by Amy Maroney
“They do,” he said, “if you ask them the right way.”
“What’s the right way?”
“In Flemish.”
After they cleaned the dishes and wiped down the table, Zari found out the envelope she’d gotten from the archives and spread out all the photocopied documents.
They pored over the pages together.
“Look at this,” Wil said. “A huge donation to the Catholic Church in the name of Bartolomé Bermejo. It says ‘…in memory of my old friend and fellow apprentice, whose discerning eye for the world’s minute details made me the artist I am today.’”
Zari leaned over his shoulder, flabbergasted. “Sebastian de Scolna was once apprenticed alongside Bermejo?”
“The researcher must have asked himself the same question,” Wil said. “The note at the bottom says there is no corroborating evidence about them working together. It says no one knows if Bermejo spent time in Northern Europe.”
“But no one knows if he didn’t, either,” Zari countered. “There are very few recorded facts about Bermejo’s life.”
She shuffled the papers and slipped one out. “Okay. This says Sebastian walked the pilgrim’s way to Compostela several times, tithing generously to the church upon his return from each pilgrimage.” Zari turned the page over. “Here’s the excerpt from his will. The part that mentions Mira. ‘To Miramonde de Oto, nurse, student, colleague, and above all, dear friend, who has fulfilled the promise of her name: I gift all of my pigments and my collection of sable brushes in gratitude for coaxing me from the edge of death when I, a hapless pilgrim, stumbled into disaster on a mountain road.’ So maybe he came upon the Abbey of Belarac during his pilgrimage and apparently got sick or something. And Mira helped him recover. Maybe that’s when he taught her to paint.”
Wil nodded. “If Sebastian de Scolna and Bartolomé Bermejo were apprenticed together, it would make sense that their styles had similarities,” he reasoned. “And if Mira was Sebastian de Scolna’s student, then she would have picked up that style too.”
“So maybe that’s why the Bermejo scholars think her work is his—because she learned from his colleague, who learned from him.”
“That makes sense.” He drummed his fingers on the table, lost in thought.
“What is it?” she asked.
“You need to take this public,” Wil said.
“I already am,” Zari pointed out. “I’ve been posting all over social media about Mira.”
“I know, but what about the press?”
“I searched for reporters who’ve already been writing articles about female Old Masters, and I’ve been sharing the whole story with them.”
“Just English-language reporters?” Wil persisted.
“Yes. No one’s running with the story. Probably due to the fact that I’m the only voice in the choir at this point.”
“My aunt knows a lot of people in the art world, all over Europe,” he said. “I’ll ask her for press contacts and make a spreadsheet for you.”
“I don’t know how much good that will do,” Zari said. “At this point it’s my word against the art history elite. The guy who gave me this stuff—” she gestured to the pile of papers on the table “—is going to publish an article about Sebastian de Scolna and include the findings about Mira and Bermejo. The archivist in Bayonne who’s been helping me will publish a paper about the evidence she’s found of Mira and Arnaud, too. Until then, there’s nothing else to back up my research. It doesn’t help that I’m young, a junior academic. I’m no expert.”
“Didn’t you tell me Judith Leyster’s work was attributed to Frans Hals and her husband until someone noticed her signature on some paintings?” Wil asked.
“Well, not really a signature,” she replied. “It was called a monogram, and it was basically an illustrated version of her initials that looked like a star.”
“My point is, how many experts looked at her work and never noticed that star?”
Zari stared at him, considering his words. “It took more than two hundred years for someone to finally see what was hiding in plain sight all along,” she said slowly. “The key was one person looking at things from a different perspective.”
“You’re that person, Zari,” he said with conviction. “You’re doing it for Mira. I understand you feel alone in this, you feel like an outsider, you’re always comparing yourself to those with more experience. But you are an expert. On Mira.”
She leaned her elbows on the table, staring down at the pile of papers.
“Her painting of the woman in blue is about to be sold, Wil. Her self-portrait is in a rotting house in Spain, its owner so lost to dementia she’s incapable of comprehending its importance.” Zari looked up at him, despairing. “I feel responsible for Mira’s paintings. What kind of expert am I, if I’m powerless to protect them?”
“There’s nothing you can do to stop the auction,” he said, his eyes full of sympathy. “As for the self-portrait in Spain, what about contacting the woman you met in San Sebastián?”
“Señora Beramendi?”
“She wants to hire you for a project about women artists, right? To find art by women and get it into museums?”
“I hope so. I haven’t heard from her yet.”
“Don’t wait for her to call you. Call her,” Wil urged. “Ask her to help save that portrait. You said she seemed lonely and she had money. Well, here’s a chance for a wealthy old widow to feel useful again.”
“That’s actually a good idea,” Zari admitted. “A really good idea.”
Wil leaned back, arms folded over his chest, and gave her a self-congratulatory smile.
“Don’t get a big head, now,” she warned him. “I can see it starting to swell.”
He scoffed. “That’s just my hair.”
A cacophony of chimes drifted through the night. Zari reached out to Wil, pulled him from his chair, and led him gently in the direction of the bedroom.
69
Autumn, 1506
Bayonne, Gascony
Mira
It was evening. Tristan was asleep. Mira and Xabi sat by the fire, he whittling a chunk of alder, she mending a stocking. Mira had not seen Sebastian for several days. He was nursing a cold, so she had busied herself with domestic tasks.
Silently she thanked Nekane for teaching her about running a household. Mira could read and write in several languages, work figures, draw, paint, light fires in the woods, shoot an arrow, wield a dagger, swim, dance like a mountain woman. And yet she never learned how to care for a home until she met Nekane.
I have truly had four mothers, she thought, tying off a knot in the flax thread. The mother who birthed me, Marguerite de Oto; the mother who nurtured my talent as an artist, Mother Abbess Béatrice; the mother who taught me the ways of the mountain folk, Elena; and now Nekane.
She wiped her eyes, glancing furtively at Xabi. But he hadn’t seen. He was staring intently at something in the corner by the cupboard.
“What is it?” she asked in a low voice, not wanting to wake Tristan.
“Something scrabbles there in the dark.” He put down his whittling and padded over to the cupboard. Then he walked to the fire, holding something in the palm of his hand.
“A mouse. Dead now. It was alive a moment ago, though. Something took it quick.”
He reached for his dagger and made a slit in the mouse’s belly, then disgorged the contents of its stomach on the soot-blackened hearth.
“Fruit,” he said, poking the glistening mass with the point of the blade.
Both of them glanced at the cupboard. The woolen bag of candied fruit was missing from the top shelf, where Mira had left it since its mysterious arrival.
She dropped her mending. Searching all around the cupboard, she finally spied the bag underneath it. Retrieving it, she spotted a hole in the side.
She pressed her cheek against the floor, peering under the cabinet. Another dead mouse lay there, an arm’s length from the spot where she had discovered the bag.
Mira rocked back on her heels.
“Two dead mice,” she said, holding up the bag.
Xabi shook his head. “Those sweets were full of poison. Whoever sent you that gift was not a friend, Mira.”
She stared at him, feeling sick. Then she sprang up, strode to the fire and flung the bag into the embers. They watched it catch fire, the flames leaping with new life.
Mira’s knees wobbled. “What if I had given Tristan some of those sweets? What if you had eaten them? Or I?”
He folded his arms across his chest. “Nothing happened to us. You put them away until you could find out who sent them. Although I’m guessing you weren’t meant to find out.”
Looking at Xabi’s somber face, Mira felt her resolve waver. The bubble of confidence that had surrounded her since Sebastian’s arrival burst. She dissolved in sobs, covering her eyes with her hands.
“This is my fault,” she managed to say. “I have brought attention to myself; I was bound to attract enemies. Arnaud is always warning me on this count, Xabi, and yet I did it anyway. What a fool I am. My vanity could kill us.”
“Your vanity?” Xabi’s tone was dismissive. “You’re doing what you must to find work. There’s nothing vain in that.”
Mira swallowed, nearly choking on the lump in her throat. “My mind is filled with worries about Arnaud. I fear he is dead on some mountain roadside, drowned in a river, cut down by bandits...”
“It’s not much of a life,” he agreed, “spending all your time missing someone.”
“As you miss Elena.” She swiped the back of her hand across her wet face. The sight of Tristan’s small sleeping form on the bed was reassuring. Xabi picked up the piece of wood he had been whittling and turned it over in his work-worn hands. His face, always serious in repose, looked hollowed out by sorrow.
“Arnaud and Elena are coming back to us,” Mira said vehemently. “They know how to slip through the world safely, they have all the skills of the mountain people in their possession.”
He looked at her. The worry in his expression made her heart twist. Say I am right, Mira silently pleaded with him. For the alternative is too horrifying to contemplate.
“What about the pigments?” he said after a moment. “Could they be poisoned too?”
Both of them looked at the wooden box on the top shelf of the cupboard.
“I suppose,” she said doubtfully.
“You should destroy them all,” he declared. “Throw them in the river.”
“I do not eat pigments,” she pointed out.
He shrugged. “Some poisons have only to touch the skin to cause death.”
Mira thought about the lustrous shimmer of lapis lazuli powder. It was so precious, so rare. And how it shone on the panel—there was no richer, more vibrant blue.
“I will think on it,” she said with reluctance.
Tristan stirred and wailed in his sleep, startling himself awake. The dark thoughts in Mira’s mind vanished as she went to comfort her son.
She heard Xabi moving across the room.
“I’ll see you in the morning,” he said. “Bar the door behind me.”
Mira went in the half-light to the door, Tristan fussing in her arms, and flicked the latch shut. Listening to Xabi’s footsteps recede down the corridor, she kissed the tears away from Tristan’s cheeks.
“We are alone, my son,” she whispered bleakly.
She wondered if it would be so for the rest of their lives.
70
Autumn, 1506
Bayonne, Gascony
Mira
Mira walked briskly through the sun-warmed streets, a parcel under her arm, eager to complete her task. She wove through small knots of housewives and servants doing their morning errands, happy to be outside on a mild day under a clear sky.
She approached the stone wall by the river and waited until no passers-by were near. Quickly, before she could change her mind, Mira heaved the parcel over the wall and listened for a splash. The beautiful box of lapis and malachite and vermillion would lodge in sediment at the bottom of the river. The corks would swell and burst, the pigments would float upward, driven west by the current until they were swept into the cold dark sea. Satisfied, she strode back into the labyrinth of streets, headed toward Sebastian’s studio.
Just knowing the pigments were sinking into muck put a lightness in her step again. Breathing deeply helped quell her worries, as did movement, as did distraction. She passed a young mother with a toddler in her arms. The little girl stared round-eyed at Mira, her face breaking into a grin. Mira smiled back, thinking of Rose. What a help she would have been with Tristan. How he would have adored her.
A twinge of grief gripped her, but it was not as agonizing as it once had been. It was more a quiet melancholy, an aching regret. Somehow, time had mended her enough to function again. Though she carried sorrow with her always, it no longer gutted her.
Halfway to the studio, she halted at the edge of a dingy lane, fingering the bag of coins at her waist.
Not long ago, Mira vowed never to set foot in the bookseller’s store again. But the guild master who sold her pigments earlier in the season told her he could no longer do so, as his own supply was growing limited. And when Sebastian confirmed he had not sent her the wooden box of pigments, she did not tell him what it contained. Nor did she reveal her plan to destroy it.
Whatever happened, she would not look to Sebastian for a new supply of pigments. After his generosity toward her, she was ashamed to ask him for anything more. She needed a new, reliable source.
She sighed, her nose wrinkling at the fetid stench of rot emanating from the lane. Slowly she walked the short distance to the bookseller’s shop. Inside, the bookseller’s expectant look was immediately replaced by something more like disbelief when he recognized her.
“First you, then that other woman painter, now you again.” He braced his hands against the countertop, frowning. “What is coming of the world?”
“Another woman painter came here?” she asked.
He nodded. “A rich widow. Bought out all my pigments. Every last one. Paid in gold for them, too. I’ve no idea why any painter, especially a woman, would need all those pigments.”
“I have come to inquire about pigments myself, but it appears I am too late. Did she buy lapis, malachite, vermillion...?”
“Yes, yes, all that I possessed,” he said impatiently. “I had to send an apprentice to St. Jean de Luz to restock my pigment supply.”
Mira turned over his words in her mind. Then she remembered the widow seated at the far end of the long table on the evening of the tribute feast.
“What did she look like, the widow?” Mira asked.
“How should I know?” he asked peevishly. “She’s a widow. Her face was concealed by a veil. She was a stout lady. And she had an accent.”
“What kind of accent?”
He glared. “Foreign!”
A wave of lightheadedness washed over Mira.
“I wonder where that other woman artist lives,” she said, putting a hand on the countertop to steady herself. “I would dearly like to meet her. After all, as you said, how strange it is to discover two women painters in the same city.”
“She’s a foreigner,” the man said with exasperation, as if Mira’s ignorance had just tapped the reserves of his patience. “All the rich foreigners stay at the same place, the fancy inn by the cathedral.”
“Of course.” Mira nodded at him and turned away.
He began to speak again but she shut the door firmly behind her, desperate to escape.
With mounting anxiety, she hastened in the direction of the inn.
71<
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Autumn, 1506
Bayonne, Gascony
Mira
Mira pushed open the broad oak door of the inn. The innkeeper was poring over a ledger book at a walnut desk in the entry hall.
“Good day, sir,” she began, pulling her hood off. “I seek a woman, a person of my acquaintance. A widow from a foreign land...”
He peered at her suspiciously. He was a middling-sized man approaching old age, with a puffy face and a red knob of a nose—evidence of too many feasts, too much wine. His hazel eyes had likely been lovely once, Mira thought, but now they were bloodshot and rheumy.
“And why would a commoner like yourself be seeking a gentlewoman?” he inquired.
Longing for the fine dress she wore to the tribute feast, Mira mustered a haughty tone.
“I am an artist,” she elaborated. “I was told the widow might wish to retain my services. I met her at the home of the bishop. At the tribute feast.”
His eyes widened. She saw the thoughts trundling through his brain. She was dressed plainly, yet she did not speak like a peasant. He ran the risk of displeasing the clergy if he did not treat her with respect.
“The woman you speak of is abroad,” he said tightly. “Hired a carriage and traveled south to St. Jean de Luz, I believe she said. Do you have a message for her?”
“No, thank you,” Mira said. “I will come again another day.”
She heard footsteps on the staircase, half-turning at the sound.
“The sun and stars. Is that you, Mira?” said a voice as familiar as light, as air, as the stars in the sky.
Elena’s voice.
Mira gasped. She swayed, frozen in place by shock. Then she found herself drawn into Elena’s strong embrace. For a long moment they stood clinging to each other, sobbing.
The innkeeper cleared his throat. “Madame, perhaps you would take your guest to your chamber?”
His pinched face conveyed the irritation he felt at having to witness a teary reunion of women in his entry hall. Especially women wearing plain clothing and no jewelry.