Fitcher's Brides

by Gregory Frost

  Fitcher seemed as surprised as anyone by the entrenched trespass. Letting go of Kate’s hand, he went forward, his head swinging from side to side. In his long coat, he was like some enormous wasp with folded wings stalking through their midst. His long legs surmounted the debris clogging the aisle, but he kicked aside those who reclined in his way. Most didn’t move far, but huddled between pews as if hoping they might be overlooked, forgotten.

  When he reached the front, Fitcher leaned over the bloodred altar. When he came about he was holding at chest level the milky crystal skull. One hand rested on the crown, fingertips on the sculpted thorns; the other cupped the jaw. He rotated the skull as if providing it a view of them all. He said, “What do you think you’re about? Do you not know what place this is? Whose hall?” He pushed the skull at them. “Do you think it brings you closer to your Lord that you establish yourselves in this chapel? You followed my voice and it brought you here?” He shouted the last word. Then, almost in a whisper, he looked down upon the skull and said, “‘Surely, thou didst set them in slippery places.’ They fall faster than angels.”

  At that moment Reverend Flavy burst in. He stopped when he saw the condition of the hall, and Fitcher at the front of it. By comparison with the others around him, his disheveled collar and shadbelly coat were sartorial perfection. “Oh, my,” he said. “Someone’s made a grave error.” His eyes swept the squatters, and he smiled disdainfully as he identified many who’d mistreated him. Now would they be sorry.

  “An error indeed, Mr. Flavy, and it shall be answered,” replied Fitcher. He set down the skull as he gestured Flavy to come forward. Then he circled the altar and took the pulpit for a moment. “There is to be a ceremony here momentarily. Those of you who wish to participate may do so, silently. Your host is about to marry in preparation for the opening of the gates. Stay or go, but choose now. Whether or not you stay, your belongings will leave before morning.”

  A baby began to cry as he spoke. Its mother whisked it out of the hall.

  “Reverend,” he said to Flavy.

  They traded places. Fitcher handed him a torn piece of paper, then removed his long coat. Flavy stuck the paper in his Bible. Kate took off her shawl. Mr. Charter stood beside her. Lavinia moved to the far side of Fitcher as if to fill the position of best man.

  From one of the pews, someone said, “I’m an organist, if you should wish one.”

  Flavy exchanged a glance with Fitcher, then said, “Please.”

  They waited for the fellow to settle himself. He began with a few tentative chords, then began playing the tune for “The Tyrolese Evening Hymn,” a verse and chorus, after which he stopped.

  With the music dying away, Reverend Flavy cleared his throat and said, “We welcome this great man and this woman before us to join in holy wedlock before God, and to approach Him as one. Be there anyone who opposes this union, let them speak now or forever hold their peace.” He looked up nervously as if actually anticipating an interjection, then hurried on: “Do you, Elias Fitcher, take this woman as wife—as your ring girdles her finger, so you shall bind her to you always?”

  “I do.”

  “Do you, Ame…that is”—he quickly glanced at the paper Fitcher had given him—“Katherine Proserpina Charter, take this man, Elias Fitcher, as your lawfully wedded husband, to honor, and follow in strictest obedience, to love and cherish, both now and in the life to come?”

  Kate gave no answer, and the silence became uncomfortable. Lavinia leaned forward and glared at her around Fitcher. He watched her uncertainly. Kate addressed Flavy, “Why is it that our ties are not equal, Reverend? He has only to bind me, to harness me with his ring, while I must honor and grant him sway in all things, as well as love and cherish, never mind that this must continue both here and in life everlasting. You require me to make a gift of my will, and that I shall not do.”

  Flavy looked for some direction from the groom. Fitcher stared openmouthed at Kate. She refused to shrink from his umbrage. Facing him, she said, “Find better vows, sir.”

  Lavinia, had she been standing beside her, would surely have strangled Kate. Her father squeezed her shoulder, though whether as a warning or a precursor to shaking her sensible, she couldn’t tell. Fitcher began to chuckle, quietly at first, but it rose to a guffaw. “Better vows!” he exclaimed. He dabbed at one eye. To Flavy, he said, “You heard her.”

  Flavy opened and closed his mouth, fishlike. He looked at his prepared text, at the scrap of paper with nothing but her name on it. He was completely at sea. “What—what should they be?”

  “Oh, come, man, tit for tat. If I bind her to me with my ring, then so the reverse must be true and no more, else I must give her all that is required of her in turn. So…”

  “Ahm, Mistress Katherine. As your—your ring circles the finger of Elias Fitcher, do you thus bind him to yourself?”

  She smiled sweetly. “I do.”

  Flavy nodded in relief. “The rings, then?” Lavinia handed one to Fitcher. Kate’s father provided hers, a simple band that she placed on Fitcher’s hand. Her ring was more elaborately crafted and Kate wondered where it had come from in such short order. It fit her perfectly. Flavy said, “I, by the powers vested in me, do pronounce you both husband and wife. Go with Go—”

  But Fitcher was already leaning across her for his kiss, and the crowd broke into cheers and clapping, though with uncertain enthusiasm and less comprehension.

  There was no cake, no reception at all. Some of the dwellers in the chapel approached Kate as she was led past them—some expressed their congratulations, others reached out to touch her, their heads bowed; she heard herself called “the Virgin.” The rest hung back, wary of Fitcher’s ire. Some of them began gathering up their clothing and paraphernalia, making ready to leave. In the foyer, her new husband apologized to her for duties that he now had to perform “because someone has let the wolves in with the sheep.” He bid her father a good night, then marched off with Flavy to find whoever was responsible for settling people in the chapel.

  Lavinia fumed at her then for her insolence: How dare she presume to instruct the Reverend Fitcher. It promised to be a long-winded diatribe, but quickly ran out of steam when she was ignored by both father and daughter.

  A minute later, an elderly woman holding a bull’s-eye lantern entered from the rear doors. She spotted Kate and came to her. “I’m Louise,” she said. “Reverend Fitcher’s told me to take you up to your room.” She jangled a ring of keys at Kate.

  “You have your things?”

  “No, we didn’t have time to bring them.”

  “I’ll gather up your belongings, Katie,” her father said, “and bring them along tomorrow.” He seemed to be waking from his spell. He added, “We’re all coming here tomorrow,” as if there were a multitude accompanying him and Lavinia.

  “You shouldn’t drive back,” Kate told him. “Not in this downpour. Not when there are rooms. And you,” she said to Louise, “needn’t walk up those stairs. If you’ll give me the keys and tell me where my room lies, I’ll go.”

  “Oh, but he said—”

  “Yes, but he had other things weighing on him.” She held out her hand, not defiantly, but as a gentle request. Louise gave her the lantern.

  “It’s the very first room on the second floor, on the left side of the hall.”

  “Do you know where my father might stay the night?”

  Louise thought for a moment but shook her head. “I’ve little acquaintance with the upper floors. None of us has much doing with them.”

  “But why, if there are empty rooms above, are people being crammed into the chapel and keeping room?”

  Louise tilted her head as if the idea had never occurred to her. “I don’t know, missus. It’s not for me to say.” She handed over the keys then as if happy to be rid of them. The largest, made of glass, seemed to drink the light from the lantern, transmuting in reflection into gold.

  “Papa, you must wait here. And you, Lavinia.”


  She went up the stairs, and into the second-floor hallway. It was dark. No candles had been lighted there, but with the lantern Kate had no trouble finding her room. She had to set it down to try the keys and open the door.

  Inside, she moved to a small dressing table. There was a small lard-oil lamp on it, and a stick of punk beside it. She lit the punk from the candle in her lantern, then touched it to the wick of the lamp. The window beyond her bed was open. The curtains swelled like ship’s sails with the storm. She closed the window against the chill. Lightning flashed at her, capturing the landscape below in an instant—bent trees, and people scattered everywhere. She closed the curtains but the afterimage burned on in the darkness.

  The bed was surrounded by wine-colored drapes hung from the canopy frame. Inside, it was a secret place, smelling faintly, she thought, of lilac. A box tied with ribbon lay atop the pillow.

  There was a writing desk, some logs for a fire, and an open armoire. She drew back the armoire doors, thinking it at first completely empty until she saw, hung in the back, what looked at first like a snake but proved instead to be a long slender crop. She recalled Amy’s seemingly mad claim that Fitcher whipped her nightly. She ran her fingers over the braid of the crop as if convincing herself by feel that it wasn’t her imagination. Then she closed the armoire.

  This room, she thought, if it were exemplary of the rest of the chambers on this floor, could easily house a handful of people. It was absurd that she should have such quarters and they in their final hours be turned out into the storm. What would God think of them if they failed to help one another now? What sort of Christian refused to afford even so little kindness?

  She thought again of what Amy had told her about the rooms—about her own and Vern’s and the others on this floor—and she went out into the hall and to the next room.

  She unlocked it and went inside. It was very like her own. It had been lived in recently, too. There were clothes draped over the armoire doors, and familiar clothes at that. Sticking out from under them was a small leather cat with six leather strands to it, exactly as Amy had described it. On the dresser, beneath a hinged mirror, there was a small box tied with ribbon identical to the one on her bed. She knew what it would contain.

  Kate hastily withdrew and locked the door on Amy’s room again. Even as she did so, she realized she hadn’t smelled anything like what Fitcher had described. No doubt the room had been aired out afterward…still, she must assume it was unhealthy. She could not house her father there.

  The next room along proved to have been Vern’s. She recognized the items laid out in it—the parasol especially. There could be no mistaking that. After sorting through the wardrobe, she had to agree with Amy’s assessment: If Vern had run away from Harbinger, she had left behind some of her most precious belongings.

  Kate returned to the hall again and locked the door. Some sense of the danger they presented convinced her to mention neither of these rooms, not even to admit she had entered them. Did he keep them as shrines to his lost wives? She was reluctant to grant him that much humanity or to allow that he had in fact lost anything. If her suspicions were correct, and he was a collector, then no one had been lost, merely acquired. The overarching question was what form acquisition took. If she went into the rooms beyond them, would she find items belonging to other women? How many had preceded her sisters into this house and never come out again? What sort of God granted him such power over women? It might be the end of this world but if God was truly just it could not be the beginning of the next, not with Elias Fitcher in the lead. She wondered if he was merely mad or if some plan greater than she could imagine had yet to unfold.

  As much as she wanted to know more, she could not now enter the rooms beyond Vern’s. Instead, she crossed the hall.

  Here she had some luck. The first door hung open. The room had been turned into storage. Trunks and satchels had been piled inside every which way, but a path could be made to the bed. For tonight it would offer her father shelter. Tomorrow they could retrieve his belongings as well as hers, and move some of the stored things elsewhere. Why, she wondered, did they bother storing belongings when everyone had only tonight and tomorrow left to live in these material bodies, in this world? Unless it was Fitcher’s notion that after the Advent they would all be returned to Earth in the same physical state, in this hallowed place, and would need their things again. It occurred to her that while she had heard endlessly of the Day of Judgment and of how their souls must be readied for it, the nature of life beyond that day had never been fully detailed. Did the dead receive new bodies? Did anyone know?

  She was speculating on the matter when she exited the room, and ran right into Fitcher himself.

  She jumped, startled. He didn’t so much as flinch. He held a bottle of champagne and two slender glasses. “That isn’t your room,” he said. “Where is Louise?”

  “No, I know. I was looking for someplace for my father to rest. And I dismissed Louise.”

  “Unnecessary. I’ve already had Mr. Charter driven home.”

  “But why, sir, in this storm? He’ll have to come back tomorrow. There is adequate space here behind the trunks.”

  With a glance around the corridor, he asked, “Have you gone into any other rooms?”

  “My own.”

  “Ah. And did you see the gift I’d left for you?”

  “I saw its container. I felt I shouldn’t open it alone.”

  “Well, we’ll open it together now, shall we?” The topic of her father had been dismissed, removed from play. She recognized how she’d been maneuvered.

  Kate followed him across the hall to her room. He set the champagne on the writing desk, then parted the canopy and offered her the beribboned box. “It’s a small thing,” he said, “but mine own. A trifle, but it means everything to me and I hope it shall come to mean as much to you.”

  Kate gave him the lantern and opened the box. The egg looked identical to the one Amy had shown her—bright white stone shot through with cobalt. It might have been the same one, she couldn’t tell, but if it were, then what was in the box next door? She rested the egg upon her palm, and even through the lace of her glove she could sense the arcane power of it.

  He stood behind her, placing his hands upon her shoulders. “The house has a few rules. Despite its size, there are no servants, for it would be improper to make others serve us. Everyone takes part in the duties—all of them, whatever they might be, whatever must be done.

  “This little egg is the embodiment of my affection for you—perfect and pure. I expect you to keep it with you at all times, that I might be close to you wherever you go. Will you do that for me?”

  “If that is what you desire.”

  “Swear it.”

  “You doubt me, sir, already?”

  His hands slipped. “Why, no. No, why should I doubt you? You are as reliable as all your sisterhood.”

  She wet her lips, listening to the meaning that flowed like a subterranean stream beneath his words. His voice was powerful, intoxicating. She could do nothing to protect herself from the allure of him, but unlike her sisters before her, Kate had come equipped with some knowledge of him and his methods, and with greater self-possession. Stepping within his spell, she refused to be robbed of her own percipience. It might be divorced from the simmering emotions his beguiling voice put the flame to, but she would not disregard or doubt it any more than she would disregard the artfulness of his application.

  He bent his head and kissed her neck. A spiderweb of pleasure, crisp and cold as ice, ran through her from the touch of his lips. She rolled her shoulders and tilted back her head.

  He unbuttoned her blouse and his hands reached inside her garments, stirring her further. With him behind her and the egg in her palm, she could do little more than absorb it all. She was his instrument, his fiddle, vibrating as he drew his bow across her. She thought, He knows me.

  He made a sound then, a low animal snarl, and his hands spread wide,
separating her clothes, pushing them down, rending them if they didn’t comply. He propelled her forward, against the bed.

  She caught hold of the drapery. The errant thought wormed its way into her pleasure that there was a whip in the armoire next door because he’d known Amy’s soul just as perfectly—known that she would respond most to punishment—and no doubt fathomed Vern as well. However he’d taken her, she had opened to him willingly. He knew them all. And so, a riding crop for her? Was she to canter for him?

  Instead of going down onto the bed as he tugged her garments to her knees, Kate spun about to push at him with the egg in her fist. A carnal face, fanged with lust, met her. She caught only a glimpse. It vanished even as she turned—peripheral phantom of his true nature, so brief that anyone else would have denied they’d seen anything at all.

  Already in her mind the image had congealed of how she was supposed to go down upon the bed, open and willing; and she wanted it, wanted the passion he instilled, wanted it as desperately as anything in life, but she knew he’d planted this yearning in her brain to direct her. How he did this, she didn’t know and couldn’t say, just as Amy hadn’t been able to explain how she was being consumed. Her flesh trembled with the urge to surrender to him, even to know the sting of the crop. He would have her beg for that.

  His hands reached around her fist, their heat about to melt her, and she drew the drape between them, warding off his ungovernable touch. He darkened angrily. It took every ounce of will she could muster to say firmly, “Sir, we are husband and wife, not dog and bitch.”

  He bent his head, lowered at her through his brows. His breath rasped in his nostrils. For a moment she didn’t know what would happen. He seemed arrested between his own lust and his awareness that she’d discovered the truth of him. He was like some chrysalid unable to take form. If he chose to strike, she would not be able to fight him. Sex with him would obliterate her as it had done her sisters. She was certain of it.