James Flanagan.

Kim slowly slipped the letter back into the envelope. She was dismayed, even shocked. She didn’t think of herself as a feminist, yet this letter offended her and made her feel like one. Elizabeth had been chattel to be bargained away. Kim’s sympathy for her forebear, which had been on the rise, now soared.

Returning to the cell, Kim put the letter on top of the bureau where she’d found it and began looking more carefully through the drawer. Oblivious to the time and her surroundings, she went through every slip of paper. Although she found a few more contemporary bills of lading, she found no more letters. Undaunted, she started on the second drawer. It was then that she heard the unmistakable sound of footsteps above her.

Kim froze. The vague fear she’d experienced when she’d first descended into the wine cellar came back with a vengeance. Only now it was fueled by more than just the spookiness of the huge, empty house. Now it was compounded by the guilt of trespassing into a forbidden and troubled past.

Consequently, her imagination ran wild, and as the footsteps passed directly overhead, her mental image was of some fearful ghost. She thought it might even be her dead grandfather, coming to exact revenge for her insolent and presumptuous attempt to uncover guarded secrets.

The sound of the footsteps receded then merged with the house’s creaks and groans. Kim was beset by two conflicting impulses: one was to flee blindly from the wine cellar; the other was to hide among the file cabinets and bureaus. Unable to decide, she did neither. Instead she stepped silently to the door of the cell and peeked around the jamb, looking down the long corridor toward the granite steps. At that moment she heard the door to the wine cellar creak open. She couldn’t see the door, but she was sure it was what she’d heard.

Paralyzed with fear, Kim helplessly watched as black shoes and trousers appeared and came relentlessly down the steps. Halfway they stopped. Then a figure bent down and a backlit, featureless face appeared.

“Kim?” Edward called. “Are you down here?”

Kim’s first response was to let out a sigh. Until then, she hadn’t been aware she’d been holding her breath. Leaning against the wall of the cell for support, since her legs felt tremulous, she called out to Edward to let him know where she was. In a few moments his large frame filled the doorway.

“You scared me,” Kim said as calmly as she could manage. Now that she knew it was Edward, she was acutely embarrassed by the extent of her terror.

“I’m sorry,” Edward said falteringly. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

“Why didn’t you call out sooner?” Kim asked.

“I did,” Edward said. “Several times. First when I came through the front door and again in the great room. I think the wine cellar must be insulated.”

“I suppose it is,” Kim said. “What are you doing here, anyway? I certainly didn’t expect you.”

“I tried to call you at your apartment,” Edward said. “Marsha told me you drove out here with the idea of fixing up the old house. On the spur of the moment I decided to come. I feel responsible since I was the one who suggested it.”

“That was considerate,” Kim said. Her pulse was still racing.

“I’m really sorry for having scared you,” Edward said.

“Never mind,” Kim said. “It’s my fault for letting my stupid imagination take over. I heard your footsteps and thought you were a ghost.”

Edward made an evil face and turned his hands into claws. Kim playfully socked him in the shoulder and told him he wasn’t funny.

They both felt relieved. The tension that existed evaporated.

“So you’ve started on the Elizabeth Stewart search,” Edward said. He eyed the open drawer of the bureau. “Did you find anything?”

“As a matter of fact I have,” Kim said. She stepped over to the bureau and handed Edward James Flanagan’s letter to Ronald Stewart.

Edward carefully slipped the note from the envelope. He held it close to the light. It took him as much time to read it as it had taken Kim.

“Indian raids in Andover!” Edward commented. “Can you imagine? Life certainly was different back then.”

Edward finished the letter and handed it back to Kim. “Fascinating,” he said.

“Doesn’t it upset you at all?” Kim asked.

“Not particularly,” Edward said. “Should it?”

“It upset me,” Kim said. “Poor Elizabeth had even less say about her tragic fate than I’d imagined. Her father was using her as a bargaining chip in a business deal. It’s deplorable.”

“I think you might be jumping to conclusions,” Edward said. “Opportunity as we know it didn’t exist in the seventeenth century. Life was harsher and more tenuous. People had to team up just to survive. Individual interests weren’t a high priority.”

“That doesn’t warrant making a deal with your daughter’s life,” Kim said. “It sounds as if her father were treating her like a cow or some other piece of property.”

“I still think you could be reading too much into it,” Edward said. “Just because there was a deal between James and Ronald doesn’t necessarily mean that Elizabeth didn’t have any say whether she wanted to marry Ronald or not. Also, you have to consider that it might have been a great source of comfort and satisfaction for her to know that she was providing for the rest of her family.”

“Well, maybe so,” Kim said. “Trouble is, I know what ultimately happened to her.”

“You still don’t know for sure if she was hanged or not,” Edward reminded her.

“That’s true,” Kim said. “But this letter at least suggests one reason she might have been vulnerable to being accused as a witch. From the reading I’ve done, people in Puritan times were not supposed to change their station in life, and if they did, they were automatically suspected of not following God’s will. Elizabeth’s sudden rise from a poor farmer’s daughter to a comparatively wealthy merchant’s wife certainly fits that category.”

“Vulnerability and actually being accused are two different things,” Edward said. “Since I haven’t seen her name in any of the books, I’m dubious.”

“My mother suggested that the reason she’s not mentioned is because the family went to great lengths to keep her name out of it. She even implied the reason was because the family considered Elizabeth guilty.”

“That’s a new twist,” Edward said. “But it makes sense in one regard. People in the seventeenth century believed in witchcraft. Maybe Elizabeth practiced it.”

“Wait a second,” Kim said. “Are you suggesting Elizabeth was a witch? My idea was that she was guilty of something, like changing her status, but certainly not that she considered herself a sorceress.”

“I mean maybe she practiced magic,” Edward said. “Back then there was white magic and black magic. The difference was that white magic was for good things, like curing a person or an animal. Black magic, on the other hand, had a malicious intent and was called witchcraft. Obviously there could have been times when it was a matter of opinion if some potion or charm represented white magic or black magic.”

“Well, maybe you have a point,” Kim said. She thought for a moment, then shook her head. “I don’t buy it. My intuition tells me otherwise. I have a feeling Elizabeth was an entirely innocent person caught in a terrible tragedy by some insidious trick of fate. Whatever the trick was, it must have been awful, and the fact that her memory has been treated so dreadfully just compounds the injustice.” Kim glanced around at the file cabinets, bureaus, and boxes. “The question is: could the explanation of whatever it was lie in this sea of documents?”

“I’d say that finding this personal letter is auspicious,” Edward said. “If there’s one, there’s got to be more. If you’re going to find the answer it will most likely be in personal correspondence.”

“I just wish there were some chronological order to these papers,” Kim said.