Not Yet Drown'd Page 18

  “Oh, aye!” said Mr Sinclair. “She is a Hindu, I suppose, to whom leather is horror, defilement, an unclean abomination. Now, we Highlanders, too, are fond of our cattle, but then we are as likely to honour it on the plate as on the hoof.”

  The footman made his bow to them, made it deeply expressive of his disapproval, and went away. Sharada, flustered, placed her hands together and bowed her head instead of her usual little curtsy. “Ma’am, I beg your pardon,” she said. “Here is an important letter of great urgency from Mr Fleming for your esteemed brother, but no one knew where he was to be found. So I am carrying it to you in hopes you are knowing where he has gone.”

  In a few minutes they had settled their plan. Mr Sinclair would take Mrs MacDonald in search of her brother. And Mr Todd would take Mrs Todd to buy a broad-brimmed hat.

  “The theatre, then,” said Mr Sinclair, as he and Catherine stepped into the street, Sharada close behind. “And as it lies on the most direct route back to the quay, your maid might as well follow.”

  They reached the theatre, and found Hector in the foyer, just as a rain shower began.

  “It is only ‘The Young Werther,’ in French,” reported Hector. “Would it amuse you this evening to observe the Young Werther sinking under his sorrows?”

  “Oh, Werther! So petulant,” said Catherine.

  “It is hard to muster any sympathy or even patience for a character who is so incompetent,” said Mr Sinclair. “There is nothing unusual about his troubles, and we must not all go about shooting ourselves if we find ourselves crossed in love.”

  “The playhouse does not inspire confidence either,” observed Hector.

  “It was the Tapestry Hall in former days of glory,” said Mr Sinclair.

  “That would explain why there are so many filthy old tapestries hanging about. We had best stay inside until the rain lets up, and I will show you an interesting one with a piper in it.”

  Clerestory windows high up near the stepped roofline of the old building admitted gray light onto the dirty tapestries hung along the building’s water-stained walls. “Look,” said Hector, “here stands the piper atop this overturned barrel, and the peasants all dancing about—the ones who aren’t feasting or misbehaving themselves or being sick. It must be a lively tune, to judge by the animation of the dancers. I see only two drones to his pipes; and that is just what we had in Scotland, too, in the old days.”

  “Not very splendid, is it?” Catherine said. “I am disappointed. Somewhere I had acquired the delusion that old tapestries were fairy confections woven of silver and gold.”

  “But you see here only those which survived the occupation of the Buonapartists,” said Mr Sinclair. “The valuable ones, the ones with gold and silver thread, proved too great a temptation when the troops were rioting for their arrears of pay. Those were nearly all burned to recover the value of the metals in them.”

  “Yet the Flemish speak affectionately of the French occupation! It is astounding.”

  “Inexplicable are the workings of the merchant mind. Nor were these from the best ateliers. Falsified town marks—all marked ‘Brussels’ no matter where they were made. Badly faded, and not from sun and venerable age but just because the dyers didn’t know their trade, or cheated and used indigo instead of the costly woad—that sort of thing. Afzetter work and forgeries.”

  “What is afzetter?”

  “Oh, literally it is ‘offsetter,’ but it means cheater, swindler. Come, here is an example of afzetter work.” He was peering closely at the face of an oriental soldier in the background of a large soiled and faded tapestry depicting some ancient military victory. “You see the contours, the shading under the cheekbones of this barbarian soldier, this Mongol? Any buyer of a tapestry is entitled to expect that the design of the tapestry is woven, not painted, is he not? Yet this shading is not woven, not a result of weft threads first dyed the desired shade, then woven over the warp threads. No, it is powdered chalk brushed onto the finished tapestry to correct it, to heighten the design, to compensate for poor draftsmanship or poor dyes. This is the dishonourable touch of the afzetter. One finds it usually on minor background characters. More care is usually taken with the principal figures, such as this barbarian general, whomever he may be. Who is this meant to be, do you suppose? Genghis Khan?”

  “It is Lord Timur, sir,” said Sharada unexpectedly. “Tamerlane, you English are calling him.”

  They had forgotten that she was there. “I beg your pardon, sir. And ma’am.” Sharada put her hands together and bowed her head.

  “Tamerlane! Is it indeed? And how can you be certain? Have you seen this tapestry before?” said Catherine.

  “I have seen one very like it in the palace at Allahabad; it was a gift to the first emir from feringee merchants in the reign of the Emperor Akbar. Also in that palace is hanging another feringee tapestry. I think it is just like the tapestry in the grand house where I found you just now, showing the victory of the invader Sikander at the Hydaspes River.”

  Was she in the habit of frequenting imperial palaces, this ayah? Catherine tried to see her face, but Sharada was looking at the floor, her face averted behind the hem of her shawl.

  “Sikander? Oh, she means Alexander!” said Hector, looking up from his letter.

  Such an old name, so many variations. Sikander; Alexander; Alasdair. Sandy.

  Catherine said, “Now, Hector, what is this exceedingly important letter which we were so good as to bring to you?”

  “It is from Mr Fleming, and he encloses another letter in Dutch, or Flemish. As far as I am able to make out, they are having some difficulties in Liège with their new looms. No doubt they have disassembled one and cannot put it together again.”

  “I am at your service, sir, as a translator,” offered Mr Sinclair.

  “It is very kind, but I had better go along and ascertain Mr Fleming’s views. He says he will be at the warehouse. You had best return to the ship, Catherine, for here is your maid to go with you. But Mr Sinclair, sir, you might find it worth your while to come with me if you are so disposed, for our Mr Fleming has some interesting things. Books and ancient fragments—rather miscellaneous to my eye, but worth seeing nevertheless, I suppose.”

  Catherine said to Sharada, “Grace is with…?”

  “With Anibaddh, who is teaching her to play at chess.”

  Chess! There was an unexpected accomplishment in a slave girl. “Well, then, Hector,” Catherine said, “I should like to see the warehouse, and Mr Fleming’s collection. I rather like to see the treasures that people gather around them. Their plunder.”

  Hector looked as though he might oppose this proposal. He drew a breath, but then he merely shrugged and said ungraciously that she could come along if she liked.

  And so it was settled; Sharada returned alone to the ship, as she had come, and thus was able to conduct a few matters of her own business along the way.

  The massive iron-bound carved wooden doors fronting the Crawford & Fleming warehouse—a handsome stone building like all the others in the old prosperous merchant town—were not open. Instead, Hector knocked at a small door to one side, and a little iron-grated spy hole slid open. An unblinking brown eye inspected them for a moment; then a sturdy Flemish servant admitted them.

  He led them without speaking toward the rear of the building through several dark rooms and passages. They emerged into a vast hall lit by expanses of glazing near the dark carved and gilded ceiling. Bales of goods were ranged about the walls in promising array. The air was a heady blend of foreign scents, both sweet and acrid, mixed with the smell of tidal mud.

  Enormous doors stood braced open, showing a stone-paved loading dock outside, still glistening with rain, and a narrow brackish canal lapping sluggishly below. A stout block and tackle was rigged on a thick frame of timbers on the dock just outside the door. When Catherine got close enough, she saw that a barge lay on its spring lines against the stone pillars of the dock. And there was Mr Fleming himself, ju
st turning away from directing his crew as they lowered a heavy canvas-wrapped bundle from the dock to the waiting barge. Six men moved three huge timbers used for rolling out the heavy cargo. The timbers made a deafening rumble across the stone floor, drowning out Mr Fleming’s first words to them.

  “I hope you don’t mind, sir,” said Hector loudly, “but I have told my sister and Mr Sinclair that you might be so good as to let them view the wonders of your cabinet while you and I contrive some sort of reply to these weavers in Liège. I fear they have got themselves into a sorry muddle. It is just what I expected, despite my best precautions.”

  Mr Fleming agreed graciously. He gave instructions in Flemish to his servant, who then led Mr Sinclair and Catherine back through the dark ground floor of the building and up a set of stairs. They crossed a handsome landing, with a tall window overlooking the street, then passed through a pair of carved heavy doors, into a suite of high-ceilinged rooms, well furnished in the newest French style.

  Here they were given over to the care of an immaculately aproned housekeeper, her manner as stiffly formal as her snowy starched linen coif, in the style of the country. They were seated before a fire in well-upholstered chairs; then, impossibly quickly, tea was brought on a polished tray set with handsome china, and arranged before them. The housekeeper offered to pour, but Mr Sinclair assured her in Flemish that they could manage for themselves. After she had pointed out the door that opened onto her master’s cabinet, she left them.

  “Agreeable, to be sure!” declared Mr Sinclair, looking about. “Now this! This is the famous domestic comfort of the Netherlands.”

  “Exceedingly handsome,” agreed Catherine. She and Grace would certainly have been very comfortable here. The tea, as she expected, was of superb quality. The fire burned vigorously, as all fires should. Everything in the room shone with polish and cleanliness and excellence. “Why would the Netherlanders ever venture out of their houses, I wonder?” she said. “One might suppose they would be ruined for the rigors and harshness of the world by such comfort at home.”

  “But that is precisely the purpose of comfort,” argued Mr Sinclair. “It is not just softness and ease. It is conforter: to strengthen, to reinforce, to make strong. To fortify, in fact—to fortify against the slings and arrows of fate, against the blows and buffets dealt by the wide world.”

  “Of course you are quite right,” said Catherine. As she gazed into the fire and drank her tea, she thought of her housewifely sister-in-law, whose well-run house was so comfortable, so strengthening that Hector was sufficiently fortified to venture forth and leave it all behind for years at a time.

  She considered her own domestic history, too—the houses she had lived in, and the houses whose comforts—or discomforts—had been her responsibility. She remembered well a vast baronial fireplace that couldn’t be made to draw, its finely carved marble chimneypiece permanently soot-stained. She remembered succulent roasted joints of aged beef dripping with juices; exquisite collops of venison from the hill; flaky tartlets filled with wild berries gathered above a wee burn. But she also remembered unpleasant cooled soup served up with floating gouts of congealed fat. The freshest sweetest butter, but only bitter rye-flour bread to spread it on. Freshly aired eiderdowns and ancient soft linen sheets; but also rough woolen blankets riddled by moths, and sharp quills stabbing through pillows. Old silver candlesticks, heavy and handsome still; but bent, tarnished black, greasy with tallow. Mr Sinclair was engrossed in his own thoughts, for he had found a book lying open on a table and was intent upon it, one finger tracing the captions under the engravings.

  “Will we go and look at this collection of Mr Fleming’s?” proposed Catherine presently. “And perhaps you will be so good as to explain to me what I am seeing, and what I am to think of it.”

  “I beg you will excuse me for a few minutes more, Mrs MacDonald; this book is one I have been seeking for a decade. Pray go and see the collection, and I will follow you in five minutes.”

  “Of course. Please do not hurry yourself in the least,” said Catherine. And so she opened the door and crossed the threshhold to Mr Fleming’s cabinet.

  But what had she expected?

  Not this: a Pompeian cameo glass vase, larger, lovelier, a darker sea-blue than the Duchess of Portland’s, the translucent creamy goddesses most exquisitely carved, most elegantly disposed around its surface; of unsurpassed delicacy. But both arching handles snapped off, missing, the remaining stumps jagged, raw.

  A broad Greek kylix, red figured on a black ground. A masterfully painted scene of Perseus slaying the monster, and Andromeda, of a comeliness well worth Perseus’s effort, bound by her wrists to a pair of shapely little trees—an olive and a laurel. The rim was decorated with palmate and key patterns, but the whole was cracked across the middle—between Andromeda’s lovely breasts—and clumsily repaired with rusted iron staples.

  A darkly glittering old tapestry—Adam and Eve in the garden, a scene of rich and bosky orchard, verdure, shadow, stream. Oddly, there was a gleaming city in the distance, gleaming because the threads were of gold, real gold. The forbidden fruit was rendered in gold as well, and the snake, though dark with tarnish now, was surely of woven silver. But the lower right quarter was missing, and the ragged edge unmistakably scorched. Water stains rose as high as Eve’s rosy thigh.

  A painting: a most exquisitely painted lady in Florentine dress, with grave countenance. But other figures which once surrounded her had since been cut away. From the edge of the canvas, a plump baby’s arm, disembodied, reached toward the breast of the solemn lady. A be-ringed hand, a man’s hand, lay lightly on her shoulder, connected to an arm which extended off the canvas. The man’s shoulders and head were excised, and only some of his damask coat showed behind the lady. The richly carved and gilded frame could not relieve the disturbing effect of these disembodied limbs extending out of the picture.

  A Mughal dagger, its blade of watered steel, its hilt of pale carved jade in the shape of a horse’s head, with inlaid rubies for eyes and emeralds for a bridle. But where the hilt met the blade, only empty gold settings remained; the gemstones themselves had been pried out. What stones could those have been? Had the rubies and emeralds not been worth taking too?

  There was a great deal more of this kind.

  There was a chair. Catherine sat down, and considered what might be the character of the man who had gathered these things.

  She heard voices in the other room through the door. Mr Fleming had come; he was speaking to Mr Sinclair and Mr Sinclair was praising the rare books. She heard Hector’s voice too. Then the door opened and Mr Fleming came into the cabinet.

  “Ah, here you are, Mrs MacDonald, keeping company with my exquisite widows and orphans,” said Mr Fleming. “My ravishing cripples and amputees. Dealers on three continents know how they can dispose of their damaged goods; they need only let me get a sight of them. They must do it as offhand as possible, and they know it. And so here it is, my magpie’s nest.”

  “They are beautiful,” said Catherine. “But painful, too. Painful to see shards of glass here, where the handles should be. As though my own arms had been broken.”

  “Ah! You feel it, then—a physical sensation, quite singular,” he said, and his gaze met hers for a moment.

  “Perhaps the pain heightens the beauty, makes it more poignant,” said Catherine. “More moving, somehow, than admiring perfect things, strangely enough.”

  “Sometimes I have wondered,” said Mr Fleming, turning away to pick up the Mughal dagger, “if my circumstances permitted me to acquire objects in perfect condition, not damaged in any way, would I love them as much as I do these? When I come across something like this dagger, something formerly exquisite but now flawed through no fault of its own, I feel a clawing at my heart. No serious collector would treasure so damaged a thing; but I find it irresistible.”

  “I guessed I’d find you here,” said Hector, walking in. “Didn’t I tell you, Catherine? Look at that hor
se-headed knife! What were the missing stones, do you suppose, Mr Fleming?”

  “They would have been diamonds—large, uncut ones, judging by the size and shape of the settings,” said Mr Fleming.

  “Diamonds! That size! I do hope a few of those might have been overlooked and are still lying about India when I get there…. What are we waiting for?”

  “Nothing more, as a matter of fact. That barge we have just finished loading carries the last of our Indies-bound cargo: good Norway spruce fit for spars, and heavy canvas just fallen from Jacob Raes’s widest looms. And there remains room enough on the barge to carry you three back to the ship, if you desire; the master is ready to cast off within this quarter hour.”

  “Excellent. Nothing could be better. Will you come now, yourself?”

  “Tonight,” said Mr Fleming. “There remain yet a few matters requiring my attention.”

  The master of the barge made them comfortable, seating Catherine on a cushion on a plank under a flapping canvas awning. The barge glided down the canal drawn by a pair of heavy horses trudging along the towpath in tandem, their coarse blond tails blown against their hindquarters by the wind. With the wind aft, the barge was unwieldy, but the bargemen, with their dripping slippery poles, deftly held it off the bank. Hector and Mr Sinclair stood, watching the city glide past. On this bank were houses, warehouses, docks, shops, heavy-planked beamy boats. And on the far bank, windmills.

  The wind had come up during the time they had been inside, enough to turn the windmills, enough to make them creak and groan as the vast heavy vanes turned over, over and over. “Like souls in travail,” said Mr Sinclair.

  “But how does the wind actually make them turn?” asked Catherine. “I have never quite understood that.”