Page 117 of In the Pursuit of Haven
My heart leaped about as an anxious deer. Moody’s voice lowered, “Your friends have arranged for your conveyance out of the colony.”
I knew not how to answer. “But what of our children?” They would be punished as others had, used as collateral to force us to return.
“As I say, they are in excellent hands,” Moody assured me. His fingers clenched over his Bible. “None shall touch them while we are their guardians.”
The jailor rapped at the prison doors again. “Your time is through!” The stern man began the work of getting the doors open to escort the good priest out.
“You must do this thing,” Moody whispered urgently. “Make your way by carriage to New York and wait out this madness that happens in Salem. It is the only way to live through this.”
Hot tears ran down my cheeks at his generosity—he was taking a great risk, as were we all. By running, we were proclaiming our guilt. What vengeance would be taken on us if we were caught? “Only let me kiss my children goodbye,” I said.
“It will be done.” Moody gave a brisk nod. “By the by, Governor Phips asks of you often.” The doors opened and, pressing my hand and then my husband’s, he bid us both farewell.
“And it was a good thing they got out,” I told Jessie. “Five days later, everyone who went on trial that day was found guilty—John Proctor….” A favorite ancestor of Haven’s. “George Burroughs.” A former Puritan minister of their Salem congregation. “George Jacobs Sr.” A man accused by his own granddaughter to escape the noose herself. “John Willard.” A former constable in Salem who brought in the accused, and no doubt, he objected to Sheriff Corwin’s subsequent corruption and that’s what sealed his doom. “And Martha Carrier,” I whispered. That one was Haven’s eighth great-grandmother. “Also found guilty was the missing Mary English,” I said. “Everyone except the runaways got hung a week and a half later.”
“Talk about cancel culture,” Jessie muttered. “The leaders pretended to be led by a crew of screaming children, but we know the big guys held the strings or they’d never let it happen. They’d murder all dissenters if they could.” Jessie jerked when a text came through on his phone.
“Captain William Hathorne,” Abbey wrote. “That’s the only name I recognize. Mary English’s granddaughter married the witch trial magistrate’s great-grandson, which makes Nathaniel Hawthorne their descendant. The writer!ThatNathaniel Hawthorne.”
Well, there was another name that kept popping up. Hawthorne was also related to the Turners, who’d once owned Baker’s Island.
Abby followed that with another text. “Aren’t you proud? I mean, I’m no Roxy, but I do okay for myself.”
“Very proud,” Jessie replied. “No Crowninshields in their line?”
Three dots on his phone showed she was texting, then those disappeared before her text finally came through in the storm: “No.”
“Okay, okay.” I was willing to accept that. Still, there were so many Crowninshields and Hawthornes involved in all this. We were getting a pattern, at least, of who these descendants were… and possibly who’d become today’s modern Shepherds?
My mind wandered to Ruth again.
If she was something as romantic as a Shepherd of the Relics, I’d laugh.
My finger traced the names written into the stone. “Did you know that Nathaniel Hawthorne based his lead character fromThe Scarlet Letteron Mary English’s mother? Nowtherewas a woman accused of being a witch a few times in her day. I didn’t know Hawthorne was related to her though…”
“Hmm.” Jessie pushed his knee up to stretch out in our cramped quarters. We weren’t getting out of here soon—not with this storm raging against this little island. The moaning, screeching sounds were muffled where we hid. “Do you think Hawthorne got his hands on their Relic?” Jessie asked. “Or did the runaways take it with them to New York?”
“If the English family left the Relic home,” I said, “there’s a good chance the sheriff got it. After the couple escaped, the corrupt man plundered their home of all its possessions. That’s how the feud started with the Corwins when Philip returned from his exile.”
But he wasn’t able to get much of his property back before the sheriff died at the young age of thirty from a heart attack—or from Corey Giles’s curse, as they called it.
I glanced back at Jessie. “You didn’t hear what Philip English did with the sheriff’s body, did you?”
“I hope he dropkicked him into the ocean,” Jessie grumbled. “The Corwins messed up this treasure hunt from the beginning.”
They’d messed up a lot of things. I squeezed my eyes shut against the angry ocean, using the steady sounds of my husband’s beating heart as my backdrop to the clop-clop of horses’ hooves as Philip led his posse to pay George Corwin their last respects:
That vile worm thought he had the right to a proper funeral and burial… after everything he inflicted on his enemies and neighbors?
Never!
My husband rushed to cut off the funeral march. The sheriff’s wife walked in front of the horses pulling George Corwin’s casket on a wagon. After all the anguish this man heaped against this town; it was clear that his power did not stem from any love for him, for hardly a soul that did not share his miserable blood had bothered to attend his funeral.
Now that the life had left the despicable man’s body, no one wanted a thing to do with Corwin, though his family had been forced to hide the sheriff’s remains in the basement of his cousin, the magistrate’s home to keep anyone from exacting their revenge on his corpse.
They did not hide him long enough.
Philip motioned to the men riding alongside him to surround the casket with their horses. Corwin’s widow stepped back, wringing her hands. “Ye dare to intrude on our moment of grief?”
