Nathan Snake's Arc

Chapter 10 of 13

Nathan walked to the temple ruins at first light with the cape folded under his arm. The daughter's brothers had been sheltering there for three days now and he'd promised them the land was secure. But promises meant nothing without proof. The brothers were awake when he arrived. The older one sat near the entrance while the younger paced along the far wall where the floor had started to crack. Nathan told them he needed to see what was beneath the stones. The younger brother asked why and Nathan said because someone had hidden something here forty years ago and he needed to know what it was. They helped him pry up the loose stones near the back wall where the floor dipped lowest. Beneath the third stone they found a narrow alcove lined with iron. Inside sat a leather book with brass corners and an anvil the size of a man's fist carved from black stone with red veins running through it like frozen blood. Nathan pulled the book out first and opened it carefully. The pages were brittle but the ink had held. The first entry was dated forty years back and signed J.F. in a tight careful hand. It was a record of transactions. Food bought and distributed. Blankets sewn and given. Medicine paid for and delivered to families who couldn't afford a physician. Every page listed names and what they'd received and how much it cost. The last entry was three months before the fever came. It said the land would be given to the church with one condition written into the deed. That it would always serve those who had nowhere else to go. Nathan closed the book and set it on the ground beside the anvil. The woman hadn't just given away her family's land. She'd built a place to forge sanctuary and the church had buried her for it. The older brother asked what it meant and Nathan told him it meant the woman who gave them this ground had been a blacksmith who fed the poor until her family erased her name to steal what she'd built. He wrapped the cape around the anvil and the book and carried both back to his house. He would show the deacon what his aunt had really done with her life. And if the deacon tried to bury her again Nathan would make sure the council saw every page of her record before winter came.