Mortal Love (38 page)

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The Masterstroke

E
arly in December, Daniel visited the
Learmont exhibit at the Tate Modern. There were a number of works by self-taught artists of the last two centuries: notebooks and sketches, maps of imaginary places, architectural drawings, quite a few unsettling sculptures, two works by the Victorian fairy painter Jacobus Candell, and several paintings by Radborne Comstock, including the diptych
The Love Philtre (Tristan and Iseult)
one-half of which Daniel recognized from Learmont's study.

The already notorious drawings by Evienne Upstone hung on the opposite wall—pen-and-inks with colorwash. A card identified the largest one as
Nisus.
There was little known of the drawings or their creator, but Daniel had read that the Tate had hopes of discovering more about her in the trove of material left by Russell Learmont. Daniel had his own suspicions, especially after viewing Radborne Comstock's tragic and haunting
Iseult.

Comstock's work, sadly, looked pallid and relentlessly mundane in comparison to Upstone's.
Nisus
had odd visual echoes of artists as disparate as Mark Rothko and Odilon Redon, Gustave Moreau and Willem de Kooning. It was at once abstract and sexually suggestive—almost pornographic, Daniel thought with sad amusement. There were long explanatory notes beside each drawing, and he waited patiently until he could read those for
Nisus,
compiled by the noted feminist scholar and self-styled agitator Charlotte Moylan.

“She tends to come on a bit strong,” said a voice beside Daniel. “Charlotte Moylan, I mean. She was a student of mine, some years ago. At the Divine. She must be about your age, I imagine.”

Daniel turned. To his delight he saw the slender figure of Balthazar Warnick, elegantly clad in a charcoal-gray suit and bespoke shirt that matched his sea-blue eyes. “Professor Warnick! I thought you were back in D.C.!”

They shook hands, Warnick giving his melancholy smile as he glanced at the framed drawing. “I was. I came over a few weeks ago for the opening—I'm on the board of the foundation Russell set up for his collection. We have a trustees' meeting shortly, but I wanted to take another look at this.”

They edged toward the center of the room to observe the crowds, small ones for Comstock's diptych, larger ones in front of
Nisus.

“It really is incredible,” said Daniel. He watched a group of American tourists gathering to read Charlotte Moylan's printed exegesis, all middle-aged women wearing T-shirts emblazoned
NUNS ON THE RUN.
“You know, that public perception about an artist could change so quickly, I mean literally overnight.”

“Well, quickly, maybe,” agreed Dr. Warnick. “But not convulsively. I think that perhaps these big changes happen more like the way the body heals itself, when we sleep and dream. Who's to say that the world doesn't dream sometimes, too?”

“I guess.” Daniel glanced curiously at Warnick, but the elegant figure only watched, smiling slightly, as the Nuns on the Run pointed at Upstone's drawing. “It's still weird, though.”

Warnick turned, gesturing at the door. “Shall we?”

They strolled into the corridor. “What about you, Daniel?” asked Professor Warnick. “Last time we talked, you were on sabbatical. You were writing a book, weren't you? Did you finish it?”

Daniel shook his head. “No. It's strange, but I guess I just kind of burned out on that idea—the nonfiction one, I mean. But I've been thinking a lot lately about doing something completely different.”

“Which is?”

“A novel. I applied for an extended leave of absence from the
Horizon
—they're not happy about it, but I can continue to do freelance writing from here. ‘Rowlands's London Journal,' that kind of thing. And I can always just cash in an IRA if I have to.

“So I'm staying with my friend Nick Hayward, kind of kicking these ideas around. I have all these notes from the book I
was
working on, and … well, some other stuff that came to me over the last few months. I thought I might try to work them into something completely different—different for me, I mean. So. A novel.”

“A novel.” Professor Warnick looked up and gave him that enigmatic smile. “Do you have a title?”

“I do.
Mortal Love.
That's the title my other book was going to have.”

“Have you told your publisher about this sudden change of heart?”

“Not yet. I figure I'll just hand them the finished manuscript and start running.”

Balthazar laughed. “Well, if you need any help when the time comes, give me a call. I might be able to put you in touch with some people.”

He paused and glanced back at the gallery they'd just left. “Do you know Charlotte Moylan's work?”

“Moylan?” Daniel shrugged. “Just the crazed Feminist Avenger stuff.”

“I should introduce you to her. She's more interesting than you might think.”

Daniel shook his head. “No more interesting women,” he said. “Not till this book is done at least.”

They went outside, where the blue-violet light of early evening streamed across the Thames, glinting off warehouses and the dome of St. Paul's, barely visible behind skyscrapers, the London Eye, and the arching web of the Millennium Bridge. Daniel was headed for where he'd left his motorcycle in the carpark, Warnick a few blocks north to Vinopolis for his meeting

“I would invite you along, but … well, trustees,” Warnick said apologetically. “Russell left an incredible amount of work for us to do. Some of it I'd rather
not
do, but …”

He smiled his melancholy smile, then extended his hand. “Duty calls. Glad I ran into you, Daniel. Good luck with the novel. And please—call me when you get back to D.C.”

Daniel shook his hand and smiled. “I'll do that. Thanks.”

He stood and watched as Professor Warnick walked along the Embankment, a deceptively small man in a deceptively large city, until he disappeared into the London twilight.

It was well
past 2:00
A.M.
when Nick arrived home that night, laughing raucously as he shouted farewell to someone in the High Street, then banging his way upstairs.

“Danny boy!” he cried, and stormed into the kitchen. “Wakey-wakey! You wouldn't fucking believe who showed up after the gig, fucking—”

He stopped. All the lights were on. Music blared from the stereo—an electroclash version of the “Liebestod,” and why in God's name would Daniel be listening to
that?
At the kitchen table, Daniel's gangly form was hunched over his laptop. Stacks of books and papers and notebooks were piled about him, coffee mugs, several empty bottles of fizzy water and a nearly full one of absinthe, the remains of dinner from Parkway Pizzeria.

“What the fuck is this?” demanded Nick.

“Shut up,” said Daniel, and scowled at the computer screen. At his elbow were stacks of books and CDs—
Collected Poems
by Laura Riding,
Folklore of the British Isles,
Val Comstock's sketchbook,
Astral Weeks
and Nick's own
Sleeping with the Heroine,
along with a postcard from the Tate Gift Shop. “Not a single word from you now, Hayward.”

Daniel glanced at the postcard—a reproduction of Radborne Comstock's diptych
The Love Philtre.
After a moment he looked up and flashed a beatific grin at his oldest friend.

“For God's sake, Nick,” he said. “Can't you see I'm working?”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

A couple of years after seeing Patti Smith perform, Elizabeth Hand flunked out of college and became involved in the nascent punk scenes in DC and NYC. From 1979 to 1986 she worked at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air & Space Museum; she was eventually readmitted to university to study cultural anthropology, and received her B.A. She is the author of many novels, including
Winterlong
,
Waking the Moon
(Tiptree and Mythopoeic Award-Winner), and
Glimmering
, and three collections of stories, including the recent
Errantry: Strange Stories
.

Her fiction has received the Nebula, World Fantasy, Mythopeoic, Tiptree, and International Horror Guild Awards, and her novels have been chosen as
New York Times
and
Washington Post
Notable Books. She has also been awarded a Maine Arts Commission Fellowship. A regular contributor to the
Washington Post Book World
and
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
, Hand lives with her family on the Maine Coast. Find out more at
elizabethhand.com
.

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