Hers the Kingdom (34 page)

     With Ignacio's arrival, the routine of the past months was erased, the old order returned. You could feel the change. Summer was over, in spite of the heat.

     I met Willa in the hallway, alone, for the first time that day. No one was about, so I felt free to ask, "Tell me about Owen's health. What is it? What is wrong?"

     "He has had pneumonia, Dr. Hadley told me. His lungs are weakened," Willa explained, "but the doctors say that he will recover, that it is a matter of time and rest now."

     "Rest—will he?" I wanted to know.

     "Dr. Hadley says he must, that he is to stay here for six months, perhaps more."

     "No business trips, then?" I asked.

     "No riding, even, for at least two months. And yes, I believe he will, Lena. He has been shaken by this illness. He is much more, well—subdued, it seems to me. Have you noticed?"

     "Of course he is subdued, the man is ill," I answered, but gently. I think the question she asked was not the one she wanted to ask. "But you, Willa," I went on, searching her face, "will you be all right?"

     She closed her eyes and leaned against the wall, her forehead pressed into the flowered paper. "I don't know," she whispered, her lip trembling. The house seemed heavy with silence. A circle of light played on the wall, opposite an open doorway. Willa went on in a voice that was distant. "You know how people admire eagles because they have such strong wings, because they seem to be the very essence of freedom?" she asked. "In fact, eagles aren't free, not in the least. Once full grown and mated they are tied to the nest. The same nest in the same tree somewhere in the north woods. Year after year they return to the nest, and it grows larger and larger until it fills the top of the tree, until it fills the whole of their lives. The eagle pair has no choice. It is trapped by instinct.
Every year until one of them dies, the eagles must return. They are not free."

     In a very quiet voice I told her, "None of us are free, Willa. Perhaps no living creature ever is."

     "But the eagles soar," she said, her voice rising slightly, her eyes filling. "They seem so free as they rise on a thermal—they ride the wind and it must feel as if all that binds them to the earth is gone."

     "Maybe that is enough," I said, "to soar, just to have known how it is?"

     She looked at me for a long time. Finally she wiped the tears from her eyes with her fingers and, biting her lip, she said, "You wanted to know if I will be all right. The answer is yes. Yes, I will be."

     I put my arms around her and I could feel how tightly she held herself, how straight and true.

We took our supper in the front parlor, Willa, Owen, and I. The light grew dim, but none of us moved to turn on a lamp. It was better to sit there in the twilight, better not to see too sharply. We spoke in desultory tones. Owen, who took the lead in our conversations, lapsed into preoccupied silences. He may, in fact, have been dozing. I felt, for a long moment, that it might forever be dusk in our lives together.

     It was unusually warm, yet all the doors were shut on Owen's account. For that reason we did not hear the dogs announce the approaching horsemen.

     "Hallo!" a sound drifted in.

     "Whoever?" Willa asked, puzzled. "Do sit still, Owen. I'll see what it is."

     She returned with two men, strangers both. One was tall and had a nose with a high, wide hook to it. He seemed to be in charge. The other man was swarthy and stood uncomfortably just inside
the door, his hat in his hand.

     "Mr. Reade, sir, my name is Amos Proctor," the man with the hooked nose said with an official air, "I am the district agent for the Department of the Treasury." He strode across the room to shake Owen's hand. Owen did not rise, but invited the two to join us. Proctor declined for them both.

     "It is a matter of some urgency—my being here," he said, looking pointedly at Willa and me as if to indicate he had come on delicate business. Owen dismissed the idea out of hand. "You can speak before my wife and her sister," he said.

     Clearing his throat to give the business at hand weight, the agent said, "We have reliable information that there is to be an opium exchange off Point Dume tonight, a cache to be dropped from a sailing ship called the
Pequod.
We will need permission to cross your land, sir. We intend to catch whoever it is that is picking up the contraband on this side of the ocean."

     Owen frowned. "Dirty business," he said, "I hate to think of it so close to my home."

     "If you don't mind my saying so, sir, Point Dume has long been a favorite for smugglers, there's a cove . . ."

     "Paradise Cove," Owen put in, "I know it."

     "Yes, that's the one," the man continued, "it's perfect for the kind of landfall they need."

     "Of course you have my permission," Owen told him. "No question. I want to put a stop to that degrading business as much as you do. Shocking. I won't have vermin who profiteer on other men's misery on my land."

     The short man who had seemed so uncomfortable now shifted his weight, knocking against a small commode and sending bric-a-brac flying.

     "We'd best be gone," Proctor said, as if to apologize for his awkward partner, who had made no move to pick up the scattered bits of glass and porcelain, but in leaving had, even, crushed a bit of crystal under his foot.

     Owen seemed not to notice; Willa, not to care. I started to retrieve some of the small bits, but thought better of it and held myself to my seat.

     "Call them back," Owen said, suddenly.

     Proctor did not reenter, but through the door said, "Sir?"

     "I want to know if you find anyone," Owen told him.

     "Find?" Proctor asked, as if he did not quite understand.

     "If you find anyone on my ranch, I want to know."

     The Treasury agent nodded.

     "Do you think there is anything to it?" Willa asked. "It seems so farfetched—desperados here, on our ranch. At Point Dume, even."

     "It does sound like one of those Wild West stories the Eastern press so loves, doesn't it?" Owen admitted wryly.

     I thought about Win Soong, and what he had told me of the opium trade, but I said nothing. I did not want to draw attention to my acquaintance, or to his confidences.

     I left them together, Willa reading to Owen from an old issue of
Harper's
we had saved because it was about Theodore Roosevelt and his political aspirations. Scarcely a quarter of an hour had passed before I heard Willa's step in the hallway.

     I opened my door to see if she needed me.

     "No," she said, hurrying on, "Owen is asleep on the chaise. I'm getting some quilts to cover him—he sleeps so lightly, I don't want to wake him for fear he won't be able to get back to sleep."

Strange sounds moved into my sleep. I lay for a moment, trying to rise to consciousness, trying to sort them out. It was hot, close; the windows were open but no breeze stirred in the eucalyptus tree. It was the dark of early morning, a deep iron gray. Three o'clock, I guessed. Perhaps four.

     They were voices, low. A murmur, then Owen's voice.

     "Come down, everyone, come down!" he called in a voice that was not so much loud as urgent.

     I pulled on a wrapper and made my way into the hall, colliding there with the boys who had come in search of me. They clutched at me, sleepy and frightened.

     "What is it?" they said, one and then the other, "what is wrong?"

     Wrong. Something was wrong, I could feel it too.

     "I don't know," I said. "Come. Hold together. We'll be fine." The floor felt cold to my bare feet, in spite of the heat. In the dense dark of the hour before dawn, the house creaked with the uncommon movements.

     We made our way down the stair, each of us guided by the long, smooth banister, knowing that we had reached the bottom by the quick curve in the wood as it edged against the wall.

     We made our way toward a single light in the parlor. Willa was there, her hair loose and sleep-tossed. I could see that she did not know, that Owen's frenzied call had caught her, too. I could not tell if Owen was holding her to him, or if she was supporting Owen.

     The servants were silently entering the room, filling the dark spaces in the corners, away from us, isolating us. You could feel their fear. Something was terribly wrong, was the sense of it. Something was happening, or about to happen. Trinidad, breathing heavily, was moving her rosary beads in steady rhythm. I thought that Ignacio was beside her, but I could see that he was not.

     Owen held the lamp high; it threw its light on his face—the eyes deep-set in his skull, the skin taut. The boys held so tightly to me that I had to pry their fingers loose to lessen the pain.

     "All of you, follow me," Owen commanded," and led us outside onto the verandah.

     There was no moon, yet I sensed the men there, on horseback, lined to the rail, before my eyes made out their dim forms. In the quiet we could hear the quiver of a horse's breathing, a man's loose cough.

     "They've caught the smugglers," Owen announced in a high, wild voice, "I want you to see, all of you . . ."

     He walked away from us with his light so that it cast trembling shadows in the circle it illuminated. In the flickering light we saw, first, the forelegs of the horses and then, as the light carried, the faces of the riders in a row: Amos Proctor and the swarthy man. Between them, Connor McCord.

     Connor, hatless, his hands tied behind him so that his shoulders were pulled back. A trickle of blood ran from the side of his mouth, thin and neat, as if someone had drawn a perfect line.

     "No," I wailed, "you've made a terrible mistake."

     Willa gripped my arm, hard. "Connor, dear God," I said, "what has happened?"

     "There's been no mistake, ma'am," Proctor said in his official voice.

     "We caught 'em carryin' the gold," the swarthy man put in, "ain't no doubt we got the right man."

     Connor said nothing. His face had a set to it that I had never seen before, as if frozen. His eyes were locked on some middle ground, removed from us all, I would not have known him; I did not know him. I wanted him to speak, to explain, to say what had gone wrong.

     Owen walked back to us, pulling Willa to him and holding the lantern high so that only the two of them fell within the circle of light.

     "I wanted my family and all of the servants and workers on this ranch to see the thieves, the cowards, the filth who traffic in the opium trade. I want all of you to see how a man we trusted has violated that trust, has made fools of us."

     Owen spoke to Proctor. "I employed that man and it was a mistake, a terrible mistake. He used our home to pursue his vile business. The man is scum, vermin." I had never seen Owen so agitated, his voice shook with anger.

     "Who is the other thief?" Owen asked. "Does anybody know?"
For the first time I saw another of the mounted men with his hands behind his back.

     "It's Rodriguez from over Calabasas," the swarthy man said, "we know that one well enough."

     Proctor cut in. "Rodriguez will tell us all we need to know about McCord here," he said.

     "Get them off my land," Owen told them. He was leaning against the railing, holding onto it, his face contorted with anger. For a moment I feared he might tumble over the railing, but I hadn't the courage to move to help him.

     "Take them away," he said, his voice weary, his strength spent.