Helga has sailed for Jamestown as she still has hope to conceive a child. The woman is a saint, but I fear we will never see her again. Virginia is a dangerous land.
The letter ended with the curving fronds, exactly like this one carved onto the lintel stone. She centered her camera on the mark and took a picture, hoping the symbol meant something and wasn’t a coincidence.
She continued scanning the room for more things to photograph. Plaster had been added to cover the walls in the early nineteenth century, but the heavy beams supporting the ceiling were probably original wood. Some of Jack’s belongings were stacked on the windowsill. A well-thumbed paperback about the history of golf lay atop the latest issue ofSports Illustrated. The kitchen was tidy, even though the contents of the cupboards could give her heart disease merely by looking inside. Boxes of sugary cereal, fluorescent-orange cheese crackers wrapped in cellophane, bags of potato chips. The mini-refrigerator operated on generator power, and she couldn’t resist a peek inside. A jug of full-fat milk, cans of beer, and a plastic basket filled with small glass vials.
Medicinal vials.
The vials weren’t any of her business and she ought to close the door, but couldn’t stop herself from investigating. Most of the vials were clear liquid, but others looked cloudy. Some hadpurple caps, some had red. The prescription label had Jack Latimer’s name on each vial, but the names of the drugs were unfamiliar to her.
She closed the refrigerator door. Jack’s medical condition wasn’t any of her business, though whatever he suffered from would surely benefit from a diet besides cheese crackers and beer.
She headed upstairs to take more photos. On either side of the staircase were two large matching square rooms, mostly empty. A cheap patio recliner with another sleeping bag was serving as a bed, and it looked like Jack was living out of his suitcases. The other room was identical in its square layout, but he had it set up as a study. A card table held a laptop and a printer. Rain spattered the slate roof, and an eerie sensation descended. This was the same sound of rain patter the early settlers would have heard. Outside, everything looked distorted through the wavy glass, but the view out the back was thickly wooded with silver maples and sycamore trees. Again, the same view they would have seen.
She touched the cool glass, marveling that hundreds of years ago, some woman probably stood at this window as water rolled off the eaves to pool on the ground below. This glass was original, and over the centuries a number of people had scratched graffiti onto its wavy surface. Elizabeth and William Tucker scratched their names and wedding date in 1771. In subsequent years they wrote the birthdates of their three children. A curious, disjointed snake was etched into the bottom of the window glass. Historians identified it as the “Join, or Die” snake, a symbol calling for unity leading up to the American Revolution. Other symbols were harder to understand . . . stray scratch marks, doodles, and random initials. Once upon a time, people not so different from her stood on this exact spot as they etched these markings into the glass.
Falling under the spell of this old place was an occupational hazard. Most people who studied the past probably had similar feelings, but Alice needed to quit daydreaming and find out the real age of the Roost if she had any hope of figuring out the source of the Saint Helga legend.
Her best shot was downstairs in the front room as Brandon prepared to take samples of the original wood ceiling beams. The old staircase creaked as she headed downstairs to join him.
“Before you drill, I’d like to take some close-up photos of the ceiling beams,” Alice said. Brandon moved a card table below the center beam and helped her clamber onto the wobbly table. The ceiling was lower than in homes constructed today, letting her get close enough to an exposed beam to lay her hand on the wood. What secrets this old beam could spill! She took a few photographs, wondering if it was oak or maple. It was so darkened with age she couldn’t tell.
“Nice legs,” a male voice said.
Alice startled and turned to see Jack Latimer standing in the open doorway. He held a dripping umbrella in one hand and a bucket of fried chicken in the other.
She hopped down so that her knees wouldn’t be eye-level with him anymore. She shouldn’t have worn a miniskirt, but it was warm and he wasn’t supposed to be here.
“What were you doing up there?” Jack asked.
“You said I could look around,” she defended, and he flashed one of those annoying smiles.
“I saidyoucould, but who’s he?” Jack asked with a glance at Brandon, who held a boring tool. Jack had better not utter one rude comment about the kindest gentleman in all of Virginia.
“This is Professor Brandon Tilney,” she said. “He’s an expert in dating old structures by studying the tree rings in the wood.”
“Cool,” Jack said with a grin and clapped Brandon on the back, who looked a little taken aback by the vigor of the greeting.Brandon wasn’t the backslapping type. He was more likely to execute a courtly bow than be a backslapper. The skinny man named Doc came into the room as well, dragging mud in with each step.
“So how do tree rings help you date a building?” Jack asked, and Brandon supplied the well-practiced answer.
“I’ll compare the tree rings from this beam to other samples from the area. The core samples I’ll be taking today won’t hurt the structural integrity of the Roost.”
“I thought you were going to be out on the golf course today,” Alice said. Their work would be more challenging with Jack hovering over them.
“Yeah, I did too, but as you can see, the weather isn’t cooperating.” He set the bucket of chicken on the table. “Hungry?” he asked.
Her mouth watered. Deep-fried food was an insult to her arteries, her complexion, and her waistline, but fried chicken had always been her weakness. Doc set out paper plates and plastic utensils while Jack brought over two more folding chairs for the table.
Everyone else dug in, so Alice picked up a drumstick and discreetly nibbled.
“How long is it going to take before you get that tree-ring data analyzed?” Jack asked, then ripped off a huge section of chicken breast with his teeth and chewed with vigor. At least he seemed curious as Brandon replied that with luck, it could be within the week.
“It all depends on if I can find any wood with bark still on it,” Brandon said. “That outside layer is the last year the tree was alive, so if I can pair those final few rings to one of our reference samples, I will be able to pinpoint the exact date.”
To his credit, Jack fired off plenty of intelligent questions about everything from native trees to water quality in thetidewater. Jack and Brandon talked like old friends as the conversation skipped from trees to climate to invasive plant species.
The rain continued unabated all through lunch, and Brandon didn’t want to get his equipment wet lugging it out to the car.
“Who is the chess player?” Brandon asked with a nod to the chess board on the hearth.
