American Heroes Series - 03 - Purgatory (44 page)

“This is it,” she said, setting
the Jello cup down as they both sat on the bed. “Did you get a look at the
dumbwaiter?”

Nash was entranced as he gazed at
the book, running his hands carefully over the leather, inspecting the
stitching on it as Elliot had done.

“Yes,” he said. “It made me think
that this house has a lot of secrets and they just keep coming.”

Elliot wriggled her eyebrows in
agreement as Nash carefully opened up the journal. The writing on the first
page stared up at him.

“
Le journal de Madame Sophie
MacGregor Aury,”
he read softly in perfect French. “You were right; it says
the Journal of Madam Sophie MacGregor Aury.”

Nausea all but forgotten, Elliot
could feel her excitement growing. “Open it up and read it. I want to hear what
she has to say.”

Nash gazed at the cover for a
moment longer before opening up to the second page and beginning to read. The
journal was written in very carefully scripted long hand, the ink so faded in
spots that it was difficult to read, but the first thing that came to mind was
how lovingly it was done.

He started to read. As he read
the first few paragraphs out loud so Elliot could share the experience,
already, he got the overwhelming sense of resignation and duty through the eyes
of a woman who was not only the daughter of a pirate, but also the mistress of
one.

He read on, page by slow page.
The journal seemed to be written as more of a series of separate entries, some
dated and some not. There wasn’t much organization to it. As the hours ticked
away and Elliot lay down on the bed next to him as he read, Nash relayed
stories of the harsh conditions, the ‘vicious beasts’ who ate man and animal
alike, which Nash took to mean alligators, the savages and the sickness that
seemed to plague all of them.  It was all very fascinating and very, very real.

But there was something more he
noticed as he read. Sophie also, strangely enough, referred to herself in the
third person as she wrote, as if she was on the outside looking in at
everything that was happening. It was an odd perspective.

He continued on and as he got
deeper into the journal, he began to better understand the manner in which it
was written. From what Nash could tell, the journal only seemed to encompass
time spent at Purgatory because it started well after the house was built.

There was no mention of the
particulars of the house, like who designed it, or how it was built because
Nash had always wondered if it had been slave labor or shipwrights who built
the very sturdy home. Obviously, Louis-Michel had shipwrights as well as slaves
at his disposal, so that was a genuine curiosity.

As Nash read, he was hoping to
find a mention of the room beneath the house and its original purpose, but she
made no mention of anything to that regard. She did, however, speak on goods
and the prices of things, in true housewife fashion.

He continued reading deep into
the night. The journal wasn’t particularly long but it was difficult to read,
making each passage slow going. It gave Nash and Elliot insight into the world
of Sophie, and of Purgatory, that they could have never imagined.  Sophie would
speak of her and the house as if they were one, using an odd sentence structure
and word tense that had Nash re-reading passages several times to figure out
what she meant.

Then, the journal started
speaking of the children. It was close to midnight by the time Nash got around
to passages about the kids and Elliot had been struggling to stay away, but at
the first mention of Sophie’s first-born son, she perked up and listened. 
Sophie spoke of all four children together, which was odd because she had not
mentioned or documented their births. She spoke of Paul-Michel when he killed
his first deer and of Saturnine who liked to eat mud. Elliot, snuggled up
against Nash, thought it was all rather strange.

“She’s not writing like a diary,”
she yawned. “It’s like she’s just writing about whatever she feels like writing
when the mood strikes her.”

Nash nodded, peering at the pages
through his reading glasses.

“That’s strange,” he agreed. “You
would think she would have kept a daily record of things, not just events or
thoughts. I think the one thing I’ve come to see is that she’s not particularly
organized in thought or in her life.”

Elliot had to agree. “She writes
about the cost of flour and then in the next sentence, she’s talking about a
neighbor’s cow.”

“Like she can’t keep a train of
thought.”

“Do you think she really was
crazy like Dr. Clarke suggested?”

“Maybe,” he said. “But the way
she writes… it’s not that she’s uneducated, because she clearly is, which is
unusual in itself for a woman of that time period. There’s just no rhyme or
reason to what she writes about.”

Elliot yawned again, her head on
his chest. “Keep going,” she told him. “She’s talking about the kids. Maybe
she’ll say what happened to them.”

Nash continued to read, slow
going. Sophie was writing mostly about the children now, how they had hired a
woman from the east to come and educate them and how she smacked the children
with a stick if they didn’t get their lessons correct. Then she rambled on
about Louis-Michel, only the second time in the journal she had ever mentioned
his name.

 Nash was coming to think that
she wasn’t his mistress by choice because her words regarding the man implied
bitterness.  She wrote of how the man was grooming Paul-Michel to succeed him,
and how their son had the same ‘dark hatred’ in his eyes that his father had.
Now the journal was starting to get interesting.

Nash was starting on the last few
pages when he heard soft snoring. Glancing down, he saw that Elliot had fallen
asleep against his chest. He carefully pulled the covers up over her but
continued reading, no longer out loud.

Sophie’s writings were growing
more bitter and negative as she spoke of ‘dark days’ and ‘hellish nights’ with
Louis-Michel. Then he seemed to be gone because she only wrote of the children
and of a pet pig, and then it was of Paul-Michel’s marriage to Julia Loreau.
Somehow, the subject of wealth came up and he began to pay close attention.

She wrote of “golden wagons” from
the Mississippi River, which he wasn’t sure about until she spoke of giving
equal portions to each child. Nash was coming to think that she meant the
wagons that must have transported the wealth from the pirate ships docked at
the river to Purgatory, because to her, they surely must have looked like
wagons laden with gold, hence, golden wagons.

The more he read, the more it
began to look as if Louis-Michel had indeed brought treasure of immense
proportions to Purgatory and Sophie began to speak of the wealth being ‘in the
very walls’ of Purgatory.

Again, Nash wasn’t sure if she
meant they had paid a good deal for the house, or spent money on a lavish
lifestyle and furnishings, or if she meant the literal walls. His pulse was
beginning to race with excitement and he found that he had to wake Elliot up.
She would never forgive him if he didn’t.

She didn’t wake up easily. He had
to shake her, very gently, four times before she finally roused. As soon as she
became lucid, she groaned.

“Oh, God,” she breathed. “I feel
so nauseous.”

He kissed her forehead. “I’m
sorry I woke you, but I think you’re going to want to hear this.”

Her eyes weren’t quite open.
“Hear what?”

“Sophie writing about treasure.”

As he suspected, she very quickly
perked up. “Treasure?” she repeated. “What does she say?”

Nash went back a page to the part
where Sophie spoke of the golden wagons and of the treasure being in the very
walls of Purgatory. Elliot sat up, rubbing her eyes, as he read the passage.

“That’s completely plausible,”
she said, both sleepy and excited. “When we restored it, we really didn’t touch
the walls because of the
bousillage.
The only walls we had to tear up
were in the kitchen because of the rot, and even that was on a minimal scale.
It’s absolutely plausible for some kind of pirate treasure to be sealed up in
the walls of Purgatory. We just haven’t found it yet!”

He looked at her, thinking on the
possibility. Being the less excitable of the two, he wasn’t ready to start
tearing up the walls yet. He looked back to the journal.

“Listen to this part,” he said. 
“Let me see if I can make sense of it. She speaks of greed, tremendous greed… but
I don’t see who she… wait a minute. She’s speaking of Paul-Michel.”

Elliot was hanging on every word.
“What does she say?”

Nash’s brow furrowed as he
continued to read. “Wow,” he finally said softly. “She says that Paul-Michel
was wrought with greed and wanted everything for himself.  The kid was only
seventeen, right?”

Elliot shrugged. “He was
seventeen when he died. Did she date that passage so we know when she wrote
it?”

He looked over the page, shaking
his head. “No,” he replied. “But by this time, he was already married, so he
had to be at least sixteen or seventeen.”

“What does she say about his
greed?”

Nash read carefully, translating
Sophie’s own words. “
’My first son, my angel, has turned dark and against us
all. He wants for himself what his brothers have. As this day turned dark, my
heart wept at the sight of Joseph and Saturnine as they joined our holy God in
heaven.  Their souls are consigned to God as their brother’s greed destroyed
them.  My dearest angel, Felicity, fought against the darkness with others who
sought to take rewards for themselves, but Paul-Michel rose up to smite them
all. Now my Felicity lays at my feet with her army of dead souls, and all I see
is my first son as he lays claim to what his brothers were given.’
”

Nash paused when he came to the
end of the passage, looking up at Elliot. She was staring back at him with
shock.

“My God,” she breathed, a hand to
her mouth. “It sounds like some kind of battle, doesn’t it? Paul-Michel against
Felicity after he apparently killed his brothers.”

Nash puffed out his cheeks,
struggling to digest what he had read. 

“It sure sounds like it,” he
agreed.  “That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard of, but on the other hand,
I guess it makes sense. All of these people were pirates, including the kids.
In their world, battles and greed were perfectly natural.”

Elliot was thinking of the
children, doing battle against each other.

“So Paul-Michel decides he wants
everything and kills his brother to get it,” she said thoughtfully. “Only his
sister, who wasn’t more than fourteen or so, decides to rise up against him.
Maybe she did it out of self-protection because if Paul-Michel went after their
brothers, then it was only a matter of time before he went after the sister.
Sophie said that Felicity fought with people who wanted to take the wealth for
themselves but ended up dying along with them.  Oh, God, Nash; imagine being
the mother of these children and watching this go on.  Why didn’t she do
something to stop it?”

Nash shook his head. “I don’t know,”
he said. “Women back then were chattel, especially the mistress of a legendary
pirate. She wouldn’t dare resist her son who was going to take over the empire.
But Felicity fought back, so I’m not sure why the daughter fought her brother
but the mother didn’t.”

Elliot thought of the children
buried in the crypt below as the horrific tale came to light. Her gaze moved
around the walls of the room, wondering what horrors they must have seen two
hundred years ago. She couldn’t even fathom it.  As she thought of the battling
children with a heavy heart, Nash continued reading.

“Sophie goes on to say this – ‘
in
the darkness of the morning, my first son, my angel, came for me as well. He
would take me also for his dark deeds but God spoke to me and told me to seek
vengeance for my littlest angels. Justice would be in blood, in my hands
’,”
Nash paused, staring at the words. When he continued, it was a whisper. “
Comme
je lui ai donné la vie, donc faire je le prends. Comme sa vie draine loin, donc
extraira.
’”

Elliot stared at him. “What does
that mean?”

Nash sighed heavily. “Roughly
translated, it means ‘as I gave life, so shall I take it.  As his life drains
away, so shall mine’.”

Pregnant and emotional, Elliot’s
eyes filled with tears. “That’s so sad,” she whispered. “She must have killed
him. She killed him because he killed the others.”

Nash looked up at her, reaching
out to hold her hand to comfort her. He looked back at the journal.

“There’s more,” he said quietly.
“She says that their greed is buried with them for eternity.  Then there’s this
last passage here that says….”

He trailed off and she looked up
at his face, noticing his strange expression.  “What is it?” she asked.

Nash blinked as if not quite
believing what he was reading.  When he spoke, it was with awe. “
’To all who
know the matter of greed decided, with blood and curses we know the hell we
have condemned ourselves to in the bowels of Purgatory’
.”