Chapter 30 Discrepancies
Discrepancies
Lydia Brown
Saturday after breakfast, Kate heads to Micaville.
It turns out Eli never did go. Not on Wednesday or Thursday or Friday while we were in the workroom bringing order to Birdie’s books and Kate was desperate for the phone to ring.
When she finally reached him, he spouted a litany of vapid excuses: a flat tire, then a funeral to preach and his sister Prudence getting stung by yellow jackets.
And there’s no news about Loretty either, so today, Kate follows her own hunch and goes to talk to strangers.
Gus and I ride to the general store in Little Switzerland to pick up the photos she took last week at the Morrigan graveyard. Then we walk to the bookstore to show Professor Covey the rubbing we took of the headstone. We follow him to a long counter in back with space to unroll it.
“Thank you for including me in this exploration. Let’s see what we have here…”
He places bean pouches on the corners of the page to keep it flat. I say, “I sprayed it with fixative so the charcoal won’t smudge.”
“Good, very good…” he mumbles then gasps. “Had you told me the family name was Morrigan?” He looks up and slips off his readers.
“No, I misremembered it as Morrison. Does Morrigan jog your memory?”
“Not for a family from these parts, but from Celtic mythology. The Morrigan was an ancient Irish warrior queen. A shapeshifter who loved to stir trouble on battlefields. She was fearless.”
There it is again. That odd link between the shapeshifter Romi and potentially my graveyard. I say, “I found that reference in my Celtic dictionary as well. But what would my graveyard have to do with a Celtic warrior goddess?”
“The ties between Appalachia and Celtic lore are tight beginning in the 1700s. But your headstone is chiseled Morrigan, and therein lies a distinction. The warrior goddess was referred to as The Morrigan.”
He slips on his readers again and his eyes travel across the charcoal image to the dates. “May I jot down notes?”
“Certainly, but you’ll see some odd things.”
He remarks, “The obvious dying date is clear, but the birth date of February 29, 1702, is wrong.”
“I know. It’s not divisible by four, so it wasn’t a leap year. I didn’t bring rubbings of the smaller tombstones, but their birth dates are wrong as well. The birth months don’t have thirty-one days.”
“Fascinating, isn’t it? Do you think the stone carver chiseled three wrong dates by accident?”
“Of course not. One could have been off, but not all three.”
“I agree. He’s playing with us, but why?
” He picks up his magnifying glass to study the charcoal border.
“This daisy wheel at the top is a symbol to protect from witchcraft. That has me think your Morrigans believed in witches but weren’t witches.
And their dying date: October 31, 1761, is earlier than most recorded history in these parts. We didn’t become a state till 1789.”
Professor Covey sits back and grins. “It appears finding the lost graveyard has brought more questions than answers. You have unearthed a wonderful enigma, and I’d enjoy being part of the quest.”
“Gus took photos of the graveyard. We had them enlarged and picked them up a few minutes ago. Would you like to see them?”
“With pleasure.”
I reroll the rubbing, and Gus lines up the prints on the counter.
Magnifying glass in hand, Professor Covey shuffles along muttering excellent, interesting, well done.
I follow behind and marvel at the clarity of the photographs.
My niece has an artist’s eye like her Uncle Jack.
The lichen looks three-dimensional, and the carving on the stones is more pronounced.
While at the site, Gus had me hold my flashlight from the side, and the angle of light revealed the writing better than the rubbing. Professor Covey jots down more notes.
“The puzzlement is the errors in the dates, isn’t it?
” he says. “Why would there be such obvious mistakes? All three women have birth dates that don’t exist. And the symbols that frame the stones are a combination of religious or pagan and Wiccan, and that’s an unlikely marriage.
But the borders are all identical. Something fishy is going on.
” Professor Covey takes off his glasses and out of habit polishes the lens with his handkerchief.
“Your mystery is holding tight to secrets, ladies, and it grows more complex.”
“There’s something we haven’t told you.” I nod toward Gus to explain.
She says, “We got sick. Sick to our stomachs. When we were inside the wall making the rubbing, it was getting really cold. But when we walked outside the wall, the air was fresh and warm.”
Professor Covey studies our somber faces, then shocks us. “Ladies, we need to go back to that graveyard, and I need to accompany you. Are you free this afternoon?”