Sweet Boundless (28 page)

She sensed Alex Makepeace beside her and turned. In what short time he had become one of them. She smiled. “Last year I wondered if Èmie would ever marry. Now this.” She waved her arm at the joyful assembly.

“You’ve done well for her.”

“Not me,” Carina protested, seeing Èmie’s face aglow from across the room. “It is Èmie’s own nature.”

“And a little help from her friends.”

Carina started to argue, but he cut her short.

“Do you think she could have blossomed so, trapped in that hot spring cave day after day?”

It was true. Èmie no longer seemed dull and pale. Her lackluster eyes shone with mirth, and she was accomplished both in the kitchen and business. Carina smiled. Maybe she had helped her friend after all.

“I wish there were more I could do. I owe her so much.”

“For what?” Alex raised a cinnamon eyebrow.

“For befriending me when I was alone and afraid in a strange place with no money and hardly the sense of a chicken.”

He laughed. “In that case I’m deeply in your debt.”

She smiled. “Hardly. You know exactly what you’re doing. You didn’t come to Crystal expecting anything but what you found.”

He was silent a long moment, then, “I never once expected what I found.”

Their eyes met, and Carina felt a pang. It was wrong, this closeness they shared. Completely chaste, yet . . . She knew they had crossed a line somewhere. She told herself he was a friend, her husband’s partner. Yet the room was brighter for his presence. His smile eased her loneliness. She felt free to discuss anything—anything but her husband and their coming child.

What would Alex think when her belly grew? Would he know she loved her husband? A twisting confusion filled her. She did love her husband. Even in his absence, she longed for his mocking smile as she had first seen it, the strength of his arm as he’d carried her from the shaft, the swiftness of his wit as he’d heard and destroyed the rattlesnake. Most of all she longed for the gentle love they’d shared on their own wedding night. How had it all been destroyed? She dropped her gaze from Alex’s and felt, rather than heard, him sigh.

“If this freeze holds, I’d like to return to the cave. There are some tests I want to conduct.”

Carina nodded. She, too, wanted to see the cave again. Wolf’s pictures had haunted her, but this time she wanted to study them, to learn their story, to know it as she knew Rose’s. Somehow she felt it would make her understand Quillan. Reading Rose’s diary had increased her love for the man she hardly knew. Seeing Wolf’s pictures might do the same.

Carina glanced at the window. “If we start now we’ll have enough daylight.”

“Dare we sneak away?”

Her heart thumped, his choice of words causing a guilty thrill. Carina looked at Èmie engrossed in the man at her side, enclosed by friends and well-wishers. They might be missed, but not for long. Èmie’s joy would eclipse all else. Èmie’s joy, which ought to be Carina’s as well, for she truly loved her friend. Yet . . . Carina nodded, and they slipped out together.

Did she imagine Alan Tavish’s frown as Alex requested their horses? Did the bowed head hang lower, the shoulders stoop with more weight than usual? Carina shook herself. She was doing nothing wrong! She was going to her husband’s mine to understand more clearly the forces at work on the man she loved.

Carina shivered. On horseback with her mouth wrapped in a scarf against the crystalline air, Carina was chilled more quickly than she could have imagined. She thought of the blizzard that had stopped Quillan and her. What if another one came? What would Alex do? Would they be safe in the cave? At least it was shelter. But she couldn’t spend a night alone with him as she had with her husband. Blizzard or no, tongues would wag.

Yet he couldn’t be expected to go alone into the cave. What if something happened? Nor could she go without him unless she told someone else of the cave’s existence. She had meant to tell Father Antoine, but he’d been absent from Crystal these last two months. She would tell him, though, now that he was back for Èmie’s wedding. He would want to see for himself Wolf’s depictions of the story he’d shared with the priest that night on the mountain.

Yes, she would tell Father Antoine, take him there herself if he returned to town long enough. Then she wouldn’t have to go alone with Alex Makepeace. But today she rode beside the steeldust stallion, wondering what kept Alex so quiet.

Èmie’s wedding feast was the only meal she was preparing today. She’d posted as much on the door of her dining room. Her clientele would have to eat elsewhere, and that left her free to pursue this adventure. Funny how Alex had thought of it himself.

She glanced his way. His gaze was forward, but he sensed her movement, turned, and smiled. “Thank you for coming, Carina. That’s the first rule in caving. Don’t go alone.”

“Thank you for keeping this secret.”

“I wouldn’t break my word to you.” He looked away.

Again she felt a pang, aware that his feelings might be more than her own. She rocked with Daisy’s gait and wondered if she should be riding in her condition. As she had yet to mention it to anyone, she had no medical opinion to go by. Papa had not given his opinion on the subject since Mamma never rode horseback if she could help it.

Carina sighed. She had yet to write them. Oh, what a shameful daughter to keep something so important from those she loved. One letter had arrived in answer to her earliest correspondence. With the winter roads, mail service was difficult, though not impossible.

But she had yet to tell them of her marriage, much less this child she bore. If only Quillan would return and see once and for all that she wouldn’t desert him as so many others had. That must be behind his fear to get close. He’d been rejected too many times. Now he guarded himself. But she knew he could love if he once let himself.

They climbed to the Rose Legacy and dismounted. Alex had loaded his horse with ropes, balls of string, candles in their tin holders, a box of instruments, even kindling. He, too, was a resourceful and forward-thinking man. He helped her down, and she wondered for a moment if he noticed her extra bulk without the skirts to hide it.

How could he? It was hardly enough to add weight, much less substance. She was overly aware of the baby’s presence, but it wouldn’t be noticeable for some time to others. They entered the drift and Alex lit the first candle. He handed it to her. She held its dim light for him to see as he fixed the rope to the spikes and double-hitch tied it.

Alex turned. “Ready?” Once again he’d brought a harness for her, and she stepped in more confidently than she had the first time.

“I think so.” But as she surrendered the candle and he lowered her down, she heard the moaning, and again, her fear kindled. It was only wind through the mouth of Wolf’s memorial. But she imagined worse, far worse.

She descended into darkness and fixed her eyes on the faint glow about Alex above. Soon it was nothing more than her imagination as the dim candle flame was eaten by the hollow depths surrounding her.

Her feet touched ground. Heart rushing, she called, “I’m down.” The echoes surrounded her like a flood of voices, breathless and eerie. She trembled. What had she thought, returning here? She could be warm and safe at Èmie’s wedding feast. What would they all think when they noticed her gone?

Would Mae organize the cleanup? Would Lucia, Celia, and Elizabeth follow with only Mae’s direction? What had she been thinking to sneak off like this? What if something happened? Who would know to look for them here? Trembling, she waited for Alex to join her.

As soon as she heard him near, she struggled out of her harness and reached for the end of his rope. She steadied it as he descended, then stepped back for him to land. He handed her a candle and their fingers brushed. Warm, living flesh.

He lit both their candles. “I don’t suppose you came to watch me take rock samples and measurements.”

She shook her head, wondering if she dared make her way to the circular cave alone. Overhead the bats stirred. She shuddered.

“I’ll walk you through to the chamber, then return, if that’s all right?”

“Thank you.” She touched his arm, and he pressed her fingers. The contact was brief and inconsequential, but it emboldened her. Holding her candle aloft, she followed him once again toward the moaning sound that indicated the direction of the secondary chamber.

Alex stopped once to mark a channel leading off from the main chamber. He nailed the end of one ball of twine there. “I might see how far that one goes when I come back.”

Carina had no desire to see for herself how long the dark tunnel wove. She wondered again what she was even doing there in this dark, cavernous hole. But once she entered the painted chamber, she knew. She was honoring Wolf.

“Well, I guess I’ll go back?”

She smiled wanly. “I’ll be fine.”

Alex glanced once around the chamber. “Not exactly gentle viewing.”

“No.”

“Are you sure . . .”

She swallowed her uncertainty. “I want to know.”

Again he brushed her fingers where she clasped her arm with the opposite hand. His touch brought her strength and comfort.

She almost wished he wouldn’t leave, but she strengthened her smile. “I’ll be fine.”

“If you call and I don’t answer, stay where you are. Don’t try to find me. I might be down some side tunnel, and it’s terribly easy to become disoriented.”

“You might get lost?”

“I won’t get lost, but you might if you tried to find me.”

Carina wondered once again what she was doing beneath the earth and how it would be to stumble about in the dark, lost in an endless maze of tunnels. “I’ll stay here or in the main chamber.”

“Are you warm enough?”

She realized she was. The temperature in the cave was higher than the outside air. The ground must form a barrier to prevent extreme temperatures in either direction. Though cold, the air had none of the wind’s bite. Bundled in layers of warm miner’s attire, she should be comfortable enough. “Yes.”

“Then I’ll leave you.” He still looked uncertain, but he went.

Carina brought her gaze to the first mural, which she had identified as the scene of which Father Antoine had spoken. The massacre of Wolf’s parents, friends, and baby sister. The picture was brutal in its accuracy. Carina could look at it only a moment. Could Wolf have recalled it so vividly, or did he paint what he thought must have been?

No, she remembered Father Antoine saying the memory was vivid for the man, though he’d been only five years old at the time. His memory must be extraordinary, but then, to see your mother . . . She couldn’t look at it any longer.

The next picture showed a boy standing alone in a circle of cone-shaped tents. At each tent stood a man painted red with a feathered headband. At some stood a woman also, and at several, more than one woman. The boy was painted with the same ochre-colored paint as the first massacred victims. Beside him, the pale wolf.

She moved her eyes to the next scene. The boy was on his knees, and it seemed those around him beat him with sticks. The next showed him tied to a post by his wrists while boys on horseback whipped him with ropes. Over both of these, the wolf hovered, almost a cloud, though its shape was discernible.

The next showed the ochre figure as a man standing in the river with a spear. On the end of the spear was a great gray fish. The wolf pranced. The next was a scene of the hunt. A brown stag, bloodied but twice the size of a man, stood in a circle of warriors, and though the ochre man was among them, he carried no spear. Had he not been allowed the glory of the kill?

She looked but saw no wolf in that picture until, studying it closely, she noted the ochre man’s head was wolf shaped and pale. Somehow that image chilled her. Was he becoming the wolf they’d named him? The one who howled in tortured dismay when his son was born?

Carina felt a chill across the back of her neck and spun. Her candle sputtered and almost extinguished, but it revealed nothing at all behind her. Just a movement of air. Her throat tightened painfully. Her heart hammered her chest, but she was alone. There was nothing in the chamber.

Signore, give me strength
. She turned back to the wall and saw Wolf astride a paint pony, his own head decked with a single feather. At his side, the wolf. They were on the edge of a cliff, and a great vista had been painted around them. The cactus all waved and pointed toward the sun, which was rising or setting on the horizon, and above the saffron sun, an eagle spread its wings. Its shadow reached Wolf on the cliff, the wingtips just touching his forehead.

Carina reached out with one finger and touched the spot where they met. The stone was smooth and dry, probably because of the air hole above. Had Wolf known his pictures would be preserved? But what was their significance? What was the eagle, and why did it touch Wolf now?

The next was a war scene, and the two beyond. In his ochre paint, Wolf did not participate in the bloody acts shown too clearly for Carina to bear. He and the wolf were shown apart, unarmed, heads hanging as though shamed or despairing. Did he choose not to make war, or was he forbidden it? She recalled Father Antoine’s words.
“He was the most humane man I’ve ever met. It wasn’t in him
to kill.”

Not to war for his people must have cost him greatly in respect and esteem. Or did they refuse him the honor, sensing what Father Antoine had said, a humane spirit that set him apart? She passed the battle scenes and saw now a painting of a maiden. She was naked and broad. Only the wolf stood beside her, no ochre-colored man. Had Wolf believed that only his Indian side could join with a woman of the people?

The next picture showed the maiden on a high platform in the trees. Other platforms were around hers, but each held a skeleton. She had died, then. The ochre man knelt below her platform. The wolf again hovered above like a cloud. If only Carina knew what it all meant.

Now there was a mountain, and on its side, the man and wolf together. The man had his arms upraised and she saw, very small above him, the eagle. One feather drifted down and she wondered if Wolf would catch it in his open hands.