small comfort to the families.”
“It will. For one of them was my daughter.”
Simms spun around. “Your daughter?!” He closed his eyes, and began to shake again, just slightly. “Oh, my God, I should have known. I wondered why you were so determined, why you seemed to dog me. Everyone else was content to count them natural deaths, or brush them aside, but you wouldn’t let go. But for you, I’d have gone on killing forever. Why did you take so long to stop me?”
In spite of the shaking, his voice had become flat and toneless, a fact that Lewis found more chilling than if he had wept or shouted as he had on previous occasions. “I didn’t mark them out deliberately, you know. They just happened to be there. Which one was your daughter?”
“The first, I believe. On the eve of the rebellion.”
Simms nodded. “Everywhere I went that night there were men on the move, with weapons in their hands, moving like ghosts through the woods and down the back roads. Mackenzie had called down the smell of blood, and men were answering to it. I tried to run from it, go in the opposite direction, get away from it — yet they kept passing me, marching by on the way to their doom. I ran as far as I could. Then I saw her — Esther. She was standing in front of a cabin by a dooryard well, her chestnut hair spilling down her back. It took my breath away; I thought my heart had stopped, for I never expected to see her there. And I saw my chance. A chance to end it. I knew that death would soak the ground that night, and who would notice but one more?”
“No, not Esther. Sarah.”
But Simms had ceased to hear him.
“And the next thing I knew,” he went on, “she was dead beneath my hands. I don’t recollect leaving the little Book of Proverbs, but I must have, for my stock was short by one the next day. I know I did something with the pin, for it seemed as though she needed a prayer to go with her.
Lewis grabbed one of the iron bars of the cell to steady himself, for surely he would swoon to the floor if he didn’t. He wanted to scream for Simms to stop talking, stop telling him what had happened to Sarah. But he couldn’t, for he needed to know.
“And then I noticed the child.”
His mind reeled with the words — Martha! He had forgotten that Martha was there that night. How could he have forgotten little Martha lying there in her cradle while a madman leered above her?
“I didn’t know where she had come from. I thought she was Esther’s, and mine as well — living proof of our sin. I didn’t know what I should do next. I stood there and looked at her for the longest time. She had chestnut hair, like her mother. And just for a moment I thought it might be kinder to let her go, too — to stop her before she grew old enough to stand testament to our wickedness. I almost did it, Lewis, I almost took the babe as well.”
The words were cracked and dusty when they finally came out. “What stopped you?”
“She began to cry. Only it wasn’t a cry, it was a terrible wail, and it filled the cabin. It filled my ears, it filled my mind, and the child wouldn’t stop. I even shook her a few times, but that only made her cry the harder. And then I began to hear what she was wailing, and it was accusation, she was telling the world that I was a murderer and a sinner. And then my brain was full of that: ‘Murder, sin, murder, sin,’ over and over again until I could stand it no more. And so I turned and ran, just to get away from those words.”
Martha, who made more noise than all the boys put together, and thank the Lord for it, Lewis thought, for it had saved her life. His chest pained him from the idea of it. How close she had been.
“I rode hard to get away from those cries,” Simms said. “I rode far. And then, when I could no longer hear them, when they could no longer rail against me, I began to feel better.” He looked at Lewis squarely for the first time. “In fact, I began to feel fine, better than I had in many months. I had taken steps to end my wickedness, and I could look forward to leaving my sin behind. I didn’t know then that more would be necessary, that the blood call would come again, and again I would be compelled to answer it. Then, after a time, it got so that I didn’t need to hear the call. I didn’t need the scent of death to spur me on. I had only to ride into a clearing or up to a cabin and there would be Esther — ‘a proud look, a lying tongue, a heart that deviseth wicked imaginations.’ And again I would slay her. I killed time and time again and still she would rise up from hell reborn and I would be compelled to send her back. You can see why I was forced to do it, can’t you, Lewis? ‘For can a man take fire in his bosom and his clothes not be burned?’”
Lewis had to shake his head to clear his thoughts, for Simms’s voice was mesmerizing in its monotony. When he spoke, it was harshly, as a weapon against the strange seduction of the peddler’s account. “All this because you couldn’t leave your sister alone.”
Simms face twisted in disgust. “It was she who wouldn’t leave me, Lewis. If she had been other than what she is, none of this would have happened.”
“No,” Lewis said. “I’m sorry, that is not reason enough, Isaac. There were two of you in this. It would only have taken one to stop it.”
“You just don’t understand, do you?” Simms’s words came out in an angry hiss. “You still don’t see what she is. How she used me. How she would torment me. I had no control over it. I couldn’t stop her.”
“Because you didn’t want to.”
Surprisingly, Lewis suddenly felt a crushing pity for the man — about to answer to his Maker and still unable to admit accountability for his sin.
“You were so stupid.” Simms said with contempt. “You should have known it was me. Who else would want to murder her so many times? I’d watch you afterward, to see if you knew, and sometimes I thought you did, but still it took you so long to fit all the pieces together, didn’t it? You could have stopped me if you’d been quicker. You could have, but you wouldn’t.”
And then, suddenly, suspicion crossed his face. He looked at Lewis narrowly. “Were you in it together, you and Esther? Did you conspire with her? Did you want her, too? She used you, too, didn’t she? She’d make me kill her and then you’d raise her from the dead so I’d have to kill again.”
“Yes, I was stupid,” Lewis said. “And yes, it took me far too long to find you. But, believe me, if I had known sooner, I’d have stopped you. I’d have stopped you whatever way I could. As much as your first sin is great, your second is the greater because it carries no real remorse. You’d do well to think on that, Isaac, in the little time you have left.”
“Go. Leave me. Take your infernal sanctimony and get out.” Simms turned again to the window.
“There’s something very important I need to say before they come and take you,” Lewis said. “I’m not leaving until I say it. Listen to me. Look at me.” He drew on every ounce of authority he had within him to command the man to turn around. “Look at me!”
Simms looked around, his face stony.
“I forgive you, Isaac. Not for the sake of your soul, but for mine.”
VI
He had not thought it possible to cram more people into the yard around the scaffold, but it seemed to Lewis that there were hundreds more than there had been when he went into the jail. The platform was surprisingly
