Effigy (22 page)

Crossing to her little window, Ruth fingers the silk shift where it drapes against her thigh. She’s conscious of a deeper discomfort now, her flesh troubled not by the strictures of fabric but by her own impropriety, the sense of vulnerability that comes of acting outside a lifetime’s bounds. Soon she’ll stuff herself back into her clothing and return to the house. In the morning she’ll dig out one of several roomy dresses she hasn’t needed for years.

She transfers her weight from sole to sole, the shift whispering. It’s the last of a trio Hammer gave her on their first night together as man and wife. The other two—one shell-pink, the other icy green—have long since worn to webbing. He opened the gift for her, shoving aside the white bulk of lace Mother Hammer had draped across her pillow before liberating the flimsy articles from their box. Their simplicity pleased Ruth, as did the quality of the weave.

It’s not superstition that forbids washing the shift—or the body beneath it, for that matter—until the last cocoon hangs entire. Ruth’s reasoning is simple, based on lessons learned during her first spring season on the ranch. At the time, she was big with the girl Mother Hammer would name Josephine. Hammer was busy breaking colts for auction, and Ruth would lean at the gate to watch him, fitting the bulge of her middle between the rails. He liked an audience, though in truth she paid little attention to his antics, letting her gaze turn unreceptive whenever the process grew overly cruel. The gate accepted her bulk, and so long as she leant there her mind remained quiet, soothed not by the scene immediately before her but by the greening country beyond.

Mother Hammer had made it clear that no Saint should seek to lie with his wife when she is with child, but there were times when the day’s result—good or bad—produced in Hammer a state of agitation that knew only one cure. He took Ruth quickly on those occasions, leading her by the hand to an empty stall, propping her against a stack of bales before lifting her skirts and working her drawers down from behind. It wasn’t the horizon that claimed her attention then but a chaos of compacted straw. He was kind enough to hand her up when he was done.

“Not too ripe for you, am
I?”
he asked her the third or fourth time.

She busied herself straightening her skirts.

“Can’t wash, can’t change my clothes.” His eyes glittered in the stable’s brown light. “Not even my smalls.” He gestured in the direction of the corral. “Wash your smell off just when they’re getting used to you, you might as well start all over.” He stepped in close. “You’re about used to me now, aren’t you, my girl. Getting to like it a little, hmm?” For an answer she held her breath and smiled.

She’ll be pretty whiffy herself come the end of four weeks’ time. By then the shift will have come to feel like part of her, blood or some clear equivalent coursing through its fibres, warming its folds. It’s not that she need tame the worms—they’ve been bending to the human will for thousands of years. All the same, she desires very much that they should recognize and trust her scent.

There’s no doubt the shift is thinning. She’ll need to break in another. Is it possible Hammer still harbours sufficient tenderness toward her to make her a gift? He’d never think to offer of his own accord, but perhaps if she were to ask …? No, it would be as good as asking for his attentions, and, more than like, bearing the nine-month consequence thereof.

She could fashion her own. Finally agree to a loom, spend her every evening rounded over its workings until, like her own mother, she knotted her shoulder blades and spine into a painful, permanent bow.

Weaving is hard work, but it’s not idleness, as Mother Hammer is wont to claim, that keeps Ruth from employing her skill. The truth is, the further those initial threads travel from the worms that spin them, the less vital, less meaningful they become. The great bobbins of madder red and alder bark gold she handled daily in Mr. Humphrey’s bright attic seem poor relations compared with her plump cocoons. Once thread meets loom and lies flat or figured, it’s but a cousin several times removed.

Ruth turns from the window and surveys her diminutive house, picturing herself a dozen days hence. She’ll coax the worms up into their branches with a pan of spitting onions, a cloud of eye-watering smoke. Over a period of a few days, the dead brush will seem to come alive, producing a bumper crop of custard-coloured berries. Ruth will wash the pale shift and fold it away. It will last her through next year’s worms if she’s careful. Beyond that, she doesn’t care to think.

The night is warm, yet Thankful descends, as is her habit, to fill the earthenware bottle for her bed. Not because she needs it, but because she would have her actions go unnoticed on those occasions when she does.

Her dress ripples wetly down the stairs behind her, seen in her mind’s eye from above. The candle in her left hand is appropriate—it bathes her bare forearms, her throat. The bottle balanced on her right, however, is a dull, brown prop. She imagines it to be anything else—a cat on a crimson pillow, a man’s head on a silver plate.

It wouldn’t kill Mother Hammer to leave the kettle simmering for her, but as usual Thankful finds it shoved to the cool back corner of the stove. She struggles with the stove door, stirs the coals and draws up a chair to wait.

On the table at her elbow, a plate of Mother Hammer’s biscuits lies covered with a checkered cloth. The bumps are unmistakable. Thankful didn’t touch hers at supper. Well, touch, yes, but not to her lips. She weighed it in her palm, making sure to catch the first wife’s eye before returning the leaden thing to the plate.

She’s been waiting several minutes, her mind gone slack, when her husband’s eldest son comes in out of the night. He opens the door by heaving against it. Seeing her, he makes a void of his expression, then lets it sour about the mouth. She says nothing, only stares back at him, letting her gaze soften when he bends to work out of his boots. His hair gleams in the candle’s guttering. She could rise. Two, perhaps three strides and she could stroke it, grab hold of a hank and pull. Instead, she needles him.

“Where have you been, Lal Hammer?” An idle question, until he straightens to show a face gone rigid with guilt. “Oh-ho.” She licks her lips. “What have you been up to?”

He takes a jerking step toward her. Her pulse doubles. Another step, and she can see up his nostrils. She fights the urge to lower her eyes. He reaches for her. No, not her. His hand snaking beneath the cloth for a biscuit. Without planning to, she smacks him, hard, just where the cords of his forearm narrow to bone. He turns on her, his face a battle scene now—shock and rage and, yes, there in the back quarter of those big eyes, something new. He’s seeing her. Taking her in.

He grabs hold of her by the wrist, his grip nothing like a boy’s. A fluttering thought—he’ll break something—but he’s already let her go. He flicks the cloth aside, helping himself to the biscuits, clutching four of them to his chest. “You’re not my mother.” His voice is raw.

“No.” She holds his eyes with her own. “I’m not.”

He wheels and stalks away, swallowed by the dark front hall.

Bendy can’t help but admire Hammer’s mount. Even setting aside beauty and size, Ink is a fine saddle horse—resolute, sure-footed,
strong. At a walk her gait is flawless. At a canter she’s a devil to keep up with, never mind at a run. The day Bendy followed his new boss home from the city, he could feel Stride churning beneath him with the strain.

All this plus an even temper, despite the fact that she’s survived the worst terror known to her kind. The evidence mars her back. As regular as war paint, four scored lines cut on the oblique down each shoulder, each haunch. They caught Bendy’s eye at the auction, long before the man on her back offered him a job. Unsaddling her that first time, he took the greatest of pains not to cross those lines, circling around them as he rubbed her down. Even so, he couldn’t believe she didn’t flinch. It was rare for a horse to live through a cat landing on its back. He’s heard of only one other, and it never brooked a rider again.

Gazing on the stripes that mark her near-side shoulder, Bendy feels his hand slide toward them without the say-so of his brain. Beginning at their highest points, he fits his fingers to the leathery grooves. Ink tenses, seems almost to swell. Doesn’t kick, though, doesn’t even turn and bare her teeth.

Bendy musters all the gentleness his body knows. Slowly, ever so slowly, he draws his fingers down the tracks of the four long scars. He lingers a moment at their tails—her terror will be keenest here, where the claws punctured hide. Ink begins to tremble, a vibration so subtle that, for a moment, Bendy questions its existence. A moment more and he lifts his hand, initiating the second of many strokes.

The second wife spoke sparingly as she led Dorrie up to her bedchamber that first night, saying nothing until they stood together at the top of the stairs.

“Mother Hammer.” Ruth gestured to her left where a single door divided a long stretch of the eastern corridor wall. “Myself.” She laid a hand to the door before them. Turning to her right, she waved vaguely along the entire western wall and murmured, “The children.” They carried on to the third door on the adult side. “Sister Thankful.” Finally, at the far, dark end, “This is yours.”

Ruth turned the brass handle and pushed, the plane of the door giving way to a well-furnished room. At the window, a shaft of waning light. The rug had a freshly beaten look. The bedposts gleamed. The quilt was turned down on the near side, revealing something left folded on the pillow—a garment of purest white.

Ruth followed her gaze. “Mother Hammer made it.” She set the bread and milk down on the dresser. “Save it for when you return from the city—when you’re married.”

“Married,” Dorrie repeated.

Only then did Ruth look her in the eye. A long look. “You must take everything off. Every stitch. Then put on the nightdress, get under the covers and wait.”

Dorrie nodded, her tongue suddenly thick, a dirt-caked potato in her mouth.

“It will pain you.” Ruth shifted her glance so it hovered above Dorrie’s shoulder, as though there was someone standing quietly behind her back. “There may be blood, but there will be no injury.” She paused. “You understand?”

Dorrie nodded again, the tuberous tongue swelling, pressing against the ribbed ceiling of her mouth.

“Good night, then.” Ruth withdrew, her departure made final by the mechanical chuck of the door.

Dorrie stood still in the middle of the room. After a time—she couldn’t be certain how long—she took a trio of steps to the dresser, pressed up against it and plucked up the bread. A drawer
handle tormented her hip bone. She ate quickly, forcing small bites, taking mouthfuls of milk to help things along.

The following day proved long and trying, yet it was lost to her in the blink of an eye. They returned from the city by moonlight. Again she stood alone in her room, staring at the nightdress. There was no denying what was required of her. She would manage it step by step, like any other task.

She drew the heavy curtains closed and set about undressing in the gloom. Her boots she kicked under a chair. Dress. Petticoats. Stockings. She piled them on the dresser and shuffled to the foot of the bed.