The Golden Key (92 page)

The boy’s face had lit like a torch. “You’re not just a master—you’re a genius!”

En verro, he would miss this boy. …

“Jonino’s nephew is wasted doing the bookkeeping for the copper mines.” Leilias scrawled a notation onto the lengthening list of persons suitable for Mechella’s new household.

“Jonino?” Zevierin asked. “Oh—your stepfather. What will he think of a Grijalva in the family?”

“Moronno, he
married
one, didn’t he? Why shouldn’t I?” She chewed the end of her pen, grinning at him. “You’re nervous about meeting my parents, aren’t you?”

“Not in the least.”

“Liar. The nephew—what
is
his name? Eiha, never mind. Anyway, he plays the gamba, and his wife’s not half bad on the gittern, if I recall. So there’s our mathematics tutor and bookkeeper for the estate, plus two music teachers! Now, what’s left?”

“Languages and religion.” Zevierin tapped a fingernail on the desktop, staring out the window with a smile; he’d caught sight of Mechella and Cabral on their usual daily walk, and they were walking much closer together than usual. “I think I know where we can get both in one person. Do you remember old Davinio?”

“The groundskeeper at Palasso Grijalva? Never tell me he’s a linguist
or
an Ecclesial!”

“No, but his grandson turned out to be both. Sancto Leo is a fairly good friend of mine, in fact. We debate the damnation of the Grijalvas on occasion.”

Leilias drew back, aghast. “You’d bring a prating, self-righteous, Grijalva-hating sancto to Corasson?”

“You misunderstand.” He laughed at her. “
I’m
the one who takes the high moral position, while young Sancto Leo defends us despicable Grijalvas. Does a good job of it, too. I’ll introduce you when next we’re in Meya Suerta—for Penitenssia, I assume? Or is Mechella determined to stay here all winter?”

She was so determined, failing a direct order from Cossimio. She said as much to Cabral as they hiked back up to the house through the stubbled fields of the home farm. Iluminarres approached, when fires were lit in the shorn cropland to summon rain in preparation for renewed fertility. The wind was growing colder, the days shorter, but Corasson lay ahead of them up the hill. Home.

“I’m hoping Countess Lizia will stay a few weeks on her way south,” Mechella said. “And the Brendizias have promised to ride over for Imago, so we’ll have to plan something special.” She paused as they reached a fence. “Why are you smiling?”

“Because you are. Didn’t you know?”

“Sometimes it feels like it, but. …” She shrugged. “Help me up.”

He lifted her to the top rail. She swung around to face Corasson, giving him a swift view of wool stockings and stout shoes caked in rich earth. He climbed up beside her, thinking wryly of the delicate silks and sumptuous velurros of her Court clothes. Pulling from his jacket pocket the notepad and pencil no
Grijalva ever lacked, he began to draw Corasson, backlit by the setting sun.

They sat quietly for a long while, the only sounds the scratch of his pencil, the whinnies of paddocked horses, and the chirps and whistles of passing birds. At length he cast a sidelong glance at her and grinned.

“Why do people who can’t draw always look at artists that way?”

“Was I looking?” she asked. “What way?”

“As if searching for something in our faces that shows why we can do what we do. Something in our eyes, the shape of our lips—or the way we comb our hair, for all I know! As if there’s some mysterious exterior physical feature that could explain interior talent.” He filled in a shadow on the sketch, then chuckled. “And they
listen
, too—even if we’re just talking about the weather or wondering what’s for dinner.”

“Chieva do’Orro,” Mechella responded. “That Golden Key all the Limners wear. That’s what we’re looking and listening for.”

“Eiha, but that secret doesn’t really exist. If anyone ever did find it, he certainly wouldn’t talk about it! I know I wouldn’t, if I were a Limner.”

“None of you would, not even Zevierin.” She picked at a splinter on the wooden fence rail. “Is Leilias really going to—how did she put it, go shopping?—for a man to father her children?”

“Yes. If she and Zevi want to be parents, that’s their only option.”

“It’s strange. But no stranger than anything else about you Grijalvas.” She smiled. “If I look deeply into your eyes, and listen to every word you say for the next fifty years, would I even begin to understand how it is that you can put a few lines on paper and have them look like Corasson?”

“I fear you’d be bored in less than a minute, Dona Mechella. Whatever it is that makes me an artist, I can neither show it to you nor explain it.”

“I could never be bored with you, Cabral.” She smiled, adding, “When would I find the time to be bored with anything? Mequel’s advice about working in spite of illness is just as appropriate for grief. If I fill up my life with other things, then I haven’t time to be sad.”

“Yet I see it—here, and here.” He dared to brush his fingertip across the air an inch from her mouth, her brow.

She said nothing for a long moment. Then, wistfully: “Can you paint me happy, limner?”

“Mechella … let me try. Please let me try.”

“Cabral.” She took the pencil and paper, let them drop to the ground. “I think,” she murmured, “that you shall not need these to do it.”

  FIFTY-ONE  

At
the Grand Duke’s request, Mechella spent Penitenssia in Meya Suerta. Arrigo’s renewed Marria do’Fantome with Tazia was no longer an open secret; it was a public scandal. Cossimio was livid, Gizella heartsick. Lissina counseled patience. From Casteya, Lizia sent her brother a letter precisely six words long:
Moronno! Have you lost your mind
? Mequel, forty-five this winter and so stiff and sore that he rarely left his chambers, tried to ignore the whole disaster. The conselhos were silent. The gossips wallowed in every detail. And everyone—privately, nervously, reluctantly—began to choose sides.

For Mechella: the common folk of Tira Virte.

For Arrigo: the bulk of the aristocracy and most of the merchant class.

For Mechella: Cabral, Leilias, Zevierin, many of the Grijalvas related to them—and Lord Limner Mequel.

For Arrigo: Premio Frato Dioniso, the Viehos Fratos, and any Grijalva connected by blood to Tazia—even her sisters, who despised her.

Mechella’s fifteen-day visit for the winter holiday made the thinnest of gruel for the gossips’ nourishment. She and Arrigo shared their usual suite at Palasso Verrada, performed social and religious obligations, spoke pleasantly to all, and were much seen in public with their two young children. Her radiant looks were commented upon; his attentiveness was remarked. Cossimio dared to hope. Lissina warned against it. Tazia wisely caught a cold and confined herself to her husband’s fashionable caza in town. Garlo, still not on speaking terms with his wife, sent the Grand Duke a plausible if transparent excuse for staying at Castello Alva. In the absence of a command of the type given Mechella, Garlo was safe in refusing to lend the dignity of his presence to the proceedings in Meya Suerta. The year turned from 1266 to 1267, Mechella went home to Corasson, Tazia recovered from her indisposition, and Arrigo told his parents in person and his sister by letter to mind their own business.

Mechella did not appear in the capital again until the spring. When she made her entrance—unheralded, unexpected and unannounced—at
the Grand Duchess’ Fuega Vesperra ball, a gasp escaped every throat. Even Arrigo, turning to see what the fuss was about, looked stunned. She seemed a slender column of starfire come down from the sky at Astraventa and only now gracing them with her brilliance. Her masses of golden hair were held in place by diamond-studded hairpins. Her gown was of glowing silvery gray: daringly low at the neck, shockingly narrow in the skirt, impertinently showing her lovely ankles. Most startling of all, her arms and shoulders were entirely bare of gloves, sleeves, or indeed anything at all but for a splendid diamond necklace and bracelets. The shawl draped from her bare elbows gave off subtle glimmers of gold from a sunburst pattern of rare beauty.

She greeted everyone with brilliant smiles and charming words, but her progress through the crowd was soon seen as a straight line to her husband. When she reached his side, she laid a languid hand on his arm and whispered in his ear. His complexion changed color. He gave her a look of astonishment. She smiled, tugging gently at his sleeve. He mumbled an excuse to the Count do’Palenssia and escorted his wife from the ballroom to a location unknown—while speculation ignited in everyone from Grand Duke Cossimio to the fifth-chair gamba player.

Tazia do’Alva, dancing at the time with Premio Frato Dioniso, was seen to lose her footing. Dioniso later made it known that he had been unforgivably clumsy and stepped on her hem. No one believed him.

What Mechella whispered to Arrigo was, “Come with me this instant or I’ll have Zevierin paint your portrait—with all the symptoms of sifilisso.” Where she led him was to a little antechamber on the second floor, equipped with a sofa, a table, an elaborate candle-branch, a cheery little fire in the hearth, and a lock.

“Have you gone mad?” he demanded as she closed the door behind them. “What’s this nonsense about paint?”

“Don’t pretend you don’t understand. You have your Grijalvas, carrido meyo, and I have mine. And that’s where this discussion will begin.”

“We have nothing to say to each other.”

“I don’t agree.” She rubbed at her head as if her diamond-studded hairpins hurt, her fingers disarranging a few carefully scrolled curls. “Oh, that’s better. Sit down, Arrigo, and listen.” She tossed a few pillows on the floor, sat on the couch, carelessly bunching her silk skirts, and patted the upholstery beside her. He stood stiff-backed near the locked door. “Don’t be so silly, Arrigo, I want to discuss the children.”

He folded his arms, eyeing her suspiciously. “What about them?”

“You’re their father, and they love you—though I’m sure I don’t know why. But I won’t have them hurt any more than can be helped by anything that happens between us. Therefore I propose that we share them equally.”

“No.”

Mechella shook her head, sighing her sadness. “You see? This is just the sort of thing I’d hoped to avoid. Matra, but that fire is warm!” She let her shawl of gold-threaded sunbursts drop to the floor. “Undo your collar, Arrigo, you must be roasting.”

“I won’t let you take my children—and neither will my father.”

“I think he’ll find my proposal fair. You may have them both during the winter here at the Palasso. They love you, and they love their grandparents and Lissina, and they must learn how to be do’Verradas. But from Sancterria to Providenssia, they’ll live at Corasson. Your parents have taken to spending the summers with me, which means that almost all year they’ll be seeing the children every day.”

He leaned a shoulder against a tapestried wall, unhooking his collar as she’d suggested. “You could’ve chosen a more comfortable place for this. By the sound of it, we’ll be here a while. Now, if I understand your proposal, you want the children for more than half of each year? You call that fair?”