Bonnie Dundee (7 page)

‘No,’ I said, ‘I’d not have been like to see him again in any case; and as for leaving these parts – ’twas in my mind to be ’listing for a sojer anyways, in a year or two.’

She smiled, ‘Then come with me for the year or two.’

‘I’d like that fine,’ I said, ‘just fine, my lady.’

She kept me there a while longer, asking about my grandfather and the like; and all the while I could hear the bustle of an arrival in the stable-yard. I did wonder if it was Claverhouse himself, but he came more quietly as a rule. And then just as I was going, Mistress Ruthven came into the garden on flying feet, that pretty soft hair of hers bursting out from under her cap – her caps always seemed too big for her, like huge white cambric columbine flowers half quenching her small brown face. But this time the brownness of her face was flushed with foxglove pink, and her eyes dancing.

‘The painter-chiel who is to make your wedding portrait is come,’ said she. ‘He looks like a wee yellow toad perched up on top of the post-horse, and him with a great curled red peruke on the top, fine enough for a six-foot gentleman! Do you suppose he’s a prince in disguise?’

And I heard their laughter skirling behind me as I went out and back to the stable-yard.

And though I did not know it at the time, that, the coming of the Dutch painter, was the third of the three things that were to play a part in the shaping of my life.

Mynheer Cornelius van Meere, that was his name, did indeed look somewhat like a toad under the monstrous curled red peruke; and as long and lean as he was short and squat, was Johannes his apprentice, a wey-faced sulky-seeming callant, with the red rash on his cheeks and chin that plagues some of us when our beards first begin to sprout; aye, an odd looking couple. They were both still in the stable-yard when I got back to it, the apprentice unloading the bundles and cases of painting gear from the pack pony that carried it, while the master stood by to see it done, for clearly he would trust none of the grooms to touch it.

The two post-horses were already being rubbed down, and the pack pony fell to my lot when the weary little brute was finally unloaded. And meanwhile both the newcomers were swept away by the steward, and that was the last we saw of them for a while.

But we heard. As I have said, we heard most things in the stable-yard.

Cornelius van Meere had taken over the Little Dining-room for his workshop. I had never seen it, of course, but I had heard it was a bonnie room, with walls
covered in tooled and gilded leather; and I could see in my mind’s eye how that would cast warm reflected lights on to my lady’s face, whether from the sun or from the candles. And I could see in my mind’s eye also how that long spotty apprentice would be tacking the primed canvas over the four stretcher bars, and driving in the corner wedges until the tightened canvas sounded like a drum under the flat of his hand, and how he would be setting out the boiled oil and working up the rough-ground pigments. And all the old memories of my years with my father woke in me, and I fair itched to be in that little chamber and setting a hand to the work.

And then the painting started, and of course my lady Jean had less time than ever for the stables or the garden. At first, seemingly, it had been intended that it should be a great wedding portrait, with the groom in it as well as the bride, and him in his fine new scarlet coat – for the Government had lately ordered red coats to replace the old hodden grey for the Scottish regiments, all save the Dragoons. But the countryside was still not at its quietest, and Claverhouse had no time for the sittings, and so it was just my lady Jean.

So it went on for two—three days; and then Mynheer had the need for a fresh supply of black oil. As you know well enough, the black oil does not keep for long, whether it be oil of poppy-seed such as I myself use now, along with most painters here in the Low Countries, or linseed and walnut boiled together; and so a travelling painter will carry with him only enough to start the work, and bid his monkey – his apprentice – to boil up more for him as it is needed. And as you will know also, for I have warned you often enough, the boiling is a dangerous process, and never if possible to be undertaken within doors.

Between the kitchen quarters and a postern door to the stable-yard was a small well-court which seemed finely suited to the purpose; and there the small charcoal fire was made and the iron pot set over it, and Johannes got to work with the raw linseed and walnut oil.

I contrived to have some horse gear to polish, so that I could wander out to the door of the tack-room as I worked, and catch a glimpse of the doings in the well-court; for I was fair fascinated; drawn to what was going forward as by a kind of homesickness.

Johannes was feeding the little charcoal fire with care, piece by piece, peering the while into the fire-darkened pot; but it seemed to me, even so, that he had too much attention to spare also for the world about him. The black oil when it passes the boil and draws on towards flaming point is kittle stuff, and not to be left unwatched for a single whisper of time. My father had taught me that before I was ten years old.

Well, I never did see just what happened, for I had my own work to do as well; but kind of out of the top of my head I was aware that one of the kitchen lassies had come out to draw water from the well, and there was a chit-chat of voices; and I am thinking that Johannes (did I not say his beard was sprouting?) took his attention from the black oil at just the wrong moment, to give it to the lassie.

Next instant there was a terrified yell, and the lassie screeching and the clatter of the pot lid, and the black oil going up in a belch of flame, and Johannes staggering back from it, crying out like a lassie himself and with his hands clapped to his face.

I flung aside the headstall I was polishing, and ran. Folks were running from all over. Someone had
Johannes on the ground and was beating out his hair that was on fire; and someone else – I never saw who – had snatched up the full bucket of water and was making to throw it over the blazing oil. I shouted ‘Leave be! I ken what to do!’ and fended him off with the flat of my hand in his face as one fends off an opponent at hurley, and caught up the pot lid from where Johannes had dropped it. I mind the savage blast of heat, and the oil-smoke choking me, and then I had the lid slammed on, and the flame and stink cut off; and I swung the pot aside from the charcoal fire.

Johannes was groaning and sobbing; and indeed the pain must have been sore, for his eyebrows and front hair were clean burned off, and when I saw his hands later – well, I reckon I would have been bawling like a bull calf for its dam, if it had been me. Myself, I had no more than a scorch-mark on one wrist. And Willie Sempill was there, and telling me ’twas well done, and to leave it for all was safe now.

I shook my head, ‘If ’tis left now, ’tis good oil ruined and mebbe no more to spare. It needs to be brought to flame-point twice more.’

I suppose I had the air of knowing what I was talking about, for they let me be, and I – I took my attention away from all of them to give it to the oil in the pot.

I made the proper count, then lifted the lid. The oil lay there dark and still faintly stirring. I let the air get to it until the last stirring and dimpling was stilled, then took up the skimming spoon and cleared the sooty scum that had risen to the surface, and left it again for the time of three paternosters said within my head. Aye, I should have counted it off, but my father had taught me the old way; and come to that, I’m thinking there’s a good few even here in the Protestant Low
Countries that still use the old Popish prayers when they need an accurate timing too short for the clock or the sandglass – swordsmiths and apothecaries and such – then swung it back over the fire and fed a bit more charcoal to the flames and stood by with the lid, watching…

The dark surface began to dimple again. I stared down at it as the movement changed to a rolling boil and then fell away into stillness; and above the stillness came the faint blue haze that comes a lick of time before flash-point. In the instant, as the flame began, I slammed the lid back on, and again swung the pot clear of the fire, and again betook me to my paternosters and the skimming spoon.

Once more the whole thing had to be gone through; and then, with the lid slammed on again and the pot swung clear and the last skimming done, I straightened up and fetched a long breath, as though it was the first breath I had fetched since it all started, and drew the back of my forearm across my sweaty face.

And the outside world came to me again.

Johannes had been hauled off somewhere to have his hurts tended, there were folks all about me in the well-court, and amongst them the squat round figure in the preposterous curled peruke of Mynheer Cornelius van Meere himself. And him looking at me somewhat oddly, so that I realised he had been watching me most of the while.

‘And where did you learn how to boil the black oil?’ said he, speaking our tongue well enough, though with the broad thick accent of the Low Countries.

‘My father taught me,’ I told him.

‘Ach, so – he was a painter, this father?’

‘Aye.’

‘And you were his apprentice?’

‘I was but eleven when he died,’ I said, ‘but he’d no other help, so I’m thinking I’d learned as well as most apprentices, how to boil the black oil and a size a canvas and grind the colours, and clean his brushes after him.’

‘So-o,’ said Mynheer thoughtfully, nodding so that I thought his great peruke would over-balance him. ‘Then will you finish the task that you have so well begun, and when the oil is cooled, pour it into this flask and bring it to me in the Little Dining-room?’

‘Aye,’ I said, ‘if Master Sempill—’ I looked round and caught the head groom’s eye on me.

He nodded, ‘But mind the kitchen lassies dinna keep you from your proper work.’

And Mynheer turned and trotted away, and for the moment that was all.

But by and by, when the oil was cooled and safely in its flask, I took it into the Little Dining-room, one of those same kitchen lassies showing me the way, for I’d never set foot beyond the great smoky kitchens before. And the place was as bonnie as I’d imagined it, with the tooled and gilded leather on its walls catching the candlelight, for the day was fading, and the tall easel set up and covered with a white cloth, and the familiar smell of oil and paint… And Mynheer standing by the table, rubbing his hands on an oily rag.

‘Ah, Hugh,’ he greeted me, ‘that is your name? It seems that Johannes my apprentice will be small use to me for the next few days until his hands are healed. Therefore I have asked Milord Dundonel that he lend you to me in his place meanwhile – if you like?’

‘I’d like fine,’ I said, feeling a little as though I was in a dream.

‘
Goot
!’ he said. ‘Then clean up all these brushes.’

FOR THE WHILE,
then, I became Mynheer van Meere’s monkey; and the centre of my daily world which for more than a year had been the stable-yard, was the Little Dining-room, where my lady Jean came every day to sit in the big carved chair cushioned in faded golden cut-velvet, for Mynheer to paint her wedding portrait.

For those sittings she wore a gown of blue damask, much grander than anything I had ever seen her wear before, and had her side hair curled into bunches of ringlets hanging over her ears. ‘Confidantes’ they were called, the height of fashion at the time so I was told. And altogether she did not look at all like the Lady Jean I knew. But even so, it seemed she lit up the room with her coming, as thought she brought the sunlight and the scent of the high heather moors in with her; aye, and the linnets singing bonnie among the broom.

Most times Mistress Darklis would be there too, just for company, for Mynheer was not one for chit-chat while he was painting. (I always thought of her by her real name, her gipsy name, now, for though we had seldom spoken with each other since the evening in the Abbey ruins, the shared secret seemed to have made a kind of bond between us.) And whiles, she would bring her lute, and sing to it the old songs of the Border country;
The Twa Sisters
and
The Gay Goshawk,
and the like; for listening to them, he said, gave my lady’s face the right look to it.

I listened too, and looked on, and thought that I would like fine to be painting the brown lassie with the lute in her lap, and the way her hands caught the light against the dark stuff of her gown.

Once she sang
The Ballad of Johnnie Faa
:

She sang it very softly, and I mind the glance that brushed between her and my lady, towards the end, guessed that the singing of that song, and the listening to it must have been a small shared rebellion to lift the boredom of the long portrait sittings.

Mynheer worked me hard, at mixing the oils and grinding the colours and clearing up after him, but much of that was done when we were alone, while he himself worked on at the background, or the posy of pansies and briar roses on the table, or even the folds of the stiff blue gown laid across the empty chair with no Lady Jean in it at all. But anyway grinding paint does not take all one’s mind, and one can listen well enough at the same time. I seemed always to be grinding the blue called ultramarine which he needed for that gown, for it was a deep blue and he painted thickly; and he would have only small amounts ground and oil-mixed at a time, lest any should be wasted, that colour, which the old church masters used for the Virgin’s mantle, being the most costly of all pigments, ground from pure lapis lazuli.