The house was very still, yet I never had the sense of being alone in it. There were too many windows and passages, too many rooms opening one out of another. Was I being watched, as was so easily possible? I turned about quickly and caught a faint movement at a door that led to the patio. For an instant I was prompted to run to the door and see who was there—but I did not. An odd prickle of panic went through me and I fled up the stairs to my room, wanting only to close my own door between me and the rest of this silent, watching house.
But when I reached my room, I saw that it would do no good to close the door. Once more, Eleanor waited for me. She wore dove-gray trousers and a sleeveless turquoise blouse, and she sat cross-legged in the middle of my bed, with the book Emanuella open on her knees.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” she said. “I see that someone has loaned you Emanuella.”
“Sylvia said I should read it.”
“She’s right—you should. Though it may frighten you badly. It did me. Do you know who Emanuella was?”
I shook my head, wondering why Eleanor had come to my room.
“Legend has it that she was an ancestress of ours. Rather a notorious one, because of all her affairs at the court of Philip IV of Spain. Paul learned about her after he married Sylvia, and he went to Madrid to do some research on her before he wrote the book. Grandfather is proud of what he claims is the line of descent and he makes a lot of it. Emanuella was supposed to have a passionate disposition and a temper that we’re all expected to inherit. But when Paul wrote the book, Grandfather was furious because he claimed she was a little mad. Her cousin Doña Inés wound up in a madhouse. Do you suppose the strain really comes down to us, Amanda?” Her eyes were bright and wide, with that appealing air of innocence that I didn’t trust. I knew there was nothing innocent about her intent.
“I shouldn’t think so,” I said carelessly. “It would be a pretty diluted strain if it did.”
“Velázquez painted the mad one—Doña Inés,” Eleanor went on, tossing the book aside on the bed. “Velázquez himself is a character in Paul’s story. Has Grandfather told you any of this, Amanda?”
“No,” I said. “And I’m afraid it all sounds too remote as a scandal to get very excited about.”
Eleanor uncurled herself and stretched out her legs in their gray trousers. “Not so remote, perhaps. Grandmother Katy took it seriously. I think she used to watch all of us for signs of the wild strain that Grandfather is so proud of. Only he won’t call it madness.”
“From what I’ve heard of Katy, she sounds too sensible for that.”
“I remember her very well,” Eleanor said. “She wasn’t always calm and sensible. When I was small I can remember her walking in the patio and wringing her hands together as though there was something she couldn’t bear. Once when she didn’t know I was near I heard her talking to herself about being trapped in silence. I’ve always wondered what she meant.”
I wondered too, and thought of the little key I’d put away in my handbag. Was that trap of silence about to be sprung open? Was I to be the instrument? I walked to one of the room’s three windows and stood looking through the deep recess, down into the patio. I could imagine Katy walking its paths with a warm sun beating upon adobe walls. Eleanor came quietly to stand beside me.
“From here you can see the place where the family used to picnic,” she said softly, slyly. “Do you see where the hillside dips into the arroyo beyond our back wall?” She pointed. “There’s a very old cottonwood tree down there that gives a lovely shade. And there’s a place where the hillside levels out beneath it. Do you see where the path winds down to the clearing?”
My gaze followed her pointing finger and I remembered my earlier uneasiness when I’d looked out toward the arroyo. I could see the path she indicated, and the clearing itself in the midst of that green growth that sprang up wherever there was a trace of water in New Mexico.
“Yes, I can see it,” I said.
I would have turned from the window, but she put her hand on my arm to hold me there, and I felt malice in her grip.
“Your mother died on the ledge below the clearing.” Her voice was light—and deadly. She meant to wound, to torment. “Because of the juniper bushes it’s hidden from those who were there above at the picnic. But you can see the ledge from here. There are rocks along the hillside, forming the ledge. Do you see them?”
I could only nod, my throat constricted. The pressure of her fingers hurt my arm.
“That’s where they struggled—your mother and Kirk Landers. Though he was away in Taos when it happened, Mark Brand, Gavin’s father, was visiting here at the time and he had a gun. Doro must have gone into his room to get it, and everyone thinks she went down there to kill Kirk Landers.”
“I don’t believe that,” I said tightly.
Eleanor shrugged graceful shoulders and took her hand away from my arm. “What difference does it make whether you believe it or not, when it really happened? I’ve heard Paul say that Doro was like Emanuella. She was in love with men. Many men. But she had a passionate nature and she couldn’t bear to be—what’s the old-fashioned term?—spurned. She was in love with Kirk when she was young, but he went away and changed. So she killed him.”
My breath was coming quickly and I could feel the perspiration breaking out on my cheeks and neck.
“What if none of this is true? You said they couldn’t be seen from the picnic ground above.”
“That’s the angle that interests Paul. But you forget there was a witness—Aunt Clarita. She’d stayed home, since she had a headache. But she got up for fresh air and she stood at this very window and saw the whole thing. She saw Doro fire the gun, while Kirk struggled with her. There was blasting going on in a nearby lot that day, so no one heard the shot. But Aunt Clarita knew when it was fired because she saw Kirk fall and your mother fling herself over the ledge into the arroyo. She could swear to all this later and there weren’t any who would doubt Aunt Clarita’s word.”
The light, breathless voice at my side was still for a moment, but I was aware of the air of triumph with which she awaited my reaction. I felt a little sick and somehow angry as well. Stubbornly, I refused to accept.
“You wanted to know, didn’t you?” she went on. “No one else would tell you the truth, but I think it’s only fair that you should know the details of what happened. Of course, it’s too bad the other witness couldn’t be coherent about what she saw.”
“There was a second witness?”
“Yes. Hasn’t anyone told you? You were there on that ledge with your mother. You saw everything that happened and you were a lot closer than Clarita. But you were too terrified to talk. Gavin says you were speechless for quite a while after what happened. Your father was away that day, and it was Gavin who found you crying your heart out, and he brought you back to the house. Everyone else was too busy with the tragedy to think about you until you could be taken to Grandfather. All that part I saw, because Gavin brought me along too. Oh, he could be kind enough in those days. Not the way he is now.”
Because I was shivering and the breeze felt cold, I moved back from the window.
“You came to my room for some reason?” I asked, knowing how stiff I sounded.
“Yes, of course. And I’ve told you what I came to tell you. Now you know everything that happened, so you can go back to New York and not worry Grandfather any more.”
She turned from me with a light flick of her fingers that dismissed me, and went out of the room. Whatever malice she’d intended had been accomplished. I didn’t want to look out that window again. I closed my door against further unwelcome guests and threw myself upon the bed. Eleanor wanted me gone, and that was why she had told me. But I couldn’t accept her story. I still rebelled against the published version of what had happened, yet I had only my own instinct about my mother to guide me. Even my father had believed the worst of her. Only I, who knew her so little, believed in her. I flung an arm across my eyes to shu
t out the bright Santa Fe light.
I had seen what happened. I had seen it all—and I knew and remembered nothing. Or perhaps some instinct in me still remembered the truth and this was why my belief seemed unshakable, so that I had to stay and uncover the past.
VIII
I must have fallen asleep, for when I awakened it was nearly time for lunch. Something hard lay on the bed beneath my hand and I saw it was the book by Paul Stewart. I sat up and stared at the back jacket, where a photograph of the author had been used.
The picture must have been taken years ago, for he looked youthfully handsome and more like a faun than ever. His sharp-featured face with those pale eyes gazed out at the world with an expression that seemed to invite danger. He was hardly the ivory tower writer, but looked like a man who enjoyed living, and who might court danger for the sheer satisfaction of defeating it. Only a few years before this picture was taken, he had—as he’d told me himself—been in love with Doroteo Austin. Yet he had married Sylvia. And now he chose to bring to life the circumstances under which Sylvia’s stepbrother had died, and which his wife opposed having resurrected. Besides all this, some relationship seemed to exist between Sylvia’s husband and Gavin’s wife. Eleanor too seemed to be stirring something up, and I had again a feeling that the past hung over the present, dangerously imminent and involving all of us. Perhaps involving me especially, because of whatever lay buried in the memory of the child I had been.
I was sharply aware of the window that looked down upon the arroyo and drew me toward it with invisible threads. There was something down there which compelled me, and inevitably I would have to obey the summons. But not now. Not yet. Nevertheless, I went to the window and looked out.
At once my attention was fixed on the patio below. Near the gate which joined the Cordova and Stewart properties, Paul and Eleanor stood talking. They were in open view and there was no reason why they should not be there, yet there was something that suggested the clandestine in their interest in each other, in their whispered conversation. If I’d had to title the picture they made, I’d have called it The Plotters, and I wondered why that impression was so strong.
A memory flashed into my mind of Paul as I had seen him today in the store with the disciplina—that three-pronged whip of the Penitentes—in his hand. He had startled me unpleasantly then, and it wasn’t hard to imagine his using the whip. Though not, I thought, on himself.
As I watched, Paul turned from Eleanor and disappeared through the gate to his own house. She, with a small, secret smile on her lips, ran across the patio to the garage, out of my view. As I stood there, I heard a car start, heard it move out of the garage and down the road.
Beyond patio and wall the path Eleanor had pointed out led along the hillside above the arroyo. Abruptly I faced my room. I was not yet ready to deal with what awaited me down there. Before I answered that summons, I wanted to talk to Clarita. Both Juan and Eleanor had told me she’d seen what happened, but I wanted to hear it from her own lips. I wanted to watch her face and listen to the tone of her voice when she told me.
When I was ready for lunch I went downstairs apprehensively. I wasn’t anxious to face Eleanor again so soon, or for that matter, any of the rest of the family. However, neither Eleanor nor Gavin was there, and only Clarita sat at the head of the table. As I took my place, she regarded me with her curiously intent look, though her words were casual enough.
“We are having only an omelet. I hope that will suit you. Often I lunch alone, and I prefer something light.”
“That will be fine,” I said. This was my opportunity, and I began to wonder how I might bring up my question. I knew I must move with care, since this was a subject she abhorred. Her guard must be down first, and that might be difficult to achieve.
The omelets arrived, and were made with tomatoes, green pepper and onion, lightly browned, with the edges firm. I found I was hungry and I ate with relish and relief, since the others weren’t there and there need be no crosscurrents of hostility. However, nothing in my aunt’s manner gave the opening I wanted, and I said nothing of what was uppermost in my mind.
Again Clarita wore her favorite black, with little concession to fashion. Only her dangling turquoise earrings gave her a touch of elegance and did not look foolish against her thin cheeks. She had the same manner of pride that characterized Juan Cordova, and which she had probably learned from him.
“You visited CORDOVA this morning?” she asked, when the omelets had been served.
“Yes. Gavin took me all around the store. There’s more on those shelves than I could see in a lifetime.”
Her look grew distant, remembering. “I used to know all of it. I trained the women who work on the second floor. As my father trained me. If I had been a man, Gavin would never have been put in charge over me. But my father doesn’t believe in the business ability of women.”
Her words carried a hint of hostility toward Juan, which I hadn’t expected. For the first time I was aware that underlying her concern and care for her father, lay something else—an antagonism—that seldom surfaced.
“Surely you’d proved your worth to him in the store,” I said.
“Gavin knew my worth. He always consulted me, as his father used to do before him. I had a certain influence when I worked for CORDOVA.”
“Why did you stop?”
The rings on her fingers flashed blue and amber light as her hands moved about the table. “I am no longer interested in such things.”
Her answer allowed of no questioning, but it seemed to hide more than it revealed. I ate in silence. We had little to talk about. But at the end of the meal she surprised me.
“I have something to show you in my room. Will you come with me?”
She rose from the table and I followed her into the long, bedroom wing and through the first door. No sun fell through the windows into Clarita’s room, and it had a muted, austere look. The blanket on the narrow bed was an Indian weave in brown and white, and on the floor nearby lay a shaggy brown rug. The rest of the floor was of dark, wide boards, richly polished and bare of any covering. On the wall above the bed, Clarita had hung a row of very old santos, those pictures of saints that were commonly seen in the Southwest, and on a shelf were two bultos—saints carved in the round and also clearly old. On a table near a window, various small objects had been collected, and she waved me toward them.
“These belonged to your mother,” Clarita said. “I came upon them in the storeroom and I thought they might mean something to you.”
I approached the table hesitantly because of unexpectedly quickening emotion. Emotion so sudden and shattering that I didn’t know how to cope with it. These were feelings long buried, yet able to rise and devastate me. For an instant the old dream-vision of a tree was sharp in my mind, and I swayed as if I were dizzy.
Clarita was watching. “Is something wrong?”
The child which had risen with such sudden passionate grief, subsided, sank below the surface, and I managed to recover my adult self.
“I’m all right,” I said. But the child had frightened me.
On the table lay a pair of silver and turquoise earrings of exquisite design. Zuni work again, with the typical inlays of coral, turquoise, and jet in the form of small winged birds that must once have graced Doroteo’s lovely ears. There was a long-toothed Spanish comb with a high curved back that might have held up a mantilla, and I could almost see her wearing it—gay in Spanish dress. The small prayer book fell open when I picked it up, to reveal pressed rose leaves between the pages, and I set it down with hands that were quick to tremble. Last of all was a single satin baby shoe, embroidered in pink. I picked up the shoe and my eyes filled with tears that were a release and a relief.
“Are these the only things of hers that are left?” I managed the words.
Clarita nodded. “They are a few things my mother packed away in a box when everything else of Doro’s went out of the house.”
“Why? Why were her
things sent away?”
“Your father wanted to keep nothing of hers. And my father ordered everything to be given to charity. He wanted no reminders of her around. But Mother stole out a few things and set them aside. She said they were for you. But I had forgotten about them until now.”
I couldn’t stop my tears. The impact of emotion had been too great, too unexpected. Grandmother Katy had thought of me again with these small treasures that had been my mother’s. Clarita stood silently by and let me weep. She offered me no sympathy, no kindly understanding, and her eyes were bleak.
When I’d dried my tears, she spoke to me without emotion. “They are for you to keep. I would not want my mother’s wish to be forgotten. Here is the box she packed them in.” She brought a small sandalwood case from under the table and gave it to me.
I picked up earrings, comb, prayer book, and shoe, one by one, and placed them on the nest of cotton in the box. Having wept, I felt a little steadier, less vulnerable to the frightening child that haunted me. Touching them seemed to bring Doroteo a little closer to me as an adult, and in coming closer, her demand upon me was all the greater—the demand I had put upon myself. Somehow I must talk to Clarita.
“The shoe is badly embroidered,” she pointed out critically. “Doro had no skill when it came to sewing, and she would not apply herself. Our mother could teach her nothing.”
All the more reason I would treasure the small shoe which she had tried awkwardly to embroider because it was for me. I closed the box. This was the moment for the next step.
“Thank you for thinking of these things, Aunt Clarita,” I said. “Now I wonder if you will do something more for me?”
Though her expression did not change by a flicker, I sensed that she was immediately on guard—and I wondered all the more what secret it was that she guarded. I went on resolutely.
“Will you tell me what it was you saw that day when you stood at the window in Doroteo’s room? When you saw what happened between her and Kirk?”
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