Treasure of the Sun (34 page)

"Not at all. I'm not a very devout Protestant." She nervously played with her watch chain. "I mean, I've never believed my religion to be the only one."

"Just what the Americano men say when I tutor them before their weddings." Shaking his head, the old man held the candle up to the crowded bookshelf, then ran his nose along the spines of the books until he found the one he wanted. He slid it toward her. "Here. You'll need to read this as soon as possible, and I'll help you find the right way. You can read?"

"Yes, of course!"

"There is no 'of course.' Except for the boys I taught, there are few in California who can read, and read well." He scrutinized her. "Have you had bodily commerce with Damian?"

Mortified, she nodded, wondering where her dignity had fled.

Before this elderly man's kind questions, she couldn't summon the nerve to tell him to mind his own business. Where was Damian during this interrogation?

"Well, well, I'll have to give you the quick course of religion.

A sort of instant state of grace." He cackled as he shuffled over to her. "Don't repeat that, of course. The Mother Church in Rome would never sanction such a thing, but here in the wilds of California , we've had to seek conversion through devious routes. Sit down, sit down."

A lack of reality, a perception of isolation tangled her emotions as she sat on the straight-backed chair he indicated.

"We'll start with-"

A tap on the door interrupted them. "Padre?" Damian stuck his head in. "Has Katherine told you why we came?"

''To sanctify your union, I would hope," Fray Pedro answered tartly.

"Not exactly."

Katherine could almost hear Damian squirm and she relaxed.

It would seem this Franciscan had the same effect on everyone that he had on her.

"Why have you come, then?" Fray Pedro conveyed disappointment and displeasure in his sharp question.

"We have a problem." Damian stepped into the room, a saddlebag flung over his shoulder.

"More than just living in sin?"

"Even more than that," Damian agreed. With care, he shut the door and leaned against it. "Do you recall the old tale about the padres and the gold?"

The shrewd eyes of Fray Pedro studied him. "The padres and the gold?" he repeated. "I'm not sure ...."

"Try to remember."

Something about the way Damian urged made Katherine think Damian didn't believe the friar, but Fray Pedro didn't seem insulted. "Ah, yes." Fray Pedro folded his arms across his skinny chest. "That's nothing but an old legend. Nonsense." He dismissed it with a wave.

Looking irritated, Damian tossed the saddlebag off his shoulder.

Katherine stepped in with an explanation. "We don't think it's a legend. We think it's based, at least in part, on fact. Please think about it. It's very important. There's someone who will kill to find this gold, and this person seems to think I know where it is."

Fray Pedro turned on her with a swiftness that belied his age.

"Someone who would kill? You? Why you?"

"Because I'm the widow of a man who sought the gold."

"That man's name was? .. ."

"Tobias Maxwell."

Before her eyes, the friar seemed to wither. His hands disappeared into his cassock, his shoulders sank. His head drooped; he muttered unintelligible words. Alarmed, Katherine slipped her arm around his waist. "Come and sit," she urged. "You're ill."

She assisted him to her abandoned chair.

Fray Pedro asked faintly, "What happened to that nice young man? What happened to Tobias?"

"He was murdered," Damian answered, coming to squat by the old Franciscan's knees. "Murdered by this same monster who seeks to kill my wife. Please, Padre, tell us what you know."

Fray Pedro adjusted his spectacles and peered at Damian irritably. "What could I know? San Juan Bautista wasn't even built when that senile Fray Lucio came out of the mountains with his wild story." He seemed unaware of the contradiction in his denial.

"When did he come out of the hills?" Damian asked eagerly. "In the summer of 1777, it was. I'll never understand how he made it alone, for he was ill and tired. He died within the month." Fray Pedro dropped his head as if he, too, were ill and tired. Katherine met Damian's eye.

"How old are you, Fray?" she asked, soft with his age and his sadness.

"Eighty-eight." He sighed. "I came all the way from Spain to work under Fray Junipero Serra, did you know that?"

"No, I didn't know."

"Si. I came from Majorca, as he did. It was an honor to be touched by Fray Serra's shadow. The man was a saint."

She humored him, giving him the moments he needed to pull himself together. "Was he?"

"There's never been another like him." He shivered, drawing in on himself. "Although others have tried."

There it was. There was the thing· he would prefer never to reveal. The thing, she suspected, frightened him. "Who?" she whispered.

His chuckle sounded like the rustle of old paper. "Damian, you know, don't you?"

"Fray Pedro, I don't-" Stricken by the thought, Damian said, "Fray Juan Estevan?"

"Si. Fray Juan Estevan. The big man with the gleaming eyes.

He, too, came from Majorca and was younger and healthier than Fray Serra, with a great skill for healing. Almost a godlike skill for healing. He had a charisma that blinded many to his ambition. Yet in his vanity, the man never knew about himself." Lifting one finger, he shook it in admonition of a man long dead. "Fray Juan Estevan thought that God worked through him, that his determination to convert the interior was a sign it was God's will. He would never tame his restlessness long enough to go to the chapel and ask God what His will was. I tried to speak to him about it, to explain that when God directs your actions, you feel a peace and a sureness within yourself. But Fray Juan Estevan was my elder in both years and experience."

Katherine stroked his fingers as they trembled in his lap.

"What did he say when you chided him?"

"He laughed. Only-" Fray Pedro closed his eyes as if in pain.

"Only when Fray Lucio came out of the mountains, he had been instructed to ask for me. I received the burden of the secret, at Fray Juan Estevan's request."

Damian poured a glass of wine. Pressing it into Fray Pedro's hand, he asked, "What did you receive?"

Fray Pedro sipped the spicy red liquid, and sighed. "A good wine. A new wine. I like new wines, don't you?"

"Fray Pedro, please." Damian knelt beside him. "We must know."

Fray Pedro studied Damian, reading his soul. "I never wanted to tell you about this. Of all the boys I taught, you were the most dependable, except when this tale was trotted around. Then your eyes glowed and you listened too intently. I feared for you." He sipped again. "Do your eyes still glow at the mention of gold?"

Damian opened one side of his saddlebag. "Let me show you." From the midst of Katherine's ruffled underwear, he drew a well-wrapped package. Unfolding it, he held the rock to the western light from the window. The gold of the setting sun brought the gold in the rock to blazing life; Fray Pedro knew what it was.

Crossing himself, blessing the gold, he murmured, "It exists. It truly exists." A smile broke across his weathered face, eroding every wrinkle to its deepest canyon. "All these years, I had wondered if I were mad, but it exists and I am not."

Caught in this topsy-turvy world of egocentric friars and hidden treasure, Katherine could only say anxiously, "Then you'll help us?"

He lifted his hand and blessed them both. "I'll seek the answer in the chapel. God is always there for anyone who seeks Him.”

A little prickle ran up Katherine's spine. Fray Pedro discussed God as if He were an important friend who could be contacted and spoken to at will. It fed her sense of strangeness.

She slid her gaze to Damian, but he seemed to find nothing amiss. He leaned against the table, watching Fray Pedro as if such spirituality were ordinary, expected.

Fray Pedro, too, seemed impervious to her discomfort. "Find Fray Manuel, Dona Katherina. He'll show you to your room, where you can study the book I gave you. Damian, you can bunk with your vaqueros tonight."

Rewrapping the stone and hiding it once more in the saddlebag, Damian shrugged in resignation.

"Early in the morning, I expect to see you so we can discuss this matter." Fray Pedro looked over his glasses with a droll expression. "Our little Damian can pay attention to the sacrament of marriage. Then confession for you both, first communion for you, Dona Katherina, next the wedding ceremony. Prepare yourself."

Without a word, Damian took Katherine's elbow and directed her out into the passage. As they left the little office, they heard Fray Pedro call, "Don't eat any breakfast."

"Wonderful man, isn't he?" Damian chuckled, and she stared at him as if he were mad. "Come, I'll find Fray Manuel for you."

In the rooms ranged along the arched corridor they caught Sashes of the fading sun that gleamed directly through the windows. It flashed through the open doors as they walked, catching the wood trim and transforming it to polished topaz. It faded to a glow as they left that brilliance behind, then flashed forth at another door. Katherine stared about, her eyes wearied by the rapid transitions, confused by her sense of isolation.

As Damian strode beside her, alternately sculpted in brilliance and dusted in shade, the light transformed him, too. Here, today, in this place that was so essentially Spanish and Californian, he looked different to her. Not at all like the man she'd married. Or perhaps, like the genuine man she'd married. The darkness of the corridor accentuated the austere gravity that placed him apart. The illumination revealed his somber beauty, underscored by splashes of black and accents of gold. Like a painting created with an eye for drama, he flaunted a beauty unmatched in her discreet background.

In this world of crucifix and conquistador, she was the alien. Damian found Fray Manuel, and she heard their murmured conversation through the cushion of shock.

She was the alien. She didn't belong here.

Fray Manuel came out to escort her to her room. He blessed her before leaving. Damian set her bag beside the bed, and she turned to him, eager for friendship, for words of reassurance. Surely Damian realized how estranged she felt. Yet he said nothing. He smiled without warmth, bowed with the formality of a Spaniard, watched her with great, dark eyes as he shut the door behind him, and left her alone with one candle to lighten the gathering gloom.

She looked around the room, bare and sparse as any cell, as if she'd find an answer to the questions that overwhelmed her.

What was she doing here? Why did she ever believe she could fit into this society? What madness had made her marry a man marked by history and culture?

Sightless, she stared down at the book in her hand until she focused on it in dismay. This was the book she must learn overnight. This was her anchor to reality.

She pulled the stool up to the table, sat, and opened the book to the first page. The silence of the mission filled her ears; a silence of old prayers and new devotions. Her breathing slowed, her heart beat with a steady rhythm, and she listened intently, seeking evidence of companionship. All she heard was the deep, sweet sound of sanctity, and it touched an unacknowledged part of her.

The candle flickered, the words wavered before her eyes, and a splash of water fell on the page before she realized it. She wiped it away; wiped, too, the tears from her cheeks.

Homesick.

For the first time since she'd left Boston, she was homesick.

For the first time, she wondered if she'd ever see snow again. She wondered if she'd ever wear a fur wrap again, or roast chestnuts for Christmas dressing. She wondered if her ear would ever hear the clipped, nasal speech of Massachusetts again, if she'd ever see a dockside bustling with Yankee traders or hear a cannon boom for a Fourth of July celebration. Would she ever see the men stand with heads bared as the mayor read the Declaration of Independence?

It was foolish to remember little things, to long for a muff to tuck her hands in when she lived in a land of eternal spring, but she did. It was foolish to remember only the snow, and not the slush and subzero cold, but she did. Foolish or not, nostalgia grew in the loneliness, watered by these silly tears.