The Woodcarver's Secret (Samantha Sweet Mysteries)

by Connie Shelton

  He peered out through the lashes of his closed eyes, gauging the mood of the family and their staff while the words of prayer came out by rote. Did the girl seem restless and inattentive? And her father—was that a hint of derision on his face? They didn’t look like Jews or Muslims, but one never knew.

  Already Maria Borega had insisted that he stay after the prayers, to share some wine with the family and partake of the evening’s repast. He would remain observant of these newcomers. It was, after all, his duty to report to the head Inquisitor if he noticed suspicious activity anywhere in the city. He gave the final blessing and the bowed heads looked up.

  Señora Borega rose first, followed by the three children who were old enough to attend prayers. The baby must be off with its nursemaid, elsewhere in the house.

  “Mamá, mamá . . .” Young Simón was tugging at his mother’s sleeve.

  Benedict waited to see what discipline might be inflicted for such rudeness, but the woman allowed their conversation to be interrupted as she turned to her son.

  “Can Father Benedict see the painting?” the child begged.

  “We should ask Señor Vermejo. Perhaps later.” She turned her attention back to the priest.

  From the corner of his eye, he could see that the boy had approached the artist, posing his question once again.

  “The paint is wet,” the artist responded, looking toward la señora to help him out of the predicament.

  “Oh, we shall not move it,” she replied with an indulgent smile. “Let’s take Father Benedict up to the studio—for a quick look before dinner.”

  “It isn’t finish—” But Abran Vermejo’s words were lost in the bustle as eight people took to the stairway.

  A more famous artist would never stand for such disregard, the priest thought as he followed behind the mistress of the house and her exuberant child. He’d heard of the temperamental dispositions of the great ones, the stories of men who stormed from a room or slashed a canvas when their wishes were not followed. Clearly, this one was not a successful man.

  The room set aside for the portraits was at the end of a second corridor, a former drawing room chosen, no doubt, for the fact that two large windows faced north. In the last of the daylight outside, the high spires of the cathedral glowed with golden light.

  “See? It’s me,” the young lad was saying to his mother as he pointed to the canvas on the artist’s easel.

  Maria Borega patted his blond curls indulgently. The two daughters, ten-year-old twins, shared a quick glance. Señor Borega seemed distracted, no doubt by thoughts of the mistress he kept in another part of the city. Father Benedict prided himself on his keen observational skills.

  He admired the half-done painting for an appropriate length of time. The details on the child’s face were quite good, especially the way in which the curls of blond hair were depicted in exacting detail. No doubt the man would impart the same elements to the clothing and background. If Vermejo had been a young artist, beginning a career, he might become well known.

  “We have already commissioned a frame for the portrait of the girls,” Maria was saying. “Once the individual portraits are finished, our maestro here has agreed to paint one of the family as a group.”

  “Ah, how nice.” Benedict turned toward the thin old man to offer congratulations.

  The artist, he noticed, seemed nervous, eyes darting between the painting on the easel and the clutter of materials on his nearby work table. The young woman—the artist’s daughter—she also seemed particularly edgy this evening. Perhaps they were simply worried that one of the children might touch the paints.

  Benedict’s gaze fell to the tabletop. Bottles, brushes, a jar of liquid with two brush handles protruding from the top, a carved wooden box. His breath caught.

  The box. He had seen a very similar one.

  A year ago. Holy Week. Here in this city. As the pious gathered for the solemn procession depicting Christ’s passion, a band of gitanos had begun loud singing, that discordant wail so horribly Muslim in its tone. The very thing that Pope and King and Church had worked so diligently to eradicate, the gypsy sounds and dances that were abhorrent to civilized life. Father Benedict had stood among the Church leaders on the steps of the cathedral, with a view over the heads of the parishioners.

  There they had gathered, merely one street away. The women with their wild, loose hair which they refused to wear tucked inside a cap or wimple, the bright colors of their clothing, the unshaven men in peasant garb. They were rowdy at the best of times, but in that place—it was sacrilege to show up during those holiest of days! He had turned to Bishop Andreas and saw that his superior’s face was livid, his jaw clenched tight.

  No one in the crowd had moved yet, although a few heads had turned toward the source of the tribal sounds. Andreas nudged Benedict with his elbow and the two of them slipped into the quiet of the cathedral.

  At the altar, candles cast a soft glow and incense gave the air a hint of saffron. In another hour, when four thousand people crowded inside, it would serve its true purpose, keeping the odor of that many humans under control.

  Quickly, the two men hurried down the south aisle, slipped into the transept and made their way through the sacristy and chancel to a door which led outside. Out of sight of the gathering out front and the watchful eyes of the palace across the square, they followed an alleyway to the street where the gypsies’ celebration had become no quieter.

  At the center of the gypsy crowd a man and woman danced (together!) with suggestive looks in their eyes and much swishing of skirts that showed the woman’s calves from time to time.

  “Stop this!” Bishop Andreas ordered. “Stop this immediately! I hereby order each of you to appear before the Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition.”

  The male dancer did a final flourish with his arms and stepped forward insolently. “You have nothing to say to us, priest. We do not live by your laws.”

  “You live by the laws of the land, as decreed by King Ferdinand himself!”

  An old woman with strands of white in her dark hair stepped forward, fixing the two clergymen with a steady scowl. In her hands was a wooden box, carved with diagonal lines. Small, colored stones blinked with an unnatural light as the woman gripped the box.

  “I see a murky aura surrounding each of you.” Her voice was low and ominous.

  The gypsies had gone dead silent.

  “There is a cloud of deep red ... it obscures your face. You, sir, in the white robes of pretension. You have evil motives. The people shall not be bound by you and your ways!”

  With that, she flung a hand toward the two holy men. Benedict felt as if her hand had actually touched him, had heaved him backward violently. He lost his balance and sat down hard on the cobbled street. The old woman, in a swirl of skirts, turned and vanished down a narrow pathway. In under a minute, the rest of them were gone.

  His chest pounded, the sound of rushing air filled his ears.

  He looked around to discover Bishop Andreas lying on the ground, as well, his face a gray-white contortion of pain, his hands clutching at the front of his robes.

  “Eminence, what is it?” Benedict cried as he scrambled to the bishop’s side.

  “My chest—I cannot breathe,” came the choked reply.

  “Lie still. I will fetch help.”

  But the bishop’s color began to improve and he was finally able to catch his breath. He stood and the two men made their way back to the cathedral in time for mass. By that same evening Andreas was pretending nothing had really happened.

  Now, dimly aware of movement around him, Father Benedict reached out to touch the box on the artist’s table. Could it be the same one the old gypsy woman had used to curse him? It had no colored stones on it.

  The young woman’s hand scooped the box from the table. “It’s only—my father’s valuable pigments—”

  Benedict couldn’t recall that he had ever heard the girl speak a single word until now.
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br />   “Where did you get that box?” he demanded.

  Her face went a shade whiter. “It ... it was a gift—”

  “I gave her the box.” Maria Borega stood in the doorway, a firm expression on her face. “She may do anything with it that she wishes.”

  Benedict willed away his scowl.

  “And now, dinner is served,” Maria announced brightly.

  Benedict gave the girl a hard stare before turning to his hostess with a frozen smile.

  * * *

  Sophia sat through the dinner, responding with gay laughter when Maria made a joke, managing to slide her gaze past the priest’s chair with her lids lowered when someone at the other end of the table spoke. Papá seemed more tired than usual, after the interruption of his nap this afternoon, and she used that as an excuse to finally make their escape.

  At the second-floor landing, she whispered to Abran that she wanted to check their studio, to be sure the children had touched nothing after the earlier visit. They parted at the narrow stairs to the third floor, he climbing that final flight, she taking a lighted candle from the hall table and walking the length of the corridor.

  The north-facing windows were black squares of night against the whitewashed walls of the room. Shadows bounced from corner to corner, revealing elongated shapes from the standing easel, the jar of paintbrushes, the high wooden back of the chair where the portrait subjects sat. It occurred to her that someone walking the street below might find the movement of light odd this time of night, so she made her movements purposeful and quick.

  The carved box sat among Abran’s art supplies, exactly as she had left it—to her relief. She scooped it up and tucked it into the folds of her shawl, holding it to her side with an elbow so that she could maneuver the candle as naturally as possible with the other hand. She had no intention of stopping to talk with anyone but one never knew, in a household this size, who might be in the halls at any moment.

  After checking to see that her father had a pitcher of water for washing and a fresh candle at his bedside, she closed the door to her own room. A lock would have made her feel more secure but there were none, as far as she knew, for any of the bedrooms. Certainly not the small cells here in the servant quarters. She sat on her bed, positioning the blanket so she could quickly flip an edge of it over the box if someone opened the door.

  With the box on her lap, she raised the lid. It appeared that some letters had been carved along the edge of the lid, but they were old and worn now and she couldn’t make them out. The first few letters might have been M-A-N-I but she realized futilely that had she recognized all the letters she could not read the word; girls were educated in cooking and sewing, not in useless skills they would never need. Boys who might enter the priesthood—they were the ones who might learn academic skills. A picture of the cold Father Benedict popped into her head. Asking him to take another look at the box was the last thing she would ever do. She’d seen his level of interest in the object.

  Her hands had lost their chill, she realized, and she placed them on the carved top, spreading her fingers and closing her eyes to accept the welcome warmth. When she opened her eyes once more, a quick glimpse came to her, a vision of the box with small colored stones mounted within the pattern. She blinked. The surface was plain again.

  Her hands were growing almost hot and the surface of the box now glowed with a brightness that had not been there before. Sophia raised the lid again and looked into the empty compartment. Light flashed, sudden and vivid, tentacles of lightning striking a tree. She gasped.

  The lid closed with a small clatter. Had she cried out? Had anyone heard?

  But no sound came from outside her room.

  What was this strange artifact?

  She stared nervously at the door. The one thing she understood instinctively was that she could tell no one of this experience. Not even Maria Borega, who might have, herself, seen these same things. For one thing was certain, in this city, in this time, anyone could report her to the Inquisition for any reason. Not fully embracing their new religion was one thing; being accused of witchcraft—that was even worse.

  She blew out the single candle, curled her body around the box and pulled the blanket over her. Only after an eon of time, while sleep eluded her, did she remember that she had not even changed into her nightdress.

  Sounds of the kitchen servants moving about the halls signaled the beginning of the new day. Sophia stretched, fretting over how to protect the box. She mouthed the words to a prayer from childhood; the action brought back the words of their old rabbi, now long gone. Worrying a problem does not solve it.

  Exhausted, she pulled herself out of bed and dipped frigid water from the bowl, washing her face, making herself more alert. The wise rabbi was right, of course. Her night thoughts had added only a little clarity. Surely Señora Borega had not experienced anything mystical about the box; she would not have so casually given it away if that were the case. In some way, however, the priest knew more about it than he had voiced the night before. The way he looked at the box—there on the art table—that was pure greed. If he concocted a reason to search Sophia’s room, there was no safe hiding place.

  Nor could she carry it with her at all times, awkwardly trying to tidy the rooms and dust the furniture with the object tucked under one arm.

  In the end she decided the safest way might be to use it exactly as she had claimed, to store her father’s most valuable pigments and keep the box with his art things. The Boregas would stand up to the priest if he tried to disrupt the artist at his work. She carried the box to the studio and picked up the chunks of lapis and cinnabar. During the day her father would let no one bother it; at night she would find ways to bring it to her room and keep it safe.

  For three days the plan worked. Each evening Sophia carried the box to her room where she opened the lid to be sure no one had disturbed it. Each time, a new picture revealed itself to her. The first time it had been a porthole window in the cabin of a sailing vessel. Then she saw a man dressed in the quality robes of a wealthy merchant; he was handing the box to a beautiful woman who sat at a dressing table filled with trinkets and jewelry. The woman gazed at the box until the man left the room, then she set it aside and turned back to arranging combs in her light yellow hair.

  The next night Sophia saw the box inside a palace formed of many buildings in concentric squares, a place with blue roofs that tilted upward at the corners. Women with pale, smooth skin and dark eyes that appeared half shut wore garments made of long pieces of brightly colored silk that they wrapped elaborately around themselves. Soft-spoken male servants lived among these quiet women who, it seemed, all belonged to one man. This emperor spent very little time with the young woman who held the box to her chest at night. In another scene this woman had apparently died, a male servant handed the carved box off to a trader and told him to take it far away from the forbidden city. Sophia tried to imagine where in the world that might be.

  The next time, Sophia saw the box inside an elaborate white marble hall. The dark eyes of the women in this place were rimmed with black and each lady had a dot of red centered on her forehead. The carved box held spices of some sort. For a tiny moment Sophia caught the scent of them, foreign and exotic. Someone carried the box to a cooking area where an old woman in white took small pinches of the spice and sprinkled it into a flat pan that bubbled with some sort of sauce.

  After that, Sophia observed a dusty city where camels roamed the streets, then a crowded bazaar with men in turbans arguing loudly over the prices of everything from cloth to vegetables. The box had become the object of one such discussion. After that, it sat in a tea shop in Venice. Sophia recognized the city from a description one of Abran’s artist friends had given—a magical place of canals and palaces and narrow alleys and many bridges, and the boats! Oh, the boats! She came to treasure those few minutes before she fell asleep each night with the box resting snugly against her, a time when she felt as if she were in another w
orld.

  * * *

  Abran was stroking tiny lines of nearly white paint onto the yellow curls of Simón Borega’s youthful image when Sophia edged quietly into the studio.

  “I’m out of linseed oil,” her father said, not taking his eyes or his brush from the canvas. “Please stop in at Madrigo’s shop this morning and get some.”

  Sophia thought of the four bedrooms in which the beds were still unmade, changes of clothing left lying about. Certainly Maria Borega would want those attended to before Sophia went out on errands. On the other hand, her father could not continue his work beyond a certain point without the linseed oil. She could dash to the shop quickly and return to her housework within the hour.

  A stiff breeze fluttered her skirts as she stepped into the narrow street. The trees had begun to leaf out and a few blossoms showed tentatively on the large oleander bush at the corner. Spring. Nervous weather, to match the unsettled minds of the populace. Only last week she had overheard two women speaking in whispers in the market square. A neighbor had been called before the Inquisition, along with his entire family, and none had been seen at home since that day. When anyone spoke of it, images came to mind of dank, black prison cells somewhere. In other cities, rumor had it that people had been burned at the stake. Sophia turned her eyes downward now as she passed two priests who seemed deep in conversation.

  Madrigo’s shop was only three blocks farther. Her steps quickened.

  The old man who ran the shop was nowhere in sight but his daughter came from an inner room at the sound of the small bell on the door. Although they were close in age, Sophia didn’t know her and they transacted their business hastily and with a minimum of conversation. It was sad, Sophia reflected as she thanked the woman and walked out, that everyone was so wary these days. But to discuss anything other than the weather was fraught with danger. Even admiring the dress of a passing stranger might somehow be interpreted as sympathizing with one of the forbidden religions. You never knew who might pass along your comments and how they might be received. Best to stay uninvolved.