“In the morning, I heard carriage wheels in the lane. The surgeon was coming. I pleaded with your mother again. I said, ‘Madam, please! Can you hear me?’ I said, ‘Madam, if you are ever to wake, for heaven’s sake, let it be now! The surgeon is coming, and what he intends to do to your skull … I cannot believe it is lawful and I know it is not godly!’
“I had an idea. I’m ashamed of it now. In a way, it led to everything that came after—I don’t know if that makes it better or worse. Fernley had beaten your mother with the pitcher so badly that she was hard to look at, even for me who loved her. He’d shattered the pitcher doing it. I thought if I could remind him of how beautiful she was, he might change his mind about the drill. Your mother refused to keep cosmetics, as I’ve said. When Fernley went to greet the surgeon, I snuck downstairs and brought up a silver tray with whatever substitutes I could scare up, along with a camel-hair brush, a beet to redden her cheeks, and a broad knife to cut the beet with.
“I talked to her as I worked. I begged her not to be angry about what I was doing. I moistened her eyebrows with coconut oil, then held a dish over the candle by her bed and darkened her lashes with the soot. They were tricks my mother had taught me. I sliced the beet with the knife, and pressed it against her face. I sponged her arms with vinegar. I could hear Fernley and the surgeon conspiring downstairs. I imagined pushing Fernley into a vat of lye, and holding him under with a stick. I imagined your mother and me cutting the surgeon in half with one of those two-handed saws they use to bring down trees. I patted her arms dry, and dusted them with powder, too. It was pointless. Heartbreaking. Her arms were still a mess of bruises. They looked like the spots on a leopard. Nothing would have covered them.
“I began ranting about the surgeon and how he meant to turn her into an imbecile. I told her that I refused to lose her—that the surgeon would have to make me an idiot, too. I was just babbling. It took me a second to notice that your mother had opened her eyes.
“I fell on her chest, weeping. I saw her remember what Fernley had done to her with the white pitcher. I saw her wince when she felt the ice I’d packed around her. She began wriggling, as if she wanted to get away from it, so I swept the ice onto the floor. Fernley and the surgeon were in the parlor, cooing over the drill they’d use to open your mother’s skull. Fernley sounded giddy—he asked if he could hold it!
“Your mother still hadn’t spoken. She tried, but couldn’t. She looked me full in the eyes for the first time. I don’t know what I expected—happiness at the sight of me, maybe? relief?—but she looked inflamed. I thought she was angry about the powders and cream, so I apologized. I said I’d just wanted her to be beautiful again. But of course, she was furious at Fernley and the surgeon. She could see the state I was in. She was furious at what they’d put me through, too.
“I heard them mounting the stairs. There was no one to help us because Fernley had dismissed all the workers. Your mother looked around the chamber. She saw the silver tray with the candle and the brush and the beet, which was now dripping and red. She finally spoke. Just one word. ‘Leave,’ she said. I refused. She shook her heard angrily, as if I hadn’t understood. She tried again. ‘Leave me,’ she said. Again, I resisted. I told her I’d die before I let Fernley and the surgeon have their way. She got even angrier. She was frustrated that she couldn’t make herself understood. She glared at her bruises and then at my own. She wanted me to see that she saw them. Then she finally completed the sentence that’d been stuck in her throat: ‘Leave me the knife.’ ”
Maud paused, as if the moment were playing out again, right in front of her.
“I handed it to her,” she said. “I’ve spent many, many years wondering if I should have refused. She took the knife, slipped it under the covers, and pretended to sleep. I sat down in my rickety chair. Fernley and the surgeon came in. Looking back, it was the only time I ever saw the surgeon sober. He looked awful. Pale. His hands were shaking, and he was so poorly shaven that I couldn’t tell if he’d even tried. I’d have rather he operated on your mother drunk! He was holding this evil-looking instrument. It was like something you’d use to drill for oil or dig a well, only a miniature version. It had four little legs so you could steady it on the patient’s head. There was a foot-long steel drill in the center—you carry a bit of it with you now—and a hand crank on top to make it turn. The thing wasn’t even clean.
“Fernley crouched down next to your mother and said, in his phoniest voice, ‘Hello, honeybun!’
“Your mother popped open her eyes.
“Fernley was astonished. Your mother said, ‘Hello, Fern!’ Then she pulled the knife out and plunged it into his stomach. She looked right at him while she did it. Then she sliced upward with the blade—like she was … I don’t know. Like she was looking for his heart.
“The surgeon rushed forward. It was almost comic. He slipped on the ice that I’d scattered on the floor, and fell. I don’t know if he could have done us any harm at that point, but I was so crazed with anger and fear that I picked up the drill, and bashed him across the mouth. Your mother begged me to stop—she didn’t want me to go to jail, too—but I couldn’t. I beat the surgeon until he was dead.”
Maud fell quiet, like she was waiting for the memory of the murders to dissolve.
“We laid the bodies in the surgeon’s own buggy, one on top of the other, and burned everything in the woods,” she said finally. “Afterward, your mother said, ‘It’s done. It’s done, and I am not sorry.’ We went back to the house. She picked up a piece of the porcelain pitcher and the tip of the drill bit to save. We scrubbed the bedroom. The ice had melted and turned the blood on the floor pink.
“And then it seemed to be over. Your mother sold the house, and we moved to town. The local gossips had two theories. One was that Fernley and the surgeon had fled the state to escape creditors. The other was that they fled to get away from their wives. I doubt the sheriff even spent an hour investigating.”
Just ahead, the tunnel divided into three. As the men clustered around, Maud repeated what X’s mother had said.
It’s done, and I am not sorry.
“I’m not sorry either,” she said. “I hear how terrible that sounds, but I don’t care.” She looked at Regent. “Not being sorry,” she said. “It’s one of the reasons we were damned, isn’t it?”
“It is,” said Regent. He seemed to regret the answer. “You were unrepentant and unpunished. Each time I send a bounty hunter up to the world for a soul, I use those very words.”
“Yet who could feel sorry for ridding the earth of such men?” said X. “My mother deserved a better life. As did you, Maud. As did you. Instead she was chained to a vile man. And when she declines to be his victim, what is her reward? She is damned! The lords send a bounty hunter to stop her breath and drag her here!” He knew he shouldn’t say the words that were crowding his head now, but he couldn’t hold them back. “And the one who took her life was you, Regent. Of all people, it was you.”
Regent surprised him by nodding.
“Yes,” he said. “I have grieved over my role more than you can imagine. It helps me to remember that your mother did eventually find love. She found it, and—because neither Fernley nor even the Lowlands had extinguished her sense of her own worth—she knew she had a right to it.”
“Why have you never told me anything about my father?” said X. “I do not for a moment believe you know nothing.”
“I know one thing about your father, and it is a small thing,” said Regent. “I will not share it, for I cannot predict its effect on you.”
“I am tired—very tired—of being controlled,” said X. “It appears I am like my mother, and I will not apologize for it.”
He stalked down the tunnel to get away from Regent. Even Maud knew not to follow.
“I know your father’s name,” Regent called after him. “Nothing more. And I swear to you, it is just a name, no more memorable than any other.”
X turned back.
“Speak it!” he said. “Speak my father’s name!”
Even Maud and the Ukrainian leaned in, waiting.