By this time the coughing attack had such a grip on Philip, he could no longer stand. He fell to the ground, doubled over, racked by the spasms. He expected to be hit by an arrow at any moment or see his attackers standing over him, ready to slit his throat or take his scalp. But no arrows came. No musket fired. No one stood over him.
Eventually the coughing subsided. Philip struggled to his hands and knees and looked around for his attackers. They were gone! Benjamin Morgan lay face down on the road. Two arrows protruded grotesquely from his back, waving back and forth ever so slightly from his father’s shallow breathing. A third wound in the small of his back—from the musket ball—was splattered with powder black and wet with blood.
Philip remembered the raspy sound of his father’s voice calling to him. He felt helpless as he knelt over his father. Should he pull the arrows out, or would that only aggravate the wound?
Benjamin Morgan lifted his head and turned toward Philip.
“Come here, Son. Down here.”
Philip lay beside his father, his head resting in the dirt.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes, Father.”
“Do you know who it was?”
Benjamin Morgan’s voice was barely more than a whisper.
“No, Father. I never saw them before. It was a sailor and an Indian. Why would a sailor and an Indian want to hurt you?”
A look of confusion crossed the elder Morgan’s face.
“A sailor and an Indian?”
Philip nodded, the side of his head rubbing in the dirt.
Benjamin Morgan half-chuckled, then winced in pain.
“Imagine that,” he said, “a sailor and an Indian.”
“Father, let me help you to your horse and I’ll get you to a doctor.”
“Too late for that,” his father wheezed. Then he said, “I’m sorry to leave you like this, Son.”
“Nobody’s leaving anybody!” Philip shouted. “Everything will be all right! I’ll get a doctor and bring him here!”
“Tell your mother I love her,” said the elder Morgan. His eyes closed momentarily. “Should have told her myself more often.”
“I’ll tell her, Father. I promise.”
“Priscilla and Jared too. Tell them I love them.”
“Yes, Father.”
“I know you and your brother and sister don’t get along, but promise me you’ll look after them. Promise me. Family is important, Son, the most important thing on earth. Never forget that.”
Tears spilled from Philip’s eyes, forming miniature craters in the dust.
“One more thing.”
“Whatever you want, Father.”
The elder Morgan coughed a chest rattling cough. His eyes closed in pain. When they opened again, they were unfocused to the things of this world. “I want you to complete a bit of unfinished business,” he said. “In the cabinet. In my study. A diary. Read it. It belonged to one of our ancestors.” Another spasm interrupted him. “It tells of a Bible. Family Bible. Ours. Lost for,” more coughs, “lost for more than fifty years. Philip, I want you to find it. Bring it home. Promise me.”
“I’ll find it, Father. I promise … I promise … I promise.”
In the darkness of his father’s study, Philip’s tears flowed freely.
“I should have been able to save him! If only I’d acted more quickly, Father would be alive today. Why, God? Why did I have an attack when Father needed me most?”
Philip wheezed and coughed.
“You chose the wrong son to accompany you!” Philip cried to the empty room. “Jared’s the coolheaded one. You should have taken him. He would have acted more quickly. If Jared was with you, you’d be alive today. He could have saved you. Oh, Father, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. You’re dead because I failed you. I wasn’t fast enough, strong enough. Why didn’t you ask Jared to accompany you instead of me?”
Philip buried his head in his arms on top of the desk laden with books and papers. He wept until sleep overcame him.
He didn’t sleep long, maybe an hour or so. He hadn’t slept through the night since his father died. And each time he awoke, he awoke to the same words swirling in his head—bring back the Bible … bring back the Bible … bring back the Bible.
Philip stood, wiped his eyes, and stretched. Reaching for the tinderbox, he lit a candle, and the contents of the table came to view. One stack of papers were funeral related bills—charges for the headstone, rings, gloves, liquor table, and a variety of other miscellaneous items. Funerals were costly; one-fifth of the deceased person’s entire estate was the norm. Philip took this stack of papers, crammed them into a box, and set them aside. He didn’t want to think about such things now. The remaining papers came from the cabinet his father had spoken about. In the cabinet Philip had found loose papers, books, and a journal, all related to the Morgan family history.
For almost a year his father had spent several hours a week pursuing a special course of study. Two, sometimes three nights a week, he would shut himself away in his study and work. He wouldn’t tell anyone what he was working on, only that he was excited about it and hoped to share it with them soon.
The collection of loose papers scattered across the desk was a hodgepodge of research and personal notes. One paper featured a treelike structure bearing the family genealogy. Philip knew that one of his ancestors, Drew Morgan, had come over from England aboard the Arbella with Governor John Winthrop, but that’s about all he knew of his ancestry. According to the family tree, he and his brother and sister were the fifth generation of Morgans to live in Massachusetts.
Philip held the paper up to the light and traced his lineage. The information was sketchy in spots, but adequate. Drew Morgan was born in 1611 (the month and day were not recorded) and died September 24, 1682. Drew and Nell (Matthews) had three children: Christopher, born in 1634 (no date of death was indicated); Lucy was born in 1635, died 1704; and Roger, born 1638, died 1701(?), possibly 1702. Philip’s family line came through Roger, the youngest of Drew and Nell’s children. Roger married Mary Shepard (no date recorded), and they had three children: Thomas, Timothy, and Tyler. Thomas, the eldest, was Philip’s grandfather. Philip remembered him being a strange sort of man. He was a proud Englishman who always talked about going back home—meaning England—where he belonged. This attachment to England was rather strange since Thomas had lived in the colonies all his life and had never been to England. His wife, Ann (Grandma Ann to Philip), died of smallpox the same year their only son, Benjamin, entered Harvard at age fifteen. Thomas blamed the miserable conditions of the colonies for her death and within a month of her funeral sailed to England and civilization, leaving his only son to fend for himself.
Philip remembered noticing a letter (buried somewhere beneath all the piles of papers on the desk) from a Master Higgenbothem in Exeter, England, informing Benjamin Morgan of his father’s death in 1725, a mere two years ago.
On the family tree limb beside Thomas Morgan and Ann Weston, Benjamin had written his name and that of his wife, Constance. Beneath the names were their birth dates, his 1682 and hers 1690. He had left a space for a date of death, to match the branches of the family tree above them. With an uncertain hand, Philip Morgan took a quill and scratched in the date of his father’s death—June 20, 1727. Beside the names Benjamin and Constance, a branch with three limbs was drawn, bearing the names Philip, Priscilla, and Jared.
A fistful of papers was stuffed between the pages of an old journal. The writing on the pages was in his father’s hand, barely legible. The hastily scribbled letters and the preponderance of exclamation points scattered across the pages revealed Benjamin Morgan’s excitement over the journal’s contents.
According to the papers, the journal had just recently been discovered in the attic of an old building on the Boston wharf. The owner of the building, a business acquaintance of Benjamin Morgan, upon reading the surname of the journal’s author, had delivered the journal to Philip’s father. The journal wa
s the personal account of one Drew Morgan. It told of the early days of Massachusetts Bay Colony and had a few sketchy references to a little village called Edenford in Devonshire, England, but mostly the writing was about Drew’s spiritual journey and his passion to train his children in the ways of God. Benjamin’s loose pages marked a passage that revealed the existence of a family Bible. It read:
August 26, 1682
(Philip made a mental note. The date of the entry was just a few weeks before Drew Morgan’s death. He was seventy-one years old.)
It has been seven years to date since we’ve heard from Christopher. We hold little hope he is alive. The last word we received, and that secondhand, was that he was ministering to the praying Indians of the Wampanoag tribe shortly before the outbreak of hostilities. Although his location and health are uncertain, of this we are sure—his life is in God’s hands. Christopher did not fear those who could harm his body, knowing full well they could not harm his soul. My only regret is that, as far as we know, he died without issue, without fathering a son to whom he could pass the family Bible in keeping with the charge I gave to him at the ceremony. Maybe it is wrong of me to place so much emphasis on a physical symbol. God needs not a written record to know those who are His. My one last hope for this world is that the Morgan family will never know a generation that does not worship the Lord.
Nell has not been well these past few weeks. Having lost her beloved father and sister to the acts of evil men, she finds it hard to accept she may have lost her firstborn son in similar manner. Lord, grant her comfort.
We’ve recently received word that Lucy is with child again. If God grants this new little one life, it will be her twelfth child—three others having died in childbirth. She has done much to raise a godly lineage for the Sinclair line.
Finally, I pray that the Lord will grant me patience with Roger. There is very little regarding this life or the next in which we have agreed. Open his eyes, Lord. Teach him not to put his trust in the things of this world.
The scholar inside Philip was stirred by this original document. Drew Morgan’s journal was not just a piece of Massachusetts history; it was a piece of his history. The man who penned these words forty-five years previous was his blood ancestor.
The balance of the papers stuffed into this section of the journal was a summary of Benjamin Morgan’s research regarding the lost Bible. The notes referred to correspondence with his cousins—the children of Timothy and Tyler Morgan. The actual letters were probably crammed into one of the many little boxlike filing spaces in the desk. Benjamin had written his cousins to see if they knew anything about a family Bible. They responded that they’d heard their grandfather Roger mention it when he was drunk and angry. One cousin also remembered his grandfather cursing his brother, calling him “Jesus of the Narragansetts,” and “the reservation apostle.” Benjamin’s excited script followed:
I believe the Morgan family Bible still exists! Hypothesis: Christopher Morgan taught the Indians to revere God and honor His Word. Upon his death would not his disciples treasure the Bible of their teacher? To test my hypothesis, I will travel to the Narragansett reservation to see if I can recover the symbol of my family’s spiritual heritage.
Philip pulled in a deep, wheezing breath of air. His father’s mission was now his mission. He’d given his word. Only now, the more he thought about it, the tighter his chest became, and his forehead glistened with sweat in the candlelight.
ALSO BY JACK CAVANAUGH
American Family Portrait Series
(Available on SMASHWORDS)
The Puritans
The Colonists
The Patriots
The Adversaries
The Pioneers
The Allies
The Victors
The Peacemakers
The Guardians
Songs in the Night
(Available on SMASHWORDS)
While Mortals Sleep
His Watchful Eye
Above All Earthly Powers
Great Awakenings Series
w/Bill Bright
Proof
Fire
Storm
Fury
Book of Books Series
Glimpses of Truth
Beyond the Sacred Page
African Covenant Series
The Pride and the Passion
Quest for the Promised Land
Kingdom Wars Series
A Hideous Beauty
Tartarus
Dear Enemy
Death Watch
w/Jerry Kuiper
Postmarked Heaven
Behold
www.jackcavanaugh.com
The Puritans (American Family Portrait #1) Page 50