Epilogue One Year Later

Epilogue

ONE YEAR LATER

They hanged Harry T. Hayward on December 11, 1895, in the brick-walled courtyard of the Hennepin County Jail. Quite a crowd gathered to catch a glimpse of the man who had, for a brief time, become one of the most infamous in America. By now, he’d confessed to having masterminded Kitty Ging’s demise and committed five other murders, including at least one sporting girl and a Chinese immigrant whom he’d impaled, brutally, with the leg of a chair. For nearly a year, newspapers nationwide had splashed his handsome face across their front pages, racing to print the latest lurid scoop. Allegedly, he’d burned down his own family home, hoping to collect insurance money. He’d mesmerized Claus Blixt to kill, Kitty Ging to sink into financial ruin, his own brother Adry—who’d turned on him immediately—to aid his insurance ploys. No one was safe from his hypnotic charms, it seemed, as long as the man lived.

The sheriff led Hayward up the steps of the gallows, dressed in a black shift, his fair hair hidden in a cap. The mob pressed forward, men and women and at least one little boy, perched on his father’s shoulders. Hayward appeared to be muttering, chuckling, sharing private jokes with his executioners, and the people strained to hear. What had he just said? Would he repent, would he profess his faith, as the condemned often did?

There had been rumors that he’d escape with the help of the Freemasons, or that he’d charm the guards into unlocking his cell. No one doubted the man was a true Mesmerist, not even the jury hearing Claus Blixt’s murder trial. Blixt had successfully convinced them that Hayward had hypnotized him to commit murder, sparing his own life but dooming Hayward’s.

Folks even claimed the “Minneapolis Svengali”—the nickname the press had given Hayward, after George du Maurier’s character in Trilby, of all things—could persuade the sheriff to untie the ropes binding his hands or cut the noose. An almost disappointed sigh rippled through the gathered masses when the sheriff led Hayward to the center of the scaffold and slipped the noose around his neck. A dramatic escape seemed less and less possible. Hayward gazed out at the throng of people, grinning ghoulishly, a star before his audience. He gibed with his executioners, telling them not to muck it up. “Pull ’er tight,” he said casually, as though he, too, believed he possessed the improbable power to transform into a wisp of smoke and slip away.

Just before they yanked the hood down over his head, he squinted out once more at the crowd. Johnny Lundberg must have been there, hidden among the throngs; he’d have a lump in his throat, glad no one had connected him to Hayward’s crimes, yet fearful, as he would be for the rest of his life, that someday someone would.

At the last second, Hayward locked eyes with a woman in the back. The new children’s matron at the Bethany Home for Unwed Mothers.

His pale eyes widened a bit, in recognition. Then, whoosh, the hood.

The children’s matron didn’t flinch when the trapdoor fell. She didn’t look away as his body twitched for eleven full minutes, as the cries of the crowd grew more and more hysterical. The sheriff had miscalculated the length of the rope.

She waited until she could be sure he was dead. Then she left, keeping the brim of her hat low, her eyes on her skirts. She didn’t want anyone to recognize her, save Hayward himself.

—

Faith had stayed at Mrs. Mendenhall’s house, in the cozily upholstered bedroom where Mrs. Mendenhall’s mother, Chloe, once lived, until Faith’s daughter arrived. She’d named the girl April, after the month of her birth. April had just turned four months old when the two of them moved into the children’s cottage, which sat half a block from the Bethany Home on its own little green knoll, surrounded by sugar maples. They’d waited until there were no longer any inmates left at the Bethany Home who would recognize her except Cook and Mrs. Overlock, both of whom were sworn to secrecy. They seemed to enjoy being in on a conspiracy. A confederacy of women, which fortunately didn’t include Mrs. Van Cleve. Charlotte had never met Faith during her time as an inmate. As far as she knew, Abby had hired a stranger when she reassigned the current children’s matron to the main house and turned over the care of the cottage to Faith.

No one called her that anymore, of course. She went by her birth name, Margaret Bartos. She dressed comfortably, in warm flannel dresses with lace collars, her dark hair wrapped into elaborate knots. The children called her Mrs. Bartos, which always made her think of her mother.

Mrs. Mendenhall exclusively used that name for her, too. Ever since Faith and April settled at the cottage, Mrs. Mendenhall hadn’t once mentioned anything about her past or how she’d come here, even when they were alone. There seemed a tacit understanding between the two of them. Mrs. Mendenhall was the one person on earth who had figured out exactly what happened between Faith and Priscilla Black. If Mrs. Mendenhall had pressed for details, Faith would have supplied them: How she’d put spiders in Priscilla, as she did, in smaller measure, to Pearl. How the spiders had consumed Priscilla, imaginary though they were, following her wherever she went, until, desperate, she leapt into the river in a doomed attempt to shake them from her skin.

But Mrs. Mendenhall never asked. Instead, she read Faith the letters Leigh and May sent from Wyoming. Faith would lift her chin, close her eyes, and smile, as though their news carried a bit of Western sun to shine upon her own face.

Faith knew Mrs. Mendenhall had taken an enormous personal risk in hiring her, especially after what had recently happened with Miss Rhoades. Mrs. Mendenhall had made it clear that Mrs. Van Cleve could never learn the details of Faith’s history, or the board would have no choice but to cut her loose. Yet Faith did not believe she’d been hired out of pity or charity, as she felt quite confident in the quality of her work. She had never been afraid to speak to children; she did so in a soft, gentle voice. She felt no need to use Mesmerism, or whatever it was, not with them. It was easy for her to intuit their needs, their fears, their relative strengths, especially as compared with the previous children’s matron, who everyone agreed was better suited to the care of adult women. Faith now had sixteen girls and twelve boys in her care, with the aid of two nurses; the children ranged from three to fourteen. She attempted to see herself at that age in each one, and to give them all the encouragement she had lacked.

Beatrix, for instance. The oldest girl at the cottage. She’d come to Faith—Mrs. Bartos—sobbing, convinced she’d soon die. Blood, she’d whispered. There was blood soaked through her underclothes, staining her bed. Faith had been sure to embrace her first, because that was what she herself had sorely needed when her own first blood had arrived. She’d explained it meant that Beatrix’s body could now carry a baby, even though her mind was certainly nowhere near ready.

She told Mrs. Mendenhall about the incident the next morning, over hot cocoa in the main house’s office. It was mid-November, winter and the holidays approaching. Harry Hayward’s upcoming execution had her on edge, plagued with a feeling of unfinished business. What if he somehow escaped punishment, as everyone said he would? The cocoa did little to quell her nerves.

Mrs. Mendenhall didn’t seem embarrassed by the mention of menses, but she sighed over Beatrix. “That poor girl. She’ll be out in the world soon, and what will become of her?” Then she muttered, almost to herself: “I can’t make them all a matron. Can’t put them all on a train to Timbuktu.” The rate at which Mrs. Mendenhall was declining into old age seemed to have accelerated. The events of the past year had taken their toll. Perhaps because she could see the end of life on the horizon, she seemed, also, to have lost faith in her own ability to make a difference. “Every day, this city grows more and more wicked. And I can do nothing about it.”

Faith offered a sympathetic smile, though she disagreed. One person could wield a great deal of influence on the lives of others, often with little effort. A few calculated moves, some watchful waiting, and you could convince an evil woman she was going mad, so mad she was driven to yank out her own eyebrow hairs and fling herself into the river.

You could place a gun in May’s hands, knowing beyond a doubt that she would take her shot, even if it turned out she missed.

—

Faith reached the children’s cottage before breakfast ended; the execution had begun near dawn. The sweet smell of griddle cakes greeted her at the door of the dining room, as did April, sitting in a baby stool, smiling with her two tiny teeth as a nurse spooned her oat porridge. The children’s matron went around touching her charges’ shiny heads, blessing them, silently, as she always did:

You will prosper. You are loved. And you, you are a good little soul.

“How was the hanging?” the baby nurse, Ingrid, asked her. “I don’t know if I’d be able to stand close to that man without screaming.”

Faith took April from the chair and wiped her face with her bib. The baby’s little neck was a stack of folds, plump and milk-scented. They were fortunate to be here, together. Lucky, but not entirely safe. No one ever was. She thought of Johnny Lundberg, the last remaining of the trio who’d forced her into working in that brothel. Occasionally, she asked the Bethany Home’s coachman to drive her past the Lundbergs’ house. Risky, but she had to study his habits, and those of his wife, who appeared not to have left him for her mysterious dark-haired lover. Quietly she kept track of them, their routines, their schemes.

“Next time,” she told Ingrid, “I shall take you with me.”

Ingrid gave a shudder. With that, Faith banished the black cloud coloring her recollections. They had Yuletide decorations to assemble. The older girls were learning embroidery at the main house; today, the four- and five-year-olds would bake gingerbread. First, however, there was time for a story. She hardly had to say a word to get them to follow her into the sitting room. Only gestures were needed, a gentle touch at the base of a spine, a tap on the shoulder of a boy who’d been poking his neighbor. The children waited quietly, a sea of flushed cheeks and runny noses, for their sweet new matron to spin a tale. A scary one, though not too dark: just enough to remind them of the cold outside, the warmth within.