Fallen

Scarlett set the C.S. Lewis title aside, and another one by Mark Twain, and then pulled out a thick stack of papers enclosed in a suede wrap and tied with a leather string. Speaking of ancient . . . this thing looked like it was going to fall apart at any moment.

Scarlett sat back on her butt, leaning against a couple of boxes behind her and set the bundle on her lap, untying the string and unwrapping the suede covering. At the top was a piece of old linen paper filled with writing in a language Scarlett had never seen before. She squinted at it. What in the world? She moved a page aside and looked at the one beneath it. This paper looked more recent and the handwriting was in English, the letters carefully penned. Her eyes moved over the clean, concise lines, taking in the tale familiar to Scarlett.

It was Taluta’s story.

The one Camden West had told her as they’d sat drinking lemonade in the gazebo.

Scarlett rifled through the stack, confirming what she had guessed. “Oh my God,” she whispered into the empty basement. Taluta had written out the truth of her story and someone had translated it. Scarlett flipped to the end. Taluta’s writings ceased, but several pages in English told the end of her story. Because she hadn’t been there to do it anymore. She’d been tossed into the canyon and disappeared. Who? Scarlett wondered. Who did this?

The very last of their tribe died about three years ago and took their language with her.

Scarlett searched her memory but she couldn’t remember the name of the old native woman Camden had mentioned. Had she translated Taluta’s story? And if so, when? And how did it come to be at Lilith House?

Scarlett found the answer in a small black journal underneath the collection of Taluta’s papers and the translation.

“Narcisa Fernando,” she said aloud, reading the name inscribed at the front in that same neat penmanship. Yes, that was the name she couldn’t quite recall. She’d lived in a small house a few miles from here. Hadn’t that been what Camden said? She’d sold herbs and such in town.

Scarlett glanced at the journal. Only one page was written in and Scarlett’s stomach knotted as she read the words.Mr. Bancroft hired me to tend to his wife who was with child, and then the expectant mothers of his parish, but really, I am his whore as my ancestors were to this family of devils. The baby he put inside me was taken, his club feet proving the mark of Satan, or so says Mr. Bancroft. But my baby is not of Satan, though his blood father is evil. They put me to sleep and left my baby on a rock in the forest to die. Mr. Schmidt tried to save my baby. He has a spark of decency in him, but the others are too powerful. Tonight, I shall follow my baby boy by my own hand for I have no other hope for escape.Scarlett let out a heavy breath, her shoulders dropping. Holy Christ. Her heart ached. For a moment she simply sat staring, unseeing, at the disorganized junk in front of her. She’d known this house had a past but she hadn’t known such cruelty and suffering had filled the halls of Lilith House. A mild shudder went through her. One of the Bancroft sons had made Narcisa Fernando into his unwilling mistress, she’d borne a child of his, and then because of a physical abnormality, he had left him to die in the woods?

Good God, the unthinkable evil of that was almost too much for Scarlett to bear.

Narcisa had been right—her baby’s blood father was a monster.

And he’d come by it honestly. His ancestors hadn’t been any better, if not far worse.

She looked at the papers enclosed once again in the suede covering, and the journal. Had Taluta, who had once been kept captive in the house, written out her story during the time she was there? That had to be it . . . Scarlett didn’t imagine that native people had the type of paper and ink pen Taluta had used. Then later, Narcisa, who’d come to live in the Bancroft house had found Taluta’s writings and translated them, leaving the few necessary facts of her own time at Lilith House?

She’d intended on taking her own life. Hadn’t Camden mentioned something about a limp? Had she attempted to harm herself but only come away with an injury? A picture entered Scarlett’s mind of a woman, arms held wide as she pitched her body from an upper story window. She shook her head, dispelling the image that had to have come purely from her imagination.

Scarlett bit at her lip, a feeling of deep sadness settling on her skin just as the dust in the basement had coated the trunk where two women’s brutal stories resided.