by Amy Maroney
“A very American way of thinking,” Zari finished, wiping her cheeks with a sleeve.
“Yes. You must be patient.”
They began strolling again. The gull scuttled away as they approached, then unfolded its wings and flapped out over the sea.
“I wish I could keep going, keep digging for Mira,” Zari said. “But what I have to do now is go home and start applying for jobs. And my family needs me.”
“Your brother is taking care of your mother, I thought?”
“He is, but...” Zari broke off, listening to the rubbery squeak of their shoes scuffing the dry sand. “It’s a long story. He can’t do this on his own.”
Laurence was quiet a moment, kicking a small object ahead of her, watching it roll across the sand, then kicking it again. She stooped and picked it up. It was a small scallop shell, worn nearly translucent by the action of wind, sand, and water.
“I see. What about Wil?”
Zari watched a quivering lump of sea foam explode into tiny white puffs that skittered along the sand like miniature tumbleweeds.
“I sometimes wish I’d never met him, because it hurts so much to be apart. It’s hard to plan a future with him, especially now. He’s not very happy with me at the moment.”
“But you told me he is the love of your life.”
“He is. Was. I don’t know.” Zari sighed, staring out over the sea.
“I had love.” Laurence’s voice was rough with emotion. “When my husband died, a part of me died. There is nothing more precious than life with a companion you love. You have found one—find a way to keep him in your life.”
“Don’t hold back on the advice, now,” Zari said drily.
Laurence laughed. “If there is one thing age gives us, it’s the ability to look back in time and see the choices we made, good and bad.”
A band of gulls skimmed along the waves, their bodies hovering just above the cresting whitecaps.
“How do they do that?” Zari marveled. “A rogue wave could come along and knock them into the water. But it never does.”
“Always curious. That is what makes you good at your job.” Laurence’s eyes were trained on the south, where the green hills of Basque country rose up on the flanks of the Pyrenees. “Your people came from those hills, Zari. Your mother’s people. The Mendietas. One day you will search for them, I know it.” She placed the scallop shell in Zari’s palm. “Whatever you decide to do, I will keep looking for Mira. She’s not lost to us. Not yet.”
Zari folded her fingers around the shell and slipped it into her pocket.
28
Summer, 1505
Abbey of Camon, France
Mira
The thick oak door rattled against the table once, twice.
“Leave me alone!” Mira tried to shout the words, but they came out in a croak.
“It is I, the abbess. Let me in at once.”
She set down the pitcher with trembling hands and inched the table away from the door just enough for the abbess to slip through.
“Why did you block the door?”
The abbess’s angular face was grave, her dark eyes cool. Something in her assessing gaze reminded Mira of Mother Béatrice.
“I heard the voices of men.” Mira folded her arms across her chest to quiet the tremor in her hands. “I was afraid.”
“Your husband left with those men on the road east to Fanjeaux.”
Mira stared at her, dumbfounded. “Did they take him by force?”
“I know not. The gatekeeper saw them approach. She was afraid. Your husband told her to stay inside, that he would talk to them. They were knights, that was plain to her. She said your husband spoke some foreign tongue with the men. He bade her have a stable boy fetch his mule, then they all left in haste. Their shields bore a herald, she saw. Three ships, three sheep, three castles.”
The question that had haunted Mira for weeks pounded in her skull: Does my twin wish me well, or does he wish me dead? She would be a fool to assume anything but the worst. She balled her hands into fists and dug her nails into her palms, forcing the panic away.
“You know those men?”
“Perhaps one of them.”
The abbess’s gaze hardened. “Does he seek you?”
Mira dropped her eyes, unable to lie to this woman who had offered her care and shelter. “Yes.”
Crossing to the window, the abbess peered through the shutter’s slats. “We have no defense save those gates. The women here are under my care.” She faced Mira again. “What if they come back? We cannot take the risk. You must leave here at once. You may give me a message for your husband. If he returns without the other men, I will see he gets it.”
“But...” Mira’s voice faltered. “I am with child.”
“I know.” The abbess’s face was difficult to see, standing as she was with her back to the window. “I will escort you to the guesthouse. Your husband left your things in his room.”
There was not a trace of sympathy in her voice.
In the guesthouse, Mira questioned the stout, nearly toothless gatekeeper, who declared that Arnaud had indeed left in haste with the men on the road to the market town Fanjeaux. He had told her nothing of what the men had said to him, the woman declared. He just turned to her and raised an arm in farewell, said he’d be back.
Mira went into his room. It was slightly larger than her room in the convent dormitory, with the same narrow bed pushed against one wall, but instead of an oak table it contained a desk and chair. All of his things were gone. Her leather satchels were piled neatly on the bed. She pawed through them. At the bottom of the smaller satchel she spied the bag of coins Lord de Berral had given them. Next to it was her dagger in its sheath.
She opened the bag of coins, gave it a shake. Had Arnaud kept any for himself? This was more than enough to purchase a mule from the abbess and pay for lodging elsewhere. Pulling the sheath out, she laid it gently in her lap. At least she could arm herself.
She sank down on the chair, remembering the stench of the humid air the day she saw the tall nobleman in Perpignan, the determined stride of his long legs, how his dark eyes had searched for her in the crowd.
Somehow her twin had pieced together the truth. If it was Mira he wanted, why had he taken her husband away? Elena had once told her Pelegrín had a good heart. But what had war done to him? Did their father’s cruelty lurk in his blood?
She ran her fingers over the dagger’s polished bone hilt, half-pulled it from the sheath, eyed the gleaming blade. Her father had stolen it from the dead body of a Moor after a battle and gifted it to her mother long ago. For years, Marguerite hid the dagger in a chest. When Mira was eleven, Marguerite gave it to Elena and told her to instruct the girl in its use.
The thought of her father usually made Mira’s heart thud faster. But not today. In fact, for the first time since Rose’s death, she felt strong. It was as if an unseen well inside her had been sucked dry and then replenished again. After succumbing to the grief of losing Rose, after nearly drowning in it, she knew she could survive anything.
Since she learned Ramón de Oto was her father, she had wondered if his blood gave her courage or simply the capacity to perform monstrous deeds. She had murdered twice, after all. But the truth was, Mira’s courage came from another source entirely—from the three women who had mothered her each in their own way. They were responsible for Mira’s strength, her knowledge, her capacity for love, her very survival. She was alive because of the discipline Béatrice had instilled within her, the skills Elena taught her, the hope her mother had nurtured that, one day, Mira would live a life of her own choosing.
And now, there was another reason to be brave: the life within her, pulsing with promise. She pressed a hand on her belly, reassured by its flatness under her skirts. Then she slipped the dagger entirely free of the sheath and
laid it on the bed beside her.
Her mother’s ivory shell necklace on its thin chain of gold lay coiled at the bottom of the sheath. The sight of it always gave her comfort. She tipped the necklace into her palm. Another object tumbled out, too: a tightly rolled strip of linen paper.
Mira unfurled the paper, eyed the familiar lettering scribbled in charcoal. She whispered the words aloud.
“‘I go east so you do not have to meet the past again. Keep to the pilgrim’s road west, and I’ll follow. If you require aid, remember the one who promised it.’”
She sat frozen, holding the paper by its edges, Arnaud’s words repeating themselves on an endless loop in her head. Her heart flailed in her chest. For a long moment, she was nearly consumed by panic. She struggled to breathe, to push aside the fear that threatened to engulf her.
Staring fixedly at her mother’s necklace, she willed herself calm again. She would find a mule train to join and continue west, on the pilgrim’s route through the plains and woad fields—just as she and Arnaud had planned.
An anxious voice in her mind pointed out that Pelegrín might turn his sword against her husband. For a brief, terrifying instant, she imagined a world without Arnaud.
Mira squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head, vanquishing the fear.
If Arnaud did not follow as promised, she would continue to Nay and seek refuge with the Sacazar family until her baby was born—for ‘the one who promised aid’ had to be Carlo. She dreaded crossing paths with Amadina again, but there was nothing to be done about that. Her baby’s well-being was all that mattered now, and Carlo Sacazar would offer protection.
In the desk she found the other half of the slip of linen paper, torn along one edge, along with a broken stick of vine charcoal. She stared unseeing at the paper for a long time, composing the words in her head. Then she willed her hands to stop trembling and wrote several lines of script all at once.
If the abbess was true to her word, Arnaud would read her message when he returned. They would be reunited well before she reached Nay—and they could sidestep the town entirely on their way to Bayonne.
The Sacazars would never be the wiser.
She emerged from the guesthouse into bright sunlight. The abbess stood near the stable doors, dispensing orders to a pair of servants. Hens pecked at bits of straw that lay scattered over the cobblestones. Mira crossed the courtyard, ducking around linen sheets that billowed and writhed in the breeze, her mind caught on a refrain that kept rhythm with her steps—words that had been her guide since the day of her birth, though she did not know it then.
“I am Miramonde,” she said aloud, in a voice so forceful that two red hens flapped squawking away from her, their wings frantically beating the air.
The wind gusted then, catching the rest of her words and sending them swirling into the blue sky just as she reached the abbess. But in her head they rang out fiercely, like the strike of iron on stone.
One who sees the world.
29
May, 2016
Pau, France
Zari
The windows in Zari’s bedroom were flung open to the warm spring air. The chug of a diesel truck floated up from the square below, then the high-pitched bark of a dog. Sunshine spilled into the room, illuminating the piles of belongings she’d stacked on her bed.
One by one she rolled up the shirts and tucked them into sleek rows in the bottom of her suitcase. Wil had taught her that trick—rolling instead of folding. She remembered how ingeniously he organized his backpack during their days on the Camino. His waterproof topographical maps. The Belgian chocolates he carried all the way up the mountain for her. She became acutely aware of the thudding of her heart. Each beat marked another second of silence between them.
She glanced again at the mobile sitting on her pillow, buzzing with an incoming call. Wil.
“Zari.” His voice was hoarse, low.
“How is Filip?”
“He’s stable. We arrived last night in Amsterdam and he’s in a hospital here.”
“Are you with him now?”
“Yes.”
“Wil, I’m so sorry I ever mentioned adaptive sports to him.” The words tumbled out in a rush. “I wish I could take back everything I said that night at dinner. I feel horrible.”
“What?” He sounded astonished.
“If I hadn’t told him about Gus’s friend, offered to make the contact, he wouldn’t have gone on the trip.”
“That’s crazy, Zari. Why would you think that?”
“Hana said it, when she answered my call. She said it was my fault.”
There was a long silence.
“Zari, he would have gone back to adventuring whether you encouraged him or not. He was so happy on that sailboat...I can’t even describe it. He was alive again. And Hana will not admit it, but the infection probably started before the trip began.”
Zari’s entire body felt like it had turned to gelatinous mush. She began to sob.
“I’ve been worrying that Filip is going to die because of me for more than a week now.”
“The hospital in Croatia was horrible, Zari,” he said wearily. “Hana got no sleep. The stress made her say things she should not have said. Not just to you.”
Zari wiped her eyes, steadied her breath. “Do you miss her?” The question sounded like an accusation.
There was a tiny hesitation before he responded. “No. I mean, I miss our happy times, but we were really young when we got together. We’ve both changed.”
She stayed silent.
“Zari, I love you. But Hana is part of my life and will always be, because Filip is my closest friend, and our families are close too. You have to accept that.”
Zari got up and went to the window, watching a group of students pedal across the square on battered bicycles, book bags slung over their shoulders.
“I’m going back to California,” she said. “After I give my report to the Mendenhall Trust in Oxford, I’m flying home.”
“Wait. What happened to Amsterdam? You were going to come here.”
“Filip’s not the only one having a crisis. My mother was in a car accident last week. I need to go home. And frankly, after that conversation with Hana and your silence, I figured I was no longer welcome in Amsterdam.”
“Your imagination gets you in trouble, Zari.”
“If you had communicated more, maybe I wouldn’t have imagined the worst,” she pointed out, her voice rising. “I wish we could live together and give real life a try. But I think real life, for me, is six thousand miles away.”
Muffled voices sounded in the background. Wil said something in Dutch and then asked if he could put her on mute. Zari shoved her mobile in her pocket, feeling ready to explode.
To distract herself she went to the kitchen and grabbed a nectarine from the fruit bowl on the table. Next to the bowl was a final to-do list and a printed itinerary for her flights back to England and then California. Chewing her nectarine, she ran her finger down the list. All the items had been checked off.
Except one.
She tossed out the pit, washed her hands, and walked barefoot into the living area, contemplating the map that Wil had hung for her on the wall. The routes of the Camino he highlighted last fall were marked by bright green and purple slashes, by circles and question marks and scrawled notes that made long, blurry trails. Zari slowly removed the pushpins and folded the map into a tiny rectangle. Then she returned to the bedroom and slipped it into her messenger bag.
Pulling her mobile from her pocket, she saw that the call had dropped, or Wil had ended it.
She sank down on the bed with a sigh and picked up a small framed color copy of the prayer book page she and Laurence had discovered last summer in the university archives. It had been a parting gift from Laurence. Zari gently traced the features of Mira’s self-po
rtrait with a finger, then picked out the words hidden in a bramble of black ink squiggles and curves: ‘Mira pinxit hunc librum.’
She closed her eyes, listening to a pigeon coo on a nearby windowsill. She had held tight to those threads of connection binding her to Mira—had dragged herself hand over hand along each one, clinging to hope that when she reached the end Mira would be waiting for her, gray-green eyes aglow.
“We got so close, Mira,” she whispered, blinking back tears. “We were nearly there.”
Carefully Zari folded a long-sleeved black shirt around the frame. Something in one of the pockets poked at her palm. She fished it out. Andreas Gutknecht’s card. She folded it in half and tossed it in the Monoprix bag she was using as a garbage bin. In the next moment, she pulled it out again and entered his contact information into her mobile. After she typed in the data, she accidentally touched his number on the screen. The call went through.
Zari cancelled the call immediately, scowling in irritation. One of the few things she didn’t like about the modern age was the fact that accidental calls, or ‘butt dialing’ as her nephew described it, could not be kept anonymous.
The next morning, she stood at the window of her apartment one last time. The rising sun bathed the city in golden light, illuminating the green ridges of the Pyrenees in the south. Two massive white clouds scudded diagonally down from the mountaintops. Zari squinted up, gauging the distance between them, the speed of their movements. A collision was imminent, she realized. And it would be directly over her building.
Looking down, she saw the cobblestones in the square below gleaming, still wet from a rain shower in the night. Several pigeons gathered around a stormwater drain near the sidewalk. While Zari watched, another bird flapped into their midst, setting off a flurry of strutting and cooing from its comrades. Laurence’s charcoal gray Renault motored into the square then, pulling up in front of Zari’s building. The diesel engine spluttered for a moment and went silent.
