Fitcher's Brides (34 page)

She walked around the bed to the armoire and pulled open one of the doors. Clothes hung inside, and she could identify most of them, one dress in particular: her mother's wedding dress, the one Vern had worn. None of the Charter girls owned many outfits. Amy knew Vern's wardrobe. There might have been one or two dresses missing, but surely Vernelia would never have run off to Henri in Boston without her clothes or her hairbrush, and never ever without her parasol.

Amy looked through the bottom drawers for anything to explain this. There was nothing. Vern had left no writing behind, no diary or journal—it hadn't been her nature to record things.

Finally, fearful that Fitcher would remember he'd left the door unlocked, Amy crept out of the room and back to her own. She changed her clothes hastily and then set out for Harbinger village; all the while her mind tumbled with the elements of what she had learned. If Vern hadn't run off to Boston, then where had she gone?

T
HE BOY HAD OPENED ALL THE
rooms.

Amy didn't realize it until the next evening, when she took a candle and crept to Vern's room again to see if it had been locked in the interim. The door opened at her touch. She closed it again, pausing to glance the length of the hall. She pattered to the next room along and tried that door, and was surprised when it opened, too.

She pushed only a little, enough to peer around the frame.

The room looked more uninhabited than Vern's, if identically furnished. The armoire was closed and the smell was musty. She entered and closed the door carefully behind her.

A layer of dust coated the top of the small table against the wall, but there was a lopsided candle in a pewter holder there and it spat and took the flame from her own, casting enough yellowish light that she could see about her.

Cobwebs stretched across the bedposts. It wasn't a canopy bed like hers and Vern's, and it was off to the side rather than under the window. A scar in the floorboards suggested that at some point the bed had been dragged closer to the hearth. She snooped in the armoire, where as in Vern's room clothes were hung—a dark poke bonnet, a blue Princess dress, a whalebone corset, and a burnouse above the unmentionables and stockings. In the drawers at the bottom she found, folded in lace, a silver cameo with a woman's hand-painted portrait and a name, “Adele,” written beneath it. She put it in her pocket to take it, but her fingers brushed the egg there, which reminded her that she must delve into the pocket each night for Fitcher. She knew sooner or later she would inadvertently grab the cameo by accident, and he would know where she'd been. Better to leave everything undisturbed. She folded the lace back up around the cameo and replaced it in the drawer, closed up the armoire, then blew out the crooked table candle. It had dripped onto the wood but there was nothing for it. If she tried to wipe up the grease, she would only clear the dust and make her intrusion the more obvious.

She left the room. Awhile she stood outside the door, glancing toward the stairs, debating what to do next. It was too early for Fitcher to arrive. He came to her at the same hour each night. She had time to look at a few more rooms, provided they were open, which they were. She made a cursory inspection of the next two, then hastily looked in upon the rest.

Five rooms proved to be identical to hers, the dressers and armoires containing women's apparel and belongings. Of the others, two were empty, unused, the bed frames bare; and two others had been converted into storage, full of trunks, boxes, and additional furnishings piled up, no doubt from the latest arrivals to Harbinger.

One small door at the very back of the hallway opened onto a narrow stairwell. But where, she wondered, was her husband's room? It appeared that they didn't even share the same
floor
.

She'd just determined that the last room was open when she heard her husband's voice below in the foyer. He laughed once, then spoke softly. Amy hurried across the hall to her own room and slipped inside.

Fitcher did not arrive for another quarter hour. He had gone to his chambers, wherever they were, and changed out of his clothes and into his silver dressing gown. He entered her room noiselessly as always. Amy was lying on her bed, pretending to be engrossed in reading her Bible, and wearing only her chemise as if she had been waiting for him since supper. The marble egg lay beside her on the bed. He always wanted to see it first.

Fitcher strode to the armoire and retrieved the whip. Amy closed her Bible and stood to remove her last item of clothing. As she knelt, she spoke from the psalm she'd just read: “‘It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord, and to sing praises unto thy name, O Most High.'” The nightly ritual of the mortification of her flesh began.

 

When he was finished, and the whip's venom had been drawn out of her back through the magical, ecstasy-producing touch of the egg, she lay in a transported dreaminess, her thoughts flying like a released spirit through the rooms she'd penetrated, the strange dusty sanctums she'd violated. She felt neither guilty nor sinful for what she'd done, only confused by the complexity of the mystery of five women's chambers containing no women. Had they all, like Vern, “run away”? And where was
his
room? The question threaded its way in. Where did Fitcher himself stay? In her lucid dream, she saw him flip through his ring of keys until he came to the strange glass one. That key must surely answer the mystery for her. There was no such key on Notaro's key ring. She could think of only one reason why that should be the case. She couldn't very well ask for the keys, but she had the scent now. She would find out, and when she did, she would…

What would she do?

Finally, her dream spirit settled back into her body. As it did, the answer came to her: “I shall tell Kate.”

 

After the morning sermon and breakfast, Amy tracked Fitcher's movements. He'd worked the past few days in the fields, and as she'd hoped, he set out for them again. She stood on the porch and watched until he disappeared into the orchard. The hot, steamy morning gave her an excuse to freshen up before going to the village, but no one was paying much attention. Like her, they had tasks to perform.

For perhaps ten minutes she stood in the doorway of her room, listening to the sounds of the house. She heard people walk in and out of the foyer; then a door closed and all was silent.

Amy hurried to the far end of the hall. The narrow door was still unlocked, and she climbed into the stairwell. The stairs curved around the wall as if inside a turret. Over the railing she peered into darkness below.

She reached a landing that contained a door. She pressed her ear to the door, but could hear nothing on the other side. Nevertheless, she took great care in turning the handle—all for nothing. The door wouldn't open. The little boy hadn't made it this far with his stolen keys. It hardly mattered, since she didn't need to creep onto the third floor—she could just walk up the main staircase some other time.

The source of light in the stairwell came from somewhere above her. Amy crept up the circling stairs one entire circuit of the spiral to reach another landing and small archway. On the far side of it was a straight, steep flight of steps gleaming in the light. Amy ducked beneath the arch and, at the bottom of the steps, found herself peering up into the glass pyramid at the top of the house. She had reached the roof.

The pyramid threw a spray of colors across the space. The glass doubled as a prismatic surface, and the sunlight pouring in split into crisscrossing rays. Amy climbed through splashes of violet, blue, green, and red. There was a railing at the top, and she crouched against it, reluctant to stand at first for fear someone in the yard or the orchards would be able to see her. She crept to the side and looked out over the rooftop.

On either side chimneys shielded the pyramid, impeding anyone's view. Amy could see only the last few windows at the ends of the dormitories. Surely no one could see her within the intersecting colors.

She rose and stepped into the center of the room, with her back to the rail. She could see the forests on every side. To the north she could make out the shimmer of the lake on which they'd steamed to Jekyll's Glen, the cleared land on the hillsides, orderly rows of planted crops, and the town itself. She thought of her home, and there it was, clearly visible, right down to the pole across the road and her father in his box, awaiting the next pilgrim. Then the impossible displacement swept over her like a wave of vertigo so intense that she had to cling to the rail and close her eyes.

When she opened them, she was looking straight down upon her house. She muttered, “Papa,” and he appeared in the glass before her, seated idly in the sentry box, passing the time by reading his Bible. She was close enough to see the stubble on his cheek. Now her view hovered just above the pole. She said, “Kate,” and it was as if she had become a bird. She flew from the sentry box, straight at the house, the vision so overwhelming that she recoiled as it penetrated the wall, sped up the stairs and into her room, where Kate was sweeping around the furniture. Kate was barefoot and dressed only in her chemise; but of course she wasn't expecting company, no one was going to see her, and it was enervatingly hot. Amy walked to the canted glass, pressing her hand to it as if she could simply pass through it and into the room. Distantly, she seemed to hear the whisk of the broom. “Kate,” she called. Her sister went right on sweeping. “Katie, can you hear me?”

It was as if she were a ghost, a spirit hovering beside her sister. Amy wanted to grab the broom out of Kate's hands—that would shake her to her soul. Before she could, she saw the wall above Kate's bed. A shadow was etched in it, a slender faceless shade, like smoke made solid. Amy recalled what the men in the crowd had said after Notaro's impalement, and she knew she was looking at the Angel of Death. Even as she watched it, the shadow withdrew into the wall again. Had it been observing Kate or herself?

Amy closed her eyes and said, “Vernelia.”

When she opened them the pyramid had gone dark. It was not black, but a deep red, the color of the molten belly of the earth. The color seemed to ripple and run, making the side of the pyramid look as if it were in motion, flexing; yet at the same time the rippling imparted a sense of peacefulness. At some distance were two luminous shapes. They might have been human but the color acted like some mercurial membrane stretched across her vision and kept her from distinguishing any features. Where was Vern in all this? Amy couldn't tell. But then she thought:
Unless—
she almost dared not think of it
—unless Vern was dead and the two glowing shapes were angels
. That would mean that she, Amy, was gazing upon Heaven itself. “Oh, my sister,” she whispered.

She considered then what this pyramid at the top of the house might be. Fitcher communed with God, he spoke with Him. It was what pastors and preachers always said, but what if Fitcher spoke of a literal communion? This room, that let him look everywhere, upon everyone, could it allow him to look to Heaven? If so, would the Almighty deign to speak to her?

Without thinking, she recited, “Our Father, who art in Heaven.” The glass sides of the pyramid erupted with searing light. Amy shielded her eyes, but even closed, they burned red. The brightness dimmed and she dared to peek between her fingers.

The outside was gone and she was whirling down a dark hallway, down stairs. She glimpsed the chandelier in the foyer of Harbinger spin past, then her view burst out into daylight. Her stomach threatened to disgorge. She clutched the railing at her back like a sailor clinging to a storm-tossed ship. The world whirled around her.
This isn't Heaven
, she thought. Her view dove into the orchard, sliding through branches, leaves, and fruit, then out across the field, through rows of shoulder-high corn, and out the far side. There, among dozens of others laboring in the sun, in shirtsleeves and a wide-brimmed hat, Elias Fitcher stepped one foot on a spade, turning over soil. Even as her vision rushed right at him, he straightened and whipped about, his face filling the glass before her, his crystal-blue eyes piercing the distance, locking upon hers. She shrieked and flung herself into the stairwell. Only at the last did she glimpse that there was a design, figures, set in the floor on the far side of the railing. It caught her eye beyond the flashing colors. She couldn't stop to look, however. He'd seen her.

She ran under the arch and back down the steps, down and down to the second floor, out into the hall. She took the front stairs to the foyer and dashed out the back. Instinct compelled her to guard herself. On the porch she drew up, collected herself a moment, then went down the steps. On the lawn she tried to hurry without seeming to be in a panic. The encampment was full of people, many of them sleeping in the heat, others chatting. She didn't want them to pay attention to her, didn't want them to report her. Yet she had to put as much distance as possible between herself and the house. The village might as well have been miles away.

Amy strode as fast as she could and watched the orchard for any hint of him. She saw his legs before anything else, saw him burst through the trees like a hell-bent juggernaut. She dropped to the ground behind a tent. When she dared another look, Fitcher was speeding across the lawn to the house without even acknowledging the greetings of people who climbed to their feet at his passing. Some of those working in the orchard emerged to watch him go. They traded worrisome looks as if they knew what his purposeful gait meant—as if they had witnessed this before.

Amy got up and dashed into the orchard. Panic overcame caution, and she ran the rest of the way to the village. She entered her shop, closed the door, and collapsed, gasping. She trembled, began to whimper, but forced herself to stop, to gather her wits. It wasn't over and she had little time.

The shop was hot and confining. Soaked from her run from the house, Amy looked as if she'd been at work for hours. She grabbed matches to start a fire in the hearth, took the lid from a keg and fanned the flames. At the same time she scooped spermaceti out of the keg and into one of the kettles. It melted rapidly. She added bayberry wax, mixing it in as she took the kettle off the fire. She didn't care whether the mixture ever made candles or not. The sharp scent filled the shop, and she opened the windows front and back then to let it and some of the heat escape. That was the moment Fitcher burst in upon her.

His sleeves were rolled up, his pant legs stained and dirty. Dirt smudged his brow and clung to his forearms. At first his eyes were narrow, calculating, darting all around the shop. Then he gave her a disaccording smile as if he were just making a routine visit and nothing about it were out of the ordinary. He inquired, “My dear, how is your day going?”

Amy answered just as casually: “It's very hot work, husband. Candles should be made in the cooler parts of the year, I think.” She had no idea where the steel in her spine came from, how she managed not to quake and collapse with those crystal eyes boring into her. It was fear that anchored her—fear of what, she wasn't sure. It wasn't Fitcher alone. It was of something huge. Something that would destroy her if she slipped up in the slightest.