by Amy Maroney
“Yes.”
“But that’s so expensive!”
“I am not paying for it.”
“Who is?” Zari asked.
“Herodotus Butterfield-Swinton.”
Zari felt her mouth compress into a thin line. “How generous.”
“You did not know?” Laurence shook her head, one eyebrow raised in surprise. “He is now working with a Spanish expert on Bermejo. They plan to analyze a Bermejo work with the same tests and they want to compare my painting to it.”
Zari regarded her uneasily. “I didn’t realize he’s been involved in the restoration of your painting.”
“No matter who pays for it, the tests will only reveal more of the truth.” Laurence lit her cigarette. “Isn’t that what you want?”
“Of course.” Zari tried to keep her voice light. “I’ll be patient. In the meantime, I’m looking forward to Bayonne.”
She watched smoke spiraling above Laurence’s head.
“I forgot.” Laurence smiled. “You’re afraid of smoke.”
“I’m afraid of lung cancer.”
“I quit smoking once. Then my husband died and I started again.”
Zari regarded her across the table a moment.
“You could try now, while I’m here,” she said. “As an experiment. I’ll get nicotine gum for you. You can run with me instead of smoking.”
“Run?” Laurence balanced her cigarette in the ashtray on the table, grimacing. “In this rain?”
“I love running in the rain. You like to hike, right?”
Laurence nodded.
“There’s not that much difference. You just start slow and combine it with walking. You kind of trick yourself into it to get through the hard part in the beginning when it feels awful. Then, one day, it feels good.”
Laurence looked skeptical. She picked up the cigarette again, took a puff, and blew the smoke out in a long stream.
“I’m going running tomorrow morning,” Zari said, shrugging. “Text me if you want to join.”
As soon as Zari got back to her flat, she made a video call to Vanessa Conlon.
Vanessa, the mentor who helped her secure this research grant, had an adversarial relationship with Dotie Butterfield-Swinton, to put it politely. He was a fixture at Fontbroke College in Oxford. His father had been the dean. And Vanessa was an outsider, an Irishwoman who was one of the first female professors in the college. Dotie slid upward through the ranks of academia with ease, his path oiled by generations of wealth and social connections. Vanessa battled her way up, as she liked to put it, with imaginary mentors keeping her sane in her darkest hours.
When Zari had come to Oxford last year to kick off her research on Cornelia van der Zee, she found an ally in Vanessa, who encouraged her to pursue the idea that Mira de Oto—not Cornelia van der Zee—may have been responsible for Fontbroke College’s portrait of a noblewoman. The fact that Dotie had a competing theory about the true creator of the portrait seemed to amuse Vanessa as much as it distressed Zari.
“Dotie’s like a dog with a bone, Zari,” Vanessa said now, twisting her long dark hair into a bun on the back of her head and stabbing a pencil through it. She was curled in a battered-looking leather armchair, a cobalt-blue wool throw draped around her shoulders.
“I don’t get it. In Amsterdam he acted like he had no idea about my new grant. But he must—he’s the biggest Oxford insider there is.”
Vanessa shook her head. “Oxford is huge. Dotie doesn’t step out of the cozy confines of Fontbroke College very often. Unfortunately, I think learning that you’re being taken seriously has made him get serious about this Bermejo idea.”
“Great.”
Vanessa paused, chewing her lip. “He needs a big win right now.”
“What do you mean?”
“This summer he let it be known that he wants to become head of his department. But he hasn’t had any big scoops lately. His research is lackluster. He hardly publishes at all. If he can prove that Bartolomé Bermejo painted these portraits, he’ll walk on water at Oxford.”
Zari sat up straighter in her chair. “There’s absolutely no proof that Bermejo painted them!”
“Yeah, but there are some similarities to his work in those portraits. The extraordinarily detailed backgrounds, particularly. Plus the fact that his name is written on one of them.”
“Mira’s name is written on both of them,” Zari groused. “Doesn’t she get any points for that?”
“Try to keep emotion out of this. Look at it logically. You’re raising someone from the dead here. Even when they’re cloaked with mystery, artists usually at least have a body of work to catalogue.”
“Mira does too! I know it.”
Vanessa rolled her eyes.
“I’m sorry, Vanessa. The important thing is I have the opportunity to do this work—it never would have happened without your help.”
Vanessa smiled. “How’s your French?”
“Getting better all the time. I didn’t realize how lucky I was that Laurence speaks English so well—most people here don’t. It turns out she spent a year in Ireland as an exchange student.”
“She’s lived among my people? That’s a blessing. At the very least, we know she speaks English properly.” Vanessa reached for the cup of tea that sat on a table next to her. “You made connections in your research last year that elude seasoned academics. You’re curious, Zari, and you’re persistent. Just keep doing what you’ve already shown you can do well.”
Zari felt a rush of relief. The tightness in her shoulders eased. Even if she was feeling insecure at the moment, Vanessa seemed to have faith in her. That was something.
“But you should know that your proposal was an outlier for the Mendenhall Trust,” Vanessa went on. “I did a fair amount of cajoling on your behalf. And I called in favors.”
Zari’s moment of contentment evaporated.
Whatever happened, she could not let Vanessa down.
12
September, 2015
Pau, France
Zari
It was three days after their first run and Zari had convinced Laurence to meet her again, despite the weather. She waited under a tree on the riverfront street that cut through central Pau. When she spotted Laurence’s slight figure approaching on the rain-slicked sidewalk, she smiled. The Frenchwoman had grimly plodded alongside Zari for the duration of their inaugural outing, the total running time of which was approximately seven minutes. But here she was again, back for more misery, dressed in an all-black ensemble of athletic tights and fitted rain jacket.
“That is an interesting look,” Laurence said as she approached, her eyes glinting with amusement.
Zari glanced down. Her long-sleeved purple T-shirt decorated with yellow handprints had been a gift from her niece Eva. Periwinkle-blue shorts, running shoes sporting various neon hues, and a lime-green rain jacket rounded out the ensemble.
“I’m all about safety,” she said. “Visibility.”
Laurence chuckled. “You don’t care what people think, do you?”
“In some situations I care very much. But not this one.”
They began running along the river, which was swollen with rainwater. Zari watched a branch floating downstream, bobbing madly in the swift current.
“The reality is that I’ll never pass as a French person,” she pointed out. “Even if I copied your style exactly, people would know I’m not French.”
“You could pass,” Laurence said, casting a sideways look at Zari. “Your mother is Basque, no?”
Zari nodded. “Half Basque, half Greek. And my dad’s mostly French. So if I could just get a perfect French accent, learn how to tie a scarf, and walk on cobblestones in five-inch heels, you’re right—I could definitely pass.”
“I can teach you how to tie a scarf. Walkin
g on cobblestones...that is just practice. And your accent is good.”
They crossed over a bridge and entered a market street lined with cafés and shops.
Halfway down the street, Laurence’s mobile rang. She slowed to a stop and took the call under the green awning of a bakery. Every time a patron pushed open the door, the scent of buttery croissants floated outside. Zari’s mouth began to water.
A conversation in rapid French ensued between Laurence and her caller. Zari strained to understand the spirited exchange. When Laurence ended the conversation, she turned to Zari with a sober look.
“The archives in Bayonne have flooded,” she said. “They are moving everything into a warehouse on higher ground.”
“We’ll still be able to access what we need, though, right?”
“I am sorry, Zari. Not until next summer at least. Some of the documents are damaged and will have to be repaired.”
Zari stared at Laurence, taking in the enormity of her words. Bayonne had been her north star, the centerpiece of her plan, the starting point of everything. If only the archives of Bayonne were fully digitized. It was such a frustrating time to do research. Digitization was happening in fits and starts, and some museum and city collections were available online, while others were still years away from starting.
“That was my one solid lead,” she said softly. “Arnaud de Luz and the cabinetmakers’ guild in Bayonne.”
“You are not looking for Arnaud de Luz, you are looking for Mira,” Laurence reminded her.
“They’re connected. I saw the proof.”
Before she could go on, Laurence held up a hand. “I know you are disappointed. But I have something else to tell you. A friend who works in a museum in Perpignan saw some of your posts about Mira online. She called me last night. There is a prayer book in her museum with artwork that looks similar to Mira’s. A prayer book like the one we saw here.”
In the archives of the University of Pau that summer, they had examined a sixteenth-century prayer book from the Abbey of Belarac that contained a tiny self-portrait of a young nun, along with the Latin words ‘Mira pinxit hunc librum.’ The same day they had found Mira’s signature in a parchment mortuary roll that commemorated the death of the abbey’s leader, Béatrice.
The disappointment crushing Zari’s chest eased a bit. “Where is Perpignan?”
“On the Mediterranean coast. And we must go soon. My friend begins maternity leave in two weeks.”
When they set out for Perpignan a few days later, the rain had finally stopped. Laurence’s gray Renault wove through the curves of the narrow road, taking them deep into the green foothills of the Pyrenees. The air was cool, the sky capped with lacy clouds. Leaves swirled on the roadside in their wake.
Laurence kept one hand on the stick shift, smoothly downshifting around each turn, then slipping the clutch and switching into a higher gear on the straightaways.
“You’re a good driver,” Zari said admiringly. “I don’t know very many people back home who can drive a stick shift.”
“Can you?”
“My mother had an ancient car when I learned to drive. I had no choice but to figure it out. Which I’m grateful for now, but at the time I thought it was very uncool.”
She left unsaid the fact that she had been ashamed of her mother’s car, a rattling old Toyota truck with an accumulation of flotsam and jetsam inside that would test the excavation skills of even the most ardent archaeologist. Most of her friends drove their parents’ spotless minivans and SUVs. Some of them had been gifted shiny new convertibles for their sixteenth birthdays.
Zari had been hyper-aware of her own family’s unconventional story all through her childhood. Her parents had been hippies in the seventies, but when the eighties hit, her father transformed himself into a polo-shirt-wearing commercial realtor, disdainful of the meditation retreats and drum circles that once obsessed him.
He divorced Zari’s mother and remarried a much younger woman, also a realtor. They had two daughters in quick succession and rose to prominence in California’s central valley as businesspeople of repute. As the years wore on, he made little effort to stay in touch with Zari and Gus. He hadn’t remembered Zari’s birthday in more than a decade, and her calls to him often went unanswered. She had made peace with that, but what she could not abide was the fact that he was equally neglectful of his grandchildren, Gus’s kids. That broke her heart.
Outside her window, the sun burned through the clouds and sent long pale rays into the fields. Zari watched the light shimmer against the grasses, transfixed.
Her reverie was broken when Laurence turned off the road and followed a narrow graveled lane to a Romanesque church, rolling to a stop in a small parking area.
“This is one of my favorite places in these hills,” Laurence said by way of explanation.
They entered the church and walked around the perimeter, admiring the jewel-toned stained glass in the high windows, their footsteps echoing on the rutted stone floor. When they emerged from the church, they traced a circle around the exterior, examining the time-worn details that stonemasons had chiseled carefully into the rock centuries ago. Zari stopped at a small door on the south wall that was bracketed by two whimsical carved stone faces.
“That door was for the Cagots,” Laurence said. She peeled a piece of nicotine gum from a foil packet and popped it into her mouth.
“The Cagots? Who were they?”
“No one knows where they came from, but they lived in these mountains. They were not treated well. They had to enter churches through these doors and drink from their own holy water fonts.”
“Were they a different race?”
Laurence placed her hand on the weathered cheek of one of the carved faces.
“Some think yes, but others say no. No one agrees on what they looked like. They had to wear red marks on their clothes.”
“Why?”
Laurence shrugged. “I don’t know.”
Zari went back inside the church through the main doors, which were flanked by holy water fonts each containing a small amount of water.
She paced down the aisle along the south side of the church until she reached the other, smaller door that had been reserved for Cagots. Next to the doorway stood another holy water font.
Unlike the water fonts by the main doors, this stone basin was dry. Zari ran a finger over the surface of the vessel.
It came away covered in a film of dust.
13
September, 2015
Perpignan, France
Zari
Afternoon was stretching into evening as they approached Perpignan. The landscape was markedly different here from the wooded foothills of Pau. It was drier, the vegetation sparser, the colors more muted. And the air was sultry, heavy with moisture. The blue waters of the Mediterranean shimmered in the distance.
Laurence parked the Renault in an underground lot just outside the historic heart of the city. They walked along a concrete canal lined with green-painted container boxes overflowing with geraniums.
“This used to be a river flowing from the mountains to the sea,” Laurence said. Despite the long drive and the heat, she looked fresh and rested, her sleeveless white blouse spotless and unmarred by wrinkles.
Zari watched the gray-green waters flow languidly through the confines of the canal’s walls. Glancing down, she noticed a grease stain on the front of her blue shirt. She and Laurence had both eaten croissants this morning at a café. Maybe this was another skill Laurence could teach her: the art of eating flaky, butter-drenched croissants while remaining totally crumb-free.
“But why turn it into a canal?” she asked.
“Floods,” Laurence said simply.
They turned a corner. Just ahead loomed a massive crenellated tower built of faded red brick.
“The gates to the city,” Lau
rence said. “All of Perpignan was once surrounded by brick walls. This is all that is left.”
They passed through a cool, dark archway at the base of the tower and entered the stone labyrinth of Perpignan’s medieval streets.
After a quick lunch in a café on a large, somewhat grungy and dilapidated square, they hurried to the museum. Stepping inside, Zari sighed with pleasure at the coolness of the air, a welcome relief from the harsh afternoon sun outside.
Deep in the bowels of the museum, Laurence’s curator friend, her belly swollen under a chic black maternity dress, led them to a brightly lit room outfitted with a long metal table. She removed a leather-bound book from a cardboard box and placed it on what appeared to be a miniature bean bag chair upholstered in velvet. The contraption, she explained, allowed delicate books to sit open without straining their bindings.
Laurence donned white cotton gloves and began to carefully turn the linen paper pages. On one of the first pages was the mark of the bookmaker: a swooping, long-tailed ‘R’.
“Albrecht Rumbach’s mark. He had a bookmaking shop in Perpignan for many years,” the curator said. “Later he had a workshop in Barcelona.”
“Why did he leave?” Laurence asked.
“We don’t know. Where he came from, why he came, why he left—it’s a mystery.”
Laurence turned the page.
“Ah—the frontispiece. When I saw your posts online about the prayer book you found in Pau, my mind went immediately to this,” the curator said to Zari. “Look at this miniature of a woman.”
The small likeness she pointed to did have some similarities to the prayer book from the Abbey of Belarac that Zari and Laurence had examined that summer in Pau. The dark-haired woman’s face in this image was round, with almond-shaped brown eyes and wide, red lips.
“We assume this is the patron who commissioned the book, since most of the female images in the book show her face,” the curator added. “That was typical of the time.”
She directed Laurence to turn several more pages, then held up a hand. “But look at that miniature of Judith slaying Holofernes. I always stop here because something is unusual about it.”
