Treasure of the Sun

by Christina Dodd

  Damian caught her fist as it swung.

  “You’ve become nothing but a brazen-faced whore.”

  Damian’s own fist found its mark, right across the narrow lips of the man from Boston. Lawrence smacked back against the chair so hard the fragile wood split and tossed him to the floor. Grabbing his oversized lapels, Damian dragged him back to his feet. Holding him face to face, Damian said, “Stupid,” and hit him again. Lawrence’s hands flailed as he tripped into the pedestal. The fine Grecian vase flew into the air and crashed into the fireplace.

  Shards flew across the room. Katherine cried, “Don Damian, please. You’re ruining Señora Diaz’s attractive parlor.”

  Lawrence wiped blood from his face and whined, “Is that all you can say?” He stopped and moved his lower jaw. Assured that it worked, he complained more loudly, “He’s beating me up and all you can do is worry about a bunch of ugly furniture?”

  “You could hit him back,” Katherine advised with little sympathy. “Men do that.”

  Drawing himself up, he said, “Your sense of decency is dead, you hear me—dead!”

  “Do you never learn?” Damian reached out again. He used more a slap than a blow, but Lawrence staggered like a drunk in a stupor and collapsed against the pedestal, which in turn collapsed under him.

  The door of the parlor flew open as the wood splintered around him, and Señora Diaz screamed hysterically, “My vase!”

  “I told you you shouldn’t do that,” Katherine advised as Damian led her away from the groaning Lawrence and into the sitting room.

  Damian ignored her. “Señora, I’m so sorry to have ruined your parlor.” He bowed to the señora with such charm the lady halted in midoutrage. “That cur insulted my bride. My bride, the love of my life, and he spoke to her without respect. I couldn’t allow him to continue. You understand?”

  She did, of course. Clasping her hands before her chest, she half swooned. “Romance.”

  The alcalde put his arm around her. “You remember?” he asked.

  Damian cocked an uneasy eye at Katherine. She’d stumbled into the corner of the sitting room and held her stomach with one arm. The other hand shielded her face; her shoulders shook.

  The couple stepped to the door of the parlor and the alcalde clicked his tongue. “Such a waste, that beautiful furniture.”

  “I’ll pay for it, of course.” Damian started towards Katherine. “In fact, señora, if you would go to my father’s townhouse this afternoon and tell the housekeeper what has happened, you can pick out anything you desire.”

  “Is she ill?” the alcalde whispered, nodding at Katherine.

  “I think not.” An embarrassing suspicion dawned in Damian, replacing his first tremor of alarm.

  “These tears,” the alcalde said, “they are for—” He pointed with his thumb.

  Damian pryed her fingers away from her eyes and checked. It was as he guessed, and he could hardly wait to usher her from the Diaz home. Noncommittally, he said, “The bonds of blood are strong.” He thrust her face into his shirt and hugged her against him. With careful steps, he urged her from the house. “I’ll take her back to the place where she can give way to her emotions.” They cleared the veranda before the strangled clamor from his chest began to leak out. “Doña Katherina is sensitive to the sight of blood.”

  Shocked faces peered at him from the door as her sounds, unmistakably of mirth, pealed out.

  Grimly he concluded, “Although not the blood of her cousin.”

  31 May, in the year of our Lord, 1777

  The cause of our grief caught up with us this morning. The devout among the Indian women followed us into the mountains. They were the noise Fray Patricio heard List night, and the reason for his death. The three women crept to us on their knees, obviously afraid of our wrath, but Fray Lucio and I were too heartsick to do so much as speak harshly to them.

  They carried pouches on their backs, emptying them at our feet. They brought us gold, huge nuggets of gold, smooth to the touch. They brought us sacks of gold dust, and even quartz veined with gold. Clearly, they believe we can transform this quartz into the pure metal. In their primitive minds, this abundance of gold will make up for the loss of our brothers.

  —from the diary of Fray Juan Estévan de Bautista

  Chapter 13

  “He’s not a parnevu.” Lawrence’s pronunciation suffered from the consequences of the split lips given him by Damian. A swollen nose, acquired no doubt in his fall, contributed to his nasal Boston accent.

  None of that affected his determination, and none of his determination affected Katherine as she walked around the boardinghouse bed with an armload of clothes.

  “Any fool can see that Don Damian’s a gentleman. If I’d taken a moment to look at his boots, I’d have realized it. I mean, he’s out there right now accepting his horse from some groom or another.”

  “The Estrada groom?”

  “I suppose so. That animal is a beautiful piece of horseflesh, even I can see that. I just lost my temper when you didn’t want to return immediately. I assumed you’d see it my way. It’s my father coming out in me, I suppose.” He chuckled anxiously and followed her to the brand-new trunk sitting, lid up, against the wall. “You won’t hold it against me, will you?”

  “She’s not a prostitute. Any fool can see that. She’s a valued member of our family. I’m sure you understand my shock when I discovered she was widowed and remarried. Perhaps I took my responsibility a little too seriously. You won’t hold it against me, will you?”

  Damian tightened the girths on his saddle and ignored Lawrence.

  “Perhaps my anxious concern offended you. Perhaps you’re still offended, and I don’t blame you. I acted like an ass. But I’m acting like a concerned relative, now. There are rumors that some murderer attacked Katherine last night.”

  “Doña Katherina.”

  Lawrence blinked at Damian. “What?”

  “You may call her Doña Katherina. It’s a sign of respect.”

  “Why, she’s my cousin, and I—”

  Damian lifted his cold gaze to Lawrence’s face.

  Lawrence gulped, his throat rising and falling with his courage. “Of course. Of course. Married women are due respect. I suppose her real name is Mrs. Sola now.”

  “Señora de la Sola, but as her relative you are permitted to call her Doña Katherina.” Damian strapped the bags onto the back of the saddle.

  “Of course. Of course. As I was saying, the rumors say that Doña Katherina—” it clearly tasted bad in Lawrence’s mouth “—Doña Katherina was attacked last night. To travel the road between here and your farm—”

  “Rancho.”

  “Huh? Oh. Your rancho as the sun sets is a foolhardy act.”

  “I can take care of Doña Katherina.”

  “I don’t doubt it. I don’t doubt it for a minute. I just thought that if you insist on leaving so late in the afternoon, I could ride with you and protect—”

  “Do you have a horse?”

  As Katherine strode up, a bag in each hand, Lawrence asked her petulantly, “Does this man ever let you finish your sentences?”

  She handed Damian her new carpetbag. “Is he interrupting you, Lawrence?”

  “Yes.”

  “Try saying something worth listening to,” she advised, mounting the sidesaddle with Damian’s assistance.

  Damian hooked the carpetbag over his saddle horn, then vaulted onto Confite. He repeated, “Do you have a horse?”

  “Well, no, but—”

  “Adios, then.” Tipping his hat to Lawrence, Damian gestured for Katherine to precede him. They set off down the southeastbound road out of Monterey, and Lawrence jogged along beside them.

  “I could get a horse.”

  They increased their speed.

  “It’s not safe out there at night.” He dropped behind. “Maybe not even in the daytime.”

  Katherine leaned against the neck of her horse and encouraged her to move faster.<
br />
  “I can wield a gun,” Lawrence shouted from behind.

  Damian slowed. “Can he?” he asked Katherine.

  “One time he shot a mirror, believing his reflection to be a burglar,” she said definitely.

  Spurring Confite, Damian kept pace with his wife, who rode as if the ghosts of her past pursued her. When they were well away, he signaled for her to slow. They swapped a grin of camaraderie, the naughty shame of two children fleeing an unpleasant duty. “He can’t catch us now,” he said.

  “That worried me,” she answered. “But it’s my own soft heart I flee.”

  Damian suspected her dilemma and shook his head warningly. “Don’t tell me—”

  “I don’t want to, but I feel sorry for Lawrence. Poor sap.”

  “He called you a whore.”

  “He’s always been gauche, but never brave. He’s the sorriest son of the sorry Chamberlain family.”

  “I don’t want him along. If we don’t get rid of him now, he’ll follow us to the ends of the earth,” he warned.

  “You don’t know how true that is. He doesn’t dare go back to Boston without me. He’s too afraid of his parents.”

  “What kind of family is this?” he asked, bewildered. “They’re cruel to you. They frighten their son.”

  “He was sent after me because he’s the most easily supplanted child of the family.” She nodded at his appalled expression. “He’s not good for much. His law work is sloppy. He can’t hold his liquor. The girls giggle about him behind his back. His ruthlessness is not up to Chamberlain quality.”

  “He’s been kind to you.”

  “Exactly. It’s that occasional compassion that makes him so replaceable in his father’s eyes.” She glanced behind her. “If there’s someone on our track, Lawrence would do us no good. He’d faint if presented with that awful countenance that attacked me last night.”

  Damian chuckled as they rode on, skirting the salt marshes that gave Salinas its name. They were well along the track beside the river when he asked, “Why do they want you back so badly?”

  Katherine grinned. “They’re running out of money.”

  “What?”

  “I’m truly very good with the law.”

  Her eyes flashed a challenge, but he only murmured, “You’d be good at anything you set your mind to.”

  She bent her head in acknowledgement. “Thank you.” She patted her horse’s neck as she considered the best way to explain without bragging. “My uncle had modest success as a lawyer before I moved into his home. He was competent enough to swindle people with no lawyers of their own out of their hard-earned wages. When faced with another lawyer, however, he lacked the verbal finesse to argue his way out of a mousehole.”

  “You don’t think much of your uncle.”

  “He’s a bully, a master at finding someone’s weakness and exploiting it. Witness his results. Witness Lawrence.” The hand that patted the horse clenched in its mane. “Witness me.”

  “You?”

  He sounded surprised, and she found him smiling at her. Encouragingly, sweetly. “Yes, me. There are some people who say I have a tendency to stick out my chin and dare someone to knock in my teeth.”

  “Who would say such a thing?”

  “My mother. She said she couldn’t understand why, but grew belligerent at fifteen.” She shook her head, watching her fingers as they loosened the knots she tangled in the horse’s mane then combed them out. “Bless her, I think she believed she’d been delivered of a pixie.”

  “Bless her, I think she was, too.”

  Something in his eyes made her pay close attention to her riding. Clearing her throat, she said, “Anyway. Uncle Rutherford’s fantastic success as a lawyer began when I moved into the house and started writing his legal arguments for him. I put the Chamberlain fortune on firm footing when I took over the accounting and investments. I’ve been gone almost eighteen months. Plenty of time for my spendthrift family to have driven themselves to the verge of bankruptcy.”

  He whistled.

  “Of course they want me back,” she added matter-of-factly. Catching at her reins, he brought her horse close to Confite. She squawked, “Don Damian!” before she received a warning look.

  “They may want you back, but I’ve got you. Never think you have an alternative to our marriage.” He rose in his stirrups to press a kiss on her surprised lips. Turning back to the road, he set off at a gallop. As she struggled to keep up, she could hear his voice on the wind, complaining, “With such a family, you were willing to leave us to go back to Boston. A woman like you could shatter a man’s pride.”

  She trailed along in his wake until his fit of pique wore itself out. When he dropped back to her side, she said, “I wasn’t returning to Boston.”

  He pulled up his horse so abruptly the animal almost sat down. “What?”

  “I wasn’t returning to Boston,” she repeated obligingly. “I was going to take the ship down to Los Angeles, find a position in one of the houses there—”

  Pointing his finger right at her, he insisted, “I don’t want to hear another word. When I think I would have gone all the way to your family’s home . . .” He shook his head as if he couldn’t stand it.

  “It’s all for the best,” she said with bracing good humor. She pointed to the sun, dipping low on the horizon. “Where will we spend the night?”

  “The Cardona hacienda is nearby. We’ll stop there.”

  Her shoulders slumped, but she agreed.

  “Don’t you like the Cardonas?” he asked anxiously. “They’re an older couple, I know, and dull, but they’re good friends of my father’s.”

  “It’s not that.” She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. “But they’ll toast our marriage. The meal will be long, and after last night—”

  “You’re tired. Of course, I’ll tell them—”

  “What? That we’re newlyweds and want to retire early?”

  “Ah.” He stroked his mustache to conceal a grin. “I see your concern.” He looked her over. “Come . I’ll tell them we must rise with the chickens, else we’ll not arrive home before dark.”

  “Before dark? We should be at de la Sola rancho by noon.”

  “I’ll tell them you’re a delicate woman who demands many rests.”

  “That’s not much better,” she pointed out.

  “It will have to do.”

  Julio strode into Monterey’s cantina. The hum of conversation halted as the drinkers surveyed the newcomer. Only four tables were occupied, and Julio returned the Spanish greetings from three of them. No one invited him to sit with them; it was a reaction he was used to. The tiny windows kept the afternoon sun from beaming in too brightly, and he stared to identify the occupant of the fourth table. Satisfied, he pulled out a chair and sat. A man hunched over the bar in the darkest corner, but he wasn’t the man Julio had come to see.

  Lawrence Cyril Chamberlain lifted his sulky face from a glass of brandy. “No one asked you here. What do you want?”

  Julio grinned at his rudeness. He settled against the high, hard back and said in English, “I want to help you. Isn’t that what you want?”

  “With what?”

  “With whatever you need done.” He leaned close toward Lawrence’s face. “This morning, you were talking about your cousin Katherine, and how you’d pay anyone to capture her and put her on the ship to Boston.”

  Lawrence’s lip stuck out. “Yes, I did.”

  “Well, I’m a friend of Damian’s. A good friend of Damian’s.”

  “So?”

  “I could help you.”

  “If you’re such a friend of that Damian’s, why would you help me?” Lawrence asked petulantly. “No one else would.”

  “Because I’m a poor friend of Damian’s. Money,” he rubbed his fingertips together, “is always welcome.”

  Lawrence’s voice rose incredulously. “You’d betray your friend for money?”

  “Of course. What other reason is
there?” Julio asked in surprise.

  “Now that’s a little more like it!” Lawrence slapped his knee. He winced, lifted his knuckles and examined them. He thrust his hand toward Julio. “Can you see that? Can you see what that animal did to me? He hit me.”

  Julio squinted to see the injuries that made Lawrence so indignant. “You hurt your hand hitting him back?”

  “No,” Lawrence said, impatient with such nonsense. “I hurt my hand breaking my fall.”

  Julio coughed in unaccountable distress, and a few coughs shook the other tables. Julio leaned close to Lawrence again. “Maybe we’d better lower our voices.”

  Lawrence looked at the scroungy cantina patrons. “You mean, they speak English?”

  “Perhaps. It’s likely.”

  Lawrence glanced sideways in a parody of caution. “Let’s get this clear. You think you can deliver Katherine to me before the ship sails?”

  “If not this ship, then the next ship.”

  “The sooner the better. I want to get out of this backwater.” Julio watched him with a steady gaze, and Lawrence hastily added, “Katherine will, too, once she’s away.”

  “In return, I want money. Gold coin. Half now, half on delivery.”

  Squinching up his eyes, Lawrence said, “Do you think I’m a fool? You’ll take the money and I’ll never see you again.”

  “Fine.” Julio rose. “Find someone else to do your dirty work.”

  Lawrence caught Julio’s sleeve. “Just a minute. Let’s talk.”

  When Julio left, he wore a pleasant smile and his pocket jingled. Lawrence stared at the door doubtfully.

  From behind him, he heard a deep voice say, “I wonder if you’ll ever see good from that money.”

  Rested, but not satisfied, Katherine rode into the yard of the de la Sola hacienda at noon and dismounted, handing the reins to a stableboy. Don Lucian stood on the porch, a twinkle in his eye. “So, Doña Katherina, you’ve decided to return to us after all.”

  She climbed the stairs with a twitch of her skirts and lifted her cheek for his kiss. “Si, Papa, I did.”