This last week I met someone very interesting. She stands on the opposite end of a divide from us—she is wealthy but lacks status above that of someone in trade—but something about her is approachable and enjoyable. She wears fine clothes but they’re stained with paint, she affects courtly mannerisms but ceases when asked… I think I’m making my first proper friend here at the College.
The merchant woman—Vaterin—woke up almost as soon as the bell tolled. Her family must be wealthy, for her to have been raised in sufficient quiet to make her such a light sleeper. I wonder what she’s doing here. Artists work for their living.
“Good morning, Vaterin.”
“Good morning, Marble.”
“You have about a sandglass to get dressed before we’re expected to be in the dining hall. After that, we’ll attend services. After that, you’re free from chores to see around the place, and I’m free from chores to do the showing.”
“Services. Right. Sau—Father Sauer mentioned those. I’ll just dress then, shall I.”
Once Vaterin was dressed, Marble appraised the newbie. She wore boots and gloves—I wonder if she bothers removing them or just has them cleaned at expense—trousers, vest, and shirt, all of it in reds and purples. Expensive dyes. And they’ll show paint like little else. She was a short-cut dark blonde with brown eyes set off by an aquiline nose. She was taller than Marble by several inches, and heavier. Good living and mental labor. Or maybe she just tends towards fat. She did not think this unkindly; she honestly thought that her clothes set off the curves of a full figure rather well. But then, good tailoring flatters most builds.
They walked quickly down the hall, and Marble cursed that she didn’t have the eye for portraiture. She’d tried, she had the words like “aquiline” to describe features, but it just didn’t carry over into her paintings. Thus, she was at a loss to describe more to her liking the way Vaterin’s hair lay, or the color of her eyes and skin. However, a noble upbringing gave her the eye to see that Vaterin moved confidently, walking through the new space of the College with self-assurance as of one who belonged wherever she went.
She picked up my name immediately, and evidently bought from my family before we beggared ourselves undoing the wrath of dragons. Or maybe since. It’s not as though the money isn’t coming in, it’s just all going to duns. I wonder what—I will just ask. “So what brings you to the College of the Art of the Divine, if you’re a merchant?”
“What brings anyone to the College of the Art of the Divine?” Smartalec.
They arrived at the dining hall, there was a quiet hubbub from the clergy and students of the College and Chapel making conversation. Food was barley and turtleweed stew, cooked in a bone stock, simple but nourishing and hearty fare.
“Well, if your family trades in gems you have the wealth to patronize. The wealthy like to have themselves immortalized in portraiture.”
“Suppose that were why I was here. Would you suggest yourself?”
Marble shook her head. “Most definitely not. I am a landscape and architecture painter. My portraits are…” she laughed. “My portraits are not work that will draw a patron.”
“Landscapes draw their own patronage. My family—” Vaterin sighed. Why the sigh? “My family has landscapes testifying to their gardens over the years, keeping pace with fashion and bringing plants from as far as Dominion and the Sevens.” You haven’t answered my question, though it really does seem like you’re here to hire away a painter. You’re several months too early for the All Saviors’ Day expo, though.
“So that is why you’re here?”
“Oh, sorry. No. I am here to paint, and to pray.”
Marble led them across the plateau, and into the Chapel of the Power of Ariel. She watched Vaterin’s face inside, and saw her reach into her pocket abortively before resting her hand at her side. The pitch black chandelier in the dome of the ceiling cast light though some kind of pre-Loss sorcery, illuminating all there was inside. The pews were old, well-cared for wood tended by monks before the College had assumed control of the isle, the stone the native granite of the island. At the apex of the chapel was a large window with the eight-pointed Star of the One God. The Mother Superior stood off to one side, while Father Sauer was taking his customary role of leading the morning service. As he said, “Children of the Father Supreme, let us pray,” Marble’s hand reflexively flew up to cover her heart, fingers splayed, mirroring the God-Star at the head of the chapel. However, her mind was elsewhere. When you attend services twice a day every day, Marble thought, perhaps it is not so great a sin to let your mind wander from time to time.
So she’s wealthy, but she comes to a monastic college to learn to paint. She said she had come not only to learn to paint, but to pray. Marble stole a glance at Vaterin, who was kneeling beside her and murmuring the words of the prayer Father Sauer was leading in. I wonder what the significance of that is. I’ll have to ask, we’ll have plenty of time to talk while I show her around. The wealthy were known to occasionally develop a pious streak, forsaking their money in favor of enlightenment—but she’s dressed in fine red and purple linen. You’d think she’d dress more economically if that were what she was doing. Never mind the hypocrisy of buying a new wardrobe to signal an oath of poverty. Then, too, she had paper and ink and quill. Not cheap things. She sighed… oh confound it all I’ll just ask her when services are over.
As they walked out after the sermon, an affair taking roughly six sand-glasses, Marble asked the question that was burning in her mind. “What is the wealthy scion of a merchant family doing on a monastery island, well-dressed but looking to ‘paint, and to pray’?”
“You don’t beat around the bush, do you?” Vaterin was smiling as she asked.
“One of us has to not, you only answer questions on the second attempt.”
“That’s not intentional. Oh, I did it again. Well…” she looked into the distance and sighed. Again, the sighing. “My parents spent what they would willingly part with in terms of tuition in a donation to Mother Church, to get me a compact with the Muse of Painting. You see, I have the love of painting, but not the talent. So I commune with a holy spirit to give me the ability, and it is through faith that I can paint at all.” I don’t know terribly much about spirit magic, but I thought it was the magic of certainty, because you felt the spirit. It’s sorcery that’s about pure faith in the One God. Grandmama explained that to me when she taught me how to wield flame. “As a result, it was imperative that I go to school somewhere with two virtues. One, piety. Two, economy. Because of the labor that they exact, and the piety they demand, the College of the Art of the Divine was the perfect place.”The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
“Verdantfield is close to the Crown Range. You came a long way. That wasn’t a dear expense?”
Vaterin waved a hand dismissively. “It’s all a formality. My parents can afford the trip, they just are making me go through the hoops of economy to prove my devotion.” Ah. So she is affecting poverty when she has the resources of a merchant family available—no, that’s not fair.
“So they’ve cut you off from any further support?”
“Precisely. I have until the end of the season to secure a patron, before I return home, marry into another merchant family, and lead our combined mercantile dynasties.”
“You make it sound like a death sentence.” Many would envy such a fate.
“I detest ciphering. Though I may have no talent for it of my own, I have the faith necessary to channel an angel and that gives me talent.”
“Hmm.” I really have nothing to say to that. “So you’ve seen the chapel, do you want to explore the College first, or the fields below?”
Vaterin swallowed. “The College, I think.” Fields make her nervous? Is she worried about doing manual labor? She just expressed a detestation of the intellectual exercise involved in ciphering. Marble was extremely proficient with numbers, as a noble child brought up in penury tended to be.
Marble showed Vaterin the college. It was not large, but then it was not housed on a large island. There were the broad-windowed study rooms, where sculptors worked their clay and painters plied their canvasses with as much daylight as could be let in. “This is the boys’ dorm,” she said, indicating a door opposite the one they’d risen from. “Nothing of interest there.” After that, she led them to the workshops and kitchens, the places where they would spend a few hours each day repairing wobbly stools or making the thick soups that served as the communal meals.
“Now then, the fields. Weeds aren’t much of an issue, but we’re expected to clear any kelp that beaches itself over the crops or clogs the tidal mill.”
“Right. The, ah… fields.” What is her problem with crops? Issues with manual labor? Evidently seeing the question written on her face, Vaterin added, “I am scared of heights, and the switchbacks do not encourage me.”
“You could always go through the catacombs down into the mines and out onto the dock. We’re not technically supposed to do that, but you could.”
“I was told very sternly not to enter the caverns at the end of the dock.”
“I mean, it’s not a straight path by any means.”
“Do you know the way?” Her face lit with hope. I regret that I cannot lead her through there.
“Oh no. Not at all. I have no desire to hang out with the dead.”
“That’s valid. I can brave the switchbacks. Lead on, my L—Marble.”
Marble snickered. “Were you about to honor my title, or be a smartalec?”
“You have a regal bearing. Merchants are lower class; it was ingrained that if we wanted favorable contracts we had best show respect for those buying from us.” I have a regal bearing? Well that’s flattering. Good to know my title is good for something other than minefulls of debt.
They made their way down the switchbacks in silence, Vaterin’s clammy hand in Marble’s for the security it offered. Once again, I wish I could portray the difference in bearing. On the switchbacks, she was timid, uncertain, but now that we’re on the ground she’s standing… Marble cast about for the painfully memorized terminology she’d hoped would be the key to figure painting. A wide stance. An open stance. Something like that.
“So you paint landscapes. Could you paint the cliff, from the bottom like this?”
“Now that’s an interesting question. I hadn’t considered the foreshortening necessary, but yes, I certainly could paint this.”
“I’m envious. I was trying to distract myself on the way up, and, well… I would show you the sketch but I scribbled over it.”
“Despite your angel, you can’t do scenery?”
“I think it’s something to do with faith. Or practice. Both of which I hope to explore here. But all I can seem to paint are animals, people… sometimes the odd abomination. I’ve got a nice sketch of one of the not-cats I saw chasing down some kind of vermin. I’d like to paint you by candlelight, your eyes are the most beautiful golden color.”
“Aww, thank you! They’re brown, but I’d believe they catch candlelight.”
“I thought you had no knack for figure paintings?”
“I’ve been painting a still life by candlelight. So while I don’t know how I’d paint myself, I know what it does to have an orange glow instead of white sunlight.” I’m having fun. I hadn’t really made any friends here, but Vaterin is different. A little off-putting how she doesn’t see her own privilege, but I suppose I have some of my own. She mentioned a “regal bearing” or something like that. “What say you and I become friends?”
“I should like that very much.”
“Well then, friend, I present to you the fields of sand and mud, the crops that sustain this College, and our prized duty of bringing water from the spring on the plateau down to the fields here.”
“You have got to be kidding me. We water these by hand? Why not just carve a channel so the spring drains into the fields? They’d probably fare better further up towards the cliffs anyway and—”
“You know about farming? I thought you were a merchant. Oh, but you’re from Verdantfield. From the name alone, I’m guessing you trade in produce. Profitably, if you’ve also bought Bitumen tourmalines. But no, we draw water from a pool and carry it down. Each student gets that duty one day a week. The spring is unnatural, you see.”
“More pre-Loss sorcery?”
“A bargain with the dragon of Tourmaline Isle. Tribute in the form of art and money from our expos in exchange for her sorcery making an aquifer. The natural one dried up back before recorded history.”
“You’re a Bitumen, but you wear undyed wool and white cotton. Why is that?”
“And you say I’m blunt.” May as well get this out of the way. If she’s only interested in wealth, she’s a friend I could do without anyway. “A dragon felt we had bargained with her in bad faith and flooded our mines. We traded the production of the mines to a water sorcerer to drain them, until the year of remission. All the wealth we have left to ourselves is in our fields, and those were poorly tended. Then, too, the mineworks are ever expanding, spoil covering or poisoning what pasture we have.”
“I see. That’s unfortunate. Would you mind if I spoke to my family on your behalf?” Because she has money, she just has to make a show of poverty to satisfy her parents.
“I don’t. It wouldn’t arrive for some time, however.”
“Oh?”
“We’re well off the ‘Loon route. To get letters into Fief proper, you put them on a boat. The boat goes along a route I imagine you took to get here, or into Dragold if you’re in a hurry, to get to a ‘Loon outpost, and then it’s four days from there to go around the Orth… but I suppose the Crown Range is east of here, so it’s their reply that would need the four days plus transit across the sea.”
“You certainly know a lot about this. I take it you send letters home as well?”
“I do, but that’s not the only reason. Tourmaline Isle is in the Clearwater Duchy, which is my homeland. But you knew that, you recognized my family name.”
“What I didn’t put together is your knowing how lines of communication flowed through your lands.”
“You sound like you respect my knowledge of what amounts to trivia.”
“I’ve met more than my share of nobles who would only be interested in the shining products of their mines. They never impressed me particularly.”
“Well thank you, then, Vaterin.”
“You’re welcome, Marble. So, what else do I need to know for my stay here?”