Kim nodded.
“They’re crazy,” Kinnard said. “They’re just asking for trouble. Have you noticed any other effects?”
Kim gave a short laugh. “You wouldn’t believe it,” she said. “They’re all having a dramatic response. Before they started the drug they were bickering with each other and sullen. Now they are all in great moods. They couldn’t be any happier or more content. They act as if they’re having a ball even though they continue to work at the same feverish pace.”
“That sounds like a good effect,” Kinnard said.
“In some respects,” Kim admitted. “But after you’ve been with them for a while you sense something weird, like they are all too similar and tedious despite their hilarity and their industriousness.”
“Now it sounds a little like Brave New World,” Kinnard said with a chuckle.
“Don’t laugh,” Kim said. “I thought of the same thing. But that’s more of a philosophical issue, and it’s not my immediate concern. What has me worried is the forgetfulness Edward has been exhibiting with silly everyday things. And it seems to be getting worse. I don’t know if the other people are experiencing it or not.”
“What are you going to do?” Kinnard asked.
“I don’t know,” Kim said. “I was hoping you could either definitively confirm my fears or dispel them. I guess you can’t do either.”
“Not with any degree of certainty,” Kinnard admitted. “But I can say something you can think about. Perceptions are extraordinarily influenced by expectations. That’s why double-blind studies have been instituted in medical research. There is a possibility that your expectation to see negative effects from Edward’s drug is affecting what you see. I know Edward is extraordinarily smart, and it doesn’t make much sense to me that he would take any unreasonable risk.”
“You have a point,” Kim said. “It’s true that at the moment I don’t know what I’m seeing. It could all be in my head, but I don’t think so.”
Kinnard glanced at the wall clock and had to excuse himself to do a case. “I’m sorry to cut this short,” he said, “but I’m here for the next few days if you want to talk more. Otherwise I’ll see you in the SICU in Boston.”
The moment they parted, Kinnard gave her hand a squeeze. She squeezed back and thanked him for listening to her.
Arriving back at the compound, Kim went directly to the castle. She had a few words with the plumbers, who insisted they were making good progress but that they’d need another three days or so to finish. They also suggested they should check the guest wing for the same problem. Kim told them to do whatever was needed.
Before going down to the wine cellar, Kim inspected the two entrances to the wings. She was appalled when she saw the one to the servants’ quarters. Not only was there dirt on the stairs, but there were also some sticks and leaves. Even an empty container for Chinese take-out food was in the corner near the door.
Swearing under her breath, Kim went to the cleaning closet, got out a mop and a bucket, and cleaned the stairway. The dirt had been tracked up to the first landing.
After she’d cleaned everything up, Kim walked to the front door, picked up the outdoor mat, and carried it around to the entrance to the servants’ wing. She thought about putting up a note, but then thought the mat should be message enough.
Finally Kim descended into the depths of the wine cellar and got to work. Although she did not find any documents even close to the seventeenth century, her concentration served to free her mind from her concerns, and she slowly began to relax.
At one o’clock Kim took a break. She went back to the cottage and let Sheba out while she had some lunch. Before she returned to the castle she made sure the cat was back in the house. At the castle she chatted with the plumbers for a few minutes and watched Albert deftly make some seals on water-supply pipes with his blowtorch. Finally she got back to work, this time in the attic.
Kim was again becoming discouraged when she found a whole folder of material from the era she was interested in. With excitement she carried it over to one of the dormered windows.
She was not surprised when the papers turned out to be business-related. A few of them were in Ronald’s easily recognizable script. Then Kim caught her breath. Out of the customs documents and bills of lading she pulled a piece of personal correspondence. It was a letter to Ronald from Thomas Goodman.
17th August 1692Salem TownSir:
Many are the villainies that have plagued our God fearing town. It has been a matter of great affliction for me whereby I have been unwillingly involved. I am sore of heart that you have thought ill of me and my duty as a convenanted member of our congregation and hath refused to converse with me in matters of joint interest. It is true that I in good faith and in God’s name did testify against your departed wife at her hearing and at her trial. At your request I did visit your home on occasion to offer aid if it be needed. On that fateful day I found your door ajar yet a frigid chill be on the land and the table laden with food and sustenance as if a meal interrupted yet other objects upside down or sharply broken with blood droplets on the floor. I did fear for an Indian raid and the safety of your kin. But the children both natural and the refugee girls I espied cowering in fear upstairs with word that your Good-wife fell into a fit while eating and not be of her normal self and having run to the shelter of your livestock. With trepidation I took myself there and called her name in the darkness. She came at me like a wild woman and affrighted me greatly. Blood was on her hands and her frock and I saw her handiwork. With troubled spirit I did quiet her at risk to my own well being. To a like purpose I did likewise with your livestock which were all affrighted yet all were safe. To these things I spoke the truth in God’s name.
I remain your friend and neighbor, Thomas Goodman.
“These poor people,” Kim murmured. This letter came the closest to anything she’d read so far in communicating to her the personal horror of the Salem witch ordeal, and Kim felt empathy for all involved. She could tell that Thomas was confused and dismayed at being caught between friendship and what he thought was the truth. And Kim’s heart went out to poor Elizabeth, who’d been rendered out of her mind with the mold to the point of terrorizing her own children. It was easy for Kim to understand how the seventeenth-century mind would have ascribed such horrifying and inexplicable behavior to witchcraft.
In the middle of Kim’s empathy she realized that the letter presented something new and disturbing. It was the mention of blood with its implication of violence. Kim didn’t even want to imagine what Elizabeth could have been doing in the shed with the livestock, yet she had to admit it might be significant.
Kim looked back at the letter. She reread the sentence where Thomas described that all the livestock was safe despite the presence of blood. That seemed confusing unless Elizabeth had done something to herself. The thought of self-mutilation made Kim shudder. Its possibility was enhanced by Thomas’s mention of droplets of blood on the floor in the house. But the blood in the house was mentioned in the same sentence with broken objects, suggesting the blood could have come from an inadvertent wound.
Kim sighed. Her mind was a jumble, but one thing was clear. The effect of the fungus was now associated with violence, and Kim thought that was something Edward and the others should know immediately.
Clutching the letter, Kim hastened from the castle and half-ran to the lab. She was out of breath when she entered. She was also immediately surprised: she’d walked into the middle of a celebration.
Everyone greeted Kim with great merriment, pulling her over to one of the lab benches where they had uncorked a bottle of champagne. Kim tried to refuse a beakerful but they wouldn’t hear of it. Once again she felt as if she were with a bunch of frolicsome collegians.