The Golden Key (80 page)

“I’m sure he would, Your Grace.”

She hesitated. “Does … does Rafeyo still hate me, do you think?”

Lamplight gilding his green-flecked eyes, Cabral said quietly, “No one who spends two minutes in your company could do otherwise than adore you.”

She took refuge from astonishment in a swiftly summoned smile. “That’s sweet of you, Cabral. But I’d settle for his not despising me.”

“Your Grace—Mechella—”

Whatever he might have said was lost in the silvery chiming of bells summoning all within hearing to partake of the Sanctia’s bounty: a simple meal preceded by a brief ritual of thanks. The elderly resident sancto shuffled into the nave, followed by a few noviciatos, the Grijalvas, and finally Lizia—late as usual. By the time all were assembled and the sancto began singing the ceremony, Cabral was gone from Mechella’s side and she had almost—almost—recovered her calm.

Still holding the sketch of Corasson, she glanced down the row of worshipers to Rafeyo. She had noted that although Grijalvas did all the proper things during Sanctia ceremonies, most of them resented the Faith that cast them as sinful beings a step removed from heresy. Most hid it; Rafeyo was ostentatious in his contempt. When the small First Loaf was passed around, from which each person was supposed to take a token bite, Rafeyo stepped back a pace and folded his arms across his chest. After an instant’s confusion and a frown from the old sancto, the Loaf went from the young Limner on Rafeyo’s left to Leilias, on his right.

Mechella had tried to ignore his disrespect for her; he had his grudges just as she had hers, and she surmised they were fairly equal in strength. But she could not ignore his callous rejection of the symbolic sharing of life’s gifts—gifts that included his substantial talent. She recalled hearing Leilias talk of the boy’s ambition, that it was not impossible for one of his superior ability to
reach it. As Mechella saw the tight disapproval on the old sancto’s face and the flinty challenge in Rafeyo’s black eyes, she vowed that this self-righteous Grijalva would become Lord Limner over her dead body. It had nothing to do with his mother—not very much, anyway. She simply refused to countenance a person like Rafeyo any where near her family.

Mechella listened to the litany of thanks to the Mother and Son, let the morsel of bread dissolve on her tongue, and whispered a small prayer for the health and long life of Lord Limner Mequel.

  FORTY-FIVE  

When
Mechella and Lizia arrived in Meya Suerta late on a gloomy, overcast afternoon, preparations for Penitenssia were underway. As the mud-spattered carriages were dragged by exhausted horses through the streets to Palasso Verrada, everyone in the city stopped work to cheer. They paused on ladders where banners were being hung; they clung to the tall poles of the street lamps with decorations dangling from their hands; they emerged from bakeries and butcher shops—aprons white with flour or crimson with blood—to wave and yell and sing blessings on the two ladies.

Groggy with weariness, waking too abruptly from an uneasy doze to an inexplicable uproar, Mechella trembled. “What’s happened?”

“They’re calling for us.” Lizia nudged her with an elbow. “Tidy your hair, carrida, I’m about to open the curtains.”

Mechella raked her fingers through a few snarls, then gave up with a wince. “I’m a wreck, Lizi.
Must
I be seen like this?”

“Yes.”

Lizia parted the heavy tapestry curtains. Mechella held herself from shrinking back in fright from a horrible panorama. Beyond the living faces crowded close to the carriage were skulls, hundreds of skulls. Festooned with black ribbons, they grinned from every lamp post and lintel and eave. Full skeletons danced high above the street from wires strung roof-to-roof. Every window was draped in black, with what seemed the unearthed contents of whole cemeteries nailed to the casements.

Penitenssia
, she told herself frantically, clinging to Lizia’s hand and trying not to show her fear.
It’s Penitenssia, that’s all, just readying the city for the holiday
—

But the horses were as skittish as she, startled by the danza morta figures overhead. The carriage lurched. Mechella cried out.

“She’s injured—”

“Our Mechella has been hurt!”

“Matra ei Filho, preserve her!”

“Fetch a physician before the baby is lost!”

Righting herself with Lizia’s help, Mechella tried to reassure the
crowd. She smiled and waved and called out that she was perfectly fine. But the rumor wildfired and a great moan shuddered the street.

“Matra Muita Dolcha, mercy on our Mechella!”

“I vow by my family’s icon to give this month’s profits to the poor if only our Dona Mechella and her child are spared—”

“I vow my silver cup to the Sanctia—”

“Find a physician! Quickly!”

Amid the screams of grief and the promises to the Mother and Son a man’s strong voice shouted, “Make way! Make way!”

“Cabral!” Mechella recognized his beard-stubbled face as he struggled to the carriage, shouldering people aside. When he reached the window, she clutched at his extended hand. “Cabral, tell them I’m all right, tell them—”

“You’ll have to show yourself!” he yelled over the din.

She cringed against Lizia. “I can’t!”

“It’s that or the people will run mad and the horses will bolt, and then you
will
be in danger! Hurry, Mechella! Do you want everyone to be trampled?”

“Do it,” Lizia ordered. “I’m too little, they’d never see me. Open the door and stand up. I’ll hang onto your skirts, Cabral will keep you steady. Rapidia, ‘Chella!”

And so, bolstered by Cabral’s strength, she stood in the opened doorway of the carriage and at the sight of her the people bellowed with joy. She lifted a hand to wave; incredibly, the gesture silenced them. She glanced wildly down at Cabral, who nodded encouragement, eyes shining.

“Good people—” she began. And then she saw their faces, the individual faces of her people straining toward her, concerned and joyous and anxious and loving.

“My people,” she corrected herself. And the roar of delight that was their answer echoed all the way to Palasso Verrada—

—where Arrigo stopped in the middle of a sentence to the Blacksmiths Guild, and listened with a thousand speculations rampaging through his mind. The bellow resolved into a chant, one he had heard before, and just as he identified it, the guildmaster cried, “Dona Mechella is home! Grazzo do’Matra ei Filho, our Mechella is home at last!”

“Merditto! You should’ve seen her—parading through the streets in front of the carriage, with Lizia up on the box with the reins in her hands!”

“Eiha, Lizia handles horses better than she does her children,” Tazia murmured, knowing Arrigo would not hear her. No one else would either; her caza was as deserted tonight as a graveyard at a pauper’s funeral. And as cold.

“She walked—
walked!
—all the way to the Palasso, people singing and holding up their babies as if mere sight of her could bless them all their lives!” He paced stiffly, front door to the staircase where she sat, staircase to wall, wall to front door. “My Ghillasian Princess of a wife, in a dirty gown three sizes too small and some camponesso’s lice-ridden cloak on her shoulders, with her hair in tangles and Cabral at her side grinning like an idiot—”

Tazia shifted on the bottom step, fisting her hands between her knees. She’d heard the whole tale this afternoon from Rafeyo, of course—whose expressions of disgust had been hymns of adoration compared to Arrigo’s tirade.

“—and
I
had to stand on the Palasso steps with Father and Mother and all the conselhos, watching this performance as if I approved of it! When she finally arrived—merditto, like a Marchallo at the head of an army of rabble!—I had to kiss her and make much of her and stand there for half an hour while they all yelled themselves hoarse over her! First she sneaks away like a thief, now she comes back like
this!
”

Taking the small lamp from the floor beside her, Tazia rose and looked up at him. There was more gray in his hair; small wonder, with the cares of the nation on his shoulders while his wife made a public spectacle of herself.

“I’m freezing, Arrigo.”

His boot heels thudded to a stop on the floorboards. “Haven’t you been listening? Don’t you understand what she’s done?”

“Of course. She’s come back to you.”

He glared. “Is that all you can say?”

“She’s come back to you,” Tazia repeated. “And you have come back to me.”

She took his hand and led him to the little room hidden beneath the stairs, and lit the candles behind the upholstered sofa, and locked the double locks of the door.

Penitenssia was at once the most solemn and the most riotous holiday of the Ecclesial calendar, serving to clear away the old year and give joyous welcome to the new. The date shifted a bit each year, for the third day must always coincide with the first day of luna oscurra, moondark.

Dia Sola was, as its name suggested, for solitary contemplation of sins. No one ventured out except in dire emergency. The city, draped in black, lay empty and silent but for the skeletons strung above the streets, twitching in their death dance, rattling in the winter wind.

The second day, Dia Memorria, was dedicated to ancestors. Small offerings of water and wheat were placed on newly tended graves. The dead who had no living descendants were propitiated with bits of paper drawn with the sigil of the Mother and Son secured by pebbles at the headstones. All Meya Suerta stayed awake until midnight, keeping watch by black wax candles for stray spirits that had accidentally gone unhonored that day.

On Herva ei Ferro, women stayed indoors weaving special charms on iron pins from grasses cleared from the graves. The complex patterns—each family’s was different, taught mother-to-daughter for generations—formed knots signifying the protection given by the dead to the living in gratitude for remembering them. While women wove charm after charm, men built effigies of wood and straw and iron nails. Figures of people and animals were draped in black cloth painted with the white outlines of bones. topped by skull masks symbolizing sins and misfortunes. At dusk these apparitions were paraded through the streets with the Premia Sancta and Premio Sancto leading the way, intoning prayers. By nightfall everyone crowded into the Cathedral Zocalo, where the effigies were secured on poles anchored in hay bales. In absolute silence, in a night unlit by torches and empty of the moon, the people confronted grinning spectral images of Greed, Jealousy, Anger, Sickness, Adultery, and a dozen others. By an eerie trick of special white paint, the skeletons glowed in the dark; most children had nightmares for weeks afterward, and behaved themselves scrupulously long into spring.