She wore his mother's face. It's true what old Brace said, he can't deny it any longer—a murderer's face.
She is his, his, his sister. Not his little sister anymore. She's made sure of that, with that bloody stupid amateurish kill. She killed her husband to deny him the pleasure of it. And then had the cheek to say he'd told her to do it! Or did she really believe he wanted that, has she slipped that deeply into madness? Not a gift, but madness. What was it she had said to him at that idiotic society dinner? "You're not well." How she'd lorded that over him! So haughty, with other people around. In the woods it had been a different story. He'd held her down, pinioned her to the damp forest floor and taken her body over and over. It had not been enough. He'd wanted to sink his teeth into her neck, mark her for all the world to see. She had said, "If you do that I'll be ruined," and then tellingly, "If you do that then this will never happen again. I'll cry and say you attacked me, and you shall be sent to Bedlam, and I shall convalesce for awhile and then marry some upstanding gentleman once the marks have faded."
Women have always wanted him. The primal man, the savage man, for when they get bored of their puling boys. Their "upstanding gentlemen" who he'd be happy to kill, every single one. They all want to be taken into the woods and held down. Lorna especially, for all her pretense of being his mother—his good mother, pale skinned and sweet. Who would go to balls on his arm, and be announced by her name, and never have to deny being Irish.
How easily his sister had threatened him with such betrayal! If ever he'd been tempted to do such a thing himself, the chance is long gone now. He is a formally adopted son of the Akan. Their marks are on his skin, rubbed with ink so they will not fade.
What he'd wanted was to take her where society could not reach. To do his dark business in London and then take her away, his little sister, his. But all the grave-digging he's done since her act could not change the basic fact of its authorship.
He sees in his mind's eye, over and over, how she must have done it. Soothed her puling husband with sweet lying words of love and wine laced with laudanum, til he slept in their bed meek and innocent as a child. Held her hand over his mouth so he would not scream as she slipped the blade into him, taking away his voice and his breath at the same time she took his life.
Not his little sister anymore.
His real mother had taken his sleepy body onto her back, soothed his crying by whispering to him in the real language, the original language: "It's all right, we are going somewhere safe. I love you." His real mother had held him down, pinioned him to the mossy river rocks. Water had filled his mouth and he could not breath, could not speak. And then men, strange men pulling him up and pulling her away from him, speaking to him in the stranger's language: "Your mother is not well." It was madness, they said, and so she could not be his mother anymore. But the gift, the initiation, always involved pain and danger of death. The Akan had taught him that. There in their secret house, their ceremony house, where he cast aside his helpless state and at last became a man.
He never knew what the women did.