The Golden Key (155 page)

There were some truths not meant to be shared. For in the end, he had given this last secret into her hands alone. “He never confessed,” she said calmly. “He never told anyone, not even Saavedra.”

In time, perhaps, she could bring Sario’s
Peintraddo Memorrio
out of storage and display it, as it deserved to be displayed. As his last and greatest monument.

The bells rang, a new beginning. She smiled and took Rohario’s arm, and together they left the room.

“—this way, Baltran … through here. Do you see? No, no, ninio! We’re not going back outside. This way. Grazzo.”

The curatorrio was halfway down the Galerria, attending to a group of bankers’ wives, their black lace shawls draped becomingly over their hair and disguising the low necklines of their fashionable gowns.

“If we are very quiet, Baltran, we might slip by without—”

“Patro!” The child grabbed his wrist and tugged him to the window. “Do you see the new cannons, Patro? Look how fine they are!”

Alejandro sighed and gave way to the inevitable. He had to endure the courtesies and graces and interminable small talk of the bankers’ wives, respectable women of good society, each one. He knew their husbands and had met them at dinners or presided over their daughter’s presentations at court. Blessed Matra, at least Teressa enjoyed such duties—human foibles never failed to amuse her.

When they had gone he waited for their voices to fade (“
Such a handsome young man!
”), for their figures to vanish through the Galerria doors. Baltran was now standing in front of a
Marriage
, hands stuck in pockets, looking monumentally bored.

“Why must we, Patro? There are nothing here but pictures!”

The child was never content. He was restless, always thinking, but what he thought about bore no resemblance to the thoughts that wore at Alejandro. This boy always thought about new things, new creations, new ideas, and he had questions, questions, questions. None of which there were answers for.

Alejandro thought about the past. “Just think, ninio, you are related to every do’Verrada hanging here on these walls.”

Baltran sighed expansively. “Patro, I don’t like painting. I want to go to the theater. There are explosions on stage for the battle
scene! And fireworks afterward. Grandmama ‘Vedra says she will take me. Do let me go!”

“You will walk with me. You will be Grand Duke in time—”

“When I am Grand Duke, I am going to have all these paintings carted off somewhere else!”

Alejandro smiled. A ten-year-old might have grandiose plans. Certainly he had had such when he was ten. But there was no need to shatter the child’s illusions. Time and life would do that easily enough. Baltran would come to understand why this Galerria was important, to the do’Verradas
and
to Tira Virte.

“For now, you are only Heir to the Grand Duke. Since I am Grand Duke, I may order you to come with me.”

“You must have the permission of the Corteis first!”

“Not for the governance of my own son.”

Baltran laughed and ran ahead, although he knew he should not run in the Galerria. Alejandro did not have the heart to call him back.

My own son.

Bitter, that blow. Worse still the endless secret councils about what to do. ‘Grazzo do’Matra that his father had been dead by then, killed in the succession wars in Ghillas. Only that was the greatest irony of all, wasn’t it? Edoard was not his father. His true father had lived four hundred years ago. But Edoard had never minded that. Edoard had raised him as if he were truly son of his own seed. Just as Alejandro now raised Baltran.

No one must know. That was what they had all told him. No one must ever know.

“Patro! Patro! Here is your
Birth!
Here is the
Marriage
of Grandmama and poor Grandpapa. Tell me again about the battle! Is it true he was leading a charge?”

In fact Edoard had stopped during a retreat to help one of his young lieutenants, who had been wounded in the stomach, and gotten his head blown off for his pains. It still hurt, remembering the day the message had come. It hurt because he had realized then, at ten years old, that his mother did not love his father as much as he did.

“He died because he was a good, kind, honorable man, Baltran. Remember that.”

Baltran did not reply. For once, he seemed to be examining the painting. “Is it true Grandmama is magic, Patro?”

Alejandro smiled wryly. “No more than I am. Where did you hear such a thing?”

“Most people say it. They say that the Grijalvas are all magic,
but that they threw themselves on the mercy of the Ecclesia before you were born and the Premia Sancta lifted all terrible stain from them.”

“They confessed it openly, it is true. In front of every person in the Cathedral. You know Grandmama’s story well enough, do you not? How she was captured in a painting and held prisoner for three hundred years?”

Baltran made a face, unimpressed by this tale, and began walking down toward the end of the Galerria, having evidently decided to do his duty as quickly as possible so he could be free. “But you know what else they say, Patro.” Here he bit his lip, recalling words overheard, probably from somewhere he ought not to have been listening.

“What is that?”

“They say, ‘Ha! Ha ha!”’ He imitated a big man’s belly laugh, enjoying the exaggerated sound and the way it flattened in the air. “‘Do you call that magic, that they painted flattering portraits of Dukes and beguiled do’Verrada Heirs with their beautiful women?’ What does ‘beguile’ mean, Patro? What did the beautiful women do? Beautiful women like Grandmama?”

“Certainly beautiful women like Grandmama.”

Luckily the boy’s mind was already racing ahead. “Why does Grandmama not live at the Palasso? Why must she go live with her old family? She must love them better than me.” He stuck his lower lip out, pouting, then grinned, knowing full well that his Grandmama ‘Vedra doted on him and his little sister Mechellita.

As she doted on me.
But Alejandro had to smile. Saavedra was not an easy woman to live with, or to have as a mother. She was the flame to which all moths fluttered and he but one frail boy among the rest. Dote she might, but she also expected nothing but the best from him. “Her family needed her, ninio. Once I married your mother, she left us in peace.”

That she now ruled the Grijalvas as she had ruled Edoard before them, with an iron hand, he did not doubt. That she loved him fiercely he doubted less. Still, he wondered sometimes what it would have been like to have an ordinary mother.

They skirted a few other clots of visitors gathered arpund this
Treaty
or that
Marriage
, wealthy travelers from out of town who did not, with a casual glance, recognize him or Baltran, Grazzo do’Matra. Alejandro surveyed the collection with approval. Over half the paintings had been moved to a new building that adjoined the recently-built Corteis, the chambers that housed the assembly, and now the Galerria received fewer visitors, which pleased
Alejandro greatly. The most monumental and famous paintings had been moved to the new Galerria Nacionalla, but he preferred the collection that was left here, a more intimate and subtle portrait of the Grijalva legacy.

Of which he was the crowning achievement. The child bearing half do’Verrada and half Grijalva blood on the throne of Tira Virte. Yet the crowning irony was that he would be first.

And last.

“Wait, Baltran!” But Baltran was far ahead of him. Teressa’s child, certainly, with that quick wit and all those damned questions. Alejandro did not know who Baltran’s real father was. He had never asked, trusting to his wife’s good sense to pick a man with suitable bloodlines and an ability to keep his mouth shut.

He had agreed to the marriage and counted it good fortune that he liked his bride and that she liked him. Teressa, named after her grandmother, the eldest child of Arrigo and Mechella, had been brought up in a revolutionary household. She had received an intense education in the classics and her father, a bit of a cracked pot (as they said in the lingua merditta) as well as the Principio della Diettro Mareia, brought scientists in to his Palasso to perform their peculiar experiments.

When Saavedra had bluntly outlined Alejandro’s problem to his new bride, Teressa had accepted it calmly. He fancied she considered him a peculiar experiment, the nature of which had not yet been solved. Indeed, Teressa loved nothing more than entertaining his Zia Beatriz—now Premia Sancta—who always arrived with her white sancta robes stained with dirt and grass and a ridiculous beatific smile on her face, babbling about her cursed pea plants and the secret language of the ancient Tza’ab mystics.

“Patro! Patro!” From the very end of the Galerria, Baltran’s piping voice pierced the quiet. “They’ve taken Grandmama’s portrait!”

Alejandro sighed. He hurried forward, passing one of the large alcoves that thrust out into the park without looking closely at the small group of people seated before the paintings displayed there.

“Ninio, you must learn to temper your voice,” he said, coming up beside his son.

“Grandzio Rohario doesn’t temper his voice. He roars with the best of them.”

“When you are fifty-three years old and a thirty-year member of the Corteis, then you may roar with the best of them, too. What is wrong?”

“Grandmama’s portrait is missing.”

“Yes. We agreed it would be exhibited in the Nacionalla.”

“But why, Patro? Why not the other one? All we see of
him
is his back and the room is so ugly. I like to see Grandmama’s beautiful face much better.”

Alejandro gazed up at the painting known as
The Mirror of Truth.
He had been told the story many times. But to see the face in the mirror, a different face from that of the man who stood with his back to the viewer, still gave him a shiver. So much was revealed in this painting, about his heritage, about the nature of the Grijalva Gift, about the truth of his, Alejandro’s, own parentage. About the truth of
what
he was.

“Why
is
his face different in the mirror, Patro?”

“Because the face he wears on his body is not the face he wears in his heart.”

Baltran eyed the painting with deep misgiving. “Eiha. I hate paintings. Grandzia Eleyna says that you can read what they tell you, all these
Treaties
and documents, by knowing the language in which they are painted. But why can’t we just write it all down? Wouldn’t that be easier? Patro!” His mind jumped again. “Will we get a semaphore installed in the Palasso? Maesso Oswaldo says that news can travel from Aute-Ghillas to Meya Suerta in twelve hours with semaphore!”

News can travel as fast as a voice can speak, when Grijalva Limners speak through their Blooded paintings.
But Alejandro did not say it aloud. Oh yes, the do’Verradas knew, the Ecclesia knew, the Grijalvas knew; even the Corteis knew. But no one
believed
anymore. They wanted their semaphores. So much more reliable. So much more
scientific.

“Come, Baltran. We have seen enough for today, I think.”

The boy was gone like a shot. Alejandro did not bother to slow him down. He took a long look at the portrait of Sario Grijalva. Not a portrait at all, of course. It
was
Sario Grijalva, greatest of the Grijalva Limners, punished for his crimes by being imprisoned in the portrait, painted there by his cousin Saavedra’s Gifted hand.

She had made a good life for herself, had Saavedra. Of the other children granted to her and Edoard in their brief and not unhappy marriage, only one had been a boy, and he had died in infancy. The other three had been girls, grown now, all married. Alejandro could not help but wonder sometimes what would have happened to him had Saavedra never been trapped in that painting. He would have been born, Alejandro I’s chi’patro child, and raised in Palasso Grijalva. He would have eaten, breathed, and lived painting from
the day he was old enough to hold a piece of chalk. Perhaps some of
his
paintings would have hung here, in the Galerria Verrada.

The curtains in the corner stirred. He started, stepped back, then relaxed and extended a hand. “Come, bela, it is only I, ‘Sandro. Don’t be afraid of me.”

She crept forward. She was dressed quite indecently, of course, in a yellowing white shift and tattered lace shawl, but as the years went by she became more and more like a wild cat, shy of humans and quick to bolt. The servants called her Ila Luna, the crazy woman.

“Sit beside me, bela,” he said, hoping to coax her out, but she would only come as far as the first square of sunlight on the marble floor. She was indeed beautiful, and so young. Forever young, except for the fine cracks beginning to show on her skin and the odd yellowish tone she was acquiring, the result, his Zia Eleyna had once told him, of Sario Grijalva using inferior paints to create her.

Loud laughter sounded from down the hall, a new group of visitors, and Ila Luna darted back to the safety of the curtains. He waited, but she did not peek out, although he could see where she hid by the lump in the heavy fabric. Poor mindless creature. He wondered, suddenly, if a Grijalva Limner might learn secrets that could somehow cure her of her affliction or if she was doomed to wait beside her imprisoned creator until, like an ancient painting, she finally crumbled away.