Free The Edge of Recall by Kristen Heitzmann Page B

cathedral’s floor labyrinth. I’ll know more when I uncover enough of the path to see the first turns.” Although now, with every cut of the spade, she wondered what she might unearth. “I wish I knew more about it.”
    “Have you read the documents?”
    She nodded. “Mr. Gaston’s documents contain the most information I’ve found. The etchings are fairly detailed for the structure”—a wooden colonial chapel with wings that would have held the priests’ cells, kitchen, storage, education and workrooms— “but not so much for the labyrinth. I haven’t found more than a passing mention of the monastery in records outside Mr. Gaston’s.”
    “According to Smith, he privately acquired everything he could.”
    She raised her brows. Lots of people wanted to know the history of their land, but left it for the public as well. “St. John’s didn’t seem to have been around long enough to impact history before it got destroyed.” She hoped with everything in her the priests’ bones did not lie within the labyrinth.
    “Hard to imagine that kind of violence.”
    “Is it?” She looked up, surprised. “With Islamic suicide bombers who want to kill us all as infidels?”
    “But these were all Christians. They simply worshiped differently.”
    “True.”
    In spite of Smith’s dire warnings, she had managed to learn a little about the local history without raising alarms. “Lord Baltimore envisioned a colony without an established religion, where all believers in Christ could worship in peace. The original act went so far as to punish with fines people who used terms like Puritan, heretic, Calvinist, Papist, or Lutheran in a ‘reproachful manner.’ Very forward thinking for the time, but naïve.”
    “What happened?”
    “Puritans who had been forced out of Virginia and given refuge in Maryland wrested control, suspended the Toleration Act, and denied Quakers, Baptists, Catholics, and Anglicans religious liberty.”
    “That’s a nice turnaround. So what happened?”
    “Oliver Cromwell recognized the excessive persecution and restored the Toleration Act, but by then the monastery and its peace labyrinth had been burned to the ground.”
    “Makes you wonder what God thinks of it all.”
    “Yes, it does.” She nodded. “Especially since the infighting between Christians hasn’t stopped. It never took long whenever Mom and I tried a new church before one group or another was being criticized. I guess that’s why some people choose a private relationship with God over any church at all.” She had not meant to say so much, but learning the monastery’s history had struck a chord with the nomadic search she and her mother had made for a place to rest away from petty quarrels and politics, and why she still sought God in the labyrinth’s solitude.
    “Well, um . . . I was wondering . . . when you might be finishing up.”
    “I don’t know. Why?”
    “No reason. Just . . . wondering.”
    “Is there something I need to do?”
    “No, no.” Bair shoved his hands into his pockets. “I’ll just . . . head back in.”
    “Okay. See you later.” At least in the field, she didn’t have to shield herself from Smith, though, thankfully, they’d had little direct interaction since their last collision. As Bair trudged back to the trailer, she returned to her own business.
    The stone path she had uncovered beneath the fallen gate appeared to be bedrock, a creamy white limestone bordered by walls of the same, with which the builder had created earth beds for the hedge. It all showed blackening from fire, and she imagined the flames sweeping over and engulfing it.
    The house Smith designed might only hint at a monastic heritage, but she intended to restore in the labyrinth a place of peace, of seeking divine wisdom. This was more than landscaping, more than preserving a wetland or laying out a park. Nature had reclaimed the ground, but the path was there, and she would bring it all once again to life.
    And