by Amy Maroney
“Great, honey.” Portia beamed at her. “Obsidian and I have two more scuba diving classes in the practice pool and then we head down to Monterey for our first dive in a couple of weeks.”
“Do you feel ready to tackle the ocean?”
“We won’t be diving very deep, not much deeper than the pool, and we’ve practiced everything a million times, so I’m not worried.”
Zari’s chest constricted at the thought of her mother entering the cold, murky waters of Monterey Bay, loaded down by weights, an oxygen tank, and other assorted gear.
“How are things there?” Portia asked. “How’s your neighbor doing?”
“Monsieur Mendieta? He’s fine. He even lets me help carry his groceries upstairs for him. I told him Mendieta is a family name for us, too, and he said his people originally came from a town in Spain just over the border from St. Jean de Luz. I told him I’d find out where our Basque ancestors came from.”
“Your dad was the one who collected genealogical information. He had a file going for a few years and I know he talked to some of my cousins about the Mendieta history at family reunions. You should start with him.”
“I bet he threw that file away the day you divorced,” Zari said darkly. “I doubt he would even remember it.”
“He’d appreciate a call regardless of the reason, honey.”
“I used to call him a lot.” Zari got up from the bed and walked to the window. “I just gave up after a while.”
“Try again.”
“Mom, you’re so forgiving. He was such a jerk to you. To us.”
“That was a long time ago. If I had hung onto my anger all these years I would have keeled over by now. I’ve never been one to focus on the past, Zari. I live in the now. The past is history. Tomorrow’s a mystery. Today is a gift...”
“...That’s why we call it the present. I know, I know.”
“You laugh at all my sayings, but you secretly love them.”
“Lately they’ve been getting me through a lot of rough patches,” Zari agreed. “But for the time being, just to keep my own sense of balance intact, I’m going to avoid calling Dad. So who else could tell me about the Mendietas?”
“I have a second cousin who used to hand-draw family trees and bring them to gatherings. Your father got a lot of the Mendieta information from her. She lives in Oregon now, though. Way out in the middle of nowhere near a place called Wallowa Lake. I’ll see if I can track down contact information for you.”
The next afternoon when Zari was ushered by the grim-faced receptionist into the chief archivist’s office, he did not stand to greet her. Instead, he stayed seated behind his desk and waved her into a chair.
“Now that you’ve got my attention, you had better show me what’s so important,” he said, his eyes stony. “And quickly. I don’t have much time for you, I’m afraid.”
She swallowed, pulling a handful of papers from her portfolio. Images of the Fontbroke College painting, Laurence’s portrait of the merchant family, and the painting of the woman in the blue dress. Mira’s miniature self-portraits, one with the words ‘Mira, painter and servant of God’ written in tiny Latin script around it. Photos of Arnaud’s mark on the backs of the panels. The prayer book image with Mira’s inscription, ‘Mira illustrated this book.’ The mortuary roll with the signatures of Mira, Marguerite de Oto, the Sacazars. Mira and Arnaud’s marks on the walls of the cave in Aragón. The Oto family trademark and the corresponding medallion in the Fontbroke College portrait. The design on Carlo Sacazar’s ring in the merchant family portrait—and in the stone courtyard of his home.
The archivist inspected the documents one by one in silence, then raised his eyes to Zari’s.
“Mira de Oto was an artist who lived and worked in this area five hundred years ago,” she said with conviction. “It was here, in the notary Jean Aubrey’s record book, that I found evidence that Mira was married to Arnaud de Luz. He made the panels for the paintings I’ve shown you. I need more evidence of Mira’s life and work, and that’s why I have to see Jean Aubrey’s other book. Forgive me for the way I arranged this meeting, but I am almost out of time. I have to present evidence at a conference in Bordeaux soon. I had no choice.”
He pushed back his chair and stood up, expressionless.
Zari felt her composure begin to crumble. Her cheeks were hot.
Without another word, he walked to the door.
Apparently her presentation had failed to impress him. The thought of looking him in the eye again was unbearable. She began gathering her papers together, wishing she could melt into the floor.
“Well?” he said. “Are you coming with me, or not?”
She choked back a cry of delight, snatched up her portfolio, and followed him out the door.
At a long metal table in the room where Zari and Laurence had seen Jean Aubrey’s elaborate signature for the first time, an assistant laid the notary’s record book in one of the miniature bean bag supports. The chief archivist pulled on a pair of latex gloves. Zari stood at his side.
“Allons-y,” he said. “Let’s go.” With great care he lifted the worn leather cover of the book.
The parchment pages were stained, some of them clearly beyond readability.
“Water damage?” Zari asked.
He nodded. “And more. This book has been through hell.”
Delicately he slid a narrow metal tool with a pointed edge between two pages and separated them.
“We can’t open the book all the way,” he explained. “It would stress the spine too much. That’s why we haven’t digitized the contents.”
Zari bent down and tilted her head, examining the pages.
“Each notary had his own mark, you see,” he explained. “Some of them were quite ornate. In Toulouse at that time, there were a dozen or so very powerful families who ruled the city. This Lord de Vernier that you saw in the notary’s other book was one of them.”
“The notaries went from house to house, or sometimes set up a stall at the local market. The entries reflect that. A debt to be repaid, a sale of wool, an agreement to take a loan, a wedding dowry...they all appear randomly.” He pointed to various entries. “See here, a contract for manufacture of shoes between a grain merchant and a shoemaker. Here, a contract for carpentry work between a merchant and a group of Cagot men.”
“Cagots? The people who had to wear red badges?”
The archivist nodded. “It’s an ugly history. Cagots who worked within the city walls weren’t allowed to live inside Toulouse itself, so each night after work they had to leave. They had their own graveyards outside the city walls, too.”
“But they could worship in the same churches as everyone else, with restrictions,” Zari remembered. “What happened to them?”
“After the revolution, a group of Cagots managed to destroy most of the records about themselves in the city’s municipal buildings. Eventually they vanished into the fabric of society. Their culture disappeared.” He paused. “But we are here to talk about a notary, not Cagots. Sometimes, for a very rich merchant, a notary would be exclusive to him and even travel with him. Lord de Vernier seemed to prefer this notary, Jean Aubrey.”
He turned the page. Zari’s eyes were instantly drawn to the signatures at the bottom. There, next to the notary’s mark, were four names: Lord and Lady de Vernier, Miramonde de Oto, and Arnaud de Luz.
Zari heard the thudding of her own heart and nothing else, staring at the words in disbelief. She had found Mira again. And this time, Mira had identified herself as an Oto, with a notary as witness.
The archivist glanced at her, the shadow of a smile on his face. “You are happy? There is something else, too. Some illustrations you will find interesting...”
His words bled together, buzzing in her ears. She just breathed in and out, tears blurring her vision. Once again she felt a tug of conn
ection to the woman she had spent so many hours pursuing through layers of time and history.
Miramonde de Oto. The words seemed to float off the page and hover just before her eyes. All along she had harbored the belief that Mira wanted to be found. In this moment, it seemed her belief was grounded in truth.
The crumbling book before her bore the evidence.
17
Summer, 1505
Valley of Maury, France
Mira
In the still hours before dawn, Mira was tugged awake by a sound, a piteous moan that threaded its way into her consciousness. Drowsily, she sat up, listening in the dark. There it was again, that tiny, insistent moan.
Rose.
She padded across the cool stone floor to Rose’s room and knelt by her bedside. The silver light of a three-quarter moon illuminated Rose’s tiny shape sprawled in the center of the bed. Her nightdress was twisted around her hips, the coverlet bunched around her ankles. Rose’s face glowed with an eerie luminescence in the moonlight. Mira frowned, put her palm to the girl’s forehead; it came away damp with sweat. She rested a hand on Rose’s chest, felt the furious pumping of her heart.
“Arnaud!” A jolt of terror overtook Mira. “Rose has a fever.”
In a moment he was beside her.
“We need bark of the willow,” he said. “I’ll go to the kitchens and wake someone.”
He was back in a few moments. “No one’s about. I’ll go to the servants’ quarters and find a cook.”
“No,” Mira said. “Go to the artist’s house in the field. She has what we need. I know she would share it.”
While he was gone Mira did her best to comfort Rose. She poured water from a ceramic pitcher on a length of linen and folded it into a rectangle, then placed it on Rose’s forehead. She took another cloth, wet it, and wiped Rose’s limbs one by one. The girl lay still, silent except for those occasional tiny moans.
Where was Arnaud? Fear began to leach into Mira’s mind. Fevers in a child this small came on like a quickly burning wildfire; one moment a small glowing ember and the next a towering flame.
Finally he returned with a small bottle and a ceramic jar.
“Bark of the willow and herb salve for her chest.” He thrust the items at Mira.
She cradled Rose in one arm and administered the willow bark syrup.
“Go back to the kitchens and find some watered wine,” she ordered.
He disappeared again. Mira smeared the salve on Rose’s chest, then perched on the edge of the bed, not wanting her own body heat to increase the fever. For the first time since they arrived in this place, tears welled in her eyes. She sat staring at Rose as dawn approached, aching to hold the girl in her arms, to rock her and soothe her, to cure her of this agony.
When Arnaud returned and she tried to pour a little watered wine down the girl’s throat, it was no use—Rose thrashed and moaned and spluttered, her breath coming faster and shallower with each passing moment.
Birdsong sounded in the courtyard. Mira realized dawn had bloomed in the sky. Rose’s hair was dark with sweat, her cheeks a brilliant scarlet. Arnaud crossed his arms over his chest, taking in the sight of Rose’s feverish little body with worried eyes.
“She’s so small.” His voice was ragged, barely a whisper.
He sank down on his knees next to the bed.
18
Summer, 1505
Perpignan, Aragón
Pelegrín
A fortnight passed. Then another. Summer was at its end. Pelegrín’s restlessness grew. Finally the ship was loaded, its decks washed, the damage it had sustained during the crossing from Naples mended with pine pitch, oil, and glue. He had done his best at diplomatically indicating interest in the merchant’s daughter while remaining vague about his ultimate intentions.
The last morning, he checked the trunk that contained his few belongings. On top lay the prayer book. He pulled it out one more time to riffle through the pages. The small portrait of the pale-eyed woman stared out at him. So like his mother’s image, so familiar. He traced the frame around the image, a cross-hatched pattern of Moorish designs. His finger came to rest on a series of lines and squares. He peered more closely at the drawing.
There were words within the maze of pen strokes, he realized. Letters had been cleverly inserted one after another inside the design.
“‘Mira pinxit hunc librum,’” he read aloud.
Mira illustrated this book.
He flipped to the last page of the volume and studied the bookmaker’s mark. Then he sprang up, clattered down the stairs, and burst out the door, leaving a trail of bewildered servants in his wake.
At the bookmaker’s workshop, he banged on the door until a terrified servant answered. Without waiting, with no words of introduction, he pushed past the man and shouted for the bookmaker. It was early yet, not much past dawn, and the man appeared blearily tying a wrapper around his nightshirt.
“How can I be of service, my lord?” he said.
“The artist. Where did she go?” Pelegrín opened the book to Mira’s image and pointed.
“To a great house in the countryside. I told you, my lord.”
“Yes, but which great house?”
Pelegrín took a step forward, impatience plain on his face. The man shrunk back.
“It was a few days’ journey away to the west, near a castle falling into ruin. In a valley planted with lavender. I remember that because she said she loved lavender, like her mother before her. I swear it to you, my lord.”
Pelegrín shook some coins into the bookmaker’s hand and left without another word.
19
Summer, 1505
Valley of Maury, France
Mira
Little Rose’s stiffening body lay before them, her skin taking on a milky pallor, the sheen of sweat fading from her brow. Mira’s eyes burned with a searing pain that would not go away. Her training as a nurse had meant nothing in the end. She had been powerless to stop the fever raging inside Rose all night. It had swelled and festered like some furious beast, impervious to her ministrations. And it had dealt its death blow swiftly, so swiftly.
She smoothed Rose’s nightdress back into place and tenderly lay the sheet over her again. Carefully she fitted herself next to Rose’s small form, curling her arms around the girl, and began to weep. Arnaud knelt beside her, smoothing her hair.
They startled at the sound of footsteps in the hallway. A knock at the door.
Mira and Arnaud exchanged a bleak glance.
Their employers sent word via servants, along with a small sack of silver coins, that they were to leave immediately. The baron did do them the kindness of offering a spade with which to bury Rose and a mule to carry their burdens. They packed the mule and led him to a field that lay fallow, just past the lavender beds on the far side of the Van der Zees’ home.
As Arnaud dug a hole under the baleful eye of the sun, Mira clutched Rose to her chest and stared unseeing at the little house, numb with grief. A movement within it startled her. She could just make out the form of Cornelia van der Zee’s husband, framed in a window. He reached out and quickly pulled the shutters closed. Within a few moments he had shuttered each window that looked out over the field. Perhaps he feared that whatever killed Rose was capable of drifting across the fields and slithering into his home. Or perhaps, with his wife so close to death, he could not bear the sight of her own unfolding fate in the small, linen-wrapped corpse that Mira held in her arms.
She dropped her eyes, filled with despair at the thought of relinquishing her little girl. Their patrons had not even allowed her to bathe Rose with lavender water, so panicked were they that the illness would spread and fester within their walls. So now her tiny body would be laid unclean in a shallow grave and covered with soil, with no protective layer of pine or oak between her and the wriggli
ng creatures of the earth. She gripped Rose’s small form tightly, thinking of Deedit. First the father, then the mother, now the child. An entire family extinguished in the space of a few seasons. Why would God let such a tragedy occur? Why not at least spare Rose, innocent Rose? Tears welled in her eyes. She choked back a sob, bit the inside of her cheek, tasted blood.
The door of the small house opened and Cornelia’s husband slipped out carrying a wooden chest. He lugged it across the field and laid it next to the hole that Arnaud was digging.
“My wife bade me bring you this,” he said. “For the girl.”
Mira searched the shuttered windows of the house, desperate to communicate her thanks. As if he knew her thoughts, the husband shook his head.
“Cornelia is poorly today. Even the light of day pains her.”
“Thank her for us—please,” Mira entreated him.
He bent and opened the chest. Inside was a layer of blue wool, upon it a hand-stitched silken doll with pearl eyes and hair made of yarn.
“She always wanted a child but we were never blessed. These are for your girl, to ease her passage into the heavens.”
Tears blurred Mira’s vision as she laid Rose gently in the chest and placed the doll beside her. The two men settled the chest into the ground and Arnaud spaded soil into the hole. Cornelia’s husband helped cover it with stones.
The three of them stood silently for a few moments. A breeze carried the scent of roses from the garden. The sweet odor repulsed Mira. She took a breath to clear her head, then bent down and was violently sick.
“Mira!” Arnaud stepped forward and steadied her.
She was trembling.
“You should stay on,” Cornelia’s husband said to Arnaud. “Your wife is ill.”
“We can’t,” Arnaud replied, jerking his head back toward the manor house. “They’ve ordered us out.”
“But what if...” the man broke off, his eyes on the mounded stones. “Where will you go?”