The last one on the right was a smaller door than the rest, as to a cupboard. This end of the hall was too dark, however, for her to make out anything distinct. She tried the key she’d used for the other doors along that side, and it was too large to fit.
Once again, she held the keys up one at a time against the brightness emerging from between the now distant drapes; but even that didn’t help her much. It was certainly not the lock for the glass key. It would, she suspected, prove to be a cupboard.
She stepped back, leaning to steady herself against what she thought was solid wall, and nearly toppled backward. Quickly she caught herself, stumbling.
She squinted into the gloom. The hall’s end was not a wall. A vertical line of casing was just visible as a stripe that wasn’t quite as dark as that which lay in the center. She reached out, touching it, touching stone. And in that black center, what seemed like blank wall was in fact a recess. She dared to stick her hand into the darkness, touching nothing. The air was much colder, though, as if a draft flowed up through the floorboards. She edged forward, hand extended, until she touched the door.
It had to be black, because she could see nothing of it. Her fingers felt inset panels slick with a rime of ice, the spade shape of a large hinge, and across from it the lock stile and handle and keyhole. When her hand passed before the keyhole something flashed. She moved her hand back, watching a point of light flow across her palm. Crouching down, she peered into the keyhole.
It was a large hole, but afforded her nothing more than a nondescript view of something bright with reflected color—the lip of something, a bathtub perhaps.
She took hold of the handle to stand. It was thin and elegant, knurled, and icy cold. She snatched back her hand, placed it against her breast, and felt the lump of the egg there. The air seemed to come alive with a tiny whispering voice that she knew was only in her head—an interior voice compelling her, urging her.
Would this give her the access to the pyramid or let her into the secret rooms her husband kept? Instinct told her which key to use. It was obvious. It had to be that key.
She remembered what her husband had said. She knew he didn’t want her to enter his private domain: the chamber of Elias Fitcher. The truth of him. But all the admonishments in the world couldn’t have kept Vern from fitting the shaft of that key into that hole. It slid in as if the one fluidly embraced the other. Turned and pushed the mechanism with such lubricated slyness that she hardly felt the bolt release. Standing in that cold spot, as the door inched inward she sighed, and it seemed the door was hissing at her, releasing a kept atmosphere around her, drawing her in, her hand upon the handle as if frozen to the metal, unable to release it, unable any longer to escape her fate.
Light spilled down just inside the doorway, a wedge of brightness casting everything behind it into murkiness. The air from the hall collided with the chill in the chamber and produced a mist, a sparkling, smoky membrane before her.
The colors and light came from a large stained-glass panel fitted into the ceiling. It showed Adam and Eve standing on either side of the tree of knowledge, with the serpent, as large as either of them, entwined around its trunk. The heads of the figures were almost directly above hers. Eve’s eyes were cast down. Adam stared across at her in judgment. The serpent, its head bowed, eyed her sidelong with heavy-lidded mockery. The tip of its tail was curled around her ankle.
What Vern had seen through the keyhole was the lip of a large bronze cauldron. Raised figures decorated the side of it, but she couldn’t make them out too well and drew closer.
Peripherally, she noticed on the far wall shapes like canvas sacks or animal carcasses. Now she could see the cauldron better. Along the side of it, human forms in bas-relief wrapped around each other. Large heads with long snouts and round eyes, more animal than human, pushed out from between the figures. There seemed to be lines of text here and there as well but in a language she couldn’t identify. Grabbing the lip, she knelt and looked at them closely. The figures might have been intertwined sexually except that many looked to be in agony. Heads were thrown back, mouths gaped in silent cries, and the bodies were contorted. She pulled herself up. The mist had thinned. Vern looked straight across the room at the shapes hanging on the wall.
There were four of them. They were women’s torsos.
The heads and limbs had been hacked off. Two hung upside down, robbed of context, dehumanized into things so abstract that at first she could not comprehend what she was seeing; her revulsion grew slowly, and then it became too awful, too horrible to see, and she had to look away.
She looked down. Into the cauldron.
It was half full of liquid, a red-stained solution. In the center, four hands stuck out like little trees planted in a circle. Something like moss was tangled in the decaying finger branches. It was hair—hair strung from beneath the surface of the solution, strung from the most terrible sight of all. From severed heads.
There were four of them, too, all women. Hair of gold and red and black waved like seaweed below the surface. Through the strands the stare of milky eyes met hers. The eyes were all pale marbles, dead as stones. The mouth of the nearest was open as if to say “Oh,” as if death had come as a tiny surprise.
Vern dropped the key ring.
The instant she let go she knew it. The keys fell and she lunged to grab them, catching them just above the bloody surface. Only the glass key, longer than the rest, dipped for an instant into the imbruement. Ripples raced away from it. The marble egg slid from the pocket between her breasts. She sensed it happening, collapsed her arm, and bent almost double to trap it. Cold fingers poked at her cheek. She trapped the egg in the crook of her elbow, curled her hand, and clutched it to her breasts. The contents of the jostled cauldron splashed against the side. One single sanguinary drop spattered the egg.
Vern flung herself away from the cauldron and out of the chamber, across a floor soaked in blood. She realized it would be on the bottoms of her slippers. She stumbled out, keys in one hand, egg in the other, then leaned against the thick jamb and trembled. Her teeth began to chatter, from cold or terror or both. She had to close the door but couldn’t make herself set down either of her possessions.
Eventually she made herself turn back, reach back into the room, and hook her fingers over the handle without letting go the keys. They rattled against the black surface as she pulled the door closed. With palsied hands she scraped the key over the stile again and again until she thought the hole must have closed up, disappeared—she would never be able to find the lock. Then the key inserted. She turned it and shot the bolt.
She tore it free and backed into the hall a few steps. She wanted to run, but knew she mustn’t.
Placing the egg on the floor, she carefully undid the ribbons on her ankles and kicked off one slipper and then the other. She collected the shoes and the egg once more. Then, in her torn stockings she ran.
She only glimpsed the doors as she flew by them. The pounding of her feet must have thundered into every room, but no door opened. No one leaped out to stop her.
Down the precarious stairwell, she pressed against the rail. At every moment she might have fallen.
The second floor remained deserted. Outside her own room she took an eternity finding the right key. One-handed, she kept trying to flip them around the ring to try another, but either the lock had changed shape or she was frantically trying the same key over and over, and finally she had to drop the egg into the pocket between her breasts and use both hands. She quickly found the right one. By then she was whining with fear.
She opened the door and all but fell inside, slammed and locked it after her, then stood pressed against it as if she might melt into the wood.
Twenty
IN THE AFTERMATH OF DISCOVERY, her terror grew steel wings, lifting her above her fear. She looked down on all she had to do to protect herself.
The first thing was to clean up. She dropped the key and the egg in her basin and poured wa
ter over them. Blood leaked in tendrils off the key, turning the water pinkish. She wiped off the keys and egg and set them on her commode table.
Then armed with menstrual rags and a candle, she carried the basin to the third floor. Barefoot now, she hunted down the traces of her transgression. She found footprints outside the room and scrubbed them away, being careful not to kneel in others as she worked. She made sure she missed nothing. A part of her had broken free from the terrified girl at her core. Most important of all, she must feign complete innocence and give neither the community nor her husband cause to suspect that she knew the enormity of his secret. She wondered, did any others know? Those men who lived on the third floor—they must know. His inner circle, surely, acted as guardians of his crimes.
She rinsed the rags in her basin, emptied the water into her chamber pot, and carried that to the outhouse, where she poured the evidence into the pit. That the rags might bear traces of blood wouldn’t matter. It was expected.
The key had cleaned up well. Only the tip of it had submerged. Nevertheless, she obsessively went through the entire ring key by key to make sure she hadn’t missed anything.
The egg had only one spot on it—a pink circle no larger than the nail of her little finger where blood had spattered; but even with soaking this blemish would not come out. It was as if the stone had absorbed the color. All the rubbing and polishing she did failed to remove it entirely.
She stole a boar’s bristle brush from the kitchen and scrubbed the egg to no avail. The spot remained. She resolved finally that nothing could be done about it, and she must simply be careful how she showed it to Fitcher. He was bound to ask her for it. If she held it right, he might never notice. And if he did see it, she would say it was her own blood.
After that, she remained in her room, awake through the night, unable to do more than doze in the chair. The keys and egg stayed in her pockets. The candle at her side finally exhausted, but by then the grayness of dawn was bleeding into the chamber.
She went down to breakfast, nodding to those who greeted her, trying for all the world to seem unperturbed. For once she was glad they didn’t speak during the meal. Surreptitiously, she glanced at them to make sure no one was observing her oddly, no one acting as if anything out of the ordinary might be going on; some of them did seem to be eyeing her askance, and quickly looking away if she noticed. One little girl stared straight at her. It was the child who’d led her to dinner on her first day. They shared a smile; her own surely looked strained; but seeing the girl caused Vern’s face to flush with heat as if she were about to cry.
Scanning all their faces, she tried to identify who she could trust, and who looked as if they knew his secret. It was impossible. Would anyone know? She thought if she could find Lanny Gibbons, he might help her; but she’d no idea where he was, what his job was here in the community. She must find a way to get out of here before Fitcher returned. She must have days if not weeks left. If her father came to a sermon—but no, he’d gone with Fitcher, hadn’t he? He wouldn’t come. Kate, though—mightn’t Kate come to a Sunday sermon? Or even Amy. God, let them bring the wagon. She would hide in the back of it. But could she wait for them? How many nights could she go without any sleep?
All through the meal her mind whirled through escapes. Then afterward, in the kitchen, Sarah came up to her, saying, “Child, you look peaked this morning. But your hair—why, how did that happen?”
“I’m sorry?” She put a hand to her hair—she hadn’t even thought to arrange it. She’d been too absorbed in all the other details.
“Were you struck by lightning?”
When it was clear that Vern didn’t understand, Sarah hauled her over in front of a glass cabinet door where she could see herself reflected. Sarah pointed: On the right side of Vern’s head, a shock of hair had turned absolutely white.
“What did that to you, child?” Sarah asked.
She couldn’t think of any good explanation, but had to say something—it couldn’t be dismissed. He would ask, too. She answered, “Oh, Sarah, I had a dream, an ugly, awful dream. Can dreams do such a thing?”
Sarah took the bait, nodding emphatically. “Oh, my dear, anything can do it if you git scared enough. Why, being alone in this big old house must prey on you something awful.” She squeezed her hand. “But he’ll be home soon now. You needn’t fear. And there’s nothing in this place to harm you. Nobody here would do that.”
“No, nobody here now,” Vern agreed. Sarah patted her arm and turned away. Vern reached out to stop her, but hesitated. Her hand trembled. Could she trust Sarah? Could she show her what she’d found? No, she didn’t dare. If she was wrong…Nevertheless, she took advantage of Sarah’s explanation for the streak in her hair and used the nightmare as an excuse to withdraw. Sarah would surely spread the tale, and that should help. People would cluck their tongues, shake their heads for the poor dear girl, and maybe chalk it up to her recent illness. “She’s had the worst luck, that poor girl.” Elias wouldn’t know how she’d fared after he left, whether she’d made a complete recovery or not. Better to let him think she hadn’t—except of course that people had seen her dancing, and they would tell him. She devised then to pretend that she’d had a relapse. Feeling too healthy, she had exercised her frail system prematurely and worn herself out.
She retired to her room, sat on the bed, her brain alight with machinations. She could not wait for Kate, for rescue to come on its own. She must effect her own escape.
If she could find an excuse to loiter about on the front lawn, then she might wait until someone was going out. When did Notaro go to town for supplies? Was he even around? She couldn’t remember when she’d last seen him. She could hide on the wagon before he left, or run through the gates when they were opened, run all the way home. She would have to befriend whoever was in charge of the gate, engage them in idle conversation until the opportunity arose. Or she might insist she needed spermaceti or more alum for her candle-making. Yes, she must ride in with Notaro on the wagon. She must go to town. Fitcher had put her in charge and she would use that to her advantage.
There was time, plenty of time. First she must get her energy back. In everything hereafter she must go cautiously and draw no attention to herself until she’d gotten outside the fence. Lanny would help her. Surely he must be innocent in all this, and his parents. Then Kate—Kate would believe her. They could come back together with the keys and show everyone what Elias Fitcher had done.
She lay back, scheming, certain she would seize her opportunity before he returned. A day—two at the outside—and she would get away. She would sleep during the heat of the day, and stay awake at night. No one would miss her at the noon meal one or two days in a row. She closed her hand against the egg resting between her breasts, looked up at the sweep of the canopy, but her sight traveled beyond it, up through the ceiling and out of the house, through the air and over the fence to home, to her sisters and safety. Her terror had exhausted her, and she finally fell asleep.
When she awoke, Fitcher was standing beside her.
She closed her eyes and opened them again. It had to be a dream. She was feverish, hallucinating, because he could not be back already. Above her head the light pouring in was golden and unreal. A dream, and she would wake up now.
He sat beside her. “My dear Vernelia,” he said. “How are you?” He reached his bony hand to her cheek and she flinched just as he touched her. She didn’t mean to, but she couldn’t help it. Her body knew what his hands had done.
The change in Fitcher’s demeanor was slight, but significant, and she saw it. The bearded smile tightened, the eyelids dropped like guillotine blades, and he glanced away from her and down, at her hand. She was lying on the bed, clutching the keys tightly. When she saw his look, she made herself relax her grip.
He extended his hand, palm up, and she gave him the keys. He flipped them around one by one with his thumb while he asked, “Did you enjoy your exploration? Did you go everywhere?”
“And my little egg, did you keep it warm and safe for me?” He ran his fingertips up her arm.
Vern wanted to get up. Trapped on the bed wasn’t how she’d wanted to confront him. She said, “Yes, of course. I took it everywhere.”
“Oh, not everywhere” he replied slyly. Did he know about the dance then? How many people would he have talked to before entering the room? She mustn’t deny, mustn’t answer directly in any way that he might catch her out.
“I meant, everywhere I went.”
“Yes. Where might it be then?”
“I have it here.” She pressed her hand against her breastbone. The egg was not in the pocket. She sat upright, glancing around on the covers.
Fitcher said, “What’s happened? Have you lost it so carelessly?”
“No. No, it was in my pocket when I fell asleep. It’s here.”
“Yes, I know it is.” He brought his other hand into view. The egg floated upon his palm. “I found it when I came in.” She tried to take it from him, but he snatched his hand away at the last moment, and held the egg up between his thumb and forefinger. “How remarkable,” he said, inspecting it closely, “that I never noticed this slight imperfection before. Did you see this?” He turned his wrist to show her the ghostly pink circle. But the veins in the marble were no longer blue. They had become a deep crimson.
It must be the light, she told herself.
“And look here,” he said. He flipped the keys around until he was holding the glass one. “Isn’t this remarkable as well?” He held the key toward her. The key, like a phial, had filled with color; glass had transformed into ruby. It was impossible: She’d cleaned it herself, inspected it a dozen times.
“Such a shame,” said Fitcher. “I asked of you one thing only. One small good thing. To protect you. I asked you not to eat the fruit, didn’t I, but you could not deny your hunger. You insist upon knowing that which is denied you. Do you think we deny it for no good reason?”
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