The Conjured Woman

by Anne Groß

  “I did? No, I didn’t. I didn’t give you any reasons. None.” Elise shook her head.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I’m not getting married. Seriously, why would you want to do that?” Elise couldn’t help feeling like Richard was making fun of her. She could think of no possible reason for him to want to marry her, unless he truly felt morally obligated. “If this is about last night, don’t worry. I wont tell anyone.” That was one promise Elise felt positive she could keep.

  “Then it’s too late. You have remembered who you are and now you think you cannot marry me. I understand. I’m below you.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Why else would you deny me? No, it’s no use my darling. I won’t hear your excuses when I know in my heart that you love me. I know this to be true because you told me yourself countless times in the way you address me, look at me, smile at me. The only reason you would not have my hand is to keep from dishonoring your family.” Richard shook his head sadly. “Star crossed lovers—that is what we are.”

  Elise studied Richard. Could he be serious? It would be so easy to just make up a wealthy family to get him to abandon the idea of marrying her. But if she did, everyone would expect her to leave the Quiet Woman. But if she didn’t leave the Quiet Woman, everyone would wonder why she didn’t marry the proprietor when she had the chance. She was damned either way. “I just don’t want to, Richard. Why is that so hard to understand?”

  “You must marry me,” he whined. “I’ve already purchased the license. Besides, I can’t possibly take the King’s shilling without knowing you were here, waiting for me to come home.”

  “Take what? The king’s what?”

  Richard took Elise’s hands in his own and looked at them thoughtfully. When he swept his thumbs across the backs of her hands and drew them to his lips, she felt hair rise up on her arms in response. Elise faltered slightly in her resolve. Despite how ridiculous she felt the situation was, he was still proposing, and that kind of thing didn’t happen every day. “Elise,” he started, “I’ve must join the army, and if you won’t marry me, I’m sure I will die on my first battlefield.”

  “The army? Why? Why would you leave the Quiet Woman?”

  Richard looked at the grass under his feet, then over his shoulder. “You see, it’s the damnedest thing: the Brewery decided, all of a sudden, that they cannot continue. That is,” Richard scratched his head and began again. “You see if I cannot come up with a rather large sum of money, as of this evening, the Quiet Woman will no longer be mine. The Brewery has taken possession of our pub, and Cooper will be operating it.”

  Inexplicably, Elise felt the need to fight back tears. She didn’t care about the fate of the Quiet Woman, she thought as she sniffed loudly. There was no reason for her to cry about it.

  “So, you see,” Richard continued, “now there’s nothing left for me in London. There’s nothing left but to travel with the regiment to America.”

  “America,” breathed Elise. Her eyes dried instantly as her world shifted. “Where in America?”

  “I’m not sure; they didn’t tell me.”

  “North or South America?”

  “Why does it matter? I’m as easily slaughtered near the one pole as the other if you don’t marry me.”

  Elise looked up at the sandy blonde hair that curled at Richard’s brow, at his strong shoulders, then into his light brown eyes. It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to have him as a husband, she thought. At least he was nice to look at. She gave him a smile she hoped looked dreamy. There was no way the British government cared about Brazil or Argentina. Wasn’t it the colonies that gave them headaches, Plymouth Rock, and all that? “Could I go with you? To America?” she asked.

  Richard looked surprised. “Some wives do follow their husbands, but I think you’d be much better off staying at the Quiet Woman with my mother. The Brewery’s allowed us to keep our apartment.”

  How would she get from the East Coast back to Tucson? Elise’s mind whirled with the possibilities. She pictured wagon trains, gunslingers with spurs on their heels and bandanas at their necks. She just needed to cross the Atlantic and then she could snag some cowboy to be her guide. Elise looked at Richard’s tight waistcoat and her hopes fell slightly, realizing it would be at least fifty years before John Wayne. Briefly, she considered the idea that her beloved city may not even be part of the United States. She tried to remember what year the Gasden Purchase happened, then took a deep breath and pushed away her doubt. It didn’t matter. She’d worry about the details later. “Find your way home,” Mrs. Southill had instructed. This was her way. If she could just get back to the foothills of the Catalina mountains where it had all started, she was certain she’d have a better chance to return to the 21st Century. “Of course I’ll marry you,” she said sweetly. “I’d follow you to the ends of the earth.”

  “My darling, you have made me the happiest man.” Richard pulled Elise’s hands back to his lips.

  “I’m so glad for you.”

  “Let’s do it right now.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes.” Richard stood and drew Elise up with him. “I’ll be shipped out in two days, so I really can’t wait.”

  “You mean, ‘we’ll’ be shipped out.” Elise corrected.

  Richard’s smile faltered slightly. “If it comes to that,” he said enigmatically.

  “If I can’t go with you, then I won’t marry you.”

  Richard shrugged and pulled Elise along by the hand. “Vicar Harris has been marrying couples en masse for the last week, what with the surge of recruitments. If we hurry we can get there before noon for the ceremony.” Hesitatingly, Elise took a step towards Richard and froze, still unsure. With a grin, Richard tugged at her. “Come along,” he coaxed. “Won’t we be quite the pair?” When Elise took another step forward, he tucked her hand under his arm and took off across the park towards a church conveniently located on the other side of the green.

  When they stepped inside, the heaviness of the building caught Elise off guard, as though the building itself was adding weight to her impending marriage. Light streamed through the tall stained glass windows from the great vaulted ceiling and spilled onto the stone paved floor in warning reds. The chill of disapproval she felt was only slightly warmed by the spiced smell of incense that wafted down the aisles of pews.

  They were shuttled by a sour looking crone to a chapel within the church where five other couples waited. Another young bride holding a small bouquet of blue forget-me-nots and dressed in a simple grey gown impetuously clutched Elise’s arm when she got too near. “Our lives will never be the same,” she said breathlessly. Her eyes were wide and clouded with joy. Elise disengaged as politely as she could, thinking how her life was already nothing like the one she left. Marriage to Richard would be an easy transition in comparison. “Aren’t they so handsome and brave, to be so willing to die for their country?” The rhetorical question triggered the beginning of a headache. Elise gave the girl a tight smile before desolately slumping as the vicar began to drone.

  The words were incomprehensible; Elise was completely unable to process the vicar’s words over the growing panic she felt. Then suddenly it was too late to change her mind when the vicar pronounced everyone wedded with a bored wave of his hand. A few nervous cheers went up. Three couples kissed quickly. When Richard bent down to do the same, Elise turned her head away. Her heart beat a drum roll against her chest while she told herself over and over that it wasn’t real, it was all some sort of bad dream. Nothing that was happening would matter when she woke up. She felt Richard slip a ring on her finger and she glanced at the simple golden band. She was surprised by how prepared he was—the argument for marriage, the church, the license he mentioned purchasing, now the ring. She was even surprised that she had fallen for it all. She barely knew she was moving forward in a line with the crowd until she reached the front. “I don’t believe we’ve met. Are you not
from this parish?” Vicar Harris asked, surprised. His quill was poised to write down her information in a large tome. Elise opened her mouth but her jaw hung slack and no words formed on her lips.

  “She doesn’t remember her parents yet, but I’m fairly certain they’re French. Her name is Elise Dubois. That’s spelled D.u.b.o.y.s.e.” Richard watched while the vicar carefully wrote down her name. “Would it be alright if we were to return later today? Something tells me she’ll remember in an hour or so.” Richard winked at Elise.

  The vicar merely nodded as he shuffled through papers to find the correct document and handed Elise the quill to sign the license. Elise could feel herself breathing faster. Red pin dots obscured the peripherals of her vision. “I need to sit down,” she whispered to Richard. He wrapped a protective arm around her waist and nearly carried her to a quiet spot off to one side of the church.

  Taking the little wooden chair Richard offered, Elise looked up at a stained glass window high above. In a mosaic made from sharp shards of glass was a woman wearing calm blue and pale ivory robes. The sun came through the window in such as way as to make her head invisible. Elise knew the artist had most likely given the woman a serene expression, but couldn’t help but imagine a face with sparking eyes and a mouth wide open to deliver an angry, finger-wagging lecture.

  “I’ve a wedding present for you,” Richard said softly, drawing a chair up next to her.

  “I don’t want anything,” Elise said quickly as she glanced at the band on her finger. It was a simple narrow ring with no stones or adornments, but it completely changed the feel of her left hand. It didn’t seem to belong to her body anymore.

  “Don’t be silly, of course you want a wedding present.” Richard reached into his waist pocket and pulled out his handkerchief. A thick gold chain slipped out from the folds of the linen square and caught Elise’s eye. “What’s that?” she asked.

  “I thought you didn’t want it?” Richard teased, jerking his hand away. When Elise’s eyes narrowed in warning, he carefully unfolded the little package to reveal an enormous emerald cut into the shape of a beetle and set in gold with outstretched wings. “Do you recognize it?” Richard asked.

  The jewel gleamed and winked with a luminescence that rivaled that of the windows above Elise’s head. She felt compelled to touch the scarab to feel its smooth surface. Its warmth was as soothing as the desert evening sun. “Why would I recognize it?” Her voice sounded hollow to herself as she asked the question. She had no doubts about having seen the jewel before.

  “Think, Elise. I thought it would help you remember your family.”

  Elise shook her head to clear the dazzle. “My family? Why do you think it’ll help me remember my family?” She thought fleetingly of her mother in the mid-West, then tried to remember her ancestry beyond the scope of Richard’s question. There was something about the jewel that drew her to it, but it frightened her too. “Where did you get this?”

  “Look at it, damn it. Think.”

  The intensity in Richard’s voice startled Elise. She took the scarab out of the handkerchief and placed it in her left hand where it spanned the entire length of her palm. When she spread her fingers apart, the links of the broken chain drooped heavily between them. She closed her fingers back up and the loops became three separate circles of chain attached distantly to each other. Tucson, London, there had been a third place, Elise suddenly realized. She felt an echo of the same intense fear that had paralyzed her that first night. Even though it was cold in the church, sweat formed beads on her upper lip. She absently wiped them off with the cuff of her sleeve as images of faces crowded her senses—faces with surprised looks intensified by garish makeup and lit from underneath by countless candles.

  A man with black eyes had kicked her viciously. Then he lifted her by her collar and squeezed. The more helpless she became as her breath failed, the angrier she grew so that when the scarab manifested itself she snatched fiercely at it and twisted until it gave way.

  Elise felt her heart pulsing in her open palm and the scarab moved up and down with her heart’s rhythm. “You’re returning to me what is already mine,” she said coldly. “How is that a gift?”

  “I’m giving you the gift of your memories,” Richard said with relief in his voice. “It worked. Tell me about your family. Our family. Where are they?”

  “I don’t remember anything.”

  “But when I found you, your entire body was limp except for your fist. I had to pry your fingers apart to save that jewel for you. You obviously treasured it beyond your own well-being, even while unconscious. I’m sure it is a clue about your family legacy.”

  “Legacy.” Elise paused, thinking it over. “Is that what you’re hoping for? A legacy?”

  “Of course I am. Your family must be frantically searching for you at this very moment. Just think how relieved they’ll be when I bring you back. No one’s responded to the many adverts Mother posted in the papers, so I’m sure your family must be in France. Your parents must have gone back after Napoleon granted amnesty, and somehow you were lost. That would explain your name, wouldn’t it? That jewel must be the key to discovering who you are.”

  “Are you really that stupid? Can’t you think of at least one other way a woman could snag a golden bug?” Richard looked blank. “Emphasis on snag,” Elise drawled. “Why do you think the chain is broken?”

  Elise watched Richard’s smile freeze as he slowly processed the information. “I’ll take that back then,” he said, holding out his hand.

  “What?” Elise closed her hand over the jewel and drew it to her chest. “No. It’s mine. I don’t know why you had it in the first place.”

  “I was keeping it safe for you. It could have easily been stolen during those days you were convalescing. And then later, when you were so confused, it would have been completely irresponsible of me to give it to you then. And now,” Richard shrugged and looked at the floor. “If what you suggest is true, and you have no family, then there’s no point in you continuing the charade. Give me the jewel and I’ll find a better use for it. For the future of the family we will create together.”

  “Better use for it?” Elise repeated in outrage. “Who the hell do you think you are?”

  “I’ll be able to pay off the Quiet Woman’s debts with a jewel that size, and have money left over.”

  Elise stared at Richard, trying to understand. “Isn’t it too late? You told me you’d joined the Army. I thought I had to marry you or you’d die on the battlefield.”

  “I never said I’d joined the army. I said that I was unable to pay my debt to the Brewery, and because of that my only choice was to join or go to debtor’s prison. But now that I’ve married you, together we can pay off the Brewery. So be a good girl and hand me that beetle.” The volume of his voice vacillated strangely as he struggled to keep his voice down in the echoing church. He grabbed her hand and tried to peel back her fingers. “What’s yours is now mine.”

  Elise neatly twisted her arm and broke Richard’s grip, then pointedly placed the jewel in her apron pocket. When Richard lunged at it again, her hand flew out and caught his cheek in a slap. Stunned, he stared at Elise with his mouth open. “Where were you last night before we met up?” Elise demanded. “I bet you were sitting at some poker table—or whist table, whatever you guys play these days—getting more and more drunk and desperate until you went all in on a bad hand and lost the Quiet Woman. You totally deserved that slap. I hope it hurt.” She looked around, suddenly self-conscious. The church had emptied out after the ceremony and they were alone. She turned back to Richard and considered slapping him again.

  “Elise, don’t be so selfish. Think of how many people depend on the Quiet Woman. Mary, Thomas, Mrs. P., my own mother—all of them need the public house to maintain their living. If you give me the jewel, we can help them.” Elise slumped back down into her chair and put her head in her hands. “You must give it to me.” Richard insisted. “We’ve only a short amount of
time left before Cooper takes over.” He lifted her chin up and smiled into her eyes. “Don’t you want to run the Quiet Woman with me?”

  Elise pulled her face out of his grip. “Why did you have to show it to me? Why didn’t you just sell the damn thing? I never would have known the difference.”

  “It wasn’t mine until today.”

  “It’s still not yours.”

  “It is mine now.” Richard’s brown eyes turned flinty. “We’re married.”

  Elise suddenly remembered the conversation she’d overheard in the stairs. Thomas knew. Thomas knew all along Richard had the scarab, and in the stairway he all but accused him of stealing it. This was Richard’s stupid contrivance to honorably acquire the jewel through sex and resultant marriage. All along Richard had been keeping her in his back pocket, just in case he needed a final weapon against the bankruptcy he must have known was coming, and hoped that it would also bring entrance into a wealthy family.

  Elise felt her eyes burn with tears. She’d been played. Despite her contempt for the man, she couldn’t help but feel rejected when she realized he had to get drunk before setting his plan in motion in the larder.

  THE CHASE

  In Adelaide’s dream, the golem was nearly within reach, close enough to distinguish features she’d never noticed before. She had a lovely black freckle just under her left eye. Laugh lines creased the tops of her cheekbones like extensions of the thick golden-red lashes that framed her demonic green eyes. The effect of her full, pouty mouth was not overshadowed by her sizeable nose, but was marred by the bruise on her jaw. The patchy red wound on her cheek detracted from the appeal of her cloud of auburn hair.

  “Whatever that has happened to you will never happen again. No one shall beat you again. Come to me,” Adelaide beckoned. “Come, ma petite fille, and I will protect you from all that you have endured.” She spread her arms wide in a show of love to entice the creature to enter her embrace. The golem had only to take three steps; three steps and the bond between them would be repaired and strengthened.