Fool's Gold (12 page)

It did not take her long to pack up the few things that they had managed to bring from the Greys’ with them and while Cornish bought the surveying equipment she would need from Sullivan, she slipped her bundles out with the Colonel’s order and gave them to Jim. Then she carried Tamsin out into the livery yard.

‘Goodbye, Jim,’ she said softly. ‘Don’t tell them where we’ve gone. It will be easier for everyone this way.’

‘Goodbye, missie. Gawd bless yer — and the li’l ’un,’ said the old sailor. ‘An’ let’s ’ope you lands in a better billet next time.’

Chapter Ten

Alicia breathed in deep lungfuls of the crystal clear air and listened to the tap-tap of the acorn woodpecker; at the approach of the carriage deer slipped away into the shadows of the oak wood.

It was a hot summer’s day, but once they had left the broad brown Sacramento behind them and begun to climb up out of the valley, it became a different, more bearable, temperate heat. The sky was still blue but the metallic glare that hurt the eyes in the capital had gone and without the constant haze of dust that hung over the town the air was much fresher.

Half an hour after leaving Washington, they breasted a broad hill and she could hardly suppress an exclamation of delight: the valley of the Tresco lay at their feet, its sides scored by numerous small streams sparkling in the bright sun as they bubbled down to the Tresco, meandering through the lush green meadows in the valley bottom. The entire valley floor, as far as the eye could see, was covered with colourful summer flowers.

‘It’s beautiful!’ she whispered in awe.

It was a view she had not seen before, for when she had been driven away in the Reverend Cooper’s gig, she had not dared to look back.

It took them nearly an hour to cross the valley, clattering over the new bridge at one of the narrower points of the Tresco, and drive up to the green plateau above the river where the ranch house stood.

Near the bridge was a scatter of adobe houses with the desolate and blank appearance of houses long unlived in. One of them had a rudimentary bell-tower on the roof.

‘Mission buildings,’ he explained curtly.

‘But the missions never came this far, surely!’

‘No. Nearest one’s at Sonoma, I reckon. Mateo, who sold out to me, reckoned this was some sort of an outpost. Didn’t last long. Legend is the Holy Brothers brought in some illness, wiped out all the converts. That’s why there are no Indians in this valley.’

The entire upper plateau where the main house stood was surrounded by one of the great prickly nopal pear hedges that the Franciscans had planted to protect their orchards and gardens. She remembered Father Dominic at Mission San Francisco showing her how to eat the
tuna
, the fruit that grew on the great prickly hedges, and avoid the numerous tiny thorns on the skin. This hedge was high and dense, sure sign that it had been there for years.

He climbed down to open the massive gate let into the nopal hedge and she saw again how he favoured one arm as he carefully pushed the gate aside. Inside the great hedge, she could see a riot of vegetation, lilies and roses that had run wild, tangled with ancient trees, some still in blossom.

They passed beneath an archway into a large stableyard where one of the hands came to take the rig into the cool of the stables. The buildings round the back of the house were very extensive.

Cornish handed her down, then scooped Tamsin effortlessly up into his arms and strode off towards a further small archway with a curt ‘This way!’ to Alicia.

They passed into what had once been the garden. Various articles of farm equipment, old harrows and twisted ploughshares, cluttered it up now, but to Alicia, who had often visited the missions with her Mexican friends, the outlines of the flower beds and the herb and vegetable garden were quite clear. It was a large area, for it would have needed to supply all of the requirements of the mission — or fort — in the event of supplies not coming through from the coast, and it was all entirely surrounded by a high adobe wall that was almost completely obscured by a rampant tangle of green and purple vines.

Cornish turned sharp right and went in through a jumble of cluttered rooms into the back of the house. Carefully he laid the sweating child down on an old high-backed carved bench.

‘Guess Jo must be out in the yard,’ he muttered. ‘I’ll go see.’

Left alone, Alicia looked around her in amazement. From the outside, there was no hint that the house was so large.

The room she was in now, which must once have been the
sala
, the main refectory hall of the mission, was about thirty feet long. On one side unglazed arched openings with folded back wooden shutters faced into the inner courtyard, empty but for a basin with a bubbling and sparkling fountain. On the other side two rougher openings had been hacked out of the adobe wall to give a look out up and down the valley. The walls themselves were badly in need of fresh whitewash and the smoke-blackened beams were thick with dust and cobwebs. More recent occupants had left behind a quantity of ornately carved dark oak furniture, but that too was dry and cracked and filthy. Later residents had not been as concerned by defensive considerations, for a herringbone pattern of poles and split juniper had been laid between the massive roof beams, and split boards laid above them to form a second storey, access to which was up an exquisitely ornate staircase set against the centre of the inner wall.

‘Alicia?’

As usual, she had not heard Kai come in. She whirled, her face lightened by a delighted smile.

‘Kai! Oh, it is so
good
to see you again!’ she exclaimed, rushing across to grasp his hands.

They stood for a moment, hands locked tightly, while he scanned her face. ‘Corr-onel tells me there was trouble at Carsons’ store,’ he said anxiously.

‘Trouble?’ Her eyes took on that blank look he dreaded so much. He wondered if he had not done more harm than good by giving her those herbs in San Francisco. They had helped then, hazing her memory of what had happened, but he had never intended her to go on taking them for so long.

With a smile, he patted her cheek softly. ‘No matter. You look better now,’ he murmured.

‘Hardly surprising!’ she replied wryly. ‘Even the little I had to eat at Carsons’ was better than — before.’ Her voice cracked on the words. ‘You never told me how dreadful I looked, Kai. Colonel Cornish thought I was an old woman.’

‘You must have come as something of a surprise to him!’

‘More than you might think! You see, he’d already met me — but knew me as Mrs Owens.’

‘A good thought,’ he agreed gravely. ‘But the little one, Alicia? Corr-onel tells me she is sick.’

‘A fever,’ she replied abruptly, willing him not to ask why she had not kept her promise and sent for him. ‘I tried to get a doctor, but I hadn’t enough money. He said to wait until she was in the Asylum, then the Town Council would pay him to treat her.’

‘Doctor!’ He almost spat the word out in disgust. ‘Most of them would not know a childhood fever from the plague, even when they are sober — and that’s not often.’

He crossed to where Tamsin lay, very still, wrapped in the Colonel’s travelling cape; he felt her forehead and smelt her breath.

‘It is well, Alicia,’ he pronounced with a sigh of relief. ‘Something she has taken from other children, no doubt. But not serious. I will give her a draught. She will sleep perhaps one more day and then she will be better.’

‘Thank God!’ She sat down abruptly, and quite unexpectedly burst into tears. ‘I was so worried!’ she sobbed. ‘If anything had happened to her, it would have been my fault!’

‘But it did not,’ soothed Chen Kai. ‘And now you are here she will have fresh air and good food. And so will you.’ He raised his head. ‘Hush now! Corr-onel is coming and it will not do for him to find you weeping.’

When Cornish came back into the room, she was gazing out of one of the windows, up the valley to the road they had travelled along that hot, dusty day when they had first come to Tresco from One Horse Town.

‘There’s a shortage of clean rooms, Jo,’ he said, ‘so they’d better bed down in your room tonight. Then tomorrow you can find something better. Get a couple of the boys to help you. There won’t be much chow to prepare: I want as many of the hands as possible out riding the boundaries. I wouldn’t put it past Lamarr to use the old trick with professional squatters, even if it risked a repeat of the ’50 War!’

In 1850, squatters, some genuine, some hired by ambitious men, had taken over what they considered still to be public land. The Squatter’s War that followed the eviction had resulted in the shooting of the Mayor and the murder of Sheriff McKinney, but the practice of hiring a ‘professional’ squatter and encouraging him to stake a claim on a rival’s land had still not died out.

It did not take Chen long to clear his traps out of the room he had been occupying up to now, a high and airy chamber which seemed to have been tacked on between the kitchens and the courtyard almost as an afterthought, and a rope bed was soon knocked together for Tamsin.

She woke as they carried her through the kitchen. Her eyelids flickered and then she opened her eyes wide and looked up into the face of the man who was carrying her. The fear on her face turned swiftly to joy.

‘Chen Kai!’ she whispered in tones of wonder. ‘Oh, Chen Kai, you didn’t forget us! You came for us, like Lisha said!’

She clung to him and would not let him go.

The shadows were lengthening before Chen was able to slip his hand out of Tamsin’s loosened grip and head for the kitchens.

‘I regret, Corr-onel, chow will be a little late tonight,’ apologised Chen as he met his employer in the garden.

The rancher laid aside the knife he had been sharpening on the whetstone and sniffed the air.

‘If that ain’t chow, I don’t know what it is. Smells good,’ he said appreciatively. ‘Should have known it wasn’t yours! Let’s go see.’

A pot of savoury stew was bubbling away over the fire and at the side the griddle was heating to cook the hotcakes to serve with it.

‘My! That’s the best smell this kitchen’s known since the Holy Brothers moved out!’ exclaimed the Colonel.

‘Some of the smells in this kitchen have been here ever since they left!’ she replied drily, jerking her head to the piles of papers and accumulated rubbish at the far end of the kitchen. ‘I’m surprised at you, Chen Kai! How you could cook in such a mess, let alone have people eat in the middle of it!’

‘That’s down to me, I guess,’ said Cornish. ‘Some of those papers are important, but they’re so mixed in with the rubbish that I can’t move anything till I’ve had a chance to sort through.’

‘Papers would be much safer in one of the inner rooms, away from the fire,’ she said decisively. ‘Leave them much longer and you’ll have rats in here.’

‘Anything else you’d care to reorganise for me?’ asked the Colonel sardonically, propping his shoulders against the wall and surveying her through narrowed eyes. ‘I’d remind you, Mrs Langdon — or do you prefer Mrs Owens? — that you were hired on to make a map for me. That’s all I require of you. I’d advise you to take a leaf out of Jo’s book and confine yourself to your proper duties.’

She returned him look for look for a brief moment, then deliberately took off the old flour sack that she had tied over her dress for an apron and handed it to Kai.

‘I’ll be with Tamsin until my services are required.’

She nodded coolly and strode out of the room, forcing him to step aside. Outside the door stood Kerhouan.

‘Damned arrogant woman!’ growled Cornish, looking angrily after her. ‘I knew it was a mistake! Trying to organise me before she’s even got her foot in the door …’

Kerhouan saw the mutinous look in Chen’s face and hurried into the breach. ‘
Eh bien
, most people who clash with strong-minded women end up eating humble pie — we just end up eating Jo’s terrible cooking again!’

‘Hah!’ It was as much a bark as a laugh, but the confrontation was avoided.

It took Cornish nearly an hour to sort out what he wanted from the untidy pile of papers in the corner, but by the time the food had been carried out to the barn, now a bunkhouse for the hands, he thought he had got most of it ready.

He strode back across the courtyard to the kitchen, just in time to see the woman heading towards the outbuildings.

‘Hey! Where are you off to?’ he called. ‘Jo’s just serving up!’

She turned to look at him, surprise on her face.

‘To the bunkhouse,’ she replied. ‘I’m told that’s where the hired hands eat.’

‘Serve you right if I let you go ahead and eat there!’ he snapped. ‘That’d sure be an eye-opener for you!’

‘You think so?’ she enquired, eyebrows raised demurely.

‘Field hands eat in the bunkhouse,’ he said brusquely. ‘House hands eat in the kitchen, unless the boss invites them to eat with him.’

She made no move to answer, but stooped to smell one of the flowering vines that clambered up the old adobe wall that ran around the garden.

‘So I’m inviting you,’ he went on, in tones that sounded churlish even to him.

She looked at him measuringly, then abruptly nodded her head. ‘I accept your invitation.’

When they’d eaten, Chen Kai went to take a sleeping draught to Tamsin. Alicia rose and started to clear the dishes.

‘Leave them, leave them,’ said Cornish impatiently. He pulled a dog-eared map out of the vast pile at his elbow. ‘This is the map we worked on when I bought out Mateo — there’s Lamarr’s section to the north, over as far as Washington. And this one —’ he pulled out an even more tattered parchment ‘— is the one Mateo worked on when he bought from Carillo. Then this is the Bidwell map of ’44 that Larkin reprinted in ’50; we based the confirmation of the land grants on that. This is the document from Micheltorena confirming the first land grant, and this is the one from Alvarado confirming it again after Micheltorena had been overthrown — or that’s what I’m told for I don’t read Spanish — at least, not this kind of legal mumbo-jumbo. Only thing all these maps have in common, to my untrained eye at least, is that they are all different and all equally inaccurate.’