The family stood about waiting for me, with glasses in their hands, and I paused in the doorway for a moment, studying them. Clarita with her dark eyes and her black dress and turquoise earrings. Eleanor with that brightly malicious look upon her, and Gavin, standing a little apart from the two women, his manner as detached as though he hardly knew them. I was relieved to find in myself nothing of the sense of attraction that had flashed through me when I’d seen him earlier today. He was only my cousin Eleanor’s unfortunate husband and he meant nothing to me.
Clarita saw me first. “We thought it best to let you sleep,” she said, and moved to the head of the table, motioning me to a chair at her right. Gavin went to the far end, opposite Clarita, while Eleanor sat across from me. There were great stretches of empty table between us.
When we were seated, I spoke to Clarita. “Grandfather doesn’t join you for meals?”
“He prefers to eat alone in his room,” she said. “Rosa takes him a tray. Tonight he is particularly upset because of Eleanor.” She threw her niece a despairing look and busied herself with serving the food.
Eleanor, still in her violet linen, with the inevitable New Mexico silver and turquoise about her neck, looked subdued for the moment and rather watchful. Once or twice I caught her gaze upon me in speculation, and at other times she watched Gavin as if she were not altogether sure of his reactions.
Clarita, clearly trying to do what was proper, made conversation by asking if I knew about Santa Fe’s Fiesta, which was held in September.
“That’s when we burn Zozobra,” she explained. “He’s the monster figure that represents gloom. There will be music and fancy dress on the floats and much excitement. Visitors come from everywhere.”
“That’s something for you to see, if you’re an artist, Amanda,” Eleanor put in. “I noticed your painting gear. But of course you probably won’t be here by that time.”
No one at the table wanted me to stay that long, and I said nothing.
Gavin paid no attention to this idle interchange. He was intent upon his own thoughts, as was clear when he spoke abruptly into the new silence.
“This is the first time we’ve all been together since Eleanor got home. I want Amanda to hear this too. Who put that stone head in my bedroom today?”
A moment of further silence met his words, and I could feel tension in the air. Then Clarita spoke.
“It was I who found it. I think we know how it came to be there.”
I had a feeling that Clarita and Eleanor were closing forces against Gavin, accusing him.
He returned Clarita’s look coldly. “There’s no doubt about who is behind these tricks, but I hadn’t expected you to back Eleanor up.”
Clarita’s manner was as distant as his. “We have a guest,” she pointed out. “This is not the time for such discussion.”
“Our guest is one of the family,” Gavin said flatly.
Eleanor’s soft laughter mocked him, and I wished myself well away from such family feuding. I wanted no family like this one.
Unexpectedly, it was Eleanor who drew the conversation onto safer ground by asking me about my painting.
A little stiffly I told them about my work and my wish someday to be a real painter. Surprisingly, Clarita showed an interest.
“My father was something of a painter at one time,” she said. “And Doroteo liked to sketch.”
I snatched at that. “I want to know about my mother. Do you have any of her sketches?”
Again silence fell upon the table and I was aware of Gavin’s eyes upon me, faintly pitying. Why pity? I wondered. Rosa came to serve the plates as Clarita filled them, and for a little while we were busy with our meal. My unanswered question hung in the air until Eleanor leaned toward me across the table.
“This is a house filled with secrets, Cousin Amanda. You’d better not go dragging them out of the shadows. Of course you could hardly know that Aunt Doro’s name isn’t often mentioned here. Least of all to our grandfather.”
This was something I didn’t mean to accept, and I looked around at them all defiantly. “But I mean to mention it. That’s one of the reasons why I’ve come here—to learn about my mother. My father would never talk about her either. Yet I have a right to know. All I’ve been told was that she died in a fall, but I don’t even know how or where.”
Clarita choked and put her napkin to her lips.
With a too innocent air of concealing nothing, Eleanor spoke to me openly across the table. “There was a picnic outdoors. Several of us were there that day. I can’t remember very much, but I’ve been told that, at least. Katy was there, and Sylvia—though she wasn’t married to Paul Stewart at that time. Gavin was there too, though he was only fifteen. The trouble is most of us didn’t see what happened. It was all out of our sight.” She fluffed her fair bangs with a childish gesture that did not match the wisdom of her eyes.
Clarita stared at her niece with an air of stunned horror, until Gavin reached out and placed a hand on his wife’s arm. “That’s enough, Eleanor. You’re upsetting Clarita, and you know Juan’s wishes.”
“But why?” Eleanor asked quickly. “Why shouldn’t Amanda be told what happened? Aunt Clarita needn’t be upset. She didn’t even go to the picnic that day. She was ill and couldn’t come, and Juan wasn’t there either.”
“It might have been better if I had gone,” Clarita said hoarsely. “Perhaps it would never have happened if I had been there.”
“But how did she fall? How?” I persisted.
Clarita recovered herself. “We will have no more of this subject. Do you understand—all of you? And I will not have my father disturbed with questions, Amanda. What happened nearly killed him, and I will not have him made ill over it now. You are here because he wanted you to come. Only for that. But there must be rules about your meeting him. You are not to ask him anything about the death of your mother. If he chooses to speak of it himself, that is something else.”
I felt again that force she possessed. It put a pressure upon me and I found it hard to resist, as her will bore down upon me, defeating me. Juan Cordova was apparently Clarita’s charge and she would protect him at all costs. I was ready to give in until she pushed me too far.
“You will promise me this,” she insisted.
I recovered my own will and shook my head. “I can’t promise,” I told her, and Eleanor laughed as if she approved.
“You can see Amanda is a Cordova,” she said.
Clarita ignored her. “It will not make you happy to learn about your mother,” she assured me.
Gavin made an effort to draw the lightning away, and I was briefly grateful to him as he began to talk about the firm of CORDOVA. Until I found that this too was a dangerous subject.
“Paul is going to put in the Penitente display you asked him to loan the store, Eleanor,” Gavin said. “I’m not sure it’s a good idea.”
Eleanor nodded with no great enthusiasm. “He wants to advertise the book he’s written on the subject. And Grandfather was pleased. He’d like to turn the store into a museum anyway.”
“Which he can’t be allowed to do,” Gavin said, and I heard the grim note in his voice.
“You’re not likely to stop him,” Eleanor taunted. “He’ll do as he pleases. But it’s interesting to see you standing against him after all these years. Amanda, how much do you know about our albatross?”
“CORDOVA is scarcely an albatross,” Clarita broke in. “We live and eat well because of it.”
“And who comes first in any crisis—the store or us?” Eleanor sounded angry. “You know very well that the store has been held over us all our lives. We can’t do this, and we can’t do that, because the store might suffer. My parents ran away from it, but after they died Juan brought me back here. And I was foolish enough to marry a man who is owned by CORDOVA.”
“Eleanor!” Clarita said warningly.
She paid no attention. “Oh, you’ll feel it too, Amanda, if you’re here long enough. It�
��s Juan Cordova’s life and blood, and he cares about none of us as he does about all those treasures he’s collected for the store. It ruined your life, Aunt Clarita, because he could never spare you from the work you did for him. He made you a slave to it, and it kept you from having any happiness of your own. But it’s not going to ruin my life!”
“No one but you can ruin yours,” Gavin said grimly.
Eleanor turned her interest back to me. “Don’t ever accept any part of it, Amanda. If you do, it will destroy you, just the way it destroyed your mother.”
“That is ridiculous,” Clarita said, but she looked a little pale, as though Eleanor’s words had got home to her.
“Why?” Eleanor persisted. “Amanda’s father wanted to take Doro and the baby away from Santa Fe. You told me that, Aunt Clarita. But Juan said if she went away he’d leave her no share of the store and his fortune. So she stayed. And look what happened to her! Wait till he tries to buy you, Amanda. The way he’s bought Gavin and me!”
“Be careful,” Gavin said evenly. “You go too far, Eleanor.”
By this time we had reached dessert, but I could eat nothing more. The meal had been disastrous, and Eleanor’s efforts to mock everyone and stir up emotional storms left us all upset and antagonistic.
I don’t know whether she would have subsided or not, for at that moment Rosa came into the room looking excited. She spoke in Spanish to Clarita, and I saw my aunt close her eyes, as if against the inevitable. Then she opened them and looked at me.
“Your grandfather is asking for you,” she said. “I will take you upstairs to see him, but you are not to stay more than ten minutes.”
Again Rosa broke in with words in swift Spanish.
Clarita sighed. “He wishes to see you alone. There’s nothing else to be done. You will have to go to him now.”
This was what I had been waiting for—yet with the moment upon me I felt frightened and unready. I cast a quick glance around the table, seeking for help, for reassurance. Eleanor was eating a piece of fruit with an air of concentrated unconcern. Clarita, clearly disapproving, restrained herself with difficulty. Only Gavin looked at me with some consideration—where I had expected none.
“Don’t be afraid of him, Amanda. Don’t let him intimidate you.”
While this hardly sounded promising, at least it helped me to brace myself against the coming interview. This was what I had come here for, and I must make up my own mind about my grandfather. All the others had disappointed me. Clarita, Eleanor, even Sylvia, would never seem close to me as relatives. But Juan Cordova remained.
I pushed back my chair from the table and the others rose with me.
“Rosa will take you to him,” Clarita said. “Remember that he is ill. Don’t upset him or stay very long.”
The little maid threw me a quick look and hurried off through connecting rooms toward the other end of the house.
“Wait a moment,” I called after her. “I want to get something from my room.”
While she waited, I ran up my private flight of stairs and took the little road runner from one of my bags. Then I rejoined her.
“I’m ready now.”
She took me to the foot of the steps which led to the small balcony off the living room.
“Better you go up alone,” she told me.
I hesitated for a moment, looking about that southwestern room with its dark Spanish furniture and bright Navajo rugs. But all I saw was the carved tarantula on the table near a lamp. It looked ready to move, to pounce. Yet the same man had carved my amusing road runner, and it was reassuring to feel its outlines hard in my hand.
I reached for the railing and mounted the balcony steps.
V
The door of Juan Cordova’s room stood open and I stepped through the gloom. At the window, draperies were drawn and no lights burned. Only a glow from the balcony behind me picked out general shapes. The room was a study, not a bedroom, and across it I discovered a man’s straight figure seated behind a desk. He did not droop as a sick man might, but sat facing me with a manner of pride and assurance.
“I am here,” I said hesitantly. Now that the moment was upon me, I found myself both fearful and hopeful.
He reached out a hand and touched a switch. The gooseneck lamp on the desk beside him was bent to turn full upon me and it was as though I were lighted suddenly by a spotlight. Shocked and startled, I stood blinking in the glare, unable to see the man behind the lamp, and disturbed that he should do such a thing. With an effort, I recovered myself, and I walked out of the circle of light and around the desk. Any possible moment of sentiment between us in this first encounter had been lost, and clearly that loss was deliberate. There would be no affectionate welcome for me from my mother’s father. Indignation erased my shock.
“Is this the way you always greet visitors?” I asked.
His chuckle was low, amused. “I like to see how people react. Come and sit down, Amanda, and we will look at each other in a kinder light.”
He stood up and touched another switch that lighted an amber glow overhead. Then he turned off the glaring lamp and waited for me to seat myself in a leather chair near his desk. As I sat down, I hid the road runner carving beneath my hands in my lap. Bringing it here had been a sentimental gesture, and this was clearly no time for sentiment.
In the softer light I studied him boldly, still prickling with resentment from his cruel greeting. Juan Cordova was tall, I noted, as he sat down, retying the sash of the maroon silk robe which hung loosely upon his spare frame. His gray hair was brushed close to a finely shaped head, and his face was lined and drawn by illness, though the proud beak of the nose denied all weakness and somehow reminded me of a falcon. It was an infinitely proud face, its expression not a little arrogant—with a falcon’s arrogance—even to the posture of his head and the way he held his leanly carved chin. But it was the eyes, most of all, that arrested my own gaze, almost absorbing me into the fierceness of his look. They were eyes as dark as Clarita’s, as dark as my own, but they glowed with an intensity of spirit that gave no quarter to age or illness or weakness of vision, and made an almost palpable effect upon me.
My own eyes dropped first because I had, instinctively, to protect myself from some strange emotional demand he seemed to make upon me. I had felt this before—from Clarita and Paul—some inner questioning. It was a demand that had nothing to do with affection. If I had expected to find an old man, beaten by illness, someone whom I might pity, I was quickly disillusioned. No matter what his body had done to him, his spirit was invincible and I could see why those around him must fear him a little. I had hoped that I would be wanted by him, and his look told me that I was—not because he had love to give, but because he had a purpose in bringing me here. In these few moments I stiffened against him, aware that this was a man I might need to battle.
“You look like her,” he said. It sounded more accusation than praise.
“I know,” I agreed. “I have a miniature you painted of my mother when she was young. But she must have been beautiful and I am not.”
“It is true you are not like Doroteo in that respect. No importa—the resemblance is there. You have the family hair, thick and lustrous, and I like the way you wear it. I wonder how much you are like her in spirit?”
I could only shake my head. “How can I know?”
“You are right. Quién sabe? You do not remember her, of course?”
“No—I wish I could. I don’t even know a great deal about her because my father never wanted to speak of her. I’ve even been told not to talk about her to you.”
Something in those fierce eyes seemed to flinch for just a moment, and then the very flinching was dismissed.
“It is still painful to think of her, speak of her. But now that you have come, I must face my own pain.”
He used a certain formality in his speech, as though he had grown up accustomed to another language, seeming thoroughly Spanish. Clarita’s speech was rather like her fa
ther’s, I realized, perhaps copied from him.
I waited, having nothing to offer. His pain was none of my affair, since he had not chosen to greet me warmly as belonging to his family.
“If your father would not speak of her, Amanda, perhaps he was more willing to speak of me?”
“To some extent, yes.”
“He had no love for me.”
Again I was silent, agreeing, and again Juan Cordova chuckled. There was bitterness in the sound and no mirth.
“I remember our parting. I will never forgive William for taking you away, but I can still understand how he felt. Now I suppose I am to prove myself to you—prove that I am not so evil, so wicked as he portrayed me?”
“I expect you will do as you please, Grandfather.”
Oddly, he seemed to like my resistance. “You interpret me well already. And you will have to take me as you find me. I will pretend nothing. I am quite likely all the things he has told you I was. But we must get to know each other on a basis of our own. Why did you accept my invitation to come here?”
I made a small, helpless gesture. “I’ve already been asked that several times. It seems to be part of the Cordova arrogance to invite me here, and then demand why I’ve come.”
“I do not deny that we can be arrogant. But you could have refused to come. Especially with your father’s warnings.”
“I had to see for myself. One half of my family I know very well. The other half is a blank page. Naturally, I want to fill it in.”
“Perhaps you will not like what you find.”
“That seems quite possible. I’ve hardly received a warm welcome here, but I’m beginning to learn about the Cordovas, and what being a Cordova means.”
The Turquoise Mask Page 6
