SHE 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.
"Hannah." His voice was stricken, but she did not look up from the laundry tub. "If we marry," he said fervently, "we will only be guilty of fornication. I will find a way to pay the fines. I promise you there will be no whipping."
"Mayhap if we sell the ring you gave to me." She wrung out the clouts, then plunged them into the tub again, scrubbing until her skin was raw.
"We must leave this place," he said. "We shall go away together where they will never find us. We shall change our names and begin anew. God willing, Hannah, we might still be happy."
It seemed a marvel to her that he could still feel love after all this. Everything inside her was dead. Her heart had become an empty chamber.
"Come spring," she said, "we shall quit this place." There was no use setting off now, with winter only a month or so away. "But not together."
His mouth went slack. "You wish to part ways?"
"I do." Her eyes followed the patterns in the soap scum as though she might read her future there. She had no idea where she would go. She wondered if Elizabeth Sharpe, from the ship, would welcome her. If everything else failed, she would be a servant to the Banhams. Her own happiness and pride didn't matter anymore—they were of the past. As long as the Banhams were kind to Daniel, she would scrub their chamber pots if they asked her.
"Then it will be as you say." Gabriel walked out the door.
***
Though they went on living in the same room, he was already beginning to fade. She saw him through a haze, which grew thicker and thicker until he appeared to be little more than a wraith. He spent nearly every waking hour out of sight and earshot—a thing for which she was grateful. It was easier to bear her burden alone, without his eyes on her, his sorrow filling the house. Each evening he brought home the animals he had trapped or shot with his musket. He seemed eager to make up for the time he had lain ill in bed. Perhaps bringing home the dead animals was the only way to banish his memory of May's body. Hannah did not pretend to understand the secrets of his heart. He tanned the hides and nailed up the furs in the old tobacco shed. She had never seen him bring in so many beaver pelts. It seemed he was trapping them up and down the river. Before, the beavers had been his allies, their dams and obstructions keeping the outer world at bay, but this year he killed as many as he could. Beaver pelts sold for a handsome price. Part of her still wanted to tell him to spare himself the effort—all the beavers in the river couldn't redeem their debts. But she said nothing.
Sometimes she took the rolled-up maps from the chest of drawers and spread them out on the trestle table. How far would she have to go to escape her reputation as Gabriel Washbrook's whore, the woman who had fornicated with her own sister's widower? If she traveled south to Virginia or the Carolinas, or north to Pennsylvania, could she finally live in peace? Change her name, pass as a widow, meet another man? She would have given anything to have Joan read the cards for her, lay out her future on the table beside the map. What a comfort it would be to know for certain, even if the cards said her fortune would be full of woe. Anything would be better than the awful blank she saw before her.
***
Gabriel loaded the furs in his canoe and left to do his trading. Watching from the dock, she didn't wave goodbye. She knew that on his journey he would be furtive, not telling anyone his real name. A man could escape between the cracks so much easier than a woman, especially a woman with a child. It passed her mind that he might not return. The dogs seemed to sense this, too. Rufus kept mournful watch, always looking downriver. He hardly touched the food Hannah gave him.
In Gabriel's absence, she expected Richard Banham to pay a visit. She had avoided the graves by the river since the day she had pried the lid off the empty coffin. The box still lay open to the sun and wind. She had left May's ruined wedding dress on the grass, just couldn't bear to go back and dispose of it. If Banham came riding, that spectacle would greet him. She was too deadened to care what he thought; let him make what he would of the opened grave. But he did not come.
Days slipped by in silence. Hannah counted them on her fingers, and when she ran out of fingers, she cut notches on the doorframe. If Gabriel did not return in a fortnight, she would put Daniel in his packsack, fill a basket with provisions, and set off for the Banhams'.
She picked a gourd from her garden and shook it so Daniel would hear the dry seeds rattling inside. "Look," she told him, "you have a new toy." Waving the gourd, he toddled through the long grass. Laughing, he trotted into her arms and let her sweep him in a circle. If only she could be as easily pleased as Daniel, who took delight in the simplest things. They threw a stick for Ruby to fetch until the dog flopped down exhausted at their feet. Sometimes when she fed him his supper, her son looked around and inquired, "Da-da?" But it didn't take long to distract him again.
***
The grass was brittle and dry underfoot on the thirteenth day of Gabriel's absence. It hadn't rained in weeks. The soil in her garden was cakey and dry. If there had to be a drought, at least it had come late in the year, when the harvest was already in. Edging close to the creek, she looked at the huge trees on the other side with their dead leaves lying in a thick carpet over their roots. The forest resembled a giant tinderbox. If the drought went on, one bolt of lightning or one careless cooking fire could set the whole woodland ablaze.
She hadn't dared set foot in that forest since May's burial. The place was haunted and cursed, the trees arrayed like an enemy army. She remembered the sense of futility when she had arrived here—the homestead was so fragile compared to the living wilderness, which waited for its chance to strike out and take back everything they had wrested from it.
***
Her heart raced at the noise of barking. Banham had come after all.
Why did the dogs sound so ecstatic? Their excitement proved contagious. Daniel, who had been sleeping in his packsack, awoke and kicked his legs back and forth. His weight slowed her down. When she reached the dock, tears pricked at her eyes. Gabriel stood surrounded by the leaping, joyous dogs. Rufus, paws on Gabriel's chest, licked his master slavishly. After stroking each of the dogs in turn, Gabriel took parcels out of the canoe. He didn't seem to notice her until Daniel cried, "Da-da."
She took the boy out of the packsack, passed him into his father's arms. Daniel shyly patted his beard. As Gabriel kissed the top of the child's head, his eyes locked with hers. Gabriel's deep blue eyes still had the power to undo her.
Clutching herself, she turned away. "You must be hungry." She picked up one of the parcels and carried it to the house, along with the empty packsack. Then she went to the hen house to butcher a chicken.
***
While she fried the chicken, he unpacked the parcels and laid out their contents on the table. Two cones of sugar, a box of gunpowder for his musket, a bolt of sober, dark blue linsey-woolsey, and a bolt of plain white linen.
"You chose well," she said. If she intended to pass as a widow, she couldn't have picked out better fabric herself. There was nothing fancy like last year's lover's gifts—the ruby ring and beautifully printed cotton. The ring was hidden in the Bible box for safekeeping, and the lovely dress was faded and worn. She bent her head over the skillet so he wouldn't see her tears.
"Was Banham here?" he asked in a weary voice.
"Not a sign of him." It occurred to her that she might ask him why he had been away so long this time, but the words eluded her.
He slumped on the bench with Daniel in his lap. The boy kept gazing at him as though afraid he might vanish again. Watching Gabriel ruffle their son's hair, Hannah saw how blistered his hands were from the oars. Leaving the skillet for a moment, she took the jar of bear grease from the pantry. After setting Daniel on the floor, she knelt at Gabriel's feet and gently rubbed the grease into his broken hands.
"Hannah." His eyes moved over her face. She flushed and concentrated on his blisters. His lips moved, as if he were about to say something more. But then, at the smell of burning chicken, Hannah scrambled to her feet and snatched the skillet from the fire.
She split the chicken breast with a knife. Though the skin was blackened on one side, the flesh still looked white, juicy, and tender. Taking one drumstick for herself, she put the rest on Gabriel's trencher, then brought out the cornbread she had made that morning. While Gabriel ate, she prepared Daniel's mush. She stole glances at Gabriel, who devoured his meat in silence, leaving a pile of clean bones on the trencher. He was thinner and hungrier than ever before. If possible, he looked more ghost-ridden.
Could it be salvaged? He was not beyond comforting. A small voice inside her said that she still had the power to break the spell, banish the estrangement. She only had to kiss him. Let him hold her. Call him to her bed this night. She only had to tell him he was forgiven. But she just kept spooning mush into Daniel's mouth. The words she might have said clogged in her throat. After finishing his meal, Gabriel lay down on his bed of furs and fell asleep at once.
***
Days slid by like slippery necklace beads falling from her hands. Then one day, no different from the ones that had preceded it, Hannah came back from gathering walnuts to find a map spread out on the trestle table. Her writing quill, inkpot, and blotter lay beside it. An X had been made to mark their house, then a line had been drawn, following the river down to the Bay and across it, to a place called Cleeve Hill on the Eastern Shore. The words Quaker Village were written in an unfamiliar hand. Hannah traced the sloping letters. At last she got to see Gabriel's handwriting.
Beaver pelts were piled high on his father's carved chair. She could not resist stroking the soft dark fur. But why were they still here? She thought he had traded all the furs for provisions. Then she noticed the message in the top right corner of the map.
Get you to the Quaker Village. They will give you Shelter and Protection. I have spokken to them already and said you are a good and honourable Widdow in need of Refuge. Take the Canu downstream. I have cleared the Waterway. When you reach Gardiners Point, await the Ferry to bring you to Cleeve Hill. When you arrive, ask for Mrs. Martha Nuttall. She is the Daughter of Father's old Housekeepper when we lived in Anne Arundel Town. She will look after you and Daniel. God go with you Hannah Powers.
"Gabriel?" She stepped out on the porch and called his name until she was hoarse. It was nearly sunset. He should be coming in for supper.
The day before, he had butchered a pig. The pork loin roasted in its pan over the fire, with carrots, turnips, and potatoes, and the rosemary and thyme she had added. Surely the smell must be enough to draw him back to the house. She fried corncakes on the griddle. Still he did not appear. When she went out with scrap meat to feed the dogs, only Ruby came to eat. Though she whistled three times, the other dogs did not come. Back in the house, she made Daniel his porridge. It grew dark. Leaping flames cast shadows over the walls. When she couldn't bear to wait any longer, she ate the overcooked pork and griddle cakes alone.
The map, the message, the pile of beaver pelts. He had left her. He was well and truly gone. He had grown fainter and fainter until he had vanished altogether. Even his dogs had disappeared. God go with you Hannah Powers. He hadn't signed his name.
That night, she left the door unbolted in case he returned. Lying in bed, she started at every noise—the wind whistling down the chimney, the straw rustling beneath Daniel as he moved in his sleep. In the morning, she got up and combed every corner of the house, every outbuilding, looking for signs. As indicated in his message, he had left the canoe in the boathouse. He had taken only his musket, his hunting knife, his traps, and his dogs. He hadn't taken a blanket or a change of clothing. When she opened the chest of drawers, she saw his second pair of buckskins, his old wool breeches, his linen shirts, and the waistcoat she had never seen him wear. She kept hoping he would return for his clothes. She knelt down and prayed, Dear God, bring him back.
He had left her the canoe, beaver pelts, and provisions. He had cleared the waterway for her. There was still time to make her way to the Quaker village before winter set in. With the beaver pelts she could pay for her passage on the ferry and have more than enough left over to purchase a small cottage with a plot around it for growing vegetables. She could keep a pig and chickens. She could take the salt pork and cornmeal along, the cones of sugar, the barrel of raspberry wine. Gabriel wouldn't have wanted her and Daniel to winter here alone. It was time to return to society. But she couldn't leave this place if there was any chance he might come back. Gathering her courage, she crossed the creek into the forest where he had carved his name on the trees. One day faded into the next until the first snow came.
Cutting patterns in the linsey-woolsey, she made new gowns for Daniel. She sewed them with generous seams, to let out as he grew. Instead of sewing a new dress for herself, she stitched a new pair of breeches and a jacket for Gabriel. Sewing was a prayer to call him back. She wondered if he expected her to wait for him in the Quaker village. If she went there in spring, would he come looking for her?
As the days slid toward midwinter, each day darker than the one before, she forced herself to accept the truth. He had melted away into the forest, as he said he would all along. He was that fey, like one of the faeries, the vanishing people. Once they lived amongst us like ordinary folk, Joan had told her when she was little. Long ago, before the reign of King Henry VIII, but then, one by one, they faded away, and now they can only be glimpsed at twilight and in dreams.
If she had allowed it, he would have taken her with him. They would have been together forever, and no one—not the Banhams, not the debt collectors, not the judges from the Assembly—could have touched them. Now it was her lot to remain in this world while he passed into the next—that magic world deep in the forest. He would melt westward, toward those mountains he had once described for her, fleeing so far that no white man would ever lay eyes on him again. Maybe he would take an Indian name and an Indian wife. His children would be children of the forest.
As winter dragged on, a transformation befell her, too. An enchantment of sorts. To pass the lonely hours, she read her father's books of anatomy. She opened the case of surgical instruments, polished them with a clean cloth. In faith, Gabriel had once told her, I always suspected there was something uncommon about you. You have powers few possess. Come spring, she would leave this house, but not to pass as a widow in the Quaker village. And she would be no man's servant.
The dead end of the year reached its darkest point before slowly turning back to light. As the days grew longer, Hannah took in the seams of Gabriel's clothes. She shortened his buckskin breeches and cut out a new pair of boots to match her feet. She took an inventory of the physick herbs in the pantry, then wrapped them in scraps of linen and tucked them in a leather pouch. The raspberry wine was now ready for drinking. It helped steady her nerves for what she would do next.
She took one of the deerskins off the bed and cut out the pattern for a great roomy satchel, with a strap that she could wear across her shoulder and breast. Working with scissors, needle, and thread, she altered the packsack so it would accommodate Daniel's growth.
"You have to be my brave boy," she told him. "Your father has gone far away. I think we shall not see him again."
Ruby was growing up, too, in her loneliness away from the other dogs. She slept at the foot of Hannah's bed.
The winter, though cold, was dry with little snow. When spring came, she was grateful that the drought made the ground firm for walking. She sharpened her scissors. Daniel and Ruby watched while she cut her hair, the long red locks falling in a pile on the floor. She left them there. It hardly seemed worth the effort to keep the cabin tidy.
She had salt pork wrapped in cloth, a week's supply of corn-bread, a bag of walnuts. She had a tin bottle for carrying water, a sharp knife to carry in her belt. She had a cloak and a blanket to sleep in. She had the map, her pouch of herbs, her father's books and instruments, and she had two changes of clothing. She flattened her breasts with a winding cloth before stepping into Gabriel's buckskin breeches and shirt. Her shorn head made her neck feel bare. Daniel kept looking at her in amazement. She stroked his face and kissed him. May's voice echoed in her head. If I were a boy, I would run away to sea. I wouldn't come home until Id seen the wide world.