“We seem to have trouble with fire, don’t we? That was also ’82.” Lisbeth raised her head to look at one of the framed photos on the wall: a formal black-and-white photo of a handsome teenage boy with porcelain skin, a shock of dark hair, and silver eyes. “Even back as far as the Winter Siege, all the buildings in the valley were burned by the Iroquois, and the homes on the Drop didn’t fare much better. All but yours, of course. Spared by the grace of God.”
She pointed up to the photograph she’d been looking at. “There’s Mark Swann, one of the boys who died in the fire at the Crofts in ’82,” she said. “What a terrible night. One of those things that—” Her voice caught. Ben saw that she was struggling with tears. He approached her, but she waved him off. She rubbed the sleeve of her blouse over her eyes and collected herself. “A night like that changes a place forever, is what I wanted to say.”
“Did you know him?” He felt bad to press, but he wanted to know.
“It’s a very small village, sugar.”
“Of course. I’m so sorry.”
“He was a beautiful boy, as you can see.” She ran her hand in front of the other images on the wall. “Here’s Philip Swann; he was taken in 1878. He was just eighteen.” She slid her fingers along the frame of the large portrait.
“The same year as the Great Fire?” Ben asked. He remembered that Joseph Swann, the artist, had moved to St. Michael’s after the death of his brother.
“That’s right.” The next one she came to was a large painted portrait. “And you know James Swann from the Winter Siege.” The boy depicted shared the same fine features as the others. “I’m named after his sister, Elizabeth.”
“They all died so young,” Ben said. In his portrait, James Swann looked no older than Charlie.
“They used to say that the Swanns were cursed and blessed in equal measures. But I think someone had their finger on the scale.”
The last of the prominent photos was of an even younger boy. A year, 1933, was scrawled on its corner.
“Well, I have some paperwork of my own to get through,” Lisbeth said.
“Why do you have these hung here?” Ben asked as Lisbeth headed for the stairs.
“They’re beautiful and sad, aren’t they? I have them here so that we can remember. Remember those who were taken before their time. Remember how blessed we are to still be here, and remember how quickly those blessings can change.”
Ben turned back to the portraits of the Swann boys, their likenesses frozen in youth like a thing caught in amber. Striking young men, all of them.
“Well, you have me feeling just about low enough to stick my head in an oven,” Lisbeth said. “I’ll leave you to it. I’m trusting you to take care with the papers, now. They’re the last of their kind. When they’re gone, it’ll be as if all of this never happened.” Ben heard her slow steps as she began to heft herself up the stairs. “And it wouldn’t do to forget,” she said. “Even if that’d be the easier thing, we can never let ourselves forget.”
30
Ben spent hours at Lisbeth’s house. When it came time to pick up Charlie, he took three boxes from the Dispatch archives with him: 1878, year of the Great Fire; 1933, year of Black Water; and 1982, year of the fire at the Crofts. Each issue was slim, no more than three pages folded into one another, thin even for a local weekly. While they primarily contained weather forecasts and the kinds of things you might find in a farmer’s almanac, each usually had a couple of news articles, as well. He hoped there would be something in them to jump-start his imagination. At the very least, they’d be useful examples of the local vernacular, something upon which he could model his characters’ dialogue.
He’d known from the beginning that the novel he was writing was different from his others. There was a piece of him in every character he’d ever written, but he felt a special kinship with the people in this book. Living at the Crofts, as the Swanns had, made for a strong connection. And his people, the Lowells, had been one of the first families here: They’d survived the very Winter Siege that he wrote about. He’d known this in an academic kind of way, but the more time he’d spent with the Preservation Society, the Swannhaven Trust, and the men from the village, the more Ben realized that a part of him had been woven through the whole arc of the narrative from the very beginning. Woven through by both will and blood. Even if it turned out to be a dark and unhappy story, it was one that had always been his to tell. He guessed that this was one reason why it had become so difficult for him to write it. It might also account for why he had become so certain that something was still missing.
When Ben got to the priory, its pathways were quiet, its grounds still. Early for once, he decided to take advantage of it by telling Father Cal to set up a session between Charlie and the school counselor.
He found the old priest’s office empty, but a young woman at the administrative desk directed him to the archives in the subbasement. The stairs she sent him down terminated with a single unmarked door.
Ben had a romantic’s image of the archive: Leather tomes carefully shelved on heavy wood bookcases that stretched to the ceiling. Thousands of books, each one a mysterious bud waiting to flower. A smell that combined desiccated paper and incense with the dusty notes of neglect. Can you see it?
Ben knew better than to expect an Alexandrian labyrinth, but he was still surprised by the state of the place. Fluorescent lights flickered overhead. Banks of large metal filing cabinets broke the room into narrow corridors that stretched the length of the floor. Sheaves of paper and accordion files were piled high on top of them. Father Cal poked his head between two of these stacks and saw the look on Ben’s face.