Robin Cook - Acceptable Risk

Once she was in the trench and had walked back to where the coffin was, a sense of claustrophobia made the ordeal even worse. The walls seemed to tower above her and from her vantage point seemed to curve out over her head, adding to her fear they might cave in at any moment.

With a tremulous hand, Kim set to work on the end of the coffin. Inserting the hammer’s claws, she pried it back. Then she turned to face the box.

Now that the unpleasant task was at hand, Kim revived the debate as to what she should do in relation to the box. But she didn’t debate long: hastily she untied the string. As much as she hated the idea of touching the head, she had to make an effort to restore the grave to a semblance of its original state.

Lifting the cardboard flaps, Kim reluctantly looked inside. The head was facing up, balanced on a mat of dried hair. Elizabeth was staring back at Kim with her dried, sunken eyeballs partially exposed. For an uncomfortable moment, Kim tried vainly to reconcile the gruesome face with the pleasing portrait that she was having restored, relined, and reframed. The images were such stark opposites that it seemed inconceivable they were the same person.

Holding her breath, Kim reached in and lifted the head. Touching it gave her renewed shivers, as if she were touching death itself. Kim also found herself wondering anew about what had really happened three hundred years previously. What could Elizabeth have done to bring on such a cruel fate?

Turning around carefully to avoid tripping over any of the pipes and cables, Kim extended the head into the coffin. Gingerly she set it down. She could feel her hands touch fabric and other firmer objects, but she didn’t try to look in to see what they were. Hastily she bent the end of the coffin back to its original position and hammered it home.

Picking up the empty box and string, Kim hurried back up the trench. She didn’t begin to relax until she’d put the trash back in her trunk. Finally she took a deep breath. At least it was over.

Walking back to the trench, she looked down at the end of the coffin just to make sure she’d not left some telltale evidence behind. She could see her footprints, but she didn’t think that was a problem.

With her hands on her hips, Kim’s eyes left the coffin and looked up at the quiet, cozy cottage. She tried to imagine what life had been like back in those dark days of the witchcraft scare, when poor Elizabeth was unknowingly ingesting the poisonous, mind-altering grain. With all the books Kim had been reading on the witchcraft ordeal, she’d learned quite a lot. For the most part the young women who presumably had been poisoned with the same contaminant as Elizabeth were the “afflicted,” and they were the ones who “called out against” the witches.

Kim looked back at the coffin. She was confused. The young afflicted women had not been thought of as witches themselves, as Elizabeth had been. The exception had been Mary Warren, who had been both one of the afflicted and one of the accused, yet she’d been released and not executed. What made Elizabeth different? Why wasn’t she just one of the afflicted? Could it have been that she was afflicted but refused to accuse anyone of afflicting her? Or could she have been practicing the occult, as her father had intimated?

Kim sighed and shook her head. She didn’t have any answers. It all seemed to come back to the mysterious conclusive evidence and what it could have been. Kim’s gaze wandered to the lonely castle, and in her mind’s eye she saw the innumerable file cabinets, trunks, and boxes.

She glanced down at her watch. There were still several hours of daylight. Impulsively, she walked over to her car, climbed in, and drove up to the castle. With the mystery of Elizabeth so prominent in her mind, she thought she’d spend a little more time on the daunting task of looking through the papers.

Kim pushed through the front door of the castle and whistled to keep herself company. At the base of the grand staircase she hesitated. The attic was certainly more agreeable than the wine cellar, but her last visit to the attic had been singularly unsuccessful. She’d found nothing from the seventeenth century despite almost five hours of effort.

Reversing her direction, Kim walked into the dining room and opened the heavy oak door of the wine cellar. She flipped on the sconces and descended the granite steps. Walking along the central corridor, she peered into successive individual cells. Recognizing that there was no order to the material, she thought it important that she develop some rational plan. Vaguely she thought that she would start in the very farthest cell and begin to organize the papers according to subject matter and age.

Passing one particular cell, Kim did a double take. Returning to it, she gazed in at the furniture. There was the usual complement of file cabinets, bureaus, trunks, and boxes. But there was also something different. On top of one of the bureaus was a wooden box that looked familiar to Kim. It closely resembled the Bible box which the Witch House tour guide had described as an invariable part of a Puritan home.

Stepping over to the bureau, Kim ran her fingers along the top of the box, leaving parallel trails in the dust. The wood was unfinished yet perfectly smooth. There was no doubt the box was old. Placing her hands at either end, Kim opened the hinged lid.

Inside, appropriately enough, was a worn Bible bound in thick leather. Lifting the Bible out, Kim noticed that beneath it were some envelopes and papers. She carried the Bible out to the hall where the light was better. Folding back the cover and flyleaf, she looked at the date. It was printed in London in 1635. She thumbed through the text in hopes that some sheets of paper might have been stuck in the pages, but there was nothing.

Kim was about to return to the Bible box when the back cover of the Bible fell open in her hands. Written on the endpaper was: Ronald Stewart his book 1663. The handwriting resembled the graceful cursive script Kim recognized to be Ronald’s. She guessed he’d written in the Bible as a boy.

Turning the back flyleaf, Kim found a series of blank pages with the word Memorandum printed at the top. On the first memorandum page following the Bible text she found more of Ronald’s handwriting. Here he had recorded each of the marriages, births, and deaths of his family. With her index finger keeping her oriented on the page, Kim read off each of the dates until she came to the date of Ronald’s marriage to Rebecca. It had been Saturday, October 1, 1692.

Kim was appalled. That meant that Ronald had married Elizabeth’s sister just ten weeks after Elizabeth’s death! That seemed much too quick to Kim, and once again she found herself questioning Ronald’s behavior. She couldn’t help but wonder if he’d had something to do with Elizabeth’s execution. With such haste to remarry it was difficult for Kim to imagine that Ronald and Rebecca hadn’t been having an affair.

Encouraged by her discovery, Kim returned to the Bible box and lifted out the envelopes and papers. Eagerly she opened the envelopes, hoping for personal correspondence, but each was a disappointment. All the enclosed material was business-related and from a period from 1810 to 1837.

Kim turned to the papers. She went through them sheet by sheet, and although they were older, they were not any more interesting until she came to one that was folded in thirds. Unfolding the multipage document, which had traces of a wax seal, Kim found a deed to a huge tract of land called Northfields Property.

Turning to the second page of the deed, Kim found a map. It was not difficult for her to recognize the area. The tract included the current Stewart compound as well as the land presently occupied by the Kernwood Country Club and the Greenlawn Cemetery. It also crossed the Danvers River, which was labeled the Wooleston River, to include property in Beverly. To the northwest it ran into present-day Peabody and Danvers, which in the deed was called Salem Village.