by V. J. Banis
“California,” she repeated. “The treasures—the mountains and the trees and the ocean, treasures all. everywhere you look. And absolution, too. Peter, it’s a different world here. Virginia’s gone, and London too. The lives we used to live. Your brother. The quarrels and pains, they’ve been left behind in that other world. We’ve got another chance. California’s given us absolution. It was California we were searching for all the time.”
She came to him and put a hand lightly on his arm. “Peter, I know we didn’t do very well at it, but we are married. And this is a new life for us. Perhaps if we both tried.”
He shook off her hand. “I’m not Peter,” he said harshly, “I’m Friar Hidalgo, and I’m married to the Church now.”
“But what about me?”
“I came here because of you, though I didn’t know who you were. I came to chastise you and your paramour for your sinful lives. Look at you, you talk about being married to me, about wanting another chance, and here you are, another man’s mistress, living in his house, shameless.” He looked around and, spying a stole lying across a chair, he snatched it up and threw it at her. “Your breasts are half-bare, señora, cover yourself in the name of decency.”
He started from the room. “Peter!” she cried.
“Hidalgo,” he corrected her, “Friar Hidalgo. And I will be back, señora, never fear. The Church is my marriage now. I will not rest until she is yours as well.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
It was the biggest excitement the town of Monterey had had in ages. It was far more thrilling to its residents than the disappointing fight between bull and bear, which they thought it resembled. If Don Hernando could be cast in the role of the bull, for which his stubbornness, if nothing else, suited him, it was not difficult to see the wild Friar Hidalgo as a bear. But would his claws triumph over the bull’s strength?
For days the Californios could talk of nothing else but the discovery that Friar Hidalgo—here, it was agreed, for the sole purpose of chastising the Don and his mistress—was none other than the long-lost husband of the lovely Clara herself.
What a juicy scandal! The Don’s wife, Doña María, drinking wine in the unbroken privacy of her bedroom; the mad friar, a modern-day John the Baptist who even went so far as to hold a baptismal service at the beach; the handsome new governor, an austere Old World aristocrat of the sort rarely encountered in raw California; and the aloof, though admittedly lovely Claire herself. Clara, as they invariably called her, turning her name Spanish. While the women laughed and chattered in the cool shade of their parlors, the men gathered in knots along the town’s streets and in the cantinas to pursue the same subject.
In the days since her meeting with Peter—she could not bring herself to call him Friar Hidalgo—Claire had become nearly as much a recluse as Doña María, rarely venturing outside her house. She discouraged all those visitors who came to call, thinking to pick up fresh tidbits to add to the stew of gossip. Only Don Hernando, who after all had provided her the house in the first place, was permitted inside. Even he found the reception a cool one.
“You must see how this changes everything,” Claire pointed out.
“My darling, I know what a shock this has been to you,” Don Hernando said, coming to her and attempting to put his arms about her.
Claire turned from him, shunning his embrace. “It’s different now,” she said. “My husband....” She let her voice trail off lamely.
“That madman? You’re no more married now than you were a day ago, a week before that. Less, maybe. At least in your memory he was a real husband, not a Biblical patriarch. And what of my wife?”
“I’ve been thinking of her, a great deal, in fact,” Claire said. “Which we ought to have been doing before this.”
“You’re letting his filthy accusations taint your thinking, Claire.”
“Please, Don Hernando.” Claire pressed her hands to her throbbing temples. “I must have time to think. I don’t know what to do.”
“Well, I do,” Don Hernando said angrily. “I’ll have that scoundrel whipped in the streets for the things he said. I’m governor here. Mission or no mission, he’s got no right to insult decent people.”
Claire gave a mirthless laugh. “I’m afraid our ‘decency’ is rather in dispute at the moment, wouldn’t you say? And anyway, you can hardly have the husband of your mistress whipped in the streets. That would really give the good señoras plenty to talk about.”
“Damn them all.” Don Hernando poured himself a drink and downed it quickly. “Has he come back to see you?”
“He will. I know Peter. Excuse me, I mean Friar Hidalgo.”
“What if he does? What then? Will you don animal skins and join him in his search for sinners?”
Claire met his gaze thoughtfully. “I don’t know,” she said. “I just don’t know.”
Don Hernando’s heart ached as he gazed back at her. When he’d first laid eyes on her at the San Fernando mission something had happened inside him. He’d blamed it on her eyes. There was something about the way she had of looking at you; it played tricks with a man’s good sense. He’d known long before he suggested it just how his wife would react to his bringing this beautiful stranger home with him, but he had been unable to help himself. Nor had he planned on making her his mistress. Even when he had finally suggested that to her, he hadn’t dared to dream that she would agree. Indeed, he would have been content to have her about, to be able to see her when he wished, to know that she was happy.
For perhaps the first time in his aristocratic, well-organized life, Don Hernando was in love. He was not a man accustomed to displaying his emotions. Since his earliest childhood he had been trained to keep them locked securely within himself. No enemy had ever seen his fear. He was known to have a temper, but the full depth of his anger had yet to be measured. He had married for political and social reasons and taken mistresses in answer to physical urge.
In myriad ways, significant to himself, he had attempted to demonstrate his feelings for her. He’d hired someone to protect her from unwanted advances, had given her gifts, and had even brought her with him to Monterey, despite his wife’s misery and the inevitable gossip of the local people. In every indirect way he had tried to tell her what it was impossible for him to say directly.
What was he to say now that would not add to her confusion and unhappiness? If it would have helped, he would have tried to go deep within himself, to reveal his innermost feelings to her, though it would have violated all of his experience and character. But he was wise enough to see that it was too late for such a declaration, that it could only make things worse.
He turned from her so that she could not see how difficult the suggestion was for him and asked, “Do you wish me to stay away?”
Her silence was so lengthy that he actually dared to hope she would say otherwise, but after a while she sighed and said, “It might help to still their tongues a little.”
He did not say goodbye, nor tell her that she had only to send for him if she needed him. That much at least she surely knew. He gathered his hat from the hook by the door and went out without a backward glance. A moment later she heard the sound of his horse’s hooves fading in the distance. He did not ride toward the town, she noticed, but up into the hills where he would be alone.
From outside came a puzzling murmur of voices, punctuated by a childish giggle. Claire, going to the window, saw that a group of the town’s children had gathered across the way to watch her house. She supposed that they had heard their parents hint of the dramatic events expected to occur. The children had come to be an audience.
She did not scold them, but carefully closed the shutters over the windows, plunging the interior into darkness. Then she seated herself to await the call Peter was certain to make.
* * * * * * *
But Peter did not come. The days passed slowly for Claire as she waited in the sheltered gloom of the house Don Hernando had given her. The children ceased to sit ac
ross the way, finding nothing to amuse them in a still house with closed shutters. The townspeople ceased to invent excuses to stroll by the out-of-the-way location. The hours inched more slowly than the snails that frolicked by the cistern. And still Peter stayed away.
At first she was puzzled, but as the days succeeded one another she thought she began to see the point. She knew the ways in which Peter’s mind worked, and the long hours of waiting gave her the time needed to see things from his point of view.
Peter’s return had been sufficient to put a halt, at least temporarily, to her relationship with Don Hernando. Peter was clever enough to see that the criticism of the townspeople would effectively separate them. As provincial governor, Don Hernando was not completely above censure. As for herself, it was one thing to be the wife of a man missing and presumed dead. It was another altogether to be the wife of a religious man very much on view in the community. What might have been forgivable, if maliciously noted, in one set of circumstances became quite scandalous in another.
But for Peter it would not be enough simply to interrupt her liaison with the governor. Peter’s thought processes were such that he would expect her to suffer some punishment for her misdoings. She strongly suspected that by ignoring her now he was in a way punishing her. After all, she was as effectively isolated as if she had taken the vows. Indeed more so, for at the mission she would have had the company at least of other penitents. Here she saw no one but the two Indian servants Don Hernando had hired for her, neither of whom conversed with her in more than the most essential monosyllables.
Her home had become a prison. She was guarded by her gossiping neighbors. Locked in by her own guilty conscience.
With realization came anger. Trapped in the confines of four small rooms, Claire began to pace as she had once paced the grandly elegant rooms she had occupied in Virginia. Who was Peter to manipulate her life in such a calculated manner? Granted he was her husband, but he was a husband who had abused and misused her during their time together. A husband who had married her as a result of treachery toward his own brother. A husband who had left her in a foolish quest for fortune in the west. A husband who, having reached California, had made no effort to inform her of his whereabouts or his well-being.
Indeed, in every effective way, her husband had divorced her long before she had become Don Hernando’s mistress.
From room to room and back again she went, each pace fanning the anger smoldering within her. At night she heard the sounds of merrymaking from the town. Music from fiestas and cantinas, and young people calling to one another happily. There was laughter and shouts, and the strumming of guitars.
At last she could bear her isolation no more. It was the second of October, and Doña Magdalena’s feast day. For weeks the Doña had planned a grand party to celebrate the occasion, and Claire had been invited long ago. Of course, it had been supposed that she would come in the company of Don Hernando. But the invitation had not made this mandatory, and late on the afternoon of that day, Claire decided that she would attend the party after all, but alone.
Almost the first thing she had done upon arriving in Monterey was to have several new dresses made, and now she searched through them for just the right outfit for the occasion. She had all but forgotten a gown of red satin, picked only because Don Hernando had thought the color striking on her with her golden hair and deeply tanned complexion. Now it seemed exactly right for her mood of defiance. Her jewelry was still minimal, but Don Hernando had given her a pair of gold hoop earrings, which she wore. An embroidered shawl completed the effect.
Though the rainy season had officially begun, the minimal rains that had fallen had not yet managed to turn the dirt streets into seas of mud, as she had been warned would happen soon enough. Shunning horse and buggy, Claire decided she would walk to Doña Magdalena’s house, which was near the center of town. She knew that Don Hernando would have expected her to send a message to him, letting him know her plans. He would expect to take her, but that was only certain to fan the flames of gossip, and she had decided to brazen it out on her own.
Doña Magdalena’s house being judged too small for such a crowd, the party was being held out of doors, becoming as it progressed more or less a community affair. Wooden planks had been put down for a dance floor and around these were arranged wooden benches for the ladies. A makeshift band had been assembled. Claire could hear their lively music competing with the hum of conversation and the click of heels on the planks as she strolled purposefully along the street. Balls of pitch had been set atop tall poles, providing a flickering illumination.
The party had begun before she set out, and most of the townspeople, always eager for fun, were already there. She met no one along the way and had moved through the crowd to the very edge of the dance floor before her arrival was generally noted.
She was not unaware of the stir she caused. Anger had added color to her cheeks and, while the women whispered rapidly behind their fans, a number of the local swains, seeing her without an escort, hurried over to greet her.
Claire threw herself into the festivities. Scarcely a person present had not witnessed the scene when she had recognized Friar Hidalgo as her missing husband, and those who hadn’t seen it had certainly heard every detail. But they were wrong, she thought grimly, if they supposed she would hide herself forever from observation.
Fortunately the scene was made easier by the fact that Don Hernando was nowhere to be seen. For his own reasons, and no doubt assuming she would be absent, he had chosen not to attend the party. She was grateful, as her mood of defiance did not extend to him. She had no illusions regarding their relationship. She was not in love with the governor. He had proven himself a good and reliable friend, however, and she had no wish to hurt or embarrass so fine a man.
The unattached gentlemen, seeing she was receptive to their invitations, flocked to ask her to dance. Her smile never wavering, she danced waltzes, polkas, and the Spanish fandangos, barely pausing for breath between them.
It was while she was dancing the fandango that Don Hernando, made restless by the sounds of music drifting from the party, left his house and came to make an appearance.
He stood at the edge of the wooden floor watching her and thought she had never looked more beautiful, nor more unobtainable. He understood as the others did not that her brazen manner was largely bravado. He knew that inside she was hurt and frightened, but she was too proud to display such feelings.
At last, unable to bear the ache in his heart, he stepped forward, meaning to claim her for the next dance. Before he could do so, however, he became aware of a commotion back in the crowd and he paused, craning to see what was happening.
Someone was approaching. The crowd parted to make way, and Don Hernando had a glimpse of a wild-eyed figure clad from head to foot in animal skins despite the night’s warmth.
“Harlot!”
Until she heard Peter’s cry, Claire had been completely unaware of his approach. Only a minute before she had glanced about and found herself gazing into Don Hernando’s eyes.
The music whined to a stop, the other dancers melting back from her as the friar advanced onto the dance floor. Even Claire’s partner of the moment seemed to vanish in a twinkling, and she suddenly found herself alone facing Peter.
She tried to smile, though her legs were trembling so badly she half-feared she might fall. “Peter,” she said with false cheer, “how nice to see you again.”
He ignored her efforts to remain friendly. “Whore!” he cried.
“Sir!” Don Hernando would have stepped forward, but two of his friends gently restrained him.
“Peter, I—it’s a party.” Claire spoke in a low voice, coming toward her husband. She put a placating hand upon his arm. “Let’s not spoil it by making a—”
He did not wait for her to finish, but raised his hand and struck her with such force that she was sent crashing to the wooden floor.
Don Hernando gave a cry of anger and would
have leapt upon the friar, but his friends intervened, grabbing his arms and preventing his interference.
“He’s her husband,” several of them hissed at once.
For several seconds Claire lay stunned upon the floor, her jaw aching where Peter had struck her. Shame, rage, humiliation washed over her like the waves of the nearby surf. She looked around and saw a wall of people, staring at her, some with pity, some with scorn, a few even with amusement. She saw Don Hernando, his arms pinioned, his face contorted with frustration and rage.
The silence of the crowd was eerie, so complete that the ocean sounds could be heard clearly. Not a person moved or spoke, but remained frozen as if in a tableau.
Slowly, favoring an ankle that had been twisted under her, she got to her feet. Fixing her gaze straight ahead, she limped off the floor. The crowd, still silent, parted before her like the waters before Moses’ rod. No one moved to help or impede her progress. Even Peter seemed stunned by what he had done and stepped aside to let her pass. Still walking with a painful limp, she passed through the throng and disappeared along the darkened street.
Watching her go, Don Hernando felt his face burn with shame. Even when the men holding him released his arms, he made no move to follow her. He felt as if he could never face her again.
After a long moment someone ran their fingers over the strings of a guitar, unleashing a cascade of liquid sounds. The crowd gave a great collective sigh, beginning to talk all at once.
Down the street Claire heard the grumble of their voices like the threatening growl of some dangerous beast.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
It was late when she woke the next day. She lay abed, listening without knowing just what it was she was listening for. Something was wrong, though she couldn’t quite put her finger on it.
She had it at last. There were no sounds of activity about the house. Surely by now the two Indians who acted as servants, Redwing and his wife, should be up and about their chores.
