Her Dear & Loving Husband

by Meredith Allard

  “We were married in late 1691,” he said. “I don’t remember much about our wedding ceremony except a yearning impatience to be alone with her. I remember the feast my father paid for, set out for our guests like a king’s ransom waiting to be plundered. I remember the magistrate mumbling something. After the cere-mony was over and our guests were well satiated, my father walked my bride and me to our new home. He came into the house with us, which surprised me, and he took great pleasure showing Elizabeth how he completed the home for us with the finest furniture the best carpenters in Salem Town could build. He even had a few pieces, including the blue and white hand-painted Delft dishware, imported from Holland. When he finally left (it took a few pointed stares from me before he understood) I was alone with my wife for the first time.”

  Sarah felt his body curving around hers, and she leaned into him. She couldn’t get close enough. She felt his hands in her hair, his lips on the back of her neck. She wanted him, there was no denying that, but he had just been talking about being alone with Elizabeth for the first time. Sarah knew she looked like Elizabeth, and her desire for him was tempered by the fact that, if they did make love that night, who would James really be with? Her? Elizabeth? Sarah sighed. Here they were, finally close, and he had been speaking about being alone with his wife. She began to wonder if they had a chance after all.

  James brought her home. He was distracted with his own thoughts and didn’t speak at all on the drive. She thought she saw concern in his eyes, and she wondered if he was thinking the same thing she was—maybe the fact that she looked like his wife was going to keep them apart.

  As she got ready for bed she had her moments when it seemed like a trick, the idea that James was anything other than human. There are yogis who can stop their breath or slow their heartbeats for a dangerous amount of time. Maybe James had learned to do that. But what would be the point of such a trick? He was pale, but being pale doesn’t mean you’re dead, so she tried to be logical about it. Had she ever seen anyone else with skin like the light of the moon, so white it looked vein blue or translucent gray? Whenever he touched her she noticed that he felt cooler than she did, but did he feel as cold as a dead body? She had never touched a dead body before so she didn’t know. His hair was gold but his eyes were night-sky black, an unnerving contrast to the blue she still expected them to be. Aren’t vampires walking corpses with pointed ears, hideous leers, and sharp fangs that pierce you until you die? Don’t they flutter as bats outside your window and drink your blood while you sleep? But she had felt his still chest, twice, heard the silence inside, and in the end that was all the proof she needed. She fell asleep dreaming about when she would see him again, hoping that his dead wife would stop being a barrier between them. She only had one nightmare that night that woke her up cold and afraid, and it wasn’t a nightmare about vampires but a terror about a prison that looked and sounded too real.

  Though I am too weak to see clearly I know I am locked in a dank, gloomy dungeon infested with rats. I can hear the faint cries of the other women in the cages around me. The dim candlelight is flickering demons, there are the real demons I want to cry, not us, there they are in the shadows on the walls. I am so ill I am delirious, barely conscious or alive. I feel the blood on my legs from the scraping of the iron chains around my ankles, an extra precaution, they said, to prevent my specter from vanishing through the walls. As if chains could prevent a real specter from doing anything it wanted. The women surrounding me are groaning, or scratching their itching skin, or reading the Bible, or praying softly, hoping God could hear them even there.

  I am in hell. I am waiting for someone, anyone, to realize this mistake. I should be home with my husband. We shall have our baby soon. I try to speak but only spittle escapes my cracked lips. I close my eyes and know I am dying, my baby dying with me. I let the tears flow freely because I think I shall never see my beloved again, and I know how devastated he shall be when he learns that I left him though I promised I would never leave him ever. I know he has been outside the jail doing everything he can to get me out. I feel his agony. I know his body shudders in pain like a knife blade ripping his skin. With my last strength I press my hands against the wall and whisper “I love you” to my husband. And then nothing. I am gone…

  CHAPTER 14

  When James arrived home he locked himself into his house, lit a single candle, sat at the table, and stared at the cauldron in the hearth. So much about that house hadn’t changed in over three hundred years. He looked at the seventeenth-century furniture, his vast collection of books, the peaked roof ending in two points overhead. He shut his eyes so tightly it hurt. He was trying to summon Elizabeth, begging to see her, wanting to feel her in his arms again. Sarah was so like Elizabeth, and yet she was also her own woman. Again, the problem of wanting to be with Sarah and feeling Elizabeth so strongly the two became confused. He could sense that Sarah felt it that night too. He had wanted her, and she had wanted him. He knew it from the softness in her eyes, from the way she pressed her warm curves against him, yet the ghost of his wife stood squarely between them, arms out like a boxing referee, separating them and keeping them apart. He was mad with desire for Sarah, but he didn’t know what to do about Elizabeth.

  His thoughts turned back to his wedding night. After his father had left, Elizabeth was standing by the wall along the back of the great room staring at that very cauldron in the hearth. Though he had been dreaming of being alone with her from the first time he saw her, he was shy and tongue-tied suddenly and didn’t know what to say. He stood mutely, waiting for her to speak, but she was feeling shy, too, and she pretended not to notice him standing there. Then he felt the absurdity of the situation—they were husband and wife now, he thought, there’s no reason to be shy with each other. He laughed, and she did too, smiling that smile he loved so much. All of a sudden his life made sense to him. This was where he was supposed to be, and there was no one else in the world for him to be with.

  He removed his hat and cloak, walked to her, and stood as close as he dared. She looked up at him but shyness overcame her again and she turned away. He tilted her chin with his hand and caressed her cheek until they both exhaled. When she looked at him with the same longing he had felt for her he couldn’t hold back any more. He kissed her, first gently on her temple, then her cheek, then her lips. When she kissed him back with as much yearning as he felt the passion overtook them and he carried her to bed. He thought she would be self-conscious when he undressed her, but she wasn’t, which was good because it took some time. He left her coif, the white cap she wore tied over her hair, and her brown silk outer gown to her to remove. Then he had to make his way through her underpants, stockings, petticoat, chemise, bolster—a padded roll she wore tied around her hips under her gathered skirt—and her bodice. They were easy about it and laughed because it was funny, an erotic comedy of manners as he fumbled with the ties and fastenings of his wife’s clothing and tried not to appear too greedy to get to her bare flesh beneath. But she wanted him as much as he wanted her and she waited patiently, often with amusement, and finally she was free from the constraints. The first time he made love to Elizabeth had none of the awkwardness of two virgins fumbling their way through a blind, impetuous maze. His hands knew where to caress her. She knew where to stroke him. Somehow, he knew that she loved to be kissed on the nape of her neck and he lingered there. Instinctively, they understood each other and knew how to be together.

  They had found their own little bubble of joy in a harsh colonial world. He was happy whenever he awoke in the morning and saw his wife standing over him, already dressed, her apron on, her white cap tied over her hair, pulling the blankets from him.

  “James?” she’d say. “Jamie? You’re dallying again. The sun has been risen this hour past. ‘Tis time to awaken.”

  With a frustrated sigh she’d start tugging on his arm as she tried to pull him out of bed.

  “James Wentworth,” she’d say, “you are the most slot
hful man yet born!” Then he’d pull her into bed and try to run his hand under her skirts before she slapped him away. “Slothful and lustful,” she’d say, pretending she was annoyed. “You’ve already committed two of the seven deadly sins and you’re not yet clothed.”

  “‘‘Tis difficult to commit some of the sins when clothed,” he’d say.

  She began every morning by standing outside near the trees, listening to the birds sing, trying to whistle along. Back inside, she brushed his clothes and set them out, his cotton stockings, gar-ters, breeches, doublet, shoes, and hat. After he was dressed she’d fasten his points, the strings which tied his breeches and doublet together. He’d wash his face and hands in the basin, then say a blessing before they broke their fast with either white pot, custard made of baked eggs and milk, or samp, cracked corn mush. Every day but Sunday he would walk to his father’s where he would help with whatever business tasks necessary.

  There was no time they loved more than their nights together when he would read to her while she sewed. She didn’t care what he read—the Bible, poetry, literature, pamphlets, news—she loved it all. Her favorite was Anne Bradstreet. Every night he would read “To My Dear and Loving Husband” before they blew out the candles and went to bed, a ritual they both looked forward to. As much as she wanted to hear James read was as much as he wanted to hear her voice. He didn’t care what she was saying as long as she was speaking to him. There were times when they talked late into the night, about what he did at his father’s that day, who visited, what they talked about, what his father said, what the other person said in return. She found the Puritans too stoic, as he did, but at least they had reprieve from the pious eyes in the sanctuary of their home.

  After the witch trials began to suffocate everyone in Salem, everything he knew to be true became false. Frightening. There was so much more he could have told Timothy about the witch trials. He still shuddered whenever he thought of that time. There was so much sadness then. In 1692, nineteen “witches” were hung on Gallows Hill, but there were other fatalities as well, including their friend Giles Corey, a respected farmer in his eighties who was tortured to death, suffocated under the weight of heavy stones because he refused to enter a plea at his trial after he was falsely accused of wizardry. Six others, including his wife, died in prison. Seven if you counted their unborn child, which he did.

  James looked out the window at the lightless sky. The nightmarish memories had been unleashed in him, and it was hours until dawn when he could find reprieve in his daily death. He had no choice but to dwell on them.

  CHAPTER 15

  To the casual observer looking at the brick house in the center of town, seeing the snow on the roof, the white swing on the porch, the Christmas decorations on the front lawn, the lighted tree in the window, there was no evidence a different kind of family lived there. The wife was a dentist who kept her office open at night to handle after-hours emergencies. The husband was a high school science teacher. They were a nice young couple, friendly with their neighbors, and they seemed very much in love. No one suspected that the wife was a nonhuman married to a human husband, and they probably wouldn’t have believed it if someone had told them, even someone like Kenneth Hempel who wrote for their local paper. Jocelyn Endecott, not human? She might be a bit pale, but flesh-colored foundation and cream blush helped to make the death-like pallor look more rosy and alive. She kept night hours, odd for a dentist, certainly, but hadn’t she seen their children at midnight when they woke up screaming with a toothache? And how could she possibly handle being a dentist when they love blood so much? Her neighbors would scoff at such foolishness as someone calling their friend anything other than what she seemed to be, a lovely young woman, and they would turn away, snickering, telling everyone that the reporter from The Salem News had lost his mind. Jocelyn Endecott could not possibly be that.

  When James and Sarah arrived at the brick house, Jocelyn and Steve welcomed them with open arms. Jocelyn embraced Sarah and took her hand.

  “I’m so glad you’re here,” Jocelyn said. She led Sarah to the dining room table, which was set out with food and drink for the humans, eggplant parmesan, garlic bread, meant as a joke, red wine, and discrete, covered coffee mugs for Jocelyn and James. After dinner, Sarah helped Steve clear off the table and put the plates in the sink. When they were in the kitchen, James heard Sarah ask Steve about the one thing that had her curious.

  “So how did you and Jocelyn meet? You’re not the likeliest of couples.”

  “No,” said Steve, “I guess not, but then neither are you and James. You don’t need to do that, you know. You’re the guest.” Steve was washing the dishes while Sarah dried them.

  “I don’t mind. So how did you meet?”

  “She was my dentist.”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “Not at all. I came in from Boston one night to visit my mother and I had the worst toothache ever. I called around and Jocelyn was the only dentist who had late hours so I went to see her. I knew she was the one for me as soon as she walked into the exam room. I took one look at her and thought, ‘Now that is one hunk of a woman.’ I asked her out that night. She refused. Then I called her the next night, and the next, and the next. I called her every night for a month. It took some persistence, but I finally wore her down. She said, ‘If I go out on one date with you, will you leave me alone?’ So I agreed. We went out on one date and we’ve been together ever since.”

  “Good for you,” Sarah said. “Persistence usually gets you what you want.” She stacked the plates and Steve put them into the cupboard. “So Jocelyn didn’t want to date you because you’re human?”

  “That had nothing to do with it. She didn’t want to date me because I was her patient.”

  Jocelyn walked into the kitchen and put her arm around Steve. “I have a very strict policy against dating patients,” she said.

  “Had,” said Steve. “You had a very strict policy.”

  “That’s right—I had a very strict policy against dating patients. But he was too cute to resist.”

  “And you didn’t care that she was a…?” Sarah asked.

  “Why would I care? It took some getting used to at first, and I might have been a little nervous until we worked through some of the logistical problems, you know, like where she was going to find blood to drink. There’s also the night hours, but she’s the girl of my dreams and I wasn’t going to let her get away. And younger guys with older women is all the rage these days, isn’t it?”

  Jocelyn whacked Steve with the dishtowel. “You know better than to say anything about my age,” she said. “That is not a topic for discussion.”

  Steve and Sarah stayed in the kitchen while James and Jocelyn went outside to the backyard. Jocelyn closed the glass door behind her. James sat on a snow-dusted lawn chair and watched the twinkling Christmas lights glisten like stars on the ice.

  “She’s nice,” Jocelyn said. “And all it took was finding a girl who looks exactly like your dead wife.”

  “I don’t ask for much,” James said.

  Jocelyn sat on a folding chair. “What is it, James? You sounded serious on the phone.”

  He walked to the edge of the yard, gripping the picket fence, staring out at the empty street. “What happens to us when we go out in the sun?” he asked. “I’ve only been out once since I was turned, over three hundred years ago, but I didn’t last a minute before I went running back inside.”

  “I don’t know what happens to us in the sun. It never occurred to me to try. It isn’t so bad living only at night. The moon and the stars can be beautiful too. Why are you asking? You’re not thinking about going outside during the day, are you?”

  James shrugged without meeting Jocelyn’s gaze. He wasn’t prepared to share his half-formed plan.

  Jocelyn brushed an icicle from her chair. “I’ve heard that the sun makes us weak. I’ve heard we can be killed more easily in the light, or it burns our eyes out, or it kills us instantly and
we melt away like the wicked witch. I suppose there must be some of our kind somewhere who know the truth.”

  She looked at the moon and smiled. “Wouldn’t it be funny if it turned out to be a legend—about the sunlight? Like silver and garlic? Those don’t harm us at all yet they’re considered the perfect weapon. Maybe there’s no reason we can’t go outside during the day, but we’re all so convinced into believing it we never tried. Maybe it’s just a story passed down through the centuries, like cautionary tales meant to teach children lessons?”

  “There must be some truth to it. I went out during the day once, and it was…hard.”

  “Then you know there’s some danger. You didn’t tell me why you’re asking.”

  “Just curious.”

  James watched the rainbow lights reflect off the windows of the house. He saw Sarah though the glass, laughing at something Steve said, and he was happy at the sound. He had to remind himself what that feeling was whenever he was caught by an irrepressible grin or a warmth in his dead-cold body. He was get-ting used to it again—joy. It had been oh so very long.

  Sarah and Steve came out into the yard though the winter weather was too harsh for them without coats and mittens.

  “Go back inside, Sarah,” James said. “It’s too cold.”

  “Not without you.”

  Shivering, she walked to him and took his hand. He was overcome with emotion. He wanted her to understand the irony of it all. When they first met all he could think about was how much she was like Elizabeth, and now he was fine with her being Sarah, just Sarah. Only Sarah. He hoped when the time came he would find the right words to help her understand.