To Carry the Horn

by Karen Myers

  “Cabal will keep an eye on her if I ask him to.” And, indeed, when she put her wriggling armful down on the floor in the first large building, on the left, Cabal did his best imitation of a herding dog.

  This was clearly where Angharad did her heaviest and dirtiest work. At one end wood-working and stone-carving benches with tools were covered under cloths. “I haven’t done much three-dimensional work for a while, other than clay,” she said. A woodstove in the middle of the long wall provided heat in colder weather for the entire building, but it was at the other end that George saw active work in progress.

  Here there were low covered pans on work counters with various liquids, wrapped bundles that he suspected contained raw clay and other materials, and two different potters’ wheels. He could smell the distinct earthy scent of clay, catching a bit at the top and back of his mouth. Shelving along the walls held unfired pieces, still dull. Two dusty aprons hung next to the doorway, along with a basket of rags for wiping hands. A standing broom showed how the shop stayed clean.

  George had never worked with clay, but he knew it was a dusty, drab, business until firing brought out the strong colors and depth of the various slips and materials. Then he turned his head to the right and saw the end wall, illuminated by some of the many windows, shining where it would catch her eye every time she entered the building. Here, away from most of the dust, were shelves of finished works.

  He walked over to it and worked his way down slowly, trying to let it all sink in. There were display plates ranging from fine porcelain down to deceptively primitive forms full of what the Japanese call wabi-sabi, that quality of subtle imperfection and randomness that characterizes all material things. He looked back at Angharad. “May I handle these?”

  “Of course. That’s what they’re for.” She stood by the door composedly and watched him.

  He picked up a simple handle-less cup. The black slip covered the surface of the stoneware unevenly, revealing the raw texture of the material underneath. The glaze showed that variation in color that only use, age, and lots of hot water could cause. It fit the hand perfectly, with the unglazed portion touching the palm just reminding the holder that nothing is perfect.

  He set it down and lifted a thin, translucent, porcelain plate. It showed a woodland scene of deer grazing before a backdrop of the Blue Ridge, painted in a naturalistic style. When he held it up to the window, he could see light glow through it around the shadow of his fingers. A light tap on the rim with a fingernail raised a faint clear chime attesting to the fineness and purity of the material. He marveled that a single artist could encompass both extremes.

  As he moved along the shelves he lifted one piece after another for closer examination, shaking his head in admiration. When he reached the mid-section, he stopped. Here were statues and other medium-sized forms. The range of styles and subjects was overwhelming, from small abstract animal figures to full-sized realistic busts, some painted, some not.

  He stepped back several feet and let his eye survey the whole display. He tried to see it as not just the output of one artist, but of one artist across hundreds of years, with all the time necessary to explore one style after another. He could dimly perceive a unity across the work, not just the unity of a single culture which, after all, did change over hundreds of years, but the unity of one mind, of one point of view, not inflexibly fixed but in a dialogue with the material and the subjects and its own experience playing out over endless possibilities.

  He turned to Angharad. “I’d need days and days of looking at these, a few at a time, to begin to do them justice. I can’t tell you how wonderful they are. But then you obviously already know that.”

  She colored faintly and looked down. George anticipated a conventional acknowledgment but she surprised him with a more personal statement. “We all like beautiful things, but I find the challenge of trying to create what I can see, and the certainty of falling short each time, to be a spur to further attempts. Each piece there is a failure to reach an impossible ideal.”

  “Yes, I can understand that, but how close you must come, or they wouldn’t glow in the mind this way.”

  The color rose higher on her cheeks. Why, I’ve pleased her, he thought. After all these years, she cares what a human thinks about her work. Well, good, because I meant it. He was genuinely stunned to see the lifework of an artist like this, laid out over the centuries.

  She picked up Ermengarde and went outside. Putting her down in front of the stables with Cabal on guard, she pointed to a clearing behind the workshop. “The kilns,” she said. There were two of them, carefully sited in the open. “I used to have a third small one for metal work, but I’ve put that aside for now.”

  Her voice became a bit distant as she thought out loud, “I’ve been considering getting into glass for some time which would mean another building.”

  “Yes, please,” George said. “I’d like to see what you could do with that.”

  She smiled, taken aback at the interest he was taking, but pleased nonetheless.

  As she closed the door of the first workshop, Angharad was surprised at how moved she was by George’s obvious sincerity. It’s been a long time since I had an apprentice, she thought. I’ve forgotten what that feels like.

  It’s become too easy to just fall into the habit of loneliness, of talking only to herself, or of keeping quiet lest she bore her rare visitors with her actual thoughts, focused on problems of composition or execution, of how to manifest some vision in recalcitrant physical materials.

  I need someone I can talk to about these things, it’s been too long. Maybe it’s time to seek a new apprentice. I’ll write to Bleddyn in a few days and see if he knows of anyone.

  She showed the kilns to George and spoke of doing glass next, all the while turning over the image of him, standing in the shaft of light at the end of the workshop, surrounded by colorful objects and holding the simple black cup. It would make an interesting subject for a painting, wouldn’t it?

  I wouldn’t have expected someone like him to pick up the black cup first, holding it in those large hands and feeling the weight of it, its reflection of imperfection and impermanence, of life. He seems to understand that. Few do. Maybe it’s the human perspective, the short life. He’s clearly not a maker himself but he is… perceptive, I suppose, would be the right word. Unexpected, in one so young. It’s as though I keep glimpsing an old soul inside, and I forget it’s just not so.

  But then, he’s no boy. He thinks before he speaks, and he sees clearly. Clearly enough that he’s beginning to see me, not my face, but me. It’s been a long time since that’s happened.

  On the far side of the stable stood another workshop. When she opened the door for George, his senses were assaulted. The layout was similar, with a woodstove dividing the far long wall, opposite the entrance, but here there was painting on the right at one end, with a strong smell of oils and turpentine, and textiles to the left, with two looms, a large and a small. Everything was clean, well swept, and a blaze of color from one end to the other.

  The looms were empty and covered with cloth. “More of an occasional practical craft than serious art, for me,” Angharad gestured to the textile end of the building on the left. “I haven’t got the patience for tapestry.”

  The shelving, bins, and walls at both ends were painted in long irregular blocks of color which got smaller as they moved toward the middle of the building, making an abstract match for all the paintings on the right. Both watercolors and oils, many were hung not only at the narrow end, but up along both sides for almost the same length.

  George was again drawn to the display walls, densely packed with completed work, little of it framed. The watercolors were mostly landscapes, but they weren’t all of the local area. There were winter scenes, almost Japanese in their spareness, with just a hint of an alpine forest that seemed somehow European. One quiet woodland scene stabbed at him, reminding him unexpectedly of his Welsh childhood.

  “I’
ve always admired those who can draw,” George said. “All my life I’ve had a vision I wished I could render.” He’d never told anyone this, and wasn’t sure why he was telling her, perhaps because she was still a stranger, and an artist. It was something ‘painterly’ he could offer. He still faced the painting of the Welsh woods, too shy about what he was going to say to watch her while he spoke.

  “There’s an upland meadow and near the top, all by itself, is a great oak tree, hundreds of years old.” His hands sketched the scene and placement. “The oak is strong and its boughs are wide and solid, stretching out evenly in all directions. I can’t see them, but I know its branches shelter animals, and there are more on the ground as well.”

  Angharad was silent behind him.

  “Ever since my childhood I’ve seen visions of it, and more frequently lately. The weather and the seasons change—sometimes autumn leaves and sunlight, sometimes heavy storm, sometimes a snowy moonlit night—but always it stands strong with roots reaching deep.”

  He cleared his throat. “It’s silly, I know, but I can’t help looking for it whenever the lay of the land feels right. Your landscapes have something of the feel of it.”

  He risked a glance back over his shoulder, trying to make this all sound casual. Angharad looked at him soberly, not laughing or making light of it.

  He moved past the moment and turned his attention back to the wall.

  The oils were altogether different from the watercolors. There were landscapes, with a concentrated boskiness that revealed a deep fondness for forests, but most of the oils were portraits, both busts and full-length. George could see that the styles changed over time, judging age roughly from the form of the clothing, and that the artist moved from an admiration of surfaces and composition, to experimentation in dramatic shadowing and three-dimensionality, to a sophisticated suggestion of depth and expression, and then a return to surfaces and form. Each area of concentration was an entire school of art in its own right, with variations and elaborations on the core concepts.

  Why, long life changes everything, he realized. And isolation. He didn’t see the influence of one artist on another, so obvious in an art gallery. These were her own schools, not someone else’s used as a foundation. “How did you learn? Do you have apprentices?” he asked her over his shoulder, not taking his eyes off the work.

  “For all the work except painting, I’ve learned from skilled craftsmen all my life, and shared my findings with them as well. We have another potter in this village who makes most of the domestic ware, and we chat frequently and share firings.”

  “But for the painting and drawing,” she said, “my childhood masters showed me how to make materials and prepare surfaces, and how to see, to really see. Then they had me work largely on my own for twenty years before they would discuss their own works with me. That was all a very long time ago.”

  She looked at him. “Now and then I meet another painter, a few in my life, and occasionally one comes here for a few weeks or months. It’s been many years since my last apprentice, but if one comes with the requisite fierceness for making a version however inadequate, of what he sees, why, then I’ll have another one. I’m a master now, and that’s my duty. And pleasure—teaching apprentices always clarifies my own understanding. I was just thinking about that a few moments ago.”

  This must be how Ceridwen operates, he thought. What a life for an artist or a scholar. All the time you need for your own studies, and an expectation that you will teach anyone serious who asks.

  More than ever George was aware of the distance between them. He was drawn to her, to the mind which focused on the ever deeper understanding and realization of her vision. This was the dedication of a serious artist, but honed over centuries of existence. The work hadn’t gone stale for her. I’m just a child next to this, he thought, not just in years, but in my expectation of mortality before this level of achievement in any field, much less several.

  Gwyn’s long life and vast powers didn’t affect him in the same way, though for all he knew perhaps he was just as disciplined. Angharad’s life was more vivid for him, and more impressive. Worse, he felt something resonate within him for the woman herself. She filled his eye, standing there, and her low voice soothed like velvet, but there was more than that to her, and it intimidated him. He assumed the feeling could only be one-sided and grieved unexpectedly over what he couldn’t have.

  In the grip of that emotion, he spoke his thoughts candidly. “I don’t understand how you can bother wasting your time with me this way when you have so many better things to be doing.”

  Angharad looked at him, genuinely puzzled. “But I’m not pressed for time. If the older ones among us spoke only to each other, we’d never speak to our descendants at all across the years, and then what would be the point of life?”

  “Besides,” she continued, “you’ve nothing to be shy about. You came to a world you never knew existed, bearing our blood and maybe more. You’re kind to our young folk and take them in charge. You fight bravely with unfamiliar weapons in loyalty to a family you don’t know, defending them against their enemies. You take on a pack of hounds of fearsome reputation in pursuit of a goal you only partially understand, in front of strangers, not all of whom wish you well. And yet you seem to have no fear of failure and, indeed, have succeeded so far most wildly beyond Gwyn’s expectations, if I’m any judge.”

  “All this in just a few days,” she said, shaking her head in wonderment. “If all humans were like this, who would mind a shorter life?”

  George was taken aback. This was a point of view he hadn’t considered. He hadn’t suspected there was anything about him she might admire.

  Embarrassed, he looked away back to the wall of paintings. His mind shifted from regarding them as specimens of mastery to looking at the people portrayed, and he realized he knew some of them. Here was Rhys as a young man coming into his maturity, and there in another was a face he recognized, though younger in form and in an older style of Angharad’s.

  “Is that Gwyn?” he asked, standing in front of it.

  “Yes, a great many years ago.”

  Long life surprising me again, he thought. These weren’t miscellaneous Rembrandt subjects, to be appreciated just as art; these were also still living breathing people, most of them. Many are family, no doubt. An ancient portrait gallery, but of the living.

  He found a chair behind him with a view of the wall and sat down abruptly as his knees suddenly weakened. “I can see I’ll be needing some introductions to the family.”

  She smiled at him sympathetically. “I suppose this isn’t what you expected?”

  “You have no idea. The paintings we admire are memorials of the dead, by and large. Yours are more like snapshots of the living. Nothing here is what it seems.”

  Culture shock, he thought, dimly. It’s finally hit me. He roused himself, under her gaze. “Tell me who’s who, and I’ll try to remember as much as I can.”

  “The oldest in your lineage here would be Beli Mawr, Beli the Great. He’s Gwyn’s grandfather. I’ve only met him once, when I was Rhys’s age, and painted this many years later.”

  She pointed at a stern dark face, long and lean. His hair was entirely white, but the strength of his will was evident in his tense features.

  “He was ancient and ageless then, and by all accounts he hasn’t changed. He holds himself aloof from the doings of his descendants and isn’t often seen. Ceridwen can tell you more about him, if she will.”

  She moved along to a ceremonial portrait, two strong men who resembled each other seated in adjacent throne-like chairs surrounded by a well-dressed crowd. Despite the formal tone, the two were individualized by different postures, the one on the left leaning forward to speak with the man bending his knee before him. Angharad had made of this painting a study of color and gorgeous materials, focused on the kneeling man who was dressed more soberly in dark greens. Two of the great shaggy Cwn Annwn hounds, a dog and a bitch, were stan
ding prominently, one on either side of him.

  “These are two of his sons, Lludd Llaw Eraint, ruler in Britain, and Llefelys, ruler in Gaul. Pledging fealty before them is Gwyn ap Nudd, as Prince of Annwn. ‘Nudd’ is the older name for his father.”

  “Were you there, in the crowd?”

  She smiled. “Better—I was court painter at the time. I’m not in the crowd because I’m in front of it, sketching furiously. I’ve made three versions of this scene: the large one requested by my patron, a later one for Gwyn, and finally this one, for myself.”

  She walked over to an informal painting of Gwyn in a recent style. “I’ve done many portraits of Gwyn since I came to live here. This is my current favorite.” Gwyn was seated in the foreground on a rocky ledge, leaning forward with a hand on one of his hounds, gazing off across a valley to the Blue Ridge.

  Angharad then pointed up to a group portrait of Gwyn and another dark-haired man with a strong resemblance to him, standing together behind what could only be Rhys and Rhian, the latter a very young but determined child standing next to her more relaxed teenage brother.

  “The fostering of Rhys and Rhian. That’s Edern, Gwyn’s brother and their grandfather. It’s his room you currently occupy at the manor.” Gwyn’s expression was suitably paternal. Edern’s was closed. Perhaps he was remembering his dead son, their father, George thought.

  She moved now to a much older portrait of a young dark-haired woman, her lovely features subtly marred by discontent. She was walking alone across the picture, with her body leaning forward in one direction, but her head looking back the other way. The painting was full of tension, of influences from offstage.

  George asked, “Is that Creiddylad?”

  “Yes, the youngest of Gwyn’s siblings, and my contemporary. She was never a happy woman, and hasn’t changed.”

  “You promised to tell me this tale. Come, sit down.” He patted the chair next to him.