Eternal Deception

by Jane Steen

  I let my head drop into my hands, suddenly afraid I would either laugh hysterically or cry like a child. I always underestimated Tess. My instinct was to protect her from my own worries in the same way I protected Sarah—but Tess wasn’t a child. And she had a faith I found it hard to emulate. Her unquestioning, absolute assurance of divine love had nothing to do with my view of the world as a place filled with problems I had to solve by practical means.

  “Well, if you’re not afraid, I guess I’d better not be,” I said when I regained control of my emotions. “But there’s another thing—something that would perhaps help me with Judah. Mrs. Drummond was going to give me a letter—something about Judah that Professor Wale thought I should know, but it disappeared after he died. I don’t think it’s in her room, and I doubt somehow that she hid it in her office either.” I wiped my nose with the handkerchief I held balled up in my palm. “And—I’m very afraid she may never be able to tell me where it is now.”

  Tess nodded, her mouth turning down at the corners. “Eliza is very sick,” she agreed. “Dorcas said her ague will probably carry her off this time. I think so too because I don’t think Eliza wants to be here anymore. I think she wants to be with Jesus and not be unhappy all the time.”

  Well, she certainly wanted to leave the seminary. Knowing she had planned to leave for employment elsewhere, I wasn’t so sure dying had been her planned course of action.

  Tess brightened for a moment. “Maybe your letter’s in the hiding place in the library,” she said. “You take out some of the big books, and there’s a panel—“

  “It’s not there,” I interrupted. “I looked this morning before I went to see Mrs. Drummond. Tess, you knew about it?”

  “Of course.” Tess looked pleased at my astonishment. “Eliza showed me.”

  “What other secrets of hers do you know?” I felt an unexpected surge of hope. “Are there more hiding places?” In such a big building, there could be many. Perhaps even some that Judah had not ferreted out.

  Tess screwed up her face, concentrating.

  “Not good ones,” she said finally. “Not really, really safe. Those boys get into everything, you know. And if I were hiding something, I wouldn’t put it in any place I regularly work in, would you? You expect people to hide things in places they know well.”

  “And Mrs. Drummond was—is—very cautious by nature. You’re probably right, Tess. I’ve always thought it odd that she has so few personal possessions considering the amount of time she’s lived here. What on earth did she even do with the money she earned? Give it away?”

  “No, she took it—“

  Tess stopped short. Her eyes widened, her mouth formed itself into a perfect O, and she scrambled to her feet. “Nell,” she breathed. “I think I know. And I think I have—“ She did not finish the sentence, but jumped up and down in excitement, squealing as quietly as she could manage.

  I pushed myself up from the floor—an ungainly operation when one’s midriff is encased in steel—and grabbed Tess’s shoulders to quiet her.

  “Well for goodness’ sake don’t let the whole building know,” I said. My heart thumped. Tess was trembling with excitement, and my own legs began to shake a little in response.

  Tess took a few deep breaths and then reached into her pocket. She withdrew her set of keys. Like me, she had a key to the workroom, to our bedroom, and to the linen room we were now in. Mrs. Drummond had also given her keys to her own office and to the room where the ledgers were stored. Tess loved to study her methods and would pore over the ledgers for hours given a chance.

  But the key Tess was holding up to me was one I had never noticed—and why should I? A bunch of keys was a commonplace thing. It was an ordinary iron key, small and slender, of a plain, old-fashioned design.

  “Eliza gives me copies of some of her keys,” Tess explained in her loud, hoarse whisper. “But this one is not a copy. It’s the only one. Eliza said, ‘They don’t watch you, Tess.’ And she’s right. They look through me or over me, never at me. They think, ‘Tess is an imbecile; she’s not smart like Nell or Eliza.’ But if Eliza gives me something to keep safe, I don’t lose it or tell anyone about it. Except I have now.” Her mouth pursed in consternation, but then she brightened. “But I only told you for the letter Eliza wanted you to have, Nell. Not for the other things.”

  “It’s for a strongbox of some kind? Where she keeps her money? But such things can be easily broken into, can’t they?”

  Tess grinned. “Not if nobody knows they’re there. Nobody in the seminary, anyhow. Mr. Yomkins knows because it’s in his big safe. He says a postmaster shouldn’t have such a thing in his keeping, but it’s been there ever so long. It holds Eliza’s bank book and the bit of money she keeps by for emergencies and a pretty necklace with pink pearls and some papers. Eliza used to go to Springwood most Saturdays, don’t you remember, Nell? That’s when she sent her money to the bank, just like we do. But she stopped going months and months ago. She gave the key to me, and one day she had me put some money in there for her—‘Be very careful no one sees you, Tess,’ she said. And I was.”

  I felt a swell of indignation that Mrs. Drummond had been using Tess—had exposed her to danger—but I let it pass.

  “Did you see a letter in there when you put the money in?”

  “I didn’t really look,” Tess replied. “I was real quick—Mr. Yomkins stands outside the door, but he doesn’t like me to spend long at his safe. But wouldn’t you put a secret letter there instead of in a hiding place near you? I would.”

  “I might,” I mused. “But if you’re right, what are we to do? I don’t like the thought of you—or I—carrying a letter around that Professor Wale may have been killed for and that Mrs. Drummond was so afraid about. And if she—does not recover, we run the risk of the box being surrendered to—someone, I don’t know whom. Either way, the Calderwoods and Judah have their eye on me, and anything I do out of the ordinary will arouse their suspicions.”

  “So let’s be ordinary, Nell.” Tess’s round face was rosy with anticipation. “Let’s do exactly what we always do—and if I do it, nobody will think we’re being clever.”

  42

  Journey

  November 27, 1875

  Dear Martin,

  I write this in great haste. We’re sending you something that may be of interest. I don’t know what it says because Tess is sending it on before I can see it, but I trust you to take the appropriate course of action when you’ve read it.

  Of course it may be nothing at all. Didn’t you tell me about a novel in which the heroine is greatly agitated to find a hidden paper, only to discover it’s a laundry list?

  Tess, Sarah and I are traveling to the Lombardi mission in the company of Mr. Poulton on December the sixth. Please don’t worry too much. I hope you are well.

  Yours,

  Nell

  “How long do you think it takes a letter to reach Chicago?”

  Tess’s loud whisper was fortunately masked by the sound of the sewing machine. Jane Holdcroft, the young woman Mrs. Calderwood had hired to replace me once I rose to the status of Judah’s fiancée, was working industriously on yet another set of new pillowcases. From the number of torn ones the servants had found lately, I suspected the students weren’t using them for their intended purpose.

  It was five days after I had watched Tess’s small figure recede into the distance, accompanying Bella to Springwood on her usual Saturday errands. Dorcas, who generally accompanied her daughter, had been busy in the sickroom.

  Tess had returned elated at her success in locating a letter very much like the one I had described to her. She’d enclosed it with the note I had written in a wrapper addressed to Martin. This she had put into our customary mailing to Chicago. We still sent money to the banker Martin had found for us and still felt a sense of achievement in doing so, even though the wealth Martin had garnered for us had eclipsed our small earnings.

  Tess had been able to accomplish t
his feat of derring-do in time to join Bella at the mercantile. She had purchased eau de cologne for the two of us and a penny whistle made of persimmon wood for Sarah into the bargain. She had been right—nobody had paid any attention to her.

  “How long for a letter to get to Chicago? I’m not at all sure,” I said. “At least four days, I’d imagine—quite possibly a week. And then it must reach Martin—he may be traveling again, for all we know. Why? Do you imagine he’ll come charging up to the door on a white horse and rescue us?”

  “That would be so exciting,” Tess sighed.

  “I suppose it would.”

  The last time I had needed Martin to rescue me, he hadn’t turned up until I’d hauled myself and Sarah out of the river into which Hiram Jackson had thrown my daughter. True, he had been of invaluable comfort and assistance in the aftermath of that dramatic scene, but hardly the knight in shining armor Tess was hoping for.

  I hadn’t yet told Tess that our friendship had, as the novelists say, ripened into something deeper. And I never might since my most sensible course of action—once I left the seminary—was to start life anew as far away from Martin as possible.

  I stretched my cramped fingers and looked at the list I had been making. I was attempting to itemize our tasks by season. Tess had thought of several things I’d forgotten, and I would have to write the whole thing out clean later, but I was fairly satisfied.

  In our nearly four years at the Eternal Life Seminary, we had made many improvements to our role. Tess’s mania for list-making and her admiration of Mrs. Drummond’s methods had allowed us to anticipate the demands of the seasons. I had negotiated favorable terms with some of the newer suppliers in Wichita, Saint Louis, and even Chicago. I had put systems into place to keep the boys well supplied with basic linens.

  And at the same time, I had built up a successful business as a dressmaker. I’d learned much in the process about the difficulties of dealing with women who decidedly had too much time on their hands. I’d faced the challenges of interpreting catalogues and sales circulars to find the best-quality fabrics at the lowest cost. I’d learned to harness my drawing skills to interpret my clients’ wishes. I’d taught myself to follow through by producing dresses that did not deviate too far from my original designs and yet incorporated the ideas that swarmed into my mind as I considered the drape of a fabric and the properties of the trimmings.

  When we arrived at the seminary, I was a callow girl with an illegitimate baby. I was grieving my mother and unable to look much farther forward than the end of my nose. Now, I saw the future as an endless vista of possibilities.

  If I could only escape the trap I had unwittingly walked into.

  Dawn had not yet broken when we loaded our wagon and took our leave of the seminary. Yet by the time we turned west, the sun had risen, and its first low rays struck sparks from the frost that clung to each stalk of grass or wizened seed pod.

  Tess and Sarah were fast asleep, shaded by the wagon’s canvas cover. The only sounds I could hear were the steady plodding of the horses’ hooves, the soft rasp-hunk of their breathing that sent puffs of steam toward the crisp sky, and the creak-rumble-creak of the wagon.

  We’d watched the farmer liberally grease the gear and wheels from the barrel hanging off one side of the wagon. He had proudly demonstrated the new rifle concealed in a compartment near the driver’s bench. Tess and Sarah squealed and put their fingers in their ears as he worked the lever and fired out into the empty prairie a couple of times before reloading.

  Judah held the reins. Andrew, assigned to drive us, was even now in his bed, suffering agonies from having eaten tainted pork at a certain establishment in Fork Crossing. I was fairly certain Judah could not have had a hand in that turn of events. My alarm at realizing we were not, after all, to have someone else with us quickly turned to anger against the hapless Andrew.

  This would never have happened if Mrs. Drummond had been her old self. She had been particular about knowing exactly where the servants were at all times. But Mrs. Drummond had not awakened for days. She lay motionless, her skin a waxy yellow and her eyes sunken, a picture of death in life. Tess had been very upset about leaving her thus and had sobbed over her as if over a corpse—which she almost was. I didn’t think we would see her again in this life, and I had taken my own leave with a murmured word of blessing and forgiveness. She had, after all, only ever done what she thought was right.

  Judah was silent beside me, other than speaking occasionally to the horses. I had plenty of time to think.

  I should perhaps have been afraid, I reflected, but I was not. It was exhilarating to be free of the seminary building and out on the plains with the great vista of tan and gold grasses before us, waving in the crisp, cold breeze that swept over us in gusts and eddies.

  I wasn’t cold—the farmer had supplied two huge buffalo hides, and Judah had draped one over my shoulders. The thick, coarse fur on the inside formed a surprisingly warm cocoon so that only my nose and cheeks stung from the frosty air. Inside the wagon, Tess and Sarah huddled under a collection of fairly clean Indian blankets and the other hide.

  Idleness freed my mind to roam around its memories. Unfortunately, the image that consistently invaded my thoughts was that of Professor Wale, wide-eyed in death, a bloody hole in his head.

  It was strange how easy it had been for people to accept that the mysteries surrounding his death—and Dr. Adema’s, come to that—would likely never be solved. Of course, Dr. Adema’s death could have been an accident—but Professor Wale’s definitely wasn’t. The frontier attracted the rough sort of man who would kill for nothing; that was what the people of Springwood said. Commit murder because a man looked at him sideways. Or Indians—some kind of retaliation for a land lost to the cause of manifest destiny. Theories abounded—and none of them made sense to me.

  I shivered under the buffalo hide, and Judah sensed it. “Are you cold?” He turned his head in my direction, and his breath misted the fur collar of his greatcoat. He managed not to look cold at all. He was well dressed for the journey in high fur-lined boots and a hat such as I imagined a fur trapper wearing, fur-lined leather gloves encasing his slender hands.

  His clothing always looked new, I realized, remembering how worn Martin’s riding clothes had been. I’d always thought of Martin as a well-dressed man, but Judah’s sartorial elegance seemed to go a step further. It was studied, somehow, as if he put great thought into dressing with precision for every occasion.

  “I’m all right.” My voice sounded loud after the silence between us, and I felt oddly embarrassed. To cover my confusion, I twisted round on the “lazy seat”—although how one could be lazy on a bouncing wooden bench some ten feet off the ground was a mystery—and peered into the wagon’s dim interior, noting the motionless lumps in the bedding.

  “We’ll stop when they wake up,” Judah said. “You may remember that the trail descends into a gully. There’s a spring down there, marked by boulders, so we can build a fire and brew some coffee as well as water the horses.”

  “I’m surprised how well you know the trail.”

  “I ride out sometimes, when I can borrow a decent horse.” Judah clicked softly to the Percherons. The left-hand horse was setting rather a slow pace, but the ears of its brother flicked back and forth at the sound.

  “I look forward to the day when I can afford a horse of my own,” Judah said. “Perhaps a carriage. It’s tiresome being a poor man, Nell.”

  No guesses whose money would buy the horse and carriage. I smiled in a noncommittal way, pulling the buffalo hide closer around me.

  Judah flicked the whip over the left horse’s withers. Its skin twitched, and it quickened its pace fractionally. “That one’s a lazy brute,” he said. “It’s ambling along like the lowest kind of mule. Such horses as these should step out more.”

  “Perhaps it needs a rest?” I suggested.

  Judah laughed. “Perhaps. But this journey’s a sight easier than pulling a plow o
r a cart loaded with hogs or wheat. These beasts are bred for hard work. I’ll take a look at it when we halt. Something may be bothering it, a sore place or a badly fitted harness.”

  “Judah, how is it that you’re so knowledgeable about horses?” My curiosity got the better of me. “You don’t seem to spend an excessive amount of time outdoors.”

  “I grew up around them.” Judah’s reply was curt and seemed designed to forestall any further inquiries, but I persisted.

  “In Baltimore? Did your family own many horses?” I knew nothing of Judah’s antecedents—he had never mentioned father or mother, sister or brother. One might think he had come into the world new minted, an angel fallen from heaven, perhaps. As soon as that thought crossed my mind, it gave way to the realization that a fallen angel was a demon.

  Judah merely smiled his dazzling smile, white teeth and violet eyes gleaming in the sunlight.

  “You’re very curious all of a sudden. I spent a lot of time with horses, and then I became a scholar. I prefer the latter.”

  His tone brooked no further inquiry, and he looked to the front, presenting me with his perfect profile, but absolutely no answers.

  We reached the gully about an hour later. Judah guided the horses skillfully down the shallow incline where the trail dipped, holding the reins with his right hand and leaning on the wagon’s heavy brake with his left with practiced ease. He had spent many hours driving before he came to the seminary, I realized.

  I wondered, not for the first time, how I had been so blinded by Judah’s personal charms that I had omitted to ask who exactly he was. Out here on the frontier, almost none of us had roots or antecedents. Apart from a few families whose parents or grandparents had arrived before the war to scrabble a living out of the plains with only the Indians for company, we were all new inhabitants of a place that was building itself around us. It was easy to ignore the fact that all of us had histories. I thought—as I had many times over the last week—of the letter making its way toward Martin, which expediency had left me no opportunity to read. The clues it contained to Judah’s past might help me decide our best course for the future.