The Golden Cross

by Angela Elwell Hunt

  He had struck a nerve, yet the flame of defiance still burned strong in her eyes. Schuyler waited in silence for her to collect her thoughts, marveling at the persistence of the creative spirit within her. From the looks of her patched skirt and faded bodice he surmised that she had spoken truly when she said she had no money for art supplies. Yet she had found a way to create with a blank building and a chalky island rock.

  “There is more to it than you realize,” he murmured when she looked up and her gaze met his again. “Art and insight come from the creative Spirit. Almighty God has given you a gift, and I have seen the depth of the gift within you. I would be neglecting my responsibilities to God himself if I did not help you as much as I am able.”

  The girl met his gaze evenly. “I don’t care much about God these days,” she answered, “but I know a lot about life. I’ve lived six years in that tavern, Heer Van Dyck, and I’ve seen things that would make a gentleman like you shudder. But I want to be an artist. If being a good artist can take me away from the tavern, I’ll do anything to learn.”

  We shall not cease from exploration

  And the end of all our exploring

  Will be to arrive where we started

  And know the place for the first time.

  T. S. Eliot, Little Gidding

  The Heirs of Cahira O’Connor

  Book I: The Silver Sword

  Book II: The Golden Cross

  Book III: The Velvet Shadow

  (available Spring 1999)

  Contents

  1 Aidan O’Connor

  2 Schuyler Van Dyck

  3 Sterling Thorne

  The

  Heirs of Cahira O’Connor

  Book 2

  The phone rang again, the fourth time. I skidded on the slippery tile as I rounded the corner, then nearly tripped over my mastiff, Barkly, who was cooling his two-hundred-pound carcass on the kitchen floor. Reaching over Barkly for the phone, I accidentally tipped over the chipped mug that held a collection of kitchen implements. Amid a clattering of spatulas and wooden spoons, I jerked up the receiver. “Hello?”

  “Miss O’Connor?”

  Grimacing, I lunged over Barkly and bent to pick up a wooden spoon before he decided to chew it. Only telephone solicitors call me “Miss O’Connor.” I’d just destroyed my kitchen and nearly broken my neck for the chance to subscribe to Southern Fly-Fishing or prepay my funeral at cut-rate prices.

  “Yes?” I frowned into the phone. “Listen, I’m really very busy—”

  “I won’t take much of your time, Miss O’Connor.” The man sounded slightly apologetic. “But I’ve just finished reading your work, and I must say it surpasses anything I ever expected.”

  My breath caught in my throat as I finally identified the voice. “Professor Howard? You read The Silver Sword?”

  “But of course, my dear.” I could hear a smile in his voice. “And I was most impressed by your scholarship and attention to detail. Your work seemed very precise, quite well documented.”

  I clutched the telephone cord and leaned back against the counter, momentarily forgetting about Barkly, about the book I’d been reading, about everything. Professor Henry Howard liked my work! What had begun last semester as a silly little research paper on piebaldism—the condition that had produced a distinctive streak of white hair above my left ear—had grown into a major undertaking.

  “Thank you, sir,” I stammered.

  “I had no idea other such women had descended from Cahira O’Connor,” he went on. “How on earth did you find them?”

  “I just typed the words ‘O’Connor’ and ‘piebaldism’ into an Internet search engine,” I muttered, stating the obvious. “And there they were, all four—Cahira, Anika, Aidan, and Flanna. Suddenly Cahira’s deathbed prayer made sense. She had begged heaven that her descendants might break out of their courses and restore right in a murderous world of men.”

  “Incredible,” he murmured. “I was very impressed. If you had been my student, I would have given you the highest possible mark. The manuscript read more like a novel than a research project.”

  “Well.” Completely at a loss for words, I shifted my weight and leaned against the counter. “Thanks very much, Professor. Praise from you is high praise. I appreciate it.”

  Silence rolled over the phone line, and I could almost see the professor lifting his brow, tapping his pen on the desk, carefully choosing his words. “You mentioned in your cover letter that you plan to continue your research,” he finally continued. “Might we meet for lunch one day this month to discuss what else you’ve discovered? I’m curious to understand how the past might affect your future.”

  “I don’t know that it will,” I countered. Ever since we met, I had been bothered by the professor’s vision of me as some sort of twenty-first century Joan of Arc. “I know you think I’m one of Cahira’s descendants, but I have nothing in common with either Anika of Prague or Aidan O’Connor.”

  The professor politely ignored my protests. “You also mentioned my assistant, Taylor Morgan.” A teasing note had entered his voice. “He has read your work as well and would be happy to join us for lunch.”

  A blush burned my cheeks at the mention of Taylor Morgan, and I was glad the professor couldn’t see me at that moment. Flush with the joy of completing a gigantic task, I’d been feeling a little bold when I wrote the cover letter and sent it with the manuscript of The Silver Sword. I had hinted—rather strongly—that Mr. Taylor Morgan was exactly my type. My type of research assistant, that is.

  “Um, sure,” I answered, wrapping the phone cord around my wrist. “I’m working part-time at the Tattered Leaves bookstore down on Sixth Street this summer. There’s a little coffee shop next door.”

  “I know the place. Shall we say Friday, at one? I’d like to avoid the crowds if at all possible. And Mr. Morgan teaches until twelve-thirty.”

  “Friday.” I felt a foolish grin spread over my face. “Fine. And in case you’ve forgotten what I look like, I’ll be the redhead—”

  “Miss O’Connor,” he said, his voice crisp, “I could never forget what you look like. Your red hair led me to you in the first place.”

  They were waiting for me when I raced through the coffee shop doorway at five minutes after one. The professor rose and pulled out a chair for me, and Taylor Morgan stood, too, his blue eyes smiling at me from behind a pair of chic wire-rimmed glasses. He was wearing a cotton shirt and khakis, looking completely cool and elegant even in the city heat, and as I slid into my chair my mind stuttered and went blank. The sight of Taylor Morgan at close range could do that to any woman, I suspected, but he wasn’t about to be impressed by my scholarship if I sat there and stammered like a starstruck schoolgirl.

  So I looked at the professor instead. He was middle-aged, soft, and infinitely respectable, and nothing about him gave me the tingles—except the fact that he liked my work.

  We exchanged polite hellos; then the professor asked again how I’d found the other descendants of Cahira O’Connor. “The Internet search engine I used picked up four references to ‘O’Connor’ and ‘piebaldism.’” I scanned the menu, decided on my usual tuna sandwich, and dropped the menu back on the table. “Each woman followed her predecessor by two hundred years, give or take a few. Cahira lived in the thirteenth century, Anika in the fifteenth, Aidan in the seventeenth, and Flanna in the nineteenth. All of them bore the O’Connor name, and all had red hair with a white streak above the left temple.”

  The professor’s gaze darted toward the streak of white that marked my own hair. I sipped from my water glass, waiting for some kind of response.

  “Do you plan to investigate these other women?” Taylor asked, his voice golden and as warm as the sun outside
. “Will that work fit into your current studies?”

  “I’ve already finished most of my research on Aidan O’Connor,” I answered with a shrug. “I’m an English major, so I’ll find a way to use everything I’ve learned. Or maybe I can talk to my adviser about setting up some sort of independent study.”

  “It would be a shame to let such scholarship and hard work go unrewarded.” Taylor captured my gaze with his. “And I am eager to hear about the other women.”

  “What I want to know, Miss O’Connor—” The professor lowered his menu, then folded his arms on the table. “—is what you intend to do about your own involvement in the lineage. You are an O’Connor, and you have the same physical characteristic that marked the others.”

  “I have to admit that I’ve wondered about that.” Uneasiness crept into my mood like a wisp of smoke. “I think I am supposed to be the chronicler, nothing more. If God did answer Cahira’s prayer and her descendants are linked to me, then I am the only one with the resources to tell their stories. I have access to the Internet, I have a computer—such technology was completely unimaginable until this century. So I’m the one entrusted with telling the stories, with weaving the threads of history together.”

  “For your sake, I hope you’re right.” Professor Howard’s hazel eyes clouded in an expression of concern. “Because if you’re not—well, I’d hate to think that armed conflict lies around the corner of the millennium. Didn’t all of Cahira’s descendants fight in a war or—”

  I held up my hand, cutting him off. “That’s not quite right, Professor. Cahira didn’t say that her descendants would fight in wars, only that they would fight for right. Aidan O’Connor, for instance, didn’t go to war. In 1642 she was living in Batavia, a Dutch colony on the island of Java in Indonesia, and the islands were at peace.”

  “How in the world did the descendant of an Irish princess end up in Indonesia?” Taylor’s blue eyes flashed with curiosity.

  I took a deep breath as my gaze moved into his. At that moment Mel Gibson could have walked into the coffee shop and I wouldn’t have even glanced his way. “It’s a long story. If you have to rush off to another appointment, I probably shouldn’t even begin it.”

  Taylor leaned forward on the table and clasped his hands. “I cleared my calendar for you,” he said, his voice low and smooth.

  I vaguely heard Professor Howard say something about having a three o’clock dentist appointment, but his words barely registered. If Taylor Morgan was willing to sit and listen, I’d talk all day and into the night if he wanted me to. Such a sacrifice. Still, the man wanted to know …

  “Okay.” I smiled at him. “But first I’d like a Coke and a tuna sandwich. Let’s order.”

  Taylor lifted his hand to signal the waitress, and I pulled my notebook from my purse. While he and the professor ordered sandwiches and soft drinks, I studied my outline.

  “Okay, Miss O’Connor,” Taylor said as the waitress moved away. “We’re ready. Tell us how an O’Connor descendant ended up in the middle of the Pacific.”

  “Aidan O’Connor wasn’t born in Indonesia,” I answered, setting my notebook on the table. “Her parents, Cory and Lili O’Connor, were as Irish as shamrocks, but they were living in England when Aidan was born. In 1632, when Aidan turned fourteen, her parents risked everything to escape the plague that killed over twelve thousand Londoners that summer.”

  “The O’Connors emigrated?” Professor Howard asked.

  I nodded. “Yes, to Batavia, capital of the Dutch colony in the Spice Islands. Many Englishmen fled London for the Caribbean, New England, and Virginia, but Aidan’s father longed for something different.”

  “Wise move on his part.” Taylor shifted in his chair.

  “Not really,” I answered, lifting my brow. “He died on the voyage. Upon their arrival in Batavia, Aidan and Lili found themselves with no patron, no resources, and no social welfare system in a colony that prided itself on industry and social order. Lili had to turn to the world’s oldest profession just to survive.”

  “Prostitution?” The professor’s face twisted in dismay.

  “She guarded her daughter,” I said. “But Lili became what the Dutch called a procuress—she procured whatever, ah, entertainment a visiting sailor might need in the port city.”

  “Wait a minute.” Taylor held up his hand as the waitress placed a sweating soft drink in front of him. “You just said the Dutch were known for industry and social order. I can’t imagine their tolerating such a practice.”

  “Batavia was like most other large cities: two very different worlds existed within it.” I took my drink and nodded to the waitress. “There was the civilized world where respectable folk lived and worked, and a darker world they largely ignored. Oh, every once in a while they’d send the sheriff’s constabulary to round up the beggars, cutpurses, and drunks, but for the most part they enjoyed pretending that the notorious flophouses, musicos, and taverns did not exist.”

  “So our Aidan lived in the underworld?” Professor Howard frowned in concern.

  “Yes, and she might have remained there unnoticed,” I answered, “but everything changed one afternoon when Schuyler Van Dyck and his family went for a carriage ride along the waterfront.”

  Aidan O’Connor

  They are ill discoverers that think

  there is no land when they see nothing but sea.

  Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning

  July 22, 1642

  Aidan O’Connor lifted her eyes to the green mountains in the distance and wished for a moment that she could lose herself in their velvet shadows. Surely she could find a cool breath beneath the gigantic trees that soared above the ridges. She knew the natives had built their thatched houses beneath the towering trees, secure in the cathedral-like stillness and shade.

  But she was a child of Europe and therefore relegated to the “civilized” sections of Batavia—the squalid, crowded area near the wharf in general, and one crowded corner near the intersection of Market and Broad Streets in particular. Here the air smelled of ale and open sewers, occasionally punctuated by a particularly strong whiff of a prostitute’s perfume. Crowds of sailors and merchants clogged the alleys; wagons and horses jammed the cobbled streets. Drunken seamen draped their arms about each other’s necks and sang sea chanteys; women squealed in pretended protest as whiskey-logged lips pressed against theirs even in the revealing light of day.

  Aidan glanced down the sloping length of Broad Street to the place where the cobbled road spilled into the bay. A tall, three-masted ship was sailing into the harbor, her sails fluttering as the eager seamen gathered them in. Soon the ship’s crew would come ashore, thirsty, hungry, and eager to experience all they’d been denied in the strict discipline aboard ship.

  Sinking to a stone bench outside the tavern, Aidan pressed the damp fabric of her bodice to her chest, wiping away the pearls of sweat that dotted her skin. Bram or Lili would come looking for her in a moment, demanding to know why she’d run out again. They didn’t mind the noise, scents, and ribald atmosphere of the tavern, but Aidan did—terribly.

  One of these days she would be done with the stale odors of frying oil, shag tobacco, and unwashed beer mugs. She’d get up and walk out forever. She wouldn’t be welcome in the civilized part of Batavia, but she could stroll out to one of the native villages. And while the Javanese stared at her in wonder, she’d kneel in front of one of their sacred Banyan trees, close her eyes, and lift her hand in a solemn vow never to return to the tavern again.

  God won’t like it, some inner voice warned. The Almighty didn’t approve of his children kneeling to pagan totems. But the God she had loved as a child had done nothing for her in recent years except take her father and blight her hopes. Perhaps he wouldn’t even care if she ran away.

  She lifted her skirt for an instant, tempted to forsake all modesty in exchange for the touch of fresh air upon her bare legs. But no lady exposed her feet in public, not even the brassy barmai
ds of the Broad Street Tavern.

  A handsome coach-and-four pulled out of the traffic on Market Street and turned onto Broad, the horses’ hooves clacking merrily upon the cobblestones as the coach moved toward her. Aidan paused, spellbound by the unusual sight. These were people of quality, that much was obvious from the uniformed driver who held the reins. So what were they doing on Broad Street?

  The coach gleamed bright in the morning sun, and through the open windows Aidan could see three men and a young woman. The woman wore the contented, slightly superior look of a wealthy lady. Her gaze caught Aidan’s as the carriage passed, and the superior look intensified as a small, smug smile quirked the corners of her mouth.

  “Aidan—Lili’s calling for you.”

  Orabel’s familiar voice cut into Aidan’s thoughts, and she looked toward her friend. “I’ll be in soon, Orabel. Tell Lili I need a moment alone.”

  “You’re an odd one, Aidan.” Orabel sank to Aidan’s side on the stone bench, then leaned forward to stare at the departing coach. “My goodness, did you see that woman’s gown? Yellow satin! So pretty! I’ve always wanted a yellow dress. It’s such a happy color, don’t you think? The color of the sun, of morning, of flowers—”

  “She didn’t look like a happy woman,” Aidan answered. Her gaze drifted down the road again. The carriage had moved away; only the bright brim of the woman’s feathered hat was still visible. “I think red would be a better color for that one. Or maybe purple. She seemed a little high and mighty.”

  “Of course she did,” Orabel answered, straightening. “Don’t you know whose carriage that is?”

  Aidan shook her head. “I can’t say that I care.”

  “You should!” Orabel lifted her hand in a regal gesture and pointed toward the departing coach. “The gentleman who just passed was Schuyler Van Dyck, the cartographer. He’s quite famous, you know, for his maps. The seamen all talk about him. They say he’s employed by the Dutch East India Company.”