The Baltic War(46)

How does an artist paint something he has already painted? Without the master becoming his own apprentice? Ending a life full of triumphs as if he were nothing more than an understudy?



Another of those impossible quandaries the monster brought with him into the world. But Rubens could resolve it now, using the monster himself.



He came into the room and wiggled fingers at his daughter, who was staring up at him with the wondering eyes of a child barely one year into a life that, for half the children in the world—including some of his—would never be much longer than that.



Then he smiled at Helena to reassure her, while he gently stroked the hair sprouting on Clara Johanna. "You will live, girl," he said, so softly that he didn't think Helena could hear the words. He hoped not, certainly, since she would insist on an explanation later, and what could he say? If nothing else, he would carefully shield Helena from any charges of treason.



"But I must go to work now," he said abruptly, and left.





By the end of the day, he already knew it would be one of his best paintings. He had that sure sense of the thing, that always came with the very finest ones.



A painting that existed in no up-time book, because he had never conceived such a portrait in that other world. Could not have conceived it. He didn't think Brueghel's fevered mind could have dreamed of it—nor even the mad brain of Hieronymus Bosch, for all that the structure of the image shared the logic of Bosch's triptychs.



"The Titan's Choice," he thought he would call it. Or, better still, simply "The Titan." The choice being obvious in the painting itself. Cities wracked by flame and destruction issuing from the right hand, clad in mail and armor. The right hand that any man could resist, with sufficient will and courage. While the left hand, unarmored—the assassin's hand, with the main gauche—delivered the fatal blow. Children spilling out like fruit from a cornucopia. The blow that passed beneath any armor, any defense, any will or steadfastness or courage, because it did not strike at kings and princes and soldiers at all. It struck the fathers and husbands hidden beneath.



Of course, he would not be able to show it in public, but that didn't really matter. The joy of finally recapturing his own creation was enough.



Who could he show it to, after all? Even if Don Fernando triumphed, Rubens would have to conceal it from the prince become a king. Rubens liked the young Habsburg scion, a great deal, and he wished him all the best. A long reign over a prosperous realm, with many children to carry on his line, sired upon a convivial and comely wife he actually loved. Had affection for, at least.



For that matter, Rubens was partial to the Habsburgs taken as a whole, and hoped that Don Fernando would be able to revitalize that great family. But he also knew that Don Fernando's dreams of future Habsburg glory were already doomed. The best the prince and his heirs would manage—no small thing, of course—would be to protect and nurture one corner of the world.



The world itself no longer belonged to them. A titan had come, and shaken it loose. For good or ill, it would be his name that the future would bestow upon this time, just as it had in ages past upon Alexander. And would, in the future of the titan's world, bestow upon a man named Napoleon.



His enemies could assassinate him tomorrow, and it wouldn't matter. The deadliest blows had already been delivered. Alexander died in Babylon at the age of thirty-three—but the Persian world was already gone, swept aside by the Greek torrent brought by its conqueror. Just as surely as the world Rubens and Don Fernando had been born in was already gone.



So be it. Rubens had made the father's decision, the husband's decision. In the end, dynasties were a small thing.



He decided he would leave the face till the last. True, he could request a portrait of some sort—they might have one of those "photographs" in their possession, in Amsterdam—but why bother? That would require awkward explanations, and he would have several days to study the titan himself after he arrived, with no one being the wiser.





He came. He went. For days, that fair but plain face fascinated Rubens. He'd thought he would have to idealize it—or demonize it, perhaps—but in the end decided the face was perfect as it was. Inscrutable in its simplicity, just as were the titan's deeds themselves.



A week later, the painting was done. It was the best work Rubens had done in years. A pity it would have to remain hidden, of course. But whatever else, the work had shattered the artist's paralysis. Everything he'd done since the Ring of Fire, except this, had been a copy of something, in one way or another. If not a copy of his own works, those of another—like that portrait he'd done of the Gretchen woman and her magnificent bosom, mimicking an artist of the future named Delacroix.