Chapter 20
20
Hand in hand, Clio and I amble through the garden toward the blue irises where the painting opens up. If I walk any slower, I’ll be at a standstill. But as much as I want to stay with this woman—this Muse—I’d prefer it not be inside a painting. Especially the Renoir, where we’re at the mercy of Max-slash-Renoir and whatever blight is afflicting the other art.
No, I swore I’d protect Clio, and I can’t do that from in here.
Along the way, we walk across the bridge. At the top of Monet’s arched bridge, Clio nudges me with her shoulder. “What are you thinking?”
With our fingers still linked, I tug her close and wrap my other arm around her like we’re dancing, à la Fred Astaire, sort of, until we get off-balance on the slope of the bridge and stumble against the railing, catching ourselves with our clasped hands. Clio throws back her head and laughs as I put my other hand on the railing too, playfully penning her in.
“I’m thinking,” I say, “about how much I enjoyed being here with you.”
Her laughter quiets to something more gentle, and she reaches up to smooth the furrow between my brows. “That doesn’t seem like something to frown about.”
I catch her hand and kiss her palm. “Only because I don’t want to leave.”
She sighs. “But you must.”
I nod and hold her hand against my chest. “I have to go so that I can work out how to free you.”
Clio looks as if she hardly dares to ask, “Do you think you know how?”
I kiss her softly parted lips. “Not yet,” I murmur when I finally allow a hair’s breadth between us. “But I will figure it out. And I know more now than I did. Maybe enough to ask the right questions.”
Tipping her head back, she closes her eyes and breathes deep, as if basking in the painted light and savoring the last bit of our evening together. When she looks at me again, her smile is sweet and spicy, like she’s thinking about everything that’s happened since she brought me into her painting. “It feels like a whole different universe than it did before.”
I tug her away from the bridge’s railing for another embrace before we continue on. “Why, Clio, are you saying I rocked your world?”
She swats playfully at my shoulder and starts a cheeky reply—and then stops, mouth hanging slightly open as if she’s seen something baffling. Only she’s not looking at any one thing, but rather all around us.
“Julien . . . do you see this? I assumed ‘a whole new world’ was a figure of speech but . . .”
I see immediately what she means. From the apex of the arched bridge, we’ve stepped onto its mirror image. It might even be the same one, but the light is different, brighter and greener than Clio’s garden.
I know where we are. I didn’t think anything could surprise me now, and yet this latest twist has proven me wrong. Somehow, Clio and I have walked into another painting in the Musée d’Orsay.
This is The Water Lily Pond: Green Harmony . Same bridge, different painting, one of Monet’s many versions of his Japanese bridge.
We follow where it leads and step off the planks and into the museum. Clio stares wide-eyed as if we’ve been transported to another planet instead of a different gallery in the Musée d’Orsay—a gallery nowhere near Clio’s painting.
Finally, she looks at me as if hunting for an answer, but I’m looking at her for the same thing. Her bewilderment makes it even more of a shock—she’s been living in her painted world for more than a century, and has been a Muse for much longer than that. If she’s surprised, I’m flabbergasted.
“Did you know you could do that?” I ask her.
She shakes her head slowly. “I had no idea. And I’ve searched every corner of my painting. The bridge never went anywhere except across the pond.”
“So, what happened?” I have to say it aloud, even though we must be thinking the same thing—the only thing that’s changed in the century she’s been trapped is . . . me.
Her gaze flicks to the painting and back to me. “We touched the bridge together. Our hands, remember? You were distracting me at the time, but I think that must be when something changed.”
“Or the bridges in the paintings connected right at that moment.” I rub my chin as I speculate. “The moment when two muses touched it together?”
“It must be,” she says, still wide-eyed with amazement.
A new voice enters the discussion from not far away. “Convenient, wouldn’t you say?”
Clio and I both jump and turn to see Dr. Gachet, Van Gogh’s doctor from his famous portrait. It’s the first time I’ve seen him corporeal. He stands, hands behind his back as if studying Monet’s painting rather than us.
“What’s convenient?” I ask.
His voice is low and sonorous as he gestures idly to the water lilies. “That the Impressionists painted so many versions of that bridge.”
I know that—Monet’s garden was apparently a popular place to paint—but now my mind boggles at the implications. “They connect?” I ask Dr. Gachet. “The bridges all connect?”
He spreads his hands in front of him in a noncommittal way. “I merely offer an observation. After all, I’m not the one jumping in and out of paintings.”
I can only stare as the doctor, in his royal-blue coat, wanders along the hall. In the corner, Olympia stands, the sheet from her painting draped around her, waving flirtatiously at him. I’ve never seen her moving about either, but now she and the doctor link hands and walk off.
Clio whispers, “I think Olympia and Dr. Gachet have a little something going on.”
Some of the impish humor is back in her eyes, and I shake my head in dazed amazement. “Just another night at the museum,” I say. “If muses and bridges can hook up, why not famous portraits?”
“I don’t blame them one bit,” Clio says, wrapping her arm around my waist.
I drape mine over her shoulders as we head toward her gallery, then I’m struck by a thought. “You know what? We have another one of the bridges on loan to the Hermitage as part of a Monet exhibit. We could go there sometime.”
Clio stops and grabs my arm. “I would love to do that. Do you think we really could?”
Glancing back at the Monet before it’s out of sight, I shrug. “You’ve been a Muse a lot longer than I have. What do you think?”
She stretches onto her toes, twines her arms around my neck, and kisses me like there’s no tomorrow. Breathless, she pulls back enough to say, “I think we have a date.”
I walk her back to her canvas, kissing her again before she reenters. I can’t get enough of her, can’t remember a time when it took so much willpower to let a woman out of my arms.
Once I manage it, I ask her something that’s been lurking in the back of my mind, where I’d pushed it so as not to spoil our time together. It doesn’t seem fair to bring it up and leave her worrying all night and day, so I couch the question carefully.
“Clio, about Renoir . . . if he managed to work a curse to keep you from inspiring ordinary people and starting this new age of artistic enlightenment, what lengths might he go to in order to stop it now?”
Her shrewd and level gaze says I haven’t slipped anything past her. “Do I think that, having failed to get his hands on this painting by forgery, he might try outright theft?” Fists on her hips, she says, “After spending more than a century trapped in here, I’m inclined to think the worst of him.”
As am I.
I can’t resist one last kiss, because she’s as lovely fired up and indignant as she is any other time.
And kissing her distracts me from the rest of my thoughts, the part I don’t want to say. I’m worried about something more destructive than theft. Renoir might not be able to bring himself to destroy the painting of Woman Wandering in the Irises , but if a human muse is the key to this prophesy, well, I don’t think he’ll have any qualms about destroying me.
I have to get to the bottom of this for both our sakes.
* * *
Simon and I grab lunch in Saint-Germain-des-Prés the next afternoon and eat outside on the steps of the church, where my friend is happy to give his opinion.
“I don’t know, mate. If it were me, I’d have offed you already.”
He takes a carefree bite of his cheese sandwich, and I give him a look. “How is that helpful exactly?”
“Well, if a human muse is going to usher in the new renaissance for the common folk, those who want to stop it would get rid of you before you can team up with the other Muses. Ipso facto, elitist art snob wins.”
“I figured out that part for myself. I mean, how does it help, you telling me that?”
“Seeing as how you head home well after dark every night since that painting turned up, and nobody’s conked you over the head and dumped you in the Seine yet, that seems to suggest Renoir doesn’t see you as the threat.”
That leaves Clio as the target. I don’t think Renoir has it in him to destroy his own work. But steal it? No question. Make sure it’s lost forever? Certainly.
My phone pings with an incoming text.
Remy: How fast can you get over to the Marais? Seems one of our forgers has recently found religion.
* * *
Remy fits in well in the Marais, with its mix of trendy and vintage, chic and quirky. He greets Simon and me, and we set off toward the vintage place where Cass Middleton has set up shop, literally and figuratively.
“I already figured out that this was about Cass Middleton,” I say as we pass her store. “Want to explain the rest?”
“You’ll see.”
At the corner, we turn into an alley full of boxes and trash cans beside the back doors of shops and restaurants. By counting the doors, I know which goes to Cass’s shop, and directly across from it is an unexpected pair of arched doors. Remy yanks them open, and the three of us head down a stone path that ends at a church.
Remy leads us inside, where it’s musty, cold, and quiet. A few candles flicker by the altar, and a pair of painted Madonnas watch over the nave from high above.
“We’ve been keeping tabs on Cass Middleton,” Remy says. “Sophie has spotted her crossing the alley to this church with easels, stretched canvases, and paint supplies.” There are no signs of a makeshift studio—not so much as a whiff of linseed oil.
“Are you sure this is where she was headed with them?”
“Yes. She’s been going back and forth—was here this morning, in fact.” He looks around as Simon and I do the same. “Maybe she’s using another room or a basement?”
“Let’s spread out and look,” I say.
Simon heads for the altar, and when he’s out of earshot, I ask Remy in a low voice, “Did you ever learn why Suzanne Valadon asked your family to keep Woman Wandering in the Irises safe?”
I’m almost certain I know, but confirmation would be nice.
Remy shakes his head, seeming to genuinely regret that he can’t give me an answer. “Only that there was a woman trapped inside the painting until a human muse came along. The family henceforth had to keep it safe until then.”
From the start, it’s seemed like anyone involved has a piece of the puzzle, but no one has the whole story. Remy doesn’t know there’s an eternal Muse in Woman Wandering in the Irises . Clio doesn’t know what happened to her painting after Renoir’s last words, cursing her.
As for Renoir, I don’t think he has all the answers either. His forged papers were convincing, but none of his stories have been. Maybe I can’t figure out his plan because he’s still figuring it out himself.
Remy and I fan out too, but there’s not much to search. The church is tiny, and there’s no sign of a way into another room or a basement. I throw up my hands in frustration. “Nothing. Now what?”
“Now,” says Simon from where he’s casually leaning against the altar, “I dazzle you with one of my random bits of knowledge.” He taps the top of the altar. “A lot of these old alleyway churches have served as handy places to stash relics, refugees, riches. But sometimes . . .”
He braces his shoulder against the raised altar and shoves like a quarryman. The stone altar groans as it moves over a few inches to reveal a door in the floor.
“Voilà. You get a hidden staircase in front of everyone’s eyes.”
“Consider me dazzled,” Remy says, his sculpted eyebrows climbing. I think he’s more surprised by Simon than the door, but that’s my Scottish friend all right—more than he seems.
Simon holds up a hand as if demurring applause. “It’s nothing. Brilliance is all in a day’s work for me.” Then he takes the first step down, looking back at me. “You coming, mate?”
“Of course.” I hurry over, and Remy follows, peering at the uneven stone steps and wrinkling his nose.
“I’ll keep a lookout up here. I am extremely particular about basement upkeep.”
I can’t argue with that, so I thank him and follow Simon down a loop of stairs. I find the switch for a work light and pull it, illuminating a breathtaking and chilling sight.
Two easels. Two paintings in progress.
Renoir may be loathsome, but his work is astoundingly beautiful. And there’s no denying this is his work.
On one canvas, the artist has begun the Young Girls at the Piano , and The Boy with the Cat is underway on the other easel. Those were the first two Renoirs to fade. Is he replacing his own work?
Simon pokes around the stacks of empty canvases against the wall. “This proves that the Middleton woman is forging paintings, right? What next? Do we call the metro police or go straight to Interpol?”
I’m sure Renoir’s been here, inhabiting Max. But it must be Cass doing the actual painting. Renoir needs a master art forger to reproduce his masterpieces. The ghost can’t simply paint them in a borrowed body—whenever he takes possession of Max, his fingers twist into an unusable shape, mimicking the deformity of Renoir’s arthritis.
“I don’t know,” I answer Simon. “It’s going to be hard to explain the spirit of Renoir coaching his forger.”
“But I don’t get why . He can’t sell them, right?”
I picture Clio in the painted sunshine of Monet’s garden, telling me how Renoir loved his art above everything else. How it means the world to him.
“Losing his art has got to be his worst nightmare,” I say. “Maybe he has his reasons. If he can replace the works with exact replicas, he can preserve his legacy.”
Simon points out, “They won’t be exact replicas though. Not without the secret formula thingy in the signature.”
That’s true. And who knows if he can even create the signature pigment with modern supplies?
A door slams above us. Simon and I look up at the old musty ceiling at the same time. “Let’s get out of here,” I say, and I don’t have to tell Simon twice.
We rush up the steps into the chapel, where there’s no sign of Remy.
There’s no sign of the fist that blindsides me either. Not until it smashes into my face hard enough to spin me around and drop me to the ground.
Pain tears through me, ripping through my body.
“Trespassing in a church? That’s a step up from snooping around my shop,” a woman’s English accent taunts.
A yell comes next, and I flip over, still wincing, as Simon flies out from behind the altar and jumps Cass Middleton. She jabs an elbow into his solar plexus and then a fist to his groin.
“Oi!” Simon twists away from the brunt of it, but it still lays him out. Hell, it nearly paralyzes me in sympathy.
Where the hell is Remy? Before I can look around for him, Cass grabs the neck of my T-shirt and twists so tight that I struggle to breathe.
“You looking for your friend? He’s all right. Tied him to the baptism font with his scarf.” I can get a hit in on her now, if I get enough breath, but she backhands me so hard my brain rattles in my skull. Then she pins me to the ground with her foot on my chest.
“Now, listen up. I don’t go for violence,” she says without a shred of irony, “but I might make an exception for guys who keep sticking their nose in my business.”
“ Might? ” I wheeze, keeping her attention on me and away from the movement I spot behind her.
“You think it can’t get worse than this?” She steps harder on my chest to make her point.
I gasp for breath.
Then Remy taps her on the shoulder from behind. Cass whirls, and my bon ami throws a punch like a prizefighter. It knocks her back, to the stairs, where she rolls across the edge of the door down into the basement, with a few loud thumps
I crawl over to peer down. She’s at the bottom of the stone steps. I’m glad she’s not dead, and more glad she’s moaning too much to get right back up.
Remy joins me at the edge and, livid, shakes the tattered remains of his scarf at her. “This. Was. Hermès!”