[Galazon 00] When the King Comes Home

by Stevermer, Caroline

  Each of us identified the correct pillar. Gabriel had done it with ruthless efficiency, drawing just one capital. Saskia had approached the problem the same way I did, though her sketches were far more detailed and she’d included diagrams of the vaulting overhead. Piers outdid us all, having gone so far as to redesign the entire church to bring it into proportion with the ambulatory. Yet even my dogged attempt to identify the similarities among the copies was greeted with approval.

  Madame Carriera was pleased with our work. “You see it. You’ve absorbed it. Both the classical and the copies. You must be able to replicate either. But when you copy, know that’s what you’re doing. Don’t confuse it with your own work.”

  “Yet we copy you,” said Piers. “That is our work.”

  “For now,” said Madame Carriera. “No artist worth the name copies forever, else there would be no seven-year limit to your apprenticeship. You imitate only as long as you can learn from the imitations. The day will come to leave copying behind. You will need something of your own to say, and a way of your own to say it. Or why would anyone ever want to copy you?”

  “For his line,” I said, without meaning to.

  “For his way with color,” said Gabriel, pleasantly enough, for him. “For his beautiful brown eyes,” sighed Saskia.

  Piers blushed.

  That summer was very dry, so dry that the Lida’s usual deep flood steadied to a sullen flow. Instead of sending our woolpack to market in the old-fashioned way, on rafts made of our own timber, Father shipped it as freight on a flatboat. That way, if the flatboat encountered difficulties, the loss to Father would be the value of the freight alone, not the woolpack and the timber besides. The crew were professionals and the owner of the flatboat would be liable for any losses they endured.

  As his fellow passenger aboard the flatboat, Father brought Amyas, my favorite brother and the one closest to me in age. There was no need for me to beg them to call on me at Giltspur Street. Instead, they came looking for me.

  It was a quiet day, so hot in the streets that no one wanted to venture out of the shade. Madame Carriera was away on a social call. Gabriel and Piers had gone to the baths. When Father knocked, Saskia and I were down in the kitchen, as it was the coolest place in the house.

  “Father!” I threw myself on his chest and he half staggered under the onslaught.

  “Girl, you’ve grown.” Father held me at arm’s length to get a better look. “You’re as tall as I am.”

  “It agrees with me, living here.” I urged him indoors. “Come in off the doorstep. Would you like something to drink?”

  “So I see.” Father turned me toward Amyas. “Look who came with me.”

  I couldn’t help laughing. “Amyas, you’ve grown a beard!” Amyas’s hair grew in soft brown curls, which he kept severely short lest they become him too much. Predictably, his beard had come in as soft brown down. It made me want to pet him like a puppy.

  “Yes, I know,” said Amyas. I could always provoke him to huffiness.

  I introduced Saskia to them. “Madame Carriera is out, I’m afraid. But I’m sure she would offer her hospitality. May I get you something to drink? Are you hungry? Please, sit down.”

  “I’ll call on Madame Carriera when it’s convenient for her,” said Father. “For now, come with us, the pair of you. I’ll buy you a slap-up dinner, the best the Sheeperook has to offer. You can tell me all about your life as a famous artist.”

  “I’m only an apprentice, Father.”

  “For the moment, love. It’s only a matter of time.”

  Father had ordered a fine reunion feast at the Sheeperook. Saskia accompanied us and ate like a young wolf, while I was almost too busy talking to take a bite.

  I had wondered what Amyas and Saskia would make of each other were they ever to meet. I thought they were alike, both very fluffy and soft looking on the outside, quick and cynical on the inside. Talking to each of them, to me, seemed like biting into pastry wrapped around what you expect to be marzipan and finding it’s wrapped around an artichoke heart or a bit of crabmeat instead. It’s not worse. It’s just different.

  At first Amyas seemed a little awed by Saskia. He sought to impress her with tales he’d heard from the flatboatmen. Saskia, always delighted to tease me about my provincial background, was eager to play the cosmopolitan artist for my brother.

  When I had run out of anecdotes and was finally applying myself to the fish stew, Amyas said, “The Lida hasn’t run so shallow in fifty years. The boatmen say it’s proof that Red Ned has sold his soul to the devil.”

  Saskia did not ask who Red Ned was. Amyas waited for her to say something all the way through the poppyseed roll she was busy with. She had finished it and started on another before he gave up and continued.

  “Red Ned is what the boatmen call the lord of Ardres; that’s the castle on the heights where the Lida and the Arcel meet. It’s a great defensive position, right atop a crag. An army of Turks couldn’t take it. His name is Edward, but they call him Red Ned. He’s a terrible man, the boatmen say.”

  Saskia smiled at my father and asked if there was by chance a morsel of cheese left. As Father called for more cheese and more rolls, Saskia turned to Amyas, her dimples still showing. “His name is Edward so they call him Ned. I think I grasp that much. But why do they call him Red Ned, I wonder?”

  “Because he’s so terrible.” It was a struggle to get the words out intelligibly around a mouthful of stew, but I managed it. I knew that Saskia, like many redheads, was peculiarly sensitive about the traits red hair was supposed to signify. Sometimes there was no telling when she would take offense.

  Too late. Amyas rushed in. “Because his hair is red, of course. And his hands are bathed in blood, the boatmen say.”

  Saskia’s dimples faded. She gazed forlornly into her empty bowl. “Is it so terrible … to have red hair?”

  Father called for more stew. More wine. More everything. Amyas said, very patiently, “It’s superstition. There’s nothing wrong with red hair. That’s all rubbish about Judas Iscariot.”

  Saskia looked up sharply. “What about Judas Iscariot?”

  “Judas-colored. People say Judas had red hair. So they sometimes call red hair Judas-colored. And they associate red hair with evildoing. It’s nonsense.. The same sort of people say Red Ned can bring people back from the dead. Pure rubbish.”

  More food arrived, but Saskia could not be distracted so easily. “In the first place, my hair is not red—”

  “I never said it was—I never noticed it was—Oh, I do apologize … .”

  Saskia ignored him. “My hair is red gold. Ask anyone with an eye for color.”

  “Hmm.” I tilted my head a little and took a long, considering look. “No. It’s red all right.”

  “Ask anyone with an eye for color,” she repeated tranquilly. “In the second place, one can bring people back from the dead.”

  “Hmm.” Amyas took his turn at a long, considering look. “Perhaps you can.”

  Saskia did not quite smile, but I could see her take a new measurement of my brother. All her archness left her, and she continued in her more usual downright way. “No, really. If you want someone to come back from the dead, you can fetch them back. If you have something that belonged to them, you can call them right to you. If you say the correct spells and if they died unshriven. That’s why war is so terrible. So many die with their sins still on them.”

  Intrigued, Amyas rushed in again. “What about plagues? Lots of people die unshriven in a plague.”

  Father poured more wine. “Now, Amyas. It’s one thing to listen politely to the boatmen, no matter what tales they choose to spin. But it is quite another to discuss this kind of rank superstition at the dinner table.”

  “Plagues too,” said Saskia cheerfully. “Sometimes they want to come anyway, because there was something they forgot to tell you. Like where the family treasure was hidden. Or if they feel bad about something they did and want to apologize. Y
ou must have played green gravel when you were little. It’s all about how to keep someone coming back from the dead.”

  I remembered the circle game we’d played as children. “Wash her in milk, dry her with silk,” I sang. “Green gravel, green gravel.”

  “That’s the one,” said Saskia. “Over time the words have changed. We learned green gravel, but once it was green grave, o.”

  We sang the round through twice. Father gave up and helped himself to more stew.

  “You can see to it that your family are safe if you bury them properly. Or you can bring them back to life and make them stay, if they care enough about what it is of theirs that you have. That’s why it’s dangerous to put too much value on the things of this world.”

  Amyas put on his loftiest expression. “Oh, rubbish. Father’s right. That’s rank superstition.”

  “It is not. It’s necromancy, and very wicked, but it isn’t superstition. My grandfather is a healer. He only deals in the white arts, of course, but he has to know all about the others.”

  “Hmm.” Amyas studied me. “So if Hail died unexpectedly, say, by talking herself to death…” He flicked a fingertip at my earlobe, but I pulled away in time. “I could bring her back just by saying a spell. And I could make her stay, if only I could manage to get hold of one of those fine gold earrings she’s so proud of. How did you come by those, I wonder?”

  “They were a gift,” I replied haughtily, “from a young man who admires my skill.”

  Father began to look appalled, but Saskia took pity on him. “She won them from Ludovic. Knucklebones.”

  Amyas smiled at me. “Very nice.” He smiled at Saskia. “Do you play?”

  “Not with you. Hail told us you taught her everything she knows.”

  “About knucklebones,” I added. It’s foolish to let even a favorite brother know just how helpful he has been. (Come to think of it, especially a favorite brother.)

  I could tell well enough from his conversation what Amyas thought of Saskia. That night, in our room under the roof, I tried to guess what Saskia made of my brother. I hinted that he had seemed to like her. She would not catch my meaning and did not allow me to talk about it for long. In anyone else, that brusqueness would have convinced me there was something afoot. In Saskia, whose most amiable moments were lightly seasoned with vinegar, it was impossible to be sure.

  FIVE

  (In which I study Maspero’s craft.)

  Only autumn brought relief for the weather that baked us that summer. The turn of the season brought storms, the kind of high winds usual in spring, and constant soaking rains, but brought them too late. After such a dry summer, the harvest was meager. Chill rains waterlogged what crops were left. The produce for sale in the city’s market stalls dwindled, and prices rose.

  That October marked the end of Gabriel’s seventh year in Madame Carriera’s workshop. On the first day of the month he began his masterpiece, painting in a corner of her studio. It was an allegorical piece, a large canvas depicting the drunkenness of Noah. By the end of the month, the work was all but complete. Only the final glaze remained to be done. Gabriel was off celebrating with his friends when Saskia, Piers, and I had our viewing of the masterpiece.

  “He’s sure to be admitted into the artists guild for this.” Piers pointed to Noah’s hand, outstretched helplessly toward his sons. “Look at those halftones.”

  “The drapery’s good,” said Saskia.

  “Oh, very good,” I said. “So much of it too. Looks like the laundry day of Noah, in fact.”

  “Cat,” said Saskia amiably. “You’re only jealous.”

  “I can do drapery.”

  “I never said you couldn’t. He’s a brave one, I’ll give him that. Not a very safe subject to choose these days.”

  “Noah?” I tried to look as if I knew what Saskia was referring to. “Or drunkenness?”

  “A helpless old man,” said Saskia. “People find political references everywhere these days.”

  “It’s not a political reference,” said Piers firmly. “It’s the drunkenness of Noah, and it’s good. Leave it at that. The guild will.”

  “It’s going to cause a sensation,” said Saskia. “The guild may not be as blind as you expect them to be.”

  “Noah is still Noah,” Piers insisted. “His sons still owe him their filial piety. That’s the text Gabriel chose. This will be talked about—it deserves the attention. But it isn’t political. Or if it is, it isn’t treasonous.”

  I remembered Madame Carriera’s conversation with Ludovic. “Will this really cause a stir?”

  “Oh, yes.” Saskia put the canvas cover back very carefully. “It will be interesting to see when it sells, and to whom, and for how much.”

  “Will it please someone?”

  Saskia said, “Probably. And that’s how we’ll know who, and how much.”

  “Then all I’ll really be left wondering is why,” I said.

  On the last day of November, Gabriel’s painting was presented to the artists guild as his masterpiece. He was accepted into the guild, and the Drunkenness of Noah earned a short-lived notoriety when it was purchased, at three times the going rate, for the private collection of Otto Tallant. Gabriel Wex opened a workshop of his own on the proceeds. Would-be apprentices flocked to him.

  Saskia, now the eldest and the most accomplished of us, became our leader. The kindness she showed me, and the patience, which came not at all easily to her, was in sharp contrast to my experience with Gabriel. I learned all the faster.

  Madame Carriera was commissioned to limn a Crucifixion, a devotional piece for the prince-bishop himself, a miniature to be fitted in its own cruciform jeweled case. The work was exacting. Madame Carriera did the painting on vellum smaller than a playing card. She designed the filigreed case but left the casting to Saskia.

  Saskia rose to the occasion. With me to help, she used the skill of a goldsmith to carry out Madame Carriera’s wishes. The finished case was a jewel to match Madame Carriera’s most delicate work.

  “Well done,” was Madame Carriera’s verdict, and she halved the commission with Saskia.

  “Glad to be done with it,” was Saskia’s private opinion. “I hope she won’t want any more.”

  “Why not? It’s beautiful.”

  “It’s nice enough. Old-fashioned, though.”

  “You loved the casting.”

  “I do like metal. But I’d rather do something with some weight to it. A medallion, for example. Filigree is jewelers’ work.”

  “Isn’t a medallion just as much a piece of jewelry as filigree is?”

  “That depends on the medallion.”

  The next errand that brought Saskia to the palace, I accompanied her. At Madame Carriera’s written request, we were admitted to the palace archive. There, in a glass-topped case, were two portrait medallions, one bronze, one gold.

  “There,” said Saskia. “Call that jewelry?”

  The bronze medallion looked unthinkably old, a Roman emperor with curly hair and a double chin. “Is it real?” I asked.

  “They don’t bother with copies here,” Saskia reminded me.

  I looked at the gold medallion.

  There are faces that proclaim the character within. Let the proportions of a face be never so odd, if the heart within is strong and fair, the face reveals that quality. We look and say, this is not beauty, yet still we look. We are drawn to that mysterious quality of the visage, even when the likeness is of someone we have never met. Likewise, who has not known someone who is fair of face yet negligible of heart? We are struck with the proportion of the features at first, but the impression does not last. A single deed or, at times, even a single word spoken in sufficiently plangent tones can banish that first impression and leave us wondering where we found beauty at all. It is the task of art to give us all these impressions and qualities, both the inward and the outward, and to give us something more, something that keeps us looking and wondering.

  “I’ve seen
him before,” I said. The portrait was similar to the Roman medallion in that it showed the profile of a man somewhere in his thirties. There the similarity ended. for where the classical portrait idealized everything but the double chin, this portrait seemed a realistic representation of a man who was at once strong, honest, wise, and sad.

  “Of course you have, you idiot. That’s Good King Julian.” At my silence, Saskia nudged me in the ribs. “What did they teach you in Neven? Anything at all? That’s Julian the Fourth. The siege medal, remember? It’s by Gil Maspero.”

  “Gil Maspero? What else did he do?” The name was not as familiar as Julian’s profile. He was my Good King Julian, from the Archangel Chapel. I ought to have recognized him at once, for the siege medal was the model for the Julian dinar, the backbone of Lidian currency, a silver coin so famous that even in these degenerate days it is used as a measure for goodness. You may put this to the test yourself.

  Ask if a horse is sound and you will be told, without any hesitation, that he is as sound as a Julian dinar. That the horse is touched in the wind, or has a bowed tendon, or is spoiled in some other way, is simply the way of all horseflesh and must not be allowed to reflect on the soundness of that beautiful old coinage.

  “Gil Maspero?” In her exasperation, Saskia nudged me in the ribs again, this time a bit harder. “It takes less time to think what he didn’t do. Ever hear of a little thing called the Mathias Bridge?”

  Everyone knew the Mathias Bridge. It crosses the Lida above Shene in a three-arch span, a feat believed to be impossible until the bridge had been finished. “I’ve heard of it.”

  “Maspero designed it. He also improved the city’s defensive fortifications, cast portrait medallions of the royal family, painted miniature portraits of everyone who had the money to pay him, frescoed the palace throne room, and when she died, he carved Queen Andred the Fair in marble to ornament her tomb. Oh, and when Good King Julian broke the Turkish siege and saved us all—Maspero cast the siege medal to commemorate the famous victory.”