Page 10 of Blood on Her Tongue

Chapter 10

The day of the funeral dawned.

The undertakers took Sarah to the local church in a black hearse drawn by six black horses. Something had spooked them; they foamed at the mouth, rolled their eyes, dug at the earth with their hooves. Soon their coats were glossy with sweat. The driver had the greatest trouble to keep them from bolting. By the time they arrived at the church, he, too, was sweating profusely. One of the horses had champed at the bit so hard that its mouth was bleeding. The blood came slowly but thickly, mixing with the foam that slathered its chest.

Sarah was placed in a little room located at the back of the church to allow her nearest relatives to stay with her and say their goodbyes before the coffin would be closed forever and carried into the main part of the church for the service. To this end, the room had two doors: one leading to the church itself and one going out. It faced north, which made it cold and dark. There was a soft, sad smell to it, of dust and damp and neglect, even though it was clean.

Only Michael, Katje, Arthur, and Lucy went inside. Mrs. van Dijk, who had ridden with them because she insisted it was ridiculous to send another carriage solely for her humble self, wandered around the church as she waited for the service to begin; they could hear the tap of her cane on the flagstones.

“Awful woman,” Michael muttered. His face was a tight mask, even more bloodless than usual. It made a bruise under his jaw, not quite hidden by his cravat, seem particularly vivid. Did I do that? Lucy wondered.

Lucy thought of saying Mrs. van Dijk really wasn’t that bad, merely loud and opinionated, but what was the point? Michael considered both those things faults in a woman; Lucy would not change his mind. Besides, this was neither the time nor the place to argue.

She turned to Katje, who was crying softly into a handkerchief of black lace. Unlike Lucy, the state of mourning became her: she looked fetching in black, which matched the dark color of her cropped curls and her milky complexion very well, and she could cry without sound in a manner so pretty, it was almost disturbing. Katje had been crying almost constantly for the past few days, but rather than turn her face blotchy and ugly, it made her eyes, though rimmed with pink, glitter in an arresting way.

How horrifying. Is there anything more dangerous to a woman than to be beautiful when weeping? Lucy thought.

Katje caught her watching. She looked away, then back to Lucy again. Katje said, in a soft voice choked with tears, “I’m sorry. I must be making a spectacle of myself. I don’t mean to. It’s just that I loved Sarah very much. She was so good to me. With her, I didn’t think of myself as poor and strange and broken.”

When Lucy opened her mouth to contradict her, Katje added, “No need to deny it. I know that’s what people think when they see me. But Sarah…she could look past all that and see me, the real me, I mean, the creature I am underneath, and it made me so…so happy .” She smiled. Her mouth trembled and twitched, making her look vulnerable and a little mad.

“She could be good at making people feel comfortable and seen, if she wanted,” Lucy said. She swallowed, looking away.

“She was a very fully realized person, wasn’t she?”

“I suppose so,” Lucy hedged, although she knew Katje was right. Sarah had been a fully realized person, almost as if in herself complete. It was that exact quality that had made her so attractive, for it was rare. Lucy hadn’t possessed it. Even with her twin next to her, she had often felt like only half a person, insubstantial and unfinished. That watery quality, that blurredness, must have been especially pronounced when she had been with Sarah. No wonder Michael had preferred her to Lucy.

Lucy took the handkerchief Katje offered her. She folded it, making it smaller and thicker until it would be folded no more, then shook it out again. The tears still hadn’t come, but they felt close to the surface and perhaps would finally flow before nightfall.

She had repeated this process of folding and shaking the handkerchief thrice when the time came to close the coffin.

I shall never see my sister again.

Panic turned her insides to water. For a moment, she thought she might faint. The blood drained from her face and hands. When she bent over the coffin to kiss her sister’s forehead for the last time, her lips were so numb, she did not feel the fine weft of the veil, nor the cold skin underneath. As she straightened herself, the world rocked. Her heart throbbed. It was the only thing she could feel.

Arthur appeared at her side and took her by the arm. He steered her to the only window in the room, which was small, the glass strangely yellow and warped. “Slow breaths,” he said.

She had wadded Katje’s handkerchief into a little ball and held it tightly in her fist. Her hands were wet with sweat. It had saturated her gloves, dampened the lace of the handkerchief. Arthur took it from her, moistened it with the water from one of the vases, then dabbed her forehead and temples with it. The water had a bitter, chalky smell to it.

“I’m fine. Don’t fuss,” she murmured, but she did not resist when he peeled down one of her gloves and pressed the handkerchief against the inside of her wrist, nor when he put his arm around her as Michael screwed down the lid of the coffin. He did it quickly, like it was either distasteful or simply unbearable. When it was done, his face contorted, only for a moment; then the pallid mask slipped back into place.

After, they had to take their place in the pews at the front of the church, but Lucy still felt weak and sick. “Just leave me here. I’ll join you in a minute,” she said, then gave a little smile.

When they had left, she sank to the floor and buried her face in her hands. They were clammy and smelled brackish.

“I can’t do this,” she muttered, but she knew she could because she had been doing it for days, was, in fact, doing it right now. In a little bit, she’d get up, shake out her skirts to dislodge potential grains of dirt and dust, and enter the church. There she’d sit in one of the wooden pews designed to be as uncomfortable as possible to keep the congregation awake. She’d take a hymnal and let it lie open in her lap, the onion-thin paper wrinkling under her fingers. Once the service began, she’d stand when bid, then sit again when ordered to. She’d listen to the vicar talking about Sarah, praising her for being a good wife and mother, and then she’d think that he hadn’t known her very well at all, because if he had, he’d talk about her bravery and intelligence, how funny she could be, how insufferable, how lovely, lovely, lovely …

Faintly, the sound of scratching.

She dropped her hands, furrowing her brow as she listened. It came again: nails scrabbling against wood. Perhaps mice or even rats. Not so strange a thing to hear near Sarah. Unless frozen in ice, every corpse eventually proved itself a banquet for certain kinds of insects, birds, and rodents. The smell of Sarah’s corpse—despite the tub of ice placed underneath her coffin and the windows opened to let in the cool air, she had begun to stink—would attract all kinds of animal life. A natural process, yes, but that didn’t mean Lucy could just leave the mice to it. They could have Sarah once she was interred in the family crypt but not before.

She listened closely, trying to locate the sound. It came intermittently, softly but steadily. She picked up a Bible, then crept around the coffin with it held aloft so she could kill any mouse that dared show itself. Soon her calves cramped, but she kept creeping, straining to hear the scratching over her own breathing, the rustling of her skirts brushing over the ground, and the soles of her buttoned boots grating against the floorboards.

It’s coming from inside the coffin , she realized. Her mouth flooded with saliva as her stomach contracted. She pressed the back of her gloved hand against her lips as she fought not to vomit. If she found a rat eating its way through Sarah’s belly or nibbling her fingers or face, she feared she’d start screaming and never stop. There was only so much the mind could take before it cracked.

Then came the realization: What if it wasn’t a rat, but her sister making that noise?

She rested her forehead hard against the cool lacquered wood of the coffin, pressing her hand flat against it. Her heart was tearing through her chest.

“Sarah?” she asked. The name came out hushed and strangled. She cleared her throat, then touched her knuckles softly to the wood. Her hand had left a ghostly imprint of moisture. “Sarah?” she repeated.

The scratching stopped.

“Sarah, please knock if you can hear me.”

Nothing, just the beating of her own heart and the muffled voices of people in the other room. She sighed, leaned her elbows on top of the coffin, and ground her eyes with the heels of her hands.

Softly, hesitantly, a knock.

It was muffled by the velvet that clothed the inside of the coffin, but it was a knock; nothing but a rap with someone’s knuckles could have made it.

Emotion seized Lucy by the throat. “Oh, Sarah!” She sobbed, then laughed. “Don’t worry. I’m going to get you out of there.”

She grasped one of the thumbscrews used to screw the lid shut. It was silver-plated, beautifully wrought in the shape of a vase with flowers. Lucille’s had been shaped like little doves. Funny how such things came back to mind. The ones used on her parents’ coffins had been plain. One didn’t expect such elaborate, beautiful things when one buried a Protestant, but Michael had the tastes of a Catholic.

She tried to twist the screw open, yet it wouldn’t budge. She put the tip of her finger in her mouth, then used her teeth to tear off her glove. When she gripped the screw again, it felt so cold that it burned. Again she tried to twist it, first to one side, then to the other because she suddenly wasn’t quite sure which side was right. Not that it mattered; it would not move.

Damn Michael and those beautiful hands of his straight to hell! What need was there to screw on the lid so tight? The law ensured a regular supply of bodies to the universities; unless the body was in any way unusual, there was no need to fear it would be stolen by resurrection men and sold for anatomy. And what fear could there be that the coffin’s occupant wanted out? That was what the wake had been for: to ensure Sarah was truly dead and not merely comatose. Not that it had helped, because here she was, feebly moving around inside, scratching against the wood with her weak hands.

Of course, there had been that incident with Lucille…

Lucy grabbed a silver candlestick and bashed it against one of the screws, which bent it. She tried to twist it, but it was firmly stuck. She bit off a scream of frustration, resisting the urge to drum her fists against the side of the casket.

“Don’t be afraid, Saartje. I’m going to get someone. I won’t be long!”

She had not quite made it out of the room before she ran into Arthur. The jolt of it was sickening; she had not expected him, had not even raised her hands to cushion the blow.

“Steady!” he said.

She clasped his lower arms, making him wince; the wound from Sarah’s bite had not quite closed. Lucy winced in sympathy but did not let go. “Arthur!” she breathed.

“I’ve come to see if you feel a little better. The service will begin in a quarter of an hour. The coffin should be in the front of the pews by then, but I didn’t want the undertaker and his men to disturb you.” His kind eyes crinkled at the corners in concern. “You’re still looking mighty pale. Do you feel feverish?”

“Black washes me out; ask Mrs. van Dijk. You must come with me first, though. I need your help. God, am I glad you’re here.”

His face lit up at that. He was all ruddy cheeks and twinkling eyes and smiles when happy or pleased. It was a shame he had not yet married a pretty little girl who lived to delight him.

“I’m always happy to assist,” he said.

“Then you must come with me. She’s alive!” She squeezed his good arm so hard, her fingers turned white.

“Who is?”

“Sarah, of course. Who else?”

He took a deep breath, as if gathering himself, then placed his hand on top of hers. “Lucy, I know this must be very difficult for you, but your sister truly isn’t alive anymore.”

He talked in that soothing doctor voice of his, the very same he must use on patients who were sick and confused. She had the sudden urge to hurt him, really hurt him, by gripping his lashes and yanking them out or scratching at his eyes. She clenched her hands into fists. “I heard her,” she said.

“Corpses can make sounds. They can sigh or groan. Sometimes they can even move, but those things are caused by the processes of decomposition, nothing else.”

“She didn’t sigh or groan. She was scratching the inside of the coffin lid. I heard her nails against the wood. I thought it was a rat at first, but rats don’t knock when you ask them to.”

“Lucy,”— if he says my name like that one more time, I really can’t be held responsible for what happens next— “you have been under a lot of stress lately. You are grieving, and you haven’t been sleeping, and…”

“I’m not mad!” she cried. Tears of shame and frustration welled. She dashed them from her eyes with hatred and impatience, then took a shuddering breath. With a lowered voice, she repeated, “I’m not mad. Twins are not identical in everything.”

“I’m not suggesting you are. I’m only saying that the mind can play tricks upon us, especially when it has suffered such a massive blow as yours has. There’s a family in this village who lost a child, and when it had just happened, the father told me he kept seeing the little boy from the corner of his eye, always dashing out of sight. He’s a decent fellow, calm and stoic, with very little imagination.”

“I’m not hallucinating. Sarah was scratching the wood, and then she knocked on it when I asked. She’s in there, Arthur, and she’s alive!”

His hand was hot on hers. He stroked a single line along her knuckles with his thumb, very softly, very gently. “Marry me,” he said.

She blinked; she couldn’t have heard right. “What?” she asked.

“Marry me, Lucy.”

“I don’t understand.”

Those ruddy cheeks of his turned a deeper shade of pink. “Come, don’t act as if I’m speaking a different language! I’ve asked you to marry me.”

She had the curious feeling that she wasn’t properly aligned with her body anymore. Everything felt either too sharp or too dull. She shook her head a little, as if trying to dislodge a drop of water from her ear. “You’re not speaking sense.”

“On the contrary, I’m speaking more sense than I ever have. Don’t you see that marriage would be the sensible thing? You’ve received the worst blow in your life. As your husband and your doctor, I’ll be able to take care of you in ways no one else ever could.”

Was this truly happening? Was she really listening to her childhood friend pleading his case for marriage when she had just told him her sister was scratching her hands bloody, trying to get out of the coffin in which she’d surely be buried if they didn’t act? Reality had never felt as thin as it did in that moment.

“Of course, in becoming my wife, you’ll be somewhat restored to your proper place in society,” he went on. “I know being a doctor’s wife is not exactly as prestigious a position as you must have hoped for before your parents died, but you must concede it is much better than being an old widow’s companion.”

Tears of frustration and anger made her vision swim. “Why does everyone assume I hate working for Mrs. van Dijk? Is it that impossible to believe I actually enjoy being her companion? And must I remind you it was you who found me that position in the first place?” She tried to extract her hand from his, but his fingers clamped around hers, not with enough force to hurt—he’d never hurt her—but with insistence.

“You weren’t raised for servitude, Lucy. It pains me to see you reduced to it. I would’ve saved you from it sooner, only I didn’t have enough money then to keep a wife, and I would never have you live in poverty. You weren’t raised for that either.”

“I wasn’t raised for a lot of things, like burying my sister after she has attempted to destroy herself with the pen that was a gift from her husband for my twenty-first birthday, yet that’s exactly what’ll happen if you don’t help me!”

“Of course, there’s also the matter of my loving you most ardently,” he said softly. He had long lashes. She rarely noticed them, they were so pale, but in the yellow light falling through the window, they seemed as sharp and defined as hoarfrost.

“But you can’t marry me,” she said.

“Why not?”

“Because madness runs in my family, and mad people shouldn’t have children.”

“Your father didn’t think so.”

“My father didn’t know until it was too late.”

“Michael didn’t think it a problem.”

That’s why he now has a dead wife. “We weren’t exactly forthcoming about Aunt Adelheid at first.” Their parents had never spoken of Aunt Adelheid after she had gone. They had told their daughters to do the same, lumping her together with all the other things one didn’t speak about because they were shameful, like defecating and their neighbor’s psoriasis. The worst was that Lucy could understand why they had excised Aunt Adelheid out of their lives as one would a cancerous mole: no one would marry a girl who had a mad relative.

“We shan’t have children, if that’s what worries you,” Arthur said and smiled magnanimously.

“But, Arthur, I don’t love you like a wife should love her husband.”

“But you are fond of me?”

She pulled at his arm in an effort to get him to follow her. “You know I’ve always been fond of you.”

“I won’t ask any more of you than that, Lucy.”

“Why must you ask me at all? Why must you keep pressing, when I’ve told you that I can’t think, not with my sister alive and terrified in that coffin?”

“I know these sensations are very real to you, but that doesn’t make them so,” he said, a little coldly.

She wanted to stamp her foot, or grab him by the lapels and shake him, or scream in his face—anything to make him stop patronizing her. She tore her hand from his grip and pushed her fists hard against her face instead, knuckling her closed eyes till they smarted. When she dropped her hands and opened her eyes, she felt a little calmer.

“I’ve got no need of Doctor Hoefnagel now,” she said, “nor of the man who desires to be my husband, but of plain Arthur, my childhood friend and confidant. I am telling you I heard my sister move inside her coffin. Perhaps it is as you say, that my nerves are frayed and none of it is real. But what if it is? Could you live with yourself then? All you need to do to help me is come with me and open my sister’s casket so we can look inside and ascertain that she is truly dead. I tried to open it myself, but I lack the strength in my hands. It’ll only take a minute.” She gave him a tremulous smile.

“And then you’ll consider my proposal?” he asked.

“And then I’ll consider your proposal,” she assented.

That seemed to decide him. He squared his shoulders, patting her hand affectionately. “I shall assist you then.”

Unscrewing the lid proved to be a slow business. Multiple times, Arthur stopped and shook out his hand, then rubbed at the flesh of his fingers, which was at first livid and then red and pink and purple, stamped with the pattern on the thumbscrews. He did not humiliate her by complaining, nor by saying they needed to hurry, that they would be missed and hold up everything and how would that look? He did curse once, when his fingers slipped on the silver. He got out his handkerchief and wrapped it around the screw, and that helped.

As he worked, Lucy wrung her hands with such force, the skin at the base of her index finger split. It hurt like hell. Her whole body did—her nerves were acutely sensitive to the point of pain, as if she had received a large electrical shock. Perhaps it was as Arthur had said. Perhaps she was overwrought, crazy with grief.

Only, she didn’t really believe that.

Finally, Arthur loosened the final screw. Lucy hurried to his side, then helped him lift the lid and prop it against the wall. She thought her heart would burst in her chest, it beat so quickly.

When they turned around, Sarah had sat up.

She blew at her veil, then brushed it impatiently from her face. Her fingers were studded with splinters and left a red smear on the veil, which stuck to her mangled eye and drifted back, thus revealing only for a moment her colorless lips peeled back from her teeth, the porcelain one painfully white among the gray ones.

“Finally,” she said. “I’m fucking starving.”