Chapter Eleven #2
The paper Titus handed him had a number of suggestions in admirably legible handwriting. It also bore several little pictures, presumably executed while Titus waited for him to finish. Nico had noticed his habit of sketching whenever he had pen and paper to hand.
The Tower (accompanied by a rather good picture of an evil-looking bird) looked like it would bear a lengthy visit; so did the Kew gardens, their name twined with flowers.
Greenwich was highly recommended, but it seemed that one had to procure an introduction to the Astronomer Royal to see the famous Camera Obscura.
Since Nico needed to arrange a visit to the collector Sir James Roud in Greenwich anyway, he expressed his entirely fictional desire to see whatever a Camera Obscura was—Titus hadn’t drawn it, possibly because he didn’t know either—and undertook to deal with the formalities as soon as possible.
Titus had listed but not decorated Westminster Abbey, and several Institutions for the Encouragement of Arts, Scientists, more to the point, Titus had a boyishly enthusiastic look as he planned his holiday that made him seem about ten years younger.
It was delightful, and contagious, and Nico couldn’t help feeling a matching lightheartedness, even with the persistent pulse beat of worry about the debt.
Mr. Thorpe came in with the morning’s post on a salver just as they were preparing to leave. “Your letters, sir.”
“Oh. Let me see, I was hoping to hear from the Indigent Artists’ Society.”
“I have no doubt they will be in touch, sir,” Mr. Thorpe remarked without inflection.
Nico grinned as he tweaked his cravat in the mirror. Titus ignored them both and scanned the enclosures quickly. “Yes, I think most of these can—”
He stopped. Nico looked round at his face. “Mon ami?”
“Nothing. Nothing. I’ll look at these later, Mr. Thorpe. Please leave them for me.”
“If you need to deal with anything…?”
“No,” Titus said. “No, let’s just go.”
They walked down to Piccadilly. Titus was quiet at first, then let out a long breath and shook off whatever had come with the letter.
Nico wanted to know about that, but he would not ask now: Today was for holiday.
He set himself to chatter, and they strolled along talking nonstop of very little in a thoroughly enjoyable way, until they were faced with an Egyptian temple complete with angular porticos, statues, columns, sphinxes, beetles in bas relief, and strange symbols, set between two perfectly normal shops.
Nico had walked past it often enough, and never previously stopped to reflect how peculiar it was in a London street. Titus considered it for a while and finally said, “I suppose the builder had his reasons. Shall we go in?”
The Picture of London had promised that the Egyptian Hall was stuffed with curiosities from across the world.
It now transpired that the owner had sold his collections two years previously, leaving the space as an exhibition hall.
The current exhibition was an Egyptological one to match the exterior: a reproduction of the tomb of Seti I, which the explorer Mr. Belzoni had discovered a few years previously.
It was quite remarkable. Mr. Belzoni had taken wax casts of the bas-reliefs—Titus made worried noises about what that procedure might have done to ancient paint—and had detailed watercolours made, and these had been used to create a series of rooms through a looming and sinister gateway, all painted to the likeness of the tomb.
There were winged women, stylised suns, great striding animal-headed gods, and labouring men, depicted in astoundingly rich, mostly earth-toned colours.
The vividly night-blue ceiling was splattered with stars.
Nico had seen more paintings and statues inspired by the ancient Greeks or Romans than he could count, and therefore never looked twice at them. This was quite new to him, while depicting something awe-inspiringly old.
“Three thousand one hundred years,” Titus said softly, as they sat on a bench together to admire the display.
“Thirty-one centuries. Think of that. Imagine being Mr. Belzoni and making one’s way down some dreadful close dark passage in a hillside to find all this, untouched for aeons. The age, and the silence. The colours.”
“And the monsters,” Nico said. “Imagine: to raise one’s lantern in the darkness and see that spring from the shadow.” He indicated a deeply ominous figure with the head of a long-eared black dog. “I would run screaming.”
They sat silent for a moment, locked in imagination, then Titus shuddered pleasurably. “I can see now why everyone is so fascinated by Egypt. This is a work of art as much as any great church, isn’t it?”
“And all for a dead man,” Nico said. “Dead at the time, I mean. He could hardly help being dead by now.”
“Yes, that is extraordinary. All this beauty created with the sole intention of sealing it up, never to be seen again.”
“But the king Seti had it to admire in his afterlife, no? So it was not entirely wasted.”
“Was that how it worked?” Titus asked. “I’m not sure pharaohs were supposed to haunt the tomb. Though if I were to haunt a tomb, I might well pick this one: It is quite wonderful. But all the same, I think works of art ought to be seen, displayed, not hidden away for a single man. Or ghost.”
“Well, that is the rich for you. They don’t like to share.”
“He’s sharing now, like it or not,” Titus said with a touch of “serves the pharaoh right.” “I’m glad we can see it, and I am happier to see a reproduction than the real thing.”
“So am I,” Nico said frankly. “Haunted passages under the earth do not appeal to me.”
“No, I mean, I’m glad Mr. Belzoni didn’t bring it with him.
So many of these explorers cut the paintings off the walls and what have you, like the Elgin marbles, and I think Lord Byron was quite right to call it vandalism.
If the paintings can be reproduced for us, and the real things left in their proper place, that is surely better. ”
“But this way you cannot see the actual paints and pigments,” Nico pointed out. “Would that not be interesting?”
“I would love to see them, of course, but I don’t think my interest is justification for stripping a grave. I do realise there’s a difference between an archaeologist or historian and a grave-robber,” Titus added conscientiously. “But it’s not clear to me quite what the difference is.”
“The age of the corpse?” Nico offered. “If you dig up my grandmother for her gold rings, you are a vile criminal. If it is my great-great-great-great grandmother, you are an antiquarian.”
“I wonder how many greats is the tipping point. I suppose that’s it, but I find it quite discomfiting how people regard mummies as objects, or ingredients, just because they’re old.
Look at Egyptian brown. Colourmen are quite happy to debate which part of the mummy gives the richest brown, without any—”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Nico said. “What did you say?”
“Egyptian brown. Mummy brown, people sometimes call it, or caput mortuum.”
Nico’s Latin was as one might expect of his patchwork education, but he could do that one. “Dead man’s head? Are you telling me you make a paint— Oh, you are not serious. Tell me you are not serious.”
“I’m afraid so,” Titus said. “I don’t sell it myself. It is much loved for glazing layers, to give muscles and skin the right tone, but it ages very poorly, and I find the finish unsatisfactory. Not to mention—”
“It is made of dead people!”
“That, yes. I did make up a few batches as an apprentice when my master purchased a forearm, and it was a horrible process. He believed in using the bones and bandages too. It felt more like witchcraft than anything.”
“That is disgusting,” Nico said with his whole heart. “Even by the standards of paint, disgusting. How many paintings made by corpse-colour have I seen? Oh my God, my brown coat!”
“That will be a vegetable dye,” Titus assured him. “Egyptian brown is used for oil paintings.”
“Hmph. I could not enjoy a painting made of the dead.”
“You’ve probably seen a few already. This is always the problem with knowing too much,” Titus said. “Something might be quite lovely, and then you find out more about it and it starts to seem rather sordid or unpleasant. Like Scheele’s green, or…” He groped for an example. “Sausages.”
“Sausages?”
“I’m saying, it’s often better not to ask too much, for one’s peace of mind. One might be better off not knowing.”
That hit hard. Nico could only nod, an imitation man in an imitation tomb, hoping to stay unknown.