Mendoza in Hollywood (38 page)

“Señor, your excellent qualities outweigh any consideration of clerical sanction,” I said with an airy wave of my hand. He was grinning, about to answer, when his expression suddenly changed, became ice-cold. I followed his gaze but could see nothing except a pair of men hurrying into the Bella Union Hotel down the street. That was our destination too. Yet now Edward pulled abruptly on his horse’s reins and spurred down a side street. I followed silently. A few more streets over, and he turned in his saddle to address me.

All the easy warmth of the day’s pleasure had gone, with all the high color from his face. There was a look of strain in his eyes, though his voice was composed when he spoke.

“My dear, I’m afraid there’s been a change of plan. Regrettable, but it can’t be helped. There were two gentlemen entering the Bella Union just now—perhaps you saw them? I know them, unfortunately, and their presence indicates that they know I’m here. It would appear our friend Mr. Rubery made a few more blunders than 1 thought. Please accept this as a token of my esteem.” He reached into
his saddlebag and drew out a small leather pouch. He passed it to me over my horse’s neck; it was heavy for its size. “That should enable you to find a more hospitable corner of the world in which to live. I believe you’re clever enough to see that my presence shall shortly be a very dangerous place indeed, so I’d advise you to ride, and quickly.”

“Not in this life, señor,” I said in a low voice, leaning forward in the saddle. “I know the country, as you said, and I think you need a swift way out of here. You can’t go back to the Bella Union. Will those men think to look for you at the stagecoach inn when you fail to return to your room?”

“Possibly,” he said. “I must assume they’ve already discovered certain things. You’re owed an explanation. You’ll have it if you can get us both out of here alive.”

“Follow,” I said, and urged my horse forward. He followed, to my relief, and I immediately accessed a detailed street map. There was a narrow alley that ran along the base of the long low hill, and we made for that and galloped its length, behind its houses out of town. We encountered nobody but a dead man; our mounts slowed to pick their delicate way over him where he lay staring placidly at the new stars, and we sped on as the twilight deepened.

So back toward Hollywood, but not the way we’d come. I found us a route over torn earth, where cattle and vaqueras had passed in the dozens, and widened my scanning range to eight kilometers. Nobody was following us; nobody was lying in wait for us. The people whose delight it was to lie in the underbrush and take potshots at passersby were evidently on their dinner breaks. So far, so good. We made a wide turn, avoiding Cahuenga Pass, and rode for a winding canyon about a mile west of it.

About a kilometer in, there was a great branching sycamore tree near a spring that bubbled out of the sand, and we reined in under the shadows there. The tree was occasionally used to hang thieves, and so local residents tended to avoid the area after dark. “Well, Señor Bell-Fairfax?” I said.

“Well, Señorita Mendoza,” he said. “You were indeed correct in your assumption that what’s left of the Yankee government wouldn’t approve of our plans for profitable trade with the locals. Apparently certain agents in the employ of Mr. Allan Pinkerton have got wind of something, doubtless thanks to Mr. Rubery’s lack of discretion.”

So this was how it had failed? “The game is over, then, señor?” I asked, hoping we’d make the best of a bad business and get out of the heat.

“By no means,” he said, “since we were able to escape with our lives. Our proposal for your countrymen will simply be delayed, and they may be even more willing to listen by that time. If you’re still game, of course?”

“I am.” Though I didn’t like his persistence in the face of danger. Better to give it up, go home, live to spy another day. “What about getting over to Catalina Island?”

“Hm. That’s compromised now. I had engaged a reliable fellow to take me across tomorrow evening, but if my room has been searched, I daresay he’ll be watched.” He looked thoughtful in the darkness, but the color had returned to his face. After a moment he turned, surveying the night. He couldn’t have been able to see anything; to a mortal the black shadow would have been complete and impenetrable. “I’m afraid I must impose on your bravery and your hospitality a while longer, my dear. I’d like to move on. We need a secure retreat with a decent view of the surrounding countryside. Do you know of any such?”

“I think I know a place,” I said, and we rode on up the canyon.

It twisted steeply for a few miles, and we followed a sandy creek bed under black avenues of trees. There was no water there now, but cool air currents flowed past our faces in the darkness until we emerged, riding straight uphill toward rimrock. To one side below us a splendid view of the plain opened out, and there was a tiny cluster of yellow lights to show us where the village of Sherman slept. I wondered if Señora Berreyesa had survived the smallpox. What a lifetime ago that had been.

We stopped climbing and made our way north through the hilltops, keeping well below the rimrock, and our horses picked their way carefully through black sliding piles of scree. I found a trail to take us around and down, until we emerged on another view: the San Fernando Valley lying vast and silent in the darkness. There below us was the northern end of Cahuenga Pass, beyond was the gigantic wall of Mount Hollywood, and far, far out on the valley floor was the tumbled ruin of what had been Mission San Fernando, its graceful arcade broken open to the stars. Not that a mortal could have made it out at that distance. I remembered chatting with a friar in its tidy mission garden, once, and felt a pang of loneliness.

“My compliments,” whispered Edward beside me. “A fine panoramic view. All we need is a defensible spot.” How could he tell there was a fine panoramic view? I was seeing it by infrared, but he was a mortal man.

“Up here,” I murmured, gesturing to a small steep hill like a turret that was crowned with a stand of trees. We rode up into the cover they provided. On the other side of the hill was a little terrace, wooded and dropping to a rocky saddleback ridge. To either edge the land fell sharply away in deep canyons. Below us, nearly invisible in the night and the trees, was a rough square of leaning wooden huts.

“You want a defensible spot?” I said to Edward. “This was one of Fremont’s outposts. It’s been abandoned for years. Nobody for miles but Cielo the farmer, and he won’t be able to see us from his house.”

Edward nodded.

I let him reconnoiter while I gathered wood for a fire. I’d told him the literal truth, we really were the only people for kilometers except for Mr. Cielo; so he returned satisfied as to our security. The largest of the buildings had a crude stone hearth, and I cleared it enough to start a small fire. No furniture left, but at least the creaking plank floor was dry. Edward saw to our horses and then came in and sat down beside me, carrying the saddlebag. He pulled out his watch and looked at it.

“Twenty-four hours,” he said, with some satisfaction.

“Is that significant, señor?” I asked.

“Yes, I think so,” he said, closing the watch and slipping it back into his waistcoat pocket. Without explaining further, he took out the valise and opened it. “I daresay you examined the contents of this whilst it was left at your inn?”

“No, señor,” I said truthfully. “But I’m fairly sure Martha went through it.”

“Yes, I’d gathered someone had. Damn.” He looked up as an idea struck him. “Where has that intriguing lady got to, by the way? You said she was gone; where did she go?”

“San Francisco,” I answered.

He stopped in the act of taking out the neat little stoppered bottle of violet ink. “When?” he said in a voice too calm.

“Just this morning, señor,” I said. “If you’d arrived two hours earlier, you’d have met her.”

He relaxed visibly, but his expression was still grim.

“Now, I wonder,” he said, pulling a pen from an inner pocket and removing the cap that protected the nib. “I wonder how well you’re acquainted with the lady.”

“Quite well, señor.”

“She had rather a reputation at the Bella Union as a sympathizer with the Secessionist cause, and was reputed to have had a particular fondness for Britons. I assume this was how Mr. Rubery chanced to be enjoying her favors at the moment her jealous friend stepped onstage.” He pulled out a sheaf of papers, half sheets that appeared to be printed in the same violet ink, and thumbed through them carefully. “Was the lady what she seemed to be, in your opinion?”

“I don’t think she’s a Federal spy, señor. I think she serves her own interests, like most whores.”

“Yet she made no attempt to pilfer the contents of this valise.” He held up the sheaf. “These are drafts on the Bank of England; useless without a countersignature, but a dedicated thief would attempt to forge one. And there’s a considerable sum in coin as well, but apart from prising up the seal to look at it, she left that quite untouched. She may also have read through certain other papers here, the idea of
which is rather unsettling.” He rested the valise on his knee to use as a writing surface. Dipping his pen in the violet ink, he selected a draft and filled out an amount. He signed it with a flourish and carefully put his pen back in his inner breast pocket. “I put the question to you: having examined these things, what was the lady’s object in departing for San Francisco this morning?”

“She didn’t say,” I lied, looking thoughtful. “If she was intending to betray your cause, I should imagine she’d have taken the valise straight to Fort Drum down here. Would she have learned from the papers that your friend was now in San Francisco?”

“Yes,” he said, waving the check in the air to dry it.

“Well, then, perhaps she’s gone up there to blackmail him. That might explain why she left the valise.”

“It might well.” He stared into the fire. “In which case, we have nothing to fear from that quarter, at least at present.”

“We haven’t?”

“No,” he said. Groping with his free hand, he pulled a kind of envelope of oilcloth out of the valise. It was exactly big enough for a half sheet. He tucked the check inside and handed it to me. “There, my dear. Less immediately negotiable than the gold, but if we should be separated, this will get you to London, where you’ll find you have friends. Take care not to get it wet; even perspiration is enough to make that ink vanish like a dream.”

“You’re too generous, señor,” I said, opening it to peer at the amount. My jaw dropped. I had to read twice before I was sure. I looked at him in confusion. “Señor! That’s—it is too much.”

He gave a brief shake of his head, putting away the contents of the valise. “You may well earn it before this business is done. Let me tell you honestly that your life may stand at hazard, Señorita Mendoza. I shall certainly think no less of you if you wish to withdraw at this point and travel elsewhere. Indeed, I’m obliged to tell you it’s in your best interests to do so at once. The money’s yours, regardless.” He reached back into the saddlebag and brought out a small box.

“This is more than a matter of trade, isn’t it?” I said.

Edward looked at me for a long moment before he answered. “It is a game of nations,” he said. He drew his gun from its holster and opened the box, which contained small tools, ammunition, and a chamois cloth. Methodically he removed the remaining bullets from his gun and began to clean it.

I watched him awhile before I spoke again. “I suspected as much. Well. Señor, I will not leave you. This involves my honor, after all.”

He was shaking his head. “That won’t do, my dear. Marriage is really not—”

“You mistake my meaning,” I said. “You are a stranger in my country, and you have shown me kindness, and now our common enemies hunt for you. I will not leave your side, señor, while I can be of use to you. That’s my honor, and I won’t surrender it.” Only lines spoken by the character I was playing; but I meant them all the same.

Real emotion in his eyes again, before the cold businesslike look returned. What kind of man lay behind the role
he
was playing? “Señorita, you do credit to your father’s sword,” he said. “By God, I hope we can win through to London.”

“What are our chances?” I settled back, hoping he couldn’t hear the way my heart was pounding.

He took up his gun again and spun the empty cylinders. “Not poor, I think,” he said, reloading. Oh, his heart was pounding too. “If we can avoid capture for another day or so, and if we can get across to Santa Catalina Island, we’ll do very well indeed. The difficulty will be finding a vessel to take us.”

I remembered Señor Souza and his dark house on its pilings.

“I can manage that, señor,” I said. “I know a fisherman with a house on the slough, below the old landing place.”

“His name?” Edward gave the weapon a final inspection and returned it to its holster.

“Souza. A Portuguese gentleman. There was a doctor who resided at the inn for a while, to whom he’s indebted. I’ll call in a favor on his behalf.”

“Can you?” Edward said, putting away the box. He leaned back and stretched out his long legs. “Then we’ll hope for the best and prepare for the worst, and God defend the right.”

Flames were dancing in his eyes. Flames running up his shirt, sputtering in his fair hair, Nicholas had stared at me until the agony broke his concentration . . .

I had to close my eyes and draw a deep breath. When I opened them, Edward was sitting forward and frowning at me. “Are you well, señorita?” he asked.

I stared at him. “Do you believe in God, señor?”

He looked disconcerted. “I suppose so,” he said at length. “Certainly religion is a civilizing influence, if it’s not taken too far. I imagine you’re a Roman Catholic?”

“I was born one,” I said, which was the truth.

“I won’t offend you, then. But I think we can agree that zealots of any persuasion do a great deal of harm. All the same, men need commandments of some kind.”

“Do you think there’s a true religion?”

“Do I? Yes, the C. of E., I suppose. But if I were a Hottentot, I’d tell you that my great wooden idol was better than anyone else’s. I doubt that distinct creeds matter much, so long as civilized behavior is observed.” He looked at me askance. “Is the matter of doctrine very important to you, my dear?”