Midnight Harvest

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Author’s Note

  Part One: Doña Isabel Inez Vedancho y Nuñez

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Part Two: Rowena Saxon

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Part Three: Ferenc Ragoczy, le Comte de Saint-Germain

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Epilogue

  Also by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

  Copyright

  This one is for

  Irene Kraas

  agent extraordinaire

  author’s note

  The 1930s, although still in living memory, are as remote as the Civil War for many Americans, especially those born after 1960, whose contact with those times—if any exists at all—tends to be through grandparents; the combination of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression put the country into dire straits of a kind that has, fortunately, not been seen since. The impact of those privations touched every part of society, and the reforms undertaken by the government to address the appalling conditions that prevailed can still be seen in public buildings in almost all American cities to this day, and in the ongoing debate over Social Security.

  The Roaring Twenties in America—themselves a frenetic reaction to the aftermath of World War I, or the Great War as it was then called—had come to a screeching halt with the Crash of 1929 and the catastrophic plummet of the stock market that led to the Great Depression. Europe had already endured financial hardship, most notably in Germany in the mid-Twenties, and the political instability that resulted from the disastrous inflation eventually led to the rise of the Nazi party, which used not only the vindictive terms imposed on Germany at the end of World War I to incite the populace, but the economic crisis as well. America may have lagged behind the Europeans in money problems, but eventually the same difficulties cropped up in the United States, and some of the same political unrest.

  The wild card—and wild is the appropriate word here—in the American situation was the general air of lawlessness that developed during Prohibition. By making drinking alcohol illegal, the government created an environment that encouraged tolerance of lawbreakers as acceptable behavior in the general society more unobjectionable than had been the case since the great westward expansion of the nineteenth century. For many Americans, turning bootleggers was an irresistible temptation; and with others taking advantage of the situation, their daring and media exposure made them into mythic figures, like buccaneers or Robin Hoods, braving incompetent and unfair authorities on behalf of the common folk. In many ways this preoccupation with the exploits of criminal gangs engaged in circumventing the Volsted Act diverted the general social malaise into the single issue of booze and the escapades associated with it. By the time Prohibition ended in 1933, its impact had touched almost every aspect of daily life in America, and its impact was not only on issues of law enforcement: among the many victims of Prohibition were the American wine, beer, and distillery businesses, although a few distillers made a spectacular recovery at the end when the aged whiskeys they had made could finally be released for sale. Wine and beer producers did not generally fare so well, for only a handful had the financial resources to ride out the thirteen years of Prohibition, although few religious Orders continued to make sacramental wines, which were excluded from the terms of the law, but otherwise most of those industries suffered, many of them—already burdened with the flagging general economy—beyond remedy.

  Yet a few industries prospered in these hard times, most notably in America the entertainment industry. As vaudeville breathed its last gasp, the 1930s saw the rise of major motion picture studios and expanded distribution of movies that in turn rode on technological advancements—many of which originated in Europe but moved across the Atlantic to escape the war-ruined economies and the political unrest that came with them. Radio became ubiquitous, in part because of an ambitious program of bringing electricity to all of the country, not just the cities. Thousands of theaters were refitted from stage to screen, for movies became the most popular form of escapist entertainment outside pulp magazines. Another industry that did well in the Twenties and Thirties in America was transportation: the burgeoning airline business, the ambitious expansions of roads and similar public works projects that were as much a means of creating jobs as opening the country to trucking, and the railroads all profited in the harsh financial climate that followed the Crash. By extension, the oil industry—although far more volatile than many other endeavors—expanded and, when it succeeded, succeeded handsomely; as more and more applications for petroleum products were developed, the greater the profits were in the oil business. All of this was not enough to offset the Depression, but as Will Rogers so succinctly put it, “All that money went somewhere”; these are some of the places it went. The free-falling downward monetary spiral of 1929 continued to wreak havoc in America right up to the first stages of World War II, when the demands of the arms industry finally got the American economy into high gear again.

  In Europe, where conditions were harsher, the solutions tended to be more extreme: in Germany the Nazis came to power; in Italy and Spain, the Fascists rose, and the polarization of right-wing authoritarian governments (Nazis, Fascists) and left-wing authoritarian governments (Communists) became entrenched and the seeds of World War II—or more accurately, World War I, Part II—were sown. With the demands of economic and material recovery making such stringent demands on Europeans, the unilateral might of authoritarian governments was not only tolerated, it was generally welcomed by the various countries in which that authoritarianism flourished; those who did not support the regimes were pressured into silence or removed from society, reinforcing the hold of the governments in question. As German belligerence increased through the Thirties, it found echoes in many other countries, including Britain and America, although the general return to isolationism in America kept Nazism and other authoritarian systems from establishing more than a minor toehold. But that did not mean Americans were immune to the appeal of extreme politics.

  Extremist political groups sprouted up in all parts of America, from far right, racist organizations, such as the Ku Klux Klan and the notorious Black Legion, to the far left, such as the United Workers of the World, with every stripe and inclination in between, for although there was political unrest in the
United States, it did not become fixated on one aspect of the country’s many problems—the issues of Prohibition notwithstanding, for those had been preempted by organized crime—and as a result the responses were more varied and diffuse than was the case in Europe, and never had the opportunity to become entrenched in the centers of political power as was the case elsewhere in the world. There was also—especially in rural areas—an upsurge in revivalist religion, some of which went big-time, anticipating the televangelists of the present. Such preachers as Aimee Semple McPherson, who in 1923 dedicated her 5,000-seat Angelus Temple in Los Angeles, set the tone for spectacular, theatrical histrionics, a kind of showmanship that has remained in popularized religion to this day. The Fundamentalist farmers of the Midwest, uprooted from the Dust Bowl, took their faith with them as they moved—usually westward—in search of a living. It was a dicey situation that could only deteriorate as the problems escalated.

  The middle to late 1930s brought increased tensions to Europe as the buildup to war began to pick up speed. This increasing conflict was known in America, but for the most part deliberately ignored as part of the desire of America to remain aloof from what was hoped was just more European squabbling. Many Europeans shared that hope of American isolationism, leaving their homelands for America in anticipation of coming conflict. Starting early in the 1920s, a number of successful businessmen and academics came to the United States—and to South America as well—looking for an opportunity to avoid becoming caught up in the coming hostilities; most of them brought their families with them—parents, children, aunts, uncles, cousins, all were included whenever possible. As hostilities worsened, more Europeans left the Old World for the New: North and South America both experienced an influx of immigration in the Thirties. Shortly before World War II broke out at the end of August 1939, what had been a trickle became a flood.

  Not all Americans were pleased with this situation, for in an already damaged economy, there were many who saw these newcomers as economic spoilers, bent on taking what little employment there was away from the “real” Americans. This served to fuel the various hate groups that battened onto the old organizations or cropped up as new ones from one end of the country to the other, and although the European arrivals created as many jobs as they took, the perception of many longtime unemployed was that they were being shoved aside in favor of the newcomers.

  * * *

  Unlike several of the other books in this series, this one doesn’t lack for applicable information on the time and its events: there are newspapers, books, newsreels, radio broadcasts, magazines, and all manner of personal documents readily obtainable; in fact, the trick here is not to find out specific information, it is to winnow out the material essential to the story from all the data available. In that capacity, I have had the advantage of speaking to a dozen men and women who lived through these years as young adults, two in Europe, two on the East Coast, three in Chicago and the Midwest, and the rest in California. I am grateful to them for sharing their memories, diaries, and other material with me, for their personal reminiscences have provided me a wonderful window on the decade of the story. So: Anne, Claude, Durandarte, Elihu, Frank, Louise, Patti, Petronella, Renee, Silvain, Sol, and Yoshiko, thank you for all your time and generous conversation. If in making my selection I have left out some incident, person, or development that is your favorite, I apologize, and plead exigencies of narrative line for my omission, and I offer the same mea culpa to my readers whose view of that period may not be the same as the view of this novel. Also California: The Guide to the Golden State, published by the WPA in 1937 through 1938, proved extremely useful, particularly in details about roads and other travel conditions of the period.

  There are also others who deserve a thank-you here: Elizabeth Miller, Stephanie Moss, and Sharon Russell of the Transylvanian Society of Dracula and the Lord Ruthven Assembly; to Mia Delancy, Jim Russ, and Jeanne Keagan, who read the manuscript for clarity, and to Anne, Sol, Yoshiko, and Claude, who read it for accuracy. To Lindig Harris for her newsletter Yclept Yarbro, available from [email protected]; to Wiley Saichek for all his tireless promotional work; to Tyrrell Morris for keeping my machines and Web site (www.ChelseaQuinnYarbro.com) running; to Robin Dubner, who continues to look after Saint-Germain’s legal interests; to Libba Campbell; to Maureen Kelly, Gaye Raymond, Alice Horst, Randall Behr, and the Luckes, just because. On the publishing end, thanks to the good people at Warner, including Larissa Rivera and Jamie Levine, who have taken Saint-Germain under their respective wings, and to Laurence J. Kirshbaum, Chairman of Warner Publishing, along with Stealth Press, for giving Saint-Germain such a splendid opportunity to rise from the grave of the out-of-print. And finally, thanks to my readers, new and longtime, for your continued support of this series.

  Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

  May 2002

  part one

  DOÑA ISABEL INEZ VEDANCHO Y NUÑEZ

  TEXT OF A LETTER FROM ROWENA SAXON IN SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA, TO COUNT FRANCHOT RAGOCZY, CARE OF HIS LONDON SOLICITOR, MILES SUNBURY OF SUNBURY DRAUGHTON HOLLIS & CARNFORD; FORWARDED TO THE HOTEL DELLA LUNA NUEVA IN CÁDIZ, SPAIN.

  San Francisco, California, USA

  October 21, 1935

  Franchot Ragoczy

  c/o Sunbury Draughton Hollis and Carnford

  New Court

  City of London, England

  My dear Count,

  I suppose I may still address you as such, though it has been a long time since I took pen in hand to write to you, a decade at least, and I am fully aware that you may have gone far beyond my ability to reach you via any address I have in my records. I trust your solicitors may still find you, wherever you are, and whatever name you are using now, for I must assume you have changed that as well as your address.

  As you may guess from the letterhead, I am still in California, and still living in the magnificent fifteen-room house my grandfather bequeathed to me, and I am still painting. I employ a housekeeper-cum-cook—a sensible woman named Clara Powell, whose husband is incarcerated for bootlegging and whose three children are being raised by his parents in Michigan—and a gardener—Cedric McMannus, a Canadian from Saskatchewan who came here fifteen years ago to work at the Ralston Mansion—neither of whom live in; occasionally I hire a carpenter-handyman for more strenuous work, a great change from the staff of servants at Longacres. I have turned two of the parlors into a large studio where I work, and I have added a north-facing bay window to it; I have also improved the bathrooms and the kitchen. To hear my English relatives’ reaction, you would think I were living in a tent in the middle of the wilderness. Yet, all in all, I have become, in my own way, quite staid in my life, though it is not the life my family would have chosen for me. They all thought me hopelessly wild when I came here, back in 1911, and nothing I have done since has changed their view of me, since I am continuing to pursue art instead of establishing myself as someone’s wife and someone else’s mother. In fact, my work has developed a fairly good reputation in the West, and I have had several shows, a few of them one-woman shows, the result of which has been that I have recently been approached by a gallery in New York to handle my work. I am giving their offer close consideration, for although I am fortunate enough not to have to worry about money—my grandfather left me handsomely provided for, and not even the Great Depression has diminished my holdings to a marked degree—I do have to consider the realities of the artistic world and make some accommodations. So it may be that I shall have to journey East and do the pretty to the ever-so-cultured New Yorkers. I am not wholly resigned to the prospect, as should be apparent I left England to get away from just the kind of snobbery that the New Englanders have determined to enshrine, and I am disinclined to deal with such aggrandizement unless it becomes absolutely necessary.

  You may be surprised to learn that I have become an American citizen, taken Saxon as my legal name, and voted for President Roosevelt, all much to the distress of my sister. Do you remember her? She was
a precocious child when you met her. Penelope achieved her dearest wish and married Rupert Bowen in 1922, and I know you must remember him. She is a widow now, and living at Longacres, with her two children. I have seen my nephews three times—once in England, twice here in America—but not in the last five years; they were very young then, now they are eight and eleven. Rupert died in 1931, quite suddenly, and Penelope has made his memory into a hallowed one. You would scarcely recognize him in the paragon he has become in Penelope’s remembrance. I have ceased to try to remedy her fiction, for it brings me nothing but her rancor and I already have a quantity of that to deal with.

  On May 10, I turned fifty, and I have spent the last five months thinking over my life, and I have found myself recalling the time we spent together, your many kindnesses to me, and your love. Since my parents are dead, and my brother, and I find I cannot discuss these matters with my sister, I am appealing to you to read this with the compassion you have always extended to me, and which I am persuaded you must still possess. I hope I have not erred in this conviction, and that I do not intrude upon you in sending you this letter, but I am certain that you are cognizant of all I am presently encountering. You, of all people, must know the weight of mortality, as well as the burden living imposes. How capricious it all seems to me, the twists and turns of events, the bizarre whims of what some would call fate, but I can find no word to express. I thought the Great War had inured me to the uncertainty of life, but now I realize that there is another understanding that is part of age and comes only when one’s contemporaries begin to fall away. In the last two years, my mother has died—which was painful but not unexpected—a childhood friend has succumbed to cancer, and a couple who have been my close friends here have been killed in a terrible automobile accident. Now I am distressed to learn that a longtime associate has suffered a stroke and is bedridden, unable to speak or walk. I went to see him yesterday, and I was shocked and saddened, he was so changed, like an echo of himself. I begin to feel the shadows gathering, as my grandfather used to say. He died in the Influenza Epidemic, early in 1919, when so many others perished. That was a dreadful calamity, coming as it did in the wake of the Great War. How much suffering shaped those years! At the time, I could not mourn for my grandfather, there being so many others dying all around me, and the grief of war still fresh. So I shut it away as best I could and decided that I would not be overwhelmed by the losses I had sustained—as so many others had elected to do, too. Only since the more recent deaths and misfortunes I mentioned have I come to appreciate how much I miss my grandfather, and to understand what I have lost. I begin to wonder if I shall ever reach a point when the mourning is eased, and I begin to suspect that I shall not. If I find myself so haunted by a mere five decades, I cannot imagine how it must be for you.