The journey from the headland to Mesmay’s house was, as might be imagined, a trifle subdued. There were four of us in the sociable, Hecate having gone home to change and taking Myrica with her. Hecate would make her own way there, along with Myrica, probably in Vashti Savage’s carriage. That meant that Elise didn’t need to sit in anyone’s lap. She was sitting with her viola, still in its case, between her knees. She knew now that it was the only thing she had left of her real mother…except for her bizarre grandfather,
Did she think that she could manipulate him as she had learned to manipulate Charles and Mariette? Did she think that all adults could be charmed as easily as those she presently wrapped around her little finger? Probably not—she had after all, been raised on Martyr’s Mount, where she would have had every chance to see life in the raw, and the scars it left.
I felt the need to say something, for my sake rather that hers, so I asked her how the ending of Hecate’s poem resolved the puzzle of Eurydice’s lament. It was a stupid question, but it seemed a safer subject than any other.
“She didn’t finish the poem you saw,” Elise told me, almost absent-mindedly. “We worked out something else.”
“Something else?” I queried, helplessly.
“I could hear, you know,” she said, looking up at me, a trifle resentfully. “Even though you shut me out, I could hear.”
I thought she was talking about the conversation I’d had with Charles Parenot when I’d given him the bad news about Dellacrusca.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “But...”
“You could have let me sit in the circle,” she added, revealing that she was, in fact, taking about Vashti’s séance. “I wouldn’t have broken it, and I wouldn’t have been frightened. I’ve lived on the Mount—I know what death is… and I understand the language of sighs as well as you do, even if you’re as old as Methuselah.” She was just using a colorful turn of phrase; she didn’t mean it literally.
“It wasn’t me who excluded you,” I said, mildly. “It wasn’t Charles and Mariette, either. It was Vashti. She has rules. The conditions have to be right for her to… do what she does. At least, she believes that they do, which comes to the same thing.”
“She should have let me in,” the child insisted. “You should all have let me in.”
This time, I thought, she really was thinking about secrets other than those of the séance.
“It’s a universal problem,” I told her. “At some stage, children have to be let into the adult world. It’s never an easy decision to make, and there probably never was a child who didn’t think that the timing was wrong.”
She took that in good part. She reached out, impulsively, and took Mariette’s hand. It wasn’t an exclusion of Charles; Mariette was sitting next to her and it was her hand that was within reach.
“I suppose it wasn’t easy,” she said, trying to prove her maturity. Then she added: “At least you never tried to pretend that I was your real daughter.” That didn’t really qualify as evidence in the same cause.
“We don’t love you any less,” Mariette murmured, just to place it on the record.
Elise didn’t argue, but she wasn’t convinced. She’d lived in the Mount. She’d had more opportunity than most children to see what adult life was really like, in its least flattering aspects. At least she was holding Mariette’s hand, not turning round and accusing her of being some cheap whore who’d only volunteered to look after her so that she could get her hooks into Charles. There would be time enough for Dellacrusca to pour that kind of poison into her ears, and perhaps even convince her that it was true, even though it wasn’t.
“What exactly is this something else that you and Hecate have worked out?” I said, trying to steer the conversation back to safer ground.
“I can’t explain it,” the child said. “You’ll have to listen to it to understand. It might not work, though—we haven’t had chance to rehearse with the marine trumpets, and they’re essential to create the atmosphere of the Underworld. Hecate says that the nuns are expert players, and she’s sent them all scores so that they can practice in the convent, but until you bring everyone together…and I want my new grandfather to be impressed. I want him to see what I can really do. Last time, I was just playing tunes.”
“You’re supposed to be accompanying Mademoiselle Rain, darling, not the other way around,” Charles Parenot put in.
“That’s all I wanted to do, at first,” Elise replied, “But it’s not like that anymore. You’ll see—if the marine trumpets play their part. I’m sure of myself, and Hecate…but they might mess it up, if they don’t get it… and they’re only a bunch of nuns.”
“There’s no only about it,” I told her. “Sister Ursule impressed me—and that’s not easy.”
“Sister Ursule won’t be playing,” said Elise. “She’s sending eight of the younger sisters.”
“If she’s trained them all,” I said, “They’ll be good. I’d be inclined to trust them.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Elise!” said Mariette softly reproachful, squeezing her hand.
The subdued thoughtfulness had worn off now; without intending to, I’d provoked her, and had brought other feelings to the surface.
“Do you still want to paint me?” she demanded, looking me in the eye.
“I believe that Lord Dellacrusca has commissioned your father to do that,” I answered, in my most soothing tone.
“That’s not what I asked,” she pointed out, accurately.
“I would still like to paint you,” I admitted, “if the opportunity arises.” I could have added, but didn’t, that it might not be easy to persuade Dellacrusca to allow it, even though I’d painted his other children.
“On the Mount,” Elise said, “people say that Charles is the only artist there who only fucks one of his models. Do you fuck them all?”
“Elise!” said Mariette, rather plaintively—which probably wasn’t the reaction the girl was trying to elicit. She had been brought up on the Mount; she was hardly likely to have unaware of how sexual relationships worked, especially in their tawdrier manifestations. Mariette must have been all too familiar with it long before she reached the age of twelve.
It was not a time for exaggeration. “First of all,” I said, “I think of it as making love, and I mean it, unlike some of the artists on Martyr’s Mount. But to answer your question, not very many, even in my young days—and now I’m as old as Methuselah, hardly any. I suspect that the artists on the Mount do a great deal more boasting than... anything else... and in my opinion, they’d be better off trying to make love. Artists all do a good deal of boasting, but I mostly boast about my genius—which is safe, because no one believes me.”
“Me too,” said Elise, “and nobody believes me either—but Charles doesn’t boast at all.” It was impossible to tell from the way she said it whether it was intended as a compliment or an insult.
“I don’t have much to boast about, alas,” said Charles Parenot.
“False modesty is as much a sin as boasting,” I remarked. “A little more faith in your own genius would probably do you good—not that I ought to be telling you that, now that your reputation is about to overtake mine, reducing me to the rank of jealous rival.”
He looked at me as if he didn’t know whether or not to believe any of that.
“Do you still want to paint me, too?” Mariette put in, also in search of safer conversational ground.
“Yes,” I said. “Provided that it’s as yourself, not Persephone… or Eurydice.”
“I’ll be happy to pose,” she said. “It will make a change.”
“To be yourself?”
“To pose for someone other than my husband—and to be out of the Underworld.”
We were on the verge of developing a snappy double act, but we didn’t get a chance to go any further. The carriage pulled up. We had arrived.
Without really meaning to, we had arrived fashionably late. Most of the guests were already assembled: all the participants in the séance, all the members of the Island Council, a dozen of Dellacrusca’s hangers—and, at the back of the room, discreetly placed behind the podium and the music stand, eight Sisters of Shalimar in their cream robes and head-dresses, patiently unpacking their marine trumpets.
There was a marked shortage of women in the audience; the Mesmays, with Dellacrusca pulling their strings, hadn’t aimed for the conventional balance. There was also a marked lack of color; aware of the danger, all the women had adopted for dark silks and satins, which wouldn’t show the stains of any ash that descended from the skies. The overall result was a trifle sepulchral, more like a funeral than a welcoming party. I wished that I could find that inappropriate, but I couldn’t.
At least, I thought, it will provide a suitable Underworldly backdrop for Hecate’s new version of Eurydice’s lament. The cream costumes of the Sisters of Shalimar don’t really help in that regard, though, and they don’t, for the most part, seem slim enough to pass for shades.
After being formally greeted by the over-effusive Marquis and the under-effusive Marquise, I was buttonholed by Fion Commonal, nowadays the President of the Council as well as the island’s leading physician.
“Why is Dellacrusca here out of season?” he asked me “Something’s going on, isn’t it.”
“Nothing for you to worry about, Fion,” I assured him. “Just a little bit of personal business. No matter what anyone thinks, it really wasn’t him who ordered Hekla to erupt and commanded Hades to pop out of the Underworld to place himself at his orders.”
“It’s going to be a bad winter, they say,” Fion admitted. “Some people are saying that there are going to be epidemics—that volcanoes spread disease. I don’t know—there’s no one alive on the island who remembers the last time it happened. Naples is a fever-pit, of course, but I really don’t know whether it has anything to do with Vesuvius.”
“You’re the doctor,” I observed. “If you don’t know, nobody does.” It wasn’t strictly true, but it’s always as well to keep on the right side of the Island Council, and flattery never hurts.
“Is the girl any good?” the physician asked. “I’ve seen these so-called child prodigies before, and they’re usually a disappointment.”
“I haven’t heard her play, but Dellacrusca has, and so has Hecate. They obviously think there’s something there.”
“I never thought I’d see Hecate allowing anyone to accompany her, let alone a child,” Fion Commonal admitted.
“Not to mention an entire chorus of marine trumpets,” I pointed out. “When she changes her mind, she goes all the way.”
“I’ve never understood why they call them marine trumpets,” the physician complained. “I have to be at all the concerts they play, of course, being on the Council, but it’s always seemed to me to be a sufficiently ridiculous instrument without giving it a ludicrous name. I don’t recognize the players, but the Mother Superior always trains them well. I’ve never met her, obviously, but she’s said to be quite a scholar.”
“She is,” I assured him. “She dropped round to my studio the other day, concerned for the welfare of my soul. We had a very pleasant chat.”
“You really are a sorcerer, aren’t you, Axel?” he said, shaking his head. He didn’t mean it.
“It’s always useful to have friends in celestial places,” I told him. “When one gets to my age, it’s comforting to know that someone’s taking an interest in one’s soul. Sometimes, I wish I’d taken better care of it myself.”
“No you don’t,” he retorted. “You wouldn’t want to be anything other than the old reprobate you are.”
It would have been pleasant if he had been right, and he would usually have been right, but I was still caught up in a role that I didn’t relish at all. My gaze strayed sideways, and I saw Elise walk up to Dellacrusca, and greet him very politely, and very respectfully, exactly as he would have wished. He didn’t favor me with a grateful glance, because he didn’t believe that I had made any useful contribution to making things go the way he wanted. No matter what he’d said, all the steps he’d taken to involve me in this affair had been malicious, taking out on me the seething wrath he could no longer vent on the unfortunate Almeras, the painter who had, in his view, stabbed him treacherously in the back.
A pity, I couldn’t help thinking, that he didn’t use a real knife. It was an unaccustomed thought, for a confirmed pacifist—but sometimes, the unconscious gets the better of finer feelings and nobler thoughts. Nor could I really justify the flash of resentment because Dellacrusca was a wicked man, although he was. What I couldn’t forgive him for was instructing Tommaso to put one over on me—and I couldn’t forgive myself, for falling for it.
I finally managed to get away from Fion in order to return to Charles and Mariette. Dellacrusca had placed himself in the middle of the front row of the audience, directly in front of the music-stand and the chair where his granddaughter would take up her position. Mariette and Charles, by contrast, had automatically selected seats on the very edge of the same row, as far away as possible from their nemesis while still remaining close enough to be offering evident support to their child—the child, that is, who was no longer theirs. I sat down beside them. Myrica Mavor sat down behind Mariette, on the edge of the second row. Vashti, even more discreet, was behind her, next to Niklaus Hylne. We were all outsiders, in a way; the bulk of the audience consisted of the island’s upper crust and various temporary incomers, ninety per cent of whom were presumably secret members of Dellacrusca’s Cult of Orpheus, or his secret police, if any distinction could be drawn between the two.
As Elise turned to walk back to her chair, against which the viola da gamba was carefully propped, I saw her take something from her grandfather, and realized, with a sight shock, that it was the parchment, now carefully enclosed in a glazed frame. Evidently she had asked him for it. Did she really think that she could read it, or draw some inspiration from it as she played? Did he? Presumably not: presumably, it was a purely symbolic exchange, as if he were welcoming her into the Cult and into the family, and she were accepting the welcome. It was ceremony.
That child, I thought, is far too clever for her age. She’s already started trying to take control of him. Is there a possibility that she might actually be able to do it?
She was only twelve, though. Even geniuses as old as Methuselah couldn’t stand up to Dellacrusca. That would require the Devil himself, or Hades, at least.
I saw Charles take Mariette’s hand, far more tentatively than he should have done. It was as if he were seeking reassurance from her rather than offering it. He really did need some intensive training in the art of arrogance, but Mariette didn’t seem annoyed by his failure.
Perhaps it’s the fact that he can’t admit to himself that he loves her that keeps her dangling, and maintains her love for him, I speculated. Perhaps, if he’s been more passionate and forthright in the beginning, she’d have moved on years ago. Who can tell?
There was an atmosphere of expectation in the hall now. There weren’t going to be any speeches, any empty formulae or polite applause. Dellacrusca, the one and only architect of the occasion, wasn’t going to bother taking the pretence of welcoming Charles Parenot to the island any further. This was all about him, and no one else. He wanted to hear his new-found granddaughter play, knowing as she did so that she was his granddaughter, that she was a Dellacrusca—and he wanted to show her off to his inner circle, so that they too would know that she was a Dellacrusca, under his dominion.
The Sisters of Shalimar were all in position, holding up the marine trumpets that were as tall as they were, in a semicircle behind the podium and the chair. Elise sat down and placed the viola da gamba carefully between her knees. Hecate stepped up to the podium. Unusually, she didn’t look toward me for reassurance. Even more unusually, she wasn’t holding a script. Apparently, whatever she was going to recite had been committed to memory.
It can’t be very long, then, I thought.
Elise adjusted the position of the framed parchment on the music stand; there was no other score in front of her, although each of the Sisters of Shalimar had one. Then the child picked up her bow, and drew it across the strings of her instrument, as if to check the tuning of the strings.
Immediately, as if it were a signal, there was a stir among the Sisters of Shalimar, as if they too were tuning up.
But they weren’t.
And neither was Elise, for she drew the bow back far more forcefully, playing a chord that was impossibly loud and impossibly resonant—as if it did not come from the viol at all, but from somewhere outside the room, outside space, and outside time: a chord that did not stop when the bow reach the limit of its thrust.
In fact, although she did not show any sign of astonishment or alarm, it was immediately obvious that Elise was not playing the chord at all, even though it was her hand that had drawn the bow and triggered its release. Perhaps it was something in the haunted instrument that had been waiting for the right trigger for a long time, but it seemed more likely to me that it had been something lurking far deeper, which had only been waiting to use the instrument, or its strings, as a fissure through which to flood.
The parchment was supposed contain the language of sighs, and perhaps it did—but only if the language of sighs is also the language of screams.
The marine trumpets did not strike the same chord. In fact, they did not strike any chord at all. The marine trumpets fell away, as each of the Sisters of Shalimar removed something that had been hidden inside her instrument: a dagger.
They could have hidden revolvers, or even rifles; but this was no mere matter of brute aggression; there was a symbolism to it as well as an insanity. And as everything within that terrible scream became movement, hectic and rapid but still somehow more balletic than chaotic, I realized that the one thing that I had considered so utterly implausible as to be literally unimaginable—that the Dionysians would invade the Convent of the Sisters of Shalimar in order to sow mayhem there, to carry forward their vendetta and exact their revenge for Dellacrusca’s symbolic reclamation of the most precious relic of his cult—had actually happened.
The Sisters of Shalimar were not Sisters of Shalimar at all; their places had been taken by maenads. And the maenads had one simple purpose in being there: to assassinate Dellacrusca, and sever the head of the Cult of Orpheus.
The maenads were probably screaming, as maenads are supposed to do, but nobody would have known, because the whole Underworld was screaming through the mouth of the viola da gamba, and that scream drowned out everything else… far more than mere sound.
I felt a thrill of burning electricity shoot through me, but it did not petrify me any more than it petrified anyone else—for everyone was in movement, in panic or alarm… and although the Orpheans had been taken completely by surprise, they too were drawing weapons, with somewhat less concern for tradition and symbolism than their enemies.
I whipped my head around to face Myrica, and simply said: “Run!” I formed the word precisely with my lips, because I knew she would not hear it, and trusted to her to realize that she ought to drag Mariette with her if Mariette did not have sufficient presence of mind to run too, or wanted to follow Charles instead.
Charles had no choice about where to go, because I was dragging him away, hurling him toward Elise. There was no point in shouting at him, because he could not see my lips—and because he had to know, in any case, why I was thrusting him forward toward the helpless, bewildered child.
I have to confess that I didn’t do that because I thought that the glory of saving Elise, if she could be saved, ought to fall to her adoptive father. I did it because my own first thought was not for the child but for Hecate, who, was an adult, and might well have been able to look after herself, and probably didn’t need my help at all—but it was yet another of those moments when passion and the unconscious carry one away.
I grabbed Hecate as Charles grabbed Elise. I didn’t waste a second before turning to haul my prize away, because, even though I knew that no one was actually intent on stabbing her or Elise, the crossfire might easily be deadly. Even so, I am convinced that I saw, out of the corner of my eye, the first dagger plunge into Dellacrusca’s breast. I truly believe that it was not my imagination: that I actually saw the fatal blow.
Then I saw nothing more, because I was diving for the door with Hecate in my arms, who felt like an enormous burden, even though she was slightly built, and it was one of those situations when a surge of adrenalin is supposed to give a man the strength of ten.
Shots must have been ringing out behind me, but they were inaudible in the scream. Blood was certainly flowing: spurting and jetting volcanically. And the room was full of presences both visible and invisible, real and virtual maenads, crazed with Bacchic fury. I was not at all sure, as I plunged through the door, hot on Charles Parenot’s heels—his burden was lighter, and perhaps he really had acquired the strength of ten men and the speed to match—that anyone behind me would get out of that mayhem alive.
Jean-Jacques had already leapt up into his seat. It was so crowded inside the carriage that I ought perhaps to have climbed up beside him, but I didn’t think of it, and simply squeezed myself in, trying to slam the door of the sociable behind me as the whip cracked—probably unnecessarily, as the horses were already moving away of their own accord. Even outside, the scream was still audible—or at least its echo. The viol was silent now, but the scream still filled the Marquis of Mesmay’s ballroom, sowing its panic and its terror.
The atmosphere outside was icy, and the wind cutting—but not, thank God, like a dagger.
Gradually, we sorted ourselves out. Mariette, Myrica, Hecate and Elise were seated on the cushions, Charles and I on the floor. Elise was still clutching her viol and her bow, but she only had two hands. The parchment had been left behind, on the music stand. I wasn’t sorry, and I really didn’t care who ended up with it, when all the killing was done, even if it was a powerful instrument of magic.
“It wasn’t me,” said Elise, finally.
“No one thinks it was,” said Charles, “but I wish you’d dropped that infernal instrument.”
“It was my mother’s,” she said.
In her place, I supposed, I wouldn’t have let go of it either.
“I hope Vashti’s all right,” said Hecate. “You left her behind.”
“With forty or fifty others,” I said. “She was on the edge, with us. If she didn’t get out, she’ll have had sense enough to keep her head down.”
“But Fion and the rest of the council were in the middle—and Niklaus was on Vashti’s inside.”
“At last half the Island Council are members of Dellacrusca’s cult,” I said, although it was a guess. “Even if they didn’t draw knives and guns, they were fair game. The maenads didn’t stand a chance, though: it was a suicide mission. They had to be completely crazy.”
“Isn’t that rather the point?” said Charles. He was a mythological painter. He understood such things. Sane maenads would be a contradiction in terms.
“Do you think they got him?” Mariette asked.
“I don’t know,” said Charles. “I didn’t see.”
“I did,” said Elise, saving me the trouble. “The boys tried to protect him, but it was too late. They were taken by surprise.”
“He was off guard,” I said. “For once, he was off guard. He was too arrogant. He really didn’t think that the Dionysians would try anything, once he had the parchment in his possession, even if they knew. He thought he’d won.”
“And what happens now?” asked Myrica.
“You’ve probably just lost the two largest commissions of your career,” I told her. “Maybe three, if Mesmay went down in the battle. We’re all a good deal poorer than we seemed to be an hour ago.”
“What I meant,” said Myrica frostily, “is what do we do now?”
“We have a very stiff drink,” I said. “Except for Elise, of course.”
“We do not,” said Hecate, sternly. “The rest of you will sit quietly, while Elise and I put on the performance we intended. I’m damned if I’m going to let all that work and rehearsal go to waste. It won’t be the same without the marine trumpets, but we’ll just have to do without.”
“What do you suppose they did with the real Sisters of Shalimar?” Myrica asked. “They won’t have killed everyone in the convent, will they?”
“No,” I said, trying to sound confident. “They weren’t maenads until the time came for them to be. When they infiltrated the convent they were just women. At the worst, they’ll have locked the Sisters up. They won’t have wanted to hurt any of them, and the Sisters won’t have put up any resistance.”
“The innocents in the hall won’t have been so lucky,” Mariette put in.
“Maybe not,” I conceded. “Let’s hope the innocents had enough sense to play dead, and let the rest get on with the stupid games. What idiots they all are! Still feuding, after three thousand years! Still shedding blood, even now, in the so-called Age of Enlightenment. Maenads, in today’s world—and here of all places, on Mnemosyne! I was wrong, I admit it. That black snow really was an evil omen; I just refused to see it.”
“Are we really going to play?” Elise asked Hecate, looking uneasily at her instrument now, wondering what other diabolical devices it might still have in store.
“We are,” said Hecate. “We have to. It isn’t finished until we do.”
“You understand Eurydice’s lament now, then?” I said.
“Yes,” she said, “and so should you. You would, if Dellacrusca hadn’t bent your mind out of shape playing cat and mouse with you…although, in a way, that ought to have helped you. You’ll understand when you hear the piece. And thank you, by the way.”
“It was a reflex action,” I said. “I know you could have got out in your own.”
“I was thanking the reflex action,” she said. “Your thoughts get tangled up in your genius, but your unconscious is always trustworthy.”
“I, alas, needed to be shoved,” said Charles Parenot, mournfully.
“No you didn’t,” I said. “That was a reflex action too. When I panic, I just can’t bear leaving other people to do the right thing by themselves. I simply have to grab the credit. I’m sorry.”
“Tell me, Master Rathenius,” said Mariette, “have you ever painted a self-portrait?”
“Of course,” I replied. “Several.”
“As yourself?”
I saw what she was getting at. “Vision doesn’t work like that,” I told her. “I can see more in other people than they realize they’re giving away, but when I look at myself in a mirror, I only see the appearance. I can only paint my image. I’ll still be able to do justice to you, though—with your husband’s permission, of course.”
“But what will happen now?” Elise asked. “To me, I mean? Now that my grandfather is dead.”
It wasn’t over, I realized. Not unless Tommaso and Lorenzo had gone down in the conflict too. She still had a family, linked to her by blood; they would still have a legal right to claim her; they didn’t even need to be above the law, in the sense that her father had been.
“I think you’ll get to choose,” I said. “Tommaso and Lorenzo don’t have the reputation of being good or reasonable people, but they’re not as bad as they paint themselves, let alone as others paint them. They won’t do you any harm.”
“That’s good,” she said. “It’s good to be able to choose.” She didn’t sound entirely convinced, although it was the truth. She had never really thought before about having a choice in major matters, but had simply gone with the course of events, as children do, only exercising choice in trivial things, exerting her will just for practice. For now on, it would be different. From now on, she would have to decide what it was she wanted, not just from moment to moment and day to day, but with a whole future life in view.
“Shall we stop at our house or go on to yours?” Charles asked, as Jean-Jacques turned on to the promontory.
“We’ll go on to Axel’s,” said Hecate. “Finished or not, his triptych will make a backcloth for our performance. It won’t be the same as the marine trumpets, but the middle panel will help to put the language of sighs in context. As long as there’s a good fire in the studio—now that it’s getting dark, it’s turning positively Arctic.”
Luzon had, in fact, kept the fire stoked up in anticipation of my returning with guests. She had even prepared a meal, which was more necessary that anyone had anticipated. Danger of death stimulates the appetite, presumably because of all the extra energy released by the rush of adrenalin.
So we ate first, and calmed down, until we were in an appropriate state of readiness to hear Hecate and Elise perform, after which we arranged the triptych as a backdrop, even though two of the panels were still incomplete.
As the child picked up her bow, though, I couldn’t help feeling a twinge of apprehension, thinking that the instrument was still essentially diabolical, and the language of sighs still the language of screams.