Closing Accounts

  * * * * * * * *

  Summer passed slowly into autumn. The city folk could only tell the change by the diminishing grey light and a chill in the air. Thaddaeus continued to paint yet he was also restless. He began to spend his mornings walking out into the city. Because he was such a big man and perhaps because his untidy hair gave him the semblance of a bear, no one bothered him as he prowled the streets. Was he looking for something? If so, it was a shadow of the past he sought, a glimmer of the city’s life before the advent of the General. Now and then he would accost one of the dark figures hunched in a doorway and lift him up by the shoulders or the scruff of the neck. “Beneath! Above! Behind! Before!” he would bawl into the shadowed face. A vacant stare was the usual reply; sometimes a snarling curse. Only once did his strange greeting elicit a different response. A ragged youth, dangling from the old man’s fist, began to weep when he heard those words. Thaddaeus took the youth back to The Tower where he presented him to the proprietors. Tom took the boy, fed him, washed him, and gave him a job. His name was Abner, which Thaddaeus said meant ‘Father of Light’.

  It was Emmie, Tom and Hyla’s daughter, who’d streaked vermillion paint along the walls that night of the dance. She was three years old, and could often be found in the studio at the top of The Tower, sitting under the artist’s easel.

  At first he hardly noticed her. As he painted, the words of the dancing song possessed his mind and brought startling new images which he struggled to transfer to canvas. The little girl sat at his feet humming and playing with small stones or spoons. It was the humming that finally penetrated his thought; she was humming the tune to the words in his head. He looked down, his brush poised in midair. The little girl looked up at him and grinned.

  “Keep singing,” he said, and she picked up the tune again, tapping her spoons in time.

  Thaddaeus continued to paint, but every now and then he stopped and looked down at the little girl and she looked back at him, grinning. At five o’clock her mother took her away to supper and bed. Thaddaeus found he missed her and put away his paints and cleaned his brushes. When Grissle brought up his supper, she found him sitting in his chair, staring out the window and humming tunelessly. He usually painted through dinner and on into the evening, leaving a cold tray of food for Grissle to collect and feed to the dogs, but that evening marked another change. Grissle took note as, an hour later, she carried an empty tray out of the tower. The dogs in the kitchen were deeply disappointed, but the old woman’s eyes glimmered with satisfaction.

  From then on, Thaddaeus took to eating every meal that Grissle brought, and he spent every afternoon either painting, or sitting with little Emmie on his lap, watching her scribble in his sketchbook. He built her a small easel and set it beside his own, then gave her paints and brushes and canvas. They spent many hours together, daubing away, Emmie humming as she spread bright colours over her smock, her canvas, the old man’s pant leg; Thaddaeus, chanting in his tuneless way as he began painting portraits. For now he saw more than the visions of his inner eye; the faces of the people around him shone like bright beacons beaming out of the city’s grey light.

  Crowds of portraits began to appear on the walls of The Tower’s Great Room: Abner and Tom, Hyla and Winnie, and several pictures of Emmie wearing different expressions. He painted farmers and marketers, town people and soldiers, old women, young men—anyone who came to The Tower-- and even the kitchen dogs all silly with their tongues lolling out. The growing collection of portraits drew crowds to The Tower and provoked endless conversation.

  One day Hyla hung yet another portrait in the Great Room: a woman standing tall and straight in a field of waving flowers; her eyes blazed with gladness though she did not smile; her rough clothing fluttered in a breeze.

  “Well now,” Tom said, “who’s he painted this time?”

  “That’s Grissle,” the boy Abner piped up.

  It was early evening and folk returning from their day’s work had begun to gather at the inn. Abner had just finished scrubbing tables. Now, everyone in the room pressed closer to the new painting.

  “I do declare,” Winnie said, “the boy’s right. Who’d a thought.”

  Grissle came out of the kitchen carrying a supper tray. Everyone in the room turned to look at her and she stopped, her face expressionless. All heads swivelled back to the portrait. No one said a word. Grissle followed their gaze and her eyes opened wide. She stood, frozen, holding the tray aloft. Across the room, Thaddaeus appeared at the bottom of the stairs; he carried little Emmie on his shoulders and ducked under the doorway.

  “There you are, Grissle,” he said. “Glad we caught you. No need to carry all that upstairs.” He set Emmie on the nearest table top and took the tray out of Grissle’s hands. Putting it down, he sat at the table and took Emmie into the crook of his arm. “Look, girlie. All our favourite things.” He was unaware that everyone in the room was silent, waiting, Grissle still as stone. Emmie pushed a bit of cheese into her mouth, then looked up at the new portrait and pointed. Thaddaeus glanced up at the painting, then turned back to his supper and said, “Oh yes. Before.”

  Grissle sucked in a sob, threw her apron over her face, and ran from the room. People began to sit down in their accustomed places; Tom and Hyla brought in drinks. As the room settled into the evening sounds of clinking glasses and steady conversation, only Winnie stood with her hand on her hip, glaring at the new portrait.

  “Before? What’s he mean by that?” she said.

  Tom, passing near with a tray of drinks said, “Must be the name for the picture.”

  “Ha! Grissle. Before.” Winnie snorted, “I coulda told you that.”

  “You ain’t jealous now, are you Winnie,” a man said. “Why your portrait is one of the first he painted.”

  “He’s painted all us regulars,” Winnie said in her loud voice. “What I want to know is, who’s he gonna paint next?”

  Winnie and her listeners turned to look at Thaddaeus. Surely he’d overheard the question; he was sitting near enough. But he was oblivious. Somehow, Grissle had contrived to make a chocolate pudding and it claimed the complete attention of the artist and the child.

  “Well,” said the man, turning back to Winnie, “maybe he’s done with paintings of people.”

  But he wasn’t. The next influx of portraits took The Tower by surprise. Each morning, before dawn, Thaddaeus packed his easel and paints, and went out into the streets. He returned at midday with paintings of the street folk: faces hardened and criminal: faces that, at first, made your skin crawl. Tom didn’t want to hang these portraits, but Hyla was relentless.

  “What good will it do to look at those terrible faces?” Tom argued.

  “Wait and see,” Hyla said.

  “We’ll lose customers, Hyla! People will stop coming! Who will want to sit and look at that while they eat their soup,” Tom said, pointing to one of the new paintings.

  “Wait and see, Tom,” Hyla said.

  “I don’t know how it is,” Tom muttered, “but these are worse than them violent ‘Studies in Madness’. Somehow a picture of marketers killin’ each other don’t get to me like these faces do.”

  “Beneath, Tom. Those violent pictures are named ‘Beneath’, and the landscapes are called ‘Above’. ‘Studies in Madness’ is a title coined by art critics.”

  “Oh right. That makes it all clear as day,” Tom said, rolling his eyes at Hyla’s back. She was up on a ladder tapping a nail into the wall. “And them nice happy paintings are called ‘Behind’ and the paintings of our folk are called ‘Before’. Don’t you wonder what he’ll name these new paintings?”

  Hyla looked down at Tom and said, “Can’t you guess?”

  Tom frowned and shook his head.

  “He’ll call them ‘Within’.”

  The new paintings did cause a stir, but not in the way Tom had predicted. The regular customers were at first shocked by what they saw and let Tom and Hyla know. How dare they hang those disturb
ing faces among those of honest, hard-working folk? And how in blazes had the old painter convinced the evil, slinking creatures to pose? Had he paid them? Held them at knifepoint? It must have been one or the other. For two nights running, long loud discussions rang out in the Great Room. Tom listened to the talk with growing concern. Hyla just smiled and brought out more food; the regular crowd had doubled.

  By the third evening, after two more portraits had been added, the talk hushed, though the crowd had not lessened. People sat, transfixed by the new portraits. If they spoke at all, they spoke in quiet voices and whispers. They hardly seemed to notice what they ate or drank, and some did not eat or drink at all. After two more evenings like this, and six new portraits added, Tom took Grissle aside in the kitchen.

  “What’s going on out there?” he said. “Hyla don’t tell me nothin’. I thought them new paintings would make us lose business, but instead it’s doubled. And yet even with all them extra people out there, the place is quiet as a tomb. What’s going on?”

  “You’d know if you looked at the paintings, Tom,” Grissle said.

  “I’ve seen ‘em. They give me the willies.”

  “Look past that, man,” Grissle said, and stumped out the door with Thaddaeus’s supper tray.

  Two weeks later, when the dark portraits numbered twenty-four in all and Thaddaeus had made it clear that the ‘Within’ paintings were finished, Tom breathed a sigh of relief and sat down beside Winnie. It was Saturday evening and the Great Room was packed with people conversing in hushed voices.

  “What do you think he’ll paint next?” Winnie said.

  “Dunno,” Tom said, “but I think we should take some of these portraits down, you know, make room for the next batch.”

  “You ain’t takin’ down any of these paintings, Tom. Especially them new ones. They’re the best of all.”

  “Well I can’t deny they’ve been good for business,” Tom said.

  “You think they’re ugly, don’t you,” Winnie said.

  “Well they are! Look at ‘em. Creepy, that’s what I say.”

  “Yes,” Winnie said, “I guess the truth is ugly more often than not, but it’s still better to look it in the eye.”

  Later that night, when the Great Room was empty and Hyla had gone to bed, Tom sat down and forced himself to look at the new paintings. Perhaps he could locate some flaw, some excuse to take these portraits down.

  But I could never convince Hyla, he thought, and looked at the walls hopelessly.

  The ugly portraits were scattered among the pictures of folk from The Tower so that it was impossible to look at, say, a painting of Emmie, and avoid seeing one of the tormented faces. He shuddered as his eyes rested on one darkened face after another. He fought the impulse to leave the room and began to sing softly to settle his nerves.

  Beneath, above, behind, before

  Within, beside, to win, restore.

  As Tom sang, a curious thing happened. “Hullo,” he said, “I must be tired or else the paint on that picture is shifting.” He rubbed his eyes. The particular painting he’d been looking at had indeed changed. At first, the expression had been evil; now its aspect had deepened. Tom read desperation in that face and incurable regret.

  “Blimey,” he whispered, and then, “poor bloke.”

  Gazing at the cheerless portrait of a ruined woman, Tom’s eyes slid sideways, resting on a picture of his own daughter. It should have cheered him, but a queer thing happened to Emmie’s face: something in the woman’s countenance transferred to the child. The joy was snuffed out and replaced by loveless grief. He saw at once what Emmie’s life could become; he saw how the woman may have begun.

  With a choked cry, he jumped up from the table and ran to the room where his wife and daughter lay sleeping. He kissed them both, then hurried to the kitchen. He found Grissle poking about in the larder.

  “What you doing there, Grissle?” he said. “I thought you’d be in bed.”

  “I’m needing a bit of bread to settle my stomach,” she replied, and held her candle up to Tom’s face. “What’s up with you now, Tom? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “Been lookin’ at those pictures,” Tom said, avoiding Grissle’s eye.

  “Ah,” Grissle said.

  “Thought I might see if there was somethin’ to give them poor blighters out there in the street. You know, some extra food or somethin’.”

  “Ah,” Grissle said again. She watched as Tom yanked open a cupboard overflowing with cheese.

  “Seems like there must be somethin’ we could do,” he said, pulling random packages off the shelves.

  Grissle put a hand on his arm and beckoned him over to a large pot on the stove. “Soup,” she said. “Get some bowls.” Then she opened the back door and lit the lantern over the steps. Tom stood in the doorway looking over her shoulder. A crowd of figures began to gather, like dark moths around a lamp.

  “Bowls, Tom. Fill them up and be quick,” Grissle said. “And get bread. Some may want it yet.”

  Next morning, early, Hyla was surprised to find Grissle in the kitchen drying a large stack of soup bowls. Beside the stove, a man sat hunched over. His filthy greasy coat and face told Hyla he’d come from the streets, but not why he was in the kitchen gulping bread like a wolf.

  “Grissle,” Hyla said, nervously. The man looked up with blazing eyes.

  “Tom’s down at the market getting more bread,” Grissle said.

  “Oh.” Hyla hadn’t been thinking of Tom. “Grissle . . . .”

  “Aha!” Thaddaeus cried, bursting through the door and addressing the man by the stove. “Just the man I need. Up! Wash! Attend to business with me.”

  What was going on here? Hyla was speechless with confusion.

  The man stood slowly and looked at Thaddaeus with a face that would have made anyone cower. He was as tall as the artist and almost as broad shouldered. He seemed ready to strike and Hyla held her breath when Thaddaeus clapped a hand on the man’s shoulder and said, “Come, Bill. I’d know your face anywhere. Think of the hours we’ve spent together in my studio at the palace. I painted nearly everyone’s portrait but yours in those days. Still, I could paint your face from memory if I wanted to.”

  Bill glared at Thaddaeus and his clenched fists shook. Grissle quietly lifted a large soup ladle as Hyla wished desperately for Tom to return. Thaddaeus just stood bouncing slightly on the balls of his feet and smiling. All at once, Bill’s face crumpled and he sucked in a shuddering sob. “I left them, Master Thad. I left them just to get some bread and I never got back. That villain of a Mayor came after me. I been on the run for two weeks now. You understand me? Two weeks. I couldn’t go back. He woulda followed me and found them and killed ’em for sure, just to finish the job he was too chicken to do ten years ago. We’ve been hidin’ here and there all these years, keepin’ outa his way, and now this! I oughta be shot!”

  “Fine. We’ll go get them tonight,” Thaddaeus said.

  “But I’ve been gone two weeks! Don’t you understand? They’ll be dead by now. Starved to death.”

  “Not dead. Hungry though,” Thaddaeus said.

  Bill gaped at the artist. “What are you saying? Have you gone mad? I didn’t believe it when I read what they said about you in the papers, but it must be true.”

  “Not mad. Asleep. But I’m awake now,” Thaddaeus said. “Have a good wash. You stink. And a good rest. Tonight we’ll find them and bring them here.” He grasped Bill by the shoulders and steered him out of the kitchen.

  “Who are they bringing here?” Hyla said, weakly.

  “That’ll be the young prince and princess, I think” Grissle said.

  Hyla sank down on the stool beside the stove where Bill had been sitting moments before. “But Grissle, how can that be? The General and the Mayor have been telling us for years that the royal children died of fever!”

  “That’s as may be,” Grissle said. “We’ll find out tonight.”

  Bill’s given name wa
s William Standall and he was the last surviving member of the King’s Guard. For ten years he had kept watch over the King’s two children, moving them from house to house, and from one hiding place to the next. That night he took Thaddaeus by secret ways to the hidden depths of the palace dungeon, unknown even to the General’s mercenaries who operated the deep torture chambers. In these nether regions, the chambers were not man-made; the light of the lantern revealed stalagmites and stalactites beside the paths, luminous streams, and glittering stones that covered the walls. Bill led Thaddaeus to a small phosphorescent cavern, but it was empty: they found only loose stones, the cold remains of a fire, and a tattered blanket on the ground.

  “Not dead,” Thaddaeus said.

  “Then where?” Bill whispered into the echoing dark.

  They trudged back the way they had come, Bill listening for any sound of life in the subterranean passages, Thaddaeus hearing only that gentle pulse swelling up from the earth like the metrical beating of wings. At one point he began to sing in his tuneless way, “Beneath, above, behind, before . . .” but Bill shushed him.

  Back up on the murky street outside the old palace gardens, Bill began to tremble with fear. “The Mayor! His spies are everywhere. He’s sure to find me and he must have found the children. He’s surely slit their throats by now!”

  “Come now, Bill. He’s just a little man with a big belly. Small-minded too,” Thaddaeus said as an afterthought. He took the lantern, grasped Bill’s elbow, and led his old friend boldly across the Market Square. Dark figures shouted, trying to bar their way, but Thaddaeus bore down upon them swinging the lantern aloft and taking up his tuneless chant:

  I bind unto myself today

  A refuge under mighty wings

  A fortress in the time of storm

  A shield from terror in the night . . .

  The figures fell away like rats before a burning torch. Soon the two old men were making their way up the hill.

  “Master Thad,” Bill said, “this isn’t the way to The Tower. We’ve taken the wrong turning.”

  “We’re going the right way, Bill.”

  They came to the top of the hill and stopped under a dim streetlamp.

  “Master Thad, The Tower’s not this far up the hill,” Bill said, looking around furtively. There was a shuffling sound and movement farther along the murky street. To their right, the road plunged down a steep slope.

  “Master Thad,” Bill panted, trying to master his fear, “that’s the Belltown road. We should not be here, not at night.” He looked around at the ragged folk emerging from dark corners. Panic rose and choked any further words of warning.

  Thaddaeus merely swung his lantern aloft and sang the old words he knew so well. The crowd backed off. Suddenly he swung his lantern toward the Belltown road and cried out: “Watchman! What is left of the night?”

  From the depths a voice answered: “Morning is coming, but also the night.” Then a higher voice called out, “Look Edward, it’s Captain Bill! He’s come to meet us!” And at the sound of that voice, Bill’s fear drained away; he sank to his knees like an emptied sack and covered his face with his hands. Thaddaeus patted him on the shoulder. A face bobbed up the steep road: the glowing face of a young soldier, lit somehow from within; he carried no lantern. Behind him another bright face appeared: a man in a shabby black coat, leading a young girl. The soldier carried a thin bundle in his arms: Prince Edward, the rightful ruler of this ragged country by the sea, whose father had been murdered by the General and buried in a common grave outside the city walls.

  The girl, Princess Minn, threw herself into Bill’s arms and said, “I told Edward you would come and bring the medicine, but we ran out of food and the fire went out, and Edward said you’d been caught, but I knew you’d find us again.”

  “And here we are,” Bill said.

  “But Edward wasn’t really well enough to walk out, and some soldiers caught us and took us down to that awful place and left us and now he’s sicker than before.”

  “It’ll be alright now,” Bill said.

  Thaddaeus stood silent, staring at the bright-faced man in the black coat. Finally he said, “I’ve seen you before, sir. Where are your wings?” and he took a worn piece of paper from his pocket, unfolded it, and held it up under the lantern’s light.

  “Joe! That’s got to be Letty’s!” the young soldier cried, and tightened his hold on the young prince.

  “You know the artist?” Thaddaeus said, rounding on the soldier.

  “Come,” the bright-faced man said, putting a hand on Thaddaeus’s arm, “it’s time to get these children out of the cold.”

  At the man’s touch, Thaddaeus saw; he saw the tall shining figure and the wings outspread under twinkling stars. He had only a glimpse, but it was enough.

  “Beside!” he cried out, and his voice carried along the dark echoing street, down the steep Belltown road, rousing sleepers in dark doorways. Then the night pressed in again. He passed the lantern to Bill and took the frail prince in his arms. With a brief nod he bid goodbye to the soldier and to Joe, and watched for a moment as the two descended again into Belltown. Then he turned and led Bill and Minn away from the crossroad.

  As Thaddaeus and Bill approached the Tower, they saw Grissle waiting on the doorstep. Behind her stout figure, light and music spilled out the door from the hallway and the Great Room. For all in a moment, the gathered crowd had lost the hushed solemn attitude it had worn for weeks. First a farmer stood and called out for a round of drinks; then the fiddler picked up his bow and seven men instantly jumped up and began to clear the floor of tables; people stood, stretching, yawning, and stamping their feet as if waking from a long sleep; the piper threw off her shawl and blew a reedy rill, testing the atmosphere; the drummer stepped to her side.

  “Beside!” Winnie cried out.

  Beneath, above, behind before . . .

  . . .and the music took off like a match set to dry tinder. And so no one noticed the entrance of two old men carrying two ragged children. Grissle took charge of the boy who was near death. Hyla whisked the girl into the kitchen for a meal and a bath. The old men sat down on a bench near the wall. Thaddaeus gave his full attention to the music until he felt a weight against his shoulder. Bill had fallen asleep, sagging sideways.

  “Come now, Bill. Heave ho.” Thaddaeus stood, grabbed Bill by the coat front, shook him slightly, and eased him to his feet. Then, as gentle as a bear with her cub, Thaddaeus guided Bill upstairs and put him to bed.

  Prince Edward did not die that night, but he did not get well, and Grissle fussed over him like a dog with a bone. Thaddaeus made them put Edward’s bed beside a low window in his studio. There, amid the canvas and the easels, Princess Minn and Emmie played while Thaddaeus painted and the invalid boy looked on. Grissle came in and out on one pretext or another, while Bill, last of the King’s Guard, kept watch over the tower room, prowling the hallways and stairs like a restless lion, or standing beside the prince’s bed, watching him sleep.