~*~
Hannah progressed little as the days passed. She never opened her eyes. She didn’t move, and the only noise she made was when the midwife had to funnel a tincture down Hannah’s throat in the effort to remove any pregnancy. We also forced beef tea down her, which seemed to help with her color. Both Mrs. Jones and I cried while my sister spit and coughed as we compelled the broth down Hannah’s throat. The midwife, Mrs. Smith, had given us many salves: one to rub on her body and face to help her forget the pain, another to heal the deep gash in Hannah’s lower lip, and another for internal peace. Mrs. Smith had gotten the recipes for the salves from her mother’s, mother’s, mother’s and so on. It was rather Pagan, she had warned me, but I knew she said that to absolve herself from the panic of judgment that a couple generations ago would have killed her, or at least locked her in the scaffold, for offering my sister the kindness of topically treated inner peace. I’d asked Mrs. Smith to concoct another large batch of the stuff, and shoved twenty pounds in her hand. I’d do anything to get my sister back to me. My lovely sister wouldn’t or couldn’t open her eyes, even with the pleasant combination of potions that smelled exquisitely of comfrey, chamomile, and mint. Mrs. Jones and I kept washing my sister with lavender, rose, and apple blossom water. It was my method of willing my sister to open her eyes, knowing how she loved the scent of herbs and flowers.
The doctor performed a bloodletting after four days had passed with no movement from Hannah. He was very happy. He said her blood appeared to be thicker than he thought it would be and stronger. When the doctor asked me to dispose of it, I couldn’t throw her blood out like it was dirty water. I cried into the bowl. I cried and cried and cried.
My mother found me beside the barn, my tears rolling down my face, and began crying herself. It was Jonah who finally took care of the bowl full of blood and tears. I lay with my sister daily. Jonah did all the farm work, but there wasn’t much to do other than to wait out the April rains. Mrs. Jones had baked petite cakes for Hannah, each day hoping she would open her eyes and eat the sweets.
If I wasn’t with my sister in our room, I was in the barn. I stared at Bess and the horses. My sister liked the horses. Beautiful creatures, even though ours had no breeding of value. But they were both bays that would run to the ends of earth for Hannah. I wept while I stood in their stall, currying their fur. Strange, but they seemed to understand. The mare with the darker coloring would let me hang on her neck and cry as long as I needed. Her brown eyes would find mine with sorrow filled in them.
Sometimes, I would find the spot where I had clung to Jacque. Did I imagine him completely?
No. I’d paid the doctor and midwife with the money I’d found in my hand from that night.
If I wasn’t with my sister or letting the animals comfort me or staring at the spot I might have imagined Jacque, I indulged in a fantasy. Nay, fantasy isn’t the right word. It happened innocently enough, this daydream. Mathew had told me how he made sure to have a different regimental officer quartering Kimball, since Kimball’s own colonel hadn’t been jailing him at all, and had let the rapist wander around Boston at his own whim. That was the first I had allowed anyone to talk about my sister’s rapist, and it made me think about him. I knew so little, but could visualize a tall, blond man with a smirk for a smile and that dreaded red coat. Mathew spoke about Kimball’s possible punishment: to hang in the gallows in London.
My father had allowed me to hunt with him at eleven years of age, but killing an animal was for food. Killing a human . . . I had never thought of it before. My father had tried to shield me from viewing capital punishment. But being raised during a time of war, I had seen men dead from a musket shot or hanging from trees. They were French allied Herons and Delawares, being picked apart by crows. Horrific, and I had nightmares for weeks about the dead men dancing a jig in the air with bones for fingers and toes, and hollowed black pits for eyes.
What I felt toward Kimball was murky, cold, and vicious. I wanted to see him twisting at the end of a rope, practicing his own death dance. Or to be pierced with bullets, blood oozing from his gaping wounds. Sometimes I envisioned my own hands punching his face, until it no longer existed. I saw it clearly and maddeningly—a nose broken, a jaw dislocated, an eye gouged. I saw blood, black blood, all over a man.
My father would tell me that murder was a barbarian’s path, but I had never claimed to be Quaker. Perhaps I was too weak of spirit to stop my visions of seeing Kimball dead, or too barbaric. Of the philosophers I adored, they abhorred violence, yet many, like Locke for one, did write that one could defend oneself. I was sure my sister had. Her fingernails were broken and there was blood crusted on many of them. Not for certain, but I’d thought that blood was her abuser’s. But crime, sickening violence, had been committed anyway. Punishment by England’s law was death for a convicted rapist. But, Mathew had informed me, many courts in England—sixty percent, he’d said—pardoned rape. This, I thought, was indignant, yes, but what boiled my blood was when Mathew had given me a copy of the laws pertaining to rape. Why the legislature had decided upon a death penalty for raping a woman, especially a single woman, was that she would be deemed worthless after a rape. In other words, her property value was erased.
I wanted to break something. I wanted to break Kimball.