Breath and Bones (8 page)

As the guards continued to look the other way, Famke and Albert collected as many molten shards as they could carry. They took the largest ones they could find and filled Famke's small pocket, then the multiple flaps of Albert's coat. Famke unbuttoned her bodice to tuck a cold lump inside. When they left the plain of rubble and made their way home with the booty, their movements were slow, freighted, and they sank deeper into
the mud. But the new prospect made Albert very happy, and Famke's heart caught some of that infectious warmth. She imagined it lighting up her chest like an electric globe.

She was feeling hopeful, in fact, and as she and Albert left, she noticed the gray mortician; he seemed to be lifting a scrap of embroidery from a heap of ash, and she wondered if perhaps he had really lost someone in the flames. When he stood, she turned a dazzling smile upon him. He was clearly surprised, but he touched his hat to her in a gentlemanly fashion, releasing a new wave of pungent scent that made both Famke and Albert cough and the glass in their pockets rattle.

The mortician reached into his pocket, simultaneously depositing the embroidered wisp and withdrawing a stiff cardboard square. “In case of need,” he said mournfully, and passed by them like the god of death, poking his cane into mound after mound. They watched him pass through the iron gates and disappear into the fog.

Famke translated the card for Albert:

E
MBALMING PERFORMED
• reasonable rates
• lifelike appearance
• excellent value
G
AMLE
K
ONGEVEJ
16

“It would appear he's in need of his own services,” Albert joked, and Famke was so glad to feel she had pleased him that she laughed right along.

If I say that the houses did not disgust me, I tell you all I remember of them; for I cannot recollect any pleasurable sensations they excited; or that any object, produced by nature or art, took me out of myself.

M
ARY
W
OLLSTONECRAFT,
LETTER FROM
D
ENMARK

Thus it began, their best time together. Now Albert had models for both Nimue and her ice; around Famke's feet he painted the Christiansborg glass many times larger than it was, filling in his little squares with vivid and detailed renderings of all he saw there. Famke, for her part, was glad not to be quite so chilled while posing, and even to have a day of rest here and there while Albert worked on the ice. She had caught a cold, or one had caught her, and it wouldn't let go.

She coughed and blew her nose until Albert was quite exasperated. “Darling,
really
,” he said; but then he fell ill, too, and resorted to the comforts of long dark hours of bed rest and Famke's loving ministrations. They spent candlelit time together poring over Pre-Raphaelite prints; but in the morning, all was work again.

On one blue afternoon, as he refined the lines of Famke's streaming hair, Albert even mentioned his plans for the future. He rubbed out a red strand with a handful of bread, then bit the bread absentmindedly and said, chewing, “I quite like your country. I am finding it every bit as rich in inspiration as I'd hoped. Perhaps I will come back.”

Famke felt suddenly more naked than before, and completely tongue-tied. Here it was, what she was longing to hear: almost a promise for the future.

“Of course,” Albert ruminated, “that can be only after I am accepted as a member of the Royal Academy. After I am able to live from the proceeds of
my work. I might even do some portraits then—let the ladies' commissions pay for the models' fees.”

This was an interesting notion. Aside from her room and board, Albert had not yet given Famke an
Øre
for her work; but then she did not wish him to. He had once explained that ladies posed only for portraits, for which they paid, while the hired models who lent themselves to narrative paintings belonged to a category just slightly removed from the
Ludere
strolling up and down the frozen canals. “Not you, of course,” he had said hastily, seeing her crestfallen. Somehow, not being paid removed her from the unpleasant models' class; and Famke generally preferred pictures that told stories anyway.

She summoned all her courage to ask now, “Will you paint me again?”

“Of course.” He sneezed and blew his nose, carefully turning away from the canvas.

“Will you be glad?” She waited a moment, and when he didn't answer—he was still emptying his nose—she added softly, “
Vil du elske mig
?” Will you love me?

He didn't seem to hear, and he would not have understood the Danish words; but Famke took his silence for all the affirmation she needed.

“Darling, please stop smiling,” he said, looking up. “Remember, Nimue is angry.”

But in the warmth of her smile, he was inspired to pull out a pair of dried butterflies—saved, perhaps, from that bridal carriage ride—that might alight on the ice blocks and freeze there, to represent springtime and the love that once existed between Nimue and Merlin. He bought some silk flowers, frayed and faded them, then painted them withered and bewormed in the ice. Famke did not need him to explain that symbolism.

In this happy time, Albert and Famke often forgot to eat and usually smelled like each other. When he had been out late in the streets, she washed his feet for him with strong, delicious soap and brought life back to his frozen toes. It was while they were doing this that he told her their
Revenge of Nimue
was not the first painting on the subject.

“There is another, called
The Beguiling of Merlin
,” he said. “I don't have a print to show you, but I recollect it clear as a summer's day. The colors are gold and blue. Nimue is reading spells from a book, and the ancient Merlin swoons. Her body is big but it moves like a snake's, coiling toward him.”

“Shall there be a book in our picture?” Famke asked.

“Darling, that is hardly the point. No, my
Nimue
will be an entirely new composition; I cannot imagine Merlin in a hawthorn bower. Perhaps that is why Burne-Jones's painting failed.”

“Who was his model?” Famke asked, rubbing his arches with her thumbs. She hoped it had been Fanny Cornforth, the tavern-girl with hair down to the floor; she had posed for several Brothers and became Dante Rossetti's mistress.

“Maria Zambaco, a wild, dark gypsy-woman.”

“Was she his . . . Did he
fokk
her?” she asked, reaching for a word the sailors used.

“Famke!” Albert pretended to be shocked, but he shot her an amused look. “Well, yes. She wanted him to leave his wife for her.”

“But he didn't,” Famke guessed. She pushed the basin aside and began rubbing Albert's feet with a rough towel.

“No, even though Mrs. Burne-Jones was being courted by William Morris . . . Ouch, darling, not so rough.
His
wife, Jane, is said to have been entangled with Rossetti after Lizzie Siddal died.”

“
Fanden
,” Famke said, “are all of your Brotherhood loving one another's wives?”

“Not everyone in the circle is like that,” he said, in a tone she would have thought priggish from a Danish man. He held out his feet, dry now, so she could slide them into heavy wool socks. “There are men of great honor and women of great virtue.”

Famke's cheeks reddened at the thought of virtue. “There are women in the Brotherhood?” she asked innocently.

“Yes, there are women. Some of them even fancy themselves artists,” he added, again in that priggish tone. “Rossetti tried to teach Lizzie to paint. Even Maria Zambaco, the earlier Nimue, takes up the brush from time to time, and she has a friend who makes photographs. But most of the true ladies are content to give quiet support. Euphemia Millais, for example, has been her husband's mainstay—since she divorced Ruskin . . .”

Famke could not repress a snort. A divorce caused by private hairs.

“Well,” Albert concluded, gazing at his warm feet in satisfaction, “that divorce was quite a
cause célèbre
, but Millais says he'd be nothing without her. And there are other virtuous women. Georgiana Burne-Jones has remained loyal to her husband, and their daughter, Margaret, is quite lovely.”

As Famke carried the basin to the window, she noticed that although Albert referred to the male painters by their last names, he felt on first-name terms with the women. She glimpsed, fleetingly, a time when the two of them, Albert and herself, would be known as Castle and his Famke. She thought she could be content as the quiet support in the background of his life, if she could be the chief figure in his paintings. And if he would leave the Brothers' wives alone.

On Christmas Day, Albert announced it almost shyly: “Darling, come down from your platform. I believe you are complete.”

He had finished the figural work.

Famke stepped slowly from the pedestal, struggling with a dual sense of loss and happiness. She had dreaded the day when Albert would not need her to pose—but what a marvel he had made of her! When she looked at the canvas, she saw herself, every bit as beautiful as she wanted to be: eyes like two sapphires, lips like two rubies, skin luminous as a pearl. The fiery hair crackling down her back, the strength of her arms and legs showing through the icy net of nightdress—Famke almost pitied the poor wizard who must, she thought, stand a few feet beyond the farthest reaches of the canvas, where she and Albert were standing now.

Albert breathed: “It is . . . yes, perfect.”

He looked about to dash out for one of his mad runs; so to hold him where he was, Famke said that the picture did not
quite
capture her: If he were truly to paint life's every detail, he would break with convention and show the hair Down There.

Albert took this with good humor. “Hush, hush, Miss Famke,” he chided, ruffling up the hair in question and sending her into a fit of giggles. “You know we must retain our icy cloud. But here's a thought! Perhaps you will understand better if you become a painter yourself. I shall make you my apprentice”—he smiled—“as Merlin did with Nimue.”

It was the finest gift he knew of, and it would more than compensate for the little wood-framed mirror she had given him the night before. He put a brush in her hand and wrapped her fingers around the handle in a way she considered awkward.

“But I have never painted,” she said, staring down at it. “
Ellers
, I've painted only fences and the goose pen, all in white—er, white—”

“Whitewash,” he said, pushing her up the ladder. “So then you can paint ice . . . Mind your skirt, darling, we don't want you to trip; perhaps you should take off the nightdress . . . Here, you may start with this corner. Only try—remember, many English ladies paint.”

“I am not a lady,” she said, but she let herself be pushed.

“Ladies paint in watercolor anyway,” he said, and his argument was so nearly logical that she capitulated and put a tiny, all but invisible dot of pale blue in the farthest reach of the left-hand corner.

Behind her on the ladder, he praised the dot extravagantly. “That's splendid, that's really wonderful! Such sensitivity, such finesse—you are a born artist. In that little spot you have captured an eternal truth about the nature of ice, about its essence and symbolic weight in human and natural history . . .”

“Stop!” She laughed as his hands reached up, caressing first her bottom, then her waist, then dipping into that controversial thatch of hair. “I must concentrate on my art!”

That day she made two dots more before Albert pulled her off the ladder he'd so insistently pushed her up. He took her to bed, where both were very happy.

Over the next days, Famke discovered that she liked painting. Albert seemed genuinely grateful for her help with the dreary ice, especially as she was willing to lay the base of blue-white and mottle it over while he walked the streets in search of breakfast or inspiration. She was careful to keep her brushstrokes as smooth and flat as the white gesso, and enjoyed squeezing the clean-smelling paint from its metal tubes—rather like milking a cow, she thought at first; then, when more practiced, like holding a girl's breast so long that a drop emerged. The very thought made Famke retire for a moment to bed.
This is a cottager coming home to warm himself . . . This is a fish . . . This is a paintbrush grinding a pearl
.

When Albert came home, he did the finer work, adding nuance to the ice, a bubble or a flower here, a crack or a worm there, more of the reddish glow that signified not only Nimue's magic but her virginal anger as well. Soon the canvas was finished.

Albert bought wide strips of gilded walnut for a frame, then proceeded
to bury the gilding under a thick layer of more painted flowers and butterflies. He could hardly wait till the paint was dry before he fit the frame around the canvas—up into the very peak of the roof—and laid a thick coat of varnish over the whole.