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Chapter Five
LaRusse Franklin Chapman greeted his subjects wearing a crown of brown leafy brambles, evidently
garnered from one of the hops stacks in a nearby field. His frame - which Trevor was forced to admit
was an impressive blend of muscle, height, and posture - was draped in a tapestry, which had been
evidently pulled from one of the walls. It was perhaps an opening; a group of artists squatting within
an abandoned property was one thing. Stealing tapestry from a wall which belonged to the Crown
was something else. Whether or not such a theft was enough for Brown to prosecute Chapman and
evict the others, it was hard to say. And now that Trevor consider it more seriously, it was even
difficult to determine if eviction was a desired outcome. It was possible that the dissolution of the
colony would drive girls like Anne and Dorinda home to their families, but he supposed it was
equally possible they would simply follow LaRusse to his next location. And it was likely to be even
farther from London, and thus civilization, than Hever Castle.
He shivered, for they were outside and the evening was chilly. Darkness had begun falling at five,
and although he could no longer see his watch, he would imagine it to be no more than six now. And
yet the evening sky was utterly black. The promised bonfire was a sad affair, a small pile of sticks
emitting little warmth and the promised full moon went in and out of clouds. At times, the castle and
fields around it were beautiful, almost shimmering in a fairyland glow. But minutes later the moon
might retreat, taking its silvery magic with it, and turning the scene into the bleak and joyless affair
Trevor now beheld - twenty people huddled together for warmth around a smoky pit of embers.
Not everyone was dressed in costume, so he and Rayley need not have worried about the fact they
had none. Most of the group, in fact, wore the same ragtag clothes they worked in, including Dorinda
Spencer, who was still in her gentlemen’s trousers. Trevor watched her from the corner of his eye
has he held his tin cup of untouched ale. A recent visit to India had given him a new appreciation of
women in trousers, and it was easy to see why Rayley had taken such a quick interest in the girl.
While it would seem that men’s clothing would obscure the female form, the reality was that it often
revealed far more than a dress, or at least trousers had the effect of highlighting different parts of the
feminine anatomy. Dorinda turned toward him abruptly, as if she sensed she was being watched, and
Trevor quickly dropped his eyes to his cup. It would not help his cause if he appeared to be nothing
more than one more lascivious letch in a field full of letches.
The fact that not everyone was in costume seemed to highlight the significance of those who were.
Anne stood to LaRusse’s side, wearing a similar crown of brambles. John Paul and several of the
other young painters had gone so far as to rub colors directly into their skins, giving them a fiendish
glow, and Trevor noted that a few of them had used the potentially dangerous white paint. Perhaps
Dorinda overstated the dangers in order to impress Rayley, Trevor mused. For surely no painter,
who knew the dangers, would be foolish enough to rub a toxic mixture directly onto his skin. And
however shall they get the paint off when the party has come to its close? Turpentine, splashed
right to the face?