A Place in the World

by Amy Maroney

  “It’s time I told you what happened when I went off with your brother.” He lay a leather sack on the bed next to the mirror. “These are pigments. And brushes. Cornelia’s, all of them.”

  “What?” Mira was aghast. “You took Cornelia van der Zee’s things when we left the Valley of Maury?”

  He shot her an irritated look. “How could I have managed that? The lord ran us off his land as soon as Rose died.”

  “Did her husband give them to you after he helped—when he...” Mira faltered.

  When he helped us bury our Rose.

  Arnaud shook his head. “No. But later, when I went to Carcassonne, I saw him. Cornelia died soon after Rose did. And, like us, her husband was turned out by Lord and Lady de Berral. He headed to Carcassonne to sell her things and pay his way back to Flanders. I ran into him at the market there and bought it all. It was the least I could do, after his kindness.”

  Mira swallowed a sob, willing her grief away. “Why were you there?” she asked.

  Arnaud stole a quick glance at Tristan. Reassured that the boy still slept, he spoke again.

  “I told Pelegrín and his men I had seen you and your husband traveling east. I claimed I was heading east myself and offered to lead them to you.” He half-smiled. “The lies I told them. Couldn’t think straight. First I led them to Fanjeaux, where a local told me about a market in Carcassonne where artisans gathered. I’d no idea Carcassonne was a fortified town, crawling with French soldiers. A group of Aragónese knights can’t just walk through its gates. So your brother and his men waited in the woods while I went searching in the city—”

  “But Arnaud,” Mira interrupted. “What if the French soldiers had seized you?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “The entire adventure was a fool’s errand, Mira. I only undertook it to protect you.”

  She dropped her gaze, chagrined. “Go on.”

  “As I told you, I stumbled into Cornelia’s husband there and bought the art supplies he was selling. Then I returned to your brother and his men, concocted a tale that it was you who had died, said I had purchased your art supplies from your husband. I offered them to your brother, but he didn’t want them.”

  “What did he say about me?” she asked, dreading Arnaud’s answer.

  “At that moment, nothing—because a pack of French soldiers jumped us. I got a bit scratched up.”

  “The wound on your cheek when we met in Lourdes!” she said triumphantly.

  He nodded. “I fought alongside your brother and his men. He ordered one of them to give me a pair of boots in thanks—boots he’d stripped from the feet of a French soldier at the battle for Naples.”

  “Why boots?”

  “Because I rode off from the abbey of Camon shod only in slippers,” he explained. “We departed in haste, if you’ll remember.”

  Mira took in his words, her mind unravelling the details and spooling them out one by one.

  “All you have described happened quickly,” she said. “And yet you did not come to me until I had reached Lourdes. Why did it take you so long?”

  “I wasn’t about to let those men out of my sight. I rode all the way to Perpignan with them, made up some story about wanting to buy tools at the market there. Then I watched their ship sail south for Aragón. Only then did I turn and ride for the west again.”

  Mira felt hollowed out inside. “You saved me from him,” she whispered, leaning against Arnaud.

  He hesitated. “Pelegrín told me he wanted to find you, but he never said he wished to hurt you. He said he wanted to right an old wrong.”

  She drew in a sharp breath. “He must have meant to finish what my father had started—to kill the girl who was never meant to live at all.”

  “From that point of view, his words could be taken as a threat,” Arnaud conceded. “But I was there, not you. And I’m still not sure what to make of it.”

  “Would he have told you, a stranger, what he truly meant to do?”

  “Pelegrín’s the baron of Oto now,” Arnaud replied. “Who knows what he promised his father before he died? But the truth is, I found no fault in the man. He treated his knights well, and they clearly loved him.”

  “My father...” Mira fell silent a moment. “He doted on Pelegrín. I am certain my brother would try to end my life if that was our father’s wish.”

  Arnaud enfolded her in his arms. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter now. Pelegrín’s in Aragón. And you’re here. Safe.”

  Tristan stirred and opened his eyes. He looked directly at his father and beamed.

  “Do you see this?” Arnaud said with hushed reverence. “He’s smiling at me.”

  All thoughts of her brother and father were banished from Mira’s mind at the sight of her son and husband grinning at each other.

  A comfortable routine developed over the next few weeks. Each morning, after Arnaud left for work, Mira fed and changed Tristan, then took him downstairs and handed him over to Nekane. Returning to their rooms, she mixed her paints and set to work on the self-portrait, layer by painstaking layer.

  One morning Mira examined the portrait and was satisfied all the major elements were there. She mixed ground white lead with linseed oil and added a few highlights in strategic places. Wiping her hands on a rag, she stood back, surveying the painting with a critical eye.

  Mira had painted a self-portrait, it was true, but the only accurate representation of what she glimpsed in the mirror was her face. The rest was all imagined. She painted herself garbed in a fine red dress like her mother wore in the portrait Mira painted at the castle of Oto, with the same black slashed sleeves, the same white blouse decorated with Moorish-inspired embroidery. After some deliberation, she had added her shell necklace on its thin gold chain and the Oto medallion around her waist, also in homage to her mother.

  The background was where she diverged from her mother’s portrait. Instead of creating an elaborate landscape, she used alternating layers of burnt umber and black paint to build up a somber backdrop. Her primary goal was to show merchants and nobles that she could paint their images with great skill. A detailed background might be distracting.

  On the back of the portrait, under Arnaud’s mark, she painted in tiny script the words, ‘In memory of my mother Marguerite.’ She also concealed her name in two places on the painting itself, just as Cornelia van der Zee had advised her to do one hot summer afternoon in the Valley of Maury. Had that really been only two seasons ago? It seemed a lifetime had passed since their little family arrived in the lavender-scented valley and she completed the portraits of Lord and Lady de Berral which Cornelia was too ill to finish.

  Mira’s painting skills were unchanged since those sweltering summer days. But making an image of herself was strange. It had taken Mira several days to get used to staring into the small rectangle of glass, studying her reflection, then daubing paint on the oak panel. She felt oddly self-conscious, as if she were being observed—though the baby and Arnaud were the only ones who saw what she was doing. No one else had any idea that a young woman was painting her own portrait in these modest rented rooms above a small square in one of Bayonne’s unfashionable quarters.

  She gave the portrait another appraising look and frowned. There were at least a dozen flaws to fix. It was nowhere near perfect. And perfect was the only acceptable outcome. After all, Carlo Sacazar was not here to smooth the way. She had no champion, no mentor, no advocate in Bayonne. She would succeed on her own merits, or she would fail.

  Mira reluctantly slipped off her leather apron. The last details would have to wait.

  It was time to fetch Tristan.

  31

  November, 2016

  San Sebastián, Spain

  Zari

  Señora Beramendi buzzed Zari in from the street. The elderly widow’s apartment was on the edge of the half-moon-shaped bay that lapped at the shore
s of San Sebastián. It occupied the fourth floor of a building painted in cream and yellow, its tall windows looking out over an esplanade where pedestrians strolled along the beach. The rooms were filled with antique furniture, wool area rugs, and an entire library of leather-bound books that Zari eyed hungrily, imagining medieval script and jewel-toned illuminations.

  Señora Beramendi moved with a measured pace through the apartment, finally pausing in a room whose windows faced west.

  “My husband did his work here in the evenings.” She gestured at an oak desk near the window. “He sat there with his papers and looked out at the sea.”

  She was dressed entirely in black, Zari noted. The only splash of color in her ensemble was the heavy gold chain around her neck set with an amber stone.

  “What a beautiful view,” Zari said automatically, her eyes on the shifting waters of the bay, on the clouds scudding across the pearly sky.

  Señora Beramendi pointed across the room. “Here it is. The painting.”

  Zari approached the portrait. Like many of Cornelia Van der Zee’s works, this one was small, perhaps eighteen inches by twenty-four. It showed a three-quarter length view of its subject, a woman wearing a black dress, her fingers festooned with gold rings, her hair mostly hidden under a lace cap.

  “May I?” Zari asked, reaching her arms out.

  Señora Beramendi nodded.

  Zari carefully lifted the painting off the wall and carried it to the desk. She pulled her magnifying visor from her bag and slipped it over her head. First she examined the painting itself, then turned it over and studied the reverse side.

  “Why do you look at the back?” Señora Beramendi asked after a while.

  “It can tell us a lot about the painting. Who the artist was, who made the panel, where it was made.”

  Zari touched a mark burned into the wood. “This is the symbol of a panel maker who worked in Amsterdam in the late sixteenth century after Cornelia van der Zee died,” she explained, turning the painting over again.

  The upper right corner of the portrait contained a small design, nearly invisible against the dark background. Zari hovered a finger near it. “This is the monogram of a minor Netherlandish artist. It tells us the portrait is his work.”

  The woman moved closer, peering at the place Zari indicated. “It is almost impossible to see.”

  “Age has darkened the colors.” And dirt, Zari didn’t add. “You could probably get a good price for this painting at auction. It’s in excellent condition.”

  She carried the painting back to the wall and slid it into place on its hook, then removed her headgear.

  Señora Beramendi looked disappointed. “I don’t care about the money,” she said. “I am interested in women artists. If this was by Cornelia van der Zee, I would have it restored and donate it to a museum. Girls need to see the work of women alongside that of men. Did you know the Prado Museum in Madrid is showing its first-ever exhibition of a female artist this winter? And her work has never even hung on the walls of the museum. Her paintings are kept in storage.”

  Indignation flared in Señora Beramendi’s brown eyes. Despite the careful application of makeup and an expensive-looking hair dye job, her deeply lined face showed the ravages of time.

  “Yes, I know,” Zari said, a warm feeling of solidarity unfurling in her chest. “The Clara Peeters exhibit. Her work is finally coming out of the shadows. I am searching for another woman artist who is buried even deeper in history—her name was Miramonde de Oto.”

  “Miramón?” the woman said in surprise.

  “You’re familiar with the name?”

  “It is the name of a neighborhood nearby.”

  “This is a little different: Miramonde. It means ‘one who sees the world.’ She painted a portrait of a woman much like that one—” Zari gestured at the painting on the wall. “It hangs in Oxford. And for many years, people believed it was the work of Cornelia van der Zee.”

  “How did you learn it was not?”

  Zari smiled. “How much time do you have?”

  “This is a story I wish to hear,” Señora Beramendi said, her expression softening. She put a gnarled hand on Zari’s arm. “Have a coffee with me. Stay a while.”

  As Señora Beramendi walked her to the door a few hours later, Zari asked if she was familiar with the town of Pasai Donibane.

  “Yes. It is just north of here. You can walk there, on a footpath by the sea. It is not too rainy this week. You might enjoy the walk, it only takes a few hours.”

  “And what about Erkodun? In the hills?”

  The woman shook her head. “The old whaling towns, the beach villages, I know—but the mountains, no. Why do you ask about these places?”

  “My—people,” Zari stumbled over the words, not because she couldn’t recall the Spanish, but because it felt unnatural to put a claim on her ancestors after a lifetime of barely acknowledging their existence. She injected her voice with more strength. “That’s where my people are from. The Mendietas.”

  “I wish you luck finding them,” said Señora Beramendi. “Wait.” She disappeared into her husband’s study and returned a moment later with a monogrammed piece of note paper covered with a few lines of script.

  “Archivo Histórico de Protocolos de Kotirrun,” Zari read aloud, then glanced up at Señora Beramendi.

  “It is an archives near here where you might learn something about your ancestors.”

  Zari folded the paper and tucked it in a pocket. “Thank you. And thank you for the coffee.”

  She stepped through the door and it thudded shut behind her. For a moment she stood still, imagining the old woman pacing through the silence of her empty rooms. Señora Beramendi’s loneliness had been palpable.

  Zari was struck by a memory of Monsieur Mendieta, her elderly neighbor in Pau, whose solitary routine and aloof reserve had been disrupted when he collapsed one night and Zari had come to his aid. Laurence had often urged her to search for Mendieta connections, but it wasn’t until Zari developed a relationship with Monsieur Mendieta—though he was not a relative, it turned out—that she felt a spark of interest in family lore. Since her arrival in Basque country a few days ago, the spark had swelled into a glowing ember pulsing against her ribs, on the verge of exploding into flame.

  Quickly Zari descended the curving staircase and pushed open the heavy glass door of the apartment building, eager to explore the streets of San Sebastián.

  It was a relief to breath the cool briny air again.

  32

  November, 2016

  Pasai Donibane, Spain

  Zari

  Zari stood gasping for breath at the top of a hill, admiring the curving bay and the city of San Sebastián below her. This peak was deceptively modest in stature from afar—but climbing it took more effort than she had imagined. You’re out of shape, she scolded herself. Being constantly on the road had torpedoed her running routine.

  She staggered north along the coastal path. To the west, the Atlantic churned with mysterious currents and foam-capped swells. To the east rose the green foothills of the Pyrenees. The promise of rain sailed in from the sea. Zari could taste it on her tongue.

  She made good time on the rest of the journey, getting into a comfortable rhythm. And she was well fortified. Before she set out on this adventure, she stopped in a café for a coffee and a slice of cream-filled cake with a caramelized, buttery crust.

  When she reached a viewpoint looking down at the fishing village of Pasai Donibane, she stopped, dazzled by the sight of brightly painted houses festooning the harborside like jewels. Supposedly her ancestors had once lived and worked in this dreamy little spot. The thought spurred her onward. She hurried down the twisting path into the heart of the village.

  Wooden boats bobbed in the tiny harbor, their shellacked hulls gleaming. Underfoot, the cobblestones sparkled
as if they had just been scrubbed by hand.

  Finding a cafe open on the edge of the harbor, Zari surveyed the nearly empty space and chose a table by the window. A middle-aged man whose white shirt strained against his ample belly came to take her order. She asked for the ‘plate of the day,’ which turned out to be a whole grilled fish and a side of roasted potatoes. Studiously avoiding eye contact with her meal, she dug in.

  When the server came back, Zari pulled out the plastic bag containing her pile of Mendieta lore and selected the page that showed the Celtic-looking curved lines of the ‘Mendieta mark.’

  “Do you know this design?” she asked him, holding the paper out.

  He looked at it with an expression of mild impatience. “Of course. It is the mark of a Basque family.” He patted himself on the chest. “We all have them.”

  “It’s the mark of my family, the Mendietas. Some of them were from here, I think.”

  “You think? You should know where your own family is from.” His mouth wasn’t smiling, but his brown eyes crinkled at the corners.

  “They were whalers and fishermen. They made—” she peered at the page again. “Chalupas.”

  “Yes.” He nodded sagely. “Small boats for whale hunting. Quick and fast, for an easier kill.”

  “Oh.” Zari felt revulsion at the idea.

  The server studied her face. “You love the whales, eh? We Basques were whale hunters from the early days. We were the best at it.” He pointed at her. “You come from whale hunters. You should be proud.”

  Zari fought the urge to protest and rifled through her papers again.

  “Do you know this town?” she asked, holding out the drawing of the house and the scribbled name Erkodun.

  “It is not a town,” he said. “It is a place. An old homestead.”

  “A homestead? Could I go there?” A buzz of anticipation crawled around Zari’s collarbone.

  He considered her a moment. “You would need a car. But it’s muddy and steep in those hills. Okay for locals, but not tourists like you.”