'Okay,' I said, trying to sound like a tough guy who's decided to be generous, and not to pulverize the sarcastic barfly who's been making comments about his wife. I reached out for the library door handle and firmly closed the room behind me. Back in the hallway, I said to myself, 'It's nothing. Nothing whatsoever. No ghosts. No spirits. No demons. Nothing.'
I picked up the watercolour and the books once more, and carried them through to the living-room, where I spread them all out on the rug in front of the fire. I unwrapped the painting, and held it up so that I could examine it closely. The firelight played patterns across it, so that it almost appeared as if the painted sea were moving.
It was strange to think that this same sheet of handmade paper had been pinned to an easel over 290 years ago, only a quarter-mile or so away from here, and that an unknown artist had recreated in paints a day that had really passed; a day when men in frock coats had walked on beside the harbour, and Salem had been alive with horses and carts and people in Puritan clothes. I touched the surface of it with my fingertips. It was a crude painting, in many ways. The perspective and the colouring were strictly amateur. Yet there was some quality about it which seemed to bring it to life, as if it had been painted for a heartfelt reason. As if the artist had wanted more than anything to bring that long-lost day to life, and to show the people who were to be his descendants what Salem Bay had actually looked like, in every detail.
I could now understand why the Peabody Museum people were so interested in it. Every tree had been carefully recorded; it was even possible to make out the winding curve of Quaker Lane, and one or two small cottages there. One cottage could very well have been the forebear of Quaker Lane Cottage; a tiny lopsided dwelling with a tall chimney and weather-boarded sides.
Now I examined the ship on the other side of the bay. It was a three-master, conventionally-rigged, although there was one distinctive feature which I hadn't noticed when I had looked at the picture earlier in the day. There were two large flags flying from the stern-castle, one above the other, one of which appeared to be a red cross on a black background, and the other one of which was obviously meant to be the colours of the ship's owner. No Stars-and-Stripes, of course, because this was 1691. Some people say that it was a Salem sea-captain, William Driver, who had first dubbed the Union flag 'Old Glory,' but that was in 1824.
Pouring myself some more whisky, I looked into Walcott's book on merchant vessels, and discovered that 'it was the custom of some Salem dignitaries to fly on their ships two flags; one to denote their ownership and the other to celebrate the voyage on which they were engaged, particularly if it was expected to be especially significant or profitable.'
At the back of the book, I found a chart of owner's flags, although they were printed in black-and-white, and it was hard to distinguish between the various designs of stripes and crosses and stars. There were two which appeared to be vaguely similar to the owner's flag on the ship in my picture, and so I cross-referred to Osborne's Salem Marine to find out something about the fleets of the men they belonged to.
One of them was obviously hopeless: the flag of Joseph Winterton, Esq., who was said to have run one of the first ferries from Salem to Granitehead Neck. But the other belonged to Esau Hasket, a wealthy merchant who had escaped from England in 1670 because of his extreme religious views, and who had quickly established in Salem one of the largest fleets of merchantmen and fishing-vessels on the east coast of the colonies.
The text said, 'Little is known today about Hasket's fleet, although it probably numbered four 100-ft merchantmen and numerous smaller vessels. Although tiny by modern standards, a 100-ft ship was the largest that Salem's harbour could comfortably accommodate, since it had a 9-ft tidal range, and ships which had sailed quite easily into harbour when the tide was high would settle into the mud when the tide ebbed again. The names of only two of Hasket's vessels have survived to the present day: the Hosannah and the David Dark. A scrimshaw rendition of the Hosannah made in about 1712 by one of her retired crewmen shows her as a three-masted vessel flying a palm-tree flag to indicate that she usually traded in the West Indies. No known illustration of the David Dark exists, although it can fairly be assumed that she was a similar vessel.'
I turned to Great Men of Salem and read all that I could about Esau Hasket. A vigorous and firebreathing forerunner to Elias Derby, Hasket had obviously been feared and respected as much for his Puritanical religious fervour as he was for his sea-trading. Derby had made Salem into one of the busiest and wealthiest seaports on the eastern seaboard, and earned himself the distinction of being America's first-ever millionaire, but Hasket had apparently shaken the community's souls as well as their pockets. One contemporary account said that 'Mr Haskette firmlie believes in the existence on Earth bothe of Angelles & daemones, and is forthright in so sayinge; for if a manne is to believe in the Lord & His hostes, sayes Haskette, so must he believe with equalle certaintie in Satan and his miniones.' Derby had subsequently made Salem into one of the busiest and wealthiest seaports on the eastern seaboard, and earned himself the distinction of being America’s first-ever millionaire.
I was about to put the books away, satisfied at least that I could now sell the painting either to the Peabody or to one of our regular customers with the catch-all caption, 'Thought to be a rare depiction of one of the merchant ships of Esau Hasket', when it occurred to me to look up the name of David Dark. It was a curious name, but there was something about it which rang very distant bells. Maybe it was something that Jane had once said, or one of our customers. I thumbed through Great Men of Salem again until I found it.
The entry was tantalizingly short. Twelve lines altogether.
‘David Ittai Dark, 1610 (?) — 1691. Fundamentalist preacher of Mill Pond, Salem, who enjoyed brief local celebrity in 1682 when he claimed to have had several face-to-face conversations with Satan, who had provided him with a list of all those souls in the Salem district who were surely damned, and to whose 'inevitable incineration' Satan was looking forward with 'relishe'. David Dark was a protégé and adviser to the wealthy Salem merchant Esau Hasket (ibid.) and for some years was engaged with Hasket in trying to establish extreme fundamentalist principles in Salem's religious community. He died in mysterious circumstances in the spring of 1691, some say by the phenomenon of 'spontaneous explosion.' In Dark's honour, Hasket named his finest merchant-vessel the David Dark, although it is interesting to note that all contemporary records of this ship were excised from every logbook, chart, account-ledger and broadsheet of the period, supposedly on Hasket's instruction.'
It was then that I found what I had been looking for. I traced the words with my finger as I read them, and when I had read them silently I read them again out loud. I felt that heady surge of excitement that every antique dealer experiences when he discovers for certain that the goods he has bought are unique and valuable.
'David Dark’s insignia was that of a red cross on a black field, to indicate the triumph of the Lord over the powers of darkness. Contrarily, however, this insignia was adopted intermittently for several decades after his death by secret covens of 'witches' and practitioners in the black arts. The insignia was declared illegal in 1731 by Deputy Governor William Clark, presiding officer of the Court of Oyer and Terminer.'
I laid the book flat on the floor, and picked up the painting again. So this ship was the David Dark, a ship which had been named for a man who had claimed to have conversations with the Devil, and whose name had been expunged from every possible local record.