The Golden Key

by Melanie Rawn

  “Have you gone mad?” he demanded as she closed the door behind them. “What’s this nonsense about paint?”

  “Don’t pretend you don’t understand. You have your Grijalvas, carrido meyo, and I have mine. And that’s where this discussion will begin.”

  “We have nothing to say to each other.”

  “I don’t agree.” She rubbed at her head as if her diamond-studded hairpins hurt, her fingers disarranging a few carefully scrolled curls. “Oh, that’s better. Sit down, Arrigo, and listen.” She tossed a few pillows on the floor, sat on the couch, carelessly bunching her silk skirts, and patted the upholstery beside her. He stood stiff-backed near the locked door. “Don’t be so silly, Arrigo, I want to discuss the children.”

  He folded his arms, eyeing her suspiciously. “What about them?”

  “You’re their father, and they love you—though I’m sure I don’t know why. But I won’t have them hurt any more than can be helped by anything that happens between us. Therefore I propose that we share them equally.”

  “No.”

  Mechella shook her head, sighing her sadness. “You see? This is just the sort of thing I’d hoped to avoid. Matra, but that fire is warm!” She let her shawl of gold-threaded sunbursts drop to the floor. “Undo your collar, Arrigo, you must be roasting.”

  “I won’t let you take my children—and neither will my father.”

  “I think he’ll find my proposal fair. You may have them both during the winter here at the Palasso. They love you, and they love their grandparents and Lissina, and they must learn how to be do’Verradas. But from Sancterria to Providenssia, they’ll live at Corasson. Your parents have taken to spending the summers with me, which means that almost all year they’ll be seeing the children every day.”

  He leaned a shoulder against a tapestried wall, unhooking his collar as she’d suggested. “You could’ve chosen a more comfortable place for this. By the sound of it, we’ll be here a while. Now, if I understand your proposal, you want the children for more than half of each year? You call that fair?”

  “I’m their mother. And summers at Corasson are much healthier than in Meya Suerta. You’ll have Teressa and Alessio for five months every winter and spring, Arrigo. I think that’s quite fair.”

  “What if I don’t agree. No, let me guess. You’ll have Zevierin paint warts on my nose. What foolishness!”

  “If you know half as much about Limners as I do, you know it’s anything but foolish.” She massaged her head again, dislodging more curls. When she resumed speaking, her voice rang like steel on stone. “I should mention there is a condition to this arrangement. If you allow that woman anywhere near my children, I’ll take them and never give them back. For Teressa and Alessio, she does not exist. I mean this, Arrigo. If they spend a single moment in her company—”

  He smiled pityingly. “And how could you possibly prevent it?”

  “Oh, I won’t have to. You will. Because you know what a Grijalva Limner is capable of.”

  He gave in to nervous habit and began to pace. The little carved oak table had the misfortune to get in his way; he kicked it over, kicked it again deliberately, and spun to face her. “You have your Grijalvas,” he said grimly, “and I have mine.”

  She laughed to herself, as if at some private joke. “Yes, I have my Grijalvas. It seems we are at an impasse—except for one thing.” She rose lithely and cupped her breasts in her palms. His brows shot up as she slid her hands down silvery-gray silk to her flat abdomen. And smiled.

  “You—you—”

  “Don’t splutter, Arrigo, it’s unbecoming in a future Grand Duke. Aren’t you happy to know you’re going to be a father again?”

  “Chi’patro!” he snarled.

  Another secret laugh, as if he’d said something very funny. “If by that you mean ‘bastard’—eiha, not in the eyes of the world, carrido. You and I and the father—whoever he may be—are the only ones who will know otherwise.”

  “Who is he? Whose bastard is it, Mechella?”

  Stroking her belly, she pursed her lips and gave him a sidelong glance. “No, I don’t believe I’ll tell you,” she mused. “Just imagine it, Arrigo. You won’t look at any handsome Shagarra officer or fine young nobleman again without wondering if he might be the one. But you’ll never know who fathered this child. And the world will believe it was you.”

  “Impossible! You’re already pregnant—”

  “Do I look it?”

  “Everyone knows I haven’t touched you since—”

  “Everyone knows we’re alone together right now. How long have we been in this room, Arrigo? Ten minutes? Fifteen? Quite enough time for the necessary.”

  He choked on the sweetness of her smile. “No one will believe that I—”

  “Won’t they?” She tossed her loosened hair from her eyes, and diamond-headed pins tinkled to the floor like shards of rainbows. “Countess do’Shaarria’s dear old uncle just told me I’m the loveliest woman who ever set foot in Palasso Verrada. You’re only a man, Arrigo—and my husband, with a legal and sanctified right to enjoy my beauty. Who could blame you for being unable to resist me, especially after a long separation, especially after I murmured so seductively in your ear?” She laughed. “Who could look at me and believe you faithful to your whore? How old is she now—forty? Forty-two?”

  “Tazia won’t believe—”

  “Do you think I care?” Mocking humor vanished and she glared at him. “What she believes is your concern, not mine. I’m twentysix, and I won’t spend the rest of my life like a cloistered Initiata in a Sanctia at the back of the beyond!”

  “So you’ll play the whore instead!” He went for her, grabbing her bare shoulders, shaking her until her hair fell completely from its pins and cascaded down her back. “Who is he, Mechella? Who?”

  She wrenched away from him, breathing hard, hate and disgust seething in her eyes. “You’ve been to Corasson. Dozens of handsome young men—my Shagarrans, my footmen, my stable hands, my farmers—or perhaps it was a visitor, some charming nobleman or merchant—anyone at all! You can’t bully it out of me, and you can’t make any of my people tell you!” With both hands she raked her hair back from her face, laughing at him again. “The only one you can be absolutely certain of is Zevierin! But be certain of this, too—he’s just as much mine as all the others. You’ll never know who my child’s father is, Arrigo! Never!”

  “I won’t own to your bastard! I’ll deny it, denounce you—divorce you!”

  “I think not. You made a fatal mistake. You forgot the people you were born to serve. They love me. Not you. Call me a whore and my baby a bastard, they won’t believe you. Not after I walk out of this room tonight looking like this.”

  She let him look at her: tumbled hair and flushed cheeks, silvery skirt all wrinkles, the marks of his fingers on her bare shoulders and arms. Horrified comprehension scrawled itself across his face as his gaze flickered around the room. Strewn pillows, table upended, lace shawl on the floor by the sofa—

  “They will believe me” Mechella said softly, maliciously. “When the time comes, you’ll welcome your third child just as you did the first two. There will be no denial, Arrigo. No denouncing. No divorce.”

  “I will ruin you,” he breathed in a voice that shook with loathing. “You’ll never sleep another peaceful night for wondering how I’ll ruin you.”

  “Try,” she invited serenely. “You have your Grijalvas, marrido meyo—but never forget that I have mine.”

  She swept past him, a smile on her lips, and unlocked the door. There was a footman outside, carrying a tray of used glassware; a maid was just down the hall with an armload of fresh sheets. They would do very nicely.

  “Carrido, we’ve been gone simply hours!” she called lightly over her shoulder. “It’s terribly rude!” She paused, knowing the servants were now listening. “Is my gown done up in the back? I don’t know what I’ll do about my hair. Really, Arrigo, did you have to take out all the pins?”
>
  She heard him choke, and laughed gaily as she started down the hall. When she neared the maid she pretended to give a start. “Oh—could you do me the most tremendous favor? When you have a moment, could you fetch my shawl? It’s in that little room down the hall. I really must hurry back to the ballroom—bring it to me there. Grazzo.”

  The girl would see the disarray of the antechamber, draw the intended conclusion, and—with the footman to back up her story—tell every servant in the Palasso that Don Arrigo had simply been unable to keep his hands off the spectacularly beautiful Dona Mechella. By noon tomorrow all Meya Suerta would believe the tale. And that suited Mechella just fine.

  She ran down the stairs, heart racing. Fifty feet from the ballroom entrance she stopped, reaction trembling through her. That she, Princess Mechella of Ghillas, could have said such things to such a purpose—and enjoyed it so thoroughly! But she was no longer that callow girl. She was Dona Mechella of Tira Virte, the next Grand Duchess, and she would say whatever was necessary to protect herself. More, she was pregnant with the child of a man who adored her, and she would do anything to protect him and their baby.

  How she wished for Cabral’s strong arm now! Or at least Leilias’ knowing smile and a wink of encouragement. But she was alone, and must see this through on her own. The worst of it was over—for, contrary to what she’d feared, she hadn’t felt the slightest pity for Arrigo at all. Let him live his chosen lies; this one she would shove down his throat.

  Once again flinging her hair back, she took a deep breath and entered the ballroom. The first person she saw was Lissina, whose gaze darted once and then again to Mechella’s bare shoulders, as if she had not quite believed what she saw there the first time. Lissina was too tactful to mention the reddened fingermarks, but Mechella knew what she was thinking.

  What they were all thinking, what they could hardly avoid thinking when Arrigo returned. Red-faced, his hair disheveled, the top button of his tunic done up wrong—Mechella felt her cheeks turn crimson at the picture he presented, and was glad everyone thought her embarrassed. En verro, her face was burning because she was trying very hard not to laugh, especially when his mother adjusted his collar for him as if he were five years old. The appearance of the maid a short time later, smirking as she handed over the shawl, was the crowning touch. Mechella thanked her, glanced around as if abashed, and pulled the lace up around her shoulders.

  Her immediate personal reward was a single glimpse of the Grijalva woman’s face halfway across the ballroom. Stark with shock, thin-lipped with rage, she looked every one of her years and then some. Arrigo started toward the woman, was seen by her—and was instantly presented with a view of her back.

  The smile Mechella gave Lissina was pure dazzlement as she said innocently, “I do hope I didn’t miss the fireworks.”

  When Cossimio and Gizella arrived at Corasson for the summer, Mechella announced the happy news.

  “And at Fuega Vesperra!” The Grand Duke chortled. “The very celebration of conception! How clever of you to have arranged it, ‘Chella!” he added with a broad wink.

  She blushed—easy enough, recalling the true circumstances of conception—and did not correct his impression of the timing. By her own calculation, it had happened during the glistening night of Astraventa. Not that that she and Cabral had shattered Corasson’s reputation of having no babies conceived beneath its roof; they’d celebrated the holiday with appropriate rusticity in a willow-veiled glade. This child was one with a special soul come from the starry sky to be nurtured in her womb. Mechella glowed as if the spark of this child lit her from within—the child of the man she loved, who genuinely loved her. The only stain on her happiness was that once her brother learned of her condition, he absolutely forbade her to attend his coronation this autumn. In his letter of congratulations he told her flat out that he would be crowned King with her or without her, his Grijalva would send her a dozen paintings of the whole lengthy ceremony, and if she thought he wouldn’t order his border guards to send her home to Tira Virte, she was vastly mistaken.

  For until I get an Heir of my own, ‘Chella carridia, if the child you carry is a boy, he will be King of Ghillas after me. So stay home!

  “I just hope the baby’s late when he comes and small when he does,” Leilias privately told her husband. She had said the same thing at least three times a week since Mechella had told them she was pregnant.

  They were out walking in the hills, collecting herbs for Leilias’ perfumes—and Zevierin’s paintbox. Expert botanists each, though for entirely different reasons, they learned much from each other: she from him the magical properties of the plants, he from her better ways to extract and distill their essences. She was alternately fascinated and appalled by his descriptions of how certain spells, spoken when in a certain state of mind, activated and sealed magic in a painting. One kind of flower would soak up such-and-such a magical influence while another wouldn’t and a third required another set of words entirely—all of which a Limner had to memorize from the Folio.

  Plucking up a fistful of vervain, Leilias said, “If there was only a plant I could brew up and you could spell and then we’d put it in everybody’s food, so they’d believe that a baby born several weeks early can weigh eight pounds and have a full head of hair!”

  “Stop taking the roots as well as the stems,” he scolded. “You’ll denude the whole forest of next year’s growth. And worry about Mechella’s baby when and if you must.”

  “Somebody has to worry, because Mechella certainly isn’t! As for Cabral—” She snorted. “My besotted brother drifts about wearing the silliest expression I’ve ever seen on a human face. Swear to me, Zevi, that when I’m pregnant you won’t look such a fool.”

  He promised solemnly, then began to laugh. “I’m sorry, I can’t help it. You remember when we went to Diettro Mareia a few years ago? Mechella was pregnant then, and Rafeyo kept saying what an idiot smile Arrigo wore. I’ll wager it’s not on his face now!”

  Some days before Cossimio and Gizella arrived, Mechella sent a letter to her husband, sweetly phrased, officially informing him that he was to be a father. It was Arrigo’s bad luck that the courier—who had strict instructions to deliver the envelope to him in person wherever he might be—found him in the Grijalva’s public gallery with Tazia and Rafeyo.

  They were planning a special showing—By Sun and Moon: Two Centuries of Landscape Paintings—to provide Rafeyo with experience in the curatorial duties of the Lord Limner. Premio Dioniso was said to be quite irritated by his choice of subject.

  Rafeyo was wheedling a few paintings from Arrigo when the courier was escorted into the long, narrow little Galerria. “If you’ll lend us Yberro’s two Granidia Sunrise pieces from the Audience Chamber, that will fill out his period very nicely. I’d love to have something by Riobaro, but he wasn’t much for landscapes.”

  “You’ve grown so in your work,” Tazia smiled, “that you could probably paint one, sign his name, and have everyone believing it was his!”

  As Rafeyo rolled his eyes, Arrigo laughed. “She’s your mother, it’s her sacred duty to embarrass you.” Nodding thanks to the courier, he glanced at the wax seal on the envelope, frowned, and tucked the letter in his pocket.

  “Begging Your Grace’s pardon,” said the courier, “but Her Grace said to wait for a reply.”

  “Tell her—” He broke off. “Very well, I’ll read it here.”

  Tazia touched her son’s arm, and together they moved away, pretending interest in self-portraits of long-dead Limners currently on display. The Galerria Picca was a project initiated thirty years ago by Gizella and Lissina. Because the Verrada was closed to commoners and the Grijalva was closed to everyone but blood kin, the two ladies felt it only fair to provide the general public with a place to view their country’s art. The exhibition changed every three months, drawing on the inexhaustible family collection and occasionally those pictures owned by the do’Verradas. The experience of being curatorrio
to an exhibit was invaluable for the young Limners, some of whom would go on to advise foreign courts and private collectors on the subtleties of placement, lighting, and preservation.

  Three mornings a week, schoolchildren were guided through the Picca by incredibly patient docents, who gave them paper and colored pencils to contribute their own “masterworks” to the Grijalva collection. Truly talented children were invited to take formal lessons, and sometimes even become limners. Three afternoons a week, the general public was admitted. And at least twice a month Limners gave evening lectures on particular paintings or artists. No visit to Meya Suerta by Tira Virteian native or touring estranjiero was complete without an afternoon at the Picca.

  Tazia and Rafeyo were gazing at Riobaro’s Self-Portrait at Eighteen when Arrigo spat out a curse. Tazia turned in time to see him fling the letter to the floor and storm from the room. The courier bent to retrieve the envelope and single page.

  “Give it to me,” Tazia said.

  “Her Grace—”

  “—will never know unless you tell her, which you won’t. Give it to me.”

  “Regretto, Countess, I cannot.”

  Gently, she asked, “Do you know who I am?”

  Though he kept his gaze downcast, he revealed himself by a tightening of the lips as if he’d downed unsugared lemonada. “Yes, Countess. I know who you are.”

  Rafeyo solved the problem by snatching the letter from his hand A bottom corner tore; it didn’t matter. There was only a brief paragraph on the top of the page, Mechella’s childishly round signature halfway down.

  “Grazzo,” Tazia said sardonically to the courier. “I’ll make sure this finds its way to Don Arrigo’s desk. You may go.”

  Rafeyo added, “You might as well go all the way back to Corasson. I rather doubt there’ll be any reply.”