Strangers (4 page)

“Oh, I can do the stairs,” Faye said, though her hips were arguing with her.

“Didn’t you use the elevator to get to my office, Faye?” Daniel asked. “There’s no way to get up this far without that last flight of stairs, but we added an elevator that serves the guest areas on the three main floors.”

Faye’s back was yelling at her, saying,
Idiot. You should have known a place this luxurious would have an elevator.

A tiny bit of irritation seeped into Daniel’s habitually calm voice. “This house was built with a freight elevator. A dumbwaiter, too. But the freight elevator wasn’t good enough for the government, so we installed a passenger elevator in the turret on the right side of the entrance hall. We did it right, too. We hired a historic restoration firm to design one that wouldn’t destroy the aesthetics of the house. That atrium is featured in architecture textbooks, you know.”

The restoration architect must be really good, because Faye had never even noticed the elevator. Clearly, it was damn near invisible.

Joe looked behind him, through the open door, obviously looking for the easiest way to get his elephantine wife safely downstairs. Faye could see that she had no choice but to clamber back down the attic stairs. After that, though, it couldn’t be far to the elevator.

An odd quiet hung in the air. Faye took it on herself to break the awkward silence.

“You said you had something to show me?”

Or had Daniel said he had something to
ask
her? Which was it?

Logic said that Daniel had wanted to show her something, because he could have asked her a question downstairs or outside in the rear garden. He could have asked her a question on the telephone or by email. He could have even texted her a question, now that Faye knew how to answer it. No. Daniel had asked to see her face-to-face.

Daniel eyed Joe for a second. Why did Faye have the feeling that this man didn’t want to speak in front of Joe? Joe was her business partner. If Daniel wanted to talk to Faye about curating this glorious roomful of junk, he could certainly say so in front of him.

Or maybe he had truly just wanted to show Faye something interesting, and he was finally getting around to it. Instead of speaking, Daniel took a tentative step into the midst of the junk to his right and grabbed a book off a dusty shelf, deep in the alcove formed by a dormer window.

And not just any book. It was beautifully bound in worn blindstamped calfskin that was still mostly black. Faye reached out both hands to grasp it safely, cursing the skin oils on those hands and on Daniel’s. Daniel handed it over casually, like a man with no idea what he had.

Faye hesitated to touch the pages, but they looked like very old vellum. They had been bound together in a day when books were precious and their craftsmanship reflected that value. Wishing for cotton gloves, she gently opened the volume. The ink had faded from black to brown, but the words were still clear on the old paper. The text was handwritten in Spanish.

Faye thanked God that the university had forced her to study a foreign language and that she’d chosen Spanish. And she thanked Magda, especially, for refusing to let her stop her Spanish studies after she’d met the two-year foreign language requirement imposed by the graduate school. Despite the antique script and archaic language, Faye knew that she could read the words written in this very, very old book.

The narrative began by stating that, “
The favor of the Lord shone down on the fleet of our admiral, Captain-General Pedro Menéndez de Avilés
,” and Faye lost her breath. The baby had a habit of kicking her in the diaphragm, which sometimes made breathing difficult, but this was a different kind of gasp. This was the kicked-in-the-stomach breathlessness of a history geek who recognizes a name from her textbooks.

Pedro Menéndez de Avilés was the founder of St. Augustine.

The next words were even better. If her translation was accurate—and why shouldn’t she be able to translate words so simple that a small Spanish child might use them?—then the next phrase read, “
…on that bright July day in 1565
.”

Menéndez de Avilés had sailed for the New World in July 1565. Was it remotely possible that this book had come with him and his crew?

“Would you like me to take a look at this for you?” Faye asked, though she hardly supposed Daniel could understand her, since her lips and tongue were so dry. “Is this why you brought me up here?”

Daniel drew the book back and laid it atop a cardboard box. “Not this book, especially, though I do love the look of that old leather. I was thinking it might look nice in the guest library downstairs.”

Faye groped for the right words. It was a completely awful idea to expose this priceless journal to the dirty and careless hands of bored tourists. But it was Daniel’s book.

Daniel grasped Faye’s elbow with a gentle but firm hand, guiding her toward the door where Joe stood. “I really just brought you up here to see this room. In the future, Suzanne and I might want to hire your firm to sort through this junk and tell us if there’s anything worth preserving. Right now, though, we need to focus our money on getting permission to build that swimming pool.”

They took a step away from the book. Faye was in agony.

She couldn’t possibly leave the priceless manuscript in these awful surroundings. The book had probably languished here for decades, it was true, but now she knew it was here. She couldn’t leave it for the bugs and the humidity and the dust to destroy. The sunlight streaming through the dormer window onto the leather binding made her physically ill. And that cardboard box beneath it…the acids in the cardboard would give her nightmares tonight. If anything, by moving the book onto that box, Daniel had put it in even more danger now than before.

“Daniel?”

Faye thought quickly as she spoke. If this man told her to mind her own business and get back to the work she was being paid to do, there wasn’t a thing Faye could do about it. She’d need to choose her next few words carefully, because she might not get another chance. “I’d like some time with that book tonight, after I’ve finished monitoring my field crew for the day. I think it might be significant enough to get some publicity for your business—”

Daniel perked up substantially. Faye had chosen just the right approach.

“—and I won’t charge you for my time.”

Daniel, the consummate businessman, absolutely glowed.

Faye had decided that maybe she was pretty good at fostering good client relations. All she had to do was promise to give her clients something for free. Of course, this would mean that those clients would expect her to keep right on doing that, but she’d cross that bridge when she came to it. Right now, she was just happy to
have
clients.

Surely this was a most diplomatic way to get her hands on the book. And it was a lot more ethical than sneaking back up here tonight and…um…liberating it.

Faye could see that Daniel was thinking. And while he was thinking, the sunshine was doing its damage to the front cover of a book that might be irreplaceable. And the cardboard was taking its own toll on the back cover. Faye prayed for the right answer…

…and she got it.

“Okay. Take it with you.” He grabbed the book and handed it to Faye as casually as if it were a sack of potatoes. “Just stop by my office later in the week and let me know what you find out about it.” He glanced behind him and fetched another book out of the stack. “This one looks interesting, too. Let me know if it’s worth anything.”

It was a blue cloth-bound copy of an early Nancy Drew mystery. Even given all the various editions and printings and changes in artwork, it would be far easier to establish the age and value of this book than the old leatherbound journal.

Faye accepted the second book and gave her client an ingratiating smile, as she promised to do a little more work for free. “I’ll do that.”

Picking her way through the junk on the floor, Faye let Joe lead her by the hand. With his arm around her waist, he gave her just enough support to make the trek downstairs easier.

He knew her well enough not to even try to carry the books for her.

***

Faye would have said that it was impossible for Glynis’ voice to be anything but sweet. She would have been wrong. The young woman’s sharp tone was evident and audible, even from the next room. Faye lingered in the atrium, wishing that she’d just stayed in her room with Joe, instead of venturing out to scavenge an after-dinner snack.

She was hesitant to walk into the dining room and let Glynis see that someone had overheard her argument, so she just lurked and wished she were somewhere else.

“I told you I was busy tonight! I have a board meeting.”

Glynis was angry and upset, and she was doing a good job of communicating that. If she was trying to sound forceful, though, she was missing the mark. Faye remembered that she’d been well over thirty before she’d gained the strong tone of voice that caught the attention of people who were busy dismissing her.

“And I told you that I wanted you at home.”

The voice was calm, as if to suggest that Glynis was the unreasonable one. “I just want us to have some quiet time together. A drink. A nice meal—”

“Of course, you want a nice meal, Lex…as long as I’m the one that cooked it. Make your own damn dinner. And mix your own damn martini.” Sweet little Glynis might not sound convincingly bitchy yet, but she was getting closer. “I’ll be home early. I’m always home early. What’s your problem?”

The male voice shifted into an ingratiating tone so quickly that Faye knew he was faking it. The man wasn’t just angry over Glynis’ rebellion. He was outraged.

“Sweetheart…the preservationists can get along without you just this one night. I just want to look at your pretty face over the dinner table, and I want to watch old movies while we hold hands. Like we used to do.”

Why wasn’t Faye picturing a happy couple, hand in hand? Why was she picturing a big angry man holding both Glynis’ dainty hands in one of his huge ones? What did this guy look like, anyway?

Faye edged closer to the open archway separating the atrium from the dining room. The arguing man and woman were standing on either end of a serving table. They were looking at each other, not at her, but the painting above the serving table
was
looking at her. The dark-eyed woman in the image looked just as unsettled as fair-haired Glynis sounded. Actually, she looked terrified. Faye remembered why she wasn’t such a big fan of expressionist art.

Interesting…the man wasn’t as big as he sounded. He was several inches taller than Glynis, who was not a short woman, but he had the kind of slender build that looked good in a suit. He was fair-haired, and his tanned features were cleanly sculpted. She caught only this glimpse before Glynis delivered her final word.

She said, “I’ll be home by nine. If you’d enjoy a quiet dinner together, then have it cooked when I get home.” Then she showed him the door.

Faye backed into the shadow of the staircase, so as not to detract from Glynis’ sweeping dismissal of her idiot boyfriend, but she wanted to give her a standing ovation.

***

Joe watched Faye trudge into their shabby room. She was five feet tall in her sock feet and, until eight months ago, she’d tipped the scales at a hundred pounds. Joe, on the other hand, was never allowed to forget that he was six-and-a-half feet tall, since he spent his days stooping down to hear the conversation of normal people and tiny folk like Faye.

There was a very real possibility that Joe’s baby would be just too big for Faye to carry.

They didn’t talk about it. They
couldn’t
talk about it, because that would require Faye to admit there might be something in this world that she simply couldn’t do.

It would also require her to admit that she was forty years old. Joe was only thirty-one, but he could already feel time making a difference in his strength and endurance. They were both still prodigious, but there was a difference.

When Faye was twenty-five, maybe she could have carried and delivered this baby easily. Now, he could see the toll her pregnancy was taking. She groaned when she rolled over in her sleep, because her hips pained her. She rubbed her aching back all the damn time. She wasn’t eating as well as she should. And he was frankly scared to keep shoving prenatal vitamins her way, because one day she was going to bite off the hand holding them.

He’d wanted this baby so badly, and so had she. She’d gotten pregnant as soon as they said, “I do,” because they wanted more than one kid and they thought there might just be enough time for that.

Now he was wondering. Maybe this should be it. He’d been an only child, and so had Faye. They’d both turned out okay. Yeah, he liked the idea of listening to two kids laughing and playing all over the wild island where he and Faye lived, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to take another big risk with the health of the woman he loved. If Faye came out of this pregnancy with a ruined back or wrecked hips, she’d live with the consequences for the rest of her life. And there were worse things that could happen.

He knew this, because he’d bought every pregnancy manual on the bookstore’s shelves. For a man who’d spent his first quarter-century running from books as if they were bears, Joe had found that knowledge had a pacifying effect. When he was worried about Faye, he could find a book to tell him that most women came through childbirth just fine, even women who’d waited till they were forty to find the right man and start making babies.

Unfortunately, those books also told him about women who needed Cesarean sections to birth babies who were too big. And other women who got dangerous infections afterward. And still other women whose blood pressure spiked so high that they got strokes and kidney failure and—though he told himself to stop brooding about it—sometimes they died.

He blamed himself, every time she bent over and her face twitched in pain. If something happened to Faye, Joe would always blame himself.

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.

The Captain-General, Don Pedro himself, visited our vessel as we prepared to sail from Dominica to La Florida. Having secured weapons from our stores, as well as taken two soldiers from among our number to care for the ordnance he took from us, he gave a most stirring speech.

Upon hearing of his plans to force our way past a seaport armed with two thousand Frenchmen, Father Francisco had the bravery to speak his opposition, begging the Captain-General to remember that he must give a good account to God for his care of a thousand Christian souls. It speaks well of the Captain-General’s respect for the Father that he listened to his appeal, though he did not heed it.

Our passage to La Florida was yet another succession of omens, good and foul. Near the entrance to the Bahama Channel, God hung a comet in the heavens, where it shone long enough for a penitent soul to repeat two Credos. The sailors spoke of this as a good omen, yet the next day found us utterly becalmed. Father Francisco prayed ceaselessly, and shortly after the sun passed its highest point, Our Lord sent a fresh wind and we were under full sail again.

This miracle continued, for we soon sighted land. Taking anchor, we found ourselves miraculously near the enemies we sought, without any need to thank our pilots. These benighted men had pretended that they knew our location, while claiming that we were yet one hundred leagues from La Florida. I confess that I fully believed them, up till the moment that La Florida’s coastline crested on the horizon like the monstrous whales we encountered while far at sea.

And then the evil omens resumed. For four days we remained at anchor, thwarted by contrary winds. When they abated, we had no winds at all.

As we waited, the Captain-General sent scouts ashore to seek the location of the French port, and I asked to accompany them. I confess to a burning curiosity to see this wild country and the wild people who lived there.

We first built a large fire on the shore in hopes of attracting Indians who could lead us to our destination. When no one appeared, the lead spy cried out—

“There is proof of their ignorance. They are too dimwitted to wonder who has landed on their shore!”

I wondered whether their absence might be more due to caution than ignorance, but I do not have Father Francisco’s boldness, and so I held my tongue.

The decision was made to penetrate the interior, and we arrived at the village of a tribe of Indians known as the Timucua. They received us kindly, serving us abundant food and embracing us as friends. Through sign language, they asked us for gifts in return, as I have learned is their custom, and our soldiers complied with trinkets such as beads and mirrors. In return, the natives handed our leader two pieces of gold. They were small nuggets and not of the highest quality, yet I now believe that this gift marks the natives’ true moment of ignorance.

How could they have known how much blood had been spilled—and would soon be spilled again—for this subStance that is, truth be told, not very useful. You cannot eat gold. You cannot build a house of it. You cannot clothe yourself in it. You cannot burn it for warmth. Why do we kill for it?

I am now at the end of a long life, and still I cannot answer that question.

I do admit that gold feels warm and wordlessly lovely in the hand. When we returned to the ship, the Captain-General’s eyes glittered over the glowing lumps of metal. How he gloated over the unequal exchange: our trinkets for their gold! And this is the tragedy underlying everything I have seen in this strange new world. I do not think the Timucua saw the exchange as unequal. They returned trinkets in exchange for the trinkets they were given.

How could they have known that we would destroy them in the name of this luminous and glistering plaything…gold?

__________

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