short story: gilt

GILT

I

 

“I find you odious.”

“And I find your frankness refreshing. However, that does not alter our immediate circumstances.” He paused, “What I ask is clear, no? A straightforward request, bringing our relationship to a conclusion”.

“How do I know this will be the end? What guarantee do I have?”

He leaned in, “My dear, you seem to misunderstand your position. You do not hold any cards. Any. You certainly cannot afford a guarantee”.

 

Back in her office, she stared at her desk, livid. When the switchboard asked if they might put through a call from Sheridan Talbot, she had been thrilled. He was legendary in the acquisitions field; a hero to her. The Talbot library - housed in his duplex in The Beresford - was a staggering achievement. He had forged one of America’s finest private collections in under twenty years.

On the phone Talbot had been gracious, seigniorial. Could he intrude so much as to consult her on a manuscript purchase he was considering? Might this very afternoon be a possibility; he could send a car over?

By the time she was seated in his signature Jaguar Mark II 1959 (the year of his birth), Amy had already envisaged her appraisal of the manuscript, Talbot’s regardful response and subsequent poaching of her from The Cloisters. Appointing her as curator to his private collection would allow Talbot more time with his new young wife in her pregnancy. That he was the known rival of Raynard, her overseer, made it only sweeter. She could walk away from his demesne and enfold herself into the world of his nemesis. She would become a devoted acolyte. It was perfect.

On arrival, she was informed that her host was taking a call; would she mind waiting in the library a few moments? She may need to hold onto her jacket: they were still experimenting with the temperature regulation. Walking across the red onyx floor, Amy recalled the feature on Talbot in Time magazine: Last of the Big Spenders? The bottom floor held the library, study, dining room, wine cellar and an eat-in kitchen. Upstairs was the master suite featuring five windows on to Central Park, double baths, dressing room, the master’s den, two further bedrooms, two bathrooms. And a maid’s room.

She took the steps down from the living area to the famous gallery. Time did not do justice to the space. It was beautifully set out, running the length of the duplex, spanned by tasteful arches to create a wide interior arcade.

Amy sat neatly on a Chippendale camel back sofa for less than a minute before she rose to explore. The furniture was simple but exquisite: English oak shelving lined the niches, and the halfway point of the gallery was marked by a long refectory table, matched with a selection of Italian walnut chairs. Many of the items on view were familiar from sale catalogues of recent years: the Medici narwhal cup; a silverpoint by Lippi; a unicorn’s horn, two metres long, crowned in silver, engraved with fantastic beasts. There was a tenth-century wine glass cut from a single block of crystal, once owned by Pope Clement II. Holding the glass up to the light, Amy caught its delicate Arabic inscription: “There is no good in wealth if it is not with a generous giving hand”. She smiled.

Amy was bemused at Talbot’s fondness for the de casibus tradition, illustrating the lives - and downfall - of great men. Here was a stained glass panel of Boccaccio owned by Lucrezia Borgia, an illustrated Lydgate, Chaucer’s Boethius. She came to the infamous orphery of Pope Alexander VI, the decorative band for which Talbot had outbid the Getty Museum. It was mid-fourteenth century, a wide linen panel exquisitely embroidered in silver gilt and coloured silks. Lady Fortuna stood against a milles fleurs background, turning her wheel of fortune, constantly inconstant. On the wheel were four men. One gripped the left-hand side of the wheel, looking greedily upwards. He was labelled regnabo: ‘I shall reign’. On the top a man stood proudly crowned: regno. To the right a man was plummeting, regnavi. Beneath the wheel a crushed figure lay prone, labelled sum sine regno: ‘I have no kingdom’. It was sumptuous - it was all sumptuous.

Then she saw it. Displayed in a reading niche, quietly framed, was a leaf from a glossed Psalter depicting Psalm 57 in the Vulgate text. She recognised it instantly: the large historiated initial, foliate border, fine bastarda anglicana script.

 

It was the one she had stolen from The Cloisters.

 

Amy looked around her wildly, blood pounding.

She was quite alone.

He left her alone for a further ten minutes, during which she recognised the four other pieces that she had stolen. She catalogued the items: a richly-decorated herbal in protogothic script; twelve medieval tiles from Buckfast Abbey; the thirteenth-century ring brooch, wrought of gold and sapphire; a carved pax stone. No heart-stopping treasures. She had chosen artefacts whose disappearance would not be noticed at the Met for years.

 

Unless the Met was told.

 

When her peak of panic was reached, Sheridan Talbot entered. He was smooth, complimentary, unctuous. He urged her to be seated, leant over, conspiratorial. He was entrusting her with an important task, a quest if you will.

If she would.

He wanted Pucelle’s Gospel of John, which The Cloisters had purchased the previous year as a companion piece to one of their treasures: The Hours of Jeanne d’Evreux. Although not on permanent display, it was an important item. Amy’s mind raced as Talbot waxed lyrical on the manuscript: surely the 1331 John was Pucelle’s most subtle piece. Such an innovative approach to three-dimensional space; what indeed could compare to the naturalistic borders of the new school? The delightful drolleries: so playful, so sacred. On its spine John stood less than four inches tall; it would be a simple item to conceal, and Amy’s past diablerie had prepared her well. Such things happened all the time. There were 30,000 items missing from the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Since moving to Euston Road in 1997 the British Library had lost over 8,000 books. It was not as if he was asking her to abscond with The Hours of Jeanne d'Evreux. He had every confidence that she could evade detection from the choleric Raynard; the poor soul hadn’t yet grasped that his star was on the wane… Talbot caught himself in his digression: “After all my dear, what is one little book in comparison to the promising career you have burgeoning before you, waiting to unfold”.

Amy picked up the gospel on the way back to her office.

It was done.

She walked through the museum with the book, forcing her body to slow, her mind to concentrate on physical surroundings until her gait felt natural. The daring vision of The Cloisters still filled her with reverence: medieval buildings dismantled, shipped from Europe and rebuilt brick by brick on the northern tip of Manhattan. The museum itself was part of the display, thousands of architectural elements flowing one into another.

Crossing the Bonnefont Cloister, she faltered, stopped under one of the quinces as vertigo overcame her. Her mind reeled downwards. Around her, the Cistercian buildings seemed to stretch apart at their corners, the stones prising themselves free. “The centre cannot hold”, she murmured. But it had to hold. Gripping the leaden manuscript, she fought the sensation and step by step walked out of the harsh sunlight towards her office.   

Inside she recalled the world of marginalia that was peculiarly Pucelle. Within the pages of John, massive insects, animals and hybrid humans clambered over text, stretched out between lines, peered around paragraph corners. A snail crept along the underside of an initial; a monkey clung on to an enormous dragonfly. She was forced to agree with Talbot: the daring eccentricities of this manuscript eclipsed the work of The Hours with glorious abandon.

The full-page grisaille illustration opening the book was remarkable, executed in monochrome shades of grey and highlighted with gold leaf. John was centre, holding a chalice containing a snake, here symbolising wisdom rather than sin. At his side a devil reached across to steal the ink with which he would write his Gospel. The background scene had always puzzled Amy. Two figures stood within a colonnade: St Benedict of Narsius blessed a poisoned cup, rendering it harmless, but beside him was Socrates, drinking willingly from his poisoned chalice.

Amy started when the phone rang. It was the switchboard, to inform her that the Fine Art group from NYU had arrived. Amy closed the manuscript, strove to regulate her breath. It would be a relief to discuss pigments and techniques and ateliers for the afternoon.  Safe topics, unrelated to theft.

Walking up to her apartment that evening, she replayed the encounter with Talbot. Of course he knew from the first. He gloated over it.

“What could drive a young scholar with such promise to such a desperate act?”

She had not spoken. “Was it medical expenses? Ah, is this poor sick mama? The reason you had to leave work suddenly on not one but two occasions. Most dramatic. Travel up to Boston, hold her frail hand, wonder if it’s even possible that she could recover, and if not - how much longer, how much longer… Because you need to have a life too, oh yes. And all the while the bills - her bills mind you - mount up.  Master Pucelle will put all that to right.”

She bolted the door, stood and sighed into its wood until Toadstone curled through her ankles, “Hi Toady. What’s that: how was my meeting with the big famous art collector? Well, he turned out to be the guy from EBay. Not my salvation after all”.  She sank down and stroked his grey fur as he made furious circles around her. “What’s that: what am I going to do? Well I have the book right here. I’m going to get it to him tomorrow. And then we’ll see if I have a career left”. Mister Toadstone mewed. “Or a shred of self-respect.”

Amy picked him up, burying her face in his fur. “It’s true what they say. We must not touch our idols; the gilt sticks to our fingertips.”

 

II

 

The first guest rang as Raynard was putting the finishing touches to the scene. He heard them being welcomed, took one final look at the study. Sprezzatura - the art of artlessness.

Dante’s Inferno was opened to a fine illumination, his little tribute to Talbot. To one side, behind a silver gilt casket, was a small stack of volumes. He deliberated yet again on whether to excise the Pucelle John, and yet again found himself unable to remove it. The thrill of knowing that it lay quietly at the base of the stack was too irresistible.  After all, he rationalized, it had been six months.

“I picked this one up for a steal.”

The soirée was in full flow. “Of course, since 1978 and the Von Hirsch Collection, things have been uphill. You don’t get as much for your money nowadays.” A stockbroker and playwright nodded in unison. “This piece is from the Talbot estate: his widow was aware of my interest, and she resolved her grief quickly, shall we say?”

Quick work indeed. It had been four months since Talbot’s death. Each day Amy waited for the phone call: to hear that the probate process had revealed certain inconsistencies, the finances had raised a query. There had been nothing. The week after the Pucelle theft, a hospital trust representative had come to her, had murmured in quiet tones of an anonymous benefactor, a godsend, Fortune smiling upon her. She signed papers, never saw a bill. Sheridan Talbot was never mentioned.

Now, hearing his name spoken by Raynard, she was on edge, saturated afresh with guilt. Amy slipped away from the conversation into a side room, thankful for its muted light. She glanced over the Inferno manuscript, admired the gothic tracery of the silver casket, then her gaze came to rest on the neat pile of volumes.

She would recognise the spine anywhere.

It held the gilt insignia of Marston’s library. Her hands shook as she shimmied the manuscript out from the bottom of the stack. The nineteenth-century insignia marked the owner’s hubris; it wasn’t enough for Marston to possess the book, he had to imprint himself on it. It was her John.

Hearing a voice approaching, she restored the volume and pored keenly over the Inferno. It was the Professor of Jewish-Catholic Studies at Iona. Amy found herself rambling about the Württemberg crossbow, the Yiddish benediction above its trigger, written in Hebrew for a Christian patron. He soon suggested that they rejoin the party. She forced herself to wait fifteen minutes, then claimed a headache and escaped.

In the cab, the discovery tortured her. If she could unlearn the knowledge. If only she had never looked.

But perhaps she was supposed to look. Perhaps Raynard left the book out specifically for her.

To tell her that he knew.

 

Raynard was pleased; the evening had gone well. He sauntered through the apartment with a final glass of Fleurie, replaying highlights of the evening. He had bested Switten in the debate on Josephus, been asked to write a preface for VanderKam’s new book and to give a lecture at NYPL. All most satisfying.

In the study, he closed the Dante, adjusted the casket. Then he froze. The book’s position in the stack had altered.

 

There was only one: Amy Harrington. She had seen.

 

III

 

Strolling back through the Cuxa cloister after lunch with a benefactor, Raynard felt fattened and appreciated; even his rheumatic pain had receded. He pictured the original Benedictines gracing the cloister, then compared them to the Audio-Guide tourists who now moved erratically through the space. He had long suspected that the audio-guide robbed visitors of the spontaneity of experience. Did its users ever divert from the route to investigate a grotesque, a finial, a flower? Yet it was an effective method of control.

It was insufferable that the girl knew, but he had that in hand.

The evening at Talbot’s residence four months earlier had been artfully designed. The host casually mentioned on entry that they were toute seule; his bride was weekending at the Hamptons. Raynard merely glanced at the gallery, then seated himself with his back to the arcade. Talbot was jubilant, wine flowing too freely. The evening’s badinage was cloaked swordplay. Raynard refused to allow it to escalate, waited patiently for Talbot to reveal his purpose. Finally his host excused himself - a call to Japan scheduled - would Wilton care to look at some recent acquisitions while he waited? They were all set out on the refectory table.

The Pucelle John lay underneath a copy of Boethius. It was insufferable. As Raynard went to leave Talbot appeared, leering. He sneered that Raynard was the one man who would appreciate the jewel of his collection. That is, until something more sparkly caught his eye.

Fuelled by impotence and rage in equal measure, Raynard pushed his host. It proved more than effective. The head gashed against the red steps, onyx slick with blood. Clearly dead.

Raynard thought quickly. He could not be discovered here. It would not do.

First he turned and walked back to the long table. After all, the damage had been done, the insurance paid, the literature altered. There had been an audit of the vaults; an investigation into the finances of the staff. Suspicion had been cast and had faded. Best to let sleeping dogs lie.

He then located the thermostat function for the gallery and turned it up to room temperature. The following morning, the coroner concluded that the earliest time of death was twenty minutes after Raynard bade goodnight to the doorman, John nestled in the inside pocket of his jacket. If she noticed the warmth of the room, Talbot’s young wife probably put it down to her condition, or the number of police, photographers and technicians swarming through the arcade.

 

“You see here greyhounds, who hunt by sight, and running hounds, who hunt by scent”. Amy tried to melt into the small group. She was only a few minutes late; the tour guide was introducing the first of the unicorn tapestries - The Start of the Hunt. Glancing out onto the cloister, Amy saw Raynard strolling by. He looked entirely unperturbed.

She was right not to try to take the manuscript from him. It would have played into his hand. She was certain the study had been staged, down to the Inferno manuscript displaying that bas-de-page scene, where gruesome serpents swarmed over men, devouring and transmuting them. It depicted the eighth circle of Hell, the seventh pit.

The pit of thieves.

Raynard was biding his time until he decided on the best way to make her pay.

And perhaps she should pay. In this place teeming with images of the divine, Amy felt more than ever that she had fallen from grace. Peccavi:  I have sinned.

She refocused her mind on the words of the guide. It was expected that where possible, museum staff would join the private tours given for benefactors and their families. The petite guide was dwarfed by the gigantic proportions of the gallery, the walk-in fireplace, the tapestry panels, each more than twelve-foot square.

“The fourth panel - The Unicorn is Found - alludes to the legend that the unicorn’s horn could cure poison. Here we see the unicorn dipping his milk-white horn into the stream, which has been tainted with snake’s venom. Around him animals and birds wait to drink the purified water. Unicorn horns - in reality the tusk of the ‘corpse whale’ or narwhal - were worth many times their weight in gold.”

What was Raynard’s purpose in extending the luncheon invitation? He couldn’t dismiss her so informally. Was it blackmail? She held one card at least; she could reveal the location of the manuscript. Surely questions would be asked. No, he would never allow that to happen. Wilton Raynard had devoted decades to The Cloisters, been energetic in corporate fundraising, ruthless in acquisitions. He was an unstoppable force.

It did not make sense.

She heard a question being asked: “So is this like the Picasso of its time?” The adept tour guide smiled at the flippancy of the teenager, “We’re fortunate to have one of the tapestry’s curators with us, so perhaps I’ll refer the question to Dr Harrington.”

Amy stepped forward, considered the panel before her, “You can put an estimate on a Picasso. John D. Rockefeller Jr paid just over one million dollars for six of these tapestries. That was their worth in 1922”. She pondered for a moment, then shook her head, “We cannot guess at their value today”. The guide smiled again, and the group was led forward to the next panel in hushed awe.

Her thoughts spiralled again. How must her crime appear to Raynard? A theft within his cure, the buyer his rival: it must seem an all-too-personal betrayal.

For the first time, it occurred to her that perhaps he had no intention of dismissing or blackmailing her.

Perhaps his plan was to kill her.

 

They stood before the final panel: The Unicorn in Captivity. “The red smears on his flank resemble blood, but are revealed to be pomegranate juice dripping from the tree overhead. Like so much else in the tapestry, the pomegranate has multiple meanings as a symbol. Jewish tradition says that the fruit has 613 seeds, corresponding to the 613 nerves of the human body and 613 commandments in Torah. To eat a pomegranate is thus to eat human flesh, with obvious Christian associations. Across world cultures the pomegranate stands for righteousness, fertility, hope, regeneration. It features prominently in the myth of Persephone, who spends half of each year in the underworld for eating six seeds of the fruit; as such the pomegranate is a symbol of the indissolubility of marriage. All of these meanings come to fruition here: the beast is reborn, his rage to survive has been quelled. Here he is penned and restful.”

This panel was Amy’s least favourite. She disliked seeing the unicorn in such a small enclosure. He seemed less than his potential. She supposed that was his purpose, or his choice.

 

IV

 

He chose orpiment - King’s Yellow. It was a simple matter to smuggle the crystals of arsenic trisulphide from the supply cupboard for museum displays. How appropriate on all levels: a favoured murder weapon of the Middle Ages, the poison of kings, king of poisons, discreet and potent. How apt for the setting of The Cloisters.

His invitation to Harrington had been offhand, all staff would be consulted regarding the menu for the museum’s centennial banquet. It was over one year hence, but work was underway.  Monday was ideal, the museum being closed. They would dine in his offices.

There was garlic in the Tartes of flessh - he had checked. That would help mask the garlicky odour that she would notice after half an hour, along with a metallic taste, a dry mouth. She would of course be violently ill, succumb to a high fever, then her blood would slow as hypovolaemia set in. Her milk-white skin would discolour, the bluish telltale of cyanosis warning of too little oxygen in her blood. It must be like suffocating from inside. Harrington would lose all rational thought, cerebral hypoxia starving her brain. There would be internal haemorrhages as her organs failed, the cold in her extremities reaching inwards as shock set in, followed quickly by death.

Then nothing could stop him.

He had three decades of sterling work with the treasures, with little apparent fanfare. He was seen as a dedicated connoisseur. His ‘Light on the Romanesque’ attracted more than 420,000 visitors, earning him the status of key player. His reputation was sealed when he brought in the Sforza missal, outbidding the Louvre and the Getty. His ascension at the Met would continue. He was next in line for the Michel David-Weill Curator in Charge of Medieval Art and The Cloisters.

Raynard regretted having to let the Pucelle go, but it was necessary. He would explain that Harrington had seemed preoccupied over lunch, had then produced the stolen manuscript, confessed her terrible crime. She saw no way out. She told him she had already taken steps, her own surrender of sorts. He had tried to help her himself as the poison struck, but it was so sudden, so violent. Between the shock and his rheumatism, he brought help too late. “All too late, all too late, when the bier is at the gate…”

She would shortly be here: the gilt. He chuckled at his epithet for her: the name for a young female swine, unbred, or not bred long enough to show signs of pregnancy. Yes, today everything was most appropriate.

The food was set out on individual plates. “For our delectation, we have Tartes of flessh: we need to give them a few minutes to cool. I suggested that roast swan would be more fitting for our centenary celebrations, but between our modern sensibilities and this anxiety about bird flu…”

On entry Harrington had been nervous: her eyes darted, she spoke too quietly and too quickly. Seated, she seemed positively terrified. She knows, he thought. She knows it’s poisoned.

She sat, sipped clumsily at her wine, twisted and untwisted the linen napkin.

“You are wondering if there’s another reason I asked you here.”

She opened her mouth to respond but stopped, baffled.

“Am I so transparent? The other night at my little soirée…”, he paused.

She waited.

“Wilcockson asked if I would be the keynote speaker at their medieval congress. I’ve been considering it, and I think that you could deliver the address. Your reputation is well grounded, and it would be a signal, so to speak. I will not always be in this position, and it helps to indicate who one might choose as one’s successor.”

He raised his wine glass, smiled at her over it.

In that moment Amy was certain he meant to kill her.

The phone trilled, causing them both to start. The switchboard was holding ‘all’ calls, which meant it was probably a trustee. Raynard excused himself.

Amy sat before the food. Of course he wouldn’t bother with blackmail. She was a liability to him, a disgrace to The Cloisters, to more than The Cloisters…

If she were gone, debts would be settled. Her prospects had disintegrated; she had no hope of a career now. If she died, the insurance could pay for her mother’s treatment. If they paid promptly. Surely it would look like murder, not suicide.

Her mother would be taken care of. She would never know the depths to which her daughter had sunk; the daughter she spoke of with such pride.

Amy released her breath slowly. The suffocating weight lifted from her chest, leaving her surreally peaceful. That was it then.

“Sorry about that - it was Geneva. Our Director of International Affairs seems to have embroiled herself in a diplomatic quagmire. The museum world is changing: if the Italian deal is the shape of things to come, one wonders if there’ll be anything left.”

“But there were improprieties in our purchase; it was right to restore the antiquities to Italy.”

He shook his head, “But who draws the line, and where? Next Notre Dame De Pontaut will be banging on our door, then the cathedrals of Rouen, Strasbourg...  we shall have to dismantle this place stone by stone”.

As Amy mused on the future of museums, Raynard quickly appraised her changed manner. She was entirely at ease.

It was too obvious. She had swapped plates.

“I wonder, could you dig out a volume for me? From the aroma alone I’m sure these people have this recipe all wrong. My rheumatism has flared today…”

She scanned shelves, content to help.

Raynard took care of business.

 

 

V

 

As the Trustees dispersed down various walkways, two figures fell behind, strolling together in time.

“Do you have a favourite cloister Dr Harrington?”

“I love the low fountain in the Cuxa Cloister, the rosy tones of the marble there. I think my favourite used to be the Bonnefont - austere and peaceful, with that great view over the Hudson.  But these days I spend my time here, in the domain of the unicorn. There’s so much going on in the Trie Cloister; all that late Gothic energy.”

“‘The patient Gothic chisel’.”

“Exactly.  And I love the jumbled planting here, and being able to pick out the flowers from the tapestries: periwinkle and daisies, wild strawberry and sweet violets.”

“And pomegranates.”

“And pomegranates.”

“Will you be staying on for the evening concert in the Fuentiduenña chapel?”

“I would have loved to, but it’s my mother’s birthday, and we’re off to Per Se. Big treat.”

“Perhaps I’ll stop in to see you another time - see the new office.”

 

They had come to the parting of their paths. The scent of the garden in late afternoon was intoxicating. He paused, “You know, we realise that for some time you have been holding things together over there. It’s good to see you getting the recognition you deserve”.

“It’s an honour to have the opportunity to serve.”

“And thank you again for taking the time to show us that which was lost - I realise it was short notice. We see it’s in safe hands now”. He lingered, “There is one thing I wanted to ask”. He lightly touched the calf binding. “I heard mention that it has its own built-in security?”

She laughed, “The colophon - yes, book curses were common practice. Scribes trying their best to scare off would-be thieves”. She opened the back cover of the book, turned one page backwards to reveal a doodle of a cloaked figure in brown ink, pointing solemnly at dense faded writing. “It reads: If anyone steal this book, let it change into a serpent in his hand and rend him. Let him languish in pain crying out for mercy, and let there be no surcease to his agony. Let worms gnaw his entrails, and when at last he goes to his final punishment let the flames of Hell consume him forever. Amen.”

“Amen indeed! Well, for my part, I’m glad that both of you are where you belong. Now, it goes straight back on the shelf!”

“I promise!”

They parted, both smiling as they walked in opposite directions. Sunlight streamed through the trees, and the small book felt light in Amy’s hand.