The Crimson Shard (5 page)

“I shall show you how we prepare the glue”— Jeremiah used a wad of rags to protect his hand and pulled the lid off —“straining out the bones and skin.”

A pungent steam cloud enveloped Jeremiah and Toby, who recoiled for a moment from its heat. The smell rolled through the workshop like an ill wind.

“Bones and skin of what?” asked Blaise in a small voice.

“In this particular mixture, rabbits,” said Jeremiah, wiping his brow. “Though oft-times goat parts come cheapest. Necks, feet, and skins.”

“What’s it for?” Blaise grimaced at a chunk of gristle that had landed by his feet when the lid rose.

“To mix with gypsum and chalk for the making of gesso.” Jeremiah stirred through the foul casserole and fished out a tiny bone. He threw it into a graveyard pot already half full of bones and cartilage. “We must coat the surface of our paintings with it before we begin work.”

He held out a long-handled wire strainer with hard dried bits of something gray stuck to it. “Which of you shall start?”

Sunni yanked Blaise back a few steps toward the windows. Her face was white and covered with a sweaty sheen. “Can I talk to my friend for a minute, please?”

“As you wish,” said Throgmorton, watching her closely.

Starling shrugged and handed the strainer to Toby.

Sunni turned her back to the others so they could not make out what she said. “This is out of control. I think that man really
is
Jeremiah Starling.”

“He can’t be,” whispered Blaise. “Throgmorton told us he died. . . .”

“Yeah, I know. But look outside,” she murmured. “And don’t be obvious!”

Blaise strained to see out of the window from the corner of his eye, but he was too far away. “What? I can’t see anything.”

“Everything is wrong. We’ve got to get out of here. Now.”

“M
iss Sunniva,” called Throgmorton. “You are missing Master Starling’s demonstration.”

“I’m sorry. We have to leave.” She took off the work shirt and dropped it onto a stool. “Blaise’s father is waiting for us, and we’re late already.”

Sunni made her way to the painted door. She studied the wall, hoping that the solid panels and metal door handle might reappear, but they did not.

“Mr. Throgmorton,” she began, anxiety pulsing through her.

“Miss Sunniva,” he answered, “not that way. Please come with me. And you, Blaise.” He took a step toward the open door in the opposite corner of the room.

Sunni hesitated. “Why are we leaving through that door? We came in through this painted one.”

“Please come along.”

“Where does he want to take us?” she whispered to Blaise.

“I dunno. Do we go?”

“Don’t think we have a choice.” Sunni turned away from the painted door but stood still.

Throgmorton raised his arm like an outspread wing, sending the candles flickering. “Come.”

The boys kept their heads down. Toby and Jeremiah stirred the glue pot intently, until the painter lifted his head. “I advise you to go with Mr. Throgmorton.”

“Stay close together,” said Sunni as she and Blaise threaded their way through the tables and easels.

Reluctantly, they followed Throgmorton down the stairs.

“What did you mean that everything’s wrong here?” whispered Blaise.

“Out the window,” Sunni whispered back. “Nothing’s right.” She might have believed that the workshop was a recreation for tourists, but not the world outside. She’d seen London’s old rooftops beyond the rippled glass windowpanes and had had a clear view of Saint Paul’s Cathedral dome. It was by far the tallest building, with no sign of any high-rise offices, construction cranes, or air traffic above it. The passersby in the street below were dressed in period clothes like Throgmorton and Livia.

“What do you mean, nothing’s right?”

“No skyscrapers, no cars,” said Sunni huskily. “Everyone out there’s wearing old clothes and wigs.”

On the second floor, Throgmorton opened a door for them, smiling. “Please.”

Inside, Livia rose from a dark-green wingback armchair. “You are very welcome.”

She guided Blaise by the arm to a matching chair opposite hers, but let her father offer Sunni the hard-looking sofa. They were in a formal sitting room that had no trace of
trompe l’oeil
trickery. A chandelier lit the room with a blaze of beeswax candles. The busts on the mantelpiece were real, and the small table by Livia had an array of playing cards spread across it in a game of solitaire.

“Mary is bringing tea for us,” said Livia.

A servant girl struggled in with a large silver tray holding teacups and a pot. She gawked at Sunni and Blaise as she laid it down on a table beside Livia and scurried out after a nod from Throgmorton.

Livia’s hands fluttered over the tray, pouring and stirring. She extended a china cup toward Sunni but did not get up from her chair. “You must be very thirsty.”

“No, thank you.” Sunni sat stiffly on the edge of the sofa.

Blaise shook his head at the offer of tea. “Where are we?”

“Jeremiah Starling’s house.” Livia’s laugh chimed out.

“Where are all the
trompe l’oeil
murals?” Blaise asked tersely. “I don’t see them anywhere.”

“He has not painted them yet,” said Throgmorton.

Sunni jumped in. “What do you mean, he hasn’t painted them
yet
?”

“You met Starling. He’s a young man, and this is his old childhood home. One day he will build a new house on this land. He’ll fill it with murals and it will be known as Starling House.” Throgmorton pointed at a few framed landscape and portrait paintings on the parlor walls. “Those are the sorts of paintings he has been making during the past few years.”

“This can’t be real. He can’t be Jeremiah Starling,” said Blaise.

“I have told you the truth.” Throgmorton showed a flicker of displeasure. “He is Starling.”

“You told us he died in 1791,” said Sunni.

“That is also true.”

Blaise said, “Jeremiah Starling can’t be alive and dead at the same time.”

“He is for us. You have traveled back to the time when Jeremiah Starling was twenty-nine years old,” said Throgmorton. “You are in the year 1752.”

1752 — where had she seen that date before?
Sunni couldn’t keep her hands still in her lap. “The painted door. It’s the crossing point, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is an astonishing door,” said Livia, sipping delicately from her cup. “It connects our time and yours by the slenderest sliver of space and time.”

“But why us? Why bring us?” Blaise nearly shouted.

“To show you the Academy,” said Throgmorton. “You agreed to it.”

“We didn’t agree to go back to 1752!”

Throgmorton shrugged. “That is what one must do to see the Academy. And you have not even left Phoenix Square. We are still in the same location. Starling House is not the only house that has ever sat on this land. Other houses were here before it, including this one. We have stretched a little hole in the skin of time and crawled through to it.”

“You can’t just make an opening in time!” Blaise interrupted.

“How do you think you got here then?”

Blaise murmured, “I don’t know.”

“You control the painted door,” said Sunni. “How?”

“It is just an ability I have. Far too complex for you to understand,” replied Throgmorton.

“W-what are you?” asked Sunni.

“An ordinary man.” Throgmorton’s mouth twitched. “A mere mortal.”

Silence fell over the tea party, but Sunni’s and Blaise’s eyes didn’t leave Throgmorton’s face.

“So,” Sunni said at last, “we’re sitting here in this room, but somewhere right around us, right now, across a closed-up hole in time, is the other Starling House with all the murals, on the date we left it?”

“Yes.”

“And the only way back is through that painted door.”

“Yes.”

“And you’ll take us back through it now, since we’ve seen the Academy,” said Blaise.

The words hung there while Sunni and Blaise waited for his answer. When it came, Throgmorton delivered it without a flicker of doubt.

“No.”

The air crackled with Sunni and Blaise’s outrage.

“You have to!” Sunni cried.

“My father is waiting for us.” Blaise leaped to his feet. “You can’t stop us from going home.”

“I can.” Throgmorton strolled about the parlor with his hands clasped behind his back. “And I will. The door is now closed.”

“I don’t understand
why
!”

“Because I wish it.” Their captor said this as if it were the only explanation anyone could require.

Sunni fidgeted on the hard sofa. “You can’t keep us here!”

“My father has never brought anyone else across to our time. Only you,” said Livia. “It is a great honor, so do not be angry!”

“Honor!”

“You have met Jeremiah Starling,” said her father. “And seen his Academy, full of the most astounding boy-artists in this century or any other. This is what you wished for.”

“No. We didn’t wish to be kept here!” said Sunni, shaking with fury.

“You have no choice,” said Throgmorton. “I have decided you will stay and be pupils at the Academy. You are highly qualified applicants.”

Blaise’s hands were clenched into fists. “You can’t force us to do anything! I’m not going to be your trained monkey.”

Livia appealed to him with wide eyes. “Do not be this way, Blaise! Please.”

“How am I supposed to be then? Your father is keeping us here against our will.”

“You will like it here. I promise,” she said. “You want to be an artist, don’t you? Now you will be.”

“Trade our freedom so we can draw better?” Sunni jumped in. “No chance.”

“You do have a choice,” said Throgmorton. “Accept what I offer you, or I will have you sent to prison for thieving from this house.”

“You’d do that to us?” Sunni could barely get the words out. “Why, what’s the point? Why not just send us back where we came from?”

Throgmorton’s mouth was pinched. “You will stay here with us as well-behaved pupils or go to prison.”

“That’s no choice. We’re in prison either way.” Blaise thumped the arm of his chair.

Livia nestled her teacup close and bit her lip. “This is not a prison.”

Sunni scowled at her and Blaise just turned away.

“Forgive them. They do not understand yet, my dear, but they soon will.” Throgmorton squeezed his daughter’s shoulder and said softly, “There is sleeping room for two more pupils in the Academy, but it is difficult to hide a girl amongst boys. People will ask questions.”

“What you are talking about?” Sunni asked.

“You will need to disguise yourself as a boy, Sunniva. Sometimes visitors come to see the workshop, and they will notice a girl pupil.”

“What!”

“Father, I think there are some cast-off breeches that will fit her,” said Livia. “They are men’s but can be tied tighter around her waist.”

“Will you see to it, my dear?”

Livia shook her platinum curls. “Yes, Father. This will be most amusing, Sunniva, like dressing for a masquerade!”

“No way —” Sunni began.

“You would prefer to spend time in Newgate Prison? For that is where burglars end up,” Livia said gaily.

Sunni mumbled something and shot a look at Blaise.

“You said something, Sunniva?” Throgmorton’s face was impassive.

“I said you have no right to do this.”

“I have
all
the rights in this house,” said Throgmorton. “Livia, my dear, take Sunniva to your chamber.”

“Come with me!” Livia pulled Sunni up and frogmarched her out of the parlor.

“Walk properly, Blaise! You are not a wild animal.” Throgmorton steered him up the stairs and into the Academy workshop.

Blaise’s rage continued to come out with every footstep. He kicked against the stairs and shrugged off his kidnapper’s hand.

Throgmorton pulled him to a halt outside the workshop door. “Leave your childishness outside the Academy. It does not suit you.”

Blaise snorted.

“Stop your work, gentlemen,” said Throgmorton as he entered the workshop with the sullen boy in his grip. “Blaise is to join you as a fellow pupil.”

“Is he?” Jeremiah looked puzzled.

“May I have a word, sir?” Throgmorton let go of Blaise and strode into the corridor. Jeremiah grumbled and followed, with a gesture to the group to continue working.

Blaise dodged candles and easels as he ran to the painted door. His hands trembled as he worked his fingers over the illusion of a door handle and along the door’s false edges, looking for an indentation. There were some barely visible curved scratches in the paintwork, but otherwise all he could feel was the flat coolness of plaster.

Desperate, he implored the boys, “How do I get out through this door?”

Six heads shook from side to side. No one answered.

“But you saw us come in! How did Throgmorton make the door open?”

One of the younger boys, Jacob, said, “The door comes alive when he wills it to.”

The others shushed him and glanced toward the corridor to make sure the two men were nowhere near.

“Jacob!” Toby shook the boy by the shoulder. “Do not speak of that, now or ever.”

“Why can’t he speak about it?” Blaise growled.