Fiammis is floating just below the surface of the lake, her long yellow hair streaming about her pale body like ribbons of waterweed. Naked as a watersprite, her slender limbs shimmer with the fluorescent taint of floating algae.
Anguished, Acir goes wading into the green waters, catches hold of the limp body and drags it out on to the shore.
‘Fia! Fia!’ He can hear himself frantically calling Fiammis’s name, her pet-name, the name he has not dared to use since childhood when they were constant companions.
Fiammis does not stir.
Acir leans over her, presses his mouth to Fiammis’s and, encompassing the wet body with his own, begins to blow breath into the limp body.
The weed-stained lids open. Fiammis is staring directly into his eyes. Fiammis’s arms, her waterweed hair, wind about him, binding their wet bodies together. Her mouth, no longer slack and cold, presses upon Acir’s, her tongue…
They are rolling, rolling back into the water, floating down into the green depths, drowning slowly in this unending kiss…
Acir gasps for breath, each convulsive shudder wracking his body more profoundly than the last.
‘Fia, oh Fia, Fia…’
Acir Korentan awoke, calling the name of his dream-lover. And then, with a groan of self-disgust, he felt a stickiness staining the sheet in which he had twisted himself.
How could I? How could I?
And he thought he had finally exorcised the ghost of her memory!
He lit a crimson candle before the rose reliquary and prostrated himself naked on the bare boards of his lodgings. He was shaking.
‘Forgive me,’ he said silently again and again. ‘A lapse. A moment of foolish human frailty.’
The scourge still lay at the bottom of his travelling bag. He hardly felt the sting of its knotted cords as he struck himself in penance again and again. He was trying to score the image from his mind. The false dream-image. The dark succubus that had betrayed him into sins of incontinence and self-pollution.
The scourge dropped to the floor. He looked down at himself in the first light of dawn and winced. Angry weals had brought a brighter stain to the sign of the Rosecoeur. The rose wept real tears of blood.
Dawn cast pale shadows on to the grey and red slate tiles of the sloping roofs outside his window.
It was not as if he was still in love with Fiammis. He had purged himself of that hopeless love long ago in the deserts of Enhirrë, he had let the fierce sun burn her from his heart. His love for Mhir, selfless and all-encompassing, had filled the void she had left. It was just seeing her so unexpectedly –
How alone he felt in this foreign city. He sorely missed the spiritual counsel of his fellow Guerriors. Even if he had been in the barren deserts of Enhirrë, he could have sought advice from his confrères. Here he could not even find solace in prayer at the shrine of Mhir the Peacemaker.
And then he remembered the Temple. Elesstar the Beloved was venerated here in Sulien. It seemed the only place to go to shrive himself.
He winced as he pulled on his shirt, gritting his teeth, The pain scored his mind clean, it centred him.
A little while later, he went stiffly down the stairs and set off in the direction of the Temple.
It was not long past dawn and few people were about; a street sweeper pushed his cart across the Temple courtyard, sending the clustering Temple doves up into the air in a fluttering cloud of grey and white.
Drifts of steam blew across the Temple steps from the lustral baths.
Acir was used to the grey, echoing vaults of the Commanderie Abbaye, the austerity of unadorned pillars lit by the reflected fires shining through great rose windows. The Thorny Path began in stark stone gashed by a glory of blood-red light.
Elesstar. The name was Her name. But as he entered the Temple of the Source, he sensed he entered the presence of an older deity.
Acir gazed around, searching for a shrine, a plaque even, dedicated to Iel the All-Seeing. There was none. Till this moment he had not realised to what extent the influence of the Goddess of the Source still prevailed. In spite of the invaders’ imposition of the worship of Iel, the Sulien people had managed to keep their allegiance to their Goddess alive through the cult of the handmaiden, Elesstar.
Elesstar’s shrine was decorated with exquisite mosaics: water flowed in patterns of green and silver glass. And in the watery shadows stood Elesstar herself, a river-spirit arising from the darkness, one hand outstretched in blessing.
As Acir gazed he found himself drowning in the dream-memory again; watery reflections shimmered on the walls, like ripples on flowing riverwater…
Elesstar was leaning forward from the water-shadows, offering her hand to him, her glimmering eyes fixed directly on his –
No!
He stepped back, moving too suddenly, and felt a raw, red pain grate through his wounds. It brought him back to himself.
He must be light-headed, weak from fasting.
The elderly Priest who oversaw the lustral baths showed Acir where to disrobe. The crumbling stones lining the bath were stained green with age and mineral deposits. Steam gusted in little clouds from the cloudy waters. Acir hesitated on the edge, steeling himself – and then eased himself in, a step at a time. Warm water swirled around him. He gasped as the open weals stung… and then slowly let himself relax. Healing waters. He had come here to make penance – and the waters of the Goddess were soothing him, salving the self-inflicted injuries.
It was not at all what he had expected.
The Priest appeared on the rim of the lustral bath. He extended his hand until it gently touched Acir’s head. Acir understood; complete immersion was required. He took a breath and dived beneath the surface of the water.
For a moment he floated there, a moment out of time. Water green as verdigris embalmed him, lulled him into a sense of immense and timeless calm.
And then the need to breathe forced him upwards. Shaking the water from his hair, he burst the surface, blinking in the daylight. The old Priest nodded at him and mumbled a few words of benediction.
It was over. Acir climbed out, shivering in the cold, and dried himself with a coarse towel. He felt light, cleansed, shriven. He pressed coins into the venerable Priest’s hands and re-entered the Temple.
It was no longer empty. A trail of black-clad people was winding between the pillars, with movements solemn and slow. The women were veiled, the men bare-headed; all were carrying lotos candles in their cupped palms.
Curious to observe this unfamiliar religious rite, Acir drew nearer. The Priestess, also veiled, stood with a lighted taper beside the prayer-bells, making each candle blossom into flame.
A bier, borne by six men, was at the heart of the procession. The body lay on a curtained palanquin. The air filled with the milky smoke of perfumed wax.
Now he understood; a funeral procession. The Sulien way of death.
The mourners set the prayer-bells gently vibrating until the Temple filled with their bronze drone. He felt drawn to understand what the observance of the cult of Elesstar had come to mean to the people of Sulien.
The Priestess nodded to him as he approached.
‘Where are they going?’ he whispered.
To the Under Temple.’
‘Is it permitted for a stranger to observe?’
‘Anyone may accompany the dead on their last journey. Here. Take one of these with you.’
She placed a waxen lotos candle in Acir’s hand. The wax felt smooth and cold. It gave off a faint drowsy scent.
‘What should I do with this?’
‘You will see.’
The funeral cortège was winding its way below ground. Acir followed at a respectful distance. He had read of the underground reservoirs and cisterns beneath Sulien… but he had not until now realised the extent of the Undercity.
The tunnel opened out suddenly into a vast, dark hall. By the soft light of the lotos candles borne by the mourners, Acir saw that they stood on the rim of a great, dark reservoir, its waters as smooth and black as a polished mirror. The high-vaulted roof of the hall was supported by painted pillars, each carved with a pattern of lotos leaves and sinuous, twisting snake-creatures.
One by one, the mourners passed by the bier, respectfully touching it and murmuring words Acir could not catch. Then they knelt at the water’s edge and gently placed their candles on the smooth black surface. Soon the cavernous hall gleamed with a myriad floating candle-stars, their white flames pale and insubstantial as will-o’-the-wisps.
Now they will seal the body in some subterranean tomb, Acir thought as the last mourner rose from the water’s edge. One of the presiding Priests moved forward.
One voice began to sing… and the others joined it.
The bier-bearers lifted the bier on its poles and moved forward too. The two foremost bearers dropped to their knees on the edge of the reservoir and the bier tilted towards the waters. As the singing swelled, the shrouded body began to slowly slide into the water.
Acir stared, frozen in the shadowed archway. They buried their dead in the reservoirs? The singing echoed and re-echoed around the vaults as the body disappeared, sinking beneath the black waters. They must have weighted it with lead, he thought numbly.
The black water stirred; the lotos lights shivered and some went out, extinguished by the sudden violent turbulence. It was as if, Acir thought, horrified, some water creature – or creatures – lurked deep beneath… and the singing had brought them to the surface.
The singing had ceased. In the silence, all the mourners watched the writhing of the black waters, watched as one by one the lotus candles went out. And then the waters stilled as suddenly as they had erupted.
The Priestess with the torch stood on the rim of the reservoir, gazing calmly out over the waters.
Shaken, Acir waited until the last of the mourners had left the hall and only the Priestess remained. Only then did he venture to approach her, still holding his unlit lotos candle, the wax now warm and soft in his sweating fingers.
‘What – what was that?‘he asked her.
‘They that are born of Elesstar return to Her. She takes back Her own.’ She spoke dreamily, distantly, as if drugged.
‘But-but I saw –’
‘Elesstar’s water-snakes. They strip the flesh from the bodies, the bones sink into the sediment.’
Acir swallowed back a sudden surge of nausea.
‘This is not how we honour our dead in Allegonde. We treat them with respect.’
‘You bury your dead in the earth to be eaten by worms. Is it so very different, Guerrior? Come back on the Day of the Dead. Then you will witness a miracle.’
Acir’s hand automatically touched the sign of the Rose to ward off evil. He could still taste the lingering bitterness of bile at the back of his throat.
‘On that day the sky-shaft is opened to let them fly free. The winged souls.’
She was talking in riddles. He tried to make sense of the skewed religious doctrine.
‘The souls fly from the reservoir?’
‘Dragonflies.’ She pointed to the ancient carven stone and, peering by the light of her torch, he saw carved figures: stick men and women, over whose heads double-winged insectile creatures hovered. ‘It is our belief that when the dragonflies hatch from the waters of the reservoir, they transport the souls of our dead as they fly to the light. It is a moment of supreme transcendence. You will not, cannot, understand until you have witnessed it.’
She was right. He did not, could not, understand. It seemed to contradict the teachings of Mhir on which he had based his life. His hands had become hot and sticky; looking down, he saw that he was still clutching the lotos candle and it had begun to melt.
The Priestess lit the wick and he watched it flower into light between his fingers.
‘Stay a moment.’ She raised her fingers to touch his forehead… and then his breast, lingering just over the place where the Rose was tattooed.
He gazed questioningly into her flame-warmed eyes and saw a frown pass, evanescent as a fast-moving cloud, across her calm gaze. Her lids fluttered, her eyes losing focus – and he was afraid she was going to faint.
‘The Lotos is fading, dying…’ Her voice was low, dream-drowsed. ‘Blood blooms in the heart of the Rose. Listen! Elesstar calls to you, Rose-bearer. Can you not hear her voice?’
‘Elesstar calls to me? What do you mean?’ Acir’s Guerrior training had made him suspicious of any such kind of religious trances or seeings. Yet the Priestess’s words seemed unpremeditated – and spontaneous. ‘What did you see?’
But the moment of Seeing had passed and the Priestess stared at him as if their conversation had never taken place.
‘Go,’ she said, turning away from him. ‘Place your candle on the waters.’
Acir went to follow her – and then remembered where he was; a stranger in a foreign temple. He turned back, his questions unanswered.
Kneeling down on the rim of the reservoir, he let the candle float free; the lapping black water was chillingly cold to the touch.
Nothing stirred. The solitary candle floated out into the darkness, a single crocus-flame on the black waters of oblivion.
Khassian’s fingers moved nimbly across the ebony and yellowed ivory keys as Cramoisy Jordelayne soared into the elaborate arpeggios of the cadenza…
Magelonne had worked his miracle and cured him. His hands were whole again. Healed!
And in that one moment of revelation, the illusion shattered.
He looked down at the keyboard.
The flesh had begun to peel from his fingers even as he played, the keys were stickily slippery with leaking blood, he could hear the hollow tap of the protruding bones on ivory –
His hands were disintegrating.
‘No!’ he whispered.
The discordant twang of snapped strings resonated about his head, the harmonic progression unresolved, Cramoisy’s scream left hanging in the air.
He started up, staring at the bloody rags still clothing the skeletal fingers.
And in the candlelit salon, he became aware of a flurry of movement about him, a murmur of revulsion as the audience began to back away.
All so slow, so distant, fading into a blurred jangle of snapped strings –
In the pale brumelight of the Sulien dawn, Khassian slowly, shakily, examined his hands. The scar tissue knitting the fingers together felt lumpily coarse against his cheek, seamed with knots of rough skin. There was no sensation in the finger-tips – only the strange jabs of dull fire that sometimes irradiated the whole hand, making him cringe with pain. ‘Damaged nerve-endings,’ Dr Magelonne had said impassively at the last consultation. ‘It may never improve. You will just have to learn to live with it, to ignore it.’
‘I find I must speak plainly, Sieur Jordelayne.’ Mistress Permay’s voice rang out from the hallway. ‘I don’t like to have to talk of money – but you are well behind with your rent. I run a respectable establishment here, and some of these disreputable-looking individuals who have been calling upon you, well – it’s giving my apartments a bad name in the city. People have been talking. Remarking upon it.’
Khassian held his breath. He could not be certain whether Cramoisy would react as Cramoisy Jordelayne, Prima Diva, or would use his charm to soothe the landlady. He prayed the Diva would choose charm.
‘My dear Mistress Permay.’ Cramoisy’s voice oozed honey. ‘How perfectly dreadful that our visitors should have occasioned ill comments – and comments that have been directed at you. May I share a confidence with you? A very important confidence? These individuals are musicians of the highest calibre –’
Khassian heard Mistress Permay give one of her disdainful sniffs.
‘Highest calibre at begging on street corners, more like. I want my money, Sieur Jordelayne. And if I don’t get it by midday tomorrow, I shall be obliged to evict you.’
Cramoisy entered Khassian’s room, closing the door, standing with his back pressed against it as if to keep Mistress Permay out.
‘You heard?’
‘What’s happened to our money, Cramoisy?’
The Diva gave a little shrug.
‘We’ve spent it.’
‘All of it? Even your jewel money?’
‘Don’t worry. The Mayor has invited me to give a series of recitals. And if that doesn’t bring in enough, I’ll start to give lessons. You could teach music theory.’
Khassian looked at him in horror.
‘I am not teaching theory to Sulien brats!’
‘Miu caru, you may have to.’
‘We must find cheaper accommodation. We must live within our means.’
There was a shocked silence. Then Cramoisy said, each word clipped and precise, ‘You may, if you wish. Composers are renowned for starving in garrets. But I have my reputation to consider. I shall remain here.’
Orial stood on the borders of an alien country. Clouds scudded overfast across a threatening sky, illuminating the unfamiliar terrain with brief snatches of stormlight. She was a stranger in this mindscape, wandering lost and confused, searching vainly for familiar landmarks.
She had begun to dread the daily mindjourney, the plunge into the darkness along unknown ways.
It was all happening too fast. Her brain could not assimilate Khassian’s musical language.
Yet his influence was growing, shaping her own style. She sometimes experienced the unpleasant sensation that she was beginning to lose her identity, that his music was invading and altering her mind until her individuality was submerged in his.
Today they had been alone together, unchaperoned (Cramoisy was closeted elsewhere for fear his undisciplined thoughts might disturb Orial’s concentration). Khassian had walked close to her, his jacket brushing the corner of the escritoire. She had looked up and noticed the curve of his cheekbones, the shadow on his stubborn chin, the way his eyes softened when lost in the intricacies of his composition…
‘Let me see that passage again.’
He leaned over her shoulder. So close that she wanted to reach out and push the errant strand of hair out of his eyes. So close she could breathe in the scent of his hair, a curiously clean scent, redolent of soap herbs, rosemary and mallow. But who had washed his hair for him, tugged a comb through the tangles –
‘No, no, no, this is all wrong. You must do it again. It’s free time here, senza misura. Recitative. Let’s take it one bar at a time.’
Deflated, she took up the pen and scored lines through the passage.
‘This leads into one of the key moments of the opera. I’m striving for something new here, something that goes far beyond convention…’
He wandered over to the window, still talking.
‘You’ve never heard an opera, have you? The current convention is for the heroine to go mad – usually in Act Three. Her madness involves elaborate virtuoso vocal work – of the kind at which our Diva excels – and it usually brings the house down. Vocal acrobatics! I don’t want such absurdities. My Elesstar is torn between her love for Mhir and her loyalty to the Shultan. When she hears that Mhir has been put to death, she loses her reason. It must be a moment of pathos – of poignancy – but also terror. The audience must become one with Elesstar. It must terrify.’
‘Was that why the Grand Maistre wanted you to withdraw the opera?’
‘What?’
The one word was as loud as the report of a mortar; he had obviously not expected her to interrupt him. But she wanted to know why so she braved another question.
‘I still don’t understand why he accused the opera of being blasphemous.’ Khassian took in a breath.
‘To understand fully you would need to have lived through the last year in Bel’Esstar. To have seen the personal freedoms you take for granted here in Sulien taken away, one by one. Opera is not a chaste entertainment, for a start. It takes passion, incest and intrigue as its subject matters. And the danseuses in the Interludes wear revealing costumes which inflame the lusts of the men in the audience and incite lewd thoughts.’
His moods seemed mercurial, unpredictable, the lowering gloom suddenly pierced by glints of wicked humour. Orial could feel a giggle threatening to burst out; she clapped one hand to her mouth to stifle it. But when she glanced up, she saw from the glint in his eyes that he had intended her to laugh.
*
Late-afternoon in Sulien, twilight slowly drawing a shadowveil over the sunlit hillside terraces… Jerame Magelonne walked slowly, ruminatively, past the Cabinet of Curiosities on his way back to the Sanatorium – and then turned on his heel and went up the steps. A light burned in the depths of the Museum. Orial had mentioned she was spending some of her spare time assisting Jolaine with her work. He was suddenly seized with a pleasant inspiration; he would pay the ladies a surprise visit and take them to the Rooms for tea.
He pulled open the door and entered, gazing around him. The Museum seemed sadly neglected. Display cases were half-arranged, their treasures lacking labels or explanation. Signs had been removed, adding to the confusion. He ran his finger along the top of a display case; the tip left a trail in the grey dust. Had Dame Jolaine grown too old to manage the responsibilities of the position?
‘What are you doing in here? We’re closed!’
Her voice rang out, crisp as an arquebus shot; startled, he swung around to see Jolaine Tradescar framed in the lamplit doorway, glaring at him.
‘Jerame.’ She wagged her finger at him as if he were a naughty boy caught scrumping apples. ‘I took you for… but no matter.’
‘Who did you take me for?’ he asked, a little disconcerted.
‘One of the Mayor’s minions, snooping around.’
Jerame followed her into the lamplit office; every surface was cluttered with open books and ledgers.
‘To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?’ She swept up an armful of folders from a chair and patted it for him to sit down. ‘I’d offer you some tea…’
He waved a hand in polite refusal; the tea leaves, he suspected, might be coated with the same dust that lay on the books and exhibits.
‘I rather expected to find Orial here.’
‘Orial? Whatever gave you that notion?’
‘I see I was mistaken.’ Jerame was a little perplexed. ‘She gave me to understand she was helping you.’
‘Oh, she’s often in here,’ Jolaine said vaguely. She let the folders drop in a heap.
‘I came to invite you both to the Rooms. Would you care to take a dish of tea with me?’
Jolaine hesitated.
‘Well, maybe for a half-hour – no longer! I have important work to complete.’
Jerame waited as she crammed notebooks into an old canvas bag and drew down the blinds, double-locking the back door. She seemed to be taking very elaborate precautions to protect the contents of the Museum.
‘You wait for me outside. I must extinguish all the lights and it’s easy to miss one’s step in the dark. Go on, go on.’ She shooed Jerame out.
Certes, she had become even more eccentric in her old age.
Jolaine Tradescar, his mother’s bluestocking aunt, had always been a source of pride and exasperation to her family. And yet it was she who had proved the greatest comfort at the time of Iridial’s death, her bluntness of manner a relief after all the polite, anguished whisperings. The disarray in the Museum perplexed him; her mental faculties seemed in no way diminished by age – so why had she neglected her duties as Antiquarian? And if Orial had been helping, why was everything so cluttered, so dusty?
The last light within was extinguished and Jolaine came out on to the steps. Jerame saw her glance all around as she double-locked the door, as if making sure there was no one suspicious lurking in the shadows. Even as he escorted her away from the Museum, she still glanced furtively around, clutching her canvas bag to her tightly.
They had already lit the candles in the crystal chandeliers at the Rooms and their brilliance spilled out on to the courtyard from the tall windows. Within, the tables were set out for cards and tea and a murmur of conversation blended with the more distant strain of country dances emanating from the ballroom. Jerame frowned. Maybe it was as well Orial had not accompanied them; he had forgotten there was a dance this afternoon.
The periwigged attendant ushered them to a table in the alcove. He offered to take Jolaine’s wrap and bag but she refused, still clutching the bag possessively. Jerame hastily ordered tea and sat down, laying his gloves on the table.
‘What a pity Orial could not join us,’ Jolaine said, easing herself into a chair opposite his.
‘I’d – hm – been meaning to come and see you about Orial.’
‘Ah,’ Jolaine said. ‘So you’ve noticed too.’
‘Noticed what precisely?’
‘The eyes.’ Jolaine eased herself into a chair opposite his. ‘She has her mother’s eyes.’
‘But it usually skips a generation or two, often more.’
‘Then how –’
Jerame looked up to see her gazing penetratingly at him. ‘You don’t think that I –’
‘It is possible, Jerame.’
‘But the Lifhendil inheritance only occurs in the female line.’ He had begun to twist his gloves into a knot.
‘Only shows itself in the female line. Who’s to say that a strain has not lain dormant in your family for years?’
‘You know very well I have no sisters.’
‘My point precisely. You are the first of your line to sire a daughter for generations. The Lifhendil blood could have passed to her through you – as well as directly through her mother.’
‘We have no proof.’ To hear Jolaine confirm his suspicions only increased his disquiet. ‘And I have kept her safe all these years, safe from the malign influence that music would exert over her. There is no certainty that she will develop the full-blown condition.’ Who was he trying to convince with this show of bravado? Jolaine had noticed Orial’s eyes too.
The attendant arrived, bearing the tea-tray, and Jerame tried to fix his attention on pouring tea into the bowls. But his hand shook and he spilled tea on to the cloth; a spreading yellow stain on the crisp white linen.
Jolaine leaned across and placed her hand on his arm.
‘You must not blame yourself. No one could have foreseen such a thing.’
‘But what am I going to do?’ For a moment his composure deserted him and tremblingly he took out his kerchief to wipe his brow. The distant strains of the country dance no longer sounded merry but distorted, grotesque.
‘It doesn’t have to end the same way,’ she said gently.
‘But we know of no way to halt the progress of the Accidie once it manifests itself,’ he said. ‘I’m a doctor, Jolaine, au fait with the most recent discoveries in medical science. Why do I feel so helpless?’
Azare came into the salon carrying an elongated wooden case which he set down with extreme care. Cramoisy followed him, carelessly casting his new viridian jacket down on the couch, peeling off his kid gloves, finger by finger. But Khassian’s sensitive ears had caught a slight vibration of sound as Azare put the case down, the tremor of tuned strings.
‘What is that?‘he demanded.
‘What does it look like?’ Cramoisy was critically examining his appearance in the mirror.
Azare knelt down and unlocked the case, opening the lid to reveal the ivory keyboard of a portable clavichord.
‘They call it an epinette here – isn’t that quaint?’
The hollow tap of the protruding bones on ivory –
Khassian stared at the epinette with loathing.
‘You said we have no more money. Why this extravagance?’
‘How am I to rehearse my recital if Azare has no instrument? What is he supposed to do? Hum the accompaniments? And if there is no recital, how shall I make money for us to pay the bills?’
Could Cramoisy not see how it exacerbated his feelings of uselessness, to have to hear Azare play the instrument at which Khassian had excelled…
Azare screwed the three legs into the case, stood it up and ran his fingers over the keys, setting up a sweet jangle. Khassian winced.
‘Needs tuning,’ Azare said, misinterpreting his reaction. Taking out a tuning key, he leaned over the case and started to tighten the tuning-pins securing the strings.
‘For Mhir’s sake!’ Khassian flung himself out of the chair and went over to the door. Only as he reached it did he realise that it was firmly shut and he would have to attempt an undignified struggle with the handle – or wait for Cramoisy to let him out like an unruly lap-dog.
Orial slipped the gold-edged invitation from her apron pocket and gazed at it again. Her fingers smoothed the fine ivory card, traced the elegant black copperplate print:
A Vocal Recital of Divers Songs and Arias, including a selection from the new opera Elesstar by Amaru Khassian.
To be given by the incomparable Diva, Cramoisy Jordelayne, accompanied at the epinette by Oriste Azare.
The recital will take place at eight in the evening on the fifteenth day of Afril in the concert room of the Assembly Rooms in the presence of His Worship the Mayor of Sulien.
She pressed the card to her heart. A concert. A real concert – and she had been especially invited. The only problem was that Papa would never let her go.
Well, she would ask him nevertheless. And if he refused, she would go anyway. She was old enough to know her own mind.
Determined to have her own way, she went straight along to his office and rapped on the door. There was no reply.
‘If you’re looking for your father, he’s been called out to a patient.’ Sister Crespine was coming along the corridor in her cape and bonnet; she had finished her work for the day and was going home. ‘He said he would probably be late. You’re to sup without him. Cook’s been told.’ It seemed too good an opportunity to miss.
Orial went to her closet and looked with dissatisfaction at her few gowns. Dowdy high-necked school gowns, girlish checks and sprigs. Nothing suitable for the Assembly Rooms.
She wandered around the upper floor until she found herself in her parents’ room. Her fingers reached out to unlock the inlaid chest, to touch the delicate fabrics of Mama’s gowns. A faint faded perfume drifted out, dried petals of orange blossom and lavender sprigs, as she lifted up the folds of muslin. She rubbed the smooth satin of some blue ribbons against her cheek, lost in a memory of distant childhood.
She carefully eased a gown out of the chest, shaking it loose from the protective folds of petal paper, and held it up against herself.
‘Yes,’ she whispered, looking with satisfaction at her shadowed reflection in the cheval mirror. ‘Yes.’
‘Orial?’ Dr Magelonne opened the door of the parlour and looked in; the fire had burned down to embers. Perhaps she had gone to bed.
He was back much later than he had intended. He had known the old Mareschal many years; indeed he had helped him walk again after a hunting accident. It was difficult to get away without taking a glass or two of apple brandy and listening to the Mareschal’s hunting anecdotes.
Cook had left him some bread and ripe blue-veined cheese; he felt too tired to eat much but chewed dutifully as he scanned tomorrow’s schedule.
The last of the spent coals subsided with a soft hiss into ash. He started.
The house felt odd. Something was not quite right. Perhaps he should let Orial know he was back in case she heard the footsteps downstairs and feared robbers had broken in…
He tiptoed upstairs and tapped lightly on her door. No reply. Sleeping already. He opened the door a crack and gazed fondly in.
Her bed was empty.