Free The Lady and the Unicorn by Tracy Chevalier Page A

here?’ Georges Le Jeune demanded. I shook my head at my plain spoken son, though I couldn't really blame him for speaking so. I wanted to ask it myself. When a man is rude I want to be rude back.
‘Nicolas has come with me because of the importance of this commission,’ Léon cut in smoothly. ‘When you see the designs you will understand that they are very special indeed, and may require some supervision.’
Georges Le Jeune snorted. ‘We don't need minders.’
‘This is my son, Georges Le Jeune,’ I said. ‘And my apprentice Luc, who has two years training yet with us, but does fine millefleurs . This is Philippe de la Tour, who makes the cartoons from artists' designs.’
Nicolas glared openly at Philippe, whose pale face went red. ‘I am not in the habit of having other men change my work,’ Nicolas sneered. ‘That's why I've come to this loathsome city — to be sure that my designs stay as I made them.’
I had never heard an artist so keen on his own work. He should know better — first designs always change when cartoonists make them into the large paintings on cloth or paper that weavers follow as they make the tapestries. It is the nature of the thing that what looks fine small doesn't when made large. There are gaps to be filled — figures must be added, or trees or animals or flowers. That is what a cartoonist like Philippe does well — when he draws large he fills the empty space so that the tapestry will be full and lively.
‘You must be used to designing for tapestries and the changes that must be made to them,’ I said. I did not address him as Monsieur — he might be a Parisian artist, but I ran a good workshop in Brussels. I had no reason to grovel.
Nicolas frowned. ‘I am known at Court for —’
‘Nicolas has a fine reputation at Court,’ Léon interrupted, ‘and Jean Le Viste has been content with his designs.’ Léon said this too quickly, and I wondered what Nicolas was really known for at Court. I would have to send Georges Le Jeune to find out at the painters' guild. Someone must have heard of him.
By the time the women returned with the fare, we were ready to cut off the tapestry. The cutting-off is a good day for a weaver, when a piece you have worked on for so long — this time eight months on the one tapestry — is ready to be taken off the loom. Since we are always working on just a strip of tapestry the size of a hand's length, which is then rolled inside itself onto a wooden beam, we never see the tapestry whole until it is done. We also work on it from the back and don't see the finished side unless we slide a mirror underneath to check our work. Only when we cut the tapestry off the loom and lay it face-up on the floor do we get to see the whole work. Then we stand silent and look at what we have made.
That moment is like eating fresh spring radishes after months of old turnips. Sometimes — when the patron won't pay upfront and the dyers, the wool and silk merchants, the gilt wire sellers begin demanding payments I can't make, or when the weavers I've brought in refuse to work unless they see money first, or when Christine says nothing but the soup gets thinner — on those days only knowing that one day the moment of silence will come keeps me working.
I would have preferred that Léon and Nicolas weren't there for the cutting-off. They hadn't broken their backs over the loom for all those months, or cut crisscrosses into their fingers while handling the gilt wire, or had headaches from looking so hard at the warp and weft. But of course I couldn't ask them to go, or let them see that I was annoyed. A lissier does not show such things to the merchant he is to haggle with.
‘Please eat,’ I said, waving at the plates Christine and Aliénor had brought in. ‘We'll take this tapestry off the loom and then we can discuss the commission from Monseigneur Le Viste.’
Léon nodded, but Nicolas muttered, ‘Brussels fare, eh? Who can be bothered?’ Nonetheless, he