So he didn’t take it, nor did he grab the man by the lapels and scream,Pay more!He declined with a smile, explained with pleasant finality that he could not accept less than two thousand, observed that he had an appointment to visit Sir James Roud in Greenwich, and, he prayed, left the man with a sense of a prize snatched from his grasp.
He had over two and a half weeks left, and two possible buyers. He just had to hold his nerve and he’d win this.
And he even got some other results. When Titus returned, footsore, tired, and dizzy with artistic marvels, Nico was able to hand him a letter from the Astronomer Royal, enthusiastically inviting Mr. Pilcrow to see the Camera Obscura at his earliest convenience.
So early the next day they headed down to Greenwich on the water. It was a bright day of the best kind as the year eased into summer, and the breeze was stiff with salt. The boatman headed east, past the great foursquare Tower of London, then the frantic, filthy docks of Limehouse and Rotherhithe and Deptford. Titus watched the flotillas of boats from across the world, and the astonishing variety of humanity workingon them. Nico had spent quite enough time on docks, so he mostly watched Titus, and the way his face relaxed when he was absorbed in things. Or, perhaps, the way he tensed up when he was aware of himself.
So much tension. So little trust. Titus had a fortune where Nico had an eye-watering debt to a dangerous man, so it was ridiculous that Titus was the worried one between them, but that was what you got for a lifetime of caution and responsibility. Nico had never owned more than could be packed into a trunk; his life had never gone anywhere near the kind of path that led to a shop of one’s own and a modicum of financial security. It sounded like a lot of hard work. Like having a great deal to lose.
That made Nico wonder about the worrying letter again. He’d cast a surreptitious glance over the writing table but learned nothing. Was it merely Titus’s pestilential oldest brother, or something else? Nico had very much tried to position himself as the solver of Titus’s problems, both to be invaluable and because he liked the way Titus looked when he did it. He didn’t like that Titus wasn’t bringing this one to him.
He wasn’t going to ask, not yet. Instead he kept watching Titus. Watched him as they strolled through the park, admiring the noble architecture of the Hospital, even more struck by the living panorama of the Thames, thick with shipping, and the sprawl of London beyond. Watched him as he marvelled at the lovely, complex, incomprehensible astronomical apparatus of the Observatory.
He did have to stop watching Titus in order to pay attention to the famous Camera Obscura, because it was astonishing. Somehow, in a turret room of the Observatory, an arrangement of lenses produced a great moving picture of the distant street outside, with pensioners and schoolboys wandering up and down. An attendant explained how it worked;Nico tried briefly to understand, classified it as magic, and went back to watching Titus and the studious way he set himself to grasp the principles of light rays and lenses.
He left Titus to be shown round the interior of the Hospital, which apparently boasted painted ceilings and an impressive staircase, after which he would take luncheon with the Astronomer Royal. Titus was delighted by the invitation; Nico just hoped he was prepared to become a financial patron. He had other fish to fry himself, in the person of Sir James Roud, the other Marie Antoinette collector.
Unfortunately Roud was wizened and elderly, too bloodless now for the stories Nico had to tell. He expressed interest in seeing the painting, but none in buying it, and Nico walked back to meet Titus with a sense of panic that he couldn’t quite suppress. He’d depended on playing Rankin against Roud to get the price up to what he needed.
He’d depended on Miss Whitecross before that, and on Baynes as well. Some people might see all that as a litany of failures; Nico preferred to consider it a string of opportunities. Granted, none of them had come off yet, but the game wasn’t lost while he was still playing.
He met Titus back at the Hospital, and they took a look at the famous chapel with its elaborate painted decoration of ceiling and walls, and the huge altarpiece. ThePicture of Londonsuggested that perhaps it was too profusely ornamented. Nico, used to Continental Catholic churches, considered it depressingly restrained. He did, however, find a great deal to think about in Titus’s careful examination of the altarpiece.
“Do you paint?” he asked as they settled into the boat back to town. “That is, make the art, not the materials?”
“Good heavens, no. I haven’t the talent.”
“Have you tried?”
“Well, no. I should say I don’t have the skills.”
“Have you studied?” Nico pressed.
“Of course I have not studied,” Titus almost snapped. “When would I have studied?”
“But you like to draw.”
“I did as a boy.”
“You still do. You make the little drawings all the time.” Little pencil pictures on letters, invitation cards, any bits of paper that might be lying around. Nico had opened thePicture of Londonthis morning and seen a few lines on the flyleaf suggesting a face that might, for all the world, have been his own. He’d looked at that for some while.
“Oh, well, yes. It’s—not even a hobby, just an idle distraction.”
“You like to do it, and you like colours. Why do you draw but not paint?”
Titus was looking distinctly harried. “There are techniques to using oils. It’s quite different. I could teach myself to draw.”
“And someone could teach you to paint,” Nico said. “Mon ami, I saw you last night, drunk on pictures, and I watched you today. You like to understand how things are made. And colours speak to you. You know them inside out, you care about how they are used—”
“As an artisan!”
“Is that so far from an artist? You know how the colours work, you know what to use, you have precision and application, and you peer closely at how it is done. Why do you not learn to do it yourself?”
“But I don’t know anything about art!” Titus said, with far more emotion than you’d expect from a man who didn’t care about the subject.
“Of course you do. You look at paintings. Youownpaintings. You have a dozen or more stacked against the wall.”
“Those were given to me in lieu of payment.”