Camera Obscura

I stomped into the room, and dramatically swept all the documents and papers I’d so carefully gathered onto the floor.

Instead of reacting with shock or fear, Lady Suzanne laughed with delight.

“Obviously, my paltry attempt at dramatics has unmoved you.” I flopped in my chair with a sigh. “You could have just told me, instead of having me climb the roofer’s ladder. I don’t think he’ll ever get over it, poor chap.”

“Would you have climbed the attic steps, had I simply asked you?”

I stared at my patron, sitting primly, mirth still dancing in her eyes. I sighed explosively. “I suppose not.”

“Then there’s your answer.” She leaned over, tapped the corner of a drawing that somehow withstood my determination to introduce it to a hideously expensive Berber carpet. “You are a man of science. You now have incontrovertible proof. So, now adjust your theories. And your artist's sketches.”

“Have you known all along?”

“Oh, la, you young stripling. Of course not. Not till even younger Charles out there went up on his ladder a few weeks ago. That part of the house was entirely closed off. Last week I had the carpenter in, and he uncovered the door.”

I stared at my documents, scattered like my wits. My life’s work, over in an instant.

Lady Suzanne was mildly sympathetic. She stood, patted my arm absently. “Ideas are like children, they can die a-borning, and the loss is keenly felt. I will give you a few moments to grieve, then meet me in the Rose Room. From there we will ascend through the servant’s old quarters. Moved the girls to the Green Room, and they seem to like it better, so perhaps things should change. They seem to anyway, no matter how much I disallow it. Things changing, I mean.” And she swept away, as only a grand dame can.

I do like the old bat, but she can be a bit trying sometimes.

I stared at the drawings.

I had been so sure that the old palace had hosted a bell tower!

The plans, as well as the palace, had been quite well obliterated during the war. Its treasures had been spirited off months earlier, and were safely secured in various locations. Even Lady Suzanne’s well-connected family did their civic duty, smuggling various antiques and jewelry to their modest country estate. One wrote a book about it, detailing his heroic stand against highway robbers, which eventually cost him his hand and military career. And a particular key battle in the war, he hinted broadly, since he himself personally wasn’t there.

He also wrote of hearing the bell in the tower clanging fitfully as the conflagration destroyed it, when the palace burned.

No one had consulted the palace librarian when treasure-gathering. He was able to carry out five books in a large satchel on his back as the rest burned, and he mourned the loss the rest of his life. Mere paperwork, ledgers, and receipts wouldn't have made the cut anyway.

Our history courses always include the more memorable quotes from Lord Augustus. No, we don’t use the family surname, because “it’s too embarrassing” (according to themselves). The Palace Bell became our new country’s anthem when we changed from a kingdom to a constitutional republic.

But our royalty, including Lady Suzanne, kept their old wealth, and their estates, and their prestige.

And their secrets.

And their classism, baked in. Along with their resistance to change.

And now here I go, trying to uncover something I don’t understand.

I loved our national anthem. I’d worn out two copies of Lord Augustus’ autobiography, and reading his passage about the Palace Bell still makes me shiver. Its chapters form the backbone of our history classes. It was one of them that inspired me to try to find the location of the tower. The New Palace, now a museum, refused to replace it in the new construction. For patriotic reasons. No tower could replace the one that had died to save our country.

Krakow had one. Amazingly patriotic. Why not us?

The mystery had been behind my drive to become an archeologist, and make it my life’s work to find where the tower stood, find the foundation. Maybe restore it. Find a few fragments, my holy grail.

I huffed, heaved myself out of the chair. Followed my complicated muse.

Lady Suzanne had heard about my quest, and opened her archives.

Diaries, war dispatches, paintings. His uniform. The wooden hand, carved from the finest wood, with its permanent painted glove worn to the wood at the fingertips.

Why would he lie?

And, another suspicious thought: what else did he lie about?

True to the name, the Rose Room was a study in dusky pinks. Rose wallpaper, made out of silk damask on French looms. Upholstered chairs in a darker hue, contrasted with the almost-pale pink of the trim. Ghastly in my opinion, but I didn’t have over three hundred years of Tradition forcing me to adhere to a color scheme.

Lady Suzanne had donned a tattered dressing gown, over her reception clothing. “We’re going to an attic that hasn’t been opened in one hundred twenty-five years,” she said archly, I assume in response to my startled look. “I would prefer to keep my wardrobe intact, therefore Great Grandmother’s disused dressing robe will have to do. With burn holes still intact from the Palace Fire, since she is credited with being there. I thought it appropriate, considering what we will discover.” She took two torches from her maidservant, handed me one.

I clicked it on, and followed her into the servants' quarters, then up the attic stairs, that had been previously hidden behind a rose wall panel.

We were met by boxes of various sizes. Trunks, steamer trunks, closets. A wide pathway led to farther rooms, and Lady Suzanne swept through to the far side of her mansion.

The one that faced toward the palace itself.

Dust motes danced in my torchlight, but the creaky rooms looked like they had been tidied recently. Or at least a good faith attempt was made. I felt sorry for the maids, and thought they rather earned their new Green Room status.

Lady Suzanne slowed, and I saw what made her pause. A door, darkened with age, was in a recess in the wall. Freshly chipped plaster marks surrounded it, showing where the carpenter chiseled his way through. The plaster pieces were neatly stacked in buckets to the side.

She turned the knob, and it creaked, though I could see it was recently oiled. Hinges, too, they barely squeaked.

And there it was.

The roofer had spotted it, called it to Lady Suzanne’s attention. A hole in the tiles had created a camera obscura. The image, projected upside-down onto the plaster, must have been made permanent, painted into a fresco by a family member. Old painting supplies covered a table near the eave.

“Lord William, fourth brother of Lord Faustus, was interested in Italian painting techniques,” she murmured. “He hid his studio up here, away from prying eyes. Likely done at least a dozen years before the war. I assume the room was plastered shut after Augustus’ book was published, to prevent scandal.”

“Scandal? Why?”

Lady Suzanne sighed heavily. “You are a commoner, and it is good. You are allowed a free mind to explore such things. We of the nobility are not. Augustus was a pompous fool, arrogant, boisterous. Boastful. You think you are dramatic? You don’t hold a candle to Augustus, even before he was in his cups.”

A fresh white sheet lay on a little table, and we unfolded it to drape over a rope that had been set up by the carpenter. Sliding it back and forth, we could see the changes between the old version of the palace, and the new. The differences were clear – and that there was no bell tower in the old palace.

Lady Suzanne continued. “We in the family already knew he never lost his hand in a duel with some fictitious highwayman. We had guards for that sort of thing. He got drunk at a tavern, and instead of keeping the crown jewels safe, decided to attack a thorny bush outside the outhouse at said tavern. He took a thorn to the pad, and it got infected. Because our family attempts to save everything, we still have his hand. The surgeon dipped it in plaster. It’s in a concealed box on our Cabinet of Curiosities Room.”

I had already had the shock of my patriotic life, what was one or two more?

“Why tell me all of this now?”

“As if the carpenter won’t tell? The roofer? I might as well ‘fess up,' as you say. Augustus has been quite an embarrassment to our family’s good name, and the fact that he’s the most famous of us all makes it so much worse. I would rather a good man of science disclose these ‘new discoveries,’ than through servant gossip. I trust you to be… kind.”

I snorted.

Was that a tiny smile? “Well, as kind as you can. Within reason.”

“I… I will certainly try.”

“Good man.”

We descended the levels, back to the pristine rooms. Lady Suzanne looked about thoughtfully. “Perhaps I should turn this into a museum, like the New Palace. Charge extra for a docent’s tour, up to the attic. Display this dressing gown. Put the real hand on display. Move to the summer estate. What do you think?”

“I think you will do whatever you wish to, Lady Suzanne.”

She smiled at that, a genuine one.

Someone had gathered my dramatically scattered papers into a neat pile. I collected them, bowed to my sponsor, and showed myself out.

My tiny studio rental was worlds away from that refined place. I arrived to find a note under my door, that my rent had been paid for the next three years by an “anonymous benefactor.”

Interesting bribe.

I tossed the papers in the corner. Most were now useless, anyway, but some might have historic value. Maybe I could chuck them all in one of Lady Suzanne’s steamer trunks in the attic.

I sat at my desk, staring blankly at a pad of paper.

Old school. New Palace. The contrast of the human ego.

I picked up a pen, and began to write.