by Riona Kelly
She'd looked up Marchant's gallery on the internet when they'd gotten back to the hotel, and he seemed legitimate. His gallery displayed and sold work by a wide range of artists. Still, she wasn't certain her particular art would be comfortable in the setting. He was the sole distributor for works by several European artists, including Pablo de Sintra. In fact, Marchant had discovered the Basque artist living in relative poverty in a town near the Portuguese city rather than in it. He took the city name as his artistic moniker because Alain had suggested it and now signed his paintings in that way.
If she placed a canvas or two with Marchant, she did not wish to sign an exclusive agreement with him, so the details would need to be discussed as would any commission he might receive from the sale. She had shown her work many times, but she rarely placed them for sale in a gallery. In the early days, she would display the book cover art at conventions and would sometimes sell them from there to the fans who willingly bid the cost up to a very nice amount although not close to what she might get from a collector these days. Perhaps even Señor Cardenas might be willing to fork over several thousand to have the cover painting for a favorite book. Money, however, was not a motivation for her placing a painting with Marchant. Several non-book related paintings she'd done had received critical acclaim when she'd displayed them, and she wondered if they would draw more interest to her work.
She loved doing the book covers, but as she'd said, the business had slowed some in recent years. She worked mostly for two or three larger publishing houses, but so many writers were publishing books now, and digitally-created covers were plentiful. For as many writers as they were, it seemed an equal number of artists were providing covers at very reasonable fees. Perhaps she was becoming a dinosaur in the business with wanting to continue to paint the covers. And it wasn't because she didn't know how to use the new tools of the trade; it was a matter of preference. Sooner or later, she might have to switch to using the computer.
Putting a few paintings with Marchant might give her an indication if there would be an outlet for her paintings in the legitimate art world. She wanted to check him out further, though and would have her business manager check into his background more. If nothing else, she'd learned to be cautious over the years.
The other thing that troubled her a little was the painting by Pablo de Sintra, which bore a strong resemblance to Roberto's paintings in style, color, and brush strokes. She found it curious Roberto would imitate de Sintra's style so closely in his own work. Had Michelle noticed?
Her niece had spent the time over breakfast catching up with her friends, keying in messages nimbly with her three-fingered typing on the tiny keyboard on her phone. Young people, Lindy thought. They can't be out of touch for any length of time these days.
Now, as they got out of the car, Michelle turned to her aunt and asked, "You know, we didn't talk much last night after the party, but you looked at the painting closely, didn't you? Did you notice anything about it?"
Lindy nodded, "I did. What about you?"
"I thought it resembled Roberto's style. Does that mean he's copying this Pablo-guy?"
"Either copying very well or something else is going on."
"What do you mean?"
Lindy began walking toward the entry to the ruins, and Michelle fell into step beside her. "I mean the style is so much like Roberto's that I can't really tell the difference. The brush strokes, the color mix, the subject matter – it's all the same as his. There would be no reason for him to duplicate the style so completely it's virtually impossible to tell the difference."
"Are you saying that the painting was actually Roberto's? Or is Roberto really Pablo?"
Lindy shrugged. "All I can really say without an expert analysis is the painting styles are so similar they could be by the same artist or one extremely good forger. But neither option makes sense."
"I can ask Roberto if that specific painting is his," Michelle replied, her voice sounding a little tense.
"It would help if we had a photo and could send it to him. Just describing it might not trigger a memory for him, but if he could see it..."
"I do." She pulled out her phone again and tapped on the screen. "I took a picture with my phone while you were looking at it. I think it's clear enough for you to see most of the canvas." She held the phone up to show Lindy.
Taking the phone from her, Lindy enlarged the image a little and smiled. "Yes, I think it's good enough for him to recall. Send it to him and ask if he painted it, but don't say anything about Pablo de Sintra. I don't want to stir up a hornet's nest if there's no meat at the table."
Michelle nodded, then tapped in a quick note to Roberto, attached the photo, and sent it as Lindy paid the entry fees for the grounds.
Entering, Michelle and Lindy paused to gaze over the beautiful, yet dry-looking landscape of the ancient Roman city. Near the entry, a beautiful garden with flowers, bushes, and trees beckoned them, and they responded, turning into the nearest pathway to go in. Meandering through, they peered at the various beds of flowers and made their way to the town where the base stones and pillars outlined what had once been houses. Within the destroyed walls, the marble mosaic floors drew their eyes as so many of them had different beautiful and unique patterns within the designs.
Michelle took pictures at almost everyone as they paused to study them for a few minutes. “It’s like a museum,” she said as she lined up a shot with three open, marble-floored rooms in a row. “So much beauty in an ancient city. Who would have thought?”
“Well, Rome was an advanced civilization. Look at the streets here and even the channels for their plumbing. Rome in the first century was quite modern in many respects, and Italica was built by Romans at the beginning of the third century,” Lindy stated before she paused to look at the guidebook she’d brought. “Hadrian, the emperor who built the wall in England, was born here, as were two other emperors.”
Michelle squinted at her as she pushed her sunhat up a little. “Didn’t you tell that man last night that you had arranged a guide for today?”
Lindy held up her book. “I did. So, I fudged a little, but all we need to know is in here.” She tapped the cover. “For instance, over here is the House of Birds, so-called because of the birds worked into the mosaic on the floor.”
Michelle followed her into the first of the many rooms that made up the house, all of them now just an outline in stone but with much of the floor mosaics still in place.
“This would have been an aristocrat’s home. It even had this peristylum – that’s this little patio area – with a well in it to provide water.” She led on through the ruins while she glanced at the layout in the book. “Ah, and back here is a triclinium with two patios, one on each side. This one—” She paused to point at the one on her left. “—had a fountain while the other had a pool.”
Michelle’s lip skewed up on the side. “Getting pretty free with those fancy words, aren’t you?”
Lindy laughed. “They’re in the guidebook. I don’t speak Latin. At least, not much.”
“So, all of this belonged to Rome at the time?” Michelle asked, waving her arm to indicate the whole area.
“Yes, Spain was under Roman rule then. They were a conquering nation, but generally, they brought some good improvements with them, like the aqueducts, roads, dams, and bridges. Even the amphitheater. Like the Greeks, they were great creators.”
“How did the world fall so far behind?” Michelle asked. “I mean, the Middle Ages were dim.”
Lindy shrugged. It was a good question, but she didn’t have an answer. “Let’s head over to the amphitheater. This is a very good representation of their construction skill as much of it is still standing.”
As they walked through the main vomitorium, or entryway, to the coliseum, Lindy marveled at the size of it. She’d been to Italica many years earlier, but it hadn’t been as excavated as it was now. They stepped through into the semi-circular two-story building, getting their first look
at the central arena.
Michelle gasped. “Omigod, it’s the dragon pit!” She jumped up and down a couple of times. “I can’t believe it. I have to get pictures!” She lifted her camera and took a photo right then.
“Excuse me,” Lindy said. “The dragon pit? What are you talking about?”
“Game of Thrones. Aunt Lindy, this was used in the television series. Didn’t you recognize it?”
Lindy’s face clouded with puzzlement. “Uh, no, I don’t watch the show.”
“What?!” Michelle’s eyebrows lifted almost to her hairline in shock. “You don’t watch it? You’ve got to be kidding.”
Her niece rolled her eyes then pointed to the central part of the arena where huge openings in the ground formed the pits where animals were kept for the games. “This is where Jon Snow came to talk with Cersei, and the dragons came bringing Daenerys.” She looked around the area and pointed to a section of the wall. “Over there is where the dragon climbed down to let Daenerys climb off. They covered those pits with a stage to make the meeting spot. Can I go down to the stage area behind it?”
Lindy nodded. “Of course.” She waited as Michelle hurried to the arena and climbed up to the stage overlooking the pits. Well, at least, she’d found something that truly impressed the girl. She strolled over, noting all the work done to excavate the theater.
Michelle walked out on the stage and made a slow turn, waving her arms at the tiers of seating around the entire arena. “It must seat thousands, auntie.”
Lindy consulted her guide book. ““It can seat twenty-five thousand people. Many of the dignitaries from nearby came for the events, but I don’t know if anyone knows if it was ever filled. The whole town barely had a population of eight thousand, so it certainly exceeded the needs of the town. But even in the third century, Seville was a larger city, and doubtless, it attracted visitors from there.”
Michelle marched to where she perceived center stage to be and struck a pose as she pretended to play to the most important audience, where the Roman senators might sit with the local head honcho. “Take a photo of me here, please, Aunt Lindy. I want to send it to my theater friends and joke about playing a huge outdoor theater.”
Laughing, Lindy framed the photo to get a close up of her niece with the seats and pillars rising behind her lending their antiquity and stateliness to the image. Liking what she saw, she encouraged Michelle to do a few performance poses and snapped several more photos as the girl obliged.
As she thumbed through the images with her niece peering over her shoulder, Lindy saw what Roberto had seen in her — a naturally graceful young woman who looked beautiful on film. It would be easy to paint her in a variety of settings and poses. If she made it as a film actress, she would likely photograph well. Her natural beauty shined, and when she wore make-up, she looked stunning.
“Oh, I love those, auntie. Might I put a few in my portfolio along with the ones from the Alcazar yesterday and the ones from the fountain?”
“That’s some portfolio you’re going to have. Of course, you can have them. But I’m sure there will be many more photos to come on this trip. Many places in Spain are picturesque, and the light is wonderful with the color of the stones here. I’ve done paintings of Italica from my first visit here in 1989. Much of the excavation we see now wasn’t even started then, not until 2001. So it’s like seeing it for the first time in many ways. Perhaps I’ll do more paintings, and you might make a fitting subject for one if you don’t mind me painting you in a Roman tunic to give it a romance cover look.”
“Seriously?” Michelle’s eyes widened, and a huge smile lit up her face. “You’d put me on a book cover?”
“Well, it wouldn’t look exactly like you, but you and most of your friends could probably see the resemblance.”
“So long as it isn’t distorted like the French painter did.”
“You mean Picasso? He was a Spanish painter, dear. In fact, he was from Malaga, where we were a few days ago. His style of art is called ‘cubism,’ and he was one of the creators of it. But no, I don’t do it. I prefer something more realistic, especially when painting book covers.”
“Then it would be cool. But I have one request.”
Lindy lifted an eyebrow as if to say, what?
“Could you put a dragon in the painting?”
“A dragon? I don’t believe I’ve ever done one before. Maybe this won’t be a romance ...”
“Sure, it could. He could be a dragon shifter who’s madly in love with the maiden.”
“Maybe.” Lindy grinned then pointed toward the entry plaza where towering cypress trees stood, along with a couple of pillars and a fine example of the colorful mosaics so popular in the Mediterranean countries. “Let’s go over, and I’ll take a few photos of you in various poses. One of those will serve as the basis for the painting.”
As if parting from an unseen audience, Lindy watched Michelle give a little bow to the seats and prance out to the courtyard area. Just as she started to lean against one of the broken columns, her phone played a cheery little tune, and she whipped it out of her pocket to answer.
Lindy shook her head and looked away, checking out the sun’s position and making notes on her own phone as to the angle, the colors, and depth of the shadows while she waited for Michelle to finish. She wanted to include some of the tiles in the painting, so she photographed several of them, and turned her attention to the column itself, getting a detailed shot of the base and the top of it so she would have a clear image for the work.
Call finished, Michelle hung up then came up to her. “That was Roberto. He does recall the painting. It was a special order he did a few years ago. He’d only been selling a few paintings then, and a man asked him if he could do a custom painting for him. He said it was one of his first commission jobs.”
Lindy frowned. “Did he say if his client requested a specific style?”
“No, and I didn’t think to ask since you didn’t want me to say anything about Pablo de Sinatra.”
“Sintra, not Sinatra. One’s a city, and the other’s a singer. It’s all right. The resemblance could be a coincidence, but I still want to check on it. Now, stand over by that column, lean against it, and look wistfully toward the statue across the way.”
A dozen photographs later, they located a café in the nearby town of Santiponce and ordered café con leche, the Spanish version of café au lait, and a basket of pastries to tide them over until dinner.
While Michelle prattled on about what Roberto was doing, Lindy thought about the painting and the best way to check it out. She had a few contacts, but she thought Colin might have better ones. She regretted not getting his cell phone number or any of the places where she might reach him in Italy. Perhaps the production company he was working for might tell her. What was the name of it? She closed her eyes and tried to recall what he’d said. The name of it danced right at the edge of her memory, almost there, but not quite. It will come to me soon if I just don’t fret about it.
“Omigod, he’s on his way here,” Michelle’s excited voice cut through her thoughts.
“What?”
“Roberto. He’s coming to Seville to see me... us. Maybe he’s curious about the painting. Or he just misses me, but he left a couple of hours ago.”
“Well, that’s a surprise,” Lindy replied, not sure what to say. Did the question about the painting trigger his response? They would find out soon enough.
Chapter 15
Michelle and Lindy had almost arrived back in Seville when Lindy’s phone rang a little after five p.m. At her indication, Michelle answered it, knowing her aunt expected a call from Alain and was not surprised to hear his voice although he sounded both off guard and pleased she picked up the call.
“Can you hold just a few moments? My aunt is pulling the car off the road so she can talk to you.” She listened as he told her again how pleased he was she’d come to dinner the previous night, and he hoped she and her aunt would allow him to tak
e them to an excellent restaurant tonight.
“I can’t make it tonight myself. I have other plans this evening, but here’s my aunt.” She handed the phone to Lindy as soon as the car was safely stopped on the shoulder.
Although Lindy put a smile in her voice, she wasn’t as sure about the dinner plans as she told him, “We won’t be back in Seville for about another thirty minutes, and we are expecting a friend. So it would be almost eight before I would be free to go out. Is that too late?”
She waited as he spoke, arching an eyebrow at Michelle, then said, “All right. Yes, fine. I’ll meet you in the lobby of the hotel at eight-thirty.”
“You could have gone sooner,” Michelle said when Lindy clicked the phone off and tucked it back into the pocket of her handbag.
“I’m hoping Roberto is here before I go out. I have a couple of questions for him, and I want to know what you two will be doing.” Lindy pulled the car back into traffic.
“Honestly, don’t you trust me?” Michelle sounded offended.
“Of course, I do. But you’re in a foreign country, and in a city that you, and possibly Roberto, are neither one familiar with, so I would like to know what your plans are before I go out for the evening. And you’d better make sure your phone is charged.”
Michelle shot an annoyed look at her aunt, but she did have a point or two. She didn’t know what Roberto had in mind, and she was as surprised as her aunt with his decision to come to Seville. Nonetheless, she was excited to see him. She wondered what questions Lindy had in mind for him, but she thought they had something to do with the painting. Although she wasn’t saying much about it, she knew Lindy had suspicions about the piece and who actually painted it. For herself, she had faith Roberto didn’t copy anyone’s art style, but the painting was a mystery.
They pulled into the hotel parking about five-forty-five and went into the lobby. As they checked for their room key, the concierge told them a young man was waiting for them in the hotel lounge.