Light Fantastique

by Cecilia Dominic

  He sat next to her and took her hands so he wouldn’t give in to the temptation to bury his hands in her hair and revel in its silkiness. “Absolutely not. We’ve both made mistakes that we’re not proud of.”

  She tried to smile, but tears fell on to their joined hands, and she collapsed against him. He held her while she sobbed.

  “I just want to get away,” she whispered once she’d calmed.

  “I know you did.”

  “No, now. There’s nothing for me here, but we’re trapped.”

  “Hey,” he said and lifted her chin. He couldn’t resist kissing her. “We’ll get out of this. The siege can’t last forever, and I have the marquis’s promise even if he is no longer alive.”

  She nodded, and he was glad she didn’t mention the airship. The spirit might try to shoot it down himself. He captured her mouth again, and she opened to him, running her fingers through his hair. He grasped her and pulled her to him.

  A squawk and thunk made them jump and pull apart, and Johann saw a red glow behind the mirror.

  “We’re being watched,” he said. He wished he could throw something at the raven.

  “Yes. Help me to the townhouse. I need to sleep without dreams after that.”

  “Good luck.” He knew his dreams would be tantalizing and filled with her. At least the spirit couldn’t get to them there. He thought.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Maison LaFitte, 6 December 1870

  When Marie woke the next morning, she found a ribbon and a thimble in her slippers, which had been placed at the foot of the bed.

  Ah, right, the feast of St. Nicholas. I wish he had brought us an end to the siege. I feel restless enough to expand and float away on my own.

  She couldn’t help but check around and behind her as she dressed. She’d slept later than the rest of the household, and when she went down for breakfast, she found a single roll instead of the usual variety of baked goods on the sideboard. It was one more reminder that Parisians would soon literally be tightening their belts as supplies inside the city ran out. She ate quickly and was finishing her tea—coffee was completely gone—when a knock on the front door echoed through the house and startled her. She heard Claudette answer the door, and soon the maid appeared.

  “It’s a boy,” Claudette told her.

  “Thank you. Where is everyone?”

  “At the theatre, except Mademoiselle McTavish, who is in the atelier. She says it’s easier to spread her research materials out up there, and she’s English so she doesn’t mind the cold.”

  “She’s tougher than she looks.”

  I’m not so sure I am. When Marie thought about what she’d revealed to the spirit and Johann, shame twisted her insides. She could have said she got caught up in the femme fatale role, but she didn’t want to lie even if it meant admitting she’d joined Parnaby Cobb’s collection of beautiful things in exchange for what she thought was freedom.

  But that was a different time, and she’d figure out what to do with Johann when she saw him again. Thankfully that wasn’t an imminent worry. “Bring the boy up.”

  The urchin she’d given the message to the day before walked into the dining room. He kept his eyes straight ahead, and Marie admired his focus.

  “Madame Lafitte says to come as soon as you are able, Mademoiselle. Her daughter is doing worse.”

  Marie gave the boy a coin and hesitated before she dismissed him. She noted the hollowness of his cheeks, the thinness of the ankles and wrists sticking out from the too-small clothing. The siege was taking its toll on the poor first, but she wondered how long it would be before they all felt its effects on a deeper level.

  “Claudette, take him to the kitchen. I’m sure our cook can find something for him.”

  “You’re very kind, Mademoiselle,” he said with a bow. Marie took note of him, thinking he would be a good addition to the theatre company with how he carried himself. Then she stopped—she needed to get away, not become more involved.

  In the front hall, she wrapped herself in her cloak and walked into the cold. She hoped the air would sharpen her focus—they’d be going into dress rehearsals soon, but parts of the script still slid through her mind and refused to catch in memory. Plus Radcliffe’s words had disturbed her. Did he know about her ability? He seemed a man of science, but then the Eros Element and its emotional effects had bent all their concepts of reality and possibility.

  The Lafitte house stood sturdy and gray, not huge and ostentatious, but also larger than the average Parisian home. Marie recalled that Monsieur Lafitte was a merchant, although he hadn’t done quite as well as Cinsault. But it seemed that they had something in common—members of their household who were involved with a dangerous cult.

  The butler raised his eyebrows when he saw Marie, and she braced herself for the inevitable searching look, the rumor-fueled sniff of judgment, but he only nodded and gestured for her to follow him.

  Amelie lay in a parlor that would be cheery and well-lit when the sun was out, but the gloom outside and the half-drawn curtains gave it a somber air. Marie recognized Madame Lafitte, who rose to greet her. All she saw of Amelie was a tangle of blonde curls over the end of the chaise.

  “Come, let us speak before she awakens.”

  She led Marie into a dining room, where the curtains did lay open to let in the gray light outside.

  “When I saw your message, I didn’t dare to hope that you would actually come,” Madame said. The tension around her mouth drew lines of strain down her pretty face.

  “I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do, but I hope I can help in some small way.”

  “Your leaving was a blow to all of us, not just your mother and the theatre. Amelie always admired you, always looked forward to your performances. I hope that seeing you will bring her back to an easier time.”

  Marie maintained her composure, but inside the all too familiar strain of guilt twisted her stomach, particularly as she had just relived how stupid she’d been. “You don’t mean just the siege.”

  “No, although that’s been hard. Like most, we didn’t anticipate it would last so long. Amelie felt betrayed when you ran off and became involved with a group of students. We thought she was just going to lectures, but those turned into rallies, and then, after the republicans failed to topple the emperor, something darker.”

  Madame Lafitte picked up a pamphlet from a sideboard, and Marie recognized the symbol, a square inside a circle.

  “I found this in her cloak pocket. It’s all nonsense to me, but I know it has something to do with her condition.”

  Marie opened it. The language looked familiar, but she didn’t understand the words. Iris or Radcliffe might be able to translate it. “May I keep it?”

  “Yes. She brought that back with her three nights ago. She has not been the same since.”

  A moan from the parlor startled Marie with its soul-aching depth. Madame paled.

  “She is awake. Come. I pray that you will be able to help her.”

  She led Marie to Amelie, who lay with one arm over her eyes. The room smelled of sweat and old perfume, but Marie caught a whiff of something that tickled her brain with its familiarity. It briefly brought her back to a different parlor in a different time, but the flash of memory was gone before she could grasp it.

  “Look who’s come to see you,” Madame said. “It’s Fantastique.”

  Marie no longer cringed at her stage name, but she wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do. She searched the roles that came to mind, but arrived at la premiere femme Fantastique, which she was surprised to find didn’t feel like a role, but rather was part of her.

  “Mademoiselle Lafitte? Amelie?” Marie sat on the stool beside the chaise and took one of the girl’s hands. She remembered Amelie as a girl with wide blue eyes in a delicate pretty face. Her features had grown into lovely young w
omanhood, but her eyes held a haunted look that went well beyond her years.

  What did you see?

  “Fantastique, you are here!” The girl’s voice was hoarse, and Marie tried not to flinch from the smell of her breath.

  “Yes, I’ve come to help you.” Marie stroked her hand. “Tell me about your favorite play.”

  Amelie shook her head, and when she saw her mother, she closed her eyes. “Leave us, Maman. I must speak with Fantastique alone. The rose opens, and the thorns will dance.”

  “Very well, but I will be in the next room if you need me.” To Marie, she whispered when she passed, “This is the sort of nonsense she’s been saying.”

  Amelie struggled to sit, and Marie placed pillows behind her. She took both Marie’s hands and squeezed with a strength beyond her frail appearance.

  “You know of what I speak. You have seen it, the spirit, in action. It is awakened with the song of the spheres, and it waits to bask in the light of the eternal flame.”

  “What are you talking about?” Marie swallowed against the terror the memory brought up, of being trapped in the statue’s arms at the Marquis de Monceau’s house. Could it have had something to do with the immolation of the airship he’d tried to escape on?

  “It was stirring, waiting, but it has been released, and it seeks the minds of weak men to possess. It has consumed many, and only I escaped to tell the tale, to give the warning.”

  Marie hoped the feverish glint to the girl’s eyes meant she had only imagined horrors, but she suspected something had happened. “What do you mean, only you escaped?”

  “Tell the inspector to check the church. There is more than one means of mass death in there.”

  “I’ve been in there. There’s nothing but weapons.”

  “There wasn’t until the other night. The painting, Mademoiselle. Eros and Psyche. Their wings moved, and it was too much for them.”

  The chill that overtook Marie had nothing to do with the temperature of the room. She recalled hearing the rustling of the wings when the statues came to life.

  “But the National Guard was keeping people out.”

  “Many of them are students and don’t see the reasoning in the government regulations. Stop arguing with me and listen! It may not be today or tomorrow, but it awakens.” She shrieked with laughter. “And when it does, all will dance to its tune, flesh men and mechanical ones.”

  Madame Lafitte came in and shooed Marie out. “She is getting agitated. Please tell Doctor Radcliffe to hurry with his cure for her.”

  “I’m sure he is doing his best, but I will pass along the message and tell him what happened.”

  Once outside, she breathed the cool air in with relief, but it did nothing to loosen the tightness of dread in her stomach.

  What is happening? Is the Eros Element causing other effects Edward didn’t anticipate?

  * * * * *

  Iris opened the blinds of the atelier to let in the sunshine, which she hoped would help to warm the room. She’d left Marie asleep, and Johann had avoided her at breakfast before she could ask what happened to make Marie so exhausted and Johann so serious. Had they engaged in the kind of improper activities she would supposedly find out about when her innocence wasn’t in danger? But both of them seemed experienced in that way—at least that was what they projected—so Iris wasn’t quite sure what to think. She only knew that something of serious import had occurred.

  But Johann and Marie weren’t her main concern. She needed to continue to read the manuscript Monsieur Firmin had entrusted to her. Even if she couldn’t understand all the words, she could continue to get images of the history. She needed to find out where the temple page had gone with the document and how it had come to the Louvre.

  Iris spread the bound pages, which she now knew had once been scrolled on the table in front of her, in the spot where Edward had placed his tools. They both did similar things, she mused, to try and figure out the world and how it worked. His ability to engage in complex mental calculations and observations seemed no less mysterious to her than her own talent.

  She took off her gloves and closed her eyes. The pages drew her fingertips to them like magnets to metal shavings, and the paper took on a soft quality, not brittle as it looked.

  The vision dropped her into the page’s labored escape from the peasant woman who lived by the wall. She first became aware of running downhill and a cool breeze tinged of salt and fish guts. To Iris, it would have been an unpleasant smell, but to the girl’s nose it smelled like a far-away home.

  Wooden slats replaced the stone streets, and she slowed to quiet her steps. The blaze from the temple, although at the top of the hill that housed the city, illuminated the docks in an eerie muted light. Sailors gathered in small groups, gesturing and pointing, and arguments rose in a dozen languages around her. She listened for one that sounded familiar and headed in the direction of the shouting in her dialect. She searched for familiar faces among the men and spotted one with a square-cut beard. He wasn’t from her country, but she knew the merchant, who was a friend of her father’s.

  “Menelaus,” she said with a gasp.

  He looked down at her, startled. “What? Fausta, is that you?”

  She nodded, and her knees gave way beneath her. He scooped her up and threw his cloak around her.

  “What have you there?” one of the others asked. “That wharf rat’s a little young for you, don’t you think?”

  “She’s a chieftain’s daughter. Have some respect.” He ushered her aboard a nearby ship. “What’s happening at the temple? Aren’t you goddess-promised?”

  Fausta nodded. Tears of relief stung her smoke-chapped cheeks. “It’s burning. I don’t know what started it, but the emperor’s guards are up there. I think they’re looking for this.”

  She handed him the scroll. He unrolled it, and his heavy brows drew in. “They’re granary records, but something’s not right. These can’t be the measures. There is too much variability.”

  “The priest said something about them using it for their gods, and then Cervella said Constantinople will be the first to burn.”

  “Apollo’s flame,” Menelaus said in a whisper. “Keep this here with you. I will get the captain. It’s good you brought this to me, but the goddess obviously wants you to be its guardian.”

  “But I don’t understand it.”

  “Don’t worry about that. We’ll take it to Alexandria. There are scholars there who can help you.”

  He left Fausta, and she heard his heavy footsteps cross the deck above her head. She found a barrel of fresh water to quench the burning in her throat and waited. And waited some more. Men’s voices startled her out of a doze she didn’t know she’d fallen into, and the creaking of the ship told her it was on the way. Footsteps outside the chamber where she waited sounded wrong, so she shoved the scroll under a blanket on a bunk.

  “Menelaus?” she asked.

  “The Phoenician didn’t make it on to the ship,” the young man said. “The Varengian guard stormed the dock and captured him. But we will take you to Alexandria.”

  Her throat stung again, this time with tears for her friend.

  Iris came out of the trance, but her own throat burned with tears for little Fausta. She sensed the girl hadn’t made it to Alexandria, possibly due to illness or some sort of internal damage from smoke inhalation, but she had kept her secret as to what the manuscript contained. Then the Alexandrian monks had accepted it but also hadn’t known its significance, and it had gotten lost in the flotsam of time until it resurfaced at the Louvre.

  And Firmin thinks I can figure out the key.

  She knew she would have to reach back farther than Fausta to the mind of the author of the manuscript, but she wasn’t so good at directing her talent that she could force objects to show her things, particularly not objects of low density like paper and
cloth.

  There must be something I can do, some key somewhere. The priest said something about one they were burning. Perhaps it’s survived at the temple. But which one?

  A knock on the atelier door startled her.

  “Entree!”

  Marie entered. A thousand questions leapt to Iris’s mind, but she only asked, “How did you sleep?”

  Marie’s cheeks flamed, and she looked away. “Fine.”

  “Did you have sweet dreams of Johann?”

  “Alas, the situation is not that simple. But I’m not here to talk about him. I saw Amelie Lafitte this morning. She’s extremely neurotic after something happened at the student gathering referenced in Cinsault’s letter.”

  “What happened?”

  “I’m not sure, but I’ve sent for Davidson to investigate the church next door. That’s where they met. She brought this brochure back with her.”

  Marie handed Iris the pamphlet, and the symbol brought her back momentarily to the evening in her father’s study. “It’s the neo-Pythagorean symbol.”

  “Yes. Can you read it?”

  “I think so. It’s Greek, which I’m not as strong in as in Latin. We should get Doctor Radcliffe to take a look at it—he’s much better than I am.”

  “That’s not quite what I meant.” Marie gestured to Iris’s hands. “What the brochure says may not be as important as what it can show us about the meeting.”

  “I can try, but paper doesn’t hold impressions as well.” She closed her eyes and focused on the brochure the impressions it gave her had the quality of candle smoke in a breeze—hard to see and even harder to sense beyond the occasional whiff. “Faint screams and rustling, that’s all.” She opened her eyes. “But the rustling sounds like what we heard at the marquis’s chateau.”

  “She said something about that, and that now that the rose is open, the thorns will dance.”

  “The voice in the temple!” Iris had tried not to think too much about that day when Edward had saved her but lost his sense of self, but the words had been etched into her mind. “It said, ‘The rose is opening.’”