Defending the Dead (Relatively Dead Mysteries Book 3) (17 page)

She pivoted around and recognized what had been the nineteenth-century church, which sat on the site of the First Church. It still bore the Daniel Low and Company sign that had been added when it was a jewelry store. Conveniently there was a pedestrian plaza running alongside it, with tables and awnings. “I think that’s where the church was. Mind if we sit?”

“No, not at all. You want a soda or something?” Ned asked.

“Sure, that sounds good. I’ll snag a table.” As Ned strolled off in search of something to drink, Abby found a table and sat down. Luckily at mid-afternoon there weren’t a lot of people around to see her acting like a flake. How was she supposed to do this? Call up the ghosts of the past? She felt like a fraud. Well, a quick scan of the passersby didn’t yield anybody wearing clothes a century or three out of date. She closed her eyes.

And the world changed. Part of her knew she was still sitting in the sunshine in modern Salem, but what she saw was a dark room, crowded with both men and women, and it looked to her as though it was a trial.
No! How?
It was impossible, but she could hear people speaking. A panel of what could only be judges were seated at one side of the room, and a man about her own age stood before them. He looked ordinary: his clothes were clean but not fancy. He didn’t seem nervous, just determined. Another man sat at the far end of the table, pen poised over paper—the court reporter of the day?

“Your name?” one of the judges addressed the standing man.

“Samuel Barton, sir.”

“Age?”

“Twenty-eight years, sir.”

“Why come you here before us?”

“To speak for Goody Proctor, who is accused of being a witch.”

“What do you have to tell us?”

The young man stood up straighter and looked squarely at the judges. “In March of this year I was at the house of Thomas Putnam. They got to talking about who was afflicted, and who the children had complained of. One of them there was Mercy Lewes, and they said she had cried out against Goody Proctor. And Mercy Lewes she did deny it, said she had never cried out against Goody Proctor nor anyone else. She said all she did was point and say, ‘There she is,’ but she was not pointing at Goody Proctor. But Thomas Putnam and his wife said she did. And Mercy Lewes said that if she did that, she did it when she was out of her head, because she had seen nobody.”

There fell a silence, broken only by the scratching of the clerk’s quill pen. Then a judge said, “Thank you, sir. That is all we require from you, and you may stand down. We now call John Houghton before us.”

The room dissolved when Abby felt a hand on her shoulder. She looked up to see Ned, watching her with concern. “Are you all right?”

“I don’t know,” she whispered. “Barton,” she said more strongly. “He said his name was Samuel Barton, and he was testifying on behalf of Elizabeth Proctor.”

Need took a deep breath and sat down, pushing a bottle of iced tea toward Abby. “Abby, I . . . I’m not sure what to say. You’re telling me you just saw a part of the Salem witch trials?”

“Yes. What else could it be? It was right here. Someone was recording it—writing it down. The court records are all available online and in print, so it’s easy to check.”

“Are you sure that you haven’t already read about this particular episode and you’re just fantasizing it?”

“Ned, there are hundreds of pages of court records and testimony! I haven’t had the time to read all of them. You don’t believe me?” She was beginning to feel angry—or was that just the residue from the tense scene she had witnessed?

“No, I didn’t mean that, Abby. I’m just asking. All right, if it’s true, why this particular event out of all of them? Or at least, why first? It’s possible that if you sat here for long, you might see a lot more.”

“Why Samuel Barton, you mean? Because when I started pushing back one of my family lines, I found a Barton—this was only last week. I haven’t had time to follow it back, but it makes sense, doesn’t it? Why else would I see him, rather than someone else? But there are no Bartons on the list of either accused or accusers—I would have noticed that.”

Ned took a drink from his own bottle and gave Abby a small smile. “If it was anyone else talking, I’d think you were just looking to make yourself more important. Like, ‘wouldn’t it be cool to have an ancestor at Salem during the witch trials?’ But I have to believe you, Abby.”

“Thank you.” Abby reached out to touch his hand, and then thought better of it. Maybe joining hands would amplify her own perceptions, but she wasn’t sure if she could handle any more right now without overloading. Had she really just seen something that happened over three hundred years earlier?

“Have you had enough for one day?” Ned asked.

“I think so. I hate to waste the opportunity, since we’re here, but I’m afraid I might short-circuit or something, and you’d have to carry me home. And of course, now I want to get to my laptop and plot out the line from the Eliza Barton I found to Samuel, which I assume exists. Oh, unless you’d like to sit here for a bit and see if you can pick up anything? It’s possible you had people here, you know.”

“I don’t think I’m up for it right now,” Ned said, looking uncomfortable. “One big hit per day between us is plenty, don’t you think?”

“I guess.” Abby wasn’t sure whether she was relieved or disappointed. Maybe she would be more help to him once she sorted out her own impressions. Or was that just a rationalization? “I’ll let you know if I find anyone who I think connects to you.”

“Fine. You ready to go? You don’t want to go look for the prison site?”

Abby stood up. “No, not now. I don’t know if this Samuel was ever there—all I saw of him was when he was a witness—but there must have been a lot of emotional pain at the prison, and I’d rather not find out today. Let’s go home.”

They walked back to the parking garage and drove out of town. Abby was silent for most of the ride, trying to retain and also understand what she had seen. It wasn’t like she was starry-eyed. She knew she’d seen plenty of engravings of the trial sites (or maybe seen the same two or three many times), so she could have projected those into a fantasy. A pretty elaborate fantasy, she admitted. But she questioned everything she learned or saw; she wasn’t just looking for attention, or for the bragging rights for future parties. “Oh, yes, I’m descended from a witch.” Great conversation starter, but she didn’t go to that kind of party. She’d be much more likely to launch into an impassioned discussion about how generations had gotten it wrong about Salem, which probably would have driven away anybody at a party.

“You’ve been quiet,” Ned commented as he pulled into their driveway.

“Just thinking. And thank you for not interrupting. We’re both lousy at making small talk, aren’t we?”

“Kind of. Any conclusions?”

“Just that I need to know a lot more, but at least I know where to look.”

Then she realized there was something she had missed in her excitement. “Ned, there might be more.”

He turned off the engine and faced her. “Why do you say that?”

“You know in the past, sometimes I see these people through someone else? Not always, not since I’ve gotten more tuned in to the whole thing. But sometimes. This may be one of them. I was seeing Samuel, and the rest of the room and the people in it, very clearly. Which means I
wasn’t
seeing it from Samuel’s point of view. So maybe I’m connected to someone else who was there.”

Ned nodded. “Okay. So right now you need to follow your Barton line back to this Samuel and track down this specific event, and then see who else shows up.” He hesitated before adding, “Are you all right with this? I mean, you looked pretty shaken up when I came back to the table.”

“I was, I have to admit. But it kind of proves my point, doesn’t it? The trials inspired a lot of strong emotions in the people—the accused, the accusers, the witnesses. That’s what I was looking for, what I hoped to find. So I can’t complain when I do find it. And of course, now more than ever I want to know what was going on. So now I have Samuel’s name, and no doubt he’s somewhere in the records, so I can trace him. That’s what I’ll do next.”

But who was the other person, the one who was watching Samuel?

“Let’s go inside—unless you’re up for looking at wallpaper?” Ned said.

“Sure, why not?” She still needed to calm down a bit before trying to do any computer research. It would be a good distraction. Samuel wasn’t going anywhere, and he’d be waiting for her later.

17

“I like that one,” Abby said, pointing to a roll of wallpaper, one of half a dozen lined up along the foot of the wall in the front parlor. Too bad the store wouldn’t give out samples, so each could be spread out to show the overall pattern, but at least they had let her bring home sample rolls, so she could study them where they were going to go, by daylight.

“Okay,” Ned said cautiously.

She cocked her head at him. “Well, that wasn’t exactly a glowing endorsement. What is it you
don’t
like about it?”

“The pattern looks kind of small and fussy, now that I see it here. It’s a big room.”

Abby studied the roll. “I think you’re right. It looked better in the store. But I like the colors. Okay, now it’s your turn. Which one do you like?”

Ned looked more and more uncomfortable. Almost at random he pointed to another one. “That?”

“Why?” Abby demanded.

“It looks, I don’t know, important. Formal, maybe. This is a formal room, one of those that Victorians used only when the minister was coming to tea or they were hosting a wake. The rest of the time they kept the room closed off—hence the pocket doors. Open them up for light when you use the room, close them to save heat when you don’t.”

“Okay, that makes sense. But the colors are kind of blah. I wish I hadn’t seen the William Morris ones first.”

“Why not go with Morris wallpaper, then, if you like it?”

“Because it’s hideously expensive, no matter how historically correct it is. Like over a hundred dollars per roll, and I’m afraid to calculate how many rolls we would need.” Much less contemplate matching patterns around all those windows and doors.

“But you like it?”

“I do. It’s gorgeous.”

“So order it,” Ned said firmly.

“Ned!” Abby protested. “It seems so extravagant. I mean, with a world full of starving people, how can I justify putting a thousand dollars’ worth of paper on my walls?”

“Send another thousand to the starving people.”

Abby shook her head. She was not used to having money. Of course, she didn’t actually have it—Ned did. Ned had earned it, through his own efforts. He had the right to spend it any way he wanted. He wasn’t into showing off—not that anyone, until his mother, had seen the house, and Abby couldn’t see them ever hosting soirees full of important people—that is, the ones who would recognize and appreciate William Morris wallpaper. But it seemed morally wrong, and being so extravagant made her uncomfortable.

But it was so pretty, and it went so well with the house.

“Abby, what’s the problem?” Ned asked quietly.

“I feel guilty, I guess. I mean, the only people who are going to see it are you and me.”

“So? You like it. It makes you happy. Do you have something against being happy?”

“I don’t
think
so. Maybe I should practice more.”

“So get the wallpaper you like.”

Abby regarded him for a moment, then said, “All right—for this room only. We’ll find something more affordable for the back parlor and the dining room. And we’ll paint the kitchen.”

“Okay, one task done: we’ve picked out a wallpaper for the parlor. Does the floor sanding come next?” Ned asked.

“I think so. Are you planning to do that yourself?”

“No way. I would end up destroying the floor—it would look like a topographic map, with hills and valleys, and it’s too nice to risk it. I love the inlays around the edges. Let’s see if we can find a trustworthy contractor and find out what he’ll charge us. It’ll be cheaper in the long run.”

“Check—I’ll put that on the list. Once we get the wallpaper, we can match the paint color. Oh, and is the wiring okay?”

“That I can answer: yes. It was a fire hazard the way it was when I bought the place, so I had that replaced before I moved in. The same time I put in the Wi-Fi.”

“Oh, great—one decision I don’t have to make. Good thinking.”

“Did we have other plans for today, now that we’ve decided on a wallpaper?” Ned asked.

“I’m hunting for Samuel Barton. You can do what you want, like mow the lawn. Do we have a lawn mower? Your mother asked, and I had no idea.”

“Yes, we do. A gas-powered push model—good exercise. Have you used one?”

“No. Dad always did it at home. Do we have a snowblower?”

“Yes. Abby, it’s May—are you worried about snow already?”

“After this past winter, aren’t you?” Abby retorted. “Where the heck are you keeping these things?”

“In the cellar, near the hatch in back—not the most convenient solution, I’ll admit, since I have to haul them up and down the steps there. The property had a stable when it was built, but it burned down before I was born, and I guess the people who owned the house didn’t bother to rebuild. Are you yearning for a garage?”

“I hadn’t really thought about it. At least the driveway is big enough to accommodate two cars. With a lot of shoveling. But I don’t want to deal with adding an entire building until we’ve gotten a little further with this one.”

“Good point. Then I shall go mow the lawn, and you can go hunt Bartons. We can rendezvous for lunch.”

“A brilliant plan,” Abby said, and kissed him. Which took at least five minutes.
Anything worth doing was worth doing well,
her mother had always said, although Abby doubted that she had counted on this particular application. She shoved him away at last. “I’ve got work to do.”

As Ned wandered out in search of the lawn mower, and gas for it, and whatever other tools he needed, Abby sat down at the dining room table and booted up the laptop, then laid out what information and diagrams she had. She zoomed in on Eliza Barton, who, by her calculation, was her fourth great-grandmother. Based on her experience in Salem, the man she had seen, Samuel Barton, was most likely a lineal ancestor of hers, so it was time to find out who Eliza was. There had to be a connection, didn’t there?