SenyoraSuaumama

Senyora Suaumama

Ah yes, that Painting. It never fails to bring a smile.

That is me as an infant with Senyora Suaumama, my dida, you call her a wetnurse. She was also my first tutor. She was a very kind and generous woman; exquisitely warm and affectionate. She read to me between feeding sessions when I was an infant and in the painting you can see me reading her just a few months later. Did you know that I could read and talk before I could walk? Even as an baby I was a great philosopher.

The painting was only properly displayed once, during the Feast of Sant Benedict on the year of my birth. There was an entire set of family portraits unveiled, of which this was but one. During the feast there was an incident, one of the sort that happen when gossip and jealousy raise their ugly heads at such affairs. By the end of it Mother had been raised to such a state of agitation and anger that she ordered that all of the guests were to leave immediately and that all of the decorations and paintings were to be destroyed.

The next day my dida was dismissed. It was said that the Senyora was taking improprieties, though the details were never made clear to me and I was too small to understand at the time. In my heart of hearts, though, I fear it was a mother’s jealousy that was my dida’s undoing. The Duchess, my mother, took over the Senyora’s duties after she left.

I found the painting years later at my family’s estate in Lyonesse. A servant, either through kindness or laziness, had simply taken down and stored the paintings rather than destroying them. I took it with me when I moved my residence to Valentin and hung it above the mantel to remind me of my youth and to lighten my mood when it is dark. Being evermindful of decorum I always take it down if the Duchess is to be in attendence.

The Senyora? Some say that she took holy orders after she was dismissed. Others say she was killed by bandits. I have always hoped that she travelled to a foreign land and after many adventures married a prince, but that is just my own imagining.

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