“Well,” Lasker said gently, “maybe the rest of the story will help.”
Kate leaned back, letting the noise around her blur.
“When Sir Miles left for the crusades,” Lasker continued, “he left behind massive debts.Land holdings mortgaged to the hilt.Creditors circling.But he was confident in his prospects—military glory was lucrative.Except…” A pause.“He was gone far longer than intended.Years.And while he was away, his beloved elderly mother was cast out of their home.She died in the care of a nunnery, penniless.”
Kate closed her eyes.There it is.
"When Coverleagh returned in triumph," Lasker said, "he found out what had happened.Contemporary accounts suggest he was devastated.Some chroniclers say he retreated to a particularly austere monastery out of remorse; others say he took poison in grief and shame.His ultimate fate is debated, but the moral is consistent: he abandoned a parent and suffered the consequences."
The image snapped into place like a puzzle piece sliding home.
“Parental abandonment,” Kate murmured.“Punished harshly.It fits.It fitsexactly.”
“In which case,” Lasker said, “I’d say that whoever chose that image understood its implications intimately.”
Kate stared down at the knight’s serene face, the heavy-lidded calm.
A man blessed by a king.
Cursed by his own conscience.
She exhaled sharply.“Doctor, one more thing.Can you zoom in on the bottom left of the image?There’s a tiny black bird, holding something in its beak.It appears on both of the paintings we’ve found.”
“Let me pull it up… ah.Yes.I see it.Goodness.How could he paint something sosmall?”
“I don’t know.I’m thinking maybe he painted it full-size then somehow printed a minimized version onto the canvas.Does it say anything to you?”
“The plant in its beak—I’m afraid I can’t identify that with confidence.Could be stylized.Could be symbolic.But the bird itself?”Paper rustled.“That’s a crow.”
“Definitely a crow?”Kate probed.‘Not a rook or a raven?”
“Rooks have shaggy chest-feathers, and ravens have a patch of grey skin at the top of their beaks.And I’d say our painter knew exactly what he wanted to paint because he’s given his crows a distinctive, wedge-shaped tail.”
“Are you a bird expert as well as a medieval historian?”
“I’m married to one,” Lasker replied with a chuckle.“Anyway, the crow is an important heraldic symbol,” Lasker said.“Crows often appear in crests or badges to mark a bereavement.A loss so significant that families wanted it recorded in their arms.A crow can indicate mourning, memorial, or the burden of a death.”
Kate’s pulse thumped once, hard.
“But there’s no heraldic significance to the twig or the plant in the beak?”
“Plants and flowers carry a range of meanings, but not, to my knowledge, attached to or associated with birds or animals.There’s the possibility, of course, that your artist is creating his own symbolic language, but you’d know more about that than I.It would help if we could identify what’s in the bird’s beak, but it doesn’t seem to have been drawn with much detail.”
“Thank you,” she said quietly.“You’ve been incredibly helpful.”
“My pleasure, Agent Valentine.I’ll see if any of my colleagues can shed any further light on the plants.But if there’s anything else, do get in touch.”There was a pause.“I hadn’t expected to be assisting the F.B.I.on an overcast Wednesday afternoon.”
Kate thanked her again and ended the call.
For a moment, the precinct noise seemed to pull back, as if the whole building were inhaling, leaving her in a bubble of thinning air.She stared at the crow, enlarged on her screen.
Its ink-black body.
The wedge-shaped tail.
The little plant clenched in its gray-black beak.It was, as Lasker said, not very detailed.The color somewhere between green and brown.The thing itself somewhere between a plant and a twig.
A memory marker.
