Lily took Alo’s arm and guided him to stand in front of the fireplace. “Alo has agreed to tell us the legend of the miraculous staircase we saw this afternoon. It seems a fitting thing to do since it’s Christmas and the legend involves Joseph.”
The fire backlit Alo’s chiseled, leathery face and his shiny black hair worn in a ponytail. There were still a few of his ancestral ways that Alo refused to relinquish. His hair was one and his hunting bow the other.
“My friends,” he began, “you have seen the Loretto Chapel today. No doubt you enjoyed the building itself, designed and built by the famous French architect Antoine Mouly and his son. He was also the architect and builder for the St. Francis Cathedral, which took over ten years to build.
“It is said the Sisters of Loretto who ran the school wanted a small chapel and appealed to the bishop when Mouly was nearing the completion of the cathedral. The bishop agreed to allow Mouly and his son to design their chapel in the style of the bishop’s favorite small chapel in Paris. History tells us the sisters raised what monies they could and gave their inheritances to raise the thirty thousand dollars to build the chapel.
“If you visited the other chapels in the area, you would see they are built of adobe, but not the Loretto. It is built of stone that was quarried from around Santa Fe, and the sandstone for the walls and the volcanic stone for the ceiling had to be hauled for miles by wagon. The stained glass was made in Paris and had to sail across the Atlantic to New Orleans, where it was placed on a paddle boat to St. Louis and then brought by covered wagon over the Old Santa Fe Trail to the chapel. Quite a trip.”
Beatrice interrupted. “Amazing. I’ve made that trip across the Atlantic. But heavenly days, I’d have never made it on a paddle boat and covered wagon. And that beautiful, fragile glass.”
Alo assuaged her concern before continuing with the story. “So very true, ma’am. It took two years to build the chapel, and it was completed in 1878. Well, I should say it was almost completed. There was a choir loft over twenty feet above the floor without a way to get to it. But the sisters were determined to use that choir loft. They called in other carpenters, and all agreed that the chapel was so small that a staircase would take up too much room, so a ladder was their only answer.
“But as I said, the sisters were determined, and they couldn’t see themselves climbing a ladder. So for nine days, they committed to special prayers to Saint Joseph, the patron saint of carpenters. Legend has it that on the ninth day of their prayers, a stranger on a donkey appeared at the chapel. He had a toolbox and was looking for work. Six months later, he had completed the staircase, and he left as he came, mysteriously and without pay. The sisters searched for the man. They ran an ad in the local paper. They contacted local merchants to see if they sold wood or supplies to the mysterious carpenter. No one knew who he was. The sisters considered him the answer to their prayers and concluded that he was Saint Joseph himself.”
Beatrice waved her handkerchief. “You mean Joseph came from heaven just to build the staircase?”
“That’s what the legend suggests, ma’am. Because I’m a carpenter of sorts, I can’t quite imagine building that staircase with such primitive tools of that day. I find the design ahead of its time. There is no visible means of support in the staircase. It makes two complete circles with thirty-three steps. And there are no nails; it’s entirely put together with wooden pegs. Legend says that the wood is not even native to the area, which adds to the mystery. I’m happy you were able to visit the chapel and see the staircase, especially during Christmas, the season of miracles.”
Alo nodded to Lily, and Lily thanked him. “Alo, your father must have been a Hopi chief, and you got your storytelling talent from him.”
He acknowledged her and stepped aside to stand by the window.
As if on cue, Lita and the two young girls entered the gathering room with trays of eggnog and butter cookies. When everyone had a cup, Lily thanked them and turned to Greg. “So, Greg, is it a miracle or not?”
“Well, Lily, since you didn’t start with an easy question, maybe I should at least have a taste of this famous eggnog before I give my answer.”
“When you’re ready, Professor, your students will be ready to listen.” Lily took the last cup on Lita’s tray and sat down next to Beatrice.
Beatrice took a taste and stood straight up. “Why are you giving me a cup of whipped cream? Or is it ice cream? I don’t know what this is. I thought I was getting eggnog.”
Lily pulled on the back of Beatrice’s pants leg. “Sit down, Bea. This is eggnog. It’s the absolute most delicious eggnog you’ve ever tasted. None of the store-bought-carton stuff for you. You are so special, dear. Silas made this just for you.” She looked at Silas. “Tell her, Silas, how you make it.”
“Well, this recipe was one my grandmother used, and we only make eggnog at Christmas. Maybe that’s another reason it’s so special. We have to wait a whole year for it.”
Silas described beating the egg yolks with sugar until creamy and then slowly adding the whiskey—or the nog, as he liked to call it. He explained how the alcohol made the raw egg safely edible. The egg whites were beaten separately with sugar and folded into the egg yolks. Then heavy cream was whipped with powdered sugar and a dash of vanilla and gently folded into the mixture. “After all that’s done, into the freezer it goes for about half an hour. And now you have the Thornhill Christmas Eggnog, sprinkled with freshly ground nutmeg, of course.”
Beatrice waved her spoon. “Heavenly days, this stuff was beaten and whipped and then frozen. I’d say that’s horrible treatment, but it’s delicious. But tell me again why we’re having Christmas eggnog when it’s not Christmas and we don’t even have a Christmas tree.”
Lily spoke quietly to Beatrice.
Greg finished the last spoonful of eggnog. “No question, the best eggnog I’ve ever tasted, Silas, and certainly the only eggnog I’ve ever eaten with a spoon. Thank you for sharing your home and your family recipe with us.” He paused. “So, let’s talk about the Miraculous Staircase. Was it a miracle? The answer, simply put, is I don’t know.”
A collective “What?” reverberated around the room.
“I know, you think we theologians have all the answers. And we do have answers to the most important questions. But we don’t have them all. And frankly, some of those answers rely on an acceptance of the mystery of God. Maybe a good place to begin is to tell you how I define miracle. Regardless of your faith background, I think we can accept that a miracle is some incomprehensible event that can only be attributed to God himself. It’s when he steps in and breaks the laws of nature that he designed and performs some action that is totally unexplainable outside of his doing. Can we all agree on that?”
They nodded without question.
“So, is the staircase a miracle? I’m not absolutely sure. I wasn’t there, but it appears that this information we have comes from reliable sources. I believe that God answers the prayers of his people, and the sisters prayed. I believe that God can do whatever he chooses, and if he chose to answer their prayers by sending a carpenter who was Saint Joseph himself, or a Hopi Indian, then God could have done it. Interesting though that the design was ahead of its time and that the carpenter appeared and disappeared so mysteriously.”
There was a warm quiet that settled upon the room. Greg continued. “This is the season of miracles, is it not? So I choose to think that God intervened and answered the prayers of the Sisters of Loretto and gave them a miracle.”
“Me too,” echoed through the room.
Maude glanced over at Alo, looking out the window, the moon lending just enough light to see. From where she was seated, Maude could see too—the wind gusting and the snow blowing sideways.
Alo’s worried. Temperature must be in the teens by now. The next miracle might be getting these travelers on the road in the morning. Nothing we can do, though. No use worrying Lily or our guests tonight.
Thursday, December 22
Maude rolled over to see the time. Almost five o’clock. The shadows through the window told her only that there were strong winds.
Wind’s blowing from the northeast. Cold. Wonder if we got a dump of snow last night. I should get up and pack. The weather could affect Lily’s departure this morning. Then I’ll be rushed the rest of the day to get ready for our flight in the morning. I hate leaving everything for Lita and Alo to clean up and secure, but I may not have a choice.
She snuggled closer to Silas. “Are you awake, Silas?” She knew he was. They always woke together and lay quietly for a while.
In these early morning moments as of late, Maude had been thinking more of their younger years and the paths that had brought them to this place. She couldn’t remember a time in her life when she hadn’t loved Silas. As a ten-year-old girl growing up in West Texas, she’d been determined to marry him from the first time she saw him riding the fences on their neighboring ranch. From then on, be it school, church, the local library, riding the range, or cruising in his 1957 Chevy, they’d been inseparable—until high school graduation sent Silas to the university in Austin and exiled Maude to study art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. For her, they might as well have been on different planets. She didn’t come out of her room in Chicago for the first three days, and she cried until her eyes were nothing but slits in her puffed red cheeks.
But for the next four years in Chicago, when she wasn’t in class or studying, she visited every museum, gallery, and lecture offered. It was her way of filling up the time and holding her breath until she and Silas were together again at home during holidays and summer breaks. It was then she could finally inhale and exhale. And then they parted and the crying started all over again.
Lily used to get so frustrated with me. Maude smiled at the remembrance of her fiery friend stomping around and telling Maude to “stop being such a ninny.”
Thankfully, the crying stopped when they set off for Boston together for Silas to attend Massachusetts General as a medical student and later a resident. Their parents had given their blessings and a wedding the likes of which had never been seen under a West Texas sky.
As a young bride and art teacher in an elementary school only a few blocks from their modest apartment near the hospital in downtown Boston, Maude made Silas’s life as easy as it could be. She prepared meals at odd hours and never complained about his workload or schedule. When she found herself lonely, which was much of the time, she haunted the art museums and galleries, dreaming about having her own art studio and living in a place where the weather was warm and the sky was big and she didn’t look out on brick buildings.
After nine winters in Boston, Silas hesitated all of two seconds before accepting Dr. Aaron Thomas’s invitation to join his practice. “Maude, want to move to New Mexico? If you do, we’ll be trading in this three-room apartment for a four-room casita only blocks from the Plaza in downtown Santa Fe. That’s temporary, mind you, until you can find us a real home.”
It took Maude even less time to say goodbye to concrete buildings and city noise and pack up the evidence of their lives in Boston.
Coming to Santa Fe was like coming home.
During that first summer, there was not one art gallery or museum or mission that Maude did not find and explore from the bottom up, studying not only their treasures but their architecture. All the gallery owners on Canyon Road knew her by name. The summer evenings found her and Silas enjoying night skies in the desert and the outdoor performances of the Santa Fe Opera. Again, Maude had a way of filling up time while she held her breath. This time she was holding her breath until she found them a real home.
The summer days and nights slowly turned to autumn, and Maude sensed a need to nest. While Silas built his medical practice and relationships with the locals, Maude began to look for property. Not a flat-roofed pueblo in town, but a place out in the mountains, with a small house that would be their intimate sanctuary and her studio and the nucleus of the sprawling home she intended to build. She had seen this home in her dreams. She had lived in it in her imagination.
Her first visit to these forty-seven acres was like the first time she had seen Silas. Maude knew. She knew this cottage on this mountain was it, the perfect spot of her dreams. She called Silas immediately and described in detail the corals and blues of the horizon and the deep greens of the pines in the woods and the silver sage and the running creek and the two-bedroom cottage.
On his next day off, she brought Silas to walk through the lush forest, and to picnic at sunset, and to sit on the hood of the car in the evening to see the expansive sky. “I think we should call the place Grey Sage, and someday I’d like to add a wing facing the east for a few more bedrooms. Who wouldn’t want to wake up to the sunrise? And then I’d like a studio with massive windows facing slightly southeast, and porches—lots of porches and breezeways. We have to build for the land, Silas.”
Maude had only to describe her vision of what Grey Sage would look like in five years to convince Silas no other property would do. He could not deny her the place when she had already given it a name.
Maude thought she had always belonged to Grey Sage and to Silas.
How different this season of our lives would have been if Elan had lived.
But he hadn’t.
She spoke softly again. “Talk to me, Silas. Are you awake?
He rolled toward her. “One eye open.”
“I’m thinking we’d best get both eyes open and rise and pack. Weather may delay getting our guests off this morning, and we’re not ready for our trip. We’ll have at least an hour before I need to get to the kitchen to help Lita. I think we can get most of our packing done.”
Silas cleared his throat. “You’re right. Just seems odd to be packing shirts with palm trees on them and sandals when the wind is howling outside.” He lay quiet with his eyes closed. “If you remember, Maude, I wasn’t sure we should have Lily’s party here so near Christmas. But I must say I’ve enjoyed it.”
“Umm-huh. Me too. Rather interesting group. Of course, Lily always surrounds herself with unusual people.” She searched under the covers for Silas’s hand.
“True. I like the colonel, and I’ve enjoyed Greg and his wife. They seem like ‘salt of the earth’ kind of people. Can’t quite get the Suttons figured out yet, though. And Beatrice . . . Well, she’s entertaining.”
“I can’t decide if she’s just unaware or uninhibited.”
“She’s probably always been somewhat uninhibited, and you mix that with a touch of dementia? Makes for entertaining. Then there’s Lily. She’s just getting Lilier.”
“But, Silas. You love Lily.”
“Didn’t say I didn’t love her. Just don’t have a word for her other than ‘Lily.’”
“And a budding romance right here at Grey Sage. I’ve watched those two around here and when we’re out and about. I tell you, Silas, they’re smitten, plain smitten. Just like we were.”
Silas pulled Maude to him and kissed her cheek. “What do you mean were? I’m still smitten, aren’t you?”
She hugged him. “Up. Will you get the suitcases? I stashed them in the closet. I’ll get the packing list, and let’s get this done.”
Silas turned on the bedside lamp and got out of bed. They pulled up the covers and adjusted the pillows. “Think I’ll put on some warm clothes first.” He looked out the window on the way to the bathroom. “Might be an interesting day, Maude.”
Six thirty. Maude and Silas made their way toward the kitchen. Silas stopped in the butler’s pantry to make the coffee—his morning duty when they had guests. Alo already had fires blazing and sat warming himself in front of the fire in the keeping room.
Maude joined Lita at the kitchen island and gave her a morning hug. “We’ve been up awhile to get our packing done. Didn’t know what the day might hold.” Maude saw the oven light on. “I smell something good. What’s for breakfast?”
“Baked oatmeal with maple-
cured bacon, scrambled eggs, and almond scones. Should be hearty enough to send our travelers on their way.”
“What’s my assignment?”
“Would you fry the bacon while I make the scones?”
“Done. Let me get my apron.” Maude headed to the mudroom. “Alo, what’s the latest on the weather?”
“Not as bad as they predicted. Seems the storm is delayed.”
“That’s good news for getting our guests on their way this morning.”
“Best to get them on their way early. Storm’s coming through the mountains.” Alo stoked the fire. “Not out of the woods yet. If it blows in like I think it will, we’re in for some big changes. Just don’t know exactly when yet. Aren’t they headed to Taos?”
She tied her apron strings and opened a package of bacon. “Today in Taos, and then on to Colorado Springs tomorrow.”
“Lily may want to change her plans.”
Lita rolled out the dough for the scones. “Well, good luck on that one, Alo. You change her mind. Our job’s to get them fed so they can be on their way to somewhere.”
Maude agreed. “The inn ritual after we feed them, and then we’ll say Merry Christmas and send them on their way.”
The Unlikely Christmas Party gathered for breakfast, their luggage already lined up in the front hall according to Lily’s last-night instructions. There was no sign of Gordy yet.
After breakfast was served, Maude rose from the table. “It has been our delight to have you as our guests at Grey Sage. I hope your stay has been pleasurable enough that you will want to return. We’ve done all we could to make it that way. Unfortunately, we have no control over the weather.”
The guests chimed in their positive responses, some expressing their desire to return in the spring.
Christmas at Grey Sage Page 9
