The Vanishing Point (15 page)

Though lacking cream, rosewater, and lemon, the golden brown apples smelled like heaven. Covering the pie plate with a clean cloth, she set off down the path, hoping to deliver it to Gabriel while it was still warm. She no longer heard chipping or sawing but saw blue smoke rising from the trees. When she saw that the fire was burning inside the canoe itself, she nearly yelped, thinking that Gabriel had set to destroy his creation. Then she noticed that the front and back had been chiseled into points and the bottom carefully shaped.

Gabriel swung around, his face blackened by the smoke. "Now I burn out the wood in the center to hollow it. It is easier to burn the green wood away than to hack it out with the adze." He stopped short when he saw the covered pie plate.

"I made this for you." She bowed her head so she could avoid looking him in the eye. "I thought you might be hungry." She pressed it into his hands.

As he took the plate from her, Gabriel caught her scent. She smelled of apples and nutmeg, but underneath that was her young girl's smell that reminded him of wood anemones and freshly shucked corn. Like a Puritan, she had covered every lock of her fiery hair with her linen bonnet. In his mind's eye, he saw her hair as it had been the evening she had come back from the river, damp and tangled over her shoulders. Her face glossy and wet. She had looked like a mermaid tossed up by the sea. The startled look she had given him when he had warned that the river could be dangerous. The flush that had filled her face.

"It's apple tansey." She spoke as shyly as a child would. "I cooked it from my mother's receipt."

Before he could thank her, she scurried away. He couldn't find the words to call her back.

Sitting cross-legged on the bare earth, he uncovered the pie plate and saw the fried apples. She had tucked a spoon on the side. At first he could only stare at the tansey, inhaling its maddening aroma. Not since the days when his mother was alive had anyone taken such care to prepare a special dish for him. Everything May had cooked for him had simmered in resentment.

Eating the first spoonful, he remembered a line from an old song.
Apples are the fruits of paradise.
Hannah had cooked sweet apples for him. He wished she had stayed so he could talk to her.

His dogs pressed around him, begging for scraps, but he reprimanded them until they backed away. Each bite of apple tansey tasted the way Hannah smelled. He could toil on the canoe all the daylight hours, working with ax, saw, adze, chisel, and fire. He would work until his blistered hands bled, but he could not banish her from his mind. More than ever, he understood what it meant to be a haunted man.

His dead wife's sister. How dare he think of her that way? He was unworthy of her, for unlike May, Hannah was innocent, as wholesome and good as her plain Puritan name. Leaping to his feet, he tended the fire that licked at the inside of the canoe. How her hair had shone and crackled like flame the other night when she sat at the hearth with her head uncovered.

He was in thrall to her, and the only way he could free himself was by finishing the canoe and taking her downriver, out of his sight forever. After what had happened with May, he must remain alone, undisturbed. Everything hung in such precarious balance. If he didn't keep his solitude, it would all come crashing down.

***

Around sunset, he went to the creek to wash himself before returning to the house, where the smell of chicken soup greeted him. He had spotted the blood and feathers in the bushes. She had left the raw heart and giblets in the dogs' trough.

During the meal, Hannah shifted her face away from the hearth light so that he could barely see her.

"If I could trouble you for one thing," she said.

"What would that be?" he asked her.

"Before I leave here..." She paused. "I ... I ... would like to take with me some memento of my sister."

His gut tightened instinctively, the way flesh did around a wound. How long would this go on? he wondered. How long would it take for the bitterness to finally die away? He did not want to spend the rest of his life thinking hateful thoughts of the dead.

She turned, the light catching her face. Her eyes were wide and moist.

"Her trunk is in the attic," he said. "Tomorrow I will open the trapdoor for you. You may take what you like."

She looked down, as though collecting her thoughts. "I would like to see her clothing. I helped sew her wedding dress. Might I find that in the attic with her other things?"

Gabriel closed his eyes as the old pain surged. "Your sister was buried in her wedding dress."

Hannah shrank into the shadows. Above the crackle of flames, he could hear that her breathing had changed. She was crying, doing her best to hide it from him. It took his entire reserve of self-control to keep from going to her and wrapping his arms around her. What a pure soul she was, her wounded heart full of love and unsullied grief.

"What about her other clothes?" she finally asked.

He sighed, resting his forehead on his blistered palm. "The wench Adele stole them when she ran away. There is much the servants stole." He told her about the missing boats, and his father's sovereigns and signet ring.

Hannah said nothing. Her silence dragged on like agony. He wished he could do something to bring lightness to her heart. It would be something to see her laugh and smile again, the way she had when he told the story of the glamoury eye.

When she rose to wash the pots and trenchers, he went outside with a candle and took the rabbit skin, now tanned and dry, down from the wall. By firelight, he cut it with his sharpened knife, then took his heavy needle and the thick thread May had spun while cursing him. Long after Hannah had retired behind the bed curtains, he stayed awake, stitching the pieces together.

***

Despite the news that she would never see May's wedding dress—or any of her clothes—again, no disturbing dreams troubled Hannah. As if in answer to her prayers, she had her first peaceful sleep since coming to the Washbrook house. In the morning she awoke and felt like her old self again.

Whistling, she went to the orchard to gather windfall apples. Cutting away the bruises and worms, she simmered them with sugar and nutmeg to make compote. She made Gabriel corn-bread-and-butter pudding with compote poured over it. When she brought it to him, he was chiseling out the charred center of the canoe.

***

"I wonder what I will do in Anne Arundel Town," she said that night by the fire. "Do you know of a respectable place where I might go?"

"You must ask the Banhams." His voice rang spiteful when he mentioned their name, but then he continued in an even tone. "They are well connected. Mayhap they know of someone seeking an educated girl as a lady's maid or companion. Or mayhap you will find a place as a child's nursemaid. But you won't have to stay a servant long," he added quickly. "Healthy young women are scarce. If you wish to marry, you will find many suitors. No doubt you will find a worthy man."

Hannah struggled to maintain a polite demeanor, for she sensed that he meant to offer comfort. But the time had come for her to look at her future squarely. She placed each fact next to the other, lining them up like dominoes.

Father is dead, and I may no longer practice physick or make any practical use of my education. May is dead, and I am stranded in the New World. I cannot live with Gabriel, for that would ruin my reputation, even if we lived as chastely as brother and sister. I cannot stay here in any case; Gabriel has lost his tobacco harvest and will also lose his land. When I leave here, I will be either a servant or some unknown man's wife.

Maybe there was another possibility. Could she set herself up as a traveling midwife? True, she knew little of the birth process, but she could at least read about it in her father's books. Her knowledge of anatomy had to count for something. Unlike most midwives, she could read and write. But she would need to find a companion first, as Lucy Mackett had. No respectable woman traveled on her own for a living.

She looked up, aware that Gabriel was staring at her.

"Something troubles you," he said. "And I fear it is more than simple grief."

At first she wanted to demur, then it occurred to her that she had nothing to lose. "I have a secret."

"A secret? You?" It seemed that he spoke with relief, as though having a secret entailed some unspoken fellowship between them. For a moment Hannah could forget he was May's widower. She could forget she was a young woman alone with him in a remote house. The look of complicity he gave her reminded her of the way Father used to look at her when they went to perform surgery. It reminded her of the way Father had treated her—not as a mere girl but as an apprentice physician with an intellect to match his own.

"If I tell you," she said, "will you promise to keep my secret?"

"Aye, Hannah. I give you my word." He gave her a wry look. "Not that I have anyone out here to tell, at any rate." But he was not joking—his face was as serious as it had ever been.

"My father was a physician," she began. "He was getting old. I was his handmaiden. He taught me things no other girl knows. He treated me like a son..." She broke off, thinking again of how Gabriel's father had treated him. "He was the best of fathers and the best of men. He taught me Latin and Greek. He had me read the works of Paracelsus and Aristotle. He had me study the writings of Dr. Harvey on the circulation of blood through the body. In my trunk I have books of anatomy. I know of physick herbs and their signatures."

He nodded. "You gave your sister the seeds to plant in the garden."

"He also taught me this." Hannah went to her trunk on the shadowy side of the room away from the fire. Even though she had no candle, her fingers easily located the leather box. She carried it back to the hearth and opened it in front of Gabriel, revealing the surgeon's knives of different sizes, the catheter, the razor-sharp scalpel.

Gabriel looked at the instruments and then at her. "These are things I would not think to find in a maiden's trunk."

"I have used them." Hannah spoke forcefully. "He taught me how." She told him how she had become her father's hands when his own hands had grown unsteady with age. She explained how they had kept their secret from the patients and the patients' families. Gabriel's face went bone-white when she told him of extracting Mr. Byrd's kidney stone. "I cut into him with this." She pointed to the scalpel. "And I pulled the stone with these." She took the tweezers from the case and held them so that they flashed in the firelight.

Gabriel regarded her speechlessly.

Hannah held his gaze without blinking. "Do you think me a monster?"

"No monster, but a thing of wonder. You have powers few possess."

Her skin prickled in pleasure. "You are the first I have ever told," she said in a warm rush. "Only Father knew, and he swore me to secrecy. Not even May knew."

"You honor me," he said. "I will keep your secret safe. In faith, I always suspected there was something uncommon about you ... and now I know. I will miss you when you go." The last thing he said quietly. Grabbing the poker, he shifted the burning logs in the hearth.

"I wish I knew what to do." She leaned closer to the fire. "There are so few physicians here, and yet I have no opportunity to put my arts to use." She told him about her experience at the Mearley Plantation, how Mrs. Mearley had rebuked her for offering to help her husband. "Had they allowed it, I could have relieved the man of his agony."

"You expect overmuch from these people, I fear," Gabriel told her. "But do not fret about your future." He fed more wood to the fire. "A girl like you will always find her feet."

***

Each day when she carried out his midday meal, Hannah saw the progress Gabriel was making on the canoe. He used the adze to chip away the charred wood in the center. He kept burning and chipping until, three days later, the canoe was hollowed out. With the adze, he smoothed the bottom. Then he smoothed the sides to make sure they were symmetrical, so the canoe would be balanced on the water. Last, he cut down a slender birch and carved out the paddle.

The finished canoe was twelve feet long and so massive, Gabriel needed to heft it onto logs to roll it into the river.

"This will last many years," he told her. "Nothing is better than solid wood. If I run into a rock, it will not break." He slapped the canoe's golden flank. "The Indians used to make giant canoes. I did hear stories of war canoes that were fifty feet long. Each could hold forty men. But I made mine small enough so that I can row it on my own."

Hannah stood on the dock and watched Gabriel climb in. He sat cross-legged on the flat bottom and then paddled around in a circle, showing her how easily he could maneuver the boat in the strong current.

"I could never ride a horse very well," he called out, pitching his voice above the gushing water, "but I am a born boatman."

She had to smile to see his face so flushed with pride. When he paddled up to the dock, she tried to share his delight. He let her climb in and run her fingers over the satiny wood.

"I made it just the right size to take you and your trunk down to Banham's," he said. "There is even room for your sister's trunk."

***

Before sunset Gabriel climbed the ladder and opened the trapdoor to the attic while Hannah waited below. He went up with a guttering candle. She had taken care to close the shutters and to push the trunk back to its original position. She hoped he would never guess she had been up there making her own investigation. With the shutters closed, it would be too dim for him to see the footprints she had left in the dust. A sense of regret passed through her. Now that she had divulged her deepest secret to him, it seemed almost shameful to conceal anything.

First he handed down the spinning wheel. At home, an unmarried woman could make her living spinning, though she doubted such a thing was possible here. What would people have to pay her with—eggs and tobacco?

With some difficulty, he hefted May's trunk, bearing the weight in his arms and descending slowly, one ladder rung at a time.
Careful,
Hannah thought, afraid he would fall and the trunk would crush him. When his feet reached the floor, he set it down with a heavy bang.