Текст книги "The Golden City"
Автор книги: Kathleen Cheney
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Текущая страница: 4 (всего у книги 24 страниц)
CHAPTER 4
Oriana jolted awake when the milkman’s cart rattled through the alleyway. A momentary panic seized her, but she too quickly recalled why she had fallen asleep out of doors.
Lady Amaral had cast her out. When she told the woman that Isabel had been taken, Isabel’s mother claimed it was merely part of her daughter’s scheme to elope. Oriana hadn’t been able to tell her the truth; she’d barely gotten a chance to speak at all. Lady Amaral had just returned from a ball or party and was in a foul mood, so in the early hours of the morning she had the butler escort Oriana out of the house.
It had been too early and too dark to go anywhere, and Oriana had been too exhausted to search for a place to stay, in any case. After a dazed moment standing in the court behind the house, she recalled the stairwell that led to the house’s coal room. The two bags she’d left the previous evening were still there, so she’d curled up on the cold stone next to them and cried until sleep overtook her.
Oriana forced herself to sit up. The morning air was cold but bearable. Her black skirt was ripped. Her clothes were almost dry, although her shoes were still damp. Her forehead was tender, and her fingers found a small lump there. She checked her right palm, wrapped with strips torn from her apron. The narrow slash her rescuer had made when wrestling her dagger out of her hand had scabbed over, although one end began to bleed afresh when she removed her makeshift bandage.
She heard someone speaking then with the milkman up at the back door of the house—meaningless chatter, but it reminded her she wasn’t alone here. She grabbed the portmanteau she’d left there the evening before, dragged it to her side, and searched through the contents until she found another pair of mitts. Hiding her hands came first. She tugged the right one on over her scabbed palm, making sure that all of her webbing was covered.
She was donning the other when Carlos, the first footman, leaned over the rail that led down to the coal room stairs. “Miss Paredes? Are you still hiding down there?”
Oriana clutched both hands to her chest, her heart slamming against her ribs. She took a deep breath and rose unsteadily, grasping the rail with her left hand. “Yes, I’m here.”
He came a few steps down, not crowding her. “The dragon won’t be awake for hours, so Arenas won’t notice if I’m missing for a few minutes.” He held out a napkin-wrapped offering in one hand. “Were you serious about Isabel being grabbed?”
Oriana took the napkin. It held a croissant, a rare show of kindness from Carlos. She wasn’t starving yet, so she tucked it into the mouth of her portmanteau. “Thank you. Yes. I fear something terrible has happened.”
Carlos nodded. “Efisio’s driver came by here just a few minutes ago. He said he was supposed to pick up the two of you last night. They drove around and around but they never saw you.”
Of course the driver would have missed Isabel!“Has anyone told Lady Amaral that?”
“Wake the dragon?” Carlos laughed shortly. “Not after the way she treated you last night.”
It had been a terrible display of temper on Lady Amaral’s part. Oriana didn’t want to relive it again. “There was a coach at the end of the alley,” she told Carlos. “We thought it was Mr. Efisio’s. Theytook us. They drugged us and threw me into the river, but Isabel . . .” She shrugged, not wanting to lie outright.
Carlos nodded, his lips pursed. “I’ll be changing my bets, then.”
What did he mean by that? “Bets?”
“On whether they’ll get married or not,” Carlos clarified, brushing a croissant crumb off his black sleeve with white-gloved fingers.
Oriana felt a flare of anger. Carlos didn’t care about Isabel—or her. He just wanted to make certain he didn’t lose money on a bet.
“You can’t stay here,” Carlos added, glancing pointedly down at the two bags near her feet. “Arenas will find you for sure. Do you have somewhere to go?”
There were places she couldgo, but Oriana didn’t know if she’d be welcome in any of them. She could go to her master, Heriberto, but if she went to see him, he might order her back to the islands and she wouldn’t be able to pursue Isabel’s murderer. She could try one of the sereia who lived here in the Golden City, the exiles, but as they’d been banished by the very government she represented, they had no reason to help her. She doubted any of them would, not even her father. In any case, contact with the exiles was strictly forbidden by the ministry.
She raised her chin. “I’ll think of something,” she told Carlos.
He fished a slip of paper out of a pocket and passed it to her. “My grandmother’s sister rents rooms. Tell her you know me, and she’ll give you a good rate.”
The paper had an address on it, one down near the river. It wasn’t a good neighborhood, but she couldn’t afford a good neighborhood, not with what little she had stashed in her portmanteau. Oriana looked back up at Carlos. He was watching her, but had one eye on the house’s back door, she could tell. “Thank you, Carlos.”
His eyes focused on her, one corner of his lips twisting up into a smirk. “And if you can’t pay, I’m sure we can work something out.”
I should have known Carlos wasn’t acting out of kindness. A paid companion was considered abovethe household servants, but given her current circumstances, the footman might well think a dalliance with her within his reach now. She’d had some of Isabel’s suitors try their hand at seducing her before. It had been an easy matter to frown at them and shake her head, but she’d been under Isabel’s protection then. Now she had no one to guard her against unwanted advances. Still, while she might not like Carlos, she needed a place to stay, a place where they wouldn’t ask too many questions about a woman showing up in her bedraggled condition. She forced herself to smile at him. “We’ll see.”
Carlos spotted the butler come out looking for him then. He winked at her and jogged up the steps toward the back of the house, nose in the air as he went.
Oriana leaned back against the stairwell wall and covered her face with her hands. Why do things keep getting worse?
* * *
Duilio’s mother sat alone at the breakfast table. He stopped at the threshold and gazed at her, worried. She looked completely human and had human manners. She had excellent taste in clothing, always comported herself in a manner befitting a Portuguese lady, and had elegantly decorated the Ferreira home, managing to work in the occasional garish item brought back by her seafaring husband. None of the social set who knew her would have any reason to guess that she was a selkie.
At the moment, she stared toward the dining room’s west-facing window, her hands cupped in her lap. She absently rubbed the tips of her fingers with her other hand as if they ached. With her somber garb and desolate countenance, most would assume she mourned her husband’s death still. Duilio knew better.
She was pining for the sea.
He hated to see her this way. When he’d left the Golden City to travel abroad, she’d been vivacious and mischievous—a loving, attentive mother. She’d helped oversee the family’s business investments and kept firm control of the household. Now most days all she did was sit in the front parlor and gaze in the direction of the river. It seemed her spirit had slipped away from her body.
And, to some extent, that was his fault. If he’d stayed home, perhaps none of this would have come to pass. Perhaps he could have stopped . . .
His mother’s head turned as if she’d caught scent of him standing there. “Duilinho?”
He smiled. She persisted in calling him by his childhood pet name. He settled next to her at the table and covered her hand with his own. “I’m here.”
Her seal-brown eyes fixed on him, a rare moment of concentration. “Are you well?”
He must look tired after his sleepless night. Even as distracted as she was, she always worried for him. “I’m fine, Mother.”
Her eyes slipped back toward the window, and she turned that direction as if she heard the sea itself calling her.
Duilio pressed his lips together. It troubled him that she spent most of her days cooped up in the house. His father had been dead more than a year now. Duilio expected that his mother would prefer to remarry eventually. She was a lovely woman, even approaching fifty as she was. But her social reemergence must be put off until she was better.
One of the footmen brought him his regular breakfast, a large plate of eggs and chouriçoalong with a pot of coffee. Duilio waited until the man left before starting in on his food. Between bites, he told his mother of the bizarre information he’d gotten very early that morning. He wasn’t certain she was attending. Her coffee was almost untouched, and she’d eaten only half her croissant. Her preferred newspaper—the trade daily rather than the Gazette—lay unopened next to her elbow. He talked to her anyway, in the hope that she caught something of his words. He would hate for her to feel neglected.
“So I’m going to go see Joaquim,” he finished, “and ask if he can help me find her.”
His mother continued to stare at the window.
“Shall I bear your greetings, Mother?”
That caught her attention. She blinked and turned halfway toward him. “To Filho?”
Apparently she hadbeen paying attention. Just as she addressed Duilio by his childhood name, she called Joaquim so also. Joaquim Tavares and his father shared a name, so Joaquim was simply Filho—“son”—to her. He set down his napkin. “Yes, Mother.”
Joaquim and his younger brother had lost their mother at an early age and had come to live with their cousins, the Ferreira family. They had stayed for the next eight years, until their father retired from his sea travels to take up boatbuilding. The younger son, Cristiano, had joined that business, but Joaquim had chosen to make his career in the police.
Duilio might have selected that profession himself, had his own father not been set on his sons being gentlemen. He’d dutifully studied law at the university in Coimbra—an acceptable profession for a younger son—but then had proceeded to travel abroad for the next five years to work with various police agencies on the continent and in Great Britain. His father had not been pleased. But when his elder brother Alessio died, Duilio had been forced to return home to shoulder the responsibility of managing the family’s considerable investments . . . and to take care of his mother.
She brushed her hands along her skirts and picked up her newspaper, a rare show of energy. “Please tell Filho to come visit me.”
“I’ll ask him, Mother,” he promised.
“I wonder . . .” She laid down her paper and touched the smooth brown hair dressed in a simple knot at the nape of her neck.
Duilio hadn’t inherited that hair. He had his father’s, darker and with a tendency to curl. The only feature he’d inherited from his mother was her eyes. He wished he resembled her more, as Alessio had.
He waited for her to finish her sentence, but instead she stared down at her newspaper as if she had no idea what it was doing there. Sighing inwardly, Duilio rose and took his leave of her, kissing her cheek in farewell. Her maid, Felis, bustled past him, no doubt eager to get her mistress up and about her silent day. Duilio paused and watched the elderly woman fussing over his mother’s unmoving form.
His mother’s pelt was missing, stolen from the house three years before. In a feat of magic that Duilio’s intellect never could grasp, a selkie could remove his or her pelt and be left in human form. Half-human, Duilio couldn’t do that himself, but he’d seenit done many times. It still baffled him. And even in human form, that pelt remained part of the selkie, an eternal tie to the sea and her life there. Without her pelt, his mother couldn’t go back to the ocean she loved.
Duilio hadn’t been around at the time of the theft. If he had, he might have stopped it, but he’d been in London instead, studying the police force there. Alessio had written and mentioned a theft, but hadn’t told Duilio whatwas stolen, a gross oversight. He would have come back to hunt the thief himself if only he’d known. But Alessio and Father had thought they could find the thing without help. Unfortunately, that hadn’t been the case.
Then Alessio had died.
His death nearly a year and a half ago had been suspicious. He’d gotten involved in an argument over a lover and ended up dueling another gentleman in a clearing outside the city. Both parties had seen it was foolish and in the end both men deloped, firing their guns into the air. Yet somehow Alessio was shot through the heart. Duilio had talked to witnesses, and none had any idea from where that fatal shot had come. With no evidence to the contrary, the police had called it an accident.
Duilio wondered if that stray bullet was linked to Alessio’s hunt for their mother’s pelt. In his journals, Alessio had indicated he was close to a breakthrough right before his death. But he hadn’t recorded that breakthrough, whatever it was, leaving Duilio in the dark.
It turned out they actually knew who’d taken the pelt from the house: a footman hired only a month before. The man had pinched both the pelt and a strongbox from the desk in the library. When Alessio had located the footman’s apartment, the strongbox and the pelt were already gone. And they couldn’t question that false footman about it. He’d been strangled to death. That made it likely he’d merely been hiredto find the pelt and steal it. Whoever hired him had probably killed him to keep him quiet.
Duilio’s father had continued the search for the pelt, but one damp night while out hunting, Alexandre Ferreira contracted a chill that all too quickly became pneumonia. He died before Duilio could make it home from Paris. In the intervening year, Duilio had reconstructed every last step his father and brother had taken in their searches, with no more success. His gift had proven singularly unhelpful in this particular quest.
The thief hadn’t destroyed the pelt; Duilio knew that much. His mother would have died if that were the case. No, it was secreted away somewhere, an item of indescribable magic. Without it she would never be whole again. If she were to answer the call of the sea, she would be as vulnerable to the waters as any human. She fought that desire constantly.
After one rueful look at his mother, Duilio headed to the door to collect his things from the long mahogany table in the front entryway. He hadn’t found her missing pelt yet, but perhaps he could find one missing servant.
The butler, an elderly man who had served the Ferreira family his entire life, bustled up the hall in time to hand Duilio his gloves. “I’ve heard your sleep was disturbed last night, sir. I am so sorry . . .”
Duilio tugged on the kid-leather gloves and shook his head. “No need to worry, Cardenas,” he said reassuringly. “It was an important message, and I was awake anyway.”
“I’m concerned about security is all, sir.” The butler handed over Duilio’s top hat. “I don’t like strangers in my house.”
“I do understand, Cardenas. I’ll ask Erdano again not to send others from his harem here.” He hoped that would placate his ruffled butler. He didn’t want the man worrying himself into an early grave. “Is the young lady still in the house?”
Cardenas blushed. “Yes, sir. In Mr. Erdano’s room.”
Duilio managed not to grin at the man’s vexed tone. His long-suffering butler tended to consider Erdano and his women a nuisance. Their presence invariably disordered Cardenas’ well-run house– hold. “I’m certain she’ll leave soon enough.”
The butler’s spine was ramrod straight. “She’s not alone, sir.”
Ah, that explains the blush. Well, it meant João hadn’t spent the night out at the quay, but that was permissible as long as he had all the boats in sailing shape when they were needed. “Be patient, Cardenas. I believe this morning is João’s half day anyway,” Duilio lied, giving the butler an excuse not to throw out the boatman. “Now, I’m off to meet with Joaquim. I’ll likely be gone past luncheon, so don’t hold the meal for me.”
“Yes, sir,” Cardenas said with a brisk nod.
Duilio headed out the door. Once on the flagstone steps, he heard the door lock behind him. As his gift had lately been warning him of impending danger, Duilio patted the flap pocket of his frock coat to verify that his revolver was there, then tucked his newspaper under his arm.
The Ferreira house was set back from the cobbled street by a small garden, the flowers all faded so late in the year. A tall fence of wrought iron about it warded away trespassers. An unpretentious manor of dark brown stone, the house had originally been built to adorn a quinta—a vineyard. The owner moved it to the Street of Flowers nearly a century before, stone by stone, but died with no child to inherit it. It had passed to the Ferreira family then, to Duilio’s newly wealthy grandfather. Although the house had been in his family for more than sixty years, they were still considered newcomers.
The traffic on the Street of Flowers was brisk that time of morning. While the broad avenue was forbidden to wagons and commercial carters, its width invited all other manner of traffic. Pedestrians bustled past the wrought-iron fences separating the street from the houses, either heading down toward the river or up toward the palace or the government ministries centered in what had once been the Bishop’s Palace. Finely dressed gentry and government officials shared the busy street with fishermen and boatmen.
A tram ran up the center of the road, the gold-painted car rattling by all day long. The line had been electrified at the turn of the century, eliminating vast quantities of mule manure that had required collecting almost hourly. Fortunately for the sanitation workers, the horses drawing private carriages and hired cabs up and down the street ensured that they still had jobs.
Duilio walked down to his gate and let himself out, standing back as a lovely lady in a stylish peach-colored walking suit passed him. Her poodle tugged on its leash, trying to get a better sniff of him, no doubt thinking him an oddly shaped seal. Dogs always found him perplexing. The woman cast him an appraising glance, smiled coyly, and slowed her pace, her hips swaying attractively. One of the demimonde,Duilio decided, hunting for her next protector.He admired her lush figure for a moment. She was tempting, but he nodded to the woman politely and resolutely walked the other direction, up from the river.
It was a steep climb. The Golden City rose from the north bank of the Douro River near where it fed into the sea, spreading across several hills. The Street of Flowers traversed the distance from the quay up to the palace itself. While it had once been a narrow lane occupied by goldsmiths and fabric sellers, less than half a mile long, businesses and churches and homes alike had all been demolished to make room for aristocratic newcomers. The country had been embroiled in a civil war, the throne claimed by two young twin brothers—or, rather, their advisers. The Liberals in the south pushed for political reform and a break from the Church, while the Absolutists in the north preferred the status quo.
But when an earthquake destroyed much of Lisboa in 1755, the war had fizzled out. The southern prince, Manuel III, threw all his efforts and his army into helping his city recover. In the north, Prince Raimundo refused to take advantage of his twin’s distraction. Instead his councilors set up a rival capital, cutting Portugal into two princedoms rather than a single united kingdom. Prior to that time, the Golden City had been modestly known as the Port, a city of commoners, although many would argue it had belonged to the Church instead. That was easy to believe, given the number of spires that dotted the hills, the tower that marked the city’s heights, and the grand cathedral that rose above the river.
Nevertheless, the aristocrats hadcome, along with their prince, and had changed whatever suited them, for good or for ill. They had moved their houses from the farthest edges of the city, from the resort of Espinho to the south, or from the countryside. Some homes, like that of the Queirós family two doors up from Duilio’s, were newer, built in the neoclassical style, with pillars and pediments, the marble imported from far away. Others had the whitewashed walls and red tiles common to the area about the river. It made a jumble of a street, the houses unmatched save for their arrogant consumption of space.
Duilio had always felt a touch guilty about living there. He didn’t believe that having inherited his home and wealth made him any better of a person than João, the young man who watched his boats. That was one reason he’d chosen to continue his work with the police, hoping to, in effect, earn what he’d been given.
He passed several more houses before reaching the crossing of Clérigos Street and the Street of Flowers. Clérigos had less traffic, so he turned west on it and began the steep walk up to the higher levels of the city. Built on one of the highest points, the baroque bell tower of the Clérigos church had long served as a landmark for sailors, a slender beacon of ornate gray granite. The thing also made the navigation of the old city’s narrow streets easier for those on foot. Once Duilio reached the heights, he walked along, keeping one eye on the tower as he unfolded his newspaper and hunted for the social page. He brushed past other pedestrians as he did so, but not sensing any danger on the streets that morning, he didn’t worry.
The social page listed the normal comings and goings of the aristocracy—who was seen where and with whom. For those readers unfamiliar with the persons listed, the significance of the entries was limited. The news that Lady X had visited Lady Y at her home meant nothing if one didn’t know of the long-standing feud between the families. But as Duilio acted as an interpreter of these affairs for the police, it was his business to keep apprised of all the foolishness of the upper crust. He read through the first column of entries, making mental notes as to what needed further investigation. Nothing in particular jumped out at him until he reached the second column.
He stopped in the midst of the foot traffic, causing a portly gentleman in a brown tweed suit to bump into him. Duilio apologized to the equally apologetic gentleman and stepped back against the wall of the building to his right to get out of others’ way. Then he read the notice in question again.
Lady Isabel Amaral and her companion left the Golden City for Paris Thursday night via train, following the evening departure of Mr. Marianus Guimarães Efisio. Friends of Mr. Efisio expect they will be married in Paris within the week.
Duilio frowned down at the page. He should be shocked that Efisio had eloped with a woman other than his meek betrothed, Pia Sequeira. But that wasn’t what troubled him.
Miss Paredes had been in the river at midnight last night, but if he recalled correctly, that train left for Paris via Lisbon at ten in the evening. She couldn’t have been on that train.
He felt a chill, not simply because of the cold stone wall behind his back. Had his gift been wrong? For a moment Duilio stared up at the tower, realizing only then that he was in the square before the church itself, the baroque facade of the building looming almost as if in accusation.
Fortunately, the Church in Northern Portugal didn’t hold his natural talent against him. Here the prince himself employed seers, and it was common knowledge that the Jesuits had many witches within their ranks. Not so in Spain, where seers and healers and any other stripe of witch were made to disown their gifts or be imprisoned.
Duilio had more than once considered trying to disavow his gift, trying to ignore it, not using it at all. But his gift was a part of him, just as his mother’s pelt was a part of her. Now was not the time to start doubting it. He closed his eyes for a moment, arguing with that inner voice. It insisted again that Aga’s mysterious web-fingered woman washis Miss Paredes.
Opening his eyes, he glanced down at the paper clutched in one gloved hand. He read the entry again as a group of young girls walked past him, whispering among themselves. He pondered the disparity for a moment and a horrible possibility occurred to him. What if Isabel hadn’t been on that train either? He closed his eyes again and asked himself a different question: Will Isabel Amaral marry her Mr. Efisio?
His gift told him that Lady Isabel Amaral was not to marry Mr. Efisio. That she was never to marry Mr. Efisio. That she was never to marry at all. She was already dead.
Duilio opened his eyes, the sense of urgency in him rising. From the beginning there had been something wrong with those damned houses in the river—they stayed afloat long after they filled with water. There were buoyancy charms carved on each house, but after Duilio and Joaquim had begun investigating the houses, Cristiano had told them that such charms were next to useless. That revelation had led them to the disturbing conclusion that the missing servants were being sacrificedto keep the houses floating, that the taste of rot the selkies found so objectionable came from slowly decaying bodies hidden inside those houses. What if they’d been wrong?
What if a new house had been added to the artwork while he’d slept fitfully? That house might have held Lady Isabel and her companion. What if one of the two had been aliveat the time? Or both had?
He had wondered why Miss Paredes was seen out by the houses at midnight. His mind had spun out several different scenarios, most involving her people’s government investigating the artwork. Now he felt certain that wasn’t the case at all. He quickly searched the newspaper’s front page, hunting for any mention of a new house being added to The City Under the Sea,but didn’t find any. It usually took a couple of days for the news to trickle out. And if Aga had witnessed that happening last night, she hadn’t mentioned it. Perhaps she’d simply arrived too late.
Will I learn that Oriana Paredes escaped from inside one of those houses?he asked himself. The answer his mind gave him sickened him. Yes.
Jaw clenched, Duilio folded up the newspaper and tucked it under his arm. He headed on out of the square, settled in his intention to hunt down the mysterious Miss Paredes, who was noton her way to France, no matter what the paper had to say.
