If the Tide Turns by Rachel Rueckert

Author:Rachel Rueckert [Rueckert, Rachel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington Books
Published: 2023-12-27T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 29

“You there, can you hear me?” came a male voice overhead. “Speak if you can hear me.”

Half-conscious, Maria’s eyelids fluttered. With enormous effort, she opened one sticky eye to a crack. A horizon tilted onto its side: a dirt floor, oak beams, the stench of pigs, the scratch of hay against her cheek and chest.

A barn. I’m in a barn.

A whirl of agony. White-hot pain. A howl echoing somewhere deep within her.

Maria moaned, then tightened her grip around the cold bundle in her arms. She stirred but couldn’t move her legs, frozen and numb. Wet and cold.

“This woman’s alive,” another voice said. “A runaway by the sight of her.”

“She’s lost a lot of blood,” said the first.

“Your name, lady?”

A face, blurry and pink, came close enough for Maria to smell rancid breath. He swept the yellow hair from her face.

“My God, that’s Goody Hallett.”

“Sneaking off to give birth here alone . . . But why?”

“Go! Get Justice Doane. And find Hallett, if you can.”

Hallett . . .

Hallett?

No. Not him! Anyone but him.

Maria pried both eyes open and pushed against the ground with panic. She fell back again, her whole body ablaze.

What happened here?

Sam, where am I?

After an unmeasurable amount of time, she awoke beside a pair of boots. Heavy. Pounding like thunder on the ground pressed against Maria’s ear.

Someone lurched for the baby.

My baby.

“No!” Maria screamed, suddenly coming back to herself and covering her exposed breast. A pain ripped down her pelvis, but she covered the bundled child in her arms. She looked up with wild pupils at a man she recognized as Justice Joseph Doane, the same man from the docks the day she’d jumped, the day she met Sam. “Get away from us. Please. Let us be.”

Doane ignored her and pushed Maria aside. She fought him, shrieking and biting, but the man tore the bundle away.

“Give me my baby,” Maria demanded, summoning all her strength and courage to stand on wobbly knees.

Doane said nothing, unwrapping the swaddle and grimacing. “Dead.”

No.

Maria lunged for him, scraping and hollering with animal frenzy. “He’s mine! Give him back to me.”

Doane threw her down into the hay. Maria’s whole body convulsed with shock.

“Don’t make a show of grief. You’ve always been such a willful young thing, taunting good men with your beauty,” he scolded. “Look at you now. Trying to cover up your evil actions with a mockery of tears.”

Maria’s mind struggled to latch on to his accusations. Why was he acting so cruel? She glowered and balled her fists. “Give me back my son.”

“Your son, you say, and whose else?” Doane kicked straw onto her bare chest from when she’d tried to nurse the baby back to life. He pushed the infant close enough for her to see, but too far away to snatch.

Her son was impossibly small. Tiny puckered lips. Velvet-soft skin. Coiled sweet ears. That snatch of ink-black hair. Maria’s eyes blurred. She reached her arms out and Doane pushed her down again.

Another set of hurried steps returned. The farmers, along with Mr.

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