The Mystic Marriage

by Jones, Heather Rose

  The moment fled entirely.

  “Your Grace, it is a great honor you do me. But as I have said, I cannot fulfill what I owe to my family name by leaving it behind. More than that, with all respect to Mesner Atilliet, I think we should not suit.”

  Jeanne came unfrozen at last and rushed to her side to whisper urgently, “Toneke, don’t think to refuse him for my sake. I’d rather see you alive and safe.”

  Antuniet shook her head ever so slightly and touched Jeanne’s cheek. “It’s nothing to do with you. I’m sorry.”

  “Well,” Annek said as she rose, setting the rest of the witnesses into disarray, “you make it very difficult to help you, but I will look for other means to try.” She called out to those waiting behind the door and it opened with suspicious promptness. “We’ve finished here.”

  Had it been the right thing to do?

  Lying on the hard pallet that night, Antuniet played over both offers in her mind. Was it nothing but stubborn pride to have refused? To trust the slender thread of her own cleverness against a generous certainty? No, surely there were some things worth standing one’s ground for. To give in now, after all these years? Wouldn’t that be an acknowledgment that none of it had ever been worth the struggle? She could accept the thought of living all her life as Maisetra Chazillen, but not as Mesnera anything else.

  * * *

  She’d thought there would be no more warning for the final act than there had been for any other scene in this play, but Jeanne came one day with a change of clothing: the brown woolen walking gown that had been her first, most practical gift. And she brought a word of promise: tomorrow. They kissed passionately at parting, not caring who might see, in case all should fail and there would never be another chance.

  The courtroom was packed, both floor and gallery. That was no surprise. Rotenek must have its show and she would do her best to give a good performance. She’d thought of several parts to play but in the end her own self seemed easiest: proud, haughty, cold and always in command. She gazed steadfastly out over the crowd as if she were, indeed, a princess, but that was to mask a desperate search among the faces. Of her friends she had no doubt. There was Jeanne, dry-eyed but pale. Beside her, Barbara in her braided coat, wearing her sword in case it came, at the last, to that. But there, apart to one side, where the prosecutor would stand: Elisebet, all somber in black and veils, playing the royal widow as she often did in public. At her back stood several ladies. Was it? Yes, Sain-Mazzi was among them. The stage was set; let the play begin.

  It took no playacting to settle her face into impatience with the long speeches at the start. The forms must be followed. Now they began to lay out the charges: Aukustin’s illness, the search for answers. One would not expect Elisebet or her courtiers to take the stand. That place was supplied by Escamund, the thaumaturgist who had found the talismans. That was a gamble when the charge was sorcery, but he was a man of sober and upstanding reputation. Now the stones themselves were produced: the small mahogany box that she had seen before and another bound in brass that held the rest.

  Feldin was brought forth to testify to the origin of the alchemical gems. What reassurances had they offered her? Did she know she faced the one who had ordered the death of her contact? Here she was free to lie about the theft as she had not been in the royal court, but there was no need. She was asked only to identify the stones. Yes, Feldin said, she had kept house for the alchemist. Yes, she recognized the magical gems that lay before her. One couldn’t miss them, she said, pointing out the brightly layered stones, their mottled beauty standing out like peacocks in a henhouse. She would know them anywhere. No mention of the gift or of the theft or anything of her own part in providing them.

  So, that was how it would be. Antuniet let go of any regret in what she planned. And then the moment came when all eyes turned to her and the magistrate asked if she had aught to say in her defense.

  “I do,” she said loudly, stepping forward from the box where she had sat throughout the morning. “Let me examine these amulets that are said to be my work. Would you take the word of an ignorant old woman regarding the esoteric arts? I will know the work of my own hands.”

  A murmur passed through the courtroom. Had they expected her to deny all? She made a show of picking through the boxes. “This? Trash,” she said, setting several aside. “And this?” She held up the carved onyx cameo. “Beautiful work, but not mine.” There was more to her method than mere performance. She passed over several possibilities: too irregular in shape, too flawed. But there! Perfect. A flawless crystal lens encircled by a frame of golden serpents. No doubt it had been chosen for the imagery. She palmed it and returned to the ebony box. “Now this?” She let the pride show in her voice as she lifted the layered stone reverently. “This is part of my greatest work,” she said. “Do you know the properties of this stone?” As if commanding a lecture hall, she left no pause for answer. “This stone cannot abide the touch of evil. It knows; it remembers. And it will speak.”

  A gasp and then a silence in the room as if they expected a voice to sound. She had been holding the gem carefully in her fingertips so as not to release its light. Now she palmed it, warming it to life and holding the crystal lens before it. She would need a little time to gauge the focal distances but even a gross effect would suffice.

  “Tell me, O Lapis Loquax, who first touched you with ill intent?” She turned slowly, holding it up and manipulating the lens as she came to face Feldin. From the corner of her eye she could see Elisebet’s rapt attention and Sain-Mazzi’s sudden concern. With the slightest final movement of her fingers, the azure light shone blindingly in Feldin’s eyes and the woman shrieked and fell to her knees.

  “Mercy! Mercy!” she cried. “I swear, I meant no harm to you!”

  “What is your crime?” Antuniet intoned, like an oracle of doom.

  Feldin turned toward the magistrate and held her arms up in appeal. “I’m a thief. I stole the stones from her.”

  “And I forgive you,” Antuniet said, turning away and twisting the lens sideways to unfocus the beam. “But how did my jewels come to be in Mesner Atilliet’s chamber?”

  Feldin whimpered in fear. Surely she knew the man was dead, but not what her own danger was. “I sold them to a stranger. I didn’t know who he was or what he planned for them. I swear.”

  An excited murmur was rising in the crowd and the magistrate took the time to restore order. Did he believe her trick? He’d refused to allow Margerit’s lux veritatis. She had the right to speak but would he consider this to go beyond what was permitted? Before she lost the crowd’s attention, Antuniet turned to gaze at the stones in her hand as if listening.

  “My amulet has more to tell,” she announced. “It cries out in anguish at being used against a son of Atilliet. O Lapis Loquax, tell me whose hand placed you in Aukustin’s bed?” Again she turned slowly, focusing the lens up on the rafters, where the light would not be seen until she found her target. The blue beam splashed across Sain-Mazzi’s face. She threw a hand up before her eyes. A natural reflex but it drew attention.

  Elisebet was staring at Sain-Mazzi, her mouth an “O” of disbelief growing slowly to horror. “No, not you,” the princess whispered.

  So quickly her devotion could turn to suspicion where Aukustin was concerned. Sain-Mazzi had cultivated Elisebet’s fears too well. If the stones had power to harm, then surely they had power to speak and accuse.

  “It’s nothing but a stupid trick,” Sain-Mazzi protested, holding her hand still before her eyes to avoid the blinding glare.

  But Elisebet stepped away, protesting, “Tell me it isn’t true.”

  “Be still,” Sain-Mazzi hissed. “He was never in any danger! I gave you the tools you needed and you’ve blundered them all away.”

  “You viper! I trusted you and you struck at my very heart! At my son!” Elisebet’s cries rose up in escalating vituperation, until she half swooned into the arms of those nearby.

  Antuniet felt Sa
in-Mazzi’s eyes on her, glaring impotent fury. She left it unanswered.

  “The stone has spoken,” she intoned and loosed it from her fingers to douse the light.

  She turned back to the magistrate. “That is my testimony and the testimony of my hands. I leave judgment in yours.”

  A masterful performance, she thought. But how to extricate them all from the tangle now? And only the charge of conspiracy had been answered. There was still the matter of sorcery and her little charade had only strengthened that charge.

  The magistrate called for silence again, a harder task this time. He invited Princess Elisebet back into his chambers to calm and compose herself.

  When he emerged, he said, “The princess has considered this new evidence and withdraws the charge against Maisetra Chazillen, that she did bring harm to Aukustin Atilliet through sorcerous means.”

  Antuniet closed her eyes briefly and let out her breath. It had been a great gamble. Her reputation as a scientific alchemist would take long to recover, but she would have that time. She was still in a daze, waiting for some official release, when Jeanne took her by the hand and led her through the crowds, with Barbara and her armin elbowing a path through to the waiting carriage.

  It wasn’t until she was safe inside with the steps drawn up and the doors closed that Antuniet looked down at her hand where she still clenched the telltale stone, its warm glow again seeping between her fingers but with no direction now. “I…” she began. “I want…” And then she began weeping uncontrollably in relief.

  * * *

  They all let her be that first day back in Jeanne’s house. She drifted from room to room, marveling at the ordinariness of the birdsong in the back garden at dawn and the softness of the carpet underfoot, the way the steam rose from her cup as Jeanne silently poured the tea. It would take more than one day to believe in this again but there would be today and tomorrow and the next and the next.

  The next morning Barbara brought the outside world to her in the form of two pieces of gossip.

  “They say that Princess Annek and Dowager Princess Elisebet were seen entering the cathedral side by side yesterday and together asked for a Mass to be said in thanks for Aukustin’s recovery. And—” She paused to make sure her listeners noted the importance. “—this morning Efriturik and Aukustin were seen riding together out past the Port Ausiz. That’s quite a change in the weather, though I’m sure it was carefully calculated.”

  “And that’s your doing, Toneke,” Jeanne said, taking her hand, as she did now at every excuse.

  Antuniet began to shake her head.

  “No, don’t deny it,” Jeanne insisted. “Perhaps it was for your own ends, but the wall is broken now. With Sain-Mazzi gone…” Indeed, the dowager princess’s chief waiting woman had found foreign travel to be suddenly attractive, even with snow still deep on the highest passes.

  There was a second visitor just as luncheon was to be set: a messenger from the palace with word that Maisetra Chazillen was wanted at the palace workshop to discuss the future of her work.

  Antuniet turned to Jeanne at his departure and said, “Well, no doubt she’s having second thoughts about the advisability of a royal alchemist.” She waited for the old familiar terror to uncoil in her gut but she felt nothing. Not a numbness, but at least an absence of fear. Her belly contented itself with protesting the postponed meal. “I may need to find some other way to earn my keep. I suppose I could return to tutoring, though it’s unlikely to pay for ball gowns.”

  Jeanne forbore contradicting her. “Whatever comes, we’ll face it together. Hurry and change; best not to keep Her Grace waiting.”

  The workshop stood almost as she’d left it that day—how many weeks ago? The furnace gleaming, the jars of materiae set out in neat, orderly rows. Had Anna come ahead of them to tidy up? But no, she rose to greet them in a soft russet walking dress, not her working clothes. Antuniet allowed strict order to lapse for a moment when Anna ran to throw her arms around her, saying, “I wanted to come see you, but they wouldn’t let me. I knew you’d be all right.”

  “Then you had more faith in me than I did,” Antuniet said, returning a quick embrace before restoring dignity. “And who said you should be here? I thought I told you not to come until I sent word?”

  “She did,” Anna said, nodding toward the door.

  Antuniet turned to Jeanne in confusion. Surely she hadn’t known. But it was Annek who stood there in the doorway behind them, attended by a cloud of ladies and secretaries in more state than seemed necessary for the occasion.

  “You have shamed me,” Annek said with no other preamble. “I should have found a way to see you cleared. Instead, it is you who have cleared the shadow cast over my house. I have said it would take a miracle to reconcile my cousin to me. Alchemy, it seems, can work miracles as well as any mystery can. My cousin may never thank you, but I do. This shame, at least, can be removed and I will bear the consequence.”

  She signaled to the secretary standing behind her and he brought forward a document hung with ribbons and seals. He began to read. “Be it known that Antuniet Chazillen is enrolled among the nobility of Alpennia. This enrollment shall apply solely to Antuniet’s person and to the heirs of her body. And to preserve the Chazillen name, those heirs will keep her name and status regardless of whatever husband she may take.” The legal phrases continued rolling from his tongue but Antuniet’s ears no longer heard them.

  “You see,” Annek said as she passed the document over, “I restore the Chazillens through you alone. That saves my father’s word and my own honor. There should be land with an enrollment and that, I fear, I cannot offer. But all the rest is restored.”

  Antuniet stared at the parchment in her hand. Only after the crowd of attendants had swept out of the room in Annek’s wake did she realize she’d said no word of thanks, nor even curtseyed.

  It was done. She’d won. Estefen’s crime was washed away. No, not washed away; rather, it was finally buried with him. From this day on, whatever honor the family name might carry was in her hands alone. But family meant more now than a name inscribed on parchment.

  She looked up to see Jeanne and Anna gazing at her expectantly.

  “Well?” Jeanne said.

  Antuniet blurted out the first absurd thing that came to mind. “I’m hungry; we never did have luncheon. Shall we all go off to Café Chatuerd? Today, nothing but cake will do!”

  Bella Books, Inc.

  Women. Books. Even Better Together.

  P.O. Box 10543

  Tallahassee, FL 32302

  Phone: 800-729-4992

  www.bellabooks.com