Must the Maiden Die

by Miriam Grace Monfredo

  A few minutes later the dispensary door opened. Tamar stood gripping it while the dog danced around her feet. She pointed at the chamber pot, then at the dog. Glynis thought she knew what the girl meant, but waited to respond in hopes Tamar would speak.

  The silence stretched, and just as Glynis was about to give up, the girl said, "Outside. He needs to go outside."

  "Yes," Glynis said with relief. "I'll put him out for a few minutes. And while he's gone, I'll make us some tea, all right?"

  The girl didn't respond, but continued standing there. "It would help," Glynis said, "if you tell me the dog's name."

  "Keeper," said Tamar.

  "Keeper," Glynis repeated, smiling. "A good name for a sheepherder—keeper of the flock. Is he Gerard Gagnon's dog?"

  Tamar's expression became apprehensive. "Is he...?" She had drawn in her breath, and didn't seem able to finish the question.

  "Gerard is fine," Glynis answered. Which was not completely truthful if being jailed was any measure, but she noted the immediate easing of anxiety in Tamar's face. It reassured her that Gerard Gagnon had not been the one to brutalize this girl.

  "I'll put Keeper outside," Glynis said. "But first would you please go back to the bed? I doubt if you're very strong yet, and I'm afraid you might fall."

  The girl said nothing, but backed away from the door and edged toward the bed. When she lowered herself to the edge of it, Glynis called the dog to the door.

  ***

  Tamar said nothing when Glynis brought the tea. But she drank it readily enough, seated on the edge of the bed, and even took a few bites of the corn-bread biscuits Glynis offered. The girl still looked pale, so Glynis asked if she didn't want to lie down again. Tamar gave her another long look, then lay back. In the meantime, Glynis debated with herself about how much she should tell the girl if she asked the whereabouts of Gerard.

  She didn't ask, but curled on her side with her back to Glynis. After turning down the lamps again, and stepping over Keeper, Glynis started for the other bed. She stopped at the sound of a soft sob. The dog instantly jumped to his feet; at least he, Glynis thought, was recovering quickly. But she wondered if Tamar would be able to recover from what she had suffered.

  Leaving the lamps low and relying on the moonlight, Glynis pulled a chair up next to the bed and sat down.

  "I'd like to help you if I can," she said, cautiously reaching forward to smooth the girl's hair. Tamar didn't pull away, and Glynis thought this remarkable considering what the girl had been through. It gave her some confidence that Tamar could eventually mend.

  "To help you, though," Glynis told her, "I need to know a few things. You don't have to answer, but I hope you will trust me."

  There was no response from the girl, but she didn't shy away.

  "I expect you want to know about Gerard Gagnon," Glynis said, and received a quick nod of Tamar's head. "He's here in town. Unlike you, he wasn't shot."

  The girl rolled onto her back to look at Glynis. "He's all right?" she asked.

  "Yes, although he's worried about you, Tamar. He sent..." Glynis stopped, again doubtful as to how much she should say about Gerard's circumstances.

  "Where is he?" Tamar asked.

  The girl plainly had some strength of will, or she couldn't have survived this long, and while Glynis didn't want to upset her more, she also didn't want to lie to her. "He sent a deputy here to see how you were," Glynis answered, hoping this might be enough.

  "A deputy? Why?" Tamar asked, looking straight at Glynis, her fingers kneading the sheet.

  "Constable Stuart thought it best that Gerard stay at the lockup overnight, because he was very angry about what had happened to you. The constable was afraid that he, Gerard, might try to punish those responsible."

  Glynis waited.

  Tamar continued to gaze at Glynis, then at last asked, "Did the man with the shotgun run away then?"

  "No, that man is dead," Glynis answered. "Gerard killed him before he could shoot at you again."

  "If the constable knows that... Does he know?"

  "Constable Stuart and a search party were looking for you. Do you remember, before the man with the shotgun came after you, that hounds were baying?"

  "I remember."

  "Those bloodhounds belong to one of the deputies who was searching for you. The dogs led the constable and his men to where you and Gerard were being attacked by two bounty hunters with shotguns. And to answer your question, yes, the constable knows that to protect you Gerard killed one of the men."

  "Then why is he in the lockup?" Tamar asked and struggled upright, her eyes again beginning to widen with fear.

  Glynis helped the girl to sit up, and plumped a pillow behind her, at the same time wondering if she'd done the right thing in saying so much. And now, it was too late to back away. "Constable Stuart is questioning everyone who knew the Brant family," Glynis said, watching the girl closely, "in an attempt to discover who killed Roland Brant."

  The girl's eyes fluttered, and she clutched at the sheet. "Gerard didn't kill him," she said in a whisper. "Does the constable think he did?"

  "Constable Stuart thinks he might have had reason to kill Roland Brant," Glynis told her.

  "No, Gerard didn't kill him!" Tamar said, her eyes in the moonlight now brimming with tears. "I killed him."

  21

  THURSDAY

  And I, whither shall I cause my shame to go?... He would not harken unto her voice; but being stronger than she, forced her, and lay with her.

  —Second Book of Samuel

  "SERVANT GIRL CONFESSES TO MURDER OF LEADING CITIZEN" blared the boldface headline. Neva, having just arrived at the refuge, hurled the morning newspaper onto the table in the heretofore quiet kitchen where Glynis sat drinking coffee.

  While Glynis gaped at the paper, Neva threw herself into the nearest chair. "This is absolutely monstrous!" she stormed. "Glynis, do you have any idea where that wretched paper could have picked up such a thing? Aren't there laws against slander? Why doesn't someone take a horsewhip to the editor of that contemptible rag? Why aren't you saying something?"

  "I'm numb," Glynis replied. She had also just awakened a short time ago.

  She pulled the paper toward her to read the first lines of the article.

  The investigation into the murder of distinguished Seneca Falls merchant and philanthropist Roland Brant has concluded with the capture of his killer. Tamar Jager, an indentured servant in the Brant household, confessed to the heinous crime when she was seized yesterday in the area of Montezuma Marsh. Miss Phoebe Jones, another servant at the Brant estate, said she was not surprised to learn that Jager was a murderess, and went on to state that she had always known "the girl was queer in the head."

  Glynis could read no more. "This is worse than I would have imagined," she said, pushing the paper away in disgust.

  Neva had jumped from her chair to pour herself a mug of coffee, and now began pacing around the table. "How can they print something like that?" she exclaimed, her face flushed with anger. "I was with that girl for hours and she said nothing about Roland Brant. Nothing! And you were with her all last night—" She suddenly stopped pacing and gave Glynis a direct look, the question in her eyes explicit.

  "Did you see Tamar this morning?" Glynis asked quickly. "She seems much better. At least to my mind, she does."

  "She was asleep when I just looked in on her," said Neva slowly. "Glynis, did she tell you something?"

  "She woke just once to use the chamber pot," Glynis answered, truthfully. "She slept much of the night, as did I. But Neva, I really need to go home now and ..."

  Her voice trailed off as she saw that Neva was studying her with narrowed eyes of skepticism. Glynis knew how rapidly her friend could spot evasion, and she was badly botching her evasiveness. She simply hadn't expected the newspaper to print the story so soon.

  She sat there in discomfort while Neva asked, "Why do I think that you're trying to change the subject? And that you're conce
aling something?"

  Before Glynis could form an answer, Neva, each word pronounced with deliberation, went on, "I've just realized that you don't seem irate, or even surprised at the newspaper report that Tamar has confessed to murder."

  "Oh, I'm surprised—"

  "Let me finish, Glynis! If Tamar did kill Roland Brant, was it because...because he was the one who raped her? My God, could that be true of Roland Brant?" Neva seemed stunned beyond words. Glynis didn't reply, and after a minute Neva went on, "But if that's the case, you must know that I couldn't possibly condemn her."

  "Neva, you should not say the girl was raped by Roland Brant, and neither should I! Rape will not save Tamar from hanging for his murder. I hope you understand that."

  Neva brought her open palm down on the table with a resounding slap. "It's outrageous! It is just outrageous that a man can violate—"

  "Yes," Glynis interrupted, "but that is the way it is. And has been so for centuries. Neva, do you believe for one minute that a jury of men would set that girl free because she claimed Roland Brant had raped her? Of course not! If nothing else, they would choose to believe it wasn't true—that she was lying to save herself."

  "I can testify to her condition!" Neva snapped.

  "But you cannot state absolutely that she was raped," Glynis argued, concern bringing her to her feet. "And certainly not that she was raped by Roland Brant, who in death seems to be taking on all the trappings of sainthood. All you could testify is that you have seen evidence that she might have been raped. By someone. And how do you think a prosecutor would approach that? By saying she was unchaste, that's how. Just a wanton, little baggage who seduced leading citizen Roland Brant—enticed him so as to win her release from servitude or for myriad other reasons. The girl has no protection and no standing, Neva. Even Clements, another Brant servant, described Tamar to me as 'only a kitchen maid.'"

  Neva had slumped into a chair, and was staring at her with an expression of incredulity. "Glynis, I regret to say that you're beginning to sound exactly like Jeremiah Merrycoyf. That is not meant as a compliment. I have never seen you so...so antagonistic. And to me, your supposed friend!"

  "You are my friend, Neva, but I am afraid for that girl. If you so much as imply to anyone that she should plead rape as justification for killing Roland Brant, a prosecutor will snatch it up and run like the wind with it. And Tamar will be lost."

  Neva shoved her chair away from the table and stood up, her voice clipped when she demanded, "So what, Madam Prosecutor, is your solution? Since the girl has confessed to murdering Brant."

  "That wasn't precisely what I heard yesterday from Cullen," Glynis answered with caution, "and he is usually quite accurate. So what Tamar said must have been distorted by the time it reached the newspaper. And I have to assume it reached there by way of someone in the search party."

  "So what did she say?"

  "She talked —undoubtedly in shock when she did—about a knife. It was her knife, she said, that killed him."

  Neva groaned. But then, her forehead creased in thought, she said, "It may be splitting hairs, but that's not exactly the same as saying she killed him."

  "No, it's not," Glynis agreed. "But it evidently sounded like a confession to the men who heard it."

  "Speaking of your friend the constable," Neva said brusquely, "I saw him on my way here. He said to tell you that Elise Jager has filed a petition with the court clerk in Waterloo. For full custody of her daughter."

  Glynis drew in her breath. "Did he say when it would be heard?"

  "Heard?"

  "The application. Heard by the court."

  "As I said, you sound far too much like Merrycoyf. But to answer your question, Judge Endicott is back from circuit court, so Cullen said he would probably get to Elise Jager's petition this afternoon. He, Cullen, wants to know if you plan to attend."

  "I think I should."

  "Fine," Neva said, turning to leave the kitchen. "Now if you'll excuse me, I need to get to work."

  "Neva, I apologize if I said something disagreeable. Or something that hurt you."

  "That's quite all right," Neva said over her shoulder.

  But Glynis knew by the stiff set of the shoulder that it was not all right.

  ***

  Several hours later, a light breeze sent the smell of honeysuckle and freshly tilled earth through the open windows of the Seneca County Court House. Glynis sat waiting in the second-floor courtroom, as did everyone else there, for the appearance of Judge Tobias Endicott. Just a handful of people were present, and Glynis, the better to observe them, was content to sit alone at the end of a row halfway down the center aisle, grateful that she would not be called upon to testify. She'd been required to do so on previous occasions, but could still at times be gripped by her lifelong fear of speaking in public.

  With Cullen and Neva and Jeremiah Merrycoyf, she had traveled in a four-passenger phaeton the six miles west to the town of Waterloo. During the ride, there had been little conversation. That was not unusual for Merrycoyf. Glynis knew from past experience that he rarely spoke before a court appearance. The lawyer, a stout St. Nicholas figure, had sat beside her on the rear carriage seat, the only indication that he was not asleep being an occasional nudge of the spectacles which had a tendency to slide down his small, round nose.

  Neva's silence, however, had been unusual. The only breaks in it had come when she replied in perfunctory fashion to Cullen's infrequent comments. After he had directed the carriage around the square in front of the courthouse, and had reined in the horses under a rustling canopy of tall elms, they climbed from the phaeton. Neva took Glynis aside to briefly apologize. But the doctor's rage at what had happened to Tamar had obviously not abated; nor had Glynis's own rage. She and Neva simply had different ways of seeking resolution. And Glynis did not view all men as the enemy.

  Realistically, it was time, not rage—no matter how justified—that would free the girl from a murder charge. Time to find the real murderer, because Glynis was nearly, if not completely, convinced that Tamar was not Brant's killer. In addition, the girl's highly publicized confession was now seen by Glynis as possibly useful. It might give the killer a sense of security, perhaps just enough to be caught off guard and to make a careless mistake.

  Of one thing Glynis was absolutely certain: that for months Tamar Jager had lived with terror and shame, preyed upon by the town's leading citizen and philanthropist Roland Brant. Yet if this were spoken aloud, few would believe it. Since his death there had even been talk of naming a grammar school for him. And Glynis had to admit that she wouldn't have believed it either, had she not known the history behind Gerard Gagnon's fury, had she not caught the cook Addie's cryptic remark, had she not heard a stable boy's hesitant whisper. There must be other instances of Roland Brant's casual violence, his exploitation of power, but they had perhaps been better-hidden ones.

  The incident of Brant shooting a healthy horse nagged at Glynis. It surely had been meant to serve as a graphic warning to Tamar; to what would happen to her if she "talked." But why had a warning so cruelly explicit been necessary? Had she already told someone? Or had Roland Brant believed that someone had guessed and might question the girl? Whichever, the warning clearly had been effective.

  The most confounding puzzle, though, was that Tamar, despite her confession, did not know whether it was she who had killed Roland Brant.

  The night before, after she blurted "I killed him," Glynis had persuaded her to tell what she knew about Brant's death. It had not been without difficulty. Even now, seated here in the courtroom, Glynis was ashamed that she had implied to Tamar that Gerard Gagnon could be charged with complicity—as Cullen had suggested—unless the true killer was found. A harsh strategy. But as Neva herself had said earlier that night, was it worse than allowing the girl to die? For a crime she had not committed?

  The threat to Gerard had proven to be the key.

  Glynis had begun by asking Tamar: Why had she spoken of a k
nife, her knife? Tamar answered that several days before Roland Brant's death, she had taken a knife from the kitchen and hidden it under the mattress in her room.

  Why had she taken it? She had vowed to kill Roland Brant, or to kill herself the next night he came to her room. But on that last night, as he opened the door, he was interrupted.

  How? Someone called him. He went upstairs, and after what sounded like an argument, he must have fallen into bed, because she heard a thump and the bed-springs squealed, or maybe it was someone crying. She thought he was hurting someone.

  No, she didn't know what time it had been. Only that a humpback moon was climbing into the sky.

  What had she done after that? She might have slept, because she thought it was a dream where she was standing over Roland Brant, plunging a knife again and again into his heart. Blood was spurting everywhere. She didn't know how to stop it or what to do with the knife. She tried to run, but she could only take a few steps and, when she looked behind her, she could see a trail of bloody footprints. It seemed so real. She didn't remember waking up. And then she thought: What if it hadn't been a dream?

  She was so terrified by what she might have done that she left the house by way of the kitchen door. No, she didn't know what time it had been. The sky was barely beginning to pale and there was mist rising from the grass. She started to run toward the stable for a horse, when she saw the door of Roland Brant's library standing open. It frightened her, because the door was always kept bolted.

  What did she think had happened? She feared Brant might have gone from the library to the stable himself—he sometimes took an early ride—so she'd crept along the house toward the library to see if he was inside.