Fitcher's Brides

by Gregory Frost

  The Reverend Fitcher cast his gaze down upon the sisters, from Amy to Kate, and the fire of evangelism seemed to blaze in his eyes with new life. “Soon,” he promised. “Be thou my helpmates.”

  Then the wagon lurched forward again and Fitcher returned to hailing his crusaders and converts. Mr. Charter shuffled like a drowned scarecrow across the yard. “Girls,” he said to his daughters, a world of weariness bound up in that one word. He lifted his head in their direction and winced a smile before going on to the house.

  Lavinia lingered, her bonnet protecting her. “Your father is weak,” she told them, leaving the statement open to interpretation awhile before she clarified: “He became peaked on the road till I thought at one point he might make a die of it, but he’s recovered somewhat. We’ll have to give him care now he’s home again. I expect you girls to continue with your duties here as if we had not returned. I don’t wish to see him out here—and we all know he will stubbornly protest and insist on working the pole himself if he isn’t prevented.”

  “Yes’m,” Kate replied. “Amy, you go on with Lavinia and make them both some tea now. I’ll stay here and gather what coin is paid.”

  Amy was about to protest that she ought to stay and Kate go in, when Lavinia said, “That’s most thoughtful of you, Katherine. Come along, Amelia. And bring those bundles with you.” She turned. Amy made a sour face but picked up the luggage and followed. The adults weren’t back ten minutes and already she’d been relegated to taking orders from everyone again. She wished then that they hadn’t come back, that they’d been killed on the road so that she and Kate could keep living in the house unsupervised right up to the end. Or until Michael Notaro took her away, took her to Harbinger to live with him. She expected him to come for her soon, now that everyone had returned. The spirit, the knocking thing in the wall, had told her that her suitor was close by. Vern’s archangel was her guardian now. Who else could he have meant but Michael Notaro?

  “Once the crusaders return,” Samuel had prophesied in her dream, “then shall your suitor come for you.”

  “And will I go with him?” her dream self had asked.

  “Of course. It can be no other way.”

  She couldn’t wait. She hoped it would be tomorrow.

  Lavinia said, “Stop dawdling, girl, you haven’t sense enough to get out of the rain.”

  Amy sidled inside with her bundles. Tomorrow, she thought, please let him come tomorrow.

  As it happened, no one came the following day except more converts. There were three sleeping beside the road when the sisters went out in the morning before breakfast, and all steadfastly insisted they pay the toll, though they were on foot and could easily have walked around the pole barring their way. Amy thought they were ridiculous to have stopped, and they smelled bad.

  A dozen more arrived throughout the day. Notaro never appeared.

  Two wagons did come from Harbinger on the way to buy supplies in Jekyll’s Glen, but Notaro wasn’t driving. The second wagon, tied behind the first, was a small buckboard for Mr. Charter. The driver explained that it was a gift from Reverend Fitcher to allow Mr. Charter to attend the daily sermons hereafter. A single tired old horse pulled it. Lavinia commented that the girls would have to add tending the horse to their daily chores. They didn’t have a stable, so he would have to be tethered in the yard.

  When Notaro hadn’t shown up by dinner, Amy told herself he was too busy with the newly arrived. As Reverend Fitcher’s right-hand man, he had to help settle everyone. She clung to the phantom promise that her suitor would come.

  Mr. Charter remained in bed through the day, wheezing, shivering with chills. The girls and Lavinia brought him broth, and emptied his slops and wiped his brow with hot wet towels. He gazed up through sunken eyes, never quite seeming to focus. Amy thought he was looking past her, at something above her. He muttered under his breath but she couldn’t make it out.

  The next day he was better and came down to breakfast, although clothed only in his nightshirt and obviously weak, and with the stink of illness on him. He drank tea and ate eggs, and said almost nothing. He still didn’t seem to occupy the same space as they, as if his mind were elsewhere and his eyes could see a different place.

  “What is it, Papa?” Amy asked, but Lavinia shushed her.

  Mr. Charter, slow to respond, focused on her and replied, “It’s God’s will.”

  She wasn’t sure he even knew he’d spoken. He returned to bed and slept through the morning, and by afternoon was much revived. He cleaned himself up, shaved, dressed, and came downstairs. He would have gone out to the turnpike if the three women hadn’t insisted he must not. It was misty and humid out, and they didn’t want him to lose his newfound strength. They didn’t inform him of his new wagon.

  Late in the afternoon that second day, the supply wagon appeared again. Amy saw it far down the road and came out of the box. She leaned expectantly on the pole. Instead of pulling up at the barrier, the wagon turned and rolled up into their yard beside the stumps. Michael Notaro was driving but he wasn’t alone. The reverend was with him. Fitcher climbed out. He wore a long dark canvas coat and a wide-brimmed, low-crowned hat against the mist. He looked Amy over and smiled, although she found no humor in the curl of his lips. Notaro sat with his head bowed, his eyes hidden beneath his hat brim as though sleeping. He didn’t glance her way once.

  The reverend said, “I expect you ladies might want to come inside for a time. Mr. Notaro will watch your pike for you.”

  Then he turned and started for the house, with his walking stick under his arm.

  Lavinia opened the door at his approach, almost as if she’d been expecting him. He made a slight bow before entering.

  She led him into the parlor, where Mr. Charter was already seated, and Fitcher bade him remain so. Amy and Kate followed behind him, and their father’s glance fell upon each of them in turn with a mounting anxiousness as though conspirators were gathered around him, about to plunge their daggers into his heart. The look was all the more terrible to the girls because they had no more idea than he what was happening.

  “I shall come directly to the point,” Fitcher said. “Vernelia has left Harbinger.”

  Mr. Charter’s brow knitted. “I’m not sure I understand this. Left it how?”

  “Some days before our return, it appears she ran off. To Boston.” He reached inside his coat and produced a folded note, which he handed to Mr. Charter. It had been stamped with a wax seal, which was broken.

  Mr. Charter read it silently. His face darkened and grew taut with anger. Abruptly he flung the piece of paper away and said, “The willful child. I disown her on this spot. May she know the fires of hell and the tortures of the damned for this!”

  Lavinia picked up the note. She held it in such a way as she read that the girls could see it, too. It began with an apology to all who were injured by this action. It claimed that Vernelia could not continue her false and loveless existence at Harbinger. She cared nothing for her husband, nor wished to try. She was leaving to be with her lover in Boston, with whom she’d already been intimate.

  Reverend Fitcher spoke as they were reading: “I cannot keep you from your ire, sir, but I must share in the responsibility for her disappointment. You see, in all the business I had to oversee at Harbinger, I’m afraid I much neglected Vernelia. We’d not yet even consummated our vows.”

  “But it’s been months,” said Mr. Charter.

  “Yes, it has, and the fault for this is entirely mine. I feel as if I drove her away, creating as I did this chasm between us.”

  “You mustn’t blame yourself, Reverend.”

  “I can hardly blame anyone else for my inattentiveness, Mr. Charter.”

  “No, sir. It is the girl” he replied, and stared at his remaining two daughters. “She has disgraced us. Disgraced me. After all your kindnesses, after granting me this position so close by and bringing us into your flock—no, she has reduced me to I don’t know what.”

 
; Fitcher stepped forward and raised a hand to stop him. “Please. I’ve already taken steps to have the marriage annulled. It will be as if it never happened.”

  “Why, if I were healthier, I’d go to Boston and find her and drag her back here, the trollop.”

  “Papa!” Kate exclaimed.

  Fitcher said, “Yes, comfort thee, sayeth your God. You mustn’t say such things about your daughter, Mr. Charter.”

  “But look at the shame she’s brought upon me.” He seemed ready to burst into tears over his sullied name. Lavinia handed him back the letter, and took her place beside him, her hands upon his shoulders. Like the girls, she remained standing.

  The reverend sat then, pulling his chair close beside Mr. Charter. “I may have a remedy to our mutual embarrassment,” he said. “You have lost a daughter and I a wife, as if neither ever existed. I propose to you then that I take a wife as if for the first time, and you once more give your blessing to it.”

  Mr. Charter looked confused, but Amy took a step back. She brushed up against Kate, and gripped her hand.

  Fitcher reacted to her movement by looking directly at her and smiling. “Your eldest girl must marry first, as you told me the first time I came to you. As you sit here, you have but two daughters remaining. Give me your eldest in marriage now, and it will be as if nothing had happened between us to tarnish our good relationship.” He took Mr. Charter’s hands between his own. “We must rebuild the bridge between us as God intended when He blessed our first union.”

  Mr. Charter’s gaze flicked from daughter to daughter. They clutched hands as if meaning to block access to the doorway behind them. Neither girl, so far as he knew, had any prospects nor any hope of finding a husband; and so little time remained.

  Amy knew what his answer would be. She knew the ghost in her dreams hadn’t lied about her suitor, and now she understood why Michael Notaro had arrived with his face hidden, unable to look at her. The reverend must have voiced his plan while they drove here. Michael didn’t dare object. How could he? As how could she, unless she wished to be cast out like Vern? To confess now would doom her, doom them both. A lifetime lived in subservience, in routine capitulation to her father’s wishes, shaped Amy for the answer and her response. Her father said, “Yes, of course, you’ll marry Amelia,” and she let go Kate’s hand and took a step forward again. His will be done, she thought. Her older sister had ruined her father’s good name. She, with one simple act of sacrifice, could erase that blemish and make everything right.

  She looked out the window, where she could see her lover walking back and forth beside the pike. She would still have Notaro close by her, in fact closer than they had been. Somehow they would find a way…She stopped herself. She mustn’t think like that.

  Fitcher came to her and held out his hands. She took them. “I promise,” he said, “I will not treat you as I did Vernelia.” He let go with one hand and collected his walking stick. The Medusa head glared at Amy. “I assure you, dear Amelia, I will not make the same mistake with you.”

  Twenty-two

  AMY’S WEDDING WAS A SUBDUED and quiet affair, in part because it occurred a mere twenty-four hours following the proposal, in part because no one felt much like celebrating on the cusp of Vern’s banishment, but mostly because there were now at least a hundred new converts to accommodate, and most of the community was engaged in helping store their belongings, in piling belongings deemed unnecessary onto a bonfire out by the fields, or in pitching tents down by the orchard, a bivouac progressing up the back lawn.

  Once more, the Reverend Flavy presided. He’d had no more luck with his razor than before, his face as scratched as it was shaved; and despite a proper, bespectacled demeanor, he seemed unwashed to Amy. His collar was yellow around the edge. When he patted her hand, she saw that his fingernails were broken and dirty, as if he were a mole dressed up for the occasion. He told her quietly, “Poor dear girl, let me wish you well here,” before mounting the pulpit. The altar before it was piled with flowers—blue columbine, purple lilac, and white lilies—all atop red velvet pushed into folds and cascades, with the thorn-spiked milky skull situated in the center, tilted back as if frozen in the act of laughing.

  Amy wore a plain creamy dress purchased from Van Hollander’s. Her mother’s wedding dress would never have fit her and there was no time to have another one made. This dress, with its vertical line of rose buttons, was too large, but Kate and Lavinia had done a reasonable job of stitching pleats into it to fit her. The nice slippers they’d bought for the first wedding were unavailable—Vern had taken them with her in her flight to Boston. Again her stepmother and younger sister came to her rescue and, just hours before the ceremony, hurried into Jekyll’s Glen and bought new ones for her. The only thing she shared with her elder sister on this wedding day was the veil she wore; that, and of course her husband.

  No throng filled the hall this time. Other than her family barely a dozen people occupied the pews, and they were a solemn lot. A man not much larger than a dwarf played hymns on the pipe organ in the corner. She couldn’t remember if he had played for Vern’s wedding. He performed as if unaware of the proceedings, as if he were practicing alone, and never looked up as she was led down the aisle on her father’s arm. Mr. Charter trembled against her so much that she almost forgot her own terror in supporting him and muttering reassurances to him as they walked; each stride was a beat of her heart.

  Fitcher wore his black tailcoat as before. To Fitcher’s right, Michael Notaro wore a dark brown coat and black trousers. He’d plastered down his wild hair and shaved his chin, revealing the dimple in it that she liked to press her index finger into just before she kissed him. She banished their familiarity, drove the image from her mind. This must never happen again.

  Notaro stared at her as if at an approaching ghost. Even with the veil softening the effect, she almost couldn’t bear to look at him. That he had to act as ring bearer seemed the cruelest of tortures. Surely someone else could have done it? Why hadn’t he said he was sick? Was he punishing himself? He gives me things to occupy myself, he’d once said about Fitcher. But not this, surely not this. He knows, she told herself, he knows about us.

  Flavy proclaimed, “We come here today to unite this man and woman. The world outside our happy clime is even now in turmoil, a violent and uncaring place, despite which we’ve lost a sister to it.” He smiled with pained sympathy upon Amy. “It is most regrettable, for she has abandoned not merely those who loved her here among us, but also the new life which was promised her. Nevertheless, this is no funeral we gather to witness, but a happy union resulting from that unfortunate event, necessitated even by it.” Flavy glanced down at Elias Fitcher, and twitched. He cleared his throat and quickly opened his Bible, and recited, “‘Be merciful unto me, O God, be merciful unto me; for my soul trusteth in thee; yea, in the shadow of thy wings will I make my refuge, until these calamities be overpast.’ This psalm is our guide today. These two find their refuge in the Lord through holy marriage, and so will be protected from these approaching calamities we know.”

  He closed his Bible and came down the steps of the pulpit and around the altar. He bumped it as he went past, and the crystal skull rocked from side to side, then fell over upon the red velvet cloth beneath it. Flavy turned to grab it and Fitcher said sharply, “Don’t.”

  Flavy turned uncertainly back to him. Fitcher disengaged from Amy. He lifted the skull and set it down again. Then he backed around Flavy and slipped his arm around Amy. “Continue,” he ordered.

  Flavy stuck a finger inside his collar is if it were choking him. He cleared his throat again. “Ahm, well, then. Do you, Elias Fitcher, take this woman, Amelia Chelone Charter, to be your lawfully wedded wife, to have no other wife but she, to honor, love, cherish, and…protect as long as ye both shall live?”

  “I do,” Fitcher answered.

  “And, Amelia, do you take Elias Fitcher as your lawfully wedded husband, to have no other before him, to love and honor an
d obey him in all things, for as long as ye both shall live?”

  Amy thought her head would spin off. She remembered Flavy’s questions to Vern. He hadn’t asked Vern not to have any other person before her husband. Why did she have to answer that? She hesitated, sure now that they all knew about her and Michael. Reverend Flavy asked, “My dear?”

  Through her veil, Amy looked at the dark figure of Fitcher beside her, and the thought swept through her that he wasn’t real, wasn’t human, couldn’t know her secrets unless he was something diabolical. She threw off a shiver and thought, Too late. Her mouth formed the words: “I do.” She couldn’t help it. Standing here in the Hall of Worship, what else could she have said?

  “You have the ring, sir?”

  Michael Notaro edged forward. She watched his hand appear, the ring upon his palm. The hand was shaking, and she prayed that he wouldn’t give them both away. Fitcher took the ring, at the same time asking softly, “Mr. Notaro, are you ill?”

  Notaro opened his mouth to speak. His jaw worked and he finally just shook his downcast head. Amy could see his profile. Tears were flooding her eyes. She hardly noticed Fitcher sliding the ring onto her finger, hardly heard Flavy’s words. Then suddenly the veil was thrown back, and she had one last clear glimpse of the man she loved before the Reverend Fitcher leaned in close and pressed his lips to hers. “My dear wife,” he said. She stared into his eyes and beyond them, as if she might possibly see through him.

  When he drew away, there was no one standing beside him. Notaro had vanished. She dared not look around for him. Fitcher’s hand on her elbow turned her and she walked beside her husband into the new world of Harbinger.

  Like the wedding, the reception was small and hastily assembled. The newlyweds stood in the foyer outside the refectory and received the well-wishers, many of whom seemed to have come directly from the fields to welcome her. Notaro was not among them and Amy didn’t know whether she was relieved or stung by his absence.