Bethlehem Road (37 page)

Forrester’s face tightened, some of the fresh-scrubbed pinkness fading from it; his wife’s hand gripped his arm.

“We have no daughter Elizabeth,” he said levelly. “Catherine, Margaret, and Anabelle. I’m sorry; we cannot be of assistance.”

Pitt looked at the very ordinary couple standing side by side in their hallway, faces set, hands clean, hair neat, the precise and God-fearing samplers on the wall, and wondered why on earth they should lie to him. What had Lizzie Forrester done that they should say she did not exist? Were they protecting her or disowning her?

He took a gamble. “The records say that you had a daughter Elizabeth born to you.”

The color flooded back into Forrester’s face, and his wife’s hand flew from his arm to cover her mouth and suppress a gasp.

“It would be less painful for you to tell me the truth,” Pitt said quietly. “Far better than my having to go and ask questions of other people until I uncover it for myself. Don’t you agree?”

Forrester looked at him with intense dislike. “Very well—if you insist. Although we’ve done nothing to deserve this, nothing at all! Mary, my dear, there is no need for you to endure this. Wait for me in the back parlor. I shall return when it is done.”

“But I think—” she began, taking a step forward.

“I have spoken, my dear,” he said levelly, but there was insistence under his genteel tone. He did not intend to be argued with.

“But really, I think I should—”

“I don’t care to repeat myself, my dear.”

“Very well, if you say so.” And obediently she withdrew, nodding miserably at Pitt in a sort of half recognition of his presence. She retreated back the way she had come, and again they heard the door latch open and close.

“No need for her to suffer,” Mr. Forrester said tartly, his eyes on Pitt’s face, hard and critical. “Poor woman has endured enough already. What is it you want to know? We have not seen Elizabeth in seventeen years, nor are we likely to ever again. She ceased to be our daughter then, and whatever the law says, she is none of ours. Although what concern it is of yours I fail to see!” He opened the front parlor door, twisting the handle hard, and showed Pitt into a cold room with too much furniture, all spotlessly clean. The tables were crammed with photographs, china figures, Japanese lacquer boxes, two stuffed birds and a stuffed and mounted weasel under glass, and numerous potted plants. He neither sat down himself nor offered Pitt a seat, although there were three perfectly good chairs, all with embroidered antimacassars on their backs. “I completely fail to see!” he repeated accusingly.

“Perhaps I could speak to Elizabeth myself?” Pitt asked.

“You cannot! Elizabeth went to America seventeen years ago. Best place for her. We don’t know what happened to her there or where she is. In fact, she could be dead for all we know!” He said it with his chin high and his eyes bright, but Pitt caught a quaver in his voice, the first sign that there was pain as well as anger in him.

“I believe she belonged for a while to an unusual religious organization,” Pitt began tentatively.

The pain vanished from Forrester’s face, and only rage and bewilderment remained.

“Evildoers!” he said harshly. “Blasphemers, the lot of them.” He shook with the depth of his outrage. “I don’t know why they let them come into a God-fearing country and permit their wickedness to innocent people! That’s what you should be doing—stopping wickedness like that! What’s the use of your coming here seventeen years afterwards, I’d like to know? What good is that now, to us or to our Lizzie? Gone to join wicked men, she has, and never a word of her since. Mind, we’re Christian people; we told her she’d be none of ours until she forsook her ways and came back to good Christian religion.”

It was nothing to do with the case, but Pitt asked in spite of himself. “What was her religion, Mr. Forrester?”

“Blasphemy is what it was,” he replied hotly. “Downright blasphemy against God, and all Christian people. Some charlatan who said he saw God, if you please! Said he saw God! And Jesus Christ! Separately! We believe in one God in this house, like all other decent people, and nobody is telling me some ignorant man with talk of magic and working miracles is going to have any part of me or mine. We told Elizabeth, forbade her to go to their meetings. We warned her of what would happen! Goodness knows how many hours her mother spent talking to her. But would she listen? No she wouldn’t! Well in the end she went off to some place in America with the tricksters and wasters and fools who were taken in as she was, or saw a way to make a profit out of gullible women. You do everything you think is right, all you can do to keep your family God-fearing and Christian, and then they serve you like this! Well, Mrs. Forrester and I say we have no daughter Elizabeth, and that’s how it is.”

Pitt could see the man’s grief, and his anger: he felt betrayed by his daughter and by circumstances, and it confused him, and the wound, for all his protestations, was not healed.

But Pitt had to pursue his own questioning.

“Was your daughter acquainted with a Mrs. Royce before she left England, Mr. Forrester?”

“Possibly. Yes, possibly she was. Another deluded young woman who would not take the counsel of her betters. But she died of typhoid or diphtheria as I recall.”

“Scarlet fever, seventeen years ago.”

“Was it! Poor soul. Dead without the time to repent, I daresay. What a tragedy. Still, the main damnation will be upon the heads of those who beguiled her away into idolatry and blasphemy against God.”

“Did you know anything of Mrs. Royce, sir?”

“No. Never saw her. Wouldn’t permit any of those people through my door. I lost one daughter, that’s more than enough. But I heard Elizabeth speak of her often, as if she were quality.” He sighed. “But I suppose being of gentle birth is no help to a woman, if she has a delicate constitution and a weak will. Women need looking after, sir, guarding from charlatans like that—that blasphemer!”

Pitt could not bear to give up. “Is there anyone who can tell me about Mrs. Royce? Did she ever write to your daughter? Would they have had mutual friends, anyone who still keeps that particular faith around here?”

“If there is, I don’t know of them, sir, nor do I want to! Emissaries of the devil, performing his works!”

“It is important, Mr. Forrester.” Was that the truth? To whom did it matter, after all these years? Pitt, because he wanted to know why Elsie Draper’s sick mind had clung so passionately all the long years in Bedlam to her hatred for Garnet Royce? But what difference did it make now?

Forrester was looking uncomfortable, his eyes not quite steady on Pitt’s face, his color mottled.

“Well, sir ...”

“Yes?”

“Mrs. Royce did write some letters to Lizzie, after Lizzie’d gone. We didn’t send them on. Didn’t know where to send them, and we’d sworn we’d never speak of Lizzie again, like as though she were dead, which she was to us, but then since they weren’t ours, we couldn’t rightly destroy them either. We’ve still got them somewhere, up in the box room.”

“May I?” Suddenly Pitt was shaking with excitement, a wild hope beating upwards like a bird inside him. “May I see them?”

“If you wish to. But I’ll thank you not to mention it to my wife. You’ll read them in the box room, sir, and that’s my condition.” He looked uncertain as to whether he might impose any condition upon the police, but his resolution to try was strong, his pale eyes defiant.

“Of course,” Pitt conceded. He had no wish to cause distress. “Please show me the way.”

Fifteen minutes later Pitt was crouched under the beams of the roof in a small, stuffy, ice cold box room where three large trunks lay open, a variety of cases for hats and mantles were piled high, and in front of him at last were the six precious letters addressed to Miss Lizzie Forrester and postmarked from April 28 to June 2, 1871. They were all sealed, exactly as they had arrived.

Carefully he slipped the edge of his penknife under the flap of the first envelope. The letter was in a young, feminine hand and seemed to have been written in some haste, as if interruption were feared.

19 Bethlehem Road

28th April 1871

My dearest Lizzie,

I have tried every art or plea I know, but it is no use, Garnet is adamant. He will not even listen to me. Every time I mention the Church he forbids me to speak. Three times in the last two days he has sent me to my room until I should come to my senses and leave the subject alone, forget it forever.

But how can I? I know no other such sweetness or truth on me face of the world! I have gone over everything I have heard the Brethren say, over and over it in my mind, and I find no fault in it. Surely some of it seemed strange at first, and far from what I had been raised to believe, but when I consider it in light of what my heart tells me, it all seems so very right and just.

I hope I may prevail upon him; he is a good and just man, and only desires what is right for me. I know from all my past both as his betrothed and as his wife that he desires to protect and care for me and guard me from all ill.

Pray for me, Lizzie, that I shall find the words to soften his heart so he will permit me to come again to the Church and share the sweet companionship of my Sisters and receive some instruction in the true teachings of the Saviour of All Mankind,

Your dearest friend,

Naomi Royce

The next letter was dated a week later.

Dearest Lizzie,

I hardly know how to begin! My husband and I have had the most dreadful disagreement. He has forbidden me ever to go to Church again, nor even to speak of the Gospel in the house. I must not mention the teachings or anything to do with the Brethren to him, nor try to explain to him why I know the Church is true, nor what makes me feel so.

I know it is hard for him! I do know it, believe me. I also was raised in the orthodox faith and believed it until I was eighteen years of age, when I began to find some of its doctrines did not answer the questions that cried out in my heart.

If God is such a holy and marvelous being as we are told—and I believe He is—and if He is our Father, as we are all taught, then how is it that we are such flawed creatures with no hope of growth, mere spiritual children, pygmies of such deformity of soul? I cannot believe it! I do not! There is endless hope for us, if only we will strive harder, learn who we are and stand upright, learn every good thing, seek after knowledge and wisdom, with the humility to let ourselves be taught. Then by the grace of Our Lord we shall become, in time, worthy to be called His children.

Garnet says I blaspheme, and he has ordered me to repent of it, and accompany him to a “proper” church every Sunday, as is my duty to God, to society, and to him.

I cannot! Lizzie, how can I deny the truth I know? Yet he will not listen to me. Pray for me that I may have courage, Lizzie!

May the Lord bless you and keep you,

Your dear friend,

Naomi Royce

The third letter had been written only three days after the second.

Dearest Lizzie,

It is Sunday, and Garnet has gone to his church. I am sitting in my room and the door is locked—from the outside. He has said that if I will not go to his “proper” church, as a Christian woman should, then I shall go nowhere else.

I must be content with that. If I cannot have my freedom to choose where and how I shall worship God, as we believe all human creatures should, then I shall remain here. I am resolved. I shall not go to his church, nor forswear my own conscience.

Elsie, my maid, is very good to me and brings my meals to my room. I don’t know what I should do without her—she came with me when I was married, and seems to have no fear of Garnet. I know she will post this letter. I will have but three postage stamps left after I send this; after that Elsie has sworn she will evade the butler’s eyes and deliver personally such letters as I write to you.

I hope next time I write I shall have better news.

In the meanwhile, keep your heart high and trust in God—no one ever trusted in Him in vain. He watches over all of us and will give us nothing more than we can bear.

Your devoted friend,

Naomi

The next letter bore no date, and the handwriting was more sprawling and unsteady.

Dearest Lizzie,

It seems I have come to the greatest decision of my life. Yesterday I prayed all day to question myself as rigorously in every particular as I might, examining my beliefs in the light of all that Garnet has said about our Faith being blasphemy, unnatural, and based upon the maunderings of a charlatan. He says that the Bible is sufficient for all the Christian world, and whoever adds to it in any way is wicked or deluded and should be denounced as such, that there is no further revelation, nor ever will be.

But the more I pray, the more firmly do I know that that is not so! God has not closed the heavens, the Truth has been restored, and I cannot deny it. On peril of losing my soul, I cannot!

What a terrible trial I am suffering! Oh Lizzie, I wish you were here so that just for a moment I might feel less alone. There is only Elsie, and bless her, she has no idea what I mean, but she does love me and will be loyal to me forever. And for that I am more grateful than I can say.

I had a dreadful quarrel with Garnet. He has told me that until I forswear this blasphemy I am to remain in my bedroom! I will, I told him I will, but I shall not eat until he permits me to choose for myself, by the light of my own conscience, what faith I will follow, and what I shall believe in God!

He was so angry. I think perhaps he truly believes he acts in my welfare, but Lizzie, I am a person—I have my own thoughts and my own heart! No one has the right to choose my path for me! They will not feel my pain, or my joy, nor be guilty of my sins. My soul is as precious as anyone else’s. I have one life—this one—and I WILL choose!

And if Garnet will not permit me to leave my bedroom, then I shall not eat. In the end he will have to grant me my freedom to profess my own Faith. Then I shall be a dutiful and loving wife to him, fulfill all my callings both social and domestic, be modest and courteous and all else he would wish. But I will not forswear myself.

Your sister in the Gospel of Christ,

Naomi