Portrait of an Unknown Woman. Vanora Bennett

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СКАЧАТЬ I liked that in him. We’ve been the best of friends since,’ Father ended, superbly relaxed. He was talking to me rather than to John, but I felt John also gradually relax as the story drew to its close, in a way that made me wonder if he’d perhaps been dreading a different ending – one that might discredit him in some way. ‘But I see you’re still a man of impulse, John. Turning up without warning.’ Father winked affably at me, encouraging me to laugh a little at the embarrassed figure between us. ‘Still reserving your right to surprise.’

      ‘So where had you come from that night?’ I asked the mute John, curious to see further into this glimpse of his past. ‘And where were you going?’

      ‘Oh,’ Father said smoothly, answering for John. ‘Well, that was so soon after the wars that things everywhere were still in confusion. John and his brother had been brought up by family friends after their own father died. But it was time for John to go to university. So he was stopping in London on his way abroad, to Louvain, where he was about to become the man of learning – the kindhearted man of learning’ – he chuckled again – ‘that everyone in our family has always loved so dearly.’

      And now Elizabeth was joining our circle, breaking the conversation. ‘Won’t you play one of the servants, John?’ she was asking sweetly, and, before the pink-faced John could answer, wrapping him gently in a rough servant’s cloak and shepherding him away to join in the revels. He looked back at Father, as if asking a question; and Father, as if answering, nodded what might be permission for him to stay and play.

      Left alone with me, Father turned a kindly gaze on my face. ‘You see how it is, Meg,’ he said. ‘I made a promise to the Archbishop long ago to keep an eye on John Clement. And I always will. I may always need to. He’s someone who’s endured a lot of losses in his life; and sometimes suffering leaves its mark on a man’s soul. With a man like that you have to take things slowly and carefully – and make sure there are no hidden depths you haven’t plumbed. But you’re a wise young woman. I’m sure you understand that …’

      He held my gaze a moment longer than necessary. I didn’t know exactly what he meant, though the gentleness on his face now reminded me of the gentleness with which he’d treated Will Roper’s heresy. But I thought Father might be giving me a warning.

      ‘We had a good talk this afternoon,’ I said, masking my resentment behind a diplomatic smile of my own. Father was a fine one to talk about hidden depths, if he’d been secretly negotiating with John Clement for years about the conditions under which John might marry me, without ever giving me a hint of what was on his mind. ‘I was glad to see him after so long. I was glad to find out everything he told me.’

      And I was pleased to see Father look more closely still at me, carefully now, with what seemed to be a question in his eyes. I held his gaze. It was he who turned his eyes away. ‘Good,’ he said, but without certainty; and he moved off into the crowd to attend to his guests.

      And so the rest of the entertainment, with all its applause and rumbustious punch lines and flamboyance and laughter, was reduced for me to a watchfulness of eyes. John Clement’s eyes, avoiding mine and Elizabeth’s and Father’s alike. Elizabeth’s eyes, searching my face and John Clement’s with something I couldn’t read in her expression. Father’s eyes, coming thoughtfully to rest every now and then on John Clement. And, of course, Master Hans’s eyes, giving us all the same long, careful, considering looks I’d seen him direct John Clement’s way over dinner. A gaze that mapped the line of the back and the line of the heart at the same time. Which made me uncomfortable when I caught him staring for a slow moment at my hands moving in my lap. But which I then realised, with relief, probably signified nothing more than his artist’s pre-occupation with how best to paint us.

      John Clement didn’t stay late. I saw him slip up to Father as soon as the play was over, while the costumes were still going back into their chests and the servants were setting out the supper, ready to make his excuses and go. I moved closer, wanting to hear but not to interrupt. But Father gestured me into the circle.

      ‘John tells me he has to leave now,’ Father said, with equal measures of warmth and splendid finality. ‘It’s been a joy that he’s found the time to let us welcome him here so soon after his return to London. And we’ll look forward to seeing him again here very soon, won’t we, Meg?’ He paused, and gave John another glance I didn’t understand, before adding: ‘As soon as he has had time to find his feet again in this country, after so long away. As soon as he wins election to the College of Physicians.’

      I took John out to the doorway to help him into his cloak. Out in the half-darkness, with none of the other eyes on us any more, was the first time I dared look up and meet his eyes at last. And he looked straight back at me for the first time in what seemed like hours, with all the sweetness and love on his face that I could have hoped for, and with a hint of what looked like relief too.

      ‘You see, Meg,’ he said reassuringly, with one hand on the doorknob. ‘It’s as I said. We just have to wait a while. Doctor Butts promises that I’ll be put up for election this spring – it seems a long time, but it won’t be forever – and then everything will come right for us.’ And I felt his other arm move round my waist in farewell. ‘I’ll write,’ he murmured, opening the door and letting in the night wind. ‘I’ll be back. Soon. I promise you.’

      And then he was nothing but a black figure on the black of the garden, flapping away down the path towards the water, leaving me confused but as hopeful as the silliest of serving girls that I was about to live happily ever after.

      Elizabeth sidled up and looked sideways at me as soon as I slipped back in.

      ‘Master Hans has been making sheep’s eyes at you all evening,’ she said, with one of her brittle little laughs. ‘I think you’ve made a conquest.’

      I might have been embarrassed. It was just the kind of needling observation Elizabeth was too good at for anyone else’s comfort. But luckily Master Hans wasn’t making sheep’s eyes at me now. He was sitting at the table, glowing in the warmth of Father’s undivided attention, which, as it always did with everyone, was making him feel confident and expansive. He had a miniature copy of the portrait of Erasmus that he had taken to Archbishop Warham propped on the table, and a sketch of the answering portrait of the Archbishop’s cavernous old features that he was planning to take back to Erasmus in Basel – he’d clearly struck lucky in his first two weeks in England to have got that commission (but then Warham, one of Father’s bishop friends, had always been a kindly old soul, and even if he hadn’t been it was fast becoming de rigueur to repay the gift of one of Erasmus’ portraits in kind). Now he was talking enthusiastically in his accented English about how to do our family painting. I could see Holbein was a good salesman. There was already talk of two separate pictures – a portrait of Father by himself, to send to the other humanists around Europe, as well as the group picture for our hall that the German had originally been asked to make – and he was showing Father a completed picture too, a noli-me-tangere with a virtuous Christ shying away from a voluptuous Mary Magdalene, which I could see had struck a chord with Father and was about to bring the painter another easy sale. I sat quietly down near them to listen.

      ‘There was a fresco I saw at Mantua,’ Holbein was saying, so carried away by his idea that he was beginning to move saltcellars and knives around on the table to illustrate it. ‘I can’t get it out of my head … The Duke and his dearest love, his wife, facing each other sideways-on near the middle of the canvas … the family all around… someone leaning forward from the left for instructions…’ He paused gleefully, visibly expecting to be praised for his cleverness. ‘And, right at the centre, looking straight out of the picture,’ he said, then burst out laughing at his own joke, ‘the Duke’s dwarf!’

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