Monstrous Beauty by Elizabeth Fama Read Free Book Online

The tiny, high windows let in little light and less breeze. Three layers of period clothing—all linen and wool and leather—were stifling on a warm day. She mopped her forehead with a handkerchief from her belt and tucked a few long hairs back into her linen coif. Any other interpreter might be tempted to remove her bodice jacket, but it didn’t occur to Hester. She knew in her core that Elizabeth Tilley Howland would never unfasten even the top button.
    She got up. There was always work to do in the cottage. She found a rag and began dusting. The packed-dirt floor made it nearly impossible to keep the room clean. She dusted the family’s shelf—lifting bowls, trenchers, and spoons to clean under them—and then picked up the single book on it: a replica of the Geneva Bible of 1560, believably moldy, with crinkled pages. She flipped it open and a silverfish darted down the gutter. She dropped the book, her heart pounding. She felt light-headed, and suddenly queasy. She sat in the chair and covered her face, a memory washing over her.
    *   *   *
    She was dawdling on the way home from school, looking for her friend Linnie in the graveyard behind the church. She found her patiently building a fort near the old oak. Linnie always seemed to be waiting for her.
    The air was too sweet, the sky too crisp to run and play. They lolled lazily in the young grass behind the church, listening to birds, watching just-born flies sun themselves on heated tombstones. Hester was seven, Linnie was eight and a half, and proud of being older. Hester lay on her back and tracked clouds, popping and expanding like heated corn kernels as they drifted slowly across the sky. Her eyelids closed, and she began drifting herself until she heard Linnie’s voice.
    “I dare you to go inside the church, Hester.”
    She opened her eyes and turned her head to see Linnie, propped on one elbow, facing her and fiercely focused, the way she sometimes was.
    “That’s not a dare,” Hester mumbled. “I go there every Sunday.”
    “You never go without your family, when it’s empty.”
    Hester yawned and looked at the back door of the stone building. It was slightly ajar, which she hadn’t noticed when she’d arrived that afternoon. It was dark inside.
    She sat up, groggy. “You want to play in there?”
    Linnie shook her head. “I’m not allowed.”
    Hester lay back down. She sighed deeply. “No one is allowed, I bet.”
    “That’s … that’s exactly why I’m daring you,” Linnie said.
    Hester shrugged, and after a minute of silence Linnie blurted, “I happen to know that the real rule is … that you mayn’t go inside a church—on a weekday—unless you’re carrying a Bible.”
    “Where’d you hear that?”
    “Please.” Linnie shook her shoulder. “I dare you to go in the church carrying a Bible.”
    “I don’t have a Bible here.”
    “I have.”
    Hester opened her eyes at this. “You do? Where?”
    Linnie scrambled to her feet, grabbed Hester’s hand to hoist her up, and dragged her over to the tombs facing School Street.
    The tombs were in a long building made of granite blocks, nested into the hill and overgrown with bushes and weeds. There were four square iron doors on the front, and a marble tablet dating the building, A.D. 1833 . Two of the doors had antique black padlocks on them, with keyholes for skeleton keys. Standing in the middle of the row, Linnie looked over both her shoulders, making sure they were alone. Hester looked around, too, and when she turned back, Linnie had pushed aside a curtain of ivy that dangled over the center portion of the building. Hester was surprised to see a fifth tomb that she’d never noticed before. It had the same black door and the same thick, round ring pull. There were two striped snails clinging motionless to the mortar above the door. Looking down the row of tombs, and at the spacing of the doors, she thought she might have guessed there was another tomb if someone had asked