Epilogue
Lydia
The preacher left shortly after. He’d done what he came to do, I suppose. He claimed he was saving a town. Maybe he truly believed he was.
The next year, I didn’t leave the edge of the river. I cried for endless days and nights. The rain came down in torrents. It raised the river and flooded the fields. The crops all died that year.
Then the families left. First one, then another, then the rest. They said it was to find better land.
But really, once the preacher had left and the fever abated, they could no longer look at one another, for the shame of what they’d done.
They left to start anew. To try and forget the things they’d done.
Did you know that even in Salem they spared the pregnant women?
Everyone left but the Brooks and Bishops. They stayed. They took over the land, drew new property lines. They filed for deeds and created a new origin story.
My sweet Elias was raised as the youngest son of William Bishop. His siblings treated him well enough, though his parents ignored him, treating him like an indentured servant, another set of hands to help with the never-ending work of life in an early settlement.
When the all-consuming sadness finally eased, something else grew in its place.
Rage. Not fiery rage, but rage that is cold and cutting.
That November, I stood in the Bishops’ field.
I stared up at the new house they’d built, over the ruins of my home.
And I shook with such rage that the fields became a frozen expanse, and the air an impenetrable wall of white.
Josiah Bishop and Nathaniel Brook had been hunting and the snow was so heavy that it blinded their vision and cut at their faces.
And so, my rage took William’s and Levi’s sons. Just as they had taken mine.
After that, William became a different man. More repentant. Sometimes at night, as he lay awake in bed, he’d whisper softly to himself, “I’m sorry, Lydia. I’m so sorry.”
Perhaps he truly regretted what he’d done. Or perhaps he knew I was watching. But whatever the reason, he now looked differently at Elias, the remaining male heir to the Bishop name. It would be through him that his legacy continued.
The Brooks and Bishops did go into business together.
The Brooks raised the sheep. The Bishops processed the wool.
And for a while, there was calm in Newfield Village.
Elias married a kind woman he met selling wool down in Boston.
I enjoyed watching them. Elias looked like his father, my husband, James, and they welcomed four beautiful children into the world.
But I wasn’t just staying in Newfield Village to watch my son grow.
No, I was watching to see what would become of the Brooks. Would they become repentant too?
I think you know the answer. It was as David Clark’s descendant would later say.
They always wanted more. The Brooks cut the Bishops out of the business, deciding to build their own mill on newly purchased land on the Connecticut.
If they produced and processed, they could reap more gains just for themselves.
The night the Brooks toasted their success and their gumption, William Bishop pulled Elias aside for a talk beside the fire.
He told him that a long time ago, the Brooks and the Bishops did a very bad thing.
But that the Brooks could no longer be trusted.
Whoever had the bodies had the power. And so, he sent my Elias into the woods with a shovel and told him to dig up the bodies and bury them deeper into the wild wood.
One night, many years later when Elias was an old man, after he’d had a few whiskeys and his conscience ate at his gut, he pulled his son close and whispered stories of betrayals, stolen lands, and buried bodies.
And so it went. Generation to generation until the details were lost, and all that remained was lore.
The Brooks needed to pay. Losing a son was not even enough to shake them of their greed. So I decided to wait and to bide my time. I’d wait until they had achieved such greatness and such legacy, and then I’d take away the most important thing. Their name. And their land.
I knew it would be through one of my descendants.
One of them would finally set things right.
As Elinor grew, I knew she could be the one.
Her dreams were easier to unlock than her grandmother’s.
Her heart, while not incorruptible, was good.
When I walked her through the woods that night, I wanted her to begin to wonder, to have something in the back of her brain, some question to be answered.
Do not worry, I took good care of her. She was always safe with me. She was always safe in the woods.
In the end, Elinor never knew she was not truly a descendant of the Bishops. And for that, she carries some guilt. For that, she gave up Wildwood. But perhaps that is okay. Because the land didn’t belong to any of us, after all. Perhaps we all had it coming.