“Buenos días, señorita.” Beaming, she bobs a small curtsy, then waves Ivy to accompany her into the kitchen. Far from situated downstairs, where meals must be carried up one or more flights, this little kitchen abuts the dining room on one side and scullery on the other.
Ivy hesitates, never having been invited by someone else’s servant into such a place. Yet she has nothing better to do, or anyone else for company, while remaining alone with her own churning thoughts can grow as frightening as the nightmares.
The girl pushes a three-legged kitchen stool at her, chattering like a boisterous robin as she moves about the kitchen, grabbing bowls, eggs, a flour sack, checking the fire, dropping lard onto an iron skillet.
Ivy brushes a dusting of cornmeal from the stool before sitting, feet and knees together below her skirts, hands in her lap. Cornmeal fritters and baked beans with green chiles which burned her mouth made up her dinner the night before. Now she looks with trepidation to the hanging stalks of dried chilies, jars of pickled ones, and baskets of fresh ones.
“¿Te gustan las tortillas o galletas, señorita?” Still beaming, the girl looks around.
“Gracias....” One of the only Spanish words she knows besides hola and señorita—which she calls the girl in her mind, having no idea how to pronounce her name.
The girl goes on grinning and chattering as she works. Ivy watches her frayed yellow shawl, then sky blue woolen skirt, worn thin, flutter about her ankles with few layers underneath. Jet black hair falls unbound about her back and shoulders as she moves. Ivy is too old not to put her own hair up. At least she was able to get a brush, plain sun hat, and handkerchiefs at the sparse general store the previous afternoon before she retired to the boarding house for the evening.
Señorita turns to her with a clay plate of tiny, bright red and yellow tomatoes.
Ivy repeats, “Gracias.” Though cannot eat, having neither fork nor napkin.
She sits uneasily, sweating beside the stove, plate in one hand as the girl goes on working and talking. Even Ivy’s foundation in French does nothing to help her make sense of the syllable whirlwind.
Soon, footsteps sound on wood stairs.
Ivy excuses herself, taking her plate to the table. She is just moving toward a chair when Melchior and Samuelson walk in, both looking starkly dressed without chaps, hats, or any manner of overcoat or jacket, though Melchior wears his gun belt, as well as jingling spurs. She has seldom seen him without—as if he may need to leap straight from the breakfast table onto the back of a horse. He refused even to take them off in the ranch house when his mother complained he gouged the earthen floor.
Conversely, Samuelson looks more natural without his wide black hat and leather chaps. Only the riding boots and bandana give away his recent history. This bandana catches her eye as he walks in. There must be thousands of red cotton neckerchiefs in the West, yet the resemblance to Melchior’s old one is uncanny. And her cousin returned from the drive with one of blue silk.
“Good morning, Miss Jerinson.” Samuelson steps around the table to pull out her chair.
Melchior merely grunts, dropping onto a bench so his back is to the wall.
“Did you sleep well?” Samuelson asks.
Ivy stares at him, her attention snatched from silk and cotton to bleeding entrails spilling through the torn flesh of a terrified horse sinking to his knees on a dirt track. She blinks, repressing a shudder.
“Fine. Thank you.” She looks away, stiff in her seat and unsmiling.
He takes the point, sitting beside Melchior in silence.
Ivy shakes out her stiff hemp napkin, then takes up knife and fork to slice her tomatoes.
“What happened last night?” She does not look up.
“Counted on more folks,” Melchior says, scowling. “Besides that, on folks giving a damn—”
“Melchior.” Samuelson casts him a quick, startled glance.
Melchior ignores him, shrugging as he looks at Ivy. “Didn’t miss a shindy. Wouldn’t’ve made a lick a difference if you’d come with no one inviting our jaw. Women in there though—must be all right in Santa Fé.”
“At least people know,” Samuelson says, looking from Melchior to Ivy. “We can spread word of what happened to you both.”
“None twigged either way,” Melchior says. “Reckon folks was warned months back—still trot along. Found out from the barman all hats are gone already.”
Ivy stares at him, a bit of tomato on her fork. Though he could be just as difficult to understand on the ranch, it never mattered before. They scarcely spoke to one another. Now....
“Not a military man left in town either,” he adds, looking up as Señorita brings in coffee.
Ivy eats, looking away to the bright window which frames adobe walls of one-story buildings across a wide street. When she remained in last night, Melchior and Samuelson visited a popular saloon. They seemed to feel women would not be allowed, even had she wished to go. Now, though she must speculate as to much of his meaning, it seems her cousin just told her this is not the case.
As morning sunlight flows in, Ivy shifts her gaze from windows to thick dust now illuminated in the dining room. Melchior and Samuelson are talking over their evening at the saloon when the girl of all work returns with breakfast plates. Still the only three for the meal. Are they alone in the boarding house?
Corn, peppers, an egg scarcely past raw, all piled on top of a beef tamale. Ivy loses track of the conversation for several minutes in her attempt to eat. When Melchior’s knife slips and bangs off his clay plate, she jumps.
“Hear tell he’s got a ... don’t know ... workshop, laboratory ... whatever they call them, on the north side of town. ’Spect we can drop in.” Talking to Samuelson, who eats his tamale delicately, keeping his right hand on his knife and left on his fork, while Melchior uses only a fork in his right hand.
“Does it feel peculiar that authorities have not already contracted him to improve defenses around the city?” Samuelson asks. He glanced at her when she jumped, now looking at Melchior beside him.
“Suspecting he’s no account?”
Samuelson shakes his head. “Of course, I could not say. If he is the only maker in town, as they say, he should be worth calling upon. Yet, I cannot help wondering why he seems little known and less in demand. A good maker in London has the public queuing at his door.”
“That is because London believes in progress and new ideas,” Ivy says. “It is not a backward village of mud houses and donkeys roaming the streets like stray cats.”
Both men look at her. Ivy stares at her plate, blood beating in her ears, face hot. Not the words of a lady. Nor tone. Stomach turning over, she goes on eating corn and gristly beef, sticky with cold egg yolk.
When silence stretches on—Samuelson watching her, Melchior gulping his breakfast in huge bites—she murmurs, “I am grateful for any hospitality of these people. But my vision is colored. I must return to Boston.”
“What’d you suppose we’re working on?” Melchior asks after a swallow and pushing back the end of the bench with a screech. “Getting you out of here. No train, no stage, too far and too dangerous to ride it. Means you need ideas.” He stands up. “Go ... fluff your hair, or whatever the hell it is you do, then we’ll visit this maker. If anyone has ideas, they do.”
He walks out, his plate clean though Ivy and Samuelson are less than half-finished. Samuelson sits stiffly, staring at his breakfast, flushed.
“It’s all right,” Ivy mutters after another painful moment of silence. “He speaks to me like that all the time.”
“He should not,” Samuelson says, still rigid. “I am sorry—”
“Don’t. Does it improve matters when a man apologizes for the sins of his friend?”
Samuelson says nothing.
Ivy sits back, turning her fork in gooey, cold egg, then pushing her plate away, longing to cross her arms. “My apologies. He should be given allowances. He has lost a great deal in the past week.” When
her sole breakfast companion remains silent, also not eating, Ivy sighs. “I never understood what he said regarding your evening at the saloon. What happened?”
Samuelson shakes his head, not meeting her eyes. “There ... were not many present. They informed us they had already been warned. Mr. Cody Shannon, the proprietor, said all official personages were evacuated with the snowmelt. To where, I am unsure ... perhaps Fort Union. It sounds as if Santa Fé is no longer the capitol of anything, having no governing body. Many others followed them out. Those remaining, as Melchior implied, did not seem overly troubled by our news.”
“Then they are ignorant. They have no idea what they may soon face.”
When he again says nothing, Ivy regrets her tone. He has at least been civil. She should have offered her hand upon their meeting—even under the circumstances.
His gaze shifts from his own plate to hers, then back. After a moment, he says, “I should be glad to trade anything I owned, perhaps even my horse, for a meal of green salad and roast pheasant without a chile in sight.”
Staring at her plate, Ivy wonders what he received to eat at the Albuquerque jail. Or the trail. While it was not as if Aunt Abigail was an inept cook, the monotony of her own diet has been less than satisfying.
“A hot croissant from a bakery smelling of yeast and rising dough, rosemary and olive oil,” Ivy murmurs.
“A proper cup of tea,” he says without looking up. “Cucumber sandwiches, steaming scones with clotted cream just in from Devon.”
She glances at him. “Canard à l’orange with Pinot Noir. Or simply a fresh orange. Even an apple.”
“A whole fruit salad.” With a slight smile. “Cool Chardonnay. A sprig of mint.”
“Peppermint tea. Cream cheese and pear tarts with honey and lemon. Real luncheon with lobster bisque, clean linens, polished silver.”
Samuelson closes his eyes. “Really, I should trade all for almost any meal void of hot chiles, beans, and all forms of maize.”
He looks at her, head cocked, smiling. His gray eyes catch sunlight through the low window, dancing like the reflection off a stream. His hair, too dark to be sandy, yet too light to be brown, also glows, individual hairs standing separate rather than plastered across his skull with sweat and dust and hatbands—as if he brushes and washes it more than annually.
Ivy returns his smile, feeling her lips move almost stiffly with the unaccustomed action, sure it must be a sad smile. For now, she must try to take Melchior’s word that this young man was framed, unsure how long she can go on without at least one friend.
Fifth
The Maker
The building is timber-fronted, one side adobe, another steel sheeting, as if three planners and three builders could not agree. Ivy wonders, as she approaches what she must guess is the front door, what the back looks like.
She knocks, Samuelson beside her, Melchior wandering down the length of the structure, spurs clanking and boots knocking up dust, staring upward with his hat shading his eyes.
From within, a hollow, metallic sound echoes around the walls, as if someone rhythmically hammers steel or copper. Not ringing of a blacksmith’s forge, but a careful sound of fine work. The metal echo does not cease with her knock. No footsteps sound within.
Ivy glances at Samuelson. He studies the door, void of knocker or bell. Ivy has seen many an absurd device on makers’ doors in Boston. If one man has a brass lion’s head knocker on his and another has a clockwork lion leaping from a hidden nook to roar while answering roars reverberate through the workshop beyond, there can be no contest as to who finds more employ for well-paid trinkets.
Now, Ivy needs much more than trinkets. She needs a miracle. Her shoulders slump as she is met with no sign of either.
“Perhaps ... around back?” Samuelson asks.
Ivy knows he is thinking of society houses, entrances for servants and deliveries.
“Here,” Melchior says from twenty feet along the building, toward the metal side.
Clank, clank, clank. Hammering grows louder as Ivy approaches. Her cousin lifts a fist to knock on the plain timber wall.
“Morning,” Melchior calls to the wall.
Hammering stops.
Ivy and Samuelson glance around at Melchior, who, after a look up and down the wall, takes a few quick steps back.
Something rumbles, grinds, then the wall moves. Ivy jumps as Samuelson catches her arm, pulling her back. The whole wall, in a space wide enough for two coaches to pass abreast, swings outward from the bottom, rising into the air, over their heads, then retracting into the ceiling of the building, rumbling and clanking.
“I beg your pardon.” Samuelson hurriedly drops his hand, moving back from Ivy.
Melchior glares at them. “Thought you two was supposed to know about makers?”
He steps forward as the most pale-complected person Ivy has seen out West walks into the open front of the building to greet them, shielding light blue eyes against sunlight.
“Good morning,” he says brightly, smiling around at them. “And apologies. Had you been calling long? Only just heard. Might have opened the door hours ago—didn’t know it was morning. What is the time? How can I help you, good sirs and lady?” Noticing Ivy, he sweeps his tall hat off in a shower of wood dust and metal fragments. A cog bounces away across the road. A silver nib falls at Melchior’s toe.
Ivy covers her mouth with her handkerchief, all three stepping back, Samuelson coughing on sawdust.
“Goodness me, so sorry.” The pale man bends to snatch the nib, causing a fresh shower of fragments to scatter about his boots; from watch hands to screws, bolts, and a brass whistle—or is it a tiny smoke stack?
How can this man possibly wonder at the time? His person is hung all over with watches. One fixed to his hat, at least half a dozen dangling from chains of various lengths around his neck, two more on a belt, another pinned to the top of his boot. He wears spectacles covered in dust, though a pair of goggles is also fixed around the crowded hat. A once cream shirt, now going brown with dust, displays suede straps all down the sleeves at inch intervals which hold a variety of objects: the most minuscule pair of pliers Ivy has ever seen, a candle stub, a small roll of copper wire and neat row of spare watch gears held around the upper arm, several iron keys, and a few extra watches. More chains and tool handles poke from pockets all up and down the leather jerkin he seems to be wearing as a work apron.
He snatches handfuls of dropped objects, blows on his tall hat, resettles it on his head, drops the nib and other bits in jerkin pockets, then beams around at them.
“Welcome—it is bright out here. Goodness. Won’t you come in? Say hello to Isaiah. Isaiah, say hello to our guests, ah, uhm ... I’m sorry.” He squints at them. “I’ve forgotten your names. No offense, please. I do it all the time.”
“They haven’t said their names, Oliver.” Another man, younger, taller, and more practically dressed in leather apron and wool shirt, lays a small hammer down on a workbench, standing to greet them. “Isaiah James, maker’s assistant. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”
Ivy is unsurprised to see the young man is Negro. Though books, reports, even paintings of the Spectacular West filtering to Boston never mention the fact, there seem to be just as many Negro cowpunchers or settlers in the territory as Anglo—and far less of either than the long-established Mexican community.
Melchior only grunts at the introduction. Ivy longs to kick him, yet finds it reassuring to think he is not rude specifically to her.
Samuelson steps into the shaded workshop to shake hands with the young assistant. “How do you do. Conrad Samuelson.” He looks around for Ivy, but Melchior is beside him. “My friend, Melchior L’Heureux. His cousin, Ivy Jerinson.”
“Wonderful, wonderful!” Watches swinging and clanking, wood dust puffing off him, the maker scrambles to drag out chairs from overflowing work benches. “Have a seat, tell us why you’ve come. Here to help—” He rushes back to them, holding out his hand, ha
lf-covered in a glove encompassing his first finger, thumb, and part of the palm and back of his hand.
“Orvar Kjellstedt, maker, at your service.” He wrings Samuelson’s hand as if never having met such a splendid person, amending, “Oliver, everyone here calls me Oliver. Or El Hombre Inventar to the locals. Or ... tinker to those who came West precisely to avoid our kind of ideas.”
His smile fades and his hand drops from Samuelson’s. Ivy feels herself color. It is not a polite word in society.
“Oliver,” he repeats firmly. “You call me Oliver. A pleasure.”
“The pleasure is ours.” Ivy dutifully offers her hand and he kisses it, white dust falling from his hat to her dark sleeve.
Melchior takes the maker’s offered hand gingerly, as if something about the little man might be catching.
Without his hat, Orvar Kjellstedt is nearly a head shorter than Melchior and Samuelson, even lacking an inch or two on Ivy. The name, the blue eyes and blonde hair, all speak to Ivy of Norse legend. Yet this man is no Viking. More pixie as he dashes again back to chairs, waving them to sit, asking Isaiah to half-shut the door so they are not all blinded.
“Now, now, now, not a place for a lady,” he says, brushing frantically at the little chairs. A gear pops off his sleeve. The maker rushes after it while it rolls across the packed earth floor.
Isaiah brings forward his own chair, clean, solidly crafted, with a nod to Ivy and hint of a smile.
“Thank you.” She takes a seat with her hands folded, glancing about the workshop.
Isaiah turns a handle on the wall. The massive front wall, or door, swings out and partway down, lowering the light to a more pleasant level.
“Glendaleen will get us coffee or horchata, I’m sure,” the maker calls from under a long bench against the near wall. “Then we’ll catch up.” He emerges with the escaped gear in thumb and forefinger, spectacles lopsided, watches swinging and clicking against one another.
“There’s no need to fuss,” Ivy says, looking about the room, which bursts with an array of objects both familiar and bizarre: saws and leather punches, masks with pressure gauges, firearms with seven triggers, rolls of leather and sheets of steel, a glove made of glass, a clockwork horse the size of a house cat, and what looks like a whole human arm of copper draped across the bench the maker just pulled himself out from under.
Lightfall One: Clock, Cloak, Candle (Lightfall, Book 1) Page 5