by Sword Stone Table- Old Legends, New Voices (retail) (epub)
To be continued…
28. A leather briefcase with a smashed lock
Embossed with the gilded crest of a dragon whose tail forms into a pen nib. The case contains:
• A letter handwritten in dark purple ink, with a profusion of inkblots, errors, and redactions
Cleveland, Ohio
April 28, 1882
Dear Mr. Pinkerton,
I offer my personal thanks to you for agreeing to take on this case, as follows.
To my everlasting regret, several years ago, as a result of a prophecy foretelling my death at the hands of a child I’d fathered out of wedlock, I removed engineered in a moment of weakness the removal of all children a child fathered by myself from the homes of their his mothers, placed them aboard a ship and set them adrift on Lake Erie hoping they’d disappear, intending, of course, to give him a home.
Please consult the newspaper clipping enclosed herein. There was a shipwreck, and
The sole survivor child was never intended to be truly set adrift, so much as to be transported to a nursery, and with the minimum of fuss. He is now approximately 7 years in age, and though it is known that he survived a shipwreck, his whereabouts since have proven undiscoverable. This is a matter of extreme confidentiality. I desire his return to myself or, should I be unavailable, to my associate Mr. Merle Ambrose, not to his mother, who is a seductress and hardly the sort of woman I’d—who rejected my gift of a baseball mitt—who is, regrettably, dead who will take custody of the boy, as he once did of myself, until I am able to take him into one of my own residences and educate him properly.
All this was a horrible mistake. I am not the kind of man who’d kill any children
Even if
I am a man unaccustomed to secrets.
Regards,
A. Pendragon
• And a fisherman’s leather-bound logbook, a single entry circled in dark purple ink
8 June 1875
Dropped nets for muskellunge last night on Lake Erie, near the Lighthouse at West Sister Island. Slept aboard. Tea at dawn. Bright sky. No wind. Pulled up the nets. When I did, they were filled with—
* * *
—
There were 16 of them, drowned, each weighted in silver, not weighted enough to stay at the bottom. I brought them aboard, shrouded them, and took them to be buried, to the Mariner’s Church in Detroit. The rector took them to the churchyard and told me not to speak of this again, that some things happen under God’s eye and no other, that it is not for fishermen to understand. But I—
No more to say on this. What can be said? No more can be written, no more can be imagined.
The pages of the logbook are stained with brownish spatters.
29. Clipping from The Western Medical Reporter, January 1895
Notes on an Emergency. At approximately 10 p.m. on May 1, 1894, I attended two patients at the encampment of Arthur’s Army, just outside Washington, D.C.
I was, that evening, in attendance at a “Hard Times” ball, which had been advertised widely, and in which I had a personal interest. The event was an evening of stump speeches by the proposed Presidential candidate, Mr. Arthur Pendragon, a relation of mine, and dancing by the candidate’s cohort and guests. I happened to be seated in the front row, listening to the band playing and awaiting the ham sandwiches being passed to the assembled guests. The Masters of Ceremony, an elderly man in a cowboy hat, and his assistant, a young woman dressed identically to him, had gone outside for air after performing an energetic dance. The candidate and his wife were posing on horseback, with several photographers barking instructions, when I heard loud shouting from outside the tent.
Someone cried that there must be a duel, that this could not stand.
I saw an ancient tuxedoed gentleman with white hair and pale blue eyes hobble onto the stage toward the candidate, an equally ancient rifle at the ready, though it was unclear who he sought to shoot. The brass band, stationed at the other end of the tent and well into their cups, continued to play at top volume as another gentleman rushed the stage, a young man, shouting and sobbing, in his hands a leather briefcase. This man, too, was known to me, though I had not expected to see him. Mr. Pendragon, having dismounted, fumbled in his clothing for a pistol, and brought it out, wielding it wildly.
From the audience, somewhere close beside me, there was a cracking sound, a shot. I smelled gunpowder and ducked my head as on the stage itself all parties, in confusion, commenced to fire their weapons. The candidate’s wife, dressed memorably in a gown made of American flags, chose to flee, her horse bucking and galloping through the back of the tent, and without warning, the central post gave way. Heavy fabric, dark blue and printed patriotically with stars, dropped over the assembled, including myself.
I struggled, in the aftermath, onto the grass outside the fallen tent, where I was presented with two patients, one a 43-year-old male, Mr. Arthur Pendragon, shot in the head, and the other, the 20-year-old male who’d charged the stage, shot in the chest, the bullet lodged somewhere in his body. The elder patient was delirious, the younger dazed.
The elder man spoke, pleading forgiveness for something he called “May Day.”
The younger spoke only once, to ask who was dead. I informed him that there was at present one fatality, the very elderly man in the tuxedo who’d gotten to the stage just before shots were fired and fallen to a bullet from a woman in the front row.
The young man opened his hands. He turned to look at my other patient, who was silent, his eyes closed. The wound in his head was profound, but no blood flowed from it.
“I wanted to do it,” the young man said, clearly delirious. “She gave me her pistol. He told me his wasn’t loaded. It was my responsibility to kill him, but I couldn’t do it. I have it here. It’s still in my pocket.”
The young man handed me a pistol, silver with an ivory handle, and then reached up and removed the black wig he’d been wearing, revealing his white hair. He wept, then, inconsolably, and his wound wept with him, a bullet wandering within his rib cage, bones shattered. I could only ease his pain, and I did so.
Both of my patients, though living, were grievously wounded. They were transported back to Cleveland, nonetheless, this physician accompanying them on the train, along with a young woman, the assistant to the Master of Ceremonies. She was the one who’d found my two patients and carried them out of the tent, both of them at once, and though she, too, was known to me, she is a private citizen and her name will not be publicized. Both patients left my care, and though I did my level best to sustain them, they are presumed deceased.
—Dr. Morgan Lake*8
30. A posed photograph, taken at the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, ca. 1861
Six women surround a table containing a partially dissected male corpse; some hold notebooks, others surgical tools. The women are dressed in white smocks over bustled dresses and are a diverse group, drawn from the women depicted in Item 10. The American Indian woman circled in Item 10 is depicted in this photo, too. She holds surgical instruments and is looking directly at the photographer. A gum label on the reverse reads: Dr. Morgan Lake, Living. The photo is stamped with the logo of the Pinkerton Detective Agency, and an additional note reads Return missing boy to Dr. Lake. —A. Pinkerton.
31. An undated manuscript, handwritten in green ink
I was in the dark, and there were four women, all black-haired but one, swimming around me. The eldest had long, white braids, and I opened a hand to hold on to one as though it were a rope, meant to pull me back. I was shipwrecked and drowning, my chest heavy and empty at once.
The youngest woman pressed her fingers into my chest, through my rib cage, and into my heart. She pulled out a small bag of silver coins and weighed them in her hand. I must have mad
e a sound, because the other women pressed me down. One, the one in the white dress, held me tightly in her arms, and though they were cool, and somewhat transparent, they felt substantial enough.
“Shh,” the youngest woman said. “It’s just like the deer.” In her other hand was a wild plum. She pressed the plum into my skin, and I felt my heart begin to beat again. “The old man knew some old tricks,” she said, and smiled.
The doctor, a woman I knew well, raised a hypodermic needle and injected its contents into my arm, and I slept, dreamless. When I woke again, it was in a white room, surrounded by birdsong, with the knowledge that I’d betrayed my responsibility. I hadn’t brought anything into the light.
My father stood before me on that stage in Washington, and he knew what I held, his sins in my hands. I told him I’d publish it. He told me that was why he’d saved it, all the things he’d done, that he couldn’t bear to bury them. I’m not the one who shot him, but I’m the one who killed him. He pulled his pistol from its holster and turned it on himself. He’d told me he kept no bullets in Excalibur. He lied, about that, as he did about so many other things.
There was a canvas in the corner when I woke up. A painting of two men sleeping, myself and my father, looking like the same man.
I think it was Uther Pendragon—my grandfather—who shot me, even as his long lost wife—my grandmother—shot him. Ambrose, I don’t know. He disappeared. I imagine him wandering the streets of Washington, looking for another man to run, trying to change the world, but working with a world full of sinners, himself as much as anyone. Can bad men bring goodness to the land? This reporter doesn’t know the answer to that question. Can good men leave pain in their wake? Of course they can.
This reporter remains a muckraker, swimming in dark waters, looking for the secrets beneath, looking now into his own soul as well as everyone else’s.
32. An early cinematograph prototype and an accompanying film reel, ca. 1894
Akin to the Lumière Cinématographe, this camera/projector is made of American hardwood, decorated with an inlay of a hawk. Of interest is the film, a 1-minute narrative feature utilizing special effects. Outside a star-spangled tent, a young woman in boy’s clothing greets an elderly man in a Stetson hat. The old man raises his walking stick—a distinctive stick with a bird-shaped head—and the young woman’s clothing magically transforms into a wedding dress. He lifts the young woman’s veil to kiss her. She subsequently brandishes his own walking stick and transforms him into a gray parrot, caging him and covering him with a tablecloth. The final frame shows the young woman removing her veil, donning the old man’s cowboy hat, and carrying his cage away.
33. A paper entitled “West Sister Island: A Proposal for Establishment of a Wilderness Area”
Included as part of a proposal recommending 14 new American Wilderness Areas, submitted to the President of the United States, April 28, 1971.
West Sister Island possesses no structures save the old lighthouse tower, a remnant of the past, which stands on the lakeshore at the southwest corner as a landmark. The island possesses unique botanical evidence reflective of long-standing cultivation, the vegetation having little to do with mainland and other Lake Erie species. The island is primarily a hackberry forest with a significant canopy of trees, the undercanopy covered in poison ivy and great Solomon’s-seal. There are several Kentucky coffee trees and some elm and poplar. As well, the island contains several small, wooded ponds, ringed by jack-in-the-pulpit and trout lilies and open lands bearing chokecherry and wild plum.
The hackberries are edible, well-known as a source of protein and fat, easily digested, and delicious. They may be pounded and added to meat or eaten raw. The starchy rhizomes of great Solomon’s-seal are also edible, as are the shoots, which are similar in character to asparagus. The berries are poisonous, but the plant may be used medicinally to treat ailments ranging from dysentery to excessive menstrual bleeding, as may the island’s chokecherries, which, though poisonous in quantity, may be used to treat respiratory ailments and to cure bile and jaundice. The berries of the coffee trees are toxic when raw but may be roasted and ground to produce a beverage similar to chicory coffee.
In addition to the island’s birds, the rock ledges surrounding the lake edge are luxurious sunning spots for various serpents, which hissing guard has long-standingly served to dissuade visitors to the island. The only documented human residents beyond lighthouse keepers are the stranded and shipwrecked and the occasional passengers of pleasure craft seeking shelter against sudden storms.
—R. Lake, USGS Botanist, 1971
Note: No “documented” residents. West Sister Island has been in use for centuries by residents undocumented by the United States government.
Included are multiple detailed illustrations of botanicals, nesting grounds, bird species, and a gray parrot perched in the interior cage of the lighthouse.
34. A large-format photograph, ca. 1975
Taken from a boat on Lake Erie. Five women, posed in a row along the shore of West Sister Island, the distinctive lighthouse and forested land behind them. The eldest has long white braids. She is dressed in a black oilcloth coat and hiking boots and holds in her hand a distinctive silver pistol. Her daughters are alongside her, the eldest in a man’s suit, carrying a physician’s leather bag, the next, somewhat transparent, in a white dress embroidered with flowers, the next dressed in a painter’s smock, and the last, wearing a silver Stetson and holding a staff with a carved hawk as its crown. The eldest appears to be around 70, the youngest in her early 20s. A handwritten title reads: The Ladies of the Lake. Photographer: D. M. Pendragon Lake
A NOTE ON THE AUCTION
An auction for the aforementioned items, discovered in the West Sister Island lighthouse, was held in Cleveland on October 1, 1975. A single bidder, a Mr. Dred Moore,*9 purchased the lot, by telephone bid. Though it was not required he attend the auction in person, the bidder appeared on foot to examine his acquisitions, walking slowly. The winning bidder was a very tall gentleman with white hair and pale blue eyes. When he took custody of the contents of the unit, he bent to look at the coffin, in particular, touching the carved plums on the coffin’s exterior, before signing the papers in green ink.
He departed by boat, accompanied by a young woman, perhaps his granddaughter, wearing a silver Stetson hat, an embroidered minidress, and thigh-high boots. She carried a staff with a head carved in the likeness of a small fighting hawk with inset eyes of turquoise, ivory talons, crystal beak, and droplets of blood rendered in garnet inset spilling down its length.
The parrot they released somewhere on the water. It flew straight up, higher, higher, screaming until it disappeared in the clouds.
Skip Notes
*1 The United States Coast Guard, having relied upon the Federal Bureau of Investigation to determine that the contents of the coffin are relevant neither to their investigation nor any other, takes no responsibility for the contents of the coffin. What the winning bidder(s) does with the coffin’s contents is up to the winning bidder(s).
*2 The Pendragon Company, founded by Uther Pendragon (1793–?) in 1830, dipped into a variety of sectors of 19th-century American commerce, beginning with fur-trapping and trading, expanding into both gold and silver mining and eventually resource-processing, through the engagement of Pendragon’s son, Arthur. Additionally, the Pendragon Company held large swaths of land south of Lake Erie, erecting barricades to bar competing entities from shipping and trading on the Great Lakes. As a young man, Pendragon fought under the command of Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry in the War of 1812, specifically in the Battle of Lake Erie in 1813. Pendragon is generally agreed to have bolstered the passage and subsequently taken advantage of the Indian Removal Act of 1830 in order to seize tribal lands in Ohio.
*3 Merle Ambrose (unknown–1894?) was a marketing wizard and impresario employed by the
Pendragon Company of Cleveland in addition to his part-time pursuits as a poet. Ambrose also functioned as an adviser to several American captains of industry and to a variety of military campaigns, beginning with the War of 1812. His Wild World show was a predecessor of Buffalo Bill Cody’s, though by most accounts not as rousing, incorporating a magic show along with a variety of tricks and costumed numbers purported to be traditional American Indian dances, but generally choreographed by Ambrose and based, at least to some extent, on the polka. Ambrose is rumored to have been buried alive in 1894.
*4 Gwinn Pendragon née Ever-LeGrande (1865–?) was a noted socialite, originally of the Virginia LeGrandes, relocated to Cleveland upon her marriage to Arthur Pendragon. When Pendragon began his presidential campaign, she was often at his side. She disappeared from the record in 1894, and though significant blind-item speculation would suggest that she disguised herself and departed for France on the arm of one of her husband’s lieutenants, she never resurfaced.
*5 Allan Pinkerton (1819–1884) was a Scottish American immigrant, abolitionist, detective and spy who founded the Pinkerton National Detective Agency in 1850. The agency, from its inception, employed both women and people of color, served the Union by sending its founder and other agents to operate undercover during the Civil War, and is credited with establishing lasting counterintelligence protocols. In 1875, in a rare and highly publicized failure, the agency tracked the brothers Frank and Jesse James to a homestead outside Chicago, and threw two flaming objects through a window, resulting in an explosion heard 3 miles away. The outlaws were not at home. Instead, their 9-year-old half brother was killed by shrapnel and their mother’s arm was blown off.