by Melanie Rawn
The day after that ceremony was marked by the first time in history that commoners were admitted to Galerria Verrada—by prior application only, investigated and confirmed by the young man newly assigned to the task, and for only five hours in the afternoon. Still, it was a fine beginning, and from now on there would be monthly public days when anyone granted a ticket could view the most splendid treasures of Tira Virte.
That evening, the widowed Grand Duchess Mechella took a private tour. She was more often seen in Meya Suerta since Grand Duke Arrigo Ill’s death of heart failure two years earlier, in 1284; her son had redecorated her suite and it pleased her to use it on occasion. She stayed out of his political troubles, never having had a taste for such things, and did not in fact come to the capital very often. But she would not have missed the Galerria’s first public day for worlds. After all, it had been her idea.
Mechella smiled to see one of her Casteyan orphans at the main desk. He rose and greeted her warmly.
“A tremendous success, Your Grace—though we had a close call with a draper’s little boy and one of Grand Duchess Gizella’s scent-pillars! Maesso Cabral, a pleasure to see you. May I summon a curatorrio to guide you around?”
“I think we can manage,” Mechella assured him, glancing playfully over her shoulder at Cabral. “Are you enjoying your new work, Iverrio?”
“Very much, Your Grace. It was kind of you to think of me.”
“Eiha, you’ve organized Casteya for Count Maldonno these ten years, I felt I ought to have the benefit of your skills and education for a while! Go along home if you like, you needn’t wait. I have a key.”
“Grazzo millio, Your Grace—my wife didn’t expect me until midnight, after all the fuss today! Did I tell you the paintings you lent for this first exhibition collect the largest crowds?”
“That’s nice to hear.” Taking Cabral’s arm, she moved into the Galerria, whispering to him, “If you dare tell me how many years it’s been since we first saw these paintings together, I’ll refuse to believe you.”
He gave her a wink. “If I dare tell you that you’re even lovelier now than you were then, will you believe that?”
Laughing, arm-in-arm they strolled the length of the Galerria, commenting now and then on the pictures.
“Do you know,” she said, “as often as I’ve seen all these, I think I still see something new in them each time.” With a sidelong glance of blue eyes, she added, “Eiha, I had a very good teacher, after all.”
“It’s gratifying,” Cabral said at last, “that you’ve forgotten none of what I taught you.”
“Amoro meyo, I learned things much more important from you than how to look at a painting. Oh, there’s Teressa’s Birth! Was she ever that little? And I still like your copy better than the original—who painted it? I don’t recall.”
“Dioniso Grijalva, Your Grace,” said a voice down the expanse of tiled floor, and both Mechella and Cabral gave a start. “Forgive me,” the man said, coming into the circle of light spilling from the lustrosso high overhead. “I am recently returned from Diettro Mareia, and have not seen the Galerria in some years. I regret interrupting your private tour.”
“Not at all, Embajadorro,” Mechella said, identifying his rank by the sapphire-blue badge on his sleeve—now that caps and feathers had gone out of fashion, Alessio had gifted his most important Grijalvas with his own personal sigil. “And thank you for reminding me it was Dioniso who painted my daughter’s Birth. It’s been a very long time.”
“He had a rather sad end,” the Limner went on, fingering the Chieva do’Orro at his breast.
“Sad?” Cabral slanted a look at him that Mechella didn’t understand. “He died in his sleep, didn’t he?”
“Oh, of course. I’ve confused him with someone else.” He gave a little shrug of apology. “I see that Your Grace has lent the Galerria The First Mistress. She’s not been seen in here for many long years. It’s said she fascinates all who look upon her—much like Your Grace,” he added with a smile and the archaic lips-and-heart salute.
“Eiha, the Grijalva charm!” Mechella laughed. “I’m only a woman. Saavedra is a masterpiece. We were just about to visit her. Will you join us?”
They progressed to the far end of the Galerria, where Saavedra stood at her table with the huge book open before her, long fingers reaching to adjust the lamp. After a few moments’ silent contemplation, Mechella sighed.
“Now, hers was a sad end, I should think. Even though nobody knows what really happened to her.”
“An odd painting in some ways,” Cabral said. “The pose is somewhat awkward, and the things chosen to surround her—especially that book open on the table—are much out of the ordinary. But I don’t wonder everyone’s fascinated by her. Such poignant beauty, painted so sensitively.”
“You know,” Mechella mused, “I fancy there’s a smile beginning on her lips. It’s only a feeling, but—as if she’s just read something in that book that pleases her.”
The Grijalva nodded. “I understand, Your Grace. Lord Limner Sario’s genius was such that anyone he painted seemed alive within the frame.”
“Yes, that’s it exactly!” Mechella exclaimed. “Every line, every shadow is perfection. He was truly brilliant.”
“I am certain such praise from Your Grace would be profoundly gratifying to Sario,” Sario said.
That woman, the bane of his recent existence, had not been content to meddle with the do’ Verrada family politics. No, she must go and give birth to a son who had no taste but for the display of his own wealth and who, together with his vulgar bride, felt impelled to remodel Palasso Verrada with the most ill-chosen fashions.
Arriano Grijalva stood in the Galerria foyer and stared in dismay. The once classical lines and clean bright walls of the art gallery had been replaced with the latest Zhinna style, lots of spindly-legged chairs painted black and trimmed with patterns of gold dragons, pedestals burdened with ugly black-lacquered vases, all very eastern and exotic. Worse, riotous gold-leaf wallpaper engulfed the walls, drowning the paintings that hung along the length of the gallery.
The paintings, too, had been rearranged. Instead of the old tradition of giving each magnificent painting, whether Treaty, Birth, Death, or Marriage, its own place, now they were hung all one atop the other with barely a hand’s-breadth between each one. It looked more like a gaudy storeroom than a gallery. How could anyone be so blind? At least Mechella had not suffered from the sin of bad taste. Her son was not so lucky.
He limped forward, leaning on his cane. Arriano’s body was fifty-three years old now. He had given it a good run, better than expected, but its time was over. The bone-fever was affecting his hands.
There, in the nook that looked out over the park, sat the Grijalva drawing class, boys and a few girls brought over this early morning from the compound. He had come today for one last look at the boy he had chosen as his successor.
He paused, catching sight of Lord Limner Riobaro’s lovely Marriage of Benetto I and Rosira della Marei. Matra Dolcha! The fools had stuck it up near the ceiling, surrounded by a series of lesser Treaties that utterly destroyed the graceful beauty of line, the linked hands of Benetto and Rosira. Riobaro had drawn attention away from the bride’s plain face by lavishing his lush brushstrokes and perfect sense for color onto her gown’s emerald green train, which draped in splendid folds down the steps of the sanctuary in the Cathedral.
This insult made him so angry that he began to shake. He tapped his way carefully to a bench and sank down on it. His joints hurt. With difficulty, he unfolded the guidesheet.
The heavy paper was impressed with a border of intertwined roses outlined with gold paint. An appalling affectation! He skimmed over the names of the Dukes, of the Lord Limners. Was there any order whatsoever to the changes in the gallery? What had they done with Saavedra’s portrait?
A shudder of relief passed through his frame. It still hung in the place of honor accorded it by Mechella after the death of Ar
rigo—as a constant reminder to her sons, perhaps.
Laboriously he tracked through the tiny calligraphy, seeking Riobaro’s work. The exhibit had doubled in size in the last twenty years. Perhaps Grand Duke Renayo wanted to make sure everyone knew he had the greatest art collection of all the crowned rulers.
His eye caught on a title that had been lined out with black ink. Birth of Cossima. What had they done with his painting?
Manners be damned. He hammered his cane on the floor. At once the assistant curatorrio came running. They always came running, if a man wore the Chieva do’Orro.
“Embajadorro, are you well? What do you need?” The assistant curatorrio was a well-fed youth with pale skin. Not a fit subject for a painting.
His hands shook as he pointed to the lined-out title. “My—Guilbarro Grijalva’s painting, his Birth of Cossima. What does this mean?”
“Ah.” The curatorrio had the grace to look shame-faced. “The Birth of Cossima.”
“Was it removed for cleaning?”
“No, Embajadorro. Last month was the Name Day of one of the young lords. Don Rohario, if you please.”
He did not please, nor did he care one jot about Renayo’s whelps.
“He asked for it, sir.”
“Asked for it?”
“He’s always in the Galerria, sir. It’s a bit of a joke with us. He loves painting. He’s even studying painting with Cabral Grijalva. The Grand Duke promised him he could have a painting from the Galerria for his twelfth birthday, to hang in his room.”
A spoiled twelve-year-old pup had absconded with one of his masterworks, meant to be admired and lionized, and stuck it in his bedchamber! Matra Dolcha!
He should never have spent so many years abroad, but after the disaster with Rafeyo, he had felt it safest to leave Tira Virte for an extended period. And he had enjoyed his travels, going farther afield than he ever had before, traveling as ambassador—and spy—to the distant north where princedoms and city states like Friesemark and Merse and Vethia were coming into their own. The people were a bit rough around the edges, with their seemingly inexhaustible new wealth from trading ventures, but they had treated him like a king and made much of his talent and his cultured southern background. He had taught them how to appreciate art. And he had sent reports home that had allowed first Arrigo and then Arrigo’s sons to make the most of new trading partnerships.
And what had they done with that wealth? He had only to look around the Galerria. He had only to look at the printed page, where his Cossima was now part of a boy’s private art gallery. What would be next? All the best paintings?
“He wanted The First Mistress,” said the assistant curatorrio, wrinkling up his face in the most unseemly, pacifying manner. “But His Grace refused. He said his mother, the blessed Grand Duchess Mechella, wouldn’t have wanted it moved.”
Arriano grunted. It was all he could manage. The nerve of that child! The bone-shattering stupidity of the Grand Duke. He heaved himself up, cursing his infirmities, and limped toward the drawing class. The assistant curatorrio trailed after him, wringing his plump hands.
“You needn’t accompany me,” snapped Arriano.
The young man bobbed his head and, with a look of relief turned back to the desk.
According to the guidesheet, the most recent paintings and portraits, additions of the last eighteen years, hung in the nook. Arriano looked forward to seeing them. The work he had seen in the past week, at Palasso Grijalva, had looked stiff and flat, lifelike renderings without any life in them. But these would be the best work produced during the years he had been gone.
Even in painting, fashions change, although of course the Viehos Fratos had kept a tight rein on any radical innovations. These could not be allowed. He had adapted over the centuries, but he had never lost the essential touch of Sario’s genius: his Luza do’Orro.
He halted behind a row of benches set in a semicircle in the broad nook. Two great windows looked out over parkland. Grijalva children, adolescents mostly, sketched in silence, heads bent over their paper. The Limner in charge greeted him.
“Arriano Grijalva, I presume.” This man, too, wore the Chieva do’Orro. “I heard you had returned. I am Nicollo Grijalva.”
Arriano barely managed a nod as he surveyed the walls with horror. This was the prize of the last generation?
There was a Treaty, with all the figures in the right place, all of them realistically done down to the last fingernail and twist of gold braid on the men’s coats. It was a relief paraded along the canvas. The figures were solid, immobile. That was Renayo II, but he looked like a painted statue, not like a living, breathing man. The painting had no movement.
There was the Marriage of Renayo II and Mairie de Ghillas. It was even worse. The painter had talent, clearly, but to waste it on rendering these flat, dead reproductions—for that was all they were, truly. Reproductions.
“That Marriage is very fine, isn’t it?” said the Limner beside him. “It was Andonio Grijalva’s first major work as Lord Limner. You have been out of the country, of course, but Andonio truly changed the way we paint. He took to heart Master Dioniso’s famous speech: precision, accuracy, exactitude!” He said the words with a flourish. “So it was fitting that Andonio restored Grijalva painting to its true path.” Nicollo curled his fingers over his golden key and kissed the fingertips in a blessing to the dead Andonio. “He was a genius!”
He was a moron! Precision, accuracy, exactitude, of course. But not to the exclusion of life!
“There is the Peintraddo Morta of the Dowager Duchess Mechella,” Nicollo continued. “It was the audition painting done by Andreo Grijalva, who will be invested as Lord Limner at Nov’viva. All the realism of an exact reproduction of the scene.”
Without an ounce of spirit. But Arriano said nothing aloud. Nicollo was clearly infatuated with the new style. But the new style was going to have to change.
Arriano nodded stiffly at the other man and limped forward, surveying the students’ work. Boys glanced up at him, saw the cane, the sigil, and with wide eyes turned back to their work, some sketching with more concentration, some hiding a smudge with a sleeve, one boy—his boy—smiling confidently at him.
His boy. Arriano thought of him that way. He had met the boy already, surveyed his work carefully, looked into his bloodlines. The boy had potential, a good hand, a keen eye, a good sense for color; and he possessed something else that appealed to Arriano’s sense of irony. The boy was named Sario, in tribute to the long-dead master.
What would it be like to be called by his own name again after all these years?
But now, after seeing what passed for painting—the new “style”!—Arriano wasn’t so sure. He paused to watch the boy sketch. At fifteen, he showed good mastery of technique, but he was really only copying. His hand was perfect, but wasn’t that precisely the problem with this new “style”? It had no Luza, only lighting that cast precise shadows and figures glossed to the final tiny detail. Even with Sario’s mind to direct him, did this boy have enough talent? Did he have an already developing hand of his own, so that when he became Sario, his efforts to reinvent painting, to restore dignity, power, and beauty, would not seem entirely out of place?
There was so much to be done.
His gaze wandered idly over the other students’ work and came to rest on two sketches lying askew on a nearby bench.
And there it was. One sketchpad held the usual copy: well-done, lifelike, a rendering that would please an exacting master but with no originality of its own. But beside it! An immature hand, but with a stamp of boldness. This sketch, too, copied the appalling Marriage, but the youthful hand had already begun to alter and enlighten. In the Marriage, the young bride posed in the formal style, and although every drape of her elaborate gown was correct, she had all the personality of a bolt of cloth topped with a pale head and light ringlets. In the sketch, the bride held her free hand open toward the viewer, her shoulders turned slightly, seeming to entreat her
audience to assure her that all would be well. In the Marriage, the Dowager Duchess Mechella wore her dignity with a gravity that was simply boring. In the sketch—Eiha! The sly child had altered the pose just enough that it echoed the pose of his very own Saavedra, suggesting a lifetime of waiting.
True, true, it was rough, the work of a talented child, but it had more originality than the portrait it purported to copy.
Arriano beckoned to Nicollo. “Who has done this?” He pointed.
Nicollo frowned at the sketchbooks. “It is a shame, isn’t it? The grandchildren of Leilias Grijalva have been spoiled shamelessly, say what the others will.”
Evidently the relatives of Tazia and the adherents of Mechella’s faction were still fighting it out.
“I meant the promising one,” said Arriano, willing to concede that the first was left in an uninspiring light compared to the brilliant journeyman sketch of the other student.
“That one!” Nicollo’s face lit up. “A bit of a rebel, that boy, but fourteen now—”
“Confirmed?” Matra! It was enough to shake off his disgust at the whole sorry state of Grijalva painting.
“Not officially, but he’s Gifted, all right. The little scamp has been having an affair since he was thirteen with a serving wench from the kitchens, and once we found out, we tested her, and she promptly got pregnant. So we think it’s likely, quite likely. We have high hopes for the boy.”
“His name?”
“Alerrio. He’s my nephew. We’re hoping to put him forward as Lord Limner.”
Alas, my friend, Alerrio will only be Lord Limner if I am in him. But obviously there was still plenty of in-fighting going on within the family. In-fighting he could profit by. “Where is the boy now?”