“No! Not at all! Fool! Have you never seen a tree! Do you never step back from your work and consider? The panel must be done again. I will not be disgraced by you tonight, and if we get wet paint on the costumes, Bartholomew will scream to the heavens. Get a fire in here.”
Crowther pushed the door wide with the flat of his hand, and Harriet moved into the doorway beside him. The room was very large, and light even on such a dull day. The smell of paint was almost overpowering. Crowther’s eyes smarted a little from the fumes as he looked upward.
The room was double the height he expected. The most exacting hostess would have been pleased to hold a ball for fifty people in such a space, but the place was almost bare of furniture, and the walls only rough plaster. It was not empty, however. A number of large painted canvas panels were strung from the high ceiling by a combination of ropes anchored on capstan, pully and cleats. Crowther’s eyes skipped through them, catching at their overlapping edges shreds of various views and interiors. A flower garden, some part of a city street, some gray stonework on canvas that suggested a temple of antiquity, a forest, ruins of some castle. They hung at various heights, and were in various states of repair. It was like looking into the memories of an old and romantic traveler, flashes of time and place and mood, layered and confused.
On the long wall opposite them, Harriet saw panels of sky and sea, and leaned up against them a ship, its prow standing some eight feet above the stone floor. No, not a ship, rather the flat ghost of a ship, rudely, roughly cut off twenty feet along its length; and not wood, but the simulation of wood on a canvas frame. Along its edge were painted wavelets so delicately done, she could almost hear the sounds of the ocean, and thought she could taste the familiar tang of salt on her lips.
In the center of the space available stood a high stool. On it sat, or rather crouched, the figure of an extremely tall man dressed uniformly in deep brown. His hair was the same shade of chestnut as his clothes, and unpowdered. He sat with his black shoes hooked over the bar halfway up the height of his seat. It seemed to almost fold his body in two, like a penknife blade, just open. Poised with his hands on his knees, all his attention was focused on the far end of the room.
Where he looked stood two other men. The elder of them, his coat off and his shirtsleeves rolled up, was towering over a boyish figure in an apron who seemed near to tears. The younger man held a painter’s palette in his left hand. He was biting his lip and looking down at the floor. Behind him was a painted scene of trees. It looked to Harriet extremely well done. Without noticing the new arrivals in the doorway, the older man crossed the room toward the gentleman sitting on the stool, looking sorry and concerned. When he spoke, they recognized the voice they had heard from the corridor, although its volume was now low, and its tone suddenly respectful and apologetic.
“I am sorry, Mr. Johannes. You are quite right. Boyle here has made an error. I am sorry I did not take note of it before, though some might call it only a small thing. .” The man on the stool looked up sharply at this, and Boyle’s tormentor hurried on nervously, “But of course, no error is unimportant, and there is time to correct it before evening.” When the man on the stool did not move, the other realized that more was asked of him. He cleared his throat and carried on. “I am most terribly sorry not to have taken note of it before. It is the last piece, and the. .” he paused, “the ingenious nature of your designs have put us a little behind. My apologies.”
The man on the stool nodded, then with a gesture indicated that the shirtsleeved man should approach him more closely. He did, and the man in brown seemed to whisper something in his ear. Shirtsleeves straightened again and turned his attention back toward the boy with the paint palette.
“Well, there it is, Boyle. You know what must be done.” The man paused, then added, “And Mr. Johannes wishes me to tell you, this lapse aside, he is pleased with your work.”
The boy flushed. “Of course, Mr. Gooch. Thank you. And thank you, Mr. Johannes.”
Mr. Johannes gave no indication Harriet could see of acknowledging these thanks, but instead, as if just becoming aware of observation, turned his head slowly toward the door and looked at her. Harriet blinked. The man’s face was very pale; his eyes seemed unnaturally large and were both a violent green and a little bulbous. His skin looked very fine; it had a thin glow about it that she noticed sometimes on the skin of her little son’s face. It was smooth as rosewood. She was reminded of the blank, but somewhat inhuman, faces of angels she had seen in mosaic on the walls of the churches in Constantinople. The other men, Mr. Gooch and the boy painter, had also now seen them. It was Gooch who spoke, rather gruffly and with a frown.
“May we be of assistance, sir, madam?”
Crowther smiled at him benignly and replied, “We are looking for the manager-a Mr. Harwood, I understand?”
“He’ll be in his office at present,” Gooch said with a snap, and turned back toward the canvases around him. “Now set to, Boyle, and I’ll call up the boys. Every other panel will need to be placed yet, and if that piece isn’t perfect by the time the doors open, I’ll cut you up and stuff the bits into sandbags myself.”
Johannes continued to look steadily at Harriet and Crowther, and lifted one hand to point upward, indicating, Harriet supposed, where those offices might be. His limbs seemed unnaturally long and his fingers were as thin and as pale as his face. The pose made her think of those attending angels again, pointing the attention of the penitent to their Judge and Savior above. Harriet nodded her thanks and, with Crowther, retreated into the corridor, not sure whether to feel comforted by the picture the strange figure presented, or uneasy.
In the space of the corridor, Crowther looked down at her, saying, “I think we are in the right place, Mrs. Westerman.”
“Why do you say that, Crowther?”
“Did you not notice the ropes in that room? I would call them the twin of that wrapped round Fitzraven’s ankles.”
Jocasta was whistling between her teeth as she walked down St. Martin’s Lane. There was a vigor in her step that would make any of the pedestrians negotiating the mud think twice about demanding she give right of way. Jocasta Bligh would move off the pavement for a sedan chair-since no one who wanted to keep body and soul together would do otherwise-but for the rest she yielded no ground. Within three streets of her house in any direction of the compass, it would never be in question. The women nodded to her, the men lifted their hands to their foreheads, a little wary perhaps, for everyone was aware that she had all their secrets under her fingertips and knew their minds and business better than they, for the most part. Twenty years had proved she knew how to keep her knowledge to herself, however. Unless something moved her to drop a harsh word in the ear of some man who was too free with his fists, or a girl too free with her favors.