The Golden Key (73 page)

That evening, while she picked listlessly at her dinner tray from the shelter of her lacy bed, Arrigo explained the Countess do’Alva’s predicament and his desire that Mechella assist in remedying it. Then he sat back in his chair with every confidence of his wife’s instant acquiescence.

“No!” Mechella snapped. “I won’t! How can you ask that of me, Arrigo?”

“All you need do is follow my mother’s example,” he said patiently. “It isn’t easy for Tazia—”

“Don’t say her name in my presence!” She pushed herself higher against the snowbank of pillows. “And don’t ask me to feel sorry for her either!”

The notion of anyone’s pitying Tazia struck him even more forcibly than Mechella’s outrage, so much so that he simply failed to react.

“That woman was your Mistress for twelve years! How could you even think I’d want her in the same room with me, let alone—”

“My mother—”

“I’m not your mother! I’m your wife! What if it were the other way around, and I’d had a lover I wanted you to befriend so his feelings wouldn’t be hurt?”

He laughed at that. “You’re being ridiculous. Women don’t take lovers.”

“Grijalva women do! And so have women of your own family—Benedetta, or whatever her name was—Cabral told me all about her when he showed me her portrait!”

“Benecitta, and she’s nothing to do with this.” She was being completely unreasonable; he gritted his teeth and returned to his best, most rational argument. “My mother never had the slightest difficulty being kind to Lissina.”

“Do you know what your mother told me the very day I arrived here? She said that woman was no Lissina!”

Rising, he glared down at her. “She has a name. Tazia do’Alva. I suggest you start using it, because you’ll be meeting her rather often from now on.”

Mechella began to cry. “Arrigo—please,
please
don’t ask that of me, not now when I’m so ill carrying your son—”

“You said
last
time it would be a son, and it wasn’t.” Her gasp told him he’d gone too far. Bending down, he took her hand and kissed it. “I didn’t mean that, carrida. I adore Teressa. And I adore you. That’s why all this is so absurd. What threat could Tazia ever be to you?”

“Your mother said th-that, too,” she sniffled. “Oh, Arrigo, please don’t let’s fight about this. I can’t stand it, my nerves are in shreds.”

“Regretto, carrida meya.” He stroked her loose golden hair, and after a time she calmed down and knuckled her eyes like a child.

“Then—then you’ll send her away?”

“What?” Arrigo pulled back as if she’d hit him.

“I don’t want her here! Not when I’m so hideous. Please send her away, Arrigo, I’ll never ask anything else of you again, I swear it.”

Coldly, he replied, “To send her away would be to admit publicly that I still have feelings for her that could threaten you. Did you think of that? Do you ever think about anything or anyone at all other than yourself?”

She covered her face with her hands and wept bitterly. But he was already gone.

  FORTY-TWO  

The
first storm of autumn brought near-disaster to Galerria Verrada. The wind clattered a roof tile into a gutter, blocking it and exposing a section of tarred paper that worked loose and ripped away. When the rains came, wood and plaster were soaked by water backing up from the clogged gutter. Drip became trickle; trickle turned to stream; by mid-afternoon a torrent gushed down into an attic everyone had forgotten existed.

When the flood was discovered, crafters risked their lives in the wind-lashed rain to cover the roof, replace the tile, and clear the gutter. Servants frantically began to mop up the water flowing down the attic stairway to a storeroom where lesser art treasures were kept. More servants hustled paintings out of harm’s way into the Galerria. Grand Duke Cossimio himself took crowbar in hand to pry open crates, horrified at the potential damage to his family’s heritage. Grijalvas were summoned immediately. Lord Limner Mequel, recovered from his illness, was first on the scene, and when he saw the sopping ruin of Yverrin Grijalva’s beautiful
Betrothal of Clemenzo I and Luissa do’Casteya
, his eyes filled with tears.

Happily, this was the only major casualty. All other damage was confined to water-warped frames, some spotting, and a few smudges here and there, all easily repaired. The greatest danger was mold, a familiar enemy in Meya Suerta’s humid climate and one the Grijalvas knew how to fight. Easels were brought and the paintings at risk were set in the Galerria to dry. All others were propped against walls until new crates could be made for them.

Thus the entirety of the do’Verrada collection became available for Mechella’s education. Cabral was assigned to the Galerria until rescue operations were complete, and she took him from his work quite often to discuss pictures that hadn’t been seen in generations.
Births
and
Marriages
of do’Verrada relations;
Deeds
for various Grand Ducal properties;
Wills
, landscapes, icons, portraits of the Lord Limners—all were there for her education and pleasure.

“That’s only a copy, of course,” Cabral explained as they admired
the
Lord Limner Timius Grijalva.
“The original is in our Galerria with the other portraits of the Lord Limners. And if you’re about to say that they all look alike—eiha, you’d be right! We’re inbred, we Grijalvas. It’s rare these days that someone is born with hazel or gray eyes, or fair skin, or something less than the distinctive Grijalva nose.” He touched his own nose ruefully. “I’m one of them, pitiful thin thing that it is!”

“And with greenish eyes as well! At least that makes you recognizable among all your cousins,” she teased. “What’s the standard Grijalva type, then?”

“Mequel,” he answered promptly. “A few inches over medium height, black haired, dark brown eyes with long lashes, dark skin that never sunburns—”

“I could wish for that. I’ve acquired quite an amazing collection of hats!”

“Grijalva skin with golden hair? No, Your Grace’s coloring is perfect as it is.”

“Eiha, I’m glad Teressa is staying blonde—at least I’m not the only one in the Palasso anymore! What are all these paintings over here?”

He sidled past a scent-pillar in the crowded Galerria, knelt, and flipped through canvases leaning against the wall. “Ah, I recognize these. Some of the earliest Grijalva works. This one is the
Birth of Renayo
, Duke Joao’s little brother, who died when he was four. See how it lacks the framing runes? Those didn’t come into fashion until Lord Limner Sario’s time, about fifty years later.”

“He changed a great deal about the way Grijalvas paint, didn’t he?”

Cabral gave her a smile over his shoulder. “You see, Your Grace doesn’t need to take notes on my interminable lectures!”

“Is that a challenge?” She regarded the
Birth
with eyes newly educated in distinctions of style and composition. “It looks almost primitive, doesn’t it? But I thought all the
Births
of that period always included the mother. Why isn’t Elseva do’Elleon—” She broke off with an annoyed little shake of her head. “Of course. Renayo was a boy, and to paint his mother with him would be heretical.”

Cabral nodded. “Scenes of a mother with her son are confined to religious paintings. So little Renayo is all alone in this portrait. But—now, where did I see it?” He sorted canvases and pulled out
a small portrait of a woman in blue holding a naked infant girl. “Joao’s sister and her daughter,” he announced.

She searched her memory of the family genealogy. “Caterin and … Alanna?”

“Alienna,” he said. “But that’s very good, Your Grace. Nobody remembers Caterin nowadays.”

“Except for her portrait, she might as well not have lived at all. That’s sad, Cabral. Very sad.”

“Not at all, Your Grace.
Because
of this portrait, she lives forever.”

“Trapped in a painting—as we all shall be one day,” she replied with a little shrug and a smile. She drifted away from the works spread out before her to a painting with its back to the Galerria. “What’s this one? It’s not damaged, but it’s set apart as if waiting for a curatorrio to work on it. Help me move it.”

Together they turned the huge framed wooden portrait around, leaning it against the nearest scent-pillar. Mechella ran down her mental list of identifying characteristics—runes, colors, pose and placement of the figure, floral and herbal symbology, clothing, and so on—but this painting was like none she had ever seen before.

Along the border was a wealth of runes in gold paint given depth by black shading to the left of each sigil. The portrait itself was complex in composition, and odd with it as well, for there were more runes and patterns on the edge of the table in the painting, barely visible beneath a gold-fringed green drape. A mirror on an easel behind her, a painting within the painting over her right shoulder, part of a velurro curtain in a corner—still, one saw the young woman, not the things that surrounded her.

She was dark-haired, gray-eyed, beautiful in the way most Grijalva women were. She leaned intently over the table, the pearls swagged at her bodice seemingly caught in mid-motion. One long, slender hand lay flat beside a large book, the other reaching toward a small lantern as if she wished to adjust the light. The volume’s gem-set leather binding was barely hinted at, a mere glimmer of colors and gold, for the book lay open on the table for her study.

To her left was a formidable door: iron-studded and iron-bound, but neither locked nor barred. Behind her, arched windows were set deep into thick walls, shutters folded back to admit the first dawn sunshine of a fine spring day. On one sill was a fat candle about six inches high, only just snuffed, a threadlike mist of smoke trailing upward from the blackened wick. Fine, delicate work, that—Mechella had never seen anything like it before. Yet even as
her gaze roamed the painting, she realized that
she
was choosing the direction of her contemplation, that there was no discernible flow of shape and color and angle and line through the portrait. The pose of the woman’s hand did not draw her eye to the other books on the table; the silvery sheen of dawn found no echo in the silver pitcher glistening with condensation; the shadows cast by the lantern on ash-rose gown and pallid cheek did not repeat in similar shadows around the earthenware bowl of fruit. Cabral had been teaching her the interior geometry of paintings, but this had none as far as she could tell.

Mechella found it difficult to look at the work with her intellect. Indeed, it was nearly impossible to look at anything but the woman’s face. The graceful head lifted as if distracted from her studies, lips set in a defiant, determined line, dark curls slightly disarranged as if she’d raked her fingers back through her hair before reaching toward the lantern. And she had the most compelling, intelligent, tragic eyes Mechella had ever seen in any face, living or painted.

All at once she heard Cabral gasp.

“Matra Dolcha! It’s Saavedra!”

“Who?”

He gaped at the painting, his skin gone grayish and his hazel eyes huge. Mechella touched his arm and he gave a violent start. “Oh—I beg Your Grace’s pardon, I just—it’s
her!
I can’t believe it. No one has seen this painting in a hundred years!”

“But who
is
she?” Mechella asked again, astounded that a painting could give him such a turn.

“Saavedra,” he repeated almost reverently. “Sario Grijalva’s masterpiece.”

A work by one of the greatest Lord Limners, undisplayed, unseen for a century? “Why isn’t it hanging in the Galerria?”

Shaken, Cabral took a step back as if the mere sight of the portrait might burn his eyes. “I—I don’t know.”

She was coming to know him for an honest, open man, and therefore knew he was lying. “Of course you know, Cabral. There must be a story to this picture. There are stories about all of them.”

“Are you growing tired, Your Grace? We’ve been in here for hours—”

“My Grace feels just fine, Cabral. With this baby I’m sick in the evenings, not the mornings. And the next time you want to distract me, don’t be so clumsy about it. Tell me the story of this Saavedra. It’s a lovely name.”