The Golden Key (114 page)

After two days the court physicians had proclaimed Clemenzo ill with a sickness of the mind because of his disjointed speech and jerky movements, because he quite suddenly had no knowledge of a horse’s fine points or of military tactics and would lapse at intervals into a stupor. The Viehos Fratos had destroyed the painting and arrogant Alfonso along with it. But experiments were always useful because they tested the limits of power.

It was one thing, say, to cause a woman to fall in love with a man; that changed the rest of her not at all. Suggestion spells acted on only one part of a person’s mind, usually the part ruled by emotion and impulse. A human being was an infinitely complex creature, full of subtleties that the boldest paint strokes could not duplicate
… except in the hands of a master. But he was getting ahead of himself.

Sario had manipulated Duke Alejandro perfectly well without the aid of magics and paints. After all, he and Alejandro gave each other mutual benefit and aid. Both families prospered. So had the alliance of do’Verrada and Grijalva continued over the centuries.

And yet all was not well in Meya Suerta. Weakness had crept in: The Grijalvas deteriorated, the do’Verradas were useless, and this plague of restlessness endangered everything they had built. A master’s hand was needed to correct things. As Lord Limner he could act swiftly. The Grand Duke named the next Lord Limner. And to control the Grand Duke, one must possess what
he
most wished to gain.

Sario opened up one of the jeweled caskets. Nestled against the ivory silk lining, the rich golden strands of hair had lost none of their luster. In a smaller compartment, shut off by a second lid, the darker, thicker pubic hairs clustered, crooked and short, and next to them the wispier hairs gleaned from arm and leg.

He closed the lid and set this little casket to one side.

It was true that a mob had stormed the palace in Aute-Ghillas. The furious crowd had not even pretended, as they reportedly had in Taglis, to give a mock judicial legitimacy to their rampage. They had gathered up muskets, shovels, pitchforks, and butcher knives and overrun the palace guard, not even noticing their own dead as they fell in swathes or were trampled beneath the surging crowd. Evidently they found it a small price to pay for their revenge.

He had put the eyelashes in a separate jewelbox, because they were so delicate, so easily lost, and so rare. The fingernails and toenails he had put in a cruder box, made of wood; they did not need such careful treatment. Dried blood still adhered to them.

He had had enough warning (one could scarcely fail to hear the mob) to sketch a suggestion spell on himself. “There’s no one here.” The mob’s collective mind had been easy to sway, although the spell itself had been hasty: they never noticed him. They were too intent on their real prey.

There were only five glass vials of blood left. The sixth, alas, had broken in the escape out of the chaos that had gripped Aute-Ghillas. But five would be enough. The blood moved sluggishly when he tipped the vials, one by one, but the essence of sweet clover he had added kept it from coagulating.

So he had stood shielded by the shadows he had cast over their minds, stood half screened by a tapestry in the royal hall, and watched the mob murder the royal family. Rend them to pieces
,
more like, the royal family and those dog-loyal retainers who had stood with them to the end.

King Ivo had been dragged away, to be displayed on a pike from one of the windows overlooking the gardens and drive. Poor Queen Iriene, an inoffensive woman in all regards, had simply vanished among the corpses.

Sario wasn’t sure whether the mob had actually meant to kill Princess Alazais, beloved of the court, the only and lateborn fruit of her parents. But they had killed everyone indiscriminately and she had been tossed just as indiscriminately in among the bodies of her ladies-in-waiting, young women as innocent and stupid and pampered as she was. None had been as beautiful, but beauty is no protector from improvident death.

He unrolled a length of fabric. Within it lay silks torn from finely sewn underrobes, and on those silks he had done rubbings of two palms and the soles of two feet. The journey had not smudged them. He had been careful to set them with chalk. A slight powder still clung to them. He lay them beside the casket filled with golden hair.

Once the mob had poured onward, eager to display King Ivo’s body to their assembled brethren on the lawns outside, Sario had ventured forward to dig through the heap of corpses left in the throne room.

After so many years of life, he had learned never to let any opportunity go by—not such a one as this, knowing, as he did, the long and convoluted relationship between Tira Virte and Ghillas, knowing that Grijalvas and do’Verradas had schemed between them to make of Tira Virte a great kingdom, built out of the bodies of many smaller provinces.

What did Renayo want? He wanted Ghillas, a huge new jewel to add to Tira Virte’s luster.

Sario was going to give it to him.

He took a gem-studded casket purloined from the music room in the Pallaiso Millia Luminnai and opened it. He had put cloves inside to mask the smell, but a faint scent of putrefaction touched his nostrils nonetheless. Here were scraps from a white linen shift and scrapings of skin, no longer as pale as they had been two months ago, nor as supple. It had been a hasty job.

He unrolled velvet to uncover fingerbones. On the trip south he had managed to boil these, scouring away flesh and skin and blood—he had enough of that elsewhere—so they showed white against the black lushness of the velvet.

For a long while he studied the remains. The clock on the mantelpiece ticked loudly behind him and, at the half hour, chimed.

Moving to the workbench, he retrieved a muller. Then, cupping a delicate fingerbone in his palm, he carried it from table to workbench and laid it on the slab of marble. With infinite care, he began to grind bone into a dust that would be mixed with pigment and media into a new paletto of paints.

  SIXTY-TWO  

Eleyna
stared resolutely out the window of the studio, feeling the morning sunlight wash across her body. Her hands clasped the arms of the chair; her left middle finger still hurt where he had taken blood. She did not watch Giaberto paint the finishing touches on the painting that would render her barren. Or at least, she thought bitterly, only seal what was already true.

Except wasn’t it true that she could give life through her art? Perhaps all that was generative in her had been poured into the path that led from her eyes to her hands. How unlike her mother she was: Dionisa had given birth to nine children, only two of whom had died, the elder twins. Eight-year-old twin girls and two younger boys still lived in the crechetta. It was not too much of a sacrifice for Dionisa Grijalva to allow one daughter to bear no children in her turn, especially not a daughter who had failed to produce a living child in two rounds of Confirmattio and three years of marriage.

A year or two at most.
It would not be so bad.

“It is done,” said Giaberto.

She sat, unable to move, astonished and horrified that she had felt nothing. She had passed from one state to the next, but she had no memory of the change. Nothing had warned her. Sunlight bathed her gown, falling in its ripples down to the floor. Surely a cloud should have veiled the sun, altering the light, shadowing her body. She would have painted it so, using light and shadow and the composition of the frame itself to tell this story of loss.

“The carriage comes in one hour,” said Giaberto unnecessarily.

Gowns had been sewn and packed. Her pencils, chalk, paints and paper, even two prepared panels of wood, were arrayed in a locked chest together with some of the Grijalva jewels: all the items she and her mother deemed most precious—though they did not agree on which was which.

She rose and, without asking her uncle’s permission, came around to look at the painting. At the far end of the room Agustin drew on glass, immersed in his studies. Giaberto hesitated, as if to shield the portrait from her. When he did move, he palmed a vial of oil: tincture of fennel, she thought, from the lingering scent.

She studied herself. Only her body from neck to hips was fully painted, highlighting the curve of her abdomen and breasts under her white muslin gown. The rest of her, head and skirts and hands poised lightly on the chair arms, was unfinished, a shaded brush sketch against the ground.

A strangely giddy feeling took hold of her: Her torso was the only part the family controlled. The rest was hers to finish.

Eleyna nodded coolly at Giaberto. She could not truly be angry at him. Like her, he had his own hidden ambitions. She left the studio, descended the stairs, and made her way to the tile courtyard. There she waited by the fountain, letting the play of the water on the azulejos soothe her.

At midday the servants brought four chests down, three for her and one for Beatriz, brought traveling bags for the duennia, Mara. Beatriz looked sunny and sweet in a white traveling dress of muslin stamped with deep purple patterns so tiny they seemed more suggestion than reality. Mara, a white-haired, spry old woman, was dressed in a sober gray gown in the style of Grand Duchess Mechella’s time; one of “Mechella’s orphans,” she had found service in Palasso Grijalva.

At last the carriage arrived. Her mother hurried down—to make sure she went. Grijalva servants escorted her to the street and a liveried servant helped Eleyna into the carriage. Beatriz and Mara followed. The door shut. The latch clicked into place. With a jerk, the carriage started forward.

The journey to Chasseriallo seemed entirely too short. They drove up into the hill country away from the marshlands. This time of year, the countryside lay bountifully green around them. A few puddles were all that remained of this morning’s rain. Vineyards and olive trees covered hillsides. A line of cypress trees marked a nobleman’s house.

“That is the lodge belonging to the do’Casteyas,” said Mara. “They raise hounds there.”

It would have been nice to paint hounds, long-limbed, graceful creatures, rather than those awful fat pugs, beloved by the do’Casteya Countess of this generation. But at least Count Maldonno appreciated her painting!

“You’ve been here before, Mara?” Beatriz asked.

“I have traveled in the service of the Grijalvas.” The old woman kissed bunched fingers and touched them to her heart. “I saw many things, good and ill.”

“Such as?” Beatriz loved stories about the old days, the more lurid the better.

“Pluvio en laggo, mennina. It is better not to stir up memories that will do no one any good.”

The carriage slowed and turned, lumbering down a lane set between poplars. Pasture spread beyond, and sheep grazed. The carriage trundled up a rise and they saw, below in a hollow, the slate roof and stone tower of the hunting lodge. As they started down, it vanished from view. More trees appeared, an orchard of tangerine, lime, lemon, and fig.

Eleyna shut her eyes. She felt nauseated.

“Look at the gardens!” said Beatriz in an awed undertone. “I shall be happy here!”

It was such an odd thing to say, and infused with such meaning, that Eleyna forgot to be anxious. She opened her eyes to see Beatriz’s face shining as she stared out the window.

The carriage wheels crackled over gravel as the horses rounded the drive and were led through a gateway. Once in Chasseriallo’s courtyard, the coachman opened the door and a footman helped them out.

The courtyard lay all in sun except for the western wall, whose shadowed rim presaged the coming end of day. White gravel was raked in pinwheels, giving the courtyard a festive look, and at every window flower boxes bloomed with chrysanthemums and bright marigolds. But the courtyard was empty. No servants waited beneath the arcade. No curious maids stared down at them from the balconies. Don Edoard had not come outside to greet his new Mistress.

The doors that led into the lodge flew open. An elderly man hurried out, followed by servants, who took the luggage.

“I beg your pardon, Maessa. I am Bernadin, Don Edoard’s steward. If you will come with me, grazzo.” As was proper, he addressed his comments to Mara. Eleyna felt slightly ill, realizing that she might have to endure an elaborate fiction designed to mask her real purpose here. “The young Dons arrived yesterday, but then we had news of a fair at the village of Ramo Treio, which lies some twenty miles farther into the hills.” They crossed under the arcade and entered the lodge. The entryway was dark and dank, very old-fashioned. “It was all quite unexpected, the possibility of a cockfight—although I beg your pardon to speak of such things in front of the young ladies—a horse race, some horse trading perhaps. Eiha! Here we are.”