'Yes, it is,' she said, and went forward. She leaned on the chest, familiarly now. Everything was explained, even the psycho-kinetic activity of the dream. 'A painting.'
Jonquil Hare leaned on the chest and stared in. Presently she took hold of the elaborate and gilded frame, and got the picture angled upward a short way, so it too leaned on the chest.
The painting was probably three centuries old. She could tell that from the pigments and disposition of the oils, but not from the artist. The artist was unknown. In size it was an upright oblong, about fifteen metres by one metre in width.
The work was a full-length portrait, rather well executed and proportioned, lacking only any vestige of life, or animation. It might have been the masterly likeness of a handsome doll — this was how the artist had given away his amateur status.
She looked like a woman of about Jonquil's age, which given the period meant of course that she would have been far younger, eighteen or nineteen years. Her skin was pale, and had a curious tint, as did in fact the entire scene, perhaps due to some corrosion of the paint but even so it had not gone to the usual brown and mud tones, but rather to a sort of yellowish blue. Therefore the colour scheme of clothing and hair might be misleading, for the long loose tresses were yellowish blonde, and the dress bluish grey. Like the hair, the dress was loose, a robe of a kind. And yet, naturally, both hair and robe were draped in a particular manner that dated them, as surely as if their owner had been gowned and coiffured at the apex of that day's fashion. She was slender but looked strong. There was no plumpness to her chin and throat, her hands were narrow. An unusually masculine woman, more suitable to Jonquil's century, where the sexes often blended, slim and lightly muscular — the woman in the painting was also like this. Her face was impervious, its eyes black. She was not beautiful or alluring. It was a flat animal face, tempered like the moon by its own chill light, and lacking sight or true expression because the artist had not understood how to intercept them.
Behind the woman was a vista that Jonquil took at first for the lagoon. But then she saw that between the fog-bank of blued-yellow cloud and the bluish-greenish water, a range of pocked and fissured mountains lurched like an unearthly aqueduct. It was the landscape of Johanus's Venus. The artist of the picture was the mad astrologer who had invested the house.
How could it be that the authorities had missed this find?
'My,' said Jonquil to the painting. She was excited. What would this not be worth in tokens of fame?
She pulled on the painting again, more carefully than before. It was light for its size. She could manage it. She paused a moment, close to the woman on the canvas. The canvas was strange, the texture of it under the paint — but in those days three centuries before, they had sometimes used odd materials. Even some chemical or experimental potion could have been mixed with the paint, to give it now its uncanny tinge.
A name was written in a scroll at the bottom of the picture. Jonquil took it for a signature. But it was not the astrologer's name, though near enough it indicated some link. Johnina .
'Jo- nine -ah,' said Jonquil, 'we are going for a short walk, down to where I can take a proper look at you.'
With enormous care now, she drew the picture of Johnina out of the attics, and down the narrow stair towards the salon.
Jonquil was at the masked ball. In her hand was a fan of long white feathers caught in a claw of zircons, her costume was of white satin streaked with silver veins, and her face was masked like a white-furred cat. She knew her hair was too short for the day and age, and this worried her by its inappropriateness. No one spoke to her, but all around they chattered to each other (incomprehensibly), and their curled powdered hair poured out of their masks like milk boiling over. Jonquil observed everything acutely, the man daintily taking snuff (an addict), the woman in the dress striped black and ivory peering through her ruby eyeglass. Out on the lagoon, the gleaming boats went by, trailing red roses in the water.
Jonquil was aware that no one took any notice of her, had anything to do with her, and she was peevish, because they must have invited her. Who was she supposed to be? A duke's daughter, or his mistress? Should she not be married at her age, and have borne children? She would have to pretend.
There was a man with rings on every finger, and beyond him a chequered mandolin player, and beyond him, a woman stood in a grey gown different from the rest. Her mask covered all her face, it was the countenance of a globe, perhaps the moon, in silver, and about it hair like pale tarnished fleece, too long as Jonquil's was too short, was falling to her pelvis over the bodice of the gown.
A group of actors — yes, they were only acting, it was not real — intervened. The woman was hidden for a moment, and when the group had passed, she was gone.
She was an actress, too, which was why Jonquil had thought something about her recognizable.
Jonquil became annoyed that she should be here, among actors, for acting was nothing to do with her. She turned briskly, and went towards the door of the chamber that led off from the salon. Inside, the area was dark, yet everything there was visible, and Jonquil was surprised to see a huge bed-frame from another room dominating the space. Surely Jonquil's professional impedimenta had been put here, and the inflatable sleeping couch she travelled with? As for this bed, she had seen it elsewhere, and it had been naked then, but now it was dressed. Silk curtains hung from the pillars, and a mattress, pillows, sheets and embroidered coverlet were on it. Rather than the pristine appearance of a model furnishing, the bed had a slightly rumpled, tumbled look, as if Jonquil had indeed used it. Jonquil closed the door of the room firmly on the ball outside, and all sound of it at once ceased.
To her relief, she found that she was actually undressed and in the thin shirt that was her night garment. She went to the bed, resigned, and got into it. She lay back on the pillows. The bed was wonderfully comfortable, lushly undisciplined.
Johanus's house was so silent — noiseless. Jonquil lay and listened to the total absence of sound, which was like a pressure, as if she had floated down beneath the sea. Her bones were coral, and pearls her eyes Fish might swim in through the slats of a shutter, across the water of the air. But before that happened, the door would open again.
The door opened.
The doorway was lit with moonlight, and the salon beyond it, for the masked ball had gone. Only the woman with the silver planet face remained, and she came over the threshold. Behind her, in lunar twilight, Jonquil saw the lagoon lying across the salon, and the walls had evaporated, leaving a misty shore, and mountains that were tunnelled through. The bed itself was adrift on water, and bobbed gently, but Johnina crossed without difficulty.
