Calvin Baker - Dominion

He woke the next morning unhappy again and soon after breakfast went to his workshop, where he was in the foulest of moods all day. The other smiths and assistants avoided him as he worked with his tools irritably. After supper he was unable to bear his anguish anymore and saddled his horse to go off in search of her.

Five days later he found her back with her husband, leading a meeting in Columbus County. It was much like the one that had taken place near Stonehouses, with the tent pitched in a field and congregants come from all around to hear what they had to say. When the healing chair was put out, Purchase could not control himself and went and stood in front of it, but he did not sit down this time. He only looked at Mary Josepha as she went through the pantomime of releasing people from their aches and demons.

Oswin, the Englishman, smoldered at him from the pulpit, but when Purchase moved away it was of his own accord, as nothing in the world would have been able to move him otherwise. All his strength had gone over to the thing that afflicted him. He was sick with love.

After the meeting she was gone very quickly with the Englishman, but Purchase pursued them and showed up at every one of their revivals until he could have given Palmer’s sermon himself. Once the Englishman even fired a shot at him, telling him he knew how to handle his sort. This was in Bladen County, when he saw him on the road behind their carriage, but Purchase escaped unharmed. Nor did he see it as his business to argue further with the husband, as the only talking he wished for was with the wife.

It was in Georgia that he finally persuaded her to come off with him again. She and her husband had done their preaching that day to a crowd that was mostly slaves but receptive to the message they were sharing. When she looked out and saw Purchase standing at the back of the tent she nodded to him, as if it had been her intention all along to wait five weeks then come to him again.

He did not know what her nod meant, for she had refused to speak to him the entire time of his pursuit, and, as the crowd dispersed after the sermon he was still half surprised when he turned and saw her standing there behind him.

“Are you ready?” she asked.

He nodded and led her to where his horse was and put her upon it. Once he had her he galloped off, with a quick pacing heart, and all want pressed against him from the inside out.

They stopped in a pine stand and slept that night out-of-doors. It was late November and the days still held a little of their autumn warmth, but at night there was nothing deceptive about which time of year it was, and the two of them bundled tight as a single coil of hair all the night long.

When he woke in the morning it was because he no longer felt her under his outstretched arm. He opened his eyes in the half gray of a clouded dawn and found no sign of her, but for another of the little keep-sake coins she had left before.

They had been so rapt in each other’s arms he had not even asked her why she changed her mind and came to him, but he thought it must have been his steadfast presence that persuaded her. There on the cold damp ground, with pine needles prickling the side of his face, Purchase felt like a born idiot. She must have had a falling out with her Englishman and only taken him for revenge on the other.

For his own part he could not answer why he behaved as he did, but that it had gotten beyond his ability to govern his own actions. When he realized this he felt a deep penetrating shame that, more than her drumming his emotions and hoaxing him, brought him close to tears. This in its turn increased his shame and he grew angry with himself, as something hard and dark turned over inside of him — showing a burning underbelly that shone in his eyes as he rose that morning and went off again in search of her.

That he should get back to his people he had no doubt, but he was lost to them as he was to himself, thinking only how he would keep the woman from leaving once he had her back.

The night with her had been tender, and the one before that endearing, but after this there would only be the power of his will and her will when they were with each other, locked in contest.

When Purchase disappeared from Stonehouses everyone thought he had simply slipped off for a few days, as he was wont to do when one thing or other had caught his attention. After three days of not seeing him, though, Merian knew something must have happened and tried to keep Sanne calm while he discovered what it was.

He went first to Magnus to ask whether he knew what had happened to his brother. Magnus, looking at his father, knew he had to confess what little he knew. “He sure had it for that preacher woman,” he offered, leaving Merian to ponder aloud whether Purchase could be foolish and unsensible enough to run off after a married woman. Sanne, when she heard this, was filled with woe, worrying that his emotions had led him somewhere irredeemable.

Magnus, for his part, could not understand his brother at all in this instance and, try as he might, could not relate to him. Not long after Purchase disappeared he had the dream again about the woman who lifted her skirts and taunted him. When he awoke, instead of the malaise the dream usually left him with, he found himself thinking about the nights he had spent at the roadhouse with Purchase. He tried then to recall the women he had done his best to avoid looking at before, as he satisfied himself on these pictures drawn from memory. His nature had gotten up, though, and he knew he would eventually have to do something about it.

When he saw Adelia in the kitchen that next morning his eye lingered on her longer than usual, until the girl grew uncomfortable under his staring. It was the first time since the month he arrived that he had paid any more attention to her than he had the dining room table. This morning, though she was entirely present to him. “What a pretty girl you are,” he said, sounding full of sorrow, as he left the kitchen with his cup of coffee that was mostly milk.

As he walked past her she tried to shrink out of his way, not wanting an involvement that could jeopardize her position.

She thought momentarily about confessing her uneasiness to Sanne later that morning, after the older woman had come into the kitchen, but was not certain Sanne wouldn’t reprimand her as having done something to invite Magnus’s attention, or else of being the kind of servant who was just a certain way, no matter who the man was or how imprudent the idea would strike a reasonable person. In the end she kept her misgivings to herself, deciding out of hand it was all inappropriate to her station and employment.

As the weeks wore on into winter that year, Magnus did not leave her alone but grew more and more forward with his interest and intentions. In the face of such attention, Adelia found herself growing increasingly ambivalent in her refusals, until she was no longer certain about her position in the matter at all.

Sanne was the first to suspect there was something between them, seeing how Adelia became silent whenever Magnus entered a room, always hurrying herself away or else lingering over him, if she thought no one was paying attention.

When she mentioned Adelia to Merian as a possibility for Magnus, though, he was set against the idea and said he would speak to Magnus about his behavior.

“He can’t help if she is who he’s drawn to,” Sanne argued.

“Yes, he can,” Merian answered. “Everything can always be helped, and what can’t be helped belongs to the devil.”

“Who are you to be so high-and-mighty all of a sudden?” Sanne asked. “Their coming together, if that’s what they want to do, can’t hurt anything.”