Fitcher's Brides (33 page)

Then something cut between them—a shadow, a swift blur like a storm cloud scudding through the room—and the link broke and she spun away, into the middle of the maelstrom, up against Fitcher again. He anchored her while the crowd, young and old alike, whirled about them, heads thrown back, faces turned to Heaven, beaming, joyous; a few shaking, eyes either closed or rolled back in their sockets. A woman nearby cried out, an animal sound. She fell into the crowd.

The music wound down, slowed, slid into the simple reel it had been before. Dancers stumbled and walked this way and that, some with their arms out as if blind. Many of them headed for the outdoors. People collapsed on the floor, others upon the hay bales. One woman had her head thrown over the end of the bale, her tongue protruding, her hands stretched up for the ceiling. She made noises that might have been demented utterances, words in some alien language. Those outside the barn walked in circles or away down the lanes, into darkness. A wind was blowing now, as if their spinning had set the sky in motion. At the very edge of the light Amy saw Michael Notaro glance back once, straight at her, then turn and break into a run. The night swallowed him.

The original row of eight dancers and the five-piece orchestra remained. They continued the reel as if nothing had happened, though they were visibly shaken, as disheveled and confused as anyone else—as much as she was.

Fitcher's hands touched her shoulders. He moved behind her, guiding her in a sidestep. He said, “I hope you enjoyed the dance. It's all the purifying we'll do this night.”

The music concluded. Moving beside her, Fitcher took her arm and walked with her out of the barn. The remaining Fitcherites beamed at them as if every earthly care had been swept away. Most bid the reverend a good night. A few thanked him for dancing. She saw one couple embracing, kissing, off in the shadows between two buildings. She thought of Notaro, imagined it was herself there, and felt a stab of loss, a twist of desire in her belly. Amy saw the hands of the man, whoever he was, slide up under the woman's skirts. Her head craned around to watch but she couldn't slow down: She was floating on Fitcher's touch and he impelled her on, down the twisting lanes and toward the house on the hill that glowed with candles like a spray of stars.

A
MY WANDERED DOWN TO
the village after dinner the next night in the hope there would be another dance.

She found the barn closed up, and the village lanes oddly deserted, as if everyone had left. She wondered if they had all stayed at the house, maybe gathered in the Hall of Worship. How could she have missed them? Even to herself, she pretended that she was looking for everyone, and not just Michael Notaro.

After walking through the maze of lanes, she meandered back across the edge of the fields and into the ripe groves. She hadn't come out the other side when the alarm bell sounded.

Amy had heard it rung for meals, but this was nothing like the leisurely clanging that called the devout to dinner. Someone was pulling the clapper back and forth in a fury. She ducked under the branches to where she could see the rear of the house.

People in and around the tents had sprung up and were walking or running toward the noise. At the house, lights appeared—lanterns or torches being lit at the back porch. These clustered around the bell. Then, like a swarm of lightning bugs, they headed across the yard and toward the woods.

A compelling sense of urgency overtook Amy. She lifted the skirt of her dress and broke into a run. She dodged through the treacherous tents with their ropes and pegs, and then between the markers of the cemetery.

At the edge of the woods a man was waving his arms. She reached him at the same time as the crowd did. He turned grimly and led them all into the woods. The lanterns revealed the path, and she fell in among the others moving one or two at a time along it. The path soon ran up against the towering iron fence. The man stopped there.

“A couple a boys playing Indians found him,” he told everyone, and gestured up with the light. Up the black iron verticals, almost the height of two people, up to where the body hung. In the dusk she couldn't quite tell what had happened: It looked as if someone were balancing on the top of the fence. The light dwindled before it reached that high. Farther back a torch was being passed along, hand to hand above them. At the same time the crowd parted and Elias Fitcher came marching through. He overtook the passing torch, snatched and carried it with him to the fence.

He asked what had happened. The man who'd led them repeated his explanation about playing children, and pointed. Fitcher raised the torch high overhead.

The face, twisted sideways, stared down as if in terror at the torch itself. It was Michael Notaro.

The body hung impaled upon two of the uprights: One had pierced his belly, the other his throat. The body had sunk on the spikes all the way to the top rail. His arms dangled, one inside and one outside the fence. Blood from his wounds had run down them. Drops hung from the splayed fingertips of the hand above Fitcher, extended as if offering to pull someone up.

The crowd evaporated for Amy. The woods around her own house folded around her. She saw places where she'd lain with him, kissed him, laughed with him, in the dark, in the underbrush, once in the back of his wagon. She combed leaves from her hair. She touched his dimpled chin, felt his stiff whiskers, smelled his hair. Then someone spoke, and she stood among them again.

“He was trying to climb out, looks like,” said the man who'd led them there. “Trying to run away. He must'a shimmied up one of the poles, but slipped and fell back'ard.”

“Yes, poor fellow,” Fitcher concurred. “We must get him down from there. Someone bring us ropes. We must be very careful how we go about it. I don't want to lose someone else on the prongs of this slippery fence.”

The call carried through the crowd for ropes.

Fitcher turned suddenly to Amy. “I think you should not be here for this,” he told her, then to the others, “nor any other woman or child should witness this. It's too grisly a thing. Please now, some of you men stay and assist us. But no one else.”

But Amy couldn't move. She had fixed upon Notaro's open eyes. The flickering torch made it seem that they shifted, that some life was left in him. Fitcher finally stepped between her and the horrible accusatory face. He turned her firmly until her back was to the fence. “Go on now. This is nothing for you to dwell on.”

The majority of the crowd were moving away, following lights back to the house, and she fell in with them. She trudged along silently, unable to react to the death of her lover—even to acknowledge that was what he had been. Now she would never tell Fitcher about him.
Don't speak ill of the dead
.

Someone ahead of her said, “It was the Angel of Death got him, sure as I'm alive.” She glanced up sharply but couldn't make out more than the shape of a head, a shaggy silhouette in the darkness. Out of the woods, they wove a path around the grave markers. The silhouette beside him replied, “I seen something moving about in the woods just afore supper. Tall and thin it was.”

“You probably saw
him
.”

“Naw, was nothing like him. I knew Notaro well enough, and he was a short fella, though he'd got a mite skinny of late. This thing was like smoke outen a chimney.”

“Probably all it was. Chimney smoke clings in them trees all the time.”

“No, 'twasn't the same.”

“Well, what was it like, then?”

“Like a shadow turned side-on—more that than smoke. I come near as the cemetery to look on it. Didn't have a face, far as I could tell. Like maybe there was a cloak over its head. I wasn't going to get no closer. Notaro—I bet it was hunting him, sure as I'm here. You saw his eyes. Dear Jesus, I'm tellin' Emma not to go into these woods on no account. Someone should warn them young boys to stay off, too.”

“Children play in there all the time. You can't keep 'em off. Anyhow,
he
was trying to run away.”

“Maybe so. Or maybe he saw it, too, maybe he saw it close up. If that thing cornered me, I'd a' climbed to the moon to get away.”

“Maybe it was just his time.”

“It's all our times soon enough, but if the creek don't flood and the sky don't fall, I'm for waiting till the day itself.”

Another man behind them muttered, “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.”

The two others twisted their heads around. One replied, “That's for outside here, Benjamin. We're supposed to be spared from all that. Fitcher's said. Besides, vengeance for what? Notaro hadn't done nothin'.”

She barely caught Benjamin's reply: “Unless the angel ain't
from
the Lord,” he muttered.

The men walked on awhile in silence as if pondering that. Amy followed, although they seemed to have stopped talking and the rest of the crowd had gone. She fixed upon the image, remembering a moment at the dance the night before when something gray and cold had swept between her and Michael. She'd thought it was just her imagination then, a dizzy moment in the dance.

As they reached the back of the dormitory wing, one of the men added, “If you're right, we got the devil in among us then.”

“Always been so,” said the other. “Since the day Adam bit into the apple.”

 

In her room, Amy lit a candle, then sat and tried to understand why Michael Notaro had been running away. She could only conclude with heavy guilt that he'd been running from her—from having to watch her with Fitcher. He'd lost weight, the man had said. He'd been escaping from his own desire for her.

From there it was a short step to convincing herself that she had killed him. She hadn't meant to, but that hardly mattered. Her marriage had put him in an impossible situation, where he had to look upon her every day in the possession of another man, and he had finally fled from it. Possibly it had driven him out of his mind. Nothing else really explained his trying to climb out of Harbinger. For Jesus' sake, he held the keys to the gate! He could have walked out.

He'd told her about it—it had only been weeks but seemed a lifetime ago. Fitcher had entrusted him with his own set of keys so he could bring in supplies. He could open any of the gates in any of the fences. He could open the village shops, the mills, most of the rooms in the house and dormitories. Why, if he had the keys, would he have felt compelled to
climb
out?

Perhaps Fitcher had taken them away from him. She wanted to ask, but couldn't think of a way to broach the subject that wouldn't sound suspicious.

But Fitcher hadn't taken the keys.

 

The discovery of their whereabouts occurred on the second day after the death of Michael Notaro, and in a manner she could never have anticipated.

Amy had finished her kitchen duties. She wanted to change into fresh clothing before she walked to the village. The humid heat of the morning had made the kitchen an oven, and already what she wore was drenched with sweat.

Upon reaching the second-floor landing, however, she encountered her husband with one foot on the second step up. He put a finger to his lips and gestured for her to proceed quietly. She stepped up and peered over his shoulder to her floor.

A child of no more than six years stood halfway down the hall. He was at one of the doors on her side of the hall, but beyond her own room. At first she couldn't tell what he was doing. The sound of clinking metal came to her, and his movements—even in shadow—made it abruptly clear. “He's opening the door,” she whispered.

Reverend Fitcher glanced back at her and smiled wickedly. “Indeed he is.” The door opened, throwing a wan light upon the boy and across the darkness of the hall. Fitcher said, “And I think that's probably enough.”

He climbed up the last few steps and walked boldly into the hall. Amy hurried after him.

The child became aware of them almost at once. He frantically looked about, but finally just withdrew a couple of steps from the doorway and waited. There was nowhere to run. He put his hands behind his back.

Fitcher began to laugh. “Look at this boy,” he cried, glancing back to her. “This
boy
. Why, if he found one plank on a beach, he would hunt until he found the whole ship!” He barked another laugh.

He and Amy reached the child, who looked guilty of the worst crime in the world despite Fitcher's good humor. “What is your name, lad?” Fitcher asked.

“Jonathan, sir,” the boy replied. “Jonathan Hollings.” He had short blond hair, and smeared red lines across his cheeks and forehead: war paint.

“Ah, yes, I know your family. And what have you been up to, Jonathan?” He was looking past the boy as he asked. Amy came up behind him, and peered around him into the opened room. It was dimly lit, and virtually identical to her own. The light came from a window beyond the bed. A chest of clothing stood half-opened to one side, in front of an armoire. A dressing table stood opposite the bed. Fitcher stepped into the recess to close the door, but as he did, Amy saw, lying across the table, a folded parasol.

Fitcher shut the door, then held out his hand. “You'd best give those to me now,” he insisted.

Jonathan sighed and brought his hands into view. He was holding a ring of keys that Amy recognized immediately as Michael Notaro's. He'd shown them to her while bragging about his position at Harbinger. Fitcher knew them, too. He nodded to himself as he asked, “And you found these where?”

“In the woods, sir. We were playing, and I was being the Mohawk and hiding out. I got down behind a big log by the fence, and my foot kicked 'em.”

“I see. And so you had to find out what you could do with them. No, don't worry, it's nothing at all. I'd been looking for these awhile, and you've recovered them. So you're owed a reward.” He fished in his pocket and came up with a gold half-dollar. The boy's eyes grew the size of saucers. “There, now. You find anything else in the woods, you will tell me right away, won't you?”

“Oh, yes, sir.” The boy stared at the coin in his palm.

“One more thing. This was not good, what you did. You snooped in other people's rooms, and that's wrong. Your Lord doesn't like nosy meddlers, Jonathan. To stay in good with God, you must stay in good with me. You understand?”

“I do, sir, yes, I'm sorry, sir. I didn't—”

“Yes, I know. You found something exciting. A treasure hunt you were on. But we'll have no more of those, will we?”

“No, sir.”

“Good. Now run along.” He pushed the boy out of the doorway, closing the door after him.

Jonathan ran down the hall and leaped the stairs to the landing. Fitcher laughed again and said, “That boy!”

Carefully, Amy ventured, “You'd lost your keys, husband?”

“I? No, no. These belonged to our late Mr. Notaro.” He turned and dangled them before her. “He and I shared access to so many things. They surely fell from his pocket as he attempted to scale the fence and no one noticed them in the leaves—we came upon him at night, after all. Frankly, I was of the opinion that we'd buried them with him. I'd quite forgotten them.” He pocketed the keys. “Now it's time to go to work. I have a field to inspect and you must have some candles to dip.”

“I wanted to change first. It was so terribly hot in the kitchen.”

“The midsummer heat is like a blast from Satan's furnace, isn't it?” He patted her shoulder, then walked off down the hall. She heard him say again, “That boy.”

Amy stood in place. She listened to his footsteps descending, heard them cross the foyer floor. A door closed, and then there was silence. She crept back to the room the boy had opened. Fitcher had closed the door, but her question had sidetracked him before he could lock it.

She opened the door and carefully sneaked inside and shut it behind her. She stood in the dimness a moment before crossing to the dressing table. The parasol was pink with a few dangling tassels, and a white handle. Its identity could not be mistaken: Vern had carried it with her almost like a talisman when she went out. Likewise, the hairbrush lying there was too familiar. She pulled a few strands of her sister's hair out of the bristles, then set it down.