Forgiven (25 page)

Somehow I managed to speak past the lump in my throat. “How? How could it have survived this?”

“I took it to the bank. Before the fire. It’s at the bank.” Will lowered his head, raised his hands to grip his head as if to contain everything inside.

“But didn’t the bank . . .” David began.

“It burned,” Will said. He lifted his head. “But I put the box in our family’s private vault. The vault’s made of steel—it was supposed to be able to survive anything. It could have survived the fire.”

“Then let’s go,” David said through gritted teeth. He shook Will’s shoulder roughly. “Let’s see if you’re right.”

We walked down to where the bank had been on Market. Rubble littered the streets although already men gathered to clear the way. If I hadn’t been with Will and David, they would have been commandeered into brick-heaving duty more than once, but as my escorts they could pass. The farther we went into the city, the more terrible the devastation appeared, with entire blocks of buildings gone, reduced to smoldering ash. So many buildings had been gutted with fire or reduced to rubble, and yet every so often we came upon a structure that for no obvious reason remained nearly intact.

As we drew close to where the bank stood we could see that the stone framework remained but the interior had been burned out.

David approached the outer wall. The bank had been one of the lower buildings on Market, no more than two stories high. “It appears solid, but Kula, you should stay here.”

“No.”

David shook his head but didn’t argue with me. “Will, where was the vault?”

“In my father’s office at the back.” Will led us down the alleyway between two remaining outer brick walls. We picked our way through the ruin of fallen bricks and charred lumber, some still smoldering. I lifted my skirts nearly to my knees to avoid catching an ember.

“There, the vault’s still there. See, it’s still there!” Will pointed to the interior, where a vault stood half buried but sound in the shadows of the ruined bank.

David helped me over a mound of rubble and through a window and then lifted me into what remained of the interior.

It was sad, standing in the middle of this ruin. On the walls were the charred remnants of ornate carved-oak moldings. Here was a rolltop desk, incongruously spared; a window with no glass framed the ruined city. Above us the sky, a soft blue with pale clouds, formed the ceiling.

Will and David made their way through the ruin to the vault; they heaved off the ceiling timbers that rested against it. Will knelt and twisted the dial on the lock.

“Will?” Mr. Henderson stood with one hand on the window frame.

Only days ago William Henderson had seemed to me a titan. He’d been reduced to a slump-shouldered wreck whose eyes were glassy and unfocused. His three-piece suit was torn and filthy, his hair uncombed, his beard untended. “Will?” Henderson’s voice quavered.

“Father! It survived. Our vault survived the fire.”

“What are you doing?”

“I have to return Kula’s box to her.” Will straightened and faced his father, the door to the vault still shut. “Kula says her father will die without it.”

Henderson slid down the ramp of rubble onto the floor, his feet faltering, his arms flailing. He came to a stop and breathed hard.

“Why do you want it?” I asked. “Why are you keeping it from me? It’s not yours.”

“There’s no money in it, you know.” He moved past me, toward Will. “There’s no money here at all.”

“No money?” Will sounded puzzled. “But I thought that’s what it was. If it’s not money, then . . . what is it?”

“That box is all I have,” Henderson said to the floor. He looked almost like a child, slumped down.

“Mr. Henderson,” I said. “What is in my pa’s box that you don’t want me to see?”

He placed his hand on the vault to steady himself. “It’s nothing. It’s only important to me. Just a bit of ancient history.”

“I don’t believe you.” I stepped forward. “My father sent me here to get it—it’s the only thing that can save him. Will, open the vault.”

Will shifted his glance from his father to me and back. “I’m sorry, Father. She’s right. I can’t keep on like before. Everything’s different now. What could possibly be in this box that’s so important to you that it’s worth a man’s life?” He shook his head. “I have to give it back.”

Henderson didn’t argue. He backed away until he could rest against the wall. “Your father and I were friends, Miss Baker,” Henderson said. “There were three of us. We were as close as our own fathers had been, and our grandfathers before them. Baker and Henderson and Everts.”

Will’s eyes followed his father. He twisted his hands, knotting his fingers together. Watching him, all at once I understood the lies, the betrayal. Will had been doing the same thing I was—trying to save his father. Trying to win his father’s love. His actions were clumsy and foolish and hurtful, but I understood. His desires were not unlike my own.

Will bowed his head again, and then bent to the task, and the vault door popped open. Will straightened, my father’s box in his hands. But now we all—Will and David and I—waited on William Henderson’s words.

“Three boys, each an orphan, on a ship from England bound for America in 1840. Three boys whose lives were linked by fortune, or misfortune. They pledged to remain friends forever, pledged for themselves and their unborn sons.”

William Henderson studied his hands, spread his palms open. “They found their way west together and set up a business. They bought land. In a few short years Baker and Henderson and Everts had settled in California territory. Then one of them struck north. Why? Curiosity, hunger for the unknown, or just the desires of a young man.” Henderson shrugged. “It doesn’t matter why. What matters is Henry Baker went to Alaska and returned two years later to the port town of San Francisco with a native bride, Kula. I have a fondness for names, you know. I rarely forget a name.”

Kula. My great-grandmother. I steadied myself.

“She was beautiful, so they say. Proud and dignified. Gave birth to her only child the same year that gold was discovered on the land owned by Baker and Henderson and Everts.” Henderson gave a little nod. “Gold. Men lust after many things, but none so much as gold.”

Will stared at the box in his hands; it seemed to grow suddenly heavy, or hot; he put it down on the bed of ashes at his feet.

His father pointed at it. “It’s all in there, what I’m telling you. All those secrets. I tried to keep them from you, Kula.”

“What happened?” I said it soft.

“John, Theo, and James—they were the three boys of the next generation, born into gold wealth. Kula, she died giving birth to John. Henry died not long after. So young John went to live with Charles Henderson, raised up with Charles’s son James as if they were twins. John Baker and James Henderson were nearly inseparable from their friend Theo Everts. That is until Theo met Hannah Porter. Then Theo wanted his share, out from their partnership. He and Hannah had plans.

“Now, John and James, they’d married, too. John Baker had a son, Nathaniel. James Henderson had a son, William—me,” Henderson said, and he pointed at himself. “Nat and I were best friends.”

My pa: Nat Baker. Best friends with William Henderson, one of the richest men in San Francisco. The man who’d stolen Pa’s only chance at freedom.

Henderson spoke again. “Hannah and Theo had no children. They moved across the bay to Sausalito, while Theo pressed his case to split the partnership and take his share of the fortune. There was a heated argument, the threat of lawyers. In the middle of all of this, round about when Nat and I were ten years old, Nat Baker’s parents died in an accident on the bay. They were on a ferry that rammed into another ferry in the fog.”

My grandparents. Mr. Henderson was talking about my grandparents, my pa’s parents. Why had I never heard any of this from Pa?

“Then Theo was killed. He was taking a shortcut through the meaner parts of San Francisco one night. He was murdered in cold blood. Knifed in the back. A Chinese man was blamed. Hanged for it. No trial, just a hanging. In the street, from a lamppost.”

David, next to me, moved a little.

“They died, and Theo died, and everything changed. Just like that.”

Henderson went on. “After Theo’s death Hannah Everts was shut out of the inheritance by my father. Theo’s sister, Phillipa, became the third partner.”

“Miss Everts!” I blurted.

“Yes, your Miss Everts. Her fiancé took pity upon poor Hannah and eloped with her. For which Phillipa suffered a keen loss. Hannah Porter Everts eloped with Edward Gale to the Montana territory. This left all the property and the gold in the hands of my father, along with Phillipa Everts, and the young, newly orphaned Nat Baker.”

Henderson shook his head. “Nat. My parents adopted him; they treated him like their own son. We were like brothers. And, well, I was happy to stay right here, but he persuaded me that we had to see the world. Guess he was more like his grandfather than he knew. We were sixteen when we left San Francisco; I came back two years later. Nat stayed behind in the greater Yellowstone.

“See the world, he’d said. But we never got farther than Montana. We fell in with some rough types. Nat’s a bit of a devil. I expect he still is, isn’t he, Kula? He liked the whole outlaw business. He thought it was exciting.” William Henderson met my eye. “Until he met your mother. That changed him.”

My mother. Henderson examined the ash at his feet, as if he could divine something important in it.

“What’s in my pa’s box, Mr. Henderson?” My hand rested on my throat, on the key that still hung by the chain round my neck. “What’s in there that will save his life?”

He laughed, a short, harsh laugh. “Nat. He lured me out into his wild world.”

I pressed the key against my breastbone. Above it, above my fingers, I still wore my mother’s cameo.

“I left Montana, I came home. Well, there’s the irony.” Here, he let his head drop. “I came home to find everything had changed.” Henderson pointed at Pa’s box sitting at Will’s feet. “I never knew it existed. That’s because it was in the hands of Ty Wong. Ty was one of the brotherhood. He’d gone east with Nat and me. Nat trusted him and gave him the box to bring back here, to keep it safe here. If I had known then that your father had what was in this box . . .”

Will dropped his head into his hands. David bit his lip.

“What?” I asked, softly, half not wanting to hear the answer.

Henderson’s eyes grew bright. “I would’ve destroyed it! My parents blamed me for running away.
Me!
I came home, and, out of spite, to punish their natural-born son, they had given Nat everything—he owned it all. After we’d left, they’d disowned me and sent the deeds to Nat in Montana. I was right there with him, and he never said a word. He never told me. Oh, he told Ty Wong, sure, but he never told me, me who was like a brother to him. Nat Baker owned everything that was rightfully mine.”

“But . . . your house, the business . . . How did you . . .” I trailed off. My father was a struggling outlaw; Mr. Henderson was a scion of San Francisco society.

“When my parents told me what they’d done, I was furious. How could they disown their own son? But then my father died of sudden heart failure. After that my mother was not in her right mind. So I took control of things. I paid to change the deeds and even cut Nat out of his share and left him penniless. I made it all look legal, even if it wasn’t. I didn’t know about the box then. Ty was clever, and he hid it from me. Because the papers in it? They make what I did null and void. They’re originals of my parents’ deeds. If he wants it, your father will have everything, and I’ll have nothing. So I had Wilkie get that box,” said Henderson. “And Will took the box from Wilkie and kept it safe, didn’t you, Will?”

Henderson looked at his son with something like pride; Will stared at the ash-covered floor.

“I thought it was money,” I whispered, half to myself. David’s fists were balled up tight, his jaw worked hard.

“There’s no money in that box, Kula. There’s an entire fortune,” Henderson said.

“But . . .” Desperation swallowed me. “I don’t understand how these papers can save my father. He’s going to hang, and soon. These papers, how can they change anything . . . ?”

“They can’t.”

“What?” I choked, steadied myself. “What?”

“There’s nothing in there that can save your father, Kula. And surely he knew that. When he told you to find it, he meant for it to save you.”

Chapter
THIRTY-FIVE

April 22, 1906

 

 

 

 

“NO.” I WOULD NOT BELIEVE THAT I’D COME ALL THIS WAY and spent all this time and still could not save my pa. “No!”

“I didn’t think he’d hang. How could I lose it all? How could I give it all up? Will . . .” Henderson turned to his son. “I couldn’t give it all up, now, could I? We’d have been broke. You would have lived like a pauper.”

Will stiffened. “This isn’t right, Father. You know it isn’t. You should have told me what you were doing . . .”

The clatter of loose brick caused us to turn.

Josiah Wilkie.

“Well, Mr. H, I think you’ve about said enough. And I’ve been here long enough to catch the best of it.” Wilkie carried a Winchester, and it was pointed at us. He lifted his lapel. On it he wore his silver star. “See, I got myself deputized here, in San Francisco. I been a marshal before and now a proper California deputy. We don’t want looters roaming through the streets, now, do we?”