To the Headmaster of Hogwarts,
School of Witchcraft and Wizardry:

Dear Sir,
I have recently acquired a painting which is of great value to me. However, now finding myself rich in years I should like to pass it on to a place where I know it will be cared for after my death. Your institution seems to be admirably run, and the portrait itself has a connection to the school that you should find most particular. Following, I have enclosed the particulars of the painting’s origins, and history as best I know.


I

“I will pay a great deal.”

“The money is no matter. I cannot take the commission at this time.” Will not is more like it. I’m not fond of your principles, sir, if even half the things I’ve heard about you are true.

“One hundred pounds.”

I could feel my jaw drop. It would be the largest sum I had ever been paid. I could help Martine and Maman for months if I was careful. It was almost too great a sum to let go. Work was scarce; I should take what was offered, times were desperate. Does it really matter where the money comes from?

“Very well,” I said through my clenched teeth, not sounding nearly as grateful as I ought to.

His eyes regarded me with a hidden amusement. I hated the way he was toying with me, much as a cat plays with a mouse up until the moment it suddenly devours it. “You will begin tomorrow. My daughter will be very pleased.”

Flicking a languid hand into his pocket, he held out an elegant card which I reluctantly took from his gloved fingertips. He glanced about my studio, which I had forgotten to clean in my carelessness, wrinkling his powdered nose in disgust. Pulling a purse from his pocket, dragon hide and high quality at that, he snapped four crisp notes into my hand. “Twenty now, to cover your expenses, and the rest when it is complete.”

“Yes, sir.”

Looking over my sullen figure, he added his parting shot as I bowed him out to the carriage with very little respect indeed. “Don’t be so cocky, boy. There are better painters than you out there who would be just as eager for a little gold. My daughter chose you on a whim, and that whim could vanish very quickly.”

I watched the dust fade as his carriage rolled out of sight down the crowded and crooked little road. D’accord, Philippe, so he made you feel like a fool and abandon your principles. But think of the money. Perhaps you are at last on your way to something big.

So why did I feel like I had just sold my soul?



Hastily tossing a few choice sketches and cracking paint tubes into my sack, I pulled the open windows to and locked up the shop. There is something welcoming about the streets of London in the fall. The crisp air eradicates the odours which become so stiflingly insufferable in the summer’s heat. Everyone is out and about, taking advantage of the sun before the heavy winter chill sets in. I hate winters in London as passionately as I love the autumns. A grey and dreary fog hangs over the country like a giant blotter. Even the colour in my paints seems to fade into the misty nothingness, or worse, glare garishly under the harsh cold light. No, fall is my season, that last riot of tantalising hues which burst forth from every tree.

As I turned the corner, a plethora of shrill and screaming voices interrupted my reverie and a band of children descended on me with astonishing speed. “Uncle Phillip, Uncle Phillip!” they yelled incoherently. One little hooligan attached herself firmly to my knee, another latched on to the tails of my coat, while the third flung her arms enthusiastically around my waist.

A window flew open in the wall above me and Martine leaned far out over the sill. Her merry laughter startled a near by pigeon from its roost, where it quickly retreated to a quieter roof. “I fear you have been mobbed again, Phillip,” she called down cheekily, wiping a trace of flour from her cheek.

“That I have. When are you going to teach this unruly bunch some manners?” I raised my hands helplessly, my best look of injured innocence spreading across my features.

“It’s your own fault for encouraging them you know,” she said, quite unrepentantly. “Are you coming up?”

“If I can get away.”

She laughed and waved a hand at me in dismissal, before vanishing back into the room. I’m free at last to face the clamour of my nieces and nephew. Reaching down, I pluck little Marie off my boot and whirled her around while trying to, surreptitiously, shake some life back into my tingling foot. She smiled brilliantly before burying her face in my lapel. Wisps of silky, smoky hair tickled my ear as I shift her slightly on my hip. Johnny grabbed my coat tail once more and administered several sharp tugs. “Mama’s making pie,” he informed me gravely. “Apple,” Sylvie added, grabbing my free hand.

“I drew a picture in the flour and Mama said it was a pity to have to wipe it out and I wanted to keep it to show you and…”

“I found another bird today. Oh, and my flower grew, a whole fingers width more, it’s almost this tall now…”

Laughing, I allowed myself to be drawn up the stairs and into the bustling kitchen. Martine lured the children away with some scraps of dough left over from the pie crust, and they happily started twisting them into swirls and knots.

“Where is Maman?” I enquired, peering through the floury mist.

Before Martine could answer, another voice is heard through the doorway, fussing and clucking like a mother hen. “Is that Philippe? Bien. Send him in, Martine, I could use a hand.”

Stepping cautiously into the bedroom, I instantly have an armful of cloth thrust at me with the command, “hold these.” A petite woman flew around the room, first twitching the dust out of the curtains, then sweeping up the fallen petals of drying flowers, all the while floating linens from my arms onto the bed and straightening them. “You are looking thin, mon petit, have you been forgetting meals again?”

“Non, Maman. I only did that once this week. I have been eating well, I promise.”

“Mmmm.” She made a doubtful sound in the back of her throat while evicting a pair of hapless spiders out the window. “Well, we must fatten you up while we have the chance, then. When are you going to find a nice girl and settle down? Evangeline Johnson, just down the street, is a nice looking girl…”

I barely suppressed a groan. Ever since Martine got married, mother had decided her purpose in life was to find me a nice girl, French if possible, but English would do in a pinch. After eight years, I was steadily running out of excuses. “I truly don’t think I am ready, Maman.” I decided to play my trump card. “Besides, my painting hardly supports myself let alone another. How could I ask her to live in poverty?”

Unfortunately, she wasn’t buying it this time. “But are you happy, hmm?” She gave me another of her penetrating looks.

“Yes, je suis tres content.”

A door slammed below us, and the mobbing cry of the children saved me from further discussion. “Papa, papa,” they screamed, flocking to him like sparrows. Mother frowned again as I retreated back into the kitchen where I eagerly grasped the welcome arrival of my brother-in-law.

Thomas Clay is a large man who gives me no impression other than that of a great shaggy bear. His tawny mane of hair haphazardly grows in every direction, sharply contrasting from the neat short cut of his beard, and his weathered face is all smiles. I have only ever once had cause to be afraid of him: when a lord on his fine horse had ridden down a little beggar boy. After Thomas had pulled the lad from the churning hooves there was a look in his eye which was colder than a February wind. The lord saw it too, and if he had not backed down and made reparation to the boy there would have been murder done.

Now he advanced on me, draped all over with his children, and caught me up in a hearty hug. “Phillip, good to see you again. I was half afraid you had died up there, buried among all your canvases.” His eyes twinkled with amusement as he spoke. Thomas was a craftsman in his own right; the carved wooden easel he gave me was so precious and so beautiful that I only displayed my best work on it, far from the hazards of spilt paint. We shared an understanding of the need to bury yourself in work while the muse was speaking, since far too often she would go silent all too soon.

“I’m keeping well, Thomas, although I am afraid I will soon have to desert your welcome company again.”

“You have a commission?” Martine asked eagerly; her blind devotion to my talents was cheering if somewhat misplaced. But it did make me try to work harder, if only to meet her perceptions of my poor skill.

“Yes, but I’m not very sure that I like it.”

“What’s not to like? The commission? Or the commissioner?”

I shot Thomas a grateful look for understanding. “Both, perhaps. A Mr. William Fitzgerald paid me a call today…”

“That name sounds familiar,” Maman interrupted. “A scandal or something was it?”

“No, Blanchette,” Thomas mused, a faraway look in his eye as he searched his memory. “He was awarded for helping French wizards and witches who had fled the revolution. Publicly that is. Privately I believe he was helping himself to their coffers while making false promises about locating and reuniting families. Of course, nothing could be proven so the charges were dropped.”

“Despicable,” she agreed with feeling. Having fled the revolution ourselves, so many years ago, I knew all to well the horrors which must be floating through her mind. “We don’t need his dirty money.”

“So you think I should drop the commission then? I have the money still, and can return it to him with my regrets.”

“Let’s not be too hasty,” said Martine, ever the practical one. “Did he say what the commission was for?”

“A portrait of his daughter.” I added bitterly, “she chose me on a whim so it is quite possible that she may change her mind yet.”

Martine nodded slowly while pulling a steaming pie from the oven. “She has good taste in artists if it was her choice. And the money is for a portrait of a neutral third party, so it is hardly earned through less than proper means,” she argued reasonably. Why don’t you meet her for the first sitting, and if she is impossible to work with, or if you still feel uneasy, you can call the whole thing off and give back the money without a great loss on your behalf?”

Thomas pulled her in and kissed her heartily on the cheek. “That’s my wife,” he boasted, “always the brains of the family.” She blushed prettily while the children cheered her on.

“Well, I suppose that’s settled then,” I said with an air of relief. Winking at Johnny I neatly pilfered a slice of the freshly baked pie. Suddenly the kitchen was in an uproar as I ran about the room, hot apple filling singeing my fingers while Martine chased me, brandishing her wooden spoon. The rest of the family collapsed in their chairs, insensible with laughter.

II

The red-gold brick of the house glowed in the early morning light, the two main wings reaching out like lion’s paws, drawing in the unwary prey. Her head reared up, the glassy eyes staring out proudly into the street. She was a magnificent building, a masterpiece of detailing and craftsmanship. And she scared the life out of me.

“What have you gotten into now, Philippe?” I asked myself quietly, while I stood in the shadows of the gate. I was little David, armed with nothing but canvas and a brush; but could even they slay this Goliath? Gathering up what I could of my scattered courage, I grasped the cold iron of the gate, and I was in.

The gravel path crunched under my feet as I strode up to the house. Topiaries lined the drive, pruned into innocuous shapes, although here and there I thought I saw a devil’s snare or venomous tenticula waiting for the unwary thief.

A silken bell pull hung by the large mahogany door, the soft threads catching on my coarse hands as I pulled it once. The silvery chime laughingly echoed through the front entry where I stood, and a moment later the ponderous door opened. A little old man stood in front of me.

The butler, for that’s what I presumed he was, couldn’t possibly have been human. His head looked too large for his body, a circumstance not aided by the wooly white hair which topped it in a bush. He had unsuccessfully tried to slick it down with oil until it resembled nothing more than a greasy sheep. His face was wizened and browned like an apple that had been too much in the sun, and wrinkled into leathery folds. But despite these signs of age, his eyes were a pale, clear blue I would have expected on a boy of twenty, not one hundred and twenty. Each finger on his hands was much too long, and upon closer observation I realized with some surprise that he had three knuckles on each. His bandy legs ended in long, narrow feet which splayed out sideways giving him a permanent look of pigeon toes. Oddest of all was the stark and proper butler’s uniform which encased this unusual creature. He wore it with pride, as starched as a soldier’s uniform, and as though “plainclothes” was a word other people used.

Thistledown, as I decided to call him in a moment of whimsy, looked at me with such obvious disdain that I immediately felt the need to justify myself for having disturbed him. “Phillip Garnier,” I said, fumbling for the card that Mr. Fitzgerald had given me. “I am here to do Miss Fitzgerald’s portrait.”

“Tradesman’s entrance is around back,” Thistledown said with withering scorn, and shut the door firmly in my face, so that I had to jump back slightly to avoid being hit.

I bit back a yell of outrage, all my fear dissolving into wounded dignity. I swore a few times to relieve what feelings I could, and considered renaming the butler Stenchbelly before settling on shortening Thistledown to plain old Thistle; but it was several long minutes before I regained my composure. Picking up my bag of tricks, I started back down the drive, wondering whether I should just turn in the money and quit. Surely my pride was worth more than a hundred pounds.

But my feet turned anyway, heading down around the lion’s paw. Once more I appreciated the size of the house as I skirted around her glistening walls. Distantly I noticed the way the path artfully brought me the most imposing views of the house, past glaring gargoyles and kings of trees. Here intimidation had been cultivated to an art. And I was still seething too much to care.

The track ended a plain wooded door painted a rather cheap looking, although expensive green. A small brass knocker with the gold plaiting slowly staring to chip sat in the center. Grabbing the metal hoop I slammed it down once, twice. The reverberating clang was welcome in the stillness, and as I raised it one more time, the ring was suddenly yanked from my hand as the door opened.

It was Thistle again, not even breathing hard as I was from my run around the house. Of course, I reminded myself bitterly, he only had to walk across the damn place, not around.

He waited; every fiber of his being seemed to be silently demanding that I repeat my cause. I stared obstinately back. I’d be damned if I demeaned myself any further for this ridiculous business. I think he realized this too, for after one more steely glare, he backed away and allowed me into the house.

The elegance was overwhelming, but so much for show that it was sadly lacking in taste. As I followed Thistle down the halls and up the stairs through a twisty maze of rooms, every manner of luxury assailed my senses. Gold leapt out from every corner, decking everything in its gilded gleam. Rich and smooth wood floors slid beneath my feet, their mahogany luster hidden only by the downy plush of the oriental carpets. Gaudily framed pictures hung on the walls; I noticed at least one Van Dyke and a Reynolds or two.

We stopped outside of a small and rather unremarkable door where Thistle knocked smartly three times before announcing, “the painter, Miss.” Some of the scorn seemed to have dried from his voice, although is face still looked as though he had bitten a sour lemon.

A light voice from inside the room called out, “Show him in, please, Samson,” at which Thistle, or Samson I suppose, gave me one last warning glare before thrusting me inside the door which he scrupulously left open.

The opulence which engulfed the rest of the house was more muted in this room, the furnishings chosen for comfort, and great restraint shown in their display. Laden bookshelves lined two of the walls; a fireplace encompassed most of the third. A small table sat in the corner near the window, from which a girl was just rising, reluctantly setting aside the book she had been reading.

As she stood, the sunlight engulfed her, illuminating her form in a golden nimbus and for a moment I thought I had been sent to paint an angel. She stepped forward, and the heavenly aura faded. For the first time, I saw the girl whose portrait could be the making of me, or the breaking of my career for honesty.

I suppose it is unfair of me to say that she was nothing like I expected; she had none of the aristocratic arrogance of her father, nor his dark and dashing good looks. She was small and thin, looking more like fifteen than the eighteen or nineteen I supposed she was. Her pale hair was not golden, but instead the rich yellow-brown of ripened grain. She had pulled it back into a messy knot at the back of her head, but little strands escaped around her ears in small curls which she would twist the wrong way about her fingers when she felt too self conscious. Her heart shaped face was slender, but the determination in her pointed, elfin chin was strong. A smattering of cinnamon freckles ran across the bridge of here nose which turned up in the most un-aristocratic way. Her large eyes were wide set, like two pools of melted chocolate and above them her fair arched in perpetual puzzlement. She was all sunset tones, the yellow rose; a fact much aided by the simple apricot dress she wore.

“You are the painter then?”

Her words startled me and I realized I was staring. “I am,” I stammered flourishing my best bow. “Phillip Garnier, at your service.”

“Helen Fitzgerald,” she replied holding out her hand.

Uncertain, I took it, so small it disappeared within my own. Does she expect me to bend over and kiss it? Will she be offended if I do not? How is it that one goes about dealing with nobles like her? I wondered in confusion. Fortunately my dilemma dissolved as she shook it heartily with her own, her strong grasp such a contrast to the languid hands of her father.

“Shall we begin?” I asked at last, warming slightly to this perplexing girl.

“Yes, please.”

“What are the stipulations you have for the painting?” I inquired out of habit, bracing myself for the inevitable requests to look more beautiful, younger, and richer. Her reply startled me very much when it came.

“Simply do what you think is best.”

“I beg your pardon?” I sputtered; sure I had heard her incorrectly.

“I know I am not pretty,” she began, “and that I have none of the grace of manner found in so many young ladies of means,” she paused, unsure of how to continue. “I saw the painting you did of the sparrows which you did for Lady Huxley. So plain, so simple, and yet they looked like joy reborn as they flew.” Her face glowed with expression as she spoke. “What more can I ask for, than to have a little of the artistry and freedom shown by those birds? There was such a truth to them. Paint me as you find me, paint me like those birds.”

I well remembered that painting; Maman had been desperately ill last year, Thomas and I went into debt to pay for the healer but he could do little for her. His potions useless against the wasting fever. As I sat beside her bed and waited, expecting death, despairing of life, and wishing for hope; I noticed the sparrows outside her window. Absently I sketched them on scraps of old butcher paper until a crash startled them away. Jumping up, I noticed that Maman was awake for the first time in days, accidentally knocking her water glass off the table when reaching for a drink, the fever finally broken, sweated from her body. I painted the birds all through that night, convinced that their offering of hope had saved Maman. Selling them was the hardest thing I had ever done, but the money at least cleared our debt to the healer.

“Your Father will not mind?” I checked, sensible of who was financing this venture.

She smiled radiantly, “this portrait is his present to me, he said so, and I may have it done any way I like.” Her face dropped a bit as she tried to allay my concern. “Papa is not the best of men, I know this is true. But he has always been good to me, and we have lost so much that I cannot reproach him.” The sadness left her eyes in a blink so fast I could almost believed I had imagined it. “He will not mind,” she repeated.

And with that, I pulled out my charcoal from my bag, and began the preliminary sketches.

III



One thing I have never had trouble with is deciding which way to present a subject, how to compose a picture with grace, beauty, and balance. I ran a professional eye over the dozens of sketches I had made of Helen, studying each before rejecting it in turn. Here her lithe form was dancing across the room, there she silently gazed out the window, and in another she sat with her hands folded quietly in her lap like the model of decorum. Suddenly, I stopped, and knew I had found the one. It was the second to last sketch I had made, the charcoal lines rough on the paper, betraying the haste with which I had drawn.

I had told her to act naturally, and after an hour she had run out of poses and tasks to do around the room. Sitting down with a sigh, she had picked up her book again, and begun to read. But she was distracted, the same line running past her eyes over and over again. For a moment she lowered the book and looked out, past me, past everything. She was faraway, lost in some imagining only she could see. Half was in shadow, and half bathed in the waning daylight from the window. It was perfect.

The portrait was forming itself in my mind now, a vision unfurling, and I needed to capture it before it had gone. Muttering slightly to myself, I slipped ten pounds into an inside pocket of my vest and headed out to brave the London streets.

Soon I was slipping inside a somewhat invisible and slightly disreputable pub. A curt nod at the barman, and I slid out the back door into a little courtyard. Skimming the back wall I found the brick I was looking for, the one with the slightly coarser grain and a chipped corner, and prodded it once with my wand. There was a second’s pause before it began to creak and squeal, and the wall unfolded into Diagon Alley.

Stepping in, I breathed a sigh of relief. Don’t misunderstand, I enjoy living in London, I really do, but every moment I must pretend to be what I am not, and at times the strain of deception can be too strong. With an amiable greeting to Arthur, who ran the ice cream shop just inside the portal and who knew every witch and wizard in London, I was on my way to Gringotts.

Every time I enter those doors, I feel the apprehension of a prisoner led to the cells. Whatever its uses, the bank was not a friendly place to go. I think the goblins liked it that way. The line outside the money exchange counter was not terribly long yet, however, in an hour or so it would be nearly to the door. All of the poorer families knew that the best deals on food and clothing were to be found only in the muggle world, and being poor certainly seemed to be the fashion these days.

At last it was my turn. I smiled at the leathery face of the goblin behind the counter, and pushed over two five pound notes. “Morning, Hajak.”

He squinted back at me through smudged spectacles. Hajak was young, for a goblin, and tired already of the mindless tedium of his job. “Phillip,” he said in his abrupt way. “You are a day early.”

“I’ve had a commission.”

Hajak sniffed. “Well, at least he paid you in good English pounds and not anymore of that funny foreign stuff. The way things stand with France, I’d never be able to exchange any francs. Not that any of it really holds a candle to a solid galleon if you ask me.”

“The situation with France is affecting our world as well?” I asked in surprise.

“Of course,” Hajak looked at me suspiciously. “The name of Bonaparte is on everyone’s lips. Besides, what’s wrong with a little good, solid patriotism in troubled times?”

“Nothing,” I raced to reassure him, my heart beating fast. “Nothing at all.”

Pushing his spectacles up his nose and giving me one last look, Hajak shoved me my money. “Goodbye, Phillip. See you next week I expect.”

“Yes, next week,” I choked, my voice sounding funny in my own ears. Forcing myself to walk, I quickly strode from the building. I’ve got to hide it better, I thought in a panic. At least until all this blows over. Be careful Philippe, you have to be English now.

The cooler outside air calmed my nerves as my thoughts had not, and I drew a deep breath gratefully. Composing my mind, I tried to picture the portrait again, to divine the rich hues I would need to bring it to life. Smiling slightly and lost in a serene world of color I headed into “Simeon’s Brothers’ Oils and Acrylic Supply”.

IV

“No, Miss Fitzgerald, you must not sit like that.”

“Wasn’t I sitting still enough?” she asked in despair. A slight tone of reproach crept into her voice, “and I thought you had agreed to call me Helen.”

I sighed. The hardest part of portraiture was setting people at their ease while you were blatantly scrutinizing them from every angle. “Helen,” I said pacifyingly, “you were sitting perfectly still. You were practically granite. That was the problem. Now, all I want you to do is to relax a little bit. Why don’t you rest the book on the table here so you won’t tire yourself holding it up? Drop your chin a bit. There that feels less stiff, doesn’t it?”

“Yes,” she mumbled, tension slowly starting to creep again into the cords of her wrist and the hunch of her shoulders. That wouldn’t do at all.

“Talk to me,” I said, inspired, hoping it would be a welcome distraction for her. “Tell me a bit about yourself.”

“It won’t hurt your painting?” she asked with concern.

“I’ll tell you when I need to do your mouth and chin, but nothing else should be bobbing up and down too badly.”

“Very well. Although there really isn’t much of interest, I’m sure,” she demurred.

“I’ll be the judge of that. Where is your mother? I have met your father but not her.”

“She is dead.”

I stopped painting, my brush hovering over the canvas where I was outlining the preliminary shapes. “I’m sorry,” I floundered, not sure of what platitudes of comfort to give.

She gave me a sad little smile. “It’s quite alright; how were you to know. Besides, I am quite used to it; she died when I was born. Childbirth. There were… complications.”

“You are an only child, then?” My brush began tracing the fine lines of her hands, dipping here and there to denote the edge of the book.

The silence stretched much longer this time before she answered. “I had a sister, a twin. She came first, and quite easily. I was harder. Turned the wrong way around. But I made it through, and mother did not. The strain was too great for her, the healer said.”

“It was not your fault.” I don’t know why I said those words, she must have heard them before; such absurd, meaningless words.

Helen gave a little laugh; such a pathetic sound could not conceal the old hurt underneath. But when she went on, her voice was steady. “Since my sister was born first, she was given the name of Helga.”

“A pretty name,” I observed, staring at my palette. I would start with her hands, I decided. I could work the tones, from the white and brown of the book to the midrange of pinks and yellows for the flesh. Blues and purples to pull in the shadows of course, and the hint of light on the knuckles underscored with a somber orange.

“It was for my mother’s mother. On her side of the family there is always at least one surviving Helga, for one of our ancestors. She started a school I think, only Papa does not approve, and refused to send me there. I had tutors for both magic and muggle matters instead. Papa had me named Helen for his mother. If I ever have children, it will be my duty I suppose, to name the first girl Helga, for my sister.”

“Couldn’t your sister simply name one of her children Helga?” I asked reasonably, smoothing the paint up her wrist. Ah yes, and the highlight here, so the shadow goes just like so.

“She could not. When we were five, both Helga and I got the spotted plague, the one that only affected our kind, not muggles. The fever lasted for days before it finally broke. Again I was lucky; I survived and she did not.”

I lifted my gaze from her fingers to her face. She looked old. There were lines to her face I hadn’t noticed before; laugh lines yes, but lines of sorrow as well. But despite the hurt, there was a light in her, so strong she glowed, radiated concern, caring, and joy. Her small frame was no matter, she was strong; life would not set her back. I was envious for a moment, envious of her ability to accept the hurt and shed the despair. I knew I could not roll with the punches, I would stand and throw myself into the fray, consequences be damned. Serenity happened to other people. And for the first time I found myself wanting to borrow a little of hers.

“How do you do it?” I asked, amazed with the revelation I saw in her face. “To live each day with such perseverance?”

She understood. “How then can it be that there is sweetness in the fruit we pluck from the bitter crop of life, in the mourning and the tears, the wailing and the sighs?”

“Aristotle?”

“Augustine.” She began to shrug and caught herself halfway through, making an awkward, abrupt gesture. “Hope, I suppose. Hope that there is something beyond death, and trust in myself, in the living, and in the dead. Despair only comes when you turn your back on the world.”

“And if the world turns its back on you?” There was a bitterness in my voice I hadn’t expected, it was harsh in the stillness of the room.

“Believe in its goodness. It can’t disown you unless you let it.”

I wasn’t sure if I agreed with her words, but I listened none the less. There are worse philosophies of life, after all. Every day we spoke while I painted. She had read all of the great minds; we argued Plato, Seneca, Galileo, Machiavelli, and Thomas More. By unspoken consent we each avoided modern politics, although I suspect it was for very different reasons one each of our accounts. The closest we ever came was a brief mention of Voltaire’s Candide, but still we skittered around the subject like a pair of nervous horses.

“Today I am going to need you to do something a little differently.” I announced one morning a week and a half later. “I need to get the shadows and the form of your face, so you must talk as little as possible. I would hate to get them wrong and make you look like some sort of freakish cadaver,” I joked, far more comfortable with such familiarity now.

She smiled at that, sticking out her tongue in a terribly refined way. “If I must,” she said in a tone of long suffering, that was betrayed by the twinkle of mischief in her eyes, “but you will need to amuse me in some way. It is your turn now; tell me about yourself, Phillip.”

“There is really nothing to tell,” I replied, straining to keep both my face and voice bland. Will you understand? Can I share what I have spent too long trying to hide? Can I trust you? But somewhere deep in my gut, I knew I already had. I sighed, trying to clear my mind, prepare my thoughts. “I will tell you, but in the strictest of confidentiality.” Will you keep the secret of my past?

Helen understood my unspoken plea at once. “I will not break your trust,” she promised with all sincerity, although her eyes looked puzzled at the secrecy.

“Thank you.” I toyed with my brush for a moment, swirling together a smoky blue-grey with minute precision, attempting to delay the inevitable. “I was born in Paris, twenty-nine years ago.”

“That’s impossible,” Helen protested. “Your English is flawless, your accent is pure London. You even walk, talk, and dress like a native.”

I smiled at her surprise; I had done a better job of hiding than I had thought. “I accept your compliments to my mimicry, but if I may continue?”

“Yes, of course.” She at least had the grace to look abashed. “I did not intend to insinuate that you were being less than truthful.”

“As I was saying, I was born in Paris. My name is not Phillip but Philippe, Philippe Marius Garnier. My father was a scholar and a wizard of some note. He spent a great deal of time working with the Comte de Renard on a philosophical treatise on the nature of magic. The Comte appreciated his efforts, and paid my father a modest salary as well as ensuring that Martine and I were educated.”

“Martine?”

“My sister,” I said by way of explanation. “She is two years older than I, and very like our mother. She’s married now and has two daughters and a son.” I couldn’t keep the pride out of my voice as I spoke of my nieces and nephew. “They are fortunate to have inherited all of their mother’s good looks as well as her cleverness. But I am getting ahead of myself,” I apologized. “Our life in Paris was pleasant, if uneventful. Martine and I would spend the mornings studying, the afternoons devoted to art and music. I regret to say that I spent a great deal of time mocking our tutors. As you noted, I have an eye and an ear for mimicry, I would frequently have the entire family in stitches about the curious idiosyncrasies of our tutors. Usually by four in the afternoon, we would be dismissed and allowed to play truant so long as we stayed out of trouble. There was this one old tree in the square by our house which I claimed for my own. When I wasn’t out playing with the other children, street urchins really, you would find me aloft in its branches dreaming, sketching, reading, anything. In the evening, Maman would call me in for dinner, yelling my name so often I was sure it would become quite worn out. After dinner, if he was in the right frame of mind, Papa would tell us stories about his research that day, saying that any flaw our young minds could catch must be serious indeed.”

I was silent for a minute, the old memories strong. It is funny the way that the bad seems to fade away after time. Life had hardly been idyllic, yet it was the good times, the lazy summer afternoons, that the memory clings to so ardently. “We weren’t rich,” I said in all fairness, “but we weren’t poor either. We had our trials. Martine and I would fight like dogs and cats, all tooth and claw. Life was just pleasant, comfortable, and familiar.”

“And then?” Helen prompted, and I realized I had fallen silent again.

Ah, yes. These were the memories we tried to squelch, to keep buried deep under lock and key. It’s funny the way they kept creeping to the surface again and again. “The revolution came,” I said flatly. “I was but fourteen. We kept waiting for it to be over, but it never was. Our money was mostly gone, given to the “glorious cause” to prevent suspicion from falling upon ourselves. It was like hell. I’ve heard it sometimes referred to as the Terror now, and I could not find a more apt name. We lived every day in fear. The city had gone mad, overnight, the streets smelled of blood, and every day the crowd before the guillotine roared its approval.”

I can still smell it, I thought dismayed. The putrid smoke, the sticky sweet of rot, and everywhere the filth, overlain with the thin veneer of death. But worse was the terror that struck your heart and leeched out all thoughts of love and hope. Friendships breaking because no one could be trusted, one wrong word or thought and you could be next to die. We were not men then, but animals, viscous and cruel. We were in a state of nature as Descartes believed us to be- that of war. He said that man is self interested, cunning, and dangerous to one another without the leviathan of a government to check our instincts. All of those years, I feared we had proven him right.

Helen’s eyes were bright with sympathetic tears, her face betraying her revulsion at the image I created before her. I carried on. “One day we heard that the Comte had been arrested for the heinous crime of being aristocratic. My father wanted to seek his release, to prove that Renard was a good man. Maman argued that it was foolishness, that he would only be putting himself in danger. He went regardless. The next day he was arrested as well.”

The memories assailed me now, striking deep and hard, I could not tell her, could not bear the pity and the pain I would see in her eyes. More of a mob, than orderly soldiers. They forced open the door and pulled him from his chair. Maman was screaming and crying, but he went so quietly. I attacked one of them, sinking my fist into his stomach. He knocked me down so easily, my head hit the table and everything went dark. When I woke, Martine was on the floor, cradling me, and trying to staunch the blood from a cut over my eye. Maman was gone. She spent all night speaking to father through the bars of the prison. He would die the next morning.

“Maman, Martine, and I escaped Paris on the same day they… he…” I couldn’t say it, not even now, fifteen years later. I took a shuddering breath. “We could hear the cheers, the catcalls of the crowd, the swish of the blade as we left, hidden on the back of a cart. In Normandy we found passage on a boat across the channel and came to London. Maman believed we could live safely in anonymity here, that the madness of anarchy wouldn’t reach these shores.”

“And you found that safety?” Her voice asked, and I remembered the rumors, the scandal surrounding her own father on that count.

Ruefully, I shook my head. “We did not. While we were safe now from our own countrymen, we were despised by yours. Years of tension and wars are not easily forgotten. I quickly learned through the thrashings of other boys that the last thing to be was different, foreign, and particularly French. So I watched and I listened. I learned how to be an English lad, to mimic in action, thought, and deed. I changed my name to Phillip, I suppressed my heritage everywhere but at home. And it worked. I was no longer myself, but I could find work now; I could support and protect Maman and Martine.”

She finished the thought for me. “And in time you became Phillip.”

“I did. Except in times, like now, when the old conflicts, old hatreds, old suspicions rise up again. Then I am mostly fearful that someone will find Philippe and drag out him and his past to be displayed and judged before thousands of watching eyes.”

“Oh, Phillip, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to cause you pain.”

“You haven’t,” I said, surprised to find that it was indeed true. “Sometimes not always having to pretend loosens the strain and allows in a little fresh air.”

“The truth,” she agreed, “will set you free.”

V

The portrait was finished. All month I had laboured, and now it was done; the last stroke of cinnamon brown caressing the side of her cheek. The sunlight gleamed over her shoulder, pouring over the table and book like a river of honey. All else was the smoky dusk of shadows veiling another realm of mystery and imagination. The pages of the book ruffled, caught in the breeze as they were lowered, and caught in time; forever falling as gently as a drop of rain without ever bursting on the cold pavement. The small tapered fingers hovered, a blue-black stain running along the first two where ink had leaked from her quill. Her wheaten hair tumbled down in tendrils like the gently swaying arms of a willow in the wind. The hint of a smile played on her lips, the serene countenance of her face a stark contrast to the shadows into which she stared. Each lash of her eye was dark, as though laden with tears, but her eyes burned with the gentle glow of the sunlight.

She was a puzzle, an enigma this girl. Both dark and light, sorrow and joy, strength and weakness portrayed in her frame. Neither divine nor secular, angel nor demon. She was everything at once, and yet there was nothing you could label her. In short, she was herself.

“It is time,” I said with some reluctance. “There is nothing more I need to do.”

Helen, by her own choice, had not once seen the picture and I did not wish to have failed her. But some deep and treacherous part of me wished that she would not approve, and I could keep this portrait for myself. It was the crowning glory of my career. I would never paint another to match it.

Standing aside, I made room for her at the easel. She was silent for so long I wondered if my unspoken wish had come true.

“Oh, Phillip, I don’t know what to say,” she stuttered at last in breathless delight. “It is so perfect, better than anything I could have imagined. It’s…” She paused, at a loss for words. “It’s poetry in motion. You are a genius, Phillip, an absolute genius.”

“It was not me,” I demurred. “I am as much a tool as my paints and my brush. That is you and your truth as you wanted it to be shown.”

We stood, side by side for a moment longer, gazing at the girl behind the strokes of paint.

“Are you ready?” I asked; my quiet voice shattering the moment.

“Yes,” Helen replied, entranced. “Yes.”

Slowly I muttered a few words under my breath; so old that their meaning had been lost. They were now known only as the Painter’s Prayer, supposedly to awaken the magic if the subject is painted true. Superstition, Philippe, senseless superstition. But I said them anyway, just in case.

“Breathe on her,” I commanded. “Give her life.”

Slowly, cautiously, Helen bent towards the painting. Her lips parted and I could hear the faintest exhalation of breath against the canvas. Nothing happened. She exhaled again, harder this time, emptying her lungs of all that was in them. Nothing. Still we waited.

At last I felt my shoulders drop in acceptance of defeat. I had failed. Bitter despair welled up inside of my heart, pushing against the walls of my chest until I felt I might explode with the knowledge of it. The breath rushed from my lungs in a soundless sob of frustration and grief. Beside me, Helen sighed, disappointment clear on her face.

As our breath mingled in the air, the faintest golden mist began to entwine itself in the currents. Gently it pressed against the painting and began to seep inside as though crossing a window into another world. We watched, amazed, as her hair ruffled in an invisible wind. Those painted lips parted and sucked in the thin golden stream. For a moment she blinked, her eyes staring deep into our own. And then the wind was gone, and she sat, as still as before.

Of course, I realized. I lied when I said she was none of my creation. I painted you, Helen, painted you and understood you. But I put a little bit of myself into that painting too. I painted your truth as I see it, and in this portrait we will both live on forever.

But the ceremony was not complete. The time honored phrase of painter’s everywhere slipped easily from my lips. “You gave her your breath freely that she might live; in time she will give you breath again that you might live in her.”

Helen’s eyes glowed with that inner light as she looked at me now. “With all my heart, I thank you.”

VI

I am old, now, and have painted many a canvas since then. Sometimes by evening my hands shake so badly that I can hardly hold a spoon let alone my brush. My sight is slowly fading, the colors once so crisp and clear in my mind are dulled as seen through these dusty windows. Even my mind feels fogged these days, every memory pulled through a misted veil.

I never married, much to Maman’s dismay. My paint and canvas was mistress enough, and I could not neglect her. Sometimes I wonder, what could have happened if… but no, I am content. Each day one of my nieces or nephews or even my great nieces and great nephews comes and visits me here in my flat. The studio is mostly gone, here and there relics of the heyday of my youth, and all is now designed for comfort rather than art. I love to see their faces, to answer their questions about the paintings on the walls, to tell the children stories of a time long ago when a troublesome boy with a knack for sketching ran through the streets of Paris, young and carefree.

One night late in September, there came a knock on the door just as the light had almost fully waned and I was preparing to go to bed. Oh the privilege of the old, that we may sleep as much as we please.

“Come in,” I yelled from my battered armchair by the fire. It was probably Sophie with an evening treat, or Johnny bringing over baby Thomas who never would go to sleep without a story.

A strange man entered instead, squinting at a rather grubby piece of parchment he held in consternation. “’Ere, are you Phillip Garnier, by any chance?”

“I am,” I replied in all astonishment, my hand grasping my wand and holding it by my side just in case. “What can I do for you?”

He gave me a smile of blatant relief. “I have a delivery for you, from a,” he consulted his paper again, “a Miss Davenport on behalf of her late mother, Mrs. Davenport.” With a flick of his wand, he summoned in a package wrapped in rather grubby brown paper which had been lucking just outside my door.

“Thank you,” I said, thoroughly flummoxed. I was quite sure I knew of no one by that name, nor why any such package should be forthcoming.

He nodded affably, and on impulse I gave him a sickle for his effort. I watched as he shuffled out of the room in shoes that sounded three sizes too big and pulled the door to. There was the faintest of pops, and I knew he was gone.

I observed the package where it stood in the middle of my floor. It was a thin rectangle, no more than four inches deep, covered all over in once carefully wrapped brown paper tied up in twine. Cautiously I prodded it once or twice with my wand, and then felt foolish when nothing happened. Grabbing a pen knife from the drawer of my desk, I sawed through the impossible knots; cutting here and there until I could brush the paper away.

Inside was a painting in a simple wooden frame. The girl, for a girl she was, looked at me for a moment, her eyebrows cocked in puzzlement.

“Sir,” she said at last, her voice soft and rich, “I feel like I should know you.”

I gazed desperately back at her, though a screen of crystal tears. “Helen,” I breathed. “My, Helen.”


If you wish to accept responsibility of this portrait, often entitled “Lady Hope,” please respond with due haste. I believe Helen would be glad to go to Hogwarts at last. I anxiously await your owl and your reply.
Sincerely yours,
P. M. Garnier