Weekly dinners had been Vessa’s suggestion.
She had made it with her typical matter-of-fact pragmatism: they were neighbors, they were friends, they had five years of shared history and an ongoing interest in each other’s welfare, and there was no particular reason why any of that should require formal occasion to express itself.
Sundays suited them both.
This Sunday, when Signora Sera came in to clear their plates at half past eight, the dinner conversation had gone quiet.
Quiet was not unusual — they had always moved easily between speech and silence together — but tonight’s quiet was different.
The dishes were cleared. The Signora made herself scarce. Outside, the fountain conducted its usual commentary in the direction of the dark garden.
“That tapestry,” Vessa said.
“Hm?” Beltran looked up from wherever he had been.
“Have you decided where to hang it?”
“Hang what?”
She looked at him.
“The tapestry,” she said.
“Ah.” His expression went slightly wry. “Yes. Would you like to see?”
“Alright.”
He led her up the familiar stairs to a familiar room. She stopped in the doorway.
Vessa had known the study in every hour and every season. She had not known it like this: lamplight, the shelves organized differently, the desk where she had worked for five years carrying the comfortable disorder of someone else’s mind.
He crossed to her desk, which was his now, and she followed and leaned against the front of it, beside him.
The tapestry hung on the opposite wall. She looked at it for a moment. Then at him, from the corner of her eye.
He was looking at it, too.
“Mm.” She lifted the small glass of cordial she’d carried up from the dining room. “A piece of your favorite place in the middle of your least favorite. Does it help?”
He chuckled, low and genuine. “Not really.” A pause. “Almost makes it worse sometimes.”
“Hm,” she said, a laugh.
“Thank you,” he said, “for this.”
She smiled. “You should thank Ginevra, too. She’s the one who had to keep you out of the east fields last spring when the artist came.”
Beltran turned to look at her. “You mean—”
“Mhm.”
“—the thing with the goats—”
“Mhm,” she said again, a little smug.
He laughed — fully, his hand going to the back of his head, fingers raking through his dark hair.
“I should have known,” he said. “They’re terrible actors, you know.”
“The goats?”
“No, the—” He laughed again. “Well, yes, them too.”
She smiled. He shook his head once, still smiling, and looked back at the tapestry.
It was well-positioned. The direct afternoon light would not reach it there, which would keep the color longer. She had not expected him to know this. She revised: she had not expected him to think of it.
“You chose a good place for it,” she told him.
“Varo chose it,” he said.
“Ah.”
Her eyes slid to the corner of the room she had been avoiding — Varo’s desk, neat and vacant in the lamplight — and caught there.
Beltran was looking at the tapestry. Outside, beyond the dark gardens, the winter wheat was moving through the last of its unreasonable green, tipping slowly toward gold. Here too, that green, rendered in cloth, had transformed, reading warmer under the low lamplight.
In the city, in the palazzo occupied by the delegation, the Envoy was likely going about her business. Taking notes, perhaps, or planning a visit to the dyehouse she had mentioned. He wondered when their paths might naturally cross again, and he reminded himself of the shrinking timeline — less than two seasons and the delegation would be gone.
“Beltran?”
Vessa’s voice.
“Hm?” The syllable felt slow, his attention returning from a distance.
“Do you think—” She hesitated. “When we meet people. Through some—through a particular arrangement. A role. A context.” She paused. “Do you think it determines what they can become to you?”
He pulled his eyes from the tapestry. She was looking at the glass in her hand.
“I’ve been thinking about it,” she said. “Whether the way we meet someone—what we need from them, or what they need from us—whether that sets the terms. And whether the terms can be later... revised.”
Beltran shifted, leaning more fully against the desk behind them and into the conversation.
“I think,” he said slowly, “that what we first see in a person is usually real. It’s not false just because it’s partial.”
He looked at the tapestry. The fingers of his free hand tapped against the edge of the desk.
“But you’re right,” he continued. “There are—terms—there always are. And I think the terms—they direct attention. You see what they make visible… and—”
“—and you miss the rest,” she supplied.
“Maybe. Maybe you forget to look,” he said, looking at her. “Or maybe, sometimes, you see it all at once, which carries its own… set of terms.”
He had never said this aloud, never expressed it except in his private musings. It surfaced now with a pained smile.
She was not looking at him. Her eyes were fixed on the cordial in her hands. She had not drunk any of it.
“What if—” she said. “What if you never looked?”
Beltran’s eyes went to the tapestry, unseeing, his throat suddenly thick.
He hadn’t looked, not when it mattered.
She had gone from stranger to trusted comrade so quickly, so completely. It was only looking back that he had seen it — that she had wanted more, and that he’d had nothing to give her, and that she had moved on.
Beside him, Vessa set down her glass — too hard. He flinched.
Her next words were almost a whisper. “What if it’s too late?”
His hands had gone clammy, one clutching the desk, the other holding his glass.
She had moved on.
He thought she had moved on.
Breath shallow, he forced himself to look at her. Her arms were wrapped around her waist. He couldn’t read her expression.
“Vessa.”
Nothing. He lifted his hand to reach for her.
“Vessa, I—”
“Varo plays cards.”
Beltran froze. Blinked. “V—what?”
“Fridays,” she said. The word was small. “He plays cards on Fridays. With three friends he’s had since university.” She looked at him, finally. “Did you know that?”
Beltran exhaled slowly, fully. This wasn’t about him at all. His hand returned to the edge of the desk, looser this time.
“No,” he said. “I didn’t know that.”
“No… but then, you didn’t work as closely with him.” She looked at Varo’s desk. “I haven’t any excuse.”
He waited, watching her face, the way her teeth worked her lower lip.
“Five years, Beltran, and I never knew he had friends. I never once wondered. I never even thought to look.”
He knew this guilt. He had never expected to see it in her.
She picked up her cordial and finished it.
A moment later, he did the same.
Beltran remained in the office long after Vessa had gone, staring at Varo’s desk, sitting with the things she had said.
Roles. Context. Terms.
He laughed to himself — at himself — running a hand over his face before looking up at the tapestry. He had been thinking about those fields all day — about the Envoy, when he might happen across her again, and how long she had left in the city.
Roles. Context. Terms.
He had been thinking about it all wrong.
Author's Note
I'll be taking a short break to catch up on some writing. I will be switching to publishing on Wednesdays when I return on July 15. Thanks for your patience!
Coming Wednesday, July 15
Chapter Eighteen
Or, With Dust on the Hem
Image
Design for a Frame, 1680–1720 (public domain)