Kim looked back at the coffin. She was confused. The young afflicted women had not been thought of as witches themselves, as Elizabeth had been. The exception had been Mary Warren, who had been both one of the afflicted and one of the accused, yet she’d been released and not executed. What made Elizabeth different? Why wasn’t she just one of the afflicted? Could it have been that she was afflicted but refused to accuse anyone of afflicting her? Or could she have been practicing the occult, as her father had intimated?
Kim sighed and shook her head. She didn’t have any answers. It all seemed to come back to the mysterious conclusive evidence and what it could have been. Kim’s gaze wandered to the lonely castle, and in her mind’s eye she saw the innumerable file cabinets, trunks, and boxes.
She glanced down at her watch. There were still several hours of daylight. Impulsively, she walked over to her car, climbed in, and drove up to the castle. With the mystery of Elizabeth so prominent in her mind, she thought she’d spend a little more time on the daunting task of looking through the papers.
Kim pushed through the front door of the castle and whistled to keep herself company. At the base of the grand staircase she hesitated. The attic was certainly more agreeable than the wine cellar, but her last visit to the attic had been singularly unsuccessful. She’d found nothing from the seventeenth century despite almost five hours of effort.
Reversing her direction, Kim walked into the dining room and opened the heavy oak door of the wine cellar. She flipped on the sconces and descended the granite steps. Walking along the central corridor, she peered into successive individual cells. Recognizing that there was no order to the material, she thought it important that she develop some rational plan. Vaguely she thought that she would start in the very farthest cell and begin to organize the papers according to subject matter and age.
Passing one particular cell, Kim did a double take. Returning to it, she gazed in at the furniture. There was the usual complement of file cabinets, bureaus, trunks, and boxes. But there was also something different. On top of one of the bureaus was a wooden box that looked familiar to Kim. It closely resembled the Bible box which the Witch House tour guide had described as an invariable part of a Puritan home.
Stepping over to the bureau, Kim ran her fingers along the top of the box, leaving parallel trails in the dust. The wood was unfinished yet perfectly smooth. There was no doubt the box was old. Placing her hands at either end, Kim opened the hinged lid.
Inside, appropriately enough, was a worn Bible bound in thick leather. Lifting the Bible out, Kim noticed that beneath it were some envelopes and papers. She carried the Bible out to the hall where the light was better. Folding back the cover and flyleaf, she looked at the date. It was printed in London in 1635. She thumbed through the text in hopes that some sheets of paper might have been stuck in the pages, but there was nothing.
Kim was about to return to the Bible box when the back cover of the Bible fell open in her hands. Written on the endpaper was: Ronald Stewart his book 1663. The handwriting resembled the graceful cursive script Kim recognized to be Ronald’s. She guessed he’d written in the Bible as a boy.
Turning the back flyleaf, Kim found a series of blank pages with the word Memorandum printed at the top. On the first memorandum page following the Bible text she found more of Ronald’s handwriting. Here he had recorded each of the marriages, births, and deaths of his family. With her index finger keeping her oriented on the page, Kim read off each of the dates until she came to the date of Ronald’s marriage to Rebecca. It had been Saturday, October 1, 1692.
Kim was appalled. That meant that Ronald had married Elizabeth’s sister just ten weeks after Elizabeth’s death! That seemed much too quick to Kim, and once again she found herself questioning Ronald’s behavior. She couldn’t help but wonder if he’d had something to do with Elizabeth’s execution. With such haste to remarry it was difficult for Kim to imagine that Ronald and Rebecca hadn’t been having an affair.