by Carla Kelly
Daughter of Fortune
by
Carla Kelly
SMASHWORDS EDITION
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PUBLISHED BY:
Camel Press on Smashwords
BIG LEAGUES
Copyright © 2013 Carla Kelly
Seattle, WA
Camel Press
PO Box 70515
Seattle, WA 98127
For more information go to: www.camelpress.com
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Originally Published in the United States of America by Donald I. Fine, Inc., and in Canada by Fitzhenry & Whiteside, Ltd.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Cover design by Sabrina Sun
Photograph of Carla Kelly by Bryner Photography
Daughter of Fortune
Copyright © 2013 by Carla Kelly
ISBN: 978-1-60381-891-9 (Trade Paper)
ISBN: 978-1-60381-892-6 (eBook)
LOC Control Number: 2012941563
Produced in the United States of America
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Dear Reader,
All my novels have a place in my heart, but the first one is special. What I learned about writing novels, I learned first with Daughter of Fortune.
Daughter of Fortune started on a trip to Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1982, scene of a Western Writers of America conference where I received a second Spur Award for short fiction. After years of writing short stories, I knew a novel was in my future. It was closer than I thought.
As I enjoyed that remarkable, historic place, I tried to recall the name of the Pueblo Indian who masterminded the uprising that drove the Spanish out of New Mexico in 1680, and kept them out for 13 years. I finally remembered his name, and there was my novel.
I thought about the 1680 uprising all the way home. In the next few weeks, the story came together in that odd way of novels. In thinking of that chaotic time, I thought of Greta Linde, a lady I met in Brooklyn, New York. In the perilous days before World War II, Greta, the daughter of a wealthy Jewish merchant, managed to escape Germany with nothing more than her fur coat. When Greta reached New York City, grateful to be alive, her relatives ignored her because she had not brought out any of the family wealth.
There was my story: an orphan from Mexico City who survives a cholera epidemic and goes to Santa Fe to live with her older sister, only to be shunned because the family fortune is gone. Maria Espinosa is also the sole survivor of an Apache attack near her journey’s end. Rejected by her sister, she must make her own way. She meets the Masferrers, landowners with their own secrets and sorrows. They become her family.
That’s how novelists work: one thing reminds them of another, until a story emerges. When I wrote Daughter of Fortune—I called it Saintmaker—I had children at home and a full-time job. I began my pattern of rising early to write in the furnace room. A writing instructor gave me great advice: “Sleep fast.” I still do, even though the children are grown and the furnace room became a real office.
Daughter of Fortune also taught me that once you sign the contract, it’s no longer your baby. If the publisher changes the title, learn to grin and bear it. (I still think Saintmaker is a better title.) That first book also taught me how to write a novel. It never gets easy, but I know I can do it because I’ve done it over and over.
Kindly enter this distant world of the Spanish borderlands, where Apaches threatened, Pueblo Indians endured, and Spaniards ruled—for a while. Daughter of Fortune bears little resemblance to my better-known Regency romances of ladies and lords. After researching the terrors of the Pueblo uprising, I decided to actually tone down the historic violence. My years as an Indian Wars scholar have taught me that each side gave about as good as it got.
Today, a son lives not far from the scene of this story. I love New Mexico, too. Reader, take a deep breath of a piñon campfire, watch the timeless Pueblo lifeways, revere the sturdy, primitive saints carved by Indians, and give your attention to this story of a woman who refused to die, the two brothers who loved her, and a tough colony trying to survive in a brave New World.
Carla Kelly
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Chapter 1
To Santa Fe
“Maria, we pray for those who despitefully use us.”
Until Father Efrain spoke, Maria hadn’t realized she was crying. Hands clenched tight by her sides, she watched Carmen de Sosa’s wagon lurch out of the rut. She sobbed, exhausted by the effort to push the cart. She heard the embarrassed whispers of the teamsters, but she could not stop the tears.
Like all men, eager to be away from tears they could not understand, the muleteers and freighters hurried to catch up with the wagons. Carmen de Sosa did not even look around at the sound of Maria’s distress. With a kid-gloved hand, she patted her hair and pulled her silk shawl higher on her shoulders, as if to ward off such vulgar display.
Only Father Efrain remained with Maria. He was too wise to say anything, or too weary, but after a small hesitation, he rested his arm on her shoulder.
“See there, you tore your dress,” he said finally, when her sobs turned to hiccups. “But as it appears to be a seam,” he continued smoothly when Maria began to cry again, “you can mend it.”
Maria wiped her nose on her sleeve and felt the rip in the fabric. It had given way when she was pushing the wagon, struggling to free it from the rut. Six months ago she would have been mortified if strangers had seen her with even an ankle showing. Now when the seam gave way, she felt only a helpless fury that such a woman as Carmen de Sosa had the power to command, and she only to follow.
“Father,” she said, “do you realize that we could have pushed all day and she never would have considered getting out to lighten the load?”
Her anger was bringing tears again. “I could have fallen under the wheel and she would only have clucked her tongue!”
As Father Efrain opened his mouth to speak, she turned on him. “And don’t tell me to turn the other cheek! I have turned so many times in the last six months that I am dizzy!”
He let her cry then, drawing her close to him as she sobbed. “Pobrecita,” he murmured, “when was the last time you cried?”
Her voice was muffled against his habit. “When I closed Papa’s eyes. When the lawyers came. When I closed Mama’s eyes. I cannot recall.” She wiped her eyes on the hem of her skirt. “Oh, mira, Father, soon the wagons will be out of sight over that rise.”
He laughed. “Maria, Maria, are you still such a city girl? De veras, do you think we cannot follow this wretched trail and catch up with them?”
She could not share his levity. “Oh, Father,” she whispered, “I am weary with this journey.”
They started after the wagons, picking their way carefully around the rocks and holes of El Camino Real—the King’s Highway—that they had followed for half a year from Mexico City. They had set out in August of 1679. It was now February of 1680.
“You, Padre,�
� Maria commanded, mimicking Carmen de Sosa in an attempt to match the priest’s levity, “I cannot decide whether to beat my servant or snub Maria some more. Which should it be?”
Father Efrain did not join in her mockery. “Maria Espinosa de la Garza,” he said softly, “pray for her.”
Maria was silent. She hadn’t the heart to tell this priest that if there was a God, He had no use for those fallen from grace, as they surely must be. She shaded her eyes with her hand, looking about her for some sign of grace in this barren land they traveled through. There was none that she could see, no evidence that God had ever given New Mexico a second thought after the Creation. She didn’t know why she looked anymore. God had withdrawn His grace from her as surely as He had withdrawn it from the land around. But still she searched for it, thinking such rejection scarcely fair.
Father Efrain seemed to know what she was thinking. “God loves you, my child, and He does know where we are.”
They were in sight of the last wagon by then, or at least the dust of it. Unconsciously, Maria slowed her pace, sick of the sight of the lumbering freight wagons.
Father Efrain did not try to hurry her. “Soon we will be in Santa Fe, and you will be with your sister again. All will be well.”
“Will it?” she asked out loud, thinking of Carmen de Sosa. “Or will my sister, like Señora de Sosa, decide that because I am poor now, I have no worth?”
But the fear went deeper than that. Maria did not belong anywhere. She thought again of Carmen de Sosa and wiped the tears from her eyes. Her own father had called Carmen’s family pretentious mushrooms. Before the Espinosa fortune had fallen with a crash that was heard from the silver mines of Mexico to the Spanish Main, Maria never would have given Carmen and her family the merest nod. And now Maria had nothing but the dress she stood in, while Carmen had the power to order her to help push a wagon out of a rut.
She is just the bride of a toadying government official, thought Maria, someone my Papa would have ignored only a year ago.
But if Maria did not belong in the world of wealth and position any longer, neither did she belong with the teamsters and muleteers, rough men who could not read or write but only look down on those poorer still. Nor did she belong with Father Efrain, who walked with a light step toward a future of exhausting labor with the Indians. Religious fervor no longer burned in Maria. It had been extinguished by the shattering changes in her life.
But Father Efrain was speaking to her. “Maria, you still have the jewels.”
Yes, she had the jewels, trinkets really, mere baubles that she had rescued from the little cask by Mama’s bed as her mother lay dead, killed by cholera and the shame of misfortune. Even as the creditors and clerks had scavenged the rooms below, pinging the crystal and counting forks, Maria had calmly poured the contents of the little jewel box down the front of her dress and later hidden the shining pile under her pillow.
She had parted with a brooch here and a ring there, seeing to Papa and Mama’s funerals—small affairs, really. By then the town had been emptied of the wealthy who had fled the cholera. Another pin had earned her a month’s lodging at the convent where she had been educated as a child. A gold button had been sufficient to send a letter on its interminable way north with a courier heading to Santa Fe, a letter much agonized over to a sister she scarcely remembered. And then a handful of silver chain links had bought her minor membership on the next mission supply caravan leaving for the colony of New Mexico. Only a little jewelry remained, but surely it would sweeten her reunion with the sister she had not seen in fourteen years, since Maria herself had been only a year in age and the sister a bride setting out on a new life.
“I am sure your sister will see that the jewels become a dowry for you,” said the priest, steering her around a chuckhole.
She looked at the priest then, her heart opening to him. Dear Father Efrain. How sure he was that all would turn out well. He had not known how it was after Papa’s ruin, when the young man who dealt with matchmakers withdrew their offers, one by one.
The priest went on looking at her with the belief that his own goodness was the goodness of others, and she could not bear to disappoint him. “Father, I am sure you are right,” she lied, hating herself for deceiving a priest.
She looked closer at Father Efrain, and her smile was one of genuine affection. He had made himself her protector on the journey and she was grateful. He strode with enthusiasm among the rocks and pitfalls of the King’s Highway, nimbly avoiding the cactus and animal refuse. His hair, neatly shaped into a priestly tonsure at the start of the journey, was long now and as ragged as the hem of his blue robe, his face tanned by the sun’s slanting rays of fall and winter. But he still hummed to himself as he walked the path of empire, cheerful no matter what condition of disrepair the empire currently enjoyed.
He belongs here, she thought, and how strange it is, considering that he is new to this place, too. But he belongs here and I do not.
She smiled at him. “You know, Father, I have not plagued you in recent months, but tell me now, when will this journey end?”
“Soon, my child, soon.”
And he was right, terribly so.
They joined the wagons when the teamsters stopped the ox-drawn carts for the nooning. Before the wagons had ceased rolling, Carmen’s cook leaped down, ready to begin the preparation of beans and tortillas. While Maria and the teamsters ate their dried beef and hardtack—carne seca and biscoche—Carmen de Sosa dined on cornmeal tortillas and sipped wine from a silver cup.
The teamsters passed around their own wine, drinking from a jug handed from muletenders, drivers, and priests to Maria. By the time the jug reached her the rim was greasy, but she closed her eyes and drank. She remembered Mama’s words: a lady drinks only from a cup.
After the midday meal, they proceeded into that unforgettable afternoon, Maria sitting next to the teamster in the wagon assigned to her. He was a young man, a year or two older than she. In six months’ travel, she had learned only that he was the son of the caravan head, and on his first journey, too. His name was Miguel. It wasn’t much information, but Maria had overcome agonies of maidenly shyness to learn even that little about him. She had never spoken to a man, other than her father and priests. Only her loneliness had compelled her to go as far as she had in awkward conversation with Miguel.
Before she drifted off into the half-sleep that filled most of her long afternoons in the wagon, the teamster handed her something.
“For you, Señorita,” he said.
She took the metal object he held out to her, careful not to touch his hand, and turned it over. It was a mirror.
“Where did you find this?” she asked, amazed at the boldness of her question. Praise God that the journey was nearly over. If it went on much longer, she would not recognize herself. As it was, Mama was probably tossing in her grave over the forwardness of her youngest child.
The man showed no surprise at her address. He pointed with his whip to the oxcart ahead.
“I believe it fell out of her wagon.”
It was a joke of sorts between them. The freighter appropriated items from the de Sosa wagon and squirreled them away for future use. Maria caught him at it once, and they had laughed. It was sport that would have mortified her in Mexico City, but here it was only a small way to alleviate the boredom of their oxcart journey.
Maria had never accepted anything he’d tried to give her, though she enjoyed looking over the spoils of his agile fingers, wondering if Carmen de Sosa in her plenitude ever missed anything. But this time, instead of just looking and handing it back, she tucked the mirror in her pocket.
“Are you not going to look at yourself?” Miguel asked, lazily tickling his whip around the ear of the front right oxen.
She shook her head. “Not now. After we stop. Then I’ll give it back.”
She wanted to be alone when she looked at her face. In the half year’s journey, she had not looked into a mirror, and she had to be by he
rself when she surveyed the ruin of her complexion and the state of her hair. Maria had never been vain, but she remembered how Mama used to utter little cries of delight as she brushed Maria’s hair each night before bed, exclaiming over the copper-gold highlights of the thick auburn hair. It was her one glory. She had no height to recommend her, an ordinary figure, freckles sprinkled liberally over her nose, but in the soft light of evening’s candleglow, her hair used to shimmer around her face like a nimbus.
Maria sighed, thinking of her mother’s great silver-backed hairbrush that was probably resting now on a dressing table belonging to Papa’s lawyers. Her eyes narrowed for a moment as she remembered the solicitors with their red tape and sealing wax, then she sighed again and patted the mirror in her pocket. It was going to take more than six months to become accustomed to poverty and charity from teamsters.
In late afternoon they paused at the edge of the meandering Rio del Norte. The freighter cleared his throat and pointed with his whip.
“Santa Fe,” he said.
Maria shaded her eyes with her hand. She could see nothing except a series of mountains rising before them to the north and east. The mission supply caravan had been climbing steadily for weeks now, from desert to plain to gentle slope, and she had watched those mountains growing slowly closer each day. She looked at the freighter, a question in her eyes.
“It is in the foothills below the Sangre de Cristos. Tomorrow. The next day, perhaps. You will see.”
