Sugar Free Blackberry Pie
1½ cups Honey
3 Tbsp Cornstarch
¼ tsp Ground Cinnamon
¼ tsp Ground Nutmeg
¼ tsp Salt
4 cups Fresh Blackberries
2 Pie Crusts
1 Tbsp Margarine
Directions:
Heat oven to 425 degrees. Place blackberries into bottom of one of the pie crusts. In large mixing bowl, combine honey, salt, cornstarch, nutmeg and cinnamon. Blend well and sprinkle this mixture over blackberries and dot with margarine. Unroll and flatten the other pie crust using a pin roller. Break into long, even strips, then layer strips in a cross-crossing diamond pattern. Place in oven and bake for 45-50 min, or until crust is golden brown.
CHAPTER
1
Some
herbs, like eucalyptus and wormwood, can be used to repel animals and insects.
From The
Recipes of Mercy Faye
#
New
York, New York
December,
1888
New York
City’s night noises seeped through the wall chinks and window: the jingle of
horse harnesses, the stomping of hooves, the mournful howl of a dog, but one
noise, a noise that didn't belong, jarred Mercy awake.
A creak on the stairs that led to her
apartment. The third from the top, five steps past Mr. Bidwell’s door. Only
those wishing to reach her home crossed that step. She never entertained visitors
in the tiny attic; she wasn’t expecting company.
Lying in
bed, she held her breath while the unwelcome guest paused. The walls were thin,
the door as substantial as paper, the lock inconsequential. Her thoughts raced
and her body shook. A shock of cold hit when she slipped from the bedding, the
wooden floor felt like ice beneath her feet. The embers in the grate had burnt
to a smolder and her shivering had as much to do with cold as with fear.
Mercy
padded through the doorway to the sitting room. Dying coals in the potbelly
stove cast an orange glow and shadows loomed large. Grabbing a fire poker from
the hearth, she waited for a knock on the door. She tried to think of an
innocent reason for a neighbor to call, an emergency or crisis in which she
could assist, but when no knock came, she crept behind the pie safe stocked
with the previous day’s unsold pies and pastries. Stars winked through the
window and Mercy wondered if their pale light could penetrate her chiffon
shift. She felt naked, alone, and friendless.
She
could call out. Let the visitor know she was awake, alert and fire poker armed.
Perhaps someone on the street below would hear, but would they come to her aid?
Her only neighbor, Mr. Bidwell, as old as Satan and twice as mean, would never
stir from his bed for her. As she so often did, Mercy missed her father and
longed for family.
The
splintering wood shattered the air as the lock gave way.
Across
the room, a mirror, tarnished and misty, gave a wavy reflection of the opening
door. Mercy slid a fraction lower behind
the pie safe. The odors of the pies mingled with her own smell of fear. She
could feel the panic spilling out of her like a cloud that blurred her vision.
In the
mirror she saw first a boot and then a thigh. Then Mr. Steele, his face a study
of lust and cruelty, stood in the semi-darkness. The moonlight glistened on the
six inch knife blade in his gloved hand. Mercy choked on a sour tasting sob.
Suitors don’t carry knives.
Mr.
Steele pushed the door open more, inviting in a breeze that circulated through
the room. She knew why she’d been attracted to him. He looked and moved like
royalty. His dark hair curled away from his forehead and his lean muscles
rippled beneath his breeches. She thought of his laughter, the lilt of his voice
when he asked if he could call, the gleam in his eye when she’d accepted his
gift. Mercy fingered the silver charm, a four leaf clover that he’d given her.
She’d tied it with a ribbon and wore it around her neck. Why hadn’t she taken
it off when she’d denied his suit? When had she become suspicious of his
flattery? Why was she not surprised to find him in her room past midnight
wielding a knife?
Of
course, he’d been angry and insulted that a mere shop girl would reject his
favors. Impoverished girls without families and connections should fawn over a
handsome, wealthy and prominent man such as Steele, but Mercy wasn’t typical,
and she wasn’t as impoverishedas one might suppose. And so when Mr. Steele had
invited her on a voyage to South America without proposing marriage, she’d
turned him down.
Rumors
whispered that Mr. Steele had also invited her friend Belle on such a voyage,
before Belle had disappeared.
Mercy
held her breath as Steele passed the pie safe, and then stopped, as if
thinking. Mustering strength from the muscles that spent long hours kneading
dough and beating eggs, gathering courage grown from burying first her mother
and then her father, Mercy shoved the pie safe and it gave way with a creak and
shudder. The safe caught Mr. Steele on the shoulder and he stumbled under the
assault of the swinging doors and sailing pies. Apple, cherries, peaches, the
sweet cinnamony odors of Faye’s wares pelted Mr. Steele. He danced in the
pastry goop and landed hard on one knee. In a different circumstance, she’d
have laughed at his abandoned dignity and awkward bobbling, but now she stepped
into the fallen pastries with her mouth in a stern line, her anger as hot as
fire.
One blow
from the poker sent him to the floor. A second blow brought his arms over his head.
With the third he winced, fell face first into the smashed pastries and then
went still. When she stopped beating him her arms were shaking and her breath
ragged. Blood oozed from behind his ear. His body sprawled in the spilt pies;
his face pressed against the floorboards. She nudged him with the poker, but he
didn’t stir. For a long moment she stood above him, waiting for a sign of life.
Her
heart raced as she considered her options. The police? Would they believe her
plea of self defense? She tried to imagine herself in a court of law, pitted
against the wealthy and prominent Mr. Steele.
He lay
motionless in a mess of stewed fruit and crust. A smashed, oozing cherry clung
to his eyebrow. And then she noticed papers protruding from his jacket pocket.
It looked like passage fare and she considered it with a hammering heart.
Squatting
beside him, she drew the papers loose, her fingers shaking so badly the papers
caused a noisy breeze. A silver key slipped from the packet to the floor and
landed with a ping. The skeleton key had a curlicue top with embossed leaves
swirling around the words Lucky Island. The papers were first class
passage to Seattle. It seemed Mr. Steele had been undeterred from the voyage
he’d proposed. The boat left at first light.
Seattle.
She
couldn’t.
She had
an aunt in Seattle.
She
mustn’t.
Silly
Tilly, her father had called his sister. Mercy hadn’t met her aunt, but Silly
Tilly always remembered Mercy’s birthday.
Why not
go? Mercy turned her head away from the tiny sitting room and looked out the
window to the river while hastily drawn plans formed in her mind. Perhaps Lucky
Island was in the Puget Sound. It sounded more fortuitous than Faye’s Bakery
off Elm. Would her aunt take her in? Mercy had written Tilly of her father’s death,
but hadn’t, as yet, heard a reply. Perhaps an invitation was already in the
mail.
Mercy
went to the wardrobe and tossed through her dresses, nothing seemed practical.
What did one wear for flight? She caught sight of her father’s trunk and nursed
an idea as she drew out her father’s clothes.
The
pants, well worn and loose, she slipped on and then tucked into her boots. She
rolled the sleeves of the cotton work shirt and shrugged into a boiled wool
coat. She tugged at the belt holding up her father’s pants and took a deep
breath in an effort to restore the calm she’d lost the moment she heard the
boot on the stairs. The jacket made her warm and the faint smell of leather and
shoeshine she always associated with her father gave her courage. It felt odd and
freeing to move without the cumbrance of skirts and petticoats. She kept one
eye on Mr. Steele as she packed the knapsack: her father’s watch, her mother’s
bible, a bag of gold coins, a loaf of barley bread.
She sat
down at the table where she’d taken her solitary meals and she struggled to
control her shaking hands. One pinned the paper and the other grasped the
quill. Her handwriting looked spidery, the ink blotchy. A splash of ink stained
her father’s denim work shirt, but Mercy didn’t care.
To whom it
may concern, I, Mercy Faye, have taken my life on the night of December 15,
1888, she wrote, but she mentally added, to Seattle. She left the note on her unmade bed.
She
snuck a glance at the blood still seeping from the man’s temple and fought the
bile rising in her throat as she squatted and pulled out a locked trunk from
under her bed. Her shivering increased, making it difficult for her fingers to
work the key. Quickly, she rifled through her mother’s things which smelled of
must, neglect and a lingering hint of lavender. Forgive me, Mama, she
thought, when she found the velvet bag containing the Bren jewels.
Not
trusting the sapphires in the knapsack, she tucked the bag next to her heart
beneath the ink-stained shirt. Then she went to the safe where she kept the
shop’s proceeds. Perhaps someone, most likely her landlord, would wonder, but
who would question the scant means she left behind? The coins seemed to weigh a
hundred pounds and they jingled like a tambourine in her father’s pockets.
Since her
father’s death four months prior, there’d been times when Mercy contemplated
selling the jewels, but the bakery had become increasingly successful. Mercy
took a deep breath, inhaling the warm pastry smells that permeated her life.
She would miss the shop, and it would only be a few hours until her customers
would miss her. She pictured Mr. Lester, impatient for his muffin and coffee,
Mrs. Nicole, eager for her biscuits. The customers would wander away, wondering
what had happened to their supply of baked goods. Eventually her landlord would
bang on the door, demanding rent, fair compensation. Would he find Mr. Steele?
Two hats
hung on the hook by the door, a simple straw affair and summer bonnet that she
wore walking. Mercy tucked the bonnet beneath her arm, shouldered the knapsack
and then bade a silent goodbye to the only home she’d ever known.
Then she
felt it. A shift in the air. She
stopped, listened and heard movement. Mr. Steele flinched.
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