“At the stables, you mentioned something about a grandfather.”
“My mother’s father. He took care of me on his farm when my mother wasn’t dragging me from state to state with whatever boyfriend she had at the time. I spent a lot of time by myself. That’s when I started to draw.”
“It just goes to show – sometimes good can come out of bad.” She sounded as if she wanted to believe it.
“Excellent,” Bellasar said, approaching from the sunroom. “You’ve begun.”
Sienna stiffened.
“You saw the sketches?” Malone asked.
“They’re very promising. Any of them could be the basis for a splendid portrait,” Bellasar said.
“They probably won’t be. I’ve got a long way to go.”
“But sometimes first instincts are best. It’s possible to overthink something.”
“True.”
“I’m glad we agree. Not every task has to be difficult and take forever. My wife is an uncommonly beautiful woman. All you have to do is portray her beauty.”
“But she’s beautiful in a hundred different ways,” Malone said. “Since I’m not going to do a hundred portraits, I need to figure out which way most reflects her nature.”
Sienna glanced down at her hands.
“Forgive us, my dear,” Bellasar said.
“For what?”
“Speaking about you as if you’re not here. Going back to work wasn’t too tedious?”
“Not at all. I found it interesting.”
“Well then,” Bellasar said, “let’s hope it continues that way.”
8
It certainly continued that way for Malone. He couldn’t help thinking about the proverb that equated hell with interesting times. The days assumed a pattern. Each morning before work, he did calisthenics by the pool. He would have preferred to jog but needed to be stationary at a location that allowed him to keep watch on the helicopter pad and the Cloister. After Sienna returned from horseback riding, he joined her for breakfast, then went to work with her, trying to conceal his interest in what was going on outside. As the afternoon progressed, he offered to quit early in case she was tired. Always, she told him she wanted to continue. When they separated at five, he knew that he would see her again for cocktails at seven.
That was Bellasar’s evening routine – cocktails (although Bellasar kept to his vegetable juice) and dinner (the dress always formal). Malone hoped someone else would be invited: the man who had arrived on the chopper that first morning and who had been so nervous about the rough way the crates he had brought were being unloaded. Malone wanted a closer look at him. Perhaps the man would reveal something about his relationship with Bellasar. But as far as Malone could tell, the man remained in the Cloister.
Sometimes, Malone found another centuries-old first edition on his bedside table, to be analyzed by Bellasar during dinner. Hobbes’s Leviathan was one, a 1651 treatise maintaining that warfare was the natural state of humans and that the only way to achieve peace was by the force of a dictator. Bellasar’s implication was that supplying arms to repressive regimes wasn’t the evil it was made out to be. By preventing the masses from following their natural instincts and lunging for one another’s throats, dictatorships saved lives – so did arms dealers.
After conversations of this sort, during which Sienna remained silent, Malone climbed the curving staircase to his second-story room, more on guard than he’d been since he’d left the military. No matter his tense sleep, he awoke the next morning with greater concentration, more committed to the dangerous balance he had to maintain. If he focused his attention too much on Sienna, he risked failing to notice something important at the Cloister. But if he didn’t focus on her, he wouldn’t accomplish the quality of work that he wanted, and that could be equally dangerous, for Bellasar might think that he wasn’t making an effort.
9
“You won’t be working today.”
Sienna looked disappointed. “Why?”
“We’re ready to begin the next stage. I have to get the surface ready.” Malone showed her a large piece of plywood on a table.
“I thought painters use canvas.”
“The kind of paint I’m going to use is called tempera. It needs a more rigid surface than canvas. This piece of plywood is old enough that it won’t warp anymore. The chemicals in it have evaporated, so they won’t affect the paint. But just in case, I’m going to seal it with this glue.” He pointed toward a pot of white viscous liquid on a hot plate.
“It smells chalky.”
“That’s what’s in it.” Malone dipped a brush into the pot and applied the mixture to the board.
As soon as the board was covered, he set down the brush and rubbed his fingers over the warm glue.
“Why are you doing that?”
“To get rid of the air bubbles.”
Sienna looked intrigued.
“Care to try?” he asked.
“You’re serious?”
“If you don’t mind getting your hands sticky.”
She hesitated. Her cinnamon eyes brightened when she ran her fingers through the glue. “It reminds me of when I was in kindergarten, doing finger painting.”
“Except that in this case, we don’t want to leave a pattern.” Malone brushed the layer smooth.
“It never occurred to me that painting involved more than drawing shapes and using color.”
“If you want it to last, it involves a lot of other things.” Malone handed her the brush. “Why don’t you put on the next coat?”
“But what if I make a mistake?”
“I’ll fix it.”
She dipped the brush into the pot. “Not very much, right?”
“That’s the idea.”
“Is there any special way to do this?”
“Pick a corner.”
She chose the upper right.
“Now brush to the left. You can use short back-and-forth strokes, but when it comes to the finishing strokes, brush only to the left. Go down a little, and move to the left again. Excellent. Make sure everything’s smooth. Are you feeling any drag on the brush?”
“A little resistance.”
“Good. Stop a minute. We want it to start drying but not get hard.”
“Since you’re moving to the next stage, you must have decided how you want to pose me.”
Malone nodded.
“What pose is it? How am I going to look?”
“See for yourself.” He pointed toward a sketch on another table.
She approached it uncertainly, peering down. For long seconds, she didn’t say anything. “I’m smiling, but I look sad.”
“And vulnerable, but determined not to get hurt anymore.”
Sienna’s voice was almost a whisper. “That’s how I seem to you?”
“One of the ways. Do you object?”
She kept staring at the sketch. “No. I don’t object.”
“You have all kinds of expressions, but most of them don’t show what’s going on behind your eyes. At first, I assumed it was a habit from when you were a model. After all, the company that hired you to pose in whatever dress they were selling couldn’t have cared less if you happened to be feeling glum when you did the sitting. They just wanted you to make the damned dress look good. So I imagine you did your job, turned on your smile, put a glint in your eyes, and lowered a shield behind those eyes.”
“A lot of days, it was like that.”
“But every once in a while, when I was studying you -”
“Which I don’t mind any longer, by the way. I’m amazed that I’ve gotten used to it. When I was a model, the looks I got were usually predatory. But yours don’t threaten me. They make me feel good about myself.”
“You don’t normally feel good about yourself?”
“The man who drew that sketch knows the answer.”
“Every once in a while, when I was studying you, the shield behind your eyes would disappear, and this is how you seemed to me. Your sadness and vulnerability are what make you beautiful. Or maybe it’s the reverse.”