by Amy Maroney
“Still, I would like to see the will.”
“It is impossible for a tourist to see such documents.”
Zari fished through her bag for a business card. “I am not a tourist.”
The woman peered at Zari’s card, frowning.
“My colleague Laurence Ceravet is helping me with this research,” Zari added. “She is with the university in Pau.”
“Have her contact the museum director, then,” the woman said carelessly, pushing Zari’s card back through the slot in the glass window that separated them.
Zari turned away, frustrated once again by her reliance on Laurence as ‘fixer’ for every bureaucratic maze she entered. It rankled her to be so dependent on someone else.
She ambled out to the center of the square and fixed her eyes on the Sacazars’ home. In her mind, the square was transformed into a bustling market, full of townspeople doing their weekly errands. She ran her eyes along the empty arcades that faced out toward the square, imagining them filled with the stalls of various artisans. Purveyors of wool, wood, grain, oil, wine. All hawking their wares to the people of Nay and the itinerant merchants who traveled up and down the pilgrim’s route of the Camino de Santiago.
She saw the merchant Carlo Sacazar leaving his home, making his way through the crowded square to the wool stalls, examining the quality of the fleeces brought by his competitors, comparing it to the fibers of his own wool, from his flocks raised in Aragón.
A bank of gray storm clouds moved in, obscuring the high peaks of the mountains that rose up to the south. Rain softened the sounds of traffic and people in the maze of narrow streets that radiated away from the central square.
Zari stood motionless, raindrops rolling down her face, immersed in the world she had conjured up. Imaginary scenarios rippled through her mind. She closed her eyes, going over the stops on the Camino from north to south and back again. She saw Béatrice of Belarac’s parchment mortuary roll, the signatures of Carlo and Flora Sacazar in the long list of mourners.
For a moment her shoulders sagged. She felt the pessimism that had gripped her in Toulouse flooding back. Why had she ever believed that she could resurrect Mira from history’s sealed-off archives? What use was there in pinning her hopes on a five-hundred-year-old will from an Aragónese merchant?
Then her eyes flew open. The Sacazars’ ancestral home had been in Zaragoza. If there was anything valuable preserved about them in the historical record, it was likely to be there.
She wheeled and strode quickly back to the bus stop.
15
Spring, 1505
Basque Country
Elena
Xabi’s sisters argued over the wedding plans without end. It was just as well, Elena thought. She had never planned a party in her life. These Basque people had celebrations for every conceivable event, and the sisters spent days jabbering about menus, guests, music, dancing, and other details that Elena found bone-crushingly dull. She withdrew more and more into her own memories just to keep herself entertained on long evenings.
The family settled on a summer wedding during the time of the full moon. Soon they would fan out across the hills and inform their neighbors of the festivities. Endless arguments transpired about the merits and disadvantages of including various far-flung relations. Apparently some were kind, upstanding, and generous, and some were stingy, sly, and rude. The problem as far as Elena could tell was that none of the siblings could agree on which relatives held which of these characteristics. If her Basque was better, she would stand and inform them that most people carried around a blend of all these qualities, and how they were seen depended entirely on the person who did the seeing. Therefore, they were doomed to argue forever.
Since her Basque was weak, she settled on a brief comment, given one evening after Xabi roared a long, decisive “Hush!” at his siblings and their offspring.
She smiled her thanks to him for the courtesy, and stood facing the assembled group.
“All are invited,” she said.
Blank stares ensued.
“All the relatives are invited to the wedding,” she managed to elaborate.
Eyes turned to Xabi. He nodded his agreement.
One of the sisters let loose with a high-pitched protest. Xabi held up his hand to silence her.
“You’ve argued long enough,” he said. “Elena’s right. Best to invite all of them. Yes, some of you hate some of them. You don’t want them drinking our wine, eating our cheese and our hens and our pigs. Well, it’s my household now, and my wedding, and I say we share what we’ve got with all the relatives. Even the ones you don’t like.”
There was a tense, simmering silence. One by one, the siblings edged away from the great hearth, refusing to meet Elena’s eyes as they said good night. She knew they blamed her for the decision, and she did not care.
On an afternoon in early spring there was a knock at the door. A traveling monk on his mule had made the long trek from the valley to the east, where a monastery lay. He claimed he had a message for Elena.
They sat him at the long oak table and plied him with soup, with rabbit stew, with wine. Neither Elena nor Xabi could read (well, truth be told, Xabi could read a little, and he knew how to write numbers and figure a sum, for a shepherd who hires himself out to the rich had better know if he’s being cheated). But it did not matter—the monk had no letter; there was no seal for Elena to break.
He ate his fill, then looked at her and said, “Brother Arros is very ill. A monk from San Juan de la Peña sent word to all of the monasteries in the west, seeking you. There is no one else in these mountains who can heal one so ill. And no one who knows him so well as you.”
“This can’t be.” Elena’s words were barely a whisper.
He nodded solemnly. “I swear by all the saints, it is the truth. He cannot walk, they say. He talks, but in an odd, babbling way.”
“Does he have fever?”
“That I do not know.” The monk slurped from his cup.
“It is a sickness that comes with old age, I reckon.” Elena’s mind shuffled through memories of people she had healed, people she had watched die. “When did he fall ill?”
“In the autumn.”
“And he still lives. There’s still time, then.”
Xabi looked at her, startled. “Time?”
“To cure him of this ailment. Come morning, I’ll travel with the monk back to his monastery and stay the night in the guesthouse. The snows are gone, it will be quick riding to San Juan de la Peña. I’m sure I can find a monk or two—maybe a whole mule train—to ride along with. It’s the spring rush, after all.”
As soon as spring came, the monasteries sent wool, grain, and other goods over the mountains into Béarn. While snowmelt swirled down the mountainsides in rivers gray with silt, the King’s Road swelled with pack animals on their way to market towns along the pilgrim’s route. Elena always took hidden tracks through the woods, avoiding the mule trains, and she had every intention of doing it again. But the idea of her traveling alone always worried Xabi.
She stood.
“Where are you going?” Xabi rose from his chair.
“For my things. We’ll leave at dawn.”
“But the wedding...”
“It’s waited this long. It can wait a while more if need be.”
“My muscles are sore from the journey,” the monk complained. “Surely a longer rest is due me.”
Elena strode to the doorway and turned. Her gaze slid over the monk, his frowning face, the bulge of his round stomach pressing through his robes.
“You’ll rest when you return home,” she told him flatly. “Your belly is full, you’re warmed through. A good night’s sleep and you’ll be right as rain.”
16
Spring, 1505
San Juan de la Peña, Aragón
Elena
Descending the rocky mountain path above San Juan de la Peña, Elena catalogued her finds with pride. Honey, herbs, roots, bark, leaves...she had filled two satchels with the mountain’s bounty. Brother Arros would have a full supply of the medicines he needed.
At the thought of him her pace quickened. She worried about him as if he were her own father. In fact, the idea of Brother Arros suffering made her knees go weak.
A snow finch trilled a warning from the high branches of a pine tree. She looked up, squinting into the brightness of the noonday sun, and saw the outline of a great brown bird overhead. It was a griffon vulture. The wingspan was broader than an eagle’s—Xabi had taught her that, back in the days when they argued about such things. He was right more often than not about wild creatures. For her part, Elena was an expert in the green growing things—the silvery plants that crept along the highest cliffs, the flowers that burst forth from meadows each spring in great shows of gaudy color, the roots and tubers that lay hidden under the dark rich soil of the forests.
The mountains had given up their secrets to her long ago.
When she laid her goods in a pile on the roughhewn table before Brother Arros, he beamed.
“Such treasures,” he said. “You’ve outdone yourself.”
“It was all done in the name of selfishness.”
He looked surprised.
“I can’t abide the thought of you in pain.” She scrutinized his posture. “Have you been doing as I told you? Strengthening those limbs?”
“I would never disobey my healer.” He swayed slightly and struck his walking stick against the stone floor to steady himself.
She crossed her arms over her chest.
“Think on it—when you arrived, I was nothing more than a lump of flesh in a bed. And look at me now! It is all thanks to you. I can walk again. But one side of me is broken, Elena, there is nothing you or anyone else can do about that.”
His words ran together in a long, blurry string. Whatever remedies she gave him did nothing to improve the quality of his speech.
“That can’t be helped,” she said. “The other side of you is perfectly capable of everything it did before. Don’t let it go weak, even in winter when you can’t get out and walk the path to the clifftops.”
“I am picking up all the threads of my life again,” he assured her. “With help, of course. My writing hand still works, praise the saints. The pass of Somport shall open soon and I’ve a mountain of correspondence to attend to.”
“Writing is not as important as walking.”
“Oh, I disagree entirely. Writing is of the utmost importance when the letter concerns young Mira,” he teased.
“What?” Elena’s eyes widened.
Brother Arros nodded. “She is in Toulouse with Arnaud, in the employ of a merchant. He wrote in the autumn asking if I would vouch for Mira’s character. I owe the man a reply.”
“But they were meant to go to Bayonne. Why on earth...”
“It was an affair of the Abbey of Belarac that took them to Toulouse. Something regarding the wool trade. I do not recall the particulars, as I lost the man’s letter the very day I fell ill.”
Elena frowned, chewing her lip. “The important thing is that they’ve left Ronzal,” she said after a moment. “And they’re safe.” She returned her gaze to Brother Arros. “Promise me you won’t sit inside writing all day.”
“With my stick at my side, I’ll click and clack my way around this valley from dawn to dusk. Next time you visit, I shall be strong as an ox.”
She snorted. “I’d take a mule over an ox. Strong enough, and smarter.”
“As you wish, then. I shall endeavor to have the strength and wisdom of a mule.”
His chest heaved, wracked by a fit of coughing. The coughing fit grew worse and worse, until finally Elena led him to his chambers and helped him settle into his narrow bed.
In the kitchens she placed a glob of honey and a smear of pulverized herbs in a ceramic cup, then poured boiling water over it. There, that should do the trick, she thought, carrying the cup through the silent corridors to Brother Arros’s chambers.
One candle burned on a table next to his bed. Elena placed the cup on the table and rummaged in a small wooden trunk for a blanket, then tucked it around him. She perched on the edge of his bed and reached for the cup.
“Sit up and take a drink.”
He scrabbled and clawed until he was in a sitting position. His hand collided with the cup and liquid sloshed over the rim, burning her arm. She sucked in her breath at the searing pain.
“Oh, my child,” he cried. “What have I done?”
“Drink,” she said curtly. “I’m fine. It was not so hot.”
He gingerly slurped some of the brew. “Not so hot? I’ve peeled the skin off my tongue,” he grumbled.
“You exaggerate.”
He drank again, his eyes on Elena’s arm.
“That is where you were burned as a child.”
“Yes.” She carefully returned the cup to the table and rolled back her sleeve. The silvery ridges of her old scar now had a pinkish cast from the new burn. “I’ve Ramón de Oto to thank for this.”
“Why did he do it?”
“Because he was a cruel boy, just like his father before him.”
Elena stared unseeing into the tiny flame shuddering atop the candle.
“If I had known the Otos would return to Belarac I never would have sent you there,” Brother Arros said sadly. “I thought you would be safe across the mountains. I tried to protect you from your mother’s fate.”
“I know.”
“The Otos had not honored their duty as patrons of Belarac for a generation,” he went on. “I thought—we all thought—they would never set foot in the place again.”
Elena blew on her arm, turning it over in the candlelight. The pain was diminishing a bit.
“Did he attack you?” Brother Arros had never pressed her for details about the incident. She wondered why he did now.
“Ramón?” She shook her head. The memories came racing back like a pack of yellow-eyed wolves snarling inside her skull, converging on her mind from all directions. “Not with his hands. With words. He came upon me in the kitchens, chopping vegetables for a dish that was meant to serve his parents. They were off with the abbess, getting a tour of the place. He wandered in, spied me. Called me a stupid waif, ordered me to make him a stew right then. I did my best to drag a kettle of water into the hearth to heat. But then he said the vegetables had to go in before the water, ordered me to start again. I grabbed the handle of the kettle not thinking of how hot it’d be. The water went everywhere. My arm got the worst of it.”
“What did he do?”
“He watched me scream. Laughed at my pain. When the cook came in he told her I’d been stealing food. I don’t think she believed him, but it was the end of me at the Abbey of Belarac.” She shook her head. “I thought I’d never clap eyes on that family again. Instead I’ve become entangled with them too many times to count.”
“You’ve been treated kindly by Ramón de Oto in recent years, though. You’ve told me so often enough. So why are you still angry at the man?”
“There’s plenty to be angry about, beginning with the way he treated his wife. And his kindness to me was only because of you.”
“I may have influenced things a bit,” Brother Arros admitted, a gleam of pride in his eyes.
“Your letters to the queen—I would not have thought you capable of that.”
“Why on earth not?”
“Because you lied.”
Brother Arros looked affronted. “I did not lie.”
“You told Queen Isabella I was a good Christian woman, a healer who was devoted to God and my queen. Those are lies.”
“Well, you are a good woman and a great healer.
That’s the truth I set forth in my letters, perhaps with a few small embellishments. And Ramón was so eager for the Queen’s favor in those days. It was the only way I could send you to Castle Oto in good conscience. I knew he would never allow harm to come to you if you were under the Queen’s protection.” He frowned. “Even with my intervention, if he was truly such a cruel man, he never would have heeded my words.”
“He does love his sons, I’ll admit that, and I saw him toss a scrap or two of generosity to his wife, but not enough to make up for the bruises he beat into her.”
“Still, there is always time for forgiveness, as long as one walks the earth.”
Elena fixed him with a stony look. “The barons of Oto have brought nothing but grief to the mountain folk. Ramón de Oto was born cruel and bred cruel, and I’ll be glad when he’s dead.”
“Elena, you should know...”
“No!” she broke in harshly. “I’ll never forgive the Oto family for what they allowed that devil priest to do to my mother.”
“That was so long ago,” he sighed.
“It might as well have been yesterday. Maria saved countless lives and the mountain folk loved her for it. The priest was jealous. He was an outsider, a city man, obsessed with his one great God. He wanted what she had—the respect of the people. So he concocted a lie about her, branded her a witch. The baron and his son could have put a stop to it all. But instead they sat astride their horses and watched her body go up in flames. I saw the smile on Ramón’s face. He took pleasure in the sight.”
Brother Arros looked anguished. “Maria was already dead. Don’t you see? God had spared your mother the agony of being burned alive.”
Elena shook her head, feeling weighted down by sorrow, as if her heart had been replaced by a lump of granite.
“God had nothing to do with her death,” she said softly. “Even a small child can change the course of fate, Brother Arros. Maria went out of this world peacefully, I made sure of that. And I’ve never had a day’s regret in my life.”
