The Widow of Pale Harbor Read online

  Gabriel reached the door, held his breath and waited. His heart was beating in his ears, his mouth suddenly as dry as cotton. He wasn’t scared—he’d long ago lost the capacity for that when he’d lost everything that he held dear—but he didn’t particularly relish any more excitement for the day either. All he wanted was to close his eyes and get as dry as possible.

  Just as the door swung open, he raised the candlestick above his head and lunged at the dark shape silhouetted against the rainy night.

  “Sweet Jesus, don’t hurt me!” The figure dropped to the ground in a huddling mound. “I—I’m the sexton,” the man said, his voice muffled and pathetic.

  Cursing, Gabriel stopped his swing. The candlestick dropped from his grasp, clattering to the floor. Of course it was the sexton. Who else would be interested in this rotting old church?

  “Gabriel Stone,” he said, offering his hand to help the man up. “The new minister.” The words tasted strange on his tongue, and he realized it was the first time he had said them out loud.

  The man staggered to his feet, wide-eyed and dripping wet. He regarded Gabriel with lingering panic. He was slight, with stooping shoulders and, at about thirty, was only a couple of years younger than Gabriel.

  He knew what the man saw: Gabriel was too tall, too broad, too much like a lumbering giant. People glanced cautiously at him out the side of their eyes, as if he were a criminal, a tough. His voice, low and raspy, didn’t help. He was used to the reaction, but it never eased the pang of annoyance—and self-consciousness—that he felt. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he bit off, unable to keep the irritation from his voice. Then he raised his hands, palms up, in a gesture of pacification.

  The sexton gave a hesitant nod and swallowed, extending his hand. “Ezekiel Lewis, but folks just call me Lewis. That’s quite the grip you have,” he said, rubbing his hand and warily eyeing the discarded candlestick.

  Gabriel had corresponded with someone before coming to Pale Harbor, but as with all things concerning this new venture, he had been unsure of his footing, of exactly what he was supposed to say. Now he wasn’t sure if it was Lewis he’d written to, or someone else in the town when he’d sent ahead notice that the minister who was supposed to come to Pale Harbor had died and that Gabriel was his replacement. That wasn’t strictly true, but it wasn’t a lie, either. When the brilliant Reverend Joshua Whipple of Concord had died in a carriage accident, Gabriel had seized on his chance to be the man that Anna would have wanted. It had all moved so quickly after he’d set the plan in motion, and then there had been no going back.

  Gabriel regarded the nervous man and decided to take a gamble.

  “I believe you were expecting me?”

  Lewis nodded. “I was meant to meet you at the dock, but my cart got stuck in the mud and delayed me. When I couldn’t find you, I figured you might have come up to the church. I don’t suppose you’ll be wanting me to take you to the cottage now, after all?”

  The poor man might have been even more soaked than himself, and he had only a threadbare coat to protect him from the elements. “Might as well bide here for a while yet. No use in going back out into the storm,” Gabriel said.

  Lewis nodded his agreement, looking grateful. He had closed the door behind him and was rubbing his arms to get warm. “It’s a wonder the ship was even able to make dock in this weather,” he said, after a particularly harsh clap of thunder.

  It had been a bumpy ride, the dark water endlessly churning like a witch’s cauldron, and Gabriel had watched more than one of his fellow passengers be sick over the rail. The two men lapsed into silence, the pounding storm outside making the church feel somehow smaller, more intimate. Gabriel, though never one for small talk, somehow found himself falling into conversation easily in the dark.

  “Have you been the sexton long?” Lewis was decades younger than Gabriel would have thought someone in his position would be, and it was hardly a trade for an ambitious young man.

  “No, sir. That is, there isn’t much need for a sexton these days,” Lewis said, jutting his chin vaguely into the shadowy church. “I work at the cemetery, digging graves and groundskeeping and the like. I come around here a couple of times a month to cut the grass and make sure no one has broken in.” His look grew sheepish. “Might have been a few months since I last came inside.”

  Gabriel had begun to move away from the door and farther into the church, inspecting his new domain as much as he could in the near blackness.

  Lewis followed him, swallowing. “I’d wanted it cleaned up before you saw it...” he said, trailing off, as he dashed a cobweb away from his face.

  “I’ll see to all the cleaning later.” Gabriel squinted into the darkness. The last of the moon had long since slid behind a heavy bank of clouds. “You don’t have a match, by chance?”

  Lewis fumbled in his pocket, miraculously producing a dry matchbox, and struck a match. He touched it to a piece of wood, throwing light onto the empty pews and casting grotesque shadows from the forgotten saints.

  The cross at the altar would have to go, and Mary stared at him with accusing eyes, as if she knew that her tenure would be short-lived. The stained glass might stay, but everything else was the vestige of an outdated religion and had no place in a home for transcendentalism. Or so he assumed, though he wasn’t quite sure. Anna would have known; she had been so smart, so clever. Unitarianism—with its strict interpretation of monotheism and all things scientific and rational—might have taken root in Boston, but it was transcendentalism, with its wild abandon to the spiritual, that had so enamored her in Concord. Stop thinking about her, he chided himself. Do this for her, but for God’s sake don’t wallow in self-pity.

  A flash of movement snapped Gabriel from his thoughts. “What was that?” He put his hand out to stop Lewis.

  Lewis swung the light back around toward the altar and took a sharp breath. Something was moving, rustling about in the debris under the cross.

  Without thinking, Gabriel began making his way up the aisle, pushing aside detritus. There was something at the altar, a shape blacker than the rest of its dark surroundings. And it was moving.

  His skin prickled and despite his cold, wet clothes, sweat beaded along Gabriel’s neck. The walls danced with quivering shadows, the wind howling and gripping the creaking church tighter. He swallowed. It was not a particularly welcoming place, but now a sense of wrongness took hold of him, as if he were not supposed to be here. As if something did not want him here.

  A crash and fluttering broke the stillness. Lewis fell to his knees, and Gabriel flinched as something disturbed the air over their heads.

  “What the—”

  Taking the torch from Lewis, Gabriel held it up, dimly illuminating the rafters. From the darkness above, a pair of gleaming black eyes blinked down at him.

  “It’s a bird,” he said, feeling foolish that his heart was still racing, his palms sweating. Lewis, who had lost about three shades from his already pale face, let out a shaky breath. “There are holes in the roof. It must have come through one to get out of the storm.”

  The bird—a raven or a crow, something big and black—cocked its head and blinked down at them with vague interest. Then it shuffled its wings a few times and settled down to roost.

  Suddenly, Gabriel just wanted to sleep, even if his new lodgings were cold and empty. He’d had enough of the dank church and its accusing shadows. He was just about to broach the idea of plunging out into the storm when he caught a hint of a strange odor.

  The whole church had a musty, unused smell about it, but this was different. Pungent, sweet. Acrid to the point of making his eyes water, and only growing stronger. Curiosity overcame apprehension, and he drew closer to the altar.

  He jerked backward. “Oh, God.” Gabriel buried his nose in his handkerchief, fighting the rising gag in his throat. Beside him, Lewis made the sign of the cross over his chest.

  This must have been what had attracted the carrion bird, why it had been pecking about the altar. It was a wonder he hadn’t smelled it right away. Bones and fur lay before them, strips of rancid flesh. It was such a mess that it was impossible to tell what the animal might have been in life, or even if it had been a single animal.

  “What the hell is that doing here?”

  Maybe some forest creature had found its way into the church and then perished after it was unable to get out. But something about its position on the altar sent a chill down Gabriel’s spine. Why wasn’t it nearer a door, or window, if it had died trying to get out of the church? How had it come to lie on the most conspicuous feature of the building?

  Lewis shifted uncomfortably. “I can’t say I’ve seen anything particularly like this, but—”

  Just then a loud crack of thunder rang out, swallowing his words. Lewis jumped back and the light stuttered out, leaving them in darkness.

  Gabriel had had enough. The church was in ruins and clearly would need to be addressed in the light of day. The animal remains weren’t going anywhere, and there wasn’t anything they could do about them in the middle of the night anyway.

  “All right. Let’s leave it for now.”

  A hiss of relief came from the darkness behind him. “Very good, Reverend.”

  They gingerly made their way back to the door, and Gabriel shoved his wet hat back on his head. A pang of melancholy ran through him at the thought of arriving at an empty house. He was running away from a painfully empty home in Concord; had he really done all this only to exchange it for another, and in an unfamiliar place, no less?

  Between the unsettling discovery at the altar and the icy impassiveness of the church, what little
luster his plans had had now faded to a dull and miserable gray. Gabriel was cold, weary and utterly alone. And it was only a matter of time before the town of Pale Harbor discovered him for the fraud he was.

  3

  The invitations began almost immediately.

  If Gabriel had thought that his arrival would be quiet, that he could slip into Pale Harbor unnoticed, then he had been sorely mistaken. It was a small town—Lewis had informed him that their police force consisted of one constable, and the nearest schoolhouse was ten miles away, in the next town—and the arrival of a new transcendentalist minister from Massachusetts had set everyone talking. If he had been a true minister, he would have relished the chance to recruit fresh faces and gather up a flock for his church. But he was not a true minister, and every time he thought of espousing universal truths to a church full of trusting, upturned faces, his heart twisted with guilt. He had thought that doing it for Anna, for making her dream come true, would have been enough, but he was quickly learning that it was not. Without her by his side, his actions were meaningless, his words hollow.

  The first invitation came from the Marshalls, who—Lewis had explained in admiring tones—were the foremost family of Pale Harbor, having made a small fortune in the shipment of granite down the east coast. If Gabriel could persuade them to join his congregation, Lewis had assured him, then the whole town would follow. Whether Gabriel wanted a robust congregation was another story, but he would play his part, and at the very least enjoy a hot meal.

  He slogged through the dusky little town, the scent of damp fallen leaves and wood smoke filling his lungs. Most of the homes he passed were modest, weather-beaten cottages like his, but old captains’ mansions with stately pillars punctuated the main thoroughfare, reminders of the town’s once-thriving whaling and trading industries. These could have been Anna’s streets, her soft footsteps evaporating into the yawning gray sky. She would have delighted in the tall pines creaking in the wind, the hawks that sat sentry in the spindly boughs far above. The ever-present roll and crash of the ocean would have been her nightly lullaby. Gabriel shook his head, trying to dislodge the painful thoughts.

  The road ended abruptly at a steep-gabled house, painted a lush pink and trimmed with white latticework. Rosebushes, nearing the end of their season, climbed defiantly up either side of the porch. Among all the weathered clapboard and peeling paint of the other homes, the house looked like something dropped straight out of the pages of a fairy tale.

  As Gabriel climbed the front porch steps, a rosy, stout woman came out and greeted him at the door, beaming at him from under a frilly cap. His melancholy thoughts evaporated, replaced by an anxious knot in his stomach that always formed when mixing with anyone of higher social standing than him.

  But Mrs. Marshall put him at ease immediately. “Come in, you poor darling,” she said, tutting at his coat, which had never dried properly from the night before. “You must be the minister. I’m Clara Marshall and I’m so pleased to meet you.”

  Gabriel glanced to his side, half-expecting to see a black-frocked minister to whom Mrs. Marshall had addressed her greeting. But, of course, she meant him.

  “Er, yes,” he said, recovering. “Gabriel Stone.”

  “Mr. Stone, then. Come in, come in. Here, give me that damp coat.”

  No sooner had Gabriel stepped into the hall and surrendered his coat to a maidservant than Mrs. Marshall called out, “Girls!” and ushered forth two identical, golden-haired little girls. “Cora and Flora,” she said proudly.

  Gabriel dipped his head. “A pleasure.”

  “You’re tall,” said Cora, or maybe it was Flora. The other hid her giggles behind her hand.

  “Girls, manners!” Mrs. Marshall shot Gabriel an apologetic look, and then passed the twins off to a servant with instructions to have them wash before dinner, and this time make sure they didn’t just pass their hands under water, but to really scrub them.

  Throughout the harried introductions, a small, wiry man with graying whiskers was hovering in the hallway, fiddling with a cigar case. “Mr. Stone,” he said, pocketing the case and sticking his hand out. “Horace Marshall. A pleasure to meet you. Come, will you join me for a drink before dinner is called?”

  Before Gabriel had a chance to respond, Mr. Marshall was thrusting a cigar into his hand and leading him into a dim parlor, brimming with expensive furniture and fussy ornaments. It was just the kind of place that made Gabriel nervous, as if all it would take was one careless movement to send a priceless figurine crashing over. He held his breath as he followed Mr. Marshall past a stuffed owl under a glass dome and a vase quivering with silk flowers and feathers.

  “I can’t tell you how good it will be to have that church cleaned up and full of parishioners,” Mr. Marshall said, lowering himself into an overstuffed chair. “Not just because it’s a shame to let that old building rot away, either. Did you know it used to be a Quaker meeting house back in the last century? One of the oldest in Maine, if not New England. More recently, the Irish here were using it as a Catholic church, but they hadn’t the funds to keep it up.”

  Gabriel murmured that he had not known. Perching gingerly on a precarious-looking settee, he searched for an ashtray in which to snuff out his cigar. He’d never liked the things, and the ash was growing long and threatening to spill onto his sleeve.

  Oblivious to his predicament, Mr. Marshall tugged at his mustache and continued with his line of thought. “Might do the town good to have more of a godly presence, too.”

  Gabriel commandeered a vase and discreetly tapped out his ash. “Oh?”

  When Mr. Marshall didn’t respond immediately, Gabriel asked, “And why is that?”

  “Hmm?” Mr. Marshall looked at him as if coming out of some deep private thought. “Oh, nothing. It’s only we’ve had some troublemakers lately, and a bit of fire and brimstone might be just the thing to keep them in line.”

  “I see.” Gabriel frowned. “Well, transcendentalism generally doesn’t go in for that kind of thing.” That much he knew, at least. That’s what Anna had loved about the spiritual movement, “the exquisite freedom” of it, as she had once told him. There was no good and bad, no heaven and hell, only a beautiful energy that permeated the universe, connecting each and every soul. It was a nice way to look at the world, but it simply wasn’t true. There was good and evil—he had seen so for himself.

  Mr. Marshall looked a little disappointed and cleared his throat before taking another puff of his cigar. “Well, I suppose you know what you’re doing. You’re the big city man, but I think hellfire would go a sight farther around Pale Harbor than any of this wishy-washy transcendental business.”

  Gabriel choked on his cigar smoke but was spared the need to respond by the maidservant sticking her head into the parlor and announcing dinner.

  He hadn’t realized how hungry he was until the covers were lifted off the dishes, revealing steaming platters of buttery fish and fried potatoes, roast beef, succulent green beans and thick chowder. He shifted in his seat so that his hosts wouldn’t hear the rolling growl of his stomach.

  Mr. Marshall clapped his hands and rubbed them together in anticipation. “You won’t find food better than this anywhere in Pale Harbor,” he said. “Tell me, have you employed a cook yet?”

  “Er, no,” Gabriel said as he helped himself to a heap of potatoes. He’d barely opened his trunks yet, let alone found domestic help.

  The twins, who couldn’t have been more than ten, had apparently been deemed mature enough to dine with their parents at the table, and were in the process of trying to wriggle out of their starched smocks. Their whispers and giggles were a constant backdrop to the conversation, and more than once Gabriel glanced up to see them sharing secret conversations behind their hands while staring at him.