by Amy Maroney
Mira looked at Arnaud. Worry twisted in her gut.
“I don’t see the harm in it,” he said softly.
After all, they were leagues and leagues from Aragón, in a land ruled by a young French king. No one knew them here.
The notary caught the blob of ink just as it began to fall, slipping his ink pot under Mira’s outstretched hand. She dipped the quill again, tapped it against the edge of the pot, and began to write.
Miramonde de Oto, she thought, staring at the freshly inked words. Oto. The word made her long for her mother with an ache that rarely visited her. She remembered the languorous weeks spent at the castle of Oto, building up the layers of a portrait while her mother stood just a few steps away.
After a lifetime of separation, they finally had that precious summer together. Mira had imagined it was just the beginning of a reunion that would take years to unfold. But it ended as abruptly as it began. Her mother died protecting Mira, fighting for her daughter’s life to the last.
Where is my mother’s portrait? Did the thieves abandon it? Burn it? Throw it in a river? Or is it even now on the back of a mule, destined for some city I shall never see?
Her eyes flew from the book to Arnaud’s beaming face and back again. She watched the notary apply his florid signature to the bottom of the page.
A selfish, shameful part of her wished their future lay not in Bayonne but here, in the glittering city of Toulouse. Mira kept her eyes trained on the book before her, watched the ink slowly dry on the page.
But perhaps Lord and Lady de Vernier would write her a letter of recommendation when the time came to leave for Bayonne. She raised her head, brightening at the thought. Yes. She would create two masterful portraits for them, and their good word would follow her west.
Whatever happened, Mira could at least make sure of that.
20
February, 2016
Zaragoza, Spain
Zari
The train swayed slightly as it hurtled east along the tracks. The train car was half-full and, from what Zari could tell, most of the passengers were Spanish. She had a double seat to herself. Unzipping her long down jacket, she spread it over herself like a blanket, taking in the view.
The rain-soaked green hills surrounding San Sebastián had given way to arid, rocky plains. Watching the golden-brown landscape flash by, Zari slipped on her sunglasses for the first time in days. The sun seemed brighter in Spain than it did in France. Its intensity reminded her of the harsh California sun.
To the north soared the Pyrenees, their snow-crusted peaks capped by a fleece of gray clouds. Zari would never look at these mountains again without thinking of Wil. She leaned her head against the window, lost in memories of their summertime trek along the Camino, of their return to Belarac at Christmas. A shiver of anticipation snaked up her spine. Wil was on his way from Barcelona to Zaragoza now. They would meet at a rented apartment there in just a few hours.
Zari had not been able to get permission for Wil to join her in the archives of the sheep ranchers’ collective, but at least they would have evenings together, and three precious nights in the same bed. She felt a twinge of desire at the thought. The constant ache in her heart during their separations had become part of her now, a dull weight that pulled at her like some amplification of gravity.
Zari had no expectations for Zaragoza itself, so fixated was she on the treasures within the collective’s archives. But when she and Wil walked to the archives the next morning along the wide River Ebro, Zari was captivated by the graceful stone bridges that arched over the water and the immense brick and stone structures that dominated the heart of the city. At the sight of the Basílica del Pilar with its copper-capped towers and tiled domes, she stopped. Her mind churned, imagining the scene five hundred years ago—the Ebro teeming with barges, gondolas, rafts...whatever got cargo to the sea in those days.
“Carlo Sacazar was a Renaissance-era entrepreneur,” she said dreamily.
Wil laughed.
“I’m serious.” She glanced up at him. “How many merchants in his shoes would set up a satellite empire to the north? That was gutsy.”
“There must have been a good reason. Probably involving money. Or politics.”
“Or both.”
“Put that on your list of research questions for the day.”
“Oh, I will,” she assured him.
Wil kissed her just outside the doors of the collective. She watched him walk away in the bright winter sun, savoring the sight of his long, easy strides, his lanky form, his semi-tamped-down hair. In his puffy blue jacket, he looked bulkier than he truly was. She imagined him without his jacket, and then without his shirt, and...
Straightening her shoulders and taking a deep breath, she reached for the door buzzer. It was time to rustle up her best Spanish accent and clear her mind of lustful thoughts. After all, she had been allocated two full days of research within these walls, and she could not waste a minute. Only a few research slots were granted each month to foreign academics.
Inside, her eyes adjusted to the dim light of an entry hall that had white walls and red tile floors. Her wrangler for the day was a soft-spoken young man who identified himself as a doctoral candidate at the University of Barcelona. He was doing his dissertation on the sheep economy in Aragón during the reign of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, and he conducted research daily in these archives.
Zari felt a rush of jealousy. She only had two days—and he had an entire winter.
He handed her a lanyard with the logo of the organization emblazoned on a plastic card, underneath which the word “visitor” was printed in large block letters. She slipped it over her head.
Following him down a corridor hung with medieval-looking iron light fixtures, she noticed all the doors were shut.
“It’s quiet here this morning,” she ventured.
“I’m always the first one here,” he said over his shoulder. “Me and the foreign researchers. Everyone else will arrive in an hour or so.”
He led her to a room outfitted with several long metal tables. A laptop lay open on one of them.
“You can see the digital images for all the documents in our archives on this laptop,” he said, quickly showing her how to navigate the search engine. “The images are high-quality so you should have no problem seeing details.” He clicked to another tab on the browser. “If there are documents you want the librarian to pull for you, fill out this form.”
Next to the laptop was a sheet of paper printed with a list of names and numbers.
“Every citation for the name Sacazar is on this,” he said, picking it up. “So you can go directly to the pages you need.”
He pointed at another table piled with shallow cardboard boxes. On top of the pile was a ziplocked bag containing a pair of white cotton gloves. “I’ll be over there.”
“Thank you,” Zari said, jealous again. He got to handle actual documents, while she had to scroll through a digital library.
He nodded. “Good luck.”
Over the course of the day, Zari learned that Carlo Sacazar was a fairly regular attendee at the collective’s annual spring meetings for several decades. His name was on the roster starting in the late 1470s, along with the names of two other Sacazar men. One of those names only appeared in the first few meetings Carlo attended, and the other disappeared in the 1490s. Carlo himself only sporadically attended meetings after 1495, and his name vanished from the register altogether by 1505.
Zari could not make any sense of the meeting minutes but she took photos of them anyway.
After a brief, mandatory lunch break, during which Zari stood at the bar of a nearby café and wolfed down a cured ham sandwich followed by a shot of strong, thick espresso spiked with two packets of sugar, she returned to the archives and moved on to the trademark books.
She let out an audible
gasp when she navigated to the Sacazars’ page. Before her was a pen-and-ink drawing of a sheep, its torso emblazoned with an ‘S’.
The young scholar at the table next to her looked up. “What is it?” he asked, startled.
“I found something interesting,” she said apologetically.
He nodded and turned back to his work. Zari watched him carefully turn the page of an ancient-looking manuscript with his gloved fingers. Before envy could strike again, she began scrolling through the trademark book. Unfortunately for her, the Sacazar trademark looked nothing like the design on the merchant’s ring in Laurence’s painting. Since the day she visited the Sacazar home in Nay, she had cultivated hope that the ring and the trademark would bear the same design.
She sighed, clicking through meeting minutes again, more slowly this time. On several of the pages, one of the signatures stood out: it was much larger than the rest and bore an excess of flourishes. Zari cleared her throat.
“Excuse me, I wonder if you can tell me why this name is larger than the rest?”
The researcher came to her side and studied her computer’s screen. “Ah. It is the royal agent’s signature.”
“Who was that?”
“The agent of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella.”
“Was the royal family involved in the council?”
“Very. Especially after the merino wool trade made a lot of people rich. They wanted to keep merino sheep out of the hands of foreigners so other countries could not develop merino industries of their own.” He pulled up a chair and sat next to Zari. “Scroll to the meeting minutes from 1500.”
She clicked to the relevant document.
“See?” he pointed. “This is a royal decree ordering the council members never to sell a merino sheep to a foreigner.” He pointed at the row of signatures. “The royal agent’s name appears at the bottom, after all the members had signed.”
Zari nodded, scanning the list of names. There was Carlo Sacazar, about halfway down the list. And below it...
She stiffened in her chair and clicked the zoom button several times.
Below Carlo Sacazar’s name appeared the signature of Baroness Marguerite de Oto.
She drew in a sharp breath.
The young scholar gave her a bemused look.
“That name.” Zari tapped her fingertip on the screen, shaking her head helplessly. “The barons of Oto are very important for my research, too. More important than Carlo Sacazar.” She stumbled over the words, her mind racing through possibilities.
“I showed you how to make a request to the librarian,” the young man said without enthusiasm, returning to his table. “Fill out the forms and you can see the materials tomorrow.”
“Will they allow me to handle the actual documents?”
“With supervision, perhaps.”
Zari clicked to the tab containing the materials request form, typed in the requisite information with trembling hands, and e-mailed it to the librarian.
Then she clicked back to the tab containing the trademark book and scrolled slowly through the entire document. This time, her hope was justified: the barons of Oto had their own page, too. It showed their coat of arms: three ships, three sheep, three castles. And the pen-and-ink drawing of a sheep displaying their mark showed the same design as the gold medallion that hung from the belt of the noblewoman in the Fontbroke College portrait.
Zari reached out a finger to trace the image, feeling light-headed.
So much of her research led nowhere—it was like a massive jigsaw puzzle whose pieces did not interlock, no matter how many times she repositioned them. But this moment was different. A wave of excitement washed over her.
Finally, the pieces of her puzzle were beginning to click together.
21
February, 2016
Zaragoza, Aragón
Zari
That evening at a small restaurant near their apartment, tucking into a spread of tapas that included tiny medallions of beef, scallops with lemon-butter sauce, and mussels cooked in beer, Zari recounted the discoveries of the day to Wil.
“The pieces of my puzzle are starting to fit together. Tomorrow I should have more evidence about just how the barons of Oto and the Sacazar families were intertwined,” she concluded. “And I may even get to touch some real documents. I’m bringing my magnifying visor—I can’t wait to fire it up.”
“But what will those connections do for Mira and the paintings?”
“I don’t know yet, Mr. Devil’s Advocate. Let me savor the moment.” She sipped her wine. “This is divine. What is it?”
“It’s from the Priorat region in Catalonia.”
Zari swirled the red liquid in her glass, breathing in the aromas of earth, ripe plums, cinnamon, oak. “Someday, let’s go wine tasting there. We’ll drive around the hills, stumbling on unknown little gems, buy a few cases to keep in our basement...”
Wil smiled. “We need a basement first.”
“Details, details.”
His knee grazed hers under the table, and she suddenly yearned for the check.
Well after midnight, Zari was awakened by an ominous sound coming from the bathroom. A grunting, retching, heaving sound. She rolled out of bed and slowly made her way across the room.
“Wil?” She tapped at the bathroom door. “Are you sick?”
A bout of groaning was his only response.
“Can I help? Can I get you anything?”
Finally the answer came. “A new stomach?”
“Oh, my love,” she said in sympathy. “I’m so sorry.”
Within thirty minutes she was fighting him for space over the toilet.
The fantastic spread of tapas had contained something not so fantastic after all, it seemed. Something that their bodies were now violently rejecting at a rate of about three times per hour.
Her precious second day of research was spent curled on the white tile floor of their flat’s bathroom, sweaty, delirious, and drained of every ounce of energy.
At one point she glanced at Wil, who lay staring glassily at the ceiling clad only in his underwear. “I guess this is the ‘warts and all’ part of our relationship,” she croaked. “The glamour has officially worn off.”
A ghost of a smile appeared on his face. “You can joke at a time like this?”
“Gallows humor,” she explained. A wave of nausea knotted her stomach and she assumed the position over the toilet.
Wil crawled to the sink, wet a washcloth, and waited until she was done heaving. Then he tenderly wiped her face and eased her down on the cool tile, a bath towel folded under her head.
“That was gallant,” she told him, closing her eyes.
Even with the lights off in the bathroom, the sun beating against the frosted window was much too bright. A diesel engine started up in the street outside their building and idled noisily.
“My opportunity is blown,” she murmured. “Those documents. Today was my only chance.”
Wil opened one eye. “What do you mean? You’ll be fine by tomorrow. Extend your stay.”
Zari groaned. “You don’t understand. Researchers are slotted in ahead of time, and priority is given to Spanish scholars. I tried to play the food-poisoning card when I called the administrator this morning, and it didn’t fly.”
“Fly?”
“It didn’t work. I had to get in the queue all over again. And nothing is available until after Bordeaux.” She curled into a ball, her stomach spasming.
“If there’s nothing you can do, move on to the next thing.”
She peeled back her eyelids. “There is no next thing,” she said darkly. “That’s the problem.”
Zari squeezed her eyes shut again. She took his hand between her own and lodged it at the base of her neck, bending her head so her chin was touching his knuckles. The warm
pressure of his flesh against hers was reassuring.
“Zari,” Wil said, “Remember how you felt when I found you in that storm at Belarac?”
“Yes. Angry.”
He chuckled wryly. “Angry at me, yeah. But you got over that. You knew exactly what you were doing in those mountains. You had no fear. So what happened?”
She winced, overcome by the throbbing behind her forehead. Hot tears slid down her cheeks. Outside, the diesel engine sputtered to a stop.
“I don’t know, Wil,” she whispered into the silence. “Maybe the idea that Mira’s story can be brought to life is just as impossible as Dotie Butterfield-Swinton claims. The more I dig, the more she fades away. There’s this huge cast of supporting characters around her and I’m thrilled every time I unearth something about them. But is all of that just a waste of time and resources? I mean, I can prove now that Marguerite de Oto is the woman in the Fontbroke College portrait—but that does nothing to bolster my theory that Mira painted it. And I thought Carlo Sacazar might be the man in the portrait of the merchant family. I came here hoping that the design on his ring would match some family crest or sigil in the record books. I was wrong. Even if I was right, how does it help me prove Mira painted that portrait?”
“You said it last night: it’s like putting together a puzzle. Get enough of the pieces linked together and the bigger picture will start to...” His voice trailed off.
“Emerge.”
“Yes.” He put his hand on her breastbone and spread his fingers wide, creating a warm container for her heart. “Have faith, Zari.”
She covered his hand with both of hers, too tired to talk anymore, and drifted into sleep.
22
Spring, 1505
Toulouse, France
Mira
The performance was about to begin. Arnaud, Mira, Deedit, and Rose had arrived too late to get a spot close to the stage, but it was better this way, really. Standing at the back of the crowd, it would be easy to make a quick escape if Rose started fussing. All around them jostled city folk dressed in their market day best.
