I went home to eat lunch and get more information from Dorian before I headed back to the Flamels’ house, where I’d be meeting Perenelle and Gwendolyn this afternoon.
I found Perenelle in her art and alchemy studio, an empty canvas in front of her, but no paint on a pallet or paintbrush in her hand.
I stepped closer and saw she’d primed the canvas and added a stormy blue-gray sky that looked like Payne’s Gray, but I knew it would be a formulation of Perenelle’s. The rest of the canvas was blank.
“You think I lied to you earlier,” she said without turning.
“Did you?”
She turned, and her face looked older. With the brightest light coming from the high windows behind her, I knew it was a trick of the light. But it was also the heavy expression she wore.
A gentle knock on the studio door sounded.
“I believe you have another visitor,” Nicolas said, popping his head into the studio. “She’s out front and hasn’t yet knocked on the door.”
“We’ll go.” Perenelle’s deep indigo skirt rustled as she hurried outside.
Gwendolyn was standing in the pigment garden, both hands on her cane, her eyes closed as if she was absorbing the energy of the plants.
She opened her eyes and smiled as we approached.
“What’s the Brushstrokes and Brimstone Society?” I asked.
Her face paled and she gripped her cane more forcefully. “Where did you hear that name?”
“It’s the idea that nearly cost you a tenure-track job,” I said, “isn’t it?”
She gave a sharp intake of breath. “You know about that?”
“When you got in touch—” I broke off and cringed. “When the fake you got in touch, I looked into you. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t walking into a trap—even though I was. In addition to looking you up online, I visited a local art history professor.”
“That must have been Jonas.”
I nodded.
“He’s the only one left who’s old enough to remember,” she said. “The only one local, at least. What did he tell you?”
“He didn’t remember the details. Just that when he was a graduate student attending a conference, people around the bar in the evening talk turned to gossip from recent years.”
“And I was that gossip.”
“He doesn’t even know the substance of the paper you presented, because it wasn’t something he saw himself. He only remembered that grad students further along in the program told him that everyone said you’d been reading too many Gothic novels. That you’d presented a paper that was more fantasy than fact.”
“The Brushstrokes and Brimstone Society,” she laughed bitterly. “A secret society of women artists. This is the danger of falling in love with your own theories. I truly don’t know how my students these days are ever going to overcome their mistakes. The internet didn’t exist when I wrote that damn paper, yet it still haunts me.”
“Where did you hear about it?” Perenelle whispered.
“I never found a primary source,” Gwendolyn hissed. “It’s a phantom I was chasing. You’re the one with real proof about Hayden, Perenelle. You’ve confirmed the truth about Hayden, not my fanciful ideas from badly cited research. I didn’t want to tell you about my mistake. I’ve spent more than half a century trying to undo it.” She pointed to her car. “Three boxes of real research, plus more I have online. Can I show you?”
Nicolas, Perenelle, and I each took a box from the trunk of her car and carried it into the house.
Nicolas offered us tea bought at Max’s shop or beer from his home brew. We all asked for tea.
“We should start with this box.” Gwendolyn lifted the lid off one of the three banker’s boxes we’d set on the dining room table.
“First,” said Perenelle, “I need you to tell me what you know about the Brushstrokes and Brimstone Society. Gwendolyn. Please. It’s important.”
Perenelle knew more than she was telling either of us.
Gwendolyn’s gaze darted between us as she accepted a cup of green tea from Nicolas. “Long before I realized it was just one artist passing along the tradition to another,” she continued, “I had another idea about how it was done… a foolish idea.”
“It’s not foolish.” Perenelle smiled at her. “Sulfur was always a key ingredient in my—er, her—pigments. Alchemical ingredients made their way into both her artwork and the paints used. Art and science are linked. People used to know this but have forgotten.”
Gwendolyn looked away from Perenelle, as if she couldn’t face her. Only when she was turned away from both of us did she speak. “I saw scribbled writing in a painting, and I wanted it to be real. Can you understand? I wanted to badly for it to be real.”
“A scribble in a painting?” I repeated as a car driving over gravel sounded in the distance. Perenelle’s The Red Queen?
“It’s not real,” Gwendolyn said. “Please, can we look at my other research?”
“You’ve been lying to yourself for so long that you’ve made yourself believe it,” Perenelle said. “A brushstroke over the symbol for brimstone was one of the many puzzles my predecessor hid in a painting called The Red Queen, along with the words société des femmes—society of women—that could only be seen from certain angles. She used the technique of anamorphosis to create a hidden puzzle.”
Gwendolyn stared at Perenelle, wide-eyed. “The symbols were really there?”
“They were. As were the words. Hidden with a trick of perspective.”
“My photographs didn’t capture it.” Gwendolyn’s voice was shaking now. “And the painting was one kept in archives, not on display. I was a starving graduate student and couldn’t easily get back to Prague.”
“You didn’t imagine it.” Perenelle gripped her hand. “As soon as we find the stolen painting with the notebook passed down to me, we can prove—”
Gwendolyn failed at holding in a stifled sob.
“Are you all right?” I wondered if I had an herbal preparation that could help.
“Aside from once being young and foolish,” Gwendolyn said, “I’m fine. In your research, you didn’t come across a copy of my paper itself, did you?”
I shook my head.
“That’s why you think everything is fine, and that I simply spotted some clever puzzle. You don’t understand what I did next.”
“It wasn’t foolish to share the words and symbols you saw in the paper,” Perenelle assured her. “The world wasn’t ready—”
“You don’t understand.” Gwendolyn slammed her teacup onto the table. “I made up the Brushstrokes and Brimstone Society. Because I didn’t have photographic evidence of what I’d seen in the painting, I pretended a real society existed—not just the ideas in the painting. I said I’d found evidence of the Society of Brushstrokes and Brimstone, a society of women artists.”
“You made up what you thought should have existed,” Perenelle said, and I could see the pride in her eyes. That’s why she had painted those symbols and words into one of her paintings from Rudolfine Prague and hadn’t made it clear that it was a Hayden. She wanted it to be true as much as Gwendolyn did.
“But you lied,” I said gently. “You falsified your research.”
Gwendolyn met my gaze, a desperate, haunted look in her eyes. “I’ve spent my whole career being overly meticulous to make up for that one stupid mistake. For making up the Brushstrokes and Brimstone Society.”
“But it’s not made up.”
We all gave a start at the sound of a new voice. Someone who wasn’t supposed to be there. Veronica stepped into the room.
“I know about the Brushstrokes and Brimstone Society,” Veronica said as she dumped her backpack at her feet. “I know it’s real. Because I was invited to one of their meetings.”