3. Prudence
Prudence
The stranger unbuckles the cuff on my right wrist. Then the left.
My arms drop. Then so does the rest of me. My knees give, and I am falling, and then his hand is under my elbow, catching me.
The stranger’s knuckles brush the back of my neck as he settles the torn fabric over my shoulders, and the warmth of that single point of contact travels through me like a bolt of lightning.
“Put your arms in,” he says.
I do as he tells me. My fingers find the edges of my shift and pull them closed. I don’t understand why this is happening or who the man is, but he puts himself between Father and me.
My forehead almost touches the dark wool of his back. I can smell him now. His scent is clean and expensive and foreign, not sweat mixed with the lye soap the sisters boil on Mondays. He smells of a world I have no words for.
“She’s coming with me,” he repeats.
No one breathes. I keep my head down, since lifting it is sinful, and see multiple pairs of feet in the dirt, all of them angled toward Father the way sunflowers angle toward the sun.
“I’m afraid that won’t do, Mr. O’Rourke.” Father’s voice glides into the space between us. “The girl is not yours to take.”
The stranger—Mr. O’Rourke—is not at all intimidated by Father and that alone is startling.
“I beg to differ,” the man spits out.
“She is a daughter of this community. An unwed virgin. She cannot be in the company of a man who is not her husband. It is sinful. These are our ways. Scripture is clear.”
Father’s hand lifts. Over a hundred heads lift with it, and murmurs rise in a single obedient hum, “Amen. Amen. So it is written.”
He again addresses this stranger, this man who has come between me and punishment, “You cannot take her without shaming her, and I will not allow you to shame her in front of the only family she has ever known.”
The stranger doesn’t move. “How much?” he says.
Father’s smile does not change, but something happens to the muscles around his eyes.
“I don’t understand.”
“Yes, you fucking do. How much?”
A sound travels through the Flock. Not a word. A small collective inhale.
Father’s hands fold in front of him. His shoulders straighten.
“Mr. O’Rourke, we are not the sort of community that trades in—”
“Fifty thousand.”
I have never held money. No, that is untrue. I held a penny once, a copper circle Sister Temperance slipped into my palm during the harvest festival before anyone saw, and Housemother Ruth made me confess it and give it up. I do not know what fifty thousand is. I only know the number has weight.
Father does not answer. I believe he is doing arithmetic in his head.
What I know is that this man and Father are locked in a battle of wills, and this man is not one who likes to lose. I would venture to guess that Mr. O’Rourke rarely if ever loses any battle.
Housemother Ruth steps forward.
She has not been given permission. I see the instant she realizes it—her foot lands in the dirt and her mouth is already moving, outrunning sense—and I watch her eyes widen as she hears her own voice.
“She cannot be alone with a man unless she is wed to him, Father, but if they are joined in holy matrimony—”
Ruth stops.
Father’s piercing eyes have found her face.
I have seen the look he gives her only twice before. Once toward Sister Esther before she disappeared. Once toward Sister Temperance just before she was sent to the north barn for a month of fasting, and returned weak and ill.
Housemother goes white under her bonnet. Her mouth closes. She steps back into the line of sisters as if she could unsay what she has said by putting her feet where they had been a moment ago.
But the words hang in the still air above the Flock, and every pair of ears has heard them.
Mr. O’Rourke turns his head.
Through my lashes, I see his profile in the gray morning light—the straight line of his nose, the clean-shaven jaw, the faint lift at the corner of his mouth that is not quite a smile.
“Then marriage it is. Let’s do it. Marry us,” he says.
My head snaps up.
I forget that lifting my head, that looking a man—any man—in the eyes is sinful and forbidden. I forget everything. I stare straight at the stranger’s profile, since he has not turned to look at me.
Marriage.
The thing I was supposed to do with Father. The thing that goes with a white dress and a wedding night in his private rooms and a future of unending pain. The thing I have been trying to accept since Housemother told me my “blessing” had come.
“That is not—” Father begins.
“Let me be very clear,” The stranger’s voice is so low and menacing it sends a shiver down my spine. “She is leaving with me, unwed virgin or not. Your only choice is whether or not you lose face in front of your Flock today.” He says the word flock as though it’s something dirty and vile.
A full minute passes. Then another.
Father is cornered, and I have never in my nineteen years seen Father cornered. His smile is still in place—the Flock is watching. But his hands have come apart. They hang at his sides, and his thumb presses rhythmically against his forefinger.
He cannot say no. Not in front of the Flock. Not after Ruth has spoken the rule aloud. Not after he has spent a lifetime teaching and enforcing rules.
“Of course,” Father says. “A blessed occasion.”
His voice has become something new. Smooth on top. Gritty underneath.
Mr. O’Rourke turns and offers me his hand.
I have not touched a man’s hand—ever.
Men and women rarely touch in the Enclave unless they are married, and even then, only in the private rooms, never in the yard, never where the Flock can see. His hand is large and flat and clean, and it hovers in the air six inches from me.
I stare at it.
My knees are locked. My shift is clutched so tightly in my fist that my fingers ache.
His voice drops. Low, only for me. “It’ll be alright.”
I look up into his eyes. They are the green of a pasture after a July rain. He looks at me in a way I have never been looked at before. Not as an object to be corrected. Not as a vessel to be cleansed. As a…person.
I lift my hand and place it in his.
His fingers close around mine, and the warmth of his palm is a shockwave that travels up my arm and flutters in my chest.
He draws me forward a step until I am standing beside him, in front of Father, in front of the whipping post, and in front of the Flock. The whip hangs from Brother Eli’s hand at his side. The leather cuffs swing empty on the iron rings.
Father raises his hands and the Flock responds. Everyone bows their head.
“Children,” he says, “we are gathered this day in joy.”
The words he speaks next are the same words I have heard him speak over Sister Faith’s wedding, and Sister Mary’s, and Sister Esther’s before she disappeared.
I know the rhythm the way I know the Lord’s Prayer.
Do you come before the Lord this day—do you pledge your flesh and your spirit—do you submit to your husband devout in your faith and fearful of the wrath of God.
I do not hear most of it. I am standing barefoot in the dirt, and although the stranger’s hand is warm, I shiver. My teeth knock together hard enough that my jaw aches.
Father’s pale eyes find mine. His smile is vicious. Under the smile is the look I saw when Ruth stepped forward.
“Do you, Prudence, take this man.”
My mouth opens.
Something is supposed to come out. I have not decided what. I have not decided anything. My mind is a blur and my body is shaking so hard that the stranger’s hand has moved to my back to hold me up.
“I-I do.”
The words emerge from my lips in a voice I barely recognize. But I have said it and I cannot take it back.
Father’s jaw ticks. He turns to the stranger.
“Do you, Ronan O’Rourke, take this woman.”
“I do.”
No hesitation, but flat as a table.
“Then by the authority vested in me by the Lord our God, I pronounce you husband and wife.”
And before I have fully understood what is happening, I am married.
The Flock is silent.
I am not sure what to do now. But before I can gather my bearings, Father is there, leaning in. I feel the warmth of his breath against my cheek.
Under the pretense of offering his blessing, his hand lands on my shoulder and his mouth nearly touches my ear. His voice is so soft that only I can hear him.
“This changes nothing. When he tires of you, you will come home. And when you do, the whipping post will look like a mercy.”
My blood chills to ice water.
Mr. O’Rourke feels me stiffen. I see his eyes flick to Father, narrow for the briefest quarter-second, then smooth again into stoic calm.
“Let’s go,” he murmurs.
His hand finds mine again. He draws me away from Father, away from the post, away from the bowed heads of the Flock and Brother Eli with the whip dangling from his hand, and Housemother Ruth who will be paying for her insolence with her own flesh tonight.
As I walk beside him across the grass in bare feet, Father’s chillingly taunting whisper remains in my ears.