Chapter 4
The carpenter’s name was Edwin Shaw.
He had worked on Blackthorne properties thirty years.
That made what followed more interesting.
“Did you think this was normal?”
He rubbed one hand across his beard.
“No.”
“Then why build it?”
He looked embarrassed.
“Because Miss Ainsworth showed me the chapel journal.”
What chapel journal?
Vesper stiffened again.
Another layer.
Edwin explained.
An old leather-bound book stored in the chapel archive.
Handwritten notes from weddings going back nearly a century.
One entry referenced:
THE GROOM’S VIGIL BELOW.
Edwin assumed Vesper was reviving an old rite.
He did not question it.
Why would he?
Families like mine teach workers that tradition is often indistinguishable from absurdity.
“Where is the journal?”
Vesper answered.
“My room.”
Of course.
We retrieved it.
I read the entry myself.
My great-grandfather’s wedding.
One sentence:
Thomas remained below during the twenty-minute vigil while Eleanor received the captains.
Interesting.
Vesper watched me.
“See?”
“Keep reading.”
The next page had been stuck together.
Old moisture.
I separated it carefully.
There.
THE VIGIL WAS REQUIRED BECAUSE SHOTS WERE HEARD NEAR THE EAST ROAD. THOMAS WAS HIDDEN BELOW UNTIL THE THREAT PASSED.
I looked at Vesper.
No symbolic burial.
No marriage test.
Emergency concealment.
The “captains” gathered upstairs because the groom was being protected during a security scare.
History had become ritual through one incomplete sentence.
Edwin looked horrified.
“I didn’t know.”
“I believe you.”
Vesper sat down.
For the first time, she looked embarrassed rather than defensive.
“You built a wedding tradition from half a paragraph.”
She whispered:
“My mother told me the story.”
There.
Not invention entirely.
Inheritance.
Her mother, Sabine Ainsworth, had described the Blackthorne Vigil as proof that Blackthorne brides once held temporary command.
Maybe Sabine believed it.
Maybe not.
“Did your mother know the second page?”
Vesper did not answer.
That meant I needed to ask Sabine.
Not because she built the coffin.
Because old family stories often survive because someone benefits from which half gets repeated.
Then Edwin added:
“There was one more instruction.”
I looked at him.
Vesper’s face tightened.
“Inside the lid.”
I lifted it again.
Edwin pressed a hidden brass catch.
A shallow compartment opened.
Inside lay twelve blank black cards.
Each stamped with the Blackthorne crest.
I stared.
“What are these?”
Vesper answered quietly.
“The orders.”
Not three.
May you like
Twelve.
The test was larger than she admitted.
