Sacred Ground (31 page)

Chapter Fourteen

Angelique

1850 C.E.

They were auctioning off the women. Again.

Seth Hopkins thought it a revolting practice. Slavery was supposed to be illegal in California, yet the San Francisco authorities could do nothing about it because the ships’ captains were within their rights to claim unpaid fares, even if it meant selling the female passengers to the highest bidders.

It seemed to Seth that the number of abandoned ships in the harbor had multiplied since he was last here. As soon as a boat came into port, captain and crew jumped ship and headed for the gold fields. A few enterprising men had hauled some of the clippers onshore and turned them into hotels, but the forest of spars and masts of some five hundred deserted vessels still extended halfway into San Francisco Bay. Which was why the
Betsy Lain
had had to anchor far out, requiring cargo and passengers to be brought ashore by launch. Seth paused in the packing of his wagon to watch the obscene stampede of men to the
Betsy Lain
‘s landing stage. Word had spread that the Boston clipper was bringing
women.

After being processed through the customs shed, some of the women left immediately, many of them, Seth knew, to go in search of husbands who had abandoned their families when they caught gold fever. The rest, because they had not paid their fare, would be offered to any person on the dock who would pay what was owed, forcing the unfortunate woman into legal bondage.

From all over the world the women came to California, as did the men, in the hope of starting a new life. Some were hiding from a husband, some were hoping to catch one. Some came to lose themselves, some to find themselves. In California anything was possible. The land and resources were limitless, and there was gold for the grabbing. Most important of all, there were no social rules to keep a person in his or her place. Here a peasant was as good as a king, if he had money. And here no one asked questions. A man could even, Seth thought darkly, escape the stigma of being an ex-convict.

Seth watched in disgust as the
Lain
‘s female passengers were herded like cattle into a roped-off area on the dock, penning them in among cargo bales, luggage, and crates while the growing crowd of men pressed around the perimeter, anxious for the auction to begin. Many were owners of bordellos and fandango houses, gambling joints and dance halls. These would choose the youngest and the prettiest and force them into a life of prostitution until the debt was paid. But there were also decent, hardworking men in the crowd, miners and trappers who were lonely and craved the gentling touch of a female. Honest marriage was what these men offered.

Seth Hopkins, at thirty-two years of age, had never been married, nor did he ever intend to be. Experience had taught him that the matrimonial state was just another form of bondage. The solitary life was what called to him, with trees and green pastures as far from the Virginia coal mines as he could get.

He turned away, securing ropes over the supplies piled in the back of his wagon. He disliked the mayhem of the Port of San Francisco, where squealing pigs were being off-loaded, cattle were bellowing and dogs barking, carriages and wagons creaked by, people shouted, argued, haggled, and horses with their loudly
clip-clopping
hooves randomly dropped manure. Smoke filled the air, as well as the stench of stagnant water and rotted fish, which the midday summer heat made worse. Seth was anxious to get back to the mining camp in the mountains, where the air was clean and pure, and a man could hear his own thoughts.

The captain of the clipper, a short, stocky man in a blue mariner’s uniform, climbed up onto a block and started the auction. He pointed to the first woman in line, a stout lady in her forties who was looking both angry and frightened. “This one owes fifty dollars. Who’ll pay fifty dollars?”

Mrs. Armitage, whom Seth recognized as the owner of the Armitage Hotel on Market Street, shouted, “Can she cook? I need a cook!”

“Got any seamstresses?” another woman called out. “I’ll pay top dollar for anyone who can use a needle!”

A horse-drawn trolley pulled up and a group of twelve colorfully dressed women, who had been standing off to one side, happily climbed on board. Seth knew they were headed for Finch’s Fandango Club and its upstairs bordello.

A man with the grizzled look of a forty-niner pushed through, and said, “How much for that blonde! I need a wife and I need her fast!” The crowd roared with laughter.

The women started to go quickly, as money changed hands and men stepped forward to claim their prizes. Some women went willingly, others reluctantly, a few were even weeping. As Seth was about to climb up into his wagon, his eye caught on a woman who was somehow different from the rest. Refusing to stand in the auction line, she sat primly on her big traveling trunk, hands folded in her lap. Her face was shadowed by the brim of the big feathery bonnet she wore, tied under her chin in a bow. But it was her gown that had caught Seth’s attention. He had never seen silk of such a color before— or rather
colors
, for it shimmered and changed as the lady moved, or as a breeze from the harbor rippled the fabric. When she breathed, the bodice shifted from sea green to turquoise, and when she stood up, the skirt went from aquamarine to sapphire blue. It made Seth think of peacock feathers and butterfly wings or tide pools on a summer’s day. The effect was hypnotic.

He realized that she was trying calmly to explain something to the ship’s purser, and when the breeze shifted Seth could hear her words, spoken in a thick Spanish accent. “I have said, Señor Boggs will pay my fare.”

The purser, a red-faced man with a dyspeptic scowl, scanned the crowd. “Don’t see Boggs. Might be outta town. Sorry, lady, I gotta get your fare. I’ll have to let one of these men have you.”

“What is this, ‘have you’?”

“Anyone willing to pay your fare gets to take you away. You become his property till you work off your debt.”

She tipped her chin and Seth caught a flash of dark eyes. “I am not that kind of a lady, Señor, and if my husband were alive, he would challenge you to a duel to defend my honor.”

The pursuer was unimpressed. “Rules of the shipping line, lady. I gotta collect a full fare for every passenger we carry. Where it comes from is none of my concern. But I gotta enter it in this here ledger.”

“Then my father will pay!”

The purser wrinkled his nose. “And where be he?”

“Well… I do not know just now. He is here.”

“Where?”

“In California.”

He made an exasperated sound. “Look, Boggs ain’t here so I gotta collect the fare from one of these men. That’s the rules.” He took hold of her arm.

“But you cannot do this, Señor!”

“Look, I don’t see Boggs and I don’t have time. Gotta have the receipts to the shipping office by noon.”

“Remove your hand from me!”

The purser looked at his passenger list. “Your name D’Arcy? Listen up, gentlemen! This one’s a genuine Frenchee. Name of
On-zhay-leek.
Who’ll start the bidding?”

“That’s the one I’ve been waitin’ for,” said a man nearby. “Here, girlie,” he shouted. “Lift up your skirt and show us an ankle.”

Seth climbed up onto his wagon and reached for the reins. One thing prison had taught him was that life wasn’t fair. It had also taught him that smart men kept out of other people’s business. Besides, the woman already belonged to Boggs. She knew what she was getting into.

But as he started to get his horses going, something made him stop. He looked back at the woman. The purser had left her for a moment to settle a fight that had broken out between two customers. Boggs, Seth thought. He knew the man. Cyrus Boggs had come out as a preacher two years ago but had found a more lucrative enterprise. He currently owned a brothel on Clay Street and was known to lure unsuspecting women to San Francisco with newspaper ads for teachers and nursemaids, offering to pay their fare when they arrived, and then imprisoning them in his cribs— small, windowless rooms where the helpless women were expected to service up to thirty men a day.

With a sigh, Seth dropped the reins, jumped down to the ground, and went back to the ropes. “Pardon me, lady, did I hear you say Boggs?”

“
Sí
,” she said as she dug into her purse. Her hands were small, he noticed, her gloves made of soft kid. “After my husband dies,” she explained, “the government takes our farm for taxes. I have little left. But then I see this.” She handed a newspaper clipping to him.

“Sorry, I don’t know Spanish. What does it say?”

“It is, how do you say,
anuncio.
This man says he wishes for teachers of young ladies. Here is his name and address. I write him a letter.” She produced a folded sheet of paper. Seth read the false promises it contained.

He handed them back. “This letter and advertisement are a fraud. Boggs got you here under false pretenses.”

She gave him a puzzled look. He saw dark lashes framing dark eyes, black curls escaping from under the bonnet.

He cleared his throat. He didn’t know how to put it delicately. “Boggs is a criminal. He isn’t going to help you. Did I hear you say your father is here?”

“
Sí!
He is why I come. He is wealthy. He will pay my fare.”

Seth saw how the men were eyeing her, and then he remembered that just last week a vigilante group, mostly disbanded American soldiers with nothing to do now that the war with Mexico was over, had raided a tent community on Telegraph Hill called Little Chile, and raped and murdered a mother and daughter. People of Spanish descent were not safe in San Francisco at the moment, especially a Spanishwoman on her own. If the woman’s father didn’t show soon, then Boggs surely would, and if not Boggs, then one of these men would pay for this D’Arcy woman and enslave her God knew where.

“Hey, you!” the purser shouted, coming back. “Get away from there!”

Despite his hard-and-fast rule not to get involved, Seth couldn’t stand by while an injustice was being done.

He offered to pay the fare, reaching into his pocket for a roll of banknotes. When another man immediately raised the bid, the purser accepted it. Seth grabbed his arm and said close to his face, “Friend, I don’t want trouble. But you asked for the price of the lady’s passage, and I offered to pay it.”

The purser looked down at the fingers digging painfully into his arm, then into the unblinking eyes of the tall stranger. He pulled away. “Awright, settle with the captain over there.”

“Thank you, Señor,” Angelique said as Seth moved her trunk from behind the ropes. “I am in your debt. How do I pay you?”

He squinted up at the sun. He was anxious to get going. “I’m at Devil’s Bar, north of Sacramento. When you find your father, you can pay me back.” Touching the brim of his hat, he started for his wagon.

As he started to climb up, he looked back. She remained standing beside her trunk, looking lost. Men were starting to crowd around her, saying, “You really French? You need a place to stay? I can guarantee you’ll make lots of money here.”

Seth went back, pushing his way through the protesting men. “Do you really have nowhere to go?”

“Only Señor Boggs…”

“Now see here—” began one man.

“And you have no idea where your father is?”

“I come to look. This is why I answer Mr. Boggs’s
anuncio.
I come to California to look for my father. And while I look, I work as a teacher, you see?”

“Your father a forty-niner?”

When they recognized the stranger’s proprietary manner with the woman, the men drifted back to the auction, where a woman with a baby was being offered for thirty dollars.

“No, no,” Angelique explained to Seth Hopkins. “After my mother dies my father goes to New Orleans, to his brother there. They come to California, he says in a letter, for the fur trapping.” She produced another folded piece of paper. Seth squinted at it then handed it back. “I don’t know French either. You say he’s a trapper? He’d be up north, then. Unless he’s gone for the gold. In which case he could be in one of a thousand mining camps.” He rubbed his jaw. “Look, you’ll probably have a better chance of finding him if you go to Sacramento.” He sighed, wondering why he was getting himself into this. The heat must have addled his brain. “I can take you there.”

“Oh! You have already been too kind, Señor. These men will help me.”

“These men—” he began. “Never mind. Sacramento is what you want, believe me, it’s closer to gold country. You can put the word out on your father. The camps get traveling preachers, circuit judges, entertainers, trappers, miners, and all sorts of assorted folk passing through. Word of mouth travels very quickly among the mining camps. Your father’ll soon hear you’re looking for him. What’s his name?”

“Jacques D’Arcy. He is a Count,” she added proudly.

Seth would have liked two bits for every “Count,” “Baron” and “Prince” there was in San Francisco, and phonies the lot of them. He doubted half the men on this wharf were even going by their real names.

“Oh,” she said when she saw the wagon. “Is Sacramento far?”

“We aren’t taking the wagon to Sacramento. Just along to the terminal to pick up the steamboat to take us upriver.”

* * *

As Seth guided the wagon up and down the streets of Sacramento in search of a respectable place where Miss D’Arcy could stay, Angelique was thankful to be off the steamboat. When Mr. Hopkins had said they were to take an overnight steamer upriver, she had pictured a cabin and the opportunity to loosen her corset and perhaps bathe, have tea brought. The trip from Mexico had been horrendous. Boarding the
Betsy Lain
at Acapulco, Angelique had found the Boston ship already overcrowded with passengers. But the overnight passage on the steamboat had been an even more appalling experience. Because the cabins were all taken, she and Mr. Hopkins had had to sleep on the deck among their belongings, along with hundreds of other people— most of whom had been men— even with horses, donkeys, and pigs! Thoughts of finding her father had sustained her. Papá was going to make everything all right. He had always taken care of her, and he would take care of her again.