by Amy Maroney
Mira looked down at her hands. “Your compliments mean a great deal to me,” she said. “I only wish I could stay on, but after the fabric arrives and is examined and approved by your husband, we are obliged to leave for the west.”
“Why is that?”
“Our future lies in Bayonne.”
“How unfortunate,” said Lady de Vernier. Disappointment was evident on her face. “I shall miss you, for speaking my native tongue with you gives me comfort. And my girls adore you. I cannot imagine finding a suitable replacement when you leave.”
The warmth in her brown eyes made Mira miss Elena desperately.
“In the meantime, what say you to painting miniatures of myself and my girls? As keepsakes for my husband.”
Mira smiled. “Nothing would give me greater pleasure.”
13
December, 2015
Pyrenees Mountains, France
Zari
Tiny white flakes fell from the sky and landed, tingling, on Zari’s cheeks. The sky was pale silver, the evergreens on the ridges that surrounded the valley iced with snow. She took a deep breath, luxuriating in the sharp, cold air, admiring the trail of teardrop-shaped impressions Wil’s snowshoes had left in the powdery whiteness ahead of her. He moved fluidly, with athletic grace, never stumbling or wavering in his course. He carried a backpack topped with a mysterious box wrapped in brown kraft paper. It wouldn’t be Christmas, he said, without presents.
Zari had a present for him, too, but it was nestled in a side pocket of her own pack, in a bag too small to attract attention. She shivered with anticipation at the thought of Wil opening that bag.
Two months had passed since they last saw one another. This holiday trip to the backcountry had been Wil’s idea, but Zari had found the cabin, which belonged to a work colleague of Laurence’s. It sat just a few miles past the site of the Abbey of Belarac.
They had snowshoed through the frozen silence of the narrow valley of Belarac, pausing by the stream where, last summer, they discovered the abbey’s ancient foundation stones sinking into the earth.
Now there were no stones visible to spur Zari’s imagination, but she didn’t need them. She stood next to the rushing water, constructing in her mind the structures that had once dominated this landscape: chapel, dormitory, refectory, stables, kitchens, guesthouse. Delicate icicles hung from the bare branches of willows that grew along the stream. Zari broke one off. It looked like an animal’s curved claw. Had Mira stood on the streambank in wintertime, watched icicles take shape on the willows? Where had she slept? Where had she learned to draw, to paint?
When Zari had daydreamed long enough, they forged on. Now, sweaty after a long tramp up a steady incline, they had finally reached the meadow where the cabin stood.
“Hey!” Wil pointed ahead. A crow flapped across the meadow, its black wings stark against the pale sky. “He’s probably keeping an eye on us in case we turn into dinner.”
Zari shuddered. “That’s not a good visual.”
The crow cawed at them from a branch in a pine tree.
“What?” Zari called out. “Are we invading your space?”
The bird fell silent, its shiny eyes charting their progress across the snow.
The cabin was constructed of stone, its roof made of slate tiles. It was just one room, with a self-composting toilet in an attached outhouse. Inside was a fireplace with a stone hearth, next to which was a stack of fresh cut pine logs and kindling. A pair of bunk beds were wedged along one wall and a table with four chairs sat opposite them. A worn wool rug occupied the center of the room, and on either side of the door were rectangular windows darkened with wood shutters. In one corner sat a wood-burning iron stove with two round burners on top for cooking.
Wil set to work building fires in the hearth and the stove and opening the shutters. Zari unpacked her things. She had brought a Provençal tablecloth and a few Christmas ornaments that she had picked up in an outdoor market. They stashed their food in a wooden cupboard and put their perishables in an outdoor cache fitted with a bear-proof lid, then took stock of the place.
“Cozier and warmer by the second,” Zari said.
“It’s still missing something.” Wil handed Zari her jacket.
Outside, she strapped on her snowshoes and followed him into the woods. He stopped after about ten minutes and tugged at something in the snow. A branch from a black pine tree, freshly fallen by the sight of it, with a long crack on one end and luxuriant growth on the other.
“This is good.” He shook the snow off the branch.
Zari smiled. “A Christmas tree. Now we’ve got everything we need.”
On the way back to the cabin, the snow began to fall harder.
They leaned the tree branch against one wall, bolstered at the base by their empty packs. Then they pulled the mattresses off the lower bunks and made them into one large bed on the rug in the center of the cabin. Snuggled into their sleeping bags, they watched flames dance in the fireplace.
“Two months apart is rough.” Zari propped her head on her hand and turned to face Wil. “It can get lonely in Pau.”
“I know it’s hard for you. I feel the same way.” He twisted a strand of her hair in his fingers. “I wish we could be together all the time.”
“We’ve got Bordeaux to look forward to in May. Although it probably won’t be much fun,” Zari admitted. “I’ll be a nervous wreck. And you’ll be exhausted from your trip.”
Wil had secured a position as a volunteer crew member for the adaptive sailing trip to Croatia with Filip.
“I won’t be exhausted. Sailing gives me energy—and so do you.” He smiled. “Why will you be nervous? Are you afraid of speaking in public?”
“No, I love it. But I’m worried about the strength of my research. I don’t have enough yet to present a convincing case about Mira.”
“You will.”
Zari threaded her fingers through his. “We’ll need to come up with at least one more destination before May where we can meet. Five months between visits is way too long.” She felt a stab of longing for home. “I feel so far away from my usual support crew,” she said quietly, pressing her cheek against his shoulder.
“What does your family normally do at the holidays?”
“We’re not a huge Christmas family. My mother doesn’t like the holiday hoopla. I think once my parents divorced, she dreaded this time of year. So we traveled. We camped in Mexico one year, got a cabin in Yosemite another. Once we drove up the coast to Oregon and stayed in a yurt.”
“What about your dad?” Wil’s dark blue eyes regarded her steadily. “Did you spend some holidays with him?”
“He moved in with his girlfriend the day he left my mother. They got married and had two kids, and he kind of went dark on us. His second wife is not a fan of his first family.”
“So your mom worked hard to make holidays special for you and your brother.”
“I’m really proud of her. She’s making money from her creativity at last. She made thousands of dollars in online sales last month. She’s sixty and she’s just launched a career.”
Wil got up to add another log to the fire, then settled at Zari’s side again. “Why didn’t you choose a creative life?”
She hesitated. “I was always drawing as a kid. I loved art. Even though I knew I could go down a commercial path and do graphic design or illustration, I somehow got it into my head that art wasn’t a responsible choice. Becoming an academic who studied art was my compromise.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“I know,” she said. “The academic life isn’t a road to riches, or even a steady job. Building websites on the side nets me more income than I’ll ever make as a professor, unless I get tenure at some fabulously elite school. Still, I love the idea of opening up these dusty doors into the past. Mira is a true obsession to me. There
are more women like her, waiting to be discovered. I don’t know, I just—I want to be the one doing the discovering.” She traced his jaw with a finger. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For coming here with me. You’re sacrificing your own Christmas with family.”
“They won’t miss me. There’s so many of them. We don’t all stay home for Christmas, anyway.”
“What about your grandmother? I’m still worried that I’ll never fill Hana’s shoes in her eyes.”
“Worrying about what my grandmother thinks is not the best use of your time.” He leaned over and kissed her. “This, on the other hand, is.”
The next morning they awoke to a white-out. Snow pelted the windows with fury. When Wil stepped outside to fetch the milk and butter, he returned covered with a thin layer of icy flakes.
Zari put a pot of water on the stove to boil for coffee, then brushed the snow off Wil’s sweater.
“Merry Christmas,” she said.
“Merry Christmas.”
They opened presents while eating clementines and chocolate and drinking coffee.
Zari carefully unwrapped her gift. Inside the box was a magnifying visor, the type that John Drake wore for his art conservation work. She gasped.
“I’ve always wanted one of these!”
“I know.”
“But I don’t remember telling you that.”
He smiled. “I have my sources.”
She picked up a small box containing several lens plates of different focal ranges.
“Interchangeable lens plates. I’m going high-tech. No more hand-held magnifying glass and camping headlamp for me. It’s like having a superpower.”
Wil reached into his pocket. “I have something else for you.”
The jewelry box contained a pair of silver scallop shell earrings to match the necklace that Laurence had given her last summer, which Zari had worn during their trek to Oto.
She immediately put the earrings on. “I love them.”
Wil’s eyes gleamed with quiet joy.
Zari thrust a small box at him. “Now your turn.”
He peeled off the tape and lifted the lid. Inside were four bands of silver, each forged in a slightly different way.
“Four rings?” He held one up, looking at her for an explanation.
“Try one on,” she encouraged him.
The ring fit perfectly over the third finger of his right hand.
“How did you know?”
“I measured your finger when you were asleep. My mother has a jeweler friend who makes these in a tiny studio on the California coast. I sent him your size a few months ago.”
“But why four?”
“It’s actually one ring. A puzzle ring. You need to figure out how to fit them together.”
His face lit up. “You remembered!”
“Now’s your chance to figure it out. There are no instructions in the box, I’m sure you noticed.”
“It can’t be too difficult.”
She smiled. “Try it.”
Thirty minutes later, Wil pushed back his chair and ran a hand through his rumpled hair. “I give up.”
Zari reached for the bands. In a moment she had them locked together. She grasped Wil’s hand and slipped the ring over his finger.
“It looks just like a sailor’s knot.” He twisted it back and forth, tested its stability. “You have to work hard to get these pieces apart.”
She nodded. “They belong together.”
He wrapped both his hands around hers. “Like us.”
They sat quietly like that for a while, holding hands across the table, while the fire crackled and hard pellets of snow ricocheted off the windows.
Winter’s grip was tightening outside, sending a deathly hush across the landscape. Listening to the rattle of the snow on the glass, Zari imagined the cabin as a bubble of light hovering in a dark world—a private, sacred space where love unfurled minute by minute.
A place aglow with promise, with possibilities.
14
January, 2016
Nay, France
Zari
Zari stepped off the bus by a stone bridge that arched over a swiftly-flowing, narrow river in the town of Nay. A light rain fell as she walked over the bridge and onto the glittering wet cobblestones of the ancient streets. The air was chillier here than in Pau, even though the bus ride had taken less than an hour. She thrust her hands in the pockets of her jacket, wishing she had remembered to bring gloves.
Steep foothills rose up just behind the town, which was nestled at the base of the Pyrenees. The medieval character of the central square was perfectly intact, dominated by a town hall that faced north and surrounded by buildings with half-timbered facades. A long arcade with graceful Romanesque arches wrapped around the entire square.
Zari approached the wide double oak doors of the Sacazars’ home and paid her entry fee to a woman in a glassed-in kiosk. Crossing the threshold into the courtyard, she was confronted with the sight of three stories of arcaded stone balconies. The balconies were supported by columns carved with decorative flourishes. Under her feet, rocks in various shades of gray, black, and white formed complex patterns on the courtyard floor.
A series of descriptive placards were affixed to one of the walls next to a pair of faces carved in stone that were identified as Carlo and Flora Sacazar. According to the text, the Sacazars had been a family of importance in the late 1400s and early 1500s both in Aragón and Béarn. Their ancestral home had been in Zaragoza. They had two daughters and had risen to prominence as traders of wool and makers of fine fabric.
Apparently the Sacazars had taken advantage of their status as sheep-breeders in Aragón by shipping fleeces over the mountains and having them processed in Nay, then selling the fabric in the town market to buyers from the north. They also traded in oil, wine, olives, and iron from Spain.
One of the placards listed the items in Flora Sacazar’s will. Zari stared at the words for some time, her lips moving as she worked out the English equivalents. The list was mostly made up of clothing items: dresses of silk and wool, sleeves, hats. Then there was some jewelry, followed by other items she could not decipher.
Near the bottom of the placard she made out the words, ‘Two portraits painted in oil.’
Her heartbeat ticked up a notch. She took photos of the placards and texted them to Laurence.
Zari’s eyes were drawn to the carved faces on the wall again. The stone was stained and darkened, and the features of the couple were blurry, pocked with deep pits and grooves. The man’s face, particularly, was nearly flattened in places, as if someone had taken a sledgehammer to it. His nose was missing entirely.
She scaled each set of stairs, slowly wandering the rooms. The only sound was the gentle slap of her shoes on the cold stone floor. The exhibits traced the growth of Nay’s industries. The town had become a hotbed of fine wool fabric finishing in the Renaissance era, and dye houses had sprung up along the riverbanks. Satellite industries had taken root: notions, ribbons, lace, buttons. Meanwhile a burgeoning woodworking industry developed, with the seemingly endless forests of the Pyrenees providing the foundation for high-quality furniture making.
She saw massive wooden looms, spindles and distaffs, mannequins dressed in replicas of eighteenth-century peasant garb. All the tools and trappings of the region’s wool fabric industry were laid out before her, housed in glass-fronted cabinets, or presented in tableau fashion behind cords of rough rope.
On the third floor, she went outside to the balcony. The sun had broken through the clouds and a flood of light illuminated the courtyard below. A group of schoolchildren was massed below her, chattering excitedly. Several of them formed a line and, balancing on their toes, they followed the patterns laid out in the stones. Zari watched the children hop from one s
tone to the next, drinking in their energy and unselfconscious exuberance. Her thoughts turned to her niece and nephew. She missed the high, clear timbre of their voices, the immensity of their hugs.
After a few moments, the teachers managed to corral their charges into a line and they trooped inside the building. The courtyard was suddenly silent. An orange cat appeared below her, stepping daintily across the stones. Zari watched it, transfixed. Then she took a photo of the cat and its shadow.
Sitting at a café on the edge of the square, Zari sipped a tiny cup of espresso, watching clouds move across the sky. She loved this kind of weather—dark and rainy one moment, sunny the next.
When her mobile buzzed, Zari jumped.
Laurence wasted no time with pleasantries.
“You understood most of the text?”
“Yes.”
“The part about three silken dresses, two fine wool dresses? The sleeves?”
“Yes, I got that part. I didn’t understand the specifics about Flora Sacazar’s jewelry or the paintings.”
“She had pearl necklaces. A gold and ruby necklace. Ruby and gold rings. Silver plate. Jeweled caps.”
Laurence drew in a breath. Zari knew she had gotten to the important part.
“Two portraits made in oil on panel,” Laurence read slowly. “With gilt frames.”
“Portraits of whom?”
“It says nothing else about them.”
Zari drained her espresso. “We need to see that will. The entire document.”
“Absolument.”
“I’m going back to the museum.”
The woman in the museum kiosk shook her head. “Those paintings? They are not here. Nothing belonging to the Sacazars is here. This is a museum of industry now. The building is just a space for museum exhibits.”
