The Black Ledger
“And now, a representative of the Vanderkill Society will read the Black Ledger of those taken by the Witch.” The liturgical minister introduced him before they returned to their pew. This took longer than the Solemn Intercessions on Good Friday.
Jerk stood, unclenching the fist around his thumb. He didn’t want to chew it bloody and bleed on the Black Ledger. Again.
He smoothed out the front of his jacket as he walked towards the lectern where the Ledger waited.
Father Bellafiore was seated in the chancel, just in front of the tabernacle. At Sacred Heart, the layout always made officiants seem more like bodyguards to Christ than men of the cloth.
“I’m, uh–” He hated this part. “Theodore Rousseau Van Renwyck.”
He looked out at the crowd. Full house. Overflow crowds packed the back and lined the outside walls. The doors to the narthex were open, revealing more of the crowd obscured in its dim light.
Most had seen him do this before.
He adjusted the microphone. Fixed his eyes on the ledger. It was easier when he didn’t look at the crowd.
“These are those the Witch has stolen from us.”
Had she?
Jerk didn’t know. He just knew they were gone.
The Black Ledger was nearly square. The leather wrapped cover was more brown than black, edges wearing smooth.
He opened it. He could smell mildew spores that were probably older than anyone in the church.
It had been custom-made for Maerten van Renwyck. Jerk’s ancestor, and the sibling of–
“Barent Van Renwyck. The last Patroon of Renwyck. Brother. Thirty-one. Seventeen eighty-nine.”
The first claimed by the Vanderkill Witch.
“Geertruyd Jansdochter. Seamstress. Twenty-nine. Seventeen eighty-nine.”
Definitely not the woman Barent and Maerten quarreled over.
The script was large, almost childishly so. Maerten, the first to maintain the Ledger, was effectively blind and had to write the names of his brother and their shared beloved large enough that even he could read them.
Jerk turned the page. The next few pages were written in the same hand in fading iron gall ink on the rag paper. Maerten lived to eighty-three. Longer than any Patroon.
Many names were forgotten, even by the families that had lost them. Unmourned, except by the Black Ledger.
He read many mechanically. They had become facts, divorced even from the biographies he’d studied in the Society archives.
The names of the taken spanned 206 years.
“Silas Aries Whitmore. Minister. Fifty-three. Eighteen thirty-one.”
Some said Silas was pushed off a ferry. His much-younger widow married a Hayden. Their sons took the name.
“Lillian Beardsley. Daughter. Thirteen. Eighteen sixty-one.”
Jerk looked out. The Beardsleys were near the back. They still came, one hundred and thirty-four years later. Hers was the last name in iron gall blood. The Witch went quiet for a decade.
“Seymour Gunn. Drunk. Husband. Father. Fifty-nine. Eighteen Seventy-one.”
The purple of the original coal-tar ink had nearly faded, and Jerk had traced over it in ballpoint to make it more indelible a few years prior. Seymour’s biography was empty, other than those biographical details.
Seymour was probably a bastard. Jerk couldn’t be sure.
His voice was getting hoarse by the time he got to the twentieth century. One of Father Bellafiore’s altar servers brought Jerk a glass of water. He sipped from it, and looked out at the crowd. Solemn faces. Tears here and there.
McNally was towards the back, serene like a lizard on a rock.
“Christiane Pétain. Student. Parisian. Nineteen. Nineteen thirteen.”
She had come to Ilium as a student at eighteen.
Her family never acknowledged the Society’s invitation to mourn together.
They never sent for her things.
“Carmine Gaetano. Seminarian. Brother. Son. Twenty-three. Nineteen fifty-one.”
Paulie crossed himself for the uncle he never met.
Next were the names of those taken in the sixties and early seventies. The last of the seventies was the first he remembered.
“Stephen Jonathan Early. Student. Valedictorian. Son. Brother,” Jerk stifled a noise that definitely wasn’t a sob.
“Friend.”
He always added that.
“Seventeen years old. Nineteen seventy-nine.”
His eyes involuntarily went up to the empty choir loft.
Where he had his last conversation with Stephen.
Where he made his promise to him.