Ch. 111 The Woman In The Frame

Chapter 111: The Woman in the Frame

Selene Aven looked annoyed.

That was my first impression.

My second was that the painter had probably noticed and been sensible enough not to improve it.

The portrait rested on a chair in Orselle’s council chamber. Its owner had wrapped it in two blankets and brought it on a cart with better padding than she had provided for herself.

Her name was Marit.

She stood beside it, rubbing the small of her back.

“The road is dreadful after the mill.”

Tamsin nodded.

“We know.”

“I thought I should mention it.”

“You have.”

“Twice,” Marit’s grandson added.

She ignored him and drew away the final blanket.

Evelyn stepped closer.

The woman in the portrait wore a dark blue gown with plain sleeves and a heavy silver clasp at the throat.

One hand rested on a table.

Beside it lay a folded chart.

She had a broad face, dark eyes, and a mouth that suggested she expected a sensible answer to whatever she had just asked.

I liked her immediately.

There was writing on the back.

Mary waited until Marit gave permission before helping turn the frame.

The panel had been repaired at one corner.

Beneath a later coat of dust, someone had written a name, a year, and the painter’s fee.

Selene Aven.

Marit read it aloud.

Then went quiet.

Her grandson leaned closer.

“So it is her.”

“Yes,” she said.

For a while, she kept her fingers against the frame.

“I used to wonder why Mother wouldn’t let us move it.”

“What did she say?” Evelyn asked.

“That the house belonged to more people than the ones presently living in it.”

Marit gave a small, embarrassed laugh.

“I thought she meant the dead were particular about furniture.”

Mary smiled.

Then asked whether she might copy the inscription.

We had brought the shelter records.

Marit had brought a little box of family papers.

Between them, the table disappeared.

There were marriages.

Births.

A dispute over a warehouse roof.

A letter concerning a ship called the Patient Wife, which caused Evelyn to look at me.

“I didn’t name it.”

“No. I was wondering who did.”

Marit’s grandson found the answer three pages later.

Selene’s husband.

Apparently she had objected.

The ship had subsequently been renamed.

I looked toward the portrait.

That seemed right.

By noon, we had learned that Selene disliked waste, lent money to a cousin who never repaid it, and once sent an entire shipment back because the rope had been stored damp.

There was also a letter to her daughter.

Marit read that one herself.

It concerned a sick child, a recipe, and whether the girl had enough help at home.

Halfway through, her voice changed.

She stopped.

Nobody asked her to continue.

After a moment, she folded the page.

“That one stays with us.”

“Of course,” Mary said.

Marit nodded.

Then looked at the portrait again.

“She sounds like my mother.”

Evelyn sat beside her while the rest of us began making room for the midday meal.

The harbor council asked whether the portrait might remain in Orselle for a little while.

They had a room where the copied shelter records could be displayed.

Marit considered it.

Then considered the window.

“Will the sun fall on her all afternoon?”

“We can use the other wall,” Tamsin said.

“And damp?”

“The room is dry.”

Her grandson touched the back of the frame.

“We could bring it for a month, Grandmother.”

Marit looked at him.

Then at Selene.

“A month,” she said. “And someone writes down that it belongs to us.”

Mary had already reached for a clean page.

On our way back to the gate, Evelyn stopped at a stall.

The woman behind it sold ribbons, needles, cloth scraps, and small toys made from whatever remained after more important things had been finished.

My wife picked up a little stitched fish.

It had one crooked eye.

“Carol?”

I examined it.

“She may attempt to eat it.”

“So may Garrick.”

“Then we should buy two.”

Evelyn found a second fish.

Its eye was crooked in the other direction.

The stallholder looked between us.

“They’re brothers,” she said.

My wife smiled.

“We’ll take them.”

The twins received their fish with different degrees of ceremony.

Garrick gripped his by the tail.

Carol watched hers pass from Evelyn’s hand to the blanket, then reached for it and missed by a determined inch.

Melody, who had come to return a borrowed book, sat beside them.

“You’ve brought home fish from a harbor.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Remarkable restraint. Beatrice usually brings barrels.”

Evelyn settled into the chair near the window.

“We also found out more about Selene.”

Melody looked up.

“The shelter woman?”

I nodded.

We told her about the portrait.

The ship.

The private letter.

She listened while Garrick attempted to pull his fish through the opening between her fingers.

When we finished, Melody looked at the little toy in his hand.

“People ought to leave more things like that.”

“Fish?” I asked.

“Letters, Uriah.”

“I was checking.”

She threw a cushion at me.

The lamp problem changed that week.

Until then, most of our difficulty had been metal.

Now it was light.

The repaired ring returned to Orselle, and Aldren fitted it beneath the old lamp housing.

It turned smoothly.

The crystal accepted a careful charge.

But with two glass sections missing, the beam scattered across the chamber instead of gathering where it should.

Perrin demonstrated the problem with a drawing.

Then a second drawing.

Then, because I apparently looked insufficiently enlightened, a bowl and three spoons.

“I understand,” I said.

He stopped moving the spoons.

“Good.”

“We need someone who can make the missing pieces.”

“Yes.”

“Do we have such a person?”

He hesitated.

Tilda answered from the other side of the table.

“We have someone who says she can tell us whether she can.”

“That sounds expensive.”

“It sounds honest.”

The glassworker came from Westmere.

Her name was Sella Den.

She was small, grey-haired, and accompanied by an apprentice who carried her tools while she carried a box she would not allow anyone else to touch.

Inside lay several curved lenses.

She placed one before a workshop lamp.

The light gathered into a bright patch on the wall.

Perrin leaned forward.

Sella moved the lens.

The patch shifted.

Then she looked at our drawings.

“I can make a piece shaped like that.”

Aldren nodded.

“Will it direct the light properly?”

“I don’t know yet.”

She said it without discomfort.

I found I trusted her more for it.

We gave her space beside the workshop’s quieter furnace.

She spent the first day making measurements.

The second, arguing with Aldren about the old drawing.

On the third, they discovered that both were partly right.

The surviving lamp had been altered after the drawing was made.

Perrin wrote that down in large letters.

I asked why.

“So I remember not to trust the paper more than the thing.”

Sella looked pleased.

Tilda nodded.

“A useful lesson.”

Then she handed him a broom.

Apparently useful lessons continued to accumulate.

My own lesson that week involved a bucket.

Aurelia placed it on the courtyard table.

Evelyn looked at it.

I looked at her.

Neither of us spoke.

Our teacher folded her hands.

“You are both waiting for me to explain why it is more difficult than it looks.”

“Experience,” my wife said.

Aurelia smiled.

The bucket filled with water.

“Carry it to the arch.”

I reached for the handle.

“With your working.”

I withdrew my hand.

There it was.

Lifting the bucket was easy.

Keeping the water inside while moving it was not.

Every correction disturbed something else.

I could hold the bucket rigidly.

I could hold the water still.

Doing both while walking and watching Evelyn required more attention than I expected.

My wife’s first attempt sloshed over the rim.

She stopped.

Frowned.

Then made her next movement more slowly.

Aurelia walked beside us.

“What are you watching?”

“The water,” Evelyn said.

“And the bucket?”

“I can feel it.”

“Good.”

I glanced at my wife.

She was concentrating fiercely.

Then her gaze shifted toward me.

Water spilled over my side.

I looked down at my wet sleeve.

She pressed her lips together.

“You may laugh,” I said.

She did.

The exercise changed after that.

We carried one bucket between us.

I supported the weight.

Evelyn steadied the movement.

When I stepped too quickly, she felt it.

When she corrected too sharply, I felt that too.

There was no easy way to pretend the other person had caused all the difficulty.

By the fifth attempt, we reached the arch with most of the water still inside.

Aurelia inspected it.

“Better.”

“How much better?” I asked.

She looked at the wet path behind us.

“Enough that the gardeners would prefer you to carry their watering cans outside.”

Evelyn laughed against my shoulder.

I set the bucket down.

Carefully.

Before we left, Aurelia asked about the portrait.

We had told her we were going to see it.

Evelyn described Selene’s face.

The blue gown.

The hand on the chart.

“She looks as though she’s waiting for someone to stop making excuses,” my wife said.

Aurelia’s smile became thoughtful.

“I have known that expression.”

“Worn it?” I asked.

“Frequently.”

Then Evelyn told her about the letter Marit had kept private.

Aurelia nodded.

“I’m glad.”

“Because it stayed with the family?”

“Yes.”

She looked toward the little garden room.

“There should be some things a person is allowed to have said only to the people they loved.”

Several days later, Mary showed us the notice prepared for Orselle.

It named Selene Aven.

Described the shelter.

Thanked the families who had maintained it.

There was no claim that Greykeep had discovered a place nobody else remembered.

Harl and Linnet had supplied the names of the people who still stocked the cupboard and checked the chimney.

Marit had approved the use of the portrait for one month.

Evelyn read the notice slowly.

Then pointed to the bottom.

“Could we include the instruction about leaving dry fuel?”

Mary nodded.

A practical line beneath all the history.

If you use the shelter’s fire, leave what dry fuel you can for the next arrival.

I thought Selene might have preferred that to most speeches we could give.

The first new glass section came out cloudy.

The second was clear but wrong.

The third sent a narrow band of light across the workshop wall.

Sella stood beside it with her apprentice.

Perrin held the lamp steady.

Aldren moved the measuring board.

Nobody celebrated yet.

They checked it again.

And again.

Finally, Sella removed the piece and placed it in its padded box.

“This one can go to the tower.”

Perrin grinned.

I looked toward Tilda.

She was smiling too.

Only a little.

Enough.

That evening, I found Evelyn writing.

The twins lay on the blanket nearby, each with a fish within reach.

I sat beside her.

“Council?”

She shook her head.

“A letter.”

“To whom?”

She turned the page slightly.

Garrick and Carol.

I looked at her.

“I don’t know when I’ll give it to them,” she said.

“What are you telling them?”

“About the day we bought the fish.”

I smiled.

She hesitated.

Then offered me the pen.

I read what she had written.

The stall.

The crooked eyes.

The fact that their father had insisted we needed two because either child might attempt to eat one.

Below it, I added a few lines.

About Evelyn holding the toys in the sunlight.

About the way she had smiled before we bought them.

About coming home.

When I finished, she read it without speaking.

Then she leaned against me.

On the blanket, Carol finally caught her fish.

She pulled it close with both hands.

We watched, absurdly pleased.

Evelyn waited until our daughter had settled.

Then she added that too.