The Golden Key

by Melanie Rawn

  “Not from here, I can see. What happened to the others?”

  “The guard arrested all the musicians. My aunt says they are arresting musicians and printers from all over the city for speaking and printing seditious material. Only for saying what they think! But that is a crime here in Meya Suerta!”

  “Where is Eleyna?”

  She gestured. “In the sitting room, with Maesso Azéma. He wishes to speak to you.”

  Rising, bucket in hand, she left him. He dared not turn his head to follow her movement. He could not bear for Eleyna to come in and find he had been sick. It was too humiliating. Matra Dolcha! In Palasso Verrada a whole host of attendants would have been swarming around him right now and his least movement would have been the subject of intense interest. Here, he was relegated to the care of a mere slip of a servant girl. It was enough to make him feel sorry for himself.

  And yet, hadn’t he wanted to see what life was like outside the Palasso? Hadn’t he asked to be treated with the same fine lack of concern which, evidently, was meted out to the common folk?

  When Eleyna came in and sat down beside him, she actually went so far as to take his hand in hers. “You are well?” she asked earnestly.

  “I suppose I am.” Rohario smiled at her, then shifted his attention to her companion. Silver-haired, the old man was dressed simply, but the cut and weave of his jacket and waistcoat betrayed him: he was either wealthy or nobly-born. No one else could afford such fine, if understated, clothing. Indeed, he looked vaguely familiar.

  “This is Maesso Azéma,” said Eleyna. “He has been speaking to me about the protests that are sweeping the city.”

  “The seditionists,” said Rohario.

  The old man raised an expressive eyebrow. “We call ourselves Libertistas.”

  “You are not one of the guildsmen.”

  “I’m disappointed. You don’t recognize me.”

  Rohario flushed, hearing sarcasm in the old man’s tone.

  Azéma bowed. “My real name is Leono do’Brendizia. I am the younger brother of Sebastiano do’Brendizia. He died many years before you were born, filho meyo. He was murdered in the ducal prison during the reign of Grand Duke Cossimio the Second.”

  “Surely not! There must be—”

  “—some mistake? I think not. He was in excellent health. I had other sources as well, guards in the employ of the Palasso who were not, shall we say, unsympathetic to the cause my brother espoused. He wished to reconvene the Corteis, which was suspended by Arrigo the Second. When I discovered my brother had been murdered, I vowed to continue his work. However—” He held fine leather gloves, and now he slapped them lightly against the arm of his chair. “—I had no intention of losing my life in prison. I worked in secret, waiting until the time was ripe. So you find me here, now, investigating a young man who was found dressed in the blue, black, and silver of Libera, of freedom.”

  “You instigated the protests?”

  He chuckled. “Not at all. When I saw what was happening, the sentiments which were boiling up all over Meya Suerta, the discontent, the anger, the call to restore the Corteis and its powers, the news from other kingdoms of revolts against the tyranny of kings and princes, I merely revealed myself and offered my resources to those guildsmen and apprentices, merchants and respectable landlords, and suggested a few ways in which they might organize for greater effectiveness. The guildsmen of Meya Suerta can easily grow rebellious on their own account. They did not trust me at first. Why should they trust the cousin of the Baron do’Brendizia? But they came to see that I was useful, because I could go to and from Court at will. So. Why are you here, Rohario do’Verrada, and not at Palasso Verrada? I must add that your lovely ‘sorella’ revealed no hint of your true identity or your purpose here.”

  Rohario did not like the way he smiled at Eleyna, what he might be insinuating about Eleyna’s companionship or about his own interest in the young woman. Old rich men like that always thought they could buy anything they wanted!

  Irritated, he released Eleyna’s hand. “I am not the son of Grand Duke Renayo.”

  “You do not expect me to believe that, I hope?”

  “I mean to say I do not expect anyone to know who my parents are. I am not here to trade on my father’s authority. I will thank you to keep your knowledge to yourself.”

  “I will gladly do so,” said the old man with a deceptively sweet smile, “unless I find that your presence here threatens the safety of those who are working so very hard for reform. Nor would I want to jeopardize the safety of your lovely sorella, whose identity I have not, alas, ascertained, although from gossip I have heard these past two days at Court I might venture to guess.”

  “I trust you will not do so in any public place!” By now Rohario was thoroughly irritated by Azéma’s arrogant manner. Truly, a man born to the castello could not disguise his origins.

  Azéma’s smile seemed patently false. “I always take pains to safeguard beautiful women. I must go. Gaspar knows how to reach me, my lord.” He bowed, slightingly, turned to take Eleyna’s hand in his own, and kissed it. “Florha meya, you must never hesitate if you are in any kind of trouble to ask for my protection.”

  “I thank you,” said Eleyna stiffly. She did not look grateful for the old man’s offer.

  Azéma bowed again and left the room.

  Rohario, suddenly tired, rubbed a hand over his eyes. He had a headache.

  “Everyone thinks I’m your mistress,” Eleyna blurted into the silence.

  Would that it were so!

  “I will make such a reputation for myself,” she added in a low, burning voice, “that in time no man in Meya Suerta or anywhere in Tira Virte will think of me as anything or anyone except the artist Eleyna Grijalva.”

  Rohario winced. The motion thrust a stab of pain through his right temple. He bit down on his tongue before he gasped from the pain, but a tiny grunt escaped him.

  “Eiha! I beg your pardon for letting Masseo Azéma disturb you, but he is not the sort of man it is easy to say ‘No’ to.”

  “I am tired,” he murmured. She patted his hand gently and went to find the servant girl, leaving him alone.

  He sighed, heartsore, disliking himself right now as much as he had often suspected his own mother disliked him, although of course he had never truly known. Always he chose the easy path: to avoid the real conflict. To avoid speaking with Eleyna about what he truly felt for her. Or what she felt for him.

  She liked him, of that he was sure. But even if she could love him, what was he or any man except an obstacle thrown in the way of her painting? And although men—Edoard, his father, the Grijalva limners—thought her more important as a woman they might use to their advantage or their pleasure rather than as an artist, Rohario could not make himself believe it would be better for her to love him than for her to paint. Not after seeing her paint. Not after falling in love with her in great measure because of her gift, a gift he did not share. A passable talent for art.

  At last, with his head still hurting and the squalid little room dark and stinking of pine oil, he drifted off to sleep.

  In the morning, feeling chastened but not ill, Rohario found Eleyna setting up shop in the dining room, which Gaspar had given over to her entirely until she had finished her mural—with the proviso that customers might dine at a small table or drink while watching her. Wet plaster covered half the wall already.

  “You look much better,” she said, but she was not really paying attention to him after one close look into his face.

  He excused himself and walked out into the city to seek employment. The first day he wandered and stared and came back empty-handed. He had no idea how to “look” for work, and his fine clothing caused more than one passerby to mock him.

  Embarrassed by his failure, he spent the next nine days wandering the city, returning only at evening. Nine of his ten mareias went piecemeal in exchange for laundry services, cheap wine, two new neckcloths, a shine for his boots, and bread
for the filthy child beggars whose wasted faces broke his heart. It pained him to know that his board and room were provided by Eleyna. But what else could he do but be beholden to her now and hope to repay her later? He had no skills—of course! What nobleman’s son did? His passable talent for art might, in an isolated village, be enough to get him employment as a draftsman, but not in Meya Suerta. He was good for nothing except to return to the Palasso, beg his father’s pardon, and return to his old life. And this he would not do.

  Eleyna had drawn, in charcoal, a huge cartoon onto the plastered wall in the dining room of Gaspar’s inn, the sketch over which she would lay down the mural. Now, every day when he returned to the inn, he found a new man-sized segment erupted in brilliant paint over the white background. Padron Gaspar appeared, with generous eyes and round red cheeks, the very icon of the provident patron dispensing his bounty to his deserving and grateful flock. Vines swathed the doorway to the inn and wheat flowered in every niche, so bright and lifelike that he wanted to touch the golden sheaves.

  Each day, beside her easel, Rohario found new sketches, for contracts, for Wills and Deeds, for Births, Deaths, Marriages, for the Betrothal of Maesso Zespiarre’s daughter to a clothier’s son.

  The more she worked, the more beautiful she became in his eyes. She was flowering.

  “At first they came just because I’m young and a woman,” she told him, “out of curiosity, like going to see a fish that can live out of water or a dog that can walk on its hind legs. Now they come because they know I am good.” She looked up, and his heart fell over itself, but he said nothing. “And you?”

  He shrugged.

  Glancing once around, she drew a sheet of paper out from underneath the pile. “Look at this,” she said in a low voice. The subject matter surprised him: he did not recognize the interior, a semicircle of terraced benches rather like a theater, but he knew at once by the assembly gathered there in their antique costumes that this was a representation of a meeting of the Corteis.

  “Eleyna!”

  “Bassda!” In a whisper. “Do you like it?”

  “You could be arrested for this!”

  “It won’t be traced back to me. I am going to do a few pen and ink drawings for Maesso Azéma, for the broadsides. It’s all very well to print up words, but how many men can read? What of women, who might receive only enough education to do their accounts and to read in the Holy Verses? Just as Wills and Deeds and Marriages, all of these contracts, are done in paintings, so also molest can be done in painting. A word can have a thousand meanings, or none at all. Yet if these ideas are drawn as pictures, so that every man and woman can see them, then there will be more who understand.”

  “But why are you doing this?”

  Her expression grew troubled. “En verro, in part because I do not trust Azéma. If I aid the Libertistas, then is it not less likely he will tell my family where I am?”

  “You said they wouldn’t care where you are.”

  “I hope they do not, but I don’t know. Anyway, Rohario, is what the Libertistas ask for so much? That the people who pay the tax levied by the Grand Duke be allowed to grant permission before the Grand Duke asks for any extraordinary tax? That the Grand Duke and the nobles be subject to the same laws everyone else is?” Now her tone became bitter. “It is no different in Palasso Grijalva. Some are given greater privilege and honor than others.”

  “It doesn’t seem too much to ask.”

  She slid the sketch back under the other papers and turned away from him, back toward her easel. She smelled of paint now, oils and turpentine and other, odder, richer scents. “Regretto— I ought not to criticize your father.”

  “You must know, Eleyna, that you are free to say anything you wish to me!”

  She smiled again, but absently, and returned to work.

  The next day, loitering in a wine shop and wondering if it was worth spending his last mareia on a tolerably good white to bring as a present to Eleyna, Rohario overheard the proprietor complaining to a customer.

  “Bah! Zelio has the bone-fever again and I must have a letter written by tonight’s tide for the ship to Niapali.”

  A letter written. Rohario stepped to the counter. “I can write, Maesso.”

  The proprietor looked him over suspiciously. “Have you a good hand? The letter is for a Niapalese wine merchant and must be in the best hand, with no mistakes.”

  “I have a good hand.” This, certainly, was true. “I was trained by a man who now works as a clerk in Palasso Verrada.” Also true, if misleading.

  “Eiha!” Impressed, the proprietor let his gaze linger on the fine cloth of Rohario’s waistcoat. “Down on your luck, no? I will engage you, Maesso, but only pay if the work meets my liking.”

  Rohario thought fast. “You will provide tools?”

  “The parchment. That is usual, of course.”

  But he must have his own pens, ink, and nibs. “I will return as soon as I fetch my things.” He practically ran out of the shop.

  The proprietor called after him: “Don’t be too long or I will hire someone else!”

  It took Rohario half an hour to track down a shop that sold writing tools and two questions once there to ascertain that his remaining mareia would not suffice to buy what he needed. Outside the shop, cursing, he realized he had no choice. He made his way to the Avenida Shagarra and headed up the long slope that led to Palasso Verrada. He had never known what a very long walk it was, all the way up the hill.

  The Palasso rose in all its elegant glory above him. It looked vast and cold, and the gates were shut. He paused to brush selfconsciously at his coat. Though clean, it had lost its satiny luster: the menninas at Gaspar’s were not trained laundresses such as the ones employed at the Palasso, and he had brought only one change of clothing from Chasseriallo, only as much as he could easily carry on the horse which had been returned to the hunting lodge with the groom who had attended them—well paid to keep his mouth shut. Matra! He looked like a clerk rather than a duke’s son. But was that not what he intended to become?

  The guards on duty recognized him immediately. No chance for a furtive journey up to his suite. With an escort of four gold-sashed Shagarra guards, he was hustled in the main entrance and up the monumental stairs that led to the Grand Duke’s study.

  The Grand Duke did not look up as Rohario entered the room. He signed his name to a paper and shifted it aside to look over the next document. Nor did Renayo’s voice betray any emotion. “You may go, Captain. So, Rohario, you have magnanimously chosen to return. Is the Grijalva woman with you?”

  “No.” His father’s reasonable tone made Rohario nervous.

  “But you know where she is, I hope?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where is that?”

  “I am not at liberty to say.”

  Renayo deigned now to lift his head and examine Rohario. He looked entirely bland. Then, unexpectedly, he barked out a laugh. “Eiha! I hear she’s a taking thing. I hope you have enjoyed yourself, but she must be restored to her family.”

  “She is her own mistress, Patro, not mine.”

  A Zhinna vase of royal blue-and-white ceramic filled with a bouquet of white iris sat on Renayo’s desk. He fingered it now, expression darkening, and turned it halfway round, so the scene painted on it shifted: a man bearing a burden crossed a bridge; a hill and two spindly trees, also in royal blue, curved off around to the hidden side. “This is not a game, Rohario. The Grijalvas are more important to our family than you can imagine. Edoard and his young Beatriz are by all reports very happy. While I might be amused now by your youthful daring, it will not amuse me for long, I assure you.”

  “She does not want to return to her family.”

  “So you have abandoned her?” This said threateningly.

  But Rohario discovered, to his amazement, that his father’s threats no longer scared him. “No. I merely returned here for my pens and ink.”

  “Your pens?”

  “Yes. I
am making my way as a clerk.”

  Renayo slapped a hand down, hard, scattering paper as he rose. “A clerk?” he roared.

  The door opened. “Your Grace?” A courtier looked in with a startled expression.

  “Shut that door! Get out! Sit down, you young pup!”

  “No, grazzo. If you will excuse me, I will be going.”

  “You will not be going! You will explain yourself!”

  “There is nothing to explain.” As soon as the words popped out, Rohario felt a tremendous sense of relief, followed hard by a wave of excitement so intense he had to forcibly stop his hands from shaking. “I am no longer living in the Palasso.”

  “You cannot—”

  “I am of age.”

  “You have no money—!”

  “I have Marissiallo and Collara Asaddo, two properties you settled on me when I turned twelve. As soon as I—” He faltered. As soon as I earn enough money to hire a horse to ride out to them, and see about diverting a portion of their rents for my immediate needs so I can establish myself … and Eleyna … in a decent apartamento, a place large enough for a studio for hen then perhaps, perhaps, it might be appropriate to think of asking her to be … to become.… He swallowed, unable to speak past the sudden constriction in his throat.

  The Grand Duke’s study had once been a somber room with heavy, dark woodwork, fitting a duke’s sober and weighty responsibilities. After Renayo’s marriage to Johannah it had been redone in the Friesemarkian style: the woodwork removed, new plaster laid on and painted a pale tangerine with delicately-rendered floral patterns added for accent. The only tasteful room in the entire palasso, it suited the Grand Duke not at all.

  “I cannot imagine what you think you are doing.” Renayo sounded almost bewildered.

  I am breaking free. But Rohario could not say it.

  “I begin to think I do not know you, Rohario. Imagine what your mother would say to all this!”

  Rohario flinched. He could well imagine what his mother would say to all this. But he was determined not to let her stop him. “Did you know,” he said slowly, picking his words hesitantly, “that many of the common people in the city are discontented? They are angry with you for arresting singers and printers, just for speaking their minds.”