Chapter Fifteen Frankie
FIFTEEN FRANKIE
After leaving the Stoddards’, Uncle Thomas and I stayed up late into the night discussing all that had happened; going over each detail again and again, trying to make sense of things.
We sipped brandy and smoked our pipes in his study.
I’d brought in the lantern from my room to provide extra light.
Uncle Thomas’s familiar study felt too dark, too full of shadows.
The wind rattled the windows and I was sure I heard fingertips tapping, seeking a way in.
Each creak of the house became the footsteps of a dead man coming to find us.
Despite feeling myself incredibly foolish, when I went to get the extra lantern, I dug through my room until I found the old charm Charlotte Albone had given me when I was a child to keep nightmares away: a silver eye that she said would protect me from all forms of evil.
Knowing better than to show it to my uncle, I put it around my neck and kept it carefully hidden beneath my undershirt and white collared shirt.
“Perhaps we were wrong,” Uncle Thomas confessed as he leaned back in his leather chair.
He poured himself another good dose of brandy and topped my glass off as well.
“Perhaps the knackerman went into some sort of… hibernation and his heartbeat and respiration were too slow and weak for us to hear.”
“Or perhaps we’re both going mad,” I suggested, now exhausted and frustrated at our lack of answers. “Or,” I added, looking into my glass of brandy, seeing my own dark reflection there, “perhaps Henry St. James is right and it is sorcery.”
I expected Uncle Thomas to laugh or chide me for my foolishness, but he only tightened his jaw, his eyes focused on some unseen thing.
WE LEFT THE house earlier than usual the next morning, eager to check on Mrs. Stoddard.
We found Clarice in bed, feverish, delirious, having difficulty breathing, and drenched in sweat.
Her skin and eyes had taken on a yellow tone; her breath was sweet but acrid, with that same, now familiar, burned-sugar smell.
Her damp hair stuck out in all directions.
“You!” she cried out, pointing to a shadow in the corner of the room. She was trembling, her face contorted with fear. “It’s all because of you!”
“Shh,” Pearl said as she stroked her mother’s hair. Mrs. Stoddard swatted her hand away, looked up at her daughter with a furious grimace.
“Don’t you dare touch me!” she raged, spittle flying. “I know who you are! I know what you’ve done!” Pearl gasped and took a staggering step back, stumbling over her own two feet, and I reached out to steady her, to keep her from falling. It was clear she hadn’t gotten much rest.
“Why don’t you go get your mother some of that lemon tea she likes,” Mr. Stoddard said to her. Pearl wiped her eyes, nearly running from the room.
“Easy there, Mrs. Stoddard,” Uncle Thomas said, moving closer to the bedside. “It’s all right. It’s me, Dr. Endicott. I’m just going to listen to your chest, all right?” He spoke in a low, soothing voice.
Uncle Thomas listened closely to the rattling wheeze in her chest.
Her lips were moving, she was saying something over and over, but I couldn’t make out the words. I moved closer, listened hard.
“Can you hear them?” Mrs. Stoddard whispered. “Can you hear them? Can you hear them?”
I stepped back, shocked at her words, my legs nearly giving out beneath me.
I thought of last night’s conversation with Uncle Thomas, talk of madness and witchcraft, as I looked at Pearl’s mother writhing there in her bed, sheets soaked with sweat, thinking this could not be the same person we’d left twelve hours ago.
I reached up and felt for the eye charm and was comforted to find it there, hidden beneath my shirts.
“What’s wrong with her?” Benjamin demanded. “Is it the flu?”
“I’m sorry, Benjamin.” My uncle paused for a long moment then, his gaze fixed on Clarice. I noticed his hands trembling slightly. It felt like all the air was sucked out of the room. “It appears she has the same illness as the knackerman.”
“Will she die?” Benjamin asked grimly as we stood around his wife’s bed.
“We’ll do all we can,” my uncle told him. “I’ll give her some medicine for the fever. And a sedative.”
“That’s it?” Benjamin asked.
“That’s all I have that will help,” Thomas said.
Oh, how often we’d said these words to people last fall as their family members lay dying, gasping for breath.
“Well, it’s not enough,” Benjamin said, eyes bloodshot and desperate.
Uncle Thomas said nothing, though both he and I knew Benjamin Stoddard was right: it wasn’t enough.
If we’d been in the city, if there were a hospital close by, things might be different.
But all Uncle Thomas had to work with were the contents of his medical bag and his own knowledge (or lack thereof, in this particular matter).
Benjamin was in the same clothing he’d worn the night before, rumpled. He had not shaved and there were dark puffy circles beneath his eyes.
“I don’t suppose you had any luck finding him then?” Thomas asked, his voice tinged with hesitation, as if he didn’t really want to know the answer.
Benjamin Stoddard shook his head. “We spent hours searching. Followed footprints up into the hills, but they disappeared. Snow was falling too fast, too hard.” He looked out the window, where the snow was still falling heavily. It seemed it might never stop.
“Is it true?” Benjamin asked through gritted teeth, looking back at my uncle. “That the man… that animal… rose from the dead?”
Uncle Thomas clenched his jaw, looked out at the storm. “The only logical explanation is that his heart was beating too weakly for me to hear.”
Benjamin’s eyes followed Thomas’s back to the window.
“You haven’t heard word of Emile LaRue, have you? He got separated from us in the woods last night,” Mr. Stoddard added. “One minute he was there, right behind me. Then I turned to look back and he was gone.”
Uncle Thomas shook his head. “No one should have been out in that storm last night. You could hardly make out your hand in front of your face. I think it’s even worse this morning.”
I looked out at the snow and understood there was no getting out of the valley to get any additional help or send word of the goings-on in town.
“Frankie,” said Uncle Thomas, “why don’t you go check on Pearl and the tea? And bring me back some warm water and cloths. We’ll put some hot compresses on Mrs. Stoddard’s arm, see if we can draw out the infection.”
I found Pearl in the kitchen, putting tea and honey onto an ornate gold tray.
I stood quietly behind her, just watching, my breath taken away by the very sight of her.
Pearl turned and looked at me. She looked at me like I was just anyone.
Like we hadn’t spent hours naked together in the Ayers house, unable to pull ourselves away.
Like I hadn’t loved her since I was ten years old.
“How is she?” Pearl’s tone was somber and tired.
“She has a fever. We’ll clean the wound, put compresses on it. My uncle will do everything he can.”
Pearl gave me a weak smile.
I stepped closer, lowered my voice. “Pearl,” I began, “I need to know—”
Pearl looked around, eyes frantic. “Shh! Not here,” she whispered.
I grabbed Pearl’s arm, pulled her into the pantry. There were shelves full of canned goods, bottles of wine and ale, sacks of flour and cornmeal.
“What are you doing?” Pearl asked incredulously.
“We need to talk.”
“I don’t think now is the time, Frankie.”
“About Chauncey Banks.” I spat the name out.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Pearl said, not meeting my eyes.
“Like hell you don’t,” I said, holding tight to Pearl’s arm. “Look me in the eye and tell me the truth. You owe me that much at least, don’t you think?” My voice trembled and tears blurred my vision.
“Ouch! You’re hurting me,” Pearl said, looking up, locking eyes with me.
Dear God, was I becoming a monster too?
I let go of her, stepped back, wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. “I’m sorry,” I whispered, voice hoarse.
Pearl rubbed at her arm, bit her lip. “Frankie,” she said, looking at me with tenderness, but also with such sorrow.
“Tell me,” I said through gritted teeth. “No more lies.”
“I’ve never lied to you,” she said.
“Sometimes a lie isn’t what you say, it’s all the things you aren’t saying.”
She sighed. Looked down at the floorboards. “Father wants me to marry him.”
I felt the weight of Pearl’s words hit me like a sledgehammer to the stomach.
I reeled back, made myself take in a slow, deep breath.
I had a flash of Pearl in a wedding dress, Chauncey beside her in his finest suit, holding tightly to her arm, his ring on her finger.
I thought of the duckling in the jar he used to taunt me with, how the poor little thing had suffocated there while he watched, delighted.
How he kept it for weeks, then months, the corpse shriveling, shrinking into itself until it was no more than a mummified bit of feathers, bones, tendons, and bill, twisted and wretched at the bottom of the jar.
She could be his duckling.
I forced myself to ask Pearl the question. I said the words slowly, calmly, then braced myself for her answer. “And is that what you want? To marry Chauncey?”
Pearl frowned. “What I want?” She looked at me, eyes glossy with tears. She gave a disgusted chuckle. “What I want doesn’t matter much, does it?”
I took her hand gently. “It matters very much. To me at least.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter to my father. And to go against him—”
“Tell me,” I said, reaching for her face, touching her chin and tilting it up so she was looking right at me. I locked eyes with her, pleaded with her to tell me the truth. “Tell me what you want, Pearl.”
“I want impossible things,” Pearl said. She reached out, traced a fingertip across my cheek to my lips. “I want… you.”