The Gates of Sleep

sure that there wasn’t a bit of movement, and relaxation, to ensure that muscles didn’t lock up. If the pose was a standing one, then it wasn’t long before feet and legs were aching; if sitting or reclining, it was a certainty that some part of the body would fall asleep, with the resulting pins—and—needles agony when the model was allowed to move.

Then there was the boredom—well, perhaps boredom wasn’t quite the right word. The model had to have something to occupy her mind while her body was frozen in one position; it was rare that Marina ever got to take a pose that allowed her to either read or nap. She generally used the time to go over the basic exercises of magic that Uncle Thomas taught her, or to go over some more mundane lesson or other.

Oh, modeling was work, all right. She understood that artists who didn’t have complacent relatives paid well for models to pose, and in her opinion, every penny was earned.

She’d been here all morning posing, because Uncle had got a mania about the early light; enough was enough. She was hungry, it was time for luncheon, and it wasn’t fair to make her work from dawn to dark. How could anyone waste such a beautiful autumn day inside the stone walls of this farmhouse? “Uncle Sebastian,” she called. “The model’s arm is falling off.”

A whiff of oil paints came to her as Sebastian looked up from his canvas. “It isn’t, I assure you,” he retorted.

She didn’t pout; it wasn’t in her nature to pout. But she did protest. “Well, feels as though it’s falling off!”

Sebastian heaved a theatrical sigh. “The modern generation has no stamina,” he complained, disordering his graying chestnut locks with the same hand that held his brush, and leaving streaks of gold all through it. “Why, when your aunt was your age, she could hold a pose for six and seven hours at a time, and never a complaint out of her.”

Taking that as permission to break her pose, Marina leaned the oriflamme, the battle banner of medieval France, against the wall, and put her sword down on the floor. “When my aunt was my age, you posed her as a reclining odalisque, or fainting on the couch, or leaning languidly in a window,” she retorted. “You never once posed her as Joan of Arc. Or Britannia, in a heavy helmet and breastplate. Or Morgan Le Fay, with a snake and a dagger.”

“Trivial details,” Sebastian said with a dismissive gesture. “Inconsequential.”

“Not to my arm.” Marina shook both of her arms vigorously, grateful that Sebastian had not inflicted the heavy breastplate and helmet on her. Of course, that would have made the current painting look rather more like that one of Britannia that he had recently finished than Sebastian would have preferred.

And since the Britannia painting was owned by a business rival of the gentleman who had commissioned this one, it wouldn’t do to make one a copy of the other.

This one, which was to be significantly larger than “Britannia Awakes” as well as significantly different, was going to be very profitable for Uncle Sebastian. And since the rival who had commissioned “Saint Jeanne” was a profound Francophobe…

Men, Marina had long since concluded, could be remarkably silly. On the other hand, when the first man caught wind of this there might be another commission for a new painting, perhaps a companion to “Britannia Awakes,” which would be very nice for the household indeed. And then—another commission from the second gentleman? This could be amusing as well as profitable!

The second gentleman, however, had made some interesting assumptions, perhaps based upon the considerable amount of arm and shoulder, ankle and calf that Britannia had displayed. He had made it quite clear to Uncle Sebastian that he wanted the same model for his painting, but he had also thrown out plenty of hints that he wanted the model as well, perhaps presuming that his rival had also included that as part of the commission.

Marina wasn’t supposed to know that. Uncle Sebastian hadn’t known she was anywhere near the house when the client came to call. In fact, she’d been gathering eggs and had heard voices in Uncle Sebastian’s studio, and the Sylphs had told her that one was a stranger. It had been quite funny—she was listening from outside the window— until Uncle Sebastian, with a cold remark that the gentleman couldn’t possibly be referring to his dear niece, had interrupted the train of increasingly less subtle hints about Sebastian’s “lovely model.” Fortunately, Sebastian hadn’t lost his temper. Uncle Sebastian in a temper was apt to damage things.

Marina reached for the ribbon holding her hair in a tail behind her back and pulled it loose, shaking out her heavy sable mane. Saint Joan was not noted for her luxuriant locks, so Uncle had scraped all of her hair back tightly so that he could see the shape of her skull. Tightly enough that the roots of her hair hurt, in fact, though she wasn’t apt to complain. When he got to the hair for the painting, he’d construct a boyish bob over the skull shape. In that respect, the pose for Britannia had been a little more comfortable; at least she hadn’t had to pull her hair back so tightly that her scalp ached. “When are you going to get a commission that doesn’t involve me holding something out at the end of my arm?” she asked.

Her uncle busied himself with cleaning his palette, scraping it bare, wiping it with linseed oil. Clearly, he had been quite ready to stop as well, but he would never admit that. “Would you rather another painting of dancing Muses?” he asked.

Recalling the painting that her uncle had done for an exhibition last spring that involved nine contorted poses for her, and had driven them both to quarrels and tantrums, she shook her head. “Not unless someone offers you ten thousand pounds for it—in advance.” She turned pleading eyes on him. “But don’t you think that just once you might manage a painting of—oh—Juliet in the tomb of the Capulets? Surely that’s fashionably morbid enough for you!”

He snatched up a cushion and flung it at her; she caught it deftly, laughing at him.

“Minx!” he said, mockingly. “Lazy, too! Very well, failing any other commissions, the next painting will be Shakespearian, and I’ll have you as Kate the Shrew!”

“So long as it’s Kate the Shrew sitting down and reading, I’ve no objection,” she retorted, dropped the cushion on the window seat, and skipped out the door. This was an old-fashioned place where, at least on the ground floor, one room led into the next; she passed through her aunt’s workroom, then the room that held Margherita’s tapestry loom, then the library, then the dining room, before reaching the stairs.

Her own room was at the top of the farmhouse, above the kitchen and under the attics, with a splendid view of the apple orchard beyond the farmyard wall. There was a handsome little rooster atop the wall—an English bantam; Aunt Margherita was very fond of bantams and thought highly of their intelligence. They didn’t actually have a farm as such, for the land belonging to the house was farmed by a neighbor. When they’d taken the place, Uncle had pointed out that as artists they made very poor farmers; it would be better for them to do what they were good at and let the owner rent the land to someone else. But they did have the pond, the barn, a little pasturage, the orchard and some farm animals—bantam chickens, some geese and ducks, a couple of sheep to keep the grass around the farmhouse tidy. They had two ponies and two carts, because Uncle Sebastian was always taking one off on a painting expedition just when Aunt Margherita wanted it for shopping, or Uncle Thomas for his business. They also had an old, old horse, a once-famous jumper who probably didn’t have many more years in him, that they kept in gentle retirement for the local master of the hunt. Marina rode him now and again, but never at more than an amble. He would look at fences with a peculiar and penetrating gaze, as if meditating on the follies of his youth—then snort, and amble further along in search of a gate that Marina could open for him.

There were wild swans on the pond as well, who would claim their share of bread and grain with the usual imperiousness of such creatures. And Uncle Thomas raised doves; he had done so since he was a boy. They weren’t the brightest of birds, but they were beautiful creatures, sweet and gentle fantails that came to anyone’s hands, tame and placid, for feeding. The same couldn’t be said of the swans, which regarded Aunt Margherita as a king would regard the lowliest serf, and the grain and bread she scattered for them as no less than their just tribute. Only for Marina did they unbend, their natures partaking of equal parts of air and water and so amenable to her touch, if not to that of an Earth Master.

She changed out of her fustian tunic with the painted fleur-de-lis and knitted coif, the heavy knitted jumper whose drape was meant to suggest chain mail for Uncle Sebastian’s benefit. Off came the knitted hose and the suede boots. She pulled on a petticoat and a loose gown of Aunt Margherita’s design and make, shoved her feet into her old slippers, and ran back down the tiny staircase, which ended at the entryway dividing the kitchen from the dining room and parlor. The door into the yard stood invitingly open, a single hen peering inside with interest,