Queen & Country (28 page)

‘Do you think,' said Hew, ‘that it was intended to represent the queen?'

‘Quite possibly,' said Giles. ‘Though by no means necessarily.'

That was the painting's charm for him. Its ambivalence reflected how he saw the world, a balance of two halves, and Giles, in his deliberations, rarely came emphatically upon a certain side. His conclusions were generally, ‘So it will be, or otherwise, not.' A paradox was bread and butter, meat and drink, to Doctor Locke. It did not disturb him in the least to see the flesh and bone rotated in a wink. He collected prisms and perspectives, which reflected back on the reflecting eye, distracted and dissected in a myriad forms, the image it observed.

‘This is a
memento mori
likeness, as I think, reminding us, how so fair we bloom, of our own mortality. And I should like to have it, or else something like it, for my own collection.'

‘Why not ask your painter here if he can make a copy?' Hew suggested. ‘I should like to ask him, what he makes of it.'

‘That,' considered Giles, ‘is a good idea. And I will come along, if you do not mind. For I have an itch to see into the dinner hall, and to find out how his painting has progressed. Since the boy has
finished with me, sitting for the draft, and is working up his copy, his master is evasive, secretive and shy, and does all that he can, not to be observed. It is a curious thing, this subtle change in him, as I suppose, a jealousy, attending to his craft.'

It was true enough, the painter's mood had changed. For as the work went on, he had withdrawn with his boy into a private world, that occupied them, utterly.

They came early in the morning, while the students straggled yawning to their prayers, and hurried past the porter with no smile or word, but to have the key. They brought in the colours required for that day, in small pots and shells, and pencils that were made from squirrel tail or miniver, tapered to a point. The painter locked the door, and sometimes sent the boy for water, eggs or ale from the college buttery, a scribbled scrap of paper scrunched up in his hand, but would not go himself. He shrank from curious scholars, dawdling in the court, who racked their necks to peep at him; and while he had been happy, several weeks before, to prepare his panels out among the cloisters, sanding down the wood, and treating it with size, breaking off to chat with anyone who passed, now he was inclined to keep his work indoors, safe from the inspection of a squinting sun.

They had made good progress with the work. The boy had worked up the sketches he had drawn of Professor Locke, upon a panel broad enough to do his subject proud. The figure was complete, and he could do the rest, the backcloth and effects, without the help or hindrance of a sitter by his side. He was working now upon the antique skull, with the tints of ochre, orpiment and white the painter had prepared for him, elucidating bone in layers of yellow paint.

Ars et Natura
was almost complete, and to the painter's eye, persuasive in its art. This picture would establish him. He had called for help, from his willing boy, in drawing the proportions of the figures on the board. The temper of the paint and the colours were his own. And colour was the essence and the heart of it, for him.

The painter was disturbed by an intrusive knocking at the
chamber door. For as long as he could, he went on ignoring it, trusting the intrusion would give up and go away. And the knocking, of course, did not disturb the boy, who painted on, oblivious. The rapping, though, did not let up, and was backed up in due course, by the imprecations of Professor Locke, muffled through the barrier of the chamber door, a solid mass of iron and oak, strong enough to stand against belligerent attack, but failing to protect against an irritating hum. ‘Now, I must insist,' the doctor cried.

The painter called, ‘One moment, sir,' the time it took to cover Art and Nature with a cloth, and resigned to all, opened up the door to them, albeit just a crack. He saw the doctor, and his friend, standing on the stair. ‘Will you let us in?'

‘Aye, and if ye must,' the painter said, reluctantly. ‘And that your business does not keep, and hold us from our work.'

‘It will not tak long. But, sir, I must protest, that you lock the door. For it cannot be allowed, that ye invade our college and shut fast her gates against us,' Doctor Locke complained.

‘I am sorry for that. But it has been necessary. We are plagued, in our work, by some of your students, who will not desist, to keek and lour at us. They are craning at the windows, while we are at work,' the painter said.

‘Really?' Giles replied, perplexed; the more so since the dinner hall was on the upper floor.

‘Really. They are, if I may say, uncanny and uncouth for educated men. They pester my poor boy, and mock him his afflictions.'

Doctor Locke was vexed at this. ‘Then, sir, I am sorry for it. You may have my word that I will amend it. I had no idea that they played at that. They will be telt, severely.'

‘There is one, sir, in particular, haunts us at our work, and follows us incessantly; he has a fascination with the way we talk. It is not kind nor mannerly.'

Giles conceded with a sigh, ‘Ah, that will be Roger. Then I take the point, and apologise for him. I may say in his defence, he does not mean a spite, or malice to your boy. His interest in his case is
scholarly and genuine. Yet, I apprehend, it is an annoyance to you, and you have my word, he will not come again. I will speak to him.'

‘I thank you, sir, If that is all . . .' the painter was about to close the door again, when Giles objected quickly, that that was not all. ‘Please, sir, let us in. My friend here has a question he would put to you.'

The painter left the door, and they followed him inside. Hew had the pleated picture, wrapped up in his hand. ‘Do you have a scaffold?' he inquired.

His question caused the painter a small shiver of alarm. ‘A what?'

‘A frame to stand a picture, like that one over there.' He pointed to the easel where the prentice stood, working on the portrait he had made of Doctor Locke.

Wordlessly, the painter looked around. He found a second scaffold, folded by the wall, and handed it to Hew, who set it up. He unwrapped the picture, with its prism pleats, and set it at a slant, well disposed to show its double aspect off.

‘What devil's work is that?' the painter asked.

‘Then you have not seen it before?' Hew was interested to read into the painter's eyes. Whatever the man looked at, or believed he saw, he did not like it much.

‘Never in my life. It is a hideous thing. Why do you bring it here?'

‘At the command of the king, who admires it greatly. He has asked me to find a painter with the skill to make a copy of it. Could you do that, do you think?'

The painter shook his head. He could not, Hew observed, take his eyes from the picture. Whether he had recognised it, it was hard to say. But there was something in it drew him in, willingly or not.

‘It is not,' he said at last, ‘my kind of thing.'

‘That is a pity, then, for Doctor Locke had hoped to have one too. Can you tell us, then, what painter might have made this? Could it be Arnold Bronckhorst, perhaps?'

‘Bronckhorst?' This shot in the dark had drawn a clear reaction Hew was interested to see. The painter looked afraid. ‘Why do you say that? What maks ye think of him?'

‘Because I spoke with Adrian Vanson, who is the king's painter. And he telt me there were only two painters, in the whole of Scotland, who could make a portrait likeness, Bronckhorst, and himself. This picture, he asserts, was not done by him.' Hew looked meaningfully over at the painter's boy. But the painter seemed relieved, and his face relaxed. ‘Vanson would say that. Did he tell you it was Bronckhorst?'

‘He telt me, that in his opinion, it was likely not.'

‘Well,' the painter shrugged. ‘You have your answer, then. And as to the rest, it is not a portrait, but a trick.'

‘Well,' considered Hew. ‘I think it
is
a portrait, of a kind. Though it may not be a portrait of the woman it depicts.'

‘You have lost me there. I will leave sic reason to you twa philosophers, and get back to my work.' The painter turned his back on them, and on the painting too. But Hew did not desist. ‘If you do not mind, I have not finished yet. You will understand, I put these questions to you at the king's request, which Giles Locke will confirm.'

‘Aye, indeed,' said Giles.

The painter turned again. ‘What is it you want, now?'

‘To put the question of this picture to your boy.'

‘For that, there is no call. For he does not ken.'

‘Ask him, if you please.'

The painter, since he saw that Hew would not give up, and was supported in his suit by Doctor Locke, had no option but to come up and disturb the boy, where he painted still, blissfully absorbed. The painter showed his face and touched him on the shoulder, as he always did. The prentice shook him off, and scowled upon his hand, a thing that left the painter troubled and distressed, for never had the boy rejected him before. He knew no good could come of it.

He did as he was told. He made the boy come up, where he could see the picture. The prentice picked it up, and turned it in his hands, interested and curious to see how it was made. And it was plain to Hew that he was not afraid of it.

‘He likes it,' he observes. ‘Then I shall leave it here, and see if he will try to make a copy of it.'

‘He does not have the time,' the painter said. ‘And nor, in truth, do I. For after he has finished with Professor Locke, and the platform piece, we have all the virtues and the vices still.'

‘There is no hurry,' answered Hew. He put the picture back on its easel frame, where it seemed to exercise a small and quiet mastery over the large chamber, like the queen herself. He followed the boy back, to look upon the portrait he had made of Giles. The doctor's face looked out, from a naked panel that was bare behind, with an uncanny prescience. For floating in that void was Giles Locke's gentle soul, his broad face filled with kind and humorous intelligence. There was something else, a deep and sad proplexity Hew had not seen before, or noticed to have aged his dear friend's living face, but as he looked upon it, recognised it now. ‘Your boy is possessed of an extraordinary talent.'

The painter did not answer this. But, ‘Will you take your picture, sir?' he asked uneasily.

‘I will leave it here. It sits well, I think. Bear in mind, it belongs to the king, so we must be careful that no harm should come to it.'

He was not sure, after all, why he left it there. The painter, it was plain, did not want him to. But it seemed to fit. ‘Did you know Bronckhorst?' he asked. ‘Vanson said, he left; I wondered if you kent what might have become of him?'

The painter shook his head. ‘I cannot tell ye, sir. I never met the man.'

After they had gone, the painter could not rest, though the boy returned to work upon his easel portrait. The woman and the skull seemed to watch the painter as he tried to work. From the corner of his eye, he could see them both, conflated and confused, so there was a bloom upon a piece of bone, or an eye winked from a skull, in an empty socket where it should not be. There was nothing else of art or colour there; the colours that were used were chosen for the trick, so that what was there of red, to mark the living flesh, was no more than a streak of thinly trickled cinnabar, dripping from a crease,
like a line of blood. He covered up the turning picture with a cloth, but he could feel it still, burning at his back. The room was filled with skulls. The mark of his mortality meant nothing to the boy, who kent nought of Hell, but everything to him. He could not put the horror of it cleanly from his mind.

The prentice could not help. The painter sensed a change, a difference in the boy. His humours had grown dark, and his sweet nature soured. What devil could corrupt, and turn his heart against the master he had loved? What menace could intrude upon that secret, silent world?

And there was Bronckhorst, too. The painter opened up the picture from its cloth, and looked at it again. For there was something there, that would not be kept in. Nothing in the figure bore the mark of him. Then why had he come up? What impulse had returned him, after all these years?

He found peace at last, in the work in hand. The colours in his painting – vivid blues and reds, lifted and encouraged him. He painted the wings on the sandals and helmet, feathery light, with a feather itself, and found himself calmed by their delicate brightness. The helmet and the water he would leave till last, for in their sheer illuminance, his painting would be done, and he would prove himself, the master of his craft.

Hew came home to Frances, welcomed with a warmth that he had seldom felt before, and which he returned to her, with a loving heart. And yet, Frances felt, he was absent still, as though a part of him had wandered off elsewhere, and had forgotten to return. He told her what had happened with the king. ‘The pity is,' he said, ‘we may not marry yet.'

It did not seem to Frances that he minded much, Perhaps it was the chase, that mattered most to him. It distracted him, at least, from the trouble to his conscience at the Scots queen's death, and so much she was grateful for. And they were married still, whatever happened here.

‘But you believe the king will grant us leave?' she asked.

‘I'm sure he will.'

‘What happens if you do not ever find the answer to his question?'

He would not think of that. And Frances understood, the trial that he was put to did not count, to him, as any trial at all; for it was what he knew, and what his spirit yearned for, and what he could do best.

‘It will not matter, much. Meg says, we will have more things, and a better choice, if we are not wed before the Senzie fair.' Frances was surprised, how natural it felt, to shape a word in Scots for which she had no sound. ‘The
Senzie
fair.'