The Vanishing Point

by Mary Sharratt

  "Hannah, we have spoken of this before. Your sister will be a planter's wife." He uttered his words with weary authority, as if explaining a self-evident case in a court of law. "May will live like a gentlewoman with servants at her beck and call. Nathan and Gabriel Washbrook have seven indentured manservants and a kitchen girl besides. When I am dead, you will join her there. I can rest easy knowing that you both are provided for. In truth, it is not May I worry about but you."

  4. The Earth Demands Blood

  Hannah

  WHEN THEY ARRIVED HOME in the August twilight, Hannah paid the driver and helped her father out of the wagon. It had been a bone-jolting two-hour journey, the splintered wagon bed cushioned only in straw. Hannah waited for her father to finish brushing off his breeches before he handed her the heavy brass key to their front door.

  It struck Hannah, not for the first time, how dolorous their house appeared, untrimmed ivy smothering the pocked walls. Turning the key in the lock, she opened the door that led directly into Father's study and visitation room. With its big window, this room was the only one with enough light in which to prepare physick potions and study scholarly texts. She took her father's arm and helped him across the threshold into the clean-swept chamber. Then she went into the kitchen. Stirring the embers in the hearth, she stoked the fire and lit a lamp.

  "Father?" Lamp in hand, she found him in his oak chair with his arms wrapped around the leather case that contained his surgical instruments. His face was turned away from her, signaling that he did not wish to speak. Hannah watched him open the case and gaze at the tools that provided their livelihood. The scalpel had seen innumerable operations. Hannah had sharpened and resharpened it countless times. Flexing her right hand, she recalled its smooth grip in her palm. Theirs was a family of concealments.

  Father had always treated her more like a longed-for son than the daughter she was. He had held on to her tightly, even as he let May go her own way and slip through their fingers. His belief in her talents was vast. To his friends he had claimed that Hannah was so uncommonly clever that she had learned to read nearly before she could walk—surely an exaggeration, and proof of his blinding regard for her. Above all, she had feared disappointing him. To vindicate his pride, she had thrown herself into her studies. When she was a tiny girl, she had believed that Father was a wizard out of Joan's stories and that the Latin words he taught her were magical incantations. If she was a motherless girl, she was also the receptacle of her father's teachings.

  But what if her mother had lived and given Father a real son? Then Hannah would have had to content herself with womanly tasks, as her sister had done. Sometimes she thought it would have been worth the sacrifice to have a mother as well as a father. A mother could have assured her that she was truly a girl, as much as her beautiful sister was, and not some lonely creature whom no one outside her family could ever hold dear.

  Her consolation was this: Father had made her his right hand. The two of them had sworn a pact of secrecy. Though the law refused to recognize a female physician or surgeon, Father had taught her his arts. If May could spin and sew and bind any man to her will, then Hannah knew about the body and its disorders. Anatomical engravings covered the whitewashed walls. Bones, blood vessels, and vital organs were labeled in Latin. With Father's blessing, she had learned them by heart.

  Her strange apprenticeship had begun at the age of seven, when she first held the dish to catch the hot red gush while Father bled his patients. She had lost her squeamishness long ago. Afterward she gave the blood to Joan, who hoed it deep into the soil of their garden. "The earth demands blood now and then," Joan was fond of saying. Their roses grew redder than any of the neighbors'. A few times a year, Joan went to the butcher's to get freshly chopped bones to bury among the rows of turnips and cabbages.

  When Father went to his patients' homes to perform surgery, he had taken Hannah along as his handmaiden. After bolting the chamber door to make sure the proceedings would not be disturbed, he tied the patient to the bed, blindfolded him, and administered laudanum. Silent as a shadow, she stood by Father's side and handed him the instruments.

  In recent years, Father's hands had grown unsteady with age. He no longer trusted himself to make the cuts, yet giving up his practice would mean poverty. Thus Hannah had become her father's hands. By the time she was thirteen, she had started making the incisions for him. Before an operation, Father explained the procedure, showing her diagrams from his anatomy books, pointing to the organs and major blood vessels. They did not speak during surgery but communicated in silent gestures, lest the patient discover that it was the handmaiden—not the physician—making the cuts. Afterward she cauterized the wound and sewed the flesh back together with a needle and silk thread.

  Seven months ago, Hannah had removed a kidney stone, an especially perilous procedure. "Should you not cut clean and true," Father warned, "you will rob Mr. Byrd of his manhood."

  Cupping the patient's cods in one hand, Father drew them out of the way, then nodded. Drawing her breath, Hannah had made the deep incision in the man's perineum. Sweat dripped from her forehead, yet her hands never trembled. When she had cut to the stone, she extracted it with a pair of tweezers and dropped it into a dish. The operation proved to be one of their great successes. Within six weeks, Mr. Byrd had healed. He thanked Father profusely and declared he was still in full possession of his virility.

  Yet Father found his practice dwindling. He had lost much of his business to the young barber surgeon, whose shop occupied the best stretch of market square in the neighboring town. People came from miles away to visit the barber, drawn by his elegant storefront with its red-and-white-striped pole, signifying blood and bandages. Hannah raged over the injustice that common barbers were permitted to cut open bodies. She wagered that the barber surgeon had never put his nose in a book of science. She wondered if he could even read.

  Hannah could read and write in English and Latin. Father had schooled her in algebra, geometry, botany, and astronomy, as well as the medical arts. Had she been a boy, Father would have gone begging to scrape together the money to send her to Oxford, where she would have worn the black robes of a scholar. The sign outside their gate would have read Powers and Son, Physicians. With her youth and energy to complement his experience, they would have drawn in more patients and made a handsome income. Her sister would not have been obliged to marry a stranger.

  As a girl, however, her learning was a liability, something monstrous that clouded her chances of marriage as surely as her sister's loose ways had damaged hers. Unlike May, Hannah knew she was neither a beauty nor sufficiently versed in the arts of housewifery. She could not spin half as well as her sister could and had more experience stitching wounds than ordinary seams. Joan joked that her cooking was so bad that her future husband would wind up as thin and sorry-looking as the skeleton in Father's study.

  When she walked through the village, men and boys shifted away from her, as if they half feared her for her witch-red locks and her eccentric education. Though she was thought to be merely her father's handmaiden, everyone knew she had seen things a girl should never see. Passing her in the street, Mr. Byrd would lower his head and cross to the other side, even though he greeted her father with his best manners. The gossip of her seizures had not helped matters. Hannah decided Father was right to fear for her future. It was time she faced the truth that Father would not live for many more years. One day she would be on her own, and what would become of her then? Who would ever love or want someone like her?

  As if reading her thoughts, Father closed the case of surgical instruments and held it out to her until she took it from him. "When you leave to join your sister, you must take these with you. Perhaps over the water, where such tools are rare, you can sell them at a good price." He tugged off his wig, holding it like a small dog. "Bring me a candle, dear, and I shall retire."

  ***

  Hannah climbed the stairs to the room that she had shared with May. Moon
light poured through the tiny, curtainless window. Washed silvery in its light, her nightdress and apron hanging from their pegs resembled ghosts.

  She had always clothed herself in what May had outgrown. Joan took in the seams and shortened the hems. When she was a child, she believed that she would one day grow into her sister's voluptuousness and stature, that she would be able to fill one of those abundantly cut dresses without a single stitch being altered. But at fifteen she was still small and thin, and May was sailing away from her. She could not wait to be gone. The wave of anger subsided when she remembered how her sister had sometimes derided this house, Father's obsession with death and disease, his talk of purgatives and emetics, the stench of his herbal brews filling every room. Once, in a fit of temper, she had called it a house of pain.

  When May stepped off that ship, she would first exchange vows, then lie beside that unknown man. What would she do if he was hideous, his face covered in pustules? Hannah thought of Joan's folktales of strange bridegrooms who turned out to be criminals or even the devil himself. When she tried to envision her sister's future husband, she saw neither a monster nor a handsome young planter but a void—a space filled with fog. The only sound in that gray mist was the keening of gulls.

  As she nestled under the bedclothes, Hannah sensed that somewhere out at sea her sister walked the ship's deck in darkness, feeling her way along the rail and trying to spot constellations through the patchy clouds. Though May had not cared for physick or surgery, she was well versed in other arts, the ones Joan had taught her and that Father dismissed as outlandish superstition. She would look for the stars that spelled out her fortune.

  The thought was comforting. May's essence filled the room like candlelight.

  Hannah remembered the times her sister had crept into bed in the early hours, returning from her trysts. She tried to imagine what May and her lovers had done together. Her sister had never told her anything. When Hannah had begged her for details that would give life to the diagrams in Father's anatomy books and the drugged, blindfolded men strapped to the operating table, May only laughed. Poppet, you will find out for yourself soon enough. Sometimes May had neglected to wash herself before coming to bed and carried with her the salty smell of a man, which resembled the odor of flowering hawthorn.

  ***

  The scent of hawthorn haunted Hannah when she and her father went to church the next morning. She stared at the carved stone face of the Green Man, whose questing eyes never blinked but burned into her until she almost looked away. She tried to picture her future brother-in-law.

  After the service, Hannah lingered alone in the churchyard, winding her way among the graves. Ninety-nine yew trees grew in that churchyard. People said that if a hundredth tree were planted, it would die. Ninety-nine was the magic number that guarded the flat tabletop graves, peculiar to their village. Paths among the yew trees twisted and threaded around the limestone slabs raised altarlike to the sky.

  Hannah knelt on the grass beside her mother's grave, rested her brow against the stone. Silently she entreated her mother's bones. Keep watch over us. Don't let anything ill befall our May. She pricked her finger on the thorny stem of the rose that she and May had left on the grave the previous week. Licking the wound, she tasted iron in her blood.

  5. The Cards

  Hannah

  WEEKS LATER, as summer waned and the days grew shorter, Hannah cut onions for soup. It used to be May who helped Joan with the kitchen chores. When she was in a good mood, Joan teased Hannah, saying she would make a cook of her yet. But the onions made her eyes water, and the old knife couldn't cut properly.

  "This blade wants sharpening," Hannah said, unable to keep herself from sounding strident.

  Joan was in no mood to entertain complaints. "Cut it with your father's scalpel, then. Your sister never fussed like that."

  Hannah wished she had held her tongue. Setting down the knife, she wiped her eyes on her sleeve.

  "What is it?" Joan asked.

  "I miss her," Hannah said. "Sometimes I can't sleep for thinking about her." It was September. May should have arrived in Maryland by now, but they couldn't expect to receive a letter from her until the following summer when the ships returned from the Chesapeake.

  Joan patted her shoulder. "May has a good sister, she does." She put her face close to Hannah's. "What do you say I read the cards?" Without waiting for a reply, Joan lumbered to the far end of the kitchen where her pallet lay. "Come here, dearie. Your knees give you less pain than mine. If you tell your father, I'll skin you."

  Hannah rooted under Joan's mattress. She didn't care if fortunetelling was superstitious nonsense or deviltry. She wanted some sign of May's fate, some message of comfort.

  "Here they are." She presented Joan with the pack of cards, concealed in a knotted rag.

  Joan sat at the table and began to shuffle. Pulling up a stool, Hannah watched in silence as Joan's red fingers plucked two cards from the deck and laid them down. The three of spades and the queen of diamonds. Joan's jaw sagged.

  "What is it?" Hannah clutched Joan's wrist.

  "Spades are no good. Especially the three of spades. Now, the six of spades would be a different story altogether."

  "What does it mean?"

  "The heart pierced by three blades."

  "But this one." Hannah pointed to the other card. "The queen of diamonds. Surely this is a good card."

  Joan grunted. "It tells us nothing of her husband."

  "Then it must signify May ... her good fortune."

  Joan muttered something, then swept the cards off the table and wrapped them in the rag. "Enough for one day."

  "Joan, tell me! What did you see—"

  Her interrogation was cut short by a rap on the door that opened onto the study.

  "Hannah!" Father called. "Will you come?"

  Joan hid the cards in her lap while Hannah darted into the study.

  "I heard raised voices in the kitchen." Father frowned. "What were you and Joan speaking of?"

  "Nothing, Father. Nothing of importance."

  "Were you quarreling?"

  "No, Father." Hannah bowed her head. On a normal day, Father would have pestered her until she confessed the truth, but presently he appeared too weary to pursue the matter.

  "This morning I examined Mr. Thompson. He suffers from a weak and troubled heart and has told me of palpitations."

  The heart pierced by three blades. She tried to put Joan's cards out of her mind. Father was right—nothing good could come of fortunetelling.

  "Upon hearing this diagnosis," Father continued, "what remedy would you prescribe?"

  Hannah breathed deeply. In the past weeks, he had been teaching her ceaselessly, as if attempting to cram as much of his knowledge into her head while he was still well enough to do so. "Digitalis purpurea to regulate the heart, Father. Common foxglove. But it must be well diluted in a tincture with a gin base that the patient should swallow three times a day, but only a teaspoon. This tincture should include a tiny amount of Helleborus niger to warm and stimulate the heart. And also, very well diluted, Convallaria majalis."

  "The common names of the last herbs, if you please."

  "Black hellebore and lily of the valley."

  "Tell me the lesson of Paracelsus."

  "All depends on the dosage. Any medicine may heal or poison according to its dose."

  "What will happen if Digitalis purpurea, Helleborus niger, and Convallaria majalis are dosed immoderately?"

  "The patient may die, Father. The herbs could induce heart attack."

  "What oath did I make you swear before I began to teach you about the physick herbs?"

  "The Hippocratic Oath, Father. That I will use this knowledge only for good, to heal and never to harm." Hannah wondered why he had bothered making her take the oath, seeing as she would never be permitted to practice these arts on her own. If she remained a spinster, midwifery would be the loftiest profession to which she could aspire. But there were
plenty of midwives in the district already, each of them jealous of newcomers stealing their trade. Maybe she would be lucky enough to marry a physician or an apothecarist and be his helpmeet, measuring out the herbs as she did now for Father.

  He unlocked the cupboard where he kept the gin. Working beside him, with the late-afternoon light pouring through the big front window, Hannah weighed herbs on the brass scale. Then she added them to the measure of gin. Next she needed to dilute the alcohol solution with an equal measure of fresh well water. Passing through the kitchen on her way to the well, she found Joan at the table. A new card was laid out before her, the eight of clubs.

  "What does this signify?"

  "Arrows." Joan caught her hand. "Arrows traveling at great speed through the air. She is thinking of us."

  6. The Seeds

  Hannah

  MAY'S FIRST LETTER arrived on June 16, 1690, just as the hawthorn in the garden had ceased its blooming, fragile white flowers turning brittle and brown. Rain drummed softly against the kitchen door as Hannah, Father, and Joan gathered at the hearth. Hannah broke the wax seal and unfolded the letter. Mindful to conserve precious paper, May's handwriting was tiny, lines crammed together so that hardly a dot of white space remained. Father put on his spectacles and squinted, but only Hannah's eyes were strong enough to make out the crushed and distorted words. So Father sat down with Joan while Hannah read the letter to them slowly, with long pauses between the sentences as she struggled to decipher the words. When she came to a passage she deemed unfit for Father's and Joan's ears, she silently omitted it.

  OCTOBER 25, 1689

  Dear Father, dearest Hannah, to-morrow when we bring our Tobacco to Banham's Landing, I shall press this Missive in the Shipman's Hands. May it travell safely Home to you. Hannah, though you and Joan would not have it so, now I am a Wife. Ere I first set Foot off the Ship in Anne Arundel Town, Cousin Nathan did spirit me to Church where I wed Gabriel. "What of the Banns, Sir?"I ask'd. Cousin Nathan replied that he posted them three Months before I had e'en arrived!