Auraria: A Novel (34 page)

The warrior remembered how the bowers had opened for him before, when he was mortally wounded, and he drew his dagger to strike a blow to himself, knowing it would not be fatal, but his hand hesitated at the apex of its rise, and he saw that the maiden was already dead.

So he laid her to rest beside another spring that he found. It was not her healing spring, but perhaps one spring would lead to another, under the earth. He buried her there and set up a marker of white stone.

“Do you mean that one?” said a child, pointing to the cairn beside the walled spring. The princess—the storyteller—nodded.

The monument to the Queen of the Mountains was easy to find and frequently visited. It was near a hunting path that became a route for fur traders, then a road for emigrants passing through the mountains, then a passage for carriages and stagecoaches carrying miners and chests of gold. Travelers stopped to water their horses at the spring, and they saw the cairn of white stones. They found other white stones and placed them on the cairn.

“Do we make a wish when we add a white stone?” said a man.

“If you like,” said the princess. “But it won’t come true, unless you wish for the right thing, for certainties. Rain. Or a flood.”

“I’m going to wish for a mountain of gold!” said a boy with a raccoon-skin cap.

“That’s a waste of a wish,” said the princess, and the boy began to cry.

“Did you have to put this place at such a height from the hotel?” asked a young fat man, wiping away a thick layer of sweat with a handkerchief.

Holtzclaw knew that they could have put the monument anywhere they liked. It was not really a grave. The white stones were chipped fragments of marble, left over from the bathroom in Shadburn’s suite. Shadburn conceived of the idea of a grave site as a walking destination an
d
memento mor
i
. Holtzclaw wanted to place it above the waterfall, thinking that the combination of sights—the grave, the waterfall, the spring—would make a more attractive whole. Princess Trahlyta concocted the backstory on her own and, in her telling and retelling, made the canonical version.

Holtzclaw’s mind turned around the tale, searching it for inspiration. Could he write up the story in a book? Send it to the bookshops in the city, drum up interest in the hotel with this romantic tale? Never any money in books, he decided. And the literary treatment would only make the flaws in the princess’s tale easier to spot.

Ah, but he could invent a holiday! What better way to commemorate the wounded warrior, the dying princess, and the pile of discarded bathroom marble that marked their love? He could put on a banquet. It was the next step in his plan of reconciliation—not to hide the supernatural tales of this valley, even if they were invented, but to celebrate and advertise them.

The Day of the Evening Star—that was as nice a title as any. Romantic enough and yet impenetrable and vague. He would have the banquet in two weeks; a deadline inspires the best work. That was precious little time for advertisements and announcements. He’d have clubs in Milledgeville and Charleston distribute fliers, rather than waiting for notices in monthly magazines. The urgency and suddenness of the affair would appeal to a clientele that considers itself wealthy enough to be carefree. They could come for the Day of the Evening Star, leave their money, and be off by Pullman car to the next fabulous celebration.

#

Holtzclaw came back from his constitutional vivified and hungry. It was not yet time for the formal supper seating, so he decided to take his meal at the hotel’s other dining room, a replica of the Old Rock Falls. A high corridor directed guests toward the main dining room, but those that cast a glance to the right, down a short passage, saw an impressive two-story facade that had been constructed for the New Rock Falls, complete with a wide indoor veranda.

Guests who continued inside found themselves in a truncated version of the Old Rock Falls. The New Rock Falls had no second story, despite the appearance of the facade, but guests were not bothered. The worn pine floor had been salvaged from the Old Rock Falls. Certain load-bearing pillars had interfered with the layout, and clever carpentry was needed to cover up replacement boards. The wall lamps, formerly fueled by oil, had been wired for electricity. For those that remembered the old dining area, the light in the room now was too bright, too clean, too steady. Guests who had seen only the electrified New Rock Falls complained that the lighting was too yellow, too dirty, too flickering. They wondered if country folk could be expected to dine in such meager conditions.

The walls were covered with the daguerreotypes and lithographs salvaged from the Old Rock Falls. Two were missing; the layout of the photographs was unbalanced without them.

Holtzclaw sat at a table beneath one of the gaps, covering the emptiness with his head. The piano in the corner plinked out a ragtime rendition of an old fiddle tune. Mr. Bad Thing was enjoying himself.

Hulen, the headless plat-eye, occupied his stool. Abigail promised that he could return to his familiar haunt, on the condition that his murderous head-snatching cease. Holtzclaw, suspicious at first, was convinced when he’d witnessed Hulen’s joy at being reunited with his old stool and mug. A test parade of wax heads was brought out in front of him; Hulen only laughed and called for another round, for which he’d paid in silver coins from a never-ending supply in his pocket. Hulen proved to be quite popular among the youngest of the visitors. Even now, three youngsters stumbled around the dining room, their heads pulled down below their sweaters, and chased their siblings.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself! Aha!” said Hulen from his stool. “You don’t want to get brained! Aha! Keep an eye out! Aha!”

Holtzclaw’s sweet potato stew was brought out by Abigail herself.

“Ms. Thompson, why don’t you have an underling here? Doesn’t the kitchen staff need your supervision for supper service?”

“I have to do this cooking myself. Anyone else would make a mess of it. They’d burn the sweet potatoes or give Hulen buttermilk instead of white lightning! I’ve spent a lifetime getting these rituals right.”

Holtzclaw smiled. “Ah, the sweet potatoes! How are they received?”

“The guests throw up their hands and plead for mercy! And it’s only the puree and the coffee that have sweet potatoes in them. I could give them what I used to serve at the Old Rock Falls. Sweet potato chips cooked in sweet potato oil, a salad of sweet potato shoots, a baked sweet potato, and a bed stuffed with sweet potato vines. Do they want an authentic experience or not?”

“They want their idea of an authentic experience,” said Holtzclaw.

“I suppose that’s why they complain that there are too few windows opening to the outside. Why would an authentic mountain boarding house, like the New Rock Falls, not have larger windows to enjoy the views over the water and breezes coming ashore? A man in a top hat asked me why the New Rock Falls didn’t have swinging half-doors and more ranch hands, gunfighters, and the like? I told him they had killed each other off. It was my little joke to serve toast with sheep-fruit marmalade in the formal dining room. The best people all praised it. They thought it was quince or lingonberries or some other imported wonder. When I told them it was a local fruit, some women said that they were gardeners and wanted to see the shrub. So I led them out to a grove, up the hill. All that weeping and screaming on the vine when we plucked some fresh sheep-fruits. They were horrified!”

“There is no food that one can eat without guilt,” said Holtzclaw. “Except, perhaps, for mushrooms.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

After supper, Holtzclaw walked the veranda. He was waiting on new arrivals that were supposed to come by the evening train, but a rock slide had blocked the tracks. The carriages he’d sent for them had not yet returned. To distract himself from baseless speculation, he opened a newspaper and tried to read it beneath the glow of the electric lights. He had barely made it past the ads for the rival hotels when someone cleared her throat and placed the tip of her parasol on the top of Holtzclaw’s newspaper, pulling it down.

Across the fold, Holtzclaw saw three older women. The central figure was dressed in royal purple; her lieutenants, in lavender. All three wore matching broad-rimmed yellow hats with a green ribbon. On the ribbon was a badge with the letters BWCS.

“Walk with us, Mr. Holtzclaw,” said the leader.

Holtzclaw stood as commanded. He and the leader went out in front, with the lieutenants a half step behind. They descended a staircase and then turned four abreast onto the long, continuous series of verandas, porches, and covered walkways. Guests coming in the opposite direction—already at fault for walking counterclockwise on an odd-numbered date—were chased into side passages, down stairs, or into alcoves.

“Mr. Holtzclaw, you are no doubt aware of our operations,” said the leader.

“I must plead ignorance, ma’am,” said Holtzclaw, “and please take that only as a sign of my lack of knowledge and not as a slight against your organization.”

“See, such a polite man,” said the right-hand lieutenant.

“That is why we must ask him,” said the left-hand lieutenant.

“Yes, we will ask him after introductions,” said the leader. “We are the ruling council and chief players in the Billing, Wooing, and Cooing Society.” The three women held out their hands and vibrated them up and down in a flutter, like wings on a tiny bird.

“I am Almeda, the Reader of Mysteries,” said the leader. “This is Vera, the Tender of the Entwined Rose and Briar. This is Luella, the Poetess of the Stirring Heart. We offer healing to the lovesick and wholeness to the heartbroken. We are the active agents in this resort of the passions. Consider us healers. Kindred spirits.”

They all briefly halted to make reciprocal bows and curtseys before picking up their stride again. A small child, ringed in ribbons, sheltered himself behind a column.

“If you’ll forgive the impertinence,” said Holtzclaw. “We did not intend for our hotel to be a place of passions. It’s a health spa.”

“Of course, that is what you will say,” said Almeda, the Reader of Mysteries. “Who would advertise that his hotel is a place where marriages may be made, contracts brokered, partnerships forged? It would sound too mercenary, too boiled in profits. But it is the real reason any of these good people are here. Now tell me, Mr. Holtzclaw, are you a confirmed bachelor?”

“That question, Ms. Almeda …”

“In deference to our rank, the appropriate form of address is ‘Your Graciousness,’” said Almeda.

“As I was saying, even overlooking the indelicacy of that question, I would not be able to answer it. I’m a bachelor, yes, but by confirmed, you mean …”

“I mean,” said Almeda, “are you confirmed to live out your life as a bachelor because of the peculiar arrangement of your heart and your proclivities, or do you see your bachelorhood, as we do, as a broken state, in need of remedy?”

“Then I am not a confirmed bachelor,” said Holtzclaw. “But I hardly see why that would matter. Did you have some business to discuss? Are there problems with your rooms? What is it that I can do for you?”

“It is not what you may do for us but what we may do for you,” said Almeda. “We have two primary roles here at the Queen of the Mountains, as set forth in our founding documents. The first role is the instruction of dance etiquette, and in this we have made great strides. The lines of the quadrille are crisper than at the beginning of the season, and we find that far fewer ladies are offering their hands on the turn with their pinky fingers held aloft, in the Scottish fashion. The second role, and in this we take more pleasure, is in the arrangement of introductions between eligible parties. We have decided that you, Mr. Holtzclaw, will be taken under the wing of the Billing, Wooing, and Cooing Society. We will find you a suitable match.”

Almeda, Vera, and Luella again flapped their hands as though soaring on a breeze. The eccentricities of these particular visitors were becoming more difficult for Holtzclaw to tolerate.

“Well, that is a very kind offer,” said Holtzclaw, “but I must decline. I have work to do.”

“Nowhere in the project is there opportunity for your disagreement,” said Almeda. “Your cooperation is appreciated but not mandatory. Some of our most enjoyable challenges and noted successes have been over the objections of the players.”

“Do you remember the Marquis and the pork princess?” said Luella.

“Of course we remember,” said Vera. “How could we forget such a savory reception banquet?”

“I said it for him,” said Luella, jabbing a thumb toward Holtzclaw. “Because he did not see how bitterly they fought their fate, until that fateful ham shank brought them together.”

“Then it is agreed,” said Almeda. “We will be making a series of introductions for you. The first will be to a Ms. Abigail Thompson, whom, as you may be aware, holds a position of some authority at this hotel and who, besides, has an estate of her own, obtained by the sale of her property to a land developer and his assistant.”

“I have worked very closely with Ms. Thompson for months,” said Holtzclaw.

“Yes, but you have not been introduced,” said Almeda.

“Perhaps that word does not mean what I think it means,” said Holtzclaw.