Cordelia “the museum curator”'s Arc

Chapter 3 of 8

The portfolio entry sat open on her desk for two days before Cordelia admitted she could not date the painting alone. She needed a pigment reading, and she knew one person who did them. She wrapped the canvas in linen, carried it under one arm, and locked the office door behind her. The cat watched her go from the top of the filing cabinet. Brush Light Studios sat behind a black storefront with a neon sign shaped like a dripping brush. Cordelia had read about the owner in a trade bulletin years ago. He had built a clear UV-reactive coating with a chemist after a forger gutted a gallery he loved. She pushed the door open. Silas Luminova stood at a workbench in a paint-spattered apron, sorting jars. He looked up once, then kept sorting. "I have a painting," she said. "Pencil mark on the stretcher. Could be 1908. Could be 1968. I need to know which." "Bring it," he said. He picked up a black iron wand and a small jar of clear fluid. He followed her back through the streets without asking where they were going. In her office he set the wand on her desk and studied the carousel horse on the easel for a long moment. The little girl in the dark dress reached for the bridle. He did not comment on her face. He brushed a thin stripe of the clear coating along the edge of the canvas, where the paint met the tacking margin. He clicked the wand on. The room dropped into a low hum of violet light. The stripe bloomed deep purple, dark as a bruise, and held. Silas watched the color settle. "Lead white. Linseed binder. Early run." He clicked the wand off. "Late 1800s to about 1910. Not 1968." He pulled a folded certificate from his apron pocket, uncapped a pen, and wrote the date range on the signature line. He pressed his stamp beside it and handed it to her. "Pigment's honest. Whoever painted it wasn't hiding the year." Cordelia read the certificate twice. The pencil mark on the stretcher was 1908. She had proof now that the canvas was older than she was, older than her mother, painted before either of them stood near a carousel. Silas gathered his wand and his jar and let himself out. She sat down at the desk with the certificate in one hand and the portfolio in the other. Under the line that said Painter knew me she wrote a new line. Painted 1908. Then she set the pen down, because the question had changed. The painter was not someone who had watched her grow up. The painter was someone who had painted her face sixty years before she was born, and she had no idea whose hand had held the brush.