Beneath a Golden Veil

by Melanie Dobson

  Victor watched with disgust as the man slid down the wall, landing with a thud on the polished floor.

  Victor stepped over the man and rushed upstairs. Another student directed him to Alden’s door, and he found it unlocked so he walked inside.

  There was a student working at the desk, reading by an oil lamp. His pulse began to race until the man turned around. The drunkard was right. Alden wasn’t here.

  “I’m looking for Alden Payne,” he said, angry that his brother-in-law had eluded him.

  “He’s gone.”

  “Gone for the night?” Victor pressed.

  “No. He didn’t return to school after Christmas.”

  Victor balled up his fists in his coat pockets. Had Alden really taken Isaac away to free him? Self-righteous fool. He had no idea how well Victor cared for him. Isaac wouldn’t be treated that well in Canada or anywhere else.

  If Alden took him north, Victor would search all of Canada if he must to find him.

  The man glanced at the open door. “We’re not permitted visitors here after dark.”

  “I’m his brother,” he said as he closed the door behind him. “The family was concerned when he didn’t send word that he’d arrived safely back to school.”

  The student studied him. “Alden doesn’t have any brothers.”

  “Brother-in-law,” Victor said, frustrated at having to explain needless details. “I married his oldest sister.”

  “My name’s Patrick. Alden and I have been roommates for almost three years.”

  “Then you must be concerned as well.”

  “Not exactly.”

  Alden wanted to shake the man’s shoulders until the information he was withholding dumped out of him. “His parents will be heartbroken if I can’t tell them where he’s gone.”

  Patrick rose from his chair and moved to a desk on the opposite side of the room.

  “A letter came for Alden over the holiday.” He picked up an envelope and handed it to Victor. “Your family will want to read it.”

  Victor looked down and saw that it had already been opened. “What does it say?”

  “It’s from Judah Fallow. He said he’s relocating his practice to Sacramento City.”

  “Who’s Judah Fallow?”

  Patrick paused again, and Victor felt as if he might explode.

  “Who’s Judah?” he repeated.

  “He was an attorney here in Boston until a year ago,” Patrick finally explained. “When he left for California, he offered Alden an apprenticeship.”

  Victor stared down at the envelope before looking back up. “You think Alden went to California?”

  Patrick nodded slowly. “I’m certain he did, but the dean doesn’t know.”

  “How can you be so certain?”

  He glanced at the door and lowered his voice. “I saw him the week after Christmas, walking toward the wharf in Boston with a black boy.”

  “Go on,” Victor urged.

  Patrick collapsed back down into his chair. “My curiosity got the best of me, and I followed them to the gangplank of a ship preparing to leave for California.”

  “Blast,” Victor muttered. Of course, Alden had to complicate what should have been a simple search. “Why haven’t you told the school?”

  Patrick blanched. “Alden’s always been a stellar student. I didn’t want to ruin his reputation.”

  “I suppose you’ll be at the top of your class now?”

  “Close to it,” he admitted. “I just assumed that Alden’s family knew where he went. I wasn’t trying to keep it secret from them.”

  “I’ll tell his parents.”

  Patrick opened the door. “You best leave now, or we’ll both be in trouble.”

  Coward, Victor thought as he clutched the envelope in his hands.

  “How exactly did you get inside the front gates?” Patrick asked.

  Victor shrugged. “I walked through.”

  And he walked right back out. The keeper tried to catch him, but he slipped away smoothly, blending into the darkness.

  Chapter 15

  Sacramento City

  January 1854

  Mr. Bridges paid us a visit while you were out this morning,” Fanny said as she emerged from her rooms, an apron strung over her arm. “He still hasn’t found his slave.”

  Isabelle nodded as she picked out a freshly cut pansy from her bucket, delivered from Sutter Floral Gardens, and arranged it on a table in the dining room. Mr. Bridges had returned multiple times, but she hadn’t allowed him to search again. Even though Micah was gone, she didn’t want someone who owned slaves in her establishment.

  Rodney had called twice as well in the past few weeks. They were seemingly friendly visits, but she suspected he was keeping his eye on her and her establishment. He hadn’t asked directly about Micah again, but he’d inquired about Stephan’s past. She told him the truth—that she didn’t know where Stephan had lived before California, but he was an honest and reliable steward who served this hotel well.

  She’d been up until late last night, praying again that Micah was safely hidden away. She may never know what happened to the boy, but she had tried to be faithful in helping him escape slavery.

  “Poor Mr. Bridges,” Fanny said with a sigh. “My daddy always said to never trust a slave. They’ll run if given half a chance.”

  Isabelle pinched the stem of a flower between her fingers. How could a free woman—one who had traveled fifteen thousand miles to find her husband—judge someone who desired the same freedom? Ignorance and hypocrisy were both revolting to her, but keeping one’s views about slavery private was a fine line to walk. She couldn’t help anyone trapped as a slave if she divulged her own thoughts about abolition.

  Fanny tied the apron strings around her back. Still exhausted from her long journey, she’d spent most of her morning resting in the back room. She probably wouldn’t survive a single day working as a slave.

  “How many Negroes did you have on your farm?” Isabelle asked, focusing her attention back on the flowers to finish her last arrangement.

  “Only two, but I’ve heard plenty of stories. Did your family ever own slaves?”

  Isabelle turned the vase a half inch. “We lived in a small house in Baltimore.”

  “I always wanted to visit Baltimore. Are your parents still there?”

  “No,” she said, stepping back to scrutinize the bouquet.

  “Pink or red roses would look better on your tables.”

  Isabelle shook her head. “I never buy roses.”

  Fanny sat in a chair, eyeing her curiously. “Did your parents come out west with you?”

  “My aunt and I came together,” Isabelle said, trying to steer the discussion away from her parents. Fanny would learn in time that most people in California didn’t like to talk much about who or what they left behind. They came here either to escape from their pasts or because they had grand visions of remaking themselves into someone new—much more successful and wealthier than they’d been at home.

  Fanny crinkled her nose. “Why would you come out here without a man?”

  “My uncle decided to venture west in 1849, soon after President Polk announced there was an abundance of gold in the hills. He came across the isthmus, but when he sent for us, he said Panama was no place for a lady, so we went around Cape Horn.”

  By the time they arrived here, Uncle William was gone. He’d died of cholera after the 1850 flood.

  “It took me six months to get around the Horn,” Fanny said. “Not including almost a month in New York waiting for a boat.”

  “It felt like an eternity, didn’t it?”

  Fanny nodded. “We hit a storm somewhere off the coast of Chile, and I thought I was going to die. I tried to keep my mind focused on seeing Ross when I arrived, but alas, no husband of mine.”

  When the front bell chimed, Fanny looked over her shoulder with expectation, like Isabelle used to do, but still there was no Ross. Stephan stepped into the room, carrying
a stack of letters from the post office. He handed them to Isabelle before moving toward the kitchen—some of the letters were probably for her, confirmations of orders placed or bills for their supplies. Others she would distribute to her guests.

  Fanny eyed the stack of mail in her hand. “Does Ross ever write to you?”

  “Occasionally,” she said, weighing her words before she spoke again. “He inquires about the condition of the hotel in his absence.”

  “When did you last hear from him?”

  Isabelle clutched the mail closer to her side. “About a month ago.”

  Fanny sighed.

  “I’m sure he’ll be back soon.”

  “Were you and he—” Fanny stumbled over her words. “Were you close?”

  Isabelle evaded the question. “He was a good partner to my aunt and me. And a good friend.”

  “I worried about him a lot, being out here alone.”

  “I think any wife would worry about her husband.”

  Fanny nodded toward the white swinging door into the kitchen, hinged onto the back wall. “Do you need me to help tonight?”

  “Please,” Isabelle said as she glanced around the dining room. The violet blooms brightened the white tablecloths, but each place still needed silver along with the fine blue-and-white transferware she’d received recently from England. Soon she needed to send Stephan to San Francisco to order new cloths for the tables as well.

  “Before you go to the kitchen, could you help Stephan finish setting the tables?”

  Fanny hesitated, eying the kitchen door again. “I’ve never worked with a Negro before.”

  Isabelle set her empty bucket down on the floor. “He’s a freedman.”

  “Still—”

  “Things are much different here in California than in Kentucky,” Isabelle tried to explain. “You’ll have to get used to working alongside freedmen and women.”

  “It makes no sense to me.” Fanny picked at the edge of her apron. “How can one black man be free and another be a slave?”

  Isabelle sighed. “Californians are still trying to figure that out.”

  With her apron neatly covering her calico dress, Fanny hastened toward the kitchen. She wasn’t the first person who’d balked at working with Stephan, as if she were somehow better than the man because of her skin color. As Aunt Emeline liked to say, “God created every person equal. It was man who ascribed worth.”

  People may be equal in God’s eyes, but they were often afraid of what they didn’t understand. The entire hierarchy of freedom was absurd, founded on fear and greed and a pompous sense of self-regard.

  Isabelle picked up the bucket in her free hand and began walking toward the lobby. From the Garden of Eden until today, man and woman alike tried to usurp power from the God who made them. Slavery, in her opinion, was the apex of power. One man controlling another.

  After she stepped up to her desk, Stephan walked into the room. He closed the door between the lobby and dining room, then moved over to the counter.

  “I saw a friend on the way to the post office,” he whispered.

  Her eyebrows slipped up. “Yes?”

  “I wanted you to know”—he hesitated, glancing back at the door before he spoke again—“that your package is gone.”

  She sighed with relief. “Do you happen to know its particular destination?”

  “The Colony of Vancouver Island,” he said. “It’s on a steamer from San Francisco with twenty others. They should arrive in about three days.”

  She’d read in the paper that the British were welcoming Negroes onto the island to help populate the country, like they’d opened their borders to the runaway slaves back east. Micah and the others would be safe there. “Very good.”

  Stephan placed his elbows on the polished counter, studying her for a moment. “Why did you help him?”

  The answer was too complicated to explain now so she chose one of her many reasons. “Because I believe all people should be free.”

  He smiled, the kindness radiating across his face. “You are a good woman, Miss Isabelle.”

  “No better than any other.”

  “Much better than any I’ve ever worked for.”

  She brushed a lock of stray hair back over her ear. “You let me know if anyone bothers you, Stephan.”

  “I can take care of myself.”

  “Then let me know if I can help someone else.”

  When he left, she fanned the stack of letters out on her desk. In the middle was one postmarked from Marysville, the town close to where Ross had mailed his last letter to her.

  Her joy at Stephan’s news plummeted as she picked up her letter opener and slowly slit the envelope.

  She moved closer to the coal stove, warming herself as she unfolded the sheet of paper. Ross’s script looked hurried, and there was a copper-colored smudge on the right-hand corner as if he’d written it while sifting the dirt for gold.

  Dearest Isabelle,

  I’m still digging on the fields near Marysville. I won’t say much in the letter, in case someone intercepts this, but you will be quite pleased with my findings here.

  There isn’t much to report outside my digging—I eat beans and dried pork every day, sleep when I can, and if I’m lucky, dream about you at night. We’ve only had mild bouts of rain this month, and my tent stays quite dry. I will continue digging until the weather won’t let me continue, reaping a harvest for our future.

  In your capable hands, I’m certain the hotel is running quite well. While I’m grateful for the placid weather, I eagerly await the rains so I can return to you.

  With what I’ve earned here, I will buy you a wedding gift that will last a lifetime. Just think—in a few short months, we will be husband and wife.

  Yours forever,

  Ross

  She crumpled the letter in her hands. Ross may not have much to report from the diggings, but she had plenty to tell him. In person.

  “Isabelle?” she heard Fanny call out from the dining room.

  She quickly opened the door to the stove and tossed Ross’s everlasting love into the fire.

  Part Two

  The weary sun hath sunk to sleep

  Beyond the great Pacific’s wave,

  While here I stand and idly weep

  That I have been to gold a slave!

  —E. Curtiss Hine, “Lament of the Gold Digger”

  Chapter 16

  Sacramento City

  February 1854

  The faint aroma of orange blossoms billowed in the steam as Isabelle poured Fanny a cup of tea. Then she reached for the bundle of newspapers from December, two months past.

  A carton filled with copies of the New York Herald arrived at the hotel each month, a luxury for her guests who wanted to stay abreast of news outside California. She devoured every word before passing them along to the people who stayed in her hotel. Sacramento City was a safe haven for her—a place she intended to live for the rest of her life—but she still liked to know what was happening around the world.

  Isabelle chose the oldest paper from the stack—December 20—to read this morning and handed it across the table to Fanny as a gust of wind shook the windows of the dining room.

  Fanny added a lump of sugar to her cup before reading a headline out loud: “Gold Seekers Flood into California.”

  Isabelle laughed at the words, glancing out the window. The rainy street was already crowded with men headed to work along the riverfront. “That’s not news around here.”

  Fanny glanced up. “People on the East Coast have no idea about the chaos happening on this side of the world.”

  Isabelle sipped the sweetened oolong tea she’d purchased from a Chinese shop. “At least it’s starting to be civilized.”

  “I haven’t seen any sort of refinement outside the walls of the hotel,” Fanny said. “And certainly no gentlemen.”

  Fanny began to read the story about the influx of men—and a much smaller population of women—into the new
state. Six years had passed since James Marshall found that first nugget of gold in the American River. Since then, more than three hundred thousand people had migrated to California.

  The next story was about a New York man who’d found a lump of gold and quartz at French Ravine that was worth ten thousand dollars. He bought a hacienda near San Francisco but lost both his home and his money to roulette.

  Fanny handed Isabelle the newspaper, and she read the columns about society, cooking, and fashion.

  In Ross’s absence, the two women had settled into a morning routine after serving the guests their breakfasts, typically reading the paper or a few pages from a book out loud while they shared a pot of tea. Fanny always added sugar. Isabelle stirred a spoonful of clover honey into hers.

  “Do you ever think about going out to the diggings?” Fanny asked when Isabelle finished reading the story.

  Isabelle shook her head. “I’d much rather stay in the city.”

  “If Ross doesn’t come soon, I’m going to look for him.”

  Isabelle glanced out at the river of muddy rain flowing down the street. The storms began a month ago, and droves of gold seekers had arrived back in town to wait out the weather, but she hadn’t heard anything else from Ross.

  “Was your uncle planning to dig for gold when he first came here?” Fanny asked.

  “No,” Isabelle replied. “He sold his shop in Baltimore and used the money to start a mercantile for miners.”

  “That was awfully smart of him.”

  Isabelle folded up the paper. “He was a keen businessman.”

  “You and your aunt could start up another mercantile.”

  She took a long sip of her tea. “I much prefer running a hotel.”

  “But what will you do when Ross returns?” Fanny asked, shifting on her seat.

  Isabelle lowered her cup. She’d kept hoping Ross would return like he’d promised, so he could discuss the future with his wife.

  “What do you mean?” Isabelle asked gingerly.

  “Where will you go?”

  “I’m not going anywhere. The proprietor of the hotel needs to live here.”