A Place in the World

by Amy Maroney

  She retrieved the linens from the floor and padded silently away, feeling the weight of his gaze all the way up the stairs.

  21

  Autumn, 1505

  Béarn

  Mira

  Frost clung to the riverbanks. Ahead of them, the River Pau glinted dully in the morning light. Mira pulled her cloak tighter around her shoulders, shivering.

  Arnaud held his copy of the agreement he signed in Orthez, rubbing a finger over the folds of linen paper as if to reassure himself of its existence. She understood his relief. He had waited years to make good on his promise to the people of Ronzal, and he was finally setting the plan in place. If all went well, the first shipment of oak would travel from the mountains to the harbor of Bayonne next year.

  Yesterday he told the bargemaster they would continue all the way to Bayonne aboard the barge. The only worry they had now was the weather. Storms had unleashed a deluge of rain in the mountains, and the river was rising again. The bargemaster said they would likely have to tie up at the next town’s river harbor and wait out the flood waters.

  Mira shifted awkwardly on the blanket, trying in vain to find a comfortable position. Though she was anxious for the journey to be over, a tiny part of her was relieved at the idea of a prolonged rest. Perhaps then the fatigue and queasiness that haunted her day and night would ease a bit.

  In truth, Mira yearned to stop moving, to find a home of her own, to ready a nest for the baby. A memory came to her of Elena spinning tales about babies she had helped bring into the world, about the tricks she used to ease a woman’s labor pains and speed her recovery after the birth.

  She felt a stab of longing for Elena that was physically painful. It seemed to deepen the hole already bored into her heart by grief. Elena would know what to do when this baby came, would comfort Mira with the wisdom of a healer and the love of a mother.

  But as far as Elena or anyone else knew, Mira was already in Bayonne, living an artist’s life by the sea. That had been her plan when they left Ronzal so long ago.

  Mira would never admit it to Arnaud, but the dream she had once nurtured of collecting wealthy patrons and painting portraits in Bayonne’s finest homes now seemed vaguely ridiculous. The truth was, she had lost her ambition the day she stood at Rose’s grave in the lavender fields of the Valley of Maury, watching Arnaud spade fresh soil into the hole. A wave of images swelled in her mind: little Rose’s saucy laughter, her sparkling eyes, those tiny hands that looked like stars.

  She glanced over at Arnaud, ashamed of her thoughts. Here they were, a few days’ journey from their destination, and she was wracked with apathy, with remorse, with regret. Most of all with grief.

  Arnaud was legally bound to conduct business in Bayonne with this bargemaster now. Thanks to Carlo Sacazar, her husband also had a place waiting for him in the cabinetmakers’ guild there. Arnaud had done his part to smooth their passage into a new life by the sea.

  Despite her exhaustion, despite her swollen and uncomfortable body, despite the wound in her grieving heart, Mira had to conjure up hope. She had to reclaim the version of herself that had been absent since Rose’s death—the Mira who lived up to the promise of her name, who wanted to see the world.

  After all he had sacrificed for her, she owed that to Arnaud.

  Her reverie was broken by a roar from a crew member. He called out to the other men, waving his arms at a massive log that bobbed in the current just upstream from the barge.

  The bargemaster rushed to the bow, shouting at his crew. Men scrambled to take their positions, plunging their long birch poles into the muddy depths as they tried desperately to maneuver the barge away from the hazard.

  Mira held her breath, watching the log drift closer and closer to the barge, pushed in slow, ponderous arcs by the action of the water. Without realizing it, she hugged her arms to her belly, cradling her unborn child.

  Arnaud held her close, whispered something in her ear, but she did not hear it. The hoarse shouts of the bargemaster and his crew drowned out every other sound.

  There was nothing to do but pray.

  22

  November, 2016

  Paris, France

  Zari

  Zari thrust her hands in her pockets, increasing her pace in an effort to stay warm as she strode along the center of the narrow street. There was no way a car could fit on this road with its two slim ribbons of sidewalk. Medieval buildings pressed in on either side, obscuring all but a slim band of gray sky.

  She clenched her jaw to keep her teeth from chattering. This was the problem with living out of a suitcase. Not enough layers. Her down jacket was servicable, but she needed more than jeans and a long-sleeved wool T-shirt underneath it, plus some wool socks. Judging from the weather, fall in Paris was serious business. As if the universe agreed, a film of drizzle descended.

  A tiny car silently rolled up behind her, the driver pressing the horn with quick, staccato beeps. She jumped out of the way, heart pounding, and rammed into one of the thigh-high metal posts that were mounted in the sidewalk at intervals.

  Apparently, if they were small enough, cars did fit on this road.

  The labyrinthian streets of the Marais were part of its magic, though. The neighborhood was full of cozy restaurants and boutiques selling everything from home decor to chefs’ supplies to hand-stitched leather shoes. And its tiny alleyways were laid out on a scale she felt immediately comfortable in, nothing like the grand boulevards of Paris’s other quartiers. Intimate and bustling, the neighborhood was a feast for the senses.

  Zari was on her way to an appointment with a curator at the Louvre to discuss the museum’s archived works by women. A meeting at the Louvre, she thought in amazement. It seemed like an absurd delusion, a fantasy. And yet here she was traipsing along like a real Parisian to the Metro stop. Zari put a hand to her messenger bag, feeling for the outline of her magnifying visor, a gift from Wil last Christmas. Who knew if she’d actually get to use it today, but leaving a tool like this at the apartment seemed foolish when she was about to go behind the scenes at one of the world’s greatest art institutions.

  Just as Zari reached the green-painted iron entryway to the Temple Metro stop, her mobile buzzed with an incoming text. It was from Andreas. He had gotten an inquiry from a woman whose grandmother had died and apparently left a painting by Cornelia van der Zee among her possessions. She was in her grandmother’s apartment now, having driven in from her home in Normandy to assess the items of the estate. The painting was probably a dud, he warned, but would Zari be able to go to Neuilly that afternoon and view it?

  She took shelter under the awning of a store by the Metro stop.

  Of course, not a problem. Where is Neuilly? she typed.

  Just west of the Arc de Triomphe. It’s a wealthy suburb.

  What time? she asked.

  Would one o’clock work?

  Zari felt a zing of disappointment at his response. She would not be able to wander the Louvre after her meeting. She’d have to scurry from her appointment at the museum to Neuilly without delay.

  Absolutely, she replied.

  Great. I’ll text the address.

  She stuffed her mobile in her bag and descended the steep staircase along with dozens of commuters, all of them wearing a sober expression that she had come to term ‘the Metro face.’ During one ride, she had tried experimentally smiling, especially at elderly women, and in return got looks of shock or horrified disdain. During another, when she had accidentally met the gaze of a man who was staring intently at her, he had taken it as an invitation to follow her for more than an hour. She finally escaped into the BHV department store and slipped through the crowded main floor to the back entrance, then hightailed it through the streets, checking over her shoulder constantly to reassure herself he was gone.

  The train was packed this morning, mostly with Parisians but
also tourists eager to get a head start on sightseeing. Studiously avoiding eye contact with everyone, Zari stood clutching an overhead bar for the duration of the ride, then disembarked behind a group of Germans in the Musée du Louvre station and followed them up the stairs to the street.

  When her meeting concluded at noon, Zari reluctantly dashed past the glass pyramids in the Louvre’s vast cobblestone courtyard back to the Metro stop. She had gone directly into the building’s administrative offices for her appointment, without even a glimpse of the storied treasures that the museum was rightly famous for. Someday, she promised herself as she stepped into the crowded train.

  The ride to Neuilly was a straight shot and should have been uncomplicated, but there was an inexplicable delay in a dark tunnel during which no one acted impatient or annoyed at the inconvenience.

  Zari marveled at the stoic expressions around her, worried about being late. She still felt the sting of Darius’s warning that she could be sacked at any minute. Being late to an appointment might be the death knell for her job. Who knew what type of infraction would incite Darius’s rage? She didn’t want to find out.

  As soon as she arrived at her stop in Neuilly, she checked her map application, got her bearings, and race-walked through the streets. She arrived breathless at her destination and pressed the brass buzzer next to a glass-and-wrought-iron door exactly at the appointed hour. With a subtle click, the door unlocked and she entered the apartment building’s cool, dim entry hall.

  23

  November, 2016

  Paris, France

  Zari

  Zari entered the apartment building and ascended the winding stone staircase to the second floor. The door nearest the stairs was ajar.

  “Bonjour?” she called, standing at the threshold.

  “Bonjour,” a voice responded.

  Heels clicked on the wooden parquet floor. A lithe blond woman about Zari’s age approached, wearing a cream-colored wool tunic over black jeans and high black boots. Gold earrings, a gold necklace, and an enormous diamond ring rounded out her ensemble. She wore enough bronzer to make her skin appear deeply tanned, and her wide brown eyes were framed by expertly waxed brows. She invited Zari inside and they made their introductions, then got down to business.

  Slowly they walked through the rooms. Their conversation was carried out entirely in French. Zari was grateful that she had spent much of the previous year in France. At this point she understood most of what she heard and was confident that her spoken French was at least at a middle-school level.

  The apartment was much larger than Andreas’s place in the Marais. The windows looked out into the building’s interior courtyard. Weak autumn light filtered through the glass, illuminating the honey-colored floors. An odor of stale cigarette smoke permeated the space.

  “This apartment has been in my family for more than a century,” the woman was saying. “My grandmother lived here for nearly seventy years.”

  “Has your family always lived in this area?” Zari asked.

  “No. We were originally from the south of France. My great-grandparents moved here to start a fabric and tailoring business.”

  They stopped in a small bedroom at the far end of the apartment. Stacks of boxes lined the walls. The woman pointed at two flat parcels on the bed.

  “Those paintings were under this bed for years,” she said. “Nobody knew it but my grandmother.”

  Her mobile buzzed in her handbag, which Zari recognized as a multi-thousand dollar tasseled specimen that featured prominently in the pages of the Vogue magazine she had perused on the long flight from San Francisco.

  “I must take this call.” The woman thrust a clear plastic file folder at Zari. “These are copies of the provenance papers,” she added, walking away.

  Standing at the foot of the bed, Zari unwrapped the paintings. One, a small portrait of a sallow-skinned man with a thin black mustache, was poorly executed. She turned it over and studied the back. The label was so faded she could not make out the words.

  The other portrait was about twice as large, with a gilt frame that had seen better days. It depicted a wealthy couple. The woman wore a blue dress with elaborate sleeves, the man a short wheat-colored doublet, matching hose, and a brown cap. Their clothing was the correct vintage for Cornelia van der Zee’s era, Zari noted.

  The couple stood before a window in a luxuriously appointed room. Beyond them, the view extended out to a lavender field. Visible on the opposite edge of the field was a small stone house. A low wall ran around the perimeter of the house, its gate framed by twisting pink roses. All of the windows of the little dwelling were shuttered, save one on the ground floor. The original varnish on the piece had cracked and yellowed over time. Layers of dust had taken root as well, lending the portrait an air of grimy neglect.

  Silently Zari congratulated herself for remembering her magnifying visor. She carried the painting into the next room, which was flooded with natural light from three tall windows, and leaned it against a sofa. Her eyes were drawn to the woman’s face. She flipped through the emotion index in her brain, looking for the right word. Something bubbled inside the woman. Was it amusement? Irritation? Zari could not put her finger on it, exactly.

  The male subject, in contrast, bore an expression of impassive formality, his eyes devoid of life. He had the emotionally flat appearance Zari had come to associate with Cornelia van der Zee’s portraiture.

  In some ways, the painting seemed to tick the boxes that Andreas wanted her to seek out: it was not a typical portrait, it had some of the hallmarks of a Flemish master, and it probably dated from the sixteenth century, judging by the couples’ clothing. But the elaborate background was not typical of Van der Zee. It reminded her of Mira’s backgrounds.

  Zari examined the back of the panel. The wood was pockmarked and looked as if it had once been painted black. Now the paint was distressed, showing faint cracks and fissures. The brownish label on the upper right corner of the frame was illegible.

  She retrieved the plastic folder from the bedroom and perched on a chair, studying the papers. The provenance for the painting was brief and included the ominous words ‘après Cornelia van der Zee.’

  This was not good. ‘After Cornelia van der Zee’ meant ‘in the style of’ the artist, meaning it was by an unknown artist who was copying Van der Zee’s methods. The owner, not knowing this, had seen the name and assumed Van der Zee herself had painted it.

  Zari sighed, skimming the rest of the provenance. The work had been a gift from a Madame de Berral to a Madame Nicholas in the mid-eighteenth-century. The letterhead from a photocopied portion of a will showed the name of a law firm and an address in cramped script that was nearly impossible to decipher. Zari switched out the lenses on her headlamp, choosing the one with maximum magnification. She squinted at the letterhead again. The law firm was based in Perpignan.

  Her attention pricked up.

  Crouching before the painting, Zari flipped on her visor’s light and studied the work carefully. Her eyes were drawn to the man’s cap. A braided blue ribbon decorated with a golden pin was clasped to the cap just above the man’s temple. The varnish was so filthy that details were difficult to pick out. But she was fairly certain there was a design on the face of the pin.

  She heard her host talking in rapid French in the apartment’s entry hall, still engrossed in her phone conversation.

  Zari rummaged in her handbag and pulled out a bottle of white spirit and a small plastic bag full of cotton balls and swabs. She wet a cotton ball with the substance and rubbed it lightly over the nobleman’s head. Instantly the aged varnish appeared transparent. The heightened contrast of the paint colors beneath allowed her to see the pin more clearly. Still, she could not make out the design.

  When the white spirit dried a few moments later, she moistened a cotton swab with her tongue and brushed it over the man’s c
ap. The swab came away completely black. Quickly she repeated the process with a fresh swab. Then she passed another cotton ball doused with white spirit over the spot. With her magnifying visor in place, light blazing, she could just make out two tiny letters: ‘C’ and ‘Z’.

  She sat back on her heels, staring fixedly at the painting.

  Could this be the work of Cornelia van der Zee? Zari stood, pushed the visor off her head, and crossed her arms.

  The man—yes, he could be Van der Zee’s work. Her paintings tended to be technically impeccable but lacking in emotional impact. Her subjects rarely held the viewer’s gaze. But the woman? She was the opposite of a Van der Zee subject. The couple’s faces looked as if they had been painted by two different artists, the angles and planes of their features rendered in clashing styles. The woman looked more like Mira de Oto’s work, actually. With those lively, knowing eyes.

  Once again Zari turned the painting over.

  All the works she believed were Mira’s had been made on wood panels crafted by Arnaud de Luz, and they all bore a stamp showing his initials. If this one had a stamp, it was buried under layers of paint.

  Zari shook her head, annoyed at herself. She needed to separate this work for Darius Eberly from her obsession with Mira. Otherwise she would do something idiotic and get sacked.

  Her mobile buzzed with an incoming text from Andreas.

  What’s your assessment?

  She stared at the words, not sure what to tell him.

  Then she composed a reply, told him what she had learned from the provenance.

  Within a moment his reply came back. And no visible signature?

  No, she wrote.

  The woman’s footsteps echoed in the hall, coming closer.