The Loves of Leopold Singer (32 page)

Then the influenza scourged Boston, and Aunt Margaret and Uncle James didn’t escape. When they became sick, Igraine was sent to lodge with Mr. Mark. They died while she was away from them; she wasn’t allowed to see their bodies. While she packed to leave for her parents’ farm, a place she couldn’t think of as home, she was called down to Mr. Mark’s study.

Igraine had fierce loves and tenacious hates. She hated Mr. Mark.

He was a hypocrite, her least favorite of human types. He had mastered the art of appearing charming and wise to parents and guardians while he simultaneously worked to crush the spirit of every young girl who fell into his sway.

“My poor sad girl,” he said. “I have even more horrible news for you.” Mr. Mark held out
 
his hand, trembling with a sheet of paper. “A party of Shawnee led by the Prophet attacked the farms in the valley where your family was settled. They have been massacred.”

“My mother!”

“They are all gone.”

The letter was dated three weeks earlier, addressed to her uncle.

Dear Mr. Flanders:

My name is Leviticus Armstrong. John Fiddyment was my neighbor. Some time last month, Shawnee renegades led by the miscreant Prophet attacked John Fiddyment’s farm. Our preacher came upon the devastation. All was razed by fire, the entire family lost, even the infant’s young bones did not come through the inferno. This evening my wife has the thought that word may not have reached the daughter Igraine who is in your care. She begs me to send you this sorry news. I trust you will inform the girl of these woeful tidings. Providence knows what will become of her now.

Yours in Christ,

Leviticus Armstrong

While the information seeped its way into Igraine’s brain, Mr. Mark brought her a glass of brandy and sighed in an attempt to display sympathy. Igraine had never touched spirits, but she took the drink now. The burn she felt ripping down through her chest was the only thing that told her she was still alive.

Tecumseh’s brother, called the Prophet, had slaughtered her family. They had been dead for weeks, and she hadn’t known it. If that letter hadn’t come, she’d still have them. And a baby? For as long as it had taken to read a sentence, she had had a new brother or sister. And then not.

Just this week, she had given an oral report on the great Shawnee chief. She admired Tecumseh. It was said his brother was a madman, a mystic who violently fought the westward migration of the white man. Tecumseh, however, wanted peace and preferred diplomacy to fighting. She had argued that in Tecumseh there was evidence that the Indian was not inherently savage as so many said. And now his brother had savagely butchered her mother, father, brothers, and perhaps sister.

She didn’t know what to do. She must speak or stand or cry, something, soon, but not at this moment. Not at this very moment. Mr. Mark put his hand on her shoulder. Standing behind her, he didn’t see her grimace.

“Miss Fiddyment,” he began finally. She looked at his hand still on her shoulder, and he removed it. “This is a terrible tragedy.”

My mother will never sing again.

“I am not without pity. I cannot think of turning you out.”

“Turning me out,” she repeated dully.
Yes. Yes. I’ll be turned out. My Lord! I am an orphan.

“However, there are expenses involved in feeding and clothing an orphan, not to say continuing an orphan’s education.”

Orphan. Orphan.
Her face worked into a scowl. Was he simple in the head? Did he think she couldn’t understand these facts?

Mr. Mark sighed again. “My child,” he almost cooed. “I don’t want to turn you out to the streets or to see you end your studies. You show promise. The question is how to earn your keep?”

Earn my keep.

“I believe you’re ready to take on a few classes of younger students. That would account for some of it. If you would in addition help Cook in the kitchen, I could justify keeping you on here as a student. And when you finish, you will become a full teacher.” He added his own special incentive. “It is a pity you are so plain. Even with no family connections, a pretty girl can make some kind of marriage.” He sighed again, as if he truly pitied her. “But what you lack in beauty, you make up for in intellect; and if you work hard, you might make a life here at the school.”

There was nothing to say but, “Thank you, Mr. Mark.”

She found her things were already removed to a small, cheerless room on the third floor which she was to share with the maid of all work. The walls, whitewashed in the distant past, were a dull gray. There was no decoration, no fire, and only one tiny, bare window too high in the wall to provide a view. Below the window hung a small glass where Igraine examined her features as if for the first time. She had not known she was plain.
 

A natural storyteller and a bit of an actress, Igraine made learning fun. At first, she taught French, Bible verse, and spinning. Later she added citizenship, and even later, geography. In keeping with the school’s reputation for modernity, spinning was abandoned for needlework.

The hard part was in loving her little charges so well. She hadn’t expected to be so drained or to care so deeply. But she did love them for the most part, and for the most part they returned her affection.

She rarely had five minutes in a day to herself. The girls were so young, some barely eight years old, and they missed their mothers. The younger ones often clung to her skirts, asking questions or telling tales of the latest butterfly caught or frog returned to the pond. They tried to follow her to the kitchen where she chopped vegetables and kneaded bread, but Cook put an end to that after someone dropped a basket of eggs while “helping.”

There was no refuge in the bedroom she shared with a series of housemaids, immigrant girls who worked for practically nothing and wanted as much from Igraine as her students did.

“Igraine, tell me a story. I cannot sleep.”

“Igraine, close the window. Spirits might come in.”

“Igraine, would you ask Mr. Mark to give me leave? My mother is deathly ill and there is no one to attend to the little ones at home.”

She was free on Tuesday evenings and Sunday afternoons. On Sundays she was expected to attend church services with the boarding girls, but on Tuesdays she could do as she liked.

She accepted Mr. Mark’s judgment that she was destined to attract no mate, but she nonetheless had a girl’s tender heart and the feelings that went with it. It hurt to hear carefree students her same age and even younger chatter mindlessly about their beaux or the young men they hoped to captivate at this picnic or that dance when they went home.

She compensated for her neglected heart by indulging her curious mind. In 1811, when she was nearly seventeen, she discovered the Philosophical Society. The group met the first Tuesday evening of each month at the hall on the Common and sponsored lectures open to the general public. As a teacher, it was perfectly acceptable that she should audit these lectures to improve herself. She determined to become a member.

At the first meeting she attended, the hall was filled with amiable people who greeted each other with delight and launched into animated conversations. Everyone seemed to know everyone else. As the scene grew gayer, she lost her confidence. She didn’t know where she should sit. She decided to return to the school and try again the next time.

A fashionable young man blocked her way. “Are you looking for a chair?” He looked a few years older than herself. His blond hair cut to his shoulders was carelessly loose, and his suit was well-tailored. He had an easy smile, dark blue eyes, and looked as if he were about to tell a joke. He had no business speaking to a lady to whom he had not been introduced.

She walked around him, hoping no parents of her students were here. What might they say to Mr. Mark?

“Miss, please wait!” He caught up to her and actually touched her elbow. She shrank from him, and he held up his hands as if in surrender. She then realized how comical it all was. “There. A smile. You must not think me too churlish.”

No, he was too charming. She really had to get out of there.

“Look, give me a chance? You are Miss Igraine Fiddyment, yes?”

This was terrible. How could he know who she was? She had felt so grown up in coming tonight, and now she felt like a child.

“I am George Mark, Matthew Mark’s nephew. I have seen you once or twice at the school. We haven’t been introduced, and I apologize for accosting you back there, but you looked so lost. I felt it my duty to rescue you.” His duty. As if she were a maid in a romance.

She’d been self-sufficient enough years to have forgotten what it was like to be cared for. George Mark was utterly agreeable. How could a relative of the dark and dour Mr. Mark be so light and congenial?

“I’m sorry I was rude.” She offered her hand. “Yes, I’m Igraine Fiddyment.”

“But you were not at all rude,” he said easily. “This is naturally an awkward meeting. Would you allow me the honor of escorting you to a chair? The lecture is beginning, I think.”

Throughout the lecture, George Mark whispered in Igraine’s ear. He called his uncle “Books” because his name evoked the first two books of the gospels. He himself was named after George Washington. “What George of our generation was not?” he said with bemused exasperation.

At intermission, he went for punch and returned with a young lady. “This is Miss April Westerman.”

Igraine trembled with embarrassment. How could a man look at her twice when such loveliness was in the world? Miss Westerman had red-gold hair and green eyes. Her skin was radiant with good health and no blemishes, and the faintest scatter of freckles across her nose made her pretty face interesting. Her figure was perfect, soft and plump in all the right places. Next to her, Igraine was a broomstick.

“April is a teacher too, at Mrs. Johnson’s Girl’s Academy,” George said. “The competition.” He treated Miss Westerman too casually to be in love with her, but how could he not be?

“I’m glad to know you.” Miss Westerman said, offering her hand. She didn’t know she was pretty.

“Ah, here is April’s brother, George.” George Mark made the further introduction.

“George?” Igraine shook the brother’s hand.

“You see?” said George Mark. “We Georges are everywhere!”

They all laughed. Everyone was clever. Everyone was delightful. Igraine forgot that she was plain. She was afraid that George Mark would ask to walk her home, but he must know his uncle would have something unpleasant to say about that. At the end of the evening he said, “I suppose Books will let you out of the convent for the next meeting?”

Back at the “convent,” the world was brighter. She didn’t mind the romantic musings of the other girls now. She heard her roommate’s complaints with a kindness that she now realized she’d heretofore withheld. She thought she might make a new waistcoat of the fabric she was currently embroidering. She wondered what colors George Mark liked.

During a daydream of George Mark, one of her girls let out a sharp shriek and began to cry. The other Mr. Mark stood over the sobbing child with his ever-present baton, and the child glared at Igraine. Indeed, Igraine felt she had failed her little charge.

“Mr. Mark!”

Mr. Mark opened his mouth, but Igraine cut him off. “Let us step out.” She left the classroom, praying that he would follow. He did.

“Mr. Mark.” She was terrified, but she tried to sound firm. “You simply may not strike the girls in my presence. I will not stand for it.”

“You will not stand…”

“This is not a threat. It is a fact. I mean that I cannot abide it. Of course you will do as you like in your own school.”

“Should I be grateful for that?”

“But I tell you that if you strike a student again in my presence, I shall leave. I don’t know where I’ll go, but go I will.”

Mr. Mark stared down on her with the malevolence his small mind had nursed over the years. His hand slowly advanced toward her and rested upon her shoulder. It was as if something unholy were drawing out her life’s energy. Their eyes locked and held each other, and then he grunted a little and walked away.

From that moment, the girls were safe from Mr. Mark when Miss Fiddyment was in the room. Love had made her brave. She had never been so happy, so sure of her worth. She could not bear the three weeks before she would see him again. Unless he came to the school. Perhaps he would, now that they semi-properly knew each other.