Clearly terrified, Nola Clayton wiped her tearful eyes. ‘Yes Father, perfectly clear!’
Chapter Four
Eudora could not sleep that night; the air was hot and muggy, and she could not find a position of comfort in the airless confines of Gaia’s bedroom.
She had decided against leaving the gallery after she closed it. The traffic would undoubtedly be heavy, and she detested driving at the best of times. Gaia would not mind her sleeping over. It was always preferable that one of the Donat women should remain in the gallery or the apartment whenever possible, as the alarm system was notoriously unreliable and, until Isadora’s death, each of the women had felt notoriously tough: no criminal would dare take them on!
Eudora threw the thin summer duvet from the bed and padded across the room. Opening the window, she luxuriated in the sensation of clean, fresh night air as it caressed her damp skin, causing her to shiver slightly. Though there was a gentle breeze, it did precious little to dispel the mugginess that was so oppressive it threatened to suffocate her, and whatever comfort the fresh air afforded her was short lived.
She returned to sit on the end of the bed, staring at the portrait, which was propped against the wall next to the door, facing her. In the diffused amber light which came through the window from the streetlamps below, the painting seemed somehow different; it seemed to have taken on a surrealism that made it far less lifelike but, curiously, more alive. The amber light made the flaming cross that split the sky positively sizzle with radiant heat; the flames seemed actually to flicker ominously.
The eyes of all three men, as she had previously noticed, seemed to follow her everywhere and reminded her of da Vinci’s Mona Lisa and Carmine, but it was still the central figure, the man in the monk’s robes, who seemed most alive. At times Eudora felt shivers ripple down her spine, as though someone watched her; pinpricks of tension itched at the back of her neck, fuelling the odd feeling that she was not alone. Every time she whirled around anxiously, expecting to find someone standing behind her, no one was there – she was always alone in the room.
The painting unnerved her. She had wanted to throw a cover over it to stop the men staring at her, but she found she could not; it compelled her to leave it uncovered. The painting had an almost physical hold on her – more specifically, the monk had a hold of her soul. More than ever, Eudora wanted to know who the man was, and what had happened to him.
The flaming cross was the key. In her mind was still lodged the niggling feeling that she had read about such a phenomenon somewhere, a long time ago. As she stared at the flames, she thought; as she thought, she started connecting with the memory.
Thinking of her earlier conversation with Derek about how badly she had done in her History exam, it was obvious where she had read about the flaming cross, and when: at school; in History lessons.
Stepping into her slippers and dressing gown, Eudora made her way down to the cellar, where she fumbled for the light switch, and suddenly a single naked bulb vaguely illuminated the immense, damp and musty vaulted room.
Dirt and dust coated every surface; dark scuttling spiders clustered in dense groups in the thick banks of cobwebs that were suspended in the corners and from the beams supporting the ground floor. The expansive room was irregular in shape and the single bulb offered little illumination in the farthest corners, plunging the distant crevices into gloomy shadow encrusted areas where Eudora had no desire to linger. Had it been daylight outside, the narrow grimy windows that topped one of the walls at street level might have allowed a little more light into the cellar, but the faint vestiges of the orange glow from the streetlamps that filtered through the grime left most of that side of the cellar barely more illuminated than the rest. Eudora fervently hoped that what she was looking for was not amid the areas of shadow.
Most of the wall space was taken up with shelves, upon which was piled junk; most of the floor space was piled high with more junk and bric-a-brac, collected over the years by both the Donat women and previous owners, and though none of it could possibly be of any use to anyone, nothing was ever ditched either. Broken furniture took up further floor space. The old overstuffed sofa – of which much of the stuffing had burst out – was most probably flea-infested, and Eudora decided to steer well clear, itching wildly at the mere thought of it. Riddled with woodworm, the wooden pieces of furniture were also so full of rot that she though a single brief gust of wind would disintegrate the lot.
Eudora decided that one day, when she had more free time and less pressing matters on her mind, she would have a damn good clear out: most of the stuff down in the cellar should definitely be condemned. She was alarmed to see the woodworm holes had already begun to appear in the wooden support beams holding the ground floor up; the whole place would need fumigating before the entire building came crashing down!
As she reached the bottom of the stairs, she saw what she wanted close by; an old cardboard box – mouldy and mildewed from damp and age – in which she and Isadora and Gaia had stored their old school books. Since she had been the last to leave school, she hoped her school books would be at the top, but as she carefully dragged the box into the pool of light and rummaged around inside, it became obvious that at some point Gaia had been looking through her own schoolbooks.
There were a couple of old school photos in the box, which Eudora could not remember being there before, but their very presence signified her memory to be defective. She took one look at them and burst into laughter; it was selective memory, she decided, not defective: these old school photos had been buried with excellent reason, especially the one of her, with her pigtails, eyes that definitely lacked innocence and the toothless grin that must surely have broken the tooth fairy’s bank!
Eudora grimaced and reburied the photos at the very bottom of the box.
Next, she unearthed a half-dozen school textbooks, which should have been returned to the school at the end of the final term: none had been hers; all seemed to be Isadora’s, and Eudora next encountered her sister’s school exercise books.
She was beginning to wonder whether any of her own books still existed, but then, finally, she came to them: English; French; German; Latin; Chemistry; Physics; Mathematics; Art; Geography; History.
God, did I really do so many subjects?
She fleetingly wondered how many trees were felled to produce so many books, and then she wondered how many schools had used recycled paper in the good old days? She had a reasonable idea that nobody had thought of recycling in those days, but the thought vanished when she found her History books – and a History textbook; now how had that slipped through the net?
The books she wanted had been right at the bottom of the box and now, as she reached in to start replacing all the books she had removed, the old school photos were there once again, leering up at her. Without really thinking, she pulled them out of the pile and placed them on top of her History books, and then haphazardly threw all the other books back into the box, which she instantly regretted, because in this arbitrary manner they no longer all fit. They spilled out over the floor when the mouldy old box, which had been straining before, finally split under the pressure.
She cursed, and hunted around for another empty box, but none was large enough to take all the books, so in the end she used three. Once she had filled them, Eudora lifted the first and carried it over to the wooden table under which the books had originally been stored, and on top of which old pieces of broken down machinery languished. The old Singer sewing machine could never hope to be salvaged; neither could the large old black and white television set whose screen was beyond repair.
As she crouched down in front of the table, wondering why anyone would have wanted to keep such junk when it could obviously neither be mended nor be any use to anyone, something sharp dug into her knee, and in the blinding rush of pain the stray thought was gone.
Fearing she had knelt on a shard of glass, Eudora clutched her knee, hardly daring to look at the wound in
case it was gushing blood; there was no glass protruding from her knee, no torn flesh, no spurting blood, just a bright red indentation where something hard had pressed into the flesh.
Crouching again, more carefully this time, she brushed aside the loose layer of dirt, expecting to find perhaps a stone or maybe a piece of metal. What she found made her recoil initially with shocked disbelief, but then she overcame the fear, shock and disbelief, and scrabbled at the ground with her bare fingers, desperately attempting to free the object.
The dirt was tightly compacted, and after marginal difficulty, having scraped her knuckles raw and broken a couple of nails in the process, she finally used a piece of glass from the broken television screen to prise free the object she had unearthed. Tugging at the item desperately until it broke free from its prison, Eudora ended up a couple of feet away, winded by the force of her landing, but with the object safely clutched in her hands.
Tossing aside the glass, she scrambled to her feet, picked up her history books, and ran up the stairs, pausing only to switch off the light and slam the door.
* * *
Washing the dirt and grime from the object was no easy task, but some time later, Eudora sat in the office of Gaia’s apartment and stared at the two objects that rested before her upon the glass-topped desk: the amethyst pendant, which usually hung hidden around her neck, and the matching amulet – the object she had uncovered in the cellar.
She felt it was no coincidence that it was buried in the cellar of the Donat Gallery; it was surely even less of a coincidence that it had turned up now, at the same time as the painting.
With vivid clarity, she recalled the content of the letter, which had accompanied the arrival of the pendant on her eighteenth birthday. If she now came into possession of the ring her life would change, and not for the better. She would be in mortal danger.
With a prophecy like that, how could she not be terrified?
‘Please, God,’ she whispered, casting her eyes heavenward, ‘I’ve never asked for anything before, but please don’t let me find the ring; I don’t want my life to change and I don’t want to die like poor Izzy! Grant me this one wish and I promise, I’ll never ask another thing of you as long as I live!’
She hoped the Lord was not having an off day.
She slipped both items of jewellery on. The amulet slid all the way up her slender arm, past her elbow, and stayed there, wedged onto her upper arm. She panicked that it might be stuck, but reassured when she was able to slip it back down past her elbow, she moved it back up; it was actually quite a comfortable fit, and once secure in place again, she almost felt like it was not there.
Was it her imagination, or did the amethyst in the pendant seem a subtle shade darker as she slipped it over her head; did both seem to sparkle slightly once she was wearing the pair? She ultimately decided not, putting it down to tiredness, and quickly forgot about it.
She spread out her history books, unsure where to begin; the Byzantine Empire seemed like a reasonably good bet, but when she opened the first defaced and creased exercise book, covered in ink-splodges, and saw how diabolically unreadable her handwriting had been as a teenager, her sympathies went out to all her teachers. She closed the exercise book and decided to peruse the textbook instead.
She found and read the brief section on the Byzantine Empire, which she felt was unmemorable from the first time she had read it, though fairly interesting this time around. When she read that the Byzantine capital of Constantinople was built on seven hills above the River Bosporus, she immediately thought of Nathan and wondered how he was coping. She decided she should call him tomorrow.
As she read on, she discovered that Constantinople was named after Constantine, the first Byzantine Emperor.
Suddenly Eudora found she was immensely interested; Constance’s maiden name, the names of most of the Bosporus family, including their surname, seemed to have some tangible affinity with Byzantium.
Was it all just coincidence?
Her interest grew as she began cross-referencing various names and places and discovered that Constantine the Great, the first Byzantine Emperor, had also originally been a Roman Emperor.
Born in Naissus – which Eudora discovered, was now the town of Nis in Yugoslavia – when his father died, his soldiers had proclaimed Constantine Emperor. Of course, nothing in the world ever ran smoothly, and Constantine’s life was no exception. Others objected to him becoming Emperor, and there was fierce rivalry for the vacated office.
As Eudora read on about Constantine, she decided he must be one of the men in the portrait. In 312AD, before the battle at the Milvian Bridge near Rome, Constantine saw the image of a flaming cross in the sky, and as he was already sympathetic towards the plight of the Christians, which set him apart from the previous Roman Emperors, he adopted the cross as his emblem, and his battle was a success. He and another Emperor, Licinius, ruled the East and West parts of the Roman Empire until Licinius was murdered, and Constantine became sole ruler.
At the Council of Nicaea, Arianism – the belief that God created Jesus, who was therefore not quite human, not quite divine – was denounced as heresy and countered by the Nicene Creed – which dictated that the Son and the Father are the same substance, and therefore equal. A bishop named Spiridon, from Tremithus in Cyprus, assisted Constantine at the Council of Nicaea, and two years later, Constantine moved the capital of the Roman Empire in the East to Constantinople, a city founded in the early Fourth Century on the site of the old Greek city of Byzantium.
The more she read about the Byzantine Empire, the more confused Eudora became. She did not really understand what all the foreign sounding words meant, but what she did manage to surmise was that the first Council of Nicaea marked the initial founding of the modern Christian world.
She yawned and glanced at her watch: it was three o’clock in the morning; suddenly she felt as though she could sleep for a hundred years. She left the book open and retired to bed, and she was asleep the instant her head hit the pillow.
Chapter Five
Later that morning, having arisen a little later than usual, Eudora telephoned Nola and asked her to come into the gallery during the afternoon. When Nola asked why, Eudora was decidedly cagey and merely stated gently that she needed Nola’s valued expertise and opinion, and hung up as soon as the trainee promised to stop by around three o’clock.
As it was, Nola’s curiosity, aroused by Eudora’s uncommonly guarded request, got the better of her, and she appeared at the gallery shortly after midday. ‘All right,’ she said as she stepped through the Gallery’s entrance, trying to remain calm and collected amid her grief stricken thoughts, ‘why all the mystery?’
Eudora closed the gallery for lunch, led Nola upstairs and showed her the portrait, still propped against the wall in the bedroom.
When she saw the three figures, Nola let out a surprised gasp as she recognised one of them, but masked her surprise with a moan of not entirely false excitement. ‘Can we move it to Gaia’s office so I can see it in better light?’ she asked.
Gaia’s office had a window that had no other buildings obscuring the direct sunlight, so Eudora thought nothing of the request, and the two women manhandled the large frame out of the bedroom, across the landing and down the passage into the sunlit office, where they propped it against Gaia’s desk.
Nola bent to inspect the portrait more closely, her eyes filled with genuine wonder and excitement. Eudora, whose own eyes missed nothing, could tell at once that she had not been wrong; Nola believed, as she herself did, that Isadora had stumbled across something really special and significant.
‘Can you tell me who painted it?’ Eudora cautiously asked in a tone of voice that would suggest to her trainee that she knew but was testing her.
Nola nodded excitedly. ‘Oh yes, there’s no doubt at all; it’s by the French artist, Dion Taine!’
At once Eudora’s eyes betrayed her shock: there were only three paintings by Dion Taine known to exist
.
An American billionaire had appalled the art world the previous year when, after paying thirty million pounds for Taine’s Crucible, he had announced his intention to have it incinerated with him when he died, while Majolica currently resided in London’s National Gallery, and Sangraal currently found its home in the Louvre in Paris. The same American billionaire had tried to purchase Majolica, and the National Gallery were immensely glad they had said a firm no, and the people at the Louvre wrote to him and told him not to even bother asking them to sell Sangraal, as it was priceless and would never be sold – to anyone!
Eudora could fully understand Nola’s excitement; if this was indeed an original Taine, its sale could solve all the gallery’s current financial problems. Keeping it on the premises, however, might cause more than a few problems of its own, especially since the insurance company that covered the contents of the gallery had been incredibly reluctant to cover the da Vinci due to its immense value. If this were a genuine Taine then its value was inestimable; certainly far greater than the da Vinci. With the possible price tag on the portrait well in excess of forty million pounds, the additional premiums required to cover its value while under the gallery’s roof would be crippling, not to mention an unrecoverable expense if nothing actually happened to the painting. Certainly, the gallery would recoup the cost after the sale, but there was the initial outlay to think of. The insurance company would almost certainly want the premium paid up front, and as Eudora had no idea how much Isadora had paid for this portrait, she had no idea how much money remained in the business account, though it was a fair assessment that it wouldn’t be enough to pay the insurers.
Portrait of Shade Page 5
