Friday 28th July, 1876

Dear Mr Smith,

I wish, you know, that I could save the sound of the rain on the glass roof of the studio here, and send it onto you, that you could play it from a music box or suchlike, Mr Smith. It is better to be out in it than to have the glass between its sweet kiss and one’s skin, but the sound it makes really is tremendously peaceful, a sort of constant, pulsing set of overlapping drumbeats.                                         

When I sit down to work at my easel, or when I stand and work to carve, I almost don’t hear its music, and yet as I work it feels as though the regular rhythm of it soothes me, somehow, and spurs my mind to greater focus. There is a magic in that, I think.

I have not in these past few days fell into the same sort of strange reverie I mentioned in my previous letter – I have not again worked so insensibly or with so little regard for rest, food, or water, and instead have focused myself with somewhat more restraint, but progress has indeed been made. I have siphoned off more of the marble trapping the mistress Theia in her miniature form, and she begins to show more of herself with each few hours’ work I put into her; meanwhile, I have produced a few other sketches and small paintings, and set these aside.

I hope you do not think I rush my work, Mr Smith, for that was often a concern of my tutors, merely that I work at a very quick pace, and feel quite unwell, when I am not creating. Or—

Not unwell, that is too dramatic a way of putting it – you might think that to take a rest would be to inject into myself a poison.

It is merely that I like to make art, very much I like to. I do not think it is necessarily the case – as some people seem to think – that to make art quickly is to make art below one’s par. We all have our natural paces, Mr Smith – I have always been a fast fellow, in more ways than one.

On Wednesday, after I had taken my lunch, I had returned to working for a while. I worked very meticulously, regularly consulting my sketches as I worked my chisels carefully into the grooves I had drawn onto the stone – it took me some time, as I must admit, Mr Smith, I have struggled to make my choices over precisely which way I should sculpt Theia’s skirts.

Her face comes to me as clear as day, and I could recite its every plane and angle from memory: I do not believe I will have any trouble at all finally creating its mirror in stone, for I see it in my dreams, in my idle imaginings, know it so well as my own face, by now, and I decided almost as soon as you made your offer to me how I would pose the Titaness’ hands, that I would have them set out before her, her palms raised skywards, her fingers outstretched. Even the curls of her hair, Mr Smith, I visualise easily, and I know every lock I will sculpt, when it comes down to it.

But—

Her dress?

Oh, how to sculpt it, Mr Smith?

Ought she have a wide skirt, caught by an invisible wind, rising at her sides or falling behind her? Ought her feet be together, her stance still, or should she be taking one step forward, as though greeting an old friend – or perhaps her husband? Perhaps her skirt should be more static, falling over her knees, its hems gathering about her ankles, falling over her feet – or perhaps it should be longer still, and trail behind her.

Already, I plan to craft her three children – the Sun, the Moon, and the Dawn – in miniature, and I had thought to craft Helios and Selene at Eos’ shoulders, the three of them carved of one block of marble, with a globe of the sun on each side and the moon on the other, but now I wonder if I ought not sculpt the three of them, and have them reclining at their mother’s feet. Does that appeal to you, Mr Smith? The vision of Theia’s skirts falling about her feet, and her children lying upon the fabric?

In my early stages, I rather envisioned them blooming from the ground, but I do hate to mix my metaphors, and the idea of a sun and moon with leaves and flowers sprouting beneath them struck me as cartoonish more than charming.

I am using you to think aloud again, Mr Smith – I do apologise, and I hope it does not trouble you.

In any case, on Wednesday, after lunch, I was sculpting, and I heard a noise in the other room. Initially, I thought I had imagined it, for I took my hammer and chisel from the marble to listen and found it all silent, yet as soon as I began to carve again, I heard it once more. It was only after a few moments’ pause that I heard it clearly and realised it was a knock at the door, and I hurriedly got up, dusting off my hands and rushing to the door.

Dragging it open, expecting some sort of delivery man, or perhaps Ischys Darren, I instead laid eyes on a couple I had never seen before.

The man was tall, his dark curls of hair down to his upper arm, so that they cascaded over his shoulders in thick tresses, and he had hazel eyes that caught the light: he was leaning on the arm of a woman, tall though not so tall as him, thick, tight curls bouncing around her head, gold and chestnut in colour. They both had brown skin, a handsome colour, but each wore it with different undertones: to the woman’s skin, there was a yellow colour underneath like the skin of a melon; to the man’s, there was a cooler undertone, like the dark glint of unprocessed silver.

I stood for a moment, struck dumb, and looked between the two of them, uncertain. She wore a summer dress and a broad-rimmed sunhat pinned into her curls; he wore no hat, and nor, to my surprise, did he wear a full suit, but just his shirt sleeves, and he wore neither a tie nor a cravat. His shirt was open at the neck, and showed the column of his throat, and a silver coin resting in the hollow between his collarbones.

“Good afternoon,” I said. “How— how might I help you?”

“Is he handsome?” asked the gentleman, his lips curving into a warm, easy smile. “Mama said he was handsome.”

“He is,” said the lady, and she smiled, too. “Ganymede?”

She pronounced my name – as she pronounced all her words – in the Greek fashion, the d softened, her tongue touching the base of her teeth instead of the back of them, and my name, in her mouth, had four syllables instead of three. It was the way Telamon always pronounced my name, when I was growing up, though he was Macedonian by birth, not Greek.

“Ye— Yes,” I said softly, swallowing. “I do beg your pardon, but I’m afraid I don’t recognise either of you. Are we acquainted?”

“Ganymede, my name is Honey, and this is my brother, Plutus. Our mother said you wrote to her, and that you were our neighbour – we had to come and see you, of course.”

“Oh,” I said, pushing the door further open. “Your mother is Kori Asimi – your father, Oipheus.”

“Ah, such a student of our family tree,” Plutus purred, apparently delighted. “Handsome and intelligent. Is there nothing the young man doesn’t have?”

“Manners,” Honey said pointedly.

“I do beg your pardon,” I said again, stepping back. “Please, please, come in. I’ll make tea.”

“Thank you,” she said, and she led her brother into the house.

I don’t know if you know Oipheus Asimi, Mr Smith, or Kori Asimi, personally – Mrs Asimi was always very kind to me at the orphanage, whenever she and any of the other trustees came to visit, and always pushed me toward art supplies, and as I have told you before, it was her who sponsored me to apply for the Royal College of Arts.

She is a kind woman, Mrs Asimi: she always wears silver jewellery, and fresh flowers in her hair. Her husband makes the jewellery, you know. He owns several mines, I know, and to my awareness, he smiths his own silver, and works very delicately with his hands.

He is blind, you know.

He wears wide spectacles with dark blue lenses, but the glass is opaque, and too dark to see through, I would wager – it’s the sort of frosted glass you might see in stained glass windows. I have met Kori a great many times, but her husband I have met only once. I was scarce eighteen and I had been working with wood and stone with one of my schoolmasters, and it was my first exhibition of any of my work, and I was overeager, earnest to impress the husband of a woman whom I held in such high regard, whom I, indeed, had long-since idolised.

Oipheus is a short man, a good deal shorter than his wife – and, indeed, his children – and he is very stout and square, muscular. His cane is black, with a silver-white band around the base, and I was surprised that he came to the exhibition, but I was desperately proud of the work I had made, and as some of the other trustees had gathered around a small sculpture carved of sandstone to discuss it – I had no parents to come for me, but I was flattered indeed that so many people had come to see my work – he stood aside, with both his hands upon his cane.

I was so bold, Mr Smith, and I look back on it with some embarrassment.

“Do you not like art, Mr Asimi?” I asked.

He was quiet for a moment, his lips pressed loosely together. “Mr Cavendish,” he said – he has a tremendously deep voice, Mr Smith, that comes from very low down indeed, as though he mines it, too, from the earth, with the ore he mines – and tilted his head slightly as if to hear me better, “if it hasn’t escaped your notice, I cannot appreciate your art as my wife can.”

“Oh,” I said, breathlessly, too earnestly, “but I am a sculptor, Mr Asimi, you do not need your eyes to look at it.”

Mr Smith, I am ashamed to tell you that I was so eager to show my work to my dearest patron’s husband that I took his stout hands by the wrists and tugged them to my nearest piece, the first thing I ever created out of marble. It was a carving of a hand, the fingers encrusted with rings – it took me such a long time, Mr Smith, and even thinking of it now, there were a million things wrong with its design and my process in carving it, but I was so very proud of it, at the time. I only realised how incredibly rude what I had done was after a moment had passed: my hands, which had lingered over Oipheus’ cool skin, drew back as if he burned me, and the old man stood very, very still for a moment, his mouth a thin line, twisted slightly. His cane, which had fallen against the edge of the wood box plinth, clattered to the ground.

I was almost terrified he would strike me, his fingers clumsily set against the marble fingers of the hand I had made myself, and apologies bubbled up in my throat, assurances that I would ordinarily never be so bold as to touch a man so and manoeuvre him like a puppet without his consent, least of all a blind man no doubt plagued far more than a sighted one by people attempting to manipulate his movements, and my lip quivered with them, but before I could lend any of them voice, Mr Asimi began to laugh.

It was such a deep laugh, Mr Smith. I felt it in my own chest, as much as I heard it in my ears, and I stood there, pale as a sheet, my lips parted, my eyes wide, trying my best not to shake.

I became aware of eyes on us, and I looked with terror to the other trustees, to Mrs Asimi, to Mr Lier, to Doctor Apollon, and the rest, each of them staring at us. They each looked shocked and surprised, some of them as scared as I was – I had never even heard of Mr Asimi laughing – but Mrs Asimi crossed the room toward us.

“Oipheus?” she asked. She had a secretive smile on her face, leaned into him as she spoke, touched one of her hands to his back.

Her husband was touching his fingers to the hand now, tracing over it, and I watched the tips of his fingers gently stroke over the back of the hand, the knuckles, before he began to trace the individual jewels and shapes of the rings on it. Mr Asimi’s hands were then – I expect are always – very clean, but his fingernails were caked with dirt.

“Hush, Percy,” he said, still smiling. “I am appreciating your boy’s art.”

Kori smiled at me, then, and picked up Oipheus’ cane, and she reached out, touched my arm. She didn’t say anything, just smiled at me, squeezed my shoulder.

It was off the back of that exhibition that she wrote my letter of recommendation to the Royal College, you know. I was impossibly grateful. I apologised to Mr Asimi, later, but he only smiled and tapped his knuckles against my cheek like he was knocking on wood.

His son is blind, too.

Unlike his father, he did not walk with a cane: he let his sister lead him into the house, one of his hands clasped loosely about her arm, and although he wore nothing to obscure the colour or shape of his eyes, I saw after a moment of looking at his face that his eyes were quite heavily lidded, and although his eyes moved in their sockets, the pupils reacting to the change in light, he did not appear to follow anything around the room, not trace the path he and his sister took into the parlour.

When I rushed into the kitchen, I found there was a pot of tea waiting for me, with three cups laid out, and I murmured a quiet thank you to a servant I could not see, and brought the tea into the other room.

“Mama has spoken of you, these past few years,” Honey said. She and her brother lounged on the sofa as though they were interlocking parts of the same sculpture: she kept one arm loosely wound around her brother’s neck, and he threw his legs over her knees, his ankles crossed one over the other. There were silver buckles on his shoes; on his sister’s there were gold. I wondered if their father had made these, too. “She says you are a very good artist – she says that your painting is fine, and that your sculptures are grand.”

“Papa says you laid hands on him in your school’s hall,” Plutus said, and I startled pouring tea, making the teapot clatter against the cup, and making tea splash on the tray. He must have heard it, because he laughed, and went on, “You must not be so afraid, Ganymede. He said of you, That Ganymedes, from the feel of them, has very handsome hands, and with them, he crafts fine work.”

“Our father does not praise lightly, you know,” said Honey.

“Or often,” added Plutus.

“He is a miserly old man.”

“And very cold.”

“But you warmed him.”

“For a time.”

“For a moment.”

“It is more than most of us could aspire to.” Plutus reached up, and loosely wound one of his curls around his fingers, playing with it idly. His ears were pierced, or at least, the right one was – I saw the glint of metal against the earlobe when his shifting hair let it catch the light.

In truth, Mr Smith, I found this dialogue, evidently a natural patter that formed between them, to be somewhat overwhelming, and for a little longer than I might have liked I was quiet, until I asked if each of them took milk or sugar in their tea. Neither of them did: they took it black, as it was.

“I met your doctor,” I said, desperate to fill the quiet between us, and feeling strangely nervous about discussing the siblings’ parents, lest I say something accidentally to offend. “Doctor Darren.”

“Ischys,” Plutus said, smiling.

“Was he— was he there to examine your eyes?” I asked. Honey raised her eyebrows, and I faltered. “I— I do apologise, I shouldn’t have—”

“I sprained my ankle some time ago,” Plutus said idly, with a wave of one hand. “That is all – Ischys was only to ensure it was quite healed before Honey and I leave Heatherton this month. It was my own fault: I neglected to use my cane at a party, and slipped in some spilled wine.”

“You do not like to use a cane?” I asked politely.

“No,” Plutus said. “I like to be led by a willing partner.”

“He likes to gossip,” supplied his sister. “Being blind is a useful excuse when your only wish in life is to take someone’s arm and murmur in their ear.”

Plutus laughed, and I almost did but restrained myself: I felt my cheeks blush somewhat, for I could not be so rude as to laugh at something so impolite said about such a recent acquaintance.

“He’s very shy,” Plutus said to his sister. “Mama said he was shy.”

“She did,” Honey agreed, addressing Plutus.

“I am not… I am not shy,” I assured them. “Merely— I do not wish to be impolite. I would not have you think me rude.”

“You wish to make a good first impression,” corrected Plutus, holding up one finger. His hands were nothing like his father’s: they were elegant and slender, and the fingernails were stupendously clean. “You worry what we’ll tell our mother about you. Is that not so?”

My cheeks veritably burned.

Plutus chuckled.

“Sit close to me,” he instructed, withdrawing his legs from his sister’s lap, and he patted the seat beside him, where the armchair was angled toward the sofa. “I want to look at you.” Something must have shown in my face, because he and his sister both laughed at the same time, leaning into one another, before he leaned forward and patted the seat again. His eyes looked forward, not at me, or at anything in particular. “It’s a figure of speech, Ganymede. Come, sit.”

Rising to my feet, I stepped around the small table, and as Honey sipped at her tea, I sank into the armchair, sitting at the edge of the seat. Plutus reached for me, and for a moment his fingers brushed the front of my vest before he lifted it, and then he cupped my cheek on one side before bringing up the other hand to join it.

His hands were warm, and his palms were exquisitely smooth – I have no doubt that he uses some product to make the skin that soft, and I confess, although I use a cream upon my own hands, my own hands are somewhat battered, as any sculptor’s are, from my use of hammer and tool. I try my best to preserve them, of course, but the occasional nick or error is inevitable.

I was still, as he touched my face.

“Does this help you know what I look like?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “There are no eyes in my hands, Ganymede.”

“But the shape of my face?”

“What do I care for the shape of your face?” he asked, as his thumbs traced the lines of my cheekbones, his fingertips curling into my hair. “Am I to sculpt its like from clay?”

“Why, then?”

“You laid hands on my father without his permission,” Plutus said. “See how I return the favour?”

I did laugh at that, scolded as I was, and he chuckled.

“I can feel the heat when you blush, you know,” he murmured, tracing the tips of his fingers my temples, tracing my eyebrows delicately with each thumb, and then touching my nose on each side. Whatever he used for his hands was scented, and they smelt of sandalwood. “My father was not offended by it. He thinks of everyone he meets as full of youth, stupidity, and impatience – you just proved his point. With that said, I wouldn’t try it again. With him, or anybody else, blind or otherwise.”

“I wouldn’t dare,” I promised. With his littlest and ring fingers on each hand, he traced a featherlight trail from the top of my throat to the bottom of my chin, and when I shivered at the ticklish touch over the base of my jaw, he hummed, amused.

“I would like to see how you responded if my fingers erred lower,” he said musingly, “but below the neck, you are spoken for.”

“Spoken for?” I repeated, and Plutus withdrew his hands, setting them neatly in his lap. I felt their ghost on my face – he had touched me very tenderly, and I almost missed their touch, wondered what it would feel like if he touched me more solidly, without such a faint, glancing touch.

“What is it you are sculpting?” Plutus asked. He leaned forward, carefully moving his hand over the surface of the table, and when his fingers brushed his teacup, he felt for its loop and lifted it gracefully to his mouth, taking a sip.

“Mama says it is a Titan,” Honey said, and looking between the two of them, feeling as though I were spinning on a weathervane, I hesitated a moment.

Then, I said, “It is a sculpture of Theia – Euryphaessa. Mother of Eos, Selene, and Helios. I will sculpt them, also.”

“Wife of Hyperion,” said Honey mildly. “You do not wish to sculpt him?”

“He…” I began, and then stopped, for I hardly knew what to say.

Have you ever known something to be one case or the other, Mr Smith, and yet never taken a moment to consider as to why? I had never for a moment considered sculpting Hyperion, nor even sketching him – in attempting to think of him, I could summon no vision of him into my mind, could not imagine what he might look like. He was invisible to me, unseen. He was not like Theia, nor their three children, perfectly visible to me as though I had known them my life through.

I could not make anything of Hyperion: I did not know him.

“What can I say?” I asked, and shrugged my shoulders. “All I can tell you is that I have a vision – it is that vision I seek to execute.”

“Well-answered,” Plutus said. “We must have you to dine with us next year, Ganymede.”

“We are leaving Heatherton next week,” Honey said. “We shall travel a month before we return to our mother’s home for the winter.”

“This isn’t your mother’s home?” I asked.

“The house here is Papa’s,” said Plutus. “He lends it sometimes, in winters, but never to us. It is too cold for our hot blood.”

“I am surprised you are going, that’s all,” I said softly. “Silenus said Heatherton is at its busiest in winter.”

“This is true,” Honey agreed. “Many of the inhabitants of Heatherton are further north – they summer on islands, and they live along the coast. In winter, such places come too treacherous: they return south in their boats, to Heatherton. You saw the empty dock, yes, Ganymede? When October comes, and when it gives way to November, that dock will be alive with vessels.”

“And there is Poseidon’s Jewel, also. She is a fishing vessel – she should return at the end of August, the beginning of September. She is normally gone for two months at a time, and always returns with a very great haul – men and women will come from nearby villages to help pack the fish. You like Silenus?”

“He was pleasant, when I met him,” I said. “I would not speak ill of him.”

“So political with his answers,” Plutus murmured as an aside. It was strange, I must admit, sitting between the two of them as they spoke of me like that – it made me feel, in some strange way, as though I were being observed from afar, or… No. No, Mr Smith, I know how they discussed me: they did it as though I were art in a gallery, and they were observing me. I did not entirely dislike it – it was freeing, in a way, to think they had no expectation of response on my part. “I expect he likes you, Ganymede. Silenus likes almost everyone.”

“He liked me better than the last publican I met, I’m sure,” I said.

“Who was that?” asked Honey.

“Jude,” I said. “I don’t know his surname. He and his sister run the Stone Post.”

“Turnbull is his name,” said Plutus. “He has a nice voice, but he is uncertain of Greeks. Anyway…” He rose to his feet, then, and put his teacup aside. “It was pleasant indeed to make your acquaintance, Ganymede. You must call on us when we return.”

“Yes,” I agreed, giving a nod of my head. “Of course. It was good of you to call.”

“Was it?” Plutus asked, with a small smirk. “It was my intention to be bad.” He missed, at first, and touched the top of my hair: the second attempt, he chucked me with one knuckle under the chin. “Taller than I thought,” he said.

“Sorry,” I said reflexively, and he laughed.

“What a queer thing to be sorry for,” was the response, and he took his sister’s arm to leave.

“Goodbye, Ganymede,” Honey said. “We hope you have a productive winter.”

“Thank you,” I whispered.

As I walked ahead of them to the door, pulling it open for them, they spoke to one another in Greek, and it was plain from the way Honey glanced at me that they were speaking of me, but they each had thick accents which I was not familiar, and all I could make out of it was my own name, and a few words for “handsome”.

It was flattering, of course.

And—

And I feel, sometimes, it might be nice to be artwork. It seems to me that it would be far easier to be created than creator.

I returned to my work with the Asimi siblings on my mind, and they trickled through my head, the thoughts rotating. It was part of the music of my studio, much like the patter of the rain – I thought of their musical voices, their handsome features, their gold and silver jewellery.

I worked for the rest of the day through, and slept quite well the next night, and after working upon my sculpture until a little after noon yesterday, I dressed for town and walked down in it, holding my umbrella over my head. I like to feel the rain, you understand, Mr Smith, but I don’t enjoy so much to sit in sodden clothes, and regrettably, most public houses won’t permit you to dine in the nude – or at least, they don’t that I know of. Perhaps one needs merely to ask.

I felt the rhythm and weight of each raindrop upon my umbrella’s skin, feeling the pressure of them in my wrist, and although there was still a decent amount of light left in the day, it was quite grey, and I was very careful to watch my step as I took the path down the hill, wary of slipping on the path’s muddied edges.

Once more, as I passed through the village, I noticed no one walking to and fro, and the post office was still closed, and the grocer’s was still closed, too, but the lights were lit in the tavern, and when I stepped inside, the warmth of the fire, which was lit despite the day not being too cool at all, reached for me, brushed my skin.

“Mr Cavendish,” said Silenus. “Here for a drink?”

“For a meal,” I said. “If it doesn’t trouble you.”

“How could it?” Silenus asked, beaming: his moustache curled up when he grinned, and I gave him a small smile.

I did not speak much, while I was present with him – I ate a modest meal of bread and cheese and a little bacon, and Silenus did all the talking. He made small talk about the weather, about the sea and the shoreline, and the whole time he talked, he watched me eat.

It was quite pleasant, to be in someone else’s company for a while, but before I walked up the hill to return home, I took some more time alone: I walked out toward the shore, and I spent some time wandering in the rockpools, which were overflowing with both the washed up sea water and the falling rain. When I crouched and held my umbrella over the puddles and pools, though, I could shield them enough for me to see into the water without it being disturbed, and I could see all manner of small crabs, limpets, urchins, clams, and all things of that nature; I could see several algaes and anemones, too, and even little minnows and small fish that swam one way and the other.

I would still like to sit at the pool on a dry day and sketch them all, so delightful are these small creatures in their complexity and diversity, but it was far too wet a day for that.

It was just…

It was just nice to look at them, Mr Smith, that’s all.

I admit, Mr Smith, I almost didn’t want to return home. I wanted to stay in the pub and listen to Silenus talk some more, or even wait and see if any other patrons made themselves known. I did not wish to be on my lonesome, but I did not wish to partake of any sort of ale or beer, and I thought that Silenus would think me very queer indeed if I asked for anything else.

I stood in those rockpools for quite a long time.

I felt tremendously lonely, and I knew that my walk home would be something even lonelier, but…

Oh, Mr Smith, I couldn’t even say what I was thinking.

Eventually, I walked glumly home regardless, although I made some few circuits of the village first, looking out for some sign of Ischys’ office, though I could not make it out, and when I came home, there was comfort to be found, for I found a hot bath waiting for me.

I rather melted in that bath, Mr Smith.

The peach-coloured skies opened above me, and I lay back in my bath, and thought of Plutus’ hands on my face, his soft hands, his delicate touches. What can that mean, Mr Smith, that I am spoken for?

I hardly know.

I traced where he had touched me with my own fingers, and then closed my eyes, let my hands sink beneath the water.

It was another long bath.

A man needs them, from time to time.

Yours,

Ganymede Cavendish