The Endless Forest (75 page)

She touched the sheath that held her knife, and the gesture both calmed her and made her laugh at herself. Alice LeBlanc might be mean-spirited, but she wasn’t homicidal; and more than that, Hannah would only have to shout out the window to get someone’s attention.

In the hall Alice opened the door and stood aside for Hannah to enter, a simple act that stopped her cold. The Alice LeBlanc she knew would never let Hannah precede her through a door; she had too high an opinion of her own worth.

Alice frowned at her. “What?”

“If you do not tell me exactly who is in that room, I will turn around and leave,” Hannah said.

“It’s all right,” a voice called. “Alice, it’s all right. Hannah, come in, and shut the door behind yourself.”

Jemima.

Alice was smiling now, a superior and self-satisfied smile that said she was enjoying having got the best of Hannah Savard. Hannah waited until Alice had taken her smirk down the stairs, and then she went in and closed the door.

A sickroom has a smell all its own, and Hannah had entered enough of them to get a sense of what was waiting for her on that basis alone. Here there was bile and vomit and strongest of all, the oily stench of
unhealthy stool. There was something wrong here, something far worse than indigestion.

Jemima was sitting in a large upholstered chair by the window. The curtains were drawn and the air in the room was close and hot and heavy. Hannah went to the windows and pushed back the curtains to let in light. Then she opened both sashes as far as they would go.

“I don’t like the breeze,” Jemima said.

“And yet you need fresh air.” She drew in a deep breath and turned to face Jemima. “When did you get here?”

There were new lines in Jemima’s face, brackets around her mouth that spoke of pain, along with streaks of iron gray in her hair. And there was a struggle going on too; Hannah could see it happening in her eyes. Jemima didn’t like this situation, but she was forcing herself forward.

“Last night just before dark.”

“Alone?”

“Alone,” Jemima said.

“You came masked, in a costume?”

Jemima’s mouth jerked at the corner. “I was wearing a veiled hat, if you must know the details.”

“I find it hard to believe you traveled, as sick as you are, and by yourself.”

“It wasn’t so bad yesterday,” Jemima said. “Came on a little after I got here.”

“Your husband—”

“My husband is none of your concern. I have money, and I can pay you for your services. What I need, first of all, is laudanum. And then a diagnosis.”

The anger that Hannah had been holding at bay kicked up, but she pushed it back down. “I am not interested in your money and I think you’d be better served by another doctor.”

Jemima said, “I’ve seen eight doctors in the last six weeks, and none of them would or could tell me what’s wrong with me.”

That made Hannah laugh aloud. “And so you came to me? To me? You never had any opinion of me or my skills as a doctor. You accused me of killing children out of incompetence.”

“I don’t think much of you,” Jemima agreed. “But others do. And desperate times call for desperate measures.”

Hannah studied the woman sitting by the window for a full minute.
In that time Jemima never moved, though her breathing came quick and shallow. She was in pain, and trying not to show it.

“I’ll examine you and charge what I always charge, and I’ll tell you what I find. And that’s as much as I’ll promise.”

“And laudanum.”

“Yes. I see you are in great pain.”

“And how that must thrill you.”

Hannah looked at her calmly, and waited.

Finally Jemima said, “All right, I take it back.”

Hannah put down her bag and sat down on the chair opposite Jemima. “Tell me,” she said. “Every symptom and when it started. And leave nothing out.”

Later Jemima said, “I came to you because I knew you wouldn’t mind giving me bad news.”

Hannah considered, weighing words and phrases, trying to recall extracts she had read and autopsies conducted long ago when she had been studying under Dr. Valentine and Dr. Savard—who would one day be her brother-in-law—at the almshouse in Manhattan. It was the thought of Dr. Savard that gave her a way to talk to Jemima. She imagined what he would say, and she said it.

“It will go like this. The pain will get steadily worse, far worse than it is now. Far worse. In a week or two, if you’re lucky you’ll fall into a coma and stay there until you die. You have questions?”

“Do you have enough laudanum to see me through?”

“No,” Hannah said. “But I can send for it.”

“You are saying I have cancer.”

“Most likely, yes. In the digestive organs and the liver, at the very least.”

“If I stop eating and drinking can I end this quicker?”

“Then it will be two or three days at most.”

“I don’t suppose you’d be willing to give me something to end it now. Think of the satisfaction you’d get. In fact, you could auction off the privilege of killing me.” Her laugh was hoarse and phlemy.

Hannah stared at her.

Jemima sighed. “How much do I owe you?”

Hannah said, “You owe me nothing but answers.”

—

Despite the pain, Jemima could laugh in a way that evoked memories Hannah would have preferred to leave buried.

“Go on,” she said. “Ask your questions. I might even answer some of them. When you’re done I want that laudanum.”

There were dozens of things Hannah wanted to know, but she had never thought she might one day get answers. The idea was so strange that for a moment she couldn’t think where to start. Old mysteries or newer ones? Once they had been schoolchildren in the same classroom. What Hannah remembered best about Jemima was the fact that she never smiled unless it was at someone else’s expense.

Except that wasn’t entirely true. The only time anyone got a sense of the person that might have been was when Jemima sang. Elizabeth had encouraged her singing for that reason, and maybe it had even helped a little, for a while. Then her father had been killed and her mother and brothers died of typhus, and Jemima had let anger and bile drag her down. Others had lost just as much; others had lost far more, and survived. They took comfort in the Christian Bible and its promises of another world, or lost themselves in work, or in founding another family. Some drank themselves to death. Jemima vented her fury at those closest to her.

Hannah said, “Do you still sing?”

Jemima closed her eyes, as if that could make the question go away. When Hannah thought she would never get an answer, Jemima opened her eyes again.

“Until last fall I sang almost every night.”

That was more information than Hannah had expected, and it raised more questions than it answered. She considered.

“What made you stop?”

A flush of annoyance moved across Jemima’s face. “What kind of questions are these?”

“You chose to pay my fee in answers.”

“Ask something else.”

“Did your coming back here have anything to do with that, the singing?”

Jemima scowled at her. “Ask something else.”

“All right,” Hannah said. “What was it that Harper was supposed to be finding out for you?”

“Harper is my husband’s creature,” Jemima said. “I don’t know exactly what arrangement they had.”

Hannah said, “Harper is dead. He drowned.”

Jemima went very still. Then she said, “That boy could swim all day. He was half fish.”

“Anybody can drown,” Hannah said. “There was no evidence that it was anything but an accident.”

“Of course you’d say that. It was probably one of yours who did it.”

Hannah counted to ten. Then, very calmly she said, “For someone who wants favors of me, you are very free with unfounded accusations. And may I point out to you that there have been other accidental deaths over the years.”

Jemima drew in a sharp breath. “Go on with your questions, but you are trying my patience.”

“You want the orchard, and leaving Harper behind had something to do with that.”

“Christ, no,” Jemima said. “I wouldn’t care if I never saw an apple or an apple tree ever again.”

“Your husband is the one who wants the orchard, then.”

“You must realize,” Jemima said, slowly, “that by rights, the orchard should go to Nicholas.”

She got up stiffly to walk over to the bed. Hannah waited until she had settled herself and she said, “So you know about the Bleeding Heart.”

A flicker of a smile. “Now I do.”

“You knew before. You heard about it by chance, from a farmer near Boston.”

“If you know the answers, why are you bothering to ask?”

“So the long and short of it is, you came back here to claim the orchard for Nicholas. You are worried about what will become of him when you’re dead. Did it ever occur to you to just ask Martha or Callie to take him in? Why do you assume they are as small-minded and selfish as you?”

“You always thought you were smarter than anyone else,” Jemima said.

“Is your husband coming?”

“No,” Jemima said. “He is not.”

“Was he your husband to start with?”

“Another thing you’ll never know for sure.”

“You’re here because you have no place else to go, and you need to make arrangements for the boy.”

Jemima said, “I believe I’ve answered enough questions. It’s my turn to talk. I want you to arrange for me to be carried up to Martha’s house in the strawberry fields, by tomorrow morning at the latest. I don’t intend to die under Becca LeBlanc’s roof.”

The idea so surprised Hannah that she had trouble collecting her thoughts. “What makes you think Martha and Daniel would agree to such a thing?”

“They’ll agree,” Jemima said. “Or pay the consequences.”

“What could you possibly do to them at this stage?”

The pain was coming on stronger now, Hannah could see it in Jemima’s face. And still she would have the last word, no matter what it cost her.

Her voice was unsteady. “I know things. I know things Martha and Callie and even your Saint Ethan wouldn’t want made public.”

“I see your game now,” Hannah said. “You’re trying to goad someone into killing you.”

Jemima smiled. She said, “Is it working?”

Hannah took a deep breath. Then she picked up her bag and left, closing the door behind herself.

Alice and Joan were waiting for her at the bottom of the stair, both of them on edge. As well they should be, thought Hannah.

“I hope you two are proud of yourself,” she said. “Does your mother know about this?”

Alice drew up, affronted, and launched into a lecture that Hannah cut off with a sharp look. She fished a small bottle out of her bag and thrust it into Joan’s hands.

“Laudanum. Dilute a tablespoon in a half glass of warm water and have her drink it slowly, or she’ll bring it right up. She can have that much every two hours.”

“It’s just her bowels gripping her,” Alice announced, as if this would make it true.

“Among other things,” Hannah said, and she walked out of the Red Dog into the bright July afternoon.

—

Martha put the flat of her hand to her brow to cut out the sun, and then she said, “Look, there’s Hannah. She came down after all.”

Daniel turned and saw his sister weaving her way through the crowd. She was trailing little people in a long tail, all of them plying her with questions and stories and requests for pennies.

There was something wrong. He looked around himself for Simon and Luke, but there was no sign of them here. Most likely they were down at the lake where some of the trappers were wagering on log rolling. If Lily or Jennet had gone into labor they would need to know.

Henry was saying, “Ma, can we stay until dusk? Can we stay and watch the dancing and the fireworks? Can we?”

Hannah came to a stop and looked down at him. “If you promise to keep an eye on your brothers and sisters and cousins.”

“We’ll all do that,” Nathan said, and heads bobbed in agreement.

“Then off with you,” she said, and they turned toward the trading post where some of the women were cooking doughnuts that were snatched up as soon as they were pulled from the sputtering fat.

Martha put her hand on Hannah’s arm. “What is it? Should we fetch Simon?”

“It’s not Lily or Jennet,” Hannah said. “But I need to talk to you and Curiosity and Callie.”

The last time Daniel had seen Hannah this distracted and curt she had been on her way to see about a little girl who had fallen into the hearth in the middle of winter. A little girl who had just begun to walk, and Hannah had been pregnant with Henry at the time.

He said, “What do you need me to do?”

“Send them both up to my shed,” she said. “Your ma too. The quicker the better.”

Martha left with Hannah, and Daniel set out at a trot to track down the others.

It was Birdie who caught him up before he had got very far. “Where are Martha and Hannah going?”

“To Hannah’s shed,” he said. “You could probably catch them up, if you don’t care about the footraces.”

He knew Birdie as well as anyone on this earth knew her, including their parents. If he had forbidden her to follow, she would have found a way unless he tied her to a hitching post, and probably even then.

He said, “You seen Luke around, or Ben?”

She wrinkled her nose at him. “When Martha’s gone you get this look on your face like a dog that’s being scolded. I guess you must be thankful to me for matchmaking you two together in the spring.”

“I guess I must,” Daniel said. He leaned down to touch his forehead to her brow. “Luke?”

“With Simon and Da at the lake. Oh, look, the races are starting.” And she was gone without a backward glance.

He hadn’t gone more than a couple feet before he ran into Daisy and her daughter Solange, who had a fussing toddler on her hip.

“Hannah is looking for Callie and your ma,” he said to Daisy. “You know where I’d find either one?”

Daisy took more after Galileo than she did Curiosity, but once in a while he caught sight of her mother in the set of her eyes. She was looking at him like that now, concerned.

“Joshua took my mother home about a half hour ago,” she said. “Is there something wrong?”