The Heretic's Daughter: A Novel - By Kathleen Kent Page 0,108

lot.”

The doctor grabbed his tools and turned once to say, “Your brother will be dead before the sun comes up.” We sat mute together over Andrew’s huddled body, too dazed to speak, and so the only answer to follow him out was the sound of the key being turned in the lock. I slept badly, in and out of waking from hour to hour, but whenever I opened my eyes I saw Tom kneeling next to Andrew, holding his hand and smoothing his forehead with a small rag or spilling a few drops of water into his mouth. Andrew continued to shake with fever and fell back into his troubled dreams. Every so often Tom would gently lift our brother’s sleeve and follow the progress of the red mark that crept upwards and upwards towards Andrew’s heart. Close to dawn on Sunday I woke to the sound of Andrew’s voice. I thought he was in his ravings, for Tom had leaned his head down to better hear. I crawled through the straw to be closer to them and I saw that Andrew’s eyes were queer and clouded. His lips were cracked and bleeding but his words were calm and orderly.

He lifted his head slightly and said, “Richard promised that we shall all go hunting again in the autumn. And that I shall have a turn at the flintlock, if I’m careful. Now I’ll have my arm to hold it and I will be as good a shot as Father.”

“You shall have a turn. And you shall bag the biggest ground hen in the colonies.” Tom smoothed Andrew’s hair back from his forehead and he smiled and closed his eyes again. His head slumped to the side and his breathing coarsened until I felt faint trying to slow my breathing to his. Sometime before the dark turned to light I fell asleep saying good-bye to Andrew. I had tried to do what Mother had told me to do. To tell him that I loved him. That he would be missed. That I was so very sorry that I could do nothing to save him or lessen his pain. I had taken his presence as a dreary constant, giving him no greater attention than I had given the livestock: there to be led about to do my bidding or to share in my labors. I was sorry at the end that I had not been kinder or more patient. And he was always so with all of us.

As soon as I closed my eyes I began to dream, and in the dream I saw Andrew standing on a riverbank. It must have been spring, for the light was so bright and so yellow-hazing that all of the grasses and trees appeared indistinct and wavering, like melting butter. He was wearing Father’s long flintlock strapped across his shoulder and he was poised with his arms around Tom and Richard. He looked up, his face good and moon-simple, and smiled broadly, as though he saw me standing on the other side of the river. He opened his mouth to speak, but before I could hear his words I felt my shoulder being shaken, and I woke to Tom’s tearful face close to mine. I had fallen asleep slumped over Andrew’s chest and I started to cry with the awareness that Andrew had gone.

I put my arms around Tom but he pulled my hands from his neck and said, “Sarah, look and see.” But I did not want to see Andrew’s face crumpled into death. Tom shook me by the shoulder and said my name again. I looked into his face, expecting to see my twin in mourning, but Tom’s face was not closed in grief. His eyes were slanted with joy and his mouth was upturned, laughing in disbelief. He said to me, pulling up the sleeve on Andrew’s shirt, “Look at his arm.”

And I looked and saw that the red mark had begun its retreat back down Andrew’s arm, down from the shoulder to the elbow and from there to his wrist. His breathing was deep and regular, and when I felt his head, it was cool and covered with a fine sheen of sweat. When he finally opened his eyes, he had returned to the wit of a child, his smile foolish, his only request for soup and some bread.

When the sheriff came down later in the morning, he strode into the cell to look at Andrew. He stared at me for