Salem's Daughter

by Maggie Osborne

  “Motherhood?” Cutter shrieked in disbelief. His fingers clawed into Bristol’s arm, and he spun her violently, his narrow eyes staring at her belly, finally seeing what the others had noticed immediately. Gaping, unable to accept what his own eyes confirmed, Cutter’s face collapsed. The regulars silently filed past, casting looks of disgust and censure as they moved out the door. One spit, narrowly missing Cutter’s boot.

  Helplessly Cutter watched them leave, and his eyes slitted in rage and frustration. His fortune vanished before his eyes. The toffs wouldn’t pay for her, and the regulars wouldn’t pay. Maybe his regulars would be back; maybe they wouldn’t. One thing was certain—Cutter Rumm had been played for a fool. Somebody had to pay.

  Bristol read his thoughts as clearly as if he’d screamed them aloud. “No,” she whispered from lips turned to ash. “Please! No!” She stepped backward, her face turning the color of paste, her eyes huge and terrified.

  “Cutter!” Kitty screamed from the kitchen doorway. “Cutter! No!”

  Cutter Rumm heard nothing but a roar of fury whistling through his brain. He advanced on the object of his devastation, of his ruined hopes, of his humiliation. And his heavy hand slashed across her face, splitting Bristol’s lips. It wasn’t enough. He hit her viciously.

  Pain exploded in Bristol’s head. She staggered under his blows, tasting a rush of blood. Still he came. She cried out and covered her head with her arms. But her head was not the focus of Cutter’s rage. His knee smashed into Bristol’s stomach, and she screamed and clutched her sides. White-hot pain doubled her in half, and dark bile flooded her mouth. He was everywhere, a spitting demon with hammering fists and feet, smashing, hitting, kicking with limitless fury.

  Frantically Bristol tried to twist away, to protect her stomach. But the demon followed, relentless and shouting. Hair tore from her scalp as he caught her and hurled her into the table edge. Her eyes puffed shut beneath crushing blows raining down on her head and body. She bent, wild to shield the baby, and Cutter kicked her upright, his boot burying itself in the soft hill of flesh below her waist. Something ripped and broke and tore free in a blinding wrench of agony. Something wet and sticky flowed down her legs.

  When it was over, finally over, Bristol curled on the planks in a bright puddle, barely conscious. Both eyes swelled shut; she could not force them open. Above her wheezed a labored panting, and somewhere she heard Kitty crying, a thin hopeless wail of utter wretchedness.

  There was not an inch on her body that didn’t cry out in pain. But the agony in her mind dimmed all else. Blindly her fingers crept to the blood flow between her legs, and a howl of animal pain shrieked past the broken lips. She screamed, “No! No! No!” The anguished sound faded to a series of thready whimpers. “Nononononononononono...” Bristol struggled to pull herself up, half mad with the need to find his knife and go after him. Her weight fell on aching wrists. Something snapped, and her mind exploded into darkness.

  23

  Pain. Savage ripping pain. It tore at Bristol from within and without. She didn’t remember where she was; the pain created a black universe of its own. She could open her eyes to a slit, but when she tried to turn her head, she fainted. Darkness rose like a veil, fell and rose again. Agony pervaded her thoughts, waking and in a faint. Pirates swarmed through her mind and tortured her body. She stood in Salem Town square bending under agonizing lashes that went on and on. Cutter Rumm’s fist appeared as a tiny dot and rushed toward her face, growing until her brain swelled with it, and she relived a hundred vicious blows, felt his fist hammering her eyes, her splitting lips, raising knots on her face and head and body. Excruciating. Ferocious. Pain.

  Fever raged through her flesh, and slurred words of delirium cracked open her lips. Odd combinations of people appeared in a gray mist; snatches of conversation drifted in and out of her mind. Hannah and Kitty, Charity and Aunt Pru. Goodwife Martha Cory and Uncle Robert. Reverend Parris and Mr. Aykroyd. They disappeared if she stared long enough through the pain-blind narrows of her eyes. Dead faces hovered in the fog, relatives and neighbors whose names she’d forgotten; they appeared and disappeared in a dizzying swirl.

  Sometimes when the pain was almost more than she could bear, Bristol felt a gradual detachment from her feverish body. She floated near the ceiling and grieved for the broken doll groaning on her pallet. At such times, her heart ached in sorrow for that writhing young girl whose life trickled steadily from between her legs. She floated and watched and felt it would be a blessing to reach out and snip the thread and let go—simply drift away. She cried out in protest when a brutish pain yanked her back into purple flesh.

  Someone placed a cloth across her swollen eyes, a cloth soaked in a foul-smelling concoction. She screamed and fainted when her lips were sponged. A crude splint made of kindling wood appeared on her left wrist. Packing to stanch the flow of blood separated her thighs, and she felt the rags chill and turn soppy.

  Voices rose and vanished. She heard the murmur of the regulars in the pub room, and listened to Reverend Parris thunder from Salem’s pulpit. Someone wept continually. A man’s voice asked about a lady lost in a snowstorm, and Cutter’s angry shout sent him away. Hannah whispered to Bristol, telling her to stand tall and hide her suffering. She heard brawling children, and Mrs. Pudden’s shouted advice. Kitty whispered; Diana screamed. They all roared through her mind in a knifing hurricane of sound and disconnected phrases.

  Bristol Adams knew she was dying.

  In a clean bed, with adequate care, with a reason to live, she might have survived. But on the filthy stink of a rotting pallet, in the desolate landscape of Almsbury Lane... with her baby gone and life draining from her thighs... and with no hope... no more hope... Bristol’s exhausted mind gave up. Her will to live ebbed and waned.

  A face wavered above her. “Swallow,” Kitty begged, tears streaming down her thin cheeks. “You must eat.” Carefully Kitty eased a spoon past Bristol’s scabbed lips and tilted cool soup to fall into Bristol’s throat.

  Choking and gagging, Bristol emerged from a blinding red fog and swallowed. She tried to focus on Kitty’s face, tried to understand why Kitty tormented her. But she swallowed; swallowing hurt less than strangling.

  “Again,” Kitty insisted, and the spoon clicked against Bristol’s teeth. “That’s good. Now, again.”

  Bristol opened burning dull eyes and shuddered at the hope behind Kitty’s tears. Kitty rested a chapped palm against Bristol’s cheek. Then she wiped a hand across her own nose and dashed tears from her eyes. Again she took up the spoon.

  “No more,” Bristol croaked. Kitty placed her ear near Bristol’s dry puffed lips.

  “Oh, Bristol,” Kitty cried. “You have to eat! If there’s any hope at all, you have to eat!”

  Darkness hovered at the edge of Bristol’s vision, but she gathered her strength and managed to speak before a black wave rolled over her mind. “Hope kills!” she rasped. And surrendered to the savage pain.

  Time lost meaning. She might have lain on the pallet for hours or an eternity. Time narrowed to the space between labored, agonized breaths. Pull the air in, let it out, try not to scream. How much better not to take that next gasping breath, to sigh and rest and end the pervading, terrible, killing pain. But the body was a machine built to betray the brain; the next breath continued to come. It didn’t matter. Soon Bristol felt the life force seeping, leaking from her body. Soon she would sleep, and sleep would offer peace, freedom from hurting. Freedom from the people trying to keep her alive, trying to prolong the torment.

  “Open yer eyes, Queenie,” a woman’s voice insisted. “Come along, now, open yer eyes.” Bristol felt a gentle tapping on her cheek, stubborn, not going away.

  “Please...” Vacant green eyes slowly cleared to a glassy stare. Bristol peered at a pasty moon face fading in and out above her. “Who...?”

  A bony arm, surprisingly strong, dug through the straw and circled Bristol’s shoulders. She nearly fainted at the pressure on her back.
“Come on, now, come on.” The woman grunted, puffing stale gin and leeks into Bristol’s battered face. She hefted Bristol into a sitting position.

  Red dots exploded on a black field, faded, then appeared again. Bristol watched them. “Please, let me alone, I...” The few words exhausted her strength, and Bristol sagged against the woman’s arm, gathering her weak energy for another attempt at reason. Why was the woman doing this to her?

  “All right... Rest a minute.” The woman squatted, rocking on her heels beside Bristol, her arm supporting Bristol’s spine.

  The voice... Bristol’s slack mind searched to place it. Mrs. Pudden! Speaking sapped too much strength, but her green eyes spoke through the slits.

  “Ye want to know about Kitty,” Mrs. Pudden whispered,.. her button eyes darting to the door and back. “Kitty went to save ye. I hope to Christ she’ll be back soon.” Again she shot a look toward the door and the distant sound of voices. “Now, we have to get ye ready.”

  “Ready?” Bristol’s stiff mouth formed the words, but no sound emerged. She didn’t understand what Mrs. Pudden said; she wanted only to lie down. If she lay very still, sometimes she didn’t hurt so much. Sitting was agony. She cradled the splinted wrist in her lap, and a thin reedy sound broke past her lips.

  “Stop that,” Mrs. Pudden hissed. “Aye, that’s better.” She tied Bristol’s blood-matted hair with a torn strip of rag, then reached into a pot and gently washed Bristol’s face. Next she tried without success to clean some of the blood from Bristol’s tattered skirt. Mrs. Pudden frowned. “Nothing for it there. Not so long’s ye’re still flowing.” She peered into Bristol’s white face and sighed. “Ye’re a mess, darlin’, but it’s the best we can do.” She glanced toward a dim light in the doorway, and she cocked her head, straining toward the voices in the front room. “Soon,” she muttered. “Surely it’ll happen soon.” Mrs. Pudden’s moon face measured the weaving, gasping girl bleeding into the straw. “Ye best be who ye say ye are... for the sakes of us all.”

  Nothing Mrs. Pudden said penetrated, nothing made any sense. All Bristol wanted was to close her eyes and sleep. The endless sleep. She felt heavy, so heavy, she could not have lifted an arm. Keeping her weighted eyelids open seemed an enormous effort.

  Suddenly an explosion of noise erupted from the front room, and Mrs. Pudden drew in a sharp breath, her dark button eyes glued to the door. Shouting, shrieks, the sound of overturning furniture and splintering wood. Then a man’s form loomed in the doorway, tall and lean, a sword swinging from one hand.

  Bristol tried to look up, but she could not; her head felt too heavy to lift. She tried to concentrate, seeing a man’s breeches and hose and silver buckles on fine boots. It made no sense. Cutter didn’t own silver buckles. Cutter didn’t wear hose.

  “My God! Bristol!”

  Jean Pierre’s voice. Bristol groaned and wished for more pain. Pain of the flesh was easier to bear than the tricks of the mind.

  Powerful arms carefully lifted her from the straw. And Bristol’s head fell against a broad shoulder, too heavy to move, too weak to resist. The man shifted her to one arm, her weight no greater than a child’s, and his fingers whitened on the hilt of his sword.

  Gasping with pain, Bristol forced open her eyes and saw Mrs. Pudden’s wide-mouthed stare. Bristol’s gaze shifted, and a pale ridge of scar came into focus along the man’s jaw. Her cry of joy nearly strangled her. It wasn’t another vision! Jean Pierre had come! He’d come, like she’d always believed he would.

  Jean Pierre’s lips brushed her hair. “A little longer, chérie, my love, my little one. Endure a little longer, then you can rest and grow strong.” He strode from the tiny malodorous bedroom and carried her into the pub room. Bright light filtered past the front window, and Bristol turned her face into his chest, away from the glare. He’d come! Her head fell limp on Jean Pierre’s shoulder, and a tide of blackness threatened. But she ground her teeth together and bit at her mangled lip, forcing herself to remain conscious.

  The pub room was crowded. Four of Jean Pierre’s men held the regulars at sword point in a huddled corner. The regulars clutched each other, and their gin-reddened eyes focused past the men, on Cutter Rumm. Cutter hunched over the table, blinking rapidly at his outspread hand. His knife had been driven through the palm, pinning his hand to the wood. At Rumm’s side, Mr. Aykroyd stood, his cutlass pressing across the bowed back of Cutter’s neck, a thin line of pink opening beneath the blade.

  “Please, sir,” a woman’s voice screamed. “You promised you wouldn’t kill him if I told you!” Kitty cowered near the wooden counter, her pleading dark eyes fastened to Jean Pierre’s savage granite face.

  Jean Pierre hesitated, the sword twitching in his fingers. His icy face contorted in hatred, and he spit violently in Cutter Rumm’s face. Cutter did not move. Cutter’s eyes didn’t leave the knife quivering up from his palm.

  The blade in Mr. Aykroyd’s hand increased its pressure. “What be the order, Captain?” Mr. Aykroyd’s voice was as hard and ugly as his face. Blue eyes dipped to Bristol’s still form, and his face turned wild with fury. The line under the cutlass deepened and turned red.

  Kitty screamed. “You gave your word!”

  Jean Pierre’s stone frozen eyes didn’t leave Cutter Rumm’s face. “Look well, little one,” he said softly, and not a man who heard that voice didn’t feel a chill of terror race up his spine.

  Cutter wet his lips, and his red eyes shifted from Jean Pierre to Mr. Aykroyd. He swallowed.

  “No one touches this woman,” Jean Pierre spit, his voice brutal with rage. His lips curved in a terrible smile that did not reach his eyes. “I’ll have the hands that did this!” He nodded to Mr. Aykroyd, and his flat gray stare savaged Cutter Rumm’s face.

  It happened fast. Mr. Aykroyd slammed Rumm’s other arm on the table; then his glittering cutlass rose and dropped, and Cutter Rumm’s hands, severed at the wrists, lay on the stained table. Cutter’s blank eyes stared at his lifeless hands, at the gush of red pumping from his wrists. Somewhere a woman’s keening wail rose.

  Jean Pierre raised his arm, and the tip of his sword dug beneath Cutter Rumm’s chin, opening a dripping cut. The sword pulled Cutter’s face up, and Jean Pierre’s eyes seared down into that terrified gaze. The sword shuddered in Jean Pierre’s hand and held. His face was something no one in that room would ever forget. Jean Pierre’s jaw knotted and turned white; then he lowered the sword and rushed Bristol to a waiting coach.

  Although she tried, Bristol could never remember the ride to Hathaway House or what happened immediately after. Scattered images appeared and vanished. Dr. Weede arrived, departed, and arrived again in bewildering sequence. Aunt Pru hovered near the bed, wringing plump hands, her face pale and pinched with anxiety. Aunt Pru’s posture was the same, but her clothing flashed past in different colors, different designs. Molly bustled in and out, paused by the bureau, then seemed to reappear near the window or at the end of the bed. Uncle Robert’s thin aristocratic features floated overhead, only to black out and appear somewhere else. The only constant in a confusing pain-ridden parade was Jean Pierre.

  Each time Bristol’s eyes fluttered open, Jean Pierre was at her side. Other faces came and went, but his always met her eyes first, his warm fingers clasping her hand.

  Then finally the day came they’d prayed for.

  “I love you,” Bristol whispered. And there was no agony in her smile. Her emerald eyes glowed clear and aware.

  A hoarse cry broke from Jean Pierre’s lips and he buried his face in her waist, his arms circling her. “Thank God! Thank God!” Bristol lifted her hand, surprised to discover herself still dangerously weak, and she stroked his dark hair. When his head rose, the gray eyes were unashamedly moist. The fingers he reached to her cheek trembled. “Several times we thought...” he croaked, his voice catching in his throat. Warm fingers traced her cheek, her lips, her brow. Bristol took his hand and held it to her breast. Though her heart ached at the exhaustion thinnin
g his face, she smiled.

  “I love you,” she murmured, her eyelids dropping. “I love you.” When she slept, it was a normal sleep, without the fiery pain hammering her ribs, without visions of delirium tossing her mind.

  Her recovery was slow. May turned to June, and June blended into early July before Dr. Weede judged it safe for Bristol to leave her bed and begin the gradual process of resuming her life. Even then, he insisted on frequent rest and bed directly after dinner.

  As Bristol regained her physical strength, her mind also strengthened, and she fought to sort out the past months.

  Jean Pierre laughed. “Whoa. One question at a time. Before you reach the last one, I’ve forgotten the first.” Tonight he wore a billowing blue shirt open at the throat. A gleam of moisture shone on his skin; even with the windows wide, London sweltered in July heat until long after dark. “You’re certain I’m not tiring you? You don’t want me to leave? I’m concerned you overdid it with your walk in the gardens.”

  _Bristol smiled and rested against the pillows mounded at her back. “I don’t want you to leave.”

  “Well, I’m tired, if anyone cares,” Aunt Pru snorted. She lowered her embroidery hoop and crossed her arms. Yawning, she wriggled her bulk against a velvet cushion, then looked toward Bristol’s bed with an impish grin. “I’m sure you two won’t miss your chaperon if she takes a short nap.”

  They smiled at her, and Aunt Pru’s chins bobbed toward her ample breast. The months since Jean Pierre’s marriage, the months of Bristol’s disappearance, had taken their toll. A stranger would have guessed Aunt Pru older than her mid-fifties, would have seen immediately the tensions and strains.

  From the bed, Bristol watched her aunt doze, and her green eyes softened with affection. A gentle snore lifted Prudence’s powdered row of chins; then they settled once more.