Hieronymus found lodgings, using the little money he had managed to steal from his father’s study. Money he had earned, but never received. And in his place of safety he slept with a chair propped up against the door handle to stop anyone entering. Strange, he thought in the darkness. I was imprisoned and now – a free man – I imprison myself. A prisoner always.

He dreamed of his chimeras, his hands moving in sleep as though he were painting. He woke, turned on the straw mattress, felt the prickle of a flea bite and fell back to sleep.

Coughing woke him around six, because his lungs were cold and the air damp. As he had done for over three months, he coughed up phlegm and spat it into a rag, blood spotting the corners of his mouth. His forehead was tacky with sweat, his narrow chest heaving, his ribs a dull ache of pain. Then the attack subsided and he fell back into a clammy sleep.

He dreamed he was sitting by water, drawing with a stick of white chalk on an ebonised rock. He dreamed that the studio in ’s-Hertogenbosch had burned to the ground, that his family had all perished, and felt no sadness. As the night turned over, he lay on the straw with the city fleas and dreamed of a boat coming for him, taking him through the canals of Amsterdam and into the sea beyond. As he rode the water, monsters followed him and he reached out his hand to touch the chimeras, the men fish and the flying ghouls. Animals with human heads told him stories, and under the lapping sea a shoal of demons drew the boat onwards.

He was crying in his sleep so loudly that it woke the man in the room next door, who called for the landlady. When she found Hieronymus he was grey, shiny with fever, his fingers still clenching a stick of white chalk.

Forty-Nine

Uncharacteristically thoughtful, Gerrit der Keyser sat in the sauna with a towel around his middle, his bifocals steamed up. He was trying to take his mind off his diet and the effects the medication was having on him. Like the puffy feet he had had to cram into his handmade shoes that morning. Feet and ankles like dimpled tripe, his silk socks tourniquets to the flesh. He had been quite good-looking once, but that was about five hundred years ago …

He blew his nose loudly, looking around. But he was alone, steaming, sweating, his glasses beginning to slip down his nose as he thought back. Sabine Monette – Sabine Guillaine when he first knew her – had been absurdly attractive, and clever. Much too clever for the life of a bourgeoise. It had been summer in Provence … Gerrit laughed aloud. Fucking summer in Provence! Christ, he sounded like a travel brochure. But it had been summer and it had been Provence and he had met this scrumptious piece of French arse and fallen in love.

Which had been easy when he had all his hair, all his heart vessels were working, and his sex drive could have powered a nuclear war … He could remember Sabine very well now that he allowed himself to remember. Pushing aside the grasping obsession of his work and his lascivious chasing of money, Gerrit thought nostalgically of his younger self. If they had met a little later, when he had set up the gallery and his fortunes were on an upward course, they could have made a go of it.

But then Miriam had come along and her father had offered to invest in Gerrit’s new gallery, and he would have been a fool to pass up the chance. Of course in return for the money he had had to marry the girl, but Miriam had been a reasonable wife. Jealous, certainly, but blissfully stupid. If he had thought of Sabine over the years which followed Gerrit might have had a fleeting pang of regret. Now and again as he remembered the brutality of his leaving … he put it down to youthful callousness. At least that was what he told himself.

And then Sabine re-entered his life. She was in her forties, still glaringly handsome, and now wealthy. Apparently his leaving had not destroyed her. Neither had their furtive affair spoiled her chances of landing a good catch. To Gerrit’s chagrin, Mr Monette was even richer then he was. With a better looking wife … A few years later Sabine contacted Gerrit and asked about a painting he had just purchased. She spoke to him over the phone as though he were a minion. Which, in a way, he was.

Rearranging the towel over his thighs, Gerrit took off his glasses and closed his eyes. He was so hot he thought he might expire, his heart pumping like over-boiling soup. But he stayed where he was, thinking of Eloise Devereux. His daughter … Why he hadn’t made the connection immediately he couldn’t imagine. She was so like her mother. Same elegant limbs and luminous eyes, but lacking in Sabine’s sensuality and warmth. Eloise was a beautiful woman but a chilling one.

And of course it was possible. He had slept with Sabine and the timings were accurate to their affair. But he was strangely miffed by having been excluded from fatherhood. Then again, if he had been told that she was pregnant would he have married her? Gerrit opened his eyes wearily. He was getting old, developing that most dangerous human trait – a conscience. He had managed – profited – without one for many years. No broken sleep for Gerrit der Keyser; no fucking guilty regrets; no looking back and feeling queasy about the past.

Until now … Gerrit scowled into the steam, the sauna a little replica of Hell. It made him think of Hieronymus Bosch and the chain. And how Sabine had cheated him out of it. Smart move, he thought with grudging admiration. Was that her revenge? After all, she would have known it was valuable. Perhaps she had even known about the papers hidden inside it.

But he hadn’t known about the secret then. Not until later, when the chain had left his hands and the rumours began. Stories about a deception perpetrated by the Bosch family and the Brotherhood of Mary. He didn’t know the whole story, but enough to realise it was explosive.

Gerrit sighed. Sabine had always been clever and finally she had bested him. But it had cost her. Murdered in a hotel room, initials carved into her stomach. Unexpectedly, Gerrit felt tears behind his eyes and blinked, shocked by emotion he hadn’t experienced for a long time. He could remember the young Sabine so well, her rounded stomach warm under his lips. Not grey-skinned, aged, ripped up … Even in the heat, Gerrit shivered as an image of Sabine lodged in his mind – and beside it, an image of their daughter.

The beautiful, and vengeful, Eloise.

Fifty

While Gerrit was brooding in a sauna in Piccadilly, Judith Kaminski had returned to London and entered the gallery by the front. Once inside she paused, confused, hearing the battering against the back door. Dropping her handbag, she ran towards the noise, pushing Hiram aside and shouting: ‘Who’s there!’

The banging paused.

‘Who’s there?’ she repeated. ‘I’ve got a gun, I warn you, and I’ve called the police. They’re coming.’

She could hear a muffled curse and then heavy footsteps running off, dying out in the distance. Silence fell. Neither of them moved. For several moments Judith stood rigid, facing the back door, then she slowly turned. Hiram was slumped in his chair, his mouth slack.

‘I caught the earlier train …’ she said blankly.

‘Good.’

‘… If I’d got the one I was intending to catch I wouldn’t have got here for another hour.’ She stopped, moved over to her husband, stroking his head as he rested it against her stomach. ‘I knew I shouldn’t have gone to Brighton.’

Fifty-One

The following morning Judith Kaminski made her way over to Philip Preston’s auction house in Chelsea. The street was greasy with rain and her high heels caught on the edge of the pavement. Righting herself, she entered the building, spotting Philip at the back of the hall.