on the pose or risk Albert’s wrath. So Famke made her mind a blank.
Kapitel 4
There were electric lights. They are one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. Compared to an electric light a gas flame looks like a dismal tallow candle.
JULIUS PETERSEN,
LETTER, 1887
Over the next week, Albert spent an hour or so each day down by the water, observing ice and trying to sketch it. The harsh December weather made his work difficult because he couldn’t get his fingers to move as they needed to; he complained bitterly and refused to paint at all until Famke persuaded him to concentrate awhile on her and leave the ice for later.
“There will always be ice,” she said, feeling her English so improved she was able to make a little joke. “This is Denmark.”
So Albert painted Famke, day after day, hour after churchly hour in the loft at the top of Fru Strand’s house. Occasionally he brought in a lump of ice for her to pose with, and then they had to close off the fireplace and open the windows to keep it from melting. But Famke did not complain: She felt they were as happy as they could be.
One night near suppertime, when the streetlamps had long been lit, Albert returned sweating and full of ideas. “I ran all the way from Carlsberg brewery,” he panted, unfastening her hair. “I’ve solved the problem of the ice!” He seemed inordinately pleased as he turned to her bodice buttons.
“Why were you to the brewery?” she asked, shrugging docilely out of the sleeves. She did not allow herself to glance at the fried fish congealing on its plate; art would always take precedence.
“I watched the workers as they left for the day,” Albert said, tugging on her skirt. “All those faces, so tired, so cold, under that harsh light”—the brewery had gone to electric power that spring—“and I realized Nimue must have faces in her ice blocks. Her early victims. Isn’t it brilliant?” As the skirt came down, he looked up at her with the bright eyes of a schoolboy.
Famke hesitated, holding the string of her bloomers. The hair on her body was already standing stiff in the cold. “Did you not say your Nimue must be virgin?” she asked.
“Yes . . .”
“So if Merlin is her first lover, should—shouldn’t—he be her first . . . victim . . . as well?”
She saw immediately that she’d said the wrong thing. Albert’s face fell, and he himself dropped to the floor, where he sat bent-legged and plainly miserable. Famke cursed herself and then, to distract Albert, ripped away the cord of her bloomers and stepped out of them.
He noticed nothing.
“I think Nimue is beginning to bore me,” he mumbled into his lap. “I’ve nearly finished painting you, and the thought of rendering all that ice . . . Some faces inside would make it more interesting.”
“But then the painting would be . . .” Famke hesitated; she was not used to speaking in conditional tenses, any more than she was used to voicing opinions on matters of art—“. . . less good. For those who see it, I mean to say. In your first plan, as you have said, they will see the moment of Nimue’s transforming into a villain, as well as the transforming she makes for Merlin. If you put in other men, she is not a virgin, and she is not changing.”
In his glum silence, she wrapped her arms around herself for warmth. During several long minutes, Albert continued to stare down at himself, until finally he drew himself up and said, “I am going out again.”
When Famke opened her eyes the next morning, the sun was already shining with a bright yellow light. One golden ray picked out a small silver box, slightly battered but gleaming, lying forgotten on the mantel.
“Christiansborg,” she said without thinking.
Her voice woke Albert up. He smelled sour as he yawned and stretched, reaching for her as if he’d forgotten their last conversations; perhaps he had drowned his frustrations more deeply than she had thought when he came home. He spoke as if he had a headache. “What was that, darling?”
“I want to go to Christiansborg,” she blurted.
“In the daytime? With all the guards about?”
“I am going,” she said, knowing she sounded childish. “And you may come. I have an idea.”
To her surprise, Albert yielded. Perhaps he knew she couldn’t be pushed too far this day, or perhaps aquavit (that was what she decided it had been, rather than the more prosaic beer) had set carpenters pounding in his head too hard for him to work. The two of them dressed and went out, breakfasting on fresh bakery bread.
It was a short walk, accomplished in silence. In an unexpected thaw, much of the recent snow had melted, and most of the slush was gone from the roads. Famke held her skirts up but sank to her ankles in mud. Albert’s boots were already dirty, and he didn’t seem to notice they were getting dirtier. He was too glum to catch Famke’s smoldering excitement.
Without the shroud of snow, Christiansborg’s ruins made a black scar in the golden stone of the quarter, and the last harbor ice reflected their shadow. As yet there’d been no talk of rebuilding; the royal architects would have to outdo themselves, and perhaps they needed summer’s sun for inspiration. Troops of blue-coated guards still marched a circle round the ashes, but without real fervor; the valuables had already been recovered, either by royal servants or by looting commoners such as Famke and Albert. A good deal of the debris had been carted away as well, and men were working among the rest with shovels and a wagon. Overcoming her dislike of things related to fire, Famke headed immediately for them.
“Hold op!” One of the workers whistled. “Hvad laver De?”
Famke had a story ready. She explained that she only wished to look, that her mother had worked in this palace and died in the conflagration. She and her brother—she motioned to Albert, who had the grace to nod—had come to mourn. She let the light yellow shawl slide off her hair and gave the men the most demure expression the nuns had taught her. She even worked up a tear, more easily than she would have thought, to emphasize her point.
“Kom så venligst.” One after another, the workmen invited the two of them closer, won over more by the beauty of Famke’s face than her flimsy story. Even the guard who had dutifully appeared waved them on.
“What is it you want here?” Albert asked.
“Shh,” she whispered. “No English. We are pretending you be a Dane.” To the admiration of the men watching, she began to step delicately through the ash heap, like a figure in a painting about sainthood or loneliness. The effect was good; no one seemed to notice the rough cloth of her skirt or the mud on her one pair of shoes, and even Albert appeared impressed as he followed her.
“What are you looking for?” he whispered meekly.
“I have an idea,” she said. “It is about ice.”
He
