The men immediately dropped the shovels and the pickaxes they had brought for the job.They good-naturedly made their way to the back of the church, thankful for the food and the break from such morbid work. None of them understood the logic of digging up a grave simply to fill it back in, but for a month’s wages for a day’s work, they would take orders from the Devil himself.
While the workers were busy sharing stories and food, Darcy took what he needed to address the bodies already exposed: six stakes, six coins, a bar to leverage each coffin lid, and a small hammer. Reaching the first of the exposed openings, he took off his coat and placed it on one of the nearby benches, and then he climbed down into the grave, the earth banked on either side of him. Finding a narrow foothold beside the wooden box, he wedged the lever between the sealed wood. Tapping with the hammer, he popped one of the nails, giving him the opening he needed.Then it was only a matter of moments before he lifted the lid on the resting place of the girl who had been the first to attack Damon during the early morning hours of the new day.
The girl in her white coming-out dress rested, as if in sleep. Her appearance shocked Darcy, for he had half expected a decomposed skeleton. Instead, before him lay a body in repose. Her full face appeared flushed, as if in permanent blush; her only apparent imperfection was badly scraped knuckles and fingernails. Automatically, Darcy looked at the inside of the coffin lid. Frighteningly, scratch marks, signs of the struggle to be set free, crisscrossed the closure.
Pulling back the supple lips, Darcy pried the girl’s mouth open.The soft fullness of her mouth gave way to elongated teeth protruding from pink gums. He wedged a finger between the teeth and slipped the coin in.Then he readjusted the girl’s mouth into a smile.
“You are a beautiful child,” he mused. “You will forgive me, I pray.” He placed the stake above her heart. “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.”Then he struck the blunted end of the ashen wood with the hammer, driving in deep into her
Unable to look upon the girl’s face again, he repositioned the lid and nailed it closed. “At least, now I know what to expect. It will get easier with each one.” He climbed onto the coffin and painfully pulled himself to the surface.
Learning from his mistakes, Darcy became quite adept at meting out eternity. He dispensed with four others before the men returned to work. “These may be filled in again,” he instructed Gordy.“Keep digging until all of them have been opened.”
“We be workin’ in pairs, Sir. It not be long.The men thinkin’ to leave before dark.”
“As soon as the work is finished, Gordy, they are free to leave. The sooner, the better for all of us. But remind them that I am paying for the work to be complete.” Darcy picked up his tools and moved to Lady Ellender’s chambers.
A few minutes later, Elizabeth found him there. “You did not come to eat, my Husband.”
Darcy sat in deep contemplation, perched on the ledge inside the iron gate. He looked up with Elizabeth’s approach. “I seem to have lost my appetite.” He reached for her and lifted Elizabeth to sit beside him.
Elizabeth took his hand and brought the palm to her mouth. The featherlike kiss placed the shadow of a smile on his lips. “We have lived a lifetime these past three months,” she mused out loud.
“Only three months?” he chuckled. “I feel that I have known you all my life.”
“Because we just began to live when we found each other.” Still holding his hand in hers, she traced his lifeline with her index finger.
Darcy cupped her chin in his other hand.“Damon says we have a great love, one to surpass that of our famous relatives.”
“One equal to the love of Arawn and Ellender would satisfy me. Even in death, she longed to sleep once more in his arms. Can you imagine such a love, Fitzwilliam?”
“Every time I look into your eyes, Elizabeth.” For long moments they remained locked in total surrender to each other. Surrounded by death, they found life. “Let us give Lady Ellender the release for which she has longed for two centuries. Tonight, Her Ladyship will sleep with her Lord Thomas.” Darcy climbed from the ledge and helped Elizabeth down to stand in front of him.
“These events were horrendous, but we must think of the good we leave behind: a community free to begin life again and an end to the unspeakable terror plaguing them.”
Hand in hand, they entered Lady Ellender’s spacious vault and made their farewells. As Gordy predicted, the men finished by midafternoon. All one and twenty graves turned, the Darcys left the priest to deliver his blessings. Returning to the inn, they waited patiently for the colonel’s arrival.
Damon Fitzwilliam hated boats of any size, from rowboats to the largest warships. It was not that he held a fear of drowning; he actually swam very well. But the rolling of the ship upon the water affected his inner balance, and he always felt weak and not much of a man when his stomach pitched and heaved on its own.
With Wickham’s coffin aboard, the small fishing boat cut through the rough waters of the North Sea. The rocking made Damon count to ten for the hundredth time as he took great gulps of air to settle the queasy feeling rumbling through him.
“Ye be lookin’ for one of St. Cuthbert’s miracles on the Holy Isle?” the ship’s captain asked out of curiosity. For what the colonel was paying him, the captain did not care why the military officer wished to go to the island.
Damon looked confused, but then realized the fishing captain thought he wanted to take his deceased passenger to the monastery of St. Cuthbert, known to bring about inexplicable healing. “No…no, nothing of that sort. Just a dying wish that I intend to fulfill.” He prayed that God would forgive the lie.
“I see,” said the man, although he did not understand why it was so important to take the body to Lindisfarne that day. “We be in harbor in ’nother half hour.”
“Thank you, Captain. I will be ready.”
Landing in the harbor of a small fishing village on the southwestern tip of the island, the colonel, Peter, and two of the men from the ship—whom he had agreed to pay extra—took off for the interior, carrying the coffin and several shovels. Expecting sandy, barren beaches, the fertile rise of land surprised him. There were hundreds of birds, which did not shock him, but also rabbits and other small game, which did. In the distance, Damon saw the ruins of the old tumbledown monastery, and he chuckled at the irony of placing Wickham’s bones within view of holy markers.
“This looks good,” he said to the men as he prepared to lower the coffin to the ground. They had walked nearly a mile inland. “We were to choose a place close to running water.” He offered no other explanation, and the locals asked for none from an outsider.
For nearly an hour, the four of them took turns digging a hole deep enough for a burial place. The process was slower than they had expected.Although the land was richly black and fertile, it was laced with rocks, and they good-naturedly stacked them in their own improvised altar.
“Here be ’nother one.” Peter handed a heavy stone up to one of the fishermen. He and the colonel took their turns in the hole while the other two men rested.
“At this rate, we will never finish. If we had not wasted so much time digging this far, I would choose another spot.”
Suddenly, the sound of running feet caught their attention, and Damon and Peter scrambled from the grave to find what caused such urgency. A boy from the ship scurried up the incline to meet them. Completely out of breath, the lad gulped for air, bent over at the waist, unable to deliver his message.
“What be it, Boy?” one of the fishermen demanded, impatient for the news.