20. Second Thoughts
In which Hedgehog reconsiders her advice…
Governance put the pen down with the particular care of a gerbil who had been about to write on the good paper.
“We spent all afternoon on that letter,” said Girdle.
“You did,” said @Hedgehogforshort. “And it’s a very good letter. It says no beautifully. But before it goes anywhere, I want everyone to listen to what we actually know, because I don’t think anybody has heard all of it in one sitting.”
Chairs shifted. Gasket topped up the teas on principle.
“Fenella Burnish restored the panels at Durham, Ripon and Norwich cathedrals,” said Gosie, “and Gemma Glasswing painted the replacements. They both told me separately, and neither of them mentioned the other.”
“The panes that are removed for restoration?” said @PastaAllaNorma. “Where do they end up?”
“Somewhere safe, according to Gemma,” said Hedgehog. “Or in a crate on a smugglers’ yacht in Maine, which is where the panel from Norwich Cathedral was seen by Graft and Grind when we boarded the yacht and stopped their operation. But nobody at this table can tell you what happened to the glass from Durham or Ripon.”
“And Gemma Glasswing knows none of this?” asked PastaAllaNorma.
“She is told the restored panel is too fragile to be reinstalled,” said Gosie, “which is why they want her to make an identical copy. She told us she is the only one they will use.”
“Twice,” said Hedgehog.
The gerbils looked very impressed.
“There is also a commission on Gemma’s bench that Gosie says was not there at her first visit,” said Hedgehog, “and four more waiting behind it. Every job before them came with photographs of the whole record, at every stage from removal to completion. These new commissions came with just one single high-resolution image of the original window and nothing else. And she has been told to leave out a crack.”
@AngleofRepose looked up sharply. “That is a very different order of a thing. Being asked to make something is one thing. Being asked to leave something out is another, and you would want it in writing, and I would bet money it will not be in writing.”
“Why are they leaving it out?” asked PastaAllaNorma.
“Gemma couldn’t tell us,” said Gosie. “She said it has never been done that way before. Normally what’s in the photograph goes in the glass, and removing a crack makes it look newer rather than older. She could not see why anybody would want that.”
Angle closed the atlas. “Every job Gemma Glasswing has ever worked on came with the record of a finished restoration,” she said. “Cracks are repaired, the window is restored, photographed, done. She copies something that is already whole. This project came with one photograph of a window nobody has touched yet, crack and all. The restoration is probably going to remove the crack, which is why Gemma’s been asked to take it out.”
“Then the restoration must be happening at the same time as Gemma is making the replica,” said Hedgehog. “Right now. And everything that has to happen after it leaves Gemma’s bench, the leading, the installing, all of it, probably happens behind one door in Wicken Fen. Angle just said that nobody could find out what goes on in that workshop short of standing in it.” She laid a paw flat on the three folded contracts. “Three of you have been invited to stand in it. By name. With wages.”
There was a silence of the sort that comes before a great deal of noise.
“UNDERCOVER!” said Gantry.
“Not exactly,” said Hedgehog, but it was too late.
“Like detectives,” breathed Ganges.
“Sleuths,” said Gasket, trying the word on. “We’d be sleuths.”
“They would be sleuths,” said Geometry. “We would be the sleuths’ associates.”
“Do they get magnifying glasses?” said Garnet. “There’s one in the drawer with the fuses.”
“WILL THEY NEED CODE NAMES?” asked Gantry.
“They have names,” said Girdle. “They all start with G. That’s practically a code already.”
Griffin had not joined in. She had unfolded her contract along its creases and was reading it again, feature by feature, against the ground. “The letter said no,” she said, “because everything in here is a most, and we don’t have a most here at the Bluestocking. That hasn’t changed because Hedgehog wants a lookout.”
“No,” said Hedgehog. “It hasn’t. But read it once more and tell me what else isn’t in it. There’s no clause saying you work only for Fenella Burnish. No exclusivity. Nine to five, six days, and not one word about what you are the rest of the time. The mosts stop at the workshop door. Everything here in the Bluestocking goes on exactly as it always has, without a most in sight.”
Gimbal turned her own contract over, as if the missing clause might be on the back. The back was blank, as it had been every other time.
“And nobody would be lying,” said Angle. “Fenella Burnish saw your work and wanted it. You’d go and do that work, properly, because you don’t know how to do it any other way. You’d just also come home in the evenings and talk. Which you would do anyway.”
“We do do that,” admitted Gasket.
“What about the other thing?” said Geometry. “The ending thing? Hedgehog said Fenella Burnish can sack them on a Friday and they can’t ever resign.”
“We’ll deal with it if it comes up,” said Hedgehog, in the flat tone of a solicitor closing a drawer, and something in the tone meant that nobody, not even Gantry, asked what dealing with it would involve.
Griffin looked at Graphic, and Graphic looked at her pen roll, and Gimbal said, quietly, “Twenty seeds a week,” in the voice of somebody agreeing to something else entirely.
The bordered sheet was still in the middle of the table, ivy running one way and glass the other, with a clear space the exact size of three lines.
“Dear Fenella Burnish,” said Governance, writing it. “Thank you for your offer of employment. We are pleased to accept.”
“That’s only two lines,” said Girdle.
“Yours,” said Graphic, without looking up.
https://myrtlelion.substack.com/p/20-second-thoughts