Chapter 2 #2
“If it makes you feel better, I likely couldn’t identify your flowers, either,” Florrie said. “Honnor Loftus, the artist of the… first painting—” She’d stopped herself from saying real just in time. “Loftus found Folk naturalism tiresome, so he invented most of the plants in his landscapes.”
“How wonderful!” Vern exclaimed. “I’ve always wanted to learn more about my painting. Every day, that guide comes into my gallery and recites nothing but the same dry introduction.”
“Has he truly never noticed you?” That seemed unlikely, but she had to remember that most Folk tended to overlook portraits of Fairies now.
Days after the last Fairies flounced away from Stillscape, in the mid-century, the Princes’ Consortium had issued a public statement dismissing Fairy art as “more outmoded than moonprints” – and certainly nobody deigned to pay any attention to moonprints.
“Nobody notices me unless I allow it,” said Vern. “There’s an entire world in here, and I can hide within it whenever I like. I’ve done that for a lifetime – until now.”
“Now that you’ve spoken to me, yes,” Florrie mused. “But why me, of all people?”
Vern took a deep breath – Florrie could barely hear it – but she sighed and gave the answer herself: “Because I damaged your home.”
Vern shook his head. “That’s not all. You also…”
“Yes?” Florrie asked, wondering what other injury she’d unwittingly inflicted upon the painting.
“Oh, never mind,” he said, staring at the part of the foreground that had been mercifully spared from Florrie’s interventions. “At least my colonnade is still intact!”
“I really am sorry, Vern. I will repair that arch, I promise.”
She promised? Whatever was she saying? Florrie hastily ordered herself to lower Vern’s expectations.
“I will try to repair it, that is, but your painting is different from anything I’ve ever encountered. I must research and experiment, with no support—” She cleared her throat. “Other than the support of my delightful husband, but that is too obvious to mention.”
“Would you let me know if I can help?” Vern asked. “I can’t leave the painting, and I know almost nothing about the world. But I do want to offer.”
“There’s no need. I’ll do my best to set things right for you.”
“I believe you will.” To Florrie’s surprise, Vern’s face suddenly displayed an exact replica of the gentle smile that took her breath away when she first saw the painting.
Somehow, Florrie found herself smiling in return.
She did so without even considering the precise angle of her lips that would be most fitting to communicate her internal experience at this juncture.
Her smile simply happened, and, to her surprise, continued happening.
That is, until Vern’s gaze started to make her feel so immensely flustered that she almost wanted to destroy more of the painting simply to introduce a new topic of conversation. What a relief it was when a knock at the studio door interrupted them!
“Florrie?” called Prince Ardant. “How are you faring? The proposal is over – declined, in case you wondered – and I felt awful for abandoning you so quickly.”
Florrie’s relief dissipated instantly.
“Regrettably, I’m in the midst of a delicate operation,” she replied, hoping Vern would not notice how much her voice quavered. “Might I join you in a moment?”
Thankfully, the prince accepted this excuse, and Florrie turned back to the easel with a sigh of relief. The ghostly double of Vibrant Lord Vernal Mauve remained as before, watching her with captivating curiosity.
“The prince requested my presence,” she told him. “That is to say, my husband wishes for us to reunite. I have missed him so.”
“I thought you said you weren’t in love?”
“Well, that is…,” said Florrie. “Well. It was a pleasure to meet you.”
“And it was wonderful to meet you, Florrie,” said Vern.
“Even under the unfortunate circumstances?”
“Unfortunate circumstances?” He grinned. “It was my least favourite arch, remember?”
Vern gave her a final wave and faded into nothingness, restoring The Resolute Portrait to its typical appearance. Now, only the painted version of Lord Mauve smiled serenely at Florrie. Somehow, she didn’t find that lifeless figure quite as fascinating.
So much the better. Florrie did not have time to lose herself in The Resolute Portrait again. She secured the painting behind a shield-cloth and hurried off to face her fate.
She knew exactly what would happen next.
Prince Ardant would demand to see the painting, and then she’d lose her position.
Even if he didn’t examine it immediately, he would certainly guess from her anxious manner that something had gone amiss, and then she’d lose her position.
Florrie’s knowledge of the Conservators’ Code – and its many sub-sections dedicated to the ways in which one might offend, anger or otherwise displease a collector – confirmed this was the only outcome awaiting her.
When she entered the galleries through another cleverly concealed door, she found Prince Ardant cross-legged on the floor, folding and unfolding a map of the palace.
“For you!” he exclaimed, presenting it with a seated bow. “Now, may I invite you to luncheon?”
As they proceeded to the gardens, she tried to compose herself by examining the delightfully glossy pages of the map.
The museum itself occupied four of the palace’s many towers.
To Florrie’s surprise, the prince had organised his collections somewhat temporally, eschewing the current curatorial fondness for sorting art by colour.
As a result, all the fifteenth-century art, which Florrie would find the most intriguing, occupied the tower she’d already visited.
Hadn’t Prince Ardant claimed there were five Fairy-themed artworks in the collections?
Scanning through the map’s appendix, Florrie searched until she had identified each one.
In addition to The Resolute Portrait, there were also two middling, mid-century portraits, plus the Captive of Curiosity sculpture she’d seen previously and a rather dreary eighth-century mosaic of a Fairy dancer.
As Florrie read, the prince gushed about the landscape architects who helped him transform the great grounds of his grandfather’s time.
“It’s a public park now,” he concluded, holding the door as they stepped onto a small terrace overlooking the kitchen garden.
Florrie hadn’t realised how trapped she felt in the studio until she breathed the fresh air.
An aromatic breeze drew her attention to the intricate lattices of herb beds, which must be home to countless fascinating textures.
Like any park, the palace grounds heaved with Folk, all happily sprawled across a variety of benches and blankets.
Prince Ardant led her to an unoccupied table near an eighth-century fountain carved from a type of green stone Florrie could not identify (which vexed her beyond measure).
A wide base, scalloped like the petals of a flower, supported the fountain, and an elegant stone bird sprang from the centre to project water from its sinuous beak.
Behind the fountain, the palace shone in the mid-afternoon light, which happened to fall prettily upon a triangular cupola far above the galleries.
As triangular structures were a hallmark of Fairy architecture (no self-respecting Folk architect would design anything so perplexingly pointy), Florrie wondered what had inspired that unusual structure – and what it housed.
Before she could ask, the prince produced a basket laden with bread and fruit that seemed to have come straight from a still-life painting. Florrie told herself that it would not do to confess her transgressions to Prince Ardant until after they had filled their plates and unfolded their napkins.
Once those activities were complete, however, she feared it would be rude to spoil the prince’s appetite.
There was a pleasantly golden seeded loaf, after all, along with a hearty nut jam and a medley of wild berries with most intriguingly speckled surfaces.
She might as well let him take a bite of something first. In fact, why not let him finish at least one berry? Or a bowlful?
Florrie scowled surreptitiously at the tablecloth.
Ethically and professionally, she was obliged to disclose everything to Prince Ardant immediately.
But what, precisely, would she disclose?
That his ill-advised urgency to clean the painting helped her discover it was a forgery?
That the actual Resolute Portrait had been stolen?
Friendly though he was, Prince Ardant hardly knew Florrie.
He had no reason to trust her. In Florrie’s experience, collectors were rather sensitive to the word “forgery” and reacted with disbelieving rage if an unwary conservator questioned the integrity of their collections.
The Conservators’ Code specified that one must only introduce the mere possibility of a counterfeit artwork after acquiring at least five forms of incontrovertible evidence.
With that in mind, shouldn’t she wait to gather all the facts about this unbelievable situation?
“You must tell me what you think of him,” chuckled Prince Ardant.
“Him? Which him? Ver – the – I mean, whomever do you mean?”
“Our dear Lord Mauve,” replied the prince, extending his hand in mimicry of the figure’s pose in the portrait. “I assume you found the painting even more astonishing up close.”
Florrie let her fingers trace lines down the side of a particularly appetising berry, hoping the uneven pattern of the seeds would put her at ease.
“I suppose you could say he is agreeable,” she ventured.