Hester(96)

Trust the needle.

He is abandonment and shame. He is Nat and the icy way he turned from me; Nat and the promise that is no promise at all. The needle draws out easily.

Trust the needle.

The words are Pap’s, but the voice comes from the past, from inside, from above and behind the trees. Women’s voices speaking to me of women’s work, women’s tasks, women’s friendships, women’s graves, women’s hope, and women’s strength.

Is it Isobel Gowdie? Is it the women in the forest? Is it my mother or my grandmother? Is it God?

It’s all of them—they’ve all come now, for this is my time. Edward is screaming and I am screaming and the voices in my head are screaming—I have lain with the Devil’s forked prick inside me, and if you kill me hell will reign on earth. The long, sharp needle that I carried across the ocean is like a blade between us, the length of my hand.

“I’ll kill you!” Edward screams.

His hand grips my wrist and he bends the needle in my direction. The point is inches from my face and he is inches from my face and then I roar with all the fury of my life. I twist up and jab the needle into his eye. It enters with the soft ease of cloth shredding.





THIRTY-TWO





I push off his weight and Edward tumbles onto the dirt. He’s screaming “My eye, my eye!” when I scramble to my knees. My hands are covered in blood and the forest is ablaze with his cries and beneath them are the soft voices of my ladies in the trees.

“Hurry, Isobel.” Urgent hands on my shoulders.

“Come on, Mrs. Gamble, you have to hurry.”

Women’s voices: two, then three of them.

“Run on, Isobel, run on.”

I run with the wind and the women of the forest. I run until Zeke and the undertaker gallop up the path to meet us. The horse is breathing hard.

“Get in,” the undertaker says.

He indicates his cart, the one that carries the dead. I remember the hat in front of his heart when he told me Nell was gone. I hear Edward still screaming behind me. I climb in.

A blanket covers me as we jolt to a start and ride away. It’s cold and the forest is deep. Edward’s screams fade beneath the clatter of the wagon wheels and pounding horse’s hooves.

Hours pass and I grow colder. I smell the day slipping away, ocean air replaced by the scent of spruce, pine, and iron blood. When I have to make water, I let it seep out of me into the folds of my dress where it warms my flesh, then chills it.

I listen for my mother in the darkness, for I am in the doorway at the brink of many things—past and present, awake and asleep, hope and despair. But her voice fades before I can hear what she might say to me, and I know that I need something more. Someone alive on this side of the divide. Someone I love, who loves me.



* * *



THE CARRIAGE STOPS and I wake from my stupor. There are footsteps on gravel, the blanket lifts, and Zeke’s whiskered face is framed by a blue-black sky with a silver moon. His breath is wispy in the cold air. White stars blaze above the leafless forest.

The child hasn’t moved, and that’s all I can think of.

“Let’s get you inside,” Zeke says.

It’s been hours since I climbed into the carriage, or maybe it’s been days. Time has tangled around me and I’m unsure of anything but the brittle silence of the November forest and the rusty smell of Edward’s blood on my hands.

I crawl out from beneath the blanket, my arms and legs stiff as they unwind. The horse snorts and paws the earth as Zeke helps me over the lip of the carriage and onto the ground. I don’t ask where the undertaker has gone or how Zeke became the driver, for it makes no difference. My feet and fingers are numb but I can feel the hairs in my nose, each one a crisp line.

“Where am I?”

“Sugar house.”

A shape rises slowly out of the blackness before me: a low shack hidden in a grove of maples. Zeke unlocks the narrow door and stands aside. The threshold glows from an inner flame.

“Safe here,” he says. “Go on in.”



* * *



THE SUGAR HOUSE is long and dark, with a hearth and fire at the far end. Mercy stands before the flames.

“Come sit,” she says.

Her words are the color of ripe plums turned inside out—pink on the edges, deep purple brown inside. Mercy and Zeke talk in low voices, and then he’s gone.

“You did real good.” Mercy’s face is soft and full. “And you gave us enough time.”

“Where is Ivy?” My voice is barely a whisper.

She indicates a corner of the dim room where the girl is sleeping beneath a blanket.

I feel my body waver and sag. Somehow in the warmth I’m more afraid than I was in the cold dark.

“I don’t feel the baby.”

Mercy makes soothing sounds as she leads me to the mattress beside the fire. She takes off my cloak and cap and washes my hands and face with warm water. I can feel the places where Edward struck me when she pats them with the rag. Her hands are holding me, tending to me.

“I haven’t felt the baby move since I got in the carriage.”

She puts her warm hands beneath my skirts and lays them flat upon my skin.

“Not much blood here,” she says. “Hush now.”