Monstrous Beauty (13 page)

The old man answered wearing slippers. His shirt was open at the throat, and he was missing the white linen neckband.

“Pastor!” she said breathlessly.

“Mrs. Ontstaan, es et no’? You see, they may’ve retired me, but I’m no’ senile yet! Please, come en while I make myself presen’able for you.”

“I’m sorry to disturb you, Pastor.” She stepped inside. “But it’s of the utmost importance.”

It was warm in the room, which was heated by a small coal fireplace. Eleanor waited by a wooden chair while the pastor shuffled through the tiny receiving area to his bedroom and closed the door. He reemerged wearing his collar and waistcoat, with the slippers still on his feet.

“Now, may I offer you some tea—or somethen’ more potent, perhaps? A nep of scotch?” His eyebrows twitched like caterpillars. “You look as ef you could use a nep.”

“No, I should say not,” she said disapprovingly, hugging Marijn to her chest. “I’ve come for your help—I have an urgent request, this is not a social call.”

“Of course, madam.” He motioned for her to sit down in the living room and became politely serious.

“If you don’t mind, I’m a simple woman, with no airs, and I can only speak frankly. This conversation must rest between you and me and God alone.” Eleanor jiggled the baby continuously in her arms as she spoke.

He nodded. “You may be assured tha’ I—”

“You must perform an exorcism, Pastor.”

He raised his eyebrows and laughed lightly. “An exorcesm, Mrs. Ontstaan?”

“An exorcism of the demonic possession of Sarah Doyle.”

The pastor’s face fell, and he sat dumbfounded.

Irritated by his silence, Eleanor enunciated: “
Mrs. Ezra Doyle?
Surely you know her husband, who is a member of our congregation.”

“Yes,” he said, coming to. “Yes, yes, I am well acquain’ed with Mr. and Mrs. Doyle. I blessed their marriage caeremony no’ two months ago. She es a lovely woman, Mrs. Ontstaan—I am obliged to defend haer. A spirited filly, to be sure.” He winked. “Bu’ I daresay tha’ shouldnae warrant an
exorcesm
.”

“You performed the wedding ceremony? Tell me then, have you met her family?”

He thought for a moment. “I cannae recall tha’ she had family en attendance.”

“Because she has no family, Pastor. No
human
family. She appeared from nowhere and married Mr. Doyle without so much as a day’s courtship. She is a monster.”

The pastor rose from his chair. “I willnae listen any far-ther, Mrs. Ontstaan.” He walked the few steps to the front door and opened it.

Eleanor stood up, and Marijn began to stir in her arms.

“Listening is your job, Pastor; and now that you have been relieved of the weekly sermons, it is the only function you perform here to earn your board from the parish. I am quite certain you would not want the elders to hear that you refused to counsel a member of the congregation.”

He sighed, but he left his hand on the doorknob and kept the door open a crack.

Marijn began to squirm. Eleanor jiggled her.

“I am a useless ol’ man, Mrs. Ontstaan. Why do you no’ ask the new pastor for hes counsel?”

“I considered that, but I know that an exorcism requires proof, and you and I can only furnish it on Sunday morning. During that time Pastor Davis
must
give his sermon, to ensure that all the parishioners—including Ezra Doyle—are in attendance at the church. That will give you the opportunity to observe Sarah’s possession.”

Marijn began to cry.

“Mrs. Ontstaan, en all my years—an’ I daresay I’m on the cusp of having more than my share (some would say I’ve even passed tha’ mark)—I have never seen a true possession. Wha’ I
have
seen are men tormented by an illness o’ the mind; but those poor souls are lef’ more properly to the care of doctors an’ institutions than to the claergy.”

Marijn was wailing now—red in the face, with sweat droplets on her forehead from the warm room and too much bundling.

Eleanor raised her voice over the noise. “Sarah Doyle speaks in tongues, Pastor. She cavorts with demons. And she breathes underwater. I can prove these things if you meet me at the bay this Sunday, at one quarter past eight.”

Marijn was screaming now, piercing wails with long, painful silences at the end of each scream when she had run out of air. Eleanor’s frenetic jiggling gave the baby’s cry an unbearable vibrato.

“Fine. I’ll mee’ you, Mrs. Ontstaan. Bu’ only to show tha’ your theory es unjust and unfair—nay, et’s slander.” He opened the door all the way. “I’ll expect an apology from you on Sunday mornin’, whech I’ll accept on Mrs. Doyle’s behalf, after whech we shall never mention this to anyone, or betwixt ourselves, again.”

Eleanor left with Marijn, and the pastor shut the door, wondering pityingly whether the cool air would relieve the child’s discomfort.

Chapter 20

A
T THE END OF THE NEXT DAY
the curator swept up the hill through Plimoth Plantation, corralling any straggling visitors and ushering them to the parking lot.

“All clear, Pilgrims,” she shouted to the rows of houses down the hill.

Hester scraped her pottage into a bucket to take to the pigs and climbed up a ladder to retrieve the twenty-first-century broom that was stashed in the loft. She swept the dirt floor hurriedly, hoping to make a quick escape. Nearly every thought she’d had that day had been about the stranger in the cave, until she finally stopped pretending to herself that she wasn’t simply marking time until evening, when he had told her he would be waiting on the beach. She thought of his smile, with that wonky little tooth. She thought of his bemused eyes and his deep, quiet voice. She thought about how puzzling some of his comments were, and how proper his manners seemed. And she thought, although she tried not to, about how his shirt had been unbuttoned just enough for her to see the top of his chest.

She turned to sweep her pile outside and saw Peter in the doorway.

“Hey there!” he said.

“Oh, hey,” Hester replied.

“Such enthusiasm,” he joked. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. What are you doing here?” She could hear the irritation in her own voice.

“I thought we could stop for an ice cream on the way home.”

“No!” she said. Of all days for him to stop by! “I mean, I’ve got a car today, thanks.”

“I know. I thought we could caravan over there.”

“Why didn’t you call? I could have saved you the trip.”

He pointed to the leather pouch hanging from her belt. “Your phone is off until the all clear, and it’s, what, a grueling seven-minute drive for me from the wharf?”

He hopped aside as Hester pushed the debris past his feet. Straw and mouse droppings landed on his sneakers.

“Sorry,” she said, surprising herself with how little she meant it.

“Wow, I can take a hint. See you, Hester.” He turned and started up the hill.

Hester swept the ashes into a hasty pile near the fireplace, froze for a moment, and dropped the broom. She went to the doorway. Peter was almost at the fort.

“Another time, I promise,” she yelled.

He lifted his hand and waved backward but didn’t turn around.

She finished her chores, punched out, and rushed to the break room to change. Ten minutes later, she was running down Water Street toward the picnic area.

Eleven minutes later, it began to drizzle.

Twelve minutes later, she was breathless, teetering at the top of the stone steps.

Part of her didn’t expect him to be there, even though he had invited her. Or maybe he had come earlier and left already. Maybe he knew it was going to rain and wouldn’t show.

And then her heart tumbled in her chest, because he was there. He was sitting closer to the steps than to the cave, plunked in the sand, his legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles, leaning on his elbow, reading a book that was resting in the sand. He was passing the time; he was waiting for her. Just what was she getting into? She sighed deeply to calm herself.

Hester watched a couple walk past him, holding hands and laughing. The guy was huge, with a crew cut. A classic football-playing, fraternity-brother type—long on physical strength and party skills. The girl was petite and bottle-blond, gazing up at him with shining eyes. She opened an umbrella, and laughed when he took it from her and held it over her head. The stranger glanced up at them briefly and then down at his book again.
Silly girl,
Hester thought,
your hulk is nothing compared with my stranger. Just look to your left!

Hester needed time for her heartbeat to slow. She straightened her T-shirt. She felt to see if the fly on her jeans was all the way up. She ran her fingers through her hair, which was getting damp. She wondered for the hundredth time how she could go through an entire day and forget to check herself even once in a mirror. She glided her tongue over her teeth searching for food particles; she’d had a spinach salad for lunch, for God’s sake, what was she thinking? And all the while she stared hard at him, at this lanky, rumpled, puzzling guy who was at once intelligent and yet so out of touch—and whom she had to admit was simply, breathtakingly beautiful.

He looked up at her then as if she had reached over and nudged him.

She waved, as casually as she could, and walked down the steps hoping she wouldn’t trip, watching each stair instead of him. The frat boy and his girl went single file to pass her as they walked up.

“Thanks,” Hester said.

“Lousy beach weather,” the girl said to her cheerily.

“Yeah,” Hester smiled. “I’m just going to meet my friend over there.”

The frat boy must have been a little slow, because he looked over his shoulder down the beach and responded with a confused “Sure.”

The stranger smiled at her as she approached, and it was alarmingly like the first hit of a drug she had been craving all day. Something rushed through her arteries like liquid joy, and even as she reveled in it, she knew she had to have more. It must be endorphins, she decided. What an ephemeral thing human will is, to be manipulated by a couple of drops of hormone!

He stood up to greet her.

“Hello,” she said, aiming for an ordinary cheerfulness.

“You came back.” His eyebrows were raised with something like delight.

“I guess I did sort of bolt last night. We hit on a sore topic.”

“I gathered.” He wiped his hands and lightly smacked his backside, as if to get sand off, but Hester couldn’t see a grain on him.

“Your book is going to get wet,” Hester said.

“It’s not mine. Someone forgot it on the beach this afternoon.”

She peered around him to see it. “
Jane Eyre.
I loved that.”

“Did you?” He looked at her, dwelling a little too long on what she’d thought was just a conversation opener. “Well,” he said after a moment, “I wish they had lost a book I hadn’t already read. Shall we walk for a bit?”

Was he trying to politely tell her that he had been sitting there, bored, for a long time?

“I’m sorry if you were waiting. I was at work all day; this is the soonest I could be here. We didn’t set a time to meet yesterday, you just said ‘evening’—I wondered about that all day…” She was blathering.

“You’re not wearing your work clothing,” he observed, as they strolled up the beach. He didn’t seem to notice the misty drizzle. Hester couldn’t have cared less about it.

“I changed.” She looked at him and recognized his white shirt and black pants as the same outfit from the day before. “I gotta tell you, I’m a little worried that you might be homeless.”

“I have a home,” he said.

Still, his clothes were clean, if becoming damp. His feet were bare, but he had no trouble walking on the rocky beach. Hester kept her shoes on.

“Where?” she challenged him. “Where is your home?”

“I live north of here, by the Cordage Company.”

“You mean the Cordage Museum?”

“Mmm,” he said vaguely. He stole a look at her. Their eyes met. What was he hiding?

She stopped in her tracks. “Wait,” she said, touching his elbow to slow him. His sleeve was rolled up and her fingers met his skin, which was cool and inexplicably lovely. A tingle shot up her arm and exploded somewhere in her brain, like an electric shock, but immensely pleasant. She recoiled. He took a breath, as if he felt it, too.

“I … haven’t had the pleasure of learning your name,” he said. “My name is Ezra.”

Ezra,
she thought.
How absolutely perfect.

“Hester,” she said. “Hester Goodwin.”

“Hester.” He nodded slowly, looking at every inch of her face, which was now flushed and covered in mist. He seemed to be looking for something. “Goodwin is an old name in this area, isn’t it?”

“Yes, embarrassingly old.”

“Hester Goodwin,” he said, drawing her name out under his breath, dissecting it, his eyes locked on hers now.

She had to snap him out of it. She couldn’t bear to have him look at her that way—as if he were searching her soul. Not to mention the fact that she was becoming drenched by the relentless drizzle, and he had promised he could advise her about her problem.

“Yesterday?” she started, realizing at once that it was an incomplete sentence. “You mentioned an idea. About my family’s medical history?”

He blinked. “Yes, your history. The women who have died. That could be important.”

Could be
important? It was only the most important thing in her life, she thought, suddenly irritated. How did he manage it? How could he annoy her and make her heart race all in the same minute?

“Tell me exactly what you know.”

She took a breath to calm herself. “The women in my family seem to die within a week of delivering their first baby. It happened to my mother, Susan, and her mother, for sure. And my dad says my mom may have mentioned her grandmother dying young, too—my great-grandmother.” She pointed toward Leyden Street. “And my great-great-great-grandmother is up there in Burial Hill, at age nineteen, dust and bones, after having given birth to a baby named Nellie.”

He nodded, taking in the information. “And you believe there is a scientific explanation—childbirth fever, or an irregularity of anatomy—that compromised each woman at delivery?”