“They’re mine as much as his,” Colette said flatly. She angled the ring so that he could make out the inscription on the inside. J’y suis, j’y reste.
Matt took it from her. Everything inside him hushed. Four hundred years ago, his rough, dangerous, mercenary ancestor out of Italy had sworn his fate to such a little, little hand. He could barely squeeze it on the tip of his pinky.
“He was talking to her,” Colette said quietly. “When he said that. Not making a vow on behalf of all his descendants to tie them to some chunk of land. He was making a promise to her, his ring on her finger: I am here and here I’ll stay.”
It moved him so much, so suddenly, that his eyes stung, and he took a quick breath to get that under control, since he would never live it down if he let it show.
Colette watched him a moment, letting him look at the ring, and then eased it out of his hand. “This one’s not for you, Matthieu,” she said quietly. “I hope you understand. I think one of your cousins will need it more.”
He wished they could give it to Lucien. Just hand it to their long-lost cousin like a weight, like a vow, like a thing that reeled him home and anchored him here: J’y suis, j’y reste. It’s the person that matters, not who your father was.
Niccolò had been illegitimate, too.
“The seal Niccolò created,” Colette said, after she’d hidden the ring away again, “says something completely different.”
Matt looked down at it again in his left palm. With his thumb, he stroked the chain away to reveal that exquisite enamel, so clearly his valley, although empty of roses—just the shape of the hills, the river running through it.
He turned it over to show the gold seal on the other side. Two rose bushes growing out of the ground, twining together, reaching higher and higher, escaping the mountains that framed them, up into the symbolic heavens of the edge of the seal. They twined together to make one bloom, in the center of the upper half of the oval. Along the bottom edge, where the bushes grew out of the ground, curved the words: Quivi s’incomincia.
As exposed as he’d been to Latin, through all the old-fashioned Masses his grandmother took them to, and Italian, through their own proximity to the border, and Provençal, with its roots sunk deep into both languages, and of course, French, it was easy enough to make out the translation, however archaic the wording: It all starts here.
He could only stare at it, as the words seemed to expand and expand inside him until they pressed against the hills that framed the valley, until they pressed against the outermost limits of his heart and still kept trying to make it expand even bigger.
It all starts here.
Not where he was bound, but where he began.
I’ll give my family roots, Niccolò’s seal said. And from them, they’ll grow as big as they can.
He ran his thumb over the words, over the roses rising out of the ground, up to the bloom, pressing that smooth enamel of the valley on the other side more deeply into his skin.
“I’d like to give it to her, but now I think I can’t,” Tante Colette said softly. “I think if she ever receives a gift like that, it will have to come from you.”
He looked from the pendant to his old aunt, trying so hard not to flush, trying so hard not to let his eyes sting.
Colette reached out an old, old hand and closed his big, young, strong fist around the seal. “Because it’s your valley,” she said quietly. “And it’s you.”
“Aww, hell.” Matt bent his head into his hands, the seal and chain pressing against his forehead. “Tante Colette.”
She patted his shoulder, this rare, precious touch from a woman who was not that emotive. “It’s all right, Matthieu. You’re strong enough to be a valley and to be bigger than a valley, and I’ve always been very proud of you, that inside that much strength, you keep such a tender heart.”
Chapter 21
Peace pressed up against Layla from the ancient village. Matt had brought her to the top of the world. They strolled through little cobblestone streets. A wall of ivy framed pale blue shutters. A sundial was painted dusty gold against an ochre wall, with some saying in Provençal she couldn’t understand. Flowers grew up the walls between old painted doors and in pots on balconies and on the edge of fountains. Children ran through streets with cartables, those square French book bags, as they came home from school, stopping to play in a playground set in the middle of a garden off the central place. A sign over a shuttered shop proclaimed Huiles d’olive de région.
She and Matt reached a little church at the top of the town, surrounded by an old cemetery, and stood on a stone terrace beyond the cemetery, gazing over the Côte d’Azur.