The Conjured Woman

by Anne Groß

  Elise weakly kicked her leg to dislodge Richard’s hand while her mind floated back to Tucson. “Slow down,” she had said to Anita. “If I get sick in your car it’ll be your own fault.”

  “Seriously?” Anita protested. “I’m not going all that fast.”

  “Just around the curves,” Elise said as g-forces slammed her stomach against her ribs. “Slow down around the curves.”

  The way to the top of Mount Lemon was normally a pleasant drive on a twisting two-lane road. The air cooled as the miles melted away behind them. Elise rolled the window down again and felt the wind slip under the sleeve of her shirt when she hung her arm out of the car. It raised goose bumps on her skin, smoothed away the sweat, and brought the tingling smell of piñon as they moved out of the low desert and into the coniferous forest.

  This time, however, Elise leaned out of the car window for a purpose other than to enjoy the view into the deep canyon dotted with saguaros. Instead, she stared at the horizon to steady herself and hoped the wind would slap her back to normal. “Oh god,” she moaned. “For fuck’s sake, Anita. Slow down.” Her words were blown away, unheard. Her stomach surged again as her friend whipped around yet another hairpin. The tires of the bouncing Wrangler were barely clinging to the asphalt.

  Elise would have given anything to be back in Anita’s tidy silver Wrangler. That anyone would blame her for present situation was hurtfully ironic. “None of this is my fault,” she snapped at Richard. “None of it.” She finally kicked Richard’s hand from her ankle and looked at the slick floor. All cargo and provisions were smartly tied, chained or netted so that they’d stay in place in the case of bad weather. Everything was battened down but the people on board, and the people’s buckets. The rule was to do your business at the ship’s head, but in weather like this, the rule didn’t apply. A bucket rolled across the floor from aft to fore. There was no way she’d get down off the crate in her bare feet.

  Instinctively she touched her dress where her emerald was tucked under her corset. She felt it pressed against her flesh by the tight strings of her bodice, warm and hard. It was her only clue to how she might have traveled through time, but the scarab was enigmatic. Until she could figure it out, she followed along through the adventure like an attached barnacle. It didn’t improve her mood to be so submissive to the flow of her life, but for once, Richard seemed grumpier. “Did you lose your shirt again?” Elise asked as Richard gave up trying to pull her off the crate and sunk to his blanket. His sullen silence confirmed her guess. Elise sighed.

  As a camp follower “on the strength”, she was entitled to one half of the rations of a soldier and none of the liquor. This meant either she drank water from the barrels, which was questionably fresh even before they set sail (a possible reason the “bung-hole” on a barrel is a synonym for something else), or she shared Richard’s beer. However, Richard tended to gamble away his beer rations. In the ship’s galley was a stove that kept water boiling for the officers, and once she managed to sneak past the cook to get at it with the result of a nearly scalded hand when the ship suddenly lurched over a rogue wave. Hydration was an issue, especially now that she felt seasick. She needed Richard’s beer. On the other hand, beer wasn’t going to help an already churning stomach.

  A moan rose in the damp air. The sound, a waveringly long note, came from behind a blanket that had been raised to allow privacy for another married couple—a convenience Elise and Richard hadn’t bothered to attempt. Despite her own misery, Elise still had enough strength to roll her eyes. They had no business being that happy.

  “It is your fault,” Richard pouted. “Our being here is entirely your fault. You should have let me sell that stone. We could be tucked safe in the Quiet Woman had you done so. Look at you—you’re pitiful,” Richard turned to survey Elise and his eyes took in her greasy hair, and her dress that she’d been wearing since it had been given to her a month ago. “You are content to remain slattern and unpleasant when wealth could have at least given you the veneer of social acceptability. It was most definitely you who brought me into this position. I blame you.”

  When they’d first boarded the ship, they hissed their arguments at each other. Now they no longer bothered to keep their voices down. The tight quarters made it difficult for others to politely move away when they began to bicker, although most still tried. A positive result of their marital spats was acquiring more space in the confined orlop deck than had any others. Elise saw the shadow of O’Brian recede.

  “It’s not just me you damned to this fate,” continued Richard. “Tom blames you too. He told me so himself.”

  Thomas. The name was like a hammer on Elise’s chest, subduing all further argument. She knew he was close. He’d probably set himself up with a direct line of sight to them, but she’d barely seen him since they’d first set sail. Elise doubted Thomas actually blamed her, but knew he resented her. The thought made her stomach rise. She felt her mouth fill with a swell of saliva and she swallowed hard. Stop the boat. Roll the windows down. Pull over.

  “Oh my god, Anita. Pull over.”

  “Hang on for just another minute. We’re almost there.”

  “PULL OVER.”

  Elise remembered she had the car door open before the Wrangler came to a complete stop. It had been a strawberry and mango smoothie that created the vibrant orange line against the roadside sage. Anita stepped out of the car and came around while looking at her watch impatiently. “We’re going to be late,” she said.

  “Late for what? You can’t be late to go camping!”

  “Everyone’s waiting for us at the trailhead.” Anita sighed when Elise bent over a second time. “Okay, okay. Get it all out,” she said, catching up Elise’s hair in her fist to hold it back.

  Elise pointed weakly to the car and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “I’m not getting back in there.”

  “Walk up to that tree and back. Then you drive.”

  “No way.”

  “You can’t get carsick when you’re in the driver’s seat.”

  You can’t get seasick when you’re unfurling the sails. Elise imagined the men three floors above her on the main deck happily stomping their feet in the puddles while the Captain pumped a jig from a squeeze-box. She could hear the slashing rain on the side of the ship. She knew the men were clinging to ropes and skittering across the wet deck in bare feet. But she imagined them all smoking pipes and swallowing hunks of salted beef with swigs of hard liquor. The thought of rum made Elise’s stomach muscles ripple in an uneasy clench. No wonder the captain had confined the army to the depths of the dank, dark hull. Why have a bunch of vomiting landlubbers spoil their fun?

  Another moan from behind the curtain cut through the gloom. Richard climbed up onto the crates next to Elise and she scooted over to give him space. Despite their marriage, there was little chance Elise would be emitting her own full-throated moans any time soon. She wasn’t adverse to the idea, just indifferent, despite the fact that Richard was the least rumpled of all the soldiers. While the entire regiment was soaked in the sweat of nausea, Richard’s skin took on a healthy sheen from the humidity and his cheeks remained rosy. When everyone else had turned inward in their misery, Richard thought nothing of pulling out a deck of cards from his pack to seek out the ship’s old carpenter and purser for a game and a conversation. Those men lucky enough to still have their hair kept it matted and slicked over their skulls, but Richard’s blonde waves looked as though he had applied a leave-in conditioner. It didn’t seem fair. His beauty was wasted, Elise thought as she surveyed his profile. Richard was the perfect example of attractive without attraction.

  “Shouldn’t you look in on Mrs. Collins?” he asked.

  “What for? She sounds a little busy right now.” Elise had exchanged few words with Amanda Collins in the past four days. There were five women in their Company, about twenty on the ship, not including herself or the Major’s wife. All of them had more personality than Amanda Collins, who rarely
emerged from behind her marital curtain.

  Richard shrugged. “You know your own business.” He reached down to his knapsack and pulled out his fiddle. The squeaking sounds his instrument made as he rotated the tuning pegs and plucked the strings were a welcome distraction. When he drew out a long note with his bow, nearby soldiers, suffering from their own thoughts and fears for the future, heaved a sigh of relief. Elise scooted to the edge of the crate to avoid Richard’s sharp elbows and settled back against the wall.

  The melodies he pulled from his fiddle meandered without pause from one song to another. Elise was beginning to recognize the more common refrains that circled back around in various keys and rhythms. The way people would join in making music without any kind of showmanship was one aspect of her new world that she truly appreciated, and she loved it when someone was moved to stand and sing. Only once had Tomas emerged from the shadows to join in with his earthy baritone, and there was barely a man in the company that hadn’t wiped tears from his eyes when he sang, “Man to man, the world o’er, shall brother’s be for a’ that.”

  A sudden choked, gasping sound burst from behind the blanket curtain, causing Richard to play four atonal notes in rapid succession as his bow fell off the fiddle. “I can’t think why you shouldn’t be calling upon Mrs. Collins,” he insisted.

  “Why are you so concerned abo—” Elise’s words trailed off. She felt her stomach clench again, but this time it wasn’t from nausea. It was caused by sudden fear. She sat up straight. “She’s not pregnant, is she?”

  “Good god, woman. Didn’t you know?”

  Private Collins poked his head from behind the curtain. Even in the gloom Elise was able to detect his wild-eyed look. He walked towards her like a drunken man, careening from side to side. Other soldiers caught him as he passed, thumping him on his back, giving words of encouragement, and keeping him on his feet.

  “Some nurse you’re turning out to be,” Richard laughed ruefully. “You can’t even tell when a fellow female is nearing her time of confinement.”

  “How was I supposed to see her condition with all these stupid skirts we wear?” She flicked her own and reached for Mrs. Southill’s medical kitbag. “I thought pregnant women weren’t allowed on board?”

  “Yes, quite right,” Richard agreed. He took her elbow to steady her as she descended from the crate to the floor. “But no one could bear to see the couple torn asunder. She was weeping so prettily.”

  The ship began rising up a swell which created a slick ramp for Elise to surf down with one bare foot in front of the other. Private Collins caught her mid way. “How far apart are her contractions?” she asked as they made their way towards the curtained corner. Collins shook his head, not understanding. “Her pains! How many minutes between her pains?”

  “She’s in a great deal of pain,” he agreed. “It’s her first.”

  Elise ducked behind the curtain and discovered Mrs. Collins hovering in a squat over a single blanket with her skirt hitched over her knees and her palms braced against two casks. Her face, pale as a boiled turnip, was streaming in sweat.

  “Private Hobert’s birthed plenty of lambs,” Collins noted. “Shall I fetch him to help?”

  “No. God, no,” Elise said in horror. Hobert, formerly a shepherd, was so used to having only his sheep as company that he felt no compunction in sending snot-rockets in all directions whenever his sinuses felt clogged, which was all the time. Elise considered any area within a ten-foot radius of the man a hazard zone.

  Amanda half stood on trembling thighs as she let out another cry. In two long strides, Elise reached her and offered her shoulder. “I’m so thirsty,” Amanda whispered. “If you please,” she begged, “send someone to get me a drink. Tea perhaps? Peter’s got nothing but beer.”

  Elise froze while ideas tumbled all over her brain. She eased her shoulder under Amanda’s armpit, hoping to steady them both as she worked out a way to get everyone hydrated. “Hey Collins?” she started, sounding hesitant. “It’s Peter, right? Peter Collins? I’ll help your wife but you need to pay me half your beer ration for the next two weeks.”

  Collins’s mouth dropped open. “My beer? Half?” he stuttered.

  “I can call in Hobert if you prefer.” Elise slipped her hand under Amanda’s dress and worked her palm along her belly, feeling both for the baby’s heartbeat and position. “He probably won’t ask for payment, except for maybe, here and there, a favor from Amanda. After she’s recovered of course. What do you say?”

  Amanda Collins squeezed her eyes shut. Her wail took on an edge of panic...

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Many people helped me conjure this novel into the world and I’d like to take a page to thank them for their part in the ceremony.

  I would like to thank Tracy Ertl, Karen Hughes, Megan Trank, and the publishing crew at Beaufort Books. Their knowledge, skill, and enthusiasm for this project kept me going when I started to doubt myself.

  To my writing group, Serena Le, Carrie Ritter, Katie Harper, and Trista Mallory—thanks for the coffee, the friendship, and setting the timer when the work needed to get done.

  A very special thank you to my beta readers, Kristin Rabosky, Julie Steiner, Trista Mallory, Chris Glazowski, Dan Ellerbroek, Margaret and Jean-Alex Molina, and Kate Chase, who all played various important parts in the process either by calling out plot inconsistencies, correcting my French, red-lining my errors, and being, in general, wonderful.

  Finally, I wish to thank my very patient and good-humored husband Kevin, who gently pulls me back when he sees me fall into the vortex.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  With a French father and a mother from New Orleans, Anne Gross’s interest in the Napoleonic era was inevitable. Currently, she lives in San Francisco with her husband and beloved chihuahua, where she’s working on the continued adventures of her recalcitrant heroine.