Page 5 of In the Pursuit of Haven
Rain burst from the clouds in a torrent that felt slightly ironic after that question. I gasped, even as his hand clamped over mine. “Let’s just get this over with,” he shouted over the noise.
So no, it isn’t safe.And I wasn’t about to go back without meeting Ruth’s challenge first.
He forged ahead. My bare feet slapped over the grass as the downpour quickly transformed the dirt into mud while we hurried to the rock. My hair was plastered against my face and shoulders in seconds. I could only see Jessie’s shadow ahead of me, though his strong jaw was occasionally lit up by the storm in the distance.
His sturdy hands were my only guide as we found the rock. Pulling me closer, we ducked under its shelter to get away from the rain. Was this really happening? He worked his hoodie off under the torrent.
Was he really hot? I was freezing. He draped his hoodie over my shoulders.Oh, that was really nice. Okay, okay, I see what he’s doing.“Are you okay?” he asked.
I nodded as we settled into the cold grass. All we needed to do was start telling our family’s ghost stories and we could go home. If his sordid background had any benefit, it was that he had an endless supply to choose from. My mom was an orphan, and I realized what I’d forgotten in my resolve to get here—I had nothing to share!
I bumped his arm. “You tell your story first!”
“How about I do the one about why your Aunt Haven hates us.”
I heard his smile through his voice, and I wasn’t about to lie, I was enthralled. If Jessie could fill me in on the mystery, I’d be super grateful. “Okay,” I said.
He pulled closer to me so I could hear the gruesome details. “Well, for it to make sense, the story starts out way farther back than when your aunt got involved…”
I nodded; my forehead brushed against his cheek and I sucked in my breath. I shouldn’t be this close to him. Haven was already going to have my head, but my self-preservation was quickly draining the more he drew me in. “This happened during the witch trials,” he started out.
So, 1692. I knew my history. I fed off history. It was the gossip of the world.
“My ancestor was in the prison with all the witches,” he said, “but… he wasn’t in there as a witch. He was a pirate.”
I stiffened with excitement. Jessie didn’t know it, but he’d accidently discovered my Kryptonite. I felt his arms against mine as his body protected mine from this vicious storm. I could almost imagine him as his swashbuckling ancestor. I can’t help it, okay? Stories are my thing, and I disappear when I hear a really good one and this one has a ton of potential.
“But Jonathon Crabb, he had friends in high places,” Jessie continued through the howling wind. “Back then pirating was a profitable business, some said he even sailed the high seas with Governor Phips. You’ve heard of him?”
Of course, that was Massachusetts History 101. The first governor appointed by the restored British Crown happened to be a pirate—he’d won the British a lot of money with his treasure hunting, so they could start the first bank of England. I nodded, and then realizing he couldn’t see me, chirped a “Yes.” That was immediately lost in the noise of the crashing waves. “Yes!” I shouted again.
Jessie bent down next to my ear. “Well, then you also have to know that Phips was a little too busy to help out my ancestor. His wife had just been accused of being a witch and he was fighting the very people who backed him as governor.”
I knew that too—once Phips went up against those jerks and took the teeth out of their witch hunting power, they turned against the governor, and he ended up dying in a jail in England, so that those same power-hungry scoundrels and the ones who’d backed them could take over ruling the colony, though thankfully by then, witch hunting had lost its popularity.
Like I said, history fascinates me, though… sometimes I wish dirtbags like those witch hunters got their just desserts in this life.
I shivered in the cold and Jessie grabbed the ends of his hoodie on either side of me and tried to warm me up with it. “The point is Crabb had connections,” he said against another crash of thunder, “and so he had the means to find himself a treasure that was unimaginable… and everybody wanted a piece of it.”
This wasn’t exactly a ghost story, but I was enjoying myself too much to complain, despite the wind and cold; maybe because of it. The worse the elements grew, the more I could imagine Jessie as the dashing Jonathon Crabb, fighting impossible odds to keep his treasure out of the hands of his enemies. “He wouldn’t talk,” Jessie said, “even after being forced into a claustrophobic prison! No, Crabb just sat shackled there, in a cell smaller than a crypt where the flood waters rose and… it was like this—cold and wet, only he was there for almost a year! And his family had to pay for it too. Sheriff Corwin came to shake them down of everything they were worth—his whole family was ruined when they tried to pay for his room and board, as if he was in some kind of five-star hotel instead of that rat hole he was in.”
The way Jessie told a story, I felt like I was there. I’d never seen anyone so animated when going off on history. He was growing on me by the second.
“And don’t think that money they were taking from Crabb’s family wasn’t going straight into the sheriff and magistrates’ pockets,” Jessie said. “Those men were all cousins and cronies—they had their system, looking like heroes while in the shadows they stole people’s lives.”
Another jagged bolt of lightning sliced through the sky. I took a steadying breath. Wizard Rock provided almost perfect shelter from the rain, but soon it wouldn’t be enough.
We were in a race to finish up our stories, so we could run back to the boat. Jessie rushed through his like a freight train: “Meanwhile that pirate refused to talk, despite the starvation, despite going insane from the isolation and the tortures to get him to confess. His only company was the rats until one day, the prison was so packed with witches that the jailors threw a woman in there with him.”
A love story? I couldn’t help the dumbfounded smile taking over my face. The dashing pirate had only turned a million times more romantic.
“Crazy in a world where men couldn’t even look at a woman without raising suspicion,” Jessie said, “but in prison, even a Puritan one, there were no pretty social manners to bother anyone; besides that, she had no rights. She was a witch.”
“Did she… did she get hung?”
“Well…” Jessie shrugged. “The thing is we don’t know her name, only that he fell in love with her and so the jailors finally had something to use against him.”
I let out a breath. “Oh.”
