She cocked her head. “If there is, I didn’t come across it. I read about his son and the loss of the family fortune that his great-grandfather made from the fur trade.”
He looked down at the blade of grass again, now looped and twisted into some sort of shape. He was quiet for several awkward beats. “He wasn’t only a fur trader, he was also an evangelist.”
“Oh,” Scarlett said. “I didn’t read about that.”
Camden’s brows knit as he stared off behind her. “His mission was to convert all the savages who lived in these parts to Christianity.”
“The . . . savages?” She frowned. “You mean the Native Americans who lived here?”
Camden nodded. “The Serralinos. They were considered heathens, evil-doers, and Hubert Bancroft thought it his Godly duty to save their fallen souls.” He looked at her, his expression grave as though he was recounting something that had happened to people he knew personally. “If they cooperated, they were spared, though enslaved, used as trappers for the furs he sold to enrich himself. If they didn’t, the men were pushed into the canyon and if the fall itself didn’t kill them, the elements or wild animals would. If it was a woman who refused, she was made a whore for Hubert and the other male leaders in his ministry.”
“No,” Scarlett breathed, swallowing thickly. “That’s awful. God, the things people do in the so-called name of religion.”
Camden’s gaze speared her, and something that looked like deep sorrow moved through his eyes. “Yes,” he said. He was quiet for several long moments, his fingers still now, and Scarlett wondered if he’d go on or if that was the end to the tale, so when he began speaking again, it startled her. His fingers began twisting the blade of grass once more.
“One such indigenous woman was named Taluta.” He gave her the ghost of a smile. “The name means red, like yours, but she was named for the color of her hair,” he said glancing at Scarlett’s light brown ponytail. “Anyway, Taluta refused to convert, and apparently violently rejected the advances of one of Hubert’s men. They were able to restrain her, however, and threw her over the canyon cliff, but not before raping and brutalizing her.”
Scarlett blinked at him in horror, rendered mute by the unthinkable hypocrisy of men proclaiming to act in the name of God, when in actuality, they were committing atrocities against people whose only “crime” was to be different than them.
He stared off into the tree line, reciting the story as if from memory. “When they left her, she lay at the bottom of the canyon in a pool of blood and brokenness. Her husband, only just returning from a hunt for their tribe, learned what had happened to his wife. Refusing to allow her to die alone, he donned his horned war garb, painted his face the way a warrior does when he knows he’s heading toward his certain death, and then scaled the canyon wall as far as he could and dropped to the earth, crumpled beside her, his own injuries surely extensive as well.
“But when Bancroft’s men returned the next morning to sate their depraved curiosity, neither one was there. Instead, a red fox, its fur the exact color of Taluta’s unusual auburn hair, with eyes the precise amber shade as hers, darted from the bushes at the top of the canyon and escaped into the forest.”
“They thought she’d turned into a red fox and climbed out of the canyon?”
“That’s what the legend says.”
“And him?”
“They say he still roams the forest, his cold heart full of vengeance. People have reported hearing his war chant carried on the wind and seeing the shadow of a horned dead man searching to avenge the wrongs committed against his love with the sacrificial blood of others.”
“That’s . . . quite a story,” Scarlett said.
“They called it Novaatngar after that,” he murmured. “The canyon. It means, the dark place.”
She repeated the name softly, a chill causing her shoulders to rise and the tiny hairs on the back of her neck to prickle. And what he’d said about himself was wrong. He was a very good storyteller. He’d moved her, not just with the words that conveyed the tale, but with the emotion he’d infused in the telling.
“Are there any Serralino people still left in these parts?”
He shook his head. “The very last of their tribe died a couple of years ago and took their language with her. An old woman named Narcisa Fernando who lived in a small, one-room house a few miles from here. She was a midwife once, but in her old age, she sold dried herbs and soaps, things like that. She’d catch a ride with a local fisherman who came up this way once a month or so. He’d drop her at the edge of town and then she’d walk to the center, despite a severe limp. When no one had seen her through the winter, the sheriff went to check on her and found her dead in her bed.”
For several moments, Scarlett could only sit in silence, the sadness of the story, and the idea of dying alone in your home and not being discovered through a long winter, both a heavy weight in her gut. Narcisa Fernando’s death was merely lonely, though. The story of what had been done to her people a century before was pure evil. She cringed internally at the specific example of the abomination of things humans did to each other. When she looked over at Camden, he was watching her in that intense, studious way, as though trying to decipher her. Only unlike Haddie, who truly seemed to be able to see into her soul, Camden appeared frustrated that he could not.
She cleared her throat, gave her head a small shake, and glanced over at the back of the house. “The Internet made Hubert Bancroft sound like a hard-working hero. A total success story. But really . . . the man who built this house I’m living in, attempted to convert people he viewed as savages,” she mused aloud. “And he was the true savage. Wow.” She gave her head another disbelieving shake. History really did depend on who was telling the story.
Camden turned his head toward the house as well. “Later, I suppose the house served the same purpose. The attempted conversion of savages.”
“The girl’s school?” she asked. “That’s a harsh way to put it.” Scarlett frowned, tilting her head, picturing Kandi, remembering the good-hearted person Scarlett had known her to be. Full of life . . . vivacious. Yes, she’d made poor choices later but . . .
He paused a beat before removing his gaze from the house and meeting her eyes and offering a small humorless tilt of his lip. “My poor attempt at humor. It was harsh. I shouldn’t have said it.”
“No, I’m sorry. I just . . . got prickly because I had a friend who attended Lilith House for a short time.”
He cocked his head to the side. “A friend?”
Scarlett nodded. “Yeah. My friend, Kandace, was sent here not too long before the fire happened and the school closed.” Scarlett stared unseeing at the back of the massive structure, her mind’s eye full of Kandace’s laughing face. She felt her lips tip slightly and then just as quickly fall. “She got into some trouble and was sent here. She ended up running away though and there hasn’t been a sign of her since. It’s like she just disappeared into the ether.” She moved her eyes back to him and stilled at the look on his face. He looked almost . . . stunned. She frowned. “You okay?”