Fitcher's Brides

by Gregory Frost

  She got up to finish undressing.

  Kate asked, “Amy, has he—has he said anything about Vern? Anything at all?”

  Amy felt a slight spark of anger that Kate could still be worried about Vern after what she had just revealed about herself; but she bit it off and instead only replied, “No, he hasn’t.” She didn’t add that she hadn’t asked him anything, and had no plans to do so. Vern was the princess in the tower, the one who’d gotten the “happily ever after,” and Amy was not going to risk any of her own happiness in order to worry about her.

  Seventeen

  VERN HAD BARELY RECOVERED from her illness when Fitcher announced he would be traveling to Pittsburgh on his new campaign. He came to her with this news as she lay upon her bed, still too weak to be about, and tended to by the same two women. The white marble egg lay in the bedclothes beside her. Its powers lost, it had become a strange source of security for her. Keeping it in sight proved to her that events that otherwise might have been imaginary had happened. Its perfect hardness was something she could hold on to. She could enclose it, hide it in her cupped hands, cling to it in the sea of sheets. She feared, if she lost the egg now, she would lose her mind as well.

  “Your father goes with me as I asked him to,” Fitcher told her, “and I expect you to run things here at Harbinger while I and my crusaders are gone.” It was a lot to ask of her, he admitted. He wasn’t expecting her to conduct sermons or occupy his duties as the pastor of their church—which, really, he couldn’t have countenanced since she was a woman. She must help the new arrivals. There were sure to be many; all in need of lodging, of some job to do. She was to introduce them to other members of the community. “It will occupy your time as well. You must strive to deny these feelings of lust that poured from you while you were ill.”

  Vern stared accusingly at him. Did he think she was a fool? Did he think the fever had confused her to such an extent that she didn’t know what he had done to her before it had struck? She’d had time to work out how she’d been manipulated, maneuvered, blocked at every turn. She vowed then never to let him touch her again, even if she had to stick a pin in herself all night to keep awake. With him gone, she would have time to build a bulwark against him. When he returned, he would find her as obdurate as his egg.

  He noted, “Emily and Margaretta both heard the terrible things you said, and I fear they’ve reported what they heard to others—as I warned you once, the dormitories are nothing but dens of gossip. Of course, everyone knows you were not responsible for the delusions. It was the fever. I delivered a sermon just the other morning on when we are and are not accountable for our actions, and who has any right to cast blame. It’s understood that you were not accountable. Still, I want you to be aware—some will talk about you, dearest Vern, regardless of my remonstrations.” He stepped forward to touch her hair, and she shrank back.

  Fitcher lowered his hand, studied his fingers. “I see. You believe even as you recover that I am the fiend you dreamed up in your sickness. I see that distance will be a tonic. When I’ve been gone a few weeks, I hope you’ll recover your reason, and try to see me in a better light. There was a point, I must tell you, when we were all gravely concerned that you had succumbed to the fires of your illness and would have to be sent away, to a hospital for the insane. It was not a happy prospect, for any of us, least of all me.” He smiled but his brow was furrowed to show her how grave her situation had been, how close she’d come to being committed.

  Her purpose stumbled with that revelation. He was reminding her how easily he could dispense with her. He would only have to say she’d gone mad and let the witnesses do the rest.

  “I hope, when I return, you will be able to embrace me with open arms, and then perhaps we can consummate our holy marriage properly.”

  “Consummate?” What did he mean? Did he think she could forget the first night? She hadn’t been asleep on that occasion.

  “Why, yes. Again, I bear the blame. I was so busy that I postponed and postponed until, really, it was past forgiving. I confess that I suspected you of consorting with others in our flock—oh, yes, the jealousy of a weak man, but I am a weak man, and there you were in dishabille in the men’s dormitory where no woman is ever to set foot, and my thoughts ran to such dark misgivings of your character for which I entreat you to forgive me. We do not know one another, you and I, though we’re married. Truly, I feared to lose you before the appointed day of the Lord’s arrival. And then, finally, you fell ill. I hold myself responsible entirely for my early inattentiveness. If only I’d come to you and performed as a proper husband should, perhaps you wouldn’t have become so obsessed with coupling that it manifested in your illness in so—so unspeakable a manner. It’s my fault, Vernelia. I’m a man who lost sight of what was close to him while so focused upon the well-being of the larger group, acting for the greater good but not for his own. Please, can you forgive me for my blindness?”

  She sat still a moment, but finally, slowly nodded her head, more as if to say “We’ll see” than in accord. Oh, he spoke cleverly, his words looped around and around her, one story fitting so neatly upon another that she should go dizzy and comply. Assuage his guilt. Promise to be the wife he implied she was not.

  Part of her did want everything he had done to become a dream, a nightmare she could dismiss and elude. She desired a normal life, which made her want him to provide one. Him, the villain. She would not be persuaded otherwise.

  “Well,” he said. “When I come back, we’ll begin again, just like the newlyweds we are.” He smiled. “I will make it up to you, dear Vern. After all, we shall enter the Kingdom together, and after that, everything will be changed. Now, however, I must take my leave of you, and you must suffer a few more rules.” He stood and withdrew from his coat the ring of keys he’d shown her once before.

  “These are the keys to every door in this house and across our utopia. You can go anywhere, open up any room as is necessitated by circumstance, for who can say what you’ll need to do while in charge? But”—he slid his fingers around the one key that was unlike any of the others, the glass one she had noticed the first time he showed her the keys—“this one opens a room that’s completely private, a sanctum sanctorum belonging only to me. I tell you, go wherever you like across Harbinger save for this one room. Do not use this key.” And then he held the ring out to her in such a way that to grab it she had to take hold of the queer and forbidden glass key itself. When she grabbed hold of it, he did not immediately release his grip. For a moment longer the ring bound them.

  He said, “There now. And do take care of my little egg while I’m gone.” Glancing at her hand wrapped around the blade of the key, he smiled thoughtfully. “You will keep it with you wherever you go?”

  “Of course,” she said.

  “Good. Do these things, and I shall be the happiest of husbands upon my return.”

  He leaned down and kissed her tenderly on the cheek. She twitched at the smell of him, the scent of that pomade she’d come to know even in slumber, the smell forever a part of her violation. He pressed her hand between his own and stepped back, drawing her arm up until her fingers slid from between his and dropped again to the bed. His teeth flashed within the blue-blackness of his beard. He stepped out the door.

  Only then did she realize that she was gripping the glass key so hard it had left an imprint in her palm. The key must have been carved by the same person who’d created the glass skull of Christ on the altar, because the bow of the key was a miniature of that skull. This led her to conclude that it must open something on the altar—possibly some hidden compartment inside the pulpit. She determined she would investigate first thing after he’d gone. Not use the key? How could she not when he had forced it upon her? She tucked the keys beside the egg, curled up, and went back to sleep. It would be weeks before Elias Fitcher returned. The National Road didn’t go as far as Pittsburgh. He would have to travel over rough land. Before he came back, she swore, she would find a
way out of his utopia, and she would know the truth about him.

  She woke and was all alone. It was late afternoon and sunlight made the curtains beyond her head glow molten gold. She lay still and listened to the silence of her room, the distant asymmetrical roar of wind outside, the little creaks of the house; but no voices. No echoes of people. She supposed she had been left unattended quite a bit while she was ill—she certainly would never have noticed—and now they all thought she had recovered. Even Elias had more or less said so.

  He would have put me in an asylum.

  The thought shouted in the silence. Married—how long now, a month, possibly two? Or was it longer? She didn’t know, and realized she’d lost all track of time even before the fever had struck her down. She tried to sort it out, make sense of it, but everything melted together. The days of working, sweating in the tiny shop as she poured candles, dipped candles, twisted wicks and more wicks, emptied one barrel of collected grease and opened another, till her back and arms ached and she no longer knew how many she’d made, if it was dinner or supper’s bell she heard. The days seemed to stretch backward into infinity, as if she’d never done anything else. There must have been Sundays, days of rest, but she couldn’t recall any. Her life before Harbinger had become a memory borrowed from some other person’s past. She’d fallen into the work to hide from herself and from the sense of being kept apart from everything, ostracized by the community, though they hadn’t done so openly. Now it all rushed in upon her again. She had set out to lose herself and had accomplished it well. It might be May or June, even July. She had no idea at all.

  She sat up and looked past the foot of the bed. There was no fire in the hearth nor evidence of embers, and she couldn’t remember the last time there had been one. She could not say with any surety that there’d been fires during or after her illness…it was after now, wasn’t it?

  She assured herself that it was. She was herself again and no longer the puppet of a supernatural force, some incubus.

  “Incubus.” She spoke the word aloud without realizing. The sound of her voice startled her.

  Despite the obviousness of the idea, it hadn’t occurred to her. What if Elias was telling the truth that he’d never visited her? What if some demon—but no, his words were intended to deceive her, another knot he hoped she wouldn’t master. She remembered him, after that first horrible night, remembered his arm as he leaned on the newel post in the dormitory, remembered the scratches on his arm that she’d made. It had been he and no other demon. No one would believe her. If Emily and Margaretta had gossiped, they would think her mad.

  She was not mad. She would show them they were wrong.

  Vern threw back the covers to climb out of bed, and saw the egg lying upon the mattress, shiny and white. Beside it were the keys to Harbinger.

  She picked up the egg and cupped it in her palm. It was nothing extraordinary any longer, just white marble shot with blue veins like a deformed eye. It held no power over her, if it ever had.

  Standing, she clutched the nearest pillar of the bed frame; her head spun. The room threatened to tip, but didn’t quite. She waited for the sensation to pass before she dressed.

  Her clothes felt loose, as though she’d shrunk. Her ribs showed. Between working and the fever, she must have lost a good deal of weight. Her waist was tight and narrow. Her unmentionables could have rotated around her hips.

  The light blue dress she picked had a pocket sewn into the frilled bodice, between her breasts, designed for keeping a fan or handkerchief. She took the egg and put it in there; she would keep it with her as he’d requested. The last thing she would have was someone reporting back to him that she had not done as he ordered, had not kept the egg on her at every moment.

  She put on her white slippers, the ones they’d bought for her wedding, and after tying the ribbons around her ankles, she took her keys and went out.

  In the hallway she stood awhile, listening. The house was so quiet that if she strained hard to hear, she could imagine catching the slightest wisps of whispering. She walked down to the landing and surveyed the foyer, as empty as the day she’d first set eyes on Harbinger. She glanced at the chandelier, at candles no doubt of her own making. She descended.

  Like the foyer, the Hall of Worship was empty. Vern cautiously closed the door and crept along to the arch. She peered in. The Christ skull leered upon the altar. The dried gourds and cornstalks had been removed; now the altar was covered in a mantle of crimson velvet. Deep red filled the orbits and recesses of the skull.

  She walked down the aisle. Prismatic beams of afternoon light reached from the small stained-glass windows to the dais. Vern circled it. The rear of the pulpit revealed two steps up to the platform on which Elias stood as he preached. A shelf near the top held a silver chamber candlestick and douter. She climbed up the steps, crouching and peering over every inch of the ornately turned wood, the embedded bone crosses and ornaments. She could identify where he placed his hands while he preached, by the smoothness of the wood. There was no hidden door, nor a keyhole of any sort. Her glass key did not fit anything here.

  She stood upright in the pulpit and overlooked the room, imagining what it must be like to stand before a roomful of people, commanding their attention, directing them, having them hang upon your every word. But she could think of nothing to say to the vacant pews and got down.

  Walking back up the aisle, she glanced at the windows, recalling how on the day of her wedding she could see the silhouettes of people milling about outside the chapel. Now no one stood there.

  The dining hall was deserted, as well. She wondered how many people could have gone off with him? Surely not everyone. And in fact she could smell food being prepared in the kitchen beyond. She ought to go and help out, as kitchen duties must now be shared by fewer people, and so each dinner shift must change. It wasn’t near dinnertime yet—the clock on the landing had shown the time at half past three. Nevertheless she left convinced that everyone was hiding from her.

  It’s like a dream, she thought, where you search and search but never find what you want, and something always seems to be moving where you aren’t looking.

  Vern exited to the back porch. She faced the house, keys in her hand. One of them must lock up the outside doors. She looked at the lock in front of her and tried to find a key that looked as if it matched. It took her a while to find the one that fit that door. She walked the length of the porch then, locking and unlocking the doors—the same key fit all of them.

  Elias hadn’t said directly, but she supposed she was responsible for locking up the house at night. But did he lock it? Was the house ever locked up? Just because there was a key to a door didn’t mean it should be locked. Who would it be locked against?

  She left off pondering and stood awhile against the rail. Out across a landscape burnt orange by the sun, she could see people at work on the far side of the orchard. They might have been tilling. Just the sight of them put her heart at ease: She had not been abandoned.

  She climbed down and set off for Harbinger village.

  Her path was indirect—she wanted to see someone else up close, and there was a cluster of people standing about the newly turned fields. She wandered over to them and bid them all a good afternoon. They smiled and welcomed her in the usual, traditional manner. Beyond the greeting no one had anything to say. Their attention returned to the tilling and planting as if they anticipated something exciting was about to happen in the soil at any moment. Vern watched them until she understood that none of it included her. She continued on her way. Those nearest bid her farewell, as if she were about to travel far from them.

  The candle shop stood in the shadows of the buildings across the lane. There were no lights within—no one else had taken over her duties. She could not remember in what state she’d left it. What she found stunned her. The shop was stacked full of boxes, and each of them contained dozens of candles packed in straw. There might have been a thousand candles in the boxes in
that room. Half-finished candles still dangled by their looped wicks from the ceiling rack. She touched one of them, her fingers sliding down the greasiness of it. Grease had pooled on the table below, and the candle was too spindly to be useful. The kettle, half full of congealed spermaceti, stood at one end of the table. She must have abandoned the work after only a few dippings.

  The molds were all full. She hadn’t put away the last batch she’d made. Maybe she’d been unable to find a box. She couldn’t remember where she’d found all of the others stacked here. Had the cooper made them for her? She didn’t remember asking him, although she remembered a face that she thought was his.

  She had thought until then that she would return to her duties; now she saw how unnecessary that was. There were months and months worth of candles here—enough to last the summer. No wonder she’d caught a fever. She had exhausted herself.

  The bell sounded at the house, calling the community to dinner. How many shifts would there be now? Even if she couldn’t eat during the first shift, she wanted to see how many people were on hand. She left the shop and the duties of candle-making behind.

  Tomorrow, she would explore Harbinger itself. The utopia was huge. Vast. Elias had said as much. She closed her hand around the ring of keys. She intended to go everywhere.

  Eighteen

  VERN TOOK HER MEAL IN A half-filled dining hall. The shifts, it seemed, were running as always, only with fewer people. The system had been determined without her participation, despite Elias’s assertion that she was in charge. The emptiness of the refectory suggested that a hundred or more must have accompanied him. During the meal she knew better than to ask—no one would have answered her.

  Afterward, she assisted in the kitchen, washing dishes and utensils in a large tin sink filled with water that had been heated to near-boiling on the stove. A slight, older woman named Sarah worked beside her. When she asked how many had gone, Sarah answered that she didn’t know, because they’d been gathered from all over the whole of Harbinger and she hadn’t been on hand to see them leave. “Took my Daniel, though,” she added proudly. “It’s a rare and special thing to go with the reverend. Rare and special.” By implication neither she nor Vern could consider themselves special. One of the men, overhearing, told her it had been “’bout a hundred,” but he was contradicted by both Sarah and another woman, Sarah insisting it hadn’t been more than half that—“no, only the very special, like my Daniel”—and the other woman saying it was at least two hundred.