The Royal Handmaid Read online

  “So was I,” Chase said with a grin. “Travis, it’s good to see you. Come on inside.”

  “Have you eaten yet?” Joy asked.

  “You mean lately?”

  Joy slapped at him playfully. “Come on in. I’ll fix some steaks, and you can tell us what all you’ve been doing.”

  ****

  Travis sat in the middle of the living room floor playing with Leah while the enticing smells of seared meat and fresh coffee filled the mobile home. He lay back and stood his niece on his stomach, while she gurgled and laughed and jumped. Travis held her chubby arms and glanced over at Chase, who was watching with a smile. “This is some lively girl you’ve got here. She’s gonna run you ragged.”

  Joy called in from the kitchen, “She already does! And we’re expecting another one in a few months. A brother, we hope.”

  “That means you’ll be out of the act.”

  “Just for a while,” Joy said. She was putting plates on the table and added, “I love it too much to quit for good. I always have.”

  “You’re just a showoff, Joy—always were. Have to have that applause and be in the spotlight.”

  “I just love my work,” Joy rejoined. “Now, you come on and eat. Put Leah in her high chair.”

  Travis chowed down on his steak while he listened to Chase and Joy tell him about their lives.

  “People think it’s exciting traveling around so much.” Chase shrugged as he tore off a piece of bread and stuffed it into his mouth. “But we never see much of the towns we’re in. New York, Chicago, San Francisco—they’re all about the same. All we see is the inside of the tent. Those cats take more time than babies do.”

  “But you love it,” Joy said, smiling, “and you’re the best.”

  “That’s ’cause I’ve got a good helper.” He winked and patted her hand.

  Travis was pleased at how close the two still were. Now that they had one baby—and another on the way!—he felt a deep satisfaction in seeing the love that was growing between them.

  “You’re not married yet, Travis,” Chase said. “Why is that?”

  “No one’ll have me. Too ugly.”

  “Don’t be silly!” Joy exclaimed, looking at Travis with an admiring eye. He was lean and tall and rough-looking, but handsome, nonetheless, with a shock of tawny hair and cobalt blue eyes. A scar on his forehead ran into his right eyebrow, and other vestiges of a hard life marked his features, but no one would accuse him of being ugly.

  “Don’t you ever want to get married and have a family?” Joy demanded.

  “Sure . . . someday . . . when the Lord puts it in my way. I do get lonesome, but I stay busy and don’t let that bother me.”

  “Where are you living now? You move around so much it’s hard to keep up with you.”

  Travis had indeed moved a great deal. He had been in Bible school only a year when God directed him to leave and go to Mexico. He learned to speak Spanish while he worked among the poor, establishing a mission that grew into a church. While some of the local people he had trained took over the church leadership, he moved on to South America.

  “Well, I just got back from Guatemala. Been there a little over a year.”

  “What did you do there? Establish another church?”

  “Sure did.” Travis nodded, spearing a piece of steak and biting it off the fork. He chewed thoughtfully and said, “I worked with James and Merline Golden, two independent missionaries down there.”

  “You told us about them in your letter. They must be fine people.”

  “The best I ever saw. Their whole heart’s in preaching the Gospel.”

  “What sort of work did you do there?”

  “Well, Brother James and Sister Merline helped me to do some work with the Indians.”

  “What kind of Indians?” Joy asked curiously.

  “Maya. I never did learn their language like I should have, but some of them spoke Spanish, so we got along fine.”

  For the rest of the meal, Joy and Chase listened as Travis spoke of his work among the Maya. He made it sound easy, but they knew the work must have been very hard. There were no modern conveniences, and of course, no salary.

  Travis stopped his recitation and said, “The offerings you sent down kept me going. I couldn’t have stayed if you hadn’t helped me.”

  Joy flushed and shook her head. “It was little enough to do.”

  “That’s right,” Chase added quickly. “Did you see many of the natives there get saved?”

  “Oh yes—they’re receptive to the Gospel, and they make fine Christians too.”

  “What do they look like?” Joy asked.

  “They’re very short—short and broad. The men are about your height and the women shorter. I felt like a giant, but they didn’t seem to mind. They are fine, fine people.”

  Leah began to fuss, and Joy left to give her a bath while Chase and Travis continued to talk over dessert and coffee. She came back with Leah in her pajamas, her now-damp blond ringlets clinging to her head. Joy handed the sleepy baby a bottle of warm milk and let her kiss her daddy and uncle good-night, then went to put her down for the night. When she came back she poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down at the table. “What are you going to do now, Travis?”

  “Maybe I can help somehow with the act.”

  “You could go back to your old job”—Chase winked with a grin—”the human cannonball.”

  “I reckon I’d better not. It didn’t seem too hard then, but it’s a wonder I didn’t break my neck or worse, being shot outta that old cannon.” He laughed and shrugged. “People do crazy things when they’re young, don’t they?”

  “It’s not like you’re an old man!” Joy said, punching her brother’s arm.

  Travis leaned back in his chair. He looked loose and limber; his physique was the flat, angular shape of a man who made his living with his muscles. The overhead light illuminated his face, making his cobalt blue eyes look darker than ever. He smiled in the self-deprecating way that Joy knew well, his teeth appearing milk white in contrast to his weather-bronzed skin.

  “Actually, I don’t rightly know what I’ll be doing next, but the Lord told me it was time to leave Guatemala.”

  “I’ve often wondered how you hear from God,” Chase observed. “How do you know where to go next?”

  “Don’t always know, but if I wait long enough, it sorta swims together in my mind.”

  Joy laughed, the sound a musical note in the air. “Well, you can stay with us until it all swims together. Oh—I saw an article you might be interested in.” Jumping up from her seat, she went into the living room and rifled through the newspapers and magazines stacked on the couch and coffee table. “Here it is,” she said, waving a newspaper. She laid it in front of Travis and put her finger on the page. “That story right there.”

  “ ‘Going First Class,’ ” Travis read the headline, then began the article.

  “A new sort of missionary is being birthed in San Francisco. Miss Rena Matthews will lead a group of missionaries, calling themselves ‘The Twelve,’ to the South Pacific. Unlike typical missionaries, these twelve people are mostly from the upper strata of society, all of them college graduates, and a few among them highly trained scholars. According to Miss Matthews, they are a new and different breed of missionaries. Not content to simply follow in others’ footsteps, they plan to forge new paths and lead the way into a new era of missionary work, work that is well-funded as well as scientifically devised and executed. Missionary Rena Matthews, a bright and attractive woman of twenty-two with a wealth of curly auburn hair, said, ‘We’re going to use new methods, scientific methods, and all of us are confident that God’s going to do great things.’ ”

  Travis looked up, amusement curling his lips into a smile. “A bunch of rich missionaries, huh? Well, that’ll be a switch from anything I’ve ever seen.”

  He read the rest of the article and shook his head. “Going first class to the South Pacific. I read a book once abou
t the first missionaries who went to the South Seas. Most of them were eaten by cannibals, I think.”

  “She’s pretty, though, isn’t she?” Joy said. “Let me see.” She pulled the paper over. “She comes from a very wealthy family. Her father is putting up all the money for the mission work and sending them down there in his yacht.”

  Travis found this doubly amusing. “Well, that’s going first class, all right.”

  “Do you think they’ll be successful, Travis?” Chase asked.

  “If God’s in it, it’ll work.”

  “That’s what you always used to say,” Joy said, putting her hand affectionately over Travis’s. “Now, how about wrestling down another piece of that apple pie?”

  “You bet!”

  Joy dished up the rest of the homemade pie while the men continued the conversation. When they’d scraped their plates clean, she said, “We have to get up early, Travis. Why don’t we read a chapter of the Scriptures together and have a prayer.”

  “Why sure, sis. I need all the prayin’ I can get,” Travis said. “Before I went to Guatemala, I had to wait for four months to figure out what God wanted me to do. I hope it won’t take so long this time.”

  ****

  After a good night’s sleep, they all gathered again at the kitchen table. This time Travis was presented with a huge stack of pancakes that completely hid his plate. In the middle of the table was a platter filled with juicy sausage patties. “You remember what I like best, sis.”

  “I do, indeed. And there’s plenty of Vermont maple syrup. The real article.”

  Chase asked the blessing; then they all tore into their pancakes with healthy appetites. Joy suddenly laughed, looking at the ragged mess she had made of her pancakes, while Travis’s plate was neatly arranged with uniform bite-sized pieces. “You still cut up your pancakes like you always did!”

  “Reckon it’s the only thing I’m neat about,” Travis said, smiling back at her. “They taste better if you keep them neat. Look at that mess you’ve made. It must taste awful!”

  “You just eat your pancakes the way you want, and I’ll eat mine the way I want.”

  Chase laughed around a bite of sausage. “You two have argued about how to eat pancakes ever since I’ve known you.”

  “Well, Joy just doesn’t learn easy. You’ve probably found that out.” Travis winked at Chase, adding, “I knew we’d have trouble with women after we taught ’em to count money and let ’em eat with us at the table.”

  Reaching over, Joy stabbed Travis in the arm with her fork.

  He yelled, “Hey, cut that out, woman! I bleed easily.”

  After much kidding around, they made it through breakfast and had started to clear the table when Travis said, “Hold on. I have an announcement to make.”

  Joy and Chase stopped, each with plates in their hands, and waited.

  Travis went on. “I’m not going to have to wait four months to find out what God wants me to do. I know already.”

  “Why, you didn’t know last night!” Chase exclaimed. “You mean God spoke to you already?”

  “Yep. I was lyin’ on that bed almost asleep, and the answer came clear as day. I know what God wants me to do.”

  “What is it, Travis?” Joy asked. She had always known that her brother heard from God more clearly than most people and took it for granted that if he said he’d heard the voice of God, then he truly had. “What is it? Are you going back to Bible school?”

  “Nope. I’m going to the South Seas with those missionaries the paper told about—The Twelve.” Travis saw both of them blink with surprise and he grinned. “The answer came right sharp.”

  “But it’s The Twelve,” Joy said. “The story said they’ve already got twelve.”

  Travis Winslow leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. He looked up at the ceiling for a moment, then shrugged his shoulders. “Well, it may have to be The Thirteen, then.”

  “But they’re all rich society people—socialites. They’ve got college degrees and money! You wouldn’t fit in.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Travis said, grinning. But then his expression turned serious. “I do know one thing, though. God himself told me last night I would be a part of that group, and they’ll just have to get ready for me, ‘cause He’s in charge and those are my marching orders!”

  CHAPTER THREE

  A Clash of Wills

  “Dad, I’ve got two people I’d like you to talk to.”

  “You mean candidates for The Twelve?”

  “That’s right. We have to find one more person. Dalton and I have gone over the whole list, and these are the two I’ve asked to come for an interview.”

  “All right. Who are they?”

  “One of them is Albert Gibson. He’s an excellent scholar. He’s just finished his second year of seminary. He’s brilliant, Dad. The other one is Sarah Johnson. She’s a very capable young woman. She came to speak at our school once, and I was very impressed with her. She’s already published two books!”

  Loren looked at his daughter doubtfully. “Writing books doesn’t necessarily make one a good missionary.”

  “I know, but just talk to them, will you, Dad? We’re scheduled to leave in three days.”

  “It wouldn’t hurt to put off your departure for a few days.”

  “Yes, I think it would. We’ve got to stick with our schedule.”

  “All right. I’ll talk to them.”

  ****

  “Have you lost your mind, Rena?” Loren Matthews said, his face twisted into a scowl. “Either one of those people would wreck your whole mission.”

  “But, Dad—”

  “Just look at them. That young Albert Gibson may be an able scholar, but he’s frailer than any girl I ever saw. He wouldn’t last a week on a mission station.”

  Rena swallowed hard, for she had almost come to the same conclusion. “I think you may be right about him, Dad, but what about Miss Johnson?”

  “She’s a loudmouthed, overbearing woman. You’d go crazy in a week.”

  “Dad, we have to have someone.”

  “Not those two. Either one of them would be nothing but a handicap. You’ll have to find someone else.”

  “All right, Dad. I’ll try.”

  “And you may consider going with only eleven. The number twelve is just an arbitrary number anyhow, a rather foolish idea, I always thought. Now Caleb tells me we should leave soon to take advantage of the good weather. There’ll be a chance of some bad storms if we wait too long.” Caleb Barkley was the captain of the Mary Anne, a man in whom Rena’s father had complete confidence.

  “All right, Dad, I’ll go over my list again,” Rena said with resignation in her voice. She turned and left the room, and as she shut the door, she muttered, “I’ve got to find somebody else. We’ve got to have twelve. That’s what we’ll be famous as—The Twelve.”

  ****

  “I just thought I’d see if you were available, Helen. I didn’t know you’d already taken a position in Chicago with the Institute.”

  Rena listened, then said, “We all appreciate your prayers. I wish it would have worked out.”

  She hung up the phone, and then grimly took a pencil and crossed out Helen Dailey’s name from the list. She’d started with a list of eight people to contact and now there were only two, neither of them particularly good choices in Rena’s opinion. Getting up from the desk, she paced back and forth, racking her brain for other candidates to consider. She had slept little since beginning her search for the final member of The Twelve. She had called the group together, and they had talked for hours over other possibilities; this list represented their corporate choices. She realized it was too late to be asking people to make such a major life decision, but stubbornly she had kept at it.

  Rena moved over to the window and stared out at the emerald lawn. The sprinklers were going, and the dancing sprays made little rainbows in the sunshine. Rather than finding it a cheery sight, Rena sighed disconsol
ately, her mind filled with worries of how to fill the last vacancy on the team. As she watched, she saw a man walking along the road carrying a suitcase. It was not a widely traveled road, for the houses in their expensive neighborhood were few and far between, and many of them were fenced to keep out intruders and peddlers.

  “He must be lost,” Rena muttered. She expected him to pass by the house, but instead he turned in to the driveway of crushed oyster shells. What’s he coming here for? Rena wondered. The housekeeper was off for the day, and Rena considered letting the man think no one was home, but the cars were in the garage, and the garage doors were open, so he could plainly see them. “I’ll have to get rid of him. I don’t have time for a salesman or whatever he is.”

  She opened the door after the bell chimed and looked the man over. He was tall and lean and had the bluest eyes she had ever seen. He swept off his hat and nodded pleasantly.

  “Hello, miss. Is this the Matthews house?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “I’d like to see Mr. Matthews, please.”

  Rena hesitated but decided perhaps her father had sent for the man. He was always hiring people for his business, and this man looked fit and was probably hardworking. “I’ll see if my father can see you.”

  “Thank you very much, miss.”

  Rena closed the front door, leaving him to wait outside while she left the large foyer, turned right, and walked down to the end of the hall to her father’s study. She knocked on the door. “Daddy, are you there?”

  “Yes, what is it?”

  Rena opened the door and saw her father bending over his account books. “There’s a man to see you.”

  “A man? What man?”

  “I don’t know, but he asked for you by name.”

  “Well, bring him in, then.”

  Rena returned to the waiting man and said, “My father will see you now.” When he stepped inside, she said, “You can leave your suitcase there.”

  “Thanks very much.”

  “Come this way.” Rena led him down the hallway and then nodded at the open door. “He’s right in there.” She turned around before he could murmur his thanks and returned to the living area. Picking up her list, she stared at it, a frown wrinkling her brow. “One of these will just have to do.” She sat down by a small phone table and began to dial a number. It rang three times, and then a man’s voice said, “Hello?”