The Golden Key (112 page)

Count Maldonno—the Grand Duke’s cousin!—wanted to buy her painting! “And what did Andreo have to say to that!” she demanded triumphantly.

Cabral adjusted his sleeves. He still had beautiful hands, dark
with age and the legacy of harsh paints, but strong. His mouth twisted into a grimace, an odd expression that Eleyna could not read. “‘It is not a style based on the classical form of statues. It is too wild. Too undisciplined.”’

Eleyna sighed. She had heard all this before.

“But,” said Cabral, pulling the cloth back over the painting, “it shows a fine use of color and composition, and it has life. You are becoming an excellent painter.”

“I am as good as anyone alive today!” Then she flushed. “But I am not Gifted. So I am worth nothing to them, especially because I am not a good copyist.”

“It is precisely because you are
not
a good copyist that you show the gifts you do, and they cannot forgive you for that. To them, art only matters if it serves the Gift and thus the family.” He sighed and sank down on the feather bed beside her, one hand tracing the Grijalva rosettes embroidered onto the bedspread, Beatriz’s work. “Once, I believed as they did. What will you do, Eleynita?”

Eleyna clasped her hands firmly in her lap and refused to look into his eyes. “What have you come to say to me?”

“Be Edoard’s Mistress now. Keep him happy for a few years. He has other duties. While he attends to them, you are free to paint, and to paint unobstructed by your parents and old uncle. When he marries, then you will gain an honorable retirement. He may dower you with a country house. You can live there with perfect propriety because you are a widow, and you can paint to your heart’s content. It is the easiest road to get where you want to go.”

“To be a whore?”

“We all are forced at times to make choices we don’t like.”

She jumped up, paced to the window, back to the door, and back to the bed again. “It’s a terrible choice. I can give myself over to him in return for what I can get from him. Or I can refuse, in which case Zio Giaberto will simply paint me into acquiescence.” She stared challengingly at him, willing him to look shocked.

He did not even look surprised. “It is better to choose the path with your eyes open.”

“The only way I’ll know they
haven’t painted me
into liking him is if I continue to dislike him! How can I be his Mistress if I look at his face and want to turn away? It would be better to make them paint me. At least then I wouldn’t feel anything.”

Cabral smoothed the sleeves of his jacket, the fussy movements of a man who had once, perhaps, been vain of his appearance. Or cared how he appeared to another person. “Women marry to the benefit of their families, not according to the dictates of their own
hearts. Your grandmother Leilias, my dear sister, was an exception. She married where her heart led her, and even then she married knowing Zevierin would die before her. Grand Duke Renayo wants Alazais de Ghillas for Edoard, not because of her pretty face but because marriage to her would irrevocably give Edoard the thrones of both countries. Renayo has not forgotten that
he
was Enrei’s named heir, not Ivo. Edoard will not be allowed to remain unmarried long. A year or two at most.”

Eleyna walked to the window, looked down into the courtyard at the fountain of tiles. Water splashed over the rim of the upper bowl, sliding down yellow and blue patterns to spill at last into the bright yellow basin where the water collected, strewn with bubbles.

“Perhaps it would be easier for Eleyna,” said Beatriz quietly, “if Mama and Papa allowed me to attend her at Chasseriallo. Then she would have a companion.”

“You are an unmarried girl,” said Cabral.

“I have an infant son in the crechetta.”

“That is true, and I think it an excellent idea, Beatriz. Don Edoard is not, alas, the most stimulating companion unless one likes horses and hounds to the exclusion of all else. However, you are not a suitable duennia.”

“Davo’s wife Mara, then,” said Beatriz instantly. As if she had already considered the question. “She can act as duennia. I can act as companion.”

“Why not?” said Eleyna recklessly, turning back from the window. “I would be glad of your company, Beatriz. I always am. Perhaps it won’t be so bad after all.” But her voice stumbled over the words.

“Then you agree?” asked Cabral.

She refused to bow her head. If she chose this path, then she would do so with her eyes open. “I do. I give my word. If I may be allowed to paint—”

“Between fittings, mennina meya,” said Cabral. “You will have to have gowns and walking dresses and riding clothes, that sort of thing. You will entertain, go to balls—”

Court life! It was too awful to contemplate. But contemplate it she must.

“I can stand in for you, at fittings,” said Beatriz quickly, as if to forestall an explosion. For Beatriz’s sake, Eleyna held her tongue.

Cabral rose and gave them each a kiss. “May I let the Casteyan steward know you have no objection to Count Maldonno buying the painting?” As a parting shot, it was effective. Her painting to
hang in the do’Casteya collection! She could only nod dumbly. Cabral bundled up the painting and left.

Matra Dolcha! It had all happened so quickly. And imagine, Beatriz protecting
her!
Eleyna laughed suddenly. “You can’t be fitted in my place, though it’s kind of you to offer.”

“Do you want to stand for hours for all the fittings?”

“Of course not. You know I hate—”

“Then hush. We’re close enough in size that it won’t matter. Trust me, Eleyna. Say nothing. All will be well.”

With that assurance Eleyna had to be content.

  SIXTY-ONE  

Sario
Grijalva stood beside one of the great arched windows that let sunlight pour into the Atelierro. The sun was warm and bright; it was another cloudless day in an uncomfortably dry winter. The other Viehos Fratos stood at the end of the long Atelierro, beside the stove, watching young Agustin Grijalva bite his lower lip just before he took a lancet and pricked his forefinger.

All these changes! Instead of each Limner being granted his own atelierro, as was traditional, they had ten years ago expanded the Atelierro where the unGifted limners worked. How it irritated him to have to profess approval when an old custom was tossed aside like a marred canvas, but too often his solitary voice raised in protest was ignored or—worse—marked as suspicious. Annoyed, Sario watched with his newly-young and gratifyingly sharp Limner eyes as red welled up from Agustin’s pale skin and was dripped into a tiny glass vial for storage.

The other men—only seven of them, one stooped with bone-fever though he was only thirty-eight—murmured appreciatively. Giaberto went so far as to pat young Agustin on the shoulder. It was a momentous occurrence when the Viehos Fratos acknowledged a new apprentice—even one who had not gone through the usual Confirmattio. Still, there would be years of apprenticeship before the boy painted his
Peintraddo Chieva.

Too slight
, thought Sario.
He won’t live long. He’s fragile, too sensitive, too compliant.

Damn these sour pedants anyway! They had ruined the flower of Grijalva blood. The horrible stiff classicism he had deplored ten years ago as Arriano Grijalva had not, miraculously, vanished in the intervening period. As the new Sario, he had chosen the life of an Itinerrario so his years abroad would act as the excuse for the new more vital style of painting he intended to “bring back” with him—the painting that would revitalize and change what they now called the “Academy” style.

But he had returned to find the “Academy” style draped like an antique robe over everything else, smothering it in the stark detail of its rigid folds.

There were so few Gifted Limners left after the Summer Fever,
itself so disastrously reminiscent of the Nerro Lingua that had nearly destroyed the Grijalvas—that was, perhaps, paradoxically, responsible for the Gift. Which was now stretched too thin. Once, admittance to the inner circle—to the rank of Aguo, Semmino, or Sanguo—was an honor reserved for the finest and most influential Grijalva Limners. No longer. They called Giaberto Premio Frato, but now the title meant only that Giaberto was Andreo’s likely successor. Already there was talk of allowing Agustin to attend meetings of the Viehos Fratos—
before
he had painted his
Peintraddo Chieva.
And influence was measured purely by relation within the family.

Vieho Frato Sario might be, but the others refused to acknowledge his genius. This Sario’s mother had died in the intervening years, Grazzo do’Matra, and his remaining relatives had proven weak. Cabral and Leilias’s faction ruled the Conselhos now, though Leilias—and her dangerous knowledge of a long-ago night—was dead.

He had no supporters, no adherents. The only painter for whom he had the slightest respect was a young woman who was now, he had just learned, being carted off to provide bedplay for the young Heir. They actually thought she was more useful to them as a Mistress than as a painter just because as a woman she could not be Gifted!

Chieva do’Orro! What had the Grijalva bloodline come to? Had they forgotten everything about painting; had they forgotten the secrets of the Tza’ab he had worked so hard to procure, of the Golden Key itself, in their pursuit of wealth and power? Had the Gift become more important than the
art
?

I will not let this happen. I cannot let this happen.

Sario was twenty-six now. Yet he would gladly cast off this body and take on a new host, one with more influential relatives, except there were no suitable candidates. At least ten promising boys—one of them known to be Gifted—had died in the great Fever two years ago. Those who survived had proven unGifted, except for this boy, Agustin, who claimed good family connections but poor health. He was of no use. And taking an older man was too dangerous an option.

Sario was tired of waiting.

“Eiha, Sario. The boy has talent, no?” Nicollo Grijalva sidled over to him.

“The sister is the better painter.”

Nicollo smiled patronizingly. “You’re only twenty-six. You
have the luxury of these new romantic notions. Acceptable for the streets, perhaps, but not for court art.”

“The Grand Dukes have always dictated fashion, of course.” He allowed himself a sneer. “Do they dictate what is true and beautiful in art, now, as well?”

“It has always been so,” said Nicollo with a mocking bow. Eiha! Nicollo had treated Arriano with respect, when he had met him briefly eleven years ago, when Arriano was a respected and powerful Embajadorro and Nicollo merely a young Limner struggling for position. But Nicollo was the sort of man who, once given power, used it as a height from which to look down on the less fortunate.

“It has not always been so!” retorted Sario, then stopped. What was the point of arguing with these imbeciles? They knew nothing. Copyists!

Nicollo raised an eyebrow, a trick he used to cow his students. Sario fumed.

The others of the gathered Limners drifted away, leaving Agustin with his uncle in front of a full-length mirror. Giving Nicollo a curt nod, Sario walked over to watch the boy attempt his first tutored spell.

“I’ve done this before,” said the boy with a stab at bravaddio.

“Is that so?” asked Giaberto calmly. “In your rooms? Privately, I hope.”

“No. I did it under Eleyna’s supervision. I used colored chalks on a piece of silk, using a bit of my saliva and a touch of pine oil. I drew roses, and we put the silk under Beatriz’s pillow, to see what she would dream of.”

Shocked, Sario waited for Giaberto’s reaction. How had the young
woman
found out such secrets? But Giaberto remained calm. “Did she dream of roses?”

“No. She dreamed about pigs. She always dreams about pigs. But she said they were rose-colored pigs.” Agustin giggled. Sario, attuned to the nuances of facial expression after long, long experience, saw that Giaberto was furious but hiding it.

“What really happened?” Sario asked suddenly.

Startled, Agustin played nervously with the pencil in his hand, rolling it over and over again through his fingers. “I did try the dream silk, roses one night, pigs another, Grandmother Leilias the third time, and a bell the fourth. Every morning Beatriz had dreamed of the things I painted on the silk.”