HANNAH TOOK HER PAIL and went to pick raspberries, ripe and dark red in the thorny bushes that grew up and down the creek. Gabriel fashioned a buckskin packsack for Daniel so that she could carry him on her back. The little boy adored their forays into the woods. He squealed, bare feet kicking into her ribs as though spurring on a horse. Ruby trotted at her side.
Compared to the never-ending struggle with the garden, Hannah was amazed at how easily wild plants grew without sowing or tending. Native daisies and sweet cicely sprang from the earth, growing more luxuriantly than her heartsease. But the foxglove had gone wild through self-seeding, establishing itself in the undergrowth. Dark pink bells rose beside the rotted tree stumps.
She picked a pail or two of raspberries a day, and baked them in cobblers or served them with goat's milk and maize pudding. Gabriel found an old cask barrel and cleaned it out so she could make raspberry wine. Her mother's receipt called for six pounds of berries, a mighty endeavor, but raspberry wine was the best tonic for sore throats and it would cheer them in winter when snow lay thick on the ground.
The day she set off berrying, Gabriel lay abed with a low fever. "It is nothing to fret over," he told her. "Just a mild ague. If I rest a spell, I shall be better by nightfall." Hannah took the two big milking pails with her, reckoning that each held around three pounds of fruit.
Following the familiar path to the creek, she passed the garden and the abandoned servants' shacks. Something made her stop outside the smaller shack and look at the heart carved on the lintel. Gabriel kept the goats in the other shack, but he never went near this one. By now, the roof had nearly caved in. Hannah thought that he would at least want to salvage the wood for winter fuel. Foxglove sprang up all around the hovel.
The raspberry bushes on her side of the creek were almost stripped clean. The reddest, ripest-looking fruit was out of her reach on the other side. At first she hesitated. The creek was swollen with rain and she had Daniel on her back, but Ruby leapt into the water and was already paddling to the other bank. There was really no reason why she shouldn't go there, Hannah decided. Gabriel hadn't set up the traps yet. Lifting her skirts, she waded across, wonderfully cool water washing up to her thighs.
It was a fine day, not too hot. She was content to take her time and eat as many berries as she put in the pail. If Gabriel could rest a day, then she had earned a few hours' respite from the garden and household chores. She worked her way up the creek bank, plucking berries off thorny stems. She kept picking, allowing the lure of the berries to draw her farther up the bank and into the forest itself. When the first pail was full, she covered it in sacking to keep off birds and flies, then began to fill the second.
It was so delightfully shady and dreamy, with the birds calling and the wind moving through the leafy branches. To ease her aching shoulders, she shrugged off the packsack and nestled with Daniel against the trunk of a loblolly pine. Arms wrapped around her son, she let the drowsiness claim her. Just a little nap.
A low growl awoke her. A red buck with a full rack of antlers stared at her, his eyes dark and liquid, until Ruby leapt to her feet and barked. Lunging forward, Hannah grabbed her around the neck. The dog strained, eager for the hunt, but Hannah held on while Daniel looked off in the direction the stag had fled. "Dada," he said.
By the time she returned home, Gabriel was up, sitting on the porch and whittling a whistle for the boy.
***
In the weeks that followed, Hannah made the wine. First she washed the berries, put them in the biggest kettle, then poured boiling water over them. She stirred the mixture, covered the kettle with sacking, and left it for ten days.
She strained the ruby liquid through an old bit of cheesecloth she found in the dresser, added all the remaining sugar and honey they had in the house, stirred, and covered the kettle again. She stirred it daily for the next three days, then poured the liquid into the cask barrel and put the lid on loosely, allowing it to ferment. The wine would be ready to drink in six months.
Gabriel put maize through the grinder, filling up the corn-meal sacks in the pantry. He promised her they would want for nothing that winter. In autumn, when he went to sell his furs, he would buy another sack of cornmeal and a sack of wheaten flour besides. "You will be able to bake real bread again."
The year's struggle was nearly over. They had enough. Soon the apples would be ready for picking. Gabriel would cull the goats and pigs. Hunting and trapping season would begin. The heat would mellow into the pleasing crispness of autumn, but not before summer's last stand. One steamy afternoon, they swam naked in a shallow river eddy, passing Daniel back and forth between them. They danced in the water with the dogs barking from the shore.
Daniel was growing fast. Hanging on to the bedstead, he took his first steps. Gabriel made him a pair of deerhide slippers and nailed planks to the other bed to raise the sides so Daniel wouldn't roll out. Then he made him a mattress stuffed with fresh new straw.
***
When Hannah awoke one morning to a fuzzy head, her first thought was that she was pregnant again. They hadn't been taking care to prevent it. When she tried to get up and boil the breakfast corn mush, she nearly fainted. She was sweating, chilled, and trembling, her breathing shallow and labored. As hard as she panted, she couldn't get enough air.
Gabriel led her back to bed. "It is the flux. You must rest until it passes." He brewed her a heady decoction of cinchona bark and made her drink the bitter stuff until she was ready to spit up. He tucked the furs up to her chin and held her hand. "Never fear. It will pass. I have never seen the flux take a strong young person. I have had it myself since I was a boy."
She looked at him in confusion. A hazy halo formed around his face. "You never did tell me."
"The ague I had just weeks ago ... that was it. It comes and goes in fever and shakes. I will have it all my life. It is a rare person in these parts who doesn't have the flux."
"It killed your father."
"He was old." Gabriel's face blurred. "But you are young." As he mopped her forehead with a cloth, his eyes came back into focus, inky blue-black. "You will endure this."
***
Hannah awoke to Daniel's crying. She lifted herself on her elbow to see Gabriel pick him up and tell him to hush, Mama wasn't well.
"Oh no, he isn't ill now, too." Panic rose in her throat.
Gabriel shook his head. "No, Hannah. He is healthy as ever, just bad-tempered today, I think."
***
As Gabriel had promised, her fever broke and the chills left her. She could breathe freely and soon felt well enough to get out of bed.
"You must rest easy," Gabriel told her, "until you are quite strong again."
Another week passed and she felt like her old self. She went with Gabriel to the orchard and helped him pick apples. Then, a few days on, Gabriel had the fever and shakes.
"It is nothing," he said. "Just the ague. It sticks with me like an old friend." He lay down to rest a few hours. But when Hannah brought him the decoction of cinchona, his forehead was blazing and his eyes were unfocused.
"Adele did this," he mumbled. "She poisoned me."
Hannah placed her hand on his chest. His heart was racing. She thought of the foxglove growing around the old shack. The carving of the heart pierced by three arrows.
"May asked her to work witchcraft on me. She wanted me dead."
"Hush." When she wiped his forehead, he flinched at her touch.
"That is why they do call them merry widows. She wanted me gone. But she couldn't kill me, for I was a ghost already."
"Gabriel." She took his face in her hands. "This is Hannah. No one is going to poison you."
"Foxglove flower in the stew, but it didn't kill me. I was dead already, living in a dead man's house."
"Gabriel, hush." She wrapped her arms around him and gently rocked him back and forth.
"Black widow," he mumbled. "Bitten by a black widow spider."
"Darling, hush." She sang a lullaby as she would to Daniel until he quieted down and allowed her to give him his medicine. She held his hand while he dozed off.
***
Hannah paced the floor with Daniel in her arms. Had Adele really tried to poison him? Because May had asked her to? Nonsense, he had been raving in his fever. Yet why did all that foxglove grow around Adele's old shack? She reminded herself that the plant could spread like a weed. Properly dosed, it was healing physick, not poison. Why would a servant girl try to kill him? She would be hanged for such a crime.
Surely May wasn't vicious enough to plant such an idea in the girl's head. May had been unfaithful, but not murderous, not capable of plotting her husband's death. May had not been evil. But neither was Gabriel evil, and yet his former manservant had accused him of murdering his wife. This knot was far too snarled for her to unravel. If only she had someone to talk to, not Banham or anyone who had ever quarreled with the Washbrooks, but someone impartial.
If Father were here, he would warn her about letting her passions and doubts sweep her away. She must keep her head. The key, he had always said, was the intellect. Rational thought and judgment. At home, when her thoughts were confused and overwrought, he used to tell her to collect herself and read the Bible for guidance. "Turn to the story of Hannah in the first book of Samuel," he would say, "for that is a story of the triumph of patience and humility." The biblical Hannah had been barren and thought herself forsaken by God, yet she had prayed and lived a virtuous life until God finally allowed her to conceive Samuel, the prophet.
While Gabriel tossed and groaned in his sleep, she opened the Bible box and carried the heavy book to the table. She added another log to the fire so she would have enough light to read. It shamed her to consider that she had lived in this house for nearly two years and had never read the Bible once. This wilderness had turned her into a heathen. No wonder her mind was so befuddled. She clasped her hands and whispered the Lord's Prayer before opening the cover. Turning the stiff pages to the first book of Samuel, she found a scrap of folded paper covered in her sister's cramped handwriting.
October ?, 1690
My Hannah,
Should you ever find this, I must tell you that I have ruined Everything. My Husband hates me worse than the Devill. They all hate me now, save Adele. Only she can tolerate my Company. I am weak and sinfull and God has seen fitt to punish me. I could not even keep my own Child alive. Dearest, I think you shall never see me again. I doubt I shall ever rise from this Bed. It is with my last Strength that I hold this Quill. I did to you a great Wrong in begging you to join me here. Now it is too late to send a Letter warning you away. I have asked Adele to hide this where you may one Day find it. Darling, you must not linger in this House of Pain, for it will destroy you as it has destroyed me. You must return with all Haste to Anne Arundel Town. Make yourself known there. With your Learning and Skill in Physick, you would do well as a Midwife. If you wish to marry, you will have Suitors in plenty. Forgive me if you can and then forget me, dear Hannah, for I was born under Cursed Stars and only bring Pain and Misfortune. I love you and pray for your Happiness.
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.
Hannah regarded the bowed head of the man who had been her first and only love. The boy who had been so tender to her, opening up her heart and body.
"What did you do to my sister?" She pitched her voice above the baby's cries.
"Have mercy." He gulped for air as she strode toward him. Rufus leapt to his feet and threw himself between her and his master. "I did not harm her."
"You think you can still tell the same lies?" Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out the plain wedding band. "Was this the ring you gave her?"
He jerked his face to one side as though she had struck him. "I did not kill her." He sweated and shivered with each word. "She ran away from me. She did step in the bear trap and perish. It was an accident, no murder."
How could he look at her like that, with those imploring eyes, as if he were the wronged one? He said her name over and over like a prayer.
"Then why did you lie to me of the childbed fever? Why the false grave?"
He collapsed against the tree trunk, eyes glassy with fever. She had left him alone for hours in this state. No doubt his throat was parched. He needed physick, but meanwhile Daniel was screaming and she could ignore the child no longer. Strapping on the packsack, she rushed away, leaving Gabriel beside the grave. Tears blurred her eyes as she broke into a headlong run. Father had told her that an opened, empty coffin was a symbol of resurrection. She could hear her sister's voice again, speaking the words of her last letter. Forgive me if you can and then forget me, dear Hannah, for I was born under Cursed Stars.
Remembering there was no water in the house, she went to the chicken coop where she had left her pail, then filled it at the creek. She washed the grave dust from her hands and face. Once back inside, she stripped the soiled clouts off Daniel, bathed him, and wrapped him in fresh ones. There was no time to wash the soiled rags; the goats wanted their second milking. Putting Daniel back in the packsack, she took him with her. The motion of her body seemed to soothe him. When the milking was finished, she cooked him cornmeal mush with hot milk—a proper meal to fill him at last. He devoured every spoonful, her robust boy. She still had him to live for, if nothing else. She had to endure long enough to raise him to manhood. She was thankful that he was so young: he would not remember this day. She wished she had the power to make herself forget. Sweet Daniel, the only innocence she had left. She kissed him and tucked him in his bed.
Outside, the dogs scratched at the door. Gabriel was out there somewhere, shivering and ill. Rain clouds were moving in. Following the dogs down the path, she thought of the biblical Hannah's song of praise in the first book of Samuel. The words of triumph and faith that Father had told her to commit to memory rang out like a curse. The Lord killeth, and maketh alive: he bringeth down to the grave, and bringeth up ... The adversaries of the Lord shall be broken to pieces; out of heaven shall be thunder upon them: the Lord shall judge the ends of the earth.
She found him only a few paces from where she had left him. Evidently he had tried to drag himself back to the house and had fainted from the effort. She touched the side of his neck and felt his pulse. Though unconscious, he was breathing. She ran to the river and wet her neckcloth, then returned. Kneeling at his side, she wiped his hot face until his eyes opened.
Nearly two years before, she had been flat on the ground, coming out of her seizure to see the strange young man's face above hers, his dark eyes filled with such shy solicitude. How gentle he had been, cooking for her and comforting her while she wept for her sister.
Gabriel looked up at her without speaking. Maybe he was too ill to speak. God would take him, just as he had taken Father and May. An evil voice inside her said that if God punished him, she wouldn't have to. Hannah wept in shame. Long ago, her father had made her swear an oath to use her knowledge of physick to heal, to do everything in her power to help those who needed healing. If Gabriel died on account of her neglect, she would be as damned as he was.
"Water." His voice rasped like autumn leaves.
"Open your mouth." She squeezed out her neckcloth over his parched tongue. It was only a trickle, but enough to moisten his throat.
"I thought you left me here to die."
Her tears fell on his face. "I must get you back to the house. Can you stand?"
She put her arms around his neck and pulled him so he sat upright. Slowly she helped him to his feet. Wrapping his arm around her shoulder, she bore as much of his weight as she could. He shuddered with each step. She had to urge him on.
"Look, you can see the porch. Just a little further."
When he faltered, she held on to him with all her strength to keep him from falling. At last they reached the house, where he collapsed into bed. Hannah piled blankets and furs on him. She brewed cinchona bark. He shivered so violently, she had to drip the brew into his mouth with a cloth.
"Just swallow." She made her voice gentle. These were her arts, and Father had insisted she use them to the best of her ability. Love the sinner but hate the sin. Gabriel sweated so much that she stripped the buckskin off him, sponged his body, and wrapped him in a man's nightshirt she found in the chest of drawers. It must have belonged to his father, for it dwarfed his thin body. She covered him up again, stoked up the fire, and made him onion broth. She brewed him a decoction of feverfew and sang to him as she would sing to Daniel. Tirra lirra lirra.
"It is only the ague," she said. "You are young and strong. You will endure this." She stayed up through the night, gave him more cinchona brew, and wrapped his legs in wet cloths to lower the fever before tucking him under the blankets again. But his fever didn't break until dawn.
***
Rain fell softly, beading the hairy flank of the goat she milked. The rain wet her dress, stiff with yesterday's dirt. Her joints ached as she dragged the milk pails, then the water bucket and egg basket, back to the house. Her bones creaked like those of an old woman.
He lay in bed, still weak but out of danger. When she brought him corn mush, he ate in silence, not looking up from the trencher. She felt his eyes on her, though, as she fed Daniel his breakfast. She caught Gabriel watching them as if for the last time. After Daniel was fed and changed, she gave him his wooden rabbit and put him in his bed with its high sides to keep him from falling out. Then she took away Gabriel's empty trencher and spoon. She stood at the foot of his bed.
"You must tell me, once and for all. How did my sister die?"
"It is hard to remember. I tried so hard to forget."
Hannah crammed her fists in her pockets to keep herself from slamming them against the bedstead. "You buried her in the forest like an animal."
"Hannah, you have no inkling. She hated me, betrayed me, called me the vilest names."
"I found a letter that she hid away for me to find. She said that you hated her."
"She had no regard for me."
"Did you kill her for it?"
"I am no murderer."
"Patrick Flynn said you stabbed her in the breast, then put her leg in the bear trap and left her there to make it look like an accident. Flynn said he found her in the trap, then turned her over to see the wound in her breast."
"I never stabbed her. Mayhap Flynn stabbed her. Or one of her other lovers."
"Don't you dare insult my sister." It was all she could do not to scream.
"I never raised my hand against her. I swore that to you again and again, but you would never believe."
"What am I to believe?"
"She ran away and broke her leg in the trap."
"Patrick Flynn said she fled from you in fear for her life."
He writhed beneath the blanket as though some devil were riding him. "The words of a thief."
"Why did she flee you, Gabriel? Flynn said she was still weak from childbirth."
"The woman hated me." He tilted his face to the ceiling. "When the baby died, she blamed it on me."
"Did she have cause to blame you?" Sick inside, she took her hands out of her pockets and stepped around the side of the bed, placing herself between Gabriel and Daniel. "How did the cradle break?"
He had the shakes again, but she wouldn't allow herself to be moved. "She threw it at me," he said. "I ducked and it hit the wall." He raised an unsteady hand to point at a scar in the wood near the window.
Hannah shook her head. "You would have me believe she had the strength to hurl a cradle across the room when she was still weak from childbirth?"
"Have you ever seen that woman in a temper? She cursed me and called me a murderer."
"Why?"
He sagged against the headboard. "I did not send for a midwife."
Hannah's eyes stung. She remembered the pain that had nearly destroyed her during Daniel's birth.
"What in God's name were you thinking?"
"She had the girl Adele to tend her."
Hannah couldn't speak, couldn't even look at him. She rested a hand on the high side of Daniel's bed. Absorbed in his own world, the little boy patted his hands against the blanket, pushing down into the straw mattress so it crackled. That girl Adele had been barely more than a child, with no knowledge of birth. How could she have been expected to deliver May's baby and keep the infant alive?
"You wanted her to die." Trembling in rage, she turned to face him.
He lifted his hands as if to ward her off. "The child wasn't mine."
"How can you be so sure?"
"She told me as much herself."
"Why did she run away so soon after childbirth?"
"She threw the cradle at me and called me a murderer. I told her that if she hated me so much, she must quit this place."
Hannah went cold. She remembered their fight after Banham's last visit, when he had all but ordered her to leave. If you believe I killed her, you can go. Now take the child and run after him. "She was still weak from childbirth, and you turned her out?"
A moment passed. He stared straight ahead, his skin the color of ash. Then his head fell forward into his hands. She watched the back of his neck bob up and down. "I rue it. I do. I don't know what devil got hold of me then. I told her to get out of my sight or I would have her publicly chastised for adultery. Every day I beg God's forgiveness." He was sobbing very quietly.
"Why did you not beg May's forgiveness?" Hannah asked him coldly.
His breathing was ragged. "When at last I came to my senses, it was too late. She was dead." He spoke with a dead man's voice. "My dogs found her in the woods, her leg in the trap."
"Did she have a stab wound in her chest?"
"Aye." His voice was hollow. "All her clothes were scattered about. I think that thief Flynn robbed her of her valuables and fled."
"What of Adele?"
"Mayhap the girl betrayed her, too. Or mayhap the girl fled Flynn and disappeared."
Hannah sank to the floor. How could Adele have just vanished? A runaway servant like Flynn might get as far as Port Tobacco before the authorities arrested him, but a black girl? Perhaps she had lost her way in the forest and been mauled by a bear. And why had May run into the forest instead of seeking refuge at the Banhams'? Had Flynn dragged her down the hollow? Hannah wept and rocked herself. May was lost forever. She would never know what had really happened.
"You believe that Flynn stabbed her." Her tone matched Gabriel's. She had entered his world of shades and ghosts.
"Aye. He hated her sorely. Once, on her account, my father gave him a savage flogging." Gabriel looked so broken down, so cornered and wounded, that she knew he spoke the truth.
"Then why did you not tell anyone? If he is a murderer, he must hang."
"It was a shallow wound, not deep enough to kill. She died from stepping in my trap. I think she was running from him, not looking where she stepped."
Hannah could not speak.
"He vanished with my father's silver, my father's ring, my father's second-best boat. His sovereigns, too. The other servants fled. After I turned her out, they thought I had gone mad. Maybe I had. By the time I did find her, animals had ravaged her body."
Tears stung her raw face. "Why the false grave?" But she already knew the answer.
He told her in his dead man's voice that by the time he had discovered her there, she so was ruined that he couldn't stomach the thought of dragging her carcass to the river to bury. So he had made do with the empty coffin. "I did not kill her," he said, "and yet I know I am to blame for her death."
"You thought no one would ever know of it?" Her eyes anchored on the rain-smeared window.
"All I ever wanted was to be left in peace. Then you came." His voice wrenched her.
Her tears marked the dusty floorboards. "That is why you would not take me to Anne Arundel Town and marry me. You feared the gossip. You feared I would hear the rumors."
"Aye."
Daniel grew restless. She took him out of his bed. "You lied to me from the beginning."
"You grieved so deeply for her," he said. "You fell in a fit when I told you she was dead. I feared what would happen if I told you the whole truth."
She buried her face in her son's thick chestnut hair, so much like her sister's.
"Hannah," he said softly, "if I could have charmed her out of the grave for you, I would. You came here and you were so sad. I couldn't bear to make you any sadder."
She remembered how he had stitched her the pair of rabbit skin mittens, how she had slept with them under her pillow for comfort the night before she was to leave for the Banhams'. "How could you think I would never find out?"
Daniel wriggled out of Hannah's grip and tottered away. She watched him tug at the bed curtains.
"I could not tell you," he said. "You were my one chance for happiness. I loved you from the first day. If you knew the truth, you would have hated me. You were my one chance to know a woman's love. I thought love could restore me. Hannah, look at me, please."
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."