Of Gold & Blood Series 2 Books 1 & 4

by Jenny Wheeler

  Thirty Three

  Willie Watson was gray-faced and looked ten years older than the day before, when he’d stood on his doorstep in the morning sun. He was still unconscious, but at least his breathing had a strong regular rhythm. That was something to be grateful for. Graysie watched as a serene young novitiate rinsed the cloth for Willie’s early-morning face wash. She flashed her an apologetic smile.

  “Is he going to recover?”

  The young woman couldn’t have been more than twenty years old, but she had the serene calm of someone much older as she dabbed Willie’s forehead with a soft muslin cloth dampened from warm water in a china basin on the bedside cabinet. Graysie inhaled the soap’s lavender fragrance and relaxed.

  Sister Julia patted Willie’s wrinkled face dry. “Too soon to say—and ye’d have to be asking the doctor that question,” she said in an Irish lilt. “Now I think ye need to be getting back to your babby and be leaving me to do my six o’clock rounds.”

  After lying in turmoil for most of the night, Graysie had finally fallen into an exhausted sleep just as she heard the first faint bird twittering at dawn. Her first thought when her eyes flew open barely an hour later was, Is Willie still alive?

  She had been grateful to hear Minette’s steady undisturbed breathing from the narrow bed in the corner. In the dim light she could just see her head peeping over the crisp white sheet and cream and aqua quilt bordered with angels.

  She would normally have cherished the peaceful presence in this house of prayer, but the disturbance in her own soul had destroyed her rest. She’d slipped out of bed and made her way to the hospital wing as soon as she heard the bell sound for Prime, the convent’s early morning prayers, leaving Minette in her deep sleep, her little chest rising and falling rhythmically, her cheeks flushed a light pink.

  Back in their room now, Graysie could see Minette had not stirred in the fifteen minutes she’d been gone. She felt a sudden urge to pray, and she knelt by her bed and whispered to the Father God she had ignored in recent months.

  “Holy Father have mercy on us. Keep us from the hands of wicked men. Protect us from our enemies. Let your angels raise a hedge around us.”

  Her first choir practice sessions were scheduled for that morning. After a quick breakfast in the refectory she settled Minette into her nursery class and, despite her night sweats, the next few hours flew by in a blur of navy blue choir cassocks and sweet soprano voices.

  She was finishing a vegetable soup lunch when she caught a snatch of Pania’s musical trans-Pacific accent and the opera star swept in. She was wearing one of Cressida’s new walking dresses, the skirt in a vibrant blue, slimmed down and shortened to ankle length, with a crisp white bodice with fitted sleeves braided in blue and a matching blue promenade hat.

  “Graysie! So glad to have caught you. I really do need to see you.”

  At second glance, Graysie saw her friend was on edge. She held herself stiffly and fiddled with the pretty little blue bag that swung on her forearm. It was not like her at all to be so discomposed.

  “Is something wrong?”

  Pania shook her head. “Is there somewhere we can talk?”

  “I’ll settle Minette back in the nursery and we can take a walk in the garden. I’ve finished my work for the day.”

  When they’d seated themselves on a stone bench in the shaded cloister, Pania cleared her throat. “I haven’t told you very much about my past friendship with John. It may come as a surprise to hear that I have known him for a very long time…” She hesitated as if unsure of how to proceed.

  Graysie waited, and when her friend did not continue, she nodded. “Yes, it’s obvious you’re good friends.”

  Pania cleared her throat again. “I haven’t really explained how well I knew him—and Eustace as well—when we were all a lot younger and I was just starting out. I saw and heard things then that have been popping up in my mind a lot these last few days. It’s the strangest thing. I just can’t help wondering if they are connected. You know, to things like Minette disappearing, and you and Nathan and now Willie being attacked.”

  Graysie’s fingertips tingled with shock. Father O’Brien had vaguely hinted yesterday—what was it he had said—“perhaps the answer you are looking for lies in your uncle’s affairs.” Now Pania seemed to be on the same tangent. What was she hinting at? That she knew some secret about Eustace and John and things that happened, what, more than fifteen years ago? And why on earth would it have anything to do with today?

  “What kind of things?” Graysie’s voice was almost a whisper.

  “I heard them talking. Eustace was absolutely besotted with your mother. He could not accept that she married your father while he was away in the West Indies. He had this fantasy that if he could just get to talk to her alone, she would see sense and return to him. He said she was his first and only love…”

  Pania’s normally confident voice trailed off in uncertainty. “I can’t shake the feeling that John knows a lot more than he’s ever let on. For a short time, those three were always together.”

  “Those three? You mean John, Eustace, and my mother?”

  “Yes. When your father went on a long trip to Sacramento. He had a big commission he couldn’t afford to turn down and he was away for a couple of months. Your mother was lonely with him away. She had no family in San Francisco. Eustace kept her company, and John tagged along as chaperone.”

  “Oh. So you knew my mother too? You hadn’t mentioned it.”

  “We only met a few times. I was away singing a lot. She was very beautiful but quite out of her element. California in 1852 was a hard place for even strong women, and your mother had been raised for a more gentle life. I’d say she was headstrong but not emotionally strong.”

  Graysie had a flash of recollection; she’d been skipping in their San Francisco garden. She could feel the sun-warmed air, smell the orange blossom from the hedge, hear the buzz of the bees, as she jumped up and down, the skipping rope her father had bought her making a pleasing drumming sound on the paved path. Until she was aware of her mother standing before her, hands up to her face in shocked disapproval.

  “Graysie you shouldn’t be exerting yourself like that,” she shrilled. “It will make your face freckled and give you big legs. No decent man will want to marry you if you are too physical.”

  Pania was right. Her mother had not been made for the challenges of new settler life. Raised in a wealthy New York merchant’s house, she’d lived a sheltered life until she ran away with Rafael Castellanos just after her twentieth birthday.

  “She’d have got used to California. She hadn’t lived here long enough to settle. Graysie sighed and gazed into Pania’s dark eyes. “Things might have been different if she’d had longer to learn the ropes. It wasn’t her fault she was in that stage coach when it crashed.”

  Pania hesitated and then said in a low quiet voice: “Perhaps. Perhaps not.”

  Graysie had never heard the accident mentioned when she was growing up. It upset her father to talk about it and, after he remarried, her stepmother forbade acknowledgment of her mother’s existence. But she’d always understood she, her mother, and the twins were on the stage to Sacramento to join her father.

  He’d gotten some good commissions for portrait photography and had been convinced he could set up a daguerreotype studio there and make a good living for his family. The stage coach crash had ended that dream.

  The rescuers who’d arrived on the deserted mountain road hours later had found her bruised and scratched, in a dazed state some distance from the wreckage, but the twins were nowhere to be found.

  Pania nodded in understanding. “I do remember Eustace was very upset when she decided she was going to join your father. There was wild talk of Eustace trying to stop her. He was convinced she was going out of fear of the social shame if she left her marriage. I’ve always wondered if he had something to do with it.”

  “Something to do with what? The stage coach accident?
What can you mean? Surely not… I don’t understand.” Her stomach turned over. She recalled John’s comment. Maybe it was true. Perhaps Eustace had been there.

  “Eustace had compelling charisma, and he was used to getting his own way,” said Pania. “I have wondered if he carried through with his impulse to intercept her to try and talk to her again. Things seemed to change between John and him after the accident. Eustace was more subdued. John seemed to have more sway over him.

  “Their business collaborations began in earnest, and Eustace gave John an entree into money and status through his family connections that he couldn’t have gotten himself.”

  Graysie’s legs were stiff and heavy. “Let’s stroll a while,” she said and led the way out into the garden, opening her parasol as she went.

  The afternoon was sultry, too hot for the birds to be singing, but butterflies danced over blossom bushes and Graysie caught a nostalgic whiff of orange blossom. The events all those years ago had happened in another universe.

  “This is all more than my head can hold. Are you hinting that John had something over Eustace that he used to his business’s advantage?” she asked.

  “Maybe. I don’t know. The possibility does float into my mind whenever I reflect on all these odd things that have been happening,” Pania said. “What if it was something like that? What if John felt Eustace ‘owed’ him?

  “I’ve always wondered because of something that happened a week or so after the accident. I’d just returned from a season at the Belvedere. I hadn’t long been back. I overheard Eustace say something to John that at the time didn’t mean much to me. It was only later I wondered about it.”

  Graysie paused on a curve in the path which led them back up the way they had come. “What was that?”

  “Eustace said something like ‘I’m sure they were alive when we left them.’ Or that’s what I thought I heard him say.”

  “He what?” Graysie’s head spun. Pania grasped her arm and drew her back to the bench. “Sit down and get your breath. I don’t want to upset you.”

  Graysie slumped to the bench. “I can’t believe…” She couldn’t think of how to finish the sentence.

  Alejandro and Gabriela. Alejandro dark-haired and deep, Gabriela, with the same dark hair as her brother, but with a sparkling out-going personality. Twins, yes, but the contrast in character couldn’t have been more striking. She sometimes admitted to herself that not knowing what had happened to them was worse than knowing for sure they were dead.

  Pania took her hand and gave it a consoling squeeze.

  “I don’t know what happened that night. I just have an unsettling sense we’ve never heard all the details… or the correct details.”

  Thirty Four

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the next senator for California!”

  The rotund, red-faced eighty-eight-year-old governor raised Hector de Vile’s arm in a boxer’s victory salute. And so he should. De Vile’s meteoric rise from millionaire magnate and stock market king to the United States Senate was all about deal-making. Willoughby Martens knew enough about what went on in politics to know that much.

  De Vile was replacing a senator who’d died from a stomach complaint after drinking the capitol’s tainted water, and as was its right, the state legislature had appointed de Vile as his replacement for the eighteen months until the next election.

  Technically, it was the legislature. In fact it was a cozy arrangement with the governor, who, in return for naming de Vile senator, received a handsome package of mining shares. The only thing that puzzled Martens was why the tycoon hankered after a senator’s seat when there was so much wealth ripe for the picking without leaving home. But de Vile would have his eye set on bigger opportunities. Martens recognized he didn’t have the Belgian’s foresight to know what those might be.

  The cream of local society and key out-of-town supporters crowded the steamy reception room in Nevada City’s National Exchange Hotel. The atmosphere was buoyant. Beautiful women and free-flowing wine, what more could a man want? The crowd gave de Vile uproarious applause, some even cheered, and then the conversation rose again as they congratulated one another on being invited to the year’s premier political party.

  Martens hung close to de Vile’s elbow, ever aware of his need to make himself indispensable. He’d been relieved to escape dismissal for his failure to deliver the Vance Peterson report, and he allowed himself a flicker of satisfaction at his lucky break.

  Maybe de Vile wasn’t convinced the report had gone up in smoke, but Martens had created enough doubt to give himself breathing space. And the bombshell de Vile was about to drop would take care of the other problem—getting hold of the Ruby and Ophir shares. He was confident of that.

  The sweaty-faced governor stepped aside and, with a flourish, introduced Sir John Russell. The dark-haired tycoon stepped forward with the confidence of a man born to rule. Curse his English blood. He held up his hand for silence, and the room immediately quietened.

  “Allow me, friends, just a moment of your time, and then you can get back to celebrating Hector’s success. I’ve known de Vile personally for a relatively short time, but of course I’ve respected his business acumen for a good many years. Hector is certainly a man you prefer to have on your side.” John paused and raised a theatrical eyebrow. “As I am sure many of you have found to your cost, he doesn’t like to lose, and does so very rarely.”

  The silence gave way to a waft of shuffling, light laughter and some deep male coughing before John resumed. “He will be a great man to have pushing our interests, and I’m here to congratulate him on your behalf. I don’t know anyone who could be as effective as he will be in opening the doors in Washington.

  “I know you’ll agree with me that we want protection for business so that the investment we are making in mines and railway lines endures. Without guaranteed long-term benefits what incentive is there for astute men to lay out their hard won dollars? The trend of amalgamation of mines into fewer and fewer hands is something we all recognize as inevitable if we are going to create jobs to keep men in work.

  “You all understand, I’m sure, that there is just no point in having a big capacity stamper if you haven’t got the ore to keep it running around the clock. And if a few smaller players get burned in the meantime, well that’s life. To him who has much, more will be given. It’s in the Bible.”

  A few women tittered, and men said, “Hear, hear.”

  De Vile was standing quietly at Sir John’s side, surveying the room, occasionally nodding in agreement.

  “Our friends at the Daily Bulletin might write about mine safety and shorter working hours, but most of us are more concerned with putting food on tables—ours and those of our workers. I’m confident that, in Hector de Vile, we have the man to help us prosper.”

  Sir John turned to a four-piece band and, on cue, they struck up the Star Spangled Banner, a patriotic tune which was gaining wide popularity. As the music and applause faded for a second time, de Vile tipped his top hat and cleared his throat.

  “Thank you all very much for coming here tonight. I plan to represent California’s interests very strongly in Washington, and I appreciate the opportunity to do so. And of course, tonight wouldn’t be a true de Vile show without a stock tip to make you all rich.”

  The crowd snickered, as if they were enjoying the joke, but then, as one, leaned forward expectantly, craning to hear what he was going to say next.

  “I know folks are saying Comstock silver is fading away, but they’re not looking in the right places. I’m getting some very exciting news on the Lode, let me tell you. Finds that will leave the gold mines on the other side of the mountains in the shade. I’m just saying, keep a keen eye on the Lode, and you won’t be sorry.”

  On cue, de Vile stepped down from the podium where he’d received the crowd’s applause and joined a small group of men who stood waiting for him. He paused outside the circle, examining the fingers of first his right and th
en his left hand, checking his manicure. He flicked a speck of dust from his sleeve, and, satisfied everything was in order, he stepped forward and began shaking hands.

  “Ben, great to see you here,” he said to Ben Shields, chairman of the state water and gas board. “Henry, you too.” Henry Somerville, railways magnate, was about to negotiate the acquisition of another 60,000 acres of state land for railways use. And so it went.

  Strong eye contact and firm handshakes all round. De Vile might be impervious to others’ opinions, Martens observed, but he had that special touch of making every one of these men feel like he was his most important ally and collaborator: The Napa Valley vintner with a lucrative trade in the East thanks to his merchant brother in New York. The San Francisco sugar billionaire who’d bought Hawaii’s entire sugar crop and was said to have the King of Hawaii in his pocket.

  Martens realized each had been selected to ensure de Vile had a chance to impress them, to open doors for them in Washington in return for a share of the gains, whatever they were likely to be. One thing was for sure, Hector de Vile knew where money was to be made.

  And where it wasn’t. After his crafty tip earlier that night, word would spread to San Francisco by tomorrow and silver would be up and gold down. Sadly he’d have to break that news to the two women tomorrow. Ophir and Ruby shares? They would now barely be worth the paper they were printed on.

  Thirty Five

  Sunday, July 12

  Graysie eyed Willoughby Martens in the opposite chair and tried to ignore Minette fidgeting on the seat beside her. Why on earth she’d agreed to talk to Martens in the convent’s visitor room she had no idea. Worse still, she’d dragged Minette along as some sort of safeguard against Martens in case he became over bearing—which he might do even in a convent—and the poor child was bored to death.

  Martens had arrived unannounced and requested a meeting to—as he explained it—help her understand more clearly the full ramifications of the mine report he had handed her a couple of days before.