48. Petra #2
“But how do we find out who they are now?” I ask, feeling both exhilarated and anxious.
While we are talking, something is tugging at the corner of my vision, something red . . .
“Sin, look at these!” I pull out a bundle of dusty papers bound together with a faded ribbon. “Darling love,” I read out loud before my eyes skim the contents of the missive jotted down on the aging parchment. “Sin, these are love letters!”
He steps closer, asking, “What do they say?”
“These are from Arnoult the First to a lover. But there isn’t a name. Just the appellation: ‘Darling Love’.”
“That’s interesting. Is she my great-great-great whatever grandmother?” he asks in good humor.
“I’m not sure. She’s the daughter of some type of religious fanatic, it seems,” I reply warily, scanning through page after page, and noting her mentions of her very controlling and abusive father with connections to some type of Christian cult.
Most of the exchanges are romantic, with soapy love declarations and promises of fidelity. The others, though, are bordering on eroticism. I skip most of those since it feels intrusive, and I know I would not want anyone else to read my love letters.
“Apparently, they had to meet in secret because her father disapproved of him,” I say after I’ve gone through most of them.
“What else do the letters say? Anything about Arnoult the First’s occult group?”
“There’s no mention of any deals with the devil, if that’s what you’re asking,” I reply absent-mindedly, still staring at the stack of yellowed papers.
For some reason, I find myself captivated by the longing in Arnoult’s letters.
“He talks about loving her fiercely and wanting to be with her despite the odds. It’s almost heartbreaking.”
“Sounds like there’s more to the story,” Sin says, leaning back and crossing his arms as he considers this new information. “Maybe Arnoult established the secret society to acquire some kind of status for himself, so he would finally be able to marry her.”
I read another letter, struck again by the raw yearning in which each line was steeped. “Seems like they were really in love, but the pressure from her father and his peers weighed heavily on them.”
“History keeps repeating itself, doesn’t it, Petra?” Sin asks in a surprisingly bitter voice.
“Look, it’s not all doom and gloom,” I hurry to assure him, maybe due to the pang of sorrow that pierces my heart at the sight of a sad Sin.
Dang it, girl! You’ve got it bad, says my annoying inner voice, but I already know that.
“Perhaps they had a happy ending, and she is your great-great-great-whatever, no?”
“I don’t know about that,” he adds uneasily and hands me another letter. This one is from April 1896 and mentions some type of danger. After that . . . there are no more mentions of Arnoult’s lover.
“Who was she, I wonder?” I mutter.
I had started noticing a pattern in the last few letters, where the lovers had cryptically referred to “the gift” or “the love token” or, in one particularly poetic instance, “the loveling.”
What were they referring to? I was desperately curious to find out because I had a hunch about what this “gift” might be.
At the same instance, I feel a flutter in my belly, as if like a sign from the universe.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” Sin mutters while he rifles through other boxes scattered around us, his movements becoming more frantic by the minute. “If they ended up together, there should be more.”
“You’re right,” I say in a distant voice, as my mind is busy speculating. “There has to be more.”
“Maybe something happened.” An urgency quickens Sin’s words, so they come stumbling out of his mouth. “Maybe Arnoult stopped writing to her because of that ‘danger’?”
“Or maybe something worse happened,” I whisper, unwilling to alert Sin to my dark ruminations.
Dread coils up deep in my chest as I continue searching, my fingers shaking slightly, until I come across a small slip of newspaper tucked between the pages of one of the journals.
“What’s that?” Sin asks instantly, as if he had been expecting me to find this at just the right time.
I pull it out carefully, my heart beating like a gong in my ears as I read the headline aloud: “‘Double Murder: Father and Daughter Dead; Community in Terror.’”
Yet it still does not say the names—only that they were esteemed members of Radcliffe society.
“What?” Sin says when he finally understands what the title is implying. “No way, Petra! What does it say?”
“Sin, it—it’s just too horrible.”
By now, I have already skimmed through enough of the article to know what it says.
“It says here that her father . . . killed her because he believed she was pregnant.” My voice breaks down at this last bit as my hand automatically moves to shield the you-know-who. “He thought she was—” I break off again to draw in big, gasping breaths.
“Petra, what’s wrong? Please, calm down. You’re scaring me.”
Sin strokes my back and shoulders, trying to calm me. But how can I be calm when I’ve just read that . . .
“He thought she was carrying the child of the devil! The entire community turned against Arnoult and his disciples.” I finally manage to force all the words out.
“Petra, it’s okay, all of that happened in the past,” Sin says in a voice that’s failing to sound calm. “Try and relax, please.”
“I’m fine,” I reply in a firmer tone. I have my dignity, after all.
“It doesn’t end there,” I continue, trying to keep my voice as steady as possible, even though my fingers are gripping the newspaper tightly. “This says that Arnoult killed Snowden and Leah.”