pretty but undistinguished shade of light brown, except where the sun had picked out streaks more golden-red than fair. Thank God the doctor had not cut it off when she was in the fever. Twenty times on the right she brushed it, then twenty times on the left, before she laid aside the brush and braided it softly into a slim plait over each shoulder. She tied the ribbons at the neck of the long, worn nightdress and looked solemnly at her reflection in the cracked glass on the wall.
Soft brown eyes gazed back at her, shadowed still by the dark circles of those last dreadful days in San Francisco. Both she and Tamsin could do with some good fresh air. Perhaps tomorrow they would walk out from town, along the river-bank. She passed a tired hand across her forehead as if to erase the frown lines there.
As she snuffed the lamp out and groped her way to the bed — not a difficult task, since the room was barely larger than the bed — she heard Tamsin murmuring to Beatrice.
‘It’ll be all right, Beatrice, you’ll see,’ she whispered. ‘We’ll find the wagon again and make all the pictures for ev’rybody and you shall sleep in your own little bunk. An’ ev’ry night we’ll find somewhere nice and green like that pretty place where Chen Kai is, and we’ll pitch camp there. And Chen Kai’ll tell us stories while we girls all cook us the food and …’
A deep sigh, then the heavy breathing told Alicia she was asleep. As she lay in the bed and let the exhaustion of her body overtake her, tears ran down her cheeks. Let Tamsin have her dreams, for children needed hope, but for herself there could be no delusion. The days when they had roamed the countryside, staying in the mining camps or the towns as the feeling took them, making a more than comfortable living from the photographs that they took of the miners or the prosperous tradesmen and their families, were gone. They had lost the wagon for good and with it had gone the only freedom she had ever known.
Chapter Five
Sleep was a long time coming that night, despite her physical exhaustion, and, lying between sleep and consciousness, she found herself thinking back to the time when Chen Kai-Tsu had come into her life.
The autumn of 1852 had been an unusually hot one. On the main street of Sonora, Mr Stiles, the proprietor of the stationery store, the miner’s ‘intelligence’ centre, was passing buckets of water up to his apprentice to line up on the flat roof of the store; the fire risk was high after such a long hot summer. As she passed on by Bertin’s Exchange and Banking House, she heard someone hailing her.
She turned, shading her eyes, and saw a German miner who’d been out at Angel’s Camp at the same time as the Langdons, when Bennager Raspberry the storekeeper had thrown out a keg of brandied peaches that had spoiled on the Cape voyage and all the pigs in Angel’s Camp had stayed squealing drunk for four days and nights.
‘You Missus Langdon, nicht ?’
‘I am,’ she replied cautiously.
‘Your man, he very sick up by Sierra City,’ said the German, spitting skilfully out into the road. ‘Pretty soon, you be vidow. Go stake your claims, before men he owes comes for his tools and his mule.’
‘You are a fool!’ Angelina told her roundly. ‘Madness to go up there. You think Lucky Langdon gonna leave you anythin’ worth risking your health for?’
‘That’s not why I’m going,’ she said quietly, packing her few belongings into a saddlebag.
‘What for then? Love?’
‘I married him for better or for worse, Angelina.’
‘And he kept his vows so well, huh?’
‘No. But —’
‘Alicia, think! Could be cholera, smallpox, spotted fever, anything.’
‘Angelina, I have to go.’
‘Then take the mule.’ The cook gave her a piercing glance out of her normally placid eyes. ‘You come back?’
‘I — I don’t know, Angelina, really I don’t. It depends on so many things …’
‘Like if he dies?’
‘I’ll
Soft brown eyes gazed back at her, shadowed still by the dark circles of those last dreadful days in San Francisco. Both she and Tamsin could do with some good fresh air. Perhaps tomorrow they would walk out from town, along the river-bank. She passed a tired hand across her forehead as if to erase the frown lines there.
As she snuffed the lamp out and groped her way to the bed — not a difficult task, since the room was barely larger than the bed — she heard Tamsin murmuring to Beatrice.
‘It’ll be all right, Beatrice, you’ll see,’ she whispered. ‘We’ll find the wagon again and make all the pictures for ev’rybody and you shall sleep in your own little bunk. An’ ev’ry night we’ll find somewhere nice and green like that pretty place where Chen Kai is, and we’ll pitch camp there. And Chen Kai’ll tell us stories while we girls all cook us the food and …’
A deep sigh, then the heavy breathing told Alicia she was asleep. As she lay in the bed and let the exhaustion of her body overtake her, tears ran down her cheeks. Let Tamsin have her dreams, for children needed hope, but for herself there could be no delusion. The days when they had roamed the countryside, staying in the mining camps or the towns as the feeling took them, making a more than comfortable living from the photographs that they took of the miners or the prosperous tradesmen and their families, were gone. They had lost the wagon for good and with it had gone the only freedom she had ever known.
Chapter Five
Sleep was a long time coming that night, despite her physical exhaustion, and, lying between sleep and consciousness, she found herself thinking back to the time when Chen Kai-Tsu had come into her life.
The autumn of 1852 had been an unusually hot one. On the main street of Sonora, Mr Stiles, the proprietor of the stationery store, the miner’s ‘intelligence’ centre, was passing buckets of water up to his apprentice to line up on the flat roof of the store; the fire risk was high after such a long hot summer. As she passed on by Bertin’s Exchange and Banking House, she heard someone hailing her.
She turned, shading her eyes, and saw a German miner who’d been out at Angel’s Camp at the same time as the Langdons, when Bennager Raspberry the storekeeper had thrown out a keg of brandied peaches that had spoiled on the Cape voyage and all the pigs in Angel’s Camp had stayed squealing drunk for four days and nights.
‘You Missus Langdon, nicht ?’
‘I am,’ she replied cautiously.
‘Your man, he very sick up by Sierra City,’ said the German, spitting skilfully out into the road. ‘Pretty soon, you be vidow. Go stake your claims, before men he owes comes for his tools and his mule.’
‘You are a fool!’ Angelina told her roundly. ‘Madness to go up there. You think Lucky Langdon gonna leave you anythin’ worth risking your health for?’
‘That’s not why I’m going,’ she said quietly, packing her few belongings into a saddlebag.
‘What for then? Love?’
‘I married him for better or for worse, Angelina.’
‘And he kept his vows so well, huh?’
‘No. But —’
‘Alicia, think! Could be cholera, smallpox, spotted fever, anything.’
‘Angelina, I have to go.’
‘Then take the mule.’ The cook gave her a piercing glance out of her normally placid eyes. ‘You come back?’
‘I — I don’t know, Angelina, really I don’t. It depends on so many things …’
‘Like if he dies?’
‘I’ll
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