“But are you well?”
“Quite. Only mortified that I misjudged so.”
“Jane.” Vincent tilted her head up. “You are bleeding.”
The room spun around her, but from long practice at keeping herself erect while doing glamour, Jane ignored the black specks that swarmed around her vision. “Not much, I presume, or you would be in more of a panic.”
A single, very thin scratch, lay below her right eye. She would not let herself think on what might have happened if the shard had been an inch higher. Nor would she let Vincent do so. As he tried to fuss over her, Jane pressed a cloth to the scratch until she was satisfied that the bleeding had ceased. “Shall we begin again?”
“I think we are done for the day.” Vincent stood, nodding to Mathieu.
“Nonsense. I know the bottom limit of cold now and will not cross it again. We are very close, my love.” Jane lowered the cloth and folded it neatly into a square. “Mathieu are you willing to … hazard another attempt?”
“Yes, madam.” He stood from the stool upon which he had been resting and went to his place by the furnace with remarkable steadiness.
“Jane, I cannot ask you to risk yourself in this way.”
“You are not asking, I am choosing.” Jane put her hands on her hips and spread her legs wide in a man’s stance. “We have work to do, and I want to see the results through.”
Vincent paused a moment and then shook his head. “All I ask is that you not tell your mother.”
Jane could well imagine her mother’s reaction. “I would not dream of it.”
They began again and, attention focused by the previous events, found that their next effort produced a sample which they thought might serve. As soon as it was free from the pole, Vincent took a fold of glamour and passed it into the glass ball.
With her vision extended into the ether, Jane watched the glamour fold and then fragment. The pattern, simple though it was, had too many small errors in it to produce the red cone. But the beginning of the path showed promise.
Vincent sighed. “Well, that is hopeful at any rate. The theory is sound, but the practice will take some doing.”
Mathieu narrowed his eyes, staring at the ball. “May I make a suggestion?”
“Of course.” Jane’s own head was worn out from trying to solve this riddle, and she was only too happy to hear someone else’s thoughts.
“This cone … I have been watching as you worked, and I think the pattern goes off because the glass expands as I blow. What if you made a sphere instead of a cone, so the shapes match?”
“That”—Vincent rubbed his hands together—“is a very good idea.”
“What about the Sphère Obscurcie?” Reinvigorated, Jane wondered how they had not thought of it before. Rather than start with beginning exercises, they should have sought folds that matched the medium. “It is a single fold, and designed to expand in a bubble.”
Nodding, Vincent took his place, rising up on his toes with enthusiasm.
As Mathieu dipped his pole into the crystal and blew the beginning of a sphere, Vincent wrapped the Sphère Obscurcie in the glass, making both it and the end of the pole invisible. He expanded the glamour so it passed over the group, bringing them within its sphere of influence. Jane quickly matched Vincent’s fold, twisting her cold threads around to add more definition to the channel in the glass. She nodded to him that it was complete.
Vincent released his hold on the glamour and Mathieu stepped away from them to remove the sphere from the pole. Jane gasped.
Despite the sunlight bathing the room, Mathieu was not visible. The glamour had lingered, leaving Mathieu invisible within the Sphère’s influence. Invisible while he was walking.
Jane clasped her hands, laughing in excitement. This was beyond what they had hoped, to have the glass work without glamour entering it. She and Vincent walked to the spot where they had last seen Mathieu.
As they passed within the Sphère Obscurcie, he popped into view, frowning as he tried to understand the excitement apparent on their faces. Of course, being in the centre of the Sphère, he had no way of knowing that for a few moments, he had been invisible. Vincent explained as best he could, and then Jane took Mathieu by the arm to lead him out of the Sphère.
When she turned him to face whence they had come, the boy’s jaw dropped. He stood gaping like a fish.
“This is a wonderful thing you have helped us with, Mathieu La Pierre.” Jane took him by the hands, and, in the French fashion, kissed him on both cheeks. “You have my undying gratitude.”
“And mine as well.” Vincent’s disembodied voice expressed firm approbation.
“Madame, monsieur, the pleasure is mine.” Mathieu mopped his brow with a handkerchief already soaked with sweat, while staring in wonder at the place where Vincent had been. He walked back into the Sphère and disappeared. “I should put it in the tempering chamber, before it cools too much.”
Jane, following, asked, “Why is that a danger?”
“If it is not tempered properly, it will be over-fragile, and chances are good it will crack from cooling too quickly.”
Jane’s hand went involuntarily to the scratch below her eye. “How long will this take?”
“Should be cool enough tomorrow or the next day.” He jerked a finger at the windows. “On account of the cold, we have to be more careful about getting it cooled down far enough.”
“I see.” Vincent rubbed his chin. “I had hoped to demonstrate it to Bruno tonight, but we can wait. Possibly.”
“Are you professing impatience?” Jane raised her eyebrows in a show of surprise.
Clearing his throat and pointedly ignoring her, Vincent arranged to have the crystal spheres packed for them to carry back to M. Chastain’s on the day following, while Jane changed back into her street clothes. As she stood in the relative cool of the storeroom, she felt all the fatigue of the day wash over her at once. She sagged against the wall as the room swam around her, and wished Anne-Marie were there to help her dress. The amount and complexity of the glamour might have been small, but the heat made her feel as if she had been working glamour for a lifetime. Regardless of how ill she felt, the effort seemed well worth it every time Jane reminded herself that the Sphère Obscurcie had worked.
Ten
Parade of Gilles
The effects from Jane’s over exertion at the glass factory extended into the following day. She woke the next morning feeling as if she had an ague, though she tried to hide it from Vincent. For the first time since their arrival, she counted herself fortunate that the Chastains did not take breakfast in the English fashion, as Jane could not manage more than a slice of dry toast.
She had overdone glamour before, but never coupled with the heat of a glass furnace. Despite her attempts to behave normally, her head spun so severely that when Vincent pressed her to return to her bed, she did not argue with him. She did, however, make him promise to wake her the moment he had retrieved the glass Sphère Obscurcie from M. La Pierre’s.
The sun was low in the sky when the sound of the apartment door awakened her. She pulled herself out of bed, feeling aches in every joint in her body. Her head throbbed yet, and even the low light pained her eyes. Still, Jane recognised the sound of Vincent’s tread in the room beyond, and hoped that he had been out fetching the glass Sphère. Pulling on her dressing gown, she secured the ties as she went into the outer room.
Vincent sat at his desk, writing, with the ball of glass on the table beside him. Both Vincent and the Sphère were in plain view. Jane’s heart sank for a moment before apprehending that it might be one of the balls that had failed. Vincent’s forehead had deep furrows running across it, and his pen scratched furious lines across the surface of his page.
Not wishing to disturb him, Jane quietly took her place behind his chair and laid her hands on his shoulders to rub some of the tension away. Vincent gave a muffled cry and rose half out of his seat, spattering ink across the page. “Jane! You have s
urprised me.”
“So I see.” Laughing, she reached for the blotter, her illness momentarily forgotten.
Vincent snatched it from her, blotting the ink from the page quickly and tucking it into his writing desk before it could fairly be dry. “Are you feeling better?”
“Thank you, I am. To whom are you writing?”
He compressed his lips at that and locked the writing desk, pushing it away from him on the table. “I am making notes for myself, though it has occurred to me to write to Herr Scholes.”
“One might almost think you were hiding something from me. You never locked your desk in London.” He coloured at that, and Jane, surprised at his self-consciousness, tried to tease it away. She shook her finger at him. “Have you taken a mistress, in the manner of the French?”
He laughed at that. The unease Jane thought she had seen vanished, and his countenance was open once more. “Rather, a distrust of servants. In London, I had no fear of those with whom they might share my letters.”
“And here?”
Vincent ran his hand through his hair and stopped with it tangled at the back of his head. “What do you see on my desk?”
Here at last was the chief source of her interest. “One of the glass balls we made yesterday.”
Nodding, he picked it up. “Specifically, this is the Sphère Obscurcie.”
And yet he and it had been perfectly in view when she entered the room. “Are you certain it was not exchanged for another?”
“The inclusions in the glass seem to be identical to those we created yesterday.” He held it out to her. “I do not wish you to exert yourself, but I trust your eye in such things better than I do my own.”
Pleased that he thought so highly of her discernment, Jane took the ball. It had more weight to it than she had supposed, and seemed to retain some warmth from the fire. To both her naked eye and her expanded view, the patterns in the glass seemed to match exactly those they had created.
“Do you think it needs the heat?”
“I had the same thought, but taking it nearer the furnace produced no effect.”
“Is that why it is warm?”
He nodded. Jane turned the glass over in her hand, the faint imperfections they had introduced catching the light. “Did you try glamour?”
“I did, but neither Mathieu nor I saw any result.” He shrugged. “I cannot account for it.”
She handed the ball back to him. “May I see?”
Walking a few steps away, Vincent folded a piece of glamour into the glass. It went in, swirled, and exited, but Vincent remained stubbornly in view. He might have faded a little, but it was nothing to what they had seen before.
She thought, though she was not certain, that the glamour was significantly diffused when it exited the sphere. Jane reached out to feel the folds on both sides of the glass, to ascertain by tactile sense the difference between the glamours.
A wave of nausea struck her within moments of touching the folds. She barely had time to withdraw her hand and stagger to the ash bin before she lost what little she had been able to eat that morning. Vincent tossed the glass ball on the wingback chair and hurried to her side, holding her shoulders till the worst violence of her illness had abated.
Jane’s shame at this weakness was acute. “Forgive me.”
“Forgive you? No, the fault is mine entire. I should know better than you the results of over-exertion.” Vincent helped her to her feet with gentle solicitude. “Let me tend you as you tended me.”
Jane laughed, but willingly leaned on him as he helped her back to bed. “If by that you mean that you will visit me but once and insult me while you are here, I think I might suggest a better course.”
“You saved my life once, Muse.” He tucked the counterpane around her and sat on the bed by her side. “Let me advise you to rest until you are recovered.”
“Considering the alternative, I hardly think I have a choice.” She lay her head back on the pillow, closing her eyes against the too-bright light. “Perhaps, given that the sphere worked while still glowing from the forge, it needs folds of light and heat.”
“Hush.” Vincent’s hand stroked her brow, soothing the headache that plagued her. “We can think on it tomorrow, or the day after that. For now, I want you to rest.”
Though Jane thought that her curiosity would outweigh her fatigue, she soon proved herself wrong and fell asleep.
* * *
The next day was not much better. As soon as Jane sat up, she felt as though she were on a heaving ship, though their crossing on the Dolphin had given her no such intimations of seasickness.
Vincent brought a cold compress to her. “This will help.”
“I am perfectly well.”
“And yet, I do not believe you.” Vincent pressed a hand to her forehead, frowning. “I should have insisted that we leave the factory when I saw you were tired.”
“It was a trifling amount of glamour.” That very fact made her irritable, that she should so misjudge her strength. It was true that cold weaves were significantly more taxing than visual glamours, but it had been a single thin fold. “Truly, love, it was only the heat that undid me.”
Despite her insistence that she was well, when she asked the following day to return to the glass factory, Vincent found himself occupied, and again on the day following. Somehow, he managed to fill a week with errands which he must perforce do on his own, leaving Jane to her rooms with nothing more to do than practice French with Anne-Marie. Jane suspected that these errands were all inventions to delay their return to the glass factory. She resented the coddling, but had to admit that the effects of the glamour still made themselves felt. What she most feared was that Vincent would take this episode too much to heart and hesitate to engage her assistance on future projects.
Nearly a week passed in this manner before Jane felt well enough to insist that she had recovered. “I should like to return to the glass factory today.”
Vincent winced, which Jane felt as a reprobation. “Forgive me, Muse. I promised Bruno that I would take a turn in the laboratory with his students. He and Mme Chastain have an excursion planned with the children.”
“Shall I assist you?”
By his hesitation and the manner in which his shoulders rose toward his ears, Jane knew that he was going to say that he did not require any assistance, but not out of deference to her health. “Perhaps another day.”
Before Jane could assert her health further, Anne-Marie arrived with a smile on her face. They were, by this point, conversing entirely in French, which did give Jane some measure of satisfaction. “Madame! Monsieur! You must quit these confines and allow me to take you on an excursion.”
“An excursion?”
“Today is the annual Gilles parade. The entire town will be there. It should be great fun.”
“I am afraid my time is committed already, but Jane, you should go.” Vincent kissed her hand with such tenderness that she could not resent him. “The air will do you good.”
Jane squeezed his hand in return. “Very well. But tomorrow, we return to the glass factory.”
“If you are well.”
“I am quite, quite well,” Jane said, with more heat than she intended. “Thank you.”
Anne-Marie cleared her throat. “Mme Chastain has already left with the children, but if we hurry, we may catch them.”
Reluctantly agreeing, Jane followed Anne-Marie into the streets of Binché. The normally quiet village was filled with people walking toward the centre of town. Banners hung from windows in brilliant reds and yellows, with occasional tricolours marking a supporter of the Bonapartes.
As they neared the centre of town, Jane began to hear music of a jolly bouncing sort. They rounded a corner and the cross street at the end was lined with people, all staring to their right. Anne-Marie caught hold of Jane’s hand and pulled her through the crowd to the front row.
Marching toward them came row upon row of men dressed in nearly identical cos
tumes, bright yellow shirts and pantaloons, striped with red and green. Each man had an enormous collar of lace, and a padded hump and belly. They all wore wax masks with spectacles and curling moustaches.
Most remarkable though, were the dragons that hung in the air above them. The dragons themselves were simple folk constructions, rendered with broad strokes of glamour. What astonished Jane was that the dragons travelled with the parade of men.
She let her vision dissolve into the ether, focusing first on the Gilles, in an attempt to understand how they were managing the folds while marching. Upon examination, she traced the threads governing the dragons to the women who lined the street. They passed the folds one to the next, so that no woman had to maintain the folds for more than a minute or so. But letting her attention expand into the ether made Jane queasy, so she dropped her focus back to the physical plane, glad that Vincent was not there to witness her discomfort.
“What are Gilles?” She leaned over to Anne-Marie and had to fairly shout in her ear to be heard.
“I do not know, unfortunately. I only came to Binché last July. I think they ward off evil spirits, or some such thing. Whatever they do, my friend says they have been doing it for hundreds of years.” Anne-Marie pointed as one of the Gilles threw an orange into the crowd. The dragon overhead made a show of snapping at it, and the orange passed ineffectually through its intangible jaws. The crowd screamed with laughter, jostling each other in their attempts to catch the fruit. As they marched, each Gilles threw oranges to the crowd from a seemingly endless supply.
When the Gilles passed in front of the spot where Jane and Anne-Marie stood, the crowd scrambled for the oranges and pressed the ladies forward. Jane struggled to keep her footing, seeing a similar alarm on Anne-Marie’s face. An orange soared overhead and the crowd surged back as people reached up to catch the fruit.
Despite her earlier protestations, Jane felt not at all well. The press and the noise of the crowd brought back the unease in her stomach and made her head spin. “I think I should like to go now.”
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