The Golden Key (75 page)

The Countess sighed. “You have several courses of action open to you. First, accept her. Not as my mother did, of course. Tazia is—”

“—no Lissina, yes, I’ve been told,” Mechella said impatiently. “I can’t pretend to like her, I just can’t.”

“You could make Arrigo swear never to see her alone, and believe him—no matter what.”

“I—I’d
have
to believe him, wouldn’t I?” Mechella whispered.

“Or die of jealousy.” A grim note crept into Lizia’s voice. “But there’s another choice. Turn a blind eye, make your own life and power.”

“Wh-what do you mean?”

“Tazia is a grasping kind of person. I never much liked her, though I never told Arrigo so. From what I’ve heard—and you’d hear it also if you’d done what you should to make certain you hear—she’s only biding her time before she chases him down
again. Her husband won’t mind. Garlo’s interested in power, which is doubtless why she married him.”

Mechella stared. “You mean—if she and Arrigo—Count do’Alva would—”

“You innocent child,” Lizia sighed, “half the wives at Court have lovers. And possession of a Grijalva wife whose lover is the next Grand Duke would secure the do’Alva fortunes.”

“That’s despicable!”

“That’s life,” Lizia answered with another little shrug of delicate shoulders. “Whatever you decide, I advise you to gather people around you anyway, persons you trust and who’ll be useful to you. Make yourself powerful. I had to, when Ormaldo became ill, or his cousins would have stolen my son’s inheritance and ruined all that we accomplished in bringing Castello Casteya back to life.”

“Make myself powerful? How?”

“Don’t you see that in some respects you already are? The people adore you. Don’t ever underestimate—carrida, are you feeling well?”

Mechella lurched out of bed, breakfast tray flying, and barely made it to the sink.

When she emerged, the room was tidy and Lizia was gone and the maid was waiting to help her into clean clothes. Mechella cursed feebly and wished she had the Lord Limner’s determination to work no matter what his physical maladies. But Mequel’s infirmities were mere pain, nothing at all like the trials of pregnancy.

She was ashamed of herself for disparaging the man’s suffering. And as she recalled Lizia’s words about how the Grijalva woman had captured Arrigo, she realized that she must emulate Mequel’s courage or lose her husband.
She
must be the one to make him feel essential to Tira Virte;
she
must be the one to tell him he was a perfect lover;
she
must be the one he could not live without.

She was pitiably certain she couldn’t live without him.

Her maid stood nearby, fidgeting. “What is it, Otonna?”

“Will Your Grace send word to Palasso Grijalva canceling today’s lesson?”

Cabral—she’d completely forgotten Cabral. “My
mother has Lissina, of Course.
…” Cabral could he a beginning. But first she must take herself strictly in hand.

“No, I’ll get dressed now, I’m feeling much better.” She paused seeing Otonna with new eyes. “Have you any sisters or brothers, Otonna? In service like you, I mean.”

Showing not the slightest puzzlement at the question—indeed,
with a gleam in her eyes as if she’d been waiting for this for months—Otonna replied, “My mother had four daughters, Your Grace. Primavarra, she’s head maid to the Grand Duchess. Yberria cleans the Grand Duke’s private rooms. Varra does the same for the Palasso offices of four conselhos.”

Spring, Winter, Summer—and her own Autumn; all the seasons of the year, and all the important rooms in the Palasso. One day she might even find this funny.

“You were listening at the door.”

“I was, Your Grace, and I can’t say it shames me.” Her soft lips thinned and her plump chin lifted; it was a camponessa’s face, broad and plain as the earth, and as wise. “Dismiss me for it, but this whole year I’ve been waiting for just this moment. Primavarra, she’s my twin, when she heard about
that woman
coming back, she said to me, ‘You tell her Grace that when she needs us, we’ll be ready.’ I’ve told all my sisters how good and kind you are, all innocent and unknowing of the nasty ways of the Grijalvas.”

Mechella was well and truly startled—at first by the torrent of words, more than she’d ever heard at one time from Otonna, and then by their meaning. “You don’t trust the Grijalvas?”

“Not a bit.” Otonna folded her arms over a well-filled bodice of Verrada blue. “It’s not decent, giving over a young man to an older woman who’s meant to—to do what they do, which is keep Limners powerful at Court. Why, the Blessed Alesso who died freeing us from the heathen Tza’ab, he’d put a stop to it were he alive, and that’s fact. It was that slinking Sario who trapped the do’Verradas into generation after generation of scandal, and he used Saavedra to do it!”

“He did?”

“He did! He gave her willingly to Duke Alejandro, bringing him to the Grijalvas instead of to the Serranos—so Sario could be made Lord Limner! And then when she vanished, he painted that picture so poor Alejandro would always have her Grijalva face before him, and when Alejandro’s son came of an age for it, he was given a Grijalva woman for a Mistress as a seal on the bargain that made them Lord Limners one after the other, with the Serranos nowhere to be found!”

“I see,” Mechella said faintly.

“The sanctas and sanctos have the right of it about the Grijalvas,” Otonna continued, “but even they don’t dare challenge them—and that’s worrisome, Your Grace, when even those who speak for the Mother and Son stay silent. And
that
one—Varra’s
husband, he’s master of Don Arrigo’s horses, many’s the time he went to Chasseriallo, so he’s in a position to know about
her.
”

Mechella nodded, confounded by this unsuspected view of the Limner family. “Yet you’ve said nothing to me before.”

“Eiha, Your Grace had to learn on her own, Primavarra said to me, and she had the right of that as well. She was always the quickest—out of the womb before me, into service first of us four, and risen high in the Grand Duchess’s favor as well.”

Forcing herself out of bed, remembering Mequel’s painful movements and wishing for half his bravery, Mechella asked, “But what about Cabral Grijalva?”

“As Your Grace’s eyes and ears inside their Palasso?”

Mechella gave a start at how easily the maid followed her thoughts. “I was thinking of it, yes.” How horrified Aunt Permilla would be to hear her ask the opinion of a servant. And how far away and thoroughly irrelevant Aunt Permilla was now.

“Eiha, there’s Grijalvas and Grijalvas, aren’t there? Proof enough in the sisters Larissa and Margatta, cherished friends to our blessed Duchess Jesminia. And Baroness do’Dregez, Lissina Grijalva that was, she’s a fine kind lady with nothing but goodness about her. And Mequel isn’t so bad, though he
is
one of the odd ones.”

“Odd?”

“As I say, there’s Grijalvas and Grijalvas. Yberria’s husband, he’s their cook, he said when I asked that Cabral isn’t one of the unnatural ones—meaning those squint-eyed painters who can never father a child and put strange magical signs all over their pictures, and also the women who have one baby after another in hopes of getting a painterish son, just like prize horses bred for hunting.”

In her year as Arrigo’s wife, she hadn’t even thought about what the Ecclesia or the commoners or anyone else thought of the Grijalvas. Limners were simply a fact of life in Tira Virte. Surely the sterile Limners couldn’t help what they were—and Mequel was one of the dearest men she’d ever met. As for the other painters, they worked on behalf of Tira Virte, not themselves. Still, she agreed with Otonna’s judgment of Grijalva women although a highborn wife was in much the same position when it came to it. The getting of a son was Mechella’s primary responsibility, too. It put her on similar footing with the Grijalva brood mares. And she didn’t like it at all. She must be worth more than that—mustn’t she?

Otonna said, “But Cabral’s on your side, see if he isn’t, and
against his own Grijalva kin if it ever comes to it. And how is it I know this?” She smiled. “Only that he painted a copy of Your Grace’s
Marriage
—and has been in love with you ever since.”

Mechella sat down very hard on the bed. “
Cabral
?”

“En verro, and anyone without Your Grace’s sweet innocence would have seen it weeks ago. But don’t ever let on that you know. Eiha, there’s the hour chime, I’ll have to hurry the lads with the bath water. Will Your Grace wear the lavender or the pink today?”

  FORTY-THREE  

Four
days later, Arrigo and his sister welcomed their guests—twenty-two titled parents and their forty noble offspring, aged ten to thirteen—to an afternoon of puppetry and games nominally hosted by Count Maldonno do’Casteya. The gathering, ordered by Cossimio and organized in haste, would serve to make known to his adolescent peers the Grand Duke’s grandson. From the ranks of the boys would come his friends; one of the girls might become his wife. It was devoutly hoped that Maldonno, raised in a ramshackle castello and as much a stranger to elegant silks as he was to the great names he met that day, would begin to see that he had a position to uphold. He simply could not run wild through the Palasso, and he must learn his role in society—as the unfortunate incident of the pony in the Galerria proved (though Mequel laughed uproariously when he heard of it, Cossimio was not amused).

Lizia, equally accustomed to casual manners, was as uncomfortable at the party as her son. “I don’t see why this is necessary,” she complained to Arrigo between arrivals. “He’s always been free to do as he likes without all this formality stifling him—unlike all these little hothouse flowers! Matra ei Filho, it’s just like when we were children and Mother gave all those hideous parties, which you hated as much as I did, don’t deny it!”

“Had to be done, then and now,” Arrigo said, not without sympathy. “Calm down, Lizi, I’ve invited a few who aren’t ‘hothouse flowers.’ Tazia’s bringing some cousins.”

“What? Are you mad? Grijalvas rubbing shoulders with do’Brazzinas and do’Varriyvas? The least we can expect is a score of black eyes! We’ll be lucky if they don’t all leave!”

“No one will leave.” He turned to greet an approaching baroness and her sweating, lace-collared twelve-year-old son. After Lizia made the proper noises and the pair joined the party, he went on, “They’re not stupid. Someday one of those Grijalva boys will be Lord Limner.”

“How nice for one of them,” she snapped. “And speaking of Grijalvas, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about Tazia. You’re making Mechella very unhappy, you know. Or
did
you know?”

“Leave my wife to me,” Arrigo responded sharply.

“And your former Mistress? Shall you leave her to her husband?”

Stiff-lipped, he replied, “Stay out of it, Lizia.” Then, catching sight of a familiar mane of glossy black hair, he said, “And here’s the Countess now.” With her middle stepson and six other boys—including, he saw with a start, her own son, Rafeyo.

Verradio do’Alva, a scrawny sullen-faced boy in a silver satin jacket, was completely overshadowed by the sturdy, plainly dressed Grijalvas. After directing the youngsters to the games and refreshments, Arrigo smiled at Rafeyo and said how good it was to see him again.

“Just don’t tell him how he’s grown!” Tazia winked at her son, who blushed and made a face. “Or that he’s ready to grow one of those silly half-beards that are the fashion with young men these days. Such talk makes me feel old enough to be his great-grandmother. I must say the sight of the Countess isn’t helping. You look twenty-two, it’s positively depressing.”

Arrigo chuckled. “You’ve hit her in her vanity, Tazia—”

“No, she in mine!” Tazia laughed. “That must be your son over there, Countess. He has the fine Casteyan look of his father about him.”

“We all think so,” Lizia answered, thawing a bit.

Arrigo said, “Rafeyo, you must be well into your studies by now. How are you enjoying life as a Limner?”

“Very much, Your Grace. It’s quite challenging.”

“I gather you’ve been brought along to supervise the younger cousins?”