Fitcher's Brides (24 page)

The egg—taken from her—sat across the room on the card table, drawing her thoughts, her desire like venom. Emily often sat beside it, and maybe that was how she came to link the two things, the hair and the egg. Elias would arrive from time to time and ask after her, brush his hand through her hair, kiss her tenderly on the cheek. At one point, in a delirium, she wrapped her arms around him and tried to pull him into the bed with her, announcing everything she planned to do with him—all of it borrowed from what she thought he'd done with her already. She wanted to show him her body, tried to tear off her gown. She cried, “Get me her hair, and I can be any woman you want!” She reached for Emily, who kept her distance. Margaretta, dark and usually stern, flushed with embarrassment and looked elsewhere. Fitcher extricated himself and backed away in apparent horror.

“Why won't you come to my bed?” she demanded to know. “I want you in it. You make me like this—you and your slippery little battery. Get in with me!” Instead, Emily and Margaretta closed in and restrained her. She thrashed and snarled, demanded they let her get rid of her clothes so he could have her awake the way he used her while she slept. The women held her down until she sagged, enervated, lost in a fog again. She heard Margaretta say, “She is
teuflisch, ja
.”

When her fever broke, it shattered the looping frenzy of desire as well. She had been without the egg for four days. Separation weaned her from its power. On her bed, her head propped up, she glanced weakly across at it. Her eyes ached too much to stare. They felt as sunken as the gorge beyond the gate, but when she opened them, they always flitted back to it. Finally, hardly daring to breathe, she asked Margaretta to give it to her. No one had touched it until then.

Margaretta, whose severe face reminded her of Lavinia, regarded the egg in her hand as if it were a worm, a slug. She held it out with her head craned away. Hungrily, Vern snatched it from her palm. It was cold, however. No energy lay within. It was just a piece of marble. She could not help but wonder if it had ever been anything else. The sexual power it had manifested seemed no longer to exist and she couldn't clear her thoughts enough to recall how it had consumed her.

She curled up in a ball around the egg and fell asleep. She dreamed of a forest. Both her sisters were there, darting from tree to tree, playing hide-and-go-seek, and the harder she tried to find them, the more cleverly they hid, until she had been led into the wilderness.

M
R
. C
HARTER AND
L
AVINIA
were driven home from the afternoon sermon they'd attended.

They had walked to Harbinger after lunch, which they sometimes did, leaving the girls in charge of the pike. The girls were expected to read their Bibles to each other while they sat, and not get into any mischief. Amy was also in charge of cooking the meal, and so left Kate from time to time on her own. The whole afternoon was uninterrupted by travelers.

The wagon rolled into view just as Amy was emerging from the house. Notaro drove it up to the pike and stopped, and Lavinia and Mr. Charter climbed down from the driver's box. Notaro gave Kate a neutral once-over, then his glance flicked to Amy but as quickly darted away. His affected disinterest in Amy did not escape Kate, but she had a more pressing issue to resolve.

As her father came around the lead horses, she asked him, “Did you see Vern?”

Before he could answer, Lavinia interjected, “Katherine, your sister is now mistress of a great estate. She's helpmate to God's chosen prophet. She isn't just sitting there in the house waiting for us to call.”

“But you saw her?”

“Kate, we didn't,” said Mr. Charter with more compassion. “We did not attend the sermon in the main house. The reverend instructed us to attend the meeting in the village church instead. It's his wish that we, his lieutenants, have opportunity to hear all the preachers who've come to Harbinger. He wants us to acquaint ourselves with them, make them feel welcome, make them feel their message matters to the community. You see, they aren't all death on a sermon the way Reverend Fitcher is, and having us there lends support. Sometimes he even asks us to preach the sermon ourselves.”

“But she hasn't even sent us a letter, not even a note.”

“Not so,” replied Lavinia, and she produced a small wax-sealed envelope. “See, Katherine, you jump to conclusions.” She smiled, a look more of triumph than of sympathy.

Kate took the envelope. She looked from one to the other of them. “But you didn't
see
her?”

“The reverend gave us her note,” explained Mr. Charter. “You see, Katie, there are early morning sermons, and noontime ones as well. Meals are eaten in shifts, so someone is preaching before each of those. She might attend any one of them on any given day. We could go to hear a sermon there and not see hide nor hair of Vernelia for weeks at a time. Months even. Lavinia's right. She's now a very busy woman. If you heard the list of duties she has…”

Although their answer did not satisfy, Kate capitulated. It was more important to read the letter than to argue pointlessly. “Thank you,” she told them. “Thank you for giving me this.” She turned then, and caught Amy mooning at Notaro behind them. Amy saw her and quickly went to the horses, taking one by the bridle. She was going to help walk them around.

“Here, Amelia,” Mr. Charter said, “let me help you.” He did not notice the blush on her cheek.

Lavinia said, “You'll want to go read your sister's letter,” which was her roundabout way of discharging Kate from her duties for the time being.

Kate thanked her and ran into the house.

Before giving the letter to Amy, Kate read it through twice. When she was finished, Amy set it down and said, “She's all swelled with her position, isn't she? She'll come visit us if time permits. As if her life is so terribly busy she can't spare even an hour.”

“Exactly,” Kate replied. “It's not believable, is it?”

“No,” Amy agreed, but she had arrived at a different conclusion than Kate. “She's just full of herself, is all. The same as when she told us she was a woman now because she'd been proposed to, while we were still girls.”

“That wasn't what she said, Amy. She even apologized that it sounded so.”

Amy would hear none of this defense. She was convinced that Vern was more than happy to have divested herself of both the family and all the chores she had, all of which Amy had inherited, or so she maintained. Papa and Lavinia had given her all Vern's chores as a punishment for her behavior at the wedding.

She'd complained of a terrible headache the day after, but that hadn't kept her father from delivering a protracted lecture about the inherent corruption of her soul and the almost certain damnation awaiting her if she didn't change her ways. Amy would have liked to have told him that she couldn't be damned if she was saved at Harbinger, but her head hurt too much to say anything at all. She just wanted to be left alone. They sent her to her room, but when she emerged, she discovered that she was now expected to do everything that Vern had been responsible for. Kate didn't have to do anything extra. At that point, Amy would have done whatever it took to get married, to get away from the family and the chores. She hated all of them, but Vern especially. She wasn't about to change her opinion of her sister's dismissal of them on Kate's say-so.

Kate dropped the subject. One thing she had learned since Vern's marriage was that, given the choice, Amy would side with Lavinia against her. It seemed to be Amy's method of punishing Kate, although Kate had no idea what she'd done to deserve it. After all, she hadn't gotten drunk at the wedding and she hadn't chosen who did which of Vern's chores. In fact, given who
had
made those choices, it seemed truly perverse that Amy sided with Lavinia on anything. Kate protected herself now by defusing arguments, by walking away from them, by keeping her opinions more to herself. Part of the reason she missed Vern so much was because she missed having someone to share her thoughts with.

The problem with Vern's letter was that it rang so falsely. Vern's proclamations of her happiness seemed too conspicuous, more as if Vern didn't believe any of it herself but knew she had to say so. It might have been different if Papa had received the letter directly from Vern, but since he hadn't, Kate was disinclined to believe its contents. Of course Papa's explanation of why they didn't see her made perfect sense in its way, and should have set her mind at ease; but it was all somehow too tidy. She had no more time to dwell upon it then because Lavinia called them to dinner.

After the meal, Amy went out by herself. Kate had the responsibility of cleaning up, while Mr. Charter and Lavinia retired to the parlor.

Amy went out to commune with God. She took her Bible and left the house.

Almost as soon as they'd settled in after Vern's wedding, Amy had begun to ask permission to go out and “walk with God.” Sometimes it was in the afternoon, sometimes the evening. It wasn't every day, but she was almost always gone for an hour or more. Mr. Charter of course approved of her private retreats, pouncing on them as an indication that his daughter was trying to make up for her ungoverned behavior at the wedding.

By the time her chores were finished, Kate had no idea where Amy had gone. Her father and Lavinia were seated in the parlor, discoursing on the sermon they'd listened to in the village and on Fitcher's preparations for a crusade to Pittsburgh. “The place is a locus for many people who are setting forth into the wilderness,” explained Mr. Charter. “Many people who are dissatisfied with their lives. They haven't found fulfillment. They're looking for something and they hope to find it out in the world where society has yet to go. It is these minds, these seeking people whom Reverend Fitcher hopes to persuade. He can offer them the truth they hunger for. That we all hunger for.”

“You'll be going with him?” Kate asked.

“Yes, both of us. You and your sister will be in charge of the house.”

“And Vern, is it likely she'll accompany him, too?”

Mr. Charter puzzled for a moment. “I don't know.” He looked to Lavinia for an answer, and she said, “It's as likely she will as that she'd stay behind and look after Harbinger while he's gone.”

Kate looked out the window. The sun was setting. She wondered suddenly how Amy could read her Bible in the dark. She arose and bid them a good night.

In her room, she sat awhile in the twilight. She held Vern's letter, although she could barely see the writing. Her doubts continued, but were formless, leading her nowhere. Why, she asked the shadows, was she the only one in the house who considered Vern's absence peculiar? Was she simply being willful and impatient, as Lavinia always told her? Yes, she was obstinate, but things that were wrong
ought
to be challenged. Though she didn't wish to admit it, perhaps Vern really was dismissing them in some fashion. Certainly, she knew how to put on airs.

Unhappy with her conclusions, Kate finally removed most of her clothes and lay down in the warm night air.

When Amy returned, the room was dark. She had a candle with her and set it on the dresser. She placed her Bible beside it. Kate's eyes were closed, and Amy quietly took off her shoes, then started to undress. When she drew off her chemise, pine needles and leaves sprinkled out. Amy knelt to sweep them up. When she looked up again, Kate was staring right at her. Guiltily, Amy said, “I was staring at the stars and I tripped over a root. I was with our Lord.”

Kate said, “You mean, our Lord the holy wagon driver.”

Amy blushed and lowered her head. She gathered up all the debris that had sprinkled out and carried it to the window where she threw it outside.

“What have you been doing, Amy?” Kate's question was too simple to get around, and it implied that Kate already knew what she'd been doing.

Amy had no good story to offer in place of the truth. She finally went to Kate's bed and sat. “You can't tell,” she pleaded. “You have to promise you won't. I love him, you can't tell anybody.”

“Notaro?” Kate asked. “You love
him
?”

Amy nodded. “He isn't like you think,” she said.

“Tell me.”

It had begun the evening he'd driven them home from Vern's wedding. He'd helped everybody out of the wagon except for Amy. Her head still spun from the champagne she'd drunk. She had one foot on the edge of the wagon but she couldn't figure out how to navigate from there. Notaro had caught her around the waist with both hands and lifted her safely to the ground. Then he'd nuzzled her neck and kissed her. Everyone else was walking away in the dark, not paying the slightest attention. The two of them had been kissing at the wedding, too, behind some bushes, and she hadn't minded at all. Amy had told herself she was going to discover what Vern bragged about, and really it was pretty fine. She liked kissing.

At the wagon, however, he only kissed her a little, then he whispered that he would come calling later on, as soon as things got back to normal “out at the place.”

Afterward, between her fierce hangover and her father's scolding, she convinced herself that she'd seen the last of him, that she had been nothing but a quick bit of fun to him.

About three days later, she went out to the privy and he jumped out of the woods and nearly scared her to death. He had stood out there for over an hour, hoping to see her. He'd swept her up in his arms and, laughing, had kissed her again. She wasn't drunk that time, and she decided that she liked him.

His duties for Harbinger took him into town nearly every other day for supplies of some kind. Nobody paid much mind to how long he was gone.

He was rough and uncouth and far too interested in what lay beneath her clothes, which interest she rebuffed. If that was all she'd meant to him, he could have driven off right then the way she half expected he would. But he didn't. He was genuinely eager for her company, which no one else in the house seemed to be. Papa was still angry at her, and Lavinia had piled on all her new chores.