Excerpt of Must the Maiden Die by Miriam Grace Monfredo

Spring 1861

Violence does not always trumpet its coming. Its advance may be hushed, like the creak of the stair where a predator treads, the click of the bolt before a door opens, the whish of the knife while it plunges. Or it may be as silent as one look of hate sent across a room.

And the night conceals what the day will reveal.

In the predawn hours, foghorns began to sound, and the morning gave hint of what had passed, breaking as it did with a chill mist that rose from river and canal to wrap the village in a tattered shroud. Bells tolled from church steeples draped in ragged gray. And while foghorns and church bells were frequent enough in Seneca Falls, they could mute less commonplace sounds that otherwise might have been heard. When the mist lifted at noon on a flawless day, skeptical townsfolk crept out of doors, none quite believing that at last the belated spring had come. Although nearly none could have known what its coming would bring.

Glynis Tryon was among the disbelieving when the first shafts of sunlight glanced off the tall, glazed windows of her library. She decided it must be true, the return of the sun, when dust motes flurried over her cluttered desk, and the clear cheerup notes of a robin came through the door that her assistant Jonathan had opened minutes before. Then she heard a faraway train whistle. With another glance at the tall pendulum clock standing against one wall, Glynis rose from her desk and went to the hooks beside the door to fetch her cloak.

She nodded to several library patrons, and called, "Jonathan, I’m off to the rail station again to meet my niece. Bronwen surely must be on this incoming train, as it’s the last one of the day."

The only indication that Jonathan Quant had heard came from a bob of his head. His bespectacled eyes did not raise from the pages of the book propped before him; a book whose dustcover displayed a distraught-faced, nubile young woman in the clutches of a red-caped, mustachioed man whose intentions were clearly not good. And in the event this illustration might prove too subtle for readers, the title in crimson letters blared: A Lady in Distress.

#

Even though her cousin Emma’s wedding was just a few days hence, Bronwen had not been on the train. And there was no wire at the telegraph office explaining her absence.

When Glynis emerged from the office, now more concerned about her niece than angry, she became aware of some commotion on the far side of Fall Street. A handful of townsfolk were standing there, pointing excitedly and shading their eyes as they gazed at the sky. Since she heard anxiety in their voices, Glynis discarded the simplest explanation: a late flock of Canada geese winging northward. As she started across the road, people began pouring from shops and offices, all pointing upward, so before she reached the others, Glynis stopped to search the cloudless sky. She blinked several times to clear her vision, then looked again. And still did not believe what she saw.

There, high over the land to the west, was something that appeared far too large to be a bird, or even a flock of birds. It bobbed slightly on the nearly windless air, and as Glynis watched, along with what had become a growing crowd, the object looked to be slowly descending.

She decided that if she were losing her mind, then she was at least not alone in madness, as the voices of those on the street were reaching fever-pitch. When her elbow was suddenly nudged, she turned to find Constable Cullen Stuart’s black Morgan horse nuzzling her sleeve.

"Cullen! What is that? Do you know?"

He gave her an odd smile when he dismounted, as if she were asking him the obvious. But he seemed fairly unconcerned, and while this had the effect of calming those nearby, they looked to him for an explanation.

Glynis, staring upward at the now rapidly approaching object, said with some frustration, "Cullen, if you know what that...."

She broke off, because all at once she knew. It must have shown on her face, because Cullen nodded, saying, "Sure, it’s a balloon."

"A gas balloon!" she said, suddenly recalling articles that she’d seen in library copies of Harper’s Weekly. And now it did seem obvious. A pale, shimmering balloon that floated on the air like an immense, gone-to-seed dandelion. With her references now in mind, Glynis knew that it must be made of India silk contained in a net of thin, knotted silk twine.

"It’s a lot bigger than the ones I’ve read about," Cullen said. "Must be fifty feet high, and I’ll bet it weighs a ton or more. Wonder where it’s going to land."

"Surely it won’t land here," Glynis said, shading her eyes against the canal’s reflected light. "How can it? Seneca Falls doesn’t have coal gas yet, so the balloon couldn’t be reinflated to take off again."

While this seemed a reasonable argument to her, Cullen just shook his head, and there now could be small doubt that the balloon, coal gas or not, was descending. As it came closer, Glynis could pick out, suspended from ropes that hung below the balloon, what appeared to be a large, rattan or wicker basket. And on the balloon itself, like a ship of the sky, had been painted the name Enterprise.*

Since Cullen’s announcement, the crowd had quieted, all eyes straining upward, until a voice shouted, "Look! There’s somebody in there!"

Glynis felt a sudden prick of foreboding, then pushed it aside as being too outlandish to consider. She remained uneasy, though, and by the time the deflating balloon had neared the far reach of the canal, she began to think that her fear might have been justified.

She then heard Cullen’s quick intake of breath, followed by, "Glynis, it looks as if there are two people in that basket. You don’t think one of them could...." He broke off, shaking his head again, at the same time beginning to smile. A minute later he was laughing. "It’s her, all right! I’d know that redhead anywhere."

"No, it can’t be!" But even as Glynis denied it, she spotted above the rim of the basket a red-gold blur.

Just as the now wrinkling balloon seemed to tower above them, the crowd gasped with one voice. The rattan basket began to brush the first branches of several lofty elms, swinging erratically with a sickening, bobbing succession of jerks. Then, with a series of sharp, crunching noises, it struck the tree’s lower limbs. A piercing cry--and if Bronwen’s, it would be fury rather than terror--reached those standing below, and over the side of the basket appeared strands of long red hair lashing like bloodied ropes.

Glynis was barely aware of Cullen’s hands gripping her shoulders. With her own hands clenched to her mouth, she watched the balloon swing slowly to one side like a ship listing in high seas, while the basket, now lurching wildly, was dragged through a tangle of whipping branches. Its occupants, if the forked limbs did not impale them first, would surely be thrown out. And no one dropping from that height could possibly survive.