The Killing of Barbara Pike
A story of murder on a remote island
The Killing of Barbara Pike
The thin powder flew in drifty wisps across the granite ice the day Pipershine the Peddler returned to Isle la Motte. The island drew him ashore, his mind fixed on the Pike house high on the hill ahead with the ship’s light in the gable, his mule plodding up to home, towards the goal that animated his master’s annual circuit. It had been just a few days since Mr. Pike had thrown him out. He had waited, bided his time, but could wait no more. Today would be the day. He would win her hand forever, the moon-faced girl who waited in the stone house atop the rise in the road.
With the thought of her, the icy cutting wind parted around the armor of warmth emanating from Pipershine’s hopeful heart.
She will laugh when she sees me again! I will surprise her! Yes, she will laugh! Pipershine giggled in his furs, the mule pulling, the runners of his sledge bumping over the frozen furrows of the road that bore him up and on.
He’d been here for a year, working for her hand. Being a peddler on Isle la Motte, cut off from the world by the waters of the lake – “Champlain,” the settlers call it - would seem to be bad business. But in the winter the lake was Pipershine’s highway. He could carry his wares across the ice to Plattsburgh and Montreal and St. Albans and Burlington and pay no ferryman’s fare. In the summer he could do well enough on the island as a hired hand.
Business had been good that year. He had kept from drink, slept under his cart on his travels when the nights weren’t too cold, stayed apart from bad company. He had saved, and he had bought the two acres by the marsh with the loamy soil. It would finally be his home. Her home. How many children shall I sire with her? He wondered. He would be the pride and envy of the island when she was his. Judge Pike would doff his hat. Mrs. Pike’s protective frown would melt away along with her heart of iron. The stone fortress of the Pike House would open its gates and he would enter, for he had won her heart. No, not a lowly peddler am I. They will see!
And besides, she is not theirs! She is not theirs! If only her mother lived yet. If only her father had not gone to seek his fortune. They loved me once! But now this witch, this mother hen, always watching, breathing always on my shoulder! Pipershine spat, the frozen spittle clacking on the mud and joining the brine in his beard. A shiver shook his arms, but the mule remained insensible to the tremble in the reins.
Blasted cold. But the thought of the moon-faced girl retuned him to his reverie and he forgot the cold as the sledge climbed the rise in the road to the Pike House. She is mine – I have earned her!
One year ago Mrs. Pike sat in her parlor with Pruda, the maid. Pruda had grown from an older girl to a young woman but she still had much to learn, and with loving patience Mrs. Pike corrected her needlework. “Yes, just like that my dear, very good,” she gently intoned with her hand on young Pruda’s shoulder.
But Mrs. Pike was preoccupied, her worried mind turning to that man. He will be coming around any day now. Why does Ezra insist on letting him stay and work? There’s something not right about the man! She didn’t like the way he looked at Pruda. Lecherous man! I feel it in my bones!
Mrs. Pike was not sleeping well those days. In her dreams she was 16, back in her childhood home. 1814, the war. Shouts in the kitchen. Two thunderous bangs. The whip and slice of the sabre that laid open her brother Ira’s brave and handsome face. She cowered in her bed. When she crept out trembling the American sailors were gone, the smell of liquor and gunpowder poisoning the air, her father choking on his last breaths on the floor, her brother screaming in rage and pain. But what she remembered most was her brother’s teeth as she stretched his cheek back over them and applied her practiced needlework on flesh, the outraged militia mingling and arguing in the yard. This is what she saw in her dreams, the rage and helplessness mixed with horror in her brother’s eyes. They will hang for this, Ira, she sobbed. They must hang!
They didn’t hang. Days later those same drunken marauders became heroes at Plattsburgh, the bloody battle that thundered up the lake from her home, her militiamen called up to bleed with them. She stood on a rocky point and watched the apocalypse rise beyond Cumberland Head. Murderous heroes made untouchable by the Assembly. Even her father’s friend the Commodore could do nothing. Damn politicians. Later, ashamed, she secretly wished the British had had better aim.
It would never happen again. Of that she was sure – as sure as the light she lit in the north gable every night to guide the southbound boats. She wouldn’t let it. Never. Her nightmares, along with the scar Ira bore fiercely to this day, kept her sharp.
The fast knocking came at the door sooner than she’d hoped. It was him. That knocking – quick, urgent, trying to sound friendly but too eager instead. Dutifully, Pruda rose to answer, but Mrs. Pike stilled her with a gentle hand on her knee, bidding her to resume her seat. “Seneca, it’s him,” she called down the stairs. “Please answer the door and if he asks after Pruda tell him she’s not feeling well.”
Seneca understood. Being the eldest son, it fell to him to be the protector when father was away, which his father often was, so he would help with his parents’ farm when his own work was done. He, too, was wary of Pipershine, but his father had a soft spot for the man and was helping him get on his feet. Mr. Pike had given him a loan to buy that land near the marsh, and in a letter Pipershine promised to spend the year working it off as a hired hand.
Seneca opened the door, his short stature more than compensated for by his stout, strong frame, curved face and full beard. “Pipershine,” he said, feigning friendliness, “you’re here early. But that’s fine, come on in and sit by the kitchen fire.”
“Thank you. Thank you. I’m quite warm actually. These buffalo robes I traded from out west – at a very cheap price I might add - do me just fine!” Pipershine’s eyes were eager, shining. He was just a bit out of breath as he stamped the snow off his boots. “I have several more here for sale. I think the islanders will love them! The wind off the ice does bite this time of year! But no matter. How is your mother? Is Mr. Pike well? Is Pruda to home? I hope your parents are well! I would very much like to give my personal regards to Pruda.”
Pipershine’s chattering was picking up steam and running away from him, manifesting his true desire. Seneca’s face hardened with irritation. But the warm air of the solid stone house was rushing out into the gloaming, so Seneca drew him inside and back to the kitchen.
Seneca pulled up a chair and poured his guest a cup of brandy to cut the chill, but Pipershine’s eyes wandered towards the stairs, from where the sound of women’s voices and footfalls filtered through the door. Seneca sat, his chair between Pipershine and the kitchen door, his stern eyes glowering into Pipershine’s. Seneca poured himself a drink, drank it off, and poured another, firmly planting the cup with his arm across the table as if to give form to the invisible wall he’d raised before his guest. Pipershine giggled nervously and shifted in his seat.
They sat wordlessly until Mrs. Pike descended the stairs to announce that the room was ready. Pipershine rose, bowed slightly to Seneca, and pushed past Mrs. Pike and climbed the stairs. As he came even with the archway into the parlor he stopped at the sight of Pruda. She sat in a cushioned armchair, her hands and eyes absorbed in her embroidery. He stepped into the room and gave her a deep bow, then took her hand. Small. Delicate. Weak. He felt the trembling in the fingers, heard a catch in her breath as he kissed them. I will be your knight and protector. He tried to convey the promise with burning eyes, but she would not meet his gaze. It is her propriety, her modesty, that keeps her eyes from meeting mine. No matter. He gave a little smile as he straightened and turned to Mrs. Pike’s stern, watchful face.
“Thank you, as always, Mrs. Pike. I am tired from my journey and must retire to my rest!” He bowed once again, then made his own way to his familiar room.
When he had left, Mrs. Pike turned to Pruda to find her in tears.
“I hate him!” Pruda whispered, shuddering with disgust. “He is more than twice my age. Please don’t make me marry him!”
“Don’t you worry about a thing, my dear,” Mrs. Pike said, squatting by her side and holding her head to her breast. “I won’t let him lay a finger on you.”
For the rest of the winter Pipershine hocked his wares, bundled against the blast of icy wind whipping from the ramparts of the snow-capped Adirondacks to the southwest. Every day he ventured forth one way or another from the pebbled beach with his mule and sledge, greeting the fishermen and ice harvesters as he crossed. Every evening he followed the ship’s light home with a lighter load and coins in his purse. But the denizens of the lake had begun to dread the sound of his coming as much as Mrs. Pike and Pruda had at his arrival. At peoples’ homes he talked endlessly on topics having nothing to do with peddling, often making little sense at all, then suddenly remember himself and make a ceremony of opening his trunk to show his goods. People bought from him just to get him to leave.
He always returned in time for supper. He would sit with the hired hands to the warm meals prepared by Mrs. Pike and the maid Pruda. He would converse warmly with his hosts, but he refrained from the course talk of his fellow hands. He would regale them after dinner with tales of the far away people and places he’d seen on his travels, embellishing his stories with new details and dramas and larger than life people with every telling. In truth, storytelling was one of the peddler’s singular talents, and his listeners found themselves entranced in spite of themselves and urged him for one more tale after another. In this way he not infrequently earned bread, board, and whisky, but here in the Pike house he only had one audience to win, and that was Pruda. And she would not hearken to his voice.
After paying for his necessary expenses, every week he faithfully paid down the principal of his loan from Mr. Pike, thereby assuring his creditor that he was worthy of confidence. Thus did Pipershine prevail on Mr. Pike to build him a small house on the two acres he had bought. Mr. Pike promptly put his sons and his hired hands to work. As the spring mud dried and the island was washed with the summer lake breezes, and the boats and barges and lumber rafts crowded the channel off the West Shore Road, Pipershine’s house sprouted from the loamy soil near the marsh. It was a humble dwelling of just one story and a stone cellar, but with Pruda there it would be a lord’s manor.
As he stood in its frame he imagined her by the fire, embroidery in hand, safe, content. Children would play at her feet. He would scoop up an adoring child and twirl them to peals of laughter. She would flush at his gentle touch on her shoulder and turn her face to his, eyes warm with love. Her eyes – what did they look like? What color were they? He could not remember. She always averted her gaze. But Mrs. Pike’s watchful brooding brown eyes were always on him, Mr. Pike’s firm hand on his shoulder, ushering him through one door or another with a word about business or farming or the latest case he’d judged.
To have and to hold. To have and to hold! Does she love me? Does she think of me? How could she not? I have land and a home. For her! She is for me. To have and to hold. I will make her happy. I will set her free. To have and to hold…
And so he muttered, so he imagined, turning the words about, as if trying to piece together a formula or puzzle that would make Pruda his if said just right and often enough. To have and to hold: his only hope, his purpose, the story that shaped him from infancy, the one he crafted and repeated morning and night, whipping up his passions like the white-capped waves in a summer storm. Its power grew with each telling, taking shape in his throat, moving his tongue and lips. People heard his muttering as he passed, looked from the corner of their eye, remarked in whispers when he’d gone. “Quite strange, but surely harmless,” was the conclusion of most.
The days turned into weeks and weeks into months, and Pipershine’s obsessive assurance grew. I have worked, saved, become a man worthy of her hand. I have earned her! When the cold spring day came to hang the front door, Mr. Pike gave Pipershine the hammer to strike the hinge pin home. It was done. Today was the day of triumph: he would ask Mr. Pike for Pruda’s hand, for who else could he ask with her real father gone?
But the confidence of Mr. Ezra Pike only went so far. Doing business with the man on the basis of good credit was just that, business. Mrs. Barbara Pike made no secret of her thoughts about Pipershine the Peddler, and Mr. Pike always took her opinions into advisement. She advised her husband to keep a sharp watch on the man, and to hasten the day when he would have his own bed. Her bloody nightmare haunted her sorely, and the bags under her eyes told the tale.
So when Pipershine drove home that final hinge, she breathed a sigh of relief. Mr. Pike had been called to jury duty that week - a case of murder, no less - and would likely be days gone. Now she wouldn’t have to worry about being abandoned with Pipershine in her home.
But her relief was premature. That evening, after the supper had been cleared, Pipershine leaned over and conspiratorially touched the arm of Mr. Pike and whispered, “May I have a word with you in private, sir?”
Mr. Pike flashed with irritation, but composed himself. Clearing his throat, he smiled politely, gesturing towards the parlor. They settled into chairs by the fire, and Mr. Pike invited Pipershine to speak. Pipershine was nervous, fidgety, his voice quavering and his hands flitting about not knowing where to go. Nothing like the eloquence he commanded when telling one of his stories. He had a magnificent speech all rehearsed, but his words caught in his throat when he needed them most. Forcing them forth, they fled his lips, tumbling out artlessly.
“Sir, I love Pruda and…and…I have land and hold a home and I have earned her and I think you’re like a father to her so I’m asking for her hand to have and to hold. May I? Have her? Sir?”
Mr. Pike was dumbstruck. His face reddened. A judge and legislator, he was a man of eloquence when occasion demanded it, but this was a moment for directness. He rose firmly from his chair, took a breath, cleared his throat.
“Mr. Pipershine, you have been a good worker and even a business partner, but not once have I considered you a match for our Pruda. Not once have I seen Pruda so much as look at you. But I have seen the way you look at her. It isn’t right. It isn’t…appropriate! We can’t abide it any more. As of today you have your own roof to sleep under. I ask you to make use of it!” He stood over the peddler, pointing towards the stairs.
Pipershine tried to plead his case as he backed out of the parlor. “But…Mr. Pike…I… She will! She must love me! I have land and a house. Land! A man of substance! I must have her or none of it! Or I am nothing, sir! Nothing!”
Pipershine’s voice rose and resounded through the halls, drawing out Seneca and two of the hands from where they conversed in the kitchen. Seneca, short as he was, had a way of looming when the occasion called for it, and this one did. Cowed but furious, Pipershine slunk away into the night.
They saw or heard nothing from Pipershine for nigh a week, but Mrs. Pike felt him. Knew he wasn’t gone. Every night she hung the light in the gable with a wary eye on the road below. The smallness of the island that once made it feel protected, now made it feel like a prison knowing that that man was sharing it with them. She went about her daily tasks but always kept Pruda within eye and earshot.
So that day, the day when Pipershine crossed the ice back to the island to win his Pruda, she was his damsel, the stone house her prison. I will set her free! Surely she is waiting, hoping, praying for me to come! She will fly away with me today.
He had her escape planned to the detail. Mr. Pike was away. The hands were hard at work. Mrs. Pike would have to milk the cow or collect the eggs, and that would be his chance.
He left his sledge off the road and crept up near the house and waited, hidden, until the moment was right. When it came, he snuck in through the kitchen door, up the stairs, secreted himself in his old bedroom, and waited. For hours he waited. Listening.
It was the day Mr. Pike was supposed to return from jury duty, and Mrs. Pike had the anticipation of relief at his appearance at the bottom of the hill. But the day passed, supper was served and put away, and still no Ezra. She sat in the dining room with her daughter, Anna, and Pruda. Her brother William and the hand Sidney were downstairs. The women were too anxious and excited to see Mr. Pike to focus on their work, so they just waited. But idleness compounded their anxiety, so Mrs. Pike decided having something to occupy their hands would pass the time better after all.
“Pruda, can you go to the parlor and bring those garments I hung up? I’d like us to do some mending while we wait.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Pruda stood and walked to the parlor, and as she lifted the garments off the bar, one of the bedroom doors quietly opened. Out peered Pipershine with his finger on his lips, eyes aflame. “Shhhh, I must speak with you!” he said in a hoarse whisper.
Pruda shrieked and backed away towards the dining room, but Pipershine grabbed her arm like a vise, still whispering. “I just want to talk! Please, you must come with me!”
“No! Get away from me! Let me go! William! Sidney!” Pruda shouted, pulling away.
He jerked her back into the bedroom.
“I love you, Pruda!”
“No!”
“I know you love me. I have bought land and built you a home. Come with me and see!”
“Leave me alone! I hate you!”
Those last three words cut through the veil that separated reality from delusion, person from property in Pipershine’s mind, shattering the fever dream that cloaked his vision. His face contorted with grief and rage, drool on his beard, the veins bulged from his forehead. A long bowie knife appeared in his hand.
“You ungrateful wench!” He wailed with dereliction and rage and slashed blindly. “After everything I’ve done for you!”
The blade sliced through her dress, again and again, laying open her flesh. William and Sidney seized her and pulled her away into the hall, prizing her from his desperate grip.
Mrs. Pike came charging headlong at the peddler, a fire shovel held high.
Pipershine would not stop. Blind and broken, he thrusted and slashed. The shovel blow landed on his head. He stumbled in the flash of starry light. Still he swung, his blade plunging in and out of soft flesh, his hand warm and wet with blood. But Mrs. Pike was insensible to the wounds he rained on her body. Her furious hand seized the knife, wrenching it free, sending it clattering to the floor. His knees buckled under her weight as she bore him to the ground, and through the fog he saw the wrath of God and the fires of Hell at once pouring from her eyes.
The men pulled her off the helpless peddler while William leveled a shotgun at his head. His fury blew out his mouth in short gasps of fine spray.
Pipershine fell to blubbering and sobs. “Please don’t kill me! Please please please don’t kill me I’ll stop I’ll stop I’m sorry just please don’t kill me I just want to go home now! Please! Pruda, oh Pruda I’m sorry!”
They carried Mrs. Pike, still fighting, to her bed, leaving a trail of blood in their wake.
Once they had locked the whimpering man in a bedroom and left William standing guard, someone ran to meet Mr. Pike coming up the road from the frozen ferry dock. As they climbed the rise with the sun setting across the channel ahead, the gable window was dark. The ships would be on their own this night.
“He will hang for this!” Ezra said as he leaned over her and met her eyes. “I will make sure of it!”
Her eyes were somewhere else. She didn’t see Ezra’s kind face with the bushy sideburns she used as handles to steal a kiss. She saw her brother Ira, still young, his teeth gritted through his open, bloody cheek. “They have to hang this time! They won’t get away this time! Not again. Never again!”
Poor Pruda survived her wounds, but the medicine of 1845 could not save Barbara Pike. In those days it was important that one have a good death. Time to make one’s peace. Time to help one’s loved ones make theirs. Time to see the good and merciful hand of the Lord in all things. Even in this. A dying man or woman assumed a pastoral calling. Mrs. Pike had spiritual labor to do. Being murdered in 1845 was hard work, indeed.
It is said that Barbara Pike’s death was a good one. She took two months to die. Was it kindness she saw and felt at the end, as other tellers of this tale have told? Or was it the bared teeth of her brother growling back at her through the sabre slashed gore, living deep inside her, demanding recompense, never resting, ever haunting? Ira, commander of the island militia from the moment of his father’s last gasp, sailing towards the inferno, face held together by her thread, holding hell at bay. Never again. And so she lit the gable light, night after night, to guide the ships home.
Maybe both mercy and vengeance together contended for her soul and the souls of her children. It was a sort of mercy that won the jury at Pipershine’s trial. He did not hang. The court declared him criminally insane, and he lived to a ripe old age in the asylum down state. But what is madness? What is criminal insanity but a jury’s absolution of itself for society’s crimes of conquest and ownership? Was Barbara Pike the victim of an individual deviant, or was her killer simply a more explicit instantiation of violence buried deep in the heart of the world they shared? Are not sleepless haunted nights also a kind of truthful madness in the face of it all?
I, your narrator, am one of her children, one of her heirs. Do I bear the trauma, the scar from this violence in my body and my soul? Or did her kindness, her vigilance, her defiance, arrest its passage, preventing its descent to yet another generation? I, too, have been haunted. I, too, suffer madness, but I am not ill. I am out of joint with the world. The isle my ancestors took lies within the lake called “in-between” by its indigenous stewards. It has been a borderland, a crossroads where rivals traded and fought and made peace from time immemorial, where foreign empires thieved and clashed and contended for control of stolen land and water. The island nevertheless gave a few generations a subsistence of crops and game. Today in an era of private equity and vacation rentals, few but the wealthy can afford an island acre. A silent, bloodless violence. Can there ever be peace and safety in a land drenched in blood? Perhaps there can for a time. But it is a borrowed, sometimes stolen peace that stores up violence for another day, because violence lurks in the scars as long as their story is left untold.