The Golden Key (53 page)

The mirror gave her truth: hollow about the eyes, taut around the mouth, pale of flesh, but whole. Nothing showed of her knowledge. Swiftly she tied back ringlets, then went to find Ignaddio and share prayers for dead Raimon in the Grijalva shrine.

Sario worked swiftly, with certainty, murmuring lingua oscurra, giving way from the knowledge of what had occured to what must; employing precisely what Alejandro had commanded him to employ, but of his own will, his own doing, his own Gift and Light. The original plan was disregarded, as was the original if incomplete portrait; he worked now completely separated from anything he had done before, making this wholly fresh, wholly new, unlike anything he or anyone else had done before him.

A woman, standing in the middle foreground, behind a table but not obscured, as if poised to move away from it. The table itself, in
near foreground, was only partially visible, its image carried off the bottom of the panel, extended to the left and carried off again; movement was imperative, and the suggestion of it. Thus a man looking at the painting saw mostly the edge of the table, not its surface, and that edge carved into interlocking patterns, a border, leading the eye. On the table lay books, vellum pages, a lighted lantern; an earthenware bowl of fruit; silver pitcher. And a closed
Folio
, its aged leather binding set with gold and gemstones.

Behind the woman, in the background, windows, the high and arched embrasures cut deeply into thick walls, all honey-hued curves and shadowed, deeper hollows, with shutters folded back. Beyond the windows, through the arches, the sky beyond, fading from twilight to evening, from the colors of sunset to the tones of night, rich and dark and encompassing. On one deep sill a new candle, tall, fat, honeycombed, twelve hours delineated by gilt-painted, incised rings. Its light but a blur, painting a warm patina over the honey-hued, clay-smoothed surface of the wall.

On the other sill, also behind her, a mirror set upon a small easel, silvered glass framed in gilt and pearls. A memory-mirror, a luck-mirror, gifted to a lover in celebration of Astraventa, when the stars fell from the sky.

To the extreme right, nearest the edge of the panel, a door, iron-studded, iron-bound, consuming the foreground. Shut. Latched. But not locked. Not barred.

And the woman: behind table, before windows, illuminated by candle, by lantern, caught between light and shadow. One hand, a long-fingered, slender hand, barely touched the gem-set leather binding of the
Folio
, as if she intended to open it; yet the poised posture suggested interruption, a startled expectation that made the
Folio
after all unimportant, forgotten.

The other hand, equally long-fingered, equally eloquent, was dropped to brush her abdomen, as if to cup it, to ward it. She faced the viewer and yet turned away also, caught between stillness and movement. Her head was uplifted, in motion, turning from viewer to door. The fine bones of the face illuminated by lantern light, by an inner, joyous light of anticipation, as if she knew a man was at the door, a lover, the father of her unborn child. All the fine bones,
all
, knit of chiaroscuro, hollows and shadows and lines and relief, tilted, turning, limned by love: hers for him, his for her, and none of it Sario’s.

He paused in his muttering, his painting. Caught breath. Went on.

The sheen of pale bare flesh above the low, straight line of her gown, an ash-rose gown; the stippled scumble of flame-illumined velurro, laced taut against breasts, against ribs, against abdomen; the still-slender abdomen as yet unbloated by pregnancy; the low, straight, slash of neckline, high enough in bodice only to hide swollen nipples, reaching from side-seam to side-seam so that the sleeves, ruched and quilted to stand above shoulders, were laced onto the merest strip of fabric rising from the bodice.

The deep bell of the skirts, fold upon fold of heavy velvet, vertically fretted by light, by shadow. Divided by the table, begun again beneath it, what could be seen of it. And the tumbled mass of ringlets, swept back from her face to expose it save for one or two fallen strands, fallen coils before the ear, another dangling to bare shoulder—and yet another near an eye, begging for readjustment by a lover’s tender touch.

Swiftly, so swiftly; there was so little time.

Color, tone upon tone, warm, cool, light, dark, mixed to form the whole. He tempered upon his muller, adding oil as necessary, wine as needed. Applied black pigment to the marble so it would not taint fresh color … rubbed it clean, took up the brush, began again to paint.

Detail to nose, to just-parting lips, to gray and brilliant eyes; even to lashes, to the hollows of her ears, the clean vertical line of neck from uplifted jaw to the first downs wept curve into horizontal shoulder. The blush of light, here; the deeper stillness of shadow, there.

Saavedra
: posed, poised, caught. Waiting for Alejandro.

Ignaddio’s cell was as hers had been, bereft of that save what came with it, and what he put into it: himself, imagination, inspiration. A narrow cot, strung with rope; a chest for clothing; a table near the window, with ewer and basin. And the clutter of his craft.

Saavedra paused in the doorway. He had left it open, as if wanting to hear the first footstep of her approach; but if he did, if he marked her approach at all, or her presence, she could not say. He sat upon the bed, shoulders bowed, head tilted downward.

“’Naddi,” she said, and he turned. She saw then he had been drawing: a sheet of wood-heavy paper upon a board, a piece of charcoal, smudged face and filthy hands. He set them aside as he saw her. “Eiha, no—don’t stop. If you wish to draw, do so—I can return another time.”

“I’ve been waiting for you,” he said.

She wondered if she had been so long, first with Sario, later in her chambers removing the taint of him. “Regretto,” she said. “Shall we go now?”

He stood up, shaking out of eyes a lock of fallen hair. “What will they do with him?”

She thought he meant Sario, then realized he meant Il Sanguo. “Give him passage,” she answered, knowing it was not what he asked, and yet she had no answer. She had never known a Grijalva to take his own life by any means; had not known save for Sario what was done at all for a Sanguo who died.

Raimon had not died. Raimon had perverted what was forbidden by the Ecclesia, unknown within the family.

“Shall we go now?” she repeated, “We’ll talk to the Blessed Mother, ask intercession, pray for the peace of his soul.”

Ignaddio nodded, rubbed grimy hands on his tunic, thus transferring the dust, and was no cleaner for his efforts. A second toss of his head swung hair out of his eyes; she saw deep worry in them.

“What is it?” Saavedra asked.

He stared hard at the floor. “I am to undergo Confirmattio next week.”

Inwardly she flinched; it was done to discover Giftedness, and just this moment she wanted nothing to do with such undertakings. “Eiha,” she heard herself begin calmly, “is this not what you wanted? First Rinaldo, now you. Not so far ahead of you after all, is he?”

He refused to look at her. “I don’t want it now,” he said. “I’m afraid.”

Once she might have sent him to Raimon, to ease his fears; but Raimon
fed
them instead. “Because of what happened?”

He nodded. “He had years left to him.
Years.
”

In the house of Grijalvas, even boys thought of such things.

Saavedra sighed. “We may never know why, ‘Naddi—” She did.
She
did. “—but we must not let it affect our own lives beyond proper mourning. If you are Gifted, you will be needed. Perhaps—perhaps you are meant to be his replacement.”

His head came up sharply in shock. “Replace
Il Sanguo
?”

“No,” she said after a pause, “no, no one shall replace Il Sanguo. But perhaps you can learn from what he taught, and help his memory to be honored.”

Ignaddio nodded. “That I would like to do.”

“Then come.” She did not extend a hand; he was aware of dignity again. “We’ll go to the shrine.”

After only a moment’s hesitation, the boy preceded her out of the cell.

His voice was counterpoint to his heartbeat, rising and falling as he recited the Hidden Language. So much detail now: the grain within the wood of the door, the table; the intricacies of the carved border along the edge of the surface; the rich glint of gemstones fixed into the leather of the
Folio
, set aglow by lantern; the text and illumination worked into the vellum pages; the lace work of honeycombed candle, lighting itself, the window, the folded shutter; his small copper bowl now set in the sill, holding such plantstuffs as bluebell, white clover, rosemary—and, in private jest, a drift of peach blossoms, for Captivity.

And lingua oscurra. In light, in shadow, in flame, in darkness, in the folds of her skirts, in the coils of her hair, in the border of the table, in the woodgrain of the door, in the binding of the
Folio
, in the text of vellum pages.

Oscurra. Everywhere.

Saavedra didn’t know if the shrine brought peace to the boy, if the icon offered surcease against his fear and grief. For herself, it offered some measure of renewed hope, realization: that she was Gifted after all, unaccountably Gifted, did
not
mean she must accept the tenents of the Limners. She could never be one of them, never of the Viehos Fratos, never a Grijalva who shaped compordotta and family goals. She was herself, nothing more, nothing other; leave that to Sario, to be shaped of different needs. To wish to shape other folk and
their
needs.

Ignaddio sat beside her on the bench set against the wall. The shrine was small, barely large enough to hold more than six men, but in that moment it loomed large as a cathedral. No bells. No sancto, no sancta. Merely a velurro-draped table and an icon upon it, the wooden panel painted by, it was said, Premio Frato Arturro, who was himself now dead, as Raimon was now dead; Arturro who was, they claimed, everything but father to the boy.

Boy. Raimon had not been a boy for years. She had never known him as a boy. He had always been older, Gifted, one of the Viehos Fratos.