Her pained expression, the way she had toyed with her uneaten breakfast, and the notebook she scribbled her notes in left unopened sitting next to her plate told Henry all he needed to know. Megan Ellsworth was nearing her wits end. Having dutifully assisted her as best he could in checking items off the list she’d drawn up before setting off on this quest without answering any of the questions surrounding the unsigned portrait they’d been seeking, he expected the young woman had finally come to a conclusion he had some days ago. While it had all been good fun and something of an education for him, he suspected the time had come to let Tinsdal know the game was up.

Doing so, however, could wait until he’d finished his breakfast. Having spent the better part of a month subsisting off rations packaged in a cardboard box that all too often tasted as if the same material used to manufacture those boxes had been used to season the food found in them, Henry was keen to take advantage of the hotel’s lavish buffet breakfast. Ever so slowly, he pushed himself away from the table, taking care to make sure in doing so he didn’t derail the young art historian’s train of thought. Pausing briefly after coming to his feet, he studied Megan for a moment as she continued to stare blankly out the window at an unseen object in the distance. Her vacant expression alone led him to believe she’d come to the same realization he had. As intriguing as the portrait was, without the sort of verifiable provenance that would stand up to the close scrutiny it would be subjected to if its discovery was ever made public, it had little value to anyone other than a person like Guy Tinsdal who, despite his acumen when it came to spotting a promising piece of real estate, lacked the necessary background and knowledge needed to make informed decisions when purchasing a work of art that had struck his fancy.

In the time it took Henry to walk over to the buffet, pile his plate high with hot scrambled eggs, breakfast sausages, warm toast, and return, the young art historian who’d been lost to the world was gone, replaced by a woman who was frantically leafing through her notebook, flipping pages so fast her own fingers were tripping over themselves. “We’ve been going about this all wrong,” she muttered without looking up from the pages her eyes were racing over.

Taken aback by what he was hearing, Henry found himself unable to do anything but stand there, plate in hand, wondering what Megan was going on about. Dumbfounded, he cocked his head. “We’ve missed something?”

“No,” Megan shot back without bothering to look up at him as she continued to rapidly skim over her notes. “We’ve done everything that is all but mandated by art historians around the world when dealing with a situation like this. To have done other wise would…”

Pausing in mid-sentence, she took a moment to carefully read something she’d written. When she determined it was not the note she’d been searching for, she resumed both her frenzied search and the thought she’d left hanging. “To have pursued this willy-nilly like a pair of amateurs would have doomed the project before it got out of the blocks,” she continued without bothering to look over at Henry as he resumed his seat and began to dig into his second helping of breakfast without taking his eyes off of Megan. “There are procedures, a protocol of sorts, an art historian is expected to follow when delving into the history of a work of art.”

For the first time since he’d returned to the table, she stopped scanning her notes and glanced up at Henry. “Failure to check off a single box is often enough to discredit both efforts being made to authenticate a work of art and the competence of person involved in the project. It takes but a single misstep, intentional or not, to discredit an art historian who’s spent years, if not decades, building a reputation. One made when dealing with a matter that has the potential of making as big a splash in the art world as this one is even more devastating. . “Failure to check off a single box is often enough to discredit both efforts being made to authenticate a work of art and the competence of person involved in the project. It takes but a single misstep, intentional or not, to discredit an art historian who’s spent years, if not decades, building a reputation. One made when dealing with a matter that has the potential of making as big a splash in the art world as this one is even more devastating.

“So, what have we missed?”

“Nothing,” Megan declared crisply as she closed her notebook and took up her coffee cup.

“Ooo-kay,” Henry mouthed slowly as he took to staring across the table at her.

Realizing he was waiting for her to say something, Megan could not resist savoring the feeling of having finally managed to catch Guy Tinsdal’s personal dogsbody on his back foot.

Only when he saw a twinkle in her eye and the way the corner of her lips were ever so slightly curling up did he realize what she was doing. “You win. I give.”

After giving the mischievous little grin she’d been struggling to keep in check free rein, Megan put her cup down, pushed aside her half eaten breakfast that had long since gone cold, and leaned forward, placing her forearms on the table before her and clasping her hands together. “We’ve been going about this all wrong.”

Unable to help himself, Henry gave his head a quick shake and blinked. “Excuse me?”

“We started this effort based on the assumption the artist was either Leonardo da Vinci or one of his students, someone who was able to accurately ape his master’s technique. In doing so we handicapped our efforts by focusing our full attention on the artist.”

Henry found it difficult to ignore the manner with which she was liberally tossing about the word ‘we.’ While it was true he had brought Silvia onboard and dragged Megan all but kicking and screaming to a well known forger, she had had the lead when it came to determining who they saw and what they did. “Excuse me, but what do you mean WE’VE been wasting our time.”

Not understanding what Henry was really asking, Megan took to regarding a man she was finding hard not to like. “What we’ve done to date has not been a waste of time. As I said, we needed to do everything we have in order to pass the smell test people like Clive Barrows, Monsieur Caron, and Silvia would subject it to.”

Thoroughly confused, Henry set his knife and fork down, folded his hands on the table before him, and leaned forward. “Sorry, it seems I’m being a wee-bit slow on the uptake this morning. Am I missing something, or simply being particularly dense?”

While he had couched his question in a manner that was tinged with a touch of self-deprecating humor, the unflinching gaze with which he held her should have been enough warn Megan he was not at all pleased by what he had just heard. Whether she was willfully ignoring this warning, or was even slower on the uptake than Henry claimed to be, she continued. “I’ve come to the conclusion we’re not going to find out who painted the portrait until we’ve figured out who the subject was.”

Grudgingly, Henry set aside the indignation that had been welling up within him as he eased back his seat. Having been intrigued by that very question almost from the beginning, he found himself wondering why Megan had not considered that approach until now. The answer, he quickly concluded, was self-evident. She was a professional. As she had pointed out, she was constrained by the methodology art historians, such as Silvia, Caron, and the others who had examined the portrait, followed. That there would be art historians who would question whatever conclusion she came up with was a given. There was always someone who sought to discredit the efforts of another, if for no other reason than to pull the spotlight off the person presenting them and draw attention, instead, to themselves. So rather than give them something they could use against whatever her findings were and, by extension, her suitability to be counted amongst their number, Megan had had no choice but to slavishly adhere to tried and true, dutifully following the steps established the investigative protocol art historians relied on.

“Okay, now what?” Henry asked as he took up his fork and went back to working his way through his second breakfast.

“Whoever commissioned the portrait not only took great care in finding someone who was as talented as our unknown artist was, they also went to great pains to portray the subject in the most favorable light possible. I believe everything depicted in the piece, from the setting to the way the subject sat for the portrait was staged in order to either convey a message or tell us, the viewer who is removed from that event by centuries, something about the subject. By focusing our attention on what the subject of the portrait is wearing, the items that are scattered about the room she is in, and the background, all of which the artist spent a great deal of time replicating, we just might be able to discover what the subject was trying to tell us. Once we are able to understand the story the artist was able to capture in such minute detail, we should be able to identify the subject, if not her name, than her title. We should be able to tell when the portrait was painted, what the occasion was, and maybe even the setting. With that information in hand, it should be relatively easy to determine who the artist was, for this portrait was not the work of a dabbler who just happened to get this one so right.”

Now it was Henry’s turn to mentally step back as he took to mulling over what Megan was proposing. “Assuming there are clues in the portrait that are worth pursuing, how do we proceed?”

“Simple,” Megan beamed as she sat upright, pulled her plate back in front of her, and dug into the fare she’d neglected until then. “We follow her journey, one that should tell us how it was that a woman, who is dressed in Italian attire came to be known as the English Courtesan.”

Still not sure if he would be able to convince Tinsdal this new approach was worth pursuing, Henry was tempted to ask her just how that information would help them discover who the artist was. He stopped, however, when he noticed the forlorn expression she’d been wearing when they’d sat down for breakfast not more than an hour ago was now gone. In its place was one he was quite familiar with. It was a look he was quite familiar with, one that told him she was once more fully in the game, ready to take on dragoons and storm mighty keeps if need be in order to complete a task that had become, for her at least, a quest.

Having no wish to spoil this moment, Henry decided to put off telling her he’d yet to decide if he was going to recommend to Tinsdal that they pull the plug on their search. The idea of attempting to track down the name of someone who’d been dead for over five hundred years based on nothing more than an image and clues that might not be anything more than random trinkets an artist had included in a portrait he’d been commissioned to paint struck him as being an even bigger waste of time than their original charter. What did keep him putting an end to this snipe hunt was the prospect of spending more time with a woman he was finding to be just as fascinating to him as the one depicted in the portrait was to her. It was a rather lame reason for going on, but one Henry found himself considering it as he turned his full attention back to enjoying his breakfast. He was, after all, human, a failing that all too often caused people to do things that defied logic and common sense.

The decision to set out in this new direction turned out to be far easier to make than deciding where it would begin. Henry had expected they would do so at the hotel using the images of the portrait created by Lumiere Technology Megan had uploaded on her laptop. When she made it known this was a nonstarter, Henry was a bit taken aback. “You do appreciate the reason you have the suite you do is to give you a place where we can work, going over what you’ve come across and deciding what to do next in private,” he pointed out. “Yours is not the only reputation at stake here. Mr. Tinsdal has a fair number of detractors who use everything and anything, true or not, to embarrass him. I can see it all now,” he went on, looking up as he took his right hand and traced an invisible banner headline tabloids favored in the sky. “From slums to forgeries, real estate mogul invests in fake da Vinci.” Dropping his gaze, he fixed Megan with a look that had, on occasion, caused lesser beings to wither. “Until we know what we’ve got here, Mr. Tinsdal is adamant that we keep a tight lid on this.”

As compelling as his arguments were, Megan stood her ground despite the risk of incurring the wrath of the man who was underwriting her efforts. It’s not as if she didn’t have good reasons for insisting they examine the portrait in search of clues that would help them identify the subject in a place that was far more public than a hotel room, some of which she was freely shared with Henry. “As good as the laptop Mr. Tinsdal provided me with, it cannot match the quality of the monitors Lumiere has,” she pointed out when they were discussing why she couldn’t work out of her suite. “We need to examine each and every item in the minutest detail, something best done using the most advance technology available to us. Not only are the means and the facilities necessary to pursue this investigation in the manner we need to are available at Lumiere, doing so there rather than a locked hotel room will add legitimacy to our efforts.”

Not familiar with the firm. , Megan filled him in as she checked the content of her messenger bag to ensure she had all she would need. “Founded in 1989 by Pascal Cotte and Jean Penicaut, when dealing with a work of art, Lumiere Technology uses a multispectral camera capable of analyzing both the layers and colors of the piece without damaging it. The resulting image consists of 240 millions true pixels using twelve instead of the three primary colors. This technology, and its importance to the art world, was demonstrated in 2004 when Cotte used it to analysis da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. Without needing to move the piece from where it was hung in the Louvre or leaving a mark, the results allowed art historians to view that priceless work as da Vinci had seen it the day he’d stepped back, set aside his brush and palette, and declared it to be finished. It’s the sort of technology that makes what Andre Perret does all the more difficult.”

Pausing, she looked about the room to make sure she’d not forgotten anything.

“If we’re going to find the clues we will be relying on to guide us, we need to make sure we are seeing them exactly as the artist did when he was creating the portrait,” Megan pointed out. “The slightest little thing, whether it be the color of her amber jewelry or a seemingly insignificant detail of the gown she is wearing could very well provide us with a clue that could be of use. After all, an artist did not waste either his time or material obsessing over a trivial item he was replicating unless it was important,” she added. “Lapis lazuli, the pigment da Vinci used to paint the sky in the background of the Mona Lisa doesn’t didn’t come cheap. A single kilogram of that pigment can cost as much as 13,000 quid at today’s prices.”

Unable to find fault with her reasoning, Henry made the necessary arrangements, never suspecting the real reason she wished to conduct their examination of the portrait at Lumiere Technology had nothing to do with the state of the monitors and computers they employed. It was the setting itself. The idea of spending countless hours in a hotel room, even one as spacious and well appointed as hers, side by side with a man like Henry Hackett was more than a little daunting to someone as Megan.

It wasn’t as if she was afraid he would take advantage of the situation. Despite displaying most of the telltale signed of being a classic Alpha male as Megan had come to understand the type, Henry was every inch a gentleman and professional, polite, considerate, and dedicated to a fault. What she was worried about was her own feelings. Since graduating from university, Megan had been at the National Gallery. With the exception of a small break to tend to a personal issue she’d been putting off for far too long, her whole life had revolved around that place and people like her. Just when she had come to the conclusion that while a man like Clive Barrow made a wonderful mentor, he was not the kind of man she wanted to spend her life with for reasons she could not quite put her finger on. As interesting and knowledgeable as he was, Barrow and the young men at the Gallery who were following in his footsteps lacked a certain something, a quality that would have allowed her to see them as more than what they were to her, a mentor and coworkers.

Henry Hackett was all together different in a way that was as unsettling as it was beguiling. It was something she’d found herself dwelling on more than she thought to be prudent. Having dismissed the notion that his habit of gazing at her far longer than she thought necessary when they were together was due to her unconventional background, she began to suspect his reasons for doing so might not be all that different than hers. Yet as much as she wished to discover what those reasons were, as well explore her own feelings on a very important, and very personal issue, she was determined to do so in a setting and time of her own choosing. At the moment, with so much riding on the success of the enterprise she was engaged in, the last thing she wished was to become distracted by something she had convinced herself could be put off. What the young art historian had not factored into this cold, well thought-out approach was hers was not the only vote on the matter.

Seated at a table with a smaller monitor in front of each of them, Henry and Megan started their search by considering the image of the portrait, displayed in its entirety, on a massive 8K ultra high definition monitor. With four times the horizontal and vertical resolution as a standard 1080p HDTV, yielding sixteen times more pixels, the image of the English Courtesan was as close to the day it was finished as current technology could achieve. Only having the woman depicted in the portrait itself seat before them would have been better. Since that was not possible, the two had to settle for what the artist had managed to cram into a painting that was as detailed as it was captivating.

“Well, where do we start?” Henry asked as he sat there, waiting for Megan to say something.

Good question, she thought to herself as her eyes darted from one thing to another. Grouping the various elements of the portrait into subcategories that made sense to her had been easy. Deciding which ones were important and prioritizing them in a manner that would allow them to hunt down the various clues each would yield in a logical and cost effective manner that would be palatable to Guy Tinsdal was a different matter altogether.

Right off she discounted the importance of a high, narrow window through which a patch of sky could be viewed. The odds that the building it was part of was an extant structure were almost as infinitesimal as finding it was. The title of the book the subject had both hands resting on, clearly visible on its spine, while helpful in fixing the approximate date the painting was executed, did little else. As to the clothing and woman’s hairstyle, at the moment they did more to confuse Megan than assist. “The portrait is entitled The English Courtesan,” she muttered as she thought out loud, breaking the silence and alerting Henry she was ready to begin. “And yet, as Silvia pointed out, her gown and manner in which her hair is dressed is unmistakably Italian and easily pegged to a definitive epoch.”

Having found himself wondering if she was going to take the lead, or wait for him to do so, Henry was relieved when Megan broke the silence. He was also pleased she had taken to using Silvia Mollini’s first name. This seemingly trivial detail alerted him that her self-confidence had grown considerably in the short time he had known her. In the presence of her old mentor, Clive Barrow, neither had been able to overcome the relationship they had been accustomed to when he’d been her immediate superior by virtue of his position at the National Gallery. It was a habit Henry imagined the man relied on to maintain his dominance over her. Her instinctive deference to someone she was in awe of, or at least admired, had been much the same when Megan first met Silvia. That she had managed to overcome whatever lack of confidence she had been harboring in her own abilities, as evidenced by the way the two women were now getting along, was, in Henry’s mind, an important step in Megan’s evolution. It also added to his opinion of her, an opinion that had nothing to do with the project the two were working on.

“This jewelry she is wearing is quite distinctive,” she continued. “A woman who was a courtesan was careful to wear items that informed all who saw her of her status and wealth. Her choice of amber as opposed to other stones might also be a nod to either her origins or the source of her wealth.”

“That could very easily explain the ring on her left hand,” Henry pointed out. “If I’m not mistaken, the best source of high quality amber at this time was the Baltic.”

Having studied the rings and determined the one bearing a raised butterfly and the Latin words video et taceo were of little importance at the moment, Megan focused on the one Henry had mentioned. “I’ve been thinking the same thing. I looked up the image. The crest and the crown are the same as on the Grand Coat of Arms of the Kingdom of Poland.”

“I don’t expect that was something someone was free to go about wearing unless they were entitled to,” Henry added.

Megan sniggered. “No, not unless they wanted to lose the hand it was on.”

“So that tells me our English courtesan, who prefers Italian fashions, is somehow connected to the Polish court.”

“No doubt,” Megan muttered distractedly as she continued to sort through the numerous, but unrelated clues. “So where does that lead us?”

“I would think that’s self-evident,” Henry replied after giving her question but a moment’s thought. “We follow the white eagle.”

Historical Notes;

The White Eagle is the oldest of Poland's national symbols. It is its emblem and its coat of arms. Its origins are both legendary and historical.

Well over a thousand years ago, the three legendary brothers: Lech, Czech and Ruś, leaders of their Slavic tribes, were wandering in Central Europe looking for a place for permanent settlement. Czech became the founder of the nation and state of the Czechs. Ruś went east and became the founder of the nation and state of the Ruthenians.

Lech went further north. One day, he and his tribe stopped for a rest at the edge of a great forest. Looking around Lech spotted a large white bird, majestically circling overhead.

The bird landed on a nest in a large oak tree. Lech took the presence of the white eagle and its nest to be a good omen. He turned to his Lechitians and said: "Here will be the place of our permanent settlement which we shall call Gniezno (the old Polish word for nest) and the White Eagle shall be our symbol." The declaration was enthusiastically acclaimed and accepted by all the Lechitians.

The name is significant for Gniezno, today a town of over 70,000 inhabitants some 30 miles east of Poznań, is generally credited with having been Poland's first capital.
Historically, the employment of the White Eagle as a symbol goes back to the formative period of Polish statehood.

The first crude effigy of the White Eagle, the emblem of the Piast dynasty, is to be found on the silver denarius of Bolesław Chrobry, the first crowned King of Poland. He was the son of Mieszko I, the first historical ruler of the Piast dynasty, who, in 966, had accepted Christianity on behalf of his subjects. The coronation of Bolesław Chrobry in 1025 gave recognition to the Polish state and raised his personal prestige.

The next 200 years was a period during which Poland became divided into various provinces, each ruled individually by dukes of the Piast line. However, the White Eagle, that ancient sign of strength, power, majesty, and royalty, was retained by most of them, including the dukes ruling Kraków, as their personal coat of arms. This fact played an important role in the reunification of the divided nation. Also, it was during this period that the White Eagle became refined into the heraldic form we are familiar with today.