Fitcher's Brides (38 page)

“You have allowed conditions to deteriorate, Katherine,” said Lavinia. “I'm disappointed with you.”

“Lavinia,” Mr. Charter interjected, “it has been difficult for her, for us both. Without you.”

No doubt he hoped that would placate her, but Lavinia would not be misdirected from her chosen target. “It's scandalous, what if the Reverend Fitcher had wished to come in? Why, I couldn't have stopped him, and the conditions here would not have been to
my
detriment, I can assure you.” She brushed crumbs off the tablecloth, which was itself stained here and there from recent meals.

No
, thought Kate,
you're now queen of all you survey. We're only here to serve
. What she said was: “Ma'am, I fear that with my father's weakness at the forefront of my thoughts, I have not attended to household matters that didn't directly impinge upon our day-to-day lives.”

“And insolent.” Now she turned on Mr. Charter. “Do you see? While I was gone, you did nothing to curb her habit of insolence. If anything, it has increased. Insolence like a weed.”

Mr. Charter listened, his head lowered, but his eyes following Lavinia as she circled the room. She ran her finger across various surfaces, staring sourly at the result each time, passing judgment upon them both with a look.

She said, “Two days remain. We must close up this house and take ourselves to the next estate, and here she isn't even in an appropriate state of mind to walk through the very gates.”

Mr. Charter snapped, “In the name of God, woman, shut up!”

Both Kate and Lavinia turned to him, disbelieving. He still sat hunched, but trembled with a rage he could not contain. “She has done exactly what needed doing. She has looked after me as I wished. If this house is in some way dissatisfactory, it is because I cared nothing for the dust on a mantel or the crumbs on a table—and I
still don't
.” He strode from the dining room, and went outside. The wind had blown up. A throng with no end continued to push along the road toward Harbinger.

Lavinia stood stiff, her cheeks flushed, her eyes flashing like lightning. Kate had to walk by her to leave. She tried to hold her tongue, but her own anger overwhelmed her common sense.

“I believe,” she said softly, “your reign is over.”

 

The wind whirled about the house. It pulled up tiny cyclones of dirt and leaves. One gust caught the tied-up turnpike pole, wrenching it free from the rope that held it upright. Mr. Charter and Kate, busy gathering up stray items and tethering horses, saw it slip loose but couldn't reach it. The pike crashed down on the stump and splintered in two. It was sheer good fortune that no one was beneath it when it fell.

People on the road scrambled to tie down their belongings as wind billowed tarps and worked tent pegs loose. There was thunder in the west keeping its distance; and sheets of lightning flared beyond the trees; but no rain had yet fallen when Elias Fitcher rode into view like some dark apocalyptic horseman from up the road. The wind flapped the ends of his long coat, but seemed reluctant to assault him as it had everyone else.

He dismounted and left his horse tethered to the broken pike. He walked with solemnity to the house, gesturing on the way for Mr. Charter and his daughter to leave off assisting others and follow him.

He led them into the parlor. Kate noticed that Lavinia was already there, reading her Bible by lamplight; she had changed from her riding gear into a print dress, and twisted her hair into its usual severe bun. Seeing the reverend, she closed the book, placing it upon her lap. Her hand went to her hair, as if to let it down again. She had eyes only for Fitcher. It was as if neither her husband nor her stepdaughter existed.

“How fares Harbinger?” asked Mr. Charter.

Fitcher turned away from Lavinia. “We're drowning in people at the moment,” he replied. “We're having to hold them at the gates until we can find space for them to occupy. People are doubling up. The dormitories now have people lying in the aisles and between and under each bunk. It will all work out. We will get them all in. We must accommodate everyone, leave no one behind who truly wishes to join me.” He hesitated a moment before continuing: “I have tragic news.”

Kate said, “Amy.” It was like a gasp.

The three adults glanced at her. “Indeed,” Fitcher replied. “Your sister has succumbed to illness. I suspect malaria, but can't be certain. There is sickness in the encampment—not surprising when so many are forced to share space, and conditions are not hygienic. Believers they may be, but many of these people are less than tidy about themselves. Of course I wasn't on hand to maintain order, with the result that people sprawled about.”

“I saw them, I was at Harbinger last week.”

“So I've been told.”

“No one knew where Amy was. No one could tell me.”

“That is because she had stopped appearing at meals. Someone should have investigated, of course, but in the chaos of all the new arrivals and the concomitant problems they brought, she was simply overlooked. Many thought she had gone off with me and I hadn't assigned anyone to watch after her. There was no cause, she seemed so sanguine when I left.”

“Amy's dead?” Mr. Charter asked.

“Regrettably. She must have taken to her bed, and never got out. I—I found her. She'd been dead for weeks. That room…the heat. It's too awful to describe.”

Mr. Charter had sunk down upon a chair. “There must be a funeral—”

“Mr. Charter, there will certainly be a memorial service, but I've had the body buried already. Her illness is likely communicable, and the state of the corpse prevented me from keeping it above ground for even an hour. The smell in that room…With all of these new arrivals, dear Lord, the last thing we can afford is a plague in the final hours before we would be saved.”

Her father looked lost, cast adrift. His head swayed between Kate and Lavinia. Finally he faced Fitcher. “All my girls,” he said.

“Not quite all, sir,” Fitcher answered. His blue eyes cut the distance to Kate. “I find myself once more bereaved, once more without a mate for the Day of Judgment at hand.”

Lavinia squinted at Kate with rancor.

Mr. Charter sighed deeply. His head hung down below his shoulders. “You must take Katherine, then,” he said.

“Papa!” she cried, but he didn't respond. He didn't seem to know she was there. When he raised his head, he was looking at Fitcher and his face had gone slack, as if the man within had absented himself. It was the expression he'd worn when she'd spied him descending the stairs the previous night, talking to the unseen companion—to God, he claimed—promising to
honor his promise to wed her
. She'd thought it was a memory, that in his despair he was recalling her mother. Now she recognized the look: the expression that the mesmerist's subjects had all worn while under his command.

“She will go with you. There's no time left, is there? She's young but strong.” His head bobbed, puppetlike.

“Headstrong,” corrected Lavinia. Fitcher gave her a glance, and she stiffened up and looked away.

“That is what I was hoping you'd say, Mr. Charter. Fallen though I am, I know that I am saved. I must have a wife pure and strong enough to stand with me when we face God.”

Kate considered pointing out to him that he had literally hundreds of women to pick from now. There was no reason to choose her, except that it had been his goal from the start, from at least the moment he had encountered them aboard the steamer. “‘And the king made her queen instead of Vashti,'” she quoted, and Lavinia's eyes blazed. She knew then how much lay between Fitcher and her stepmother. She hadn't suspected until then that there might have been a much greater plot at work than any of them had imagined; it would never have occurred to her or her sisters that he might have been collecting them. Collecting them all.

T
HUS WITH THE FIRST OF THE
rain lashing them, the Charter family rode in their wagon behind Elias Fitcher to Harbinger House.

Beyond the turnpike, people clogged the road and only moved aside reluctantly when it was clear the wagon would not stop. In the dark of the storm, whipped by rain, they kept their heads down, and snarled like beasts as they shuffled aside. Lightning flashed again and again, capturing the human nightmare in a series of still pictures for Kate: a dark woman at the side of the road, wailing and tearing at her hair; two men staring out from the open flaps of a rotting tent; three bodies hanging like pale fruit from the trees, the nearest bearing a sign with the word
SUCCUBUS
painted on it. All of this they passed before they'd even reached the bridge.

Someone must have been camping at the bottom of the gorge; the flickering glow of a bonfire outlined the bridge in hellish hues. The crowd upon it was a huge, many-headed thing, a shape in constant flux. Seated on the wagon, Kate was reminded of the Geneva wharf as she'd viewed it from the gangplank of the
Fidelio
. Fitcher's horse cut through them, the wagon rumbling after, both forcing people to push against the rails. Someone dropped a bundle off the side. The fires below lit it for the instant it was in view—at least Kate hoped it was a bundle. It could so easily have been…but she would not think something so awful. What she did think was that this could not be the pathway to Heaven, that these could not be the chosen and the saved. Was that why they had been kept from entering Harbinger? Perhaps, yet she found herself wondering how Elias Fitcher, as she was coming to understand him, could open the gates to eternal life.

Their wagon trundled on to the gates. The house appeared through the trees as a quilt of lighted panels against the night. The torches on the exterior had been put out by the storm.

She looked up but could not see the pyramid at the top.

A mob hung on the gates. They swiped at the guards inside, who were refusing them entry. When Fitcher rode up, most of the mob moved aside, but a few clung to the bars despite his instructions to get out of the way. They held on until the gates parted, then sprinted through, only to be met by men wielding clubs. Scuttling back, they fell against Fitcher's horse and against the gates, where they were beaten and flung back out like squashed rats, all of this occurring before Mr. Charter had even driven inside. Kate wondered if he saw the barbarity, or if he was even conscious of what was happening around him.

Fitcher dismounted and came to her, lifted her out of the wagon. “My dearest Katherine,” he said. “Finally.” From beneath her hood she spied Lavinia looking darkly over her shoulder at them. Fitcher closed his hands around hers in their lace gloves. “I confess to you, I was smitten by you most of all from the very first.”

“You did not much disguise it, sir.”

“As much as I sealed up my heart, the plain truth leaked out, did it?”

“Through your eyes. Their color hides nothing. Your intent is clear.”

He smiled and offered her his arm. “We go directly to the chapel, for there's no time for preparing, no time for the ceremony Vernelia knew, or even for the ghost of that accorded Amelia. You understand.”

“I don't stand upon ceremony,” she said.

“Excellent.” They strode up the steps and into the house. Mr. Charter and Lavinia followed, though not together, not presenting anything like a united front any longer. Lavinia walked with fury, Mr. Charter in his trance.

The Hall of Worship had become a makeshift encampment. Bundles and belongings crammed the aisles; clothes were draped over the pews. The red runner had turned black with dirt. The candles along the walls were all lit, as well as a few scattered lamps and pewter lanterns. The air stank of oily sweat.

Fitcher seemed as surprised as anyone by the entrenched trespass. Letting go of Kate's hand, he went forward, his head swinging from side to side. In his long coat, he was like some enormous wasp with folded wings stalking through their midst. His long legs surmounted the debris clogging the aisle, but he kicked aside those who reclined in his way. Most didn't move far, but huddled between pews as if hoping they might be overlooked, forgotten.

When he reached the front, Fitcher leaned over the bloodred altar. When he came about he was holding at chest level the milky crystal skull. One hand rested on the crown, fingertips on the sculpted thorns; the other cupped the jaw. He rotated the skull as if providing it a view of them all. He said, “What do you think you're about? Do you not know what place this is?
Whose hall?
” He pushed the skull at them. “Do you think it brings you closer to your Lord that you establish yourselves in this chapel? You followed my voice and it brought you
here
?” He shouted the last word. Then, almost in a whisper, he looked down upon the skull and said, “‘Surely, thou didst set them in slippery places.' They fall faster than angels.”

At that moment Reverend Flavy burst in. He stopped when he saw the condition of the hall, and Fitcher at the front of it. By comparison with the others around him, his disheveled collar and shadbelly coat were sartorial perfection. “Oh, my,” he said. “Someone's made a grave error.” His eyes swept the squatters, and he smiled disdainfully as he identified many who'd mistreated him. Now would they be sorry.

“An error indeed, Mr. Flavy, and it shall be answered,” replied Fitcher. He set down the skull as he gestured Flavy to come forward. Then he circled the altar and took the pulpit for a moment. “There is to be a ceremony here momentarily. Those of you who wish to participate may do so, silently. Your host is about to marry in preparation for the opening of the gates. Stay or go, but choose now. Whether or not you stay, your
belongings
will leave before morning.”

A baby began to cry as he spoke. Its mother whisked it out of the hall.

“Reverend,” he said to Flavy.

They traded places. Fitcher handed him a torn piece of paper, then removed his long coat. Flavy stuck the paper in his Bible. Kate took off her shawl. Mr. Charter stood beside her. Lavinia moved to the far side of Fitcher as if to fill the position of best man.

From one of the pews, someone said, “I'm an organist, if you should wish one.”

Flavy exchanged a glance with Fitcher, then said, “Please.”

They waited for the fellow to settle himself. He began with a few tentative chords, then began playing the tune for “The Tyrolese Evening Hymn,” a verse and chorus, after which he stopped.

With the music dying away, Reverend Flavy cleared his throat and said, “We welcome this great man and this woman before us to join in holy wedlock before God, and to approach Him as one. Be there anyone who opposes this union, let them speak now or forever hold their peace.” He looked up nervously as if actually anticipating an interjection, then hurried on: “Do you, Elias Fitcher, take this woman as wife—as your ring girdles her finger, so you shall bind her to you always?”

“I do.”

“Do you, Ame…that is”—he quickly glanced at the paper Fitcher had given him—“Katherine Proserpina Charter, take this man, Elias Fitcher, as your lawfully wedded husband, to honor, and follow in strictest obedience, to love and cherish, both now and in the life to come?”

Kate gave no answer, and the silence became uncomfortable. Lavinia leaned forward and glared at her around Fitcher. He watched her uncertainly. Kate addressed Flavy, “Why is it that our ties are not equal, Reverend? He has only to bind me, to harness me with his ring, while I must honor and grant him sway in all things, as well as love and cherish, never mind that this must continue both here and in life everlasting. You require me to make a gift of my will, and that I shall not do.”

Flavy looked for some direction from the groom. Fitcher stared openmouthed at Kate. She refused to shrink from his umbrage. Facing him, she said, “Find better vows, sir.”

Lavinia, had she been standing beside her, would surely have strangled Kate. Her father squeezed her shoulder, though whether as a warning or a precursor to shaking her sensible, she couldn't tell. Fitcher began to chuckle, quietly at first, but it rose to a guffaw. “Better vows!” he exclaimed. He dabbed at one eye. To Flavy, he said, “You heard her.”

Flavy opened and closed his mouth, fishlike. He looked at his prepared text, at the scrap of paper with nothing but her name on it. He was completely at sea. “What—what should they be?”

“Oh, come, man, tit for tat. If I bind her to me with my ring, then so the reverse must be true and no more, else I must give her all that is required of her in turn. So…”

“Ahm, Mistress Katherine. As your—your ring circles the finger of Elias Fitcher, do you thus bind him to yourself?”

She smiled sweetly. “I do.”

Flavy nodded in relief. “The rings, then?” Lavinia handed one to Fitcher. Kate's father provided hers, a simple band that she placed on Fitcher's hand. Her ring was more elaborately crafted and Kate wondered where it had come from in such short order. It fit her perfectly. Flavy said, “I, by the powers vested in me, do pronounce you both husband and wife. Go with Go—”

But Fitcher was already leaning across her for his kiss, and the crowd broke into cheers and clapping, though with uncertain enthusiasm and less comprehension.

There was no cake, no reception at all. Some of the dwellers in the chapel approached Kate as she was led past them—some expressed their congratulations, others reached out to touch her, their heads bowed; she heard herself called “the Virgin.” The rest hung back, wary of Fitcher's ire. Some of them began gathering up their clothing and paraphernalia, making ready to leave. In the foyer, her new husband apologized to her for duties that he now had to perform “because someone has let the wolves in with the sheep.” He bid her father a good night, then marched off with Flavy to find whoever was responsible for settling people in the chapel.

Lavinia fumed at her then for her insolence: How dare she presume to instruct the Reverend Fitcher. It promised to be a long-winded diatribe, but quickly ran out of steam when she was ignored by both father and daughter.

A minute later, an elderly woman holding a bull's-eye lantern entered from the rear doors. She spotted Kate and came to her. “I'm Louise,” she said. “Reverend Fitcher's told me to take you up to your room.” She jangled a ring of keys at Kate.

“You have your things?”

“No, we didn't have time to bring them.”

“I'll gather up your belongings, Katie,” her father said, “and bring them along tomorrow.” He seemed to be waking from his spell. He added, “We're all coming here tomorrow,” as if there were a multitude accompanying him and Lavinia.

“You shouldn't drive back,” Kate told him. “Not in this downpour. Not when there are rooms. And you,” she said to Louise, “needn't walk up those stairs. If you'll give me the keys and tell me where my room lies, I'll go.”

“Oh, but he said—”

“Yes, but he had other things weighing on him.” She held out her hand, not defiantly, but as a gentle request. Louise gave her the lantern.

“It's the very first room on the second floor, on the left side of the hall.”

“Do you know where my father might stay the night?”

Louise thought for a moment but shook her head. “I've little acquaintance with the upper floors. None of us has much doing with them.”

“But why, if there are empty rooms above, are people being crammed into the chapel and keeping room?”

Louise tilted her head as if the idea had never occurred to her. “I don't know, missus. It's not for me to say.” She handed over the keys then as if happy to be rid of them. The largest, made of glass, seemed to drink the light from the lantern, transmuting in reflection into gold.

“Papa, you must wait here. And you, Lavinia.”

She went up the stairs, and into the second-floor hallway. It was dark. No candles had been lighted there, but with the lantern Kate had no trouble finding her room. She had to set it down to try the keys and open the door.

Inside, she moved to a small dressing table. There was a small lard-oil lamp on it, and a stick of punk beside it. She lit the punk from the candle in her lantern, then touched it to the wick of the lamp. The window beyond her bed was open. The curtains swelled like ship's sails with the storm. She closed the window against the chill. Lightning flashed at her, capturing the landscape below in an instant—bent trees, and people scattered everywhere. She closed the curtains but the afterimage burned on in the darkness.

The bed was surrounded by wine-colored drapes hung from the canopy frame. Inside, it was a secret place, smelling faintly, she thought, of lilac. A box tied with ribbon lay atop the pillow.

There was a writing desk, some logs for a fire, and an open armoire. She drew back the armoire doors, thinking it at first completely empty until she saw, hung in the back, what looked at first like a snake but proved instead to be a long slender crop. She recalled Amy's seemingly mad claim that Fitcher whipped her nightly. She ran her fingers over the braid of the crop as if convincing herself by feel that it wasn't her imagination. Then she closed the armoire.