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There was a little girl and an adolescent boy dressed in a fashion from hundreds of years earlier. They sat at a table that was piled full of items. All jumbled together. It looked not so much like a painting as a portal into another time. Another world.
Leaving them to marvel, Armand walked around the other side of the painting to examine the things back there. An old leather-bound book. A bronze sculpture of an elephant. A jigsaw puzzle. A teddy bear.
“The sorts of things people throw into attics, when they don’t know what else to do with them,” said Reine-Marie, joining her husband. “I see it all the time.”
Now retired as Chief Archivist at the National Library and Archives of Québec, Reine-Marie had decided to use her skills to help people sort through their own, often inherited collections.
“Except,” she said, “most are not walled up.”
Armand nodded.
Reine-Marie was about to pick up the book when she and Armand heard Clara’s voice from the other side of the painting.
“Holy shit. It’s A World of Curiosities.”
“It is that,” agreed Ruth.
“No, it’s what the painting’s called.”
Armand came around from the back of it. “You recognize it?”
“It’s The Paston Treasure.”
“Now,” said Olivier. “Did you say ‘treasure’?”
They’d gone back to Myrna’s living room, though every now and then one of them would get up and wander over to the gaping hole in her wall and stare in, muttering, “Holy shit.”
“The Paston Treasure,” agreed Clara. “Yes.”
“And is it worth anything?” asked Gabri, casually.
“It’s priceless,” said Clara. “Except that it’s in a museum in Norfolk. In the UK.”
“Well, what’s that then?” asked Ruth, slopping scotch out of her glass as she gestured toward the hole. This time it really was scotch.
“A reproduction,” said Clara. “Maybe a study the artist made before working on the final painting.”
“Here?” said Harriet. “Why’s it here? Was he a Québec artist? I don’t understand.”
“Got it,” said Myrna, and brought over her laptop.
She’d looked up The Paston Treasure. They crowded around, pushing and shoving each other for a better view. Harriet and Fiona had brought it up on their phones. The image was too small to get a sense of the detail, but they could read the text.
“Says here it was painted in about 1670,” said Fiona. “Commissioned by one of the Pastons.”
“Big surprise,” muttered Ruth. “It’s called The Paston Treasure.”
“They lived in Norfolk, in England,” said Fiona, continuing to read the internet page. “No one knows who the artist was.”
Ruth walked over to the hole. “Ours isn’t signed either.”
“Clara’s right,” said Myrna. “It was nicknamed A World of Curiosities.”
“Looks like a world of junk to me,” said Ruth.
And it did. To the modern eye. It was a pile of stuff most people wouldn’t buy in a garage sale nowadays.
Reine-Marie joined the old poet. “Ahhh, but in the mid-1600s? This would’ve been amazing. Most people rarely got more than a couple of miles from their homes. They’d see the same things every day. Cows, pigs, sheep. Imagine coming face-to-face with a parrot? A monkey? Look, there’s a lobster. Almost no one in England had ever seen those things. These would be exotic, amazing. Maybe even frightening. Evidence that there were mysteries beyond the known world. Yes, this collection would be remarkable. Treasures.”
