Elusive Hope

by Marylu Tyndall

  “Not if you need my third of the map to find it.” Patrick grinned. “So, Mr. Scott, you can either have the colonel banish me from the colony and remain poor forever, or you can allow me to find the gold and make you a rich man once again.”

  Hayden chuckled, drawing everyone’s gaze. “The man is lying. Can’t you see that?”

  Mr. Scott glared at Patrick, a vein throbbing at his temple. “I am not a man to be trifled with a second time, Mr. Haley or Gale, or whoever you are. But at the moment, I don’t see that I have a choice.”

  Hayden shook his head in disbelief.

  “Find your gold, sir,” Mr. Scott continued. “If it even exists. You have six months to do so before I take matters into my own hands” —he swung a determined gaze at Blake—“regardless of what you say, Colonel.”

  “I would expect nothing less.” Patrick gave a placating grin. “You shall have your money, Mr. Scott”—he lifted his chin and scanned the assembled group—“and then I will invest the rest of my share in this town and make it the Southern Utopia we all came here to embrace.”

  Ah, such seductive words frothing from devious lips with such aplomb that everyone cheered and smiled at him like the puppets they were. And he, the puppet master, skillfully pulling their strings. Hayden frowned. Yet, how many times had he, himself, lied to people, persuaded them with the same laud and puffery, put on a facade of honor and integrity while placating them with the same reassuring smile? All the while robbing them behind their backs of everything they had. Sometimes in front of their eyes.

  A horrible realization struck him. One he should have seen long ago. In his quest to find his father by entering the man’s world, Hayden had become just like the man he hated.

  CHAPTER 31

  Squeezing through the rotted gate, Hayden entered the temple square. How Blake and James had talked him into coming here again, he couldn’t say. It seemed like a good idea at the time—a chance to get away from bumping into Magnolia everywhere he went, as well as from stewing in fury while he plotted revenge against his father. But now, as he glanced over the gruesome faces carved into obelisks and the huge fire pit whereupon those faces, along with their bodies, had been roasted, he much preferred his own internal angst than this temple of horrors.

  But sweet Eliza had insisted that she check on Graves and bring him some food, and Blake would not have her come alone. In fact, he organized a regular posse consisting of Thiago, Moses, and of course James, who was anxious to return due to his reading of some ancient book Graves had given him. However, now as James entered the courtyard, he moved with the determined, wary look of a warrior rather than the interest of a scholar. The preacher-doctor was a constant surprise to Hayden for he knew the man harbored secrets from his past. Yet he played the part of a respectable man of God so well, Hayden couldn’t help but admire him.

  Thiago and Moses entered in after Hayden, looking less than pleased to be there, with Blake and Eliza bringing up the rear.

  “Let’s get this over with.” Hayden started toward the temple stairs. “Though I don’t see why you care so much for Mr. Graves, Eliza. If it were up to me, I’d leave him to his own devices.”

  Releasing her husband, Eliza slipped her arm through Hayden’s. “We all have moments of insanity in our lives, do we not?” Her coy smile made him wonder if she referred to Hayden’s recent attempt to murder his father. If she only knew the other horrid things he’d done, she wouldn’t dare to touch him now. “Perhaps if someone had cared for us during those times,” she continued, “we would have come to our senses sooner.”

  “You can’t argue with my wife’s compassionate heart.” Blake leapt on the stairs, kicked aside a piece of crumbling stone, and helped Eliza up. The adoring way he looked at her clouded Hayden with sorrow. His chances at loving and being loved like that had died with the revelation of Magnolia’s relationship with his father.

  James faced the young interpreter. “Thiago, will you join us inside this time? There are some carvings I need you to look at.”

  The Brazilian’s chest bellowed like the wind, but his jaw remained firm as he followed James up the stairs.

  “I’ll wait here,” Moses said.

  Blake nodded at the man, flung a sack of food and water over his shoulder, and led his wife inside the temple. Hayden followed, wondering if he shouldn’t wait outside with Moses. But his curiosity got the best of him. The last time he’d been here, they’d gone no farther than the altar in the back. Since then, he’d heard Graves had managed to excavate tunnels beneath the building.

  Minutes later, the oppressive heat in those tunnels threatened to melt Hayden on the spot. The deeper they went, the hotter it became. Eliza wilted in her husband’s arms as he led her along, while James and Thiago discussed the odd carvings on the wall. Put there by the cannibals who built the temple,Thiago guessed, and telling a tale about a huge battle between the gods.

  “And these.”Thiago held up the torch and pointed toward drawings of figures that looked like giants with wings. “These are powerful beings who fought.” He ran his finger over the rough stone. “Here see, they are put in chains. Defeated.”

  Sweat stung Hayden’s eyes. He wiped it away, moving past them. What difference did some ancient fable make when one was roasting alive? With each step he took, more air seeped from his lungs, while his damp clothes clung to him like tarpaper. And what in tarnation was that smell? A smell that got worse when, at the bottom of two sets of stairs, they entered a torch-lit cave. All the chamber needed to complete Hayden’s vision of hell were volcanoes of fire belching from the ground.

  Leading her to sit on a boulder, Blake handed Eliza his canteen. The woman shouldn’t be here at all, but Hayden knew Blake oft had difficulty bridling his stubborn wife. Which reminded Hayden of Magnolia. Despite how things ended between them, a smile tugged his lips. A smile that soon faded when James lifted a torch to reveal strange symbols scrawled above two alcoves.

  “Yes, yes. Deception and Delusion,” he mumbled to himself as he knelt to examine the broken chains at the bottom of a long pole. “They are in the book. The Judgment of the Four. They are two of the four mentioned.”

  “I don’t understand,” Eliza said.

  Hayden ran a sleeve over his forehead. “What nonsense is this, Doc?”

  James shook his head. “I haven’t translated it all yet. But they were some kind of powerful beings.”

  “Like the carvings on wall.”Thiago’s gaze skittered about the eerie cave. “The defeated ones.”

  Hayden snorted. “Where is Graves?”

  As if on cue, sounds echoed from an opening to their left and out crawled Mr. Graves. Though he’d been sinister-looking before landing in Brazil, the dust-laden, long-haired, rag-attired man who emerged into the room now harbored such a macabre aura about him, Hayden’s sweat turned cold.

  “Ah, Mr. Graves.” Eliza approached him. “We’ve brought you some food and water.”

  “I have no need of it.” He waved her away, but by the way his clothes hung on him, Hayden thought he should reconsider.

  “Still, we will leave it for you,” Eliza said as the man brushed past her, his suspicious eyes flitting over her. “What are you doing here? Come to spy?”

  Blake drew his wife back. “We were worried about you.”

  “No need.” Graves swatted dirt from his stained and torn shirt. Cuts marred the skin on his arms and neck. “Unless you hear them and wish to help, it would be best if you didn’t come at all.” His dark glance roved over them. “Good. Just four of you.” He wiped sweat from his forehead, leaving a streak. “There can never be six,” he muttered, his expression suddenly tightening.

  James and Hayden exchanged a glance that said they agreed the man was mad. Or at the very least, he couldn’t count, though their fifth member, Thiago, now remained at the entrance as if ready to bolt at the first provocation.

  The anxious twist of Graves’s lips soon raised into a sinister grin. “I tried to stop you, you
know.”

  “Stop us from what?” Eliza asked.

  “From coming to Brazil. But I was wrong.”

  Hayden stepped toward the crazy man, his curiosity roused. “How did you try to stop us?”

  A maniacal gleam crossed his eyes. “Don’t you remember? The storm, the mists, the illness, the first mate’s injury, the fire”—he paused, thinking—“oh, and the birds.”

  Of course Hayden remembered. That voyage from Charleston to Rio had been fraught with one odd disaster after another. Even Captain Barclay had commented that in all his years of sailing, he’d never seen such bad luck. Which was all it was. Just bad luck. “You cannot expect us to believe you caused any of that,” Hayden said.

  One brow arched in imperious delight. “You’d be surprised what kind of power is available for those willing to call upon it.”

  James rubbed the scar on his cheek. “There are only two types of power on this earth. The power of God and the power of the devil.”

  Graves chuckled. “Indeed, dear doctor, indeed.”

  “But why?” Blake asked. “Why would you want to stop us?”

  “For revenge, of course!” Graves erupted in fury, fisting his hands. “I was to be a senator, then president someday. If not for the South seceding, I would have been!”

  Whether it was the scorching heat, the stench, or the lack of food for days on end that had done it, Graves had gone undeniably insane.

  “Someone had to pay, you see.” Graves’s hurried tone spiked with anger. “So I tried to destroy your hopes, your dreams, as you destroyed mine. But I was wrong. We were meant to come here.” He waved a bruised, filthy hand over them. “Besides, you will soon suffer enough, and I will be more powerful than any president could be.”

  Blake gathered Eliza close. “Then, we will leave you be, sir.”

  Breaking free from her husband, she stepped toward Graves, extending a hand. “Mr. Graves, please come back with us. You aren’t safe here.”

  “You are dabbling in things you don’t understand,” James said. “Dangerous things.”

  “Evil things.” Thiago added from the entrance.

  Eliza took another step. “Please, we care about you. Come back with us.”

  For a mere second, the evil glint in Graves’s eyes softened, replaced by a look of pleading, as if a part of him, buried deep within, cried for help. But then it was gone, hardened into granite as black and infinite as a bottomless pit.

  “Ah, but that’s where you are wrong,” he said. “You’ll see. When I gain my power, I will crush your little colony to dust.”

  The next evening, Hayden sat whittling in the center of town, longing for some peace after a long day’s work. But that was not to be. He could hear his father returning from his treasure hunt. The fiend’s spurious laughter grated over Hayden—that gloating I-don’t-find-you-amusing-but-I’ll-laugh-anyway-to-win-your-favor chuckle that Hayden knew too well. Why? Because he had perfected it himself. Trying to ignore the grating sound, he chipped away at the piece of wood in his hand. He still didn’t know what he was making. Other than a mess. But whittling kept his hands from doing what they longed to do—wringing his father’s neck. Why hadn’t the man fallen off a cliff or been bitten by a poisonous snake, or better yet, devoured by a wolf? Surely that would be a just end. But apparently God wasn’t just, or surely He would have punished Patrick long ago.

  Which meant it was still up to Hayden.

  All around him, the townsfolk clustered in groups after supper, talking about the day’s events and their plans for tomorrow. Both Blake and James had tried to engage Hayden in conversation, but his mood was too dour for company. He’d spent hours with them, chopping down trees for a barn and a dock, hoping the hard work would get his mind off of his situation. But all it had done was delay the inevitable confusion and despair that haunted his evening hours. The more Hayden sought to catch his father alone, the more people surrounded him like a fortress of worshipping toadies. It was as if God protected Patrick, while leaving his victims defenseless.

  The odious man now sauntered into the clearing, a lady on each arm, conversing in his cavalier tone and looking none the worse for wear after a day of hunting gold. Dodd, on the other hand, followed behind him, carrying shovels and pick axes and appearing as if he’d wallowed for hours in the mud with pigs. Amazing. His father had even charmed Dodd into doing his work for him. Hayden scored another slice of wood and flicked it aside as colonists gathered to hear news of the treasure hunt.

  A captive audience was the golden goose to a man like Patrick. Swinging about, his eyes twinkling, he began an embellished account of their adventures, drawing gasps from the ladies and admiring grunts from the men. Mr. Dodd, however, shook his head and circled the group to get his supper.

  Hayden’s own meal rebelled in his stomach. Rising, he slipped the knife into his belt and wood in his pocket and made his way to the edge of camp. Plunging into the jungle, he kept going until he could no longer hear his father’s voice, until the familiar buzz and hum of night creatures suffused all other sounds. He sat on a log and breathed in the thick air, scented with orchids and lemons and musk. Dim light from a half-moon spread a dusting of silver on branches and leaves. Brazil truly was a beautiful place, teeming with life. But Hayden couldn’t stay. Once he got his revenge—in whatever form that took—he would go back home. In fact, depending on the type of revenge he exacted, he might be forced to go back home. The thought unnerved him, and he shifted on his seat. He would miss his new friends, his honest work. And most of all, he would miss Magnolia. But what choice did he have? Every time he looked at her, his mind conjured up a myriad of sordid images of her in his father’s arms. Even worse, she seemed to be enjoying herself. Hayden shook the pictures from his head. No, he must start anew. Perhaps help his friend in his furniture shop in Savannah, learn how to survive on honesty and integrity rather than lies and deceit.

  Like his father.

  Visions of the man pranced tauntingly through Hayden’s mind—his mischievous grin, swaggering gait—along with the wake of hapless victims fawning over his every witticism. Especially the females. Yet how was Hayden any different? He dropped his head into his hands, not wanting to consider the question, yet not able to avoid the suffocating truth of its answer. Crackling sounds echoed, louder and louder, finally fading into female moans and sobs. Hayden looked up. A mass of pearly moon-dust materialized in front of him, glittering in the starlight. It floated through the air like a cloud that had lost its way, uttering the woeful cries of a woman. Hayden could only stare at it, transfixed in confusion as it began to twirl and spin in a mad rush that soon took the shape and form of Miss Grayson.

  Hayden swallowed. His heart raced.

  “Hello, Joseph,” she said, a vacant look in her once lustrous brown eyes.

  Joseph Murphy, the name he’d used all those years ago.

  “What? Nothing to say? The charming Joseph, with ever a witty retort on his lips, has suddenly gone silent?” She raised her chin, that pert little chin he had so adored—at least for a time.

  “I’m sorry, Julianne.”

  “Oh, now you’re sorry.” Clutching her skirts, she sauntered about the clearing as if she were strolling through a ballroom. Yet not a twig snapped, not a leaf stirred beneath her silk slippers. “But you weren’t sorry when you ran off with my dowry.” She swirled to face him, her hooped-skirt bobbing. “Left me with a ruined reputation and no prospects.”

  Just as his father had done to Magnolia.

  The words spun a tempest in Hayden’s mind. Shame fisted in his throat, threatening to strangle him. He gripped his neck and forced himself to breathe. Julianne wasn’t real. She was only a figment of his guilt-laden mind. Yet, as he stared at the agony folding her beautiful features, he suddenly wished she were real. Then he could tell her how sorry he was. Then he could somehow make up for what he’d done.

  “What I did was wrong.” He slowly rose.

  “Wrong?” Her voice spik
ed, her eyes flashed. “It was more than wrong. It was cruel, heartless, and wicked. You don’t know what happened to me, do you, Joseph? After you left?” Gathering her pink satin skirts, she floated across the clearing like a lily on a pond. “I never married, of course. Watched all my friends find love and have babies. But worse than that, I became the laughingstock of Williamsburg. A cursed woman whom the Yankees found easy prey when they stormed in to occupy our town.”

  Nausea bubbled in Hayden’s gut. “No.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry.” He stepped toward her, but she withdrew. “I didn’t mean to…I didn’t want to hurt you.”

  “Then why did you, Joseph? Why?” A tear spilled from the corner of her eye.

  Visions didn’t cry, did they? Hayden sank back onto the log. “I was trying to find my father.”

  “And you have finally found him, haven’t you? A man after your own heart.”

  Hayden stared at the dirt. “No, I was only pretending to be like him, penetrating his social circles. It was the only way to find him.”

  He kicked a rock with his boot. How his mother would have hated that. “No!” He hung his head. “I’m nothing like him.”

  The swish of skirts sounded, and Julianne knelt before him, studying him. Her eyes, now devoid of tears, turned hard as quartz. “Then you must kill him. It is the only way.”

  Up close, she looked so real. The shimmer of her skin in the moonlight, the wisps of hair dangling over her forehead, even the locket around her neck. “How will killing him help you?”

  “He started this. He’s the reason you swindled me, ruined my life. He should pay.”

  Which was exactly what Hayden had planned to do. Yet there was something familiar in Julianne’s face. An expression…a madness…that brought a memory of Graves to mind.

  Revenge. Was Graves’s insanity the destiny for all those who sought revenge?

  And what of Blake? The man had every reason to seek retribution from the Yankees, but he’d forgiven. The comparison between the two men shook Hayden to his core.