Page 15 of The Girl from Greenwich Street

Elias Ring: At this time, when my wife was gone into the country, Levi and Elma were constantly together in private. I was alone and very lonesome and was induced to believe from their conduct that they were shortly to be married.

Defense: Were you not the friend and protector of Elma?

Elias Ring: Yes.

—From the testimony of Elias Ring at the trial of Levi Weeks

New York City

March 1, 1800

The devil made work for idle hands, that’s what Caty always told her daughters, but here she was, lurking by the door, waiting for Elias, even though there was dinner to be cooked and rooms to clean—because apparently she didn’t get her rooms clean enough, even if her hands were raw and calloused and her back hurt from the endless bending.

Maybe if Elias didn’t disappear goodness only knew where, maybe if he took on any of the work of the boardinghouse at all, people wouldn’t feel they had to bring their future wife’s servant to see their room properly cleaned.

Caty knew pride was a sin, but it hurt her all the same. She’d heard what people were saying about her establishment. Disorderly. Ill managed. It didn’t help that the front door still stuck. Couldn’t Elias even take the time to fix the door? She’d only been asking him for the past three months. But no. He was too busy pursuing businesses that came to nothing, too important to complete the homely tasks she begged him to take on. It was all too homely for him.

Caty was too homely for him.

Caty pushed that thought aside. She could hear Elias’s voice through the open top of the door, raised in greeting to someone—and not altogether steady. It was the distance that was slurring his words, she told herself, and retreated into their bedroom, just behind the door, so it wouldn’t look as though she was waiting for him, so she could come bustling out and pretend surprise.

So strange to see thee at home! I had thought thee had gone abroad.

No, too bitter. Not the best start for a helpful conversation about ways in which Elias might participate more in the work of the household, while delicately intimating that she knew he was going to the tavern when he said he was going to meeting but was prepared to ignore it as long as it didn’t happen again.

It was this business with Elma. It had shaken all of them.

But soon—within the month, Mr. Colden said—the case would go to trial, Levi would be hanged, and they could start again as they meant to go on, with all of this behind them.

Why, Elias! I had hoped thee might help me. The shutter in Mr. Lacey’s room is askew. . . .

The front door opened with a prolonged groan. Caty took a deep breath and prepared to plunge forward, but before she could another pair of footsteps slapped sharply across the floor.

“Ah, Elias,”

said Mr. Croucher. “One would begin to think you were avoiding me.”

Elias stopped short. Caty could hear his labored breath through the crack in the bedroom door—another thing Elias had failed to fix.

“I don’t want to talk to thee,”

Elias muttered, and Caty felt a surge of relief. Maybe, just this once, Elias had heeded her words and had realized that entering into a business with Mr. Croucher would bring nothing but trouble and debts. “Why won’t thee leave me be?”

“Why, Elias,”

chided Mr. Croucher. “You know why.”

“Isn’t it enough?”

The anguish in Elias’s voice pierced the warped wood of the door. “I’ve done as thee said. I’ve forsworn myself again and again.”

“Hardly.”

Mr. Croucher sounded amused. “How can you forswear yourself when your creed forbids you to swear? Besides, none of it is outright lies. You’ve only . . . implied.”

“I told the lawyer I heard Elma at it.”

Elias was whispering, but he was as bad at whispering as he was at running a dry goods store; Caty could hear him as clearly as if he’d shouted. “I told him I found her clothes lying in the room on the second floor when there was no one in the house but her and me and Levi.”

Caty fitted her eye against the crack. She could see Mr. Croucher’s hand on Elias’s arm, a red stone shining dully in the ring on his finger. “You told perfect truth. You did hear her—and you did see her clothes lying where they’d been pulled off her. You simply neglected to add that it was you there with her yourself—enjoying her favors.”

The wood of the door scraped Caty’s cheek. No. She couldn’t have heard what she thought she’d heard. She’d misunderstood. The idea of Elias—with Elma—no. It wasn’t possible. Mr. Croucher—he was worldly, a sinner, he judged everyone by his own standards. He might have seen—oh, Elias talking to Elma, as a good brother should.

Only as a brother! Yes, Elma had a taking way about her, and, yes, Elias enjoyed her sallies, but it was no more than he might have exchanged with Hope. It was just high spirits on Elma’s part and indulgence on Elias’s.

“Must thee needs remind me?”

Elias hissed.

“I wouldn’t have you forget yourself—or what you owe me. But for me, they’d be on you now, you know. It would be all over the city, what you did—with her. You might have remembered to close the door. Or were you that eager to tup her that you forgot?”

“I would I’d never been born.”

Croucher clapped Elias on the back. “Come, it was a bit of sport. It’s what they’re made for, the pretty jades. Without women, hell would be like a lord’s great kitchen with no fire in it. You’d be a fool not to warm yourself by the blaze when it’s offered.”

Elias made a strangled noise.

Caty felt like her own throat was frozen, all of her was frozen, turned to a pillar of salt, like Lot’s wife. What was Sodom and Gomorrah to this? Her own husband . . . her own cousin! No. It was lies. It had to be lies.

Croucher went on, persuasively, “How were you to know the girl would get herself murdered by a jealous lover? No one need have known—and no one need know so long as you’re careful. I’ll see to it for you. If you abide by the terms we agreed.”

“I’ll do as thee says.”

Elias’s voice was so low, Caty could hardly hear him. “What other choice have I?”

“None,”

agreed Croucher genially. “You could tell the truth and shame the devil—but I don’t think they’d take well to that sort of thing in your meeting, do you?”

The stairs creaked beneath his tread as he ascended, whistling.

Elias yanked open the door to the bedroom and saw Caty standing there, white-faced. An expression of sheer panic crossed his face, so familiar and so strange. She had cupped that jaw. She had kissed those lips. She had stroked that hair.

And so had Elma.

Caty could scarcely force her lips to move. “Is it true?”

Elias pushed past her, making for the hook to hang up his cloak. “I have no idea what thee mean.”

“Elma—thee—”

Caty couldn’t make herself say any more. It was too vile for words. Lies—it had to be lies.

But then why hadn’t Elias said so? Why hadn’t he fought back?

A hundred unbidden memories rushed in on her from the past three years. Elma, laughing up at Elias. Elma, lifting her skirt to show the steps of a dance and a good flash of ankle besides. Elma, asking Elias to help her tie the ribbon of one of the hats she’d trimmed so she might show it to them, and Elias chucking Elma under the chin and saying he hoped the face it adorned would be half so pretty as hers.

It had made her uneasy, but there’d been nothing in it, Caty was sure of it. How could there be? It was just Elma’s way, and the sooner she was safely married the better. And if she’d half wondered, there’d been nothing to give her pause when she came back to town. If anything, Elma had avoided Elias, leaving the front room as soon as he entered, stepping behind the curtain of the bed when she heard his step on the stair.

Elma—skulking out of her way. Caty had thought it was because she’d scolded her for the state the house was in.

Elma—disappearing the second Elias entered a room.

Elma, holding up a vial of laudanum and locking eyes with Elias, only Elias, as she threatened to drink it whole.

Caty could feel herself starting to shake, as though she had the ague. She was hot and cold all at once. “Elias . . .”

He had his back to her, his shoulders bent, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. He turned, and there was something in his face she had never seen before.

“If thee had been here where thee were meant to be,”

he said viciously, “none of this would have happened. Does thee know how lonely it was with everyone gone away? Thee went away and left me.”

“I—”

Caty’s lips moved but the sound wouldn’t come out.

“I begged thee to come home.”

Elias advanced toward her. “I wrote to thee and I begged thee. But no. Thee was too busy basking in the country air to attend to thy own husband.”

Caty licked her dry lips. “Elma was a girl—in our care.”

“She was a woman grown. She knew what she was about. Thee left me here with her.”

“Not with her—”

Just to manage the boardinghouse. Not to share her husband’s bed. Caty covered her mouth with her hand, unable to bear the image.

“See?”

Elias loomed over her, forcing Caty to crane her neck back to look at him. “Thee knows what thee did.”

Caty felt like a shattered cup, all sharp-edged pieces. “I didn’t leave because I wanted to. It was for the children. . . . Our children.”

Rachel and David and Phoebe and Eliza . . . their little trundles lined up so neatly beneath the bed.

“It was only six weeks,”

Caty said desperately. “We were only gone six weeks.”

“Only. Even when thy body is here thy spirit is absent. Thee never has time for me. Everyone is more important to thee than thine own husband. At least Elma—”

He broke off, the import of what he was saying clear to both of them.

Elma wasn’t cooking and cleaning for thee, Caty wanted to say. Elma wasn’t making sure thy children were clothed and thy bills paid. But she knew if she did they would cross a bridge over which they could never return. And she wanted, so badly, to go back to an hour ago, before she knew.

“Elma listened to me,”

he finished.

She’d done more than listen.

Caty bit her lip hard, the pain anchoring her. “Richard Croucher—how does he come to know this?”

“He saw us,”

Elias said briefly.

“He saw her with thee. Not Levi.”

Caty remembered the way Richard Croucher had smirked at her, and now she knew why.

Elias made an impatient gesture. “For all thee know, he saw her with Levi too. No one misses a slice off a cut loaf. Why does thee think Levi would sooner kill her than marry her? He knew what she was.”

“What thee made of her.”

The words were out before Caty could stop them.

Elias’s face hardened. “She was a daughter of Eve. And thee—if thee had been a proper wife to me, I would never have had to look elsewhere. This is thy doing, Catherine, thine and none else’s. Let that be a lesson to thee.”

“I never meant . . .”

“No, thee were headstrong and proud. If thee had been guided by me, none of this would have been visited upon us.”

But it hadn’t been visited upon them. This wasn’t divine retribution. Elias had made the choice to share her cousin’s bed.

What else might Elias have done?

“Elias, thee didn’t . . . hurt her?”

“What does thee take me for? It was Levi. It was Levi who killed her. Thee knows it to be true. What? Do thee think I pushed her in the well? I was by thy side that night.”

He seized her by the shoulders, his fingers digging into her skin through the thick layers of linen and wool. “Thee knows I was in the house. Thee will attest to that in court, because thee knows it to be true.”

Elias slouched so these days that Caty had forgotten how tall her husband was, how strong his hands. He’d helped build their meetinghouse, hauling those boards, hammering nails. He’d grown soft in their city life, but that old strength was still there in his fingers.

“Yes,”

she choked out. “Thee were here. With me.”

Except when he wasn’t.

Elias released her, so abruptly that she staggered.

“What happened before—it was nothing to do with anything. We will never speak of it again, does thee understand me?”

Caty nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

“Good,”

he said, and turned to go.

“Elias?”

Caty’s shoulders hurt where his fingers had pressed. Or maybe that was her imagination. He hadn’t held her so hard.

“Yes?”

“The front door—”

she said tentatively. “It still sticks. If thee might find the time to fix it?”

His eyes met hers. Caty used to love his eyes. She used to love the way he looked at her. Now he was staring at her narrow-eyed, as though gauging her intentions.

He gave a short, brief nod. “All right. I’ll do it today.”

“I thank thee—husband,”

Caty said, and tried not to think of Elma.