Interlude 1751
For weeks, I coughed up no other fouled bits of my decaying body.
No flecks of throat or lung or shreds of tongue brought up between my teeth.
But the pain and the blood were ever present, and each day, I moved less and less.
Until, finally, I saw both the sun and moon rise from my cot and wondered why I still lingered on this side of the living when the illness had taken Hope and Isaac’s daughter so quickly.
I had not spoken to my daughter since the blood rite. Joan offered what little she knew on the days she checked in on me, her hands always patient as she passed a cool cloth over my brow or spooned broth into my mouth, taking care to avoid the open, weeping boils.
“She will marry.” Joan settled beside me, her face hidden beneath her cap as she wiped her hands on her apron.
I’d lost track of the days. Couldn’t remember how long it had been since we buried Hope and Isaac’s girl.
It couldn’t have been long enough for a courtship.
Such swiftness would be unseemly for a woman such as Florence, but I had forgotten Florence had made a habit of going into town long before that.
“Marry?” I sputtered, the blood warm against my lips as Joan wiped it away.
“A man from town. Gideon Dudley. He’s been to see Lewis. Says there’s good farmland here—the richest he’s seen—and he would pay handsomely for it.”
Laughter burbled in my throat, but my lungs would not allow it so what emerged was a harsh scrape of a cough. “And who is it he would pay? There are none among us who own it. It is land. It belongs only to itself.”
Joan averted her gaze, and I knew then whose pockets the gold would find. “Ah. I see.”
“Lewis would like an ox for plowing. The coin Gideon has offered him would be of great help.” Her voice was meek, but I heard the resolve in her words. The hard edge of a decision made.
She continued. “It would bring Florence back. If they made their home here. It would be as you wished. To have her here. Away from suspicion. Happy.”
Inside my throat, something slid free, and I gagged against it, my eyes tearing as I retched again and again.
I felt it settle in my stomach, thick and viscous, and I brought my hands to the soft flesh there, wishing I could cut it out of me.
Peel back the skin, the muscle and fat, until I could dig that foulness out. Throw it on the fire and watch it burn.
Joan held a basin to my lips, her hand making smooth circles along my back.
“Thank you,” I rasped, and gazed up at her. Her cap had come loose and fallen backward, and she quickly removed her hand from my back and tugged it into place.
But I had seen. The boil on her mouth gone milky pink with fluid and blood.
I grasped her arm. “How long?”
She pulled away from me. “It’s nothing.”
“How long, Joan?” I forced the words out, the anger and fear and confusion impossible to hide despite not wanting to frighten her.
“A few days. But it has not worsened. And there’s been nothing else. No fever. No other symptoms.”
I sank back into my cot and evaluated her. There was a possibility it had nothing to do with the illness that had made an infestation of my tongue, and mouth, and lungs. It could be little more than a coincidence, and within weeks, she would heal, the entire ordeal forgotten.
My heart longed for such a thing, but even as I reached for her hand as reassurance, I guessed at the truth of it.
I did not bother to hide my tears. “You are a good woman, Joan.”
“As are you. And whatever comes, I do not fear it.”
We sat together in the dying light, our hands pressed together until I could no longer tell where her flesh left off and my own began.
We were not sisters. I was not her mother, and she not my daughter, but in those final moments, I felt as if there were blood running between us.
A force that bound us together in an eternal, unbreakable connection.
LEWIS FOUND JOAN the following week, her body made small by the tree where it hung, impaled on a branch.
Her hair’s dark curl made darker by the blood marring her broken flesh.
The lovely arch of her body made offensive by the branch running through her chest. She was an impossible sight.
A polluted thing made in the image of a woman.
His wife reduced to skin and bone and blood and bark.
It was Hope who came and told me, the morning barely born as she spoke, her voice laden with grief.
“Lewis will bury her this afternoon. But not at the tree. He sees only evil in it now.”
“It can only be what it is,” I whispered, but it had become a useless refrain.
Hope furrowed her brow but said nothing.
“And what about you? Is that what you think?” I asked.
“It does not matter what I think. Nothing I think, nothing I do, nothing I say … none of it will bring my girl back.” She turned and left without another word.
When the sun began its descent, I dragged myself from the cot. Whatever power still lived within me burned low, but it was enough to force me outside and toward the broken ground where Lewis would bury Joan.
I went slowly, the pain in my chest an unending fire, and I coughed, the cloth I carried spattered with blood and another darker, thicker substance I could not name.
As I approached, Lewis paused his digging, his eyes flashing as he threw down the shovel and advanced on me, his pace quickening as he drew nearer.
“Lewis, don’t,” Hope called after him, but Isaac remained where he was, his arms crossed and face stoic.
“We came here because of you.” Lewis’s hands shook as he pointed at me, and spittle flew from his mouth.
“Blinded as we were in our debt to you and then taken in by the shiny promise of gold. We came bearing grace in our hearts, but there is only so long we can turn our faces from such abominations.”
An old fear spread cold fingers around my heart. His anger was not so far from an accusation, and the threat of violence came not far after that. I had survived it once, and I knew I would not survive it again. The illness would not allow for escape this time.
“You brought this sickness into our houses, and yet, you still live. Why is that? What deal have you struck?” He lifted his lip in a sneer. “It is as they said. Marked by the devil himself. We should have carried you back when we found you and let you hang.”
Isaac stepped forward then and clapped a hand on Lewis’s back. “That’s enough. There’s work to be done yet.”
With a sob, Lewis turned away, his shoulders drooping as he made his way back to the hole he’d begun.
“It would be best if you left us, Anne,” Isaac said. There was no pretense of softness in his voice.
I forced my chin up in a small show of defiance even as blood dripped down it. “She was my friend.”
“And she was his wife. You may pay your respects some other time, but it will not be today.” His hands clenched into fists at his side. “I’ll toss you out myself if I see so much as the edge of your cloak before Lewis has mourned her properly.”
Through a veil of tears, I nodded once. Lewis would grieve as Isaac and Hope had.
As much as it pained me, I would not serve as an impediment to that grief.
I feared the implications of their words, but I could only hope that, with time, they would come to understand I had nothing to do with those terrible deaths.
Whatever stole away their daughter and wife also afflicted me.
I would not wish it upon anyone. I turned and readied myself for the journey home.
“Anne! Wait.” At the sound of Hope’s voice, I faltered. I did not want her to suffer at Isaac’s hand for me, but she was my friend, too. I paused, but I did not look back.
When she reached my elbow, she took it and bent her head, her voice low in my ear. “Florence has returned. Her new husband has already purchased the land and is readying himself to come, but she is home and alone for a few days yet.”
“Thank you,” I said, and she hurried away.
My body was weary and longed for home, but I did not go there. Instead, my feet carried me down a different path. One that led to a door that was closed to me. One I knew I would have to try to open.
Suspicion lodged itself in my heart, but I could not bear to give voice to it.
To do so would be to grapple with the truth of what happened the night we offered our blood to the tree.
There would be no turning away from that awful knowledge.
No pretending. Because there was something that spoke of ritual in the torn bodies impaled on the tree.
Of an offering that hinted at a desire for punishment of the wicked.
Dark magic. A curse rather than a blessing.
And there was only one person who longed for such a thing.
A single candle burned in Florence’s window, the door already opened as if to welcome in the evening. A cool wind rose around me, the leaves scratching at the earth as I stepped into the doorway.
“I wondered when you might find me,” Florence said. She sat beside the hearth, her hands occupied with needle and thread.
I drew in a silent breath as I observed my daughter. Even in the shadows, the swell in Florence’s abdomen was obvious.
“You are—” I said as shock radiated through every limb.
She was too far along, married so little time ago.
Not enough days between her vows and this child quickening in her belly.
A laugh built between my lips and burst outward.
I could not help it. I was proud of her.
My daughter, finally striving against such stringent, ridiculous rules.
Her hypocrisy drowned because she gave in to her body’s heat paired with another.
“Oh, Florence. The covenant means so little in the face of love. It would take a madman to argue.”
“Say what you will and then leave this house.”
I gathered myself. My momentary happiness fading as I remembered what I came to ask.
“You’ve seen this illness and what it has taken.
The deaths. They go back to the tree where we offered our blood in exchange for abundance.
The very source of our power and fortune.
Hang themselves from it like some damned ornament.
” She looked back at me, her eyes glittering.
“That night at the tree. You cut your hand as well. Offered your blood. What bargain did you make?”
“There is no bargaining in what is godly. What is right. Whatever punishment our Lord gives out is His alone to determine.”
“And yet you’ve taken it upon yourself to be God’s finger.” I dropped my voice to a hiss. “I will ask again. What bargain have you made?”
She smiled then, her face transformed into something I did not recognize as my daughter. It held something akin to what I saw in Reverend Brenton’s face when he looked at me. Something made of sharp teeth. Something hungry. It left my blood cold.
“I asked for punishment.” She rose, her embroidery dropping to her feet.
“I asked that those who pledged themselves to that tree, that those carrying betrayal in their hearts might suffer. I asked that they would choke on their treacherous tongues. That every word would be like a thorn in their throats. That every duplicity would rot them from the inside out until their hearts could beat no longer.” She stepped toward me, her face twisted with hatred.
“And I asked that you see it all. That you should suffer through every bit of it. That you should linger, death taking longer to grant you peace, so you might finally understand the same betrayal, the same suffering as you have given to me.”
I stared at her, the door at my back slamming closed as the wind whined past the cabin and through the trees. Sorrow and rage and regret all came to rest uneasily inside me as I took full measure of what Florence told me.
A curse. In her desire for vengeance, Florence had cursed us all.
My eyes were dry. I could cry no more. No matter how I wanted to weep for my daughter. For all of us. My body was wrung out of all but blood. Of that, I still held plenty.
“You cannot understand what it is you’ve done.” I spoke the rest through clenched teeth. “You have damned us all in the name of your god.”
“Utter but one more word of blasphemy—”
“What else can you do?” I withdrew the bloodied handkerchief from my pocket and cast it at Florence’s feet.
“There. Look upon your justice and see it for the curse it is. How many more of us will it kill in the name of holiness? This illness that would drive us to madness and force our bodies back on the same tree that was once our nourishment? A child, Florence. Consider that. You have killed a child on the altar of your god. Tell me what justice there is in that!”
Florence did not flinch but looked upon the handkerchief, her brow lifted in disdain. “Leave my house.”
The anger that heated my bones only moments before fled, and I reached for my daughter in supplication.
“Please, Florence. There is time yet to undo this brutality. I can help you. Think of the child you carry. Your daughter. My granddaughter.” The words spilled from my lips before I could call them back.
I’d smelled it the second I stepped into the room.
The child sleeping in Florence’s womb would be a girl.
“You have no granddaughter. No daughter.” Her voice was cold. Unfeeling.
“All that we have built. You would see it laid to waste. Would prefer a life of meetinghouses filled with meek little wives carrying the scent of their men’s viciousness. Their fear and the yoke they would make you wear.”
“I would prefer a life I chose. A life that lets me rest my head upon my pillow each night with ease in my heart because I know I lived according to God’s laws. I have that now with Gideon. At least you cannot rob me of that as well.”
“I only ever wanted you to see the glory that is our world. To know its treasures and how you might hold them in the palm of your hand. To be your mother in all ways. The good and the flawed.” I felt the last of my strength leaving me, but I fought against it, fought to keep myself standing.
“Please, Florence. Help me undo this. As your mother, I’m begging you to help me remove this curse. ”
“I have no mother,” she said, and turned her back.