“Not many get there,” said Chartrand. “But I think if Peter’s courage holds and he keeps exploring, he’ll be like few others. Van Gogh, Picasso, Vermeer, Gagnon. Clara Morrow. Creating a whole new form, one that doesn’t distinguish between thought and emotion. Between natural and manufactured. Water, and stone, and living tissue. All one. Peter will be among the greats.”

“It took a hare in the Garden of Cosmic Speculation for him to see it,” said Myrna.

“It took Peter growing into a brave man,” said Gamache. “Brave enough not to explain it away.”

“If we find No Man, we find Peter,” said Myrna.

“And maybe the tenth muse,” said Clara. “I’d like to meet her.”

“You already have,” said Chartrand. “You might not know who she is, but she’s someone in your life.”

“Ruth?” Clara mouthed to Myrna, and opened her eyes wide in mock-horror.

“Rosa?” Myrna mouthed back.

Clara chuckled at the thought and looked over the railing, to the woods and the rocks and the river. She wondered if the tenth muse could be a place. Like Charlevoix was for Gagnon. Home.

“I don’t understand why the Greeks would erase the tenth muse,” Myrna said. “You’d think she’d be more important than the other nine Muses, since the Greeks revered art.”

“Maybe that’s why,” said Gamache.

Across the terrasse, the backgammon players stopped rolling the dice and looked at him.

“Power,” he said. “Maybe the tenth muse was too powerful. Maybe she was banished because she was a threat. And what could be more threatening than freedom? Isn’t that what inspiration is? It can’t be locked up, or even channeled. It can’t be contained or controlled. And that’s what the tenth muse was offering.”

He looked from one to the other and rested his eyes on Clara.

“Isn’t that what Professor Norman, or No Man, was also offering? Inspiration? Freedom? No more rigid rules, no lockstep, no conformity. He was offering to help the young artists break away. Find their own way. And when their works were rejected by the establishment, he honored them.” Gamache held Clara’s eyes. “With their own Salon. And for his troubles he was despised, laughed at, marginalized.”

“Expelled,” said Clara.

“He built a small home here, in a clearing,” said Gamache. “But he wasn’t alone for long. Other artists were drawn to him. But only the failed ones, the desperate ones. The ones who’d tried everything else. And had nowhere else to turn.”

“A Salon des Refusés,” said Clara. “He’d created not an artist community, but a home for des refusés. Outcasts, misfits, refugees from the conventional art world.”

“He was their last hope,” said Myrna. Then after a pause she added, “A shame he was crazy.”

“I’ve been called that, lots of times,” said Clara. “God help me, even Ruth thinks I’m nuts. What’s crazy?”