The Pious Few: investigation

Dear Mary,

I admit I have dragged my feet in writing this letter. It is not because I haven't thought of you, for there are times I wonder if my mind can think of anything else. Instead, your face has loomed over everything we have done, found or been charged with. I can't get a new tidbit of information and not immediately wonder what I can tell you without either burdening you or participating in gossip. I feel as a canteen with the stitches stretched to their last.

As I have already revealed, we met the man, the healer or heretic, we were sent here to investigate, although we did not know it at the time. I would tell you, although we shouldn't let is shade us, I liked him quite a bit. In fact, just minutes after making introductions, we witnessed Father Gonsalvas seeming heal the boy we brought.

Mary, I know that this is a wonderful thing, and I am happy for the salvaged life of this boy, but my hopes for a short and simple investigation walked out on the legs of that boy. See, the miracle, if it was a miracle, was not church sanctioned, which puts this otherwise seemingly good man in opposition to the crown. On the other hand, I too have had my problems with the state sanctioned religious regulations and I have not known the one true God to breathe miracles through the mouths of the unfaithful. So, there is a very real possibility, I will be asked to arrest a faithful man doing what the one true God is asking him to do. If it comes to that, I don't know what I will do. I am certain you, who have alway excelled at rightly eloquating, would offer me the council I need.

We spent that day and the next getting settled in and investigating those that had been healed and those that had not. The divide in the community here, is hot and obvious. It is a powder keg caused by what should be celebrated events. The more we look the more the more my mind is muddled, the more I think we are missing something, which we may not find before bloodshed erupts. People of course have been interested in what we are doing and then we watch them flit from door to door, telling people not to talk to us. Our presence, I'm afraid, may have lit a fuse.

One of the items we have found, which I can't believe I am resting my hopes in, is a root extract. Admittedly, when I saw it I was reminded of Dr. Nash's Snake Drawn Nectar, but Doc seemed to take it a bit more seriously. It was found at the site of several of those healed, we know it was used in his anointing rituals and we even found it near the place the boy was healed. Medicine. Perhaps he just has access to a powerful tonic.

Remember during the service for Isaiah's father how I opened my Bible and you said you knew immediately something was wrong. Afterwards, I angrily opened to the page and showed you what I had seen. A child had taken a quill and drawn over the words of the one true God. I shouted something like, you can't use the divine for the common. You don't interrupt the one true God. This was not school parchment. You calmed me. You told me you understood. You told me the One True God gave me grace and I needed to do the same.

Whenever I smell the odor of this Root Extract, I am reminded of that moment and I wonder, when we are done with Weston, if the One True God will still have grace for me.

Your Struggling Husband,
Piermont