Alice was skeptical Jack could have found anything at the Roost. She and dozens of trained historians had combed through it for decades, but he’d looked so pleased with himself yesterday and it couldn’t hurt to look.
She arrived at the Roost early the next morning, resolved to embrace Jack’s perspective. He was right: Some things in life were undeniably unfair and beyond anyone’s control. Yet, even in the face of hardship, the world brimmed with possibilities—if only she had the courage to look for them.
Jack grinned when he answered the door. “It’s upstairs,” he said as he ushered her inside the Roost.
There wasn’t much upstairs, and she suspected he was taking her to the north-facing window with centuries of graffiti scratched into its old, rippled glass. Unlike the elegant diamond-paned windows on the first floor, the upstairs windows were made of ordinary glass, the panes each about five inches wide. Historians had already milked the random doodles scratched into the glass. A few people had scratched their names and dates, and there was some political graffiti during the American Revolution. Other random doodles and sketches were impossible to understand.
“Have you ever seen all these scratchings?” Jack pointed to the window with pride, beaming as if he’d just discovered the Rosetta Stone.
Half the historians in Williamsburg had already marveled over this window, but it was rather sweet of him to present it to her.
“I’ve seen them,” she said, hoping he wouldn’t be disappointed.
“But did you see Helga’s name?”
Alice blinked. “There’s nothing about Helga on the window.”
“Look again,” Jack prompted. It felt foolish to keep staring at this strange collection of scribbles because Helga’s name wasn’t here. The only word that had baffled historians over the years was a small, careful etching near the top:SVOTZ. It was followed by a mark that looked like an 8 lying on its side. The carefully printed letters were the only thing previous historians had given up hope of interpreting.
It was also what Jack pointed to. “It’s right here,” he said. “The guy inThe Da Vinci Codeuses the Atbash cipher to decode old references. That code dates back to Hebrew times. All you have to do is substitute each letter with its corresponding letter on the other side of the alphabet. Using the Atbash cipher,SVOTZtranslates toHELGA.”
She stared blankly at the word, mentally counting backward and forward across the alphabet. Her heart pounded as she stared at the letters. Jack was right.Helga’s name was right here!
“How did you figure this out?” she asked, still marveling at the discovery.
He grinned again. “Doc gets all the credit. There’s not much to do out at this old place after the sun goes down and he’d been readingThe Da Vinci Code.He figured it out. And that sideways 8? In calculus, that symbol represents infinity. So in contemporary terms, I think the message means something like ‘Helga into eternity,’ or maybe ‘Helga always.’”
Alice’s heart thumped so hard she feared he could hear it, but she couldn’t help smiling. “How do you know calculus?” she asked.
Jack cocked a brow. “Calculus is how I measure slope and gradient changes over distance on the golf course. Even dumb jocks can learn a little math.”
She held up her hands. “I didn’t mean to insult you, I just need to understand all the possible angles. I confess to being impressed. People have been staring at this window for a long time and never connected it to Helga.”
Her fingers trembled as she set them against the marking on the window. Once, long ago and across eons of time, someone cared enough about a mysterious woman named Helga to carve her name into glass . . . but he hid it. A shiver raced through her, almost as if she could feel that unknown person beckoning her to solve the puzzle, to bring their story out of the shadows and into the daylight.
“What happens if you can figure out who she was?” Jack asked.
“I’ll get an academic paper out if it,” she said. “Maybe even a book. This story will have interdisciplinary interest. Folklorists want to know about the legend of Saint Helga’s Spring. Historians will want to know about a woman in early America. But it’s more than that. I’m simply . . . I’m simplydyingof curiosity!”
She met his gaze, and it felt like an electric spark zinged between them. He was now as eager and curious as she.
He rubbed his jaw and glanced around the room. “You said the Roost is a part of local history,” he stated. “You said college kids dare each other to haunt the place on Halloween and society ladies think there’s some kind of fertility legend here. Who else is interested in this place? And why?”
“I think it appeals to people because it’s one of the few remaining buildings from those earliest years of the English in America,” she said. “Colonial Williamsburg reflects life in the mid-eighteenth century, but the English were here for over a hundred years before that. There’s almost nothing left of those first settlers. The Roost is one of the few buildings representing those very first years.”
“So there’s value in the Roost,” he said.
Wasn’t that what she’d been telling him for weeks? “It’s priceless. There’s an aura here that resonates with people. The sound of footsteps on the old wood, the marshy scent from the spring, and the breeze rustling the leaves are exactly what the people hundreds of years ago would have seen and felt. It is as if I can reach back in time and experience a fleeting moment of exactly what a woman hundreds of years ago would have known.”
Jack had a calculating look to his gaze. “What do you need to figure out who Helga was?”
“Time. These things take years to gather funding, then travel to libraries and archives for research.”
“I haven’t got years. Can you speed it up?”
Alice took a step back. “You still want to tear down the Roost?”
“Not if you can prove it’s worth saving. If you can dig up something cool about Helga, it will put this place on the map beyond just the golfing world, and I can capitalize on that.”
