“But yesterday you wanted me to stand.”
“I know I did, and that has been part of the problem. We are not after dignity here.”
“Are we not?”
“No, Papa. We want to picture what makes you and Mama so special. We want your love for each other.”
“Can we not have both affection and dignity together?”
She resisted the urge to explain that she already had in her mind a precise vision of how the image would take shape. Because she had never attempted something like this, she wanted to make sure she could accomplish the transformation from mental impression to canvas. “Papa, whatever you do, however you stand, your natural dignity will show through.”
He clearly liked that comment very much. “So then. I shall stand, yes?”
“No, Papa. Sit.”
“But—”
“I want you to trust me.” She looked up as Bettina entered the room. “Mama, would you please sit here?”
“Do you think this gown catches a proper light?”
Serafina gazed lovingly at her mother’s face, then at the emerald-green gown of silk taffeta. “Yes, Mama, it is almost as beautiful as you are.”
Bettina allowed herself to be guided into the chair. “Can you make me appear younger?”
“You are truly lovely, Mama. That is what I will show.” She stepped around to the table’s other side. The two faces stared directly at her, both looking a bit nervous and tense. “Look at each other, please. No, Papa, don’t tilt your head so. You are looking down your nose at Mama.”
“Isn’t this the pose you told me to take yesterday?”
“I will hold the angle of your chin from the drawing. Now I want to affect a proper balance.”
She worked on their angles and posture for almost an hour. Gradually they stopped arguing and accepted their role as models. It proved harder for her mother, which was a surprise. Her father was a diplomat, she realized, accustomed to rearranging himself to fit the vagaries of court.
Finally Serafina said, “Mama, do you trust me?”
“What a question. How can you ask me, your mother, such a thing?”
“Then I want you to please stop quarreling with me.”
“I am not—”
“Mama. Please. Trust, remember? Be silent and do what I say. Lean forward just a bit. No, straighten your shoulders. Good. Now angle your face a bit to the right. No, not like that.” Serafina moved around the table so that she stood midway between the easel and her father “Turn your face so that you are looking straight at me. Good! Now look at Papa. No, Mama. Don’t move your face. Just your eyes. Turn back to me again. Now look at Papa. Fine, yes, excellent.”
She moved back to the easel. Finally the positions from her nighttime imaginings were realized.
“Please, the both of you, take careful stock. This is precisely the position I want you to maintain. Whenever we take a break, please come back to exactly here. Look at how close your faces are. Feel the position of your bodies, how your shoulders are angled. Can you do this?”
Her father grumbled, “It feels most unnatural.”
She selected the lightest of her drawing pencils and sketched hastily. Their eyes. She would begin of course with the eyes. But as she traced the first lines, she stopped.
“Daughter?” her mother intoned.
“Of course,” she whispered. She took a step back. No longer was she seeing a blank canvas. Instead, the drawing was complete in her mind’s eye. The drawing, the pattern of shade and color, the paints. Everything.
She did not need to have them reveal their true natures. She had a lifetime’s experience to draw on.
“Did you hear me, my dear?”
“Please remain still.” Serafina drew in swift, confident strokes. What she had required was the physical balance alone. That was accomplished. She could see how the light played upon the planes and surfaces. The emotional quality she would add from the reservoir within herself.
As Serafina worked, other things began to take shape, her mental image racing a few strokes ahead of the images upon the canvas. She would not fill the entire canvas with color. Instead, it would be a layering. She had seen such images by the few Renaissance painters who had worked with pencil and watercolor. Serafina traced the lines all the way to the borders of her paper. But it would only be the pencil. The coloration would not progress that far.
She dropped the pencil and with her broadest brush began the outermost border, a pale wash, scarcely one shade from ivory.
Her parents spoke to her again. First one, then the other. She heard them, and yet the sounds came from a very far distance. She was only dimly aware of movement when one of them would leave the room, then the other. Somehow, though, they seemed to be able to return to just the right positions they had left.
The closer she moved to faces, the more brilliant became the colors. She wanted to have the chance to see each face anew and redo the coloring if she was not satisfied. Most especially she wanted to rework the eyes. The eyes were the key. Weren’t they?
“Daughter.”
“Yes, Papa, please, one moment longer.”
“Serafina, no. We must finish now.”
She winced at the sudden pain in her shoulders. Where had the hours flown?
That evening she ate because Mary set a plate in front of her and Bettina ordered her to eat. But there upon the kitchen table alongside her plate was the same uncertainty. She knew the eyes were crucial. They were the windows to the soul. What else was there? The worry that she was missing something gnawed at her worse than hunger, worse even than the stiffness in her neck and shoulders.
After she had eaten, Serafina looked wearily at her parents.
“I know I told you one day of sitting, but—”
“Yes, we know, dear,” her mother said quickly. “We’ll be ready in the morning. However, we all need to get some rest now.”
Serafina returned to her room and collapsed upon the bed. She awoke four hours later, according to the clock on her mantel, just long enough to slip into her nightdress and drink three cups of water. She tried to think further on the mystery, but her mind and her body retreated into sleep.
She awoke later than usual and heard people moving around downstairs. She entered the kitchen and accepted her parents’ greetings. She took her breakfast into the dining room and ate while staring at her canvas. The previous day’s work was acceptable. Even more than that. She could see hints of the final structure everywhere. The eyes were fine. She could see that the choices of materials and colors would work well. Her focus returned time and again to the middle section of the canvas. What else could it be?
Her parents entered unbidden and resumed their positions. Serafina corrected the hold of their shoulders. She moved them slightly closer together. And she began once again to paint.
She completed the faces and did the final work on the clothing just before the church tower rang the noon bell. She dismissed them, declining their invitation to join them for lunch. When her mother returned with a plate, Bettina did as Serafina had requested and refrained from coming around to where she could see the painting. Bettina looked closely at her daughter, started to speak, then silently left the room.
Serafina ate out of a confused sense of duty. She knew her parents would worry if she did not. But the food tasted only of watercolor paint and her eyes scarcely left the canvas. The remaining small damp spots of color offered a special grace to the lines, fading and smoothing them in unexpected places. The result was a sense of humanness and timelessness. The sharp lines of youth were no more. Yet in this imperfect touch was a singular beauty. She did not think this as much as felt it. Serafina pushed her plate aside and picked up her finest brush. She extended the lines out around the edges of the clothes, drawing them out into a soft melding with the borders. The figures flowed into the pastel border and on into the mystery of unfinished lives.
Mystery. Serafina picked up her lightest pencil, cut the nib to a delicat
e point, and focused anew upon the eyes. The paint here at the center was so dry the paper crackled softly as she drew. She made mere suggestions of angles and further precision. Too little and the watercolors would appear weak. Too much and the lines would overshadow the color.
She stepped back and used the stained rag to clean her quill. And saw the answer.
The chair creaked as she seated herself. She dropped her pencil to the floor.
“Serafina?”
Her mother entered the room. She inspected her daughter, then came around to look at the canvas. She drew in a sharp breath.
The canvas shone with what was not painted at all. Balanced between the two faces and two sets of eyes was their shared love.
“Bettina?” her father called. “Is she ready for us again?”
Serafina could hear her mother swallow hard. “Come see.”
Her father stepped into the dining room, and she could hear his own quick intake of breath.
Serafina understood. It was finally clear. The issue had not been only the eyes but the balance between the two figures. They had to express an identical message, one that became the fulcrum upon which the two could be balanced. This was the purpose behind the exact tilting of heads, the shading, and the subtle blurring of lines.
She looked up at her parents. What did they see? A pleasing portrait? Probably a little more than that. Yet it did not matter. She studied the canvas again. Was this what it meant to create good art? Would she be required with each canvas to find a mystery that would only be answered when the work was complete?
Her father said, “My darling daughter, this is astounding.”
“Magnificent,” her mother added.
“Thank you, Mama. Papa.” She had to try twice to push herself from the chair. “Please excuse me. I am very weary.”
As she prepared for bed, she felt as though someone else was asking questions of her. What happened if the mystery remained unresolved? What if she painted a canvas and at the end felt the hidden mystery was not clear, not even to herself? What then? Would she destroy the work? Would she confess her failure? Serafina thought these things, and yet they drifted in and left just as easily. All she could say at the moment was, this time the mystery had been resolved. Everything upon the canvas drew the focus toward what could not be seen, only felt. Love.
Chapter 15
They saw no Indians. But the bears were plentiful. As were wild boar and feral dogs. Even cougars. At least that is what Aaron told them. All Falconer knew was that some beast made a howling racket their second night on the trail, tracking around their perimeter and terrifying the women into wide-eyed panic. Only Joseph’s sharp voice kept them from bolting. The mules shrilled louder than the women and fought against their hobbles. Joseph and Aaron wrapped empty provision sacks around the mules’ eyes and tied their traces to logs. They could drag the logs but neither snap the traces nor escape, Joseph explained.
The progress of the group remained painfully slow. They would have starved long before reaching the state line had it not been for Aaron. The boy vanished at first light, slipping into the forest and melding with the natural cover. Come sunset he found them again, a variety of wild game hanging from his belt. He handed his catch to the women and retreated to the camp’s perimeter. He never spoke, at least to Falconer.
But Falconer was not satisfied to let things remain as they were. He saw a good deal of himself in the wild young man. Where Falconer had escaped to the sea, the young man used the forest. But the half-savage way of dealing with a cold and uncaring world was the same.
On the third afternoon since leaving the turnpike, they finished the pears. Three people ate from each fruit, save for Falconer. He did not bother to try and share his portion, for still no one took food from his hand. He watched Aaron from across the campfire. The boy crouched like an untamed animal with a good eye for cover. The waning sunset turned his taut features into sharp planes of fear.
Falconer rose slowly, hating how the entire group tensed when he moved. They watched without turning their heads as he picked up the musket and crossed the clearing. When he arrived near to where Aaron gnawed on the pear’s core, he settled on a rock, the musket lying across his knees. The lad was a half inch from bolting.
Falconer addressed Joseph, who was seated by the fire, watching intently. He said quietly, “Would you join us for a moment?”
When Joseph approached, Falconer asked the young man, “Have you ever handled a musket?”
The lad said nothing, nor did he look straight at Falconer. His keen interest, though, was clear enough.
Falconer carefully lifted the weapon from his lap. He explained each of the components in turn. Explained how to cock and fire. How to aim. How to load. Knowing the lad would need to hear such things several times more. Taking it as a prize that the lad watched his hands straight on and remained crouched there beside him. Which was all he had been after.
So he went through the entire explanation a second time. Trying to reveal through his tone of voice that he could be trusted. Then he asked, “Would you like to fire it?”
The lad made no sign he had even heard. But his eyes never left the musket.
Falconer did not wait for an answer he knew would not come. Instead, he asked Joseph to tell the group that he and Aaron would be stepping into the woods for a bit of target practice. “Don’t anyone become frightened,” Joseph finished.
Rays from the departing sun spread like a fan above the western hills. They were camped upon a ridgeline with nothing save forest and advancing shadows in every direction. Falconer motioned to Joseph and Aaron and walked to where the ridge path spread out over a rocky outcropping. He knelt beside the lad, such that the young man was now taller. He nestled the musket into his own shoulder, explaining how important it was to maintain a proper stance. He explained the way to take a sighting. Then he handed Aaron the weapon. And touched the lad for the very first time.
He could feel the young man’s flesh quiver beneath his fingers. The tension radiated up through Falconer’s hand, taking hold of his own gut. Falconer fought to keep his voice calm. He showed how to jam the musket into the muscle. How to aim down the sights at a tree trunk. How to balance the long barrel. How to fire.
The gun’s bark echoed over the empty hills. Falconer walked them over to where the trunk remained unscathed. He showed where the ball had plowed a furrow from the earth less than a handsbreadth from the trunk. He explained that this was a remarkable first shot.
He helped the lad reload. And fire again. He gave Joseph the pistol, mainly so the older man would feel included. But Joseph fired with both eyes tightly shut. He also assumed the harder he pulled the trigger, the straighter the pistol would fire. His arm clenched from forearm to neck with the effort to fire straight. Falconer did not correct him.
They returned to camp when it grew too dark to see the target. As they reentered the firelight, Falconer said to Aaron, “Why don’t you keep the weapon, see what you can bring down tomorrow.”
He walked away without a backward glance. He unfurled his bedroll and sighed his way down. He lay for a moment looking at the stars. For once the cloud covering was gone and the night clear. He cast a quick glance across the camp. Aaron stood cradling the musket, staring across at where Falconer lay. Falconer closed his eyes and counted the day a success.
Up close a musket gave off a solid bang. At a distance of more than fifty paces, particularly when the sound was muffled by vegetation, it was more like a harsh cough. The next day, their little band heard an occasional cough from the surrounding forest. By the time they halted for the midday rest, the sound had grown more distant, and no one paid it any further mind. Not, at least, until Aaron returned at sunset. The lad was so weary he walked bowed over the musket. He stank of burnt sulfur at twenty paces. His clothes and face were charcoal stained. One eyebrow was burnt halfway off. His game pouch was completely empty.
He stumbled over to where Falconer chopped kindling. “I cain
’t hit nuthin’ with this thing.”
Falconer pretended not to notice that everyone was watching. “Did you strike the first animal you went after with your slingshot?”
Aaron swiped at his sweat-beaded face, streaking the soot. “I’s wasted a passel of shot and powder, suh.”
“You haven’t wasted a thing, Aaron.”
Aaron made a feeble effort to hand back the musket. “But, suh—”
“Give it a few more days. Let’s see what happens.” Either Aaron would bring home heavier game than he could bring down with the slingshot or they would soon go hungry. But Falconer did not say it, deciding there was nothing to be gained by adding to the lad’s sense of anxiety and guilt.
Falconer was not naturally a patient man. He was most comfortable with testing bodies to the limit—both his own and those under his command. But here he was dealing with the infirm, the aged, the weak. None of the band had shoes except for himself. The trail was rocky and steep and long disused. At times he and Joseph had to use the sword to chop back the undergrowth. Falconer could not press them harder. So they rested long at midday and they halted before sunset. And their supplies continued to dwindle.
Which made his internal state uncommon strange.
Falconer was not given to inner reflection. He was born to action and molded by hard days and worse nights. Yet here he was, chained to a snail’s pace by his charges, all of them facing starvation around the next bend. Yet he felt as happy as he had ever been in his entire life.
Not even Serafina’s absence could taint the glory he felt rising in his heart. He went to bed replete and slept deep. The nightmares that had plagued him for years were now so distant they might as well have happened to a different man. Which, in a sense, Falconer suspected they had.
When they halted, Falconer applied himself to whatever chore needed doing. As soon as the food was shared and the others were resting, he opened his satchel and pulled out the Bible. He used a dogwood leaf to mark his place. It went as flat as the pages to either side. Falconer pulled it out that evening and held it so the firelight shone through its translucent surface. Even a fragile leaf held heart-stopping beauty.
The Night Angel Page 13
