Even if he had provided a closed coach with the crest of the von Lindenbecks standing between her and her unknown enemy, she would not have felt entirely safe. But they came out at last on the Rohrbach Road still with no sign of pursuit, and the tension began to drain out of her as he urged the horses to a trot. Gustav saw her relax and leaned toward her, beginning, “Liebling—”
Antuniet stifled a well-timed yawn. “I was up all night working and if I’m to be good for anything, I need some rest.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” he replied in a disappointed tone as she turned away and curled into the corner of the hood. “You sleep now.”
And much to her surprise, she did.
* * *
Antuniet woke to dusk filtered through trees and the absence of motion. Without conscious thought, her hand went to the hard outlines of the book within its bag, tucked inside her cloak. Reassured, she looked around. The horses had been unharnessed and the glow of lights drew her eyes to a stone and timber building lying in the shadow of the tall pines. She considered and discarded the thought that this had all been a grave mistake. The panic of the moment had sped her decision, but longer consideration would have brought her to the same place. No way out but forward. She stepped down, shifting the book satchel to her shoulder and holding her cloak close against the chill.
She had only a general idea of where she was: south of Heidelberg by half a day on indifferent roads. She had woken briefly when they stopped to change horses and enjoy a bite to eat before taking a narrow, unpaved track into what passed for wilderness. Closer by half a day to Alpennia. This wasn’t how she’d meant to return: fleeing, near penniless, with no more progress on her Great Work than the promise that it would one day succeed.
Gustav came out and took her by the hand to lead her inside. “I thought to let you sleep while they made things ready. Come, come, there’s a fire built up and the wine is poured and soon there will be dinner.” He led her through an echoing foyer lit only by a few flickering candles. It stretched up into a darkness relieved by rows of pale, antlered skulls mounted on every surface of the walls. That part about all the stags the Lindenbecks had ever killed had been no joke.
Antuniet found to her dismay that the fire and the small dining table beside it had been prepared in a room dominated by a large canopied bed. Well, what had she expected? She let Gustav remove her cloak but then took it from him to wrap casually around the book satchel. She laid it on a chair in a corner beside the hearth, where it had a hope of being overlooked by any housekeeping impulses the staff might have. Judging from the dust on the mantel, those impulses were few. The fire drew her, but when Gustav approached to hand her a wineglass, she cast about for an excuse to keep moving.
“It’s such a delightfully gothic building! Do show me around. Where did you find the wainscoting? It must be two hundred years old at least.” Architectural details bored her but she knew enough to put on a good show.
Evidently they bored Gustav even more, for he shrugged, saying, “It’s my cousin’s place. I really have no idea.” But he gamely set about showing her through the rooms, providing stories that centered primarily on the details of how the featured hunting trophies had been taken.
When they came around again to the room with the fire, supper had been laid and a sour-faced man stood in attendance to serve them. That provided one more hour of respite, but at last the servant cleared away the covers, poked up the fire one more time and disappeared. Gustav lifted Antuniet’s fingers to his lips and asked, “Tell me why, after so many times of no, this time it was yes?”
She gave him a small piece of the truth. “I’m leaving Heidelberg—I’ve left Heidelberg. I’m not going back.”
“Ah,” he said. “And you no longer care what the gossips say.”
She shrugged. He could believe whatever story pleased him. “Tomorrow I would like you to take me to the nearest public coaching inn.”
“But Kätzlein…” he protested.
She fixed him with a gaze that belonged to the old Antuniet—the one who was accustomed to having her way. Would he refuse? She’d gambled much in coming here.
He rose and came to stand behind her. “Tomorrow,” he echoed.
She felt him take the pins from her hair to let it tumble down her back. Her stomach clenched at his touch. There was still time to tell him it had all been a mistake—a ruse. Surely he wouldn’t insist…Don’t be a fool, she told herself. What does it matter? Her future held no virginal wedding bed. What was she saving herself for? For honor? Well, honor demanded that one paid one’s debts and she had taken this one on with eyes open. With mechanical precision she unbuttoned her jacket and shrugged it off. He took her by the shoulders and turned her toward him. She stared over his shoulder at the flickering fire in the grate and allowed his embraces and practiced attentions.
* * *
When the pale dawn had grown enough that she could cross the room without stumbling, Antuniet gave up on the pretense of sleep and slipped from the bed. Gustav stirred sleepily and she froze until he quieted again, then gathered her clothes. There was a dressing room behind a door almost hidden in the oak paneling. She washed as thoroughly as she could in the basin and dressed. It would likely be hours yet before the sour-faced caretaker would be up. She found a seat by an east-facing window in the entry chamber where the light was sufficient to read and wrapped her traveling cloak closely around her.
The object of her obsession, the hope of her salvation, the bone the dogs were hunting, lay open in her lap, its worn red binding soft in her hands like the touch of skin. Concerning the Mystic Marriage of the Earth and Sun to Beget Works of Great Virtue and Power…The title went on for another half page.
Two centuries it had waited to come into her hands, hidden away from the ravages of war and neglect, superstition and greed. Surely that was a sign? She turned to the passage that had first caught at her heart that day in the little bookshop behind the castle in Prague. The crude cipher used in the introductory chapters had become as familiar to her as Greek. And with these secrets the sharpened mind can work such wonders as will earn the acclaim and gratitude of even the highest Earthly Princes, and the virtuous heart will purify the spirit to receive the Prince of Heaven. Purity of spirit was long since out of reach, but the other…that she could aspire to. The acclaim and gratitude of princes. The words had reawakened the vow she’d sworn standing over the graves of mother and brother, the one a suicide and the other a traitor. This will not be the final judgment on our line. I will redeem it.
* * *
Gustav had come looking for her hours later with a tinge of concern coloring his satisfaction. Well, if he had regrets they were his own burden to carry. And he was as good as his word, delivering her to an inn where a southbound coach would pass. Two coins from the hem of her jacket would see her as far as Basel. Two more, to Rotenek. That left three to live on until she could make arrangements. No, not the homecoming she had planned. He even offered to stay with her until the coach arrived but she refused. At the last, he leaned down from the phaeton and took her hand for one final kiss. “Farewell, dear Madame Kätzlein.”
Annoyance finally overcame forbearance. She pulled her hand back saying, “The name is Chazillen. It was once a noble and honorable name and God willing I’ll make it so again. I’ll thank you to use it!”
He nodded stiffly. “Then God keep you, Madame Chazillen.”
That had been unkind but she had no room in her heart for kindness. She had no room for anything except the path that lay ahead. She turned away so that she wouldn’t see the carriage disappearing behind her.
Chapter Two
Margerit
Margerit Sovitre gazed around the royal council chamber trying to keep two things foremost in mind: that she truly belonged here, in the presence of Her Grace, Princess Anna Atilliet, and in the company of the renowned dozzures of Rotenek University and of Archbishop Fereir himself…and that she would do well to keep silent until she was addr
essed. Four years ago Margerit would have had no trouble holding her tongue. Four years ago her godfather, Baron Saveze, had not yet named her his heir in pursuit of his own tangled plans and given her the chance to seize what a woman could claim of a university education in Rotenek. Four years ago she hadn’t yet discovered how the visions she’d experienced since childhood gave her the skill to develop new holy mysteries. Four years ago she couldn’t have imagined that she would sit here, named by appointment as the royal thaumaturgist. But being here, now, among those notables, she found it hard to hold her tongue. The impatience helped tamp down her trepidation.
It went beyond daring to present her case to this audience. It wasn’t as if she were taking an actual degree at the university, where her studies would be guided and given imprimatur. A schoolgirl’s dabbling in mysteries wasn’t even worthy of attention, much less of disapproval. If she’d confined herself only to studying, her work would be of no more concern than the charm-wives who sold blessings in the marketplace or the ceremonies of the fraternal guilds that were more social fêtes than religious worship. But the princess had proposed that the Royal Guild celebrate her thaumaturgist’s first new mystery at the feast of All Saints this year, and for that Archbishop Fereir’s consent was necessary. If she were to fulfill her appointment in truth—to serve openly as Princess Annek’s thaumaturgist—she needed, if not the sanction of the Church, at least its open disinterest. Princess Anna, she corrected herself silently. Everyone called her by the fond pet name Annek in private, and she was said to be flattered by it. But it would be a dreadful faux pas to use it here.
Dozzur Alihendin, the most prominent of the teachers of theology at Rotenek University, had been droning on for half an hour. He was pompous, condescending, dismissive of her talents…and he was there as her advocate. “As you know, we have found that young girls often have a…a sensitivity regarding the mysteries that can be put to use. There is a danger that these sensitivities may verge onto hysteria and it’s important not to place too much stress on the child. But she has been examined by a number of learned men and we are satisfied that her visions are true and reliable and that they are of God and not mere phantasms. As to the accuracy of the specific observations she reports, there is less consensus. As I need not remind you, Your Excellency, the divine manifests itself in many ways. Several reliable individuals were asked to report their own visions during the Great Mystery of Saint Mauriz recently celebrated, and though the generalities were in agreement, none perceived the level of detail that Maisetra Sovitre claims to have seen.”
She might have hoped for a more effusive recommendation, but that wouldn’t have served as well. The archbishop was known for taking his own way despite tradition and advice. That was what had begun this matter after all: his changes to the text of the Mauriz mystery. His eyes turned finally to her, fixing her from under black brows that contrasted incongruously with his white hair. It gave his face a sinister cast that Margerit knew came entirely from her own imagination. She felt her hands tremble. Would he even give her a hearing? At worst he could forbid her work entirely; that was the gamble. With no other preamble, the archbishop asked, “What have you to say, then?”
She understood suddenly what drove LeFevre, her business manager, to shuffle papers ostentatiously before a presentation. It focused the attention and marked a beginning. She fought off the urge to imitate him and began laying out the sheaf of diagrams and drawings that sat beside her. This would be the proof of her talent and skill: the observations she’d made of how divine power flowed through the ceremony, and how it stumbled and faltered at the points where the ceremony had been revised. It was not enough to know all the esoteric vocabulary of the field; she must convince him that she understood it, and that her understanding did not stray too far from the orthodox. There was no turning back now. She glanced up once at the princess for guidance, but Annek only gazed silently with those dark, hooded eyes that marked her as her father’s daughter. The slight play of an approving smile at the corners of her mouth was all the encouragement she gave. Margerit took another deep breath and began.
“When I first came to Rotenek and witnessed the celebration of the Mauriz tutela in the time of Prince Aukust—God rest his soul—several things struck me as odd about the way the fluctus manifested, particularly at the markein and the concrescatio. At the time, I was only beginning my studies and had no way to describe what I was seeing.” She laid out a sequence of pages, each marked at the top with a section of the mystery as it was performed. As the pages progressed, the diagrams of the cathedral layout were washed with colors and marked with small symbols indicating how she had perceived the fluctus, the presence of divine grace within the course of the ceremony. For the first time in her life, Margerit regretted that her education had not included the use of watercolors or even drawing, beyond the most basic skill. The rough paintings were nothing like the true substance of her visions. But would technique have told the story more clearly? The colors weren’t true colors, only impressions of them. And the patterns of movement often felt more like the swelling of song. So perhaps the crude indications were better to convey the idea than something more refined would be.
She led them through what had appeared to her: the way the divine light responded to the words of the priests, the actions of the royal celebrants and the responses of the congregants. “Now here,” she pointed, “is what first caught my eye.” She indicated the constricted flare of the charis, marking the saint’s response, at the conclusion of the rite. “At first, all I knew was that it felt…wrong. But later, when I’d had a chance to study the text of the expositulum, and then when I witnessed the ceremony again, I noted the way the fluctus convulsed every time the celebration shifted from the older text to the new.”
There was no response from those watching, so she moved on to the second set of drawings. “Now this is the ceremony the first time that Her Grace presided using the new version based on the Lyon rite exactly as written. You see here and here and here—” she pointed out the sections where the two differed most strongly “—the effects are clearest. Those are the parts where the lay presider—” she nodded in Annek’s direction “—details the markein, giving the physical scope of the requested blessing. The places where the language is most changed from the older version that Prince Aukust used.”
She rushed through the next set of examples hoping to pass over the political aspects of what they had done. When Aukust had refused to change the words he’d spoken all his life, it could be chalked up to an old man’s stubbornness. “And this is from the ceremony just performed, when Her Grace returned to the older language for her parts.” And that had caused no end of fuss. Whatever the reasons she had given publicly, it had been because she, at least, had been convinced the structure of the mystery was damaged. “We can see that the differences in effect come from the ceremony itself and not from changes in the celebrants.”
The archbishop finally raised his hand to interrupt her. “This is all very fascinating, but not much to the point. Do we know that the results of the new ceremony are different from those of the older one?”
“It’s true that I never witnessed the older version in whole,” Margerit admitted. “But mysteries from the Penekiz tradition are used widely in local celebrations. All the Penekiz tutelas have the same general form. And I’ve found at least two village churches dedicated to Saint Mauriz that use a version of the same text as ours—without the elaborations, of course. Akolbin is near enough that I was able to witness theirs on Mauriz’s feast day this year as well as our own.” She began setting out the last sequence of diagrams. “Here and here are the key points, especially the conclusion, the missio, when the charis is granted.” She indicated the swirl of exploding colors in the new image. “Saint Mauriz is supposed to solicit God’s grace to encompass the entire parish the way it does here. Instead, in the Rotenek ceremony, the charis sinks away beside the altar. I believe the change in wording directs the charis to encompass
only the buried relics of the saint.”
The archbishop was signaling for her silence again. “I meant,” he said emphatically, “that you have not demonstrated that any difference in the forms of the celebration would change the results. Do you think divine grace comes and goes at our command?”
Margerit hesitated, fearing a trap in his words. This wasn’t a question she had expected to answer. Was he suggesting that the visual manifestations of mysteries were meaningless? She recalled Barbara’s comments on why the ancient scholar Fortunatus had couched all his more daring conclusions in the subjunctive. She said cautiously, “If it were only necessary that God look into our hearts, then prayer and worship would be unnecessary, wouldn’t they? If it matters that we give spoken voice to our petitions, then why shouldn’t the form of that speech matter as well? And if the form of speech matters, then wouldn’t it be well to use what tools we have to know what would be most pleasing?” She watched his face carefully, but he gave no sign whether her answer had been acceptable. She reached for an analogy from her readings. “Any arrow you loose will hit something, but if you want to hit the mark, it matters that you can see to aim.”
The archbishop said dryly, “I see you have been studying Gaudericus.”
Once again she looked for a trap—she recalled the stares and questions she’d received when hunting down that particular book. “It would have been difficult to do this without his work,” she acknowledged. Gaudericus and his circle had nearly caused a schism between those who viewed the mysteries purely as worship and those who saw them as granting power. Strangely enough, it had been the Protestant rejection of thaumaturgy that had saved Gaudericus from being condemned outright as a heretic. But there was still a fine line drawn between the mechanists and those with even less acceptable philosophies.
The Mystic Marriage Page 2