Effigy (47 page)

He knows enough to keep to the jute mat. Reaching for the bootjack, he cranes his neck to regard her.

She considers saying nothing, but silence might pique his interest further. “Cleaning.” She slides the last jar into place and
turns to face him, looking out from the confines of the larder into the open room. The light is poor—a single lamp, the glow at the stove grate—but she can make out the muck clinging to his boots, the dark smears of what is bound to be blood on his hands.

“Take off those filthy boots.”

He waves the forked bootjack at her, then fits it to his right heel and, with a low sucking sound, works the foot free. His sock dangles empty inches. He drags it up with his bloody fingers—something else she’ll have to soak and scrub.

“Can’t you wash your hands?”

He fits the jack to the other boot heel, looses the foot with a sigh. “Pour me out some water and I will.”

“Before you come in. Before you get blood all over my door handle.”

“Your door handle, is it?”

She doesn’t gratify him with a reply. Only crosses to the basin, taking up the kettle on her way.

He shucks off his coat and hat, hangs both on the nearest hook. “Kettle on the boil, I see. Now what would that be for?”

She keeps her back to him. “I told you, I’m cleaning.” She pours out a steaming pool, tempers it with water from the jug. If she scalds him, he’ll know he’s gotten her goat. “Hurry up.”

He comes to stand beside her, plunging his paired fists with a splash. He’ll let his cuffs soak in the pinking water if she doesn’t stop him. There’s nothing for it but to reach across and wrench up his sleeves. He breathes on her cheek as she does so, hot and damp, the way she might breathe on a butter knife before rubbing it clean. She draws back, pushes the brown block of soap at him and crosses her arms. He washes loosely, sloppily, missing a red smudge at the back of one wrist.

“Are you blind?”

He grows still, as though unsure of her meaning. She points to the blood.

“Oh.” He rubs diligently at the spot, swallowing it with suds, dipping the fatty lather away.

“What was it tonight,” she says, “a barn cat? A lizard?”

He turns to face her, holding out his dripping hands. “A deer.”

She drops a cloth over his cupped fingers. He wrestles his hands dry, tosses the cloth onto her clean table.

“A very pretty doe.”

She plucks up the cloth and folds it over its rail. “You can’t imagine they signify, these—trophies of yours.”

“Signify?”

“Matter. Mean something.”

“I’m acquainted with the word, Mother.”

“Not to you.” She turns her gaze on him. “To the Lord. You can’t possibly believe He’s keeping count.”

He stares at her. “This again.”

“Yes, this again. And again and again, Erastus.”

He starts at the sound of his Christian name on her tongue. Seeing this, she wields it again. “Erastus, you know the Principle.”

“I know it, woman.”

“The more a man works to swell the ranks of the Church in this world, the greater his standing in the next.”

“I said I know.”

“Don’t you want to be one of those who populates new worlds?” She lowers her voice. “‘As man is, God once was; and as God is, man may
become.’
Would you be a mere angel, husband, or would you be a god?”

He lowers his eyes. “You have five children by Ruth.”

“And what of the others? The dancing girl? That stick of kindling you keep out in the barn?”

“And another. Ruth has another on the way.”

“Only because I made it so.”

“You
made it so?” He grins. “It’s as I’ve suspected, then. You’re not a woman after all.”

“You—” She feels herself take a step back. “You know my meaning.”

He matches it with a step of his own. “Are you, then?”

“What? Am I what?”

“A woman.” The word thins at its conclusion, as though he can barely force it out. And then three events, so close in succession as to become virtually one.

His hand, clean now, reaching to take hold of her arm in its sleeve.

Then the reaction that flares in response to his touch—not rage so much as disgust, pity’s cruellest edge. The idea that he should still try, still hold out hope after so many years.

Then the groan of a stair, a light step descending. Hammer makes no sign of having heard it—and why would he, his pulse drumming, his breath coming quickly, like a dog’s.

The children do not wander. If they need her, they know to lie still and call. Ruth returned from her last feeding an hour ago and won’t stir again for another three. Lal’s tread is clumsier by far. Thankful, then. Coming to snoop at the sound of their voices. Coming to fill her beady eyes.

Ursula waits for the hall floorboard that squeaks, covering the sound when it comes with the last words Hammer can expect to hear. “You know I am, husband.”

Then something he has no cause to hope for, let alone foresee. She lays her own hand over his where it wraps around her arm and, with a gentle squeeze, lifts and guides it to her breast. He sucks air like a man shot through the windpipe. She lowers her
face, parting her lips to show him the tip of her tongue. He drives her back against the cupboards, levering up on his tiptoes to smother her mouth with his own.

Three, perhaps four seconds of his grinding whiskers and scrambling hands is all she need endure. Thankful isn’t clever enough to slip away quietly and bide her time. She squawks like a pullet on the chopping block, stands shaking in the wide doorway, hair lank about the pale twist of her face. Hammer spins to face her, his hands in the air. Ursula meets her gaze over their husband’s bristling scalp.

“Did we wake you, sister?”

And now, far too late, the ninny runs.

Ursula steps soundlessly to one side so that, when Hammer turns back to her, she’s no longer there.

“I see now why she wears all that muck on her face.” She smiles. “She’s not much to look at without it.”

“Ursula,”
he moans, still not in possession of himself.

“You’d best see to your wife, Mr. Hammer.”

He gapes at her.

She smooths the bib of her apron, erasing any sign of his touch. “Quick now.” She treats him to one of his own hateful grins. “Before she draws the bolt on her door.”

Striking out across the darkened yard, Erastus suffers a tearing sensation in his heart. Weakest of organs, it cleaves to her still. His first. His only. If he could, he would carve the bloody thing out whole.

He cannot seem to reach the horse barn. His stride is comically short—a feeling heightened by the sneaking suspicion that
she’s watching him from the kitchen window, perhaps even the open door. Eyes laughing. Mouth cruel.

And now those same damnable features come winding toward him out of the night. Lal is always slithering out of nowhere, this time from the blackness that clings to the stable’s wall. He insinuates himself into Erastus’s path, swivels and falls in step.

“You riding out again, Father?”

As a rule, Erastus would answer with a well-chosen word or two—
Man’s work
, or
Nowhere you’d be of any use
—but just now he doesn’t trust himself to speak.

“Father, I—”

Bereft of words, Erastus quiets his son with a single backhanded blow.

Alone in the parlour, Lal nurses his hurt cheek. It no longer throbs—scarcely even smarts—but remains painful all the same. He cups it in his palm, the thumb twisting up under his chin to rub at his bottom lip.

“It’s not fair,” he tells it.

No
, it murmurs back,
not fair
.

Lal thrusts down through his heels, setting the rocking chair in motion. He’s not allowed to sit here. No one is save her, but the household is abed, so his chances of getting caught are slim. In any case, there’s nowhere he’s not unwanted.

“Ruth,” he moans softly.

“Speak up, Lal.”

He starts, the chair dropping him back. Thankful stands before him by the time he rocks forward again. Her dress is a slippery petal pink. He doesn’t know enough to realize the colour doesn’t
suit her—only that she looks washed out, maybe even a little green. He glares at her.

“All right, then.” She gives a little quarter turn. “Don’t tell me.”

Scarcely a second elapses before she swivels back and covers Lal’s hand with her own. Only then does he realize it’s still welded to his injured cheek. He flinches, but Thankful holds steady.

“Somebody hit you? Was it her?”

He wants not to respond, but his head shakes itself slowly, his eyes fall closed.

“Him.” An edge in the way she says it.

Lal nods. Her hand leaves his, hovers, and lands again, this time on his knee. Skirts rustle. He lifts his eyelids to find her kneeling before him on the braided rug. Up close she’s definitely greenish. He wonders briefly, distantly, if she might be ill.

Then her other hand on his other knee. It’s difficult to say who’s to blame for what happens next, so equally do the pair of them take part. His legs spreading to the curved limit of the chair’s two arms, Thankful dipping rapidly to nudge her sharp little chin into his groin. He groans an unlimited assent, but she’s already standing.

“You like that?” She turns her back to him, crossing to take up a froth of crimson fabric from the low table beside the armchair.

“Uhn.”
The pain is exquisite, blood rushing to answer the touch she’s withdrawn.

She turns, the bundle jammed beneath her arm. “He’s in my bad books too.” Her small teeth flash.

Lal nods, watching her move his way again. She halts just outside his reach.

“Ever heard a mouse scratch?” Thankful works a fingernail across her palm, producing the faintest of sounds. “Sometimes I hear a sound like that at my chamber door.” She regards him keenly. “You know, in the middle of the night.”

She sweeps past him, declining to wait for a reply. It’s just as well—his throat and tongue feel as though they’ve been coated in salt. He wonders if he should rise like a gentleman now that she’s moving to quit the room, but to do so would mean giving himself and his desire away.

Wrenching round to watch her go is better than nothing. She rewards him by repeating the sign—three light scritches written quickly over the lines on a palm. He spreads his hand and apes her, sealing the pact.

Erastus is in no hurry to return to the house, given that he’ll be spending the night alone in Eudora’s disused room. He plays with the idea of checking on the doe’s carcass, but it’s full dark now, and he’s loath to come upon the wolf alone. The near pasture, then, is far enough. He lets Ink drop her great head and graze.

The knuckles of his right hand ring with the memory of Lal’s cheekbone. The boy doesn’t know how soft he’s got it. His namesake, the first Lalovee Hammer, wouldn’t have stood for a son who finished every day God sends with little or nothing to show. The other children work hard for Ursula, but they’re too young as yet to be of any use to Erastus. Besides, they make him edgy—more like a clutch of blinking chicks than children. And anyway, it’s a man’s eldest son who ought to be his right hand.

Any work Lal does has to be laid out for him step by step. Tell him to see to the horses and you’ll find them watered but not fed. Set him to cleaning stalls and he’ll muck out every other one. Little wonder Erastus had to take on hire. At least that much is panning out. Drown earns his board and more, coming close to making up for the handsome sack of nothing Erastus is bound to call his son.