The moon was down when the eight men gathered at the church. In the faint starlight, their faces were planes and pockets of shadow, their whispers a swirl of brief, terse utterances, the words of men urging themselves and each other to action, the casting off of question and doubt. Six of the voices were tinged with the rhythms of the plantation, two with the lilt of Irish field and bog.
They began to move in a knot across the churchyard. Feet thumped on and around Jubal’s grave as they vaulted the fence and hurried along the path through the trees — Hannah’s path. Determined, driven by frustration and hate spawned by failed crops, empty larders and children burned up by fever, they splashed across the stream, scrambled uphill.
“I can’t go through with it,” someone hissed. “Let’s go back.”
“No! No!” came the answer. “We agreed. Keep going.”
An argument boiled as booted feet trod the path, drawing nearer to the clearing. All eight came to an abrupt halt when the cabin was in sight. The stink of their own sweat and fear was in their nostrils.
The words were spat out like a curse. “Come on!” and the pack crossed the clearing. The plank door exploded inward under the force of their feet. Three of them rushed inside, then emerged with Hannah struggling and kicking between them, arms pinned behind her, eyes wide with terror. She wore a pendant that bounced on the rough fabric of her nightgown as she struggled, a human face with round holes for eyes.
“Jubal, help me!” she screamed.
There was a split second, a frozen moment, when no one moved, as if her terrified appeal had paralyzed them. Hannah, her nightgown torn at the throat, her chest heaving, gasped for air. The men stood poised, balanced on the edge of determination and indecision.
The sharp stink of urine rose from the ground at Hannah’s feet and broke the spell.
“Haiti witch!” someone cursed. “Child killer!”
“Haiti witch,” another hissed.
“Stones! Get some stones!”
Several of the men ran to the wall that bordered Hannah’s garden, a wall made from rocks grubbed from the earth and piled in a row. There were so many stones that Jubal and Hannah, like all these men, had built fences with them. Every hand was callused from carrying stones to the edges of fields.
Hannah’s two captors dragged her screaming across the yard and flung her to the turf by the low wall. Released, she struggled to her hands and knees, frantic to scrabble away.
The first stone struck her on the back of her head with a sickening thunk. Hannah groaned, rolled over, arms extended uselessly to ward off what she knew was coming.
“Help me, Jubal,” she pleaded to her dead husband. The second stone slammed into her face, smashing nose and teeth, releasing a gush of blood. The third and fourth hammered her forehead, slashing open her skin, drawing away consciousness. Her blood soaked the earth as stone after stone hailed down upon her.
The eight men, frenzied by the hot odors of blood and their own terror, snatched up stone after stone. Their arms rose and fell, rose and fell, driving the rocks down onto the unmoving bundle on the ground, breaking bone after bone.
“Enough!” someone yelled finally, and gradually their mania faded. Only the rasp of breath drawn in and out could be heard as the men looked down. At length, someone found a shovel, and Hannah was carried into her cabin and thrown on the packed-earth floor.
It took more than two hours to bury her. During that time a cool, damp breeze swept into the clearing, and thunder rumbled in the distance, creeping nearer and nearer.
When Hannah was in the ground, four men took the excess earth outside and spaded it into her garden as the first of the rain spattered the dry earth. Others stamped the dirt floor flat inside the cabin. Someone rearranged the table and chair by the window. Someone else swept the floor.
“Why you two doin’ that? We got to burn the place,” another said.
But the storm had hit by then. Claps of thunder shook the small log building and lightning flashed in violent spasms above them. Drained and exhausted, the eight men fled the cabin.
The last man pulled the door shut. “God save us,” he muttered, crossing himself, as he followed his companions into the storm.
When I woke, a hard rain was hammering the trailer roof and the wind howled, but the thin grey light of morning showed in the windows. I had, I guessed, slept all night, but my body was leaden with fatigue, and my gut churned with nausea.
I got up, stumbled to the bathroom and vomited into the toilet. I shook my head to rid my brain of visions of blood and broken teeth, groans and the sickening thud of stones on flesh. When the retching eased, I stood on wobbly legs under a hot shower, willing the rushing water and steam to wash away the foulness that seemed to crawl on my skin. I wished the shower could wash my memory also.
I towelled off, got into a T-shirt and jeans, put the kettle on for tea to settle my stomach. I fell onto the couch in the living room and stared up at the ceiling. I had witnessed a murder, or rather, an execution, every bit as real as if it had happened on the floor in front of me.
What commandments had she broken that she deserved that death? They had feared her knowledge and power, and stoned what they couldn’t understand.
There wasn’t a shred of doubt in my mind that what I had seen — whether in a dream or a vision — had happened. Hannah had been killed and buried in her own cabin. The killers had intended to burn down the building so the community would assume she had been consumed by the fire. But the rain had ruined their plan, and they hadn’t the courage to return and finish what they had started.
Elizabeth Maitland had discovered that Hannah had not left the area. What a cruel irony that, when she visited Hannah’s cabin, she had stood on her friend’s grave.
The community would have wondered what had become of Hannah. Did they look for her? Did the men who put her to death walk the woods and fields with the others, pretending to search? Did they carry their guilt with them the way Hannah carried her grief? How many of the locals were secretly relieved that the “Haiti witch” who had brought medicine to their doors or delivered their babies was no longer among them?
“My god! They stoned her to death?”
Raphaella and I were sitting on a boulder by the shore of the lake in Tudhope Park. The morning sun had barely cleared the tops of the trees across the green water, and the dew was still on the grass. I had called her as soon as I could, breaking the Rule, and asked her to meet me there.
“What an awful way to die,” she said.
I had told her everything I had seen, leaving out no detail. By the time I had finished, she was in tears.
I was close to tears myself. It was as if Hannah had been my friend, as if I had always known her, and the pain of losing her was sharp. I ached for her, the husband snatched from her by sickness, the children she never had, the terror that must have coursed through her like an electric shock when her cabin door had crashed open.
I looked at Raphaella, who sat on the boulder with her legs drawn up, her face in her hands, and I wondered if, before I had met her, I would have felt the empathy for Hannah that gripped me at that moment. Raphaella had opened up parts of me like unused rooms in a mansion, thrown open the doors and pulled the drapes away from the windows.
“You know what I think?” I said finally. “I think the worst thing for her was Jubal’s death. She was lost after that. Just like I’d be if I ever lost you.”
Raphaella looked straight into my eyes. “You’re not going to lose me. Ever.”
We got up, took off our shoes and waded into the shallow water. The sand was firm under my feet and the water lapped at my legs. Beside me, Raphaella’s light cotton dress was dark where the water soaked it.
I took her hand and led her farther out, until we were thigh deep in the lake, squinting against the brightness and bathed in the warmth of the rising sun. I turned to her and took her into my arms. She put her hand behind my head as she kissed me, the way she had done that day at the opera house.
We kissed again and again, each kiss a promise, while around us the sun danced on the water.