She pulled Hester’s trunk in front of her and slowly opened the lid. Just as before, a secret little thrill trembled deep in her belly. Despite the lure of Hester’s journals, Olivia set them aside and found herself reaching for the drawings of the mysterious TB.
Opening the collection of sketches, Olivia leafed through the pages carefully so as not to damage any of them. The ring on her index finger tapped out a mindless rhythm against the stoneware of her mug, making a small clinking sound that she barely noticed. All her focus was riveted to the black-and-white drawings in front of her.
There was just something about them that drew her in. She shifted as she set her tea down and looked closer at the sketch in her hand. She could see a rocky mound surrounded by gnarled, misshapen trees with twisted branches, bare in the grip of winter.
Rain hammered down on a woman’s body as she hung by the neck, limp and buffeted by an unseen wind, her face hidden by the matted ropes of her pale hair and her dress stained with mud and filth.
Men gathered at the foot of the tree watching, all except one, and it was to him that Olivia’s gaze was drawn. He was kneeling in the mud, his head bowed, his hands held to his face in grief, or perhaps shame. Unlike the other men dressed in dark-colored jerkins and tall black hats, he wore only a thin linen shirt over his breeches, soaked through and plastered to his skin from the rain. She tore her gaze away from him and glanced up to the top of the page, tracing the turbulent swirls of cloud and jagged slashes of lightning with the tip of one finger.
There was something about the whole picture that made her uncomfortable. Her stomach clenched and her chest ached. As a historian, especially one who specialized in the witch trials and the persecution of witches across Europe, she’d seen images like this a dozen times. But something about it disturbed her.
Her gaze was once again drawn to the man on his knees, and she felt a wave of empathy. It was like she could feel his pain through the page, it seeped through every jagged slash and pencil stroke.
Unable to look at them any longer, she set the sketchbook aside. Instead, she picked up the journal, although it had no name and no initials like the drawings. The writing was the same leading her to suspect they might have belonged to the same person.
Olivia skimmed her fingers across the cover, and once again, her heart began to beat a little faster. She flipped through the pages, stopping abruptly at several ragged edges where several pages had been ripped out. The barest hint of a scent wafted from the pages, and she lifted the book to her face, inhaling. The pages were musty with age, but there was something else. Smoke, maybe? She flipped back to the entry before the missing pages and began to read.
August 1695
I dream of her almost every night now, a torment I cannot escape. The dreams even come to me while I wake, so beautiful, and the need I have inside me is painful. I feel her skin, soft and warm and real. I taste her mouth, the flavor of her dark and earthy and familiar. Her body is naked beneath mine as I sink into her, and we move together lost to our passion. But when I wake, she is not there, I am alone. My body aches and my mind tells me it is a sin, that fornication in thought, if not deed, will still damn my soul, but what does it matter, when my soul is damned anyway.
It is not lust whiche drives me, but passion. My heart belongs to her, has always belonged to her. As I wake with the dawn, I feel the whisper of her lips against mine, her voice a breathless sigh upon the wind. Perhaps this is my punishment, a slow descent into madness, tormented by the one thing I can never have.
Maybe she isn’t real, maybe she never was. Nothing more than a dream, a wish, but this morning, as I awoke before the dawn, I felt that something had changed. All day, a sense of urgency has come to me, waves of uneasiness grinding deep in my belly, and I wait. It is the stillness before the onset of a summer storm, only this storm brings darkness with it. The darkness is searching for her. I can feel it, and the need to protect her is almost overwhelming.
I must find her, and I pray that she will understand the burden I carry, and that she will not turn from me. Time is running out. It is coming for us, and may God have mercy on us all…
“Damn it.” Olivia swore as the entry trailed off, disappearing into the missing pages.
She returned to the start and read it through several times, tracing her fingers gently over the neat handwriting. She could feel so many emotions in the words, as if the pages themselves were saturated with hopelessness, frustration, desire, and above all… love. She could feel this person’s desperate love for whoever this woman was.
Olivia’s gaze slid over to the drawing of the woman hanging from the tree and then to the man bowed before it in grief. She couldn’t help feeling like the journal entries and the sketches were connected in some way.
Once again, she found herself trailing her fingertips over the words.
My heart belongs to her… has always belonged to her…
“Who are you?” she muttered.
Grabbing her laptop, she opened it up, resting it on her folded legs as she began to search through not only her own research files but the online resources too. Given some of the things she’d read in his journal, coupled with the date and the fact that Hester herself had kept the diaries, it was probable that whoever this man was, he’d likely come from either Mercy or Salem.
Olivia spent the next few hours curled up in front of the fire searching through every resource she could find and trying to track down anyone from that time period and those locations with the initials TB.
Shaken from her thoughts by a loud and sudden banging on her door Olivia unfolded her stiff legs and pushed herself up from the floor. Padding out into the hallway she glanced through the peephole. It was a UPS guy holding onto a large rectangular box.
“Olivia West?” he asked as she opened the door and she nodded. “Sign here, please.”
She scribbled her name and took the package, closing the door with a soft click and once again locking it. Wandering back into the library, she tore open the packaging and laughed when she saw the contents. It was a thick, warm winter coat. Lifting it out of the box, she glanced down, catching a note as it fluttered from the folds of the thick material.
Happy Birthday. Enjoy the Massachusetts weather! Mags x
Olivia smiled widely with affection. Mags always seemed to have a knack for knowing just what she needed, and after having her other coat confiscated for evidence by Mercy’s finest, this one would definitely come in handy.
Holding onto her new coat her eyes fell on her abandoned laptop, she then glanced across at the journals and sketchbook laying alongside Hester’s open trunk, and her lips pursed as an idea occurred to her.
So far, her search had come up empty, but… Her eyes flicked to the small carriage clock upon the mantle quietly chiming the quarter hour, an idea forming in her mind... there was one other place she could try.
With her mind made up, she pulled the labels off her new coat and slipped her arms into the sleeves, marveling at its coziness. Crossing the room, she tucked Hester’s trunk back out of the way and scooped up the mysterious TB’s journal and sketchbook, then she flipped down the lid of her laptop, sliding all three items into the backpack she usually used for her laptop.
