Alex Makepeace had brought them to her attention. He’d seemed defensive when she pressed him for an explanation of this condition he called “rocked up” or “dusted.” It was a sort of miners’ consumption, as best she could tell. But he had known she was looking for additional help, and he knew also to choose those who needed the work.
These girls had come to her clean but wary. Carina guessed kindness was something with which they had little experience. She dropped her forehead to her fingertips and closed her eyes. Signore, forgive me for complaining.
A figure passed her window, bundled against the snow. Even so, she recognized Dr. Simms making his way to Mae’s kitchen, where he’d linger with Èmie until his duties took him elsewhere. It wouldn’t be long now before they married. Carina half smiled. She was happy for Èmie, though she didn’t think anyone quite deserved her.
There was nothing but goodness inside Èmie Charboneau. Èmie would never have flown at Quillan like a fighting cock. She would have forgiven his injury and welcomed him gently. Carina sighed, surprised to find a tear slipping from the corner of her eye. Her own nature was too contentious, too proud.
Bene. She’d likely have no opportunity to fail him again. Fail him? The thought rose inside like a fanged snake. Was it she who had failed? She touched the lip he had bruised with his fierce kisses. It had long since healed. But the wound in her heart was unrelenting.
Another tear came. What was wrong with her? Why was she so emotional? Perhaps at last she was starting her time. That would account for the stomach distress as well, though she’d felt no bleeding. When she’d missed the first time, she had thought perhaps he’d injured her. But he had not been brutal, only selfish and cruel. Now she guessed it was the heaviness of spirit that affected her body.
She went and lay down on the bed. She was tired. A day of rest would revive her. Tomorrow she would think of something special to prepare. And she would teach Èmie to make it as well. More than anything she enjoyed their time together in the kitchen. Èmie and Mae. Where would she be without them?
Quillan jumped down from the wagon and left it in the Denver city livery. He strode down the street to his hotel, sneaked the dog past the desk clerk, and climbed the stairs to his room. He considered changing course for the dining room, then realized he wasn’t hungry, even for the passable fare the hotel offered. He continued up.
The coals in the brazier had all but died since he’d left them early that morning to do some trading about town. As Quillan added coal and encouraged a small blaze, Sam searched out the corners of the room with his nose, then, satisfied, plunked down before the fire and sighed. Quillan warmed his hands a moment, then took a seat in the chair to the side of the fireplace.
Stretching his legs out before him, he made his muscles relax. Absently he reached for the books he’d recently purchased and stacked on the small round table beside him. Lifting one, he clipped the thick parchment shade of the lamp. Lurching to steady its wobbling, he knocked another book to the floor. Two more slid down behind it. The pile was ungainly.
Quillan lifted the books one by one, some small individual sonnets, others tomes he’d collected about town. He piled them in his lap to organize by size and avoid further disaster with the lamp. Near the bottom, his hand rested on the red leather of his mother’s diary. It sat there with its secrets still locked up.
No, he hadn’t thrown it away. Neither had he opened it. He stared at it now with mixed feelings. Did he want to know what its pages held? He’d gotten over the shock of its existence, but not past the churning emotions it conjured. What could his mother say in those pages that he didn’t already know? What excuse could she give for her life?
He picked it up and laid it with the other small books. Then he stacked the large ones on the table. Beside these he made a pile of the small books with the diary atop. Hesitantly, he touched the nameplate. Rose Annelise DeMornay. His fingers slid to the key.
Determination hardening his jaw, he picked up the diary and worked the dangling key into the lock. Carina had read the book. She knew what it contained. He ought to know as much. He opened to the first page. This is the journal of Rose Annelise DeMornay written by my own hand this year of 1851.
His mother wrote in a delicate hand. Her flowery script seemed incongruous with his image of her. He clenched his teeth as he turned the page to the first of her entries. It is the way of dreams to become nightmares. What seems beautiful is seldom as it seems. Can any who have lived not believe in death? Can any who have loved not know what it is to hate?
Quillan stared at the words, feeling them seep inside him. Can any who have lived not believe in death? Can any who have loved not know what it is to hate? His chest was tight, and he released a slow breath. At least he came by his hating honestly.
He read on. His eyes grew grainy, straining in the dim lamplight, but he read on. Certain phrases he stopped and read over and over.
I find myself at odds with my own heart, longing and at the same time despising myself for that longing.
To rise to higher joy is to risk a deeper sorrow. Do I dare reach for the sun?
A single moment of joy can slake the throat of a dying spirit. An act of kindness, no matter how small, becomes a mercy drop from heaven. Where are these drops? Where is my joy? Each moment is consumed by fear and trembling. My anguish weakens me, body and soul. Where will I turn for peace?
In spite of himself he ached for her, not wanting to understand but finding a terrible kinship of feeling. At first he had thought himself the illegitimate offspring of her illicit affair. Then he read: I am become most despised. Even the result of my forbidden love could not remain within me to be born alive. Had it done so, it would have looked upon its mother’s face in shame.
Quillan looked up from the book into the fire, scarcely more than glowing coals now. A dead sibling. Would this sibling have felt the shame he felt for her? He watched the dog sleeping contentedly. Quillan almost wished he’d stayed as oblivious. But he hadn’t. He’d started this book. Now he meant to finish it.
He returned his eyes to the page. He read on about his mother’s plight, her search for shelter and acceptance. Where were those who should have protected her? Shielded her? Loved her? Why was she so alone? And then the story changed, and he read about his father. Wolf.
What strange quirk of fate, to be saved from disgrace by a savage. Yet is he more a savage than those who would have bought me? Who is this man? A stranger, yet when he found me with his eyes, I knew him. His name is Fate. He knew me by my pain, and I him, by his. We are bound together, he and I.
Quillan tensed. As he was bound to Carina? He was half tempted to close the diary, cast it away. He didn’t want to know more. He’d been told it all already. He closed his eyes and imagined the flames consuming the hand that had written those words. He forced the image away.
She went on to describe Wolf in ways Quillan had never imagined. His kindness, his knowledge of nature and humankind. His belief in a benevolent power, yet his own struggle to understand himself. Quillan found himself wishing for more. Why hadn’t she written everything, every word they spoke, every expression? He could picture them only vaguely.
Wolf is the most beautiful man I have ever seen, his hair next to honey, his skin bronzed by the sun, but his eyes the color of a stormy sky. Of his mother there was no physical description, but he guessed he favored his father. At least by her words they shared characteristics, maybe features as well. Their eyes and hair. He gripped the book’s edge, wishing he knew.
He read of his own conception, feeling the stirring of shame until he came to a passage that made him pause and read it twice. Is there a marriage on earth more blessed by God than the joining of two hearts in simple fidelity? Yet when Father Charboneau came to us a fortnight ago, Wolf insisted our marriage be sanctified by the Christian rite. For my part I accepted his wisdom, and this child is proof of God’s blessing.
They were married? Before his birth?
Th
e child grows large within me. I no longer fear his fate will be that of my other’s. This one is strong and eager for the world. He will make his own name.
Quillan forked his fingers into his hair. Make his own name? He’d fought to do that all his life, having been deprived of one he might have carried proudly.
If I die this minute I will not have lived in vain. For I have seen the face of my child and his name is joy. He is perfect in every feature, fearfully and beautifully made. Wolf said we will call him Quillan. He has a lusty cry.
Quillan stared a long while at the words, memorizing, planting them in his brain. He had ceased thinking of Rose as a woman despised and now sensed her love for him. It was there in her words. Why, why hadn’t it been there in his life?
The very next entry reminded him why. Wolf. Rose wrote the tale he’d heard in many variations, how his father went berserk at Quillan’s birth, howling like a banshee driven to murder. He knew now that Wolf had not committed that murder. It was Henri Charboneau. His brother the priest, Father Charboneau, had made that known, but only now a quarter century after his mother’s writing.
She had no reason to doubt the deadly possibility that Wolf was in fact crazed. Why? Why had his father reacted that way to his cries? Quillan shook his head, frustrated by the partial answers. And then he entered the most painful pages yet.
I tried to give my baby to the priest. He alone has shown us unflagging kindness. But he won’t take my son. I am in anguish, for the one he names is not one I would choose. What choice have I? Quillan’s helpless wailings I am unable to quell, for what baby was ever born who didn’t make his needs known? Wolf cannot bear his cries, though I will carry them forever in my heart.
He closed his eyes. This woman whom he’d despised, reviled— this woman he’d called a harlot—had faced a terrible choice. He knew now how painful it had been. She hadn’t cast him aside lightly, as he’d been told. Hadn’t spurned him to pursue her filthy ways. She’d surrendered him for his sake . . . at least as she believed.
I must think of Quillan no more or I will surely go mad. Wolf wept when I told him what I’ d done, but he did not set out to recapture his son. He knows the truth of it. I can’t find it in me to hate him, though my soul wants so badly to blame someone, something. There is only myself.
Of course, she had blamed herself. It seemed her nature to assume the guilt, though it was largely that of others, not Rose, not this mother who had loved him. Quillan dropped his face to his hands. He was tired. He could forgive himself the tears that wet his grainy eyes.
Not many pages remained, and his slow tears continued as he watched his mother fade, her mind turn and lose connection with what was real. Sometimes I see them playing on the floor, Quillan and Angel together. How beautiful they are. But they don’t stay. I feel so cold. I feel cold all the time. The sun can’t penetrate the chill. It comes from inside me.
And then the final entry. I’m bringing this book to Father Charboneau. Perhaps one day he will give it to my son. I can only hope that Quillan will have compassion on the one who bore him. For there is another inside me whom I cannot bear to see. God have mercy on my soul.
Quillan sat in silence. His eyes dried as he sat reading the words over. His mother’s last hopes were for his compassion and God’s mercy. Compassion he’d never given her. And God’s mercy? There was no such thing. Or he would never have been led to believe his parents monsters unworthy of anything but disdain.
As he thought of the venom that had been poured into his ear, lies and half truths, his anger kindled. Now he knew the truth. Yes, his mother had sacrificed her virtue, been seduced and deserted. She had even entered Placerville with intentions to degrade herself further. What choice was left to her?
Did that make her an object of scorn? Rose Annelise DeMornay. Who were her people? Would he ever know? Did he want to? He sank wearily back into the chair. Rose must have come from somewhere before she found her way to Placerville. Her writing exhibited a keen intelligence and delicate nature. He pictured his mother young, frightened, horrified by her plight, slipping away from her home . . . where?
Quillan closed his eyes. The clock in the hall chimed four. He felt depleted in every way, but he knew sleep wouldn’t come. If it did, it would be haunted with flames and charred flesh. And now he would care. God help him, he would care.
Hollow with fatigue, Quillan emerged into the early morning chill. For once he had no definite plan for the day, his ability to plan, to think, to act as elusive as sleep had proved. The Denver street was scantily peopled, so he jolted when he heard his name. He turned to meet Horace Tabor.
“Quillan. I hardly expected to find you here.” Tabor caught up to him and extended his hand. “Thought for sure you’d be holed up with that comely wife of yours.” There was mischief in his pale blue eyes.
Quillan ignored it as he shook Tabor’s hand.
“You look almost as bad as when I saw you last. Recurrence of fever?”
Quillan shook his head. “A bad night is all. Hod, you know the area, don’t you?”
“I should say so.”
Quillan deliberated his next question almost long enough to resist asking, but not quite. “How would a woman come out, say, to Placerville in ’51?”
Tabor reached into his coat and pulled a cigar from a chest pocket. He bit the end and spit it on the street. “A woman, you say?” He fixed the cigar between his teeth and from another pocket took a silver matchbox. He paused before removing a match. “Mostly on a conveyance bringing women of repute to perform in a new locale.”
Quillan kicked the boardwalk with his boot toe.
“Why do you ask?” Tabor struck the match and held it to the end of the cigar. His cheeks hollowed when he sucked, and his mustache billowed over his lips as he puffed out the smoke.
Quillan shrugged. “No way to tell, then, where they’d come from?”
“Not likely.” Tabor took the cigar from his teeth. “Say, Quillan, what’s this all about?”
“A woman named DeMornay.”
“DeMornay. The William DeMornays?”
Quillan’s heart pounded quickly. “I don’t know.”
“If so, he hails from St. Louis, but as luck would have it, he’s a Denver man now. If he’s not a relation, he might know something.”
Quillan’s fatigue became agitation.
“You want me to introduce you?”
Quillan turned as a carriage rolled past. Did he want an introduction? What were the chances there was any relation between his mother and this man? And if there were, what could he say? I’m the son of your daughter? Niece? Sister? The woman who was scandalized and married a savage in a gold field? Quillan felt too weary for words.
“My boy, are you all right?”
“I’m all right. No, I don’t need introducing.”
Tabor tugged his gold fob and pulled the watch from his pocket. “I’ve an appointment shortly, but if you change your mind . . . not that William DeMornay’s a close acquaintance, but our paths have crossed.”
“Thanks, no.”
Tabor eyed him a moment, then smiled. “Tell me the truth now that Augusta’s not here to spoil the fun. Is your wife ugly as a one-eyed mule?”
Something wrenched inside him. “My wife is beautiful, Horace.”
Shaking his head, Tabor tucked the cigar back between his teeth. “If you don’t beat all. Nice seeing you, Quillan. I’m sure we’ll meet again.”
Quillan half waved, then turned back to the hotel. He was weary enough to sleep through any dreams that might come.
Carina looked at the faces of the miners as they ate the holiday meal she and Èmie and Mae had prepared together. Her stores were too low to do all she might have hoped. Freighters had nearly stopped making any trips through the pass, and she was thankful for the six layers Quillan had brought, or she would have no eggs for the pasta at all.
But this meal wasn’t her creation alone. Mae had made the gingerbread, Èmie the corn pudding.
Mr. Makepeace and Joe Turner had provided the brandy and earned themselves a place at the tables with the miners, extra tables having been added until there was hardly room to squeeze between them.
But no one complained. There were cuts of wild turkey roasted in chokecherry preserves and long crusty loaves of bread. Carina’s lasagna bubbled in heavy iron pans, one after another being spooned out, then layered again and put in to bake.
It was odd to make the lasagna with venison, but no cattle herds were driven to the area once the ways were blocked with snow. And seasoned, the venison served as well as beef, though neither compared to the spicy sausage she would have preferred. Carina walked around the tables, smiling as the men thanked her. “You’re welcome, I’m glad you could come.”
She recognized faces of men she’d tended after the flood. Some she recognized only from the other meals she’d given them. The sheer numbers had dropped as winter drove many to lower elevations. Crystal was almost tenable with the snowpack stopping the dust, and the crowds cut by half. These men were the diehards, those who bore up under any temperatures and conditions.
She caught Alex Makepeace watching her. From his position against the far wall, he raised a glass of brandy in toast, his easy smile already in place. Beside him, Joe Turner also turned. He motioned her over and she obliged.
“Well, Mr. Makepeace, do you still grudge the men these little dinners?”
“Little dinner? It’s a veritable feast. And I’ve never grudged them. I only envied them.”
She laughed, turning to Joe Turner. “You see how well his Harvard education stands him? He’s never without a reply.”
“May I offer you a brandy?” Mr. Turner held up the bottle and a fresh glass.
She shook her head. “No, grazie. I can barely stay on my feet as it is.”
Sweet Boundless Page 18