She felt unaccountably breathless as she reached her studio; she had not raced up the stairs, and she made the climb so often she was used to it. Doing her best to appear confident, she went out into the center of the large room, half-twirling, her arms extended to the sides. “Look around you. I’ve been busy while you were gone, Count.” The sound of the rain on the skylight beat a gentle tattoo, and the muted light made all the shadows soft and blurred.
“So you have,” he agreed as he halted at the top of the stairs to look around. The studies of the barges were propped against the walls all about the room. “Fourteen of them?” he asked when he had looked around.
“Fifteen. I have one on the easel,” she said, nodding to the smaller of two easels. “The other is your portrait.” She paused, trying to gather her nerve to show it to him.
“Are you going to show it to me?” he asked when she made no move toward it.
She hesitated. “I don’t know how you’ll like it.”
He smiled his encouragement. “Nor do I.” He tried to soothe her growing apprehension, saying, “And you will be the better judge of your success than I will, Rowena. You have your talent to guide you, and I have . . . nothing. Remember, I have not seen my reflection for four
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thousand years, and I must place myself in your hands for accuracy. If you want a strict critic, you must show it to Roger.” He chuckled. “I’ve contented myself with paintings and sketches over that time, perforce.”
The rain-filtered light from the ceiling windows greyed the colors of everything around them, making the paintings seem less vivid than they were. Rowena was suddenly grateful for this, certain that this muted light would give the portrait a kinder glow than the full brilliance of the sun.
“That’s right; you’ve no reflection, and no photographic image.” She nodded in a rush of understanding. “I forgot how it is with vampires,” she said, meaning she had not actually believed it.
“So anything you show me will be a revelation,” he encouraged her. “Unless you have given me white hair and a beak of a nose, or dripping fangs, for that matter, I will be delighted.”
She recognized his description as the first one of Count Dracula in the novel, and shook her head. “None of those.” Before her nervousness made things any worse, she took the corner of the drape and tossed it back over the canvas. “It isn’t finished,” she said quickly, “but it is getting there.”
He came up to it slowly. “Ah,” he said softly, impressed at what he saw. “I may not know my own face, but I recognize your perceptiveness, and some of your intent,” he said after a long silence.
Against a sketchy background of tall conifers and the suggestion of mountains, Ragoczy’s face held the eye: the left side of the canvas was light, the right side in shadow, s6 that half his features were not clear but for the smoldering darkness of his eye, and beyond it, black on dark, was his eclipse device; the details of that side of his face were lost, but the line of his brow, cheek, and jaw could be seen. Although obscured, there was very little sinister in that part of his face. On the lighted side, his strong forehead and fine eyebrow emphasized his penetrating gaze; the tone of his skin was olive-cast but pale. The highlight on his cheek caught something of the angularity of his features, as did the line of his slightly askew nose. The dark waves of his hair were suggested in broad, neat brushstrokes, as was the soft roll of his collar against his neck. There was something in the expression that spoke of compassion and incalculable loneliness.
“I haven’t got the mouth right, or the nasal-labial fold,” she said, frowning a bit and using the end of a brush handle to indicate these parts of the portrait. “I saw some photos of Etruscan funerary figures,” she went on, “and I noticed a similarity in that part of the face; not the smirk, but something about the cast of the features, an angle, something
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in the proportions, the lines of the skull.” She gave a short sigh to punctuate her frustration. “But I haven’t got it right yet.”
Ragoczy could not quite smile. “It’s not surprising that there is a similarity. The Etruscans were the only descendants of my people to survive. They went westward into the north of Italy to escape what we could not. They were unable to escape the Romans, however.” He continued to stare at the painting, trying to reconcile what he saw there with what he had come to think about himself. “Rowena? Do I really look like that?” he wondered aloud.
“Well,” she said, nonplused by his question, “this is a painted portrait, not a photographic one”—she gave a single chuckle—“and so I have given emphasis to parts of your face that the camera, if it could capture you, would not. The lighting is also not quite what you would actually find in nature; it is too highly contrasted, more what a spotlight would do instead of the sun. The parchment-like quality of your skin is difficult to show, and the kinds of lines in your face are . . . they’re like strong lines that have been smoothed or partially erased.” She paused, puzzled at her own assessment, then resumed, more confidently. “I have taken advantage of the somewhat Slavic lift to your cheeks and brows, for example, and put more contrast in the shadow of your eyes, but otherwise, except for the mouth, it is a fairly accurate likeness. The color of your eyes is difficult to capture, a sort of blackness that is actually blue, but darker than any blue can be.” She shook her head once. “Something about the mouth eludes me.”
“Does it.” He looked from the portrait to Rowena.
Her pulse jumped to a faster tempo. “Surprising, isn’t it?” She did her best to maintain a bantering tone with him. “You would think that I would know it well enough to paint it, but no such luck. Perhaps I know so much that I can’t put all of it in the portrait.” She tried to make light of this with a flip of her hand, but did not succeed.
He did not reply at first; he looked again at the portrait. “I don’t know what to say; I cannot comment on its accuracy, but ...” He paused thoughtfully, then asked, without turning from the image on the canvas, “Are you showing me what you see in me, Rowena? Or are you showing me what you think I want to see?” The questions took them both by surprise.
She considered her answer carefully. “More the former than the latter, but I don’t see how I could escape some of wanting to show you what you want. I am an artist, and you are my lover.”
It was the first time she had acknowledged him as her lover, and it
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took him a moment to think of what to say. “It is a humbling thing, to see a reflection of yourself in another’s soul.”
“You make it easy to do,” she said glibly, to avoid saying what was really on her mind.
He understood her ploy. “You do not need to flatter me, Rowena, not this way, not any way, ever.” The deep, musical note was back in his voice.
“I’m not flattering you,” she said emphatically “Not exactly,” she appended under the impact of his eyes. “Perhaps I am trying to show what it is that. . . attracts me to you. I don’t know if I can paint it, but I am trying.”
“If that is for you and not for me, then I wish you every success; if it is intended to sway me, then do not trouble yourself.” His features softened as he saw distress come into her face. “Do not assume the worst, my cherished one. That was not my intention. I did not mean to offend you, Rowena. If I did, I apologize most repentantly. You are the one who paints, not I.” He had, in fact, occasionally painted in the past but knew that at best he was a skilled dabbler, more gifted at making pigments than applying them to wood or canvas—his real talents lay in music, alchemy and healing, and he had long since come to accept this about himself.
She could think of nothing to say as she put the drape back over the canvas; she began to amble about her studio as if browsing, all the while striving to bring her thoughts into order once more. Finally she stopped walking and said, as she looked out the small rear window to the rooftop behind her, “Si
nce I’ve been in Amsterdam. I have had my family on my mind a great deal, all my family Not missing them, exactly—more like trying to sort them out. I’ve tried to remember about how it was when Arthur drowned, and what it was like when Penelope was born. I’ve thought a great deal about my mother and her father, of course. This last week I’ve been remembering my paternal grandmother, for some reason. I never knew my mother’s mother but my father’s lived with us after she was widowed.”
“Oh?” said Ragoczy to indicate he was listening without intruding on her memories.
“She was a famous invalid, and had been for many years.” Rowena cocked her head on the side. “She often declared she hated being incapacitated, but I noticed more than once what pride she took in having the whole family accommodate her; all our plans at Longacres were contingent upon her. When my grand-father died, she said that if she
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had been able she would have danced for joy. Everyone said it was a jest, but I was sure she meant it.”
Ragoczy saw the confusion in her demeanor, and he said, “They were not well-matched, your fathers parents?”
Her laughter was short and mirthless. “I should think not,” she exclaimed. “It was arranged, all quite suitable, except that my grandfather was one of those self-indulgent gentlemen who thought the world worked for his convenience; they were more common in my grand-fathers time, men who were lords of the earth, or so they believed. He indulged himself, going through what small amounts were left of the family fortune, and chafing at the restrictions his profligacy brought, blaming everyone and everything but himself for his misfortunes. My grand-mother said he was coarse and brutish. My father said only that he was thoughtless.” She tugged at the wide, dropped belt of her jacket. “Why am I telling you this? Why do I always tell you things?” “If you keep talking, you will probably find out,” he encouraged her. “I do this to you, don’t I? burden you with things that puzzle me.” She shrugged, her discomfort revealed in the stiffened angle of her shoulder. “Anyway, she complained of him often after he died, and of men in general. She said that it was the punishment of God that women had to bear children as they did, and that her children were her contrition. I told her once that she was being unkind. She said I knew nothing of unkindness, that men were cruel. She warned me to put no faith in men, for they were deceitful and lecherous. ‘Let his mistresses put up with his rutting. Let them be the objects of his bestial inclinations’, she said, with such disgust that I have never forgot it.” She shook her head. “It is silly to dwell on such things.”
“If it troubles you, it is not silly,” said Ragoczy, taking a step toward her. “She must have frightened you with her anger.”
“She said she was never angry, that she pitied him for having fallen so far from grace.” Rowena dared to look at him. “She said that religion saved her from anger, that without it, she would have been consumed with rage for what he did to her. God spared her that sin, or so she told me.”
“ ‘One who does not own his anger nurtures a murderer in his heart,’ or her heart,” Ragoczy quoted, adding the last with care.
“She said he would answer for the wrongs he had done before God; I came to feel that she expected God to provide her vindication, to do to my grand-father all the things my grand-mother had wanted to do.” She came up to him. “My parents might be a strange match, but my mother does not loathe my father.”
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Ragoczy took her hands in his; kissed one and then the other. “Their lives, whatever they may be, are not your life, my cherished Rowena. They are not you. Look at what you have done: you have no reason to fear you will end up like your father s mother. You are not she and your world is a very different place from hers.”
Without warning she began to weep; she leaned against him while the tears wrung her. She made no attempt to hold him, relying on him to keep her upright while her unexpected feelings tore through her. “It s hopeless, isn’t it?” she asked as she strove to contain her perplexing grief. “My grand-mother was bitter, but she was right that it is hopeless.” “Hopeless? No, I would not say so; difficult perhaps,” Ragoczy said as he kissed her hair. “Rowena, Rowena.”
This gesture of compassion brought renewed weeping; now she clung to his sleeves, her hands fixed in the fabric as if intent on rending the material asunder; there was nothing she could offer by way of apology. She pushed her head against his shoulder. “How can anyone endure it?” He did not ask her what she meant; in the last two thousand years he had learned better than that. He stroked her hair and held her while her sobs became shuddering breath and her eyes finally dried. Only when she gave a self-conscious nudge to his chest did he release her. “You have been through a great deal.”
She stared at him. “You say that? You?”
“I am the most likely of all to appreciate what you endure. I have seen much more than most what humankind does to itself.” He lowered his eyes and paused. “What you are doing takes courage, as much as facing the foe in battle.”
“But if it never changes, what hope is there?” she asked, her eyes filling with tears again.
“But the world does change. Oh, yes, very slowly, and occasionally catastrophically, but it does change. I know; I have seen it.” He put his arm around her, more companionably than lover-like. “Since you have told me about your paternal grand-mother, let me tell you about... an old friend. There was one of my blood who felt the same anguish you do. She came to my life in the first Christian century. The elder Titus Flavius Vespasianus was Caesar.” He did his best to put his thoughts in order. “She had survived a husband as bloody-minded as any I have ever encountered, and when she came to my life, she kept her independence, not wanting to be in the thrall of another man again. The law, which had given rights and protections to women in the glory-days of Rome, changed once the Christians became powerful, and over the centuries, she lost land, position, and the control of her fortune. But she
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endured it, and eventually she found ways to deal with the demands made of her, although she never liked having to. When she died the true death, in 1658, she had begun to reclaim much of what had been lost to her in the previous millennium.”
Rowena wiped at her eyes with her fingers. “And you tell me this so I can be grateful that my circumstances are so much improved?” Ragoczy shook his head. “No, Rowena,” he said sadly. “I would not mock you. No; I tell you of Olivia so that you will know that other women have endured what you are enduring. You do not stand alone.” She glared at him, her brow puckered in thought. “You will pardon me if I do not feel this is so, or that I find it less than comforting. Working here I have had time to think.” She folded her arms and made herself stand upright. “You make it harder for me, with your kind words and your encouragement. My grand-mother was more honest. She did not tell me that it would be possible for me to overcome the dictates of the world.”
“The dictates of the world,” said Ragoczy quietly. “Often they are unreasonable and harsh, but they support most of the people; that is why they are respected, and why they are clung to long after their usefulness is gone.” He moved away from her, going to the darkest end of the studio. “But they can never accommodate everyone, and I do not restrict my meaning to those of my blood. Those with vision are always beyond the dictates of the world, and you are no exception.” He turned around and looked at her, his penetrating gaze holding her as surely as if his arms were still supporting her. “Tell me: why have you continued to resist the life your family wants for you? It is not because they are evil, or bent on your destruction. They do not have your vision, and therefore are not cognizant of how you view the world. They truly have your best interests at heart, so far as they can perceive them. That they are limited by their lack of vision is unfortunate, but not perverse, any more than you are.”
“But is it worth it?” she cried out, her determination failing her.
He t
ook two steps toward her. “Only you can answer that; not now, but when you are old. Then you will know your answer.”
She cocked her head as she studied his face. “Do you never wonder about these things?”
He gave a single laugh. “Often. So often that I am bored with my wondering. Yet I cannot stop it.” He came nearer to her. “It is knowing human beings of vision that make my . . . life valuable to me.” At that he held up his hand. “The human capacity for vision continues to fascinate me.”
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“So you are studying me?” she asked, her voice sharper than before. “I am someone who will supply you with another vision? You will garner as much of the vision as you can, and then seek new ones.” She knew she was trying to force him away from her, and she felt powerless to cease.
“No.” His face and voice were filled with sorrow. “Three thousand years ago, I might have, but not now.”
“Then what?” she asked, no longer offended by his remarks.
“I love you.” This simple statement hung in the air between them as if each word were burning.
It was what she had wanted most to hear, but now that he had spoken the words aloud, she had to stop herself to keep from running down the stairs. “Oh, God,” she whispered. “You can’t. You don’t.”
“I can,” he promised her. “I do.”
“But...” Her confusion coalesced into a single “Why?”
Ragoczy could not keep back a one-sided smile: how often he had been asked that question over the centuries. At first it had troubled him, but now he recognized it as the sign of trust it was. “Love is not a matter of reason. But if I have to have a reason, it is because you are Rowena: what other reason is there to love anyone than for being who the person is?”
She tried to turn away from him, determined not to succumb to his presence, but was unable to keep from staring at him. “You will expect too much of me. You will want me to be . . . sworn to you. I will not do that; I’ve told you-4-”
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