8
755 A.L.
Those who would judge a work of art reveal more of themselves than of the artist under their scrutiny or of his work.
For some reason, Samedi mornings in Ianus seemed colder than other winter mornings. The ceramic stove in the center of the studio did radiate warmth, but the windowpanes sucked that heat out of the room. The corner windows and those at the other end of the studio were covered with thick hangings, but not the others, because I needed as much light as I could get in order to paint the girl seated on the chair.
“Mistress Thelya . . . if you would please keep looking toward the vase on that table . . . that’s it.”
Her governess refrained from uttering a word.
“Yes, Master Rhennthyl.”
I didn’t correct her this time. There wasn’t any point to it. Mistress Thelya D’Scheorzyl was all of nine years old. She was sweet and had the manners of a much older girl, thankfully, and the attention span of a gnat, not- so-thankfully. She stroked the cat in her arms gently. The cat had yellow-green eyes and a long silky white coat with tortoiseshell accents. Given that Thelya’s mother had insisted that her daughter be painted in a silver-gray dress, I’d had to find a blue-gray-shaded pillow on which the cat could rest in order to get enough contrast between the cat’s coat, Thelya’s pale complexion, and the dress. Even so, I’d had to change the shade of the pillow in the portrait to get those colors and contrasts so that they enhanced her prettiness rather than clashed with it. I still worried about the eyes . . . there was something there I didn’t have quite the way it should be.
“You’ll make Remsi look good, won’t you?”
“You and Remsi will look good together,” I replied, working on Thelya’s jawline.
In some ways, depicting her cat, the rather languorous Remsi, was the easiest part of the commission, because Remsi was almost totally white with the exception of tortoiseshell paws, tail, and ears.
The jawline still wasn’t quite the way I wanted it. I looked to Thelya, fixing the side of her face in my mind, then at the canvas, and the brushstrokes. The oils on the canvas shimmered, then shifted, ever so slightly. The brushstrokes were still mine, but the jawline was cleaner-and right. I’d only been able to do that recently, but I knew what I was doing bordered on imaging. Yet it was only with oils, and it was cleaner and faster than scraping and repainting and certainly better than overpainting. For all that, I wasn’t about to try it often, only when I had a very clear image in my mind-and definitely not when Master Caliostrus was around.
I worked to get the rest of the left side of her face finished before the ten bells of noon chimed-and managed to do so as well as finish the cat’s face as well, setting down the brush just as the first bell rang.
“Can I see?” asked Thelya, scampering off the chair, but still holding the cat.
“We still need two more sittings,” I said to the governess.
“Then . . . next Mardi afternoon, at the third glass of the afternoon, and next Samedi, at the ninth glass of morning.” She nodded brusquely.
Thelya scurried past me to look at the canvas. “That’s Remsi! It looks just like her.”
I forbore to mention that was the point of a portrait and just smiled.
Once I saw them off, I put in another glass of work on details for the portrait that did not require their presence. I used what little of the oils I had left on a small work, a still life, which I could not do for hire or sale, but only for open exhibit at the annual festival-the only venue where an artist could exhibit or sell out of his discipline-although it would be next year’s festival, since the final judging on this year’s submissions would be later in the evening.
Not more than a quarter of a glass had passed, just after I’d finished cleaning the fine-tipped brush that was my own, when Master Caliostrus entered the studio. “Don’t forget to bank the stove before you leave. I’ll not be using the studio this afternoon. Nor will Ostrius.”
Of course, the most honored heir and junior master wouldn’t be working on a Samedi afternoon. “I’ll take care of it, sir.”
“When will you finish the Mistress Scheorzyl portrait, Rhennthyl?”
“Two more sittings and then a few days of fine work after that, Master Caliostrus. She’ll be here on Mardi and next Samedi.”
“I suppose the delay can’t be helped.”
“Her parents have limited the sittings to once a week, and no more than a glass a time.”
He extended a thin cloth bag. “Factor Masgayl finally paid for the portrait, and here’s your share, Rhennthyl. Go out and celebrate.”
I eased the coins from the bag-eight silvers. I just looked at Caliostrus.
“Half of the fee goes to the master outright. You know that. Then there are the costs for the framing and canvas, not to mention the pigments and oils. There was that one brush you forgot to clean, and replacing it was two silvers.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” All I could do was nod and agree. Masgayl Factorius had paid five golds for the portrait I’d done, and out of that I’d gotten eight silvers. Not only that, but I knew he’d paid Caliostrus on Lundi, and Caliostrus had waited almost a week to pay me. Charging me for the brush was mostly fair. Mostly. I’d mislaid it when Caliostrus had dragged me away from cleaning for some chore he’d thought important and I couldn’t even recall. And it had been an old brush. It seemed to me that after painting portraits for close to three years, while still doing almost all the chores for the studio, I ought to be receiving more than one part in five of the commission, especially since I received nothing else except room, board, and training.
Both Factor Masgayl and Factor Scheorzyl had come seeking my work, not that of Master Caliostrus. Yet . . . even though I did my best to save my coins, I certainly did not have enough to open my own studio-and that did not include the ten golds necessary for the bond to be posted with the Artists’ Guild, not to mention Master Caliostrus’s recommendation and the concurrence of the Portraiture Guild.
“Don’t forget the stove, Rhennthyl,” Caliostrus added before he left, climbing the steps up to the family quarters.
After finishing my cleanup and washing up, later on Samedi afternoon I made my way down toward the Festival Hall, walking out Brayer Lane to North Middle and then southwest on the Midroad.
I stopped at Lapinina. I did deserve a bit of a treat. It was little more than a tiny bistro, tucked between a coppersmith’s on one side and a cooper’s on the other, on the southeast side of Guild Square, between Midroad and Sudroad, just a little place with three windows and a half score of tiny tables. But they knew me.
A trace of rime ice clung to the outer doorframe, but when I opened the door and stepped inside, careful to close it quickly, the warmth and smells of cooking-garlic, baked bread, roasted fowl-enfolded me. All the tables were taken. They usually were.
“Rhenn! Over here!” At the smallest of the tables, squeezed in beside the brick casement separating two windows, sat Rogaris. No one else had such an elegant black spade beard, especially not another journeyman artist, but I supposed that came from working in the studio of Jacquerl, one of the most esteemed of portraiturists in L’Excelsis.
The table where Rogaris sat was so small that on the side across from him was only a stool. It was empty, and I eased onto it. “Thank you.”
“You’ve done the same for me more than a few times.” He grinned, then raised his mug. I could see the faint steam of the hot spiced wine.
“What will you have, Rhenn?” asked Staela, the wife of Ruscol, who owned Lapinina.
“The special fried ham croissant and the better spiced hot wine.”
“That’ll be half a silver.”
I extracted the five coppers from my wallet and handed them over-and she was gone.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“Getting warm. I was over at the exhibit. I saw your study. You didn’t enter a portrait?”
