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Given the nature of our arrangement, I wasn’t anticipating a speedy answer. Touching the mouse, I hovered over the close window icon, and was just on the verge of clicking, when a reply bounced back.
Dear Robyn, immortal castles are witnesses, and without them, memories of the past are lost. Who would care to keep those myths alive if it wasn’t for them? Objects and places are storytellers as much as poems and books, the stuff of legends. Do you not think so?
Your kindly Medici
He described a castle as if it was a living thing.
Yes, I do think so. I saw Guy the Seeker at Dunstanburgh.
I hesitated, then clicked send before I changed my mind. But something told me that he would understand. What led me to think that was as inexplicable as my visions of myths. Through all my reticence about Medici’s motives, I had no doubt that something of a connection had formed between us that went beyond the castles we both admired. I waited, feeling foolish at revealing such a silly thing as a reference to an obscure poem. Why the heck had I used the word “saw” when I had read about it? What would he think of me now?
The reply took longer this time and arrived without a subject header. No preamble, only four lines.
That horn to sound, or sword to draw,
Now, youth, your choice explain;
But that which you choose, beware how you lose,
For you never will find it again.
I pushed the chair back, creating space between me and the monitor and keyboard. The shock hit my stomach, churning up the veggie burger. I hadn’t expected him to know the poem. Why had he picked that particular verse? I remained awkwardly frozen by his knowledge of something I assumed was so obscure.
The inbox synched again. Another message with no subject heading.
I haven’t scared you? I have taken you by surprise, I think. I ask for photographs, but I suspect you have other means to see things without a lens. Would it not be exciting if we all could have this ability or something like it? We could reach out and be together, but unfortunately we are not all the same. Don’t let it dissuade you from persevering. There is still time, I hope. Prudhoe would be disappointing. Such a mean oriel window is hardly stimulating. Maybe the next ones will offer you more inspiration. Sorry, Robyn. I cannot always answer your questions. I will be absent soon. Keep using a camera, if it helps you. If I could, I would too. You’ll find out what David doesn’t know about me soon, from somebody you’ve met but know little about.
Know what and from whom? He was implying that he knew about my visions, too. His enigmatic writing style was really starting to piss me off, even freak me out a bit. I hammered the keys, demanding an explanation for his weird choice of words. In the midst of it, David sent a text.
Just to let you know. Medici will be offline for a while. Please refrain from making contact until I speak to you.
My head spun. I was online, emailing him. Had I upset him? Was David with him, reading my emails? Was that how they worked together? Nothing made sense. Medici, who always seemed one step ahead of me, was now telling me he couldn’t answer my questions right before David texted the same thing. Whatever was communicated behind the scenes, the message was clear, I was not to engage with Medici.
The secrecy riled me, driving out unwanted anxiety, and I replaced it with a fresh burst of outraged confidence. I should pull the plug on the project and reclaim my old job while I had the chance. But lying upstairs was a very expense camera and it wasn’t an unconditional gift. I had fallen in love with its versatility and the opportunities it offered me. I wasn’t prepared to part company with it yet. I had places I wanted to go, things to see.
I chewed my lower lip and made a decision. Tomorrow, I would visit Durham, photograph the cathedral because I wanted to, then on Monday, I would begin week two of my peculiar assignment and stick to the list and complete my obligations.
As for my so-called gift, this increasingly childish ability to fantasise, it was best I kept my thoughts to myself from now on; not even the inquisitive Medici was entitled to know about it. As for my family, they could never appreciate any of this strangeness, except one person, and she was gone forever. If I was truly able to go back in time, I would have asked Granny Izzy what she thought of it all.
Fifteen
Bowes Castle was a huge stone box with no lid.
The artist walked around the keep three times, his eyes shaded from the bleaching sun by a raised hand. Sunglasses were for gangsters and posh people in flashy convertibles. But today he regretted not owning a pair.
In places the walls had cracked apart, revealing a honeycomb of stone and mortar. A painting needed a balance of texture and shade, which meant plenty of light to cast the right pattern of shadows. He hoped to create a composition that delivered grand dimensions and not flat, featureless stonework. The latrines, of all things, were satisfactorily ambiguous, and easily mistaken for windows, of which Bowes Castles had few. The wall beneath the dark holes had collapsed, revealing the chutes. The recipient of the painting probably wouldn’t know the purpose of the holes, they could imagine what they wished. If they did know, well, perhaps they had a sense of humour. God, he hoped they did. He’d been given no instructions as to what to paint, other than the pictures must contain some feature of the castle. At Prudhoe, he’d decided on the little window because it was technically challenging to paint, and back at Bamburgh, he’d considered painting in the style of Turner – washes of intense colours – but after a brief rethink, he’d laughed it off; it wasn’t his style. Romantic visions weren’t him at all, and these paintings were becoming weirdly influenced (afflicted?) by his personality, with their clear lines, well-defined natural colours, and the important feather-light brushstrokes that captured the invisible spaces, the air he enjoyed breathing in.
He would paint the latrines because he had that freedom to do so. Another artist might pick defensive barbicans or curtain walls, the typical structures of a castle, but he was adamant not to end up with a portfolio of unremarkable, beautifully executed, yet similar features.
He settled the easel into the ochre grass that covered the rock-hard ground. It took time to prepare everything he needed – the paint, brushes, the pre-stretched paper. The sun was awkwardly high; he had arrived later than planned. He hadn’t slept well. The combination of heat and flies had been unbearable.
As he swept his pencil over the paper, marking the key points, he noticed her, the same girl who had nearly crashed into his easel – the one with melon hair, slightly skinny arms and a thumb-sized nose. She carried her camera bag with stooped shoulders and clutched a water bottle, which was understandable - the air was turgid and closing in. Later it would be too humid to paint; he needed to work fast.
Whenever he glanced up, she was there, taking long shots of vertices, the highest apex where two walls met. The sun was behind her. She fiddled with the tilt of the camera; angles were problematic with photography, less so with painting. A painter, one accomplished with the tricks of his trade, could adjust distortions and create parallel vertical lines just as the eye saw them. She wasn’t ignoring him either. Now and again, when he allowed his attention to wander away from the canvas, he caught her staring at him. It was natural, they were both creative types, and since she had also been at Prudhoe, she had to be working on something specific, like him. An odd coincidence, but his life was full of them, mostly the good kind, except for that one ruinous time that he would never forget.
Immediately, he felt the familiar stabbing pains of a headache and the weight of the invisible burden pressed from above onto his back, driving him closer to the ground, as if he was falling. However, the flashback was brief, and he shot it to pieces before it took hold. He’d become adept at managing them. Years of practice and an empty heart helped.
Something else was wrong, though, and the agitated taps of his brush against the easel sped up. He wasn’t prone to theorising, nor was he likely to judge anyone without talking to them, but from the expression on her face, the girl with the camera was disturbed by his presence, and in turn, he was perplexed. The sharp gaze of mistrust that she dispatched in his direction intensified when it became apparent he was in the wrong place. She aimed her lens at the latrines, and he stood in the middle of her view. With an angry thrust of her chin in his direction, she collected her bag and marched away out of sight.
