Strangers (15 page)

When she opened the door, she noticed how distinctly the little watercolor painting stood out against the faded wallpaper. She supposed Allyce Dunkirk had even chosen the art in the servants’ quarters. Perhaps she’d painted it.

Faye walked toward the painting, intending to check the painter’s signature. Halfway there, she realized there was no need. The lissome woman walking in profile down a deserted beach had the same mannerisms as the wronged wife in Harriet’s photo—the downturned face, the upturned eyes that looked at the world through a heavy fringe of lashes. She even had the determined stride that seemed so incongruous in such a delicate creature.

Had Allyce intentionally painted herself? Had she walked past a mirror, time and again, just to see how she did it? Or did her brush just naturally paint a woman who moved the way Allyce thought a woman should move? Did it matter?

Just to be sure, Faye checked the signature and saw that it did indeed give the name of the lady of this grand house:

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.

On the morning after our first encounter with the French, a storm arose so great that we feared to remain on the open sea, and yet we also feared being driven ashore and wrecked. There was yet more to fear, since we could suffer an attack if the French should return with reinforcements. The decision was made to retreat to the Seloy River, below the French colony, where we would build our own fort.

Two companies of infantry were sent ashore to greet the natives living along the Seloy, and they were graciously received. The gift-giving commenced in earnest and, as a result, Father Francisco and I each found ourselves in possession of a piece of property no priest should own. My gift was a woman whose name was a mellifluous thing that sounded something like Ocilla. The Timucua had no notion of the written word, so I am forced to write her name as it sounded to me when she spoke it.

Ocilla looked some years younger than I. As I have said, I myself was but two-and-twenty. Father Francisco’s gift-woman was hardly older. I looked to the father to see how he responded to this startling event.

Father Francisco came from a family with far more wealth than mine, and he knew well how servants were to be treated. He handed his woman, Yaraha, his prayer book to hold, then looked at her no more. Anxious to behave well, I did the same.

The Indians also gave our commanders a large house belonging to a chief, which was blessed with a most felicitous location on the river’s shore. A smaller house was given to Father Francisco and me, and also to a third priest we did not know named Father Esteban, who had traveled across the ocean on one of the other ships. It was presumed that Ocilla and Yaraha and Father Esteban’s serving woman Chulufi would live there with us.

I have heard it said that Timucua women use only enough woven moss in their skirts to keep them honest. Their exposed skin and free-flowing hair would be considered an abomination in Spain, but it suits the native women in a way that I cannot explain. Their nakedness is innocent, and it did not often put me in doubt of my sacred vows. Ocilla and Chulufi and Yaraha settled comfortably into a life as our servants, and I soon considered them an ornament to my own life.

Father Francisco was accustomed to having servants to chop the wood that kept him warm and to fetch the water he drank, and he had learned from the cradle to speak in a voice that servants instinctively obeyed. On that first night, he showed Ocilla and Yaraha and Chulufi where to spread their sleeping mats, in a spot as far from our beds as possible within that small house. They slept there that night, and every night, without questioning him.

Later, Ocilla told me that she and Yaraha had discussed the odd disinterest that Father Francisco and I showed for the pleasures of female flesh. I found it noteworthy that Father Esteban was absent from their conversation. From the bruises on Chulufi’s arms and the dead calm in her eyes, I soon came to believe that our brother priest had displayed no lack of interest in the things our women discussed in our absence.

Yaraha, older and more experienced, was of the opinion that Father Francisco was simply too old for such things, but she had no explanation for my celibacy. After watching me sleep for some period of time, she declared to Ocilla that I was assuredly not too old, and she ventured an opinion that perhaps there was someone I longed for, silently, late at night. Perhaps, she suggested, it was thoughts of Father Francisco himself that disturbed my sleep. Or perhaps my unspoken desire was for Father Esteban.

Yaraha could think of no other explanation for my lack of interest in my servant Ocilla.

When Ocilla made this revelation, I laughed until my belly was sore. In all my time with Ocilla, I never convinced her that my feelings were those of a normal man, but of a man who had made a most sacred promise. Anxious to preserve my dignity when in public, she sometimes laid a soft hand on my forearm and looked into my eyes like a lover. While this may have preserved my dignity among her people, it did little for my reputation among mine.

Nevertheless, I could not bring myself to stop her from making those little ministrations. The other men in our expedition would have made their obscene presumptions in any case. I found that I preferred their ribald suggestions to the prospect of hurting gentle Ocilla.

Father and I did not display the amorous energy our serving women expected, and neither did we have the warlike energy of the two infantry captains who were given the larger house. Immediately upon receiving it, they ordered a trench and breastworks to be installed around the house.

From this distance in time, I see their sin in taking a generous gift and making it a thing of war. At the time, I congratulated the commanders on their initiative, which was significant given that their men had no tools with which to work the earth. The Captain-General, Don Pedro, congratulated them upon his return from surveying the countryside, also, and his approval was worth far more than mine.

The Captain-General’s return to the village on the banks of the Seloy was lauded with trumpets and artillery. Father Francisco took up a cross to meet him, while Father Esteban and I followed behind, singing
Te deum laudamus
. The Captain-General, followed by all in his procession, knelt and embraced the cross. A large number of Timucua imitated them, in a way that reminds me to this day of the power of a Christian’s example.

The Captain-General took formal possession of all this country on that day, and his captains swore their allegiance to him yet again. Father Francisco celebrated mass, to my knowledge the first such sacrament performed in La Florida. To his everlasting credit, Father Francisco then counseled Don Pedro to allow the troops to rest for the winter and delay his conquest of the French until the promised reinforcements arrived from Spain and Dominica.

But the Captain-General was a man who kept his own counsel, and Our Lord encouraged him in his pride by giving him success after success. Or perhaps He did not. It depends upon how you read the omens and whether you are Spanish or French. Or Timucuan. When it comes to your opinion of omens and events, much depends on whether you were born in this new world, or whether you are a stranger here.

In any case, the Captain-General shortly sent two vessels away, one to Spain and one to Havana. Neither was captured by the enemy, which was seen as a very great omen. And God soon showed his favor in a yet more dramatic way, by sending another great hurricane, one so severe that few French ships survived. Perhaps they were all destroyed. I do not know.

The great faith of our leader told him that the French were without naval defense, so he set out with an expedition of five hundred men, despite the objections of a majority of them and of Father Francisco. And of the humble priest writing this account.

Each man was supplied with a sack of bread and a supply of wine and my feeble prayers. They were guided by two Indian chiefs, who both joined our leader in his implacable hatred of the French.

Father Esteban did not object to this expedition, which seemed so foolhardy to the unbiased eye. In fact, he asked Don Pedro’s leave to join him, so that he might pray to the Lord for victory within the very sight of the infidels. The Captain-General gave his permission.

Neither Chulufi nor I were sad to see him go.

This army had hardly walked out of my sight when they were punished with the most horrible tempests I ever saw. The next day, Father Francisco’s merciful heart told him to send men with more bread and wine for our soldiers, but I had no faith that they would receive it. Father also sent his prayers for the destruction of the heretics from France.

While we waited for word, a Frenchman approached our camp, bearing a white flag. He was made a prisoner and brought for interrogation. Father Francisco asked if he were Catholic, and he proved his faith by reciting some prayers, so Father consoled him by promising that we would not hang him. He then told us that seven hundred men awaited our troops in Fort Caroline on the river Mai. One-third were Calvinists, including two Calvinist priests.

Eight or ten Spaniards who had been found among the Indians, naked and painted, were also among their number. They had been shipwrecked long before and had despaired of ever seeing their home country again.

When we heard of the number of enemy troops awaiting our men, I retreated in prayer so earnest that time did not seem to pass, until I heard the sound of bells ringing and men shouting in celebration of victory. The French fort, Fort Caroline, was ours.

Concealed by darkness and torrents of rain, our soldiers had surprised the enemy in their very beds. Some of them, quite naked, had arisen and begged for quarter, but more than one hundred and forty were killed, including a great Calvinist cosmographer and magician. Within an hour, the fort, six vessels, much weaponry, and a gratifying amount of food were all ours. But Father assured me that the most gratifying advantage of this victory was the Lord’s triumph.

He foresaw this as the means of the Holy Gospel being introduced into this country, a thing necessary to prevent the loss of many souls. He anxiously awaited the return of Father Esteban, so that he could hear more about the vanquishing of the Calvinist heretics.

I confess to you that my thoughts were not on our great victory. They were with the souls of the men killed in their beds that morning. It had been but two months since our departure from Mother Spain and I had already learned that I would be worth nothing as a soldier. Since I knew that many of those poor men were not Catholics and still I grieved their suffering and death, I presume this means that I am also worth very little as a priest.

The night after we took the French fort, I lay awake in the darkness. I looked across our comfortable house with its sturdy mud-daubed walls, and I sought the shadows where Yaraha and Ocilla and Chulufi slept. I could not make myself wish them dead merely because I had not yet succeeded in making believers out of them.

__________

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

Chapter Fifteen

Harriet sounded amazingly ordinary on the phone for someone who’d been dressed like a vampire with ample cleavage just the night before. Well, she sounded ordinary but extraordinarily enthusiastic. And Faye felt that it was extremely early in the day for enthusiasm, since she’d been up past midnight reading Father Domingo’s memoirs. Joe had been so happy about her late-night work that he’d smoked two cigarettes.

“Did you feel it last night, Faye? I know you did. I saw your face.”

“Feel what?”

“The atmosphere in the atrium last night. The unnaturally cold air. The sense of something…other. It was Allyce. You know she was there.”

“I know that the air conditioning system was running.”

It was running now. No vibration from the central air conditioning unit penetrated Dunkirk Manor’s stout construction. Or was that “air conditioning units?” Faye had no idea how many units it took to cool the monstrous house. Nevertheless, the cold air pouring out of the vent over her head was proof enough that the system was on.

“You think that was the A.C.? You are such a scientist, Faye.” Harriet didn’t sound offended by Faye’s disbelief, but she left no room for doubt as to her own opinion. “You didn’t look like a scientist last night. Your eyes were big as saucers.”

“Thank you. I
am
a scientist. And those eyes didn’t see anything that couldn’t be explained by regular old science. That wasn’t Allyce on the staircase. It was Suzanne, and there’s nothing very spooky about seeing a woman climb the stairs in her own house. You and I got creeped out because we’d just seen the photo of Allyce and Raymond and Lilibeth in that very room. The tourists hadn’t seen the old photo of the atrium and they didn’t notice anything odd at all.”

“Tourists are so…” Harriet paused to grope for the right word, which wasn’t coming, probably because she was a nice lady who depended on those tourists for a portion of her livelihood. “Well, they’re not real perceptive. Okay, they’re pretty clueless. They expect their vacation experience to be wrapped up in a neat package and tied with a bow. They expect Disney-style ghosts that look like regular people, only they’re green and grinning and see-through. Anything less than that, and your average tourist will just yawn and head for the gift shop. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. If I take my tours into a gift shop and they buy a lot, the owner will usually give me a cut. Or some free merchandise.”

“Is that how you got your fangs?”

“Absolutely. I may be a fake vampire, but I’m a very real businesswoman, and one of my businesses is publishing. I want to give you a copy of one of my books. I think you’ll enjoy it and I think you’ll be able to use it in your work.”

“Will it help me with
this
job? Because I’ve got a stack of books taller than I am that I’ve got to plow through before I write my report.”

“Sure it will. It’s got lots of pictures of Dunkirk Manor and the Dunkirks themselves, but it’s got even more pictures of Lilibeth Campbell, ’cause it’s about her. Every scrap of information, every rumor, every ugly innuendo…if the gossips of St. Augustine ever said it about Lilibeth Campbell, it’s in this book. I know, because I wrote it and published it myself. They sell it at the gift shops around town, and it earns me about enough to pay my light bills. Which actually ain’t bad for a book that has mostly local appeal.”

Faye wasn’t sure a book written to satisfy the lurid curiosity of the average tourist was going to be a good reference for her report. This was surely the reason that snobby Rosa had not brought her Harriet’s book to study, though she must have known of its existence. There was no way that Rosa would shelve it in her collection.

She searched for a polite way to decline the offer. “Lilibeth Campbell will just be a footnote to my report, if she belongs in it at all.”

“Yeah, but I’ve got pictures of the house in that book that you can’t find anywhere else. I’m local and I know everybody. People dug through their old family albums and lent me amazing stuff that they’d never show an outsider. I doubt photos exist of the servant areas of the house—who would have thought they were worth wasting film on?—but I’ve got pictures of everything else.”

Photos of the house that didn’t exist elsewhere? Now Faye wanted Harriet’s book. She wanted it badly.

“Shall I come to your house after you get off work at the library?”

“Nah. I eat supper in the old city, then go straight to my early evening ghost tour. But I keep copies in my car. I’ll just drop off a book on my lunch hour. Look for it on a table in the entry hall.”

Faye was trying to say “Okay,” but she was being drowned out by Harriet’s infectious laugh. Instead she said, “What? What did I say?”

“Nothing. I was just fixing to say you might want to grab the book sooner rather than later. Otherwise, you might have to walk through that spooky atrium after dark.”

“Very funny.”

“She was there last night, Faye. You know she was. But somehow, I don’t think Allyce would hurt a pregnant lady. I think she’d take care of you, actually. Read my book. You’ll see.”

And with an ethereal “Bye!!!” like the chime of a bell, Harriet hung up. Faye was left to wonder just how anxious she really was to walk through Dunkirk Manor alone after dark. Even for a firm-minded scientist, the atrium would be a different place after the sun left the skylights and there was no light to be had beyond the dim wall sconces that had been gaslights when Allyce Dunkirk was the woman of the house.

***

Overstreet was spending the day interviewing the ne’er-do-wells of St. Augustine, and he had expressly forbidden Faye to participate. “You’re my archaeology consultant. These guys may be deadbeats, but they’re not dead and buried, so they have nothing to do with archaeology.”

When she’d opened her mouth to argue, he’d cut her off. “Doesn’t it bother you that whenever something awful happens—a woman disappears or a man is murdered or a child is molested—the police can immediately think of a dozen ‘people of interest’ that they’d like to talk to? I’m going to talk to twelve people today for no reason except that I think they’re capable of harming Glynis or killing Lex or that I think they might know who did. That doesn’t bother you? Well, it keeps me awake at night. I do not need your help today, but thank you.”

He had, however, agreed with the notion that had struck her around midnight. Their plan for the previous day—to visit active construction sites to see if any witnesses might want to talk about any archaeological sites that were being concealed—had been poorly thought out. Those witnesses weren’t going to talk to her in front of a policeman.

He’d conceded that point, but vetoed Faye’s first idea, which had been for her to go alone. She’d vetoed his counter-suggestion for her to take Joe, because she just couldn’t spare him from the Dunkirk Manor project. The businesswoman in Faye just loved it that her new business was already having to juggle two projects.

They’d managed to agree on a third plan: Faye would take Betsy along. Both agreed that a sixty-five-year-old woman didn’t offer a huge degree of protection, but there was safety in numbers.

Safety aside, Betsy knew the archaeology of the area and she’d had dealings with most of the land developers and construction companies that they might run across. And, though sites outside the city weren’t within her purview, she had a collegial relationship with the county’s historic resource specialist and it wasn’t unusual for her to visit a site that might relate to work she was doing within the city limits.

So Faye was sitting in the passenger seat of Betsy’s city-owned vehicle, chatting with the woman who had maybe the coolest job in Florida. Maybe in the whole United States of America.

“You know, Faye, I’ve been thinking about those silver filigree rosary beads. They remind me of a doublet button I found near the Castillo. The work is far finer than any I’ve found before. Likely, it came from Europe and was worn by a very wealthy man. I think the rosary beads were just as much of a status symbol.”

Faye wondered how many places in the New World were littered with artifacts as stereotypically associated with the Renaissance as doublet buttons. It was too bad lace ruffs and farthingale petticoats didn’t last as long as metal buttons. If they did, Betsy could have probably dressed Queen Elizabeth I by now.

With Betsy’s help, they’d made short work of the property development files, selecting three construction sites to visit personally. With her local knowledge, Betsy had eliminated two other active projects out of hand, because she knew for a fact that they were being built on land that had been created in the mid-twentieth-century by dumping fill dirt into a salt marsh. Modern wetlands regulations would have never allowed that, but what’s done is done. Faye figured that this created land was as good a place for upscale condominiums as any.

“I guess Glynis’ mystery artifacts
could
have come from one of those sites,” she pointed out. “They’d have just been stirred up in the fill dirt that was hauled in from God knows where.”

“Yeah, but that would make them fairly useless in terms of figuring out how they fit into local history, which would mean Glynis’ efforts to preserve them were pointless.”

“The person who took her wouldn’t necessarily know that.”

“Yeah,” Betsy said. “Bummer.”

Faye knew Betsy was old enough to remember when “bummer” was the latest slang. The woman was still just hippyish enough to say it without sounding stupid.

Though she hated to turn her back on the sites built on fill dirt, Faye knew they needed to focus on the places most likely to yield results. “I get the impression that Glynis was savvy enough to know what makes a site significant.”

“She certainly knew enough to bring you artifacts that had the
potential
for significance, every last one of them.”

“You got that right. They’re flippin’ gorgeous.” Just thinking about those filigreed beads made Faye want to go fondle them. “So let’s assume she knew what she was doing. Let’s stick with locations where those artifacts could have come from an undisturbed site from the sixteenth century. Because finding a site like that
would
disrupt a construction project for a very long and expensive period of time. Glynis grew up with a father in the construction business. If she was concerned enough to come to me with those artifacts secretly, then she felt like she needed to hide them from someone…someone who understood how much they could cost a construction business.”

“Times are tough.” Betsy’s curls flopped, detracting from the gravity of her sage nod. “A person on the brink of bankruptcy could be a dangerous person indeed.”

Their first stop had been quick. The project was a gas station being renovated to include a drive-thru fast food joint. The existing store was to be demolished and rebuilt, but Faye and Betsy found that site work hadn’t even started yet. The entire property was covered in concrete pavement that had been there for forty years, from the looks of it. If Glynis’ artifacts had been dug up in Faye’s lifetime, it hadn’t happened on that spot.

The second stop had been equally quick. The residential development was to be a riverfront subdivision catering to the richest of the rich. Unfortunately, the file said that the developer had been scheduled to break ground on the development’s infrastructure in October 2008, the very month when the stock market took the fortunes of the richest of the rich straight into the toilet, along with the smaller bank accounts of nearly everybody else in America. Faded surveyors’ flags and occasional traces of spray paint marked the locations of the roads and sewer lines that would have served this community of mansions.

“They never even broke ground,” Betsy had said. “Somebody lost a lot of money here. A lot of somebodies—the developer, the bank, the investors…”

“They’re still losing it. Every day this property sits here unused is a day somebody’s paying interest on the money spent to buy it.”

“Yep,” Betsy agreed. “But if their bulldozers never came in here and scraped up any soil—and as far as I can see, not the first spadeful of dirt was turned over here—then Glynis’ artifacts came from somewhere else.”

“So where do we go next?”

“Right down the road, actually. It was going to be a planned community—houses, retail stores, office buildings, golf course, everything. The houses and golf course will have to wait for the economy to recover, but some of the stores and offices are still worth building. More than that—I’d guess the stores and offices probably
have
to be built.”

“Because generating a little income from them may be the only way to be able to pay the interest on the property until people can afford to buy houses again?”

“Bingo. And I think you may know the developer.”

“I only know one developer in this town. Alan Smithson.”

“Bingo,” Betsy said again.

“So where’s he building the stores and offices?”

“It’s not real far as the crow flies, but we’ll have to drive a bit. Smithson’s engineers had to get pretty darn creative to keep control of the water on these two properties. They’re flat and low and the drainage is iffy. Paving a big chunk of land will leave a lot of rainwater with no place to soak into the ground. My guess is that Smithson’s planning a retention pond or three. He’ll stick a fountain in the middle of each of them, then jack up the price of the properties on his fake lakes by calling it ‘waterfront property.’”

They drove a wide circle around a freshly dug pit, then Betsy parked her car under a shade tree. “Here’s where they’ll build the office/retail center. We haven’t come far. See? You can still see the survey flags for the residential development, on the other side of that big hole in the ground. Doesn’t look like much, does it? This particular mudhole—I mean stormwater retention pond—will be hidden behind the commercial buildings, so there’ve got no need to make it look pretty.”

And it didn’t, for now. Faye knew that plants covered disturbed land with lightning speed in sunny Florida, so this long, narrow pond—which was a nice word for ‘ditch’—would look better soon. If she were an alligator, it might look like home already.