She doesn’t, of course. Will realises that this is a farewell. She stands in place for a half-minute more, contemplating it all; then she leans inside, scoops up two small sacks and quietly closes the door.
‘They’ve been moved to the gallery,’ she says, as they mount the western service staircase, ‘on account of Lord Harewood’s return.’
She’s talking about the china. Will stops climbing. ‘Are we to get all that first? Won’t it be heavy?’
Mrs Lamb looks back, her face in shadow. ‘Porcelain,’ she tells him, taking off her shoes and tucking them in her belt, ‘then books. Remove your boots, Mr Turner.’
With its sumptuous decorations muted by the night, the long reach of the gallery, could be that of an exhibition hall or large shop. Mrs Lamb passes Will one of the sacks and is off across the cool, smooth floor. Beau’s pieces are arranged in front of the west-facing windows, on a row of small tables. She moves through them like an authority, unhampered by the lack of light, making her selections and transferring them to her sack. Any caution regarding what she takes has obviously been dispensed with. She’s departing Harewood, never to return, and is grabbing the best loot she can.
This woman is a criminal, calculating and ruthless. She’s spied her opportunity and is using it to rob a nobleman of more money than country-house drawings would yield in a decade. And Will Turner is her accomplice. Staring about in panic, he sees his silhouette in the blue pane of an enormous looking glass: a runtish figure in an oversized highwayman’s cloak, boots in one hand and swag sack in the other, breaking into a grand house like the lowest blackguard of St Giles. He must have lost his mind entirely. Father would reel at the sight, that’s for sure. Mrs Lamb’s tale of distant sufferings, of girlhood ordeals, would mean precisely nothing to him. His response would be one of absolute incomprehension.
There’s causes, boy, he’d say, all sorts of very laudable causes, for which it’s worth doing all sorts of things. And then there is the law.
‘D’ye hear summat?’
Mrs Lamb has reached the far end of the gallery, her sack almost full. She’s staring back at Will. He realises that he’s standing quite rigid, glued in place, as a man might if he’d caught the sound of approaching footsteps. He shakes his head and hurries over to her, intending to ask how much more there is; how much longer they must remain so exposed. Before he can speak, however, she heaves up an object from the nearest table and turns about to present it to him.
The Endymion centrepiece. Its separate forms – the shepherd and the goddess, and the slab of rock upon which they so gracefully recline – are jumbled together in the gallery’s gloom, a tangle of glistening, rippling whiteness. The statuette looks large indeed in her arms, much larger than Will remembers. He doesn’t take it from her.
‘This they’ll miss,’ he says, ‘and soon.’
Mrs Lamb angles her head an inch to the left – a plain warning against nonsense. ‘I can sell it,’ she states, ‘for two hundred guineas. Put it in the sack.’
Will doesn’t move.
‘Put it in the sack,’ she repeats, more clearly and rather more coldly, ‘and we’ll go for your books. Mr Girtin’s room is straight above us. At the western corner.’ She adjusts her hold on the centrepiece. ‘No one will connect the two things, Mr Turner. They’ll come looking for me, and me alone. And they won’t have a single hope of success. You think I in’t prepared?’
Still Will does nothing, so Mrs Lamb pushes the statuette over in a way that forces him either to accept it or let it fall. It is weighty, even more than he expected, and a damn awkward shape; as he works it into the sack, trying to keep hold of his boots as he does so, the pointed parts of miniaturised anatomy press uncomfortably into his belly. His fright is impeding him now, dimming his awareness, gumming up his mouth with the foulest taste. He barely registers their exit from the gallery, passing beneath the empty gaze of John Hoppner’s Mary Ann; the scurry along the border of the dining room, back to the dingy confines of the western service staircase; the action of his legs as he climbs to the upper floor. Mrs Lamb sees it as they reach the landing and she’s on him at once, all tartness gone, drawing him under her cloak – reclaiming him as a lover might, her right breast flattening against his face.
‘Come, sir,’ she whispers, guiding him around a corner, ‘nearly there.’
Will moves the bulging sack from his midriff to his shoulder and attempts to peer out. ‘Which door is it?’
‘You’re doing so very well, Mr Turner. You’re proving a true friend.’
‘Which door?’
Mrs Lamb stops; she lifts her nose, as if sampling the air. ‘I’ll go. Won’t take a moment.’
Will has a different vision. He pictures himself striding across the bedchamber, wresting the books from Tom’s grasp and then conveying a few dark truths about the Lascelles before he leaves. He wriggles, testing her grip, and lets out a dissenting grunt.
‘Me and Tom need words.’
‘He’ll be over with her. Every hour’s important to them.’
‘Let me see.’
Her embrace hardens. ‘There in’t time. We can’t risk you two squabbling. Him deciding to alert the family.’
Will’s fear of this situation, of what he’s done and is doing still, switches to stubborn anger. He arches his back, pushing away from her, wobbling slightly as he breaks out onto the landing. She’s brought them before a pair of doors, set close together. He points.
‘This one?’
Mrs Lamb lowers her sack to the carpet, her face strong and serene in the low blue light. She’s not going to oppose him, but neither will she help; so Will advances on the door, reaching for the handle.
‘If I hear trouble,’ she says, ‘I’m damn well coming in.’
*
The room isn’t large. That it’s lit – a single beeswax candle over on the mantelpiece, close to guttered – gives Will pause, but he sees no one. A moderately sized four-poster is set against the opposite wall, its crimson curtains drawn; two tall windows look out into the empty night. It’s Tom’s, though. That cheap suit lies carelessly on a chair and those are his shoes on the rug, four feet apart, arranged as if kicked off. And there, under one of the windows, laid in the middle of a small desk, are the sketchbooks.
Will goes over to them. The clasps are fastened – the loose leaves present. It looks as if they haven’t even been opened. He’s frowning at this, mildly perplexed, when he notices the album beneath: dark blue board with a spine bound in black canvas, laced shut with a length of black ribbon. Tom prefers these to sketchbooks, liking to shuffle his sheets about, pass them around, lend them to people. Will deliberates for a second, then gently sets the Endymion centrepiece between his feet. He picks this album up, unties the ribbon and eases open the cover.
It holds a number of watercolour drawings, each at least twenty inches by twelve, and all of London – forming a continuous view, like the five-page sketches Tom would make from Adelphi Terrace. Although it’s clear that these were also taken in the open air, before their subject, they’re far more considered in effect. The vantage point is different as well: somewhere on the southern bank of the river, a rooftop close to Blackfriars Bridge, looking north. Several are unfinished. Will can tell that they are preparatory, the basis for another work – a great metropolitan vista, no doubt to be executed in oil on a significant scale. He selects a drawing that is more or less complete, representing the stretch from the spire of St Mary Le Strand to the borders of Westminster, and conducts a swift evaluation.
It’s a fine effort. This can’t be denied. The faithfulness to the atmosphere and arrangements of life is amazing, in fact, beyond anything Will himself has attempted. Tom has captured precisely the low chiaroscuro of a squally London afternoon, with its translucent greys, settled blues and browns, and fleeting smudges of sunlight. As always, the technique is rough in places – jogs and blots, and the occasional bleeding of pigment caused by hasty washes – but Will notes that corre
ct local colour has been painstakingly applied to every building, along with specific shadow tones. It has a breadth to it, also; that indefinable feeling that tightens your chest and quickens your heart. Elevation, he supposes. Tom is serious. He’s coming at this with his very best blood.
Among the edifices that line the Thames’s northern bank is the vast silvery block of Somerset House, dwarfing everything around it. This is where Tom’s monumental city piece is surely headed. If he can transport the effect of this drawing, of all the drawings in this album, into a single epic canvas, the Academy Exhibition will rest in the palm of his hand. The laurels will be set upon his brow, by general demand; the Royal Academicians will usher him into their ranks at the first opportunity, perhaps even forgoing the vote. Will tries to take a calming breath and finds he cannot. His muscles and sinews have contracted to an insupportable degree; it feels as if, were he to be caught by a draught, he’d topple to the floor locked in his current pose.
‘Will Turner.’
Beside him, not three feet away, a forefinger has drawn back a portion of crimson bed-curtain. Candlelight falls through the long triangle it creates, revealing an eye, Tom Girtin’s eye; and past it, the contours and furrows of a landscape of naked flesh. This sight releases Will from his seizure. Gasping, he shuts the album and returns it to the desk, swapping it for his sketchbooks. The rest of Tom’s head appears, his short hair sticking up; he’s grinning, unperturbed by Will’s appearance in his bedchamber in the dead of night.
‘You’ve come for the books. Course you have. Can you smell them, perhaps?’
Will wipes his face on his sleeve. ‘I ain’t—’
‘And dear Lord, look at that cloak. Will Turner the burglar. Rather a drastic shift in occupation.’
Will is looking into the bed, at the other person who lies there. He wonders if he should run.
Tom takes this silence as a sign of umbrage. His grin falls and he apologises for his behaviour at the church – for not giving chase when Mr Cope towed Will off to the stables. ‘My chest,’ he says, by way of explanation. ‘I couldn’t breathe, really.’ He moves atop his disordered sheets; the curtain opens further. ‘It was harsh, what Beau did. Throwing you out like that, just for taking a couple of candles. Far too harsh. Word’ll get about, back in London. A boycott, Will, of this damn place. It’ll happen.’
Behind him, Mary Ann Lascelles sits up. Will glimpses the loose, powder-grey tresses falling about her shoulders; the pillowy roll of her stomach as she drops a shift over herself.
‘Tom,’ she says wearily, ‘don’t talk rot.’
‘Rot, my dove?’ Tom replies, glancing at Will. ‘How so?’
This was not anticipated. Will assumed either that Tom would be alone, or the chamber would be empty. The lovers didn’t need to fear discovery, he reasoned, so they’d meet in her room, surely the more spacious and comfortable of the two. He sees now, however, that they are in here for Tom’s sake, so he doesn’t guess that this affair is taking place with the sanction – with the active encouragement and assistance – of the very relatives he imagines he’s defying.
Nonetheless, Will is disconcerted by how indifferent Mary Ann is to his presence; and by the casual, faintly sardonic familiarity between them, as if their connection, their fornication beneath her noble father’s roof, is of no particular significance. He can hardly reveal what he knows now. Tom would be staggered, incredulous and then hugely wrathful. Who wouldn’t be, upon such a discovery? He’d turn on her, shouting his questions. And Mary Ann is no timid maiden. She’d respond in kind. A dreadful row would ensue. Someone would come running, most probably Mr Cope. Will would be caught red-handed with the Endymion centrepiece, and destroyed. The black cloak is becoming unbearably hot. He stays quiet, watching the couple in the four-poster very closely.
‘You are poor,’ enlarges Mary Ann from the shadows of the bed. ‘Whereas my father and my brother are rich. It doesn’t honestly matter what they do, does it? Your kind will always be scratching at their door.’
‘My kind, Mary Ann?’
‘Painters and furniture makers. Silversmiths and jewellers.’ She shrugs. ‘Professional men.’
Tom manages to remain cool. He turns towards her. ‘Your father and brother will learn that change is upon us,’ he says, ‘very nearly. Proper, effective, improving change. The true artists, those like Will and me, will soon be freed from their control.’
Mary Ann sighs, not without affection. ‘But they have the gold. They are the source of it. We all must heed them, all of us, no matter how it might sicken us to do so.’ Will sees her fingertips skim idly along Tom’s hip. ‘What will it be, precisely, this freedom of yours? The freedom to starve, and wander raggedly through the streets?’
‘If that’s what we choose.’
‘Oh Tom,’ she says, lying back, ‘you will not choose.’
Will has heard enough. It’ll do him no good to tarry here. He’s got his books; he’s got a sizeable burden to carry, in fact, what with his boots and this damn sack at his feet. The plan is that they’ll leave the house as they entered it and march up the drive to the village, where Mrs Lamb says she has a gig waiting to take them off to Leeds. He lifts up the sack, working it onto his shoulder.
Spotting Will’s intention, Tom breaks from his debate and hops naked from the four-poster to intercept him. Will swerves, stops, trying to avert his eyes from the lean limbs, the long, bony torso, the flapping genitals. Tom doesn’t want to bar his path, he sees, but to assist him – to collude in this illicit escape from Harewood and demonstrate to his aristocratic lover exactly who and what he is. Mary Ann, vaguely irritated, tells Tom to come back to bed. He ignores her, snatching up his shirt and riding trousers. Will steps around him and slips through the bedroom door, thinking to hurry off before he’s dressed.
Mrs Lamb is gone.
Will curses; he peers hard into every shadowy nook. She’s gone for certain, swag-sack and all. Voices sound in a corridor, somewhere to the east; candlelight rises against a wall, carried up from below. The thefts have been discovered. What else can it be? His one hope is to bolt as well. Get outside as fast as he can. Make for the village. But urgency numbs his mind, leaving him quite unable to orientate himself. The only route he can summon is a plunge down the main staircase, perhaps a dozen yards from where he now stands. It seems empty, for the moment at least. Light-headed with terror, he scuttles towards the banister.
Tom catches up with him at the landing, just as he’s starting onto the second flight. ‘Why’s it so damn difficult,’ he whispers, hooking a hand around Will’s shoulder, ‘for you to accept an honest offer of help? What is—’
Will twists about, glowering in readiness – and finds that astonishment has dashed every other emotion from Tom’s face. The head of the moon goddess, tiny and perfect and brilliantly white, is poking out of the sack, framed by a neat escarpment. Light lances through the darkness above – through a spread of glass cases mounted high on the wall, in which a menagerie of stuffed birds are forever unfurling their wings, about to take flight. Will attempts to rush onwards, but he treads on a fold of that wretched black cloak and is tripped; Tom grabs for him and together they begin a tottering descent, revolving clumsily, shedding boots and sketchbooks as both fight to keep the sack aloft. After a half-dozen steps Will is thrown aside, dropped on his rear, and for an instant his legs are windmilling through the air; then his left knee slams against the staircase, a stone corner driving between the parts of the joint. The pain is startling, spearing up his thigh and on into his trunk – straining, even, in the tendons of his neck. He bites hard on his cuff, to stem an untimely squeal, and rolls down helplessly onto the fine carpet of the state floor.
Before this first shock has faded, Tom’s arms are under his, dragging him up, urging him to continue. More people are gathering on the upper floor. Candles seems to be converging on the staircase from several directions. Will draws in a shuddering breath. He manages to stand on his sound leg and exper
iments gingerly with the other one. The results are not heartening: barbed daggers, searing pins, the clear sensation of damage. Tom is busy nearby; he has the sack and is retrieving the sketchbooks. He passes them to Will with an enquiring look.
‘Knee,’ Will mutters. ‘Buggered.’
Tom moves to Will’s side, bending to offer support before steering them towards the hall; only to reverse abruptly at the sight of a footman, already posted at the front entrance. There’s another door, thankfully, just past the staircase. It opens into a drawing room, the yellow silk of its walls hushed to a soft brown-gold. Tom bears left, without deliberation. He’s taking them somewhere.
‘Hold,’ says Will. ‘What—’
‘The saloon,’ Tom tells him, as if stating the obvious. ‘The portico.’
The doors are unlocked and swing back on well-greased hinges. The painters go out into the night. The Lascelles’ artificial valley is laid before them, between smooth columns; stars glint through a tear in the cloud, adding a pure white highlight to the lake. It’s a false release. They are enclosed by a balustrade. And beyond it is a fifteen-foot drop.
‘What in God’s name is this? Are we to glide off into the trees, Tom, like a pair of merry pigeons?’
‘It’s an easy jump. Fairly easy. You saw me do it on the night I got here.’
Will leans against the balustrade. He tries his left leg again, but it will take no weight at all; the least bit of pressure is like a hot tack hammered into the kneecap. His gut stirs uneasily. He ate a quantity of fruit in the greenhouse – peaches and figs, and something purple he couldn’t identify – and he tastes it again now, mixed with the shivering sourness of bile.
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