A Rather Charming Invitation

by C. A. Belmond

  As we moved toward the picture gallery, Leonora commented, “So you’ve been to see Venetia. She is very drôle, is she not?”

  “I thought she was wonderful,” I said.

  Leonora seemed amused and slightly wary of her husband’s unconventional aunt. After I declined the need to have anything to eat or drink, she encouraged me to feel free to get right to it, and furthermore, I could come and go as I pleased.

  As I unpacked my camera, and began focusing on capturing the details, I commented, “What an amazing story behind this tapestry. Do you know about Oncle Philippe’s ancestor Armand, who made the tapestry for his daughter’s wedding in the 1600s?”

  Leonora shook her head, but before I could launch into more detail, she said hopefully, “That’s what all the appraisers say about the time period, but I don’t believe it. Auction houses can be mistaken. I think it’s from a later period, say, the 1700s, when Louis XIV’s grandson got married; the king was very fond of his grand-daughter-in-law. See that image of the sun? Surely that alludes to the Sun King.”

  “Oh,” I said, comprehending that she was not the least bit interested in Armand’s personal story, and only wanted to hear a royal connection, which might increase its value. “Well, these pictures might help me find out more.”

  “Ah bon,” said Leonora approvingly, “I will leave you to it.”

  It was much better without her hovering over me. As I snapped away, my eye caught more of the details, and I knew that my first task was to figure out how to “read” the tapestry. Some tapestries read from left to right, like a book. Others tell their stories from the bottom—where the images in the foreground are bigger, and represent more recent events—to the top, which represents past events. But this tapestry had all those fascinating horizontal rows of drama, and I wasn’t sure where to begin.

  The borders acted like a picture frame around the main body of the tapestry. Within this main body was the married couple’s bedroom, and here, the top image was the fan-shaped window above the sleeping couple’s heads, through which one glimpsed the moon-face on the left, and the sun-face on the right, and, in the center, the far-off horizon of hills and sea.

  But the most dramatic images were contained within the “bedspread of flower fields”, which the married couple was dreaming under. The top two rows on the bedspread were composed of a series of circular and oval insets. The first row had the “J.L.” insignia circlet on the left; and the knight-and-lady-on-horseback in a circlet on the right; and, in between, oval insets of couples of varying ages, doing their rural chores of planting, harvesting, and gathering in fields and vineyards. Beneath this, the second row of oval insets began: on the left, with a young man and woman, carrying a bucket to a water-well, like an elegant Jack and Jill; and on the right were a series of insets of people in seaside scenarios, fishing and hauling baskets of the day’s catch.

  Beneath those two rows, there were no more oval insets. Instead, the remaining rows on the bedspread all seemed to be part of a great wedding procession that was weaving its way on paths through the flower fields. So, the next row was of the bridegroom and his male entourage. He was at the center-left of his row, walking toward the left. His groomsmen were following him, carrying the bride’s very elaborately decorated “hope” chest, which contained her dowry. This was where, oddly enough, the black dogs were snapping at the heels of the groomsmen.

  Beneath all that, the next row was the bride and her attendants. She was in the center-right of her row, walking toward the right, and was about to pass under an archway of flowers. So, it looked as if she and her ladies were following the groom’s entourage that was “ahead” or above them.

  Finally, beneath the bride’s line, the bottom row had a stately house situated in the lower right corner of the fields; and, to the left, curiously, was the row of soldiers who were leading a man away in chains. They were walking toward the left, facing away from the house.

  As I studied it, I began to realize that the house seemed to be the starting point of the wedding procession. So, the way to “read” this tapestry was as a zigzag, like a maze, beginning at the bottom right corner with the house, travelling to the left with the soldiers; above which was the bride, travelling right; above which was the groom, travelling left again. All of these rows of parading figures added up to the drama of a wedding.

  Apart from just a literal interpretation of a marriage ceremony, I knew that bridal processions in art were sometimes about the concept of a “triumph”, like the triumph of Love over Death, or Piety over Corruption. Military images in wedding processions could be symbols of the groom’s “triumph” of having won his bride and carried off her dowry. That might explain the soldiers. However, I still couldn’t find a good spin to put on those black dogs nipping at the heels of the groomsmen. But mythology was full of stories of jealous guests at weddings, disrupting the festivities.

  Overall, the tapestry looked to me like a father’s tender, loving and bittersweet panorama of the world, with all its joys and sorrows. And now that I knew something about the personal history of the man who made it, these images were infused with new meaning for me. Take the prisoner being led away in chains by the king’s soldiers. Could that be Lunaire, his patron? Or Armand himself, bound and unable to keep up with the wedding procession?

  Maybe everything here was deliberately cryptic. The tapestry had been made with such painstaking care, right down to the fine detailing of the flowers in the decorative borders. It occurred to me now that these images might actually be homespun marital advice, woven in coded messages from the imprisoned tapestry-maker, so that the prying eyes of the king’s guards could not invade the privacy of a father speaking in threads to his daughter.

  I was deeply absorbed in all this, when David and Oncle Philippe appeared in the entrance hall below me. They seemed completely unaware of my presence, so engrossed were they in a heated argument in French. I heard something about selling the flower fields; then suddenly the volume of the conversation cranked up a notch.

  “You may as well sell them my headstone and my grave, too!” Oncle Philippe said, gesturing dramatically.

  David sighed. “Pa-pa,” he pleaded. “What kind of man would I be if I ignored reality, and put our family and our future generations in peril?”

  Oncle Philippe snorted derisively. “Money today, and nothing for tomorrow!”

  Something made them look up then, and when they saw me, standing above their heads in the gallery with the tapestry, they both forced a smile and nodded to me. “Ah, Penn-ee,” said David, with his correct, graceful manner. “Delighted to see you making your wedding preparations. We knew that you were coming today, but nobody told us you’d arrived. Ça va?”

  “Fine, it’s going well,” I said. I imagined that they must have been closeted off in a business conversation too important for even Leonora to interrupt. David looked a bit embarrassed at my having witnessed his exasperation with his father.

  But Oncle Philippe was too upset to really care if I’d overheard them. He returned to David, gesturing toward the tapestry. “If we do as you wish, your children—my grandchildren—will inherit only those dead woven flowers, which have no scent!” he exclaimed, and he went outside in a huff.

  I wondered if Oncle Philippe understood that his wife was plotting to sell off the tapestry, and therefore, my photos might end up being the only pictures his grandchildren would see of his flower fields. I observed, through the long windows in the gallery, that Oncle Philippe had gone across the lawn to speak to the gardener, who was now clipping the roses and hydrangeas.

  I hastily collected my things and went down the staircase. David was still waiting below, apparently defensive after his father’s outburst. He glanced up at the tapestry and shook his head.

  “My father is stuck in his old ways,” he explained. “Like all of France sometimes!” He paused. “You like old things?” he said, nodding toward the tapestry. He sounded, a bit, like Honorine. Perhaps brother and siste
r had more in common than they realized. Maybe David, too, longed for escape and adventure.

  “Yes, I do,” I admitted.

  “Well, it’s very good for a wedding,” David allowed, “but as for me, frankly, those classical and medieval images remind me of my schooldays. When I look at that tapestry, I see all the unbreakable rules and traditions that hold France back from the modern world.”

  “That’s just what I like about France,” I said. “The traditions that protect the quality of life.”

  “For tourists, perhaps,” David said with a rueful smile, in a charmingly inoffensive way. He went outside, and drove off in his car. I wondered if I should try find a way to say goodbye to Leonora. But I couldn’t exactly holler down the hallway for her.

  As I stood pondering, I heard Leonora’s voice, drifting out from the salon, very distinct, but in French. I couldn’t get all of what she was saying, but I was able to make out that she was engaged in a telephone conversation, and I actually heard her telling someone that she wished to insure le tapisserie for a higher value, even it meant paying a higher premium.

  “Uh-oh,” I said to myself. Perhaps this little visit of mine really had been ill-advised. Now she was convinced that her mission would be accomplished. Well, I’d better wrap up my research and report to Honorine about it, and let her deliver the news if it wasn’t good. Possibly Leonora would withdraw the offer of the loan of the tapestry for the wedding, but that wouldn’t be the end of the world.

  There was no reason for me to linger here, waiting for Leonora to figure out that I’d overheard her. So I went outside and thanked Philippe for letting me come, and he looked up from his conversation with the gardener long enough to wave at me as I drove away.

  When I returned to the villa, Jeremy and Rollo were still at it, having been sustained by sandwiches and ale that Celeste had given them when she came to do some more cleaning and drop off a few supplies. Neither she nor I had any truly disruptive effect on the card game; the guys just kept at it.

  “When it comes to cards, dear boy,” Rollo was saying expansively, “there are three things you need: smarts, skill, and luck. Smarts you definitely have, no question about it. With skill, I can surely help. But with luck, well, we’re all on our own.”

  I went on into the drawing room. We had been furnishing the villa a bit at a time, with Celeste showing up to meet delivery men whenever a furniture or antiques shop sent something that one of us had purchased. The drawing room was now mostly Deco design, with two cute striped sofas from the 1930s that look like ribbon candy, and a few tables and lamps, and, in the corner, a roll-top desk and straight-backed chair, with a computer and printer that could be tucked away from view when not in use. I printed out my pictures; then I spread them side by side on a low table.

  When Jeremy and Rollo got up to stretch, they wandered in and found me examining the photos. They peered over my shoulder. “I never noticed those soldiers, and the knight on horseback,” Jeremy commented. “Reminds me of King Arthur and the games we used to play, pretending our bicycles were horses, and we were knights, jousting with sticks.”

  “Ouch,” said Rollo, imagining it. “Hope you didn’t get knocked off too many times.” He studied the photos and pointed out the gambling motifs he saw, like diamonds and spades. “Modern playing cards were mainly a French invention, after all,” he said. “This looks like a lucky streak to me.”

  I realized that the tapestry was a bit like an inkblot design that psychiatrists use to determine a patient’s state of mind and view of the world. We were all gazing at the same pictures, but we each saw a reflection of our own preoccupations. I wondered about the preoccupations of the man who made it.

  “Fancy a real drink?” Rollo asked Jeremy.

  “Let’s all dine in tonight,” I said hastily, sensing that it was absolutely necessary to get Rollo to break his pattern of going out on the town every evening.

  “Are you mad, inviting him to dinner?” Jeremy whispered to me when Rollo returned to the kitchen to switch off the TV.

  “We need to keep him away from bad company,” I said. “I think we should make him come back to London,” I added.

  “You heard him. He’s sick of Great- Aunt Dorothy. Can you blame him?”

  “That’s not exactly what he said,” I corrected. “He’s lonesome.”

  Jeremy sighed. “Then find him a wife,” he said. We just looked at each other.

  “Okay, I’ll cook, and you talk to him,” Jeremy conceded.

  We returned to the kitchen, where Rollo was neatly packing away the playing cards. I put him to work helping me lay out the table for dinner, which he did with the amused, fascinated look of someone who’d never been asked to do this before. He dutifully followed me out to the dining room.

  “Oh, child,” Rollo said with some distress when I told him I wanted him to come back to London with us, “really I can’t bear London. Too depressing.”

  “But I need you,” I said, suddenly inspired.

  The expression on his face changed, and he smiled warily. “What for?”

  “You know your way around the best English antiques shops. Could you find me some nice champagne glasses for the wedding reception?” I asked. “I’ve been reading about how we should have just the right shape for champagne. You know, not too narrow, but not too wide and shallow, either . . .”

  “Of course, of course,” he said instantly.

  “Nothing too ostentatious,” I said. “I don’t want to spend a fortune on them. Just something nice for a wedding, you know?”

  Rollo brightened. “Darling, I know just the thing—Mum has a perfect set, and she never uses it. Lots of them, just laying about in crates. Perhaps I can convince her to give them to you as a wedding present; she may like that, for she won’t have to end up spending money on something inferior.”

  “Really?” I said. I couldn’t imagine Great- Aunt Dorothy giving anything away.

  Rollo must have read my thoughts, because he added, “Not to worry. I can talk her into it. Or, failing that,” he mused, “I can always smuggle them out of the flat.”

  I could see it was a challenge that appealed to him.

  Part Five

  Chapter Twenty

  So Jeremy, Rollo and I returned to London, with Rollo promising to “touch base” with me within a week. Upon entering the townhouse, I found a pile of messages, neatly categorized, all stacked up. Honorine had also put fresh flowers in vases in each of our offices.

  Lowering her voice so Jeremy wouldn’t hear, she told me that the jeweler had sent over my groom’s gift for Jeremy. She and I examined the signet ring together. I ran my finger over the fine engraving, delighted. “Oh, it’s great,” I said, locking it away in a small drawer in my desk. “I must remember to thank the jeweler.”

  “Yes, but, it was delivered by a woman who”—Honorine wrinkled her nose in profound distaste—“wore very heavy cologne, très horrible.” She rattled off the probable composition of the perfume that so offended her senses. “I had to open all the windows on the entire first floor, for days and days!” she exclaimed indignantly. “And still, I could not get that smell out of my nostrils.”

  Her little face, all screwed up in outraged sensibility, made me want to laugh affectionately, but aloud I observed that Honorine appeared to be quite a “natural” to follow in her father’s footsteps and work in the family perfume business. She knew that I’d been taken on a tour, but now I described it in more detail, which revived her own fond memories of the place.

  “At Easter time, we used to take the little soaps and hide them, like eggs,” she said dreamily. “I put the lavender ones under my pillow. It helps you sleep, you know.”

  “Did you ever consider going into the family business?” I asked curiously. She sighed.

  “And have my brother and I firing cannons at each other all day long?” she asked. “After all, I am a naturalist,” she proclaimed, “yes, I am a follower of the philosopher Rousseau, you know, ‘Na
ture never deceives us, it is always we who deceive ourselves.’ Whereas David doesn’t really care what he makes in that factory, it could be shoes or can openers,” she declared, “so long as it makes profits—but they are never big enough for him. Modernize, modernize, modernize! It’s his mantra. But,” she added darkly, “when it comes to women, David is not at all moderne; he thinks we should all just be obedient wives who stay out of a man’s business!”

  “And what do you think?” I challenged her. Honorine shrugged, pretending to be indifferent.

  “What does my famous cousine suggest?” she asked tentatively.

  “My advice is, follow your heart and do what you love,” I said stoutly. “For all you know, you could be a great nez!”

  Jeremy had come to the doorway of my office just in time to overhear this. Honorine always managed to slip discreetly away at such moments. When she was out of earshot he commented, “I don’t suppose it would do me any good to say that my advice is, keep your own nez out of it.”

  “Nope,” I said, eyeing him, trying to decide when to give him the gift. “It would do you no good whatsoever.” I paused. “Was there something you wanted to discuss?”

  “Just wondering how things went with the wedding planner,” he said, a bit too casually.

  “Let’s just say we were incompatible,” I replied. “They’d have us doing a karaoke rendition of ‘our song’ or making PowerPoint presentations of our love. There seems to be an assumption that all brides and grooms are secretly dying to get into show business.”

  “Perhaps I could do card tricks,” Jeremy volunteered. “Rollo might teach me.”

  “Who’s asking about our plans?” I inquired, in the same casual tone he’d used.

  “I got an e-mail from Uncle Giles. He says Amelia sent you an e-mail you didn’t answer,” Jeremy admitted, looking a trifle embarrassed.