Page 14 of Blood on Her Tongue

Chapter 14

Lucy feared Michael wouldn’t want to accompany her to the archive or, even worse, that he’d forbid her from going. Instead, he rested his chin on his hands and asked, “And if you do find out who the bog body used to be, then what?”

“Then I’ll know. Not that it matters much to me. I only want to know in order to nip a revival of Sarah’s obsession in the bud, should it ever occur.”

“Preventing is better than healing, and all that?”

“Yes.”

“All right. We shall go tomorrow. The sooner this bit of business has been taken care of, the better.”

***

That night, Sarah was irritable and rude. Lucy had brought some books from the library, but Sarah didn’t care for the South American travelogue; she complained she had already read the treatise on Fibonacci and said she had lost all interest in the beautifully illustrated book on botany that had been a wedding gift from Arthur. The prints made by Piranesi couldn’t interest her either, and the newspaper print was too small for her and hurt her eyes.

“Saartje, what’s the matter with you?” Lucy exclaimed after another stack of books was rejected. “You used to love to read about ferns and moths and all sorts of things from the natural world!”

“Those things don’t interest me anymore.”

“Maybe you should try and interest yourself in them again, then. You can’t just lie here and look at the ceiling. You’ll…” Go mad , she thought but couldn’t say. She might as well have said it out loud, though, for Sarah shot up like one stung.

“Leave me alone, will you? All this talking about what I used to do and didn’t do when I can barely think, it makes me faint and sick!”

You didn’t use to shout at me either, and you feel faint and sick because you won’t eat. But Lucy was always quick to appease her sister, and fighting with her wasn’t in Lucy’s nature, especially not when her sister felt so poorly that her yellowed eye brimmed with tears.

“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to nag; I just worry,” she said, then tried to take Sarah’s hand in hers, but her sister balled her hands into fists so she couldn’t.

She had once read about the case of Phineas Gage, an American who’d had a steel rod blown clean through his head. It entered through his cheek and exited at the top of his skull, destroying part of his brain. Miraculously, he had survived this, but his personality had been much changed. Perhaps the pen that destroyed her eye and penetrated her brain caused Sarah’s personality to change, too , she thought.

But perhaps it hadn’t, and the answer lay within the archive and the tough strips of meat that were all that was left of the bog woman.

***

The next morning found Lucy waiting in the drawing room with Michael for Mrs. van Dijk and the carriage to be ready. Michael prowled the room, picking things up at random, fingering them for a bit, then placing them back. He was always restless in rooms he found feminine; he did not stalk about so in his study nor the library, which were dark, the furniture large and heavy, everything smelling of leather and wood and smoke.

“I don’t see why you had to bring Mrs. van Dijk. You don’t need a chaperone,” he said.

How sinister he looks when he scowls. Quite the villain. “She’s not coming as my chaperone. She only wishes to make herself useful, and useful she shall be. She knows her way around an archive much better than I do and will have a better idea what to look for.”

Michael picked up a china dog, then rubbed its painted snout with his thumb. “Perhaps you no longer care to be alone with me.”

She turned her face away from him to hide the flush that spread across her face like wine. How easy to deny it, to point out that she was alone with him right now, but she lacked all desire to be drawn into an argument with him. He could be vicious and tenacious when he felt he was wronged. She had once seen him and her sister fight, and the intimacy and violence of it had so shocked and frightened her that she had tried to keep him from anger ever since. “I don’t much care to be alone with anyone, at times not even with myself,” she said instead. “Of course, Sarah is the only exception. It comes from being a twin, I suppose. She loves company, too.”

“I disagree. I’ve found she has a childish passion for being alone.”

“Only so she can work. She’s nothing if not committed. She was like that even when we were little. If something piqued her fancy, she’d obsess over it for days.”

Michael put the china dog down and cocked his head at her, smiling. He looks even more like a rogue when he smiles than when he scowls , she noted. The thought was devoid of emotion; she had entertained it often before. “I’ve always thought she loves to be alone because she’s supremely at ease with herself,” he said.

“That, too. It’s what makes her such an attractive creature. It’s a rare quality. I’ve never possessed it and don’t think I ever shall.”

“It would be unusual if you did. With twins, you often see that one of them is the dominant one, the leader, the instigator. The other submits and follows.”

“And what of it?”

“I’ve often thought that Sarah dominates you.”

She smiled to hide her discomfort. It always startled her when people saw the truth of her relationship with Sarah so clearly. “And what of it?” she repeated. “Some people wish to rule, others to be ruled. If both parties are agreeable, there is no fault.”

“A desire to rule isn’t normal in a woman.”

She knew the bait for what it was but took it anyway, partly out of guilt for discussing Sarah with her brother-in-law and partly because she always defended her. “Do you mean to say my sister is unnatural?”

“Your sister has many faults.”

“As do we all.”

“I’ve often thought she has more than most. Of course, they count more heavily against her because she’s my wife.”

When they had just begun their affair, he had told her that Sarah was frigid. She hadn’t wanted to know that—Sarah had never told her about this part of her marriage, and Lucy had never asked—and yet it had made her feel guiltily triumphant. Though she was used to being compared to her sister, it had never made her feel anything but uneasy and inferior. At least this was one area in which she outshone Sarah.

Lucy said, “That’s uncharitable of you. You know very well she has many virtues, too. She’s passionate and brilliant. You’d be hard-pressed to find a defender as staunch as Sarah. She can champion you like no other, and she’s much more besides: kind, interesting, lively. Oh, and funny, too. She often makes me laugh.”

He stopped his prowling. “You talk as if one has no choice but to love her, once one knows her.”

“You must agree. If you’ll remember, you lost all interest in me once you met Sarah,” Lucy said softly.

She had met Michael on a trip to the university’s library. Sarah often went there to peruse tracts and books on whatever subject obsessed her at the time. Because women were not allowed there without a male chaperone, Arthur had to accompany her. Lucy often went with them, and they’d make a day out of it: first the library, then tea and sandwiches.

The day Lucy met Michael, Sarah was home sick with a head cold, so it was just Lucy and Arthur in the library. She would never forget the first time she saw Michael. He sat bent over a medieval surgeon’s handbook, a piece of paper next to him on which he copied out lines, a deep frown carved into his large forehead. He looked up when Arthur gently tapped his shoulder, and his face was so strange, so unlike anyone she knew, it impressed itself greatly on her mind, like a seal pressed into wax.

Arthur must have introduced them to each other, but she had no memory of this, only of the way Michael took her hand and kissed it, of how soft his lips were and how rough his mustache; her hands had been bare because gloves sometimes snagged on the priceless manuscripts. He still sported a mustache then, though he shaved it off not much later when Sarah had mentioned she did not care for mustaches. As he and Arthur had talked in hushed voices, she rubbed at the spot he had kissed as if she could spread the feeling.

When Lucy was done at the library, Michael accompanied her and Arthur for a while, talking about the paper he was trying to write. “The whole ordeal is damnably more difficult than I thought it would be.”

“Language, my friend. There is a lady present,” Arthur said.

“Excuse me, Miss Goedhart. I meant to say ‘dreadfully more difficult,’ of course.”

“Of course,” she agreed.

“Part of the problem,” he went on, “is that half the manuscripts I require must be procured from other libraries, which seems an awful lot of trouble because, during my research, I have found that medieval manuscripts are actually bloody boring.” He glanced at her, a mischievous twinkle in his eyes. “Apologies, Miss Goedhart. Very boring, naturally.”

“Naturally,” she said.

“And the other part of the problem?” Arthur wanted to know.

“That I’m a bloody bad scholar. Ah, I do apologize, Miss Goedhart. I meant a ‘very poor’ one, of course.”

Had she been more daring, better equipped at flirting, she would have teased him and asked whether he hadn’t meant to say a damnably, bloody poor scholar ; that was what Sarah might have done. But in this she wasn’t like her sister, so she just blushed and murmured, “Of course.” She could still feel the back of her hand throb where he had kissed it, which confused and delighted her in equal measure.

Arthur frowned at him. “Michael, please. Lucy here must think I keep terrible company if you insist on talking like that. As for your problem: I don’t think you truly have one. You’re not at university anymore, and your job as a gentleman does not require you to write any papers.”

“You’re wrong there, dear chap. I’d like to be a gentleman-scholar, and I’m afraid I must write several papers a year if I want to call myself one.”

“Then find yourself a different subject, one that might actually interest you. May I recommend medicine or botany?”

“You may, though I can’t guarantee I’ll actually take your advice. Now, you must excuse me. I’ve got an appointment to keep. Arthur, I shall talk to you soon. Miss Goedhart, it was a pleasure to meet you.” He took her hand, the same one he had kissed before, and kissed it again, curling his fingers so they slipped inside her glove and could brush the delicate skin on the inside of her wrist. She felt as if she had been branded, and a thrill ran up her spine, making her twitch. Michael looked at her through his lashes, then slowly grinned.

She knew then there was a natural affinity between them, and the knowledge of it glowed inside her.

The next time she saw him was during a trip to the botanical gardens in Leiden. Arthur had taken her and Sarah because he wanted to show them all the spring flowers. When she spotted Michael bent over a cluster of ferns, his lean fingers stroking the green fronds, her heart began to beat so fast inside her chest, she feared it might bruise, for she had thought of him almost incessantly ever since they had met at the library three weeks before and had fervently prayed that she would see him again.

“Dear Michael, I see you have taken my advice to pursue botany rather than manuscriptology?” Arthur called out to him.

Michael looked up, stood, smoothed his crumpled trousers, and laughed. “Not at all, dear Arthur. I’ve simply come down with a case of pteridomania. I heard it’s very catching.”

“I might know a cure for that.”

Lucy didn’t know what pteridomania meant, but Sarah did. “Oh, Arthur,”—she laughed softly—“you know very well there’s no cure for fern fever! I’ve been afflicted for years, and you’ve yet to cure me.”

“A lady specialist?” Michael asked. He had ripped off a bit of fern, and the air around them, thick with the bitter scent of earth, now smelled green and fresh.

“Merely an amateur, I’m afraid.”

“Nonsense. You’re much more than a mere amateur, Saartje!” Lucy said, wondering why she suddenly used the diminutive of her sister’s name. It was not something she usually did in public. She turned to Michael and said, “My sister has just written a paper about the impact of soil alkalinity on how well ferns grow. It’s brilliant. I should know. I’ve proofread it to catch any grammar and spelling mistakes.”

“Is that so?” Michael said without taking his eyes off Sarah.

Sarah smiled sweetly at him. “It certainly is. I’ve kept detailed notes. Would they perhaps be of interest to you, seeing as you are a pteridomaniac like myself?”

“I think they would interest me very much, but only if you are willing to explain them to me yourself.”

Something arced between them. Lucy, always sensitive to her sister’s moods, felt it vividly. Normally, it would have filled her with pride to see her sister’s beauty and brilliance acknowledged, but that day, it filled her with something painful and sickening that she would only later recognize as a mixture of jealousy and despair.

She had wanted this man the moment she had clapped eyes on him, something she could neither explain nor defend, for she did not know him, and with his heavy brow and crowded teeth, he wasn’t handsome. But she had wanted him all the same, and over the past few weeks, this wanting, though she had kept it a secret, had suffused her entire being until it had become both pleasure and torment. Now he did not even glance at her. He looked at Sarah instead with a hungry intensity that was almost obscene while she talked to him about ferns, smiling softly at him, showing him the graceful arc of her long white neck and the shapeliness of her wrists as she brushed a fern at their feet carefully to the side to expose the dark earth from which it sprang and illustrate a point she was making.

Lucy had never felt more like a shadow than that day when she stood and watched the man she loved become enamored with her sister, and had been powerless to stop it.

“Lucy,” Michael said, ripping her from her reverie. “If I have ever given you the impression that…”

Mrs. van Dijk arrived before he could finish his sentence, and he swallowed the words. Lucy hoped they stuck in his gullet, choking him.

Sometimes, she hated him.

They took the carriage into town. Overnight, a thick fog had crept over the land. It pressed heavily against the windows, swallowing both light and sound. It tasted sour and coated everything with a thin layer of moisture. If only the wind would come and tear the fog apart! Lucy had grown up near the coast, where the wind blew all day long and carried with it the smell of the sea and the shrieks of seagulls. This windless weather where even the birds were hushed unnerved her.

Luckily, Mrs. van Dijk rattled almost as much as the wheels did on the cobbles. She had thought extensively about the best method to tackle their investigation, she said, so she told them in great detail the plan she had come up with to give their research the highest chance of success.

Michael scowled and turned his face to the window, then wiped at the condensation with his sleeve.

Undeterred, Mrs. van Dijk ploughed on. “We mustn’t be discouraged if we don’t find something today. It all depends on the size of the archive. Because this is a small town with a small population where usually not a lot happens, it shouldn’t be too hard to find what we are looking for, but you never know. And even if we can’t find anything useful, not all hope is lost. We can always consult the local church’s records. They’re very good at noting down who was born, who was baptized, who was married, and who was buried. Of course, the burials pertain to those that took place on church ground, but one never knows.” Her eyes glittered with excitement.

Lucy felt a pang of self-hatred. She had shamelessly neglected Mrs. van Dijk. Worse, Lucy had been curt with her when she had pointed it out. Perhaps Michael’s senseless dislike for the widow had begun to rub off on her, but that was no excuse. She vowed to do better, no matter what they found today.

The archive was located in a wing of the local library. It smelled of damp and old books. The windows were kept shuttered to protect the fragile paper from the daylight, leaving only the dim light of the gas lamps.

The attendant fetched the texts Mrs. van Dijk asked for: prison records, court documents, pamphlets, broadsheets, and surveys. Though the archive was small, as Mrs. van Dijk had predicted, she cast a large net. The attendant brought back stacks of books and papers.

“Right,” Mrs. van Dijk said, rubbing her beringed hands together. “Let’s begin, shall we?”

They spent the next few hours reading through the materials, looking for anything that might show them who the ring had belonged to, who the bog woman was, and whether they might be the same person. Lucy skimmed lists from the local prison, Het Gevang. There were lists of nearly everything: supplies bought (mainly kegs of beer, sacks of flour, and sewing thread, though one entry was for a set of imperfect delft blue tiles, which she supposed had been used to tile the wall of the torture room; china was easy to scrub down), the money paid by the inmates for their upkeep, the causes of their deaths (fevers and agues and the bloody flux, no doubt caused by those who were too poor to afford the beer and had to make do with the water from the moat), etc.

Soon, her eyes glazed over when looking at the numbers. She switched to a report written by an official from the Hague then. He had been sent to assess the land and had deemed it very fit for farming if only it was drained properly. Though he mentioned the peat as a source of fuel, there was nothing in there about bog bodies.

A little after one, the three of them took a break and ate a hasty lunch in the local tearoom. Michael had been reading agricultural reports and had found nothing. Mrs. van Dijk had found a collection of court documents she had sunk her teeth into. “Nothing to help explain the wedding ring nor the bog body yet, but I still think these documents are promising,” she said.

When they had eaten their fill of buttered bread and emptied the teapot, they went back to work. For two more hours, Lucy wrestled her way through more prison lists, until Mrs. van Dijk lay a hand on her shoulder and said, her voice smug and face radiant with triumph, “I think that I may have found what we’ve been looking for. If you’ll follow me, please.”

She escorted Lucy to her table, on which lay a huge tome bound in leather. “This, my dear, are the proceedings from the court in Murmerwolde from 1558 till 1594. They tell us who got convicted for what and when. This particular entry,”—she tapped a column of text at the bottom of the left-hand page—“tells of a certain mister named JW, who killed his wife because he believed her to be a changeling. He did so by suffocating her in a rather unusual manner: he forced a rock into her mouth, then threw her body in the bog. It was never found.”

Excerpt from the proceedings of the court in Murmerwolde, 1558–1594, dated 6 August 1559

Next was a hourrible and strange case, the Tryal of J.W., a farmer and a bloudy and inhumane Villaine, who, together with the blacksmith R.J., now dead of a fever, kild his Wife M.W. The fact was proved against him by divers witnesses to whom he confest it, and by examination taken before a Justice upon his apprehension. Neither did he deny it at his Tryal, but seemed to feel justified to it by both his words and carriage, for when the Court asked him if he did not find Remors in his Heart and Horror in his Conscience for his bloudy crime, as there is no Crime in the world that cries louder to Heaven than the sin of Murther, he replyed that he did not, for it had not been his Wife whom he had murdered, and his true Wife would surely thank him for it.

When asked if he cared to explain him self, the man told the Court that he had married the aforementioned Wife some five Yeers ago and that their union had not been a happie one, for she proved to be strange and foul-mouthed and often depressed in Spirits and when not melancholic was enraged and cursed her husband and her life and even our dear Lord him self in so foul a tongue it made any one blush to heare it; three Years ago or thereabouts her spirit had grown so heavie she had tried to murther herself through hanging and would surely have succeeded if her Husband had not come in from the fields early that day, and some months after that, she had again attempted to destroy herself by drinking poison, only her constitution being strong it did not kill her but merely sickened her; after that she did not trie to do away with her self anymore but remained melancholic.

That is until seven months ago or thereabouts, when she disappeared for two weeks during which no one saw neither hair nor hide of her. Her Husband believed she had succeeded in murthering her self until she came home; she said she could not remember what had happened to her, which he did not believe but she did not tell him anything and so he tried to forget that it had ever happened, only his Wife soon began to behave in a strange manner.

When pressed to explain what that meant, the Husband said she spooked the animals, knew things she should not, and had unnatural appetites which were to him so disturbing that he enlisted the help of the local Priest who performed several exorcisms everie day over the course of a week though with little result and so at great expense the local Doctor was consulted and offered to bleed her, but she was so opposed to it that they had to bind her down to do so. The Husband alleged that the Doctor was much perturbed by her for she seemed impervious to pain and stank like one several days dead and indeed had begun to show many signs of the Corpse but because the Doctor has since died of the bloody flux, this could not be verified.

The Husband was at this time convinced his Wife was not truly his Wife but a changeling, and having heard that the Good Folk find mistreatment of their kin unbearable to watch, he starved, beat, burnt her in the hope they would give back his Wife but to no avail; desperate, for the animals went into a frenzie when near to his Wife causing the chickens to stop laying, the dog to kill their only goose, and the cows to stop giving Milk, he resolv’d to rid him self of her, and together with his neighbor and friend the Blacksmith, he took his Wife to the bog, a place fit for his hellish purpose, where taking their opportunity they fell upon her and in a Barbarous manner murthered her by forcing a rock into her mouth and keeping her nose pinched shut until she died for lack of breath, then threw her into the dark waters of the bog.

Afraid of Discovery, they came back the next night and brought the bodie to a different bog and drove stakes through it to keep it from floating and to keep it from wandering, but it had already been spotted by a Shepherd who had gone to a Priest, and the Priest having seen the bodie for him self and having recognized it as being the Wife of J.W. whom he had exorcised repeatedly, he alerted the Authorities, though by the time they went to look for it, J.W. and his Devilish Accomplice had hidden it and it remains hidden to this verie day.

By the providence of the Divine Justice, the Murtherers were found and discover’d and one of them now put on Tryal, the other having since died in gaol of Fever, and even tho it is a rare thing indeed to be brought before the Court on charges of Murther when there is no bodie, the proof of it was evident and he for it was condemned to be hang’d, as in such cases of Fellony and Murther is accustomed. J.W. did not attempt to satisfie Heaven, believing he did no wrong, and so went to the hands of Justice impenitent and a Sinner through and through.