The Taker (9 page)

My heart was near to bursting from my chest and I was like a rabbit drawn up in the wolf’s sights. But then he laughed, placed a hand on my arm, sending a tingle straight to my head, and drew close to me, close enough for me to feel his breath on my face and for an errant lock of his hair to brush my cheek.

“Why, you look as though you are about to faint! I think you need some air … Will you step outside with me?” He had my arm already and didn’t wait for me to answer, but whisked me to the porch. The night air was much cooler than the stuffy confines of the
house and I took deep breaths until my stays wouldn’t let me draw in any more.

“Better?” When I nodded, he continued, “I must tell you, Miss McIlvrae, I was so happy that you joined us in this more intimate setting. I hoped that you would. I noticed you in the field this afternoon and I knew right away that I had to meet you. I felt a bond with you immediately—did you feel it, too?” Before I had a chance to answer, he took my hand in his. “I’ve spent most of my life traveling all over the world. I have a thirst to meet people. Every so often I meet someone extraordinary. Someone whose singularity can be seen, even across a field full of people. Someone like you.”

He had the glittery-eyed look of a man with a high fever, the wild look of someone chasing a thought but unable to focus, and I started to become frightened. Why had he singled me out? Or perhaps I hadn’t been singled out, perhaps this was an enticement he made to any girl impressionable enough to consider his offer of spiritual wifery. He pressed against me in a way too familiar to be polite, seeming to enjoy my distress.

“Extraordinary? Sir, you do not know me at all.” I tried to push him aside, but he continued to stand stubbornly in front of me. “There is nothing extraordinary about me.”

“Oh, but there is. I can feel it. You must feel it, too. You have a special sensibility, a remarkably
primal
nature. I can see it in your lovely, delicate face.” His hand hovered near my cheek as though he might touch me, as though he was compelled to do so. “You are full of
want
, Lanore. You are a sensual creature. You burn to know of this physical bond between man and woman … It is in the fore-front of your thoughts. You
hunger
for it. Perhaps there is a particular man …?”

Of course there was—Jonathan—but I thought the preacher was angling to see if I fancied
him
. “This talk is not proper between us, sir.” I stepped sideways and started to dart around him. “I should go inside …”

He put a hand on my arm again. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. I apologize. I’ll speak of it no more … but please, indulge me for one more minute. I have a question I must ask of you, Lanore. As I took the field this afternoon, and I noticed you, I saw you were speaking to a young man on horseback. An exceptionally good-looking fellow.”

“Jonathan.”

“Yes, that’s the name I was told. Jonathan.” The preacher licked his lips. “I have since been told by your neighbors that this young man might be sympathetic to my philosophies. Do you think you might arrange an audience for me with Jonathan?”

I felt prickling along the back of my neck. “Why do you wish to meet Jonathan?”

He laughed in his throat, nervously. “Well, as I said, from what I’ve been told he seems a natural disciple, the kind of man who can appreciate the
truth
of what I say. Could take up the cause and, perhaps, be an outpost of my church up here in the wilderness.” I looked into his eyes and saw for the first time a true wickedness about him, a love of chaos and disruption. He meant to sow this wickedness in Jonathan, too, as he tried to sow it in this town. As he’d hoped to sow it in me.

“My neighbors are amusing themselves at your expense, sir, since you don’t know Jonathan as I do. I doubt he would have much interest in what you have to say.” Why I felt I had to protect Jonathan from this man, I don’t know. But there was something ominous about his interest.

The preacher didn’t like my answer. Perhaps he knew I was lying or he didn’t appreciate being thwarted. He gave me a long, intimidating stare, as though thinking about what to do next to get what he wanted, and I felt for the first time in his presence true danger, a sense that this man was capable of anything. Just then, Nevin appeared in front of us with a blazing torch in hand—and for once, I was glad to see him.

“Lanore! I was looking for you. I’m ready. Let’s go!” he bellowed.

“Good night,” I said, breaking away from the preacher, whom I hoped to never see again. His fiery stare bored into my back as Nevin and I left.

“Satisfied with your little outing?” Nevin grunted at me as we headed down the road.

“It wasn’t what I expected.”

“I would say so. The man’s daft, probably made so by the diseases he undoubtedly carries,” Nevin said, meaning syphilis. “Still, I hear he’s had followers down in Saco. Wonder what he’s doing this far north?” It didn’t occur to Nevin that the man might have been driven out by the authorities, that he might be on the run. That in his madness he could be given to visions and grandiose predictions, putting ideas into the heads of gullible young girls and threatening those less than willing to do as he wished.

I hugged my shawl tightly around my shoulders. “I would appreciate it if you’d not tell Father what the preacher said …”

Nevin laughed blackly. “I should think not. I can barely bring myself to recall his blasphemous talk, let alone repeat it to Father! Multiple wives! ‘Spiritual wifery’! I don’t know what Father would do—take to me with a whipping rod and lock you in the barn until you were twenty-one for even
listening
to the heathen’s words.” He shook his head as we walked on. “I tell you what, though—that preacher’s teachings sure would suit your boy Jonathan. He’s made spiritual wives out of half the girls in town already.”

“Enough about Jonathan,” I said, keeping the preacher’s strange interest in Jonathan to myself so as not to confirm Nevin’s poor opinion of him. “Let us talk no more about it.”

We fell quiet for the rest of the long walk home. Despite the cool night air, I still tingled from the dark look on the preacher’s face and the glimpse into his true nature. I didn’t know what to make of his interest in Jonathan nor what he meant by my “special sensibility.” Was my longing to experience what went on between a man and a woman so obvious? Surely that mystery was at the heart of the human
experience; could it truly be unnatural, or especially evil, for a young woman to be curious about it? My parents and Pastor Gilbert would probably think so.

I walked down the lonesome road agitated inside and titillated by all of this open talk of desire. The thought of knowing Jonathan—of knowing other men in the village the way Magda knew them—left me hot and liquid inside. This evening I had awakened to my true nature, though I was too inexperienced to know it, too innocent to realize I should be alarmed by the ease with which desire could be sparked within me. I should have fought against it more staunchly, but perhaps there was no use, as one’s true nature always wins out.

SEVEN

Y
ears passed in the way they do, with each year seeming no different than its predecessor. But little differences were evident: I was less willing to follow my parents’ rules and longed for a measure of independence, and I’d grown weary of my judgmental neighbors. The charismatic preacher was arrested down in Saco, tried, and imprisoned, then escaped and disappeared mysteriously. But his absence from the scene did little to quell the unrest gurgling just beneath the surface. There was an undercurrent of sedition in the air, even in a town as isolated as St. Andrew; talk of independence from Massachusetts and statehood. If landowners such as Charles St. Andrew were worried that their fortunes would be adversely affected, they made no show of it and kept their concerns to themselves.

I grew more interested in such important matters, though I still had few opportunities to exercise my curiosity. The only fit topics of interest for a young woman, it seemed, were her domestic domain: how to make a tender loaf of molasses bread or coax milk from an aging cow, how well you could sew or the best way to cure a child’s
fever. Tests to prove our suitability as wives, but I had little interest in competition of this sort. There was only one man I wanted for my husband and he cared little for the tenderness of a bread crumb.

One of the household tasks I cared for the least was laundry. Lightweight clothing could be taken down to the creek for rinsing and wringing. But several times a year, we’d have to do a thorough washing, which meant setting a large cauldron over a fire in the yard for a full day of boiling, scrubbing, and drying. It was a miserable job—arms plunged in boiling water and lye, wringing out voluminous wool garments, spreading them to dry on bushes or over tree limbs. Laundry day had to be chosen carefully, for it required a stretch of good weather when no other laborious household task needed doing.

I remember one such day in the early autumn of my twentieth year. Oddly, my mother had sent Maeve and Glynnis to help my father with the haying, insistent that she and I could handle the washing by ourselves. She was strangely quiet that morning, too. As we waited for the water to boil, she fussed with the washing things—the bag of lye, the dried lavender, the sticks we used to push the clothing around in the pot.

“The time has come for us to have an important conversation,” my mother said at last, as we stood beside the cauldron, watching bubbles rise to the surface of the water. “It’s time to think about getting you started on a life of your own, Lanore. You’re not a child any longer. You are well into a marrying age …”

Truth be told, I was nearly past a good age for marriage and had been wondering what my parents intended to do about the situation. They’d arranged betrothals for none of their children.

“… and so we must address what to do about Master St. Andrew.” She held her breath and blinked at me.

My heart fluttered at her words. What other reason would she have to bring up Jonathan’s name in the context of marriage if she and my father didn’t intend to seek an arrangement for me? I was speechless from joy and surprise—the latter for knowing Father didn’t
approve of the St. Andrew family, not anymore. Many things had changed since the families followed Charles St. Andrew north. His relationship with the rest of the town—with the men who’d trusted him—was strained.

Mother looked at me squarely. “I tell you this as a mother who loves you, Lanore: you must cease your friendship with Master Jonathan. The two of you are children no longer. To continue in this way will do you no good.”

I didn’t feel the flecks of boiling water alighting on my skin or the heat from the cauldron dampening my face. I stared back at her.

She rushed to cover my horror-struck silence. “You must understand, Lanore—what other boy will want you when you are so obviously in love with Jonathan?”

“I’m not in love with Jonathan. We’re only friends,” I croaked.

She laughed gently, but it stabbed at my heart all the same. “You cannot deny your love for Jonathan. It’s quite evident, my dear, as it is just as evident that he does not feel the same way toward you.”

“There’s nothing for him to show,” I protested. “We are just friends, I assure you.”

“His flirtations are the talk of the village …”

I brushed a hand over my sweaty brow. “I know of these. He tells me everything.”

“Listen to me, Lanore,” she implored, turning to me even as I turned away. “It is easy to fall in love with a man as handsome as Jonathan, or as wealthy, but you must resist. Jonathan is not to be your destiny.”

“How can you say that?” The protest broke from my lips though I hadn’t meant to say anything of the kind. “You cannot know what lies ahead for me, or Jonathan.”

“Oh, silly girl, do not tell me you’ve set your heart on him.” She took me by the shoulders and gave me a shake. “You cannot hope to wed the captain’s boy. Jonathan’s family would never allow it, never, nor would your father abide it. I am sorry to be the one to tell you this hard, hard truth …”

She didn’t have to. Logically, I knew that our families were unequal and I knew that Jonathan’s mother had high hopes as far as her children’s marriages were concerned. But a girl’s dreams are near impossible to kill and I’d harbored this one for as long as I could remember; it seemed I was born with the desire to be with Jonathan. I’d always secretly believed that a love as fierce and true as mine would be rewarded in the end, and now I was being forced to accept the bitter truth.

My mother returned to her work, picking up the long stick to stir the clothing in the boiling water. “Your father means to begin searching for a match for you, and so you see why you must end your friendship. We have to find your match before we make matches for your sisters,” she continued, “so you understand the importance of this, don’t you, Lanore? You do not want your sisters to end up unwed, do you?”

“No, Mother,” I said, dispirited. I was still turned away from her, looking off in the distance, willing myself not to cry, when I noticed movement in the forest beyond our house. It could be anything, benign or dangerous—my father and siblings returning from the hay field, someone traveling between farms, deer picking at greenery. My eyes followed the figure until I could make it out, large and dark, a graceful shimmering blackness. Not a bear. A horse and rider. There was only one true black horse in the village and it belonged to Jonathan. Why would Jonathan be riding out this way if not to see me, but he had passed beyond our house and was headed in the direction of our neighbors, the recently wed Jeremiah and Sophia Jacobs. I could think of no reason for Jonathan to call upon Jeremiah, none at all.