Page 49 of In the Pursuit of Haven
I must’ve caught him after he’d crawled out of bed yesterday.
Glancing over at some of the nearby gravestones like he was desperate to make up for our disastrous first and second run-ins, he started making suggestions. “There are plenty of interesting gravestones around here—Freemason symbols, gourds, scythes, snakes. It just depends on what you’re looking for.”
My attention caught on the snakes. Immediately my mind went to the Crabbs’ family locket. “Is the snake on Samuel Cheever’s gravestone?”
“The reverend?”
I wriggled uncomfortably, remembering that I was working this investigation on my own, but I had to act natural now. “Yes,” I admitted.
“No, the snake is on Susanna Jayne’s behind you—the schoolteacher’s wife.”
I swiveled, seeing the most elaborate gravestone of my life. It was more of a memorial, really. A womanly cartoonish skeleton held the sun and moon like a prize, and framing her was a plump snake eating its tail.
“That snake means eternity,” he said, “because it’s making a circle. You’re a historian, aren’t you? Your aunt always bragged about you.”
That reminded me. “How do you know my aunt again?” I asked.
“We were good friends… of course, we were closer when we were younger. The years have a way of making friends drift apart.” A shadow passed over his expression. There was a story there, and I began to wonder if there was any mention of him on Haven’s mystery board. Before I could ask him his name, he pointed to a gravestone to the side of us. “Oh, here it is.”
Frost crept its icy fingers over the double-arched tympanum carrying not one death’s head with wings, but two.
What was the meaning behind two skulls when usually that meant a couple had been buried there? Was it a mistake or done on purpose?
“No one knows where his wife Ruth was buried.”
And this guy had just read my mind.
Overcome with curiosity, I pushed my hands against my knees to inspect the funerary inscription closer. It was lengthy, covering the whole stone. Moss and lichens obscured the written eulogy just like in Haven’s pictures, and as she’d noted, the gravestone was broken at one time—sliced diagonally in half, it seemed. The Latin was also faded from his death date in 1724, but I could make out a few words, and one phrase stood out like a beacon:“Pastoris Redi Reliquiae.”
Shepherd of the Relics! In this case, it definitely meant the “Pastor’s remains,” but I’d seen it so many times that it had to mean something… except what was Redi in the middle of the phrase? Part of the word had been added by helpful hands later, and quite literally it meant, “Return the Shepherd Relics.”
Yeah, Haven was right. This was bad Latin.
“His father was a Latin schoolmaster in Boston,” my new friend told me.
I jumped when the stranger seemed to read my mind again. “Is that so?” The schoolteacher hadn’t passed any of his knowledge down to his son… unless he had? What if this broken Latin hid a message in the eulogy?
I snapped on my phone’s flashlight to spotlight what I could. So much of the message was difficult to read because of erosion, though what little I made out paid the usual homage to a hardworking pastor, one who was good and kind and service-oriented.
The word “Philadelphia” stuck out. Yes, that meant the reverend was also benevolent, but it was capitalized. This was also the name of a city run by the Quakers while he lived. Could that be a location clue?
I had no idea what Drake found here that sent him to Gerry Island.
A lot of words had been added later. That was usual for gravestones from this time period, but I was looking for anything that could be meant as a message. The wordquantumlibet,which meant “any amount” was added at a later time with a little triangle to mark that it belonged betweeninsigniterandreparaturn, which as a phrase made no sense—significantly “any amount” of repair?
The punctuation was a mess; did its careless placement mean something?
Without the addition, it would say, “significantly repaired”—and to top it all off, those words were in parenthesis and broke up the phrase,Populo interea Damnum effuse lugentein a very odd way.
If the epitaph hadn’t been interrupted by parenthesis, it would mean, “The people mourned greatly.” But arranged the way it was, it meant, “The people damaged.”
The gravestone had been damaged all right, though I doubted that’s what the phrase meant. Haven had also wondered if the break in the stone might’ve been done purposely to highlight certain words, but reading the Latin down the repaired area made even less sense than the present funerary inscription.
Haven’s old friend watched on patiently. “Cheever was an interesting chap,” he said. “The residents here lured him from Salem to preach to Marblehead. For a man of God, he made strange bedfellows, since these were rowdy folks this side of the peninsula.”Yeah, Crabb was one of them. Why would a Puritan minister have ties with a pirate?“The reverend lived on a cottage on Gerry Island just across the way.”
My head shot up.
Was this why Haven thought this gravestone had gotten Drake Crabb killed? Samuel Cheever’s Latin riddle could’ve sent Matthew’s brother off to do something reckless.
