Chapter 43 Spilled Secrets
Spilled Secrets
Kate Shaw
The next morning before eight, Lydia and I leave for the bookstore.
Gus stays home to work on a secret. When we arrive, Theresa’s Volkswagen is there, and she sits at a small wrought iron table and chair outside the locked door.
She’s dressed even more electrified today in orange clothing down to orange sneakers.
Where does she find such things? Did she make them or dye them or hire a tailor who worked for the circus?
The woman doesn’t have a reticent bone in her body.
Lydia says, “Sorry to keep you waiting. I’ll get you keys today so your valuable time isn’t wasted.”
“No problem. I’ve been entertained by the motorcyclists on their touring machines.
A few stopped to ask when the bookstore opened.
They’re headed down this stretch of road called the Diamondback.
One rider told me there are a hundred and ninety steep curves in only twelve miles.
It must be a thrill of a ride.” She follows us up the stairs chatting about switchbacks and hairpin curves and the Harley-Davidson she almost bought when she was in graduate school.
But when we enter the workroom she becomes all business.
“I want to start with the journal because it’s manageable.” She turns on a soft, diffused light inside the closet and lines up her note-taking tools. She secures the journal in a bookstand with a page holder. The Gaelic writing on the opening page is artistic and remarkably legible.
We work independently until midmorning, when we hear familiar footsteps on the stairs and a light tap on the door. Lydia says, “Come in professor,” and he enters shyly. “We’ve been hoping you’d come for a visit. This is our curator from Rare Books, Theresa Cotton.”
She comes out of the closet with a pencil behind each ear, a smudge of lead above her lip, and red reading glasses perched on her head.
“Madam, my pleasure.” Professor Covey bows.
“Likewise,” she curtsies.
Lydia explains, “Professor Covey is the owner of this establishment and our landlord, but he was a history professor at UNC Asheville. He is also our primary resource for local knowledge and an excellent sounding board for research.”
The old man grins bashfully. “You give me too much credit when it is your discoveries that are the rare ones. What has been unearthed this morning?” He looks over at Theresa’s cubbyhole.
“You have timed your arrival perfectly, professor. I have news to report, so let me grab my notes and I’ll read the opening translation. You will want to be seated.”
We pull three chairs in a row like dutiful students.
“Your scribe’s name is Florie Leslie.” Theresa begins.
“She was thirteen when she began this journal in the year 1592. She was a learned girl in a time that denied her gender those rights. I don’t know yet if she is our sole author.
Others may contribute later, but so far only her voice has appeared.
” She refers again to her notes, then raises her eyebrows. “The first sentence is a doozy.”
We sit relaxed, ill-prepared.
Theresa reads, “Mother says they will kill us.”
What?
“Hold on, hold on.” She uses her pudgy hand with orange painted nails to dampen our shock. “Let me read the full paragraph for context.
“Mother says they will kill us. We must leave Elcho Priory under cover of night and travel to Schiehallion. Though I am afraid of the dark, we will travel all night. Once there, green witches will protect us. We will bring our tools to continue Mother’s important work on the apothecary book.
Mother believes the Wiccans will welcome us, but I am afraid our secrets are beginning to fray. ”
Theresa takes a deep breath and the three of us stare at her.
“Well, I never…” Kate says.
“Remarkable.” I add.
“How marvelously frightening,” the professor exclaims.
Theresa flips through more pages of notes. “I’m about eight pages in. Young Florie is quite the writer.”
Lydia clears her throat. “Where were they going?”
“To a witch’s cave, on a fairy mountain a few miles outside of Perth.
That’s an hour’s drive north of Edinburgh.
It’s a strenuous climb for hikers, even today.
Coincidentally, I visited there a decade ago and remember walking among the remains of Elcho, which the girl names.
If my memory serves me, it was run by Cistercian nuns.
It is thought that they dedicated themselves to the Virgin Mary and followed strict religious rules, but their written history is almost nonexistent.
This is the first I’ve read that an illuminated manuscript was created there, and of the secular nature, not religious.
History may be rewritten with this discovery.
Or at least clarified. Let me continue translating and we’ll know more by the close of day.
” She smiles sweetly to the gentleman. “And Professor, you’re welcome to return for the next installment. ”
“Bless you,” he says and reluctantly leaves.
Lydia and I return to the twentieth century and the Books of Truth, which pale only slightly in comparison to Theresa’s world.
Birdie dedicates some sections to a specific topic.
One is fungi. Mycelia edible mushrooms named chicken of the woods, chanterelles, black trumpets, hedgehogs, oysters, and morels.
There’s even an edible rare blue mushroom that I’ve never seen.
She drew an illustration above its name.
The medicinal mushrooms are a longer list with strange names like turkey tail, lion’s mane, and reishi, which grows on dying hemlocks.
But it is Birdie’s map of the mountain noting where they likely grow that is extraordinary from a teaching standpoint.
The section that unsettles me most is called Peculiar Forest Folk.
It reads like a science fiction story. I speak softly so as not to bother Theresa and say, “Are these made-up stories? Or do you think Birdie actually saw Moon-Eyed People who live underground and hunt at night, and Little People two feet tall with white hair and long arms? Do you believe these are real?”
Lydia whispers back, “There’s proof.”
“What proof?”
“About the Little People. In Special Collections at Appalachian State there’s a child’s skull that fits in the palm of your hand—but when you look closer, you see wisdom teeth in the mouth.”
Lydia waits for me to understand. When I don’t, she says, “Children don’t have wisdom teeth, Kate. They don’t come in till their late teens or twenties, but this skull was as small as a six-year-old’s.” She reiterates, “But it had wisdom teeth.”
“And I suppose you believe all those odd people named in Birdie’s book? You think tommy-knockers are real and Bigfoot and Spearfinger the Cherokee shapeshifter?”
“Kate, I don’t think Birdie was prone to lie or exaggerate, do you? Remember, her mission was truth.”
“Maybe she wouldn’t lie on purpose,” I admit, “but she easily swallowed the preposterous. She never questioned anything.”
“And you question everything,” she counters. “Does that make her wrong and you right?”
I turn away from Lydia and look for a book based on more logic.
At noon, we break for lunch at the Diamondback Café and order spicy gazpacho and crusty bread. Theresa looks dazed.
“You’re not going to believe this girl’s story,” she teases then dives into her soup.
Between mouthfuls she speaks low. “The entries are insightful, but you already know the manuscript and journal survived against impossible odds. The women were threatened by locals who thought they were witches simply because their knowledge and gifts couldn’t be explained.
They were taken in by kindred spirits who helped them plan their escape to the New World.
It took cunning for nuns to outfox the dangers of the time and arrange passage on a ship.
But tell me what’s going on in Birdie’s books? ”
I say, “The last story I read was about a Roma wedding held at the mushroom cave. It’s about a fifteen-year-old bride and sixteen-year-old groom and how they violated strict traditions.”
“In what way? Did they have sex?” Theresa refills her glass of sweet tea from the pitcher left on the table.
“How’d you know?”
“They’re young. It’s always sex that gets them in trouble.”
“Well, they’d been promised to each other for three years as Roma tradition requires, and the wedding day grew close.
But the boy and girl weren’t meeting for the first time on their wedding day as they would normally.
Their families had traveled together, and they had fallen in love and the girl found herself pregnant. That’s where Birdie comes in.
“The girl sought a medicine woman because if it was known she was pregnant, she would be shunned by her family. The bride and groom might not survive on their own. At the end of the story, Birdie listed the herbs that would bring on menses.”
Lydia says, “Did the girl abort the baby or not?”
“Birdie didn’t say. Maybe she didn’t know. Maybe the wanderers packed up their caravan and moved on before she found out. What I’m learning is that Birdie wrote facts, not her judgment. She didn’t guess.”
Theresa reaches for another piece of garlic bread and adds more butter. She says, “I bet one of the most common subjects in Birdie’s books is ways to get menses flowing, right?”
I say, “You’re right.”
“And I’m guessing we’ll find a similar topic in the apothecary book. It’s the healer’s knowledge of woodland plants that gave a woman a choice. An unwanted pregnancy is a dilemma as old as womankind, and it’s never a simple situation.”
Our waitress returns and we order blackberry cobbler and coffee.
Conversation returns to the tender topic, and Lydia says, “I’d like to think that the young mother and her illegitimate child survived and were spared being ostracized.
If she was, she would be in her eighties now with a passel of children and grandchildren tending to her.
It’s likely some of the girls she begot faced their own dilemmas.
Time has done little to make a woman’s road easier. ”
We return to the workroom and Lydia pulls out a stack of index cards and spreads them on the counter. “I started this exercise last night and forgot to show you. It’s a list of major discoveries. Here’s what I have so far.”
Birdie’s 78 books
Mushroom cave (yet to be visited)
Medieval oak chest
Crow carving in oak chest
Birdie’s crow Samuel
Illuminated manuscript
Tool pouch in chest
Florie’s journal
Birdie’s graveyard
Morrigan graveyard
Moonshiner’s chamber
Note in miner’s coat
Miner’s Levi Strauss coat
Empty corn sack
Underground tunnels go where?
Birdie’s writing chamber
“What an impressive list,” Theresa says. “I remember you mentioning the moonshiner’s tunnel, but tell me again why it’s pertinent to Birdie’s quest?”
“It physically connects to Birdie’s workroom. And though they are forty miles apart by county roads, traveling the tunnels is more direct. There may be other entry points. I’m probably overreaching here, but I’d like to include more in our discovery list than exclude anything.”
I point to the card noting the mushroom cave and add, “There were paintings on the cave wall. Did I tell you that?”
“What kind?” Lydia says.
“Old and faded ones, and even some strange writing—and tall figures similar to the painting. It didn’t make sense when I went with Birdie because I was frightened and only wanted to leave. I wasn’t paying close attention.”
Lydia prints CAVE PAINTINGS on another card and counts. “Seventeen clues.”
“We need to see that cave,” Theresa says. “It may have been the first place the women settled.”