The Mystic Marriage

by Jones, Heather Rose

  Every actor in the scene stood frozen watching it fly, released at last by a harsh shout, “You stupid bitch!” as the knot convulsed inward again. Hearing footsteps and panting breaths close at her back again, Barbara surged forward with her own shout and waded into the fray. There were fewer of the others than it had seemed at the first and they had no stomach when it turned to a true fight. Even so, when they fled they left Sikipirt nursing a bruised head and Marzo sporting a bloodied nose and a triumphant grin. Antuniet had sunk to a huddled ball close up against the bridge parapet. When Barbara crouched down beside her, the only word she could make out was, “Gone.”

  “Yes, they’re gone,” she echoed reassuringly.

  Antuniet raised her head at the familiar voice. Her eyes stared blank and hollow. “Gone. It’s all gone.” With a sudden motion she rose and scrambled onto the low stone wall. Barbara grabbed for her, barely dragging her from the brink by the skirts of her dress. “Don’t be a fool! It’s sunk into the mud by now. You’d never find it.”

  Antuniet twisted wildly in her hands, shouting, “Let me go! Let me go!” as Barbara took a stronger hold and pulled her back. “You don’t understand. It’s gone! It’s all gone. There’s nothing left. Nothing.”

  With a shock, Barbara realized she hadn’t meant to go after the book but to be lost beside it. She pushed Antuniet down onto the pavement and held her in a grip of iron as she called out to the men, “Go find us a carriage, a wagon…anything! No need to be a spectacle for all the city!”

  As they scattered to obey, she took Antuniet’s face in her hands and forced their eyes to meet. “You told Margerit to keep it safe,” she said in a tone that pierced through the despair. “What is the surest way to keep a book safe?” She saw the faintest spark kindle in that darkness.

  By the time they returned to Tiporsel, Antuniet had left behind her frenzy. Indeed, she seemed to have left behind everything but mute obedience. Barbara ushered her past the curious eyes in the front hall and nodded at Margerit and Jeanne to follow as she led the way back to the privacy of the library. Jeanne had been crying. Margerit, more practically, had initiated preparations for all possible outcomes of the chase. With a few brief words Barbara told them what had occurred.

  When she came to the fate of the prize that had set it all in motion, Margerit looked quickly at Antuniet’s bleak expression and went to retrieve a thick bundle from her working desk. She placed it in Antuniet’s lap, saying, “I had two done separately, as a check on errors because of the ciphers. I haven’t had a chance to have them bound yet.” Antuniet touched the ribbon that bound the pages together but made no move to untie it.

  “Not a gift,” Barbara said, quickly forestalling any impulsive generosity Margerit might feel. “For use. If you accept my conditions.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Antuniet

  Antuniet woke to the pale winter sun filtering through the shutters and spent long minutes untangling true memories from fever dreams.

  For the last week, every day had begun the same. It was the voices drifting up from below that sorted out truth from phantasm—that and the numb absence of terror. Left in its place was a deep weariness. She was back… No, she could hardly think of this place as home. It wasn’t hers now, if it ever had been. She had a new patron. And a staff—to watch over her as much as to watch out for her—but they answered to Margerit, not to her. The voices below weren’t Anna and Iakup beginning the day. Her mind shied away from that path.

  No. She had always hated cowardice. Iakup was dead because of her. Because she had thought only of her own danger and not that others might fall defending her. He had been defending Anna, not her, but it came to the same end. And Anna—her message there had gone unanswered and no blame to Monterrez for that. Disaster came to everything she touched.

  Footsteps echoed on the stairs and a knock rang on the door. Mefro Feldin. Not quite a housekeeper—there wasn’t much house to keep—but here to keep things in order, along with Petro to do the man’s work that Iakup used to cover and the two rough men whose names she hadn’t sorted out yet but whose sole purpose was to advertise that Antuniet Chazillen had a patron who would see to her protection. None of them lived in—there wasn’t room for that and Feldin, at least, had starkly refused—but she was never left alone.

  The knock came again and she realized she hadn’t answered it. “Enter.”

  The woman looked her over with a silent sniff. Margerit had gone to some trouble to find a housekeeper willing to dare the uncertain peril of an alchemist’s house. There had been emphatic assurances that she wouldn’t be asked to touch any of the equipment. And beyond that, it wasn’t any part of her duties to play lady’s maid. She sniffed again. “I was going to the market, Maisetra, and wondered if there was anything in particular you wanted.”

  “No.” Was there anything she wanted? What good had it ever done to want things? She wanted her old life back: the house on Modul Street, to own more than a single garment, to have the company of minds worth talking to. She wanted her work back. She wanted her book: that mystical talisman that her hands remembered like a lover’s touch, the scent of years rising from its pages like incense. It had meant more than the text inscribed on the pages; it had been hers, the proof of her talent and the promise of her success. Now there were only marks on a page and even that came from someone else’s charity. In those last weeks, when fear had haunted every step, at least the work had been all hers. The hope of triumph had been there, drawing her on. There would be no triumph now, only the failure even to fail.

  She turned restlessly. Mefro Feldin had left some time ago. Hunger finally bored deeply enough to drive her up to dress. No one would be bringing dainties on a tray to coax her appetite. She found bread in the small pantry, fresh from the bakery across the street. That was enough for now.

  Two hours later she had gone no farther than to move jars around on the bench in the workroom. There was a handful of notes in a stack, retrieved from the concealed room where they had lain hidden the last month. She could begin again on the last experiment without needing to go beg entrance at Tiporsel house to review DeBoodt. Someone had consulted the chemist for what supplies she needed when no list had been forthcoming from her own hand. She hadn’t had a chance to see what remained from before and what had been spoiled or lost in the attack. There was the trace of a bloodstain still on the floor next to the furnace. She stared at it until the outlines shifted into monstrous visions.

  That was where Jeanne found her later, bustling in with her maid in tow just as if nothing had happened in the last month. “I dropped by because I was thinking about your appointment at the palace tomorrow and I was wondering—”

  “Is that tomorrow?” Antuniet asked, rousing herself to the present. “I’d lost track.” That had been one of the conditions. Margerit could hardly be blamed for insisting that she couldn’t sponsor work such as this secretly, not in her position. But whatever Annek had been told, she’d wanted more. An invitation—a summons, really—to attend on her with explanations. This wasn’t how it had been meant to be.

  “I was wondering,” Jeanne repeated, touching her lightly on the shoulder when she saw that her attention had wandered, “whether you might like to borrow something a bit…nicer to wear.” She gestured to her maid, who laid a muslin-wrapped bundle across the table and began untying it. “I think we’re close enough in size, except that you’re taller, but there’s enough hem to let down for that. Marien is quick with a needle and she can have it ready by tomorrow.”

  Antuniet fingered the fabric, evaluating the quality. The choice had been calculated carefully: a fine brown wool with rows of dark braid, but nothing too luxurious. Nothing to make it feel like a masquerade. “Thank you,” she said quietly.

  She let herself be led upstairs to her chamber and pinned and tucked into the gown. There would be more work than only the hem. Had she grown so thin? Years of pointed comments had left her thinking of herself as Amazonian in proportion
s, but the bodice hung loosely, and not entirely by comparison to Jeanne’s more womanly figure. She had never been vain, but she was glad, of a sudden, for the lack of mirrors in the place.

  As the maid bundled up the gown again, Jeanne handed her another smaller package. “I also thought…well, you could hardly just borrow a chemise or stockings or that sort of thing, so…”

  Antuniet felt her face grow hot. It was such an intimate thing to have considered, and startling to have it considered at all. “Jeanne—”

  “Oh, it’s perfectly selfish, I assure you,” she replied. “I was hoping you’d join me for a bite to eat at the Café Chatuerd after you’re done at the palace tomorrow and you know what sticklers they are for appearances!”

  “So I’m to be rehabilitated into society?” Antuniet asked, forcing a wry smile.

  She expected a joke in return, but Jeanne’s expression was serious. “Toneke, we thought…that is, Margerit thinks she may have been at fault in letting Mesner Kreiser believe you were entirely without friends in Rotenek.”

  “But it’s true,” Antuniet said. Jeanne looked so stricken she wished she’d held her tongue. “Jeanne, why are you doing this? All this?”

  Jeanne reached out to take her hand and pressed it between both of hers. “When you become accustomed to the idea of having friends again, you won’t need to ask that question. But for now, just remember that your talent may be alchemy but this is my talent. Put yourself in my hands, and the next thing you know you’ll have invitations to balls and the opera.”

  It was utterly absurd—dancing at balls was the last thing she wanted—and a burble of laughter made it halfway to her lips. And that seemed answer enough for Jeanne, who squeezed her hand once more and took her leave.

  * * *

  It was impossible not to remember the last time she had entered the palace gates in the shadow of Estefen’s execution and her mother’s death. She had been too numb for anything to touch her: the dissolution of the Guild of Saint Atelpirt, the pardon for all but Lutoz. But she still remembered that chance confrontation with Margerit as she left and the bile she had allowed to spill. This time you have blood on your hands; this time I do hate you. And yet Margerit could pretend there was no wall between them. At least she’d had the tact to delegate Jeanne to accompany her today.

  Jeanne left her at the doors to the royal apartments. She would wait in the corridor with those who hoped for a moment of the princess’s time. Antuniet continued on, privileged by the escort of a palace page. This was no formal audience in state. Annek looked up from the work on the desk before her and beckoned. Antuniet approached, curtseyed and said, “I am come as Your Grace requested.”

  Those perceptive eyes looked her up and down and Antuniet was suddenly even more grateful for the borrowed dress. Princess Annek must be of an age with Jeanne, she thought, but looked much older. They shared the same raven hair but where Jeanne’s eyes always seemed bright with laughter, Annek’s were hooded and guarded, giving nothing away. Antuniet couldn’t help but see an echo of her own mother in the princess’s rigid posture. Annek pursed her lips as if in disapproval.

  “You aren’t quite what I expected. From all the uproar around you I’d expected someone older.”

  “I am five and twenty, Your Grace.”

  “No matter. Forgive me, but I don’t believe we’ve met before.”

  Antuniet thought back to all those long days of the succession debates when they’d occupied the same room. But there had been hundreds in that hall. “No, not formally.” Was this to be all pleasantries and social nothings?

  “I understand that you dabble in alchemy.”

  She bristled. Was that what Margerit had said of her? “I don’t dabble; alchemy is my work.”

  “You’ve been making your living by it?”

  “I make my living by tutoring students at the university, when I can. Few people have ever made a living by alchemy, except frauds.”

  The princess turned more fully to face her and tapped a finger idly against the desktop. “Maisetra Sovitre has come to me with an odd request. As a token of gratitude for the services she’s done for me, she asked that I place your work under my protection. You seem to have impressed her a great deal.”

  “I think,” Antuniet said carefully, “that it was in the way of paying a debt she felt she owed me.”

  Eyebrows raised. “Indeed? Then perhaps I misunderstood. Tell me about your work.”

  Antuniet swallowed heavily. The room was tilting and she reached for the back of a chair to steady herself. “Forgive me, I’ve been unwell.” Had she eaten that morning? She couldn’t remember.

  At Annek’s gesture she was guided into the chair. “A glass of wine for Maisetra Chazillen, if you please.”

  It gave her a few minutes to assemble her thoughts. The time was past for holding her plans close. As before, there was no way out but forward. She opened the small purse that hung at her wrist and drew out a knotted cloth. “My work concerns the properties of precious stones.”

  It all came out, bit by bit, interrupted by Annek’s questions, for she had a sharp and perceptive mind. She described the initial experiments, the glimpse of success, the setbacks and—like a splinter drawn from a wound—what she hoped to gain in exchange for the gift.

  Annek made no comment to that, only picked up the carnelian ring once more and turned it in the light. “Not a holy relic, nor yet the work of the devil, but you say it has power. If you wore this, what would happen?”

  “If I wore it? Very little, I expect. That one draws between two poles, one set during the fixation, the other where it is worn. Or where it touches. Sometimes simply its presence will influence those nearby, but it was designed for contact. If I wore it, both poles would point to me.” She nudged the small pile of gems on the corner of the desk between them and fished out a jasper and one of the best black onyxes. “With these, the effect is fixed as a vector, only from the stone to the bearer. The process for enhancing those is more complex and so far I’ve only produced a weak effect. The carnelian—it only involved a single ceremonial role, so it was my first project in Prague.”

  “And if I wore it?”

  Antuniet hesitated. It would be hazardous to overplay the stone’s effects even though she’d seen them in action. “Then there would be a…a connection between us. It would strengthen any sense of agreement or affection. It would guide you into sympathy with my desires. The natural stone carries a variety of properties but the fixation focuses on enhancing specific elements.”

  Annek smiled but Antuniet noticed that she shifted her grasp to touch only the band. “Agreement or affection. A love charm, then?”

  “Nothing so crude. The effects are subtle and rarely rise to the level of compulsion. You might say that it increases any impulses the wearer already feels.” In her mind she saw the stone glowing against the pale skin of Jeanne’s forefinger. That could explain much.

  “Interesting,” Annek said at last, returning the ring to the pile. “It seems harmless at the very least. We have yet to see how useful it might prove.” She stood in dismissal and Antuniet hastened to rise and scoop the gems back into her purse. “I’m not prepared at this time to lend my name to your work,” Annek continued, “but I think Maisetra Sovitre’s request can be met. The Austrian emissary has been informed that his welcome in Alpennia has worn thin and his…ah…associates understand that they will be held responsible if any harm comes to you or those who work for you. Is there anything else you wanted?”

  Those who work for you. Was she finally allowed to want something again? Perhaps…“Your Grace, I want my apprentice back.”

  * * *

  Café Chatuerd was much as Antuniet remembered it, bright and noisy in the crowded downstairs room. The upstairs was quieter, but Jeanne was determined that they be seen as much as possible. The food was light and dainty and only enough to wake her appetite. No, she must not have eaten that morning. She needed to be more careful about that.

/>   Jeanne, as always, made conversation easy and pleasant without seeming effort. It helped to cover the stares of those who recognized her. None of them approached the table to talk or did more than greet Jeanne quickly in passing. If rehabilitation were the goal, it would take time. Time… She glanced over at the ornate ormolu clock on the sideboard once again.

  “Is there somewhere you need to be, Toneke? You almost make me think I weary you.”

  “No, not at all!” She touched Jeanne’s hand in reassurance. It felt awkward but she was rewarded by Jeanne’s smile. “That is, it seems I do have another appointment today. Would you mind…”

  “But of course I can accompany you, if you like. When must we go?”

  That hadn’t been what she meant to ask, but the company would be appreciated and it would be convenient if Jeanne would provide the transportation. It was a long walk down to Zempol Street and she was still feeling shaky. “Not for another half hour, I think.”

  * * *

  They waited in the hired fiacre until the second carriage arrived, disgorging a lady, veiled as a widow, with her attendant. Without a word, Antuniet led the way into the shop. It was the same young man behind the counter that it always was. He took in the small crowd curiously but the others held back, as if waiting their turn by chance. Antuniet could tell he recognized her. He pulled the bell that rang farther back in the house even as she said, “I would like to speak with Maistir Monterrez.”

  There was no easy way to begin. What apologies could be made had been in her letter—the one he hadn’t answered. She saw a slight movement in the shadows past the half-open door to the living quarters and the glimpse of a pale face. “Maistir Monterrez, I made a contract to teach your daughter alchemy. And though I understand that you hold the contract to be broken on your end, I consider my part to be a debt of honor. Will you allow Anna to return to her studies?”