Chapter 1
Grantville, May 1636
Daniel Block stretched his aching back, then tilted his canvas to capture more of the fading light of the evening. The reddish hue changed the colors on his palette, giving Fraulein Barnes’s pale arms and shoulders an orange tint that he found most intriguing. Painting outdoors had much to offer, though he worried the colors of his final work would be off. But then, the painting would seem odd to down-timers anyway. Even many of these up-time folk seemed tied to tradition when it came to art. Perhaps, he thought, my coming to Grantville will help change—
“Block!”
Daniel jumped, turning to see Warner Barnes waving a thick hand as he entered the yard from the back door. “Ach, scheisse,” Daniel hissed. He spun, wide-eyed, looking for the canvas drape he used to cover paintings between sessions, only to remember laughing earlier as his five-year-old, Benjamin, had wrapped the cloth around his shoulders like a cape and swooped through the yard, shouting, “I’m Superman, Superman! Fly like the birds!” while his young friend Stefan Weiss cheered him on. It had been so utterly charming, but now— “Scheisse.”
The painting wasn’t ready.
Barnes, sweat beading on his pale forehead, stumbled to a halt a few feet away from the painting, his mouth gaping and his face going a sickly-white. “That—that—that,” he said, raising his hand to point, “That is not—you didn’t. Dear God in heaven, man, I trusted you. A master painter, Clyde said, and you—you—bastard!” Warner kicked at Daniel’s easel, knocking the painting face-first onto the ground, stomping on the back of the canvas, howling in rage. “You have violated her—violated my daughter!”
Daniel gaped in horror, frozen, thinking only of the still-wet paint smearing in the dirt—all his work, all his hopes and dreams . . .
“Please, Herr Barnes,” Daniel said, holding up his paint-stained hands, “let me explain. I wanted to portray your daughter similar to the way Picasso would have in his later work, you see, showing multiple viewpoints of her at once. But, you know, I’m no Picasso.” He shrugged. “At least not yet. I realized that trying to create a painting that bold too soon would be a disservice to you and your daughter. So, I thought I’d throw in a little of the current tradition, coupled with a touch of Surrealism, and—”
“I don’t give a damn what you thought you’d do,” Barnes said, a thick vein pulsing across his reddening forehead. “I paid you good money to paint a proper portrait of my little girl. I’ll be damned if I’m going to let this trash see the light of day—and I will see to it that you never paint another of this town’s decent young ladies. You filthy, disgusting, sorry son of a—” Barnes stepped forward, arm raised and fist clenched, ready to take a turn at pummeling the artist himself.
Daniel—finally recognizing the danger—armed himself with a nearby folding chair.
Barnes knocked the chair away, grabbed Daniel’s sweater, and drew his fist back to deliver a crushing blow.
Stefan’s mother, Nina Weiss—housekeeper and companion of Daniel’s host, Ella Lou Rice—came barreling through the rear door, shouting, “Nein, nein, you must not, Herr Barnes!” Her small, thin body radiated outrage. “There will be no fighting here! Frau Rice is sleeping and is not well today. You must stop, I beg you!”
Both men halted in place as Nina rushed up to them.
She took hold of Barnes’ raised arm and pulled it down, patting it soothingly. “You do not wish to cause trouble for Frau Rice, surely. Do you want to wake her when she is not well? Her son Herr Rice would be most upset.” She turned him, pulling him gently by the arm, and he went with her, a bewildered look on his face.
“But I—but he—that painting!”
“Ja, ja, Herr Barnes. You do not like it,” she said, nodding her head sympathetically. “I said as much to Herr Block myself yesterday, but he is most taken with these new up-time art forms. Very modern, very advanced. We do not understand them, I think, you and I.” She patted his arm.
“We’re not finished here, Block,” Barnes said as Nina led him into the house and out of sight. “Not finished at all!”
Stunned, Daniel turned to survey the wreckage of his work. He did not fully understand these “modern” art styles himself, he acknowledged, as he turned the painting onto its back. He grimaced at the smears of green paint that ran across Mikayla Barnes’s distorted profile, marred her bare, round breasts and belly, and dotted the pale background. Her cobalt hair, which had flown upward, transforming into undulating birds, was dotted with dirt and gravel. Worst of all was a nearly foot-long rip separating her bare legs from the purple boulder upon which she was draped.
He had envisioned a sort of Picasso-esque Andromeda, with the saturated, golden palette of Gaugin’s Tahiti paintings. Fraulein Barnes lay sprawled on the rocks, chained, waiting to be freed from her bonds by a transformed, heroic sea monster. It had been unlike anything he could have imagined before his studies at the Grantville library. It was to be the first step in a grand project to make a mark—a lasting one, this time—on the art world. But it was gone now. Destroyed.
Worst of all, Barnes could very well be right. Maybe it was a desecration—of both his own talents and Fraulein Barnes. Maybe he was a fool to experiment with art movements that had been—would be—hundreds of years in the making. Even Daniel’s wife Sofia had urged him to start more slowly: experiment with light, she said, or study the anatomy books. Learn to paint those magnificent horses that George Stubbs would bring to life in 130 years—or even explore the blends of Realism and Impressionism of Manet and Renoir. But Daniel had rejected that out of hand as too easy—too likely to leave him, as now, out of the history books altogether. No, he must do something bold, something dramatic, something . . .
But now? He did not know what to do.
He sank into the folding chair that stood nearby, dropped his head into his hands, and wallowed in deepest misery for several minutes.
Nina soon bustled out of the house again, tsking and scolding. “Up, up!” she said. “It will be dark before long, and you must put your things away.”
Obediently, woodenly, Daniel stood and worked with Nina to gather his jars of paint and his brushes. They must all be cleaned, the jars properly sealed, his sketches put away, and so on. His materials were expensive and difficult to find at times. He must not waste them.
After a moment, Nina said coolly, nodding at the enraged Barnes as he disappeared down the street, “That one will cause trouble.”
Daniel grunted. He had no doubt of that.
“I called Herr Rice. He will come.”
Daniel stopped, startled. “But surely he won’t want to get involved in all this . . .”
“Come, come,” Nina said, ignoring his question. “Clean your brushes. Do you wish to save the canvas?”
Daniel shrugged, and Nina picked it up and carried it to the shed where gardening equipment was kept. He let her go. He could move it from there later or burn it. Or maybe study it some more to see where he went wrong. If he had gone wrong.
He shook his head angrily. Damn these new styles of art, and damn the art books that bore no trace of his existence. Elaine O’Meara, an up-time art teacher and historian who had helped him scour the town’s library and even her own book collection for a single mention of his work, had tried to tell him gently that the books brought through the Ring of Fire were far from thorough or complete, that other libraries up-time would have far more detailed histories—that he would, surely, be discussed in depth in some of those books. There might, perhaps, even be whole volumes dedicated to his work and his influence.
But, in his darkest (and more pragmatic) moments, he had to admit he thought it unlikely. Frau O’Meara’s expression as she said these things to him made it clear that even she doubted it was true. Surely, if she were correct, there would be at least some hint of his artistic influence on history, even if it were miniscule. The art style of the seventeenth century had come to be called “Baroque” by up-time historians, and there were plenty of famous Baroque painters mentioned in the smattering of art books that had come through the Ring of Fire: Peter Paul Rubens, Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Johann Vermeer, and so many others, all known well enough to have at least a description alongside their most famous paintings inside thick illustrated books from one side of Grantville to the other. Why was there no mention of Daniel Block, an artist who had painted many portraits of the illustrious Gustavus Adolphus, as well as highly-regarded paintings of dozens of other prominent statesmen and their families?
Why had history forgotten me?
As Nina strode back toward the house, she gave Daniel a firm, reassuring nod. “Come when you are finished. I will make coffee—and there is cake, fresh from the oven.”
“I thank you, Frau Weiss,” he said.
He only wished he was the sort of man for whom a warm drink and a sweet pastry would ease his mind. His only real consolation, however, was the possibility that his greatest works had been consumed in a fire; that, at least, would be better than having to accept the fact that history had judged him lacking as an artist. It was not impossible. Many of his paintings—many of his greatest works—were at this moment in Mecklenburg. It was, in a sense, his only hope, however dreadful it was to contemplate. Well, that and the possibility that he could still produce works of greatness—the greatness he knew he was capable of, the greatness he would ascend to if he were permitted time and freedom to do it. He was not a young man anymore, true, but as Frau O’Meara had said to him during one of his darkest hours: one is never too old to dream a new dream.
His brushes clean, Daniel entered the house, momentarily surprised to hear a man’s voice coming from the foyer. He was first pleased and then uneasy when he realized it was Clyde Rice. Clyde, a tall, stout man, had a look of worry on his face that did nothing to ease Daniel’s mind.
“Daniel,” Clyde said, reaching his hand out for a firm shake. “Good to see you.”
The two men chatted briefly—about their families, local politics, the conflicts in the East, the Saxon uprising, Gustavus Adolphus’ current condition, etc. But Clyde soon raised the issue they both knew he was there to discuss. “Tell me, what happened with Warner Barnes?”
Daniel grimaced and related the afternoon’s events.
Clyde, who had obviously heard some of it already, nodded. When Daniel was finished, he said, “You think I could see it? This painting of yours?”
Daniel frowned. He felt reluctant to show it to Clyde. Was it possible that he really had done something wrong? Or was it just that he wasn’t prepared for yet another person to dislike the work he’d put so much effort into? He shrugged, looked at Nina, and raised his eyebrows.
“I will get it,” she said, moving swiftly toward the back door.
Once she was gone, Clyde said, “Daniel . . . is it true she posed nude for you?”
“Nude?” Daniel frowned. “No. I did not tell her what to wear or not to wear—she came out in a robe, which she took off. She had on a . . . beek? A . . .”
Clyde frowned, confused, so Daniel held his hands in front of his chest, cupped. “The cloth is here.”
“Oh,” Clyde said, “I see. A bikini.”
“Yes! That’s what she called it.”
“That didn’t seem strange to you?”
Daniel hesitated, unsure how to answer. “These . . . bikinis? They seem very strange, yes, but I don’t see how—”
Nina entered, carefully maneuvering through the door with the damaged canvas, and both men turned to her. She looked to Daniel, who nodded, then turned the painting to face Clyde.
“Oh dear lord,” Clyde said. “Daniel, what on earth were you thinking?”
Daniel launched into a discussion of his influences and the symbolism—similar to what he tried to convey to Herr Barnes earlier—as Clyde continued to gape at the portrait.
Finally, Clyde held up his hand and Daniel stopped in mid-sentence. “I can see, I suppose, where . . . but didn’t it seem, you know, inappropriate to paint her like that? Nude? And all . . . distorted?”
“Why would it be inappropriate?”
Clyde sighed deeply, then took the painting and slid it into the hall closet.
Daniel began. “I have done something wrong—something the up-timers find unacceptable?”
“Well, yes, we . . . you see, we aren’t much for nudity in general—not public nudity anyway—and especially not in our children.”
“Clyde, I know Herr Barnes is a friend of yours and you recommended me to him, and so I apologize for having offended him, but—”
Clyde held his hand up, and Daniel turned to see where he was staring so intently. One of the town’s few remaining squad cars was pulling up in front of the house.
Clyde shook his head. “Shit!”
“I don’t understand,” Daniel said. “What is wrong?”
Clyde huffed and headed toward the front door, opening it as Sergeant Marvin Tipton, Grantville’s head of investigations, was coming up the walk. Tipton had a slight paunch and was a little shorter than many other up-timers Daniel had met, but he wore his officer’s uniform well, and had a kind face below graying hair.
“Marv,” Clyde said, forcing a smile onto his face. “Haven’t seen you in a while. How’s Elsie?”
“Good, thanks,” Tipton said, shaking Clyde’s hand. “Mind if I come in?”
“Please.” Clyde waved Tipton inside.
Daniel stepped back to give them space—wanting to say something, to defend himself and his work—but figuring silence was the best policy at that moment.
“Care for a drink?” Clyde asked, shutting the screen door. He stopped next to Daniel. “I’ll bet Nina has a nice pitcher of iced tea in the fridge.”
Sergeant Tipton shook his head and put up his hand. “No, thanks, Clyde. I’m here on an official matter.”
“Oh? What can I do you for?”
The sergeant cleared his throat then looked Daniel square in the face. “I understand that Warner Barnes’ teenage daughter Mikayla was here with you, Mr. Block, posing nude for a portrait. Is that correct?”
Clyde and Daniel looked at each other. Daniel cleared his throat. “I painted a portrait of her, yes—”
“In the nude?” Tipton said.
Daniel shook his head. “No. She was not nude.”
“That’s a lie!” Warner Barnes bellowed from the door.
Tipton let out a growl. “Barnes, I told you I would—”
Barnes slapped open the screen door and joined them in the foyer. “She is naked in the painting,” Barnes said. “My little girl! How the hell do you paint someone in the nude when they’re not nude?”
Daniel threw up his hands. “Oh, for heaven’s sake. You obviously don’t understand a thing about art. I have been painting nudes since before I was your daughter’s age. I know what a nude woman looks like.”
“She’s not a woman—she’s a child!” Barnes bellowed, lunging toward Daniel with clenched fists.
Sergeant Tipton stepped between them, holding Barnes back. “Gentlemen, please. Let’s not go overboard here.” He nodded to Daniel. “Look, why don’t you fetch that painting, Mr. Block, and come on down to the station with me? We can sort the matter out better down there, I think.”
“Hold on,” Clyde said, “you can’t come into my mother’s house and haul a guest out.”
Sergeant Tipton frowned. “If necessary, I can cuff him and take him out. But I’d rather not do that, out of respect for you and your mother. Just get the painting and let’s go to the station.”
They argued back and forth for several minutes. Even Nina joined in, arguing that Daniel was a good man who should be left in peace.
Daniel, meanwhile, kept eyeing the pistol Sergeant Tipton had in a holster at his side, worried that any minute it would be drawn. If he were anywhere but in Grantville, the man who came to arrest him would have put a quick halt to any argument with a pointed gun or a sword. His anger toward Barnes surged. If he were a younger, stronger man, Daniel would silence Barnes himself, as he had done a time or two in his past against those who had questioned his honor. The accusations flying out of Barnes’ mouth were false, disrespectful, and downright obscene. And I thought these up-timers were democratic and enlightened, he thought, as the arguing continued. They’re no better than anyone else . . .
“You will not take anyone, or anything, from my house!”
They stopped arguing, turned, and looked toward the frail but stern old woman who stood halfway down the stairs from the second floor. She wore a thin red robe over a flower-patterned nightgown. Her shoulders were bowed, her back slightly bent. Daniel could see that she was ill.
“Frau Rice,” Nina said, moving to help Ella Lou the rest of the way down the stairs. “You should be resting.”
“How can anyone rest with all this damned shouting?” the old woman said, letting Nina guide her into the fray. “What exactly is going on here?”
“You’ve allowed this hack to violate my daughter,” Barnes said, pointing a thick finger at Daniel. “In your own home!”
“That’s ridiculous! What are you talking about?” she said.
“He painted Mikayla in the nude, right here in this house!” He thrust his finger toward the rug beneath their feet. “I trusted you by leaving my daughter alone with him, and that painting of his? It’s pornography is what it is. And who knows what else happened while they were alone together?” He turned toward Sergeant Tipton. “I want my money back, and I want this damn pervert arrested!”
“Watch your accusations, Warner!” Ella Lou said. “I’ve known you since you were a little boy. You may think you’re a big, important man these days, but by God, in my house, you will show some respect.” Ell Lou stepped closer and hooked her arm through Daniel’s. “My guest, the artist Daniel Block, would never do anything to harm your daughter.”
Barnes spluttered for a moment, and Daniel watched him closely. He didn’t know Herr Barnes very well, but he knew that the man served in the SoTF Office of the President, and before that had worked in the USE State Department, and in the Department of Internal Affairs for the NUS/SoTF. He was important, at least in a small way. Clyde had once called him a simple pencil-pusher, but Barnes was also rich enough to have given Daniel a handsome and much-needed advance on the work. That was not a detail that Daniel could forget so readily.
“Well, get the painting, then,” Barnes said, snapping his fingers as if everyone around would jump at his order. “Get it, and I’ll prove it to you. Where’d you hide it, Block?”
Daniel was about to answer, but the sting of Frau Rice’s sharp nails digging into his arm silenced him. Frau Rice was a very nice lady once you got to know her, but when she grabbed your arm and gave you a sharp, friendly reminder to “shut the hell up,” you listened.
“Sergeant Tipton,” Ella Lou said, “I’m sorry, but you will not take Daniel or anything else from my home until you have produced a legal search warrant. Didn’t the laws of West Virginia come through the Ring of Fire?”
Tipton nodded grudgingly. “Yes, ma’am, they did, but I don’t require a warrant to take someone in for questioning.”
“Fair enough, but you need one to see the painting, and until you do, I see no reason for Daniel to go anywhere with you, at least not without an attorney present.”
Sergeant Tipton sighed. “Ma’am, I—”
“Sergeant, when you return with a warrant, we will be happy to oblige you. In the meantime, you should go.” Ella Lou smiled and looked at Barnes. “And please take this pompous twit with you, or I will press some charges of my own.”
Warner Barnes’ face ruffled as if it had feathers, but the sergeant nodded at Clyde, turned, and held the door for Barnes, who stomped out in a huff. Tipton walked back outside to the squad car with Barnes following, talking angrily to him. Tipton nodded twice, spoke briefly, and drove off, leaving Barnes staring after him.
Ella Lou held a wry smile on her face until Tipton drove off down the street.
Daniel allowed himself to breathe. “Thank you, Frau Rice. For a minute there, I thought they might—”
“That jackass,” Ella Lou said, still staring through the screen door.
The others peered out. Barnes was speaking to a woman across the street, pointing at the house. While they watched, two other people stopped to listen, turning to look at the house as well.
“Show me the painting,” Ella Lou snapped. She crossed the foyer and slammed the front door, turning to glare at Daniel and Clyde. “Now!”
Silently, Clyde pulled the painting from the hall closet and displayed it so that his mother could get the full view of it from the light coming through the front windows. She stared at it for a long moment in silence.
Daniel found himself smiling wistfully as he surveyed his work. What a waste of a fine painting. Despite Herr Barnes’ overreaction, Daniel felt that it was a terrific piece—probably his finest work. He had used the Impressionist broken color technique, leaving brush strokes unblended throughout the composition—strokes that defined the girl’s lips and the small dimples in her cheeks, the curvature of her hips and the gentle swell of her thighs. The whole effect was bold, new, and fresh, something the likes of which few in the world had ever seen, at least outside the confines of Grantville.
It was true that a lot of up-time books had been reproduced and knowledge disseminated throughout Europe since the arrival of these Americans. But high-quality, full-color images of the great works from Picasso, Renoir, Dali, Monet, and Cézanne had been seen only by a lucky few. Perhaps Rubens had seen these things; perhaps he would understand why Daniel had made the choices that he had made, the decision to paint the girl in this manner. But I will not apologize for my art. I will not—
“Daniel.” Frau Rice’s tone was calm but strained. She looked at him. “You will not wait for the police to return with a warrant. When the boys return from school, and Sofia returns from work, you will take this painting down to the station and explain yourself. I’m sure this can still be resolved without . . . without too much fuss.”
“But . . . I tell you truthfully, Frau Rice, the girl was never naked in your house. She was wearing a bikini, and I never, ever touched her. It was innocent.”
“Yes, I don’t doubt that. And yet,” she said, her voice rising, her breath short and agitated, “here she lies, naked. And I don’t care if you obscured her . . . her . . . I don’t care. There she is, naked. She’s just a child, Daniel. Underage. You will go and you will explain, and you will tell Warner Barnes that you’re sorry.”
“I will not apologize for my art.”
“You will apologize,” Ella Lou Rice said, stamping her foot. “You will . . . or are you no longer a guest in my home?”
All was silent. Daniel stood there, staring down at the old woman whose expression had turned from support to sincere disappointment. He looked at Nina then Clyde; both of them stood there, speechless, waiting for him to say the next word. What should he say? What choice did he have?
There were two options that lay before him. Do as Frau Rice bid and go to the police and apologize to Herr Barnes. Or, as soon as his son and wife returned, gather their things and leave, go to some other place and try to make a name for himself with all that he had learned in Grantville. To France, perhaps, where great artistic movements like Impressionism and Surrealism would, in time, rise and give the world such gifts as only God himself could inspire. Yes, leaving would be a good thing to do.
But, would it? Who was to say that he and his family would receive a warm reception anywhere else? The styles and techniques that he was experimenting with would be just as strange and, perhaps, unwelcome in France right now as they were here in Germany. Leaving would, in effect, mean accepting defeat. And that would make the historians right to have discarded him on that ash heap of history, as the up-timers sometimes liked to say. What kind of message would it send to his son, who was happy and comfortable in his new life in Grantville, and who was beginning to show some artistic talent of his own?
I will not apologize for my art. And yet . . .
“Okay, Frau Rice,” he said finally, “I will go to the station. And I will try to make them understand.”
“And you will apologize?”
“Ja,” he said, sighing heavily. “Ja.”