by Beth Powning
Only fear.
“Get up,” she whispered, swinging her legs over the side of the bed. “You are just hungry and thirsty, that’s all, Enid. You’re not even hurt. You get up, now. You walk home.”
* * *
—
In Mr. Fairweather’s carriage, Flora clutched her face, as if to blind herself would also hide the scenes in her mind—Mr. Tuck with an axe; Enid, cowering; she saw the spurt of blood, like when she chopped off a chicken’s head but hideously magnified. She cried out, a wail into the heat of her hands. Mr. Fairweather patted her shoulder.
The moon was rising in the east. Fields spread away on either side; horse and carriage made the only movement, a beetle crawling across silk.
He tapped the horse with his whip. His voice jolted as the mare, startled, broke into a canter and then resumed a faster, swarming trot.
“It’s not too much farther. There’s a house and barn along here. The constables thought the house had been sold. Well, perhaps it has, but last time I passed by it was still empty. I used to visit an old man who was born and died on the farm. Lonely and a bit strange in the head.”
The mare laboured up a long hill, then down, into the flickering shadows of a spruce hollow.
“Just along here, now,” he said as they came out of the woods. “There. There it is.”
A house and barn. No lights. He turned the horse. They went up a long lane, lurching over ruts.
“What if he’s armed, Mr. Fairweather? What if he shoots at us?”
He patted his pocket. “I am armed, Flora.”
The horse drew up in front of the desolate house. They climbed from the far side of the carriage; ran, bent low. The lantern swung from Harland’s hand; he held the pistol in the other.
The door creaked on rusty hinges. Silence flowed from the house. The hallway smelled of lard, plaster, filthy fabric. The lantern’s glancing light touched oilcloth worn through to floorboards; animal scat; a dented saucepan.
Mr. Fairweather held the lantern high, inched into the front room.
Flora followed the lantern’s path, eyes wide yet not wanting to see.
No blood. No Enid.
Could have strangled her…
They went into all the rooms of the house, downstairs, upstairs. Mr. Fairweather went into the cellar through a rotten hatchway. He came back up, coughing.
“Nothing down there. Now, Flora, I’m going to explore the sheds and the barn. I want you to go back to the carriage and stay down.”
“But—”
“Please.”
She saw that it was for her sake that he wished not to state his reasons. Safety, sanity. She stepped out of the circle of lantern light. She went back to the carriage. Her skirt snagged and she tugged it, heard the rip of burrs. The mare shifted her front hooves. One, then the other. Her whinny was a ruffle, anxious.
Flora put her arms around the mare’s neck, breathed the scent of horse flesh, comforting as cornbread, cinnamon. She set her foot on the metal step, climbed up and huddled on the carriage floor.
Enid, hanging from a beam in the barn.
Enid, strangled and tossed into a shed.
She refused the images, seeing, instead, her own story: Enid’s little hand holding hers as they mounted the steps of the workhouse; Enid at the kitchen table in Nova Scotia—Are you really my sister?—a clean nightgown, peepers and the summer moon; the crackle of static beneath hairbrush. On it went, the river that should not stop, that must not, would not. She shivered against the boards, waiting for gunshot, a wail, shouting.
Footsteps. Mr. Fairweather climbed into the carriage and lifted the reins.
“There is no one. But they have been here. I saw a pile of fresh manure. He’d tried to hide it, kicked it apart. We’ll see if we can tell which way they went.”
The horse went back down the track. At the road, Harland and Flora climbed down. He swung the lantern.
“I can’t tell,” he said. “Can you?”
Hoof marks. Large, small, workhorse, pony, shod, unshod. Like ripples on a brook.
Harland stood, looking into the darkness, the lantern hanging at his side.
Enid was a hole in Flora’s heart, a rent into which anything could fall.
* * *
—
Harland and Flora drove all night, until at sunrise they found themselves at a small train station. The station master had not seen a man and a young girl.
He promised to watch for them.
* * *
—
Enid crashed down into sleep, woke in wet grass. Bewildered, she sat, absorbing the unfamiliar darkness and silence until she came fully awake. Mr. Tuck. She scrambled to her feet, unsteady but already poised to run. The moon was obscured by hills, now, and she came into a hollow and entered the woods she remembered driving through with Mr. Tuck, when she had thought her life was coming to an end. She shouted as she strode, the cape swinging, the hood sheltering her from the forest. She thought of buckwheat pancakes and maple syrup.
“I am a girl, you wild animals! I am not good to eat!”
Her voice jolted.
“I am Flora’s sister. I can read. I know my multiplication tables. I have crossed the Atlantic Ocean. I am Enid. I am Enid Salford who lives in Pleasant Valley, New Brunswick, Canada.”
She remembered the eye of the little duck and how when she had cleaned it with her finger it had seemed to know her, and be glad to be hers.
TWENTY-TWO
Warning to Travellers
JOSEPHINE WOKE TO ELLEN’S cry.
“Oh! Mrs. Galloway! Mrs. Galloway!”
She ran down the hall in her nightgown, her heart a thick presence, racing. Dawn light touched the plaster walls; chill air wrapped her ankles, coming through the side door, standing half-open.
Enid lay on the kitchen floor, curled like a cashew. In the stove, a newly laid fire roared; Ellen knelt by the girl, her hands hovering, not knowing where to touch.
Josephine dropped to her knees. She felt along Enid’s body, frantic. Firm shoulders, ribcage, the shuddering rise and fall of breath. Bits of grass and fern in her hair. Eyes squeezed shut, fists pressing cheeks.
“Where were you, Enid? Are you hurt? Can you talk?”
She lay on the floor and curled against Enid, gathering her, soothing as she had comforted her own children in their illnesses. Waking, in the night, she had dreaded to think how Enid’s loss would cast both her and Flora into despair, how the walls of her own recovery would crumble. She realized that even as she held the girl in her arms, feeling her shuddering breaths, her joy was barbed, tinged, as if at this moment another Enid lay murdered.
Footsteps, hurrying downstairs. Maud, and the boarders.
“Oh, the poor thing.”
“The Lord be praised.”
Ellen, stiff, pushed herself to her feet, one hand on the table. She slid the stove dampers shut and shoved the kettle to the hottest lid.
“Can you sit up, Enid? Flora and Mr. Fairweather are looking for you.” Josephine plucked a strand of hair from Enid’s eye. “She needs to be soaking in a tub. Ellen, will you—”
Enid scrambled to her feet. Dazed, teeth chattering, she walked between Josephine and Maud. In the bathroom, she slid from their arms and collapsed on the rag rug. Miss Harvey appeared at the door, frightened face looking over a blanket clutched to her chest. She laid it over Enid, while Josephine shook Epsom salts into the water. Sunlight quivered through the window and turned the steam to gold.
All three women supported her as she stepped into the tub. She wept as Josephine squeezed hot water over the nape of her neck. “Oh, poor Flora. She don’t know, she don’t know I’m safe…she’s thinks I’m ruined or killed…”
The women exchanged looks.
“I’m not,” Enid sobbed. “I’m not ruined…but
I think I was almost killed.”
* * *
—
Flora climbed down from the carriage beside the portico, where limp nasturtiums hung from a trellis, bearing faint residues of red and yellow. Night frost had completely burned off the nearby roofs of Creek Road. Mr. Fairweather leaned across the seat, as if reluctant to relinquish their intimacy of endeavour.
“I will phone and let you know what I learn from the constables.”
She let herself into the house. Maud came running out of the kitchen.
“She’s found, Flora! She’s here!”
“Here? Enid? Enid is…”
“I mean she’s not found, she returned. She walked into the house. A farmer picked her up on the road. Mr. Tuck had her, he took her to an empty house…”
Their boots trampled up the uncarpeted back stairs. “…she said that when she told him she had taken the brass duck, he…”
Flora, on the threshold of the bedroom, saw Enid in the white bed with a blanket around her shoulders, a cup of tea cradled in her hands—blue scoops beneath her eyes and the unblinking gaze of shock.
Enid put down the cup, spread her arms. Flora flew to her side, embraced her. Both girls burst into tears, seized by the violence of grief that had not come.
* * *
—
WAS THE WRONG MAN HANGED? POSSIBLE AXE MURDERER BOARDS AT MRS. SIMEON GALLOWAY’S HOME.
SISTER OF HOME CHILD TAKEN BY POSSIBLE MURDERER.
RUNAWAY MAN MADE MINIATURE HOUSES.
MINIATURE HOUSE IN POSSESSION OF MACVEY SISTERS. WE HAD NO IDEA, MISS MACVEY SAYS.
* * *
—
Evidence mounted: Jasper Tuck’s absence of connection to any person in the local area; and a rumour that two significant facts had been overlooked in the axe murder trial. Around the time of the murder, a man selling handcrafted toy fishing boats had been seen near the residence of the murdered woman, and a carpenter had gone missing from a house-building crew. The constables verified to the local paper that the murdered woman’s money had never been found. Neither had a small brass duck, mentioned by a witness as having vanished from her dresser.
Train stations were watched; livery stables and hotels were placed on alert. Posters were disseminated warning people not to take in a stranger with a missing wolf tooth, black hair and a wiry stature.
For two days, reporters frequented Josephine’s lane until she was driven to distraction and phoned Mr. Fairweather.
* * *
—
Warm rain brought down the last leaves, carpeting the lawn as if with a decaying quilt. The air smelled of wood smoke.
Harland stood beneath the portico.
“Mrs. Galloway has no new information. She asks that you respect her privacy and has asked me to tell you that she will answer no more questions.”
Josephine and Ellen, watching from the hall, saw two men break away from the group and approach the barn. They made blinders of their hands, looking in the workshop window.
“He’s a good speaker, he is,” Ellen remarked, jutting her chin at Mr. Fairweather, whose voice rang out, as it had, Josephine reflected, on the day of the pauper auction. He’d been sorry for the job he’d had to do. He was not sorry, now. He relished his role as Josephine’s protector.
A reporter raised a hand. “Why are you speaking for Mrs. Galloway?”
“I was the auctioneer on the day Flora Salford was sold at auction to Mrs. Galloway. The missing girl, Enid, is Flora’s sister. Both girls now live here.”
Another reporter called out.
“Wasn’t her sister at the Mallory place, in Nova Scotia? The man of the house now in custody for the death of a young boy?”
“Yes. But that is of no relevance.”
“Could this Mr. Jasper Tuck be any relation to those Mallorys?”
Harland remained calm. Firm.
“No.”
The rain changed from a patter to a teeming downpour; the reporters tucked their pads into pockets and went away. Mr. Fairweather came into the kitchen. He sat in a rocking chair. The fire made a faint, sporadic crackling. Bread rose in the warming oven. Josephine was digging in the caddy with a teaspoon; Ellen was making applesauce.
“Where are Enid and Flora?”
“They are upstairs. We are trying to keep them from seeing the newspapers, but Flora has glimpsed some of the stories. Enid weeps until we think she will be sick.”
“Flora reads to Enid,” Ellen added. Her face bore conflicted pride. “Storybooks.”
“Maud’s old books. The kind those poor girls never had.”
“Under this very roof, he was,” Ellen said, stirring apples. Rain drummed the veranda roof. “He was under our roof, Mr. Fairweather. I lie in bed at night, my mind going round and round. We all could have been killed in our beds. Savaged, first—raped, and then murdered. I think about the poor man they hanged. Then I think of Enid off alone with the likes of…”
“Ellen, Ellen. Please.” Harland sighed, putting his head back against the chair.
Josephine, pouring tea, was thinking about a rumour Maud had overheard when standing in a line at the grocery store. Mr. Fairweather is seeing quite a lot of Mrs. Galloway.
* * *
—
Flora sat beneath the window, reading aloud from a small book with gilt-edged pages. Enid, in bed, held her knees, the quilt around her shoulders.
“…and her daughter secretly warned the travellers to be very careful not to eat or drink anything as the old woman’s brews were apt to be dangerous. They went to bed and…”
Enid drew a long breath and laid her cheek on her knees.
Flora closed the book on her finger and stared out the window. A leaf fell, twirling. They had heard Mr. Fairweather send away the reporters. They had heard him come into the house.
They listened to the drumming of rain. A blue jay cried.
“So sad,” Enid said, her jaw working against her knee. “That bird. Like he’s lost someone.”
Flora watched the raindrops.
“What are you thinking about, Flora?” Enid murmured, still looking sideways, her gaze unfocused.
“How the rain is like nothing becoming something.”
“No, really.”
“How everyone is talking about us. How it seems like we can’t get away from bad things. How it’s like we were born nothing, and we will stay nothing.”
Flora’s hair pillowed at the nape of her neck, held off her white lace collar by a blue ribbon. Her eyes were resolute, sorrowful.
Enid whispered, “Flora, you are so beautiful. Just to look at you is to see goodness.”
“It’s only a danger,” Flora said. “It makes men want us. Like possessions.”
“I know,” Enid said.
“Why do you think he took that duck, Enid? I think it’s the strangest thing. Just a toy.”
“I think…”
Enid could not speak of Mr. Tuck without tears. She had turned the duck over to the constables. The dress, too, had been confiscated.
“I think he wanted it same as why I wanted it. I don’t feel sorry for him, Flora. I think he is a madman. But maybe…maybe once he was a boy like Fred. Maybe it was a part of not being poor. To have a thing, for no reason. Just a toy.”
The sisters listened to the sound of the rain, a hushing. Flora opened the book and resumed reading, her voice gentle, even though the story uncoiled a tale of the worst and the best of human nature.
* * *
—
Nothing was heard of Mr. Tuck. No hotels reported seeing him. He was not spotted at any train station. No stories were brought in from the countryside of a man asking for food and shelter. No vagrant was sighted in any town. Constables could not locate him in Moncton, St. John or Fredericton.
The
horse and carriage, however, were found and duly returned.
* * *
—
A week after Enid’s ordeal, Flora and Enid decided they must face Mr. Tuck’s workshop. Their shoes left black circles in the morning’s silvered grass as they crossed the lawn to the barn. Stepping over the threshold, Enid began to tremble and Flora took her hand.
“It’s all right, Enid. He’s not coming back.”
The tiny tools were gone. The dresser drawer hung open.
“I wish there were something of his,” Enid said. “I want to smash it.”
Flora looked at the chair where she had spent hours cutting out pieces of carpet, or sewing, or making the miniature windows.
“He’s gone,” Flora said, “But he’s not. He’s out in the world, waiting to find another woman to use. Or kill. He let another man hang for his crime.”
They listened to the drip of melting frost; the croon of hens on the other side of the wall.
Enid stared around the workshop. “I thought I seen the worst with Mr. Mallory and Fred. I feel like I can’t go out in the world. I feel like I got to just stay in my bed.”
“We have each other. Fred didn’t have anyone. Fred thought no one loved him.”
“I loved him. The dog loved him.”
“It wasn’t your fault, Enid. Fred probably didn’t know what love was.”
She thought of how she herself knew more about love now, having suffered the cruel possibility of its loss. How it was a thing like light. You could not describe it to a person who had never seen it. And yet, indescribable, it was something you trusted when, lonely in the dead of night, you waited for morning.
“I got to ruin something that was his,” Enid said. She was pacing around the room, touching the bench, opening a cupboard door. “Are we bad girls, Flora?”
Flora had wondered the same. She had determined to value herself by the degree of kindness so freely given by the Creek Road household.