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Part VII: 1846- On Whose Bones We Built Our Glory
Delilah winced, shifting uncomfortably in her seat. Had she the currency, she might remark pride was an uncharacteristic trait in a man so utterly professed to spiritual matters. Certainly, as a girl, she had oft held her tongue...as a maiden ought...as in the shadow of one brother and the light of another.
And Gaylord had been learned. Nobody would bar him from her father's study, or from sending for books from New Orleans and New York and Philadelphia. Andrew had been a soldier, and so it followed Gaylord would be the scholar.
It was only when the nature of his scholarship became known that her father's blood heated and her mother's curdled.
"I am sure I don't know the manner of her conjurations," she said at last, attempting without much success to suppress the timbre of insult from her voice, "Such mechanisms were always in your line, were they not?"
Long ago, before such things as the so-called "natural science" seasoned the stuffy air of hallowed universities, learned men were not considered so learned without some understanding of such mechanisms. Augustine had written of the binding of demons; Aquinas of communion with angels...many and more things Delilah had never known, but which her younger brother had fallen upon with gusto.
Once, it was believed that great and secret powers ran through the very threads of all life...that anybody, with sufficient skill, might engage in acts above and beyond the physical, to pursue good deeds and bad. The Scripture itself described the disciples performing great works in Christ's name, so the notion must have seemed thoroughly sensible.
But the wisdom of such ancient times was not the wisdom Delilah had been raised with. As far as she had been taught, there was only one who could mount such great, impossible works, and any mere man...or woman...who pretended to the same would earn nothing less than a seat in hell for all their trouble.
What did Enoch want of her? To get on her knees and plead? To say in as many words that he'd been right and she wrong? To apologize not merely for her own dismissal, but for their parents' rejection?
The things we do for our children.
"It seems to me salvation is earned through large deeds and small," she attempted.
"Pardon me sayin'," O'Halloran interjected, "A man coome walkin' up outta his grave. I en't sure how small that ranks, 'less ye've been battlin' Beelzebubs on th'reg'lar."
For which Delilah must give some credit to the Irishman for his plain speaking. It did not seem to her that her brother had made a great career for himself battling unseen forces.
Perhaps this is because he cannot. Yes, great evil may exist, but what indication is there that he is at all equipped to battle it?
None at all, but he was all she had...and she must needs rely on faith.
"This thing...whoever's causin' it...it's in yer very back pasture, man!" O'Halloran snapped, "It left me son te bleed te death in me arms! Ye want te tell me 'tis small potatoes? That's quite Christian of ye, an' the liddy bein' yer own flesh and blood..."
"Mr. O'Halloran," the formal address came slowly to her lips, almost reluctantly, "It is alright..."
"The de'il 'tis! I dinnae what drove ye out te this mire, sir, but when a man's family comes up te ask his favor, he don't turn 'em away! We en't born wi' a thing in this world but the blood what binds us...if ye cannae honor them, what manna man are ya?"
There was a pregnant pause. Delilah raised her eyes to her brother, "I am in no position to lord over you, Enoch. You doubt my story...you have not met this woman."
He knows, yet, she told herself, he knows there is more you do not say. The weaselly man has spent his life buried in books, yet still he can see your mind as though you were spun from sugarglass.
"I tell you I know it is she who has sown this wickedness in my home, who no doubt is plotting some new calumny even now."
With the governess...the girl knows, but will not speak, and Delwyn lined up against her.
A damnable knot.
"Whatever influence the herbwoman has the household, she is the root of it. If you would not believe my words, I entreat you to believe your own eyes and...your own learning. Please, brother..." she clasped her hands together, "Come home with me."
-Delilah and O'Halloran
"Home," Enoch repeated breathlessly, as if testing the taste of the word on his tongue. "Home, my dear sister, is where the LORD is. You are asking me to venture into an unholy, godless land." He rose to his feet and turned his back to his visitors, locking himself in a prolonged and pensive silence. There was much to consider here. Much to pray on. Would God answer His call and guide him?
A bit of feces dropped from the ceiling and onto his hands. That seemed as good an answer as any.
"I shall aid you," Enoch declared authoritatively as he pivoted on his heel to face Delilah and O'Halloran. "But on the one condition that my investigation shall go undeterred and unquestioned. If you truly want your house purged of the Devil's influences, you shall not question my methods. And you most certainly shall not interfere. You may have the right witch in mind, you may not. Trust that I'll make the right decision, in the end." He extended a shit-covered hand to Delilah. "Are we in agreement?"
So this was how it was to be. Her brother, in her husband's house, on his own terms. Delwyn would not take kindly to her maneuvering, his mind made up as it was, but when Enoch insisted upon conducting his own investigation, in his own manner...?
Just your luck, if they both concentrate their ire on the governess, even if only to spite you.
What could she do otherwise? She daren't prod Enoch further...no doubt he already believed her suspicions to be rooted in deeper sod than she'd let on. She was in it now, and the only way out was through.
"I did not come all this way to stop at half-measures," Delilah said at last, pressing her knuckles to her breast, "The house shall be at your disposal. You may conduct your investigation unmolested."
O'Halloran croaked a noise of alarm at her shoulder, and well he might. It didn't take a stretch of the imagination to surmise all that might go wrong with Enoch sniffing about the premises for evildoing. Never mind the rumormongering that was bound to get out...
Mother Maddox's mad brother, back from the marshes!
The shame it would bring to her parents if the extent of their last son's deterioration was known! But her parents were long gone...her children remained, even her daughter, hanging by gossamer thread though she may be.
She must do all she could to ensure those threads were not cut.
She eyed her brother's hand, swallowing a retch as she took the filth-encrusted paw (O'Halloran did enough retching for them both), "Thank you, brother, for aiding our family in our darkest hour."
-Delilah and O'Halloran
A Chesire smile spread across Enoch's face as Delilah accepted his terms. "The pact is set. May GOD be with us all." He released a low and throaty chuckle, which persisted until it grew into a cackle and then, a sonorous laugh that shattered the tranquility of his patch of the wilderness.
The sound of thunder boomed outside. A storm was coming.
Beth's new husband snored like a fighter jet. Or a freight train, but period-appropriate comparisons only made the despair worse.
Also contributing to the existential dread of her wedding night was Mr. Wonderful's champion notion of literally sleeping on the goddamn fucking floor, as if this would make her feel better about signing her life over to him in the desperate hope it would keep her from being burned at the stake.
He huddled there now, on the ornately patterned Persian rug (Was Persia a thing in 1846? Do Persian rugs come from Persia? What the fuck is the Ottoman Empire anyway?), lying on his side, the big shape of him and rising and falling like a blood pressure monitor. Or a dog.
Livin' the dream, Lizzie Beth.
She should feel shitty. Or who knew about 'shitty'? Like there was a terms of service manual for being time displaced and strongarmed into a marriage of convenience.
Wait. Fuck that. She had a neat laminated index of things she should feel shitty about, running the gamut from lying to children to raising the evil dead, but dammit if she didn't have license to be peeved at this bargain bin Jane Austen plot.
Was Jane Austen a thing yet? Had fucking Everett gotten this from her?
Beth turned onto her side in bed. It didn't squeak under the motion...mattresses didn't have springs in this time, which might explain why everyone was so plugged up all the damn time.
Her eyes alighted on the shiny gold circle on the nightstand...Marianne's ring. Her ring now, apparently, for the greater good and all that other jazz.
The worst thing about Everett was she could sincerely believe the nonsense that came out of his mouth. If he wanted to dupe his deranged sister, if he wanted to snatch her bright shiny object from her tremulous fingers, he could, definitely, and nobody to stop him.
But he, alone of his family, didn't have the taste for it. So when he said Marianne wanted Beth to have the ring, with best wishes for her new sister-in-law, well, he wasn't just whistlin' Dixie. He was, patently, the weakest whistler in the house.
He was nice. He had good intentions.
They were always nice. Being nice doesn't amount for a hill of pure cane sugar. And as for good intentions...well, we all intend things, don't we? Welcome to having a human brain. It's not special to intend things, and it's even less special to believe your intentions are "good".
She had good intentions. Last night, in the stables, looking into Ody's big brown eye, digging into her neck like the replacement level reverse Grim Reaper she'd fashioned herself as, for one night only...
Intentions don't amount to much, is the point. It's only real fucked up sickos who know they have "bad" intentions, so congratulations for not being Skeletor or...she couldn't even say "Hitler". He thought he had good intentions too.
Why the hell wasn't she asleep yet?
Letting out a tiny, frustrated puff of air, Beth reached along the edge of the nightstand, her fingers finding the edge of the ring, which she held up for her inspection, watching the soft glint of the gold in the darkness.
It would be easier if he wasn't nice. Everett. Or...people. Men. Christ, was she gonna be one of those girls who said things about "Men!", proper noun? So much for inclusivity. Add to the list of apologies she'd have to present Ty when they reunited at the other end of Mighty Yggdrasil's stray sprig.
But women too, obviously. Christ, chicks could be really fucking fake too. But in her experience, the fakery and fuckery of other girls wasn't so often hidden behind "niceness" than a sort of polite veneer. Bitches like Lucy Newman, the feral fashionista who'd ruled their high school class with a French tipped fist, wasn't fooling anybody with her plasticine smiles and doe-eyed condescension. Fooling people wasn't the point.
Men are different. The ones who affect their nice guy personas...they know damn well what men are "supposed" to be like and decide to act the opposite. Unlike women, they think they're doing a damn good job putting on a show...
...and you bet your bottom dollar, they expect a standing ovation when all is said and done.
Sure, Everett was doing her a favor. Sure, he believed it was the right thing to do.
He wasn't the first guy who thought he was doing her a favor, by giving her the privilege of his company.
When Delilah Maddox rifled under her skirts to play hide-and-hymen, she'd had no illusions about what she was doing and, to her credit, had been stone solid honest why she was doing it. Beth wasn't about to thank her for the courtesy, but she could at least appreciate the no bullshit approach.
And now...well, now she was on the hunt for witches, and she wasn't satisfied at having a confessed one right down the hall.
Beth could say what she meant: she could explain everything she'd done, recite the whole half-remembered Latin spiel from top to toe, describe the hideous gush of the horse's blood on the floor, and Delilah wouldn't believe her, truth be damned.
Why was it so important to her that Clelia be the witch? She was, of course, but she wasn't this witch.
The obvious answer was racism, but...and Beth would have to account for this upon her final performance review, no doubt...as much as down and dirty race politics powered this place, she was convinced it was a secondary power source, humming idly in the background, part of the system as it worked.
The people who worked the Maddoxes' land were interchangeable cogs in the background until it suited their handlers to notice them. Mosiah might've lived the rest of his life in comparative safety if he hadn't been unlucky enough to fail a couple of spot checks.
Clelia must've gotten noticed somehow, at some point.
Yeah...chicks didn't play nice. And they didn't forget shit either. Tempting as it could be to try.
Everett's breathing sounded so far away. And he meant well, in his good intentions. She sure as hell didn't need him hip to hip next to her in this bed.
But, in this room, sleeping and breathing and alive, the sheer presence of him was inescapable. There was no getting away, no forgetting, no...no retreating into herself.
"I would never force you!" he'd told her and, fine, okay, gold star. She believed him.
But here she was anyway, his wedded wife, in his bed.
Marianne had given him the ring back, to give to her. Marianne, allegedly, wasn't exactly in her right mind.
Marianne, a proper Southern gentlelady, had mastered nuances of femininity the 19th Amendment, two world wars, and four waves of feminism had rendered obscure as the Voynich Manuscript.
Was she crazy? Mind, she'd never exactly seemed lucid before, giggling merry as you please as Beth gave her the Cliffs Notes of Black History on their afternoon constitutional.
Maybe now, on the other end of her encounter with Nosiah, she was more sane...too sane for the people she'd been flapping her fan for all her life.
But that was some bullshit. The kind of stupid Tumblr aesthetic garbage that had clogged her feed during Beth's dark descent into alternative female self-help.
"We're all mad here," says the coked up Tim Burton Mad Hatter, to the tune of 15,000 notes from tweenage girls who discovered Arcade Fire this month and are waiting to be assumed body and soul into heaven any day now for this achievement.
Tracing the two Ms engraved on the inside of the ring, Beth was seized by a sudden desire to see Marianne, to determine just how sane she was, just what she thought of this whole wedding business...just what she believed had happened to her.
To apologize.
Beth wanted to apologize. She wanted to sit with that ditzy antebellum bombshell and tell her she was sorry for putting her through all this. That it didn't matter if she lied...or it did, but just as much as Beth's silence. That she had the right idea trying to get away from this place, that her stupid plan made her at least half as clever as Beth had ever been...
That, for all his many faults, Silly Boy O'Halloran must have really loved her, and that it sucked that he died, and worse if she had to watch it happen.
That it was okay if Cillian had taken her virginity and it was okay if he hadn't but Marianne told herself it was, because it was better than facing what had really, actually happened.
That Marianne's world had been taken to pieces against her will, and if she just wanted to sit in the rubble and make Jenga towers out of the remains, that was fine because it was her life, or what was left of it, and they could all judge her but she had to do what she had to do with what she had left...
"I was raped too," this fantasy version of herself might say, "I was raped and nobody called it that and, after, everyone was full of sympathy and platitudes and fear and I was so alone I thought I was going bugshit crazy, and I thought that the best thing to do, the only thing to do, was to run away and hide, inside and outside, because then nobody could hurt me again. They could call me a bitch or a witch, but they couldn't do anything to me because I wasn't really there anymore."
You can bury yourself so deep, armor yourself in cynicism and sarcasm and flinty-eyed bitchiness, but that's not going to stop them from looking at you and judging you and making up their mind. The only person that loses touch then is yourself.
And if Beth had good intentions, real good intentions, she'd get out of this bed and go down the hall and wake Marianne up and tell her that, no matter what happened out there, she had not brought it onto herself.
She could do what they...what her so-called enlightened 21st century peers...hadn't seen fit to, and tell her it wasn't her fault. That it was very especially not her fault because Beth had walked in with a pocket full of that old black magic and, wrapped in good intentions, had unleashed a soulless killing machine on a remorseful rampage.
And she'd take this ring and she'd shove it into the poor stupid girl's lap and say "I've taken enough from you. I've hurt you. I've hurt so many people and I don't even mean to do it anymore. I've gotten so used to being hurt that I don't even notice. Just take it, take it, it's yours, it has your fucking initials on it, even, get mad, Christ, just get mad at me for showing up out of nowhere and putting the torch to your life and dreams..."
Good intentions they were, and selfish...as selfish as Everett's grand wedding plans. Because it might make Beth feel better, even if for only a moment, to make some grand gesture...
But it wasn't good. It wasn't selfless. It was no different than her mother sitting that box of Kleenex down on the nightstand and gently informing her of a number for girls "who'd been through these things" to call and then just leaving with that sad, long suffering smile.
Sometimes, the "good" thing to do is to give the people what they want. Sometimes, "goodness" means looking at the person you've wronged and letting them talk terms.
Even if those terms are better than you deserve. Sometimes...maybe all the time...good means surrender. "Good" means looking out at the mess you made and, before doing anything to fix it, letting your victims come up to you and tell you just what was broken.
Beth blinked heavily, her eyes burning with stubborn tears. She wiped them with the heel of her hand.
Her eyes cleared, vision refocusing on her wedding ring.
She blinked again. Then a third time, tracing her thumb along the inscription...the M.M.
Her touch confirmed her sight: M.M. had become B.M, the initial B engraved dark and deep as if it had been there from the minute the gold circle came off the iron.
From miles away, she heard the old witchy woman's words: "Ya don' do this work outta spite. Ya do it, if ya do it at all, because ya want somethin'."
Beth turned the ring in her hand, eyes widening in stunned, stupefied disbelief.
"I'm tellin' ya that no meal tastes betta than the one ya make for ya hungry child. No quilt be warmer than the one ya knit fa ya aging motha. No art finer than what ya made for ya 'cool aunt'..."
The tears were back, but she didn't...couldn't...think to wipe them. Everett could rip ass, Ellis could have a night terror, the Union Army could make a pit stop 20 years early, and she wouldn't notice.
With trembling hand, Beth held the ring up to her face, looking at the initials...her married name, miraculously, mundanely inscribed in the gold and let out a shaky, breathy laugh.
"Magic," she shook her head, "Shit."
"Ya have ta do this work fa someone...or it ain't na work at all."
-Beth