The Golden Key

by Melanie Rawn

  He moved to stand in front of the painting. Though his sight clouded as his trance lifted from him, he could see that she was perfect, a perfect likeness, the fresh, young, innocent girl standing naked in his atelierro, waiting. …

  He stepped close, closer still, and breathed the breath of life onto her, his creation.

  The painting trembled. It was as if the wet paint stirred of its own accord, pushing out from the panel, expanding, like a flower unfolding at dawn. Startled, he took a step back.

  She followed him.

  Shadows became solid curves, lines became flesh. Princess Alazais of Ghillas stepped out of the painting onto the cold oak floor. She stood, watching him with a kind of vacant curiosity. She was breathing. Her skin shone, as if sheened with sweat. The light gray ground, outlining her form, and the plain room were all that remained in the portrait.

  “You are Princess Alazais,” he said in a soft voice, gentled by astonishment, smoothed by the knowledge of his own genius.

  “I am Princess Alazais,” she said. Her tone mimicked his tone, although her voice was a delicate soprano. Her expression did not change.

  “Sit,” he said, pointing to the chair.

  She sat.

  He saw his cot. With what remained of his strength, he staggered over to it. There was much to do. He needed to instruct her. What about food? Did she know to eat? Would she walk blindly out the door? How much did she understand? Of what was she truly made? Poppy and myrtle and iris, his blood and hers, the dust of her other body? There was so much to do.

  But he had no strength. The magic had taken it all. He collapsed on the cot and fell into sleep the instant his head touched the pillow.

  SIXTY-SIX

  The Feast of Imago dawned with clouds hanging heavy over the fields and the vine-swagged hunting lodge. Early in the morning, before anyone except the servants was up, Rohario sat on one of the old trestle tables in the banqueting hall and idly turned the dusty pages of an old book. Outside it rained, a propitious beginning to the day celebrating the Visitation of the Holy Mother and Her Son, who had appeared before a lowly camponesso and his wife while they pruned the vines at dawn in a misting rain. Rohario watched the steady drizzle through the thick windowpanes, the glass throwing waves of distortion onto the steady fall of light rain.

  The last eight days had been a misery. Edoard was edgy and short with him, overbearingly polite to the women. Mara walked everywhere with a barely hidden frown. Eleyna rarely appeared except in front of her easel, painting the hounds, sketching intricate studies of the various rooms of Chasseriallo. Only Beatriz Grijalva maintained an air of gentle good humor, and Rohario was beginning to find her endlessly sunny nature annoying, if only because it set off his own sulks.

  For, as his dear Mama had been wont to say, sulking was not only unattractive but useless. “You are too old to sulk, Rohario. It tires me, infuriates your father, and does you no good at all.” Mama was always right.

  Still, this wretched situation brought out the worst in him, even while he watched himself act like a sullen adolescent boy as if he were the observer in the Galerria scrutinizing a detailed painting. The Matra had blessed Edoard in that regard: he was oblivious to the effect his behavior had on the people around him.

  Rohario sighed and studied the crabbed writing on the page, reading the words out loud:

  Thus did Duchess Jesminia stand, supported by her handmaidens who did not fear to take the plague from her but would by their devotion risk dying with her. Though her body was frail, her voice was strong. Thus did she speak to the assembled multitudes as was recorded by Sancta Silvestra.

  “By my faith in Mother and Son, I will not allow these my faithful servants the Grijalvas to suffer under such unwarranted suspicion. They are innocent of all they have been accused of So come they with my blessing to be reconfirmed by the Ecclesia—”

  He broke off and lifted his head.

  She stood in a shadowed corner near the door, as still as a statue, listening. The sight of her shivered through him like a lightning bolt. It was not fair that she affect him this way!

  “What are you doing here?” he snapped.

  She started, almost bolting like a rabbit, then stepped out into the central hall. “That looks like an old book.”

  “I found it in the library here.”

  Over the last few days she had lost her fierce demeanor. She seemed, indeed, quite unlike herself. “I beg your pardon. I did not mean to disturb you.” She edged along one wall toward the far corner. “My brother Agustin sent me a letter. I left it here last night. …”

  Why should she have left a letter in the banqueting hall? No one ever came here; that was why it was his favorite retreat, even if the servants sometimes forgot to dust the tables and benches and thereby allowed his clothes to get dirty.

  Following the line of Eleyna Grijalva’s sight, Rohario suddenly saw a scrap of white parchment lying neatly on one corner of a distant table. It had not been there an hour ago.

  “Here it is.” She grabbed the parchment. “I beg your pardon. I’ll go now.”

  “No! I mean—don’t feel you must leave.”

  “I’m working on Edoard’s portrait.”

  She is unhappy. The thought flashed through him with the audacity of a five-year-old child scampering into apartments where he has no right to be. She was unhappy. This notion left him speechless for a moment, while she retreated to the door.

  “I can read to you,” he blurted out, then was aghast. He had grabbed this book at random, intrigued by the faded and cracked leather binding, but this long-dead scholar’s history of the feud between the Ecclesia and the Grijalva family had instead caught his interest. But surely Eleyna would not want to have her family’s chi’patro origins thrown at her head.

  She fingered the parchment nervously. “You read well.”

  She was humoring him. So had people done all his life. “Yes,” he said bitterly. “A pleasant reading voice. A passable talent for art.”

  “Eiha,” she said abruptly, revelation dawning. “Grandzio Cabral tutored you in art—”

  That stung.

  “Nazho irrado,” she said swiftly.

  He pushed off the table and brushed dust from the tails of his morning coat. “Cabral Grijalva did his best but failed to find more than that ‘passable’ talent in me.” He attempted a smile but could not manage one. “I do not know who was more disappointed, he or I.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Do’nado. You wish to go—” He gestured.

  “No, I—grazzo— Read to me as I paint. What I heard sounded interesting.”

  She felt pity for him and his passable talent, she who had such a true gift. But even knowing that, he could not resist her. “As you wish.”

  As he followed her down the broad staircase that led to the hall adjoining the ducal suite, he could not help but wish himself in another body, in another life. He was mightily tired of being a “useless fop,” but young noblemen did not have professions or callings, as his mother had been fond of pointing out. “It is our Matra-given duty to rule, Rohario, and theirs to work and to serve.”

  He ran into Eleyna just as she gasped, stopping short. His heart pounded when she backed up against him….

  He knew the feel of a woman against him. Mama had made sure that even this part of his education was not neglected. “You will not chase the pretty servant girls who work in the Palasso. That is not fitting behavior for a do’Verrada, and I have gone to great trouble to find girls from Meya Suerta who look presentable in livery and who can also perform their duties efficiently. I will not have them interfered with. There are respectable establishments where boys are initiated into these mysteries, and that is where you will indulge your curiosity.”

  He had indulged his curiosity quite freely.

  Now he noticed that the ornate door leading into the ducal suite stood partly open. Here, in the corner where the stairs gave out onto the corridor, he and Eleyna watched unnoticed as
Beatriz Grijalva slipped out through the half-open door, wearing a brocaded morning robe over an elaborate nightdress. She turned back to the man standing in the doorway.

  Her face was radiant. She leaned forward—

  To kiss! And not a sisterly kiss, either.

  “Eiha!” murmured Rohario.

  Eleyna pressed him farther back. He stumbled backward up two steps, stood there for a long while, breathing hard, not sure which was the more shocking discovery: that Eleyna Grijalva was leaning against him without the slightest evidence of self-consciousness or that Edoard had, as he intended, taken a Grijalva Mistress.

  “What have I done?” murmured Eleyna under her breath. She covered her face with a hand and wilted into his arms. He barely managed to set down the book in time to catch her.

  It was a glorious sensation, holding her. He had held women before, but he had never felt like this.

  “I have forced her into this.” Eleyna was talking into her hand. “Mennina moronna! How could I have expected otherwise?” She pulled away from him. “I beg your pardon,” she said stiffly. Tears ran down her face. He reached to brush them away, but she walked forward, leaving him behind as if she had already forgotten him.

  He grabbed the book and hurried after her. The corridor was empty now, the door into the ducal suite shut tight. Had that vision been a dream?

  Eleyna walked as if in a trance to the salon Edoard had set aside for her use as an atelierro. She sank down onto the stool set in front of her easel and stared at the half-finished painting. The letter from her brother hung, forgotten, in her right hand. Rohario stood under the lintel, not sure whether to enter or leave. He could not bear to leave her alone, not after she had received such a shock. Yet they were hardly on terms of such intimacy that he might dare to offer comfort. Only the rain sounded, heard through the veil of the great paned windows that looked out onto the parklands.

  She slipped the unread letter in with her sketches, then studied her painting: Edoard, still in half tones, standing with a musket draped in the crook of his elbow, his four favorite hounds placed round him and the ruined wall with its view into the garden as backdrop. It was so quiet that Rohario heard, from the breakfast room, the muted sounds of servants setting out the silver. He smelled freshly baked bread.

  Eleyna shook herself, coming to some resolution.

  Examining her paletto of colors, she chose a pale blue as a base and into the faintly sketched-in landscape beyond the wall inserted a tiny female figure, dressed in a white morning dress and a plain bonnet. She was, quite deliberately, drawing her sister into the portrait of Edoard.

  It was the kind of thing Grijalva limners did: every peintraddo contained a message. Now, forever, the young Edoard would be memorialized with his Mistress—and, of course, that she stood in the garden was entirely appropriate, for Beatriz was not only a lover of flowers but in her own way a fine flower herself.

  A dull sadness settled on Rohario. He could not identify its source, only that it grieved him to see Eleyna pragmatically erase her grief by recording the truth for all to see.

  Through a door set in the wall opposite Eleyna and her easel, Rohario could look into the dining room, empty at this hour. Eleyna still had not noticed him. He sidled along behind furniture, careful not to touch anything, and escaped into the dining room, leaving the door open behind him. He placed the book on the table and sat down heavily, resting his chin on intertwined fingers.

  How could Edoard so humiliate the woman he himself had chosen? How could she possibly return to her family now? One followed certain rules: a Mistress must be barren and preferably a widow. One did not choose a young rose—Beatriz could scarcely be more than eighteen—in the first flush of youth and of obvious value to her parents as a marriageable daughter who would likely bear many children.

  Patro was going to be very, very angry.

  But since when had Edoard cared about Patro’s anger?

  “Eiha! There you are, Eleynita. What are you—?”

  Eleyna cut Beatriz off. “How could you? Mother will be furious!”

  From this angle he could not see into the room, but he could hear clearly enough.

  Beatriz laughed softly. “I will protect you from her, I promise.”

  “I am not afraid of her anger for my own sake! Matra Dolcha! You must despise me. I am sorry, Beatriz. I am so sorry. If only I had behaved as I ought, you would never—”

  “This was what I wanted all along.”

  “What you wanted!”

  Rohario desperately wanted to see into the room but dared not move. What Beatriz Grijalva, that innocent virgin, had wanted all along! He could not fathom it.

  “I watched you fight them, Eleynita. What did it get you? Eiha! Worse than a lock on your door. It took no great intelligence to see the change in you between the day you told Mother you would never wed Felippo and the day you stood simpering beside him at your wedding. I swore that would never happen to me.”

  “But I thought—”

  “That I wanted to be a brood mare for the Grijalvas?”

  “You made no protest at the Confirmattio. I hated it!”

  Beatriz laughed again, without a trace of malice or self satisfaction. “You had Fransisso and Jonio and the awful chiros brothers. No wonder you hated it. I had better luck.” Rohario imagined, in the brief silence that followed, that Beatriz was blushing. “I enjoyed myself, and why shouldn’t I have? They were young, and clean, and enthusiastic, and well-looking enough. Why not enjoy, when it is possible to, rather than fight just to make a point?”

  “I had good reason to protest!”

  “Of course you did. I would have expected nothing else from you. But what I expect for myself is something different.”

  “I’m beginning to think I don’t know you at all.”

  “I am sorry for that, but you are so transparent I could hardly tell you everything that was in my mind for fear you would one day lose your temper and let everyone know.”

  “Matra ei Filho, Bellita! Perhaps you will tell me what is in your mind now! I thought you only came here out of the kindness of your heart, but now—” Her voice trembled. “I thought you were content to follow the path laid out for you by Mother and Father and Giaberto.”

  “Do you think I like living in the Palasso any more than you do? Having the Viehos Fratos rule our lives? I want to attend balls and concerts, dress in the latest fashions, enjoy myself. Not marry Fransisso Grijalva and produce one child after the next, each one scrutinized, each one carried away to the crechetta while I sit dutifully on the bench beside the fountain, planning to rule the Viehos Fratos through my Gifted sons. I want to plant a garden with whatever flowers and herbs I choose, to continue Grandmother Leilias’ notebooks and observations on the ways of plants. I want to have children when I wish to have them, and when they are grown, I will dower myself to the Sanctia, where I will tend gardens and pray in peace. Away from the family.”

  This did not sound like the innocent Beatriz with whom Rohario had become acquainted!

  “You aren’t barren, Bellita. If you should conceive a child—”

  “You can be sure Grandmother taught me about essences of plants that prevent conception. I do not need to rely on the Limners for that!”

  There was a long silence, during which Rohario puzzled over these provocative hints that Beatriz had inadvertently given him about life in Palasso Grijalva. The picture she painted did not match the image he had always cherished in his mind.

  “You should have been an actress,” said Eleyna finally. Rohario could not tell from her voice whether she was about to laugh, or cry.

  “As if that would have been permitted! And if I had protested, as you did, if I had insisted, then they would have painted me into compliance. As they did to you!”

  He heard a little sound, a wordless catch of the breath, that was surely Eleyna’s reply, all that she could manage.

  “Eleynita! Grandmother Leilias wanted us to understand what had bee
n done to you so we could fight against it!”

  “How can we fight?” Eleyna murmured. “You know what they’re capable of.”

  “I’m beginning to think I don’t know you at all! It was your example I always held up for myself. You taught me there was a reason to want to escape.”

  “You don’t understand. They can still force you to do what they want.”

  “But there is Edoard now.” Rohario heard triumph in Beatriz’ usually sweet voice.

  “They could—”

  “You are not thinking!” cried Beatriz. “Why should they do anything? They have what they want—a Grijalva Mistress for the Heir. I have what I want. When Edoard marries, I will get a manor house and a fine dowry. Perhaps I will marry a count, as our great-aunt Tazia did, although not, I hope, with the same unfortunate outcome! I do not want to rule as Nazha Coronna. I just want to be left alone to live my life as I please. To marry whom I please, if I marry at all. Then I can raise my children as Grandmother Leilias and Uncle Cabral were raised—in my manor, all of us together, including my little ‘Rico.”

  “But—”

  “This is so unlike you, Eleyna! You are full of objections. I thought you would be pleased! I would never have done this if I thought you wanted to be Mistress, but I thought you did not want Edoard.”

  Rohario sucked in a breath.

  Eleyna’s reply took forever, and ever, and yet even longer. The rain misted down outside, a light drone. A gardener walked by the window, face shadowed by a wide-brimmed hat. He wore a curl of grape leaves pinned to his loose shirt, the symbol of the Visitassion, and in his right hand he carried pruning shears. In a hearty voice, audible through the glass, he sang the joyful hymn, “Ila. Visitassion.”

  When Eleyna spoke at last, her words came hesitantly, as if to contrast with the gardener’s joyous song. “It is not that I want Edoard, or do not want him, just that I … can’t bring myself to—”

  “I can bring myself to, and I have, and I’m not sorry for it, Eleynita. And you will be sorry when I steal every fine dress in your wardrobe and then order a dozen more besides. But I won’t have you thinking I did this for you!”