Queen Without a Crown

by FIONA BUCKLEY

  ‘Something bright,’ I said. ‘The orange-tawny, I think.’ Meg’s dark colouring always rewarded lively hues. ‘After all, we’re going to introduce her to a portrait painter.’

  Except for Gladys, who preferred to stay where she was and not struggle with the stairs (‘No better than a ladder, they are, and no good to my old legs’), we were all curious to see a portrait painter on his own territory. We set off in a body: Hugh, Meg and myself, Sybil and the Brockleys, who were interested enough, thank goodness, to put aside their quarrel. Indeed, their interest was greater than mine. I kept thinking of the fear which now haunted the castle and my own unsuccessful efforts to carry out Mark Easton’s commission, and I did not look to Master Arbuckle either to help or hinder. He had nothing to do with any of my anxieties. I think I hoped that visiting him might divert me a little, let my mind rest from my troubles awhile.

  Which it did, or so it seemed then. It was quite some time before I understood that fate was going to entangle Master Arbuckle very thoroughly in the northern rebellion and the affairs of Mark Easton, and that as I walked with the others along Peascod Street towards this first meeting, I was taking the first steps on a very perilous road.

  Peascod Street was and is a long, busy, narrow thoroughfare leading south into the town from the castle’s Lower Ward. Master Arbuckle had taken the upper floor of a house halfway along. ‘The landlady is a Mistress Browne,’ said Hugh as Brockley went to knock.

  The door was opened by a faded wisp of a woman who turned out to be Mistress Browne herself. ‘Ah, Master Stannard again. Master Arbuckle’s expecting you. He’s upstairs as usual. Getting ready.’

  Her voice had a resigned note. ‘Is he a difficult tenant?’ I asked. Whereupon, in a flood of speech, she proceeded to tell us just how difficult Master Jocelyn Arbuckle was.

  ‘He pays regular, I grant you that, and his manservant does for him and has all his own utensils, so I don’t have to cook or even lend pans, just let the fellow use the kitchen fire. But the mess!’ She flung up her hands. ‘Paint on the floor, and how I’ll ever get it off when he leaves . . . and there goes that hammering again.’

  A banging noise had begun upstairs. ‘He does that now and then,’ said Mistress Browne exasperatedly, ‘and what he’s about, I can’t think. Making nail-holes in my walls by the sound of it.’

  ‘He does fine work, mistress,’ Hugh said mildly. ‘I’ve seen the portrait he’s just finished.’

  ‘Oh no doubt, no doubt, but such a disturbance – and the way he goes about it. I’ve had artists here before, and they weren’t like this. The man has all manner of gadgets – silver hoods for candles, to make their light brighter, and mirrors and –’ here her pale brown eyes widened and her voice dropped to a near whisper – ‘he uses a magic glass!’

  ‘A what?’ I asked, puzzled.

  ‘Well, that’s what I call it. He’s got a glass hanging up that gives me the creeps to look at it. It’s not like a mirror; it’s got something about it,’ said Mistress Browne, ‘that makes me think of an eye. Witchcraft, that’s what I’m afraid it is, and I cross myself, always, before I go into that room. I dursen’t say aught to him; he scares me, and that’s a fact. I wouldn’t let him paint a picture of me, not for any gold sovereigns, no I wouldn’t.’

  Hugh and Brockley were both impatient with superstition. Hugh, sensing Brockley’s irritation, grinned at him in a silent permission to speak, and Brockley addressed the landlady sternly.

  ‘Master Arbuckle,’ he said, ‘is a man of reputation and has been in his profession for many years. There can’t be much amiss with him. Now, may we go up?’

  Intimidated, the faded Mistress Browne turned towards a steep wooden staircase and led the way to the floor above.

  The hammering, which had ceased while Brockley was talking, broke out again as we climbed. We emerged into a room furnished, decently enough, as a bedchamber, though some shelves next to a door on the opposite side held an array of the silver-hooded candlesticks the landlady had mentioned, along with half a dozen mirrors on stands and bundles of candles. They were all being shaken by the hammering.

  Mistress Browne went across to it and knocked, loudly, so as to be heard above the racket. ‘Master Arbuckle? The Stannards have brought their daughter!’

  ‘Then let them enter!’ called a muffled voice from inside. ‘Door’s not locked!’

  We went in, and Mistress Browne’s exasperation was now explained. We had passed on the instant from order to chaos. As we soon came to realize, Jocelyn Arbuckle was an artist whose gifts made him a close rival to the legendary Hans Holbein. He was also, assuredly, the untidiest artist in England, if not Europe.

  A trestle table stood before us, under the front window. It was laden with a wild clutter of dishes and bottles and jars, some containing vivid pigments, others full of more mysterious liquids, some with brushes steeping in them. Stained, crumpled cloths lay about, and there was a pestle and mortar, a set of scales and a measuring jug. A number of these assorted objects had overflowed the space on top of the table and were now dotted about on the floor beside it, like an advancing army. Table and floor were indeed copiously splashed with paint, and the air was full of an odd smell, a mingling of the exciting and the soothing, compounded, I thought, of pigments and oils.

  There was little other furniture, but there was a stool under a side window and an easel beside it. A folding screen made of wooden panels, painted black, was propped against one wall, while in a corner were some spindly ironwork tables, stacked roughly into a pile.

  Beside them, the strange glass which the landlady had mentioned was poised on top of a thin metal stand. It was a lens of some sort, I thought, a thicker version of the lenses which are put into eyeglasses. It did indeed resemble an eye. I wondered what it was for.

  The place wasn’t cold or gloomy. A lively wood fire burnt in a hearth to our right, with a wood-basket and a stout fireguard at hand, and the room was bright, because even as we were climbing the stairs, the sun had come out and light was streaming through the side window. It illuminated the muddle on the work table rather well.

  Finally, there was Arbuckle himself. He had been nailing a large sheet of white paper to the folding easel, and he had a hammer in his grasp and a row of nails in his mouth, which explained why his voice had been muffled. Master Arbuckle was not prepossessing; nor was he any tidier than his studio. He was tall and lanky, with small dark eyes, badly combed grey locks and a scruffy grey beard adorning a long chin. His gown was made of cheap material, probably from choice because he obviously had no intention of looking after it. It was basically dark, but like the floor and the table, it was splashed with paint. There were even flecks of paint in Arbuckle’s beard.

  He nodded at us, and then, seeing Meg, his gaze sharpened. He put a last nail to a corner of the paper, hammered it quickly home, swept the other nails out of his mouth and said, in a voice which was deep and vigorous for a man of his obvious years: ‘Welcome. Is this the young lady? Bring her into the light. Such as it is,’ he added sourly, apparently not impressed by the efforts of the winter sun. ‘The climate of England should be forbidden by law.’

  Meg came forward a little timidly, curtseying. I understood why his landlady had said she dursen’t say aught to him. For all his unkempt appearance, Arbuckle had presence. To Meg, I said encouragingly: ‘Don’t be nervous, my dear. Slip your cloak off. That’s right.’

  ‘Over here,’ Arbuckle said as he led her to where the sunlight could fall on her face. He pushed the window open, to get rid of the shadows from the square leads.

  ‘Ah,’ he said, in tones of satisfaction.

  Meg was very much her father’s child, with Gerald Blanchard’s square features and brown eyes rather than my pointed chin and hazel eyes. As an adult, she would have a strong face, but it would be beautiful too. In the last year, delicate hollows had appeared under the cheekbones, and if the square little chin was more resolute than some people might say was desirable in a youn
g girl, it was finely modelled, and her mouth was shapely.

  Her colouring was warm. She loved the open air, and in summer it was no use telling Meg to keep out of the sun so as to preserve a fashionable pallor. She would walk and ride whenever she had the chance, and always her face bronzed a little, with a soft rose glow on each of those strong cheekbones, and her neat little nose would peel.

  I truly adored my Meg and her emerging beauty, but I rarely spoke of it to anyone except Hugh because after all, as her mother, I thought I was bound to be biased. Here, however, was someone who had instantly seen what I saw, and appreciated it. He had with great skill positioned her perfectly, so that the light could pick out the planes of her young features and find the gloss in the waves of hair which Dale had carefully arranged in front of her cap.

  ‘Delightful,’ said Master Arbuckle, holding Meg’s chin and turning it slightly to the left. ‘And with character. It is hard work to depict sitters who have none. Or else the wrong kind, which they want to conceal, and then they resent my painting because I have seen what they would rather I didn’t. When my brush is in my hand, I cannot lie. With this young lass, I’ll have no need for lies. This is the dress you wish her to wear?’

  He glanced at Hugh first, but Hugh said: ‘Meg is my stepdaughter. Ursula?’

  ‘Yes, that’s the dress,’ I said.

  ‘And how will you have her shown?’ Seeing that Meg was cold, he closed the window. ‘Standing? Seated? With a book in her hand, or some stitch-work?’

  ‘At a table, writing,’ I said. ‘Meg is studying Latin and Greek, and she does well at them. We want a picture which will help us, in years to come, to remember her as a young girl at her studies.’

  ‘I wish it were summer,’ said Arbuckle. ‘I see her in my mind, seated by an open window, with trees visible outside and the sunlight streaming in. Perhaps I can create such a picture even now, with December just round the corner. Would that please you?’

  ‘You can do that?’ Hugh asked.

  ‘I think so.’ He kept his eyes on me. ‘I have no example of my work here at hand, Mistress Stannard, but I believe your husband has seen one. I am a capable craftsman. I also use the finest materials. I create my ultramarine myself from genuine ground-down lapis lazuli. I grind it myself in that pestle and mortar there. I have my own formulae for certain other colours too, and they are therefore unique – and subtle. I believe,’ he said, ‘that I can do your daughter justice. And I see her, as I said, by a window, in June. I see it so vividly that I think I can paint the vision.’

  With a pang, I thought of our houses, of Withysham and Hugh’s beloved Hawkswood. In each, there was a room which I used as a study for Meg because the view outside was so pleasant. So often, in summer, I had sat watching her at her books, seated by an open window, with fields of corn and tree-grown hills beyond.

  I was homesick. I wanted to go home – to one of our homes; either would do, though for Hugh’s sake, my preference just now would be for Hawkswood. I wanted it so much that twice, during my sojourn in the castle, I had suffered from migraine, a condition which was apt to descend on me whenever I was unhappy or torn. At that moment the prospect of the war in the north not only frightened me, it also filled me with hatred.

  I hated the rebellious northern earls, and Mary Stuart, and the Duke of Norfolk, whose idiotic notion of marrying her, helping her to resume her Scottish crown and putting a royal consort’s crown on his own foolish head, had started all the trouble. They were keeping me and Hugh from our own homes and our own lives, robbing my husband of what was all too likely to be his last chance to enjoy Hawkswood, and I loathed them all, with a passion which verged on the murderous.

  I pulled my mind back to the present and realized that Arbuckle, a stranger, had taken one look at Meg and not only recognized her beauty, but also understood how best to set it off. I could almost believe that he had picked the image out of my mind. He was indeed the right artist to paint her, and when he had done so, I would have Meg, by a window in summer, to look at all my life, long after she had grown into a plump married dame with children of her own.

  ‘It would please me,’ I said. I looked at Hugh. ‘Do you agree?’

  ‘Indeed I do,’ Hugh said.

  Arbuckle nodded. ‘Since we now have sunshine of a sort, your daughter’s first sitting can be at once, if you so wish. I’ll need the window open again, but she can wear a cloak, or two if she likes. It’s her face I want to capture first.’

  SIX

  Paint and Embroidery

  ‘I truly hate England,’ said Arbuckle, dragging the folded screen into the centre of the room and partially opening it. It had feet and would stand firmly even if opened out straight, like a movable wall. In the middle of it was a large square aperture. ‘I went to Florence as a young man and spent years there, and I wish I were there still. Ah, the light! The strong sunlight that one can harness! A thousand curses on these pitiful northern skies, say I!’

  ‘Why did you leave Florence, then?’ Hugh asked him.

  ‘Because I came home now and then to see my parents in Hereford, while they were still alive, and they drew me to the Reformed religion,’ said Arbuckle, now dismantling the stack of spindly tables. ‘Then the Italian states weren’t safe any more. You can get arrested for heresy too easily. When Queen Mary was on the English throne, I went to Flanders. The light there is nearly as bad as it is here. To hell with this table; why won’t its legs stay at the length I want them? Sometimes I think gadgets have minds of their own . . .’

  There were three of the curious tables, and their thin legs were adjustable. Having set their heights to his satisfaction, Arbuckle motioned to Meg to sit on the stool, put the tables here and there close to her, opened the window again and was staring at the whole thing critically when his manservant, who had evidently been out, appeared with a basket of provisions. Arbuckle promptly barked at him to set them down. ‘And bring me some candlesticks – no, I think the sunlight will last awhile. I’ll use that, pitiful though it is. I’ll get an image of some sort, however faint it is. At least God gave me good eyesight. Bring me four mirrors instead.’

  The manservant, a placid fellow, clearly accustomed to his employer’s peremptory manners, did so. Arbuckle gave Meg back her cloak, arranged the mirrors on their stands and set them on the tables. Having done so, he swore, removed them all again, dumped them on the floor and once more changed the height of the three spindly tables.

  Then he moved Meg and her stool, cursing under his breath, and put the mirrors back on the tables. Meg screwed up her eyes and protested as a shaft of reflected sunlight dazzled her, and with a muttered apology, he adjusted the angle of one mirror. After that, he opened the screen out completely, setting it between Meg and the rest of us. Meg, sitting obediently on her stool and clearly as puzzled as we were, could just be glimpsed beyond the aperture.

  Next, he fetched the iron stand with the lens attached to it, positioned it in line with the aperture, closed the shutters of the windows overlooking the street and blocked out the firelight with the fireguard, so that on our side of the screen we were in near darkness. After that, he stood there muttering further imprecations, apparently against the English winter, before squeezing round the end of the screen and once more altering the positions of Meg and the mirrors.

  When he had finished, we found that, reasonable people though we were, we could see Mistress Browne’s point. It really did look like a magical trick. After shuffling the equipment about interminably and rearranging Meg several times, he had her sitting between the side window and the screen, half-facing towards the aperture. Where the sun did not touch her face directly, the mirrors reflected it instead. While the sunshine lasted, her features would be clearly lit.

  The easel with the sheet of paper nailed to it had been carefully positioned, and so had the stand with the lens. To our amazement, the brightly lit view of Meg’s upper half, through the square opening, was somehow reflected from the lens on to the paper,
where it appeared faintly but visibly, and upside down.

  ‘Horrible,’ said Arbuckle disgustedly, picking up a thin wooden cylinder and a knife from the work table and, to my surprise, beginning to sharpen the cylinder. ‘I can scarcely see it. This accursed climate!’

  ‘What is that you’re sharpening?’ Sybil asked with interest.

  ‘A modern device called a pencil,’ Arbuckle told her. ‘It isn’t as messy as charcoal. It is made of plumbago and clay, in a wooden casing. Now!’ Marching to the paper, he began to trace the lines on the paper with the point of the pencil. He worked, I saw, at tremendous speed and with the assurance that is the signal of the expert.

  I said: ‘But you can only see the top part of your sitter. We would want to show her right hand, and a desk . . .’

  ‘I make studies of each section separately and then combine them all in the finished work. I can seat my subjects higher, by setting the stool on top of boxes, so as to bring, say, a desktop or the sweep of a skirt into view. For a while she will have to do without the cloak while I work on the upper part of her dress, for instance. This is just a way of obtaining fine detail, so that the final result is exact. If the sun goes in, I am reduced to candles in silver hoods. Bah! And now, if you please, let one of the ladies remain here with Meg but the rest of you should leave. It distracts me to have so many people in the room while I work.’

  ‘I’ll stay,’ said Sybil.

  The rest of us, dismissed like schoolchildren at the end of our lessons, left the house and walked slowly back up Peascod Street towards the castle. A couple of wagons overtook us: one laden with live pigs and hens in coops; one full of guns and boxes presumably of ammunition.

  Observing these things depressed us all. In silence, we made our way to our suite where we found that Gladys had gone out after all, enticed no doubt by the sunshine, even though it meant negotiating the spiral steps. As we were taking off our cloaks, we heard footsteps coming up, but they were too brisk and too heavy to be those of Gladys. Hugh went to meet them and reappeared with Mark Easton, who bowed, accepted some ale which Dale drew for him from our cask, and then said: ‘I came to find out . . .’