The Golden Key

by Melanie Rawn

  No one must know. That was what they had all told him. No one must ever know.

  “Patro! Patro! Here is your Birth! Here is the Marriage of Grandmama and poor Grandpapa. Tell me again about the battle! Is it true he was leading a charge?”

  In fact Edoard had stopped during a retreat to help one of his young lieutenants, who had been wounded in the stomach, and gotten his head blown off for his pains. It still hurt, remembering the day the message had come. It hurt because he had realized then, at ten years old, that his mother did not love his father as much as he did.

  “He died because he was a good, kind, honorable man, Baltran. Remember that.”

  Baltran did not reply. For once, he seemed to be examining the painting. “Is it true Grandmama is magic, Patro?”

  Alejandro smiled wryly. “No more than I am. Where did you hear such a thing?”

  “Most people say it. They say that the Grijalvas are all magic, but that they threw themselves on the mercy of the Ecclesia before you were born and the Premia Sancta lifted all terrible stain from them.”

  “They confessed it openly, it is true. In front of every person in the Cathedral. You know Grandmama’s story well enough, do you not? How she was captured in a painting and held prisoner for three hundred years?”

  Baltran made a face, unimpressed by this tale, and began walking down toward the end of the Galerria, having evidently decided to do his duty as quickly as possible so he could be free. “But you know what else they say, Patro.” Here he bit his lip, recalling words overheard, probably from somewhere he ought not to have been listening.

  “What is that?”

  “They say, ‘Ha! Ha ha!”’ He imitated a big man’s belly laugh, enjoying the exaggerated sound and the way it flattened in the air. “‘Do you call that magic, that they painted flattering portraits of Dukes and beguiled do’Verrada Heirs with their beautiful women?’ What does ‘beguile’ mean, Patro? What did the beautiful women do? Beautiful women like Grandmama?”

  “Certainly beautiful women like Grandmama.”

  Luckily the boy’s mind was already racing ahead. “Why does Grandmama not live at the Palasso? Why must she go live with her old family? She must love them better than me.” He stuck his lower lip out, pouting, then grinned, knowing full well that his Grandmama ‘Vedra doted on him and his little sister Mechellita.

  As she doted on me. But Alejandro had to smile. Saavedra was not an easy woman to live with, or to have as a mother. She was the flame to which all moths fluttered and he but one frail boy among the rest. Dote she might, but she also expected nothing but the best from him. “Her family needed her, ninio. Once I married your mother, she left us in peace.”

  That she now ruled the Grijalvas as she had ruled Edoard before them, with an iron hand, he did not doubt. That she loved him fiercely he doubted less. Still, he wondered sometimes what it would have been like to have an ordinary mother.

  They skirted a few other clots of visitors gathered arpund this Treaty or that Marriage, wealthy travelers from out of town who did not, with a casual glance, recognize him or Baltran, Grazzo do’Matra. Alejandro surveyed the collection with approval. Over half the paintings had been moved to a new building that adjoined the recently-built Corteis, the chambers that housed the assembly, and now the Galerria received fewer visitors, which pleased Alejandro greatly. The most monumental and famous paintings had been moved to the new Galerria Nacionalla, but he preferred the collection that was left here, a more intimate and subtle portrait of the Grijalva legacy.

  Of which he was the crowning achievement. The child bearing half do’Verrada and half Grijalva blood on the throne of Tira Virte. Yet the crowning irony was that he would be first.

  And last.

  “Wait, Baltran!” But Baltran was far ahead of him. Teressa’s child, certainly, with that quick wit and all those damned questions. Alejandro did not know who Baltran’s real father was. He had never asked, trusting to his wife’s good sense to pick a man with suitable bloodlines and an ability to keep his mouth shut.

  He had agreed to the marriage and counted it good fortune that he liked his bride and that she liked him. Teressa, named after her grandmother, the eldest child of Arrigo and Mechella, had been brought up in a revolutionary household. She had received an intense education in the classics and her father, a bit of a cracked pot (as they said in the lingua merditta) as well as the Principio della Diettro Mareia, brought scientists in to his Palasso to perform their peculiar experiments.

  When Saavedra had bluntly outlined Alejandro’s problem to his new bride, Teressa had accepted it calmly. He fancied she considered him a peculiar experiment, the nature of which had not yet been solved. Indeed, Teressa loved nothing more than entertaining his Zia Beatriz—now Premia Sancta—who always arrived with her white sancta robes stained with dirt and grass and a ridiculous beatific smile on her face, babbling about her cursed pea plants and the secret language of the ancient Tza’ab mystics.

  “Patro! Patro!” From the very end of the Galerria, Baltran’s piping voice pierced the quiet. “They’ve taken Grandmama’s portrait!”

  Alejandro sighed. He hurried forward, passing one of the large alcoves that thrust out into the park without looking closely at the small group of people seated before the paintings displayed there.

  “Ninio, you must learn to temper your voice,” he said, coming up beside his son.

  “Grandzio Rohario doesn’t temper his voice. He roars with the best of them.”

  “When you are fifty-three years old and a thirty-year member of the Corteis, then you may roar with the best of them, too. What is wrong?”

  “Grandmama’s portrait is missing.”

  “Yes. We agreed it would be exhibited in the Nacionalla.”

  “But why, Patro? Why not the other one? All we see of him is his back and the room is so ugly. I like to see Grandmama’s beautiful face much better.”

  Alejandro gazed up at the painting known as The Mirror of Truth. He had been told the story many times. But to see the face in the mirror, a different face from that of the man who stood with his back to the viewer, still gave him a shiver. So much was revealed in this painting, about his heritage, about the nature of the Grijalva Gift, about the truth of his, Alejandro’s, own parentage. About the truth of what he was.

  “Why is his face different in the mirror, Patro?”

  “Because the face he wears on his body is not the face he wears in his heart.”

  Baltran eyed the painting with deep misgiving. “Eiha. I hate paintings. Grandzia Eleyna says that you can read what they tell you, all these Treaties and documents, by knowing the language in which they are painted. But why can’t we just write it all down? Wouldn’t that be easier? Patro!” His mind jumped again. “Will we get a semaphore installed in the Palasso? Maesso Oswaldo says that news can travel from Aute-Ghillas to Meya Suerta in twelve hours with semaphore!”

  News can travel as fast as a voice can speak, when Grijalva Limners speak through their Blooded paintings. But Alejandro did not say it aloud. Oh yes, the do’Verradas knew, the Ecclesia knew, the Grijalvas knew; even the Corteis knew. But no one believed anymore. They wanted their semaphores. So much more reliable. So much more scientific.

  “Come, Baltran. We have seen enough for today, I think.”

  The boy was gone like a shot. Alejandro did not bother to slow him down. He took a long look at the portrait of Sario Grijalva. Not a portrait at all, of course. It was Sario Grijalva, greatest of the Grijalva Limners, punished for his crimes by being imprisoned in the portrait, painted there by his cousin Saavedra’s Gifted hand.

  She had made a good life for herself, had Saavedra. Of the other children granted to her and Edoard in their brief and not unhappy marriage, only one had been a boy, and he had died in infancy. The other three had been girls, grown now, all married. Alejandro could not help but wonder sometimes what would have happened to him had Saavedra never been trapped in that painting. He would have been born, Alejand
ro I’s chi’patro child, and raised in Palasso Grijalva. He would have eaten, breathed, and lived painting from the day he was old enough to hold a piece of chalk. Perhaps some of his paintings would have hung here, in the Galerria Verrada.

  The curtains in the corner stirred. He started, stepped back, then relaxed and extended a hand. “Come, bela, it is only I, ‘Sandro. Don’t be afraid of me.”

  She crept forward. She was dressed quite indecently, of course, in a yellowing white shift and tattered lace shawl, but as the years went by she became more and more like a wild cat, shy of humans and quick to bolt. The servants called her Ila Luna, the crazy woman.

  “Sit beside me, bela,” he said, hoping to coax her out, but she would only come as far as the first square of sunlight on the marble floor. She was indeed beautiful, and so young. Forever young, except for the fine cracks beginning to show on her skin and the odd yellowish tone she was acquiring, the result, his Zia Eleyna had once told him, of Sario Grijalva using inferior paints to create her.

  Loud laughter sounded from down the hall, a new group of visitors, and Ila Luna darted back to the safety of the curtains. He waited, but she did not peek out, although he could see where she hid by the lump in the heavy fabric. Poor mindless creature. He wondered, suddenly, if a Grijalva Limner might learn secrets that could somehow cure her of her affliction or if she was doomed to wait beside her imprisoned creator until, like an ancient painting, she finally crumbled away.

  He walked slowly after his son, stopped when he saw which party inhabited the alcove. Baltran had stopped, too, held there by that irresistible force which attracts an isolated child to any group of animated children.

  Eleyna Grijalva had brought a class of youngsters to the Galerria. They sat in front of Guilbarro Grijalva’s famous Birth of Cossima, each with a sketchpad and pencil, copying the master’s work. Baltran barreled over to his “Grandzia,” bowed shyly, and was rewarded with a stately kiss. Then he sidled over to two girls seated demurely on a bench, their sketchpads resting on their knees, and promptly began to interrogate them.

  Eleyna swept back her silver hair and turned. She caught sight of Alejandro. Smiling, she walked over to him.

  “Your Grace,” she said in her lovely voice. She had a magnificent self-confidence, but of course, how could she not? She was the acknowledged master of painting in all of Tira Virte. Acolytes came from foreign lands for the privilege of studying with her. Kings and queens begged her to paint their portraits. “It is always good to see you, ninio. You haven’t been to a drawing lesson for two months.”

  “The cares of state,” he said, but he could not smile, though he meant it to be a jest.

  “Alas,” she said, and nodded, understanding.

  “Is it too late?” he asked suddenly. “Is it too late for me to ever learn properly?”

  “To learn to use your Gift to its fullest? It likely is too late, Alejandro, though I’m sorry to say it if it pains you to hear it.” He bowed his head, and she went on. “But it is never to late to study painting, not if you truly wish to learn. It is never too late to use the time left you to its fullest. Many have come late to painting and yet flourished because of their desire to learn and their willingness to work. You are talented, and you love to paint, only—” She gestured toward the walls, indeed, to the entire Palasso. His Palasso, now.

  “Eiha. That is the great irony, is it not, Zia? The Grand Duke has many duties, and painting is not among them. In ten years Baltran will be twenty and I could retire without too much fuss, but I will be forty and at the end of my life, no?”

  “How long your life will be compared to Limners who used their own blood and tears every day we cannot know. And can any one of us truly know how long we will live? You must not think of that, ninio. You have your duties, and you have discharged them well. You are a good man and a fine Grand Duke, Alejandro.”

  “Even if my heart lies elsewhere?” He gestured toward the Birth of Cossima.

  “That is up to you. You may not go as far as you wish. You may not have the talent you hope for. Even in Palasso Grijalva only one in each generation became Lord Limner.”

  He reached and took hold of the chain that hung round her neck, lifting the Golden Key. “You are not Gifted, yet you wear this.”

  She smiled softly, sadly. “I have earned it.”

  Alejandro looked at Baltran, who was chattering excitedly in his high voice about steam locomotives.

  So many mysteries to be solved. So many secrets to be learned. Eiha! There was no use in bemoaning what had gone before. “I will come next week. I promise you.”

  “I will look for you, mennino.” She gave him a kiss on the cheek and went back to her students.

  All those do’Verrada faces, painted by all those Grijalva hands. And here he stood, Grand Duke Alejandro do’Verrada, the second of that name. He who was also a Grijalva Limner, half trained but without question Gifted. It was a strange ending, indeed, to the story that had started with his mother four hundred years ago.

  Nothing in the least remarkable about Sario Grijalva. Not outside, where men could see.

  She halted before the portrait, a vigorous woman still though her once-glorious hair was now white except for a few streaks of black, the last reminders of her youth so very long ago. She was still beautiful, for age and dignity grant a new kind of beauty to women, to those who have endured.

  The Mirror of Truth, they called it, and perhaps they were right to call it by that name. But to her it was now and had always been a reminder of her own prison, though thirty years had passed since she had walked into freedom, through a door bound with iron and the painted oscurra of a Lord Limner, into a changed world.

  Out of necessity she had made a life. She was not unhappy. Like a new pigment handed to an eager limner, there were ideas abroad in this world, colorful, bold, and exciting, that she was glad to have seen. Would never have seen, in the Meya Suerta of her birth, stultified by the drab and rigid rules of compordotta. Here, they accepted her as Gifted Limner. Indeed, for thirty years she had led them, Premia Sorella, as they called her now. Not once had they questioned her right to stand among them. Never again, after the acrimonious departure and undisputed success of Eleyna Grijalva, had they questioned the right of the unGifted Grijalva limners to forge out on their own, to make their own reputations, free of their service as Grijalva copyists.

  It was a good time to be alive, en verro.

  For every gift there is a price to pay.

  She studied the painting. He stood, dressed in a dark coat with long tails extending midway down his thighs, with cuffs fastened by ivory buttons, barely visible, for she could see only his back. His back—and a hint of his face in profile, an undistinguished face, dark eyes, black hair.

  But that was not the face she saw in the mirror. The mirror caught the light of candles and lamps at angles and within its confines showed her the other face, his true face: brown hair, brown eyes, desert-dark skin. Nothing in the least remarkable about Sario Grijalva. Nothing, except for his Luza do’Orro, that shone more brightly than any other’s. Perhaps it was an illusion given by the afternoon sunlight, but she thought she could see it, his Luza; actually see it, a tremor in the depths of the mirror, a ghost of light trembling around him.

  She found his gaze and held it, he who looked out at her from the mirror. He saw her; she knew that he saw her. Who better to know, who had once endured this captivity?

  ’Vedra.

  His voice. Was it only her imagining, or did he, too, as she had, hear voices, see the parade of faces and fashions that passed in that same mirror, his view onto the world outside his prison? Her prison, once.

  So must he wait now, as she had done for so many many years while all that she knew died and passed into dust and distant memory. Eventually the candles and lamps that illuminated his prison would burn low and then, finally, their light would fail altogether, leaving him in endless night.

  They had all agreed it was a fitting punishment
.

  Again, more insistent now: ‘Vedra!

  He loved her still. He would always love her. This burden she bore in silence. And a greater burden yet, that she still loved the Sario she had once known, the boy she had grown up with. What he had done could never be forgiven and must not be forgotten, so that the boys—few now—still born with the Gift might understand the dangers of power gone unchecked.

  But neither could she forget nor dismiss his Light.

  “You are the best,” she said, for it was true. It was in her to tell him the truth. He was the greatest Limner born into the Grijalva line. “And yet you were also least among us, for in the end you gave in to the worst in yourself, because you only cared about yourself, no matter what you said about your duty to art.”

  I know what I am.

  “Was that not also your downfall?” she asked him. “Could you not have acknowledged your great Gift, served the Grijalvas, and accepted your fate, as the rest of us do?”

  Never.

  En verro, she believed him. It burned in him so brightly.

  But she was older now. She had lived, and she had endured. She had lost her beloved. Had lost a kind-natured and solicitous husband. Lost an infant child but borne four others who yet lived and had themselves produced grandchildren for her. She was a Gifted Limner, acknowledged as a fine painter, and was foremost among the Viehos Fratos. And her son—first-born and most beloved, for he was the fruit of the passion of her youth—reigned as Grand Duke of Tira Virte.

  It was in her, this gracious spring morning, to be generous. She folded her Golden Key within her hand, kissed her fingers, and signed him a benediction.

  (from La Guide Michallin, by Enrei Michallin; Librairie dei Arteio; Aute-Ghillas, 1419)

  First Assembly of the Corteis, by Eleyna Grijalva, 1316.

  Oil on canvas. Galerria Nacionalla do’Tira Virte.

  This huge canvas, depicting the opening of the newly elected Corteis, is the most famous Tira Virteian painting of the last century. Its sheer technical brilliance and subtleties of characterization, demonstrate why the artist was the most sought-after painter of her time. In a triumph of movement, lighting, and composition, the legislators are shown taking their seats, greeting friends, chatting with the Premio Oratorrio, sorting through papers—all in morning sunlight streaming through the high windows. Note particularly the illumination of the arched palm branches carved in relief above the Oratorrio’s podium, representing the Victory of the People. Certain famous personages are brought into prominence by their placement in pockets of warm golden light. The artist’s husband, Rohario do’Verrada, is flanked by Ruis Albanil, the mason’s apprentice who had just begun his tempestuous rise to power; several men who would make their mark on the law are similarly set off. The artist herself is seen in the shadows, identifiable by the paintbrush half-tucked in her pocket and the Chieva do’Orro around her neck.