The vizier left the door open—deliberately, of course. Gurçu was expressionless, seeing that. The khalif crossed to a cushioned chair and seated himself. He nodded to his guard, and then at the door. The guard crossed the room and closed it.
“Unless the light is better with it open?” the khalif of the Osmanlis said to Pero Villani.
Pero cleared his throat. “The . . . the windows are the light we will need, I think. Depending on, well, determined by . . .”
“By what? We waste time if you stammer like a child.”
With an effort, Pero resisted the impulse to clear his throat again. But really, how would a man not be fearful? He said, “Determined by your wishes and needs, my lord khalif. A commissioned portrait is worthless if it pleases you not.”
“Only a commissioned one?”
Pero blinked. He saw a glimmer of pleasure in the other man’s face. Gurçu took pride in cleverness, then. Pero said, “If I hire a model, or do a canvas from sketches made in public places, there is no sitter to please. Only myself, my sense of whether I have done well with a chosen subject.”
“But here?”
“But here, or with the duke in Seressa, or anyone paying me, the subject has chosen me, lord. Or . . .” he found himself actually smiling a little, “since I was chosen by the duke for you, the subject has chosen to have himself rendered in a portrait, and that changes all.”
“Because the subject can reject the finished work?”
“Yes, my lord. The subject here also has power of life and death over me. If I fail to please . . .”
An impatient gesture. “I wouldn’t invite a man to come to me with the intention of doing him harm.”
“Only if I transgressed?”
“Don’t do that, then,” said the khalif mildly. “How will you mix your paint?”
Pero looked at him. He was studying the features, in fact. The face and also the hands. He was thinking about the quick impatience just now shown again. How could a man with such absolute power not be impatient?
He said, “You have found reading material on western art? Have had people advise you, my lord?”
A brief silence. “Better just to answer my questions, Signore Villani.”
Pero felt a chill. He lowered his head. Transgression, he thought, was easily accomplished here. Again, he managed not to clear his throat. He said, “I intend to use egg tempera, esteemed khalif. It has certain virtues for . . . for this particular commission and—”
“Because it permits you to work faster? Fewer sittings from me?”
Pero nodded his head.
“But you cannot paint on canvas then, or the paint will crack.”
He had read a book on western painting, and Pero knew which one. It was astonishing. Pero said, “This is true, lord. I will need to prepare a wooden surface on which to—”
“This has been done. Three sizes for you to choose among, prepared after the manner instructed in your texts. If it is inadequate you are to tell me.”
He did clear his throat this time. “I am . . . grateful, my lord.”
That hint of satisfaction again. “I had imagined you would choose the method that allowed quicker work. Less demand on the subject, and you go home sooner?”
Pero nodded again. No one had warned him of this sharp intelligence, the curiosity in the dark eyes and lean face.
“Both are true, my lord. I did not presume that I could request as much of your time as oil-mixed painting demands. It dries much more slowly. There is a method some use to do oil-based painting with less demand on the subject but I do not prefer it, myself. There are . . . there are other reasons I am comfortable with the older way of mixing paint.”
“Tell them to me now,” said Gurçu the Destroyer. “Then your first thoughts on how you propose to paint me in the western manner. You will show me where you think you want me to be. And before we are done this morning you will explain why you were chosen by Duke Ricci, and why western rulers want these portraits done. You will describe his appearance. And how you will describe me to him, because he will ask you. Then we will be finished for this morning. So. The preparing of paints, the advantages of each method. Begin.”
—
HE BEGAN SHAKING when he was in his chamber again. He hoped the manservant hadn’t seen it before he left the room, but when he was alone Pero sat on his bed and looked down at his trembling hands.
Tell him the truth, he repeated over and again in his mind. The khalif was too acute, too versed—all his life, Pero imagined—in mastering men, seeing into them, or leaving the impression that he could do that. Not a man to whom you tried to lie.
“I was chosen because I was judged talented, and also young enough, with little to lose, to be willing to risk the journey here. My father is dead. I have no family to lean upon, only my skills to take me through the world.”
“And what skills do you bring, Signore Villani?”
He’d known what was being asked. Of course he did. With absolute truth he said, “None that signify beyond my art, exalted khalif. I know how to bind books, should that be required. I have a memory for faces, gestures, landscapes. That is . . . those are part of my craft, though.”
“You will be able to describe for the Duke of Seressa what you have seen here? These gardens? The palaces? This room?”
“Yes. He will want to know. Just as . . . just as you asked me to describe him to you.”
“Do that now,” the khalif had said.
He hadn’t seemed angry at any point. He was . . . attentive, his face betrayed nothing. A lifetime of being that way, Pero thought. Showing little. You needed to live long enough to become khalif. The impatience had probably come afterwards.
He thought of the prince, Cemal.
—
IN THE DARK of that same night, three men entered Pero Villani’s bedchamber.
No lamps were burning and the fire had gone out. One man carried a candle—that is what woke Pero. Another moved quickly, before he could cry out, and placed a hard hand over Pero’s mouth.
That one whispered, “Be silent. You will not be harmed. But only if you keep silent.” Pero nodded understanding. What else was he going to do? If they wanted him dead he was dead right now.
The man stepped back. Pero saw sheathed blades by the candle’s light. He didn’t know these men. Why would he? They waited, watchful, while he dressed.
They took him from the room into blue moonlight and wind in the open space between palaces. He saw his manservant standing outside by the door staring straight ahead, seeing nothing—nothing at all untoward taking place in the night.
There was no one abroad at this hour, no guards on the grounds they crossed between the artisans’ quarters and the nearest palace. They came to the doors. No one was on guard here either.
They entered and went immediately down a flight of stairs. Pero was terribly afraid. He knew what happened in underground rooms in Seressa to those who displeased the Council of Twelve.
But why would they need to take him anywhere and harm or kill him here? Before he’d even begun his work. For what he knew? For the poison he’d discarded in the stream? That wouldn’t have to be done at night—and the khalif wanted his services.
That, he thought suddenly, might be why this was secret. Whoever had him now did not want it known by Gurçu. He summoned courage. He said, going down marble stairs, “You know the khalif will punish you if I am unable to do my work.”
He received a blow on the back of the head. “You were instructed to keep quiet. Do so.”
They reached the bottom and a corridor on that lower level. Pero saw worn-smooth flooring, cracked in places, tiles loose. There were sconces in the walls but no torches, only the lights carried by two of his captors. They were alone down here, footsteps echoing. It was the middle of the night.
They came to a
heavy door. The man who had struck him took a key from his belt and turned it in a lock. He pulled the door open. It took some effort, scraped the floor.
“Go,” said the man with the key. “We will be here. And will take you back when you come out again.”
“Go? In there?” said Pero. “Alone?”
He remembered too late he was not to speak, but no blow came this time. Only contemptuous laughter. “You would prefer your mother came and led you by the hand? There is a tunnel, there are lights, it leads to one place only, a door on the far side. Knock when you reach it. Go.”
And Pero was unceremoniously pushed into the tunnel. A hard push. He stumbled forward. The door closed behind him, a grinding sound. The key turned in the lock.
He was entirely alone, in the depths of night, in the depths of the earth, and almost immediately a strange sensation came to him—not the predictable fear.
He looked down the tunnel. There was a bend to the right, he could see by the torches on the walls. But what was strange was the uneasiness he felt—beyond the obvious reasons to be terrified.
What he was seeing in his mind’s eye now was the object he’d touched in that forest in Sauradia, crawling through a glade.
He’d touched it, then set it down again. Skandir, after, had been visibly relieved to hear he’d put it back. And now it was as if he were seeing that artifact again, in the palace complex, underground, beneath torches in iron brackets, looking at long-ago mosaics on the floor.
He didn’t understand at all, but there was a sense of something not natural down here. Not necessarily to be feared, though he was very much afraid of what was happening. No, the sensation he had, as he’d had in the glade, was of age, loss, a span of time.
Well, yes, he thought, trying to gain control of himself: this tunnel was old, it would have been built by an emperor long ago. He didn’t know where it would lead; they’d said another door, so probably one of the other palaces.
He didn’t seem to have a choice. He started walking.
He heard his footsteps, his breathing. It wasn’t dark, there were torches all the way along the walls as the tunnel bent one way and then the other. The floor mosaics were chipped in many places, he saw, tesserae scattered. There were patterns, flowers, small birds at a small fountain. The object in the glade had been a bird, he thought. He stepped on mosaic pieces as he went.
At one point, for no reason he could understand, Pero felt a wave of sorrow pass through him. An old sorrow, not about himself or anyone here now, alive now, in the world. He stopped and looked around but saw nothing at all. He walked on and the sensation receded as he went.
He wondered what had happened here through the centuries, who had gone back and forth. Remarkable, that it was as well-preserved as it was. The torches flickered, the air was good. He kept walking as the tunnel bent and twisted sinuously (he had no idea why it wasn’t straight), and it wasn’t long before he saw the other door that had been promised and came up to it.
He looked back the way he had come. In what had to be an effect of the light, Pero thought he saw something that hadn’t been there before, a flame on the floor of the tunnel at the last bend—low-burning, blue-green—and somehow it seemed to be moving. Moving and then gone, begotten of nothing he could see. He shook his head. He turned and, after a hesitation, knocked on the second door.
“Welcome!” said Prince Cemal, standing behind the attendant who opened the door. There were others behind Cemal, there were lights.
He was handsomely clad, the prince, in a heavy robe of the colour they called porphyry here. The colour of emperors once.
“I am so very pleased,” he said, smiling, “that you have decided to join me.”
—
HE’D HAVE THOUGHT that having armed men burst into his room would be the most frightening thing that happened tonight. It wasn’t, in the event.
Pero followed the older son of the khalif, the one expected to be Gurçu’s heir, along a corridor and then another. He expected to go upstairs again in this other palace. They did not. They came to a room on this underground level, lit by many lamps. It would have been a storeroom once, he guessed. Nothing was stored here now.
He saw an easel, paints and brushes, mixing bowls, cloths on a table, and a medium-sized wooden surface prepared for paint, already on the easel.
“Your paints have been mixed to instructions in a book from one of your western artists,” said the prince. “The one my father read. Cennaro is the name, I believe? I am hopeful they will prove adequate.”
Pero looked at him. The prince was undeniably handsome. Broad-shouldered, tall (not as tall as the father), a full head of dark hair under a black velvet hat. He had the khalif’s prominent nose and a neatly trimmed beard. He wore a floral scent, strong in the room.
“Adequate to what purpose?” Pero asked. He struggled to remain calm. “Why have you brought me here in this way, my lord?”
The prince smiled. He had good, even teeth. He gestured. “Surely it is obvious, Signore Villani?”
“I’m afraid it is not, my lord. Perhaps it is fatigue. I was awakened by armed men in my room.”
The smile faded. “They were instructed to bring you with courtesy.”
“They did not.”
“Would you like them killed?” the prince asked gravely.
Pero stared at him. That could happen, he realized. He could say yes, and it was possible the men waiting by the other door would die. It chilled him. And with that, he felt anger stirring, as it had before the Council of Twelve (as it had not with the khalif).
“No,” he said. “I would like to know why they were sent. Why I am here. My lord.” There was such a need to be careful, he thought. He was too far from home.
The prince smiled again. He smoothed his gorgeous robe. He said, “To paint another portrait, of course. We will do this each night. I trust the room will serve?”
Well, you did ask, Pero Villani thought. It was, as the prince had implied, obvious that he was here to paint.
He said, carefully, “A portrait of you, my lord?”
The smile deepened. “Not quite,” said Prince Cemal.
—
IT WAS NOT a situation in which he had a choice, discretion to decline. Signore Villani would have, the prince murmured after explaining the task ahead, such a long road home after finishing his portrait of the glorious khalif, might he live and reign forever.
There were so many dangers for a traveller. Better, surely, to ensure protection for that journey while in the palace complex, brought—much more courteously henceforth—from his room to this one each night.
He is going to have me killed, Pero thought, listening to what was wanted of him. Either way, I am not going to survive this.
If he declined, he was being warned he’d meet a regrettable end somewhere in Sauradia, or even before he reached that wilderness. But if he did as requested, he’d be the infidel who knew what had been done, and such men surely could not live.
He agreed to paint, to work here by night as best he could. He was an artist, it was what he was here to do, what his life was about. And perhaps Jad would guide him, guard him.
A portrait of you? he had asked the prince.
Only partially so. He was to paint this man in this room, show him standing by a window that would have to be imagined (he had done that before, they all did that). Show him wearing this robe that signified power and royalty by its colour.
But he was to render the face of the subject as Prince Beyet, the younger brother, not Cemal.
He would see the younger prince tomorrow, he was told: there was to be an archery display in the afternoon. This plan, Pero thought, looking at the easel and wood and the tools and paint beside them, had not been casually conceived.
The older son was reputed clever, Marin Djivo had said, the younger one more reckless. Per
haps less trusted because of that. Nothing had ever been announced from the throne, but it was widely believed Cemal was to succeed his father. After which, in a long tradition, Beyet would be strangled by guards.
So why do this? Pero wanted to ask.
In fact, he did ask it. Anger, again.
“It is shared about that you are the heir, my lord prince. Why do you need to—?”
He stopped at a gesture: swift, decisive, a hand across the throat as if to cut it. A gesture from a prince who didn’t look at all gracious just then. A face, in fact, that one might paint as a figure in a battle scene, killing an enemy before him.
He lowered his head. “Forgive me,” he said.
He looked up. Cemal gestured again—towards the easel and the paints. There were sketchbooks and charcoal, as well. And a basket of eggs. Someone had indeed read Cennaro, The Handbook of the Art of Painting. It was impossibly strange.
They began.
—
IT WAS THE robe that mattered as much as anything. Any artist, steeped in the meaning of symbols, had to know that. The colour, the implication of the colour. And then the features he would impose upon what he did here.
He was being used to destroy someone, Pero understood. It wasn’t difficult to grasp. You didn’t need to be a courtier, a diplomat, subtle as to eastern ways.
He worked steadily for some time. Three guards and a servant remained in the room. He was offered wine. He accepted. There was no rule of silence here. He told the prince how he needed him to position himself.
It would be a standing pose, more easily done. A profile, also easier, quicker. They had taken some care with what he’d been provided. Someone knew what might be required, had made a point of knowing.
With a charcoal stick he outlined a window to place behind Cemal. Behind Beyet, he corrected himself. He would put ships out there, he thought: water seen beyond the palace. The sea the khalif ruled from here, a prince in porphyry standing before it.