by Amy Maroney
Zari slipped a camping headlamp on and picked up a magnifying glass.
“There is a tool made for this job,” Laurence remarked, her eyes on Zari’s headlamp.
“Yes, a magnifying visor. John Drake has one. It’s slightly out of my budget.”
“Ah.”
“This looks like Mira,” Zari said excitedly, peering at the image of Judith.
Pulling a folder out of her bag, she retrieved a color photocopy of Mira’s self-portrait that appeared in the prayer book at the university in Pau. She held it up.
“See? The faces are exactly the same.”
The curator looked at the two images, nodding. “It’s true,” she said after a moment. “Every other image of a woman in this book is the patron’s. This is the only one that has a different face. And it is a scene of great violence, of a woman murdering a man.”
“Is this book dated?” asked Laurence.
“Yes, 1505.”
“That’s about the right time,” Laurence said.
“If Mira was in Perpignan, working for this man,” Zari said, “how could she have gotten here from the Abbey of Belarac? It’s so far away.”
“Pilgrims, shepherds, merchants—they all traveled through the region easily,” Laurence said. “The roads go back to Roman times, Zari. This has always been an area of movement, of pilgrimage, of trade between cultures.”
Laurence’s friend pointed at a rolling table stacked with several other cardboard boxes. “Everything with Albrecht Rumbach’s mark is there. You can work until six. But I will tell you now, this is the only book with a high level of artistic skill. The others will not impress you as this one does.”
Zari checked the time on her mobile. “Four hours, Laurence. How’s your gum supply?”
Laurence patted her handbag. “You bought me enough to last a month.”
Nearly three hours later, after examining each page in every book, their eyes were strained and their backs ached. The very first one they had been handed was the only book from 1505. The curator had been right—none of the other books boasted artwork even approaching the level of mastery in that one.
“Let’s go back to the first book. The artwork is Mira’s,” Zari said. “It’s identical in style to what we saw in Pau.”
“I agree, it looks like hers.” Laurence gently placed the book in the support again. “But where is her name?”
In silence they pored over the pages. Somewhere outside the museum, a church bell struck five times.
“One hour left!” Zari lamented. “Turn back to the pages that begin with ‘M’.”
The minutes ticked by as Zari examined the decorative artwork surrounding each capital ‘M’. One page contained a curious cross-hatching of black-inked geometric designs surrounding the letter. Zari bent down, her camping light illuminating the markings through her magnifying glass.
“Aha!” she exulted.
An ‘i’, an ‘r’, and an ‘a’ sat neatly hidden in a thicket of black pen marks as slender as hairs. Through the magnifying glass, her eye followed more letters down and across and back up again, making a neat square.
“‘Mira pinxit hunc librum.’” Zari whispered the words reverently. “Mira illustrated this book.”
Laurence regarded Zari, her face breaking into a radiant smile. “You found her. Again.”
14
Summer, 1504
Pyrenees Mountains, Béarn
Mira
On the road north from Belarac, Mira and Arnaud fell in behind a party of Aragónese traders. At midday on the outskirts of a village, the traders stopped under a hawthorn tree to spread a picnic. They invited Mira and Arnaud to join them, laying out copious amounts of dried ham, bread, olive oil, and salt on a cloth and passing around a wine sack. After lunch, the traders lay back and tipped their caps over their eyes while Mira and Arnaud readied their mules again. The traders said they would catch up after a brief nap and directed them to a village ahead where the mules could drink from a fountain in the square.
Passing into the village, Mira and Arnaud heard shouting. The square was alive with movement and noise. A mob of people was gathered around the steps of the stone fountain at the square’s center, shouting abuse at something or someone in their midst. Three dogs barked crazily at the outskirts of the crowd.
A woman barely taller than a child stood a bit to the side, one hand over her mouth, watching the scene. Her cap was askew, revealing hair the color of straw.
Mira approached her. “What is happening?” she asked.
The woman would not meet Mira’s gaze. “They cut off his hand,” she said dully.
“Why? What did he do?”
The man’s moans were audible now, drifting over the heads of his attackers, deep and guttural and thick with pain.
“He drank from the wrong holy water font. His hand was nailed to the church door in punishment.” She pointed across the square.
Mira could make out an object attached to the front of the church’s tall wooden doors. A dark smear trailed down from it.
“He lost a hand for such a small offense?” she asked, incredulous.
The woman turned and held up her arm. “Look.” A scrap of red cloth was sewn onto her sleeve. “We Cagots are marked with a brand. We live apart from the rest, and follow the rules they give us. If we fail...” she jerked her head at the mob. “That is our fate.”
A light rain began to fall. The change in weather seemed to dampen the fury of the crowd. People sidled away, huddling in small groups or disappearing into their homes. A few passed Mira and Arnaud, glancing curiously at them. The man’s body lay sprawled on the cobblestones. Two dogs approached him, sniffing and lapping at his feet.
“Be gone!” Arnaud shouted, handing the mule’s lead to Mira. He strode over to the fountain and waved his arms at the dogs. They growled, but fell back.
At the sound of Arnaud’s voice, the priest on the church steps turned his gaze on them.
“Who are you?” he demanded.
“A traveler who is used to seeing justice done.” Arnaud’s voice was like ice.
The priest walked back across the square to the fountain, his hands clasped at his waist. “This is justice, traveler,” he said. “The Cagots know the rules. Yet this man broke them.”
“You cut off his hand for drinking out of the wrong vessel? That is not justice.”
The priest pressed his lips together. “I did not do the cutting. You’re a foreigner. You know nothing of this place, nor of our customs.”
Mira stepped forward, her lips quivering with rage. “You will simply leave him here to rot? That is Christian mercy?”
“His people will carry him off soon enough.” The priest waved a hand dismissively. “Should you not also be on your way?”
“We will rest here, let our mules drink, and be off,” Arnaud said.
Mira urged her mule ahead. It shambled over the cobblestones to the fountain, plunged its nose into the cold water, and began to slurp. The dogs paced a short distance away, whining, eager to resume their exploration of the bleeding body.
The priest folded his arms over his chest and scrutinized them in silence for a moment. Then he whirled and tramped across the square to the church. When he slammed the door behind him, there was a faint thud as the dismembered hand slapped the wood.
Mira stared after him. “We cannot leave this man here.”
Arnaud made a show of inspecting the baskets strapped to his mule’s back and redistributing the goods within them. “We’ll tarry a while,” he said under his breath. “Maybe his people will come fetch him.”
“He bleeds on the outside and most likely on the inside as well. What madness lives in this town?”
“The Cagots are hated. I have heard it said many times. But only now do I truly believe it.”
The half-tim
bered houses that overlooked the square were all shuttered, but they knew that eyes were peering through the slats, waiting to see what happened next.
“Why did he drink out of the wrong font if he knew this was the punishment?”
Arnaud shrugged. “Perhaps he is simply a fool.”
Storm clouds moved in, unleashing waves of pelting rain. A group of ragged people darted out from the alleys that radiated from the square. They surrounded the injured man, rolled him into a cloak, and hefted him up. Silently they hauled him away—all but one of them.
It was the yellow-haired woman they had spoken with before.
“Not many would risk aiding a Cagot,” she said to Mira and Arnaud. “We will not forget your kindness to my husband.”
Mira nodded. “What is your name?”
“Deedit,” said the woman. “And yours?”
“Mira, and this is Arnaud.”
“My husband was pushed to that fountain with a knife at his back.” The woman’s voice trembled with anger. “He would never be so foolish as to break a rule. The blacksmith blamed him for the theft of some tools. He did not take them. But a Cagot’s word means nothing. We knew he would pay for the crime one day, though he was innocent.”
“You do not have to stay here,” Mira said, stepping closer. “When he is strong again, go someplace you are welcome.”
“There is no such place for us.”
“Any convent or monastery on the pilgrim’s route north must offer hospitality to travelers. You will find shelter.”
Deedit frowned. “My husband’s hand is nailed to the door of a church. A house of God offers us no comfort.”
“The ancient pilgrim’s routes are different. Say to them you are a pilgrim. Away from here, who will know you are a Cagot?”
Deedit let out a bleak laugh. “They always know.”
“Rip that red patch off your sleeve. Pretend you are a pilgrim from a foreign land,” Mira insisted. “Say your husband was hurt in a threshing accident.”
“Cagots aren’t allowed to thresh. Our men are carpenters, the women seamstresses. We’ve no other work.”
“His hand was hurt some other way, then—some accident with a mule.”
Arnaud stood silent, his eyes roaming over each shuttered window in the square. Loud voices floated out from the top floor of a half-timbered house. Mira saw the worry on his face and gave him a look that meant, “Wait.”
“Truly,” she went on. “Follow the shells and you will see. They are like stars in the sky, pointing the way north and south. We shall follow that path ourselves, all the way to Toulouse.”
“Toulouse?” Deedit backed away a few steps, shaking her head.
A movement in a narrow passageway caught Mira’s eye: a man standing with his legs spread wide, watching them.
“Shells and stars are no help to Cagots,” Deedit said. “You are kind, but what you talk of is impossible for us. We don’t slip through the world so easily as you.”
She turned and disappeared into the rain.
“By morning the entire village will know our destination,” Arnaud said, his voice tight with irritation. “Be stingier with your promises, Mira.” He pulled on the mules’ bridles, setting them on a course back to the road. “This is one you’ll not likely keep.”
“I wanted to give her a bit of hope,” Mira protested. “To let her know there is more to the world than this place.”
The man observing them had not moved. She stared back, willing him to see there was no fear in her eyes. He ran his tongue over his lips and made a crude mock-kissing noise.
“Look away, Mira.” Arnaud pulled the mules forward, blocking the man’s view. “You’re a stranger who’s not welcome here and has no allies in this place.”
She yanked the hood of her cloak low over her forehead and stalked along beside Arnaud, fuming. The Cagots endured their harsh treatment because they had no experience of the world. All it would take was one brave soul to abandon this life for another, to strike out along the pilgrim’s road, to prove that misery was not their only fate. Imagine if she herself had not summoned the courage to leave, first from the Abbey of Belarac for Nay, and then to track down the truth about her own origins high in the mountains of Aragón. She would still be illustrating manuscripts at Belarac, preparing for the life of a nun.
A dissenting voice in her head pointed out that nothing in Deedit’s experience had given her reason to hope. Why would the woman trust a stranger after enduring a lifetime of treachery and abuse?
Mira quickened her pace to keep up with Arnaud.
“You wish her the same freedom that you enjoy,” he said after they had put a considerable distance between them and the village. “But open your eyes, Mira! A Cagot woman and a daughter of barons are worlds apart.”
There was a current of anger in his voice now, a dark, coiled emotion that he rarely revealed.
“Elena taught you to defend yourself, showed you there was life beyond the convent’s gates,” he went on. “Your mother, with her sacks of gold, made sure you had other...privileges. Deedit’s not so lucky.”
Arnaud was right.
Mira had been denied her birthright as a noblewoman. She never knew what it was to grow up in the ancestral castle under the wing of her baroness mother. But her childhood in the abbey—copying manuscripts, stirring the great copper wool-washing vats, bathing the feverish limbs of pilgrims in the infirmary—was a privileged one.
She felt a rush of shame, remembering something Amadina Sacazar had once told her: Someone paid for your life in gold coins.
Deedit, like most women and all Cagots, had no such benefactor.
15
Summer, 1504
Pyrenees Mountains, Béarn
Mira
In mid-afternoon, they came to a place in the road where a narrow trail led to a monastery. At the intersection of the road and the trail was a tall marker stone decorated with a carved scallop shell.
Mira traced the outline of the shell with a finger. She recalled Deedit’s haunted face, the sodden hem of her cloak dragging over the cobblestones as she melted into the shadows.
Arnaud led the mules up the trail toward the monastery.
“They do have to accept all travelers, do they not?” she called after him.
“Ask the monks and see.”
The monastery was on a high outcropping of rock overlooking a narrow valley. Clustered ferns waved in the breeze at the base of the staircase that led to the monastery’s arched entry doors. Climbing roses clung to the stone balustrade, their petals long dead, their leaves beginning to wither and yellow.
A monk gestured to Mira and Arnaud to follow him, while another led their mules to the stables. As they walked around the periphery of the courtyard, they watched a group of monks working in the kitchen gardens that took up the entire rectangular space. Several men were bent over preparing small beds for crops, while others were on their knees, weeding.
Their room was tiny, with a narrow bed made of rough alder planks covered with a straw-stuffed mattress. A square hole was cut into the door at eye level. The monk opened a small chest next to the door and pulled out two brown hooded robes made of rough homespun cloth. Another man appeared lugging two pails of water, one of which was steaming. From his pockets he plucked towels of flax cloth and a square of yellow soap flecked with lavender flowers.
Mira hung her cloak over the hole in the door and the two of them did their best to bathe without slopping too much water on the stone floor. The soap was rough against their skin, and the sharp scent reminded Mira of the lavender oil her mother loved. One day, Mira vowed, she would have a limitless supply of lavender oil herself and anoint her body with it every day.
Dry, she slipped the brown robe over her head. “This is not the most flattering dress I have worn,” she observed.
“Then
take it off again,” Arnaud said, watching her from the bed.
“I do not think the monks would appreciate the sight of an unclothed woman when we go to fetch our supper.”
“On the contrary.” He beckoned to her. “My wife,” he whispered, sliding his hand under the coarse cloth.
“Husband, it is not seemly to embrace within the walls of a monastery,” she whispered back, her fingers tracing the ridges of his cheekbones. “Let us go in search of what is sure to be a savory meal.”
She pulled the cloak away from the door and gasped. A monk was staring through the hole directly at her.
The man widened his brown eyes, whirled and disappeared down the corridor. Mira turned to Arnaud.
“What was that about?”
“They do not see many women, I’d imagine.”
Mira quickly pulled the hood of her brown robe over her head. She hated the feeling of being scrutinized. It was something she had become sensitive to in Nay, when gossips had begun circulating the tale that she was no mere orphan raised by nuns, but the daughter of an Aragónese baron. How confidently she had rejected that rumor! But in that instance, when the gossips’ tongues wagged, the truth came out.
As she and Arnaud padded barefoot down the stone corridor to the guesthouse kitchens, her mouth twisted into a wry smile. To think she, this shoeless creature in a shapeless homespun robe, was the child of barons. Stumbling on a crack in the floor, she suppressed a wild urge to laugh.
They sat on a bench at a long wooden table and were served barley porridge, mugs of ale, slabs of cheese, and a hunk of dry bread. The porridge was tasteless, the cheese stank of mold, and they had to soak the bread in ale to soften it.
Mira had grown up on a diet not much superior to this in the abbey. But Arnaud’s village of Ronzal was rich in flocks, situated near trading routes, and home to a people who knew how to glean the treasures of the mountains. He was accustomed to plenty of meat, to salt and olive oil, to nuts and fruit and wild honey, to creamy cheeses made from the milk of sheep and goats. She watched him swallow a gray hunk of bread, resignation on his face.
