The windflowers and the wood anemones had thrust their way out of the ground, and the jagged tear in Eisenach Castle’s western side had already been softened by a sprinkling of bellflowers and primroses.
Memories skinning over, thought Isarel, standing in Eisenach’s massive marble and gilt hall. Wounds healing and ghosts banished.
The ghosts were still here, of course; they might fade in time, but they would never quite go. Isarel could feel them crowding into the already-packed hall, jostling for place with the living, as if they were saying: but we have as much right to be here as all of you! We made the past and we created the present, and this is our night as much as anyone’s!
It was a night for ghosts and it was a night for memories to be unrolled and spread out like faded cobwebby tapestries.
It was a night when, if you could reach out and scoop up a handful of the atmosphere, you would find that cupped in your hands were old agonies and new loves and ancient curses and lingering bitternesses.
And threading it all together, the haunting, legend-drenched music.
And if you could really have taken that pot-pourri handful of tonight’s ambience, you might also have received a full-volt electrical shock, for Eisenach Castle was so heady with anticipation and excitement, it was thrumming with such expectancy, that every brick seemed to be sizzlingly alive.
In the great domed roof the newly cleaned chandeliers sparkled and coruscated, illuminating the trailing microphones and TV leads and camera flexes. The cameras and the microphones and the spotlight-hung gantries were jarringly out of place here, of course, and they were violently at war with the ghosts, but they had been unavoidable. Every TV station and radio station from three continents had bid for a place here tonight; every branch of the media had been determined to capture tonight’s concert for all time. Reputations might be made or ruined out of tonight’s events.
‘The cameras will capture the living,’ said Moira softly, at Isarel’s side. ‘But I’m glad that the ghosts will elude them.’
It was comforting that Moira could feel the ghosts as well; Isarel thought he ought to have realised she would be aware of them, but he was grateful to her for acknowledging them, nevertheless.
Champagne was standing ready in ice-buckets in the ballroom beyond the hall, and it was Clicquot and Bollinger because anything else would have been unthinkable. The long table had been carefully and lavishly set by the deferential caterers, and there were glistening salmon and trout on beds of crushed ice; lobsters and quail in aspic, silver dishes of Beluga caviare and Perigord truffles; foie gras and out-of-season fraises des bois.
Hothouse flowers were banked against the orchestra’s platform, and the heady scents mingled with the expensive perfumes of the female guests. Isarel did not know whether the gowns were Worth or Dior as once they would have been, but he thought that most of the exclusive designer houses of today’s haute couture would be represented.
He was scarcely aware of taking his seat below the orchestra’s platform, along with Kate and Ciaran and Richard and Lauren, and when Moira put her hand on his arm, and said softly, ‘The orchestra’s tuning up,’ he felt the present blur and fuse with the past again. I’m going back once more, he thought. Only this time it’s different.
As the Deputy Leader gave the A from the gleaming ivory and black Bluthner, the babble of talk and laughter and the hum of speculation stopped as abruptly and as completely as if a door had been slammed shut.
There was a spatter of polite applause for the Leader who came quickly into the hall, acknowledging the audience with what was very nearly apology, as if, despite his knighthood and his long distinguished career, he knew himself necessary but unimportant tonight.
Every eye was turned to the stair now, and the anticipation had returned, a hundredfold. The suspense was building up and up, becoming a tangible thing, stretching out and out . . . Unbearable, thought Isarel.
And then, between one heartbeat and the next, he was there. Standing at the head of the sweeping marble and gilt stairway, exactly as he had stood fifty years earlier. Judas returning . . . Jude Weissman, avenged and revenged . . . This is it, thought Isarel, staring at the thin, upright figure. This is it, the justification, the vindication, the single, marvellous moment when all of those years are going to be swept aside, and when an evil reputation is going to be smashed once and for all, and a new one forged out of a dark romantic exile. Take this moment and hold on to it, because never in the whole of your life has there ever been anything like it, and never, not if you live to be a hundred, will there ever be anything like it again.
Jude was moving forward: assured and elegant in the sharp formal evening clothes, walking sufficiently slowly to recall the torture of Auschwitz, but exuding that remarkable charisma, radiating the astonishing confidence. Arrogant! thought Isarel, feeling a thick choking knot of emotion start to form in his throat. He’s milking it of course. Playing to the gallery. I don’t blame him one bit. He’s stunned the audience into silence but at any second, they’ll erupt. It’ll be like uncorking a huge bottle of the creamiest, fizziest, most vintage champagne in the world. Yes, I was right, here it comes . . .
Jude was halfway down the stair when the silence broke, almost hesitantly at first, as if no one dared shatter the spell, and then gathering momentum, erupting into a great deafening wave of sound, a mammoth shooting fountain of emotion that went up and up, louder and louder, finally bursting in a great firework explosion of delight that cascaded across the ceiling and showered over the entire hall. People shouted and cheered, and overhead spotlights flared and cameras swung and TV and radio announcers gabbled delightedly.
Jude reached the foot of the stair calmly and stood facing the cheering throng, as composed as a cat, his eyes raking the assembly, a smile curving his lips.
Isarel was between Moira and Kate, both their hands clinging to his, and he could feel the tears pouring down his face and he knew that Moira and Kate were crying as well, openly and unashamedly, and he knew that probably every person here tonight was close to tears by now.
As the house rose to its feet, Jude bowed with perfect courtesy and unruffled poise, and smiled again, almost as if he might be saying: ah yes, this is how I remember it, and then walked with slow careful tread to the waiting Bluthner.
The cheering and the applause stopped at once, and the silence came down again. Isarel saw Jude’s eyes narrow in concentration, and knew that for him the years of exile might almost never have been, and that there was nothing in the world for him save the music. The music saved me, he had said. The music kept me sane.
The leader looked to Jude, and lifted the baton. And then the downbeat was given and Jude’s hands came down on the Bluthner’s keys. The music, the marvellous, soul-scalding music that had pulled a dazzling, rebellious High Priest from beyond the grave, that had cuckolded a Cremona lute-maker and charmed a Tudor King, that had fooled Nazis and helped lead Jews to safety, flooded the ancient castle, as, fifty years after he had first entered Eisenach, Jude Weissman again played the Devil’s Piper.