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Authors: Laurie McBain

When the Splendor Falls

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WHEN THE SPLENDOR FALLS

 

Laurie McBain

Copyright © 1985 by Laurie McBain

Cover and internal design © 2016 by Sourcebooks, Inc.

Cover art by Aleta Rafton

Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious and are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

Published by Sourcebooks Casablanca, an imprint of Sourcebooks, Inc.

Cover art by Aleta Rafton

Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious and are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Characters

Prelude

A Land of Legend

Part One

One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven

Part Two

Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen

Part Three

Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-one
Twenty-two
Twenty-three
Twenty-four
Twenty-five

An Excerpt from
Wild Bells to the Wild Sky

One

About the Author

With love for Elizabeth, Leigh, and Will McBain, who, when very young, believed in fairy-tale castles and happily-ever-afters, may all your dreams come true

Characters

TRAVERS FAMILY OF VIRGINIA

Stuart Russell Travers, master of Travers Hill; gentleman farmer and breeder of Thoroughbreds.
Beatrice Amelia, mistress of Travers Hill; wife and mother, and one of the Leighs of South Carolina.
Stuart James, firstborn son; attended Virginia Military Institute. Married. Grows tobacco at Willow Creek Landing, a plantation on the James River south of Richmond. House and lands inherited from paternal grandmother, the former Althea Alexandra Palmer, only daughter of a Tidewater planter family.
Althea Louise, firstborn daughter; attended finishing school in Charleston. Married Nathan Braedon and lives in Richmond. One daughter, Noelle.
Guy Patrick, second son; graduated from University of Virginia. Reads law in a great-uncle’s law practice in Charlottesville.
Russell Eamon, died in infancy.
Palmer William, youngest son; attending VMI.
Coralie Elizabeth, died in infancy.
Leigh Alexandra, third daughter; attended finishing school in Charleston.
Blythe Lucinda (Lucy), youngest daughter; attending finishing school in Richmond.
Thisbe Anne, mistress of Willow Creek Landing; wife and mother, and formerly Thisbe Anne Sinclair of Philadelphia.
Stuart Leslie, only son of Stuart James and Thisbe Anne.
Cynthia Amelia, only daughter of Stuart James and Thisbe Anne.
Stephen, majordomo at Travers Hill; arrived from Charleston with his young mistress, Beatrice Amelia, when she wed Stuart Travers.
Jolie, maid, cook, and confidante to everyone at Travers Hill; married to Stephen.
Sweet John, head groom at Travers Hill and son of Stephen and Jolie.

BRAEDON FAMILY OF VIRGINIA

Noble Steward Braedon, master of Royal Bay Manor; gentleman farmer and breeder of Thoroughbreds.
Euphemia (Effie) Margaret,
née
Merton, mistress of Royal Bay Manor; wife and mother, formerly of River Oaks Farm.
Nathan Douglas, firstborn son; graduate of Princeton. Lives in Richmond, where he practices law and represents his home district in the state legislature. Married Althea Louise,
née
Travers. One daughter, Noelle.
Adam Merton, second son; expelled from VMI. Lived with relatives in South Carolina and managed to graduate from South Carolina College before leaving on an extended European tour. Part owner in a coastal shipping firm.
Julia Elayne, only daughter; attended finishing school in Charleston with best friend, Leigh Travers.

BRAEDON FAMILY OF NEW MEXICO TERRITORY

Nathaniel Reynolds Braedon, younger brother of Noble; left Virginia to make his fortune in the West. Settled in the New Mexico Territory. Married, widowed, remarried. Raises horses, cattle, and sheep at Royal Rivers, ranch where he lives with second family.
Fionnuala Elissa,
née
Darcy, first wife of Nathaniel Braedon.
Shannon Malveen, firstborn daughter of Nathaniel and Fionnuala. Kidnapped by Comanches when she was twelve years old. Shannon’s Comanche name: She-With-Eyes-Of-The-Captured-Sky.
Neil Darcy, firstborn son of Nathaniel and Fionnuala; kidnapped by Comanches when eight years of age. When fourteen, rescued by father. Sent East for schooling. Graduated from Yale, traveled in Europe. Owns land, and the original homestead of Braedon family, Riovado, northwest of Royal Rivers. Neil’s Comanche name: Sun Dagger.
Camilla Elizabeth,
née
St. Amand, second wife of Nathaniel. St. Amand family fled slave uprising on Santo Domingo and settled in Charleston.
Justin St. Amand, firstborn son of Camilla and Nathaniel; attending VMI and staying with aunt and uncle at Royal Bay.
Lys Helene, only daughter born to Camilla and Nathaniel; attended finishing school in Charleston for a year before returning to New Mexico.
Gilbert Rene, youngest son of Camilla and Nathaniel.
Serena Ofelia, wife of Neil Braedon; eldest daughter of Alfonso and Mercedes Jacobs, nearest neighbors to Royal Rivers.

Prelude

Territory of New Mexico—
Early Autumn 1859

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing…

Percy Bysshe Shelley

A Land of Legend

Close to the sun in lonely lands.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

There was a time when only
The People
roamed the enchanted lands of the setting sun. High atop mesas that rose in majestic solitude out of the dust of canyon and desert below, these children of the sun prayed to the gods. Corn ripened golden in the sun. Clouds rained shimmering silver upon the earth.

A dagger of sun striking the earth through stone slabs marked the changing of the seasons, celebrating the coming of the spring equinox and forewarning of the winter solstice. When darkness fell across the land there was no fear, for the myriad fires glowing softly in the night sky watched over the children until the morning star beckoned the sun to spread its enveloping cloak of light and warmth. The children prospered and their cities became great. They were the Makers of Magic. Their magic brought the clouds and the rains and turned the earth green.

One day the Sun Father and his sister, the Moon, frowned down upon them, and the painted maiden’s chants to the god of rain went unanswered. The golden-edged clouds were a reflection of the Sun Father’s pleasure, but now when the children cast their eyes upward, the towering clouds grew dark with the thundering wrath of the angry gods.

Ceremonial dances and sacrificial rites to the gods were held in the sacred caves. But the chanting
kachinas
, the masked spirits, could not protect them from ill fortune. The Plumed Serpent and the Corn Father, the spirits of mountain, water, and wind, and all the lesser deities remained unappeased. Soon the despairing children felt the displeasure of the Great Earth Mother. Drought and famine and death followed, and the prayers and drumbeats, the rattles and bells of the frightened shamans stilled.

There was only the lonely echoing of the wind.

Where once the favored ones grew strong and mighty, the wolf now stalked the canyons and the coyote scavenged through the abandoned villages. The eagle and the hawk soared high above the forsaken cliff dwellings.

Despoblado
. The desolate land. Unpeopled and treeless.

From the High Plains the nomadic tribes—Navajo, Apache, Ute, Comanche—raided the children of the Ancient Ones, who had scattered across the desolate lands. But the children survived. With the coming of each season they grew stronger, and gathered together along the banks of the great river that flowed from the heart of the snowcapped peaks of the north and disappeared into the wastelands to the south. The valleys were fertile and their corn grew tall and green under the warmth of the sun. They prayed to the gods and their villages prospered. The weavers and potters, the masters of silver and turquoise, the farmers and hunters, and the
kachinas
, who kept the old myths alive deep within the
kivas
, knew again the almightiness of the wise, life-giving spirit that had guided them on so long a journey.

But it was prophesied that one day bearded warriors in gilded armor and riding strange beasts that caused the earth to tremble beneath them would appear magically out of the desert to the south.
The People
would once again know despair, and conquered, their gods would be lost to them. But the legend of the conquerors, as well as the myth of the fair-haired who would come from the east with the rising of the sun, had almost been forgotten when the
conquistadores
crossed the Sierra Madre and the deserts of Chihuahua and Sonora.

The unexplored lands of the north beckoned them to greater conquest. The gold-rich kingdoms of the Incas, Mayas, and Aztecs had been conquered. Moctezuma was dead and his great island-city, Tenochtitlan, looted of its fabulous riches and heritage, was destroyed. There was a fire in the blood of these
conquistadores
—a flame kept burning bright by the ancient legends.

Quivira
, a land where golden ships with silken sails were rowed upon a great river of gold. The people ate off plates of gold and silver and were serenaded by golden bells singing in the wind.

The Seven Cities of Gold
, a kingdom where the streets were paved in gold and emeralds sparkled above every golden door. Surely this was where the “gilded man” of fable, who had thus far eluded capture, ruled as king.

El Dorado
, an Indian chieftain so wealthy that when crowned before his people, his loyal subjects anointed his skin with perfumed oils and covered him in a coat of gold dust that he washed away in a sacred lake.

BOOK: When the Splendor Falls
13.24Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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