by J. Jay Kamp
* * *
She sat in the carriage, listening to the jingle of the harnesses as the horses fidgeted, for twelve whole minutes.
When Christian finally sauntered down the courtyard steps, Ravenna held her breath at the sight of him. What would she see when he turned his eyes to hers? The remnants of his abysmal need, his compulsion of the night before?
Pain, that’s what she saw, and it showed itself in a thousand different ways, in his bitter glances, the way his thin hands hesitated at the carriage door before he stepped inside. His double-breasted frock coat, royal blue with silver buttons, looked rich and vibrant in the evening light as he took his seat stiffly beside her. The air sweetened with the scent of his perfume. The sunshine reflected off his cut-steel shoe buckles and scattered across the leather walls, but no matter how gorgeous he looked, however dignified he presented himself, he was still a mess. Nothing had changed from the night before. He was better dressed, yes, but the madness hadn’t faded from his eyes in the least.
As their carriage rolled out into the thick of Charing Cross, Christian said nothing. Nor did Ravenna. Hackney coaches, sedan chairs, arrogant gentlemen on well-bred ponies, the clatter of it all would have drowned their uncomfortable words anyway. Not that they had the time to speak, because in two or three minutes they arrived at the theater.
Even before their man had opened the carriage door, Ravenna heard music. The opera had begun. It made her numb to hear that orchestra, and as Christian stepped down and held out his hand for her, she reeled from the sound of a soprano drifting through the theater doors. Ignoring Christian’s sharp orders to the coachman, she squinted her eyes. She tried to read the last remaining bill posted near the corner of the building, barely noticing how Christian still held her hand, for the one thing on her mind was the lettering on that bill; faded by yesterday’s rain, she could just make it out in the seconds before the workman tore it down.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, it read.
Just like that, the pain that waited always in her buried heart fought its way quickly to the surface. Christian led her brusquely toward the theater doors, and all through the muslin-wrapped, aristocratic women, all through the fops, her melancholy blossomed with the thought—Mozart! Why must it be Mozart?
But Christian hauled her into the theater’s darkness as if he were on a mission from God and the louder the music swelled, the more Ravenna resisted his strength. Her feet dragged. Her free hand trailed against walls, against banister posts, and still Christian lunged on, calling for an usher to lead them to their seats while a perfect tenor voice pursued them through the corridor.
When the usher turned at the curtained door and pressed a copy of the libretto into Christian’s hand, her suspicions were confirmed. Don Giovanni, that’s what it was.
Grand and unbearable, Mozart’s opera had the effect of a bludgeoning on Ravenna’s senses. Christian pushed her into the box, and she lost all notion of what was expected of her. A thin, golden light fell from the chandeliers. An ocean of silks and powdered hair lay below. Every English face was turned toward the set, a backdrop of trompe l’oeil imitating a lush garden courtyard, while on the stage stood Doña Anna and Don Ottavio lamenting the murder of Anna’s father. Stricken with shock, Anna wanted only to die with her father. As she lifted her voice in grief, Don Ottavio matched her every note, as if he’d follow her willingly to prove his love, even if her only wish were death.
Overwhelmed by it, Ravenna was startled when Christian yanked her backwards, forced her down into a chair. Their eyes met for an instant. His were every bit as black as last night’s kiss, and when he sat down beside her, draped his arm across her shoulder, it was a statement of ownership, both to her and to the world.
She held perfectly still beneath it. She didn’t squirm, didn’t struggle. She didn’t even resist when he eventually worked up the nerve to let his finger travel up the nape of her neck. Listen to the music, she told herself, and with some effort, she focused instead on Don Giovanni’s baritone notes. He sang in Italian, but she understood his story. Giovanni had been the one to murder Anna’s father; having first seduced Anna in a cloaked disguise, Giovanni had then killed her father, the Don’s identity protected by his mask.
Next to Ravenna, Christian was busy. While the opera went on, he explained loudly to a crude-looking youth that he hadn’t been well since Vancouver’s voyage, that the American climate had ruined his health. The youth was quick to shake his head in pity, but Ravenna ignored them, concentrated instead on Anna’s plight as she sang with Don Giovanni—how could Anna guess that her father’s cloaked attacker had been the cavalier Giovanni himself?
For in her presence, Giovanni showed no remorse for the murder. Nothing about him betrayed the pain he’d caused Anna or the life he’d taken. Thus Anna ignorantly begged Giovanni for help in tracing her father’s killer. Unshaken, sure of himself to a fault, Giovanni sang but Ravenna couldn’t hear his words; that ugly young man was talking about billiards.
Go away, she thought. Take Christian with you and leave me to my music, this awful, stirring music. And Anna, not knowing the snake Giovanni was, declared him a noble and gallant man.
Giovanni didn’t argue. He swore his blood, his sword and wealth in support of her efforts to avenge her father. He never let on that he himself had delivered the fatal wound, that he’d murdered the object of her measureless grief and watched the body grow cold, the way Paul’s had grown cold, the way Paul had died on that distant river.
By the end of the first act, the intricacies of this plot didn’t matter to Ravenna any more, only the music, this powerful music. She let her mind wander, let that aching run rampant as she gazed bleary-eyed at the women in the floor seats. From behind their flippant fans they pointed up at Christian. It made Ravenna sick, to see these women shun the attentions of the men already at their sides, wasting what love they already possessed…and for what? Christian, for God’s sake. In a blaze of chorus the scene finished with Anna realizing the truth, that Don Giovanni had deceived her and had been her father’s killer all along, but Ravenna was busy staring at those women. Here they were, sitting at the opera with their husbands, rich and healthy and basking in adoration, and what did they do with such good fortune? Could they even imagine how it felt to lose such love as they obviously took for granted?
Without even trying, she saw Paul’s face, saw his eyes narrowed with love in a theater like this. I’ve wasted so much, she thought, remembering that other, long ago opera. If only I’d kissed you that night in the theater, how much more time we would have had.
Catching herself, she sniffed before the pain became too great, brought her hand up to wipe at her eyes.
Christian stirred beside her.
She tensed. The memory of Christian’s cutting grasp edged at her mind. Did he know she’d been crying? Would he dare to threaten her within sight of his peers?
Yet when she turned to see what expression of disgust sat upon his embittered face, she found something entirely different.
He wasn’t looking at her. Bent over the last page of the libretto, he mouthed the lines of the final Commendatore scene, his teeth clenching down on every word. Below, Anna and Ottavio invoked the thunder of revenge that would strike Don Giovanni down, and seeing this musical assault against the Don, Christian shuddered. He gripped the libretto in his gracile hands as if it were his damnation, an omen sent from God to confirm his worst fears. Swallowing hard, he drew in a heavy breath and under the music, Ravenna barely heard his accusing words. “You will do the same,” he said, and turning toward her, his eyes darkened.
“What are you talking about?”
“Hell,” he said. “It will be your loathing which consigns me to the flames of hell.”
The orchestra punched the final notes of the first act, the curtains fell, and Christian sat calmly regarding her. Craven hatred shone in his stare. He was losing it again, she could see it. Whatever meaning he’d discovered in the opera had fueled his smolde
ring from last night’s madness.
“You’re not going to hell,” she said carefully, fingering Paul’s silver watch in her pocket.
“Oh yes, I’ve got it wrong. It’s the future for me, isn’t it? Another round of all this…this blissful, enviable life I have, but in the twentieth century?” Christian snorted. “At least I’ll get Wolvesfield. At least I’ll get the marquessate and James’s money, even James’s unborn children’s money to squander and waste as I please, and I’ll serve my penance as myself one of James’s disgusting, righteous spawn.”
“Christian, I meant—”
“Maybe I’ll set fire to it all,” he continued fiercely. “House, furniture, diary, everything that might remind me of you, once I’ve recalled who I really am. Wouldn’t you, if you discovered your soul had been mine?”
His voice rose, and around them, gentlemen everywhere leaned back in their seats and whispered to their wives. Behind fans and librettos, their fashionably pallid faces snickered as Ravenna pressed Christian to calm himself. “You weren’t supposed to find out about the future. You shouldn’t have overheard those things about David.”
“And why not?” he asked. “I’m sure you told James what he could expect.”
“James doesn’t have a life in the future.”
“So it’s a privilege reserved only for the damned? Is that the nature of hell, to live it all again? And where will you be, Beloved? You’ll be here. While your memory ruins my life not once but twice, you’ll be swooning under the Paddy’s boorish, incompetent love, waiting for death to kill me off—”
“What’s all this about death, Launceston?”
The two looked up. A man stood behind them, just outside the box’s curtains with only his head poking through.
Beside her, Christian choked. “Edmund,” he said, but that was all he could get out. Malice, complaint, he forgot everything in the face of the smiling, squinty-eyed gentleman behind them.
“Oh, come now, you can’t forfeit,” the man said. “You’ve only returned to the neighborhood, and you know I’ve not had my chance to part you from your money.”
“Edmund Thornton,” Christian repeated clumsily, giving Ravenna a warning glance. Getting to his feet, he faced the stranger. “I didn’t…I’d no idea you were back.”
“Well, I couldn’t help noticing you, Launceston.” Taking Ravenna’s hand, the man bent to kiss it. “And your lovely cousin Lady Elizabeth. I hear your brother’s writing a paper about Indians. He’ll have no trouble getting published, I’ll wager.”
“I hope not,” Ravenna said. Whether out of jealousy or manners, Christian took her hand from the man then, helped her to stand in the most gracious way.
“And what about you?” The man turned to Christian “Banks won’t even speak your name, something about a mistake in sending you on the voyage. If you’ve a treatise for the old tyrant, you’d better not count on a fair reading, because I’ve heard tell that—”
He stopped, turned toward the passage behind him. “Ah, here they come,” he said, holding the curtain back. “I beg your pardon, but I’ve some friends with me from Salzburg and they insisted on seeing this Mozart thing. Wouldn’t leave the box until the bastards quit singing. Here we are, my friends. Come and meet Lord Launceston and his bride.”
But when the first of Edmund’s visitors walked through the door, Ravenna’s heart stopped.
His friend had no freckles, no Irish brogue. He wore no silver at his ear, but that hardly mattered as he introduced himself, for Ravenna’s legs weakened. Her pulse raced madly, and she couldn’t stop herself from shivering, whispering, my love, oh God you look like Paul.
Thick of build, Edmund’s visitor had slender hips and a wrestler’s arms. His brown hair, darkened by the faintest shade of auburn, was brushed back and tied in a silk bag. Dizzying to look at, that color, and how she missed the sight, the feel of it under her stroking hands. Her heart beat quicker at the way his pale and hard-bitten features appraised her serenely, at the cleft in his square jaw, his angular cheeks and his liquid eyes, blue as Chinese porcelain.
Ravenna’s head lightened and whirled. Paul’s watch, poised at the edge of her pocket, fell to the floor at the man’s feet, but she couldn’t look away from those familiar eyes, so similar to her love’s. Miss you, how I miss you, she cried, and trembling viciously, enraptured by that face she had so longed to see, she gave in completely as the darkness swept over her.