The Golden Key (90 page)

But whatever he might do or say, she didn’t think she could fall in love with him again. Not again.

“Your Grace,” Otonna finally managed, “how can she be kept away? She comes with him and with her husband. To turn her away would be to insult them all.”

“I don’t know yet. Leave me now, I have to think.”

“Three days it will be before she arrives like the Nerro Lingua—”

“I know that! Don’t you think I know that? There must be some way to keep her out!” Hearing her voice rise, she took several calming breaths. “Go, Otonna. I need to think.”

Arrigo and his party were delayed several days at a Sanctia when Garlo do’Alva’s middle son announced with staggering suddenness that he intended to dedicate his life to the Ecclesia.

Verradio, eighteen and legally able to make his own decisions, gave his worldly goods to his two brothers and his servants, donned the coarse brown robe of a noviciato, and refused to leave his cell no matter what his father threatened. Horrified and furious, Garlo tried everything short of forcible entry and kidnap, refraining only because Tazia pleaded Verradio’s cause.

Arrigo, observing all this with a mixture of amusement and amazement, was confounded by Tazia’s eloquence in the young man’s defense. As a second wife who would never bear a child of Garlo’s blood and whose own son had no claim on the do’Alva fortunes, she could have no personal interest in Verradio’s relinquishing his inheritance. The resident sancto, though grudging as all Ecclesials were to credit a Grijalva with any finer feelings, approved her championship of the young man.

What Tazia could have told Arrigo—and didn’t—was that Verradio had presented her with a simple choice: support him against his father’s wrath, or see draft copies of her letters to Arrigo published in every city, town, village, and hamlet in Tira Virte.

The night before he announced his entry into Ecclesial life he invited her to a private conference in the Sanctia’s shabby little herb garden and showed her a damning sample. It was a page of lascivious praise for Arrigo’s most personal attributes, much crossed-out and reworked until the effect of uncontrived passion was perfected.

“The Qal Venommo in Granidia will be nothing to this. Arrigo and my father will recognize your handwriting, even if they deny publicly that you wrote it. What will Arrigo think when he finds you must
practice
your ‘spontaneous’ love letters?”

Tazia sat down very hard on a stone bench, the garden spinning around her.

Verradio grinned. “None of you care what Mechella thinks—en verro, nor do I—but the people adore her. If this and its
little friends are published. …” Verradio tucked the page into his tunic. “You really ought to burn such things. You never know who might come across them in the trash—accidentally, of course.”

“Merditto!” Tazia spat. “Prodding through the garbage like a chiros!”

“You’d know about offal, wouldn’t you, Tazia? Your every footstep stirs up more of it, your every breath is poisoned.”

“I know you hate me,” she said dismissively. “But how can you do this to your father?”

“I don’t just hate you. I loathe you. I despise you. I curse the day my father wed you—and I curse him for shaming the do’Alva name by taking a whore to wife. I hope to cleanse myself of such feelings here in the bosom of the Sanctia, without your daily presence to remind me of how deeply I abhor the very sound of your name.”

She rose, paced the broken stones of the walk, wrung her hands together. “If I take your part in this, Garlo will never forgive me!”

“Probably not.” Verradio laughed. “But think how much good you’ll do yourself and your family with the Ecclesia!”

Garlo allowed his second son to enter the Sanctia. He had no choice, but acted as if he did. His other sons, Zandor and Diegan, pretended solemnity as they rode out the gates, but secretly rejoiced in their brother’s triumph—and envied him his escape. Tazia kept her mouth shut and her eyes downcast, lest she give way to fury. Rafeyo, in whom his mother had confided, added Garlo and Verradio to his list of persons to be dealt with once he was Lord Limner. Arrigo thought the whole incident absurd, but in deference to everyone’s feelings kept his opinion to himself. They had lost four days on the journey to Corasson, and he was eager to arrive—eager to compel Mechella and Cossimio and Gizella and all the rest to accept Tazia into the family as Lissina had been accepted long ago.

One day’s ride from Corasson they were met by a courier sent to inform them that the whole family was in mourning. Word had come to Mechella only yesterday that her father was dead. Arrigo immediately galloped off with a few guards, wanting to reach Corasson as swiftly as possible. Garlo and Tazia were left to decide for themselves whether or not they wished to intrude on the family’s grief. Arrigo didn’t phrase it that way, of course, but it was clear that on this journey to Castello Alva, the Countess would not have the pleasure of forcing Mechella to receive
her. Just as clear was Arrigo’s disappointment that his little ploy to bring his Mistress to his wife’s official notice had failed.

Tazia was furious with Verradio for tricking her, and furious with Garlo for behaving as if she did not exist, and furious above all with Mechella’s moronno father for dying. Eiha, this chance had been lost, but a time was fast approaching when Mechella would count for nothing in Tira Virte. The people could adore her all they liked. What mattered was that Arrigo adored Tazia. She resigned herself to circumstances and resolved to use these weeks to work her way back into Garlo’s good graces. Damn Verradio—and damn King Enrei!

Garlo composed a formal letter of condolence over his and Tazia’s signatures, delivered by his eldest son Zandor and, at Tazia’s insistence, Rafeyo. The reply that eventually reached Castello Alva was addressed to the Count alone, written and signed by Leilias Grijalva “for Dona Mechella.” The slight was deliberate—Garlo was an important man, distantly related to the do’Verradas—and he knew precisely whom to thank for the insult and why. Tazia returned to the sodden summer heat of Meya Suerta soon thereafter, alone.

Relations between Arrigo and Mechella were even worse. She refused to see him when he arrived. She refused to see him the next day. At last he ordered Otonna to unlock the door and stand aside. She did, eyes narrowed, saying, “You’ll recall it later that I warned you.”

Alone with his wife in her bedchamber, Arrigo took a few steps toward the velurro sofa where she sat hunched and miserable. Lissina had told him she’d been weeping for days. She looked it. Her golden hair was snarled and unwashed; as she looked up at him, he saw that her blue eyes were swollen with tears.

Gently, with compassion for her grief—for he’d liked Enrei and one day his own father would die—he said, “I’m so sorry about your father. I share your sorrow. He was a good man.”

“Don’t speak to me in cliches,” she whispered. “Don’t speak to me at all.”

“’Chella—”

Her voice was barely audible, as if grief had crushed the breath from her. “How dare you talk of my father? You promised him you would make his daughter happy.”

“Mechella, you’re overwrought. This is a terrible loss, I know.”

“You betrayed him, you betrayed me. How could you even
think
of bringing that woman here?”

Arrigo took a few steps toward her. “Carrida, let me hold you.”

“Aren’t there beds enough in Meya Suerta? Or did you want the thrill of mounting your whore in your wife’s own house?”

Leashing his temper, he said, “The pain of your loss is very great, but I can’t allow you to speak that way about the Countess do’Alva.”

“What you can or cannot allow has no meaning in my house. Get out.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m your husband.”

“No.” She rose slowly, shaking hands fisted in wrinkled black skirts. Her lips curled back from her teeth and she said, “No, you’re only the man I married, who got children on me.”

“Mechella, I came to console you.”

“You came because
not
to come would show the world what you truly are!” Anger gave her breath and bearing. She flung her hair back over her shoulder and glared. “Get out, Arrigo. Don’t ever come to Corasson again—unless you
want
everyone to see you turned away at the door!”

“You wouldn’t dare!”

“Try it, and find out!”

Arrigo tried once more. “You’re too upset now to make sense. I’ll come back when—”

“If you come back, I’ll have my Shagarrans throw you out!”

He laughed. “I’m their
captain
, Mechella!”

“And
I’m
the one they love and serve!”

His temper slipped its chain. “And this love no doubt includes servicing you in bed!”

She neither flinched nor gasped; she laughed at him. “Grazzo for the suggestion! Any three of them would be more use to me sound asleep than you ever were wide awake!”

Arrigo crossed the room in three long strides, reaching for her.

“Touch me and I’ll scream,” she hissed.

Calling on every scrap of self-control that had ever kept private turmoil from public exhibition, he said, “I recall a night not long ago when you
begged
me to hold you. I tell you now, Mechella, I’d rather lie down in a trough of Plague-ridden vomit.”

“Get out!”

“Gladly.” He pivoted on one heel and strode to the door. With his hand on the crystal knob, he turned to look at her one last time. “I never loved you, Mechella. I married you only because my father
commanded it. I bedded you wishing you were Tazia. And when my father is dead and I am Grand Duke of Tira Virte, only one door at Palasso Verrada will open to you: the door to the sewers. Dolcho nocto, Mechella—ei dolcha viva en Corasson, for you’ll live the rest of your days here alone.”

“In a hovel, rather than with you! But not alone, Arrigo—not alone, I assure you!”

“En verro?” He smiled. “And what will all your adoring people think, when their Dolcha ‘Chellita acts the whore?”

  FIFTY  

Cossimio
and Gizella took the children back to Palasso Verrada a few days later. Lissina lingered just long enough for Zevierin to complete her
Will
—still a secret from everyone but him and Leilias and Cabral and Mechella—then took her leave with much cautionary advice to her kinswoman about protecting Mechella’s health in this time of her grief.

“They mourn differently in Ghillas,” Lissina said on the front steps, drawing on her gloves as the carriage rolled toward her. “King Enrei will have a state funeral and all his Court will be in mourning for a full half-year. Mechella will grieve long after that, of course, but it’s worst for her right now. And we allow only a few days of private sorrow here in Tira Virte, so people will say she’s overindulgent if she shuts herself away at Corasson, but I suppose that can’t be helped.”

Leilias nodded politely, wondering what Lissina could know about grief. In her soft brown eyes was compassion for Mechella’s pain, but at well past seventy, her face had fewer lines than Lord Limner Mequel’s. Hers was not a face meant for suffering; recalling the outlines of her life, Leilias decided that suffering had recognized this and passed her by.

But a moment later she was thoroughly ashamed of herself as Lissina gave a quiet sigh and murmured, “I remember when my Reycarro died … six days later I had to attend a ball for the King of Taglis, when I could barely lift my head from my pillow. …” She swallowed hard and shook her scarcely grayed head. “Eiha, that’s a long time ago. You must see to Mechella’s welfare, Leilias. Write to me and I’ll come at once if you think I can be of any help.”