by Jane Toombs
"Tonight? But why, Philippe?"
"A slight financial reverse,” he said. “If we wait until morning, I'm afraid the innkeeper here at the Whaley House will have the local constabulary after us. I'm sorry, Monique."
She'd lost Jeremy. There was no longer any reason for her to stay in San Francisco.
"Here, let me help,” she said. “I'll be ready to leave in fifteen minutes."
[Back to Table of Contents]
CHAPTER 9
Monique went to the wardrobe and threw open the door. She stared aside in disbelief at the one lone gown left, the drabbest she owned. She turned to Philippe, who looked away. “My gowns—have you packed them?"
He shook his head. “I'm sorrier than you know, Monique. I owed money, quite a great deal of money. The gentleman I was indebted to didn't appear to trust me. He seemed to suspect I might depart from the city without paying him. Why he thought so poorly of me, I have no idea. Whatever his reason, he came here and demanded payment. He threatened me with a firearm, as a matter of fact. I had to let him take your dresses. I believe he left you one."
She gazed at him for a long moment, then sighed and touched his arm. “It's all right, Philippe. You bought them, after all. You're far more important to me than any dress."
"Still, I feel bad about it. But our luck will turn, Monique. Luck comes in runs that either work for you or against you. Like the ocean, the tide is bound to turn, and when it does, Philippe Manigault will be ready to be swept on to fame and fortune."
Monique smiled slightly. You could always count on Philippe to bounce back from reverses. He might be weak, yet he was there when you needed him, unlike Jeremy. Jeremy! She closed her mind to the hurt and anger the memory of his denial brought.
She packed quickly and when she finished, she realized she possessed little more now than she had when she first left the Jarvis house months before.
"We have to hurry,” Philippe told her, taking her bag. “I packed an hour ago.” He opened the door. “We'll descend to the street via the rear stairs. I scouted their location when we first arrived, just in case we were confronted with an emergency."
"Wait, I almost forgot Rowena.” Monique went back in her room. The cat's basket wasn't in its usual place. She searched all around without finding it. Or Rowena. Perhaps Philippe had already taken the cat to safety.
When she came back to the corridor, ready to ask him, he was standing, arms folded, looking at the carpet. A terrible suspicion stabbed through her. “No, Philippe,” she half-whispered. “Oh, no. You couldn't have. Not Rowena."
He scuffed at the carpet with the toe of his boot, saying nothing.
"Where is she?” Monique demanded.
He face her, raising his hands in front of her, palms up. “What was I to do?” he asked. “Cats are in great demand in the city as ratters. They fetch a pretty penny, both in the city and on the ships. That's why Captain Nyland offered me quite a tidy sum for Rowena before we left the Columbia. Of course I said no then, but this time I had no choice. Didn't I mention the gentleman threatened me? It was give him the cat or..."
"We must get her back. Take me to him. Hurry!"
Philippe shook his head. “Even if I knew where he lived, we have no wherewithal to exchange for the fair Rowena, and he isn't likely to return her for free."
Monique blinked back her tears, aware there was no use in crying.
"After all,” Philippe said, “she's only a cat. You can always get another one someday."
"Rowena isn't just a cat, just any cat,” Monique cried. “She's mine, she's my friend. I've had her since I was ten years old. I love Rowena. She's all I had.” Her voice broke as she thought of Jeremy. “Now I have nothing."
Philippe reached to brush a strand of hair from her forehead, his blue eyes sad. His shoulders slumped, and she noticed that his beard was untrimmed. He looked as lost as she felt.
"You always have Philippe Manigault,” he told her. “You have me."
His sadness dissolved her anger. She put her arms around him and laid her head on his chest as he gently held her.
"And you have me,” she said as she straightened. “We have each other."
He nodded, picking up their bags. “On to the wharf,” he said with a show of jauntiness that didn't ring true. “Our ship sails for Sacramento on the morning tide."
She followed him down the back stairs of the Whaley Hotel and along the street leading to the bay.
It's true what I said, she told herself as she trudged along with the first wisps of a chill fog swirling around her. Philippe and I have only each other.
Bitterness returned, though, like an unpleasant aftertaste. Rowena had been hers, not his. He had no right to give her away without asking. She loved Philippe as a sister might love an older brother, but something had changed between them. The bond of their trust, once so strong and resilient, had been tested and found wanting.
* * * *
Philippe appropriated an abandoned cabin in the foothills of the Sierras north of Placerville, and they settled in for the winter.
"When spring returns,” he told Monique one evening after he returned from town, “we'll make our fortune. Until then, we can only bide our time."
She was no longer the naïve young woman she'd once been. “Our fortune? Where? How?"
"Perhaps here in the gold country. New strikes are being made in California every day. Or perhaps we'll travel across the mountains to the Washoe territory. This afternoon, while I was at the Jenny Lind, I overheard a rumor of a big strike there."
"You weren't playing cards again, I hope."
He came up to stand behind Monique, who was at the table, washing her supper dishes. “You sound like a shrewish wife."
"I didn't mean to. But you know what happened in San Francisco."
He took her by the wrist, turning her to face him. Putting his arms around her, he drew her to him and, as she smelled the sour odor of whiskey on his breath, he kissed her. Shocked, Monique tried to draw away, but his body pressed her against the table.
"Philippe, let me go,” she cried, wrenching her mouth from his.
His arms dropped to his sides and he stepped back “Do you find me so repulsive?"
Without answering, she crossed the cabin, took her bag and placed it on top of her cot. She began laying her clothes inside.
"What are you doing?” Alarm edged his words.
"I can't stay here. I can't possibly stay here with you now."
"Monique, listen.” He started across the room, then stopped. “There's nowhere for you to go. Snow's in the air. Besides, I need you."
She continued to pack. “You're not giving me much of a choice but to leave."
"Stop being so Goddamned melodramatic.” He raised his voice to a shout. “Look at me.” When she did, he asked, “Do you take me for a eunuch?"
"Of course not. I understand that a man needs a woman. But I think of you as family—like a brother. It's wrong for you to touch me that way."
"Here in Placerville, there's little enough diversion,” he said. “I become weary of playing cards despite my penchant for gambling.” He sighed. “I give you my pledge it will never happen again. Will you accept my word?"
"If it ever does happen again,” she warned him, “I will leave. I'll have to."
He bowed to her before going to sit at the table. He took a pack of cards from the drawer and began shuffling and dealing.
Monique unpacked slowly, her shock at his betrayal still in her mind. When he kissed her, her only feeling had been revulsion, as though her own father had turned to her in lust. She didn't want to leave Philippe, for she had no idea of what to do to earn her way. But she knew she would leave if she had to, even though she enjoyed the adventure of keeping house here in the foothills of the Sierras. This cabin was hers, hers and Philippe's, and the duties she'd found onerous when she was a servant were pleasurable enough when she did them for herself and someone she cared for.
When it occurred to
her how much more pleasurable they'd be if she were doing them for Jeremy, she stifled the thought.
The next day Philippe returned from Placerville with a bundle tucked under his arm. Brushing the snow from his coat, he said, “A gift of atonement. I hope you like it.” He handed her a thick, dog-eared book.
As she examined it, he said, “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. Your education has sadly lacked the flavoring of the bard's language. I intend to rectify that shortcoming forthwith."
She rejected her impulse to kiss his cheek, lest he misunderstand, saying instead, “Thank you, Philippe."
"This will be our stage.” His arm swept about to indicate the interior of the cabin. “And we shall be the players."
As the days passed and winter closed in, they read and acted out the plays: As You Like It, Henry V, Macbeth, The Taming Of The Shrew. But Hamlet was clearly Philippe's favorite and, though at first she didn't clearly understand it, the play became Monique's favorite as well.
As Hamlet-Philippe lay dying, tears came to her eyes as she declaimed, “'Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!’”
The winter wore on through January and February, Philippe, on his jaunts into town, hearing increasing reports of silver strikes in the Washoe country brought over the Sierras by returning prospectors. He, like the miners in the California gold country, where the once-rich veins were nearing exhaustion, listened intently.
"They say Comstock and the other who struck pay dirt are wealthy men already,” Philippe told her. “The entire mountain range east of Carson City is one great lode of gold and silver, where men can become rich overnight."
Worried over the excited gleam in his eyes, she said, “But you're not a miner, Philippe."
"I'm not, true enough. I don't have the patience for the game. If only Jeremy were with us. It's almost as if he has a sixth sense that enables him to smell out gold and silver. At times, when I throw the dice I know a seven will come up and it does. It's the same with Jeremy and gold. He can sense it."
"He's not with us.” She spoke flatly.
"True again. Still, where there's gold and silver in the ground there will be men ready to risk their stake in a friendly game of cards. I mean to be there when they do."
"We're going to the Comstock, then?"
"As soon as this dreary weather breaks."
In late March they left the cabin on foot, for they were too poor to buy or hire a mule or horse. They found Placerville already crowded with men waiting to cross the mountains men who, as they said, “practiced for Washoe” by drinking in the saloons and playing faro and Monte in the gambling houses. No beds were available at the camp east of town which was their first stop, so Philippe and Monique slept on the floor.
All around them, the talk was of the Nevada diggings, of a man making twenty thousand in a day and of a canvas hotel in Virginia City worth forty thousand dollars to its owner. Philippe and Monique left the camp early in the morning, with their blankets and provisions strapped on their backs.
As they climbed into the snow-topped mountains, trains of pack animals struggled from one dry spot in the trail to the next. Mexican muleskinners prodded their teams with cries of: "Caramba! Santa Maria! Diablo!"
By nightfall, tired and thirsty, their feet caked with mud, they arrived at Hangtown Mike's, a shanty with a bar next to the common bedroom where they spread their blankets. The furnishings consisted of a piece of a looking glass on the window frame and a public comb hanging by a string from the doorpost..
The next morning, as Monique waited for Philippe outside the shanty in the predawn darkness, a hulking miner pushed open the saloon door. He stopped a few feet from Monique, looking her up and down. She turned away. All at once she felt his fingers close on her wrist. The miner swung her around. She had the impression of a bearded face and the reek of whisky before he pulled her to him.
When she beat at him with her fists, he laughed. Pressing his face down to hers, he tried to kiss her. She twisted her head from side to side as she bent away from him.
"Philippe!” she cried.
The man's hand slid under her coat and fumbled for her breast. She screamed in terror. A shot rang out.
The bearded stranger released her and she backed away. Philippe stood on the porch, derringer in hand. The bearded man staggered along the path away from them. Oh, my God, Monique thought, Philippe's shot him.
"The next time, I'll kill you,” Philippe shouted.
The drunken miner stopped and drew himself up as though he meant to charge Philippe. His hands probed his own body searching for a wound. When he found none, Monique let out her breath with relief.
"I didn't mean no harm, friend,” the miner mumbled. “Didn't know she was spoken for is all."
Philippe motioned him away with the pistol, and the miner lumbered off into the woods, like a bear retreating to his cave. As Philippe thrust the small gun into its special pocket inside his coat, the men who'd come out of the saloon at the sound of the shot slowly dispersed.
"I've been afraid this might happen,” Philippe said.
"I'm all right. He didn't hurt me."
"But the next time? I can't be with you every minute. You saw how unconcerned everyone was about my shooting at him. There's no law here and less where we're going."
"I've only seen one other woman since we left Placerville. I'm not afraid, but if I had a gun and you taught me how to use it, I could take care of myself."
"Perhaps you should have a gun. We'll see. I have another notion. You're about my size and almost my height. Dressed in some of my less flamboyant clothes, and with your hair cut shorter, you'd pass as a boy."
She thought about that and nodded. “If boys could play Shakespeare's women, I can do the reverse. I might even enjoy it if I don't have to be as arrogant and overbearing as men are."
"I don't know where you received your warped view of the male of the species."
"From males of the species, where else? But, yes, I'll cut my hair and smudge my face. You can make me a boy, Philippe."
Less than an hour later, Philippe Manigault and his younger brother Martin set out to continue their trek over the mountains. They passed taverns built from dry-goods boxes and old potato sacks, saw board and lodging signs above tents less than ten feet square, and saloons where the bar was no more than a whiskey barrel set under a pine tree.
As they crossed the Sierras, they were never out of sight of other travelers heading for the Washoe—Irishmen pushing wheelbarrows, Mexicans leading burros, gamblers on thoroughbred horses, drovers with hogs and cattle, organ grinders, peddlers, men with divining rods as silver detectors, old men and young men, some limping and bent with fatigue, some walking beside lumber wagons piled high with households goods, others, young and strong, striding ahead singly or in pairs. All were infected with the mania for silver and gold.
At the end of their second day on the trail they reached Strawberry Flat. Two days later they gazed down on Lake Tahoe, its water the most beautiful blue Monique had ever seen. The next day they stumbled into the Carson Valley at the bottom of the eastern slope of the Sierras. Their feet were sore and blistered, but they followed crudely lettered signs to a hot salt-spring where they bathed and rested before going on to Carson City.
From Carson City, they booked passage on a stage to take them the final eighteen miles into the barren Nevada mountains to Virginia City, arriving there as the sun set behind what they learned was Mount Davidson.
Monique and Philippe stood on the muddy street, staring at the roughly dressed miners shouting to one another as they pushed their way in and out of the saloons and gambling halls lining both sides of the street. The town sprawled across the valley on their left, climbed the hill to where they stood, climbed a few more streets up the side of the mountain, frame house seemingly piled atop frame house, and then petered out, as though exhausted, in a scattering of shacks and diggings that looked like holes dug by
gigantic gophers.
"We'd best find some accommodations,” Philippe said.
Monique, still dressed as Martin, nodded, bemused by the hubbub and confusion around her. She was alarmed by the foul-mouthed bonhomie of the men—she saw no women—and aghast at the reeking smell of the town, composed of sweat, dung and urine. At the same time, she felt excited and alive. Somehow Virginia City made other cities she'd been in, San Francisco included, seem like a sleepy crossroads.
"Are you coming?” Philippe, who'd gone ahead, looked back impatiently.
She picked up her bag and followed him, hunched over, a cap pulled low on her forehead. Since leaving the camp near Placerville, no one had suspected she wasn't the boy she pretended to be.
"You bastard!” came a shout from ahead of them.
Philippe paused and drew her aside.
A short, squat man, his feet planted apart, stood on the street some thirty feet ahead of them. Looking past them she saw a man facing him, a big man with sandy hair and beard. Though he was taller, the man somehow reminded her of the Randolph twins.
"I don't reckon I heard you right.” Menace laced the sandy-haired man's voice.
"You're a bastard, Alex Campbell,” the first man shouted. “You and Reid jumped my claim."
Monique drew in her breath as a pistol suddenly appeared in Alex Campbell's hand. The gun barked. At that point Philippe pushed her into a doorway and stood in front of her. She heard another shot and peered past him along the now-deserted street. Mr. Campbell held a smoking pistol and she saw with horror that the other man sprawled, unmoving, in the dirt.
Scrambling past Philippe, she ran to the fallen man, heedless of Philippe's shouts to come back. She knelt by the man's side, aware she'd seen no weapon near where he lay, nor did he hold one in his hand. Glancing at Alex Campbell, she noticed him blowing on his gun's muzzle before holstering the weapon. He'd shot down an unarmed man in cold blood.
Her hand above the fallen man's mouth detected no hint of breath. Not could she feel a heartbeat when she felt his chest. Her hand, when she drew it away, was smeared with blood. He was dead.