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There is another sketching session that afternoon - a short one (Lucas says irasicbly that no-one can be expected to concentrate on a trump when quite so many muscles are hurting from a vigorous round of sparring).
The following day they have two more sessions - and one of sparring. The sketching goes well, but Lucas is focussing on Solange's clothes and the surroundings. He still asks questions, but the tone is lighter - and Lucas is more forthcoming himself. He is willing to talk about growing up as a member of the Ancien Regime - and he recalls, with some fondness, his mother's rose garden at their chateau (he is asking about favourite scents at the time).
On the third day they run into some rough weather - nothing alarming, but too wet to make posing or sketching on the deck a pleasant prospect.
"We can work in my cabin instead," suggests Lucas. "Or yours, if you would prefer. I'd prefer not to have an audience, though."
"Is there a reason you need to work in private?" Solange asks, looking at him askance. "I mean, well, we can probably shift the rain away and stay on the deck." By the tone of her voice, it's clear this is what Solange wishes to do.
"If you'd prefer," says Lucas equably. "The Captain was talking of refilling the rain barrels however - if you want to shift so that we can ensure full water barrels and a good strong following wind, be my guest. I do need to do some work on your face today, though. It might be best to be uninterrupted."
His reason for wanting to be uninterrupted sounded reasonable. She shrugs. "All right. Your cabin, then. I'm sure you have more comfortable chairs."
Lucas does - but he doesn't allow Solange to sit on one. Instead he poses her against the sideboard and takes up his own station on the arm of a chesterfield that has, inmprobably, been inserted into his cabin.
"Right," he says, and takes a soft-leaded pencil from one side of the paintbox. "Tell me about when you first learned you were an Amberite."
He is not looking at her, it seems. His whole attention is focused on the sketchpad on front of him.
Solange gazes into the middle distance between them, remembering, and smiles wryly. "My sixth birthday. We'd had a party and that man had come, the one that Papa said was my Uncle Gerard. He visited every once in awhile and he always brought presents and played with Matthew and me. We thought he was great fun.
"Anyway, he'd come for the birthday cake. Afterwards, Matthew and I were sent off to play while Papa and Uncle Gerard went into Papa's study and smoked cigars and drank whisky." She smiles as if there's another story there, but doesn't pursue the tangent.
"So Matthew and I decided to play hide-and-seek. My turn to hide came and I thought it'd be clever to hide in Papa's study while they were still in there, as Matthew wouldn't think to disturb them. So I did, crawling in along the floorboard and settling behind the stuffed chair with none the wiser.
"Papa and Uncle Gerard talked, and I was only half-listening because I didn't understand most of what they were saying, but I heard my name mentioned. Uncle Gerard wanted to know if there'd been questions about me, and Papa replied that there'd been no questions at all, that no one knew I wasn't his child."
She pauses, then shrugs. "I didn't understand. Who was my papa, then, if he wasn't? Was mama still mine? Was Matthew my brother? I was devastated and I sat there behind the chair and cried. I was only six, after all.
"They called for me later, to say goodbye to Uncle Gerard, and I walked out from the study with tears and snot all over me. There was a big hullaballoo as the adults tried to determine what was wrong. When I repeated what I'd heard, Papa became angry because I'd been in his study eavesdropping. I didn't know what the word meant, but from the way he said it I gathered it was a pretty heinous crime. That started me crying again," Solange smiles.
"Uncle Gerard scooped me up then and took me back into Papa's study and while he wiped my face explained that he was my father, and that he wanted me somewhere where I had a father and mother and brother because he couldn't provide those things, and that it was a Big Secret.
"Thus, I found out I was an Amberite...although it was several years after that before I better understood what that meant...and it wasn't until I walked the Pattern that I really understood what that meant."
"I wonder if even then we truly understand," says Lucas thoughtfully. "In a way - that's just the start. And some of us walk it very young - or without the training of what the Pattern truly is. Look at Lilly - how old is she? Eighteen. And yet she probably knows more of the implications of Pattern than I did, and I was at the end of my third half-century when I walked. Of course, by then I had reckoned there was something a little different about me. More than looking remarkably well preserved for my unprecedented age within the Shadow. Of course, it was also obvious that Mama was of the same stock. She was, in some ways, my indication that I wouldn't absent-mindedly one day slash a portrait I had grown bored with and promptly wither away into a heap of dust on the gallery floor."
He adds a careful, feathered line and says, "You're lucky in having Gerard as your father. I'm sure that pride in your walking the Pattern was mirrored by the care he took in preparing you."
He draws another line in the silence that follows, and then looks up at her. "Solange?"
She startles out of her pensiveness at Lucas's words and looks up at him. "Hmmm?"
"I was just complimenting you on your father," says Lucas, amused.
And she was just musing that Gerard went from being her uncle to her father and back to her uncle again. "Oh...right. Thanks," she smiles. "He's been a blessing in my life, no doubt."
He lowers the pencil to make another line on the page, and then hesitates, the point a fraction above the paper. He frowns, looks up at Solange, and then down at the paper again, still not making any mark.
"Something wrong?"
"No," says Lucas, starting to draw again. "No ... probably not."
He sets his pencil to the paper, but there's a new tentativeness in the line. After a moment, he pauses again, frowns at the mark, sighs, takes out an eraser and carefully removes it.
"Tell me about your mother. What you know of her."
Solange shifts, then goes back to her original position. "I know nothing about her, really." Which is true. Mostly.
Lucas sighs. "So ... I just leave a hole where your nose should be, do I?"
He puts the pencil down and looks at her. "Gerard must have told you something. He's like that."
He looks in the paintbox and selects a different pencil.
"I'm a draughtsman. I signed the contract. I draw .. what I see - in all its truth. No matter how awkward, how ambiguous, how incongruous. And this is a trump, not just a pretty portrait for your walls. If I screw up - it could be dangerous. If what I represent isn't the true you, then ... well. Imagine you have an open contact and you invite a person to step through. To you. Only what's on the card in front of them isn't the true you. It's something ... close. Close enough to allow a conversation ... but a more intimate connection ... ? I don't know. Where would they step through to? A Shadow you? To nothingness - like those dragonriders are meant to experience?"
He shakes his head. "If you're a habitual liar, it could be easier. I could ... allow for that. I could build it into the image. But someone who won't talk to keep a few private places hidden? That's harder."
Solange frowns at him. "The damnable thing about this, Lucas, is that I've no idea if you're lying about my need to disclose my...secrets..." she waves the word away, as though to try to prove to Lucas it's of little importance to her. "You're not exactly who I'd pick as a confidante."
Lucas looks hurt.
"The first requirement of a confidante, as I understand it, is confidentiality," he says. "Look how closely they are linked etymologically ... or do I mean entomologically? No matter. Discretion is the first requirement, and of that you can be assured. I keep secrets - as long as they're not given to me in the form of a delicious morsel of gossip with the breathless attachment of the label, "Now, promise - you won't tell a soul!"
She smiles despite herself and looks down at her feet.
He makes what looks like an idle squiggle on the paper. Then he looks up at her.
"You're trusting me to make a trump of you. Now ... you have to trust me to do it properly. Let go ... and I will catch you - capture you.
"And what passes between us ... will remain between only us."
She looks up from her feet and nails him with her gaze. "I have your word on that? I'm serious, Lucas."
"Upon my honour as Saint Just," says Lucas, using his family name. "Or I can swear by Kolvir, if you prefer. Or a Pattern Oath."
Another squiggle on the paper.
Solange sighs. "All right. Gerard isn't my father. My Amber parent is his sister Ysabeau. Have you heard the name?"
Lucas' expressive eyebrows lift. Whatever he was expecting, it doesn't seem to have been that - and his pencil makes a jagged line on the page. He frowns down at it, as though intending to erase it - hesitates, as though recognising its worth, and starts to feather it instead.
"The name, yes," he agrees. "Not a lot more. I think Maman said she was the one who never could co-ordinate her jewelry - but please don't take that personally. How much do you know?"
She shakes her head. "Not much, like I said. Apparently she was pretty headstrong. Father ... Gerard ... Hell, I'm still going to call him 'father,' dammit ... told me she wanted to be a Ranger like her older brother Julian, but Corwin and Oberon wouldn't hear of it. She was eventually banished under 'heavy displeasure.' Father said she went back to the Isles. She died there, giving birth to me."
Lucas glances at Solange, and then draws for several minutes in silence.
Her expression isn't unduly agitated. Apparently she's comes to terms with the situation. She says nothing during Lucas's silence.
Eventually he says, "Death is not inevitable, you know. For Amberite mothers. Maman, for example. Llewella. Fiona's brood. Deirdre.
"For human mothers, the incidence may be ... more unfortunate."
Again a long silence and the drawing seems to intensify under his hands.
Solange spends the time musing what effect an agitated trump artist would have on the trump being created, if any.
"Solace ... bore two children in rapid succession. That was ... careless."
She studies Lucas for a moment, wondering about the relationship he has with Solace. He professes to love her and yet he goes off and commits adultery. On a regular basis. And yet ... and yet the odd, tender statement on occasion escapes his mouth ... or he commits a loving gesture to Solace or their children. She doesn't understand.
"On the other hand," Solange offers, "can you imagine your life without Phillipe?"
"I can remember life without Philippe," says Lucas. "And not so long ago, either. In fact, I cherish vivid memories of a time where a well developed sense of paternal responsibility simply meant ensuring that the foundling hospitals to which the brats were conveyed were well-endowed.
"But if you ask me whether I can envisage a future without Philippe ... then yes, I can. But I am becoming increasingly aware that there is very little I wouldn't do to ensure that eventuality did not come to pass.
"However, at the root of your questions lies another. Would I have sacrificed the possibility of Philippe if it would have saved Solace? Or will I account Solace's death not entirely in vain because I will be left with Philippe? And when did you stop beating your wife, Lord Lucas? It is, you see, a question that is impossible to answer because it contains a pre-supposition; in this case that I was fully aware of the consequences when Philippe was conceived. I wasn't.
"So who was your father? Do you think he faced a similar dilemma?"
Solange blinks at the abrupt change of topic. She didn't realize Solace was ill enough that Lucas believed her death an inevitability. She wants to ask him about it, to clarify things, but he apparently doesn't want to discuss it anymore. She must remember to ask Hannah or her father about Solace next time she talks to one of them.
She looks down at her hands. "I honestly don't know who my father was. I don't know if Ysabeau knew going in she would die in childbirth, or if she did, if she told him. Perhaps someday I'll go to the Isles and see if I can find out more information. Have you found my nose yet?"
"It's there in all its adorable snubness. You'll have to be careful who you give this trump to - there'll be a real danger that they'll just want to kiss your sweet proboscis.
Solange rolls her eyes good-naturedly.
"The remaining feature I have to tackle is that generously curved underlip ... you've never felt the urge to visit the Isles before now? I realise not everyone shares my own fascination with genealogy ... after all, we can't all be descended from the Merovignians. Actually, after all this time, we probably can ... But no matter."
He looks up at her.
She shrugs. "Father said I'd be considered a goddess there, due to being Ysabeau's daughter. Not sure all that goddess-thing entails, but I'm also not eager to find out. That and things just keep coming up so visiting goes further down on my to-do list." Solange glances in the direction where, through the walls and down the way, lies the ship's infirmary.
Lucas follows her gaze for a moment, and then says lightly, "Everyone should experience being worshipped as a god, you know. I tried it myself, at one point - I wanted to see if it appealed. And I must say, it rather did. But one could grow bored with being capricious and willful. Although it might take eons."
"As a contrast to that, I next travelled to a hideously puritanical Shadow where everyone wore deepest black and the longest possible faces imaginable. Although I had a rather amusing time there too. I introduced an intoxicant into the religious ritual - a powerful euphoric. Just as a variant at first, you know - a new sacred mystery. A cult grew up - and, of course, spread like wildfire - because it was tres amusant. Soon the whole Shadow was a much, much better place - and I was being asked to parties all the time.
"Then I made the mistake of lacing the euphoric with an aphrodisiac. I believe the religious wars continue to this day.
"Do you think it really is just low on your list of priorities?" He adds a dot that could be a small blemish on her chin. "Or is the place where your mother died in bearing you somewhere you would prefer to avoid - for perfectly understandable reasons?"
"I'm not sure. I haven't really thought about it. I only found out about Ysabeau recently, and since then there's been the coronation, and Xanadu, and still the issue of father's legs, and so on, and so forth." She pauses a moment, considering the question, then adds, "The Isles scare me on some level. It's the whole goddess thing. I'm afraid of what I would do with that sort of power. Father said it corrupted Ysabeau...why wouldn't the same happen to me?" She shakes her head. "I'd just prefer not to find out."
"Interesting," murmurs Lucas, tracing a long, curving line - it seems to be a suggestion of an ear. What she has said seems to give him the opportunity to sketch for a while in silence - well, not exactly silence, for Lucas hums half under his breath. Were Solange familiar with Shadow Earth in the late twentieth century, she might recognise a Jacque Brel song - Ne me quitte pas.
Eventually he sets his pen down, and leans back and stretches.
"Enough for today," he says. "Unless ... "
"Unless what?" she asks, not moving.
"You are ready for me to capture your eyes," he says softly, his own eyes dark and intent.
Solange prickles. "What deep, dark secret are you going to ask about this time?" she replies darkly.
He sets down the pencil and leans beack in his seat, gazing at her thoughtfully.
"You could start," he says, "by telling me what makes the fires that burn there so hot and angry when I press close. What bruise is it, Solange, that's never entirely healed?"
She frowns at Lucas, annnoyed at his perception. "How much of the trump is left to do?" she asks.
He turns it round so she can see it clearly. The background is almost finished, and coloured - the deck, the sea behind. And her figure is drawn in some detail; her hands seem caught in mid gesture - half a breath, and they will move again. And her hair ... her hair is perfect ... lips, cheeks, nose, ears ... no mistaking her at all.
But where her eyes should be ... there are two blanks. The effect is rather sinister.
"Heh. They say the eyes are the windows to the soul." Solange shifts her position a bit and catches Lucas in her gaze. "All right. You want a good secret, I'll give you a good secret. But I want something in return."
He laughs. "You already know something you could hang me out to dry with - if not hang me outright. What more do you want?"
"More. I'm sure it wouldn't be difficult for you to come up with another interesting story.Tell me...tell me why you sleep with other women while married to Solace?"
"Because they're there," said Lucas tranquilly. "And because they're willing. And Solace knows that however many beds I pass through, I will always come back to her. Do you think that because I've entered the virtuous state of matrimony there should be no more cakes and ale? That's a rather unfashionable attitude to hold in Amber."
"And yet...and yet...it's not all right with you if Solace decides to partake of the 'cake and ale'. Isn't that called a double standard?"
"It depends on the flavour she chooses," says Lucas, his pencil resting on the page. "In her condition, it would be safer for her to forgo the cream horns in favour of the sponge cake, one feels. If Paige - or, indeed, your good self as you seem so concerned for her sexual well-being, were to instruct her in the fine arts of sapphism, I would have no particular objection. Indeed, I can envisage circumstances where I might be induced to become a participant."
The smile he gives her is perfectly amiable.
She grins back, a "yeah, you keep on dreaming that" sort of grin. "By that reasoning, you yourself should only be sucking the filling out of the cream horns, rather than taking a small bite out of every petit four on the dessert plate.
"I can resist anything," says Lucas, "except temptation. And I enjoy my fair share of cream horns too ... "
"Her condition aside, if she should suddenly develop a taste for, say, spicy sausages...you wouldn't object?"
"Oh, I think I would," says Lucas. "Spicy sausages have a habit of lingering on the breath. Besides ... they rather betray themselves, don't they? Everyone knows when you've been munching on the chorizo.
"Do you have a secret yen for the spiced, then, cos? I thought your little takeaway seems pretty but worthy. Steady and reliable ... but will he make you laugh? Will you even smile that often in his company?" He regards her thoughtfully. "Look me in the eye, Solange, and tell me which of us has made you smile more on this voyage ... your doctor or me."
Solange leans toward Lucas, dangerously close, and looks him in the eye as bid. "There's a dessert called tiramisu. Translated, it means 'pick-me-up.' As legend goes, it was a favorite of the courtesans, who needed a 'pick me up' to fortify themselves between their amorous encounters. I know it was our favorite fortifier--the heavy zabaglione cream spread over the coffee-soaked ladyfingers is exquisite on the tongue--and Kyril made it very, very well. You could say he has a talent for such things...but, then again, he's always been good with his hands. He is a doctor, after all."
She straightens and smiles pleasantly. "I think we're done here for now. Good day, Lucas."
Solange leaves.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
After their last sketching session, Lucas ... waits.
He is, as ever, a charming and courteous companion. He talks amusingly at shared meal-times. He offers games of cards on wet days, willing to teach obscure games and learn them too. If some of these games could, just possibly, be played for interesting forfeits, Lucas makes no such suggestion but instead invents fantasy fortunes that they can win and lose over the wardroom table. During the day, he is available for sparring, or for discussions about anything and everything. At the same time he is unobtrusive; he seems to know just when to withdraw and leave Solange and Kyril alone. He seems on excellent terms with the crew - several times Solange comes upon him with a group of the sailors not on dauty, sitting on piles of ropes in the foc'sle for example, enjoying a low-voiced conversation with much laughter, while one or another plays an accordion. Sometimes these conversations seem to drift off into song; not just rousing shanties but plaintive, plagent songs of the seafarers life and losses. Then Solange will hear Lucas' voice too - a pleasant tenor in the lower range.
As for the trump ...
He says nothing. And his silence seems to say that this, this final act must wait till Solange herself is ready.
Solange is amiable toward Lucas during this time, but she mentions nothing about the trump for several days. Then one afternoon, when the wind is low and the weather fair, she appears in front of him, arms crossed and already glowering.
"We need to finish this damn thing, I know," she says without preamble. "Someplace more private than the deck."
Lucas gives a little bow. "But of course," he says politely. "My cabin or yours?"
"Yours worked so well last time. Let's go there again."
Lucas bows again and allows her to proceed him to the cabin. He is too perfect a gentlemean, perhaps, to allow himself even the smallest of smirks. Or perhaps it is just that he has sparred enough with Solange know to know precisely how dangerous that would be.
Once in the cabin he moves to his former position and takes out his sketchpad and painting box, selecting the pencil. His manner is controlled, businesslike.
"Let's try a change of tactics," he says. "Rather than my questioning you, let's start with your telling me something that you never wanted to share with anyone."
"Doesn't it amount to the same thing?" she asks wryly, raising an eyebrow. "Nevermind. I just want to finish this."
Solange takes her customary position up against the sideboard. "Look, Lucas, I know what I'm about to tell you will finish the trump. It's been in my mind since you started questioning me on that first day, and it keeps coming back up in my head. So I'm going to tell you...I'm going to be matter-of-fact and unemotional about it...and it stops here. If word of this gets out, it will greatly upset Father and Papa and Aunt Felicity and I will come looking for you with murder in my heart. Do you understand? I want your word that this stops here."
"Of course," says Lucas. "You have my word that it will be forgotten - just as completely as you will forget who it was who created this trump."
He smiles pleasantly. "I have no desire whatsoever to spend my next few decades chained to an artist's easel in Amber or Xanadu, grinding out pretty pictures of our kith and kin. Nor is this a technique that will work with many of them ... if I am forced to invite Brennan, say, or Jerod, to share the innermost secrets of their hearts with me in order to get a true trump of them, I suspect my life expectancy will become shorter than my wife's. Let alone Martin."
"All right, it's a deal. Remind me to ask you sometime why you don't get along with Martin. But not now." Solange runs a hand over her face and sighs. "All right."
Lucas raises his eyebrows slightly, but says nothing.
She's quiet for a moment, ordering her thoughts, then looks up at Lucas. "My foster-brother Matthew. You remember me describing him? Dark hair, dark eyes, sometimes dark personality..." Solange trails off. Her gaze lowers to her feet and she starts chewing on her bottom lip. After another quiet moment she continues, "I also told you that Matthew was envious of me. Thought because he was older and because he was a boy then he should be better than me at everything. Well...one thing he was never better at getting than me was attention from others."
She looks up at Lucas and shrugs. "I don't know why. I suspect it had to do with his personality. He tended to be pessimistic. I was the happy one. I think people naturally gravitate toward that. Anyway...
"Matthew's way of dealing with this--and I really only figured this out later, looking back--was to try to get me to pay more attention to him than I paid attention to others. It wasn't hard. We were alone a lot of the time and I really did adore him. So.
"When we became teeenagers...well, you asked me who I lost my virginity to. I lost it to Matthew. He wanted...that...and I gave it to him. I wanted to make him happy."
"Often a good reason for going to bed with someone," says Lucas, who has been sketching very swiftly throughout this. "Although one that usually has unforseen consequences. Either the person is not made happy, but only more miserable. Or the other person is made very happy - you've given them the most addictive drug ever and you're suddenly their lifeline, their salvation, the source of their fix. And they cling ...
"What was the result with Matthew? Did it happen just the one time?"
Solange sighs. "It was more the latter situation than the former. We had...repeat performances. A few times. Then Mama caught us. That...was unpleasant. There was quite a row. Soon afterwards, Father sent me off to school at Lauderville. I suspected a connection and Mama confirmed it when I confronted her. She did say that she didn't give Father the true reason...not for my sake--because, obviously, it was _all my fault_--but because she wanted to preserve her family's reputation.
"So I was shipped off to Lauderville. I wasn't talking to Mama at the time and my relationship with Matthew was strained. The next time I came back to Amber was for Matthew's funeral. He died in the Burning of Garnath...did you know that?" Her voice has become flat and unemotional.
"I remember," says Lucas. He sketches for a while in silence and then asks, "So ... what is your greatest regret? That you slept with him, or that you went away so it was never truly resolved? I imagine that going away like that must have been something of a relief ... which presumably adds to the feeling of guilt ... "
He raises a hand and touches the corner of his left eye. "Just ... there."
She blinks and looks at her feet. "I regret more sleeping with him. It was foolish and I didn't think through to all the consequences." For that may have been part of the reason Mama killed herself, she thinks, but doesn't voice.
"Interesting you should perceive others as seeing it as all your fault," he goes on, applying the pencil lightly once more. "It was, of course - most of the things we do are our fault."
She shrugs. "Granted."
"But you seem to harbour a feeling of resentment. Is that the case? Is your relationship with Aunt Felicity rather more complicated than you like to portray?"
"I think you have enough psychological fodder to finish the trump," Solange concludes, clearly not wanting to talk about it anymore. "I further think it's time for me to go back to my cabin and break into one of the whisky bottles I brought."
He gives a little bow.
"If such is your wish, my lady," he says. "And yes, I can finish the trump - although I shall think you a meanie if you don't ask me to pop by if for a snifter later."
His dark eyes rest on her face once more - the face he has been studying for so many days.
"And your secrets," he says softly, "are as safe with me as mine are with you."
She smiles wryly. "Indeed."
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LIX: Secrets and Trumps | Index | LXI: Exploring the Wreck
