AN UNSEEMLY RELIQUARY
A Novel By Robert Zumwalt
—
A reliquary may hold nothing more than memories and hope. Then again, it may contain terrible things. Unseemly things.
Theresa Charbon’s diary, March, 1881
CHAPTER 1
Moraga Valley, California—July 3, 1880
Theresa Charbon slid the slim dagger back into its leather sheath on the office wall. The small weapon appeared like a shabby intruder, surrounded as it was by intricate showpieces. But John came by it as a child under most unusual circumstances and he prized it most. The others were collected later in his travels as factor on his family’s ships. Pretenders, peacocks, he’d said of them in his gentle French-laced voice. Those weapons had never been tested. They possessed no knowledge of life. They’d never seen death, nor known of love. But this sturdy knife, handle bound in rawhide for grip and balance, knew both.
She checked her traveling suit in the mirror by the window and dropped the short veil. It brought back memories of the mantillas of her youth, gargantuan affairs that hid beauty in a vicious modesty defined by the padres. She’d not been to church since she was fifteen and had rid herself of those notions long ago. But the sting was still there. The veil she wore on this day looked to the sensibilities of this new age—smart and just the thing for travel on sunny, dusty roads, the most practical mourning veil she or anyone could imagine.
Outside the window the housekeeper’s son gathered flowers from Theresa’s rose garden for the family’s fete at the Oakland house. Young Mateo had been moody of late. Intuition told her that perhaps manhood was about to sneak up on the boy. A trying time—for everybody! She laughed, remembering her own son’s passage, but he had a father to guide him through those years. Mateo had to depend on the inconstant fathering of the men at the ranch, most of whom had little inclination for anything more intimate than five-card draw. She shrugged and started for the door to join her family, but returned to the window and found herself watching Mateo as he methodically clipped his blooms. He seemed so unaware of life’s shadows. Sadness washed over her along with hope that the boy would not know of death until he knew love—a strange thought, but touching that knife often inspired such random flights.
——
Fifteen-year-old Mateo Garcia lingered among the lush foliage, searching not just for beauty in the blooms, but for strength and straightness of stem to stand the journey over the hills. The señora was watching him and it made him uneasy. Finally, she waved and left the study. He waved back and returned his attention to the plants that thrived in the summer heat under her vigilant care: reds and yellows brilliant against the faded browns and leathery greens of the dry hills. He clipped four more blossoms, then turned once more to the huge window that overlooked the garden. The gouges in the wooden sill from the burglary still hadn’t been repaired.
He forced himself to think of safe things, of the señora’s Evangelist looking down from the wall in her salon: the swirling images of red and gold, the beckoning fingers of the red-headed youth wrapped in a scarlet robe and ageless piety. Mateo secretly adopted the saint as his own. This ageless youth from another millennium came often to his rescue. Just this morning he stole a look at the old painting while the family was at breakfast. It gave him courage.
Mateo carried the flowers around to the front of the house. Hannibal Green, the new man, loaded the supply wagon with the wonderful things that would travel to Oakland with the Charbon family. Hannibal was a Piker and not fond of Mexicans, so Mateo stayed clear of him when he could. But now he couldn’t help but watch as the man placed his pail of flowers beside the others, its destination a world beyond the valley, beyond the hills, in sight of the Golden Gate.
“Mateo!” his mother called from the portico. The small woman in a white apron pointed to a wicker chest inside the front door of the main house.
He trotted over and grabbed the oversize basket that was a match for him in size. He ferried it no more than twenty paces when his boot caught on a brick and the cargo tumbled, his knees pounding into the paving stones.
“Be careful!” his mother screamed, almost dropping her sewing box.
His basket crackled open and tricolor bunting of blue and white and red spilled out onto the bricks.
Theresa, who’d been inspecting her carriage, rushed to the boy and offered a hand as he scrambled up. “It’s all right, Mateo. No harm done.”
Mrs. Garcia glared at her son. “Señora, I don’t know what’s got into the boy.”
Theresa patted Mateo’s shoulder. “He’ll be fine. Boys must grow into themselves. Mateo will be fine.”
—-
Theresa left the housekeeper and her son to sort out their differences and returned to the cordovan brougham. The carriage would take her family over the hills to the Oakland house for a party to raise funds to erect the base for Lady Liberty in New York Harbor. Theresa had little use for the enterprise: too much had passed during her lifetime to appreciate the symbols of a nation that had destroyed hers. But the statue came from her husband’s land–at least the country of his language–and she would honor him with this event. She took her place in the carriage, surrounded by polished brass and leather, and sat next to the dimpled seat her husband once occupied. It had been six months since John Charbon died, a timely death at seventy-nine. Everyone knew she missed him. She was much younger, though no one knew exactly, and she went to great lengths to hide her true age.
She would wear black for months to come, a familiar ritual for the daughter of a Don, the way it was done in her youth. Her long hair was confined beneath a broad hat and veil, wisps of white proud among the black that spoke of her Spanish ancestors–but only half, for her father was a Scot with hair as red as the saint’s image that graced her drawing room. A large blue sapphire set in a pin with trailing diamonds held the veil in place. Festive. It mocked the darkness of the netting and celebrated the secrets of her past, a gift from her husband, for they were his secrets as well.
Theresa’s son, Marc, handed eight-month-old Philip up to his grandmother. She settled the child into his traveling bassinet strapped to the opposite seat. He gave a toothless grin from beneath his profusion of red hair and giggled as squirrels chattered overhead, their shadows dancing through the canopy of oaks.
A man on horseback rounded the bend in the tree-lined driveway and rode up to the carriage. “Road’s clear to the summit. Harold didn’t meet a soul coming back. He’s waitin’ at the gate.”
Marc nodded and climbed up, taking the seat beside his young son. At thirty-three, the regal, auburn-haired scion of the family wore the cares of recent weeks, but relaxed as he settled in opposite his mother. The view from the summit always played on his mind when he left the ranch. The sight of San Francisco Bay and the Golden Gate beyond never failed to give him energy and perspective, something most needed these days.
“We have a beautiful day for it, Mother.” Marc turned to his driver. “Shall we?”
The driver flicked the reins and the team began their familiar journey. In two hours the family would pass through the San Leandro Hills. The vista of the Bay would dispel the cares that followed them since the ugliness of the burglary, two months before. They were getting an early start to avoid the heat that was surely coming on this third day of July, 1880.
—-
Mateo’s mother returned the last bolt of cloth and gave the basket a final inspection before she closed the lid. She grumbled under her breath. “No harm? Grow into himself?”
Mateo brushed his knees and carried the unfortunate basket to the supply wagon where it took its place under the canvas canopy beside crates of fruit, the family’s trunks, and the flowers that grew so well in the heat of the Moraga Valley. He stood by and watched Hannibal secure the load. If only it could be him who’d go with the family to the Oakland house. The wish was narcotic.
“Them’s pretty blooms, boy,” Hannibal jumped to the ground. “Right fine for them folks what’ll be ‘semblin’ for to get that statue a proper home. Quite a party they’ll be havin’. Don’t know why them New Yorkers are havin’ such troubles makin’ a place for it. I seen pictures of it. If’n somebody gave me such a pretty thing, I’d surely know what to do with it. ‘Course you Mexicans wouldn’t know ’bout such things. Lady Liberty is for us Americans.”
Anger brought a sparkle to Mateo’s eyes, but he said nothing. His mother had taught him silence in the face of insults. He did his best, though lately he’d begun to wonder why.
Hannibal climbed up next to the driver and the wagon began its journey down the long drive. Mateo’s attention returned to the coyote bush uphill from the rose garden that hid the thief those weeks ago, the last time the family left for Oakland. For the hundredth time, he asked himself why he told no one what he’d seen that night, no one but Rafael Velázquez: Mateo’s confidant, mentor, and the only other Mexican in the bunk house.
————
It had been the quietest part of the night, a few hours before dawn when all were asleep. Except Mateo. Nature called and he left the bunk house to seek out his favorite bush located a stone’s throw from the door—a habit he didn’t discuss with anyone because Señor Marc’s wife was most against the practice. She came from New York City and had the tongue of a harpy. What did she know of the trail to the outhouse? She’d never met up with a mountain lion out for an evening’s stroll. It was on his return when Mateo saw the man emerge from the brush and creep down to the back of the big house where Señor Marc had his office.
Mateo slipped across the driveway and around behind the big house to the window of the study. It had been forced open, splinters on the window sill sparkling in the moonlight. Inside the office he saw the dark form of the man bent over the huge desk in the center of the room. The silent figure held a shuttered lantern in one hand as he opened and closed drawers with the other. The yellow-white beam highlighted the hand that stirred the contents of a succession of drawers, one by one.
Why would he be searching the desk? Such a strange thing with all the treasures lining the walls of the room: swords, daggers, armor, and some very strange-looking guns—many encrusted with silver and a few even glowed with bits of gold. In Mateo’s mind, nothing in the desk could match the splendor of these relics of war, souvenirs of far lands.
The man retrieved a parcel from a drawer and set the lantern down. The red ribbon on the blue leather folder showed brilliant in the glow from the lamp. Fingers tugged and the red ribbon fell into shadow. The folder opened, hands turning papers one by one. Then the shutter on the lantern closed and the room fell into darkness once more.
Mateo jumped back from the window and worked his way around the corner of the house where he’d be safe from the eyes of the intruder. In the light of a near-full moon, he watched old Martin Van Brugger’s eldest son, Jan, disappear into the brush.
Mateo did nothing to raise the alarm. His fear overwhelmed his duty—and his common sense. This intruder came from a family renowned for brutal dealings. As far back as he could remember his mother missed no opportunity to cast an aura of evil upon this family that lived across the valley, their deeds too dark to describe.
A servant discovered the break-in the next morning. Again, Mateo said nothing, still too embarrassed to reveal his bathroom habits and unable to confess his fear of the man who’d disappeared into the brush. His mother told him that important papers were missing from the desk, papers needed to settle the inheritance from Marc’s father’s estate. Mateo could not comprehend what an estate might be. The wealth conjured by such a term was abstract and beyond his grasp or interest, but he understood family and it was enough that something important to Señor Marc had been stolen. Mateo never knew his own father, so relationships between fathers and sons were likewise abstractions of little interest, though sometimes he would look at Marc’s infant son and feel a twinge of jealousy. He would push the feelings away in the same manner he tried to push aside the stories of Van Brugger terror. In both efforts he had little success.
Weeks passed before a tardy courage finally surfaced. If the blue folder with the red ribbon was important, he would get it back. Mateo knew who had it and where it must be. And Rafael had a plan.
… more to come …
I want the rest, right now! Good historical novels are my favorite fare, and this one has fine start.
I Just Want To Give Mateo A Hug.Guess We Will Have To Wait For Rafaels Plan.