A soft rain begins to fall but we’re protected beneath the canopy of trees. The sound is gentle. Isabelle, in just her threadbare T-shirt, shivers and wraps her free arm around herself.
We slow as the path widens.
“Where are we?” she asks, peering out into the darkness, holding back.
I wonder if she can smell the incense out here. I can. Or maybe it’s memory, a trick of the mind telling me I smell something that isn’t there.
A wind blows, uncovering the moon. The rain is little more than mist clinging to her face and hair, but she is wet, her shirt sticking to her. I look down at her feet clad in those ballet flats. See the grass and dirt stuck to the shoes and her legs. She shudders and I wonder if it’s with cold or the sight before her as I follow her gaze to the chapel. The cemetery before it. Tall stones mark the graves and just beyond are the marble vaults holding the bodies of St. James’s of generations past.
I look back at her, see the lines on her forehead, feel her try to pull free, to back away.
“Why are we here?” she asks, having to drag her gaze from the graveyard to me.
“Are you afraid of a few ghosts?”
She shudders and I remember what she’d said about the cellar, how it’s haunted. And I think about Zoë. Even the cemetery would be a cheerier place to haunt than that cellar.
“Why are we here?” she asks again, trepidation in her voice.
“We’re here so you can understand why you’re here. So you can see what the Bishops have done. What they, and you, are capable of.”
“I’m not—”
“It’s what you wanted to know, isn’t it? Why I took you? Why I hate you?”
She shudders at that word and I’m not sure it fits, but all it takes is a glance at one of the grave markers to shove those thoughts away.
I pull Isabelle with me as I cross the clearing toward the iron gate. She resists but I never expected her to come willingly. It’s her guilt, her subconscious guilt inherited from her ancestors.
I open the gate. It creaks just like in horror films and I’m surprised when Isabelle moves a little closer to me. I wonder if she realizes she does it.
We walk past the gravestones. I don’t look at those yet. Instead, I take her directly to the chapel. It was built on a hill. She’ll see why in a few minutes. She’s quiet as we walk, but her breathing is short, and every sound makes her jump. Her hair clings to her face now. She’s soaked through. The shivering, though, is probably a combination of fear and cold.
Two stone steps lead to the chapel door. They’re worn and uneven. We climb up and push the heavy, wooden door open. The scent of incense clings to the place, to every stone here. It’s been burnt here for centuries, the chapel used for Sunday mass weekly. Until six years ago, that is. I wonder if my mother will take up the tradition again.
Once we’re inside, I close the door and look around. I haven’t come here myself since my return to New Orleans. I’ll see it for the first time along with her.
I take it in, the ancient stone walls, the crooked windows with their stained-glass depicting scenes from the bible. Those are a more recent addition. Zeke must have updated them because I remember they’d been damaged by a storm before I’d left home. Six pews, three on each side of the aisle take up most of the space with a small baptismal font in one corner. The tabernacle lamp burns red on the altar but apart from that the candles are out, and no cloth is laid out on the ornate wooden altar. Zeke hasn’t been using it. I wonder when he was last here. When was the last time he came to tend to the graves, at least to Zoë and Kimberly. Probably hasn’t if I know my brother. And I don’t blame him.
I turn to Isabelle who is as still as the Christ over the altar. She stopped her struggling and is looking around curiously. She looks up at me and I find I can’t read her expression. I blame the lack of light.
I loosen my grip on her and we walk up the center aisle, coming to a stop before the carving in the large stone beneath our feet just before the altar. It’s why the chapel is built on a hill.
She turns her gaze to it.
“This is the grave of Draca St. James, the oldest recorded member of the St. James family, the one who bought this land from the Bishops and built his house upon it. He would be buried inside the chapel beside his wife. His first wife, that is. Not the second or the third.”
She glances up at me as I read the dates.
Draca St. James was born in 1682 and died in 1740. His wife, Mary, was born in 1690 and died in 1709.
I watch Isabelle as she reads their names, the dates of birth and death. She shudders. “She was nineteen when she died.”
“Your age,” I tell her. It’s a cruelty I allow myself.
I release her. Her eyes search mine in the dim tabernacle light.
“We bought the land from the Bishops. Did you know that?”
She swallows. Shakes her head.
“Your brother didn’t teach you?” I ask, walking a few paces to the altar where I see the familiar heavy tome that is the bible of the St. James family. Draca St. James’s diary. A ledger of his struggles, his victories. I set my fingers on the ornate wood etched with silver, caress it, open it to peer inside, to smell the scent of something old and decaying.
“I only learned I was half-Bishop three years ago,” she says, and I return to her.
“That’s three years. A family like the Bishops. You weren’t curious? Not even to know your neighbors?”
“There are miles between our houses. And I was dealing with the loss of my family.”
“Carlton Bishop is your family.”
“He’s not,” is all she says after a long moment.
I lean toward her. “Your blood would say differently.”
We turn and walk back out into the night where mist has once again turned to rain. It’s still light though and won’t interfere with my work.
She’s quiet as I lead her back outside although the resistance has begun again. That and her shivering.
“I’m cold,” she says.
“They’re colder,” I tell her as we walk to the farthest point in the cemetery on the west side of the chapel. The mausoleum is on the east side. Here lies a single grave marker and this grave is not tended. It’s overgrown with weeds and surrounded by its own rotting iron fence. The only thing kept intact are the name and dates of birth and death of the grave’s inhabitant.
“This one,” I start, pointing to it, feeling the cold creep over me, just the same as when I was taught our history as a child. “This is Nellie Bishop.” 1690 – 1711. “She lived two years more than Mary. They were supposed to be friends if you can believe it. A Bishop and a St. James. Friends.”
“I’m really cold. Can we please go back?”
“No.” I release her, and she rubs her bare arms. “You see, you Bishops have always been a greedy lot. The men coveted their neighbor’s possessions. Their wives. And as founding members of IVI, they had power. Power they abused. Although they underestimated Draca St. James.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Do you know the name Reginald Bishop?”
She nods. “I’ve seen his portrait in the house.”
“He, like your father, had a hard time keeping his dick in his pants. Except that Mary wasn’t his. She’d worked for him, though, before she married into the St. James family. Imagine that. A servant in one household who becomes queen in another. Draca St. James fell in love with her on sight. I’ll show you a portrait later. You’ll see why. He married her within weeks of having laid eyes on her. But Reginald, like most Bishops, was an entitled man. I’m sure selling off half his land to what he considered the help in order to keep afloat didn’t help. Maybe that’s why he did it. Who knows? What is certain, is him believing himself entitled to Mary. Even when she no longer worked in his household, he felt he had some claim to her. Even after she was a St. James, a member of IVI. The same Society his family had founded, he felt himself above any law. He took her. And when she wouldn’t have him, he raped her.”