As a lifelong
resident of Virginia, I’d always heard stories and folklore about local legends
and strange happenings. Ghosts haunting colonial taverns of Williamsburg,
restless spirits roaming the Civil War battlefields in Richmond, and strange
lights appearing in the woods in Appalachia make for great campfire and
Halloween tales. Some stories preserve local history, while others serve as
warnings or moral lessons. Many are simply tall tales passed down through
generations with just a kernel of truth.
There is no
shortage of stories in Virginia related to buried treasure, and the most famous
of these is the legend of the Beale Treasure. The story goes that in the early
1800s, Thomas Beale returned from a trip to the West, claiming he’d found a
large deposit of gold and silver. He is said to have buried this treasure in
Bedford County, Virginia, before heading back out in search of more. He also
left behind three messages he entrusted to innkeeper Robert Morriss. Beale
instructed Morriss to open the messages if he didn’t return within a certain
number of years. Inside, Beale detailed the treasure’s contents, location, and
owners.
Beale never
returned, and when Morriss opened the messages, he found they were coded.
Decades later, one cipher describing the treasure’s contents was decoded using
the Declaration of Independence. The other two ciphers, despite many attempts
by cryptologists, have never been solved. Some believe Beale created the
treasure story as an elaborate hoax to warn people against the dangers of
greed. Many went bankrupt in pursuit of the treasure, and some to this day
still dig in Bedford County, searching for it.
The Beale story
got me thinking about what makes a treasure tale so compelling. It needs a
mystery, perhaps a bit of danger, and someplace that can hold a secret. That is
what inspired the treasure at the heart of The Friar’s Last Curse.
My fictional
legend is rooted in Mexico’s history in the mid-1800s. This period was known as
La Reforma, or the Reform period, and it was a time of political upheaval.
Liberal leaders enacted laws meant to limit the power of the Catholic Church, and
the government began seizing church property and wealth. The conflict erupted
into the violence of the Reform War. Many clergy fled the country with church
artifacts and wealth to safeguard them and keep them from being confiscated.
Many good
treasure tales come with a warning, and mine is no exception. In Covington
Crossroads, the treasure is said to be cursed. Over the years, several
suspicious deaths have been tied to it. When a murder occurs in Wren Meadows’s
hometown, she learns that the legend may have claimed another life. Everyone
close to the victim seems to be hiding something, perhaps even where the
treasure is hidden.
