“I knew my father was up and about. I was concerned for him.”
Whether this was the truth or not, I didn’t know. She had not come outside quickly, as had Gavin and Eleanor.
“I’m going out to paint,” I told her. “Do you suppose my grandfather still has an old easel he could let me use? I brought none with me.”
“There is one in the storeroom. I will get it for you.”
“Thank you. I’ll collect my gear and then come down and talk to him.”
She nodded stiffly. “I have the prescription Dr. Morrisby ordered for you. You cannot apply it yourself.”
She insisted on coming with me to my room, and while I lay on my bed, she smoothed the ointment matter-of-factly over my shoulders. She had neither sympathy for me nor compassion, but she would do her duty to a guest in her house.
When she’d gone, I changed to slacks and a sweater, and picked up my sketchbook. By the time I went downstairs, Juan Cordova was stretched out like a recumbent emperor upon the leather couch, and Clarita was nowhere in sight. She had kept her word about the easel, however, and it stood propped near the door.
XIII
Rosa knelt before the hearth tending a fire of white piñon logs. Their pungence filled the room and I knew this was a scent out of my childhood—the scent of Santa Fe, of New Mexico, of the Southwest.
Juan Cordova seemed in a strangely benign mood, considering what had happened to us last night.
“How are you feeling?” I asked, sitting beside him in a chair near his couch.
He waved my query aside with a careless hand, perhaps because of Rosa’s presence. “The thing I come downstairs for, Amanda, is this fire. Not only the warmth, but the fragrance. I remember it from my boyhood—out at the rancho.”
“I remember it too,” I said. “It’s unforgettable.”
“Odors breed memory. You are beginning to remember this room?”
But I wasn’t. There were no flashes to remind me that the very young Amanda had ever been here.
He went on conversationally. “You know it was the women who built the adobe fireplaces in every house in the early days. And it was the women who polished the inside walls to a gloss, rubbing them with sheepskin on their hands.”
Rosa stood up and regarded the narrow mantel over the fireplace. With a quick movement she stroked the ledge and brought her finger away gritty, shaking her head. There was always dust in Santa Fe.
“There’s nothing more,” Juan told her, and she gave us a quick smile and ran off to another part of the house.
“I am too rough for them,” Juan Cordova muttered. “I am not defeated yet. They wait for me to die. Perhaps they try to hurry my dying. But I am still alive. And you, Amanda? It is you I am concerned about. Through no fault of your own, you have been drawn into our troubles.”
“I’m all right,” I assured him. “But I don’t understand what happened. Or why it happened.”
Even when he was lying down, his look could be fierce, intimidating. “It is not necessary for you to understand, but I think you must go away, Amanda.”
“That’s not what you said yesterday. I haven’t forgotten the way you tried to use me against Eleanor and Gavin. They’re both angry with me now, and for no fault of mine.”
His soft laughter recalled how he had disconcerted us all, and he was not above enjoying the memory. Then he saw my face and sobered like a naughty child. But he was not a child in any sense, and I didn’t like the pretense. I listened to his words in distrust.
“You must go away, Amanda, because it is no longer safe for you here. You are becoming involved in what you do not understand.”
“Because I’m beginning to remember too much?”
He dismissed my words. “We have been over all that. There is nothing to remember that will serve your mother now. I have faced that fact long ago. I have tried to go along with this pretext that there is something you might remember that would exonerate your mother. I would like to believe that too, but I have had to face reality long ago. Now you must face it. So you must leave, because there may be danger for you here.”
“But if there’s nothing of importance for me to remember, how can there be danger? You contradict yourself.”
“No—danger, if there is any, lies in the present. Because of what I may do with my will. Danger because of—Doña Inés.”
“That’s nonsense. Danger from whom—Eleanor, Gavin, Clarita?”
He flushed at what he must have regarded as my impertinence in contradicting him, but he let it pass.
“You do not understand these matters. I feared I might force some risk upon you, but I did not think it would come so quickly, or be so vicious. Now you must go away.”
“Then you do think last night’s attack was meant for me, not you?”
He repeated obstinately, “You must go away.”
And, as obstinately, I resisted. “Not yet. You can put me out of your house, of course, but unless you do, I’ll stay awhile longer. You brought me here, and now you must put up with me. I think I’m coming close to something.”
“I did not know what a true Cordova I was bringing here,” he said with surprising mildness, and I had to relent and smile at him. At once he held out his hand. “That is better. A dark brow does not become you. You give me pleasure when you smile. I am reminded of the portrait of Emanuella.”
He was beguiling me, but his falcon’s look did not match his tone. I began to gather up my painting gear, preparing to leave him.
“Wait,” he said. “If you will not go away at once, then there is something you can do for me tonight.”
“If I can.” I was immediately cautious.
“Last night, while I lay trying to sleep, someone came and stood beside my bed, watching me. When I reached for the light, this person went away.”
“Clarita, perhaps?” I said. “She was concerned for you last night.”
“Clarita knows she must announce herself when she comes near me. She knows I will not be secretly watched. But then there was the attack later in the patio, when I got up, being unable to rest because of concern for my collection. There are those who plot against me, Amanda. But I cannot see the face of my enemy.”
This all seemed a little fanciful. There was no one who could get to him except the members of his household, and I could not see one of them threatening him seriously. He was quite capable of weaving fantasies in order to prevail upon my sympathy.
“What is it you want me to do?”
“I am no longer able to drive a car. I can go nowhere without being taken, so I cannot do this for myself. You will go to the store for me this evening.”
“Go to the store?” I echoed. “To CORDOVA—at night?”
He went on calmly. “In the daytime you would be seen, your action noted. Surprise is on my side. Slip out of the house quietly, so no one will know you have gone. I will order a taxi for nine o’clock. It will wait for you where our road turns into Camino del Monte Sol. I will give you a key. Two keys.”
He fumbled in the pocket of his robe and as he held out the ring I took it from him reluctantly.
“One is to the back door of the store. It will also deactivate the alarm. Let yourself in and go upstairs to the cabinet of Toledo swords. The second key will open it. There is a carved wooden box on the floor of the cabinet. Bring it to me. And tell no one.”
The keys were cold in my fingers and I did not like the feel of them. Nor did I in the least like the prospect of going into that place at night when no one was there. It was eerie enough in the daytime, and too much had happened to me.
“You are not afraid of an empty store?” he challenged me.
“Of course I am. After last night, I don’t want to go anywhere that’s empty and dark. Why don’t you send Gavin?”
“How far can I trust Gavin? How far can I trust any of those who work against me? You I can trust because you want nothing of me. You must do this for me, Amanda. And of course it will not be dark in th
e store. Certain lights are left burning all night. And no one will know you are going there.”
His strong will compelled my own, bent me to his way, as he had done before. There was no affection between us, but perhaps there was a certain respect.
“All right,” I said. “I’ll do as you wish.”
His thin lips twisted in the semblance of a smile, and once more I sensed triumph in his dominance over me.
“Gracias, querida, gracias.”
“What’s in the box you want me to bring you?” I asked.
“When you bring it here to me, perhaps I will show you. But it is a Pandora’s box and you are not to open it yourself. Promise me that.”
“I promise,” I told him, though I wondered what possible difference it would make if I knew the contents.
“Good. Then you may go about whatever you want to do with your day. I will sit here for a time where the fire can warm my bones.”
“I’m going out to the street to do some painting,” I said. “Clarita has found your old easel for me. I’ll take a sandwich and not bother anyone for lunch.”
He nodded as though his thoughts were already far away and I knew he was again deep in his own concerns and fear. But what he was afraid of I didn’t know.
The morning was bright when I let myself out through the turquoise gate and walked along the dusty edge of the road, looking at adobe walls with their hand-rounded tops, and at the low houses behind them. Hills rose close by, while farther away were the snow-peaked Sangre de Cristos, and I wondered what it was like up there in the snow, far above the pines.
There was little traffic on this blind road, and I found a sheltered place in the shadow of a poplar tree where the sun would not shine upon my canvas. There I put up my easel. I had brought several small canvas boards in my sketchbox and when I’d set one of them in place, I made a finder of my hands to separate the picture I might want from its surroundings.
A portion of winding road with an adobe wall following it, an open gateway with a low house and a poplar at its door—these seemed right for composition and reflected this part of Santa Fe. I might put a small hill into the background as well. With that feeling of anticipation mingled with uncertainty about my own ability that often came to me when I began to paint, I squeezed coils of pigment onto my rectangular palette. This would be a picture of sunlight on adobe, and that was tricky to catch. You achieved sunlight by suggesting it to the eye, not by trying to color it in as an entity in itself. This could be accomplished by the exaggeration of contrast—by using both the highest and lowest values, and touching in highlights with a judicious use of white. I liked oils for sunlight because natural light penetrated and was refracted, so that the surface had a luminous effect—as though one mixed sunlight into the oil paints themselves.
When I had sketched quickly with charcoal, I went to work, and everything but the scene before me faded away. I could forget about Gavin, and even about that moment last night when a whip had slashed across my shoulders. None of that had reality in this sunny scene, and the hours slipped past as I worked.
There was the familiar smell of turpentine and the paints themselves, all mixing with the warming scent of the sun upon adobe—like sun-baked pine needles. Yet the air was cool and comfortable. I concentrated intensely, lost in a quiet joy because I was doing what I liked best to do, and nothing else existed. The picture was coming to life on canvas, and I thought it would not be too bad. I wasn’t sure I’d caught exactly the right hues for adobe, but the effect was close. I’d been right about a touch of veridian green for the shadows of the houses. Burnt sienna seemed right for a patch of dried grass, and cadmium red, light, to touch in the poplar’s shadow at the bole of the tree.
I was so far away from everything but my canvas that I jumped when a soft voice spoke behind me.
Jarred back to reality, annoyed at being interrupted, and aware of a crick in my neck and the weight of the palette on my thumb, I looked around at Eleanor. When I’d seen her in the gallery last evening, she had been furiously angry. Yet here she stood, a slim figure in jeans and white blouse, with the medallions of a silver concho belt slung low on her hips, smiling as though there had been no flaring anger between us. I didn’t trust her, but I decided to go along with this suspiciously amiable mood and see if I could find out what lay behind it.
“How are you feeling, Amanda?” she asked.
I moved my shoulders gingerly, not wanting to remember.
“I’m all right.”
She regarded me intently. “Who do you think used that whip last night?”
“I’m not trying to guess,” I said. “Do you know?”
“Perhaps I can guess.”
“Then you’d better tell your grandfather.”
She changed the subject abruptly, studying my canvas. “I wish I could do something like that.”
“Anybody can paint,” I said, offering her the usual cliché.
“I don’t think that’s true.” Eleanor stood back to look at my picture. “Not to do it as well as you can. Or as those artists did who painted the pictures in Juan’s collection.”
I laughed as I stroked in a bit of cadmium yellow. “Don’t mention me in the same breath. I’m hardly in that class.”
“Don’t be so modest! I can’t paint, but I’ve looked at paintings all my life, thanks to Juan. I didn’t expect you to be so good.”
With my brush poised in the air, I turned to look at her in surprise. Her fair hair was caught back at the nape of her neck with a torn blue ribbon, her pale bangs were ruffled, and her face was devoid of all make-up, so that it looked guileless and surprisingly young. I had never seen her like this before, and I was instinctively on guard. When the Cordovas chose to disarm, they could be all too convincing.
“Do you care if I stay to watch?” she asked, and dropped onto a patch of dry grass by the roadside, not waiting for my assent. I turned back to my work, hoping that she’d soon grow bored and go away. But she seemed in a mood to talk, and though I didn’t encourage her, she wandered amiably into words as though we were the best of friends.
“I understand you went out to the rancho yesterday. Did Gavin tell you anything about the place?”
“A little,” I said.
“It used to belong to Juan’s father—Antonio Cordova, our great-grandfather. He should have been a Spanish don. He always claimed that Spain was the mother country, and that Seville, not Madrid, was the historical capital of the Americas. It was Seville which sent out the explorers and the missionary priests.”
For me, this was a new family name I hadn’t heard before.
“Did you know Antonio Cordova?”
“He died before I was born. But I’ve heard about him all my life. Clarita used to tell me stories of her grandfather. He was furious when his son married an Anglo woman—our grandmother Katy—and moved into Santa Fe to start a store. Clarita says Juan had to be enormously successful to prove to his father what he could do. It’s too bad that Antonio died before CORDOVA became as famous as it is today. You went through the store too yesterday, didn’t you?”
“Yes—it’s impressive.” I tried to concentrate on my painting. The scene was coming rather well, in spite of Eleanor’s interruption.
“Someday CORDOVA will belong to me,” she said and there was a hint of defiance in her words, as though she dared me to disagree.
I didn’t pick up the bait “It will be a big responsibility. It’s a good thing you have Gavin to manage it and buy for it.”
She jumped up and moved off a little way, then came back to me, kicking at the dirt with one stub-toed shoe.
“Let’s not talk about Gavin.”
I shrugged and went on with my painting.
After a moment or two she tried a different tack. “Clarita says you found that old turquoise mask out at the rancho and brought it home. Why?”
“Because I remember it. It made some connection in my mind with—with what happened.”
Excitemen
t kindled. “That’s lovely! Paul will want to hear about this. What did it make you remember?”
“Nothing. Except that I was afraid. Sylvia says when they were all children, they used to play Blind Man’s Buff with the mask at the rancho.”
“Yes. Clarita’s told me about that. One day when Kirk was wearing the mask, he caught Doro and took it off and kissed her. Clarita saw, and she was still angry when she told me the story. In those days she wanted Kirk herself, and she resented the fact that he liked Doro best. Of course she got over him later. He wasn’t the love of her life.”
“Who was?”
“Don’t you know?” she asked slyly.
I wasn’t going to play games. “Anyway, my mother ended by being in love with William Austin,” I reminded her.
“That’s not how Clarita’s story goes. She thinks that Doro was still in love with Kirk when he came back after being away for all those years.”
I said nothing more. I had no wish to argue such points with Eleanor, and I didn’t know why she was talking about any of this.
“When Gavin drove you out to the rancho did you go through Madrid?” she asked. In the local manner she put the accent on the first syllable of the town’s name.
“I don’t know. Why?”
“He may have taken you by the other road. You’d know if you went through Madrid. It’s a ghost town now, though it was once a thriving mining town. There are Cordova roots out there, and it would be a perfect place for you to paint. If you like, I’ll drive you out there sometime.”
“Thanks,” I said, and gave her a direct look. “Why are you feeling better about me today? You were pretty angry with me yesterday.”
“How suspicious you are, Amanda!” Eleanor’s violet eyes gave me a wide look of innocence that did not convince me. “We’re cousins, aren’t we? So isn’t it time we got acquainted?”
“Who do you think used that whip last night in the patio?” I returned her own question with a suddenness that made her blink.
For a moment she only stared at me. I went on. “Paul says several things were taken from the Penitente display.”
The Turquoise Mask Page 20
