Page 24 of Sinful

“What sort of trades are there?” I asked, glancing around the street again.

“We pride ourselves on providing a fulfilling, enjoyable life to our people, so we don’t just have the basics. We have specialty trades as well. Novelists, playwrights, and musicians to provide entertainment, for example. Do you see that cottage over there?’

He pointed again, and I nodded.

“Etienne Brouxard lives there, and Jean-Paul Cormier is his apprentice. Together, they print and bind books for our library and school. When Etienne passes away, Jean will take over, and another apprentice will be assigned to him.”

I raised my brows. “You even have a library here?”

“Of course. Our writers, printers, and bookbinders have been working to keep it stocked for centuries,” Augustus replied, clasping his hands behind his back. “And not just the library, either. There are some books that we want every household to own, so they must be created too.”

“Like the Bible, I presume.”

“The Christian bible, you mean?” he asked, furrowing his brows. “If so, we don’t have any copies of that. We follow our own religion here, and it differs far too much from Christianity for any of us to bother wasting our time with their books.”

“You don’t want people to explore other religions, or any other theological ideas in general?”

“It’s more that they don’tneedto,” he said, eyes narrowing slightly. “We all know that our religion is the one true religion. The sacred knowledge has been passed down for hundreds of years.”

“So you have your own bible, in a sense?”

He nodded. “Yes. The Covenant Doctrines. Unfortunately, I cannot show a copy to you. The material is not for outsider eyes.”

“I understand.” I tipped my head. “You said youknowyour religion is true. How do you know that for sure?”

“Ah, this is my favorite subject. The origins of our belief system,” he said, eyes glimmering with enthusiasm. “How much information about our town’s beginnings was in your mother’s notes? She was utterly fascinated by this story.”

“Not much. I know Alderwood was started by a mixture of French and English settlers who were disillusioned with Acadia and the English settlements. But that’s all.”

“Just the basics, then.” Augustus clasped his hands together again. “There were originally seven families who moved south from Acadia, searching for a new place to call home. Along the way, they picked up two more families from an English settlement. They eventually wound up here, in what you call the High Peaks Wilderness.”

“Mm-hm.” I nodded for him to go on.

“Times were hard back then, but they saw the potential in this land, so they decided to settle in for a few months and try to make it work. One day, two men—Jean-Baptiste Dubois and Matthiew Brouxard—went to search for a larger water source, and they didn’t return for three days. No one knew where they were or which direction they went, so they couldn’t search for them. They just had to wait and hope.”

“Where were they?”

“They discovered an enormous cave system. They were in there that whole time.”

A cave.That sparked an old memory in my mind, instantly making my stomach jolt.

My mother was searching for a cave on Covenant land not long before she was murdered. I remembered her insistence that I never speak about it to anyone after she accidentally told me about it as a child. She never gave me any details beyond that, though—just the fact that she was looking for a cave of great importance near Alderwood.

“What was in there?” I asked, eyes narrowing.

Another broad smile appeared on Augustus’s face. “Everything. Heaven and hell. The source of all light and darkness,” he said. He paused and lifted his palm. “Now, I know that’s quite vague, but don’t worry. I’ll elaborate.”

“All right.” I kept my eyes on him, brows drawn into a curious expression.

“Before I begin the meat of the story, it’s important to know some background on the two men. Dubois was a devout Catholic, whereas Brouxard and his family had originally fled France after being accused of witchcraft.”

“So the two men were very different.”

“Yes. In fact, as the story goes, they didn’t even like each other very much due to this clash in their belief systems. But they went exploring together on that fateful day anyway, because they knew their overall mission to find the perfect place for their families to thrive was more important than anything else.”

“I see.”

Augustus clapped his hands together. “Now, this is the part you’ve been waiting for,” he said. “When they stepped into the cave, they discovered something in there. Something holy. They had vision after vision for three whole days, and they didn’t need to eat or drink at all. They survived on nothing but their own fervor, fueled by the sacred knowledge that was filling them.”

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