Page 101 of In the Pursuit of Haven
It certainly does. Strangely, it does for me too.
Gulls and shags dipped over Cormorant Rock searching for food. Some sunned on the crags like it was summer. “You see that 1808 on the rock?” Jessie pointed.
Narrowing my eyes I saw the date etched onto a high boulder, but it was mostly covered in bird droppings.
Cormorant Rock didn’t earn its name for nothing!
“Believe me,” Jessie said. “Hunter and I tried everything we could to see what that date meant.”
I shifted uncomfortably at the thought of those two working together for so long. They’d completely wasted their time anyway. “That’s just the date they used to mark the site of a navigational marker to warn oncoming ships about the rocks,” I said.
“Yeah?” Jessie’s brow arched up. “So you’re taking theexpert’sword on it? I thought the historian in you would make you look deeper.”
I was intrigued, even if I didn’t want to be. My eyes went to the book that he’d shoved in the cubby under the dashboard. Supposedly that was the clue he’d stolen from Hunter. Even if those bumbling Neanderthals hadn’t figured out the mystery of where the Relic was on this island, after months of searching, they’d been close to finding it.
Jessie bumped me with his arm. “The records we found about the spar showed that they could’ve put it up anywhere as early as 1801 through 1817,” he said, “so why write 1808 specifically? And you’d think they’d keep a navigational marker if they put it up. There were a lot of shipwrecks here back in the day.”
Salem’s coast was rockier than most. As the ships grew bigger and heavier in the 1700s, Salem lost its standing as a major port. The magic of Bette Ann’s candy shop never would’ve been realized had the doomed ship that brought in her chocolate-making ancestor steered clear of the coast.
“That’s why Old Ironsides hid out between this island and Fort Sewall,” Jessie said, “because the King’s Royal Navy couldn’t get close to them without running aground. They didn’t know the coast like our people did.”
“Wait… that happened during the War of 1812,” I mused. “I wonder if that means the navigational marker wasn’t up by then because… then the British would’ve had a heads-up on what to expect.”
“So like I said.” Jessie threw his hands up. “1808 could be anything. We were onto something. Hunter isn’t a complete idiot.”
Well, that’s up for interpretation.
I stared over at the 1808 as it grew smaller in the distance. The 8s could be eyes or two snakes woven together? I was going cross-eyed looking at it. I swung away just in time for Jessie to toss me the worn book he’d stolen from Hunter.
“Whoa, Jessie! Careful! This thing is old!”
“1662,” he said with a smirk.
And he was treating it like aCosmo? My hands grew prickly as I tried to handle it with even more care than I was earlier. The title was so long it practically covered the whole front of the book:Synopsis Medicinæ: Or, A Compendium of Galenical and Chymical Physick, Showing the Art of Healing According to the Precepts of Galen & Paracelsus. Fitted Universally to the Whole Art of Healingby Zerobabel Endecott.
That was the son of the longest-serving governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony… and he was apparently the author with the longest book title.
“Besides being a drunk, a ladies’ man, and the biggest jerk in Puritan land,” Jessie said, “Zerub was a doctor.”
He didn’t even attempt to say Zerubbabel’s full name. I shortened it myself. “Zerub was a scoundrel, huh? He sounds interesting.”
“That’s sugarcoating it—he got his mother’s indentured lace maker pregnant.”
My fingers tightened over his book. “Did he marry her?”
“Nope, his old man got him out of that and married her off to another servant… after the poor servant got a good whipping, of course, for being the father he never knew he was.”
I groaned. “Remind me to never complain about the times we live in.”
He smiled. The sparkle was returning to his eyes. “Done.”
I was mesmerized by this Puritan soap opera at this point. Hunter—as much as I despised him—had done his homework, it seemed.
“Zerub was forced to marry a woman of higher standing,” Jessie said, “and then he was shipped off to school and out of his father’s hair, where ideally he never bothered anyone ever again… except with his medical journals.”
My laughter joined his. Despite my mockery, I reverently turned over the timeworn pages of Zerub’s historic medical book. Having a son like this was divine punishment sent from above. “His father was known as the Hammer of the Quakers, you know.”
“Yup.” Jessie agreed. That was Massachusetts History 101 in school. “Governor Endicott was pretty vindictive.”
