A Place in the World

by Amy Maroney

  The merchant poked his head through the door. “My apologies,” he said, coming to stand next to her. “My wife is unwell today. You can resume the work tomorrow.”

  Mira felt her pulse begin to thud wildly. So it was just as she feared. The woman was incapacitated by his blows.

  “I see,” she said, rolling her brushes up in their soft leather case with trembling hands. “How unfortunate.”

  He approached and stood at her side, his eyes on the painting. “Just as I wished. You’ve spun straw into gold.”

  “Straw?” She stepped away from him, struggled to keep her voice even.

  The merchant saw her consternation. “It is not what it seems,” he protested. He hesitated, working the muscles in his jaw. Then he said, “My wife is a good woman, but she is possessed by an addled mind. At night, she flies into the most terrible rages. She flings plates and cups at me, comes at me with her talons extended like a falcon, beats me about the head. I could turn her out, of course, it is my right. But she is the mother of my children. So I defend myself against her attacks. And she bears a few bruises and scrapes as a result of it.”

  Mira was flabbergasted. Were these falsehoods? The man looked genuinely contrite. She gathered her things, busying herself with her satchel.

  “I did not realize,” she murmured. “Forgive me.”

  He made a little bow in her direction. “Your discretion in this matter will be appreciated, naturally.”

  “Of course,” she assured him. “I will speak of it to no one, sir.”

  He accompanied her to the door and closed it gently behind her.

  On the way out, she walked past the kitchens and into the courtyard where two maids were hanging out wash, talking in low voices. Unnoticed by them, she slipped through the rows of sodden linens toward the arched doorway that led out into the lane.

  “Cook blames me for using so much salt in the washing,” one of the girls complained. “But salt’s the only thing that gets blood out. And there’s blood every morning on madame’s sheets.”

  Mira slowed her steps, listening intently. She tightened her grip on her satchel.

  “Her maid sleeps on the other side of the door,” said the other girl in a hushed tone. “Not once has she heard madame cry out when he beats her. She’s quiet as a mouse.”

  “What would you do, scream and shout? She’s probably tried that, and got an even worse beating because of it. Better to play dead, I think. For my part, I praise God that he beats his wife and not his servants.”

  Mira increased her pace, weaving through the lengths of wet linen as if they dripped poison instead of water, eyeing each one for evidence of bloodstains. But she saw none.

  When she exited the door to the lane and heard the latch slip into place behind her, she was engulfed by an overwhelming sense of relief. More than anything, Mira wanted to tell the merchant she was leaving and never coming back, that she would not accept payment from a wife-beater, that what he was doing was wrong, that he had to stop.

  But what would be the outcome? If Mira confronted him, perhaps the man would retaliate by lashing out even more violently at his wife. Or perhaps he would slander Mira’s reputation to the rest of Bayonne’s merchant class. Her career here would be over before it truly began.

  No. She must put aside her outrage and finish the job she was tasked to do. She had used much of the money given her by the fat merchant to buy more expensive pigments for this job. If she walked away now, it would not only be a death blow to her career as an artist in Bayonne—it would push her little family to the brink of poverty. Everything would depend on Arnaud’s return.

  A thought hammered at her, one that danced in the shadows of her mind day and night.

  What if Arnaud never does return? What will you do then?

  Mira was just as trapped as the merchant’s wife, held captive by the promise of gold.

  54

  January, 2017

  Getaria, Spain

  Zari

  The bartender had said he would meet Zari in front of Señora Perez’s house in an hour. After a brief nap in her hotel room, she splashed water on her face, brushed her teeth, donned her still-damp raincoat, and descended the hotel stairs to the street. It only took a few minutes to walk through the narrow cobbled lanes to the house.

  Zari shivered, the warmth leaching from her body as she waited.

  Two figures appeared, dark shapes emerging from the gloom at the south end of the street, shielded by an enormous umbrella. Disappointment flooded her. Where was the bartender? She folded her arms across her chest, feeling uneasy. For the first time it dawned on her that this might not be a good idea. The bartender was a complete stranger. Yet she was about to enter an empty house with him.

  She pulled her mobile from her pocket and dialed Wil’s number, on the edge of panic.

  “Hello?” His familiar, beloved voice filled her ear.

  “Wil, I don’t have time to explain, but I’m about to go inside an abandoned house with a man I just met, and I need someone who cares about me to know.”

  “What are you talking about?” Wil sounded perplexed and annoyed at the same time.

  “It’s about Mira and a painting,” she said. “I’m standing outside a house where there’s supposedly a portrait that looks like the one of her mother Marguerite in Oxford. Now I have a chance to go inside and see it.”

  “Who’s the man?”

  “A bartender. He’s a good guy. I think.”

  The approaching couple moved slowly toward her. The man was tall, his companion much shorter. Her arm was hooked through his.

  “Can’t you wait until someone can go with you? Me, for instance?” The irritation in Wil’s voice sharpened.

  “I just kind of impulsively made the plan—”

  “Hola!” a deep voice interrupted her. She recognized the bartender. The woman on his arm was twice his age. “I brought my mother,” he added.

  Zari smiled, flooded with relief. “It’s okay,” she whispered to Wil. “He brought his elderly mother along. I’ll be fine.”

  She promised to call him back as soon as she left the house.

  Zari’s stomach roiled with anticipation while the bartender made cursory introductions and inserted a key into the lock. His mother looked on impassively, clutching the umbrella. Finally, the bartender got the door open.

  Inside the entry hall, Zari watched as the bartender’s mother slipped a plastic bag off her shoulder and removed a feather duster from its interior. Turning her back on Zari and her son, she batted at cobwebs in a corner, seemingly fixated on her task.

  Zari followed the bartender into the living room, which faced west, toward the sea. The exterior shutters were closed. She imagined a soggy garden outside dominated by tall weeds that sagged under the weight of raindrops.

  The bartender turned the lights on in the room and gestured to the far wall. “There it is,” he said. “Your painting. Look at it for as long as you wish. I’ll be in the kitchen.”

  Zari rummaged in her handbag for her headlamp. The portrait hung about three-quarters of the way up the wall, set within a modest wooden frame. She stood before it, awestruck, letting first impressions wash over her.

  The painting was about the same size as the one of Marguerite de Oto, and showed its subject from the hips upward. The woman in the portrait had the same steady gaze, the same gray-green, cat-like eyes as Marguerite. She wore the same gown, too—a deep scarlet that had faded to a burnt-orange color over the centuries, with a low square neck. The black velvet sleeves were slashed, revealing a white blouse embroidered with geometric patterns. Around her neck was the same shell pendant necklace that Marguerite wore, and from her waist dangled the same medallion, spelling out the letters O–T–O.

  If Zari had not spent so much time studying the painting of Marguerite, she probably would have assumed
the portraits were of the same woman. But she knew better. This was not Marguerite. It was a much younger woman, and although her eyes were almost identical to Marguerite’s, there was something in the cast of her jaw, in the pronounced angle of her cheekbones, in her wider mouth, in the more honey-toned skin, that made Zari certain she was staring at a different woman entirely: Marguerite’s daughter, Miramonde de Oto.

  Curiously, the background was nothing like the background in Marguerite’s portrait. It was a seascape, featuring the same crashing waves she had watched through her hotel window not an hour ago. It showed craggy rocks, spouting whales, the pale outlines of seabirds. Without a doubt, it was the same Atlantic that churned in Getaria’s little harbor, not five hundred yards away.

  “Can I take it off the wall?” she called.

  The bartender strode back into the room.

  “Why?” He stood at her side, arms folded over his chest, gazing at the painting.

  “I want to see the back. If it has the letters ‘ADL’ we will know her husband Arnaud made it.”

  Without another word, the bartender reached up and slid the portrait off its hook. He turned it so the back faced Zari. She trained her headlamp on it, then sucked in a sharp breath.

  “Well?” he asked, watching her intently. “What does it show?”

  Zari smiled, her eyes welling with tears. “It’s his mark. And there are words painted underneath it—or there were. I can’t make any of them out.”

  The bartender nodded, satisfied. “Now what?”

  Zari tried to clear her mind. “Now I need to take lots of pictures. Is there any room in this house with better light?”

  “Come into the kitchen,” he replied. “You can do it there.”

  Zari felt light-headed, overcome by the enormity of her discovery. She caught sight of the bartender’s mother, who hummed to herself, busy with her duster in a small room off the kitchen that must have been a study. It was dominated by a large desk that seemed out of proportion to the space.

  The bartender lay the portrait gently on the wooden surface of the kitchen table. He was right, Zari realized. The light was much better in here. She put her magnifying visor on and pulled out her mobile. Her hands were trembling.

  “This is ridiculous,” she announced, feeling helpless. “I am shaking.”

  “Let me take the photos,” the bartender said, reaching for Zari’s mobile. “I don’t shake.”

  Twenty minutes later, Zari was satisfied with the dozens of photos she had insisted he take at different angles and distances from all sides of the portrait. Then she bent over the painting with her headlamp, scrutinizing every inch of it. She inserted the lens with the strongest magnification and stared again at the dusty surface. The colors had dimmed over the centuries. Details that would jump out after a proper cleaning were blurred and dulled by time.

  Zari frowned, feeling the weight of her responsibility. She had to find something. Another hidden clue from Mira, another identifier. The Oto medallion was important, but maybe there was something else. After all, in Mira’s illustrated prayer books she had concealed her name within thickets of ink strokes, her tiny self-portrait within the whorls of a gilt-painted letter. For Zari, these findings had been precious windows into Mira’s mind. She was imaginative, she was clever, she wanted to be seen—but only by those who were willing to hunt for her.

  From her handbag, Zari pulled out a bottle of white spirit and a bag of cotton balls and swabs.

  “This won’t hurt the painting,” she assured the bartender. “It will help me see it better.”

  He looked doubtful but said nothing.

  She wiped the surface of the painting with a soaked cotton ball and the ancient varnish went transparent.

  “Ah!” he said, impressed.

  Zari did not share his enthusiasm. The painting was so filthy that her trick revealed nothing. And she did not dare get out a cotton swab and start scrubbing the surface of the portrait under this man’s gaze.

  Finally she forced herself to remove her headgear and step away from the painting. She followed the bartender back into the living room and watched him rehang the portrait.

  A chill ran through her. She didn’t want to think about what the ocean air was doing to the painting, reminding herself that it had survived for five hundred years already. Surely it would last long enough to find a home in a museum or private collection where it would be well cared for, restored to its original beauty.

  “Can you put me in contact with Señora Perez’s family?” she asked the bartender. “I can at least tell them what they have here. Hopefully they will take good care of it.”

  “Yes, I can do that for you.”

  “Thank you.” She looked at him with gratitude. “I can’t explain how important this is to my work.”

  He smiled. “You don’t need to. I can see what it means to you.”

  The bartender flicked off the lights and waited for Zari to leave the room. She hesitated. The thought of letting the dust and silence settle once again in this place was unnerving. What had she missed? Tremors struck her knees. She put a hand on the back of an upholstered armchair to steady herself.

  He seemed to understand. “There is nothing more you can do at the moment. You have your photos. We have the key. Perhaps you will return one day, before...”

  Zari completed his sentence in her head: Before Señora Perez dies and the painting vanishes forever.

  A gust of wind took hold of the shutters opposite Mira’s portrait. They clacked and strained against their hinges. It seemed as if all the power of the sea was being flung into the town, the wild wind slapping the worn plaster walls and weathered ceramic roof tiles of the squat little house with fury.

  Zari backed reluctantly into the entry hall, on the verge of tears again.

  The bartender’s mother was waiting by the front door, umbrella in hand. Zari zipped up her jacket and adjusted her hood. When they were at last outside the house, she felt wracked by grief.

  The heavy thud of the door shutting assaulted her ears like an iron wrecking ball.

  The first thing she did when she got back to her hotel room was write John Drake an e-mail about her discovery. It was maybe the tenth time she had tried to contact him since he left on his surfing safari or whatever he called his sabbatical. John would appreciate her discovery more than anyone—for he was the art conservator who had uncovered the secrets hidden within Fontbroke College’s portrait of Marguerite de Oto two years ago. Moreover, he was the only other person on earth who knew the painting and its story as intimately as she did. So what if she and John had weathered a moment of awkwardness last spring in St. Jean de Luz? They were adults, after all, and professionals who shared a love of art and a respect for truth.

  Faltering a moment, staring at the words she had just typed, Zari felt her confidence slip.

  Oh, well. The worst that could happen was John would continue to ignore her.

  Attaching a link to the online folder where she had stored the photos, she jumped as the wind sent a barrage of rain splattering against the window. After she sent the e-mail, Zari got up and pressed her face against the cold glass, listening to the storm. She had always loved the ocean, yet being this close to the raw power of the sea was unnerving. The lights on the boats in the harbor glowed and danced in the darkness.

  As she fell asleep that night, she imagined Mira trapped in that small, forlorn house, subjected to the howls and harassment of the wind.

  Waiting for a chance to free herself.

  Book III

  Memento mori.

  Remember you must die.

  55

  Autumn, 1506

  Pau, Béarn

  Arnaud

  As soon as dawn broke, Arnaud and the others made haste for the north in a steady drizzle. At the turnoff for Pau, they parted ways.

 
“Take extra care on the road to Toulouse,” he cautioned the Belarac villagers, inspecting their cargo one last time. “Fall in with mule trains and merchants when you can.”

  “Someone should go to the bailiff in Nay,” one man complained. “Amadina Sacazar was behind that attack. Her manservant admitted it to you!”

  “What good is it to go to the bailiff there?” Arnaud removed his cap and ran a hand through his hair. “He’s been in the Sacazars’ pocket since they arrived in Nay.”

  There was a murmur of assent.

  “We’ll put a stop to this,” he promised the men. “The first order of business, though, is to get to Toulouse unharmed, do you hear? The Abbey of Belarac’s future depends on it.”

  Watching the oxcart roll down the muddy road, he whispered a prayer to the gods for safe transport of the fabric to Lord de Vernier. There was no longer a shred of doubt in his mind that Amadina Sacazar was bent on destroying the wool industry at Belarac. How far would she go to achieve her aim? Mira had long suspected Amadina knew more than she let on about Béatrice’s death. Arnaud had never put much stock in that idea.

  Until now.

  During the ride to Pau, he reflected on what Gaston told him at the Abbey of Belarac—the stablehand’s drunken confession about being death’s messenger. Perhaps the stablehand was not just a shifty-eyed fool, after all. Perhaps he was Amadina Sacazar’s hired killer.

  A new thought made Arnaud freeze in place. When Deedit had been stabbed in Toulouse, she insisted her attacker was coming for Mira, not her. At the time, Arnaud brushed off her words as the nonsensical ramblings of a dying woman. Now he wondered if Deedit had made a clear-eyed observation.

  His mind turned next to Carlo Sacazar. A kind man, a generous man, someone who genuinely respected Mother Béatrice and supported her efforts to build a wool business at the Abbey of Belarac. He made no secret of his wish to help Mira thrive in her art practice, and he had come to Arnaud’s aid by recommending him to the cabinetmakers’ guild in Bayonne.