Must the Maiden Die (28 page)

Aside from the Vanessa Usher Children's
Wing, the large warehouse space had been divided into sections by
partition walls to accommodate sleeping rooms and a cooking and
eating area. A front quarter of the warehouse held what Neva called
her dispensary, and it was there that Glynis went.

She assumed that Cullen would not want her
to tell Neva of the girl's confession, so she would need to be
careful about what she said, she told herself, before knocking
softly on the dispensary door.

"What?" came Neva's voice.

"It's Glynis. Shall I come in?"

"Yes! And thank God, you're here!"

She weepeth sore in the night, and her tears
are on her cheeks.

—Book of Lamentations

When Glynis opened the dispensary door,
light from two softly glowing kerosene lamps revealed Neva bending
over a bed. A still figure lay covered with a white cotton sheet.
At once Glynis feared the worst.

Neva straightened, and said, "I hoped you'd
come, Glynis, when you heard the girl was here. I need your
help."

Glynis went to where the girl lay. Although
it wasn't really accurate, she thought, to call Tamar "a girl,"
when she was almost seventeen. But she looked so frail. That was
the word Gerard Gagnon had used, and it seemed apt. Glynis now saw
why the girl on horseback had looked vaguely familiar to her Monday
afternoon when passing her on the road. Tamar had been with Helga
Brant at least once in Emma's shop when Glynis was there. It must
have been more than a year ago, and she couldn't recall whether the
girl had spoken on that occasion.

But where had Tamar been Monday
before
Glynis saw her on horseback? From what she and Cullen
had been able to learn, no one in the household could recall seeing
the girl at all that day. The question was, when Tamar left the
house, was Roland Brant already dead?

The girl's long blond hair was tangled, and
one arm that rested on top of the sheet was wrapped in bandages.
Beside the bed, a dog lay stretched out, a long strip of white
cotton bandage wound around its shoulder. As Glynis approached, the
dog gave a low growl and tried to rise, but Neva put her foot on
its rump and said, "Lie down and be quiet!"

The dog, to Glynis's surprise, at once
obeyed.

"This fellow did not make things easy," Neva
said. "He apparently thought I was attacking the girl. Tried tying
him up outside, but he howled like a banshee."

"The dog was injured, too?"

"He had some shot in his shoulder. After I
muzzled him, I took it out fairly easily. He was good about it, and
he obeys commands. It was only earlier, when I worked on the girl,
that he became aggressive. But really, Glynis, treating dogs—for
this I became a doctor?"

"You say that at least once a week," Glynis
answered, bending over to look at the girl. "How serious are her
injuries?"

"I think I removed all the shot from her
arm, but there's always the danger of infection."

"She doesn't seem feverish," Glynis
commented after laying the back of her hand on the girl's forehead.
"And she seems to be sleeping peacefully enough."

"It's laudanum-induced sleep, though," said
Neva. "I had to give her some so she wouldn't keep the others awake
when she cried out. Fortunately, the women who are here at the
moment are in the new wing."

"She cried out while you were removing the
shot?" Glynis asked, wondering if the girl, possibly in delirium,
had again referred to the knife.

"That's not what I mean. She has another
kind of damage."

"Damage?" repeated Glynis cautiously.

"When they brought her here, Zeph told me
what happened in the swamp. The girl threw herself on the dog, and
she suffered not just pellets in her left arm—which had a cut as
well—but she has at least one lodged in her upper left thigh. I say
at least one, because she wouldn't let me take a good look."

"I'm not sure I follow you," Glynis said.
"She wouldn't let you see her thigh wound?"

"That's right. She let me remove the pellets
in her arm with barely a sound. But when I tried to see the one in
the thigh, she became so frantic that I gave it up. And the dog was
ready to take a chunk out of me. I didn't want to tie her down—she
seemed terrified, but I wouldn't have called her delirious—so I
gave her some laudanum to calm her and decided to wait for
you."

Glynis bent over the girl again and brushed
back a strand of hair as pale as corn silk.
Corn
brought to
mind a kitchen; the Brant kitchen and Addie's disturbing words:
The men around here have big appetites.

Glynis turned to Neva and asked, "Did Tamar
understand what you were looking for? Did she ask anything, say
anything at all?"

"I have no idea if she understood," Neva
answered. "I tried to tell her, but she was crying and fighting me,
so she might not have heard. And yes, she did say something. It
surprised me, because I thought she was supposed to be mute. She
kept saying 'No!' and 'Don't hurt me,' over and over. It struck me
as peculiar, since it was after I'd worked on her arm, which
couldn't have been painless."

So Neva had been surprised by the girl
speaking. Which meant she didn't know about Tamar's supposed
confession; if she had talked of a knife, Neva surely would
mention it. "When you took out those pellets," Glynis asked, "was
she covered with the sheet at the time?"

Neva frowned in thought. "I think so, yes. I
had to get her clothes off before I worked on her. They were soaked
with rain and swamp water."

"And did she object? When you took off her
clothes?"

Neva frowned again. "Not much, as I recall.
Although she was in shock—she may still be. Why, do you think her
reaction was due to modesty?"

"I don't know."

"Well, whatever the case, I have to remove
that pellet."

"Can you do it now," Glynis asked. "While
she's asleep?"

"I hope so. Though I didn't give her much
laudanum. It can be dangerous to someone in shock, and it's pretty
much a matter of guesswork as to the right amount. If she comes out
of it while I'm working on her and carries on like she did
before...that scalpel is sharp."

Neva moved to a large table at the far side
of the bed, which held a tin tray of instruments, among them a
scalpel and forceps. "I need to go to the pump to wash these," she
said, picking them up along with a tin basin filled with bloody
water.

"Neva, I expect her mother should be here
soon."

"She has a mother? I thought she was
indentured to Brants because she was orphaned."

"Yes, I can see why you might have thought
that. It's rather a long story."

"Tell me when I get back," Neva said over
her shoulder as she left.

Glynis pulled one of the room's two straight
chairs closer to the bed and sat down. Softly, she said, "Tamar?"
to see if the girl's sleep was sound.

She stirred slightly, but didn't open her
eyes. Glynis took a lower corner of the sheet and began to lift
it.

Almost immediately, the girl grabbed the
sheet with her right hand, and her eyes opened; eyes the clear blue
of October skies. "No, don't hurt me," she said, her speech slurred
by the laudanum. But at least she was speaking.

When the dog began to growl, Tamar's eyes
closed. She must sense its protection, Glynis decided, and guessed
the dog belonged to Gerard Gagnon.

She thought it best to take him outside
while the girl was quiet. Glynis had to coax some before the dog
limped after her, and then not willingly. Once outside, it occurred
to her that he might try to find his master—and Gerard did not need
him as much as the girl did—so she tied him to a hitching post.
Then she stood gazing down the road to see if Elise Jager was
coming. The moon was rising to outline the factories and
warehouses along the canal, and she looked for the one that had
been owned by Andre Gagnon before Roland Brant had foreclosed. She
thought it might be the stone building directly across from the
library. If so, she recalled little activity there in the past
days.

Finally, seeing no one approaching, she went
back inside to wait for Neva, and heard the dog whimper as she
closed the door. She experienced a pang of longing for her terrier
Duncan—gone many years now and still so sorely missed that she
could not yet bring herself to have another. She almost relented
and brought the shepherd back inside. But he would be unmanageable
if he sensed the girl was in distress.

"Good, you took the dog out," Neva said when
she came back. "Her mother isn't here yet?"

"No, although she must have been notified by
this time."

"Well, let's get this over with."

"Tamar's half awake, I'm afraid," Glynis
said, and told Neva of her experiment.

"Then we'll have to tie her down."

When Glynis started to object, Neva added,
"I can't wait for infection to start."

"No, I suppose not. It just seems so—"

"So heartless," Neva said, moving to the
table where two additional lamps sat. "But letting her die would be
more heartless, wouldn't you say?" She turned up the two lamp
wicks.

Glynis nodded. Moreover, the girl didn't
protest when they loosely tied her hands with cotton cord to the
bed's spindled headboard. Glynis hoped Tamar's earlier reaction
might have been only a reflex, perhaps to the sheet rubbing against
her wound.

But as soon as Neva lifted the sheet, the
girl began to pull at the cords.

"Tamar," Glynis said to her, "it's all
right. Dr. Cardoza-Levy is just trying to help you, and it will be
over soon."

Neva was meanwhile swabbing wood alcohol
over the swollen area of the girl's thigh, muttering, "Who knows if
this works, but Dr. Ives swears by it. And much as I dislike
alcohol in any form, if it helps to ward off infection, I'll use
it."

Tamar was by now straining at the cords,
saying, "No, don't hurt me." She still sounded dazed from the
laudanum. Glynis felt her protest was due to something other than
pain from the wound, especially since Neva had barely touched her
yet.

But then Neva started to probe with the
scalpel. "No, please no!" the girl cried, tossing her head back and
forth, her eyes open and wild with fear.

"Glynis, hold her legs down," Neva said
crisply. "She's thrashing around too much."

"I don't think I can bear to," Glynis said
with mounting distress. "She's terrified."

"You have to do it!" Neva retorted. "Else
we'll need to tie her legs down, too."

Glynis tried to comfort the girl by talking
to her quietly while Neva worked, but Tamar continued crying, "No,
no," over and over again in a drugged voice. Outside the dog howled
as if he were mad with despair.

***

Glynis returned from the refuge kitchen with
two cups of tea. After handing one to Neva, she sank into a chair.
She had felt such pity for the dog that as soon as Neva finished,
Glynis brought him back inside, but by then he'd surely wakened all
of Seneca Falls. Now he was again stretched out beside the bed of
the sleeping girl.

She stroked the dog's head and told Neva, "I
could never be a doctor!"

"Days like this one," Neva answered, "I
don't think I can be either. But at least the scurrilous bounty
hunter responsible for those injuries"—she motioned to the girl—"is
now rotting in hell. And don't look at me like that, Glynis. Just
because I'm a doctor doesn't mean I can't subscribe to an eye for
an eye, et cetera. He probably murdered more than one person with
that shotgun, and the girl could easily have been killed. You saw
the size of that pellet!"

She had seen it. Mercifully there had only
been the one.

There was sudden knocking at the outside
door. When Glynis went to answer it, Liam Cleary stood there,
shivering in the cool night air. He told her he'd come because
Cullen said Gerard Gagnon would drive them to drink by his constant
demands for information about the girl.

"Come inside, Liam. We need to keep it as
warm as possible in here."

After she closed the door, Glynis said to
him, "You can tell Gerard Gagnon that the girl is holding her own.
Dr. Cardoza-Levy removed all the shotgun pellets. Tamar is sleeping
quietly and so is his dog."

He nodded and turned as if to leave.

"Wait, Liam," Glynis said. "Mrs. Jager isn't
here yet. Did you see her at Carr's Hotel?"

To her astonishment, his face turned red,
the blush extending to his carrot-colored hair. "I did, yes, Miss
Tryon, but.... That is, I saw her, but I didn't exactly talk to
her. Not much."

"What did you do?" Neva asked, coming out of
the dispensary.

"I didn't do anything. She was... that is,
she had. ..."

"Liam," Neva snapped, with the impatience of
fatigue, "what is the matter with you? Just spit it out!"

Liam swallowed, and mumbled, "She, Mrs.
Jager, she was in her, ah, undress."

"That's hardly scandalous," Neva said,
eyeing Liam narrowly. "You've surely seen a woman in a dressing
gown before."

"But that's not all, exactly," Liam said,
now staring earnestly at the floor.

"All of what?" Neva demanded.

"I guess she was...was entertaining. Yes,
that's what she was doing!" he said, obviously relieved inspiration
had struck. "She was entertaining."

"Entertaining whom?" Neva asked. "Her
husband?"

"Ah, no. No, Constable Stuart said that Mr.
Jager left town today." Liam gazed with pitiful eyes at Glynis,
obviously seeking support, but she was too bewildered to help him.
And she also wanted this sorted out.

Neva must have decided to change tactics, as
her approach became milder. "All right, Liam, steady as you go,
and let's try this again. Who was with Mrs. Jager?"