Chapter 29 The Man from London

The man from London arrived on the first Tuesday of November, three days before the Feast of Saint Andrew, and he arrived like a debt, with papers and a clerk and a carriage that did not match the inn he stayed at. His name was Copple, and he was a lawyer, and he came to Blackmore with a proposal that was, Eleanor thought, the most politely worded theft she had ever heard. Lord Vane, the lawyer said, spreading his papers on the library table as if he owned the room, wished to purchase the unfinished portrait of the woman in the tower, together with such other canvases attributed to the painter Vance as the household might be persuaded to part with, and he was prepared to be generous. Very generous. Eleanor looked at the papers and did not touch them. Lord Vane, she said. That is the V. who wrote to me. Mr. Copple inclined his head. Lord Vane is a collector of the first order, my lady. He has admired the work of the painter Vance for many years, and he has reason to believe that certain paintings, which he has sought for some time, are now in this house. He wishes to purchase them, and to settle the matter quietly. Quietly, Eleanor said. Yes. Because a public sale might raise questions about how such paintings came to be here, and about the family that once owned them. Mr. Copple's smile did not waver. Lord Vane is a discreet man, my lady. He values discretion above all things. Sebastian came in while the lawyer was speaking and stood in the doorway, coat still wet with rain, listening; and when Mr. Copple finished he said, “The paintings are not for sale.” Copple inclined his head. “My lord, I would not advise deciding hastily. The paintings, as I understand it, were executed by a man who died owing money to my client's family, and there are papers, dating from 1796, that may establish a claim. I should be very sorry to see the matter go before a court, but my client is prepared, if necessary, to pursue his rights.” Sebastian crossed the room and stood before the unfinished portrait of the woman in the tower, regarding it a long moment before he turned. “Your client's family is the family that took a child from her dying mother in 1782 and sold her to a stranger, paid in full, like a debt settled. And now he wishes to add the painting of her mother to his collection — the way his grandfather added the child to his holdings.” Copple's face did not change, but his eyes went flat. “My client's family had no part in any such story, my lord. The child was a charge upon the estate, and provision was made for her care. If you have documents that say otherwise, I should be interested to see them.” Eleanor looked at him — at the careful face, the careful words, everything phrased as a request and meant as a demand — and said, “We do have documents, Mr. Copple. We have the painter's journal, and his letters, and a letter written by the woman in the tower to her daughter, and the testimony of a woman whose family kept those letters for thirty years. We have the grave of the maid who pulled the painter from the fire — which someone has been tending. You may tell Lord Vane that we will lay every page before any court in England, and that we will be very glad to do it.” The lawyer was silent a long moment. Then he gathered his papers, very deliberately. “I will convey your answer to my client, my lady. I hope you will not regret it.” He bowed, and left, the clerk trailing after him like a shadow, and Eleanor stood in the library feeling the cold he had carried in drain slowly out of the room. They did not trust his going. Sebastian set servants to watch the house that night, and Graves locked the gates himself, and Eleanor, unable to sleep, sat in the library before the unfinished portrait trying to understand why Lord Vane wanted it so badly. It was a painting of a dead woman and a stolen child. It had no value but the value of memory. Unless — unless there was something in it she had not seen. She took a candle close to the canvas and looked the way Gabriel had taught her to look: not at the subject but at the paint — the way the light was laid in, the glazes and shadows, the tiny marks a hand makes without knowing. And there, in the lower corner, beneath the hem of Marguerite's gown, she found it: a small dark shape painted over, almost invisible — the shape of a child's face — and beside it letters so small she had to hold the flame an inch from the canvas to read them. A name. Amarantha. Elian had painted the child's name into the corner of his last portrait of her mother, as if he could not bear for her to be unremembered even in the one place where her name was forbidden. She stepped back from the canvas, hands trembling. “He knew,” she said aloud. “The painter knew the child's name, and he hid it here, where no one would think to look, so that someone, someday, would find it.” A sound behind her: Gabriel, in his shirtsleeves, a candle in his hand, staring at the corner of the canvas with wonder on his face. “I have looked at that painting a hundred times and never saw it. I was looking at her face.” He came and stood beside her, and they looked together at the small dark shape in the corner. “He wanted her found,” Eleanor said. “Elian. He wanted someone to find the name, and follow it, and bring her home.” “And we have found it,” Gabriel said. “Her name, her child's child, the letters. One thing remains — the second portrait. The one Elian painted of the child before she was born, the one Marguerite wrote about in her letter. The one never found. If Lord Vane knows of it, that is what he is really after — and this painting is only the key to it.” Eleanor was still standing before the canvas when she heard the shout from the garden, and the crash of glass, and the sound of running feet. She ran to the window and saw lanterns moving in the dark, and the shape of a man running toward the wood with something under his arm, and Sebastian's voice, hard and clear, calling the servants to the gate. She came down the stairs and out into the cold night, and by the time she reached the garden it was over. The footmen had caught the man at the wall, and Graves held him by the collar with a grip that belied his years, and the thing under his arm, wrapped in oilcloth, was the unfinished portrait of the woman in the tower. They brought the man to the house, and it was Copple's clerk, the quiet shadow who had followed the lawyer out of the library, and he was white-faced and shaking, and he said, over and over, I was only to take the one, the portrait, I was only to take the portrait, I did not know about any letters. Eleanor looked at the painting, unharmed in its oilcloth, and at the clerk, and at Sebastian, whose face was carved from stone. Lord Vane wanted the portrait, she said, and he wanted it badly enough to steal it in the night. Now we know what he is afraid of. She turned to Sebastian. We send to London in the morning. We tell Lord Vane that his clerk is here, and that his papers are here, and that he may come and collect them himself, in person, if he has the courage. Sebastian looked at her, and the anger in his face softened into something like pride. He will come, he said. I think he will come. Then we shall be ready for him, Eleanor said, and she carried the portrait inside with her own hands, and set it back in its place above the fireplace, and stood before it until the fire burned down and the house was quiet and the light in the tower room kept its watch above her like a promise kept. ---