Edward Marston - The Trip to Jerusalem

'May I see you safe home, Mistress?'

'All the way to Jerusalem.'

'I have told you. I am with Westfield's Men.'

'Our meeting today was foretold.'

'Not to me.'

'We were destined to cross paths. Master Bracewell.'

'In the middle of the River Trent?'

'Tax not divine appointment.'

'Let me escort you to your house.'

'I have resolved to leave it for ever.'

'Yet you spoke of a husband and of children.'

'They will have to make shift without me.'

'Does duty not prompt you?' he said.

'Aye, sir. To follow the voice of God.'

Nicholas had met religious maniacs before. More than one of his fellow-sailors on the voyage with Drake had found the privations too hard to bear. They had taken refuge in a kind of relentless Christianity that shaped their lives anew and consisted in a display of good deeds and profuse quotations from the Bible. Eleanor Budden was not of this mould. Her obsession had a quieter and more rational base. That increased its danger.

'The Lord has brought us together,' she said. 'Has he?'

'Do you not feel it?'

'Honesty compels me to deny it.

'Where you lead, I will follow.'

'That is out of the question,' he said in alarm. 'You have been sent as my guide.'

'But we are not going to Jerusalem, I fear.'

'What, then, is your destination?'

'York.'

'I knew it!'

Eleanor flung herself to her knees and bent down to kiss his shoes. Nicholas backed away in embarrassment as she tried to clutch at him. Facing up to a band of angry gypsies had been nothing to this. Eleanor was a model of persistence, a burr that stuck firmly to his clothing.

'I must come with you. Master Bracewell.'

'Where?'

'To York. I must see the Archbishop.'

'Travel to the city by some other means.

'You are my appointed guardian.'

'Mistress, I am part of a company.'

'Then I will go with you and your fellows.'

'That is not possible.'

'Why, sir?'

'For a dozen reasons,' he said, wishing he could call some of them to mind. 'Chiefly, for that we are all men who ride together. No woman may join our train.'

'That is a rule which God can change.'

'Master Firethorn will not permit it.'

'Let me but talk with him.'

'It will be of no avail.'

Eleanor Budden got to her feet and turned her blue eyes on him with undisguised ardour. She stepped in close and her long wet strands of hair brushed his cheek.

'You have to take me to York,' she insisted.

'For what reason?'

'I love you.'

Nicholas Bracewell quailed. He foresaw trouble.

Lawrence Firethorn was slowly enthralled. More to the point, he smelled money. Oliver Quilley had invited him up to his room to put a proposition to him, and, after rejecting it out of hand, the actor-manager was slowly being won over.

The artist expatiated on his work. Strutting about the room in his finery like a turkey-cock, the dwarfish dandy explained why he had become a miniaturist.

'Limning is a thing apart from all other painting and drawing, and it excelleth all other art whatsoever in sundry points.'

'Discover more to me.'

'The technique of painting portrait miniatures comes from manuscript illumination. Hence the term "limning". Yet Master Holbein, the first of our breed, painted in the tradition of full-size portraits that were scaled down.'

'And you, Master Quilley?'

'My style is unique, sir.'

'Do you acknowledge no mentors?'

'I take a little from Holbein and a little more from Hilliard but Oliver Quilley is a man apart from all other limners. This you shall judge for yourself.'

He opened his leather pouch and took out four tiny miniatures that were wrapped in pieces of velvet. He removed the material and set them out on the table. Firethorn was overwhelmed by their brilliance. Three were portraits of women and the fourth of a man. All were executed with stunning confidence in colours that were uncannily lifelike. Quilley read his mind and had an explanation to hand.

'The principal part of drawing or painting after life consists in the truth of the line.' He pointed at his work. 'You see, sir? No shadowing is here. I believe in the sovereignty of the line and the magic of colour.'

'They are quite magnificent!'

'Ail paintings imitate nature or the life, but the perfection is to imitate the face of mankind.'

'And womankind,' said Firethorn, ogling the loveliest of the women. 'Who is the lady, sir?'

'A French Countess. And the other is her sister.'

'The third?'

Lady Delahaye. I was commissioned by her husband to have it ready in time for her wedding. It is all but finished and I can deliver it when I return to London.'

Firethorn warmed to the little man, sensing that he was in the presence of a fellow-artist, one who consorted with the nobility and whose work was worn as pendants or brooches at court, and yet who had made no fortune from his wondrous talents. The actor knew that story all too well because it was his own. Exceptional ability that went unrewarded in its proper degree. That sense of living hand-to-mouth which compromised the scope of his art and silenced its true resonance.

'Marry, sir, what a case is this!' he said. 'Here we are together. Men of genius who are packed off out of London to scrabble for every penny we get.'

Aye,' agreed Quilley. 'Then to have it taken from us by some murderous highwaymen. Had they taken these miniatures instead, I had been ruined.'

A thought took on form in Firethorn's mind.

'You wish to travel in our company, you say?'

'Only for safety's sake, as far as York.'

'We do not carry passengers in our company.'

'I'd pay my way, Master Firethorn, be assured.'

'That is what I come to, sir.' He tried to work out which was the better profile to present to the artist. 'Is it possible--I ask but in the spirit of unbiased enquiry--that you could paint such a portrait of me?'

'Of you or of any man, sir. For a fee.'

'A guarantee of your safety?'

'I'd need a horse of my own.'

'Done, sir!'

'And a bedchamber to myself at every stop we make?'

'It shall be the first article of our agreement.'

'We understand each other, sir.'

'Such a portrait would be very precious to me.'

'And to me, Master Firethorn,' said Quilley with elfin seriousness. 'The terms of the work can be talked over at a later date but I give you this as a sign of good faith.' He handed over the miniature of the man. 'It is worth much more than I will cost you. I am but small and very light to carry.'

Firethorn looked down at the exquisite oval painting that lay in his palm. It had such fire and elegance and detail. The man stared up at him with a pride that was matched by his poise. Firethorn was overcome by the generosity of the artist.

'This is for me, sir?'

'To seal our friendship and buy me safe passage.'

'It is the very perfection of art, sir.'

'My work is never less than that.'

'But will not the subject want it for himself?'

'I fear not, sir.'

'I would hate to take his personal property away.'

'The fellow has no need of it now.'

'Why?'

'Because that is Anthony Rickwood in your hand.'

'The name is familiar.'

'You have seen his portrait before, I think.'

'Have I?'

'It is the work of another famous artist.'

What is his name?'

'Sir Francis Walsingham,' said Quilley. 'He paints his subjects upon spikes. You may have seen poor Master Rickwood on display above Bishopsgate.'

'The man was a traitor?' gulped Firethorn.

'A staunch Roman Catholic'

'I am holding a corpse?'

'That is the essence of Walsingham's art.'

Quilley gave a mischievous smile that only caused the actor further discomfort. Firethorn had now changed his mind about the gift. Instead of being a treasured object, it was burning his palm like molten metal.