The Golden Key (3 page)

This painting, a straightforward documentary rendering of an event witnessed by the artist, records the last official act of Duchess Jesminia’s life. Though already ill from Nerro Lingua and only three days from death, no trace of disease is evident in her radiant face, which the artist has delicately haloed with sunlight through the windows behind her. She watches with a gentle smile as the chi’patros are reconfirmed in the Faith. The expressions of the Premia Sancta and Premio Sancto are not so benign, even as they give their blessing. The religious leaders of Tira Virte felt as the rest of the city did, that even though the Grijalvas suffered more deaths than any other family, the chi’patros were to blame for Nerro Lingua (“Black Tongue,” named for its most ominous symptom), from which one in four persons died. It was whispered that this was retribution from the Mother and Son for having taken in the chi’patros.

The day after his mother’s death, Alessio I issued an Edict proclaiming all Grijalvas to be under perpetual protection of the Dukes of Tira Virte. But this law did not defend them against the hysterical mob—originally assembled to mourn their beloved Duchess—that attacked Palasso Grijalva. Many, including Margatta Grijalva, died before the Shagarra Regiment restored order. It is said that Liranzo was interrupted in the middle of this painting that night, and injuries taken in the fighting prevented him from finishing it.

The artist was the chi’patro son of Larissa Grijalva, the same child probably portrayed in the miniature above. He is seen in the shadows of the Cathedral Imagos Brilliantos, identifiable by the paintbrush half-tucked into his pocket and the Chieva do’Orro around his neck.

The intensifying rivalry between the Serranos and the Grijalvas is the motivation behind this arrogant self-portrait: the artist shows himself in the full ceremonial regalia of Lord Limner, but with robes of Serrano brown embroidered in the family’s feather sigil and boots planted firmly on broken tiles bearing the Grijalva azulejo rosette.

Skeptics assert that talent cannot manifest in successive generations, that simple proximity to great genius produces pallid copies in progeny. Evidence to the contrary is found in music (the Bacas, to whom brilliant musicians were born for two centuries), medicine (the do’Maio line), and literature (the Doumas—father, two sons, and five granddaughters). The Serrano artistic tradition has lasted for over a hundred years. Yet the Grijalvas are unique, for few are their males who evidence no talent for art.

Intermarriage between Grijalvas and chi’patros—for no others would consider the girls as brides or the men as husbands—produced another curious result: by the second generation, approximately half the males were discovered to be sterile. This has been attributed to inbreeding and some strange lingering effect of Nerro Lingua, but no one knows for certain.

Until 875, it was traditional to gift a bride with a painting of her marriage. This custom was the foundation of the Serrano reputation and fortune. It was Liranzo Grijalva who first suggested that paintings also act as legal certification. Combined with universally understood iconography, a picture would be a certificate of public record.

In these three paintings, separated by a mere thirty years, can be seen the evolution of documentary painting and the rich symbolism it demands. Though the
Marriage
is delightful in its simplicity, only the bride’s flowers show the traditional good wishes (roses for Love, ivy for Fidelity, thistles for Sons). The union of Elleon to Tira Virte is sealed by the union of these two handsome people, documented in the painting only by the straw motif delicately embroidered in gold on the curtain behind the couple.

Contrast this lack of embellishment with the
Betrothal
of their son Joao. The bride’s family sigil, the white chrysanthemum (a pun on
verro
, “truth,” and Varriyva), figures prominently in the embroidery
of her gown; she approaches Joao across a vast lawn of green grass that signifies Submission; golden roses symbolizing Perfection bloom near lemon blossoms for Fidelity in Love. Joao, standing on the Palasso Verrada garden steps, holds out a nosegay of both as he smiles at his betrothed. But this painting also records a trade treaty—thus the distant background of Castello Varriyva with a merchant’s caravan traveling the road below amid a field of corn that signals Riches.

Joao and Miari enjoyed only a few years of wedded happiness. It is said that Yberro Grijalva, who painted the
Betrothal
and, only a few years later, Joao’s
Death
, mixed his paints with his own tears for joy at the first and grief at the second, for the young Duke had been his cherished friend. The abundance of floral and herbal symbolism in the latter painting shows the maturation of Grijalva art and insight, and the use of iconography to make a visually powerful painting even more effective, both emotionally and as legal documentation.

Thus have painted documents become more binding than anything written on paper. Variations of dialect can accidentally—or deliberately—confuse, but a picture of an event on wood, paper, or canvas transcends language. Not only betrothals, marriages, births, and deaths are so recorded, but also treaties, wills, and deeds of ownership. And only Tira Virte, with its astonishingly vital tradition of art, can supply enough limners to paint copies for all parties concerned. During the last fifty years, the work of Serrano and Grijalva Masters has become not only legendary but essential to the conduct of personal, mercantile, and state business.

Sario Grijalva saw at once what had become of her; where she had
gone
, despite her physical presence. He knew that look, that blind glaze in eyes, the stillness of features, the fixed feyness of expression. He even knew how it felt: he, too, was what some might call victim. He himself named it potential. Promise. Power. And his definitions were unlike those of others, including the moualimos, the teachers who for now defined his days in the workshops of the students.

Petty men, all of them, even those who were Gifted. They spoke of such things as potential, as promise; even, quietly, of power, and knew nothing of any of them.

He knew. And
would
know; it was in him to know.

“’Vedra,” he said.

Bound by her inner eye, she neither answered him nor moved.

“’Vedra,” he said more clearly.

Nothing.

“
Saavedra.
”

She twitched. Her eyes were very black; then slowly the blackness shrank, leaving another color behind. Clear, unmuddied gray, unsullied by underpainting, by impure pigments. It was one of the things about her unlike so many others: Grijalva gray eyes, unusual eyes, the markers of their mutual Tza’ab ancestry, though his was cloaked in far more ordinary clothing: brown eyes, brown hair, desert-dark skin. Nothing in the least remarkable about Sario Grijalva.

Not outside, where men could see. Inside, where no one could see but he, because the only light available was the kindling of ambition, the naphtha of his vision.

He looked upon her. She was older than he, and taller, but now she huddled upon the colonnade bench like a supplicant, a servant, leaving him to accept or deny preeminence. She turned her face up
to him, into a shaft of midday sunlight that illuminated expression in quiet chiaroscuro as it illuminated the wood-speckled paper attached to a board, the agile, beautiful hands. With a quick, unthinking motion she tossed unkempt black hair out of her eyes; saw him then, registered his presence, marked identity—and answered, dredging awareness back from the vast geography of her other world, confined by the bindings of her inner eye.

“Wait—” Clipped, impatient, imperative, as if
he
were the servant now.

They were all of them servants, Grijalvas: gifted and Gifted alike.

“—wait—” she repeated—softer now, pleading, asking understanding, forgiveness, all underscored by impatience—and sketched frantically upon the paper.

He understood. There was compassion in him for her, unalloyed comprehension. But impatience also, his own for other reasons, and more than a little resentment that she should expect him to wait; she was not and could not be Gifted, not as
he
was Gifted.

Therefore he could answer: “There is no time, ‘Vedra. Not if we are to see it.”

Silence, save for the scratching of her charcoal upon the inferior paper.

“’Vedra—”

“I must get this down …” And unspoken: —
while it is alive, while it is fresh, while I see it
—

He understood, but could not coddle it. “We must go.”

“A moment, just a moment longer—momentita, grazzo—” She worked quickly, with an unadorned economy of movement he admired. Many of the young girls labored over their work, as did many boys, digging and digging for small truths that would strengthen their work, but Saavedra understood better what she wanted to do. Her truths, as his, were immense, if unacknowledged by either of them as anything other than ordinary, because to each of them such truths were. They breathed them every moment.

As did he, she saw those truths, that light, the images completed by her mind in all the complexities, exploring none so much as freeing them with a minimum of strokes, a swift stooping of her gift.

Luza do’Orro, the Golden Light, the true-talent of the mind.

He watched. For once he felt like moualimo to student, teacher to estuda. It was not he laboring beneath the unrelenting eye of another, but she beneath
his
eye, doing nothing for him but for herself instead, only for herself; she understood that freedom, that desire
for expression apart from the requisites of their family, the demands of the moualimos.

“No,” he said suddenly, and swooped down upon her. His own vision, his own Luza do’Orro, could not be denied. Even for such dictates as courtesy.
Even for her.
“No, not like that … here—do you see?” They none of them were without pockets or charcoal; he took a burned stick from his tunic and sat down beside her, pulling the board and paper away into his own lap. “Look you—see?”

A moment only, a single corrected line: Baltran do’Verrada, Tira Virte’s Duke, whom they had seen only today in the Galerria.

Saavedra sat back, staring at the image.

“Do you see?” Urgency drove him; he must explain before the light of his vision died. Quickly he scrubbed away what he could of the offending line, blew it free of residue. The portrait now, though still rough and over-hasty, was indeed more accurate. He displayed it. “The addition here gives life to the left side of his face … he is crooked, you know. No face is pure in balance.” He filled in a shadow. “And there is his cheekbone—like
so
… do you see?”