Fitcher's Brides

by Gregory Frost

  Amy closed her eyes and said, “Vernelia.”

  When she opened them the pyramid had gone dark. It was not black, but a deep red, the color of the molten belly of the earth. The color seemed to ripple and run, making the side of the pyramid look as if it were in motion, flexing; yet at the same time the rippling imparted a sense of peacefulness. At some distance were two luminous shapes. They might have been human but the color acted like some mercurial membrane stretched across her vision and kept her from distinguishing any features. Where was Vern in all this? Amy couldn’t tell. But then she thought: Unless—she almost dared not think of it—unless Vern was dead and the two glowing shapes were angels. That would mean that she, Amy, was gazing upon Heaven itself. “Oh, my sister,” she whispered.

  She considered then what this pyramid at the top of the house might be. Fitcher communed with God, he spoke with Him. It was what pastors and preachers always said, but what if Fitcher spoke of a literal communion? This room, that let him look everywhere, upon everyone, could it allow him to look to Heaven? If so, would the Almighty deign to speak to her?

  Without thinking, she recited, “Our Father, who art in Heaven.” The glass sides of the pyramid erupted with searing light. Amy shielded her eyes, but even closed, they burned red. The brightness dimmed and she dared to peek between her fingers.

  The outside was gone and she was whirling down a dark hallway, down stairs. She glimpsed the chandelier in the foyer of Harbinger spin past, then her view burst out into daylight. Her stomach threatened to disgorge. She clutched the railing at her back like a sailor clinging to a storm-tossed ship. The world whirled around her. This isn’t Heaven, she thought. Her view dove into the orchard, sliding through branches, leaves, and fruit, then out across the field, through rows of shoulder-high corn, and out the far side. There, among dozens of others laboring in the sun, in shirtsleeves and a wide-brimmed hat, Elias Fitcher stepped one foot on a spade, turning over soil. Even as her vision rushed right at him, he straightened and whipped about, his face filling the glass before her, his crystal-blue eyes piercing the distance, locking upon hers. She shrieked and flung herself into the stairwell. Only at the last did she glimpse that there was a design, figures, set in the floor on the far side of the railing. It caught her eye beyond the flashing colors. She couldn’t stop to look, however. He’d seen her.

  She ran under the arch and back down the steps, down and down to the second floor, out into the hall. She took the front stairs to the foyer and dashed out the back. Instinct compelled her to guard herself. On the porch she drew up, collected herself a moment, then went down the steps. On the lawn she tried to hurry without seeming to be in a panic. The encampment was full of people, many of them sleeping in the heat, others chatting. She didn’t want them to pay attention to her, didn’t want them to report her. Yet she had to put as much distance as possible between herself and the house. The village might as well have been miles away.

  Amy strode as fast as she could and watched the orchard for any hint of him. She saw his legs before anything else, saw him burst through the trees like a hell-bent juggernaut. She dropped to the ground behind a tent. When she dared another look, Fitcher was speeding across the lawn to the house without even acknowledging the greetings of people who climbed to their feet at his passing. Some of those working in the orchard emerged to watch him go. They traded worrisome looks as if they knew what his purposeful gait meant—as if they had witnessed this before.

  Amy got up and dashed into the orchard. Panic overcame caution, and she ran the rest of the way to the village. She entered her shop, closed the door, and collapsed, gasping. She trembled, began to whimper, but forced herself to stop, to gather her wits. It wasn’t over and she had little time.

  The shop was hot and confining. Soaked from her run from the house, Amy looked as if she’d been at work for hours. She grabbed matches to start a fire in the hearth, took the lid from a keg and fanned the flames. At the same time she scooped spermaceti out of the keg and into one of the kettles. It melted rapidly. She added bayberry wax, mixing it in as she took the kettle off the fire. She didn’t care whether the mixture ever made candles or not. The sharp scent filled the shop, and she opened the windows front and back then to let it and some of the heat escape. That was the moment Fitcher burst in upon her.

  His sleeves were rolled up, his pant legs stained and dirty. Dirt smudged his brow and clung to his forearms. At first his eyes were narrow, calculating, darting all around the shop. Then he gave her a disaccording smile as if he were just making a routine visit and nothing about it were out of the ordinary. He inquired, “My dear, how is your day going?”

  Amy answered just as casually: “It’s very hot work, husband. Candles should be made in the cooler parts of the year, I think.” She had no idea where the steel in her spine came from, how she managed not to quake and collapse with those crystal eyes boring into her. It was fear that anchored her—fear of what, she wasn’t sure. It wasn’t Fitcher alone. It was of something huge. Something that would destroy her if she slipped up in the slightest.

  “So they should,” he agreed. He walked to the hearth, looked in the kettles hanging there. “However, that observation will not take us forward very far now that we’re so close to our new life. The cooler part of the year will be with us only briefly.” He faced her. “Before we are gathered up.”

  “Of course.”

  “And surely it’s no hotter work than baking—and dare I submit you would never suggest that we should bake no bread in summer.”

  “No, I shouldn’t do that.”

  “Well, then. I did want to tell you that in a week, I will mount another crusade to go out and bring back new converts. We’ll go to Providence most certainly, and New Haven. This will be our final push, our last crusade. Those who heard us in Pennsylvania are still arriving. They’ve transmitted the message between there and here. It’s spreading on its own now, south of us. But in a week’s time, you will be mistress of Harbinger while I go north. I must discuss some matters of the house with you. Tonight. Tonight, we’ll talk.” He passed by her, and touched his fingers to her brow. His fingertips were cool. She realized that despite the heat and the speed with which he must have raced to arrive here, he was not sweating, nor breathing hard. “Do you have my little egg?”

  “Always,” she replied, and brought it out of her pocket.

  He nodded. “I’m so glad, my dearest Amelia. And your back, it doesn’t pain you?”

  “Why, no, sir.”

  “Then I shall leave you to your work and return to mine. I’ll meet you at evening prayer.” He swept through the door like a gust of wind and was gone.

  That evening, as he whipped her, Fitcher demanded that she ask forgiveness of God for her many sins. He played upon her certainty of her befouled soul. With each slash of the whip, he demanded, “Confess!” She bit her lip and drowned in the pain, accepted it, welcomed it because she deserved it more than he knew. She was addicted to it, but she refused to confess anything about her visit to the roof.

  Later, as he rolled the egg across her skin, he spoke tenderly to her, promising her such glory as she could barely imagine if she unburdened her soul. “God,” he told her as he had many times before, “will know all. When you account finally, you’ll want no blemish left upon your soul. He will find it out.” The sound of his voice was hypnotic, enveloped in the ecstasy of the egg upon her skin. His words threatened to steal her spirit away. She could feel her will dissolving before the sound and sensation, but she remembered that she’d seen Vern in Heaven and clung to that vision to give her the strength to deny him.

  Eventually he set down the egg beside her and left the room. When the door closed, Amy roused herself. Normally she would have let the opiate egg pull her down into sleep, but now she must act. She listened at the door, then stole naked out into the hall. It was empty. She would have little time: He must be climbing up to the pyramid even now. She hurried to Vern’s room. The door didn’t open. It
had been locked. She ran to the one beside it just to satisfy herself that there was no mistake. She didn’t need to try the others to know they would all be locked. He had corrected his mistake.

  Then she raced back into her room, closed the door, and returned to the bed and lay down.

  If he gazed down upon her now, she would be in her bed, where she belonged, where he expected her to be.

  She was safe. For a while.

  Twenty-six

  THE NEXT DAY AFTER THE MORNING sermon, Amy asked for a day to visit her family. Fitcher refused. “There’s too much to do now. So many people arriving daily—just step out on the back porch and behold the tent city being erected. They spill into our orchards. Our stables overflow with their animals. We’ve turned so many horses out to pasture that they compete with our cattle. The mill can’t produce enough flour for us. The crops can’t grow any faster. Even supplies from Jekyll’s Glen are in short supply. Mr. Van Hollander can hardly keep up. Soon I’ll have to be sending wagons to Trumansburg to keep us fed. I could not let you go off even for a day, Amelia. You must assist me in maintaining some semblance of order here. If you’re satisfied we have enough candles now, there are other things you can do. Critical things.” It was the first he’d said anything about her involvement or about the condition of Harbinger being less than utopian.

  The tents had spread across the lawn. Maybe half of it remained open. People crammed the Hall of Worship at each sermon. They stood in the back, lined the walls. They strained forward when he spoke; they lowered their gaze when he walked by. She’d seen it for weeks, but only now did she begin to realize the scope of the problem. “If space is restricted, why not clear more forest, erect more buildings? There must be enough people in those tents for a log-rolling?”

  If he realized she was challenging him, he didn’t take the bait. Rather, he agreed with her and suggested she consider marshalling the community to this endeavor while he was gone to Providence and New Haven. “We’ll be bringing even more back with us—a flood of converts as the end nears. They also will need space. Yes, you’re wise, my dear, this is a good notion. And you can have more corrals assembled for the animals.”

  Amy grimaced. All she had done was trap herself.

  He added, “Besides, if you need time with your family, why, your father and Lavinia come almost daily to hear my midday sermon; you can speak with them here. You needn’t go outside our community for that.”

  “It isn’t my father I wish to see,” she protested.

  He pursed his lips. “No, I understand. Amelia, soon enough, you’ll be bound together, and the Next Life will be forever. You and your sisters.”

  “What, even Vernelia?”

  He lowered his gaze as if mentally upbraiding himself for the slip. “I may—that is, I am in a position to intercede on her behalf with our Lord. You may well find yourself in her company. I believe I can make that happen. Only a short time remains—a few months. Can you not wait that long?”

  “I—” she began, then broke off. “Of course, Mr. Fitcher, of course I can.”

  He brushed his cool hand across her cheek. “Good.”

  As he walked away, she was thinking that this was how he had kept Vern from visiting them, too. She understood, finally, that Kate’s fears for her sister had been all too well founded.

  The matter was settled. Amy could think of no way to circumvent him. Worse, now he’d assigned her new duties, new tasks to anchor her. She went to the noon sermon with no hope; walked into the crowded Hall of Worship, and there found her sister waiting for her.

  The instant Amy saw Kate, she cried out. She ran down the red carpet to embrace her. Kate reached out to her, kissed and hugged her. Amy was in tears. The nearest worshippers stared at this display of affection as if at two pillars of salt. In Amy’s ear, Kate whispered, “I asked Papa to let me come hear a sermon in his place. He agreed because he wants me to experience the joy he’s found with Fitcher’s words. I didn’t tell him the truth.” She stepped back and looked her sister in the eye. “I didn’t tell him you called to me.”

  Amy gaped. “You heard?”

  “Not exactly. More as if I felt it beneath my skin. But I knew it was you.”

  “Oh, Kate. There’s so much to tell, but it’s so awful—” She stopped. Kate’s gaze had shifted somewhere behind her. Amy turned. Reverend Fitcher stood at the door behind her. He was too far away to have heard anything they said, but the lids of his eyes were lowered with suspicion.

  “Why, Miss Katherine,” he said. “An unexpected visitation.” He came forward, the crowd parting as if afraid to touch him. “Your sister and I were speaking of you only this morning. She wanted to visit you at your home.”

  “Then I’ve saved her the journey, sir. I wished to see her as well, but also to hear you preach, which my father promises shall fill me with the glory of God.”

  “I should very much like to see you filled, Miss Charter, and I’ll try to live up to the promise.” He raised his hands as if giving benediction and squeezed past them down the aisle.

  Amy said, “We must talk while he’s speaking.” She took Kate’s hand and led her out of the hall before Fitcher had reached the pulpit. She looked back once to see him place his hand upon the glass skull as he navigated the altar.

  People pushed past them in the entryway. They entered the foyer, Amy bowing and nodding to people who were still arriving to hear the sermon. If they wondered at her being out there, they were too concerned about getting inside themselves to say anything.

  Finally the foyer was empty. Amy said, “Michael Notaro’s dead.”

  “My God, Amy, you didn’t—”

  “No, I didn’t do anything. We didn’t even speak after I arrived. I saw him at a dance only once. He couldn’t stand to look at me. And then he was dead.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “The Angel of Death took him, Kate. It pursued him into the woods and it killed him.” Kate looked at her as if trying to make out how literally to take the statement. Amy continued, “They talk about it here all the time, like it’s some monster roaming the grounds. But I’ve seen it. When I called to you, I saw it in the wall, where we thought we were talking to Samuel, I saw it watching you. And then I tried to find Vern, too, and, oh, Kate, I think she’s dead, I think I saw Heaven and maybe God and angels. They glowed.”

  “Amy.”

  “No, I know how it sounds. But, look.” She fished the marble egg out of her pocket. “He gave this to me on my wedding night. I have to keep it with me all the time, because I never know when he’ll ask me for it.” She dropped it onto Kate’s palm. “And there are rooms next to mine. A little boy found Michael’s keys. He had the keys to all the buildings and the gates. The little boy opened all the rooms, and I went into some of them, and one was Vern’s. It was hers, Kate, and it had everything of hers in it. Her parasol was lying there. And her dresses, mother’s wedding dress, everything.”

  “I don’t understand. If Vern ran away—”

  “Yes.” Amy grabbed her arm. “If she ran away, why are her belongings still here? There were other rooms, too. Other women’s rooms, just like hers and mine, but older, dustier. I looked all around but I couldn’t find his room anywhere. I don’t even know where he stays in this house. And where I called you—it’s the pyramid on the roof. It has some kind of magical power I don’t understand. I said your name and it took me to you. I saw you sweeping the floor, and I saw the angel.”

  “Vern’s Sam Verity is the Angel of Death?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know—maybe it killed him, too. Kate, it hovered over you like it was waiting for you to walk beneath it. Didn’t you feel it there?” But it was obvious she hadn’t. Amy shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. I believe Elias can talk to God, I believe he can see into death and everywhere he likes.”

  Kate considered before she spoke. “But if that’s so, Amy, then he is what Papa says—he’s the true prophet. He can lead us to the other side.”

/>   “No, I mean, yes, he has that power. But there’s something hidden, there’s something we aren’t told, any of us. His room—where’s his room in the house? Everything feels all wrong. And I’m so afraid of him now.”

  Kate placed her free hand over Amy’s, as much to loosen the grip on her wrist as to comfort her sister. “Afraid? Does he hurt you?” she asked. She tried to sound as if everything her sister was saying made sense to her. She was still holding the egg. Amy let go of her wrist and closed the fingers of both hands around it and Kate’s hand. Her laugh sounded brittle. “He punishes me for my sins. He takes them away, then puts them back.”

  “What do you mean, he puts them back?”

  “It’s hard.” Amy tried to make sense of it so she could tell it. She had to make Kate understand, convince her that she wasn’t raving. Her eyes started to fill with tears. “He has a whip, a leather cat. But then he has the egg, and when he touches it to me, it undoes everything that the whip has done, so that every night my penance begins again, as if it never happened. It never ends. I’m never shriven. Kate, I’m so terrible. I’ve lied, I’ve deceived him, I broke my promises to him. I loved Michael. I don’t want to go to Heaven. I can’t—I’ll be thrown down with Vern, only he’s going to get Vern in, he told me he can, and I’ll be the only one cast out.” She wailed the last few words.

  “Oh, Amy dear.” Kate wrapped her arms around her sister and held her while she cried. In the background, the voice of Elias Fitcher rolled like thunder.

  Amy knew she hadn’t convinced Kate of anything. They’d gone back into the dark entry hall and listened in the shadows to the last of the sermon.

  “To enter Heaven,” he proclaimed, “you must let your many and horrid sins come forth. Let God see them in order that He may forgive them, and cleanse you of all sin. We’re all of us just poor sinners, and cannot work out for ourselves how Righteousness must unfold, or how the blemishes of our sins may be wiped away. When Christ asks you ‘What will ye that I shall do unto you?’ you must answer that you come seeking instruction. You must welcome it, and let the word of God guide you. Now, let us pray together…”