The Shadow Conspiracy II

by Phyllis Irene Radford

  When other helpers fail, and comforts flee,

  Help of the helpless, O abide with me.

  Swift to its close ebbs out life’s little day;

  Earth’s joys grow dim, its glories pass away;

  Change and decay in all around I see;

  O Thou, Who changest not, abide with me.

  Henry Francis Lyte

  (1793-1847)

  “Look! Tell me what you see!”

  So many dreams had begun with those simple words, spoken in her father’s low tenor voice. This time Aidan saw the field of grasses and wildflowers before her, rippling like reflections off moving water. She was so tiny and the grass so tall, she was running through a forest of stars.

  She had been so young then, not even six years old. Her father’s hair had been as vividly red as her own. Sean Cornick was slender in the peasant’s smock he wore while painting. The man’s hands easily clamped the thin wand of his camera lucida to his drawing board. The small, polished crystal lens and half-silvered mirror was jaunty like a hair pick ornament, tilted to take advantage of the light and the scene before them. To be able to see both the paper and the scene before you in good focus was such a blessing!

  Aidan was better at sitting for him than the other children, and so there were more paintings and drawings of her from her childhood. All he had to do was ask her to sit down and describe what she could see, and she was caught up in the living story around her, telling him of dogs and birds and insects. Later, she learned to describe each flower, each tree...and finally, she learned to describe the shadows, their dark intensity and depth of color.

  Her father’s father had been a watchmaker, and all his sons had learned a bit of the trade, enough to fix a good mantel clock. Father had learned more — he learned to make tiny gears, cut from sheet metal, polished to a fine gloss by a set of delicate files. He understood weight and counter-weight, how to safely wind devices, and he loved to build toys for his children.

  But he was an artist — he had a gift for making a face so real you wanted to reach out and touch it, and his landscapes invited the viewer to step inside and feel the warmth of the sun, or the bite of the wind. All he wanted to do was draw and paint, so when arthritis entered his life at a young age, he put his toy skills to work — and created his first mechanical arm.

  Painting was how he earned his bread, so Sean Cornick taught all his children to paint, enough so his sons could be traveling portrait painters if they wished, and his daughter could teach art to young ladies of talent. His second son, Samuel, loved the toys and the clocks, so in the end he was apprenticed to his uncle who had inherited the clock business. Her oldest brother, Owen, ran the gallery, selling artwork from the walls and easels and taking commissions right up until the final month of their father’s life. Sean was a rector and Benjamin a banker — she thought John would end up a professor, and Charles? Well, they would see with Charles.

  Aidan simply loved working with her Da. She had not cared if it was art or machines; she wanted to be there, learning everything her father would teach her. Now she remembered her first gear, cut when her father was away from home, a hair thicker than it needed to be, but her father had whistled when he saw the tiny wheel balanced on the tip of her finger.

  “And you did that without spectacles? Child, you were born to build calculating machines!” he’d said, taking the tiny brass fitting and studying it under his magnifying glass. “You’re the one I need cutting the pattern cards for my arm, because I can’t grip my tools like I used to.”

  Calculating machines were all well and good, but it was unlikely that anyone would hire a chit of a girl to build difference engines, much less automata. Ada Lovelace was a genius, they said — and the wife of a lord, daughter of the notorious Lord Byron. She could work magic with numbers, and had built automata that put Sean Cornick’s toys to shame.

  No one thought badly of Ada Lovelace because she built beautiful automata. No one thought her common, or masculine, because she loved to bring gears and pulleys to life. “Don’t be silly, Aidan,” Owen had said once. “Father’s a gentleman. The daughter of a gentleman is not in trade.”

  Aidan felt the silky brass fingers and polished wood under her fingers, as she wound up her father’s arm extender. The device would hold the brush he could no longer grip. Pushing the crank key just so far and no more...her father’s soft chuckle of pleasure filled her ears, and she moved back to her own drawing board, trying to master the camera lucida he had bought for her and Owen to use....

  Her eyes opened, tears slipping from beneath her long lashes. The past three nights had been filled with dreams of him, in his youth and in his prime, the artist and the amateur builder of automata devices — old before his time, dead before he got to hold her children.

  Her mourning dress had arrived last night. They would bury him today, with a proper church service for her mother’s sake, and then a funeral dinner for his friends and family.

  Oh, Da, I see Mother’s broken heart. Sitting up in bed, she wiped the tears from her face, and took a deep breath. Her mother needed her — the only surviving daughter, the one who had kept things moving the past few days. But when everyone went home...I’m coming, she promised the painting she was working on. I need you as much as you need me.

  The housemaid opened up the parlour while they were at the graveside, airing out the sweet smell of decay. Beeswax and bayberry candles took the last of the mustiness and death from the room. By the time the family returned to the house, the fragrance of baked ham and fruit pies told them that everything was ready for visitors.

  Their mother stayed in her morning room, receiving only family and the oldest of friends. Aidan handled most of the neighbours, her brothers and sisters-by-law useful for taking the most persistent in hand.

  Such a tragedy; he was so young, she heard over and over. Can your mother survive this? She was so devoted to him, was another popular refrain. People hinting at what had he died from — sins of his artistic youth come back to haunt him, perhaps? No one knew their mother had been his model, in Paris — that was a very dark secret, indeed. They had found each other early, and so Father had not indulged in the vices of so many of his contemporaries.

  By late afternoon, when the last straggler was politely nudged out the door, Aidan had a raging headache and was dying to escape to the studio. Her mother was the only one who noticed, and gave her daughter a cup of tea and permission to “disappear.” Aidan took advantage of both: the strong Irish tea cleared away most of her headache, and simply changing into her old, paint-splattered housedress was an amazing relief.

  “It is here, with my fingers daubed with paint, that I know my happiness is complete.” Aidan could almost hear her father say the words.

  The sun was still above the foothills when she walked back to the studio, swinging the Dutch doors wide to let in the light and air she craved. Home. This is truly home. Later she would look through her father’s last works, see what could be framed and sold — at a premium, of course, for there would be no more Sean Cornick paintings — but for now, she would finish the drawing she was working on.

  Standing in the doorway surveying the studio, ready to open the windows in back, Aidan heard a scratching sound. She grew rigid with indignation. Had a rat gotten into the studio? They were so careful never to leave food out here. Had one damaged any of the paintings? They would gnaw on anything for salt, even the paintbrush handles.

  Moving quickly, Aidan threw open the back windows, swinging them wide to let more light into the studio. Grabbing a lamp, she lit a wick and then settled the chimney over the candle, lifting it high to seek the source of the noise. Past the table with its cheerful jumble of ancient ceramics, over near her father’s chair —

  Aidan stopped, staring at her father’s tilted easel, its camera lucida still clamped to board and paper. The mechanical arm was always attached to the right of the lap table and chair, carrying the majority of the weight, long articulating limbs reac
hing around like a spider to be carefully guided by her father’s aching hand. The sketch had barely been started when her father, still woven into his mechanical arm, had collapsed over his easel.

  There had been a storm that night, the reason the studio was locked up so tightly. But someone had run out very late to close the windows. Otherwise, all had remained untouched, the candle guttered in its holder, and the arm still attached to the easel....

  The scratching came from the arm itself. The pencil lead had been worn down to rough wood, creasing the heavy pressed paper. But the drawing had reached the end of its first stage...the outlines were there, the placement of tiny marks as anchors to locate items in space. How...?

  “Look! Tell me what you see!”

  Without actually willing it, Aidan raised her hand to touch the lower arm of the automaton, stilling its motion. The scratching stopped, the expansion of springs in the wrist joint silenced. Lifting her lamp high, Aidan studied the sketch. There were rounded strokes taken from the camera lucida’s wavering, reversed image, filling out the bowls into symmetry. The depth of the table from that angle was clearly shown, with long lines and cross-hatching indicating intensity of lights and darks. Everything as her father liked it, before he switched from pencil to paint.

  When did Owen have time...

  But the picture screamed her father’s name — it had the full, open strokes that came from years of working to free up his arm, the focus on the intensity of light on the beautiful glazes of the Tang, Song and Yuan dynasty bowls arranged at multiple levels on the table. Her brother neither drew nor painted in their father’s style — Owen’s work was as meticulous and detail-oriented as their father’s was lush and shadowed.

  As he had aged, Sean Cornick’s weighty pieces of color and shadow had darkened. I can no longer see bright colour, Aidan, he had admitted to her once, sorrow etching his face. My eyes grow dark. Now, removed from the grave, the funeral, and the emptiness of the house deprived of her father’s laughter, Aidan knew that since she could not have given her father back the ability to see his beloved colours, she could be glad he had died before he completely lost his sight.

  Reaching for the pencil box, Aidan fumbled until she found another hard lead pencil, sharpened and ready to work. She pulled out the worn pencil from the mechanical hand, strapping in the fresh one between thumb and fingers. The mechanical arm remained motionless.

  “The drawing is complete,” she reminded herself aloud. “Now, paint is needed.” She hesitated...there was still enough daylight to work, but her father had wanted morning light for this particular painting. Still....

  Owen would probably have gone home, or over to the solicitor’s office. Would he have shut the studio back up so tightly?

  It was the camera lucida that should not be moved — realigning it once it was moved would be almost impossible. The arm, however, could move between several easels. Aidan thought a bit, and then carefully unclamped the arm, moving it over to the easel she’d set up for the same picture. Once the arm was firmly attached to the easel, a new pencil clenched in the artificial fingers made with brass riveted joints and heavy silk padding for skin, Aidan carefully wound up the mechanism. Then she turned her back on the automaton and went to open the rest of the shutters.

  Her own painting was also planned for morning light, but the sketch could grow under any reasonable level of illumination. Could the arm work with a different camera lucida? How did it finish that drawing? It could not be connected to the lucida lens, could it?

  The obvious connection had been her father, year after year, using one device to give the other something to record. What could that mean to the connections within, the patterns that had worn deeper, recording his movements over and over, his methods for beginning a landscape, a still life, a portrait —

  The slightest hint of a creak, as if a piece of jewellery was twisting, a watch case snapping open or shut...

  Aidan walked back to her chair. The hand was circling, moving across the paper, not touching the sketch, but as if aware that lines had already been placed on the page...not in the order it preferred, but finding nothing it wished to change...the arm lowered, the pencil flowing across the paper, rounding a swiftly-drawn crescent into the true depth of the Tang bowl on the table.

  Her left hand rose to her face, fingers pressed tightly to her lips. Had her father been working on a drawing automaton, and not told her? Perhaps he had told Samuel, who knew the most among all the children about constructing automata? She stood there as the sunlight reached farther into the studio, the shadows lengthening. The sounds of birdsong and farm animals faded into the distance...only the light scratching of the pencil echoed through the small building.

  A thought was growing in the back of Aidan’s mind. Her memory fled back to the house, to her mother’s boudoir, where a rare painting of her father’s hung. A dark painting, the shadows rich with deep colour. The words Marley’s Ghost were inscribed in brass and attached to the frame. Scrooge in his pajamas and nightcap, the flames of the fire visible through the spectre... There had been many lively discussions in their family, especially closer to Christmas, when it was said that spirits walked.

  Perhaps not a drawing automaton.... Could their father have...lingered?

  “All art is a lie,” she whispered aloud, quoting her father. “Good art is a lie that makes us see the Truth.”

  “Owen, you haven’t been out in the studio since father died, have you?” Aidan paid attention to her teapot as she asked the question. The water was still quite hot, the fragrance of jasmine easing the tight places in her throat and chest.

  Her brother flicked a glance at her over the top of his newspaper. Owen had her father’s long, lean-hound body, but not the flaming hair — his was as dark as his eyes. “Not at all. Why?”

  “Because someone finished the preliminary sketch of the still life he had just started when he died.”

  Owen lowered the paper. “We have a trespasser? Did they damage the drawing?”

  “The drawing seems fine,” Aidan said quickly, knowing that Owen’s accountant mind would be concerned about damage to property. “Actually, I’m wondering...did Father ever mention creating a drawing arm to sell? One that could teach the basics of setting up a composition?”

  “He did not mention it to me. We could ask Samuel.” Owen reached for his own tea, and Aidan poured the last of the hot water into his personal teapot. “That would be a very useful tool.”

  “Yes,” Aidan agreed. “Even a drawing instructor could benefit from it, helping to polish some basic strokes in a new student without losing clientele to the device.”

  “After breakfast, you should show me this,” Owen said abruptly.

  She’d known that he would want to see the work — but she had to know if any of the people capable of creating that drawing had done so. “Of course.” The others had not been in the studio. But had Owen?

  Aidan did not immediately realize her mistake. She could tell that her brother saw how much more advanced the drawing was from when they’d discovered their father’s body — he actually started when he saw the drawing. His next move was to sit down where the arm was currently set up. When he started to move the arm, it was stiff, resisting him.

  “It may have run down,” Aidan said quickly. “Let me wind it and get a new piece of paper.” Testing the spring under her fingers, she gave it three twists to get it back to its optimal point.

  Owen ignored the camera lucida and tried to move the mechanical arm. Again, the arm seemed to resist him.

  Aidan pulled out a new sheet of smooth white paper and reached for the clamps holding her drawing in place.

  “Just leave it, I can draw on that,” he said abruptly, twisting his head around to examine the joint on the arm. “It’s not moving.”

  “The drawing is complete. This is paper for a preliminary sketch for a painting, not paper for an actual drawing,” Aidan reminded him. I think the arm only helps for what you’re trying t
o accomplish. Then it stops. But she did not say the last aloud — it sounded absurd.

  “What do you mean, complete? What’s that got to do with it?”

  “Well, if this is for beginners, it would want to also keep you from over-working a drawing....” Her voice trailed off at his expression. “I was just trying to figure out how the drawing was finished, Owen.”

  He stood up, pushing the easel away from himself. “I don’t have time for this now. If you figure out how it works, demonstrate it for Samuel. I need to make sure that father’s investments have guaranteed mother’s future.” And your own, he did not say, but she heard anyway.

  Their father had not allowed her to enter polite society. You’re too young, lass, he’d say, shaking his head. When I know you have your mother’s eye for a rogue, and can protect yourself, then you can watch for the right one to spend your life with....

  Aidan did not have any interest in arguing with her brothers about suitors. The sooner she found her own drawing students, the better she would feel. She was the best artist of Sean Cornick’s descendants, better even than Sean Junior, who had the most leisure time to paint. But would galleries be willing to carry her works? Would her brother be able to show them without letting his own jealousy leak through? He’d taken over the business because his skills as an artist were competent at best. Will you show my paintings next to yours, brother?

  Once Owen had rushed off to his work, Aidan found herself setting up a new still life. She added several varieties of apples and grapes, knowing possible spoilage would force her to work quickly. Then she moved the mechanical arm to the third, comfortable chair, arranging a fresh canvas on the adjustable easel. After carefully marking the position of her camera lucida on her drawing, she moved it as well, attaching it so the sunlight streaming through it perfectly allowed her to simultaneously view the still life and the sanded surface of her gessoed canvas.