Monstrous Beauty (14 page)

“There’s no evidence that anything was medically wrong. But it can’t be coincidence. It must be genetic.”

“The infants were all girls?”

“As far as I know. Could that be important?”

“Tell me about your mother’s delivery of you.”

“My mom was healthy beforehand, with all the proper prenatal care, and my birth was uncomplicated. She had no fever, no excessive bleeding. The doctors tried everything to save her, but she just faded away.”

Hester remembered something. “My dad said that I was the one who appeared weak at first. I didn’t cry, and I wouldn’t nurse for days. He said that he’d always felt guilty that he worried so much about me, not knowing that Susan was the one who was really in danger.

“We live in a civilized country, Ezra, where the field of medicine is at its peak, and yet her autopsy”—Hester’s throat caught on the word—“failed to find a cause of death. How is that possible?”

His eyes didn’t waver from hers. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay, really.” She looked away.

He crossed one arm in front of his chest and propped his chin on his knuckles, staring at the ground. Then he started to pace, absentmindedly rubbing his lips with his forefinger—those lips that Hester had imagined kissing as she beat her rugs and aired her mattress in the village. She let him think, and she took that minute to compose herself.

“Your mother,” Ezra eventually said, repeating her list, “your grandmother, and your great-great-great-grandmother.”

“And most likely my great-grandmother.”

“Mmm,” he said. “But we need certainty, not likelihood.” He stopped pacing and looked at her. “I’m afraid you’ll have to do a more exhaustive search.”

“What?”

“You are keenly analytic, Hester, and I hope that trait will allow you to think broadly rather than dismiss what I have to say as impossible, or even absurd. What you’ve told me is consistent with the hypothesis that this may be a curse, and not a medical condition.”

Hester snorted, but he looked at her evenly.

“You’re serious?” she asked.

He nodded. “I’ve studied many myths and legends.”

“Right. So,” she said sarcastically, “curses are your hobby.”

“I may have an insight, yes.”

Peter’s words rang in her head.
Hester Goodwin, you have no sense of magic.

“I’m skeptical, naturally, but I’m willing to listen.”

“I’m glad.” He smiled. “There is an important criterion that you can confirm or disprove: curses never skip generations. If your great-grandmother or your great-great-grandmother didn’t die after giving birth to their first children, or if any first child happened not to be a girl—or if they had documented puerperal fever or uncontrolled bleeding, or any genuine medical difficulty—then it’s not a curse, and you will no doubt have a good laugh at my suggesting it. But you will need to check
all
the birth and death records.”

“I’m pretty sure we have five data points already.”

“We have at best three so far.”

Hester cocked her head to the side to look at him with one stubborn eye. “Three and a half.”

He smiled broadly—even affectionately, she thought—as if he actually found her hardheadedness charming.

Hester suddenly realized that even if it wasn’t a curse, the death records of each of the women in her family were important for whatever medical information they could provide. There were so many holes in her grasp of her mother’s family history.

“Hey, thanks, Ezra,” she said. “You’re absolutely right; I’ve been relying on word of mouth in my family, but I need to find the documentation and the missing pieces.”

He nodded. His eyes were still trained on hers, with a trace of a smile left on his lips.

She shivered, and Ezra lifted his face to the sky, noticing the drizzle for the first time.

“I’ve been insensitive,” he said. “You’re soaked.”

“So are you.” She laughed. “Only somehow it makes you look dashing and outdoorsy, while I probably look like a wet puppy with spinach in her teeth.”

“You’re just as lovely when you’re wet as when you’re dry,” he said. And then a cloud passed over his face and he was suddenly serious, almost wounded. His chest caved just a bit, and he withdrew a step, as if she had punched him. What had she said?

“I’m sorry that I snapped at you yesterday,” she offered, hoping an apology would help. “Oh, shoot. I did it the first time we met, in the cave, too, didn’t I? You must think I’m a raving…” She caught herself. “But I’m so glad to know you. Really, I am.”

He was quiet for a moment, and she wondered if he’d accept her apology. Finally he shook his head lightly as if to clear it, and that glint of amusement reappeared. “I never did enjoy complaisant companions, Miss Hester Goodwin. I believe I would be your friend even if you heaped abuse on me every moment of our acquaintance.”

She grinned and put her hand out. “Bygones, then.”

“No need for bygones,” he said, taking her hand. This time Hester’s body must have anticipated his touch, because the strange electric zap came like a welcome surge. There was something about the most innocent skin-to-skin contact with him that took away her breath and made her heart leap as if it had been defibrillated. But it was different this time. This was not a grazing touch, and the longer she held his hand the more there was a sensation of streaming, of flowing—she couldn’t put words to it. It was as if passion itself were coursing from him through her core, filling her up, and bursting into the cool, damp air around her. It was unbearably pleasurable, and also frightening.

“Ezra,” she said, trying to pull her hand away.

But he looked into her eyes, stricken.

“Stop,” she said weakly.

“Syrenka,” he whispered.

“No,” Hester said, shaking her head, dizzy with confusion. “You have to let me go.” She tugged her hand harder, and he released her.

He rubbed his forehead as if he had a massive headache. “Hester…” he started.

“What the
hell
, Ezra,” she blurted, trying to hurt him with words, not knowing how to respond to what had just happened.

“I don’t … I don’t understand it. There’s something about you that…”

“
I’m
perfectly normal. There’s something about
you
—” She started to back away, toward the stone steps.

And then he said something that she instantly recognized as a truth she had been denying:

“There’s something about
us
.”

She turned and took the steps two at a time. She looked back once to see if he was following her, but he was rooted in the sand, with something she could only describe as grief on his face.

Chapter 21

1873

T
HE OLD PASTOR ARRIVED
at exactly the appointed time, but he was still too late.

“She’s in the water already, Pastor,” Eleanor said, scowling. She had Marijn in her arms. “If only you had walked faster.”

McKee scanned the horizon. “There es naught en the water, Mrs. Ontstaan.”

“Well of course there isn’t; she has gone
under
the water.”

A look of concern flashed across the pastor’s face; concern for Eleanor.

“Come to the trees with me,” she said.

She marched him into the woods near the beach, where they picked their way for several yards. Eleanor stopped him near a fallen tree and lifted a branch to reveal a canvas bag. The old pastor opened the bag to see a towel and a dress neatly folded inside. He set it down again gently when he caught sight of undergarments.

“You’re sayin’ tha’ this is haer clothing and she es now bathin’ nearby en the water?”

“Yes, but ‘bathing’ is a human activity. Sarah does not come up for air.”

“Now Mrs. Ontstaan…”

“There is still hope that we might catch her with her monstrous companions, if we are patient and stay out of view. I have seen her with them. Once she sat on the rocky outcropping fully clothed, once she was in the water wearing a bathing costume, and once”—she whispered the rest of the sentence—“she was in the water obscenely
nude
. The monsters devour urchins and other bottom-feeders that they pick from the rocks—they eat some of the creatures shell and all.” She shuddered. “They think I can’t see them, even though they loom bright white below the surface, like beacons from hell.”

“The outcropping looks defficult to navigate, even for a nemble paerson, Mrs. Ontstaan.”

“She is nothing if she’s not nimble, Pastor.”

“I’ll have a look myself then,” he said, walking out of the woods toward the shore.

“No!” Eleanor hissed. “She’ll see you, and she won’t show herself!”

But it was too late. The old pastor had climbed up and was gingerly picking his way over the slippery rocks.

“The damned fool!” she swore near Marijn’s ear. “He’ll fail to see Sarah, and then he’ll
kill
himself, and where will that leave me?”

The rocks were much larger up close than they appeared at a distance, and they had a slimy algae growing on them, along with limp clumps of what the pastor had called green fingers when he was a child in Scotland—a branching seaweed with dark, velvety fronds and a spongy holdfast that anchored them. He smiled. The last time he had done anything like this was more than sixty years ago, on holiday at the seashore. He always did delight in giving his mother palpitations.

Each step required him to brace both his hands and his feet against the rocks, causing him to travel at a slow pace. After several minutes he had gone only a dozen yards. He stopped to rest and assess his progress by sitting down on a flat stone. He waved perfunctorily to Eleanor, ignoring her importuning gesticulations to return to shore. He looked out toward the ocean and breathed in deeply, filling himself with the cool, damp air.

He was still for a minute, until something caught his eye in the water—something deep under the surface, on the side of the outcropping away from the beach. He braced himself again in a nearly crawling position and crept across two large boulders to be closer to that edge. He leaned over to peer into the water and could hardly believe his eyes.

Beneath the water in the shadows was a pale woman, with flowing white hair and bare skin. She was intent on picking something from the outcropping. The pastor’s arms, which were supporting his torso, trembled fiercely, and the woman looked up at him through the water with enormous clear green eyes. He cried out, and his hands slipped. He began to fall into the water headfirst, grappling to hold on to the slimy rocks, and a silver flask slipped silently out of his waistcoat pocket. He caught himself just as he might have tumbled in after it. The nude woman snatched the sinking flask and was gone.

His arms and right shoulder were soaked, and he had badly torn a fingernail. He sucked his throbbing finger, scanning the water for her, and in so doing, his eyes caught on another woman, waist deep, moving toward shore. She was wearing a blue bathing costume and walking quickly, head down, in the direction of the woods. It might have been Mrs. Doyle, but he couldn’t be sure.

“Mrs. Ontstaan!” he called, looking over his shoulder. She didn’t hear him.

He stood himself up as best he could, waved his arms over his head, and then pointed in the direction of the woods. Eleanor stood on the shore, on the other side of the outcropping. She looked toward the woods, but she was not in a position to see the woman in blue.

It took him a long time to make his way back to the shore. He got there out of breath.

“I saw a woman leavin’ the wa’er on the other side of the outcropping,” he said, neglecting for a reason he couldn’t identify to mention the more fantastical woman under the water.

“It was Mrs. Doyle,” she said emphatically. “You saw her.”

“I cannae say wi’ caertainty et was her.”

“We’ve been here for three-quarters of an hour and haven’t seen anyone swimming about on the surface for refreshment, do you not agree? You were on the outcropping for fully thirty of those minutes and did not see her. The only conclusion is that she was
underwater
that entire time!”

“Her emaergence es suspicious, but no’ the proof I need. I mus’ be sure of the charge, you understand. But ef I can establish et as truth—ef she’s capable of breathin’ underwa’er—you’re correc’ that there may endeed be cause to save haer soul.”

Eleanor rocked Marijn with satisfaction.

“I’ll find a way to prove it without a doubt, Pastor. And we’ll take care of her soul. I’m certain of that.”

Chapter 22

T
HE NIGHT SHE SPOKE WITH
E
ZRA
, Hester drew a table of information that she had gathered from the Ontstaan and Crotty gravestones and from her family history, leaving question marks for the gaps that she needed to fill.

The next day she requested a two-hour lunch break and took herself to the public library. The genealogy room was a historian’s delight: bright and sunny with a long research table, and filled with hundreds of books. A woman with salt and pepper hair sat at the information desk in front of a plaque that read “Sandra Cook, History/Genealogy.” She was looking at her computer over glasses that were leashed to her neck.