Beneath a Golden Veil

by Melanie Dobson

  Tears trickled down Isabelle’s cheeks, and she wiped them off with the sleeve of her blouse. She knew her aunt was sick, but she’d fought so hard against the realization that Aunt Emeline might really leave her, like Uncle William had done. That Isabelle would be alone once again.

  The room was plenty warm from the fireplace that Sing Ye kept burning in the next room, but Isabelle still shivered.

  She hated being alone.

  The hours passed, and Isabelle dozed off, her head back against the pillows. The sky was dark when she woke again, a lantern glowing on a small table near the windowsill.

  Aunt Emeline began to stir. Then she opened her eyes.

  A smile graced her lips when she saw Isabelle. “Child,” she said softly. “Why are you holding me?”

  Isabelle looked down at her, returning her smile. “Because years ago, you used to hold me.”

  Carefully she scooted to the edge of the bed, laying her aunt gently on top of the quilt and cushioning her fragile body with pillows and blankets.

  Aunt Emeline’s soft gaze lingered on her. “You were always such a good girl, Isabelle.”

  “I didn’t want you to stop loving me.”

  “Oh, honey.” Aunt Emeline took her hand. “I would never have stopped loving you.”

  When she started coughing, Isabelle reached for the syrup on the nightstand. “You need more medicine.”

  Aunt Emeline shook her head, the wisps of white hair sweeping across her face. Isabelle brushed them away.

  “I don’t want to sleep now. I want to talk.”

  “What do you want to talk about?” Isabelle asked.

  “I heard a woman showed up at the hotel a few months ago, asking for Ross.”

  Isabelle’s chest clenched, her fingers curling tightly around the glass bottle. “Who told you that?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Aunt Emeline said. “Is he really married to someone else?”

  “I’m afraid it’s true, though he hasn’t come back yet from the fields to confirm it.”

  Aunt Emeline looked over at the picture of her husband before she continued. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Isabelle placed the medicine bottle back on the stand. “I didn’t want you to worry.”

  “I pray, child. Not worry.”

  Her aunt seemed fully coherent now. Alive. Perhaps the doctor was wrong. Perhaps all she needed was this medicine and some rest to recover from whatever it was that ailed her.

  “I want you to find a man you can trust, Isabelle. Someone who will cherish you for a lifetime, like my William did with me.”

  Isabelle’s eyes wet with tears again. “I’m afraid there was only one William Labrie.”

  “There is a man out there who will fit perfectly with you. A man who will think you are much more valuable than any nugget of gold.”

  Isabelle leaned over and kissed her forehead. “I can’t bear to lose you.”

  “This is only a temporary good-bye. Not forever.”

  Isabelle hated good-byes, no matter how temporary.

  “After I’m gone,” her aunt continued, her voice stronger now, “I’m giving this house to Nicolas and Sing Ye.”

  “Of course.”

  “Everything else I have is yours.”

  Isabelle shook her head. “You’ve already given me enough.”

  “Judah Fallow has all my legal papers,” Aunt Emeline said. “I’ve transferred the hotel into your name, and you will be an honored guest in the cottage with Nicolas and Sing Ye whenever you want to come.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “For everything.”

  “I still need to give you your Christmas gift.” Aunt Emeline tried to push herself up with her elbows. “I should have given it to you a long time ago.”

  “Where is it?” Isabelle asked, gently placing her hand on her aunt’s shoulder to stop her from rising any farther.

  Aunt Emeline pointed her finger toward the cypress writing desk. “In the second drawer.”

  She pulled out the deep drawer and found a quill and inkwell inside. “What am I looking for?”

  “A box.” Aunt Emeline glanced at the inkwell in Isabelle’s hands before pointing toward another drawer. “Try the third one.”

  There were gloves and other sundries inside, but she didn’t see a box.

  “Keep pulling.”

  Isabelle tugged harder, and the drawer slid out of the desk. It was much shorter in length than the drawer above it.

  “Feel the back,” Aunt Emeline instructed.

  There was a clasp against the wood at the end, and when Isabelle turned it, the panel folded out toward her. Reaching inside, she pulled out a small chest.

  Her aunt sighed, sinking back into her pillows. “I knew it was there.”

  Isabelle returned to the bed and examined the box. There was nothing exceptional about it—an olivewood trinket box with a lock, about a foot long and six inches wide. The top was inlaid with a painting of a red rose and a chapel on the edge of steep sea cliffs. A rendition of Aunt Emeline’s beloved Marseille.

  “What’s inside?” Isabelle asked.

  Aunt Emeline smiled again. “My greatest gift to you.”

  But she didn’t want gold or jewels or whatever the chest contained. She wanted her aunt to stay with her.

  Aunt Emeline placed her hand on the lid of it. “I made it for Rose.”

  “Who’s Rose?”

  But her aunt didn’t answer the question. “The key is in the top drawer. For years, I wore it around my neck.”

  Isabelle remembered well that key. She’d worn the lockbox key on her necklace, just like Aunt Emeline. “Thank you.”

  “One day, you’ll find a man who will love you for exactly who you are.” Aunt Emeline brushed her hand over the olivewood again. “Then you can be proud of this.”

  “I will treasure whatever it is.”

  “Sing me that song, Isabelle,” she said, her voice fading. “The one you used to sing when you couldn’t sleep at night.”

  She’d been terrified all those years ago. Of the darkness and the light. Of being with someone else and being alone.

  But she hadn’t sung in a long time.

  “The one about going to Jesus,” Aunt Emeline prompted.

  Isabelle took a deep breath, and for her aunt, she began to sing.

  My Lord, He calls me, He calls me by the thunder

  The trumpet sounds within my soul

  I ain’t got long to stay here

  “Such a beautiful song,” Aunt Emeline whispered, her eyes closed. “He’s waiting, isn’t He?”

  Isabelle’s eyes flooded with tears. “Yes, He is.”

  “Keep singing,” her aunt said, clutching her hand.

  Steal away, steal away, steal away to Jesus

  Steal away, steal away home

  I ain’t got long to stay here

  Aunt Emeline’s hand dropped back down onto the yellow quilt, and all Isabelle heard was the steady drum of the rain beating on the roof. She sang the last stanza of the spiritual softly, the trumpet sounding in her own soul.

  The Lord wasn’t calling her away yet, but it was time for Aunt Emeline to go home.

  Chapter 20

  Panama

  April 1854

  The parrots on the isthmus were driving Victor mad. Their screeching grew louder as the hollowed-out logs—bungoes—floated up the Chagres River. Tormenting him.

  Parrots screeched, and the monkeys chattered like a rabble of women, following their bungo through the jungle as twelve of the ship’s passengers skirted around rapids and branches and the hulls of boats abandoned in the water. Another bungo followed them with their luggage.

  Patience, he tried to tell himself. Soon they would be on another ship, cruising toward California. In just a few weeks, he would be in Sacramento City.

  Three days ago, the ship from Boston had anchored far off the shore of this godforsaken wilderness. He and the other passengers had climbed down a rope ladder into a skiff that bro
ught them to a muddy village, where they’d secured transportation across the sixty miles of isthmus.

  Though a bungo was hardly a decent source of transportation. If he could carry his belongings, he’d walk through the jungle instead of creeping up the river in a log.

  The first day of their river journey, the passengers around him had talked endlessly about the spectacular greens in the foliage, of the colors on the birds that flew down the river before them, but the fascination was long over for all of them. They’d been promised a two-day journey by river, but the crew didn’t seem in any hurry to rush their trip.

  Two half-naked natives—one in front of the boat and one behind him—dragged, towed, and sometimes appeared to row their passengers around the curves in the narrow canal. Mosquitos swarmed around Victor’s head, biting his neck. The sun burned his hands.

  He’d purchased a ridiculous-looking hat called a Panama to keep the sun off his head, but the rays found every other spot of bare skin and scorched it. The makeshift canopy over them, made of dried leaves, did nothing to keep the sun off him either.

  He’d packed swiftly back home for a trip in the snow, not for a journey across this stifling country. If he were back at his plantation, he’d strip down to his trousers like the natives. Then roll his pants up to his knees.

  Yesterday he’d tried to cool off by dipping his hand into the river, but one of the crew slapped him with a long pole. Victor had started to rebuke the man until he pointed at an ugly creature sunning itself on a rock, its beady eyes watching their boat.

  A crocodile.

  The sole woman passenger shrieked, but Victor just stared back at the animal. Until then, he’d only seen pictures of crocodiles, and none that he remembered did justice to this creature. Thorns peaked across its armored back, and its checkered gray scales blended into the rock. Sharp teeth were curved like a dozen sickles outside its mouth and bent into a strange sort of smile.

  Victor had smiled back and then dipped his fingers into the water again.

  An hour later, the boat floated out from the muddy banks and noisy canopy of the jungle. The land beside the river flattened as they drifted beside a field of sugarcane, the shoots emerging from the morass. He could almost taste the sweetness of sugar in his mouth.

  Tonight they were supposed to arrive in Panama City, where there were restaurants and American hotels. After three nights sleeping on a hammock, covered in scratchy mosquito netting, he would rent a decent bed. Then he would eat pork loin, perhaps, or some sort of mutton. A nice cream or pie for dessert.

  He turned to talk to the man sitting on the bench behind him. Levi Brooks, the agent of a bank in San Francisco, had made this trip three times already to escort shipments of gold to New York. “Are we almost to Panama City?” Victor asked.

  Levi chuckled. “Hardly.”

  Victor stiffened. He hated people laughing at him. “When will we arrive?”

  “In another day or two, we’ll get to the trail,” Levi said.

  Victor disliked the man, but he needed more information. “What sort of trail?”

  “Didn’t they give you a travel pamphlet when you booked passage?”

  “Of course.” He’d packed it into the leather portfolio now clutched in his lap. “But I thought this river went all the way across the isthmus.”

  “We have to take an old mule trail over the Continental Divide before we go down into Panama City. You can rent a mule, but I don’t recommend it. Too many of them fall off the cliffs and . . .” He stopped.

  “I’m not afraid of a mule trail,” Victor said.

  “That’s good. Most people get skittish when they see it.”

  The faster he could get down the trail, out of this dreadful place, the better.

  The rower pointed out a cluster of primitive huts on the side of the river, each one sewn together with dried grass and bamboo, the roofs thatched with palm leaves. Perched on one was a black vulture. “We stop here.”

  Levi called out to the man. “We paid to travel six miles today.”

  The native shrugged. “Someone else paid us more to return to the last village.”

  “But we had an agreement—”

  “We will send someone for you.”

  The native directed the bungo closer to the bank, and they had no choice but to disembark. The men rolled up their trousers and waded through the mud. One of the natives carried the woman passenger and then all the luggage to shore.

  Victor turned toward Levi. “Can we walk to the trail?”

  “You can try, but I doubt you’ll make it.” Levi set his bag on the grass. “We’ll hire another bungo in the morning.”

  The aroma of fish stew seeped out from a hut as one of the villagers came forward, welcoming them. They would host the visitors here—and feed them—for a preposterous fee. Victor rented a hammock inside a hut and then sat down under a palm tree by himself, a temporary relief from the infliction of sun.

  Once he got to Sacramento, he would book a room in a nice hotel. One that would cater to a gentleman. The natives here might not have an appreciation for Americans, but California would be civilized. No more sleeping in huts or traveling through the jungle. No more eating half-cooked fish or beans.

  He pulled out a sketchpad from his bag and began to draw a picture of Isaac so he could show people when he arrived in Sacramento. He outlined the boy’s face and shaded in part of his skin. Then he pulled out the picture he’d drawn of Mallie long ago. Isaac had his mother’s eyes. Her smile. Isaac’s nose was easy to draw. He saw it staring back at him whenever he looked in a mirror.

  When he finished the picture, he began sketching Mallie again. Instead of posing at his house, he drew her on the steps of Scott’s Grove, her silk-clad arm draped over the banister.

  He glanced back and forth between the portraits of Isaac and Mallie as the sun began to set, at the two people who meant everything to him. The two people who were supposed to love him back. And his blood began to boil again.

  Isaac would never run away from him. Alden—like Eliza—must have forced him to leave. Kidnapped him from Scott’s Grove. Or maybe he’d tricked him into going west. Alden probably lied, telling Isaac that he’d take him home to Victor before forcing him onto a ship. Isaac was probably crying for Victor right now.

  A scorpion crawled over the sandy ground as the afternoon darkened. It was moving toward the sugarcane field.

  He would find Isaac, no matter how long it took to get to California. Then he’d make Alden pay for stealing his boy.

  Chapter 21

  San Francisco

  May 1854

  The Pharos and its worn passengers passed through the Golden Gate on the twenty-sixth of May. Fog draped over the cliffs, reminding Alden of the mythological sirens that lured sailors forward with their sultry voices, enticing them straight into the treacherous rocks.

  He leaned against the railing as if it would help Captain Crandall navigate between the rocks on their way into the harbor. They’d left Boston with 117 passengers on board and were landing with two less—both men who’d died of scurvy.

  The ship had made record time with the winds propelling them north. And the people crowded on the deck were anxious to set their feet on firm land. Once their stomachs had been satisfied with the provisions from Valparaiso, it seemed that none of the passengers could talk about anything except gold. As if every one of them would find a pot of it in this strange new land.

  As if gold were the answer to all their problems.

  Alden’s work on their boat had given him plenty of time to think, though he couldn’t really formulate a plan until he found Judah’s office. Later, he would find a family to care for Isaac.

  Someone slid up beside him, leaning against the rail. He thought it was Isaac at first, but it was Mrs. Dawson. The petite woman had made a remarkable recovery in the past week, as though the promise of land ahead was the remedy for whatever had ailed her. Isaac continued reading to her each afternoon, but she joined the
other passengers in the dining saloon for her meals.

  They drifted past a shipwreck partially masked in the fog, the abandoned hull rising and falling with the waves, grating against the rocky islet that ended its voyage.

  Mrs. Dawson nodded toward the wreck. “Do you think the passengers made it to shore?”

  “It’s hard to tell,” he said, though he didn’t know how a smaller boat could help passengers stranded against that stone wall, especially if it was during a storm. Swimming between the outcroppings of rocks would be dangerous on a day with fair weather, impossible in waters churned by the winds.

  “I always think of California as a place for beginnings,” she said, tugging on the fingers of her white glove. “But I suppose it’s an ending for others.”

  He hadn’t thought about endings here either, but he and Isaac had come too far for an ending. This was a new beginning for both of them.

  He felt Mrs. Dawson turn toward him, but he kept his eyes focused ahead, at the promise of a harbor hidden deep under this fog. “Is Mrs. Payne coming to join you?”

  He shook his head. “I’m not married.”

  “I see,” she said. “Surely you have a woman waiting for you to return home, then.”

  “I’m not going back.” Stella, he hoped, had already married Robert.

  “You need a woman to help care for Isaac,” Mrs. Dawson said. “And a wife to help keep you warm.”

  Was she propositioning him? The woman was about ten years his senior and attractive in her fashionable mauve dress, her dark hair brushed into a modern winged style, and a shiny salve polishing her lips.

  When she smiled at him, he wrenched his gaze away, focusing back on the foggy gateway. She was comely, but she was also a married woman. “I heard California is already warm,” he said.

  “I heard it snows plenty in the mountains.”