The Island of Doves (3 page)

But the greenhouse was, on the other hand, hers—the only place on the sprawling property where Edward seemed to let her alone. Perhaps he did so because he could watch her from a window in his study and confirm she was there inside the glass walls, potting and pruning and watering. Susannah was unsettled by the greenhouse’s underlying purpose, by what Edward had intended it to do for—and
to
—her. But it allowed her to continue her work through the long winter. And there was nothing she treasured more than slipping her fingers into the mossy soil of her pots, collecting seeds from the surrounding woods and trying to understand by what mechanism or alchemy they transformed from a dry kernel to a sleek and thirsty living thing.

Susannah stood before the sturdy worktable inside the glass walls, her field notebook open to a blank page. A cluster of plumbago pencils in a chipped clay vase served as a bookend and held her collection of botanical guides upright where the corner of the table met the glass wall. As a girl of ten, Susannah had received Priscilla Wakefield’s
An Introduction to Botany
for her birthday and read it until the pages were smudged and torn. From this book she learned how to build her herbarium, how to collect a complete botanical specimen: a plant’s root, stem, leaves, flower, and fruit.

Back in New York Susannah had amassed a substantial collection of plants from the Hudson River Valley, but Buffalo was fresh terrain. It bordered fresh water instead of the sea, and its flora differed in interesting ways. She was counting the days until the first shoots emerged from the ground so that she might collect the spring flowers. First the anemone would appear, then the bloodroot, then the trillium.

•   •   •

O
n Sunday morning, Susannah sat at her dressing table brushing her hair. She saw Marjorie flit by in the hallway carrying a stack of folded linens, the starched strings of her apron trailing behind her.

Susannah’s anxiety surged at the sight of her. Before, everything Edward had done to Susannah was sealed within the walls of Hawkshill, and at times she questioned her own mind, whether the things she remembered had actually taken place. It had never occurred to her that someone else saw these things too. The isolation of the last year had been nearly unbearable; to be seen, acknowledged, was a kindness that overwhelmed Susannah’s heart. But she was also afraid and, because fear had controlled her for so long, furious at the thought of Marjorie’s loose lips. Didn’t she know what the consequences would be if Edward heard whispering about his private affairs?

Susannah held the silver hairbrush in midstroke, saw the curling letters of her monogram inverted in the mirror. “Marjorie,” Susannah called to her.

The girl appeared in the doorway. She had a happy face, the round pink cheeks of a little girl’s doll. “Yes, Mrs. Fraser?”

Susannah could think of no way to ask about the nun that didn’t put her in league with Marjorie against her husband. “I was thinking of wearing the printed pink cotton tonight.”

Marjorie hesitated and clasped her plump hands together. “Ah. Well, Mr. Fraser already has asked me to prepare the green silk for you to wear.”

Susannah sighed. “I
abhor
that dress.”

Marjorie bit her bottom lip, then giggled. “To be honest, ma’am, I feel the same way about it. The fabric is so delicate! Every time I press it, I say the Ave Maria hoping not to scorch it.”

“Oh, I wish you
would
scorch it.” Perhaps, Susannah thought, she had misunderstood the nun, or perhaps the woman was merely a lunatic who had made up a wild tale she had no way of knowing was true. Marjorie had never been anything but kind and loyal since the day she came to Hawkshill.

The maid stepped behind her and took the brush, then began to sweep it through Susannah’s hair with gentle strokes. “The green silk it will be, then,” Susannah said. “For Mr. Fraser always has what he wants. And always will.”

Marjorie paused her brushing and let her eyes rest on Susannah’s in the mirror for a moment. She opened her mouth, then closed it, as if she reconsidered her words. She began to braid her mistress’s hair.

“Perhaps,” Marjorie said. “For now.”

•   •   •

T
hat night the Frasers hosted a Sunday dinner to celebrate the appointment of Nathaniel Root to the position of city attorney. When Wendell Beals, the chief manager of Edward’s construction business, arrived, Marjorie led him into the parlor, where Edward and Susannah were waiting with Nathaniel. Edward poured champagne into four glasses and proposed a toast.

“To the future of the city of Buffalo,” he said, his arm outstretched as he nodded to each of the men. He twisted his mouth into a sly grin. “To be created in our image.”

As the men chuckled and drank, Marjorie nodded to Susannah from the doorway of the dining room.

“Why don’t we take our places at the table,” Susannah said. “The meal is nearly ready.”

They made a quiet procession into the dining room and took their seats at the grand table.

“Beals,” Edward said as they settled into their chairs. “How many houses did we build in the fall?”

“I believe the number is twelve, sir, not counting those begun in August.” Susannah was fond of Wendell, a round man in his fifties with a fringe of hair encircling the bare dome of his scalp. He had been a midlevel clerk in a Buffalo bank before Edward met him and offered him a promotion. The sudden change in fortune seemed not to have changed Wendell. Susannah imagined that he had always walked with the same humble stoop, had always dabbed his brow with a crisp handkerchief. She supposed this gentleness was the very thing that drew Edward to him in the first place. Wendell made a solicitous subordinate and never questioned Edward’s decisions.

Edward turned to Nathaniel. “Well. What do you think of that?”

Nathaniel seemed to choose his words carefully. As city attorney, he was the custodian of the laws of the county. He couldn’t think only of profit but had to imagine its potential consequences too. “I think it is remarkable. I hope that you will be able to sell all those houses.”

“We don’t deal in hope, Root. Of course they will sell; we wouldn’t have built them otherwise. Buffalo is teeming with Irish willing to pay an awful lot to borrow very little.”

Nathaniel nodded. “Perhaps. But I am sure Mrs. Fraser does not want to hear talk of business at her table.”

“I’ll take that as a sign you are conceding the point,” Edward said. “And of course we’ve broken ground on the city jail too, for those who fail to pay their mortgages.”

“The design really is ingenious, Mr. Root,” Wendell said. “The citizens of Buffalo can count on absolute protection from the criminal element.”

Nathaniel set his jaw and took a sip of his wine. Susannah knew Edward had insisted they begin construction on the building even though the weather was freezing and the workers suffered in it.

Marjorie carried the platters from the sideboard and placed them in the center of the table. She lifted the lid on each and steam wafted toward the chandelier. As she prepared to serve the food, Edward looked at the enormous blue walleye and narrowed his eyes. Nathaniel looked down at his plate.

“Is something wrong?” Susannah asked. She glanced at Marjorie.

“Fish?” Edward said. “You’re serving fish?”

Nathaniel held up his hand. “Please, Edward—it’s fine. Don’t trouble Mrs. Fraser.”

“As I told you yesterday,” Edward said, “Mr. Root does not eat fish.”

Edward
had
told her, Susannah remembered now, yesterday morning before she had gone to the dressmaker. The unsettling encounter with the nun had shoved everything else from her mind. Now she turned to Nathaniel, mortified.

“Please do not worry,” he said. “It is a peculiarity that runs in my family. My father once swelled up like a soap bubble from a few bites of trout.”

Susannah’s hand flew to her mouth. “I am so sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Nathaniel said. He gestured to a platter of potatoes with shaved ham and roasted pearl onions. “This looks marvelous. Truly.” He turned to Wendell and aimed to change the subject. “I understand you will be traveling soon?”

Wendell nodded. “West to Green Bay. My cousin is homesteading there. This has been his first winter and I think he is eager for visitors.”

Edward shook his head. Susannah could see from the way he held his jaw that he was still seething about her mistake with the meal. He restrained himself for now to answer Wendell. “Can you even imagine that life? A country full of savages? The Catholics in Buffalo are bad enough.”

The conversation drifted unremarkably from travel to the weather, and soon the meal was over. Later, after the guests had gone home, Susannah moved quietly through the front hallway in the hopes of passing Edward’s study unnoticed. She longed to close herself in the peace of her room to read a few pages of Mrs. Sedgwick’s latest novel before drifting off to merciful sleep. But when her toe touched the first stair, she heard Edward clear his throat.

“Susannah,” he said. “Come here.”

She inhaled, closing her eyes in a silent prayer, then followed his voice through the study into the parlor.

He stood next to the piano and gestured to the embroidered cushion on the bench. “I am in the mood to hear some music.”

She gave him a questioning glance, trying to discern his intention. “Edward,” she said, “about dinner . . . I—”

“I asked you,”
he barked, then softened his voice, “to play me a tune.”

Susannah sat down on the bench and raised the fallboard, then placed her hands back in her lap. As she tried to think of what to play, her mind felt blank, slick as a sheet of ice. It mattered very much that she choose the right piece of music just now. She was weary with the number of times Edward had forced her into this dance—making her anticipate precisely what he wanted and how, tempering the tone of her voice and her posture so as not to provoke him. Susannah tried to think of something, anything, to play, but she was frozen in place.

Edward grabbed her wrists and mashed her open palms on the keys. The notes crashed through the silent room. A tear rolled down the bridge of Susannah’s nose, and she felt it hang on the rim of her nostril. She didn’t dare move her hand to brush it away.

Slowly, she began to plunk out the notes of an old Scottish tune. “See, O, see the breaking day,” she sang, her voice a quavering whisper, “how the dewdrop decks the thorn. Hovering low, the skylarks lay, long preluding—”

One chord came out bent and Susannah’s fingers froze above the keys. Edward flicked aside the latch with his index finger and slammed the fallboard down. When Susannah snatched her hands away, the left one was too slow and the heavy oak crashed onto her fingers. She heard the bones crack before she felt the pain. As Susannah cried out, a keening sound howling from her chest, Edward strode calmly into his study and closed the door.

“Mrs. Fraser,” Marjorie cried, darting into the room. “What is the matter?” Susannah clutched her wrist with her right hand and stared at the broken fingers, her mouth stretched open in pain. The top joints were wrenched out of line. Already they were swelling.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Marjorie whispered, sinking down at Susannah’s feet. “This can’t go on.”

•   •   •

A
t first light, Susannah set off running across the back of the property, then southwest through the woods that opened to Maple Street. Marjorie had wrapped the injured fingers of Susannah’s left hand tightly together with strips of rag, and she held it gingerly at her hip. She darted among the bare trees and crossed a clearing created by a few fallen white pines. The dawn sun hung orange and lovely in the eastern sky.

Two log buildings came into view. The larger was a story and a half tall, a simple construction with the shape and pitched roof of a barn. Long narrow windows flanked the sides of the building, each a mosaic of colored glass. A door of carved oak marked the entrance and next to it hung a wooden sign that read, simply,
The Lamb of God
. Next to this sanctuary stood the rectory, a cabin with a shingled roof that sagged a little in the center, where a chimney emitted a broad plume of smoke.

Susannah pounded with the side of her fist on the door. There was a rustling inside, footsteps, then the creak of the iron latch lifting. Sister Mary Genevieve’s face appeared, her long gray hair hanging loose on her shoulders.

“My dear girl,” she said and opened the door. “I’ve been expecting you.”

It was dark within the nun’s cabin, despite the spreading dawn outside. Still breathless from running, Susannah glanced around at the humble furnishings—the stone hearth and iron pot, a table with two chairs, a long shelf that held cups and plates and one large bowl.

“Is Father Adler here now?”

“No. He travels often to the isolated villages that do not have priests.” Sister Mary Genevieve caught Susannah’s glance at the single narrow cot by the window. “And when he is here, I sleep in the church, of course. But I handle affairs in his absence, meeting with anyone looking for his . . . assistance.”

“I don’t know why I came here,” Susannah said, almost to herself, and shook her head.

Sister Mary Genevieve settled Susannah in the worn armchair next to the fire, then pulled over a chair from the table and sat across from her.

“Why don’t you just tell me what happened,” she said, looking at the bandaged hand.

Susannah sighed. How simple just to say it, after all these months of explaining everything away with lies. She described the events of the previous day to the nun: the walleye, the broken ballad, her broken fingers.

Sister Mary Genevieve nodded. “May I ask, have you ever tried to leave?”

“Once.”

The sister rose and went to the fire, stoking the banked coals to heat the water for tea. “What happened?”

“I waited until Edward was asleep, then slipped his coin purse from the desk in his study. I left the house, and ran.” The words poured out now. Susannah no longer cared whether it was wrong to tell them. “I wanted to make it to Williams Mills by the morning and catch a stage from there to Rochester. But Edward had followed me the whole time, waited until I stopped to catch my breath, and dragged me back home. He locked me in a closet for a whole day and night without any food. After that, I stopped thinking about leaving.”