“A terrible fire in 1698 destroyed so many of the early records for this part of Virginia,” she said. “We’re lucky that Virginia was still a colony in 1698, so there are some surviving records at the British Library in London. An old survey record from 1680 named the plot of land ‘Reid’s Roost.’ We don’t know if ‘Reid’ was an old Native American reference or an itinerant trapper or a settler. It could even be a misspelling for the reedy grasses that grow in the area. The first record we have of someone actually living in Reid’s Roost dates to 1705 when it was bought by the Tuckers. After the Tuckers moved in, the name ‘Reid’ was eventually dropped, and most people just call it the Roost.”
Daisy perked up at the mention of her family. “The Roost was the first house the Tuckers owned after they arrived from England,” Daisy added. She’d only married into the Tucker family three years earlier, but latched onto the family’s celebrated history like a barnacle and adopted it as her own. “After the Tuckers started getting rich, they bought more land and moved into bigger homes over the next hundred years or so, but they leased Reid’s Roost to other people. I think it became a tavern at some point, then a whiskey distillery. During the Civil War it was a hospital, then it was a house again. I think it’s been vacant for a long time.”
“Not so vacant,” Arlo said with a guilty smile. “When I was in college, the students dared each other to spend Halloween night at the Roost. Rumor had it that the ghost of Saint Helga was likely to show up.”
Alice straightened. The legend of Saint Helga had been linked with Reid’s Roost for centuries, although the origin of the story was lost to time. Most people thought the legend was pure myth. After all, there was no Saint Helga in any Christian denomination, nor was there any trace of a woman named Helga associated with Virginia at the time the Roost was built.
And yet, sometime in the earliest years of the colony of Virginia, legends of Saint Helga began to be associated with the Roost. The gorgeous stretch of water behind the Roost had been called Saint Helga’s Spring as far back as anyone could remember. Even a census map from 1720 labeled the body of water after the mysterious Helga.
“Did you ever take the dare and spend the night at the Roost?” Greg McGarity asked.
“Once,” Arlo admitted. “No Saint Helga or any other ghosts. We got nothing but mosquito bites, a stiff back, and a hangover. It was a thoroughly miserable experience from start to finish.”
“Lightweight,” General Epstein muttered beneath his breath, then began to describe what it was like to bivouac in the swamps of Vietnam.
“Please,” Alice said before the conversation went completely off-kilter. “I’d like to talk about how we can save the Roost.” She sent an uneasy glance at Daisy. Did she even know what her husband had done? Daisy filed her nails with an emery board and didn’t appear to be listening, so Alice continued.
“The man who is developing the golf course wants to demolish the Roost, an irreplaceable cultural treasure, to build an amphitheater. I’d like your help saving it.”
Arlo’s eyes widened as he looked at Daisy. “Did you know about this?”
“That’s my husband’s business, darlin’. I have enough on my hands managing the hotel in town to bother myself with sweaty golf courses.”
“If the Tuckers want to sell the place, it’s within their right to do so,” Greg said. “I saw Kyle Tucker out at the yacht club last week, and he’s gangbusters about building that amphitheater. He says it will make a fortune.”
Alice squared her shoulders and met his gaze. “Yes, but they’ll have to demolish the Roost to make it happen. I’d like the board to grant a permanent stay on development.”
“That’s a tall order,” General Epstein said. “I don’t like barging onto private property and telling owners what they can’t do with their land. Maybe we can get a brief stay on development to give the historians time to make their case, but any longer could throw the construction schedule into a tailspin.”
“A temporary stay, then.” At the very least, she needed a few weeks to get inside the house and solve the historical mystery she suspected still lurked somewhere on that property.
“Daisy?” Arlo asked. “What do you think?”
Daisy lowered the emery board. “I think Kyle ought to be able to do whatever he wants with that house.”
“But there is history on that land that pre-dates the Tuckers,” Alice said. “I need time to study it.”
Greg remained unmoved. “Historians and archaeologists have already combed over every square inch of the Roost. Anything of historic interest has already been discovered and documented. It’s not right to stand in the way of progress to save a decrepit building that probably should have been condemned decades ago. It’s unfit for occupancy and a public menace.”
The tide was turning against her, and she was ready to play her trump card.
“I’ve learned something new in England that proves that Saint Helga may be more than just a legend,” Alice said. “When I was in London, I combed through old records, looking for things of interest in this part of Virginia. I found a letter from 1672 that alludes to a woman named Helga. Take a look.”
She had copies of the letter and distributed them to the others in the room. The spidery, cursive handwriting from the seventeenth century was notoriously difficult to decipher, so Alice read the important passage aloud:
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.
Alice remembered the afternoon in the British Library when she first saw this letter. It was two weeks after she’d gotten fired from theEmmamovie set and she’d been anxious, depressed, and desperate to save her failing academic career. Hoping to uncover some overlooked detail from Virginia’s early history, she stayed glued to the chair, spending hours trolling through old records in their early American history collections. The holdings consisted of a mishmash of official dispatches, property surveys, land grants, court cases, and letters. Each day she nearly went cross-eyed while squinting at the hazy microfilm screen and struggling to read the spindly handwriting from long ago.
The name Helga jumped out at her. The Nordic name was not completely unknown in England, where the northern counties had been heavily settled by Vikings in the ninth century. Nordic names such as Helga, Erik, or Garth still popped up among the Norse descendants, so she couldn’t automatically assume this Helga on her way to Virginia had any association with the lovely body of water behind Reid’s Roost.
But there was a tiny clue on the letter that clinched it for Alice. She held back a smile as she watched the others in the room read the letter, their faces unimpressed.
“This is all you have?” Greg asked, holding up the piece of paper.
“Look at the mark at the end of the sentence,” Alice said. The mark looked a little like a circle of palm fronds and was about the size of a thumbnail. Apparently it didn’t resonate with anyone except Arlo. He put on his reading glasses and held the paper close, squinting at the mark.
“I’ve seen this before,” he said.
