Fitcher's Brides (21 page)

He waved a dismissive hand. “Superstitious twaddle. So he's one of those, is he? It's a wonder he's stayed on if he's fallen so far from the core of our belief.”

“I know nothing of any of this,” she replied, wanting to find out more. He gave her no chance.

“Worst and most unforgivable of all, you actually entered the men's dormitory in that slattern's attire.”

“Elias, how was I to know? I didn't know you separated husbands and wives. Not until I was at the top of the stairs, and a man there told me I shouldn't be there because of the community segregation, and naturally I turned to leave when he told me, but by then you had arrived, you saw me turning away, coming down—”

“Enough. I will not be painted the villain.”

“Who is painting you a villain?” Even as she said it, she knew she would not be able to speak of the previous night with him now. It would seem to him another attack upon his character.

“By implication, you do. You know nothing of the arrangement of Harbinger, and that is because I have told you almost nothing. It's my fault, your ignorance, and so I bear the blame.”

“I'm not blaming you, Elias. I'm only accounting for my own innocent actions. I ran outside for fear that the house was ablaze and I would be trapped if I delayed. I followed the crowd to the source of the alarm, and no one spoke, no one told me I couldn't go there.”

“Did they not?” His eyes narrowed, but now the focus was clearly not her, but more as if he were ticking off a list of names to confront at some later time. “They should have known you had no experience with…” He sighed. “Yes, I see it all now. You followed your instincts, as what woman does not?” He leaned forward and ran the back of his hand lightly across her cheek, smiled. “How can I possibly be angry with you on the very first day of our life together? Forgive me, dear Vernelia.”

“Of course, of course I forgive you.” She clasped his cold hand. “You must be so stricken by the event.”

“Yes, I'm deeply troubled. The poor fellow had been distraught for some time it seems. I should have known that he was in peril. But there are so many here, so many hundreds, and more arriving each day.” He pressed his hands together as if about to pray. “Well, then, first what we shall do is open your gifts, and then I'll instruct you in all of your duties here. You
do
want to be a part of the community?”

“Of course. I cannot sit by idly while everyone else works. I thought—I feared that the reason no one spoke to me was that they think this of me already, that I'm some lazy useless creature expecting to be pampered now that I'm the wife of the great man.”

His expression softened when she called him that. “Well, we shall change their minds on that point soon enough. Now, let's see what the ‘great man' has for you, shall we?”

He retrieved his package from the card table. “The card reads: ‘For Mrs. Fitcher,'” he said. “I wonder who it could be from.”

It was a small box in red paper that had been waxed, and tied with silk ribbon. He handed it to her and she carried it to the bed to unwrap it.

The box was of rough pine. Vern could hold it in the palm of one hand. With the other she slid the top open. Inside, it was full of sawdust. She glanced back at Elias, but he was giving nothing away. Gingerly, she moved her fingertips through the sawdust, and almost immediately touched something hard and smooth. She brushed the packing aside until a bit of it showed. It was a stone, she decided. She poked fingers around it until she had sense of its size and shape. Then she reached into the sawdust and drew the thing out.

It was an egg, an egg carved out of marble. White with dark blue veins running through it, the egg had been polished perfectly smooth. Holding it, she recalled the sibylline words of the mesmerized woman:
Take care of his egg
.

Fitcher had come up behind her, and now his arms encircled her waist. “It is a perfect symbol of my love—like a real egg—perfect in form. Hermetic.”

Once more his touch charged her. She felt as if she must explode with energy, so much that she became light-headed in his loose embrace. His words breathed into her ear, “This symbol of my love you must keep with you always, wherever you go, and so I will be with you. My little egg.”

“Yes, I'll take care,” she said, and tilted her head, trying to circle it back, hungry for a kiss.

Instead, he released her. But the energy, the lickerish pleasure, thrummed in her veins; she'd become a conduit, transferring energy from him to the receptacle—the egg, which, like a battery, generated the power flowing down her arms and into the pit of her stomach, where it opened like a flower, ripe and wet with dew. She didn't want to let go of it.

“And now, wife, I must impart all the rules to you in order that you may belong here. But you must dress more properly before leaving your chamber. That is the first rule: You are the mistress of Harbinger now and you have to dress properly. You must never allow people to see you barefoot or dishabille. Understood?” He stared down at her toes with obvious fascination as he said it.

“Never. I know now.”

“Good. And you're not to visit the dormitories—men or women. The men, you know already how I think of that. But even the women, they will only gossip. And you occupy a station above them hereafter, so you are not to lower yourself to sharing idle gossip.”

“But, Elias—”

“There are some in our company who won't be saved despite being in our company. I tell you this in private between us, but it's not to travel any further. Some are devoted. Others take pleasure in picking at the devotion, seeking its imperfections, without realizing of course that by so doing they are only revealing their own flaws. Do not fraternize with them.”

Again she complied—she understood his point. Women did gossip. She'd gossiped with Kate, and even now and again with Amy, it was true. She couldn't see the evil in it, at least not in her own gossiping. She didn't think she'd ever said anything terribly wicked about anyone, or if she had she was sorry for it now.

“The next rule has to do with time here. You were left alone this morning, as it was your first here. We are up at five each morning. All of us. You'll not be an exception. There's a morning prayer before breakfast and I will expect you there each day.”

“Of course,” she answered. Even at home, they were all up by six.

“And again each day with the noon meal, there is prayer. The time will depend on where you are employed that day. We must find suitable work for you. I already have something in mind, which we'll discuss after you have your meal this morning.” He stroked his beard a moment, then said, “Ah, yes, one more thing.” He reached into his coat pocket and drew out a large ring of keys. The ring itself was brass, shiny where the rings had slid along, polishing it. He shook the keys in front of her. “When I go away, you'll be entrusted with these, as you'll have the entire house to supervise. You will have to make certain people continue to do their part.” He jingled the keys again.

Vern noticed then that one of them was larger than the rest and appeared to be made of glass. Fitcher dropped the ring back in his pocket and said, “But that's for another time—when I go off to recruit. For now, please dress and we shall go down to eat together.”

“Elias,” she said, his name full of longing, of unfulfilled desire. But he was already walking away, out of the room.

Alone, she made herself set the egg down in its box. Her hands, she saw, were trembling.

 

He led her across the orchard to the village.

“Your father put the idea in my mind,” Fitcher told her, “not directly of course, but he made mention of your skills, and I thought to myself then that we need those skills just now.”

A cluster of children ran across their path, playing, but stopped and stared, wide-eyed, at the two of them. The oldest boy ducked his head and said, “Morning, sir.” The others bowed their heads, too.

“Good morning to you, young Jeremy,” Fitcher replied. “And what is our game today?”

“Sir?”

“What are you playing at?”

“Nothing, sir. Just running, is all.”

“Well.” Though addressing the child, he smiled at Vern. “Carry on with it then. But don't lead your little brothers and sisters into trouble.”

“No, sir, I wouldn't.” The child shuffled to the side, then sprinted away. The others hung back a moment, and one of them stared with big cow eyes up at Vern, before the whole pack took off in pursuit.

“Willful little tykes,” Fitcher commented. “The littlest ones of course can't be expected to work. But Jeremy is old enough, he should be doing something constructive now.”

“Surely, he's ten or eleven,” Vern defended.

“Precisely,” answered her husband, as if they had agreed upon it. He continued across the open ground, past plots of turned soil, where a few people were at work, either planting seeds or pulling weeds and dead plants from the previous year.

They walked along the lanes of the little town. As before, the adults who saw them stopped whatever they were doing and stood stiffly, respectfully, as Vern and Elias passed by; most bade them “good morning” as well.

He led her to the chandler's shop.

She understood immediately what her duties were to be. Her father must have mentioned how she helped Lavinia make candles for the family, but not how much she hated the task. Even as she comprehended what was in store, she knew she couldn't protest or complain any more than she could complain now about last night's abuse of her body.

The shop was small. On one side stood a rack containing tinned sheet iron molds—there must have been a dozen of them, and each was a twenty-four-candle mold. On the other side there was a broad low table covered in splashes of grayish wax and circular marks where the wood had been scorched by the bottom of kettles, set down between pourings. Two dirty aprons lay on the tabletop, as if tossed down just moments ago by the previous occupants. Above hung a frame like the carved spine of some mythical monster of antiquity. It comprised dozens of small rods protruding from either side of a straight pole. A few of the rods had tightly twisted wicks dangling from them, as though—again—the former chandlers had been interrupted in the midst of their work. The contraption's pole was attached to two pulleys so that it could be lowered and raised. It was quite a clever device, she thought, and would at least make the task of dipping wicks into hot wax manageable, if easier for two than for one. A large hearth took up the entire back wall, with two great hooks sticking out from which to hang the kettles and cauldrons for melting and straining the wax. Barrels and kegs stood to the side of it, and skimmers and strainers and paddles hung on the wall beside lengths of hemp cord, some of them braided and twisted. Boxes were stacked beneath these.

“Outside there is a well where you can get water. We're in sore need of these, you know, because Jekyll's Glen had not enough and we use far more candles than they can supply us and still have some left over for themselves.”

“Your previous candle-makers were a couple?”

“That's right.”

“They died in an accident? What happened to them?”

“Did I say that? I suppose I did, to protect your feelings. The young man took his life, is the truth of it.”

“Oh.”

“His wife simply disappeared. I know what you're thinking, my dear. Three people you've heard of are dead. It's both extraordinary and not surprising. The press of time weighs on all of us differently. I said when first we met that I was reluctant to announce the date of Judgment. This is precisely why. There are those who can make peace with the world and face what is to come, and there are those who refuse to do so, and in refusing, they recognize their sinfulness. They aren't accepting God's grace, they're running from it. But of course that's impossible to do. And so, in fear for their souls, or believing that arriving sooner upon the far shore will benefit them in some manner which crossing over at the date established by God, ascertained by myself, will not, they act and in doing so destroy themselves. The result is, there are those within our community who've come to believe that Death lives in our house and stalks us, one by one.”

“The Dark Angel.”

“That's right. The Dark Angel. Some who believe that fierce story have fled Harbinger. One of them at least, in his haste, plunged over the side of the gorge. Others—particularly women—stole away in the dead of night and were never seen again within our gates, our former chandler being one such. It's why we now keep our gates locked. From such events, otherwise unrelated, has grown the story of some Dark Angel of Death wandering the halls, hunting victims. It is one reason you will find the Harbinger House deserted more often than not. I tell you, there are no limits to human folly. Gossip is the fuel, driving a fearful engine.” He clasped her hand. “It isn't worthy of your concern, my dear. And now we must return to the house. It's near lunch and time for afternoon prayer.”

He led her outside, closing the door after them. He rambled on then about the topic of his sermon this afternoon—whether it should be from Luke: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with all thy heart…and thy neighbor as thyself,” or from Colossians: “Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels.” Both, he said, offered starting places to talk about members of the community who were ending their lives prematurely, and those believing in claptrap about this angel of death—how the one created an atmosphere that provoked the other and so forth.

Vern hardly heard him. The words “worshipping of angels” had sent her into a reflection on the shadow that had pursued her in her dreams. Had the women who fled from Harbinger dreamed of that dark gliding figure? And if it visited her again, how would she escape? When the gates were now locked, what angel could protect her here?