Return to Summerhouse (The Summerhouse 2)

“She was no beauty, but she had the brains of a wizard.” He chuckled. “And she had the gumption of twenty men. When she saw what I had drawn, she put on her best clothes and went to the house of Sir Markus Vanderstern.” He glanced at Zoë to see if she’d heard of him, but she hadn’t.

“In his day, he was a famous painter. There wasn’t an earl or a duke whose portrait he hadn’t done. It was said that his temper was as bad as his paintings were good. Everyone who sat for him feared him. He’d as soon rage at a duke as at the dustman.”

“As mean as a six-year-old boy with a rubber band,” she said, thinking of one house she’d lived in. “I bet your mother wasn’t afraid of him.”

“No,” Russell said. “The day after I made the drawing on the wall, she went to his house, knocked on his door, and told the maid she wanted him to come to her home and see what her three-year-old son had drawn.”

“I can just imagine how he responded to that.”

“He ignored her for four days, but she set up housekeeping on his front stoop. Finally, he had the sheriff come to get her and she screamed that he was a coward, that he was afraid to see that her son was better at three years old than he was at a hundred.”

Russell closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them. He was lying on the grass with his hands behind his head. “The old man heard her and he took her words as a challenge. Besides, by that time a crowd had gathered outside his house. They were watching this woman who wouldn’t give up no matter what was said to her. He could see that the crowd believed her and thought that he was afraid to see a child who was a better artist than he was.

“He came out, told the sheriff to unhand the woman, then he followed her to our humble house.”

“And he saw your drawing.”

Russell laughed. “By that time I’d charcoaled all the walls that I could reach. There were faces everywhere.”

“And what did he think when he saw them?”

“My father was at home taking care of me while his wife lived on the old master’s doorstep, and he told me that the old man’s jaw dropped down almost to his chest. He was that astonished at what I’d done.”

“So?” Zoë asked when Russell paused. “What did he do?”

“He told my mother to bring me to him when I was seven. My mother said he’d probably be dead by then and she’d have to get someone else to teach me. My father said the old man sneered at her, said, ‘Six,’ then left their house.”

“Wow,” Zoë said. She was lying on the grass beside him, with an arm’s length between them. “Wow, what a great story. You knew you could draw practically from the time you were born, while I didn’t know it until I was an adult. Did you go to him when you were six?”

“Aye, I did. On my sixth birthday, my mother was there with me.”

“She didn’t leave you alone there with him, did she? You were just a child and with that bad-tempered old man!”

Again Russell laughed. “I told you my mother was clever. She’d had years to prepare for her only child going into apprenticeship. She’d found out that the old man could never keep servants. His rages, and the way he accused them of things they didn’t do, made them leave. No one ever stayed more than a year.”

“So what did your mother do?”

“She sent me to him with a box full of food.”

Zoë looked at him in question.

“During the years that I’d been growing up and drawing so much that she said I was driving her mad, she set out to learn to cook. Custard pies. Meat pies. They were beautiful and tasted like heaven. I was given a cold bare room in the old man’s house, but every morning she’d knock on his door and give me a box full of food. It was her plan for the old man to taste her cooking and hire her to work for him.”

“Did she get it?”

“Oh yes, she did. She was his cook for two years, then she was his housekeeper. In my third year there, my father came to work for him too.”

“So your whole family was there,” Zoë said. “And you learned your art at the knee of a master.”

“Hmph!” Russell said. “At the end of his boot was more like it. He was as mean as they come. He begrudged me everything I did, was jealous of me, and he fired my mother every three months.”

“But she didn’t leave?”

“Leave her only son?” Russell smiled. “She was a match for the master and when he told her to get out, she just laughed at him. And he knew that no one could replace her. She kept his house clean and filled his table with good food—even though he complained about every cent she spent.”

Russell’s voice lowered. “He died when I was sixteen and he left everything to my mother.”

“That’s wonderful,” Zoë said. “He wasn’t so bad after all.”