In the Garden of Spite

by Camilla Bruce

  BERKLEY

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  penguinrandomhouse.com

  Copyright © 2021 by Camilla Bruce

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Bruce, Camilla, author.

  Title: In the garden of spite: a novel of the black widow of La Porte / Camilla Bruce.

  Description: First Edition. | New York: Berkley, 2021.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2020029193 (print) | LCCN 2020029194 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593102565 (hardback) | ISBN 9780593102589 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Gunness, Belle, 1859-1908—Fiction. | GSAFD: Biographical fiction.

  Classification: LCC PR9144.9.B78 I5 2021 (print) | LCC PR9144.9.B78 (ebook) | DDC 823/.92—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020029193

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020029194

  International edition ISBN: 9780593200841

  Cover art by Adam Paratta

  Cover design by Emily Osborne and Adam Paratta

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  pid_prh_5.6.1_c0_r0

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Personal

  La Porte, Indiana 1907

  Part One - Brynhild Paulsdatter Størset

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Part Two - Bella Sorensen

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Part Three - Bella Gunness

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  To the tribe

  PERSONAL—comely widow who owns a large farm in one of the finest districts in LaPorte County, Indiana, desires to make the acquaintance of a gentleman equally well provided, with view of joining fortunes. No replies by letter considered unless sender is willing to follow answer with personal visit. Triflers need not apply.

  —Popularly attributed to Belle Gunness

  La Porte, Indiana, 1907

  This happened many years ago, in the valley where I grew up.” My children crowded around me on the bed; their hands were sticky with porridge and the empty china was stacked on the floor, where Prince, our collie dog, huffed and rolled over in his sleep. I had turned the kerosene lamp on the bedside table down, and the little flame cast the room in a soft, warm glow.

  Outside the window, it was dark.

  “A man was out in the woods chopping wood,” I said, “when his wife suddenly came out from among the trees. She looked just as she had that same morning when the man set out from home. She was carrying a bowl of sour-cream porridge, which she offered him to eat. ‘This is for you, dear husband, for working so hard in the woods,’ she said. The man took the porridge from her hands, and it smelled so good and looked even better. Then he noticed that his wife wasn’t sitting on the log with him but was crouching down in the underbrush, and he suddenly got suspicious that his wife was not really his wife at all but a hulder from beneath the earth!” At this my children chuckled and shuddered, and crept even closer to me under the knitted blanket.

  “‘I think you are fooling me!’ The man cast the food aside. ‘I think you are a hulder,’ he cried. And up she went, and now he could see the long tail trailing under her skirt, and she ran off, screaming and cursing and neighing like a horse!”

  The girls giggled with delight, but my son’s eyes were large with fear. He was not yet four and a little too young for such terrible tales.

  “Why did she give him food?” asked Lucy, her little face upturned.

  “Because that’s how they cast a spell, the hulder people. If you eat or drink something of theirs, they can catch you.” I widened my eyes and twisted my lips. Lucy whined and squirmed beside me, and I could not help but chuckle.

  “What happens then?” Myrtle’s soft mouth hung open. She was easier to scare than her younger sister was, and I saw just as much fear as delight in her expression.

  “Oh, they take you with them into the earth—and you can never come back then, or see your family again.” I shook my head with a solemn expression.

  “Why?” Lucy asked. I could see a trace of porridge on her round cheek.

  “They always want a human bride or groom.” I reached out with a finger to wipe off the smear.

  “But she looked like his wife.” Lucy’s clear brow furrowed as she struggled to understand.

  “That’s right. The hulder can look like anyone you know.”

  “But how will we know then?” Lucy suddenly sat up straight. “How will we know that you are you?”

  “Well, that’s easy. If I am kind, I am myself. If I’m not . . . then I’m a hulder.” I suddenly felt hot. A tightening in my chest made it hard to breathe.

  “And you’ll take us underground?” Myrtle shuddered beside me. Her dark eyes glistened in the dim light. “Never to come back?”

  “Just that.” I reached over to the bedside table for some of the silver-wrapped caramels I kept in a bowl. The story had suddenly soured on me.

  I did not want to speak more of it.

  1.

  Brynhild

  Selbu, Norway, 1877

  The smell of meat drove me out of the storehouse to rest against the timbered wall. My head was spinning and I felt sick. It had happened often lately.

  “You should be careful, Little Brynhild.” Gurine came outside as well, climbing slowly down the stone steps while wiping her hands on her apron. She was chewing on something: a piece of mutton. The old woman had become scrawny over the
winter; age had sucked all the fat away, leaving her a bony frame and wisps of white-gray hair. She followed my gaze across the farmyard to the six men who stood by the barn. It was a cold but sunny morning in May; the birches in the yard were budding and the horses grazed in the pasture. One of the men, a farmhand called Ivar, told a story while gesturing wildly with his hands. All the others laughed. They were far enough away that we could not hear what he said, but we could certainly hear the laughter: hard peals of mirth hauled through the air. For a moment, I thought they were looking at me, but if they did, their gazes shifted away before I could be certain.

  “They are not to be trusted, the young ones,” said Gurine. “Like bucks in heat, the lot of them.” She spat gray gristle down on the grass.

  “He can’t deny me forever,” I said, although I was not so sure about that. I could not make myself stop looking at him, standing there laughing with his head thrown back. His dark, thick hair curled out from under his knitted cap, he looked healthy and strong, and his cheeks blushed red in the chill morning air. His hands were buried deep in his pockets. I knew those hands well, could feel the ghost of them on my skin even as I spoke. “I can make him do it, even if he says no.” Even if things had changed between us, I still held out hope that I would know those hands once more. I found it hard to believe that all was lost.

  “You put too much trust in the priest, Little Brynhild. He was never a friend to women like us,” Gurine said.

  “Women like us?” I glanced at her.

  “Women with nothing to their names.”

  “Well, he doesn’t much like sinners either. I will talk to the priest about Anders. If the priest says he must, he will.” I lifted my chin just a little.

  “Oh, Little Brynhild.” The old woman shook her head. “I don’t think it will be that easy . . . Anders has a farm to his name, and money too. Who do you think the priest will believe?”

  My hand fluttered to my belly, caressing it through the worn fabric of my apron. “I have the child as proof.”

  Gurine clucked with her tongue. “You could have gotten that child anywhere.”

  I nodded. Anders had said that as well when I went to his room and told him what had happened. He laughed even, as if I should have known better than to come to him with my plight. “I haven’t been with anyone else,” I told Gurine, although she already knew that. We shared work and a bed at the farm six days a week, and it had become too hard to lie about the changes in me. We often toiled alone in the kitchen, stirring porridge and carving meat, so it was better that she knew in case I became faint. The fumes from the food did not agree with me since the child took hold. I was often tired and sick. The price I paid for my candidness was Gurine’s constant warnings and a quiet offer to solve my problem with a knitting needle. She had seen this before, she said. It never ended well for the girl.

  I did not believe that to be true, though. I would make him do what was right, even if I had to force him. It was the two of us together, after all, who had caused this to happen in the first place. I had not been alone in the barn after dark, deep in the musty hay. He had been there too, and I said as much to Gurine, who had sunk down on a stone slab that served as a step to the storehouse.

  “Oh, but the world doesn’t work like that,” she said as another peal of laughter rose from the group of men by the barn. “You know it doesn’t, Little Brynhild. If he were a lesser man he might do you right, but that one”—she nodded in the barn’s direction—“he is heir to all of this and won’t bother with a girl like you.” She paused to spit gristle down in the grass. “If you are lucky, he will slip you some money or set you up with a tenant, but I don’t think he’ll do even that.” Her face took on a thoughtful expression. “He is spoiled, that one . . . he won’t care.”

  I could tell that she felt sorry for me, and that hurt more than any words. I never did well with pity.

  “Hansteen will set it right,” I insisted as a pounding at my temples warned me that a headache was coming on.

  “The priest won’t lift a finger.” Gurine squinted up at me as I stood there beside her, wringing the gray, worn apron between my clammy hands. I hated how sure she sounded. I hated that she might be right. Cold sweat broke out all over my body and my heart raced when I thought that I might not get my way. This was a long departure from the giddiness I had felt when I first caught his eyes after Christmas. I had thought it all so easy then. I had thought it was the beginning of something. I always believed I could do better than porridge and toil, that my hard work and diligence would earn me a reward. And for a while, I had thought that he might come to care for me, and that one day, I would cross the yard in front of me not as a maid in threadbare shoes but as the mistress of it all—and him.

  I never told Gurine about those hopes of love, but I did tell her about my plan to force him. I confided in her the same night that I knocked on Anders’s door and found him drunk in his room. I had prepared every word I was to say to him. I had meant for him to feel remorseful of how our time together had left me in such trouble.

  “How do you know it’s mine?” he asked instead, sitting on the lip of his red pullout bed. His eyes were glassy from drinking. “I’m not the first man you have tricked into the barn.”

  “But you are,” I protested. “There hasn’t been anyone else.”

  “No?” He emptied the tin cup in his hand. “That’s not what they say.”

  I felt confused. Who were they and what did they say? “Well, they lie. There never was anyone else.”

  He shrugged. The light from the candle he kept on the table chased shadows across his handsome face, and on the timbered walls. “I don’t see what you want from me.” His gaze met mine across the small room; the air was stale in there, warm and musty. I could hear the crackling of fire coming from the small black oven in the corner. There was no warmth in his eyes, though; they were much like dark pebbles in the flickering light. “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Why?” I could not believe my own ears. “Because you should do right by me. We ought to go to the priest.”

  The corner of his mouth lifted in a smirk. “What for, Brynhild? Why should you and I go to the priest?”

  “To marry,” I replied, and my voice did not quiver when I said it. It was the right thing to do, after all. He might not care for me as I hoped he would, but he had gotten me with child. Outside the window, between the plaid curtains, I could see the birch trees moving with the wind, black silhouettes against a dark blue sky. I felt like they laughed at me all of a sudden, as if they were chuckling so hard they could not stand still.

  “Marry you?” Anders laughed as well. “Are you mad or slow, or as shrewd as your father? Do you really think you can trick me like that?” Anders’s brow glistened when he lifted the bottle from the floor and filled his cup to the brim. “I should never have sullied my hands with the likes of you.” He put down the bottle and lay back on the bed, still with the cup. I had changed that bed just the other day, beaten the pillows and smoothed down the sheets while saying a quick little prayer. Not that it seemed to do me much good.

  “You are drunk,” I decided, and straightened my pose. “You aren’t thinking clearly. Tomorrow you will see things differently.”

  “Oh Brynhild.” He flung his arm across his eyes and gave a little laugh; the liquor in his cup danced and escaped, landed on his shirt, and created dark stains. “Don’t you see? I would never, ever marry you.” He spat the last word as if it were repulsive.

  “I will go if you’re with me or not.” I forced my voice not to quiver. “Hansteen will see to it that things are set right between us.”

  He removed his arm so I could see his face. Something hard had settled on his features. He did not look so handsome just then but reminded me of my father. “Are you threatening me, Brynhild?”

  “I just want what’s right—and I’m sure the priest will agree. He never
liked a sinner.” This was not how I had wanted things to go between us, but what else could I do but stand my ground? The child was there, in my belly, growing and thriving. “Surely it’s God’s will for us to marry now,” I tried. “He wouldn’t have sent me this child if it weren’t.”

  He glanced at me. “I think it’s your will that’s at work here, and that has nothing to do with the Lord.”

  “The priest might see it differently.”

  He chuckled down in the bed. “Oh, you wouldn’t dare.”

  “I would! And then the shame would be all on you.”

  “Oh, I think some shame would drip on you as well, and Hansteen can’t make me do anything.” His lips twisted up and made him look ugly. Outside the birches laughed and laughed.

  “You wouldn’t like it if he banned you from church—your father wouldn’t be happy, that’s for sure. Maybe he’d even take the farm.” I tried my very best to come up with things to change his mind.

  “Go!” he suddenly shouted from the bed, so loud that I was sure his parents would hear it. He had dropped the cup down in the bed, and the rest of the liquor soaked through the hay.

  It scared me, though, that outcry. Enough that I tiptoed back downstairs to the bed I shared with Gurine behind the kitchen. I crawled in under the woolen blankets, shivering from it all. Her arms came to hold me then, fragile as they were. “There, there, Little Brynhild.” She made soothing sounds in the darkness. “Why is the young master shouting at you in the middle of the night?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “I will see the priest about it.”

  She sighed when she realized what I meant. “So that’s how it is, then?”

  “It is.” I stared up at the ceiling through the darkness.

  “And now he won’t—”

  “No.”

  Her voice dropped to a whisper. “You know I can help you get rid of it—”

  “No!” Even in my wretched state, I was not about to let this opportunity slip. “I can make him—I’m sure of it.”

  Gurine, however, was not so sure, and nothing I had said since could make her feel any different. She did not think I could make the marriage happen—but I could! I had to believe that I could. Hansteen liked me, and I had always been diligent at church. He would put the blame where it belonged for sure. Anders should have known better than to kiss a young maid in the barn. Hansteen would make him—and then he had to—and then I would never eat gruel again.