Effigy (51 page)

Ruth doesn’t wait for the thunder to begin. She can feel the storm drawing closer, a wavering gloom at its leading edge. A fresh round of leaves laid down, she kneels to build the smallest of fires in the southwest-corner hearth. There can be no burning without heat—a pity, as the silkhouse is already warm. Lavender sags in the floor cracks, its perfume tired.

As the little fire builds, she opens her arms out wide. Can a body block air? She breaks a sweat, slippery beneath her breasts and in between her heavy legs. The lump of the child must be feeling it, held foremost to the grate.

The blaze begins to kick and spit, demanding more fuel. Let it. She requires embers, not flames.

And do you know what the peasants would do, Miss Graves?

No, Mr. Humphrey
.

They would wave a coal about the place. They would sing. Anything to drive off the evil spirits that rode in on the storm
.

She begins hesitantly, the first song that comes to mind. “All is well.” The chorus as good a starting point as any. “All is well.”

Outside, the thunderhead bursts with a vengeance, dumping its load of rain. It’s up to Ruth to maintain calm. She doesn’t glance round when the room brightens, doesn’t so much as flinch when the explosion sounds. Still, she can hear the indoor rain song fading, giving way to the onslaught coming down outdoors.

He’s promised himself he will no longer come here. Crouched beneath her window, soaked to the skin, he promises himself again.

The sky is hemorrhaging. At his back, rain invades the mulberry grove, fingering every leaf. One thin comfort—in this deluge he can hear nothing of her worms’ torrential gorging. They’ll be at their loudest now, only a day or two left before they abandon their green carpets and begin to spin.

Waterlogged, impatient, Lal inches up the wall. His crown, his brow, his huge eyes crest the sill. Ruth stoops over the small hearth in the corner, her back to him. Her beautiful, rounded back.

Lightning—its lustre raw, the colour of a slim sapling peeled. He feels it light up his face, the sodden slick of his hair. If Ruth were to glance his way, she would mark his every feature—stark portrait of a drowned man come to call. She does not glance his way.

Now thunder, the clap so loud it halts and restarts his heart.

Ruth straightens. She turns, shows him her swelling profile, and begins slowly to pace. In her hand, a pair of iron tongs. In their grip, a single living coal. Her lips move softly in time to her measured steps. She’s singing. Something else he cannot hear.

Her face is drawn. She pauses, peering hard at one of the worm beds, and Lal strains through the watery glass to see what has her so concerned. Stillness. To a one, the worms have left off eating. A fright will do this, as he well knows. And now he remembers her telling him—thunder frightens them worst of all.

Ruth reaches out with her free hand. It hovers, then drops, bestowing a feather-light stroke. Rain tracks coldly down Lal’s
cheeks. He squeezes his eyes shut and moves backwards into the storm.

The sky cracks open wide. Moving between strikes, the Tracker freezes low to the ground whenever lightning illuminates the scene. Scarcely a breath passes between each bright fall of the great serpent and the deafening roar of its voice. In his right hand he carries a stick, such as an injured man might lean upon to walk. He spots his mark in a great flash, drives the point of the stick home under cover of the thundering cry.

One
.

Run, Tracker.

Two
.

He times each hit perfectly. No one, no matter how wakeful, will have heard the steely traps spring shut. He sprints on, heartbeat sounding in his skull. Only one to go.

Lal moves in spurts through Ruth’s orchard, trunk to trunk. The mulberries offer no refuge. Branches clutch at his scalp, their huge leaves weeping, flapping like bats. A strike touches down, this one visible between the trees, touching pasture perhaps a quarter mile off. Thunder rattles his bones.

He can never remember—is a body more likely to be struck down in the open or among the black bodies of trees? The open makes more sense, God or maybe the Prophet getting a clear view, drawing a bead. Of course, a house is safest of all, but the idea never enters his head. He’s a thing of the storm now, raining
inside and out. Besides—the thought rinses through him—a lightning strike might not be such a terrible thing. Imagine being singled out like that, fingered and riven through with light.

The more he pictures it, the more fitting such an end begins to seem. What, if not sin, would draw the bright bolt down? And who more sinful than a son who adores one and defiles another of his father’s wives? Unless it wouldn’t be an end. He’s seen trees burnt black and leafless continue to stand. Never again troubled by woodworms, by axe blades, by birds.

The open, then. His last, best hope. He doesn’t consult the thumb—some steps so momentous they must be taken alone.

He tenses like anything about to break cover, a second’s hesitation that changes the course of his life. Big eyes have their uses. A figure, dark but definite, hugs the verge of the trees. Lal tracks its progress through the maze of trunks, through sheets and sheets of rain. Another strike—brilliant, closer still—and the figure has a name. The Tracker. Running low and fast, something staff-like in his hand. Lal takes off after him, grinning into the thunder’s deafening peal.

He halts when the Tracker does, witnesses from a distance of only three trees. The Indian lifts his staff like a spear, as though he would pin some scurrying thing to the ground. Lightning cuts the night behind him. A split second more and then he too strikes—driving the staff, yes, but hauling it just as swiftly back—just as the bolt’s dark echo explodes.

Lal marks the flash, the steel jaws leaping from the grass. He’s fool enough to have forgotten the trap was there; chances are, left to his own devices, he would have fed it his own foot. Not such a fool, though, as to mistake the meaning of what he’s just seen.

The storm is dying, the old barn growing peaceful again. It turns out the simplest of poses is the hardest to hold. Cast in the shape of the standing mother wolf, Bendy finds his over-slung knees begin to complain.

“Any chance of a rest?” He cocks his head to find her kneeling beside the female mannequin, smoothing plaster along its back.

“Hm?”

“My knees.”

She nods. He folds his legs beneath him to sit on his heels, slumping forward for a long moment before straightening back up. The rush of blood from his brain makes him reckless. He’s speaking before he knows he will. “You ever think about leaving?”

She looks up. “Leaving.”

“Yeah.” His heart drums up double time. “Getting shut of this place.”

Her eyes switch in their sockets. “And going where?”

“I don’t know. Anywhere.” He pauses, hearing the error in what he’s said. “Anywhere east.”

“East.” She says it softly.

“Well, sure. We’re already west. It’s just more of the same or worse the further you go.”

She stands abruptly. Taking up the pail of plaster, she returns it to her workbench, showing him her back. There on his knees behind her, he can’t help but feel as though he’s praying. His answer comes with her turning, the gleam in her sunken eyes.

THANKFUL’S DONE WAITING
. With perhaps an hour to go till dawn, she looks both ways and cuts a fast diagonal across the corridor’s dark. Lal’s door handle is stiff. She works it with both hands, breath suspended, and then she’s inside.

He’s asleep on his belly, right arm dangling, knuckles grazing the floor. She wriggles free of her nightdress and climbs astride his back, tucking her hand over his mouth. He bucks upon waking, but she grips on tight with her knees.

“It’s me.” Her voice louder than she intends. He freezes. Mother Hammer’s three little Josephs lie on the far side of the wall, sleeping with their matched eyes open, more than like. Let them listen. Let their dreams be troubled by what they hear. And what if their father should hear? What then?

Lal thrashes his head, and Thankful removes her hand from his mouth, rising up on one heel to let him turn over onto his back. It’s a bit of a trick, the bed narrow, a boy’s. He stares at her, coming fully awake to the fact of her weight on top of him, the shadows of her full, bare breasts. He’s a young man, hard to the tip in seconds. She takes care of both of them quickly, hips grinding, fingers harsh. Then bends, panting, to his ear.

“Let’s go away together.” She daren’t pull back to look at him.

For a time he lies unmoving. Then reaches up to tilt her head, a little roughly, with his hands. His lips graze her earlobe. “Are you crazy? He’s my
father.”

She has yet to let him slip from inside her. She does so now. “I know he’s your father,” she hisses. “He’s my husband. That’s why we need to
leave.”

His hands turn cruel, hauling her down. “Keep your voice down, you stupid bitch.”

Thankful feels her innards shrink. Why, why is she never best loved?
“I’ll tell him.”
Who ever dreamt a woman could screech so under her breath.

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“Wouldn’t
I?”
This said in a voice that could carry.

“Shut up.”
He twists a handful of ringlets. “You’d be the one to lose. I could make a life for myself if I had to.”

“So could I. I was—” She can scarcely say it. “I am—an actress.”

He does his worst then, laughing at her, quaking soundlessly between her thighs. He keeps hold of her until he can speak. “There’s only one job for a woman like you.”

He has her by the head, but her hands remain her own. She reaches back between her legs and drives her knuckles into his balls. His strength deserts him. She’s off him in a heartbeat, scooping up her nightdress, darting to the door.