Strangers

by Mary Anna Evans

  Faye believed to the very core of her soul that she understood the tragedy of Allyce Dunkirk’s life.

  In that day and age, medical science offered little help for infertility and miscarriage, beyond encouraging a couple to keep trying. If pregnancy resulted, then rest was prescribed—sometimes even bedrest—in hopes that the woman might go to term. Sometimes it worked.

  In Allyce Dunkirk’s case, it nearly had worked, twice. But in the end, her body refused to give her the thing she wanted, the thing that nature drove her to want so desperately…a child. Instead, she’d had no one to receive that bottled-up love, no one but a philandering husband and the ragged little boy who lived down the street. Perhaps she had poured that love into her art, but she’d been trapped in a time when society didn’t want her to express herself in that way. She had lived among people who wouldn’t even look at the passion she projected on the canvas. If society had bound and gagged Allyce Dunkirk, it could not have silenced her more completely.

  Faye couldn’t look at Allyce any more. She closed the book and picked up Father Domingo’s diary instead. Perhaps the priest had been in as much pain as Allyce Dunkirk, but he seemed further away. And his tragedy wasn’t so closely linked to Faye’s own fears, as her delivery date loomed.

  She would rather touch Father Domingo’s pain, buffered through the cotton gloves she wore to protect his timeworn book, than spend another moment imagining herself in the shoes of the grieving Allyce Dunkirk.

  From the journal of Father Domingo Sanz de la Fuente

  Translated from the Spanish by

  Faye Longchamp-Mantooth, Ph.D.,

  and Magda Stockard-McKenzie, Ph.D.

  After the victory at Fort Caroline, our celebration was shadowed by the knowledge of the hundreds of French soldiers who fled into the wilderness. Our new colony, called St. Augustine because land was first sighted on the feast day of the Holy St. Augustine, was vulnerable. It could fall before the onslaught of the remaining French troops at any time.

  The Captain-General dispatched men to secure the area. After they had been gone for some days, he felt God stirring his heart in pity for his soldiers. Resolved that he should not remain in the comfort of our camp, but should join the men himself, our Captain-General and Admiral, Don Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, set out with an entourage that included Father Francisco, Father Esteban, and this humble priest.

  Marching through water that rose sometimes to our knees, we traveled three leagues along the coast in search of our comrades. The biting insects flew so thick that it was a marvel any of us retained any blood in our veins.

  When we found the war party, we learned that our enemies were encamped on the far side of a slow-flowing river. The Captain-General sent men to fetch our boats, and we arrived in time to see a great many of the enemy go down to the water to gather shellfish for food. Believing himself enlightened by the Holy Spirit, our Captain-General resolved to dress himself as a fisherman and go talk to the enemy. It could be, he reasoned, that they were without supplies, and would be glad to surrender without fighting.

  As was his way, he put his plan into execution before he had scarce finished speaking. Quickly learning that our adversaries had not had bread for more than seven days, and that the greater number of them were Calvinists, the general revealed himself and ordered them to surrender on pain of death. They proposed to surrender, provided their lives would be spared, but Don Pedro would not agree to these terms.

  After further parley, then gave their arms and flags up to the Captain-General himself and surrendered. Don Pedro then ordered the execution of every man among them, hundreds of them. Having mercy in his soul, Father Francisco begged permission to speak to the condemned men, in order to find out whether there were Christians among them who might be spared.

  My French is halting, but I can make myself understood well enough. I knew that our Captain-General was a man of quick and decisive action. There was no time to lose before blood began to flow.

  I ran from one man to the next, asking each one if he loved God and believed in the one true church. Father Esteban was always in earshot, and even in my short acquaintance with him, I had learned that I dared not speak more clearly than that. If I could have been free of his judging eyes, I would have taken each man by the shoulders and shaken him, crying, “Say it! Just say it. Say whatever will make the Captain-General spare your life.”

  But I could not. Or I did not.

  As I searched for men I could save, Father Esteban took his inquisition quickly from man to man. “Are you now or have you ever been a Calvinist? A Huguenot? A Protestant?” And one by one, the list of the condemned grew longer.

  Father Francisco identified eight Roman Catholics in their number, while I succeeded in saving but four men. Father Esteban spared no one.

  Those twelve were brought back to our camp. All the others were executed on St. Michael’s Day, September 29, 1565. The river—pure, innocent, and clear as the day God made it—ran red with blood.

  It has been fifty years since then, but that river still bears the name Matanzas, in remembrance of the terrible massacre committed that day on its shores. Perhaps it always shall. When the morning dawned on September 30, 1565, I packed up the possessions I could carry and woke Ocilla quietly, while my brother priests slept. I asked through gestures whether she would like to stay or go.

  She did not acknowledge my question as worthy of an answer, only pointing to Chulufi as her way of asking for permission to take Father Esteban’s serving woman with us. It is an everlasting shame to me that I needed a heathen woman to suggest this act of mercy.

  Yaraha would not leave Father Francisco. She remained curled on her mat, raising only a hand to bid us farewell.

  Ocilla, Chulufi, and I walked away from our encampment and disappeared into the thick jungle which Our Lord has spread over every inch of La Florida. It was a blessing for us on that day, for it covered our escape. If Father Esteban had seen us go, I believe he would have slain us on the spot in the name of the Most Holy God.

  In the intervening years, I have forgotten many things. I have nearly forgotten the sound of the native tongue in which I now write. But I have not forgotten what happened on the shores of the Matanzas River in 1565. I do not know why Our Lord brought me to this foreign land, but it was not to watch His human creations be slaughtered. I know in my soul that I was most assuredly not brought here to spread His blessing over that slaughter.

  I fear that He brought me here for no reason other than to be a witness to unprecedented destruction. I would have preferred to be His agent to stop that destruction. I would have preferred to be His face in this new world, comforting those who suffer, and perhaps I have fulfilled that role at times. But I fear that my true purpose is simply to tell the story.

  In your hands, Reader, you hold the proof that I did try to do that. There have been many failures in my life, and one grievous and damning sin, but I have tried to serve Our Lord, as I promised to do at my ordination long ago.

  My only defense when I face Our Lord’s judgment will be this: I tried.

  __________

  I, Father Domingo Sanz de la Fuente, attest that the foregoing is a statement of actual events.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  If Faye had thought that it was impossible for Suzanne to be more over-protective of her as a pregnant woman than she already was, she now stood corrected. The woman had actually asked her if she needed help getting from the dining room to the bathroom.

  Suzanne’s husband Daniel was even worse. After Faye had managed to visit the ladies’ room unaccompanied, Daniel had met her at the dining room door, fully loaded breakfast plate in hand, and herded her back to her room. He’d been pretty forceful about it, saying things like, “You shouldn’t be on your feet, not after what you went through yesterday,” and he’d waved the plate loaded with quiche and fruit compote like a matador guiding a bull with a red flag.

  She’d regretfully turned her back on the noisy dining room
, filled with happy eaters and a boisterous little girl crawling beneath the table. She’d been looking forward to a little time watching Rachel play and listening to her talk to her imaginary friend but, confronted with the opportunity to eat in her room in silence, Faye realized that her nerves might not be ready for a three-year-old’s demands on her attention.

  Maybe Daniel was right. Maybe she did need more time to recover from her adventure in the creek with Betsy.

  Faye was reminded that Daniel, like Detective Overstreet, had spent months of his life as the husband of a pregnant woman. He was completely aware that she woke up so hungry that she could be led by the nose with nothing but the aroma wafting from the plate in his hands.

  And apparently, Joe was aware of the same thing. As they passed the kitchen door, he emerged with an identical plate in his hand. The expression on his face made her laugh out loud, which was not the best response.

  Faye was impatient and frustrated, and it seemed that Joe was suffering the same symptoms, even though he’d been spared the aches and the hormonal roller-coaster. She could tell that Joe wanted to yell at Daniel for rendering his food offering to Faye useless. And she could tell that Joe knew just how stupid it would be to yell at Daniel for doing something nice.

  Since Faye was the only person involved who wasn’t carrying a dish, her hands were free. She used one of them to squeeze Joe’s forearm and say, “Thanks for fixing me a plate. Now we have two. You can eat the extra one.”

  Daniel, a model of tact, smiled as she thanked him for his help, then disappeared into the kitchen. Joe’s scowl grew a little dimmer, but not much.

  ***

  Faye was ridiculously happy to be standing in the early morning sunshine, watching her team work. Rachel was making mud pies under the shade of a hydrangea laden with blue mop-headed blooms, oblivious to the fact that her mother was watching her every move.

  Faye couldn’t blame Magda’s babysitter for quitting. There wasn’t much impetus for a young woman to stick with a low-paying job, not when someone her exact age had disappeared from her workplace.

  Rachel was exceptionally well-behaved, and Magda was a formidable multitasker. Thus, there was some possibility that this very important project could proceed on schedule, despite having a three-year-old underfoot. It didn’t hurt to have sympathetic clients. Suzanne had “given” Rachel an entire flower bed, so Magda and Faye had been presented with daisies and petunias at five-minute intervals, all morning long.

  There would be no adventures in law enforcement today, because Detective Overstreet had made it clear that Faye had served her usefulness, until and unless something archaeological reared its head.

  Half the morning had passed, and nothing particularly archaeological had even surfaced here, where a bunch of people were digging for such things. Faye had walked surreptitiously over to the garden shed and tried the door, because she was bored and because she felt compelled to check every day. It was locked and had been locked since the evening when Overstreet had gotten a search warrant, hoping to find Glynis in there.

  Faye had spent many uneventful days like this, so she’d been lulled into expecting to uncover nothing on this day, nothing but uninteresting fill dirt. It was at times like this that lightning often struck.

  “What in the hell…?” Kirk said, pulling something the size of his fist from the soil.

  Everyone gathered around to look at the elephant figurine.

  “Do you think it’s African?” Kirk asked uncertainly, like a young man offering his best guess, but who is afraid that his best guess is just stupid.

  “I do,” Faye said. “The carving is intricate and the proportions are very good. This was no cheap souvenir.”

  Magda, looking over her shoulder, nodded in agreement.

  “What’s it doing here?” Levon asked. “Was it in the fill dirt where the pool used to be?”

  “Nope,” Kirk said. “It was under one of the paving tiles. Just like the spear point and the Spanish coin.”

  “And the baby things,” Magda said.

  “Yeah,” Kirk said, still looking at the little elephant. “Do you think this stuff came to be here naturally—though I can’t really imagine how—or do you think maybe somebody buried it all on purpose. Maybe a kid?”

  Faye thought of young Victor, helping Allyce Dunkirk with her gardening. He would certainly have had access to shovels. Maybe he’d been a little bitty kleptomaniac, stealing cool stuff out of Dunkirk Manor and burying it, just for the hell of it. It would explain a lot…

  “Faye?”

  Detective Overstreet’s voice had a sheepish note to it. She looked up from the elephant in Kirk’s hands and saw Overstreet and Victor standing nearby.

  “I know I said I wouldn’t be needing your help any more—”

  “You were pretty vocal about it.”

  “Yeah. Well, I’ve got another stash of artifacts for you to look at.”

  She raised an eyebrow at him.

  “They’re at Victor’s house.”

  ***

  So Victor wasn’t homeless after all.

  Faye was relieved, up to a point. The fact remained that his house was so substandard that the old man almost might have been sleeping under the stars. She stood between Victor and Overstreet, looking over the house from threshold to rooftop and wondering how long it had been since there were panes in the windows.

  Overstreet had expressed concern over whether Faye should walk to Victor’s place, which was ridiculous. If Faye had lingered in the street in front of Dunkirk Manor, she could have seen the shabby house. She could have thrown a rock and hit it.

  Faye was astonished that she’d never noticed the little shack. Though standing on a vacant lot overrun with vines and underbrush, it was nevertheless in plain sight at the end of the short street, if you knew where to look.

  “Best I can tell,” Overstreet said, “is that this was the gatehouse when Dunkirk Manor was first built. It was probably out of use by the time Raymond and Allyce Dunkirk owned the big house. Old Mr. Dunkirk sold a lot of this property around the turn of the century, so there wouldn’t have been a gate on the street by then. The other houses on this street all stand on plots that used to belong to the Dunkirks. They probably held onto the gatehouse property a little bit longer, but Victor says he owns it now. He says he grew up in it. His parents rented it, but the Dunkirks gave it to him sometime after they died.”

  He leaned toward Faye, whispering in her ear. “He may not own it now. I can’t imagine that he’s been paying property taxes. I’ve been thinking that maybe Victor’s mental issues aren’t just due to old age. Maybe the Dunkirks gave him this place because they knew he’d never be able to take care of himself.”

  “It’s possible,” Faye said. “I got a title search on the Dunkirk property when I was doing my preliminary work. I was primarily interested in the plot where the mansion stands, but I remember seeing that big chunks of it were sold off over the years. It won’t be hard to find out if they really gave this…house…to Victor.

  “House” seemed like a strong word for the place where Victor stayed. Only a few traces of white paint remained unpeeled from its wood frame. Green vines shrouded the entire structure, and they provided enough camouflage to hide Victor’s Piggly-Wiggly basket from passers-by. There was no bathroom, no kitchen, no running water. Maybe there was, or had been, an outhouse in the overgrown area out back. There certainly had been no such thing as indoor plumbing when the gatehouse was built, not in modest little dwellings like this.

  And there was no kitchen, maybe because the gatekeeper’s family had always eaten with the servants at Dunkirk Manor. Victor had said he ate in the dining room with the Dunkirks while they lived, at least sometimes. Maybe he ate with the servants the rest of the time. She wondered if his parents had been on staff at Dunkirk Manor while they lived, meaning that Victor had eaten every meal of his life in the mansion until the Dunkirks died and left him alone.

  Faye couldn’t imagine
Allyce Dunkirk allowing “her” little boy to go hungry, or to fend for himself if she knew he wasn’t able. But the day had come when Raymond and Allyce Dunkirk weren’t able to shield Victor from the world and, for whatever reason, they hadn’t made sure that someone else was going to do it.

  Victor was beside himself with joy that he had visitors. He had danced down the street in front of them, crowing, “Come! Come in! Come see me.”

  The warped floorboards inside Victor’s front door made it impossible for the door to swing completely open or completely shut. Victor seemed to think this was great, since he told them several times that he loved to be able to come and go at will without taking the trouble to operate the door. There was one window in each wall. Upon closer inspection, Faye found that a couple of them still had some panes.

  The gatehouse stood at the end of the dead-end street, so anyone standing at the front window had a clear view of its entire length. This had made sense when the Dunkirks had employed a gatekeeper to monitor comings and goings. Now, it simply meant that Victor knew everybody’s business.

  “I saw those people yesterday closing Miss Allyce’s gate, and I runned down there to put a stop to it. I did.”

  Perhaps to prevent Victor from suffering another emotional meltdown, Overstreet changed the subject. “Show Faye the things you showed me. She likes old stuff.” Overstreet chuckled. “She likes you, Victor.”

  “’Cause I’m old stuff?”

  “You bet.”

  Victor cackled softly as he pulled several ratty cardboard boxes from beneath a dining table that was missing a leg. As best Faye could tell, he stored the boxes there because the table kept them fairly dry. Faye could see blue sky through some of the holes in Victor’s roof.

  As Victor held his treasures up for her to see, one by one, Faye could see why Overstreet had wanted her opinion. Victor had probably found most of this stuff during his daily schedule of dumpster-diving, but not all of it. Beneath a moldy stack of romance novels, Faye saw a leatherbound edition of George Eliot’s Middlemarch. In another box, there was a piece of Victorian bric-a-brac, carved in ebony, that might have been part of a music stand. There was a set of carving knives, sheathed in a red felt sleeve, with horn handles. Atop them was a pair of embroidery scissors embossed with the body of a tiny bird, the blades shaped like its dainty beak. A tarnished candlestick had the look and heft of real silver. The slick gleam of an ornate china snuffbox stood out among the dusty junk.