Interlude 1751
Gideon cut her first. Before he put Florence on the tree. Perhaps he thought it a mercy. Perhaps he thought to spare his wife the agony of the branch piercing her chest even as he opened her throat, her blood wine dark against his hands.
I clung to life by the thinnest thread—a flimsy whisper born of the need to comfort Florence in the moment of our death. There was no final border I could cross that would prevent me from being her mother. I would hold to life until her final breath escaped.
Florence did not cry out. She did not scream. But I saw the silver glow of her tears. The shock on her face as he drew the knife over her skin, and then it was done. Blood leaked from her neck. Her lips. It coated her teeth as she opened and closed her mouth and stared up at him.
“You are blood bound to this tree. I heard you confess to it. It is only fitting that you go to your final judgment there. You and your witch mother.” He grunted as he lifted her over his shoulder.
Rage gave me the strength to spit at his feet. To find my voice once more. “It is that bond that has provided your fortune. Your gold and bountiful land. I would not trust such a fool to understand such deep magic.”
He threw back his head and laughed. “My fortune? You would claim our providence here comes from this devilry? From some fealty you have sworn in blood to this … this tree?”
Against his shoulder, Florence gasped, the words she spoke a harsh rasp. “It is as she says. I have seen it.”
“Well then.” He pulled her from his shoulder and held her upright. “Let us see if it is as you say, or if it just the ravings of two godless whores.”
He kissed her. Ran his tongue over her bloodied mouth and teeth and neck. Lapped at her blood as if she could quench his sanctimonious rage, and I sobbed because there was nothing I could do.
He pulled back, his mouth smeared with Florence’s blood.
He let Florence drop as he bent to the earth, swiped a finger through the blood I’d leaked there, and licked it clean.
“If I should quickly acquire any more wealth, I’ll be certain to look to hell and say a prayer of thanks to the one who made it so.
The one true God and not the devil whose book you have signed. ”
He was tall. He did not have to climb as I had.
I have known death. Have looked it in the face.
Seen its teeth and known its bite as natural rather than frightening.
But as he placed Florence’s body on the branch, as I listened to the wet gurgle of her flesh opening, the sharp intake of her breath that was the strangled sister to a scream, I felt fear’s cold touch.
But that fear was not for Florence or myself.
It belonged to her daughter. To the thought that she would live with such a man; that she would call him father, and he would raise her up as was his liking.
Made in his image. To hate rather than to love.
To see the world as cold and harsh and worthy of judgment rather than admired for its beauty.
It was for her that I feared. For the daughters that would be born of her.
Our bloodline forever tainted by brutality.
I reached for Florence. My daughter. This portion of my body I’d been granted for such a short time. I no longer felt any pain, and I pulled myself forward, the blood granting me purchase as I slid easily over the branch and wrapped my arms around Florence.
I knew her smell—the one she had since she was a child—and I took it in. Her scent would be all I knew of my last bit of air. I would have it no other way.
“I’m sorry, Mama,” she whispered.
“Shh. I will love you always.”
I felt the world tipping then. A great silence rising up to greet me at long last, close as an old friend.
Beneath us, Gideon watched, and for every bit of love I held for Florence, I held an equal amount of hatred for him.
“It seemed fitting to hang you from the same branch. You were sick, after all. Found your way here like all the others grown sick before you. No one will wonder when I tell them I found you together, joined in death as you were in life,” he said, turned, and then left the clearing as quickly as he came.
I bared my teeth at his back, the tendons of my neck straining as my breath grew shallow. He should have taken it all. Taken our lips and tongues. Sliced our vocal cords so we could no longer make sound. He did not understand a woman’s rage. How it manifests even as it stutters into death.
I held Florence, our blood mingling on the single branch of the tree that granted us power, my anger more powerful than any devil Gideon could imagine.