A Widow's Curse Read online

  “Something about, I kid you not, having the devil in him,” Andrews revealed.

  “Wait.” Shultz leaned my way. “He changed his name to Devilin? What was it before?”

  The questions seemed genuine. Shultz did not appear to know my original family name.

  Andrews jumped in, unable to contain himself—or to wait for me to respond.

  “It was Briarwood!”

  The rain had stopped and the wind had come up. The temperature outside had dropped twenty degrees since morning.

  Andrews had insisted on espresso before I told any of my Conner Briarwood stories. We were all on our third cup, sitting down in the darkened living room, when I began.

  “A bwbach,” I told them, “is a goblin with a relatively sweet spirit, often responsible for good deeds in exchange for strong drink. A bwbach generally disapproves of abstinence in any fashion and enjoys nothing more than good ale, a clay pipe, and a seat close to the fire.”

  “Here we go.” Shultz clapped his hands, delighted as a child.

  “Don’t encourage this,” Andrews warned, mock disdain dripping from his words.

  “Conner always told a story of his departure from Wales,” I went on, ignoring them both, “that included a bwbach. He said he was walking across a field toward a waterfall for a drink when something tapped him on his shoulder. He turned around and saw himself: A man his mirror image stared back at him. The man grinned and said, ‘Have a cup!’ and handed Conner a bit of ale. Conner declined because he was a Calvinist and would not touch alcohol. ‘Then have you a pipe!’ the doppelganger charged Conner. But Conner did not care for tobacco, even as a young man. ‘Well at least you can shake my hand!’ the man demanded. Conner offered his hand; the thing took it but then let it go immediately. ‘Cold as ice!’ it pronounced. ‘I must ask you to get out of my country. You’re no fit Welshman!’ At that, the man returned to his natural form, a grinning wraith with barely human features. Conner nodded and left his native land at sunrise on the very next day.”

  “Did he really?” Shultz asked Andrews, voice hushed.

  “He did,” I answered. “Though his exodus probably had more to do with the fact that his mother was dead and his father had little use for him.”

  “But that’s the story he told?” Andrews wanted to know.

  “Always. And when I began to study folk stories as an adult, I came to realize just how significant a bit of psychology it was that Conner faced himself—the form of a spirit that looked like him—in order to leave home. He seemed to be telling himself that if he stayed in Wales, he’d become nothing more than a hot-blooded drunk, sit around the fire smoking, and never amount to anything.”

  “That’s what that story means?” Shultz sat back on the couch.

  “So he went to Ireland and killed a man instead.” Andrews’s arch voice insulted the air. “Then fled to America.”

  “This just gets better and better.” Shultz was completely awake now and clearly overtaken by the turn of events.

  His hair was a mess, his eyes sparkled; a grin seemed to defy the constraints of his facial muscles. In that instant, I couldn’t imagine why I had ever suspected him of anything more than overeating.

  “This is all new to you,” I said to him softly.

  “As a two-day pup,” he shot back happily.

  I wasn’t completely ready to give over to him, but I wasn’t going to be calling the police about him, either.

  Andrews slumped down, and his voice warmed.

  “I begin to see why you’re acting so strangely. It’s quite a coincidence that a man you’d never heard of called you about a coin minted by your great-grandfather.”

  “It wasn’t minted by my great-grandfather,” I said patiently. “He didn’t stay in Wales, he didn’t take up the family business, and he was born sometime in the late 1800s. The coin’s much older than that, I believe.”

  “Based on what?” Andrews asked.

  “Doesn’t anybody believe me that I went to a jeweler in Atlanta?” Shultz shook his head. “The guy said it was old—took a guess at three hundred years.”

  “And when were you going to tell us that?” Andrews scowled.

  “I thought I did.” Shultz shrugged.

  “The point is that the coin probably belonged to my great-grandfather. But it wasn’t among his things, as far as I know, when he died.” I glanced at the kitchen window. The rain was starting up again.

  “Do you have any other family around here?” Shultz asked. “Someone we could—”

  “No. All dead.”

  Andrews looked as if he might object to that statement, but Shultz went on.

  “Would it be worth a call or something to Wales? Are there still Briarwoods there?”

  “There are.” I nodded. “I don’t know any of them, not remotely. But Hek and June told me they called my father when Conner died.”

  “Heck and who?” Shultz’s grin got bigger.

  “Hezekiah and June Cotage,” I told him. “A couple of my primary folk informants.”

  “And his spiritual parents,” Andrews added, teasing.

  “Not quite that,” I objected. “But I am close to them. I’ve just come from their home.”

  “Should have known that’s where you’d go first.” Andrews nodded sagely.

  “And they told you…,” Shultz said slowly.

  “That as of the mid-1970s, the family in Wales still wanted to know about Conner’s death. Or about his will, actually.”

  “His will?” Andrews growled. “After they hadn’t seen him for—what, fifty years?”

  “More.”

  “What would he have had that they would want?” Andrews went on. “He wasn’t going to leave them any of the land he had here in the mountains. And he didn’t really have a fabulous bank account, did he?”

  “Well,” I said, “he did have a sizable savings, and, you’ll remember I told you, enough money to set aside for my university education. All of it. And a bit of money to live on while I was studying.”

  “You’re kidding,” Shultz chimed in. “This old guy left you money to get your degrees?”

  “Left it to my father, actually,” I corrected, “who was his favorite grandson. My father held on to the money, even when we needed it for food and the basics.”

  “So Conner didn’t really know you,” Shultz said softly.

  “I barely remember him at all,” I confessed. “I’ve learned more about him from a few personal things of his that were kept here in the house than I have from any experience of him. Mainly some of his writings.”

  “They’re over there in that trunk.” Andrews nodded in the direction of a back corner of the room. “I remember.”

  “Something he wrote is in that trunk?” Shultz stared, wide-eyed.

  “He was in love with this woman, Molly.” I stared at the trunk. “Even though she caused him to kill a man, even though she testified against him at his trial, even though he moved to America, got married, had children and grandchildren, and grew old without her. In that trunk, yellow and moldering, are literally scores of stories, all nearly identical, retelling that part of his life over and over again, as if he were trying—and failing—to exorcise a demon. That told me more about him than any ten or one hundred conversations ever could.”

  “Jeez.” Shultz shot a look at Andrews. “You were right: This is the Addams Family on Walton’s Mountain.”

  “So you think,” Andrews said to me, ignoring Shultz altogether, “that the coin is some sort of family item or heirloom that Conner took with him to Ireland and then brought to America. Maybe a good-luck charm.”

  “The actual place in Wales that’s called Saint Elian’s Well is on Briarwood property, or was. And, of course, the ornate B on the back of the coin could certainly stand for Briarwood.”

  “But you still sound skeptical.” Andrews sat back, trying to read my face. “It all seems so obvious.”

  “I just don’t want to rush into anything. The coincidence
makes me uncomfortable.”

  “It involves your family. You’re always uncomfortable about that.” Andrews pulled at his earlobe, a certain sign he was deep in thought. “And on second thought, given the history of the fabled well, maybe it wasn’t a good-luck charm at all.”

  “Maybe it was a curse coin!” Shultz finished Andrews’s thought. “You said that by the seventeenth century, people would pay large sums of money to curse one another.”

  “I said that maybe the coin was produced by some clever Welsh entrepreneur for people to use in curse payments!” Andrews seemed quite pleased with his previous observation. “Your family history makes it difficult for you to see, because you’d rather not think about them at all, but it’s all pretty clear.”

  I took in both faces. They were quite satisfied with themselves: mystery solved.

  “In the first place,” I began slowly, “my belief—and years of research and experience have supported this contention—is that nothing is ever that simple or easy. One of my chief complaints about the twenty-first century is that no one gets past the surface of most questions.”

  “It’s the Internet,” Shultz interrupted sagely. “You have all this knowledge at your fingertips, but it’s nothing but quick, easy answers.”

  “You’re saying this coin thing is not something to do with your ancestral family?” Andrews groused.

  “I’m saying,” I answered him, “that your explanation is the best we have so far, but even if it is the truth, we’re only scratching the surface, and there’s much more to this issue.”

  “Maybe for you and your psychiatrist,” Andrews sneered. “But for young Dr. Shultz here, I think the mystery is solved. He’s got answers and he’s got a couple of pretty nice stories.”

  “Not really,” I countered. “I mean, just to start with, there’s the question of who actually sold this valuable family treasure, if it is that, and why. If it’s worth so much, both in economic terms and with regard to sentiment, who in my family would have let it go? Maybe it was stolen and sold illegally. Maybe Shultz’s father stole it and lied about how he acquired it. No offense meant. I’m just—”

  “No, no, no,” Shultz interrupted cheerily. “It’s really quite possible that the old man could have held up some poor widow at gun-point to get something he fancied. No offense taken whatsoever.”

  “I’m only saying,” I went on, “I’ve been told hundreds of times by folk informants that they don’t sing, or don’t have any stories, or don’t make anything by hand. I change the subject, I talk about the weather, and after a while, something emerges. If I look it in the eye, it goes away. If I chase it, it recedes. It’s elusive.”

  “What is? I’m lost,” Shultz confessed, looking to Andrews for help.

  “By ‘it,’” Andrews answered wearily, “he actually means the great mysteries of life. He imagines that his work uncovers the truth of the ages. In a clay jug. Or the sound of a poorly played violin.”

  “He does?” Shultz seemed more confused.

  “Most of the things we take for granted in this century—television, computers, instant news—got their start in human culture barely a hundred years ago. If we consider that civilization began, let’s say conservatively, ten thousand years ago, we have to admit spending a lot more time telling one another stories than watching CNN. We can’t ignore the way things have been done for most of human endeavor in favor of the immediate moment, no matter how compelling the wonders of that immediate moment might be. If we lose touch with mythology, with ancient stories and songs and ways of doing things, we lose our humanity. We become as superficial as an Internet search or a television comedy. We’ll end up looking back on our past with as little comprehension as most people today have of Egyptian hieroglyphics, or the meaning of Stonehenge.”

  “Say amen very quickly,” Andrews muttered to Shultz, “or this could go on for another couple of hours.”

  “No,” Shultz protested, “I actually agree with him. The good old ways are the best.”

  “That’s not remotely what I mean.” I closed my eyes. “I’m saying this: You hear the story of Saint Elian’s Well or of Conner’s encounter with a fairy and you think it’s a quaint story for children. I’m telling you that these are actual phenomena. They happen all the time.”

  “Your great-grandfather saw a spirit disguised as himself in a field in Wales.” Shultz gave me a withering eye.

  “A supernatural event is only an occurrence that some idiot can’t properly explain.”

  “Hang on,” Andrews protested. “I thought you always said these stories served primarily as metaphor.”

  “Their significance is metaphorical; their action is actual.”

  “Could we stick to the part where I’m primarily right about everything?” Andrews reclined. “We have a silver coin with a big B on the back and a family named Briarwood who minted silver coins.”

  “Those are facts,” I agreed. “But I could assemble them a hundred different ways. The B stands for Britain; the well isn’t Saint Elian’s at all, but something, say, in the Lake District, or on the way to Canterbury. Saints walked all over the place around there.”

  “The B stands for Breton.” Shultz beamed. “It’s a French saint, and it’s not a well at all; it’s the grave of, you know, Jesus or something. This is fun.”

  “When you’re a first-year medical student,” Andrews began wearily, “you’re told that the most obvious answer is nearly always the correct one. If someone in Kansas is describing a four-legged mammal with hooves and a mane, it’s more likely to be a horse than a zebra.”

  “You know this from your years in medical school.” I sighed.

  “As it happens, my roommate in graduate school was on his way to being a surgeon, and he made me study with him because I made him run lines with me when I was in plays.”

  “Aside from the very distracting image of you onstage,” I told him, “I probably have to admit at least a modicum of agreement with your premise.”

  “Yes, you have to admit that—fond as you are of Occam’s razor.”

  “Who’s what?” Shultz barged in. “Is that another folktale or something?”

  “It’s a philosophical concept of which I am fond,” I explained. “The precise statement is: ‘Universal essences should not be unnecessarily multiplied.’ The useful extrapolation is generally given as ‘The simplest answer is the best.’”

  “KISS rule.” Shultz nodded slowly.

  “Kiss what?” Andrews’s eyes widened.

  “K-I-S-S,” Shultz spelled. “‘Keep it simple, stupid.’ Plain good advice, in my book.”

  “I used to think it was just you,” Andrews told me, “but now I realize that all Americans are irritating.”

  “And proud of it.” Shultz grinned. “So where are we on the subject of my doodad?”

  “At the frustrating, somewhat embarrassing admission on my part”—I sighed—“that my great-grandfather might have had something to do with it.”

  “Why would that be so bad?”

  “You have no idea how many ghosts are in this man’s head,” Andrews said simply, nodding in my direction.

  I stared out my kitchen window. Charcoal rain clouds shadowed the pines, and each individual drop of water on the pane seemed to magnify those shadows, a hundred black prisms dividing the color of night into spectra of darkness.

  “I don’t know why this story just occurred to me,” I said softly. “Maybe it’s because it also involves a well in Wales, or maybe it’s an omen—ghosts, indeed. On Glasfryn Lake, in the parish of Llangybi, is a place called Grace’s Well, speaking of wells. In the days before history, it was a fairy well, guarded by Grace, a fairy who had taken human form because she fell in love with a man. She was a tall woman with large, bright eyes, dressed all in white silk. She waited by the water every night for her love to come walking. Her only fairy duty was to cover the well when it wasn’t in use. One night, she was distracted by the beauty of swans on the lake, watching them
glide over the black water, and did not realize that her love had drawn from the well to bring her a drink. Grace and the man walked along the lake’s edge while water poured out of the well. Next morning, the man was gone and the well had flooded the fairies’ dancing ring. When Grace saw the destruction her neglect had caused, she was overcome with guilt and paced back and forth, weeping and moaning. The fairies punished her by changing her into a swan. Every night after that, for many months, her love would come to the lake and call her name. Every night, the man was approached by a pale swan with large, bright eyes, but he looked away, longing for Grace—never realizing she was the swan. Eventually, the man ceased his visits. Grace lived as a swan on that lake for a hundred years before she was allowed to resume human form. When she became a woman again, she was forbidden to enter the fairy kingdom. She went looking for her love, but all she found were his great-grandchildren, so she went back to the lake and lived on as a swan. But on certain nights of the year, a tall woman with large, bright eyes, dressed all in white silk, may be seen wandering up and down the high ground around the lake, weeping.”

  “She’s crying because of the family that might have been hers.” Shultz’s voice was hushed.

  “She’s weeping because she lost the man she loved,” Andrews corrected.

  “People in the area, to this day, tell stories about seeing her,” I said. “They call her the White Widow or sometimes the Widow of the Swans.”