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In a fetid , dawn dark bedchamber Aunt takes one last rattling breath then sighs and breathes no more.
Alone in the empty house a dark haired serving girl goes to the room where once he slept to drop exhausted upon his bed.
On a bleak stormy morning a woman falls to her knees in the mud and wails her grief as the small wrapped body of Jacob's son is laid to rest in the heavy soil.
Below deck off the coast of Massachusetts the ship creaks.
Jacob palms hard aching flesh and groans a name as he spills.
"Ferris."
Into that panting, pleasured moment of remembered loss the Voice breaks
HE LOVED YOU NOT.
Sneck up.... speak to me no more
Jacob says
And turns away to lie unseeing.
In a wet stone walled prison cell a broken man stirs on his filthy blanket and repeats a single word through dry cracked lips and stubbled blond beard, after weeks of barely conscious silence.
"Jacob?"