The Ghost Manuscript

by Kris Frieswick

  “Very interesting,” said Harper. “Is there any legend involving Maushop in which he buries someone here? Like one of his family members?”

  “Not that I’m aware of,” said the sachem. “But legends live and die, as you know. There might have been a legend like that once upon a time. But I don’t know of it.”

  Carys finally found the ability to speak.

  “These stones,” she said. “They’re very interesting. This one in particular.”

  The sachem rose and approached her. Carys pointed to the tiny stone with the Christian cross.

  “Yes,” said the sachem, smiling for the first time since they arrived. “Many people ask if that’s a Celtic or Christian cross. It’s funny really. That symbol has been used by our tribe since its earliest beginnings. How typically ethnocentric of Caucasians to think that that symbol is not original to my people.”

  “It’s such a simple design,” said Carys. “It probably sprang up in many cultures independently of one another.”

  “Precisely,” said the sachem.

  “How old would you say that etching is? Have you had it dated?” she asked.

  “Certainly,” said the sachem. “It’s…”

  Just then a cloud passed across the woman’s face. It was not a frown, exactly, but a hesitation. Carys recognized it as a flash of panic.

  “Middle to Late Woodland period, we’ve been told,” the sachem finally said.

  “So sometime in the middle to late first millennium?” said Carys. “About one thousand five hundred years ago?”

  “Yes,” said the sachem. “But we haven’t been able to narrow it down precisely.”

  “Do you have any more stones with this symbol on them?” she asked. “More specifically, do you have any stones with that symbol that predate this one?”

  The sachem’s face went entirely blank.

  “No,” she said. She turned and walked back to her desk. “Is there anything else I can help you with today? I’m afraid I don’t have too much more time. My daughter and her children are visiting from Boston, and I promised we could go to the beach.”

  Harper stood and shook her hand. “No, and thank you,” he said. “You’ve been very gracious with your time.”

  “I’m not sure I’ve been of much help, unless you were looking for a giant,” she said, and smiled again, but this time only with her mouth.

  ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

  Harper and Carys walked back to the Range Rover, the tension and excitement nearly arcing between them. They got in, slammed the doors shut, turned to each other, and began to talk simultaneously.

  “Holy shit,” Carys said. “That was an ancient Christian cross.”

  “Maushop,” said Harper. “Madoc. Giants. Do you know how many giants there are in Welsh mythology? There’s even a Welsh legend in the Mabinogion about a giant who walks into the sea. They’re all the same metaphor. The Maushop legend is Madoc Morfran.”

  “It was a Christian cross,” she said. “And she knows there was an earlier white visitor—earlier than any were supposed to have come here. I could feel it.”

  Harper stopped his own reverie and looked at her.

  “Are you sure?” he asked. “I don’t think she knows anything. Why would she tell me the Maushop legend if she already knew its significance?”

  She reached into the back seat to the pile of documents Clark had handed Harper. On the top of the pile was an illustrated children’s book called Maushop and the Clambake. She grabbed it and held it up to Harper.

  “She wasn’t exactly divulging state secrets in there,” she said. She tossed the book back onto the seat. “She was humoring us. An ancient visitor to North America, earlier than any other previously recorded, is obviously the foundation of one of their most well-known legends. And as long as they treat it like an old myth, why would anyone read more into it? Hide it in plain sight.”

  “I didn’t get the impression that she was hiding anything,” said Harper. “I think she just honestly doesn’t realize what that legend means. They don’t know where he is.”

  “Listen. She just about jumped out of her skin when I asked her how old that stone with the Christian cross was. Until the minute we showed up today, they were perfectly safe showing that stone and claiming that that symbol was an ancient Mattakeese symbol. No one could ever dispute it. It dates to over five hundred years before any white men—or any men who would have used that symbol—were supposed to have set foot on this continent. But we knew better. And we told her so. And when she had to admit that that stone carving dates to the exact time period we were asking about…. I’m telling you, she knows.”

  Harper sat still and silent as she started the Range Rover and began to back up. Just then, Clark appeared at the window next to the tribal office door. She and Harper looked at the sachem, and Harper raised his hand and waved a slight goodbye. Clark raised her hand but did not wave. She did not smile. In her eyes was the unmistakable sharpness of anger, maybe even hatred. Harper lowered his hand and turned to Carys.

  “Oh my god,” he whispered. “She knows.”

  “Let’s go to Sandy Neck and see what we’re dealing with,” she said.

  Ten minutes later, they turned off Route 6A onto the winding, tree-lined side road that led to the entrance to Sandy Neck Beach. The road was the only way on and off the beach by land. They paid their entrance fee at the ranger station, took their parking pass, and drove up to the main parking lot that fronted the ocean.

  The lot was on top of what had been a huge sand dune before it was paved over, and from it they could see the enormity of the Neck, which stretched for six miles to the east of where they were sitting. To the north and west, the shore bent around and became white cliffs just south of the entrance to Plymouth Harbor. And almost due north was a tiny spire sticking straight up out of the ocean. It was Pilgrim Memorial Monument in Provincetown, visible from this part of the Cape only on the clearest days, which this was.

  Harper had printed out a map of the archaeological dig sites on the Neck. They got out of the car and set off down the beachfront, passing groups of sunbathers and their mountains of gear, their furiously smoking barbecues, their playing children and barking dogs. The sand was deep, and after only a few yards, they stopped to take off their shoes.

  Half a mile down the beach, a trail appeared between two dunes that led south, away from the water, and they left the beachfront and followed it. Once they were over the great hill of sand and down again, she could not hear the ocean waves anymore. It was as silent as if she were in a great enclosed room, and the accumulated heat from the sun on the sand seemed to stagnate in the little valleys. The light southerly breeze wafted occasionally over the marshes in front of them and brought an organic, peaty smell. The sun beat down on her shoulders. It was so peaceful here. The perfect place to build your village and to fish and farm, or rest for eternity.

  Harper had his phone out and was tracking their location on a GPS map of the Neck. He consulted the printout to see how close they were to the dig. After twenty minutes of trudging along the deep sand trail, Harper stopped.

  “The oldest pit is due east about six hundred feet,” said Harper. They were standing right next to a sign that had been stuck into the sand along the trail: “Ecologically Sensitive Area—Stay on Trail.” The warning was backed up by a “fence” made of string stretched between low posts along both sides of the trail. She paused for a moment as Harper stepped over the string and marched into the forbidden area.

  They’d gone not more than a hundred feet when the distinct sound of a bullhorn snapping on interrupted the peaceful surroundings.

  “Please turn around and return to the trail,” bellowed a stern female voice. They stopped in their tracks and turned. A park ranger was on the trail where they’d been a few moments earlier.

  “How the hell did she know we were out here?
” Harper asked quietly.

  “She must have followed us,” said Carys.

  “But why?” asked Harper as they trudged back to the trail. “It’s not illegal to walk on the trail.”

  “Hello,” said the ranger, a woman not much taller than Carys but much thicker, with long brown hair pulled into a severe ponytail underneath her brimmed fabric hat. “You two realize it’s a violation to enter these dunes, as clearly stated by this sign you just walked past?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Carys. “We’re sorry. We were trying to be careful, but there’s an archaeological site over there that we are trying to find.”

  “And did you not think that maybe we didn’t want you to stomp all over that either?” asked the ranger, who was a little more agitated than she expected a park ranger to be.

  “Ma’am,” said Harper, looking more carefully at her name badge. “Ranger Collwood, I assure you we weren’t intending to stomp all over anything. We’re doing some research—which is why we’re not in bathing suits.”

  “I’m going to have to ask you two to come with me,” said the ranger, who slung the bullhorn onto her belt next to her gun.

  They followed the ranger to the beachfront and got into the back of the ATV she had parked near the trail entrance. She drove them silently back to the ranger station. Harper and Carys looked at each other like errant schoolchildren waiting for their turn in the principal’s office.

  “Come inside please,” said the ranger. They followed her into the ranger’s building and back into a small office with a desk and a few bookshelves. Inside, standing next to a desk, was a tall man who had an angular face, closely cropped brown hair, and a look on him that let Carys and Harper know that he was already pissed off.

  “Anna, these the two?” asked the man.

  “Yup,” she said. “They were off by the dig site when I caught up to them.”

  The man shot Collwood a look, and she backed up and stood behind Carys and Harper.

  “You were following us?” asked Harper.

  The man looked him up and down and did the same to Carys.

  “Of course not,” he said. “But we monitor those dunes very carefully. They’re an extremely sensitive ecological area.”

  “And archaeological as well,” said Carys. “Very sensitive.”

  The man glared at her. “Yes, it is.”

  “The dig sites back there,” said Harper. “How would we go about securing official permission to access the area?”

  “You can’t,” said the man, whose name tag identified him as Michael Heath. “That area specifically has been closed off for twenty years. No one is allowed to dig there or even walk there. Permission is not granted.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  Heath didn’t answer right away.

  “They have been closed off indefinitely.”

  He turned in his seat behind him to retrieve a clipboard and a pen.

  “I’m going to issue you both a citation,” said Heath. “If you are caught out there again, I’ll be authorized to arrest you both and charge you with criminal trespass. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” said Carys and Harper in unison.

  After they’d recited their names and home addresses, Heath put the clipboard back on his desk. “Are you staying locally?”

  Harper brushed her arm lightly.

  “No,” he said. “We just came down for the day.”

  “I’ll have Anna drive you back to your car.”

  “We can walk,” said Carys. “It’s not that far…”

  “We’ll drive you,” said Heath. He stood up and extended his arm out to Harper to shake his hand.

  “Have a safe trip back up to Wellesley,” he said, pumping Harper’s hand once, then holding on to it just a second too long.

  She looked over at their clasped hands. Heath’s long shirt sleeve had ridden slightly up his extended arm. Peeking out from underneath the edge of the cuff on Heath’s wrist was a very old, slightly greening tattoo that was about the size of a dime.

  The ancient Christian cross.

  Once they were deposited back in the Range Rover, Carys turned to Harper once more.

  “You see his tattoo?” she asked.

  “You bet your ass I did,” said Harper.

  ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

  When they returned to the inn, Dafydd was on the back porch in a lounge chair, reading a dog-eared paperback copy of Carrie and drinking a Budweiser. He smiled broadly, hopped out of the chair, and hugged Carys hard. It felt delicious.

  “How did it go?” he asked with bright eyes.

  “It was very, very interesting,” she said.

  “Tell me,” said Dafydd. They moved to the sitting room. Harper laid the stack of books down on a small wicker table.

  “You go to a library?” asked Dafydd.

  “Sort of,” said Harper, flipping through the books and documents. “This is insulting. We literally could have found this stuff in the public library.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” she said. “We found out what we needed to know.”

  “Which is what?” asked Dafydd.

  “They know someone very ancient and non-native is buried on Sandy Neck,” she said. “They probably have no idea it’s King Arthur. They couldn’t know that. He wasn’t the Arthur of legend when he was buried here. The legend evolved long afterward. But they definitely know a visitor is buried here, and they are keeping it secret.”

  “The rangers at Sandy Neck are Mattakeese tribe members,” said Harper.

  “Is it possible they’re just there protecting their heritage in general?” asked Dafydd. “Aren’t there quite a few native burial sites out there?”

  “Yes, it’s possible. But remember that symbol on the huge rock, the one that looked like Stonehenge, when we dove on the cave?” she asked.

  “Of course,” said Dafydd. “Never been so happy to see a Celtic cross in my life.”

  “We’ve been seeing an awful lot of that symbol today. It was on one of the tribe’s stones in their office archives. A stone that dates back to fifteen hundred years ago. And there are no others like it that date to before that time,” said Carys.

  “And then the ranger who almost arrested us for…” said Harper.

  “What?” asked Dafydd. “Almost what?”

  Carys smiled and grabbed his arm.

  “They let us off with a warning,” she said. “We went to Sandy Neck Beach after we met with the sachem. We took a walk along the beach, went into the dunes to find one of the old archaeological dig sites, and about two seconds after we veered off the trail, a ranger was on us. They were following us. Like they were warned we’d be coming.”

  Dafydd sat there, his mouth slightly agape. He hadn’t taken a sip from his beer since they’d arrived. She reached over and grabbed it and took a long swig. The refreshing fizz cleared the layer of sand accumulated at the back of her throat. She burped. Dafydd laughed out loud.

  “You look incredibly pleased with yourself,” said Dafydd.

  “I am,” she said. “I am. They know there is an ancient visitor buried on their lands. Now we just need to figure out why they are keeping the burial site a secret. And we have to convince them to share that secret with us.”

  ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

  The sun glowed low through the trees surrounding the Colonial Inn, there was a tinge of salt air and low tide on the breeze, and the beer was cold. There was no sign that they’d been followed since Carys had returned to Boston, and she was beginning to think that maybe Frank Marshfield’s employer—whoever it was—had dropped the chase. But deep in her mind, she couldn’t convince herself of it. The faint hum of anxiety still pestered her neck and shoulders.

  Harper had gone upstairs several hours earlier. Despite his semi-miraculous recovery over the past couple of days, the after-e
ffect of his infection reasserted itself after Harper had half a beer. He excused himself to take a nap and a shower.

  She and Dafydd sat on the couch, sipping their beers, relaxing into each other. There was no one around and no sound from the rest of the house.

  “It’s really beautiful here,” said Dafydd.

  “Does it look like you thought it would?” she asked.

  “I’ve never really given it much thought,” he said. “I’ve never traveled. I guess I always thought that foreign countries would be strange and unfamiliar. But this could be my backyard back home.”

  “I guess that’s why the sailors with Morfran decided to stick around,” she said.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure,” she said. “Not much point in having secrets now.”

  “Why aren’t you…” He paused.

  “Why aren’t I what?” she asked, and smiled. “Married?”

  “Well, yeah,” he said. “Or with someone. I mean, it’s inconceivable.”

  She laughed. She’d never been asked that before. She always figured it was obvious.

  “You’re quite a catch,” said Dafydd. “Smart, beautiful, fearless, funny, great in the sack.”

  “Broken,” she said, her happy mood fading slightly. “Deeply broken.”

  “What broke you?” asked Dafydd.

  “My father leaving, my mother committing suicide, my father abandoning me, you know, the usual,” she said. “Being raised like a stepchild in someone else’s home just really did a number on me, I think. Annie and Priscilla, Annie’s mom, loved me well. But no matter how wonderful they were, they couldn’t make me believe that I hadn’t done something wrong to lose both parents. Somewhere along the way, I just decided to keep people at arm’s length. Less chance of getting hurt.”

  Dafydd raised his arm out in front of her, then moved it over her head and draped it around her shoulders.

  “I’m closer than arm’s length,” he said. “You have failed in your mission.”

  She couldn’t help but smile. “It appears so.”

  Dafydd looked into her eyes, and for the first time in her life, she enjoyed the sensation of truly being seen.