I needed a little quiet reflection in a church after the emotional conversation with Mr. Finnegan over tea and scones in the kitchen. The chapel felt like the best place to stop next on my whirlwind tour. I wasn’t left completely on my own though. Zeke and Zuly were determined to be attached to me whether I desired company or not. I think they sensed my melancholy after hearing about Ivan’s childhood and wanted to comfort me. Pets were intuitive when their humans felt sad. It was rough just listening to Mr. Finnegan tell it. Imagining Ivan having to live it was far worse. How he’d come through such a heartbreaking early life to become the charming and generous guy with the easy-going personality was quite the mystery. Add to that the disaster of his first marriage and his wife’s death—Ivan’s life read a lot like a Shakespearean tragedy.

I opened the heavy wooden door shaped in a Gothic arch and stepped inside with the dogs right behind me.

And fell instantly in love with the space.

So much light poured in through the many Gothic windows of clear glass above and stained glass mosaics at the lowest levels. I could see what he meant about the altar and not wanting to remove it. It was a gorgeous carved wooden masterpiece with animals and scenes from nature carved into all four panels. There was no way for it to be moved without destroying it, so stay it must.

A curious painting of an angel caught my eye on the wall behind the altar. As I came closer to study it more carefully, I could see it was of a woman who looked a whole lot like Imogene in a white robe with wings pointed upward as if she were ascending to the heavens. Two small doves above her right shoulder flew with her. The whole thing had a William Blake quality to it, ethereal but also peaceful, evoking a sense of serenity and comforting calmness. I reached for my glasses in my jacket pocket and put them on. I found the artists’ mark in the bottom right quadrant:

B. E. Russell

Mamma –1876

It took me a moment, but I figured it out. Byrony Everley Russell, daughter of Lord and Lady Rothvale number nine, was an accomplished artist in her own lifetime, well-known for her more mystical style rather than romanticist, but still hugely popular with collectors today. This was a simply gorgeous example of her work, even though it needed a thorough cleaning after nearly one hundred and fifty years of living in a chapel where candles were burned perpetually during the days when it was in use.

A Byrony Everley Russell just hanging on a wall for the last century and a half, in the old stone church I’d be using as a staging area for my work at Donadea.

Unbelievable.

The date of 1876 made this canvas a lot more recent than any of the Mallerton portraits of Imogene, so the daughter portrayed her mother as a much younger woman than she would’ve been in 1876… which meant this was done by Byrony to memorialize her mother after Imogene’s death. As an angel or as a living woman, I had to agree putting her in the chapel did seem like the most appropriate place for a beautiful angel to repose…