The Woodcarver's Secret (Samantha Sweet Mysteries) (6 page)

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.

“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 world.

*
* *

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.