The Vanishing Point

by Mary Sharratt

  Following his example, Hannah did not curtsy or even incline her head before walking out of the room. Instead she sought to carry herself with Gabriel's proud indifference. Reaching the hallway, she burst without knocking into the bedchamber where she had left Daniel and found him playing with a painted wooden horse. The other boy slept while the nursemaid rocked his cradle. He looked pale and sickly. At any other time, Hannah would have offered physick, but now she just swept her own son into her arms and carried him away.

  Richard spoke to Gabriel in the hall. "I apologize for my stepmother's affliction, which causes her to say improper things."

  Hannah took her place at Gabriel's side. The Banhams no longer had the power to humble her, and Richard no longer had the power to slight her. Before God, all men and women were equal. This was what Father believed and what Gabriel had taught her better than anyone could. The glamoury eye saw beyond the finery in this household to the corruption that gnawed at its core. The Banhams were a sorry excuse for a family. The father was a libertine, and the stepmother was possessed of a troubled mind. Alice and Nell were biding their time before their father married them off to planters, who might well hold their dowries in higher esteem than their beauty and accomplishments. If Richard retained any spark of character or integrity, it was by virtue of his being a young man with all the liberties of his class. But only his money set him apart from Gabriel.

  "Goodbye, Mr. Banham." She looked at him boldly until he went red in the face and bowed to her.

  That night, when they had returned to their own home and after she had tucked Daniel into bed, she led Gabriel to the pile of furs by the hearth and let him unlace her gown. She pulled him down beside her, and it was as if they had never fought. When he kissed her, she laughed and twined herself around him, happier than she remembered she could be.

  30. Down in the Hollow

  Hannah

  1694

  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 i
nto 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.