A Place in the World

by Amy Maroney

  “You tried to get my wife and me inside the gates of the Sacazar home,” Arnaud said, panting. “Just following the orders of your mistress, you told us.”

  Amadina’s servant said nothing, but the light cast by the fire revealed a gleam of metal in his other hand. A dagger. He sprang forward with more grace than Arnaud imagined he possessed, angling for a direct hit.

  Arnaud danced backward, neatly evading the attack.

  “Has Amadina Sacazar promised you a sack of coins for burning Belarac’s wool?” he growled. “You’ve failed. You won’t get your payment now.”

  The man’s expression soured. He ran at Arnaud, managing to graze his arm with the dagger.

  “I’m going to the bailiff in Pau,” Arnaud warned him. “The truth of what your mistress has done will be known all over Béarn.”

  He wheeled and darted away. As Amadina’s servant closed the space between them, Arnaud murmured a prayer to the gods.

  Then he took a deep breath, aimed, and let his dagger fly.

  47

  Autumn, 1506

  Bayonne, Gascony

  Mira

  Mira stood back, appraising the portrait with a critical eye. Silently she thanked Nekane for her generosity. If it had not been for the woman’s offer, Mira never could have purchased the lapis lazuli pigment and gold leaf she needed. This portrait would be unexceptional, its colors muted and dull.

  But now, with the proper supplies, Mira had brought the woman’s beauty to exquisite life. Her yellow hair gleamed under a pearl-studded cap. Her blue dress glowed. Her golden rings sparkled as if sunlight fell upon the painting.

  The merchant waddled into the parlor, his short cloak swishing from side to side. Behind him followed his wife and her two bulging-eyed lap dogs. They all paraded to the easel and stood admiring the portrait.

  He turned to Mira, ruddy face creased in a smile. “It is as you said it would be. I am pleased.” Producing his money purse, he counted out a number of gold coins. “Here.” He poured them in Mira’s palm. “The payment we agreed upon.”

  His wife reached forward, as if to touch her own image.

  “No, please, madame,” Mira said quickly. “The oil takes quite a long time to dry. It may smear if you touch it. In a few weeks, it will be safe.”

  The young woman’s hand dropped to her side. She had confessed to Mira that she married the merchant when she was only fourteen. The marriage was a coup for her parents, she said. She was a second daughter and her dowry was not as attractive as her elder sister’s. But she had the advantage of beauty. And the merchant was not immune to that.

  Now he slipped his arm around her waist, pressing her delicate frame against his great bulk. She looked uncomfortably at Mira. Then her eyes slid to the floor.

  “My timid little wife,” he said. “Shy from dawn to dusk, and even more bashful when darkness falls.” He laughed at his insinuation. His wife’s cheeks colored. She kept her gaze locked on the stone pavers below her feet.

  In that instant Mira understood how lucky she was to have chosen her husband, to love him, to be seen by him as a person equal to himself. She felt a wave of longing for Arnaud.

  “Madame was the picture of patience,” Mira said, choosing her words carefully. “I could not ask for a better subject, or a more beautiful one.”

  The merchant puffed up his chest. “She’ll be even lovelier when her belly swells with child.” He swatted his wife on the behind and her flush deepened.

  Mira put the coins in her purse and cleared her throat. “I will leave you, then. And I thank you for your patronage. Your good word will help me find more commissions in Bayonne. Starting with your partner in the whale hunting scheme, I hope.”

  He looked startled. “Ah, yes, of course. His own wife arrives from Toulouse any day, and once he sees this portrait, I am sure he shall not rest until he has one of his own. Of course, his wife cannot hold a candle to mine. She does have a fertile womb, though. I believe he has sired a half-dozen children with the woman.”

  Mira swallowed her distaste.

  “Thank you,” she said again, bowing slightly. “I wish you both good day.”

  A few days later Mira received word from the tall merchant that he wished to commission a portrait of his own wife. He desired her to begin work immediately, since his wife would only be in Bayonne for a season.

  Nekane watched her as she stood in the sunlight by the window and read the note.

  “You’re smiling. Why do your hands shake if the news is happy?” Nekane jiggled Tristan on her hip. He was teething and fussier than usual.

  “I am nervous,” Mira confided.

  “Do you doubt yourself?”

  “I am no master. I still feel uneasy at the idea of a new commission. Perhaps one day I will feel nothing but confidence when I set out to paint a portrait.”

  Nekane gave Tristan a piece of hard bread and he thrust it in his mouth, gumming it with vigor.

  “In my view, you’re a master,” she said stoutly. “I’ve seen what you can do. How you can capture an image on a piece of wood with a few layers of oil and pigment—it takes my breath away, it does.”

  Mira smiled. “Whenever I doubt myself, I shall come to you for compliments,” she said, opening her coin purse. “Here is what I owe you. You are the reason I was able to create a portrait that met with the merchant’s approval. And the reason I was able to buy my supplies from someone other than that ghastly bookmaker.”

  Nekane chuckled, pocketing the coins. “I don’t know how anyone gives him business. A curmudgeon and a woman-hater.”

  “He is the only bookmaker in the city, so people have no other choice.”

  “That may be so,” Nekane conceded. She hoisted Tristan in the air and he flung his soggy bread on the floor with a delighted screech. “I say we take this little man to the bakery and buy a sweet to celebrate your new pat....pat...?”

  “Patron,” Mira stooped to pick up the sodden lump of bread and tossed it in the hearth. “I would love an outing.”

  She went to Nekane and leaned in for an embrace. Tristan patted her cheek with his plump little hand.

  Nekane smiled at her. “We have each other, even if our men are away.”

  “And they shall return to us,” Mira promised. “Soon.”

  Nekane’s smile faltered. In her expression Mira saw a hint of the fear she carried day and night. Abarran had the riskiest job of all whale-hunters—he threw the harpoon at the whale from the small oak chalupa. If violent seas did not swamp him, he might be tossed from the boat by a pain-crazed whale and drowned.

  Mira took hold of Nekane’s hand. “He will come back to you,” she said with conviction.

  “There’s nothing certain in this world,” Nekane said, blinking back tears. “All I know is, if any man can do that job and come back alive, it’s my Abarran.”

  48

  January, 2017

  Basque country, Spain

  Zari

  Zari trudged along the sidewalk. Her umbrella bucked and flapped, straining against her hands. A cold winter rain left the taste of salt on her lips. In a Basque winter, the sea made its presence known even when it was out of sight.

  After a few more minutes of plodding, she stopped in front of a cobalt-blue metal building. An industrial-looking plastic sign next to the door read ‘Archivo Histórico de Protocolos de Kotirrun.’ It was the archives recommended to her by Señora Beramendi as a place to search for her Mendieta family ancestors.

  Today, Zari would not pursue the threads of her own family’s story within these walls. She was after Mira, Arnaud, and their son, Tristan.

  Her umbrella shuddered in a fierce gust, nearly turning inside out. She struggled with it in the doorway, her hair slipping out from under her hood and getting soaked in the process.

  Drawing a deep breath, she pushed open
the door.

  The compact, dark-haired woman who met her in the entryway showed Zari where to hang her sodden coat and stow her umbrella. Zari explained what she was after for the second time that day (the first had been during a stilted phone conversation in which she had asked several times for the woman to please slow down her rapid-fire Spanish). Now, with the visual aids of lip reading and body language, it was much easier to converse.

  The woman offered her a glass of water. Zari politely refused. The last thing she needed right now was more hydration. She did accept the offer of the use of a bathroom.

  Holding her hands under the warm spray of the faucet, she watched them slowly turn pink. Her mind wandered to the task ahead. Once again, Laurence Ceravet had greased the wheels, launching her impressive system of connections with academics in the region, securing Zari a last-minute appointment to peruse the digitized evidence of centuries of Basque history inside this building.

  Laurence also surprised Zari by traveling to Zaragoza in December and finishing the research on the Oto family Zari had abandoned last winter, when food poisoning cut short her research at the sheep ranchers’ archives. Laurence learned representatives of the family—often the baron himself—attended annual spring meetings in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Baron Ramón de Oto, whose wife Marguerite stood in for him as the family representative in the year 1500, disappeared from the record books altogether after 1503.

  Laurence also discovered the Oto family’s sheep holdings were rivaled only by those of the Sacazars, a leading merchant family of Zaragoza whose entrepreneurial son Carlo launched a satellite empire to the north, in the Béarnaise town of Nay. The portrait of a merchant family owned by Laurence—which was once attributed to Cornelia van der Zee—showed Carlo himself wearing a ring with the Sacazar mark. Zari had discovered the connection last spring, along with other clues that convinced her Mira de Oto painted the portrait.

  In her own research, Zari found proof that Mira’s mother was Marguerite de Oto, but no amount of digging revealed a point of connection between Ramón de Oto and Mira. To complicate things further, in the baronial record Zari saw at the monastery of San Juan de la Peña, Mira was not listed as a child of the couple. In fact, the record showed that no daughters were born to the family for the entirety of the fifteenth century.

  Of course there were other explanations, other possibilities. Perhaps Mira was Marguerite’s child with another man, but who? A lover? A rapist? Either explanation was plausible, though for a wife of a feudal lord to survive impregnation by any man other than her husband did not seem likely.

  Zari sighed, staring at her wind-reddened cheeks and wildly tangled hair in the mirror. Conjecture was a great way to waste time. She was here to search for more evidence of Mira, not drift off in an imagination-fueled stupor.

  Quickly she dried her hands, patted her damp hair with a paper towel, and exited the bathroom.

  Zari’s guide led her down a harshly-lit hallway to a research room furnished with two wooden tables and several chairs. She ushered Zari into a seat at a table set up with a computer monitor, keyboard, and detached hard drive.

  “Many historic documents in Basque country are digitized,” explained the woman. “Though there is very little from the era you are researching.” She demonstrated how to navigate the search engine. “Handwritten documents are translated into modern Spanish—just hover the arrow over the section you want to read and the translation will appear.”

  “Thank you,” Zari said gratefully.

  “Good luck,” the woman said, smiling a little. “I hope you find what you are looking for.”

  Zari stared at the flickering computer screen, gripped with a feeling of responsibility. How could she do this in an organized fashion? What was the best way to start? Her pulse quickened. There was no blueprint, no set of instructions to follow.

  Trust yourself, Zari, she thought. Just dive in.

  She began by typing in keywords, names, and dates relevant to Mira and Arnaud de Luz. Nothing related to either of them came to light, since the couple had lived in Bayonne, not Spanish-controlled Basque country—and this archives did not contain records from Bayonne.

  Stretching her arms over her head, Zari leaned forward again, giving up on her search for Mira and Arnaud. Now she felt more sure of herself, quickly typing a series of keywords related to Tristan de Luz.

  This time she was not disappointed. Tristan de Luz had been a boatbuilder in the coastal town of Getaria. There were several links to documents from the Burgos Consulate of the Sea in the 1530s showing he was contracted with various merchants to build ships for transporting goods (wool, iron, wine) to Flanders and other points north.

  She went deeper into the web of connections that developed, jumping from search to search. Opening her own laptop, she typed phrases and highlights from her findings, and took photos with her mobile of some of the historic documents. There was no mention of Tristan de Luz’s origins or his personal life, but his business dealings were well-documented. Finally the trail went cold.

  Zari slumped in her chair, wracking her brain for creative new ways to search, wondering what she had missed, how she could reengineer her keywords.

  A voice at the door interrupted her thoughts. “We will be closing soon,” said the woman administrator. “You are welcome to come back tomorrow.”

  It took a beat for Zari to gather herself enough to speak. “Thank you. I wonder if you can help me with one thing before I go?”

  The woman approached.

  “I found evidence of a man who is important to my research. His name was Tristan de Luz and he lived in Getaria. He built boats. What can you tell me about the town?”

  “Getaria is on the coast, popular with tourists. It’s where Juan Sebastián de Elcano was from.”

  Zari looked at her blankly. “And he was...?”

  “He was the first to circumnavigate the globe,” the woman explained. “Not surprising if you consider the history of the Basques.”

  “Is there a library or an archives there?”

  “A library, yes.”

  “Do you know anyone who works there?” Zari persisted. “It always helps if I have a connection.”

  “Yes, I will get the information for you.” The woman tilted her head toward the door, clearly ready for Zari to leave. “Come find me on your way out.”

  “I will be there in a moment,” Zari promised.

  Quickly, she did one last search for ‘Mendieta.’ Her eyes widened at the results. She could have stayed for the entire evening, following leads down hundreds of rabbit holes in search of her own family history. However, Zari’s time in the archives was over.

  With reluctance, she pushed her chair back. The mystery of her own family’s story would have to wait. This was her one chance to pursue Mira, and she hadn’t found anything today that would shift the needle in Mira’s favor. Zari frowned, collecting her belongings. Going to Getaria would do nothing to advance Mira’s cause, either. She was now hunting solely for Tristan de Luz.

  As she left the room, she decided there was no harm in pursuing Tristan de Luz for one more day. After all, she had absolutely nothing else to go on, nothing connecting her to new information about Mira.

  Better to be disappointed, to follow the thread and come up empty, than to always wonder what might have awaited her in Getaria.

  49

  January, 2017

  Getaria, Spain

  Zari

  When Zari arrived in Getaria the next day, a combination of siesta time and winter made the town look deserted. She found a room in a small hotel overlooking the sea, then set out for a short wander to get her bearings.

  The town curved around the harbor like a protective shield, its buildings a mixture of sand-colored historic stone structures, more modern whitewashed homes, and low-slung commercial buildings with distin
ctive Basque red tile roofs. Though it lacked the colorful charm of Pasai Donibane, Getaria’s winding streets were just as steeped in history.

  Zari ate dinner that evening in a pintxos bar on a little alleyway in the town’s historic center, where the hotel staff had directed her with the admonition to order the tortilla de patatas. Sitting at the polished wooden bar, nibbling on creamy layers of potato casserole, sipping a glass of local white wine, she soaked up the cascading sounds of Basque and Spanish around her. The place was clearly a local hangout. There was an air of relaxed conviviality that made her feel somehow included even though she was an obvious outsider, a feeling she rarely got when eating alone in Europe.

  When she signaled the bartender for another glass of wine and another round of pintxos, this time a ceramic bowl of olives and a tiny plate containing bread topped with goat cheese and red pepper aioli, he asked Zari where she was from. She explained a bit about her background and the reason she was in Getaria.

  “Tristan de Luz, you say?” he asked, filling her glass with more wine. He looked to be in his mid-forties, with expressive brown eyes under thick brows, a shock of curly black hair, and skin the color of dark honey. “It’s not a Basque name.”

  Zari nodded her thanks for the wine. “His parents were from Aragón. He was born in the early 1500s. He must have known Juan Sebastián de Elcano, the explorer? They were probably here about the same time.”

  The man looked amused. “No. Elcano left Getaria about the same time your Tristan de Luz was born. He fought in the Italian wars under the Great Captain—”

  “Who?”

  “Gonzalo Fernández de Cordóba. The Great Captain,” he repeated patiently. Another patron signaled to the bartender and he turned away, saying over his shoulder, “Elcano was born of this place, but he left young, and he died at sea.”

  The next morning Zari was at the door of the library at its stated opening time, waiting. She had e-mailed the librarian the day before and received confirmation that the woman was willing to speak to her. Zari folded her arms across her chest and tucked her chin down in an attempt to stay warm. It was not raining, not yet, but an ominous soup of gray clouds shifted and swirled overhead.