Part 57 (1/2)

Signor Cavalotti, whose brainchild this was, believed that exchanges of ideas and techniques were essential to the development of art; indeed, I was told there had been significant advances in perspective and the mixing of paints in the ten years the two ”towns” had existed.

Well, Signer Cavalotti may have had high ideals and thought he was a philanthropist, but the consortium who ran this caper was very far from being either. Everything was very highly priced, but those who came off worst were probably the models like us. It went like this: the artist paid the model, who then relinquished some seventy percent to the sponsor; he in turn paid ten percent for food, five percent to pitch the tents, and then perhaps twenty percent to the consortium for the privilege of sponsors.h.i.+p. Probably the artists spent more than everyone else-s.p.a.ce, canvas, paints, props, costumes, models, food, accommodation-but then they had the money to start with.

Most of them were sponsored by rich families or the church-I counted at least a dozen altar pieces and triptychs in various stages of completion-and many had private means. There was a handful of students and apprentices, but most of these were under the patronage of the artists themselves. Useful to be able to take credit for the important bits and have an unpaid lackey to fill in the background!

Master b.u.mbo had very little idea how to promote his models-he had ten others besides ourselves-but in spite of his laziness, incompetence and avariciousness Gill's good looks provided us with two St. Sebastians and a disciple; I got two crowd scenes, very background, and Basher was fully occupied with two young monks composing a bestiary and an artist creating a series of panels on popular legends. One artist was interested exclusively in birds and their plumage and anatomy and was very pleased with the (private) sittings with Traveler.

And what of the Wimperling in all this? All in all, he earned more than the rest of us put together. Master Bimbo gave up on him after the first day: he was, after all, a rather ugly pig-but I had better ideas. A German artist who had used poor Mistral in an allegory for famine recommended a Dutchman who was looking for ”odd” creatures, and I saw why when I peeped round the corner of his screened off area. He was painting the pains of h.e.l.l on a large canvas, and very frightening they were, too. Fires, flames, smoke; imps, demons, devils, trolls, dragons: all delighting in torturing, beheading, raping and disemboweling the hapless sinners who cascaded down from the top of the canvas in a never-ending stream. And everywhere there was an inch or so of s.p.a.ce capered creatures from a wildly demented imagination, gleefully cheering on the destruction.

These creatures could never have existed: birds with fish heads, lizards with horses' hooves, cats with six arms and two heads, mouths with thin spindly legs, spiders with human faces, torsos with heads in their stomachs, a pair of legs with wings-It was this last that gave me the idea. Withdrawing quietly before the artist noticed me, I returned later with a fully briefed Wimperling.

The artist was a thoroughly unpleasant little man, hunched and smelly, so much I had already heard, but I wasn't prepared for the brusque way he dismissed me before I had opened my mouth.

”Unless you've got an extra pair of t.i.ts or b.a.l.l.s I don't want to know: b.u.g.g.e.r off!”

But I wasn't going to be thrown out just like that. Instead I dared his wrath and looked critically at the lizard-like thing with wings he was trying to draw.

”You've got the wings wrong,” I said. ”They should be more leathery and the tips less scooped. . . .”

”What? What do you mean? How do you know anything about Wyrm-wings?”

”Look,” I said, and the Wimperling carefully extended one wing. ”And if it's claws and hooves you are after, just look at these. . . .” The pig lifted one hoof.

”And as for fangs-” Obligingly the Wimperling bared his teeth. I hadn't realized just how sharp they were till now. The pig folded himself away again.

”What do you say?”

”Christ-on-the-Cross!” breathed the artist. ”Do that again!”

The Wimperling obliged.

”How much do you want for it?” snapped the artist, his eyes even piggier than the pig. ”I'll give you what you want. Within reason . . . Ten gold pieces?” His ringers were crawling towards the pig with desire, his sleeve smudging the charcoal sketch I had criticized.

”He's not for sale,” I replied firmly. ”But I am offering him to you as a model: exclusive rights, of course. At a reasonable price.”

”For the rest of the time here? Nine days? One gold coin.”

”Two. He's worth far more, and you know it. Exclusive rights, remember: you'd better keep him hidden away.” I was calculating on his artistic greed in this: I didn't want anyone else to know about the wings. I needn't have worried: the artist's ”find” was far too precious to share, and at the end of our two weeks the artist had dozens of sketches of every part of the pig's anatomy, from the tip of his fanged snout to the end of his spade-tipped tail and everything in between.

I supposed this was the way to a.s.sure immortality, I thought, looking at the sketches, remembering the other drawings and paintings of all of us, even my crowd scenes. Some day, many years hence perhaps, people would look at a pigeon's wing, a horse's flanks, a scruffy dog, a tortoise in a bestiary, the wings on a creature from h.e.l.l, a woman bending over a basket, a saint's agony, and maybe wonder at the originals they were created from. But only we would know, and we wouldn't be there to tell them. It was a s.h.i.+very thought.

But once more on the road, with the warm wind lifting the hair from my forehead and the p.r.i.c.kly-sweet perfume of the gorse on the hillsides tickling our noses, all such somber thoughts were chased away.

”I can smell spring,” said Gill, lifting his blind eyes to the sun. ”And after spring comes Summer!” and he smiled at his own little joke, a smile to lift my heart and renew my love.

Chapter Twenty.

It was true, Spring had arrived, and with it came an uplifting of the spirit, a healthy optimism that had nothing to do with reality. I would wake in the mornings, stretch the creaks from my bones (for the nights were still cold), sniff the crisp dawn air and feel as though I had drunk a bucketful of chilled white wine.

As we traveled further and further south, I delighted in plants, trees and herbiage that were strange to my northern eyes. All seemed brighter, bigger, p.r.i.c.klier; citrus trees with evergreen leaves sprouted little dots of white bud; bushy grey-green cacti and succulents were tipped with barbs like daggers; a yellow cascade of mimosa poured over stone walls, and miniature iris and crocus speared up through the scrub under olive and carob. Of course I had to ask the names of all these, but there were plants I recognized, though their flowering was at least a month ahead of ours at home.

I found the pale tremble of pink-white-purple wood anemones, petals ready to fly on the slightest breeze; heart-shaped leaves of deepest green hiding the thick, soft scent of violets; the perfumed cream of wild jonquil; s.h.a.ggy coltsfoot and tender celandine, days-eye, lions-tooth-the last two demanded daily by an awakening Basher, together with the tender young leaves of chicory and clover.

As we pa.s.sed through villages and hamlets the pink smoke of almond blossom clothed the slopes of the hillsides, though the k.n.o.bbed vines were still bare. I experimented with the new-grown herbs: wild mint (good with lamb and goat), young and bitter shoots of asparagus, pale among its p.r.i.c.kly adult cage, the tasty tips of nettle, and thyme and rosemary (excellent with all meats and fish).

And the birds and animals echoed this burgeoning promise. Sparrows, thrushes, blackbirds, green- and gold-finch, t.i.ts, siskin, flycatchers, brambling, all were busy picking and pecking for insects, snails and young shoots, twigs, hair, moss and mud for nests. Wrens scuttled along old walls, tree-creepers sidled up the bark, and against the eaves of buildings the house martins were already building new nests or repairing last year's, dark mud against pale. In the trees the russet squirrels were das.h.i.+ng about with their usual indetermination, all mouth and ruffed tails; shy roe deer leapt among the ground elder and sweet cicely, the hinds already heavy with young; the jaunty scuts of coney were glimpsed flas.h.i.+ng through the undergrowth, we could hear the crash and grunt of swine, the faraway howl of wolf and scream of vixen; the shepherds who walked their sheep and goats along the slope often carried new-dropped lambs, their wool still sticky with pale birth blood, the ewes reaching up anxiously to nuzzle their young, the dogs chewing at strings of afterbirth as they followed the flock. Above our heads came the first sweet babble of the ascending larks, and if you searched carefully you could find in nests soft with down and moss the incredible promise of eggs blue as the sky, or scrambled with speckles and blotches, like a child's scribbles.

The first flies came to torment us, yolk-yellow b.u.t.terflies quivered on the scarcely less bright gorse and broom, mornings showed the sliver-slime trail of snails, clouds of midges danced about our heads, bees buzzed from flower to bush; from the groves of pines crept processions of striped caterpillars: I picked up a couple, disturbing the caravan of their pa.s.sage, and was well rewarded with a crop of white blebs which itched intolerably till an old crone in one of the hamlets took pity on me and threw a jug of sour wine over me: I stank for days, but the irritation was gone.

In the ponds and ditches humps and strings of sp.a.w.n showed where frog and toad had been: some had already hatched into flickering life and sun-warmed lizards ran along the stones. Fish began to sp.a.w.n, a flurry among the stones of streams, three or four males to every female, or so it seemed.

The farther south we went, the more the countryside changed: arid, mountainous, yet conversely in the valleys, more fertile. The air was clearer, colors brighter, contours sharper; the people wore more colorful clothes, too: patterned skirt, red scarf, purple jacket although the elderly were still in a contrast of black, for mourning: who at their age had not lost a member of the family? We pa.s.sed repainted shrines and gaily clad processions for St.

Joseph's day, disregarding the rigors of Lent, and then the hearty celebrations for the new Year of Grace on March 25, a fiesta full of green branches, embroidered shawls and colored ribbons.

The going became easier the farther south we went, perhaps because our feet had become accustomed to the ruts, b.u.mps, flints, pebbles and stones of the highways. More and more we traveled in company, too many for ambush or treachery. Many languages were distributed among the mighty campfires each evening; men spoke of ice, fog and snow in islands to the north and west, even in summer; of sand, sun and people black as ink to the southlands, of great temples of stone and creatures as tall as a house and with horns of ivory; when they spoke of the east they told of beasts of burden who never drank, yet carried houses upon their backs, of heathens who sang to their G.o.ds from tall towers, of men as yellow as a canary bird who fought like devils. The west was full of great grey seas, s.h.i.+ps with bird's wings that skimmed the waves to deliver their cargoes of cloth and wine, spices and silk, of great sea monsters who devoured a s.h.i.+p in one mouthful, and of the sea maidens with long hair and fishes' tails who sang the mariners to destruction on the rocks.

All this talk was heady stuff: it whetted my appet.i.te to see more of the world before I finally found a husband and settled down. If men could travel around the world, why not a woman?

Travel seemed to improve the health and well-being of us all. Gill became tan- skinned, his step was bolder, he lost his gauntness. Mistral grew rounder and sleeker, her tail and mane longer, her hide lightened to a creamy color.

Basher ate till he filled his sh.e.l.l and developed an extra ridge on his carapace, demanding a short walk each day to exercise off the excess. Traveler declared himself fit and wing-whole again, taking longer and longer flights and dancing back in brightened browny-pink feathers to wheel and dive above our heads. The Wimperling grew stouter and stronger by the day, until he was fast becoming the largest pig I had ever seen, and I felt lighter and fitter every day.

But it was Growch who took full advantage of all spring had to offer. One day the caravan in which we currently traveled was joined by an abbess and her servants, bound to take healing waters. She rode in a litter with silk curtains and was too superior to mix with the rest of us. Not so, apparently, her dogs.

With her in the litter, fed on a diet of chicken and milk and sleeping on silk cus.h.i.+ons, were two small, long-haired b.i.t.c.hes, silky hair trimmed, curled, plaited and beribboned; they were exercised four times a day by the lady's attendants, waddling around like small brown sausages, their long black claws clip-clipping on the road, their plumed tails cleaned every time they excreted, their hair combed free of tangles by their mistress herself, using the same comb she used on her own hair, it was rumored. Growch's inquisitive nose and eyes found them the first time they set paws to ground, although his first essay was beaten back by the lady's attendants.

”Stripe me like a badger! What little chunks of sweetness! Plump and petted and just ready for it! You've no idea-”

”Now just you keep away from them,” I said severely. ”We don't want any trouble. The lady's servants will chop you in half if you-”

”Gam! Got to catch me first! 'Sides, I can have 'em away any time I choose.

They fancies me, I can tell. . . .”

And apparently they did, to my amazement, for first one and then the other managed to escape from the servants and disappear from sight in the undergrowth, hotly pursued by a dog I promptly disowned. The abbess was distraught and insisted on staying behind until her ”darlings” turned up again. . . .

Growch rejoined us two days later, some fifteen miles further on, absolutely shattered, his belly dragging on the ground. He was even filthier than usual, and declared himself starved.

”You don't deserve a thing!” I said, giving him a hunk of cheese and some stale bread. ”You're absolutely disgusting! Er-what happened to the b.i.t.c.hes?

Did their owner get them back?”