Fitcher's Brides

by Gregory Frost

  Then the moment passed, and he brushed back his hair. He looked at her with gentle, half-closed eyes and replied, “Yes, forgive me, I am too much in your thrall, madam, for reason to hold sway.”

  “You would blame me for your iniquity?”

  “Blame? No, I don’t blame, merely account for myself. I’ve waited a long time for you.”

  She ignored all that this implied. “As we’ve all waited for this new life in God to begin,” she answered. “And so let’s you and I make a pact that we will give in to our passion only when we reach Him. Then we should know the truth of it, whether this is animal lust or the passion of love as God intended, beyond the flesh.”

  “That is your bargain?” asked Fitcher.

  “My…offer.”

  “Your soul, tomorrow night, as the world outside ends? You’ll face Him in my arms?”

  “You make it sound like a dare.”

  “Oh, much more than a dare, my dear Kate. Much more than that. It is the world itself.” He took the keys she’d carried, hefted them a moment, and then tossed them on the bed at her side. “You are the mistress of Harbinger till the end of time. You may go about as you please, put your father in whatever room you like, and pack in the rest of the stragglers as they crawl through my gates for their salvation. I care not, save that you don’t go into one particular room, which that glass key opens. If you find that doorway, shun it for your life, just as you carry my little egg with you wherever you go.”

  “For my life.”

  He looked away, as if something elsewhere had caught his attention. “You’re the youngest but the cleverest, aren’t you?”

  “How many of us have you judged?”

  “Enough to know,” he said, and faced her again, smiling. “Enough.” He straightened his coat. “You’ll want a fire. It’s turning cold at night now. You’ll find some lucifers on the mantel. Loco-focos they call them hereabout.”

  “You could light it for me.”

  He hesitated, then nodded and walked around to the far side of the bed. Once he was out of sight, Kate’s legs failed her. She sat on the edge of the bed, listening to him collect the wood, open the damper. She pushed her clothes the rest of the way off, drawing her legs free. She wore only stockings now. Before he finished with the fire, she’d dragged the covers down on the bed and wrapped a sheet around herself. She set the egg beside her.

  When Fitcher came into view again, she gestured at the bottle on the table. “We should still have our celebration,” she suggested.

  “You think so?” He studied her oddly, as if unable to make up his mind about her. “Why not?” he said at last. He wrestled the cork out of the bottle. It made a dull pop and a thin smoke emerged. He poured the glasses, offered hers to her. Kate took it, and raised it to him. Then, letting the sheet drop, she patted the bed beside her.

  Fitcher’s gaze slithered from her own eyes to her lips, down around her neck and to her now exposed breasts. His nostrils flared, she thought, exactly like a horse’s. He stepped up beside her to sit. The glasses clinked together. Kate drew the sheet up again and, with it, reeled him closer. She said, “Tell me about the pyramid.”

  “Pyramid?”

  “Atop the house. I’ve seen mansions with widow’s walks, and signal towers from the days of the Indian wars, but none with a pyramid at its apex.”

  “’Tis a symbol of power. Know you of the great pyramids of Egypt?”

  “Nothing save that they exist, sir.”

  “They have magical properties—mathematical relationships, combinations of special numbers.”

  “Special numbers?”

  “Twenty-five, fifty, three hundred sixty-six. And of course nine.”

  She considered, then shook her head. “No, I see nothing special in those numbers that might conjure magic.”

  “No? Alas, it’s impossible to explain to one uninitiated in the mathematical aspects of God. They are found in Revelation, these numbers, and they prove God to be the architect. I should give you Mr. Taylor’s book on the subject, but he won’t be publishing it for a while yet. As for why it’s there, I wished for it to be. I included it in the plans for our utopia. We have neither Indians to fight nor widows to watch for lost sailors here.”

  She sipped her champagne. “No, only widowers,” she commented, then added, “I’m still wondering about the mathematical aspects of God.”

  “Revelation, full of mathematical clues to the resurrection, to the millennium that now rises before us, brims with aspects. Most seekers cannot parse the secrets. The Book of David, wherein lie the numbers which provided the date of the Second Coming, is another such. I’ve spent a great deal of time with numbers—I daresay as much as I’ve spent with believers.”

  “It’s too much to take in.”

  He slid his hand across and covered hers around the stem of her glass. “You shouldn’t try. You need not know every grain of sand to realize a beach, nor every raindrop to know a thunderstorm engulfs you. Thinking is often the pursuit of insecurity. Why unbalance yourself, when I have already counted the numbers and established the answer for you?”

  “I am by nature curious, I suppose.”

  His demeanor stiffened. “I would advise against giving in to your nature here. All the mysteries will be solved tomorrow night. Trust in that. And in me, dear Kate.” He drank his glass and refilled it. “Some things in life should be accepted without question, because they are too great to be questioned. That is the definition of faith.”

  Kate handed him her glass. “On the contrary, Mr. Fitcher, I believe the greater the promise, the more closely it must be scrutinized. The largest promises govern our lives. I’m unwilling to embrace blindly that which I’ve not considered to the fullest.”

  He assayed her, and a small smile twitched at his lips. “You have never heard me preach, have you, Mrs. Fitcher?”

  “Briefly, I have, sir, that time I visited my sister. And my father has described and even reenacted some of your more dynamic proclamations. I know he is persuaded, as is my stepmother. I have not had that privilege.”

  He stood and carried the glasses to the writing desk, setting hers down. “Then tomorrow morning, you shall have it—the culmination of all my sermons on the final day. I predict I will persuade even you, madam.”

  “I look forward to my lesson,” she replied.

  He chuckled, and lifted his glass in a toast to her. “The cleverest by far, oh, yes. I was right to save you for last. You are the purest and most steadfast.”

  “As you said, sir, when you asked for my hand.”

  He waited a moment longer, as if in final hope that she would invite him to her bed, let go the sheet and shift the battle from words to sensations, where he would easily triumph. When she said nothing, he turned smartly and strode away with the bottle and the glass. “In the morning, then,” he called back over his shoulder.

  She didn’t see how he managed it, but the door to her room swung closed after him as if on command.

  Then Kate sank back upon her pillows and allowed herself the luxury of terror.

  Thirty

  “I SAY UNTO YOU, ‘GIVE EAR, O YE heavens, and I will speak: and hear, O earth, the words of my mouth. My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distill as the dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the showers upon the grass.’ Thus begins Deuteronomy thirty-two.”

  Fitcher stood upon the back porch of Harbinger. His audience had swollen beyond the confines of the Hall of Worship. They filled the yard as far as Kate could see. She sat off to one side, along with the small group of his inner circle. Thirteen chairs had been set up, three on a side and one in the center for the new bride. Kate was surprised to find herself enclosed by women as well as men—not just her father, but Lavinia sat there, both of them in the chairs ahead of her.

  Kate looked at the faces of those to either side of her, faces that regarded her husband with pure adoration, even before he began to speak; and once his voice split the dark a
nd threatening morning, so did virtually everyone within hearing turn their attention to him with expressions of adulation.

  “The Lord says here, ‘To me belongeth vengeance, and recompense; their foot shall slide in due time: for the day of their calamity is at hand!’ We know who is spoken of here. They are the people outside our blessed utopia, those people who have ignored the signs, who care nothing for our message, who will not come in. Calamity is at hand! And their reluctance can but consign them to damnation.

  “Some of them are dear ones, close to us, who would not be entreated to join us. Others are what they are—unyielding objects deaf to words they haven’t themselves formed.

  “They as we have always stood upon the brink of destruction. God placed all mankind on the blade of that sword which Solomon raised. We’ve been there since Eden. One foot stands in peril, the other in peace. The likelihood of tumbling into the pit has always been with us, and many before this day have slipped, their fates already sealed. We cannot change their fate. Others think they can wait and see how the sword will fall, and make their choices afterward. Not so, for does it not also say, ‘The Lord shall judge His people’? Who, other than God, decides when His children shall plunge into hell? No one else has this power. He may allow the wicked to persist in their ways, knowing that each act they perform only further secures their damnation; He may place temptation in their path, but He does not make them embrace it.

  “God grants you all free will. You can choose. Today you are here before me because you have heard and you have chosen.”

  Many in the crowd answered this, shouting in the affirmative, or just shouting.

  “‘See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god with me: I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal; neither is there any that can deliver out of my hand. For I lift up my hand to Heaven, and say, I live forever!’”

  Fitcher’s fist was raised to the sky. Thousands of other fists joined his in the air. Thousands of voices chanted: “I live forever!” Kate found her own arm hovering, but folded her hands together tightly in her lap. The group around her had their fists raised, every one of them. The power of the speech swept her up, but the sudden movement of the crowd in response had broken the spell. She glanced aside, saw the crowd as far back as the orchards extending their arms like clockwork creatures. His words still rang, the last quotation from Deuteronomy resounded. It must have been the three walls of the building that kept his voice spinning around them.

  “I speak for you. I have called the people far and wide unto this mountain, and you have answered that call, you have come. You have made your sacrifices to me, given up the goods of the world, cast off that which burdened you, which tied you to the sensual life. Those who have not answered, let them be cast down. They are condemned already by their very disregard. He that believeth, he is not condemned.

  “Tell me, then, that you believe!”

  The multitude shouted out their belief.

  “Tell me that you know there is nothing between you and hell itself but the air. Nothing protects you from everlasting flames. Hell is an open maw beneath you. The flames lick at the soles of your feet. The demons dance within, awaiting your arrival, the arrival of all mankind. The slope on which you stand will tumble you into their cruel care for all eternity. They will flay the skin from you. Terrible torture awaits those who lack the necessary faith, who question the truth even when it stands before them.” He glanced, as he paused, at Kate.

  “Nothing can save you from the pit of hell except faith. You have journeyed far to be here, you have shunned the false prophets and the false churches, but you still stand upon that fearful blade and you can still fall even at the last moment, even as God makes the cut which severs us from them. Those outside our gates would kill you if they knew you would be granted a special place at God’s side while they plunge into the fiery pit. They would slaughter you in their anger and their jealousy. But I protect you from them. I know who you should fear. Fear he who, having slain you, can throw your soul down into hell. I say, fear him above all others. Let me protect you from the wrath of God. I deal in fury. I deal in judgment. Place your souls in my keeping!”

  They cried out with answers—swearing allegiance, committing their souls every one to his keeping. In the front rows of the multitude, some people collapsed. They twitched and kicked in spasms. Their eyes rolled up. A man foamed at the mouth. Some babbled incoherently and clawed at the sky. Those nearest caught them, laid them down, but got up quickly again, not wanting to miss anything. White feathers burst into the air as people in the throes of ecstasy crashed into the makeshift henhouses on either side.

  The gathered lieutenants had risen around Kate to shout along with the others, and Kate found herself on her feet in their midst, though she had no sense of rising with them. She felt the words of allegiance in her throat but fought them down with urgent fear. He hadn’t lied to her about the power of his preaching—if anything, he had understated it; but she had glimpsed his true self, and she made that memory burn like a jack-o’-lantern behind his enchantment. She listened and dissected his words more carefully than his loyal followers. The promise of the pit might be real enough, but the path by which one fell was not so obvious as he would make it. She had always maintained that those quickest to condemn were most in peril themselves, because they pointed the finger with a piousness formed of hubris, of haughty superiority by which they could eclipse their own shortcomings; and Fitcher’s proposal for dividing the saved from the damned began with just such an imperious pose.

  Her father, she guessed, would not believe her. She couldn’t make him admit that the casuistry of this salvation had misled him. Even if she could find proof, she doubted she could persuade him. Fitcher was too skillful, too clever by half, to reveal himself in a casual way. She might trip him up with words, but only by verbal thrusts and parries as subtle as those he employed to twist his proclamation of redemption. His keys and the marble egg burned in her apron pocket, symbols of his control, of the limits he’d already established. It was all a matter of limits. Torture awaits those who question the truth, he’d said, but he didn’t mean that. She could question truth all she liked. What she wasn’t allowed to question was him. None of them was. As he spoke again, she closed herself off from the intoxication of his voice.

  “We read the words of God in Isaiah: ‘I will tread them in mine anger, and will trample them in my fury. For the day of vengeance is in mine heart, and the year of my redeemed is come.’ Tonight at midnight that day of vengeance shall commence. But I, holding your souls in my care, will act between you and your Lord, and together we will realize these promises that God has spoken. Together will we face our God!” His arms stretched up and out as if to embrace them all.

  Their cheer must have been heard as far away as Jekyll’s Glen. It filled the air, and each time the front gave out, from the back it rolled in again, wave upon wave of ululation like the roar of a huge cataract—like the waterfall in the great gorge that ringed them off from the rest of the world.

  The shouting mob was where Kate placed her hope. They would need his close attention more and more as the time drew nigh. Sooner or later, he would have to leave her alone to attend to them.

  She did not yet appreciate that leaving her alone had always been his intention, or that her two sisters had already stood upon the same arranged and fatal brink as she contemplated even now.

  By late afternoon, the number of those come to salvation had redoubled. Inside the fence, people moved into the woods. They cleared spaces for themselves and their families in the underbrush, content just to be inside, knowing they were both safe and saved. According to her father and the other lieutenants, their numbers had reached twenty thousand, and at least as many more were on the road.

  Jekyll’s Glen was a town trapped in the path of a flood. Converts covered the streets, the yards, the sidewalks. They jammed the taverns. They clustered beneath canvas awnings to hear other preachers, who extolled the virt
ues of Elias Fitcher and painted their own descriptions of the fate awaiting the unsaved.

  Ministers of the two traditional churches had gathered their flocks together inside the buildings out of fear that the faithful might fall prey to this millennial fever, but also out of a keener fear that they, preaching against the end of the world, might be accused as false prophets by the chaos of converts and strung up if not protected by their congregation.

  The steamboat Fidelio chugged wearily down the lake with hundreds more packed upon its decks—people who had converted only at the last, or who had bothered to set their secular accounts in order before coming. All across New England, banks were suffering as a result of the massive cash withdrawals by converts who were bringing their wealth with them, either to bribe their way across impasses or in the misapprehension that they would be able to keep their money in the Next Life. So many people with ready cash did not go unnoticed, either. Some had been waylaid as they left their banks, others upon the roads, beaten and robbed of their entire fortunes by individuals interested more in immediate than in eternal reward. The steamboat provided a safer mode of travel than coach or horse, but only because it offered no escape for the thief. The town of Jekyll’s Glen, on the other hand, now entertained a network of pickpockets and cutpurses with easy pickings and little likelihood of consequences, although one such had been caught and clubbed to death, and his body, hung with a sign marking him as a thief, now dangled from a tree on the road into town as a warning.

  On the Gorge Road, the turnpike and sentry box in front of the Charter house had been demolished, broken up during the night and used for firewood. Squatters exhausted from the crush of people on the road currently occupied the house. They ate off the family’s plates, slept on the sofas, slouched in the chairs. They were filthy and tired and not much given to concern themselves with treating someone else’s property respectfully. If the spirit of Sam Verity was still about (or ever had been), it kept its own counsel now. No one among the squatters was treated to a session of spirit rapping.