Page 85 of In the Pursuit of Haven
Abby zipped up her coat.
“Not you…” he told his sister. “You need to stay behind. We’ll need someone to coordinate with and to keep an eye on things here.”
“Really?” The sarcastic tilt of Abby’s head showed how annoyed she was at the idea. Her attention shot over the kitchen island to where her father snoozed, face down on the couch, and she left to put a blanket on him. “Maybe that’s not such a bad idea,” she said. “I have a few leads I want to follow here myself.”
“Great, good,” Jessie said. He watched her gather her coat and go. Clutching to his phone, he retreated into the back bedroom to make that call.
“You keep away from my family,” he said tensely. The house could be made of paper for how well I could hear him. He must’ve realized that too because he stormed out the back way to finish his conversation.
I wondered what kind of threats he thought would keep Hunter back.
Chapter Twenty-Three
We slid into Matthew’s boat a little after midnight, driving around Marblehead to Little Harbor, past the same spot where the USS Constitution sought sanctuary from the British, near Gerry and Brown’s.
So much history here, including my own. I always loved sailing past the tall trees on the island where Jessie and I first kissed.
The sea smoke was thick here as the cold air moved over the warmer waters. It drifted over the islands in a strange way, enveloping the shadows of the crags in the distance and flowing over the sides of Jessie’s boat to wisp around us. The eerie haze under the moonlit sky concealed our movements, but also hid whatever dangers might be lurking nearby.
Jessie was an experienced sailor, at least, and knew these waters well.
The tide was low as we docked near the same spot where I’d tied up Haven’s boat during my ill-fated trip to the cemetery where Jessie had chanced severe speeding tickets to stop me from going with Robert.
Knowing what I knew now, I shivered at the close call.
Traveling under the skeletal branches canopying the dozing neighborhoods, we came upon The Old Burying Hill. Dimond’s Old Brig homestead and Scrooby’s house was just across the way. Taking out Zak’s flashlight, we scrambled up the hillside that was made treacherous with boulders and roots from tall maples.
Jessie gave me his hand and he didn’t let me go until we reached Ministers’ Row. As much as Samuel Cheever’s Latin funerary inscription absorbed my thoughts, the gravestone now seemed smaller this time around.
Running my flashlight across the stone, I quickly explained my findings from before. “The double tympanum usually means two people are buried underneath.”
“Tympanum?” he questioned.
“The arches on the gravestone. There are two, but only the reverend’s body is here, even though he was happily married.”
“Interesting,” he said. He hunkered down beside me, studying the mystery before us. “I wonder if that means there’s more than his body buried here?”
Like a Shepherd’s Relic? Possibly… and no way did I want to go back to grave digging. I already felt like a criminal touching priceless artifacts that could be so easily destroyed. I hurried to distract Jessie from thoughts of destruction. “The split across the headstone doesn’t highlight any words of importance. Haven had wondered about that.”
“You think someone broke it before us?” he asked.
Again… the destruction. “On purpose?” I asked.
“Yes.”
My mind went to the phrase on the headstone:“Populo interea Damnum effuse (insigniter quantumlibet reparaturn) lugente.”
With the way the parenthesis cut up that phrase, it meant,“The people damaged,” not “the people greatly mourned.”
I swallowed uncomfortably.
“It looks like people added words later on.” He pointed them out. These grammar corrections were a usual occurrence with old gravestones, but we couldn’t rule out anything, especially when these afterthoughts screwed up the original phrasing. “This one has a triangle.” Jessie found the one that I’d noticed last time. “What’s that word say?”
“Quantumlibetmeans ‘any amount,’ but it really doesn’t make too much sense in this phrase. It breaks it up in a weird way, and—”
“Are there any words that mean ‘treasure’ on there?” Jessie asked.
“Uh, right here in the very beginning. It says ‘Shepherd of the Relics’ and we’re finding that everywhere…” I scanned through the words. “Here’s one!” I said, feeling the same rush of excitement I’d felt earlier when we searched through the metal sculpture yard. “This says, ‘ut remuneraretur’and that means‘to be rewarded,’ and…”
