Portrait of an Unknown Woman (35 page)

           
So Holbein hadn’t had to make a decision about whether to be disloyal to the city he’d returned to; and that was a relief.

 
          
And now it was a hot night in the middle of August, but Erasmus had a fire. And Holbein was mellow enough to be enjoying the sweaty warmth of the fire and the renewed friendship, and feeling affectionate at the sight of Erasmus wrapping himself all the time in that furry robe that was always falling open—the old man felt the cold, even when it wasn’t 
cold; those skinny limbs with no real flesh on them, Holbein thought with benevolent contempt, complacently aware of the power in his own big powerful frame—and he’d relaxed right back into his bench long before Amerbach left for the night. For the first time since leaving England, he was feeling truly at home.

 
          
“Tell me more, dear Olpeius,” Erasmus said, with his bright eyes glittering, settling back into his seat after saying good-bye to his guest. “More about More.” Erasmus liked his puns, Holbein remembered fuzzily; his best-selling book all those years ago,
Moriae Encomium
, meant
In Praise of
 
Folly.
 

           
But the title, which had been written at More’s house and was prefaced by lavish compliments to his host that had made More famous all over Europe, could also be read as
In Praise of More
, whom Erasmus had praised as the best friend and wisest scholar in Europe. Erasmus laughed his small, dry, inviting laugh at his own little sally, and fixed his eyes on Holbein’s flushed face, and waited.

 
          
Holbein was too relaxed now to care if Erasmus guessed his secret. He settled his hands comfortably on the table and began to talk—about the Mores, Erasmus’s old friends, with an enthusiasm he’d tried to forget he felt; about the beauty of the house and the garden at Chelsea; about the earthy humor of Dame Alice; about the vibrancy of More’s mind and the pleasure of discussing any subject under the sun with him; about the lute duets; and about the esteem in which the lawyer was held at court.

 
          
“Of course the Steelyard men didn’t like him breaking up the trade in religious books,” he recalled too, in the interests of fair-mindedness, “and Kratzer and I spent more time than I like to remember puzzling over how hard he was on the people who read them.” He stopped to see how Erasmus reacted to that before venturing further.

 
          
Erasmus nodded sympathetically, not seeming to mind a hint of criticism of his friend.
 
“Yessss. What he writes about religion these days often puzzles me too,” he said in his thin, precise voice, leaning encouragingly forward.

 
          
He looked so receptive that Holbein wondered whether he could tell the story of the prisoner in the gatehouse. In the end he decided not to.

 
          
Frankness was one thing, but he wasn’t a gossip. And he couldn’t be sure himself what the truth of that episode was, any more than he could be sure how far he sympathized with the wretched Rickmansworth villagers: he couldn’t believe that a man of More’s integrity could have had anything but a worthy motive for keeping a man with his face beaten to a pulp in a shed; he just couldn’t think what the worthy motive could be. So he changed the subject.

 
          
“Well, I don’t know,” he answered, with a bark of laughter, “but I tell you what. For all I spent so many evenings sitting with Kratzer criticizing
 
More for being a brute with the new men, now that I’ve seen what a mess our new men are making of governing Basel, I’m beginning to think More might not have been so wrong after all!”

 
          
Erasmus snuffled with laughter at that, and Holbein retreated quickly to safer territory. “And More’s still famous for charm,” he said, with an easier chuckle. “They love him for that. They even teach schoolchildren Latin by getting them to translate sentences like ‘More is a man of singular learning and angels’ wit.’ ”

 
          
“Ah, my old friend; I do hope it will be granted me to see him again before I die.” Erasmus sighed, sounding nostalgic. “And his children. How well I remember those little dark-haired girls . . .”

 
          
“All grown up and married now,” Holbein said, suddenly wistful. “All probably with children of their own too.”

 
          
“Margaret and Cecily . . . little Lizzie . . .” Erasmus sighed. “Even little Johnny. How well my old friend More chose the wards he adopted, and two of his children have made fine marriages to them. Good inheritances on them from their parents; a good education from him; an eminently sensible arrangement. Even little . . .” He paused, giving Holbein his bright, birdlike stare from the side. “Little . . .”

 
          
“Meg,” Holbein said flatly, bitterly resenting the thumping of his treacherous heart. “Meg Giggs.”

 
          
“Yeeess,” Erasmus drawled. “Meg Giggs. A lovely child. Clever too. She came late to the household, I remember . . .” He looked thoughtfully at Holbein’s burning cheeks. “I call them little, but of course purely from force of habit. Foolish of me, when I can see from your portrait that they’re all taller and more graceful these days than either you or me!” He cackled encouragingly at the painter.

 
          
“She’s in her twenties now,” Holbein said. Thunderously. To his secret horror, he felt tears pricking at the inside of his eyes. He wiped furiously at his nose. “Summer cold,” he excused himself, indistinctly. “She got engaged just before I left. That was more than a year ago now. She’ll be long married.”

 
          
“To John Clement . . .” Erasmus prompted again, with one eyebrow going up that quizzical quarter inch.

 
          
Holbein nodded, only half surprised to find Erasmus already knew.

 
          
He had admirers from all over Europe writing to him, after all. “We were friends,” he added, continuing to wipe at his face with his big striped scarf. “Meg and I, that is. Clement, well, I didn’t understand . . .” And he stopped, suddenly aware of his voice drunkenly beginning to blurt out his secret.

 
          
Erasmus nodded kindly. The little half smile on his delicate old face, with its crumpled-paper skin, always seemed to suggest he understood far more than was being said. The eyebrow went up an extra fraction.

 
          
“A good husband for Meg, do you think?”

 
          
Holbein nodded glumly. “I suppose so,” he said lugubriously. “She said she was in love with him, anyway.” He stopped. He shouldn’t be talking about this.

 
          
“Have you kept in touch with her?” Erasmus went gently on. “Your friend Meg? Where’s she living with her new husband? How is she finding married life?”

 
          
Holbein began to feel uneasily that there might be a point behind these questions.
 
“No,” he mumbled, looking away. “I haven’t. I wouldn’t know what to say.”

 
          
Erasmus laughed again, with the slightest note of mockery. “Dear Olpeius,” he said. “You must get over your fear of the written word. You’re an intelligent man. And what’s the point of travel if you don’t let it broaden your world and make you new friends to keep from a distance?”

 
          
The probing went on for a few more minutes. If Erasmus had been Elsbeth, Holbein thought, he’d have called it nagging. And he went on bashfully shaking his head.

 
          
“Well, it’s a pity you feel that way,” Erasmus finally said, graceful in defeat, and turning for the jug to pour the painter another drink. “I used to know John Clement myself when he was a younger man. I thought you might be in a position to help me renew my old acquaintance. Still . . .” He concentrated on pouring straight. His brown-spotted hands shook these days, Holbein noticed.

 
          
“Never mind that, anyway. I want to ask you a favor,” Erasmus said, suddenly seeming serious. “I’d like you to come back and paint my portrait again.” He stopped and coughed. “When you have time, that is,” he added politely. “I appreciate you’re a busy man.”

 
          
Holbein’s heart raced. Paint Erasmus again? Have his work displayed all over Europe by the great man’s many noteworthy admirers? Get proper payment, get weeks off his joyless grubbing round the print shops for scraps of work that in London he’d have sneered at, especially the job he’d just been offered fixing the town clock? Get out of Basel and out of the house and away from the family? He’d do it tomorrow. It was almost enough to chase away all those tormented dreams in which dark heads slipped away from him in remote gardens. He nodded, trying not to look too eager. “I’ll come back in the next couple of months,” he said, then thought he’d sounded graceless and added hastily, “of course. I’d be honored. I’ll come as soon as I can.”

 
          
“You must be tired, and I should go to bed soon too,” the old man added, watching one of the three surviving candles sputter out and stifling a yawn. “But if you’ll sit here and finish your drink with me, I’ve another favor to ask. I’ll just write a brief note to the Mores myself to thank them for the picture. Then perhaps you’ll be kind enough to arrange for it to be sent on your way home tomorrow?”

 
          
Holbein nodded. The old scholar nodded back, got up lightly from his bench, and took one of the last two candles over to the stand-up writing table in the corner, where his inks and papers and feather pens were laid out for him. He still stood very upright and his veiny hand moved fast over the paper. Holbein watched the way the light fell on his face from below, creating a circle of somber color in the dusk and showing the hollows of the old man’s cheeks and eyes and temples, and marveled at the speed with which Erasmus covered paper without even pausing for thought.

 
          
“There,” the old man said, flattening the page into his tray of sand and turning to fix Holbein with another encouraging birdlike stare, “that wasn’t so difficult, was it? I’m delighted you’re coming back to make another likeness of me. And there’s just one more thing.”

 
          
Holbein nodded eagerly. If he couldn’t have love in the dreary new Protestant world he’d wanted to see created, then he’d still do a lot to have the companionship of geniuses again. It was only this evening, after more than a year back, that he’d remembered he could feel alive again.

 
          
“If you do find, before your next visit, that you have time to contact that dear girl Meg Giggs . . . Clement . . .”—Erasmus fixed that beady look on the painter again—“I’d love to know how she is getting on.”

 
          
“Naturally,” he said, “you’re delighted to be home again, with your family and friends. But you never know, do you, when you might begin to feel a little, mmm, bogged down in Basel.”

 
          
He gave Holbein another of those bright, considering glances, and it showed the painter more clearly than any words that his secret was exposed and that the wish he’d hidden even from himself to return to London and beg, plead, shout, or do violence to make Meg change her mind had been noted.

 
          
“Now that her father’s been made lord chancellor of England”—Erasmus rolled his tongue luxuriantly over the words, reminding the painter how valuable a connection like that could be—“the Mores could be in a better position than ever to advance your international career. Or, who knows? It may be the other way round. These are troubled times in England as well as in Basel. Meg and her husband may soon need real friends more than ever. Either way, my advice to you, dear boy, is keep the door open. Write. Tuck a little note of your own in when you send mine. There’s really nothing to it.”

 
          
Holbein nodded, looking more reluctant than he was beginning to feel. He couldn’t go on saying no now, not if he wanted the portrait commission. And writing at Erasmus’s request would at least give him an excuse to approach Meg again. Not that he understood what bee Erasmus had got in his bonnet; but it didn’t matter. This was clearly a command, 
only thinly disguised as a request. So he’d just have to do it well—force himself to be elegant and persuasive enough on paper to impress her.

 
          
“Well, I’m no scribe,” he said, tucking the parchment into his bag. “But you know that, so perhaps it doesn’t matter. Perhaps I should. Try.” And without really wanting to know why, he felt his heart lighten.

 
          
It was only when he was already in the boat the next day, with the parchment safely wrapped in his bag next to the bread and cheese and beer that Erasmus insisted on providing him for the journey, watching the herons dip and dive over the fish in the shallows, that the fresh river breeze chased last night’s fog out of his brain enough for him to remember that he’d been meaning to ask Erasmus all the time he was in London about how, and when, the scholar had first met John Clement anyway.