Burnt Sienna

by David Morrell

  9

  “You won’t be working today.”

  Sienna looked disappointed. “Why?”

  “We’re ready to begin the next stage. I have to get the surface ready.” Malone showed her a large piece of plywood on a table.

  “I thought painters use canvas.”

  “The kind of paint I’m going to use is called tempera. It needs a more rigid surface than canvas. This piece of plywood is old enough that it won’t warp anymore. The chemicals in it have evaporated, so they won’t affect the paint. But just in case, I’m going to seal it with this glue.” He pointed toward a pot of white viscous liquid on a hot plate.

  “It smells chalky.”

  “That’s what’s in it.” Malone dipped a brush into the pot and applied the mixture to the board.

  As soon as the board was covered, he set down the brush and rubbed his fingers over the warm glue.

  “Why are you doing that ?”

  “To get rid of the air bubbles.”

  Sienna looked intrigued.

  “Care to try?” he asked.

  “You’re serious?”

  “If you don’t mind getting your hands sticky.”

  She hesitated. Her cinnamon eyes brightened when she ran her fingers through the glue. “It reminds me of when I was in kindergarten, doing finger painting.”

  “Except that in this case, we don’t want to leave a pattern.” Malone brushed the layer smooth.

  “It never occurred to me that painting involved more than drawing shapes and using color.”

  “If you want it to last, it involves a lot of other things.” Malone handed her the brush. “Why don’t you put on the next coat?”

  “But what if I make a mistake?”

  “I’ll fix it.”

  She dipped the brush into the pot. “Not very much, right?”

  “That’s the idea.”

  “Is there any special way to do this?”

  “Pick a corner.”

  She chose the upper right.

  “Now brush to the left. You can use short back-and-forth strokes, but when it comes to the finishing strokes, brush only to the left. Go down a little, and move to the left again. Excellent. Make sure everything’s smooth. Are you feeling any drag on the brush?”

  “A little resistance.”

  “Good. Stop a minute. We want it to start drying but not get hard.”

  “Since you’re moving to the next stage, you must have decided how you want to pose me.”

  Malone nodded.

  “What pose is it? How am I going to look?”

  “See for yourself.” He pointed toward a sketch on another table.

  She approached it uncertainly, peering down. For long seconds, she didn’t say anything. “I’m smiling, but I look sad.”

  “And vulnerable, but determined not to get hurt anymore.”

  Sienna’s voice was almost a whisper. “That’s how I seem to you?”

  “One of the ways. Do you object?”

  She kept staring at the sketch. “No. I don’t object.”

  “You have all kinds of expressions, but most of them don’t show what’s going on behind your eyes. At first, I assumed it was a habit from when you were a model. After all, the company that hired you to pose in whatever dress they were selling couldn’t have cared less if you happened to be feeling glum when you did the sitting. They just wanted you to make the damned dress look good. So I imagine you did your job, turned on your smile, put a glint in your eyes, and lowered a shield behind those eyes.”

  “A lot of days, it was like that.”

  “But every once in a while, when I was studying you —”

  “Which I don’t mind any longer, by the way. I’m amazed that I’ve gotten used to it. When I was a model, the looks I got were usually predatory. But yours don’t threaten me. They make me feel good about myself.”

  “You don’t normally feel good about yourself?”

  “The man who drew that sketch knows the answer.”

  “Every once in a while, when I was studying you, the shield behind your eyes would disappear, and this is how you seemed to me. Your sadness and vulnerability are what make you beautiful. Or maybe it’s the reverse.”

  “The reverse?”

  “I wonder if it’s your beauty that makes you sad and vulnerable.”

  Sienna’s throat sounded dry. “In the sketch, I’m looking to my right. At what?”

  “Whatever’s important to you.”

  “A breeze from that direction is blowing my hair. Somehow you’ve created the illusion that whatever I’m looking at is passing me.”

  “The important things are passing all of us.”

  10

  Sienna hurried up the steps to the sunbathed terrace and tried not to falter when she didn’t see Chase at the wrought-iron table, where they usually met before going to work. I’m a little early, she told herself. He’ll be here shortly. But before she could sit down, she saw a servant carry a large bowl of something into the sunroom.

  Puzzled, she followed. The servant came out as Sienna entered. She saw Chase peering down at what was now visible to her in the bowl. Eggs.

  “Good morning.” He smiled.

  “Good morning. You’re going to have breakfast in here?”

  “I might not have breakfast at all. I’m too eager to get started.” Chase picked up an egg, cracked it, divided its shell, and poured the yolk from one half to the other, making the white drop into a bowl.

  Still thinking he intended to eat the eggs for breakfast, Sienna asked, “How are you going to cook them?”

  “I’m not. I’m going to make paint with them.”

  “What?”

  Chase eased the yolk from the half shell and placed it on a paper towel, where he rolled it gently, blotting off the remainder of the white.

  “You’re gentle,” Sienna said. “I’d have broken the yolk by now.”

  “Believe me, years ago, I broke plenty when I was learning.” With a thumb and forefinger, Chase picked up the yolk by the edge of its sack and dangled it over a clean jar. “Feel like helping?”

  “I’d break it.”

  “At this point, we want to. Use that knife to puncture the bottom of the yolk. Carefully. Good.” Chase let the yolk drip from its sack, then delicately squeezed the remainder out.

  “Here.” He handed her an egg.

  “What?”

  “Help me prepare more yolks.”

  “But …”

  “You saw how it’s done. The worst that can happen is we have to get more eggs.”

  She chuckled. “Yesterday I was finger painting. Today you’ve got me playing with food.” But after she cracked the egg and separated the white from the yolk, she wasn’t prepared for how sensual it felt to roll the intact yolk in a paper towel and blot off the remainder of the white. The soft pouch felt extremely vulnerable through the paper towel, needing to be handled with the utmost care. When she transferred it to the palm of her hand, the yolk felt surprisingly dry, delicately quivering, the tactile sensation intensifying.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “I can’t remember the last time I had a pleasurable new experience.”

  “If separating eggs is your idea of a good time …” Now it was Chase’s turn to chuckle.

  She enjoyed the sound of it. “How many do you need?”

  “Eight.” He lanced the yolk he held.

  “What do you want with them?”

  “After dinner last night, I came back here and ground the pigments you see in those other jars.”

  Sienna studied them. White, black, red, blue, green, yellow, violet, and brown. Except for one, they were common colors, and yet she didn’t think she’d ever seen any so pure and lustrous. “That shade of brown is unusual.”

  “Burnt sienna.”

  She felt a shock of recognition.

  “The shade of your skin,” Chase said. “Your parents named you well. It happens to be my favo
rite color.”

  She looked in amazement from the jar to her arm.

  “It’s distinguished by a brilliant, transparent, fiery undertone that’s especially suited for a medium as brilliant and luminous as tempera,” Chase said.

  After adding one pigment to each of the yolks, he blended the mixtures with distilled water until they were fluid enough to be applied to a surface. “And now we’re ready to rock and roll.”

  11

  The plywood was on an easel, its chalk surface covered with a version of the sketch that Chase had selected.

  “So now you color the sketch?” Sienna asked.

  “No, it’s more complicated than that.” He guided her toward her chair, which he had placed in front of the easel. “The sketch is only a blueprint.”

  Until that moment, she had thought that he’d stared at her as intensely as anyone possibly could, but now she realized that he hadn’t really stared at her at all. The power of the concentration he now directed toward her was eerie. From five feet away, his gaze seemed to touch her. Along her neck, her lips, her eyelids, her brow. She felt invisible fingers caress her skin, making it tingle. She felt something from him sink beneath her, warming her, becoming one with her.

  “Are you all right?”

  “What?” She straightened in the chair.

  “You look like you’re falling asleep. If you want to get some rest, we can try again later.”

  “No,” she said quickly. “I’m fine. Keep going.”

  Chase managed to keep his intense gaze focused on her all the while he dipped his brush into a jar of paint, used his left thumb and forefinger to squeeze some of the paint from the brush, and applied the paint to the rigid surface. Sometimes, his hand went to the surface automatically, as if he knew how the image he was creating appeared without needing to look at it except for quick glances while he concentrated on her.

  Overwhelmed, needing to talk but not knowing what about, she said the first thing that came into her mind. “I can feel you painting me.”

  “If this makes you uncomfortable …”

  “No. I don’t mind it at all. How long will the portrait take?”

  “As long as it needs. That’s one of the advantages of tempera. I can add layer after layer for weeks before the yolk finally becomes so inert it refuses to accept another level. Don’t worry, though. This isn’t going to take weeks.”

  Sienna surprised herself by thinking that she wouldn’t mind if it did.

  A muffled explosion rattled the windows.

  “What are they doing over there?” Chase asked.

  “I have no idea. I’ve never seen that part of the estate.”

  Chase looked surprised.

  “When Derek and I were married, he told me I wasn’t allowed over there. I didn’t know how serious he was until curiosity got the better of me and I tried to get a look. A guard stopped me before I was halfway there. That night, the discussion at dinner wasn’t pleasant. I never tried again.”

  “You didn’t know how he earned his money when you married him?”

  Sienna rubbed her forehead.

  “Sorry. That’s a question I have no business asking.”

  “No, it’s all right.” She exhaled wearily. “I should have asked more questions of my own. I had a vague idea of what he did, but I didn’t make certain connections. What is it they say? The devil’s in the details. Once I began to understand the specifics, I wished I were still naïve.”

  The next thing, Chase was standing over her. “Are you okay?”

  Her shoulder tingled from the touch of his hand. “It’s nothing. A headache.”

  “Maybe we should stop until after lunch.”

  “No, we had a rhythm going.”

  12

  “It’s exquisite.” Bellasar’s smile was as bright as Malone had ever seen it, emphasizing the tan of his broad, handsome face. “Better than I dared hope. More imaginative than I dreamed a portrait could be. Isn’t it, Alex?”

  “Yes,” Potter said without enthusiasm.

  It was eight days later. They were in the library, where Bellasar had insisted on a special unveiling, champagne for everyone, except, of course, Bellasar.

  “There’s something dark and unsettling about it. At the same time, it’s bright with celebration,” Bellasar said. “A study in contrasts. The paradox of beauty.”

  “That was the idea,” Malone said.

  “Then I understand it.” Bellasar was pleased. “You see, whatever your opinion of me, I do have an appreciation of art. There was a moment, I confess, when your attitude made me wonder if I’d chosen the right artist.”

  Potter nodded, his spectacled eyes fixed not on the portrait but on Malone.

  “What do you think, my dear?” Bellasar turned toward where Sienna stood uncomfortably in the background. “How does it feel to have your beauty immortalized? The glory of beauty — the sadness that it doesn’t last. But here in this painting, it’s preserved forever.” Bellasar looked at Malone for reassurance. “You did say the materials were chosen to last an unusually long time.”

  “Oil on canvas tends to crack after several hundred years,” Malone said. “But tempera on wood … with six layers of foundation beneath the paint and the glaze I put over it …”

  “Yes?” Bellasar’s eyes were intense.

  “I don’t see why, in a thousand years, it’ll look any different.”

  “A thousand years. Imagine.” Bellasar was spellbound. “Impermanent beauty made permanent. Dante’s Beatrice.”

  Although Malone understood the reference, Bellasar felt the need to explain. “When Dante was nine, he saw a girl a few months younger than himself. Her beauty so struck him that he worshiped her from afar until her death sixteen years later. Her name was Beatrice, and she so inspired Dante to meditate about ideal beauty that the Divine Comedy was the consequence. Sienna’s beauty inspired you in a similar way. And of course the inspiration will become greater as you work on the second portrait.”

  “Second portrait?” Sienna sounded puzzled. “But this one turned out so well, why would you want —”

  “Because the second will emphasize your body as much as this does your face.”

  “My body?”

  “Nude.”

  “Nude?” Sienna turned toward Malone. “Did you know about this?”

  Reluctantly, awkwardly, he said, “Yes.”

  She spun toward Bellasar. “I won’t have anything to do with this.”

  “Of course you will. We’ll talk about it upstairs.” Bellasar gripped her arm, the force of his hand whitening her dark skin as he led her across the library. At the door, he glanced back at Malone. “If you’re curious about Dante and Beatrice, Rossetti translated Dante’s autobiography.” He gestured proprietarially toward the far wall. “You’ll find an 1861 edition of Dante and His Circle over there, although naturally, my own preference is to read the original Italian.”

  Then Bellasar and Sienna were gone, leaving Malone with Potter and the servant who had poured the champagne.

  Potter stopped scowling at Malone and addressed his attention to the portrait. His slight nod might have been in approval, but the sarcasm in his voice was unmistakable. “A career-defining work. It’s too bad no outsider will ever see it.” He gestured to the servant, who set down the Dom Pérignon and draped a dust cloth over the portrait.

  “Coming?” Potter asked Malone. “You’ll want to get ready for dinner.”

  “I think I’ll stay here a moment and find that book.”

  With a gaze that made clear nothing Malone did would ever be good enough, Potter left the room.

  Malone turned toward the bookshelves, making a pretense of searching for the book. Behind him, he heard the servant lift the portrait off the easel and take it from the library.

  Malone waited ten seconds, then followed. He reached the vestibule in time to see the servant carrying the portrait up the curving staircase. Keeping a careful distance, Malone started up as the servant pa
ssed the next level and proceeded toward the top.

  A carpet on the stairs muffled Malone’s footsteps. The servant couldn’t hear him climb higher. Peering beyond the final steps, Malone watched the servant carry the portrait to a door halfway along the middle corridor.

  As the servant knocked on the door, Malone eased back down the stairs.

  | Go to Contents |

  FOUR

  1

  A chopper took off and roared away, its blades glinting in the morning sunlight, but as far as Malone could tell, the man he had seen arrive the first day wasn’t aboard. Finishing his calisthenics by the pool, scanning the estate, he couldn’t think of a way to get Sienna out. As soon as he finished the portraits and left — if he was allowed to leave — he was supposed to tell Jeb how to rescue her. But now that he had studied the compound’s defenses, it was obvious that even the best extraction team would have trouble.

  To add to his apprehension, this was the first morning he hadn’t seen her ride from the stable. It was so important a part of her routine that he could imagine only the worst reasons for her to have abandoned it. Had Bellasar decided that one portrait of her was enough and it was finally time to rid himself of an unwanted spouse?

  Making his way to his room to shower and dress, he tried to convince himself that there might be an innocent reason for Sienna to have failed to go out for her ride. She might not be feeling well, for example, in which case she would send word via a servant while he was having breakfast. But all the while he sat alone on the terrace, no messenger arrived.

  “I wonder,” he asked the servant who brought his coffee, “if you know why madame isn’t joining me this morning? Have you heard if she’s ill?”

  “No, monsieur, I haven’t heard anything.”

  A half hour later, Sienna still hadn’t arrived, and Malone was forced to admit she wasn’t coming. His stomach uneasy, he decided that his only option was to ask a servant to knock on her door and try to find out what had happened. He felt his pulse speed with the premonition that she was in trouble, perhaps unconscious from a drug Bellasar had given her. On edge, he rose to tell a servant to check on her — and froze with relief when Sienna stepped onto the terrace.