a good man."

She lay beside him on the bed, hid her face in his chest.

"It is not too late," he told her. "We could marry still. As soon as I am on my feet again, I will take you and Daniel to Anne Arundel Town. We will post the banns."

Hannah pulled away. "Banham says that the rumors of you run up and down the Bay. If you show your face in Anne Arundel Town and post your name outside the church, people will question you, and not only of May. Think on it, Gabriel. You have not paid the rents in four years."

Once more, he looked like a ghost. She remembered something he had told her when she first came to stay with him.
I have spent too long with the dead to go back into the world of the living.

"When you were raving in fever, you said Adele had tried to poison you. Is that true?"

"Poison me? No. But she did hex me. She said she had trapped my soul and imprisoned it in a tree. She said I would be wretched all my days."

R
UFUS DISCOVERED THE BODY
before Gabriel did. The sight and smell were enough to make him double over. The sound of his panicked breathing drowned out everything else. Flies crawled over her skirts, darkened with feces and old blood. The exposed flesh of her severed leg had already blackened and gone putrid. Maggots wriggled in the torn skin above the metal jaws.

She lay face-down, loose hair fanning out on the moss. The cruelest thing was that her hair was still lovely, so shiny and soft-looking that he almost wanted to stroke it. Stroke her hair and tell her she could come home. Everything would be all right. Wasn't forgiveness one of the Ten Commandments? He would take back the hateful things he had said.
You know what they do to adulteresses here, don't you, May? With your own eyes you saw the slattern dragged behind her husband's boat until she was nearly drowned. I could have you put in the stocks, stripped to the waist, and whipped until your back is bloody.

He hadn't meant any of it, had only wanted her gone, to end the pain. In truth, he had expected her to disappear cleanly, vanish like smoke. By all logic, she should have fled to the Banhams'—he thought she would have been crafty enough to steal one of the boats, let the current carry her downstream. The Banhams would have taken her in. Paul Banham would have sat her on his knee and clucked over her tears, and she would have allowed him to
undo her braid, as thick as a man's arm. Banham would have eventually sent her on her way and helped her in his own fashion, perhaps setting her up as his mistress in Anne Arundel Town or in Virginia. May would have gone on as she had always done, but far away from Gabriel, no longer his burden. How could she have met her end with her leg in his trap?

Before he could roll her over to look at her face, he saw the rusty knife in her gray fist. Had she tried to use the knife to free herself from the trap? he wondered. Then his eyes traveled from the knife's blade to the beech trunk only inches away from her head. In the smooth gray bark she had carved a message.
Murderer.

Even in death she had to have the last word, had to stick her rusty blade into his flesh and twist. When at last he summoned the courage to turn her over, her face, though decayed beyond recognition, was frozen in a ghastly smile.

S
HE BECAME A HOLLOW THING
. Something vital was ripped out of her. A phantom surgeon slit her open from breastbone to pubis, stole her organs, filled the bloody cavity with straw, and stitched her up again. Like Gabriel, she belonged to the dead. She still breathed, walked, and ate, but her life essence had fled. When she opened her mouth, she spoke in a dead woman's voice.

Poor lost May. First she had been obliged to leave her country and childhood home after Father had made her match for her. Then her husband had turned her out of this place. Yes, she had sinned, but her letter sounded so penitent.
I have ruined Everything. Forgive me if you can.
Hannah pictured her sister penning her final message in the hours before Gabriel had driven her out the door.
Dearest, I think you shall never see me again.

May haunted her more keenly than ever. Her spirit inhabited every object in the house—each trencher and horn spoon, every board that quivered beneath Hannah's feet. She couldn't look at Gabriel without seeing the wasted carcass, the gold ring on bare bone.

***

"Can you forgive me?" he asked her.

"Only God can forgive you," Hannah told him. "Only God can forgive us both." She had stripped the linen sheet off their bed
and was stitching it into a shroud. The least they could do was finally give May a decent burial.

Gabriel was back on his feet again, his ague gone, but the wasted look never left his face. When Hannah asked him to build May a new coffin, he took the lumber from Adele's shack, using the old nails he had pried loose to hammer the planks together. He took two smaller planks, smoothed the splinters away with his adze, then nailed them together in the shape of a cross. Working with pick and chisel, he carved out the epitaph.

Here lyes May Powers Washbrook
1667–1690
R.I.P.

Hannah tucked the shroud and cross into the coffin along with the shovel Gabriel had wrapped in sacking. Together they started off for the hollow, where the corpse awaited them. While Gabriel bore the coffin across the creek and into the woods beyond, Hannah followed with Daniel strapped to her back, the Book of Common Prayer in her hands. The day would linger in her memory, following her like a shadow for the rest of her days. The deep blue autumn sky with its innocent white clouds, red and gold leaves fluttering in the wind. Autumn crocuses carpeted the forest floor. Ruby darted around her, nipping at her skirt and running off to chase squirrels. The other dogs trotted after Gabriel.

Weak from his illness, Gabriel had to set the coffin down and rest. Bending forward, hands on his knees, he panted while sweat dripped from his hair. He looked so worn down, as though it were his own coffin he had to shoulder. Hannah took the shovel out of the coffin and carried it, to lighten his load. When they reached the lip of the hollow, his face was so pale that Hannah put down the shovel, prayer book, and Daniel, grabbed one end of the coffin, and helped him bear its weight.

They set the coffin on the moss beside the shallow pit. At the sight of the rotted cloth and dirty bone, Gabriel made for the stream. Hannah watched him splash water on his face. His dogs gathered around him. Rufus nuzzled him, wagging his tail attentively. When Hannah's eyes wandered back to the corpse, she felt the sick rising up her throat. Before it could overcome her, she fled up the hill for Daniel, the shovel, and the prayer book.

Gabriel was waiting for her, his back as stiff as the shovel handle. "Are you ready?"

She nodded. While he shoveled, she retreated to the spring and took Daniel out of the packsack. The fallen log blocked their view of the corpse. She cupped her hands and let him drink the cold clear water. In the beech tree above them, a cardinal sang. Hannah whistled to cover the noise of Gabriel's shovel. She rubbed Daniel's hands on the moss to show him how soft it was, but he kept looking in the direction of the digging.

"Da-da?"

"Hush." Hannah took his wooden rabbit out of her pocket. "Your father must work."

The cardinal sang as clouds traced their slow dance across the sky. Hannah lifted Daniel in her arms and pointed. "That is heaven."

Daniel looked up with May's blue eyes. She swung him around in a circle, then set him on the ground and held his hand while he took tottering steps along the stream. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Gabriel resting, leaning on the shovel. Then he began to dig again. She hugged Daniel and smoothed back his chestnut hair. What, she wondered, would May's daughter have been like if she had lived? Would she have taken after her father or her mother? Daniel patted her wet face. Ruby came loping with a stick in her mouth. Hannah threw it for the dog to fetch, and Daniel screeched in delight. His laughter echoed over the hollow, reverberating through the beech trees. Crows cawed and crisscrossed overhead.

Gabriel called her. "It is ready." Hannah put Daniel in his packsack. He cried and struggled, but she was firm. She could hardly let him wander around if there was an open pit into which he might fall.

"Hush-a-bye. Don't cry. Be my brave boy." Straightening her shoulders, she moved over the mossy ground to the hole Gabriel had dug. Deep down, the soil went from black to red as though steeped in old blood. Just behind Gabriel lay the corpse. She couldn't let Daniel see it. She leaned him, still in his packsack, against a tree trunk so he faced away from the grave. She called Ruby. "Stay with Danny. Stay." She wiped his tears with her fingers and kissed him. "My brave, brave boy."

Gabriel opened the coffin with his raw, blistered hands. Part of her wanted to rub them in bear grease. She wanted to take him in her arms and rock his hurt away. His pain might ease if she spoke the magic words, told him she forgave him, that she cared for him still. But her eyes kept slipping past him to her sister's remains.

The shroud she had sewn was useless. Only remnants of skin and rotted cloth held May's bones together. It was doubtful that they could lift her out in one piece. Hannah's knees gave way. She found herself on the ground beside Gabriel, whose eyes were red and whose hands trembled, as hers did. Yards away, Daniel cried feebly.

"Hush-a-bye," Hannah tried to call, but she choked on the words. Taking the shroud, she ripped loose her careful seams. She shook out the sheet, then spread it on the bottom of the coffin. She thought of the graveyard in her old village, its tabletop tombstones raised to the sky, her parents resting side by side in the shadow of yew trees. When she tried to lift May's feet, they came loose in her hands. Hannah crawled off to vomit.

"The child screams," Gabriel told her when the retching stopped. "Go to him. I will do this."

She lurched to the spring to wash her hands and rinse out her mouth before running to Daniel. She took him out of his packsack and rocked him against her chest. Ruby rested her head on Hannah's knee.

"The thing is done," Gabriel called.

Daniel in her arms, she approached the coffin. The linen
sheet safely veiled what had once been her sister. She glanced at the knife on Gabriel's belt.

"Take a lock of my hair," she said, turning so he could cut it from the back of her head, thus keeping the blade away from Daniel. When he handed her the bright red lock, she dropped it on the white sheet. A part of her would go down with May, be buried with her forever.

"May I close it?" he asked.

"Aye." She clung to Daniel as the wooden lid slapped down.

Gabriel tied ropes around each end of the coffin. She put Daniel in his packsack and helped Gabriel lower the coffin into the pit. She handed him the Book of Common Prayer. He opened it to the page she had marked and started to read.

"'I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live...'" His voice shook. "I cannot," he whispered, passing the book back to her.

"'I know that my Redeemer liveth,'" Hannah read, "'and that he shalt stand at the latter day upon the earth. And though after my skin, worms destroy this body...'" She swallowed. "'Yet in my flesh shall I see God.'" She continued reading the Order of the Burial of the Dead until she came to the Last Rites. "'Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of his great mercy to take unto himself the soul of our dear sister here departed: we therefore commit her body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust...'"

She cast down a handful of earth on the coffin. Turning the pages, she went on reading the words of prayer and blessing. After she had uttered the last
amen
and closed the book, Gabriel shoveled dirt into the pit. When at last the grave was filled, Hannah planted the cross in the firm ground beside the loose soil. Gabriel hammered it into the earth with a stone.

Her vision blurred, pinpricks of light dancing before her eyes. A pounding filled her head as she swayed. Had the fog come to seize her again, drag her down into a fit? She wished she could
fall into Gabriel's arms, let him comfort and protect her as he had done in the old days. Instead she remained standing on her own two feet, with nothing but her will and her pain to keep her upright.

***

That night, while Gabriel slept on his pile of furs, she tossed alone in bed to nightmares of May's bones snapping in the trap's steel maw.

"Would I win your pardon," he asked the next morning, "if I went to the Assembly Court in Anne Arundel Town and offered my confession?"

Hannah looked up from the tub of soiled clouts she was washing. "It is the deed that honor demands." The soapy water cut into her cracked hands. "I know not if they would find you guilty of murder. All I know is the punishment they would mete out on me."

"What punishment?" he asked, but she imagined he must already know. A shadow moved across his face.

"If you tell them your story, I must tell them mine. They would question me, the same as you." She kept scrubbing the clouts. "They would charge me with fornication and bastardy. And seeing that you owe four years' rent to the Lord Baltimore, they would confiscate all your furs in the name of your debts. I would have nothing to pay the fines." She spoke with weary certainty. "They would tie me to the post and flog me." In truth, she did not really care how people treated her, but she couldn't bear the thought of passing the legacy of shame on to Daniel.