Mortal radiance, p.1
Mortal Radiance, page 1
Contents
Cover
A selection of titles from Kathryn Lasky
Title Page
Copyright
Praise for the Georgia O’Keeffe series
About the Author
Epigraph
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Epilogue
Author’s Note
A selection of titles from Kathryn Lasky
The Georgia O’Keeffe mysteries
LIGHT ON BONE
The Guardians of Ga’Hoole series
THE HATCHLING
THE OUTCAST
THE FIRST COLLIER
THE COMING OF HOOLE
TO BE A KING
GOLDEN TREE
RIVER OF WIND
EXILE
THE WAR OF THE EMBER
THE RISE OF A LEGEND
The Secret of Glendunny series
THE SECRET OF GLENDUNNY: THE HAUNTING
THE SEARCHERS
The Tangled in Time series
THE PORTAL
THE BURNING QUEEN
The Bears of the Ice series
THE QUEST OF THE CUBS
DEN OF FOREVER FROST
THE KEEPERS OF THE KEYS
Novels
THE NIGHT JOURNEY
NIGHT WITCHES
FACELESS
Visit www.kathrynlasky.com for a full list of titles
MORTAL RADIANCE
Kathryn Lasky
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
First world edition published in Great Britain and the USA in 2024
by Severn House, an imprint of Canongate Books Ltd,
14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE.
This eBook edition first published in 2024 by Severn House,
an imprint of Canongate Books Ltd.
severnhouse.com
Copyright © Kathryn Lasky, 2024
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. The right of Kathryn Lasky to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-1384-6 (cased)
ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-1385-3 (e-book)
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is purely coincidental.
This eBook produced by
Palimpsest Book Production Limited,
Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland
Praise for the Georgia O’Keeffe series
“The intricately plotted mystery puts a new spin on several historical figures”
Library Journal Starred Review of Light on Bone
“Lasky provides vivid descriptions through O’Keeffe’s eyes that bring the setting and timeframe to life”
Library Journal Starred Review of Light on Bone
“Step aside Miss Marple, Eugenia Potter, and Kinsey Millhone – Georgia O’Keeffe is the new sleuth in town! … Vivid prose brushstrokes bring the legendary artist, the Southwest landscape she loved, and a complicated plot with historical and imagined characters to life”
Katherine Hall Page, author of the award-winning Faith Fairchild series, on Light on Bone
“Georgia O’Keeffe as an amateur sleuth? A daring idea that works like a charm for the highly talented Kathryn Lasky … And the portrait of the artist is superb”
Peter Abrahams, author of The Tutor, on Light on Bone
“Kathryn Lasky draws Georgia O’Keeffe’s New Mexico with her own skillful hand … I couldn’t put it down”
Gregory Maguire, author of Wicked, on Light on Bone
“O’Keeffe’s righteous vision does not flinch from the truth, and we follow her gaze in fascination through this masterfully woven story”
Joseph Finder, New York Times bestselling author of Judgment and House on Fire, on Light on Bone
“The characters are rich, the setting is sublime … a memorable and beautiful book”
Brenda Buchanan, author of the Joe Gale mysteries, on Light on Bone
About the author
Kathryn Lasky is the author of over one hundred books for children and young adults, including the Guardians of Ga’Hoole series, which has more than eight million copies in print, and was turned into a major motion picture, Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole. Her books have received numerous awards including a Newbery Honor, a Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, and a Washington Post-Children’s Book Guild Nonfiction Award. She has twice won the National Jewish Book award. Her work has been translated into nineteen languages worldwide. She lives with her husband in Cambridge, MA.
www.kathrynlasky.com
I feel there is something unexplored about women that only a woman can explore.
Georgia O’Keeffe
PROLOGUE
She was uncertain how long she had slept, but there was such peace and quiet in the chapel. She could hear the cottonwoods stirring softly outside. From the floor where, two hours ago, she and Mateo had made love before he left, she looked out the narrow arched window of the chapel. Three stars were suspended in the night. Just like the First People legends her mother had told her. The stars, her mother would whisper, were born not in heaven but on earth. The tiny star seeds were drawn to the sighs of the cottonwood trees that stirred in the wind, and burrowed themselves in their roots, spreading out in all directions. Those sighs were like music to the star seeds, and they began to climb up the roots and settle in the twigs and branches of the tree.
Soon, all the stars in the earth began to come and hide out in the cottonwood twigs. But the Spirit of the Night and the Spirit of the Wind knew somehow where the star seeds were hiding. They felt the stars needed to be seen by all and not hidden away. So together they created a storm, and that snapped the branches of the cottonwood. As the branches broke, the stars shot from them into the sky. ‘And, Flora,’ her mother always said as she tucked her into bed, ‘if you break a twig in just the right place, you will find the shadow where a star once hid.’
But now another shadow slid across the moonlit, earthen floor of the chapel. A strange paralysis, a numbness, crept over her body. She tried to fight, but suddenly she could not move; she could not even scream as the rock came down and smashed her face, and then again and again. But she did not feel the subsequent ones. She was gone before the first of the stars began to melt into the dawn.
Please join in celebrating the life of English writer D.H. Lawrence
September 11th, 1885 – March 2nd, 1930
Eleven a.m. at the Lawrence Chapel
April 5th, 1935
San Cristobal, New Mexico – just off the Old Kiowa Road
ONE
‘Yoo-hoo!’ A voice trilled from outside the small chapel.
‘Oh dear.’ Georgia O’Keeffe sighed while on her knees and crouched over a stained-glass window on the floor. ‘Here comes trouble,’ she murmured as the voices drifting down the forest path became louder.
‘No molesta, Signora Georgia,’ said the young woman on her hands and knees on the other side of the stained-glass window.
‘I’ve almost finished the caulking.’ A voice came from outside, where the window would be installed in the eastern wall. ‘It should be dry by the time of the memorial service – just a couple of days from now, right?’
‘Yes!’
‘And Georgia and I have almost all the tacks
Such a beautiful girl, Georgia thought. She and Mateo were indeed a striking couple. Both Navajo and both artists, together they seemed to embody the grace and sheer elegant beauty of the land – their land. That earthy, ruddy blush of the very soil and rock.
‘Here we come!’ trilled the voice.
‘NO!’ Georgia bellowed.
‘Hold on, ladies,’ Mateo called out. ‘We are about to mount the stained glass into the window frame.’
‘Georgia, you in there?’ Frieda Lawrence, the widow of D.H. Lawrence, called out. The light suddenly diminished as a large shadow blocked the light coming through the door. A thick German accent drilled the air.
‘Yes, I’m in here, but stay away! We’re at a delicate point in the operation here.’ Georgia sighed. It had been more than three years since she’d last seen Frieda. A dose of Frieda went a long way. Lawrence was still alive then but had died shortly after he and Frieda returned to their villa in France.
‘You’re the boss, darling,’ a cultivated voice replied.
‘She is not,’ Frieda growled.
Georgia rolled her eyes at Flora, who giggled softly. A strand of her jet-black hair came loose from her bun and brushed her cheek.
‘They never cease,’ Georgia whispered.
‘Hold on, ladies,’ Mateo called out. ‘We need to concentrate while we move it.’
Georgia had been asked to design the two stained-glass windows, one in the east and the other in the west wall of the chapel. The glass had been made by Mateo Chee, the extraordinary Navajo glassmaker she had met at the Native American Crafts Exhibit in New York five years earlier. She was thrilled with the commission and did it at no cost.
She was now eager to observe how the sun came through the windows that depicted some of her favorite flowers, flowers that she had so often painted but were now given another life in glass. And they were beautiful. She imagined a bouquet of light – jimson weed, iris, calla lilies and poppies. The colors of the flowers would spill across the floor like a liquid palette of rose and orange and pale crimsons.
‘All right, ladies,’ Mateo said, entering the chapel, ‘I’m ready for you. Flora, over here. Georgia, over there.’ He nodded, indicating the other side of the stained glass. ‘And I’ll take the top.’ He took a deep breath.
‘OK, on the count of three. One, two, three – here we go.’ It seemed like a miraculous moment: suddenly, the earthen floor was sliding with color.
‘Take the paper off the one on the opposite wall now. So we can see the setting sun and, with the eastern light, the promise of tomorrow.’
The promise of tomorrow. Georgia liked that phrase. She lived with the promise of tomorrow. It was her favorite time to paint out in this country. It was why she got up well before dawn to go out into the desert and paint. ‘Live in the moment,’ people say, but in Georgia’s mind it was live in anticipation of the moment. Be prepared, she thought. By gosh, I am a real Boy Scout. She nearly giggled out loud. Her husband, Alfred Stieglitz, always said that he regretted that he was born too early to be a Boy Scout. Alfred – a Boy Scout? The whole idea was ridiculous. And she told him so.
‘Low blow, Georgia!’ he had muttered.
She had apologized.
The paper was now off the other window, and the western light, so much more intense on this late afternoon, slid into the room. She was nervous. This was an entirely new art form for Georgia. She had never designed a stained-glass window before. And to have designed it in New York and then Lake George, where there was no light like the light in New Mexico – well, she felt as if she had been groping in the dark the entire time. It was like painting a portrait without a face. She had to recall the light that so entranced her, but it seemed to have worked. She had a sudden feeling of being unbound, unbound from the canvas and floating in this new medium of ethereal light. It was as if she were fusing with a gossamer world sliding with color.
‘Look at this!’ Flora exclaimed jubilantly as she bent down to help Georgia get up. ‘Look at what you two have done.’ She seized Georgia around the waist as Mateo encircled them both with his arms. The three of them began to slowly move through the shifting dapples of tinted light. Georgia felt as if she were suspended in some Elysian region, neither heaven nor earth. She was in this instant fused with a new palette – a palette of air and light and color.
Frieda and her good friend Sybil – Lady Sybil Hatch – entered the chapel. Frieda was in her German Hausfrau dress that was stained and the hem half out, while Sybil looked as if she were riding to the hounds in a fitted tweed hunting jacket and gleaming knee-high riding boots. She was in a sense a British hybrid, an aspiring member of the Bloomsbury set, but also landed gentry teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, trying to maintain her late husband’s estate, Stonebridge.
‘Lovely! Lovely,’ Frieda said, looking around as the colorful shadows poured through the window. ‘I so like the notion of my dear Lorenzo here with the sliding colors. Yes, yes, his spirit is here. I feel it. His … his spirit, his Geist. The very color of his soul.’
‘You know, that was my point exactly,’ Sybil said. She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, imagining that long, handsome face, the black hair flopped over his forehead, the penetrating dark gaze of his eyes.
‘What was your point, Sybil?’
‘Frieda, tell me why one would contain a spirit like Lorenzo’s in an urn?’
‘Maybe not an urn. Something else?’ She turned and looked at the rectangular formwork of the concrete altar that was soon to be installed. On top was an urn destined to contain Lorenzo’s ashes.
‘Not an urn!’ Mateo said. He was clearly aghast. ‘But Flora designed this urn especially for ashes that will be set on top of the altar.’
Flora reached out and touched him. ‘Calma! Cara, calma.’
‘No, Flora, you are the artist,’ Mateo said firmly.
‘You say this so cavalierly, Frieda,’ Georgia muttered. ‘It can be something else? An urn for ashes is what you commissioned. Flora here is the maker of this lovely urn. Would you ask Lorenzo after finishing a book to change what that book is about?’
‘Oh, don’t worry!’ Flora said quickly, but Mateo’s face had darkened. ‘It can be used just as easily for flowers.’
‘His ashes should not be contained,’ Sybil persisted. ‘It’s against his nature, against all that he sought to find here in the desert – and did find.’
‘What do you know about what he sought? His nature? I am his wife,’ Frieda growled. ‘Fick dich!’
‘What?’
Fuck you!
Georgia blinked. Sybil most likely was ignorant of the meaning. Georgia knew the two words because, on occasion, when Stieglitz was extremely upset with a landlord, he would mutter this imprecation during a heated conversation.
Georgia decided right then that she wasn’t going to get involved in this argument with Frieda or Sybil, even though she had accepted Frieda’s commission to design the windows with Mateo. She’d said enough already. She hadn’t come out here to argue.
She had to live in the moment of being back on this land she loved – not Santa Fe right now, but Taos until the memorial service was over, then back to the Ghost Ranch. Finally, she was away, away from New York, a good two thousand miles away from Stieglitz. Not to mention the rowdy, boisterous life of the family at their summer encampment on Lake George. She had agreed to come to the dedication of the chapel almost three years before – before the breakdown that had put her in Doctors Hospital in New York for three months, before the Ghost Ranch and before she had met Ryan McCaffrey, the sheriff of Santa Fe County. Unexpectedly, she and Ryan had fallen in love. She felt no guilt whatsoever – not since Dorothy Norman had turned up in New York and become part of the cause of her initial breakdown.
She still loved Alfred, but she had told him nothing about Ryan. Why should she? He was so far away, and she was here. Alfred was indiscreet, and she was terminally discreet. Of course, it was easier for her to be discreet at this distance than for Alfred with Dorothy. Separate coasts accommodated her perfectly, whereas Dorothy was constantly in Alfred’s studio and made occasional visits to Lake George. She sighed.
