‘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 Bronckh
orst, 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.’
He did not seem to notice it. ‘That is perfect, then.’ He grinned at her. ‘You will like the fair. And I would like to take you to it, if I am still here.’
‘Where else would you be?’
‘Wherever I must go, to find this matter out. You will not mind it, Frances, to stay here with Meg? She likes you very much. I must go again, to Edinburgh, first, to question the king’s servants, who found the turning picture at the gate at Holyrood. For I have no doubt, one of them kens something, that he does not want to ken, or that he does not want the rest of us to know.’
His confidence and pleasure in it filled her with a sadness she could not express. ‘Must you go again, when you have just returned?’
He hesitated, then. ‘I need not go, at once. For nothing can be hurt by it, to leave it for a while.’
And for the next three days, while he remained with her, he did not let the picture slip into his mind.
On the fourth day, he was asked by Giles to come back into the college to help, as he had promised, with the students who were due to graduate that year, whose studies had been interrupted by the year of plague. ‘If you could hear their practice in the disputations, that would be of help. Some will have their laureation shortly, at the Pasque, others are not ready for it, and must wait till June. Roger is the student I am most concerned about. I will be indebted to you, if you hear his argument.’
‘Gladly,’ answered Hew. ‘Though I should not have thought he needed help in arguing.’
‘His arguing is faultless in its presentation. It is in the content that it lets him down.’
‘As when he says, for instance, that there is no God,’ said Hew.
The doctor groaned. ‘Did he say that? The wicked boy. But he does not believe that, Hew.’
‘I supposed as much.’
‘I have been too soft with him. But these are public examinations, and he will not, he cannot, pervert them to his own misgoverned ends. What he wants is someone who will argue properly, and who will be quite firm with him.’
‘That, I can do. In fact, I should find pleasure in it,’ Hew said with a smile.
‘I had hoped you might.’
They walked together into town, coming to the college shortly after eight. The porter at the gate called them to him urgently. ‘There is an unco problem, sir. The denner hall is locked, and the painter man inside, and we hae chapped and roared, but he will not let us in.’
‘Again?’ The doctor sighed. ‘I hoped that he had done with that. He has become quite strange, and is no longer reasonable. I must, I think, take measures to address the man myself.’
‘I doubt ye ought to, sir. He was there all night. And not a peep fae him, nor yet his dummel boy. I ken he cannae hear us, sir, but often we hear him; the more so, sin he disnae ken the clatter that he makes.’
‘All night?’ repeated Giles. ‘Now, that does seem strange.’ He looked askance at Hew, who wondered, ‘Has he stayed before?’
‘Never, in the night,’ the porter said. ‘For he has a workshop, somewhere in the town, where he gangs to sleep. He does not ever stay here when it is not light, for then, ye see, he cannot see to paint. But when the daylight fades, he quits the denner hall, and brings the key to me. Last night, he did not. Nor, as I maun swear to you, did he pass the gate. And no one here has seen him or his prentice boy.’
Hew looked back at Giles. ‘I do not like this much.’
The doctor was suddenly brisk. ‘Now, I have a key, somewhere in the tower. It is an old and rusted one, and may not be of use to us. But I propose to fetch it down, and try it out, at once.’
Giles was the first to look in. He took a step back. ‘Ah, dear me, dear me. Now, William,’ he said to the porter, ‘there are students outside. I want you to tell to their regents, to call them all in, and to the lecture hall. They must keep them there, until I send them word. Tell them to read to them, from the disputations, and then to put them all to work upon a paradox, whatever class they’re in. And if they are kept long, and past the dinner hour, the bursar will attend to them, and send them meat and drink. And for their pleas of nature, show them to the pot. Lock the college gate, and send out to the tolbuith whether Andro Wood the sheriff is in town, for we may want his help. You, Hew, with me.’
The porter left them then, and the students were dispersed, all of them but one, and that was Roger Cunningham, who came up the stair and followed Giles and Hew, unheeding and unseen.
Ars et Natura was complete. The painter had hung up his painting, a panel in three parts that measured four by five, in the very centre of the long back wall. And in the hall in front of it, he had hanged himself.
Chapter 19
Speaking Pictures
It made sense to Hew, only as a scene. He could see it with his eyes, but could not understand what it was he saw, fractured and diffused, confusing to his mind, like a false perspective in a picture or a prism. Yet the images in front of him were not at all distorted, presenting with a clarity that could not be misread. And yet, and yet, his brain refused to comprehend the whole, but splintered into parts the horrors it beheld, could only apprehend them, broken, through a glass. It was like the tears, that cannot grasp a grief, divided and discharged, reflected in a thousand places in their blurry shards. The tableau that unfolded there took some time to print itself entire upon his consciousness. And, when it did, he did not think it likely it would ever be erased.
Art assisting Nature, fixed upon the wall, cast its shadow foremost over all else there. The figures in the painting did not have much depth. Hermes et Fortuna had nothing to distinguish the expressions in their faces, which bore none of the elusive, wary sensitivity the painter’s boy had shown, but were bland and smooth. The draping of the clothes around their limbs and torsos, standing on their pedestals awkwardly and stiff, was flatter than the panel where they were depicted, which they could not lift. It was hard to imagine they were of the gods, who, with their vacant, inscrutable faces, could influence the storm clouds painted at their back, tipping out the listless vessels in a stolid sea. The sails of the ships, the curved piece of cloth in Fortuna
’s hands, were as fixed as wood, and carried in their solid folds as little there of movement. But what brought the picture out, to a transcendent brilliance, was the clarity and colour in the pigments that were used. Deep, mellow ochres, fresh and verdant greens, oozing, venous reds and florid, fleshy pinks, scintillating blues. The eyes of the serpents, wound round Hermes’ rod, were a penetrating black; the wings on his helmet and his heavy feet were pure and white and clean. Nature’s earth was coloured with a hot, honeyed dust long ago baked dry in an Asiatic sun. The colours of the sea, tempered greens and greys, were not swirled together in a muddy froth. Rather, they rose up, in little tufted curls, each one clear, discrete, white-flecked at its peak. The letters underneath, and the scroll on Hermes’ helmet, were inscribed in leaf of glinting, brittle gold. And the pewter of the helmet, and the sea beyond, had a subtle shimmer to it, an effervescent sheen, that when the sunlight fell on it, made the metal and the water feel translucent and ethereal. So the painter’s art had brought the work to life.
Nature’s colours, to the painter, had been less than kind. A rush of blood and bile had pooled behind his face, swelling out the flesh, in a livid hue. He had hanged himself with the same wire he had used for the picture, strong enough to hold his painting’s weight, and sharp enough, almost, to sever his own throat. His corpus had discoloured to a mottled splurge of purpled and heaving, bilious red. No clarity at all remained to him in death.
Though Hew’s eyes were compelled, and held against his will, to look upon that place that was the painter’s signature, his signing out of life, he became aware that it was not complete. There was another part to it, further up the hall. On the dais where the doctor had been sitting for his portrait, lay the painter’s boy, figured as he fell, like an actor on the stage. He was covered over, half, by the backcloth to his painting, pulled down in his flight, and in the crook of his arm, toppled from its perch, lay the doctor’s skull. The portrait of the doctor had been painted out, its gentle face obliterated in a mask of cinnabar. On the floor in front of it, with the paint and brush, was the hammer that was used, in assisting Art and Nature to their place upon the wall, and upon the boy, whose face appeared, to Hew, the one thing in that room to have no colour in it; but a thin fluid leaking from the dead boy’s ear, turned up from the ground, kept a faint taint of pink, as though its stream of blood was long ago washed out.
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