Fitcher's Brides

by Gregory Frost

  Her husband was so proper, so authoritative as he climbed into the pulpit for the morning sermon. The windows were dark, the sun not up yet. Candles in sconces along the wall lit the worship hall, reminding her of the importance of her role.

  Fitcher spoke of the many rooms in God’s house: “Enough rooms for all who are saved, for God knows beforehand how many that shall be. He knows who is saved and who can never be. He has prepared his house for us. Heaven is the greatest utopia of all. Huge and limitless.”

  The sermon was brief. They must not forget that He would accept from them only perfection. The less-than-perfect had been left outside the iron gates with the less-than-perfect world. He spoke as if no suicide had occurred the day before.

  The power of his voice, his words, captured Vern’s thoughts, making her agree silently to try to achieve perfection. She did not want to fail her Lord.

  She went to breakfast in a sort of daze. The oatmeal she was given was cold, but she ate it as if it were hot and honey sweet. She left the house and walked along the border of the orchards to the village and her job. Every question she had seemed frozen, impenetrable, and farther away all the time; so many things she could not ask.

  The hard work began. She started a fire in the hearth, and when it was going, she filled one kettle halfway with water and hung it on one of the hooks. Into the other she scooped great gobs of tallow from one of the barrels. It sizzled and stank, but at least it hadn’t turned rancid.

  She scalded and skimmed the tallow alternatively, added her other ingredients, and poured the mixture off. With it still warm, she carried the vessel, a smaller kettle, to the molds with their ready wicks, and poured. Wax splashed out over the edge of the mold, but she filled all twenty-four of them. She remembered that she lacked enough nails to pour the other molds. She put the kettle back on the fire and went out in search of some.

  The logical place to start seemed to be the ironsmith’s. She crossed the street. Away from the fires, she felt cold, and was gathering her shawl about her, when someone said, “Good morning, missus.” She jumped at the simple words, found a woman her own age smiling pleasantly at her from a doorway. She nodded an answer but skittered away.

  The sound of a hammer clanging against an anvil directed her to the smith. He was hammering on a red-hot bar, but he stopped when she entered the wide door. He was smaller than she’d expected, short in stature, but his shoulders and arms were rounded and thick. He had a curly beard that split into two points, and he held a mallet in one hand and a set of tongs holding the bar in the other, looking for all the world like someone out of myth, like Vulcan in his element. He wished her a good morning.

  Vern explained her need for nails or something to tie the wicks around. He pointed toward the back of the stable and told her, “I toss ’em back there, the ones that bust or get crooked. You’ll find plenty in the dirt if you kick it around. If they’re too bent up, I can straighten ’em well enough in a jiffy.”

  She walked to the back and hunted around. Some were easy to see, but she pushed her foot through the loose dirt and straw to turn up more. As he’d said, there were more than she could use.

  The smith said to her, “So you’re taking over the candling. That’s a lot of work for just one woman. Them kettles is a heavy thing to carry when full.”

  “I know. Maybe if they get too heavy, I can ask you to help?”

  He got shy then and tugged a little on his beard, and said, “I’d be most honored to, miss.”

  She collected her nails and started to leave, but then thought to ask, “What were the people like, the couple who were your chandlers before?”

  “Oh, young James and Adele was a decent pair. He was as mad in love with her as you can imagine. They’d got hitched not so long before they come here, so you’d a been surprised if they didn’t act like two lovebirds most of the time.”

  “They died?”

  “Well, yes, that is, he did.” He set down his mallet and rubbed his hands together, then looked at the palm of one as if to read the lines in it. “Hanged himself.”

  “That’s how he killed himself?”

  “Off the bridge across the gorge. Jumped straight into it with a noose tied to the rail.”

  “What happened to…Adele?”

  “Don’t know. We sent someone to the ladies’ side to fetch her and she was gone. Never did find her. We thought awhile that he’d thrown her down into the pit ahead of him, but nobody found anything of her. That poor James, he was just a fresh kid. It didn’t make sense, he’d do that.”

  “Did he—did he leave a note?”

  The smith shook his head. “Didn’t need one. He’d told us all, for days before. Said over and over that the Dark Angel was comin’ on him. We didn’t know he meant anything. You know?” He picked up his mallet again and swung it down abruptly onto the rod on top of the anvil. She assumed that meant the conversation was at an end, and turned to go. Behind her, he said, “James, he said Adele’d become the angel’s bride, so that she didn’t see him, her own husband, anymore even when they was together. It grieved the reverend fierce when James did it. He just doted on them two, he did.”

  The loud clang of hammer on metal that punctuated the statement made her jump as she emerged on the street.

  With the wicks tied to crooked nails, Vern skimmed the liquid again, then took the kettle off the fire. She would do that all day long now—move the pot off and on, heating it, then cooling it and reheating it, all in the attempt to keep it at just the right consistency.

  She poured the molds first, three more sets of twenty-four. The first one wasn’t cool enough yet to plunge into the vat of hot water, to release the candles from the mold.

  She set the kettle on the table below the rods, unlooped the rope tied round a cleat on the wall, and carefully lowered the rods until the first two wicks plunged into the kettle. After a few moments she drew them out, looped the rope around the cleat again, and moved the kettle into position beneath the next wick. Then she lowered the contraption again. She repeated this process until all thirty wicks had been dipped once. Then she began again.

  It took a dozen dippings for the candles to reach the size she wanted. She had to return the kettle to the fire repeatedly to keep its contents liquid enough. She was exhausted from the repetitive process, but she was also proud of what she had made: They were all long and tapering, just the sorts of candles to line the Hall of Worship; and none of them had cracked. She had gone slowly enough and kept the tallow hot.

  Now Vern took the molds and plunged them into hot water. It splashed and stung her hand, but she held on. Quickly she withdrew them and turned the mold upside down, allowing the briefly heated candles to slide out. She repeated the plunging with the other molds. She collected one of the boxes stacked up against the wall. It had compartments built into it into which she could slide the candles, once she had trimmed the excess tallow off them.

  Soon she had filled the box and started on another. The boxes would go into a cold cellar room until the candles were needed. She supposed they wouldn’t remain stored for very long, the way they used them here.

  Only three of the mold candles cracked. She tossed the pieces back into the barrel of tallow, and hung wicks again for the next day. Her back and arms ached from all the lifting she’d done. Her feet, too. She had been standing the entire afternoon, but she was quite pleased: She had made over a hundred candles, surely enough to light the whole of Harbinger for a few days.

  She ate supper as always with a roomful of people who said nothing to one another. She was beginning to recognize them now—the man with the huge gray mustache in the style of a teamster, and maybe he’d been one; the woman with the nose that had been broken and badly set; and the other one, the blotchy one who’d not let her eat with the first shift. Eventually she thought she might recognize them all. She looked for the little girl who’d been so nice to her, but didn’t see her.

  She retired to her room in exhaustion and dismay, too
tired to be more fearful, stoked the fire, then sat on the commode chair and tried to watch the door. The egg she took from a deep pocket in her skirt and placed on the small table beside her. It had reverted to being just an egg, a smooth piece of stone, and not the sexual icon of her dreams. She closed her eyes for a moment, and reenvisioned herself on the bed, withered like a desiccated toad, and had to shake the image out of her head.

  She needed to stay awake until Elias put in an appearance tonight. The things they must discuss should not be allowed to fester. But her eyes refused to stay open. They ached and wanted only to close, and finally she capitulated, closing them again.

  At some point she sensed herself transported to the bed. The air took her. She floated. She opened her eyes, or dreamed that she did, to watch the ceiling pass above her, then the canopy of the bed, glanced at herself to find her body nude above the sheets; but where was he who carried her? There were only tendrils of smoke in the air from the fire. His voice whispered in her ear: “How is my little egg?” Her body settled, pressed down into the bed. She couldn’t see him anywhere until she happened to glance into the mirror on her right. In the mirror she lay beneath him. He was inside her and hidden at the same time. “Vern,” he said. His whisper plucked at her. She shifted her hips, laid her head back, and succumbed to pleasure. There was more of it than she could stand. It split her open.

  The fire died as if doused, and blackness consumed her.

  When she woke it was morning and she was on the bed again, exactly as she’d dreamed. She moved, and felt something cold between her legs. She reached down but knew already it was the egg lying there.

  After his sermon that morning, Vern approached her husband. “My nights are not happy, Elias,” she told him.

  “My dear, I do so understand,” he said, instantly conciliatory. “I’ve been so busy that I’m exhausted at night, I fear. I’ve meant to look in on you, but have dozed and then discovered that it’s far too late—”

  “What do you mean? Are you saying you haven’t visited my chambers?”

  “Of course. Isn’t that why your evenings aren’t satisfactory?”

  “I—no. That’s not it at all.”

  “Then I’m afraid I do not understand. I’ve been neglecting you, my dear, which is wrong of me. But you know that we’re soon to leave here for a campaign to bring in more souls, and the preparations for that are so all-consuming—that and guiding my flock toward their inevitable destiny. I must come and visit you in your shop. We’ll dine together at midday. Yes, let’s do that.” He took her hand, then remarked, “That’s why I gave you the little egg, you know, so that you would have at least something of me with you when I’m not here, when you’re all by yourself.”

  She wanted to call him a liar, make him confess the truth. Did he think to deceive her into believing she was dreaming her nocturnal encounters, that she stripped herself and aroused herself? But she remembered where she’d found the egg, and the implication made her blush. She didn’t dare tell him.

  He saw the color in her cheeks and asked her what it meant.

  She tried to think of a way to explain. Whatever she said, it would sound ridiculous or mad—either she was inventing events, or else night after night he was emerging like a vapor from that smooth white marble.

  He squeezed her shoulder and said, “Never mind, we can discuss it later. For now you must go have your meal. There’s not time. At noon, we’ll talk about it.”

  By noon, she had concluded there was no possible way for her to explain, for she was already doubting herself. In any case, Reverend Fitcher diverted the conversation to other pressing matters almost the moment he arrived, and finally she said nothing and walked away.

  The nocturnal pattern established itself. No matter how hard she tried to remain awake, after her day of laboring with kettles and molds, she soon fell into exhausted sleep. Elias came to her only in her dreams, which became more and more formless, until after a few weeks she could no longer distinguish them, spending her nights in charged slumbers, fueled by carnal sensation, awaking each morning to a glimmering of having been violated, but without the memory of how. She was terrified at first. She intended to petition to go home to her family, but never did. Something else was happening to Vern.

  Every morning the egg lay in her bed with her, giving every evidence of having been inside her body, though she remembered nearly nothing of her night. Her hips, which had ached at first, seemed now to have no memory of being abused. Sometimes when she picked the egg up, she was overcome by desire so intense it seemed she’d burst into flame, and she lay back again, her hands coming together beneath the sheets, until she’d taken herself straight into the fire. Each day as instructed she brought the egg with her, and in her pocket it burned a little more than the previous day. She never said anything because, finally, she came to desire the touch of it more than anything else. Even had she wanted to, she couldn’t have left it behind. She never knew when Elias would appear and ask to see it. Sometimes he would sit beside her at lunch, and without a word she would hand it to him and he would pass it from hand to hand before returning it to her, and then take his leave. It would be incendiary then. His touch had increased the charge.

  Vern no longer cared that no one spoke to her. She forgot about her unease among her husband’s worshippers, about her family, about Henri back in Boston. She worked through the day making as many candles as she could, and every aspect of her chores seemed only to heighten her stimulation while moving her into the heart of arousal. When the tallow ran out, she used spermaceti, the smell of which was salty and marine, and she half dreamed of eels and fish as she worked. She could be incited by the sight of pouring wax or of the candles themselves as they slid out of their molds. The dipped ones she made thicker, wondering would anyone notice. All the while, the egg touched her, drove her, conquered her. There seemed no longer to be a moment in the day when she wasn’t thinking about sex with her husband—or more correctly, with his smoky shade. More people arrived at Harbinger, and she was introduced to the arrivals as Reverend Fitcher’s wife; dutifully she attended ceremonies and services in the Hall of Worship, but all the while she was imagining the things he must do with her while she slept. How she kept herself from flying to pieces, she did not know. Lust came in waves, crashing upon her, stealing the sand of her substance little by little. Finally too much of it.

  She woke one morning too ill to work. She shook with chills and ached in every joint of her body. She didn’t attend the sermon, couldn’t get up to go to breakfast.

  One of the other women arrived finally to inquire if she was all right. Upon seeing her, the woman fled, returning with Elias. He expressed concern for her health, and promised that she would be looked after every moment of the day and night until she had recovered.

  After that, she was never left alone. Two women sat with her. Their names were Emily and Margaretta. Emily had hair red as sunset, and Vern found herself fixating upon it. She may have told Emily she wanted her hair, but couldn’t be certain if this was spoken or only thought.

  The egg—taken from her—sat across the room on the card table, drawing her thoughts, her desire like venom. Emily often sat beside it, and maybe that was how she came to link the two things, the hair and the egg. Elias would arrive from time to time and ask after her, brush his hand through her hair, kiss her tenderly on the cheek. At one point, in a delirium, she wrapped her arms around him and tried to pull him into the bed with her, announcing everything she planned to do with him—all of it borrowed from what she thought he’d done with her already. She wanted to show him her body, tried to tear off her gown. She cried, “Get me her hair, and I can be any woman you want!” She reached for Emily, who kept her distance. Margaretta, dark and usually stern, flushed with embarrassment and looked elsewhere. Fitcher extricated himself and backed away in apparent horror.

  “Why won’t you come to my bed?” she demanded to know. “I want you in it. You make me like this—you and your sli
ppery little battery. Get in with me!” Instead, Emily and Margaretta closed in and restrained her. She thrashed and snarled, demanded they let her get rid of her clothes so he could have her awake the way he used her while she slept. The women held her down until she sagged, enervated, lost in a fog again. She heard Margaretta say, “She is teuflisch, ja.”

  When her fever broke, it shattered the looping frenzy of desire as well. She had been without the egg for four days. Separation weaned her from its power. On her bed, her head propped up, she glanced weakly across at it. Her eyes ached too much to stare. They felt as sunken as the gorge beyond the gate, but when she opened them, they always flitted back to it. Finally, hardly daring to breathe, she asked Margaretta to give it to her. No one had touched it until then.

  Margaretta, whose severe face reminded her of Lavinia, regarded the egg in her hand as if it were a worm, a slug. She held it out with her head craned away. Hungrily, Vern snatched it from her palm. It was cold, however. No energy lay within. It was just a piece of marble. She could not help but wonder if it had ever been anything else. The sexual power it had manifested seemed no longer to exist and she couldn’t clear her thoughts enough to recall how it had consumed her.

  She curled up in a ball around the egg and fell asleep. She dreamed of a forest. Both her sisters were there, darting from tree to tree, playing hide-and-go-seek, and the harder she tried to find them, the more cleverly they hid, until she had been led into the wilderness.

  Sixteen

  MR. CHARTER AND LAVINIA were driven home from the afternoon sermon they’d attended.

  They had walked to Harbinger after lunch, which they sometimes did, leaving the girls in charge of the pike. The girls were expected to read their Bibles to each other while they sat, and not get into any mischief. Amy was also in charge of cooking the meal, and so left Kate from time to time on her own. The whole afternoon was uninterrupted by travelers.