"It's so beautiful," she said, gazing at the eagle. "It's no wonder it takes not just the earth but the sky to contain it."
Serena's tone of dreamy wonder was as disturbing to Pemberton as her feebleness. He told her again they should go to the house, but she didn't seem to hear him. Serena gave the bird the last hank of meat and settled it back on the block perch. Her hands trembled as they placed the hood back on. She turned and stared directly at Pemberton, her gray eyes glassy as marbles.
"I've never told you about going to our house after it burned down," Serena said. "I'd only been out of the hospital three days. My father's foreman, the man I was staying with, I'd told him to burn the house with everything left inside, everything. He hadn't wanted to do that, and even after saying he had I needed to make sure. He'd figured on that so he hid my boots and clothes, but I took one of his horses while he was gone, wearing just a robe and overcoat. The house had been burned, burned to the ground. The ashes were still warm when I stepped on them. When I got on the horse, I looked down at my footprints. They were black at first and then gray and then white, growing lighter, less visible with each step. It looked like something had moved through the snow before slowly rising. For a few seconds, I felt that I wasn't on the horse but actually…"
"We're going to the house," Pemberton said, taking a step into the stall.
"I didn't sleep when I was with the eagle," Serena said, as much to herself as to Pemberton. "I didn't dream."
Pemberton took her hand in his. He felt a limpness as if its last strength had been used to feed the eagle.
"All we'll ever need is within each other," Serena said, her voice barely more than a whisper. "Even when we have our child, it will only be an image of what we already are."
"You need to eat." Pemberton said.
"I'm not hungry anymore. The second day I was, but after that…"
Serena lost her train of thought. She looked around as if the thought might have drifted into one of the stall's corners.
"Come with me," Pemberton said, and led her by the hand.
Vaughn was outside the dining hall, and Pemberton motioned him over. He told the youth to get food and coffee from the kitchen. They walked slowly up to the house. Vaughn soon came with a silver platter normally used to hold a ham or turkey. Heaped on it were thick slabs of beef and venison, green beans and squash and sweet potatoes drenched in butter. Buttermilk biscuits and a bowl of honey. A coffee pot and two cups. Pemberton helped Serena to the kitchen table, placed the platter and silverware before her. Serena stared at the food as if unsure what to do with it. Pemberton took the knife and fork and cut a small piece of beef. He molded his hand around hers.
"Here," he said, and raised the fork and meat to her mouth.
She chewed methodically while Pemberton poured the coffee. He cut more pieces of beef for her and lifted the tin cup to her mouth so she could sip, allow the coffee's dense warmth to settle inside her. Serena did not try to talk, as if it took all her concentration to chew and swallow.
Afterwards, Pemberton drew her bath and helped Serena undress. As he helped her into the tub, he felt the terraced ribs and pinched stomach. Pemberton sat on the bathtub's rim and used soap and a washcloth to cleanse the reek of manure and livestock off Serena's skin. The thick tips of his fingers kneaded soap into her matted hair and quickly raised a lather so thick it gloved his hands white. A sterling silver pitcher and basin sat on the washstand, a wedding gift from the Buchanans. He rinsed Serena's hair with water poured from the pitcher. Yellow splinters of straw floated on the water's dingy surface. Outside, the sun had vanished and sleet had begun to fall. Pemberton helped Serena from the porcelain tub, dried her with a towel and helped her into her peignoir. She walked by herself to the back room, lay down and quickly fell asleep. Pemberton sat in the chair opposite the bed and watched her. He listened to the tapping of the sleet on the tin roof, soft but insistent, like something wanting in.
Nine
WHEN THE SICKNESS CAME UPON THEM RACHEL thought it was something picked up at the camp's church service, because it was a Tuesday when Jacob first glowed with fever. He fussed and his brow slickened with sweat. Rachel was no better off herself, fever sopping her dress and hair, the world off plumb and whirling like a spin-top. She laid cold poultices on the child's forehead and fed him clabber. She wet a paper and placed it around an onion and set it in the embers to bake, took the juice and mixed it with sugar and fed it to Jacob with a spoon. She used the witch hazel as well, hoping at least to clear his lungs. Rachel remembered how her father claimed a fever always broke on the third evening. Just wait it out, she told herself. But by late afternoon of the third day they both shivered as if palsied. She placed another log on the fire and made a pallet before the hearth, lay down with Jacob and waited for evening. They slept as dusk ambered the day's last light.
It was full dark when Rachel awoke, shivering though her calico dress was sweat-soaked. She changed Jacob's swaddlings and warmed a bottle of milk, but his appetite was so puny he did little more than gum the rubber nipple. Rachel pressed her hand to his brow, and it was just as hot as before. If it don't break soon I'll have to get him to the doctor, she said, talking aloud. The fire was almost out, and she laid a thick white oak log on the andirons, nestled kindling around it to make sure the log caught. She stirred the embers beneath with the poker, and sparks flew up the chimney like swarming fireflies.
The kindling finally caught and the room slowly emerged. Shadows scattered and reformed on the cabin walls. Rachel discerned shapes in them, first cornstalks and trees and then scarecrows and finally swaying human forms that steadily became more corporal. She lay back down on the pallet with Jacob, shivered and sweated and slept some more.
When Rachel woke, the fire had dimmed to a few pink embers. She pressed her palm to Jacob's brow, felt the heat against her skin. She lifted the barn lantern off the fireboard and lit it. We got to go to town, she told the child, and lifted him into the crook of her arm as her free hand clutched the lantern's tin handle.
She was feather-legged before they'd hardly left the yard, the lantern heavy as a brimming milk pail. The lantern spread a shallow circle of light, and Rachel tried to imagine the light was a raft and she wasn't on a road but on the river. Not even walking, just floating along as the current carried her towards town. She came to Widow Jenkins' house, and there was no light in its windows. She wondered why, then remembered the Widow had gone to spend New Year's week with her sister. Rachel thought about resting by Widow Jenkins's porch steps a few minutes but was afraid if she did she'd not get up.