by Nancy Morse
“Do you think—?”
“I think it would be unwise to say any more,” she interrupted. “It’s better that we part as friends than…whatever the alternative might be.”
“Of course, you’re right. And I’m greatly relieved that you harbor no ill will toward me. We might even see each other socially on occasion. Perhaps you would join me for coffee at Mrs. Rochford’s Saturday afternoon? As friends,” he hastened to add.
Was it her imagination, or did he seem just a trifle too eager to renew their companionship? Something about it troubled her, but she could not put her finger on it.
“I’m attending a concert at Vauxhall Gardens Saturday evening.” Pru was relieved that the truth spared her from a lie. “There are things I must tend to during the day.”
“I see,” he said stiffly. “Is that the concert at which your father was going to perform before he took ill?”
“Yes. One of his pupils will be taking his place. He will be performing a rhapsody co-written with Papa. But then, you’ve never been much interested in music, have you?”
His mouth tightened. “No, I haven’t.”
“That’s a pity,” she said. “He’s quite remarkable.”
“I shall have to meet him some time.”
Pru’s pulse quickened. “That’s not possible,” she said, a little too quickly. “He’s very private, and busy, and impossibly shy around strangers.” It was not a complete lie, she reasoned, but far from the truth.
An uncomfortable silence settled over the room.
“I believe we have a mutual friend,” Edmund said at last, breaking the static tension in the air.
“Oh? Who would that be?”
“Simon Cavendish.”
Pru’s lips compressed into a thin line as her calm deserted her. Had Edmund’s apprentice betrayed her confidence? His stare unnerved her. Why was he looking at her like that?
“I take it the elixir he gave you has not worked.”
Inwardly, Pru blanched. So, he had learned of it from the alchemist himself. What else did he know? She took a deep breath. “Papa’s fate is in God’s hands now.”
She watched his face carefully, searching for a sign that he knew her secret, noting the little quivers of tension that flitted across his features. She stood straight despite her wariness and hoped her thoughts did not show.
Her boned stays were feeling impossibly tight, restricting her breath. In an attempt to keep her voice as level as possible, she asked, “Did he mention anything else?”
“No. What else would there be?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all. I was upset that day, about Papa, you understand.”
“Of course I understand. And I would like nothing more than to help you, if you will permit me. Getting out will do you some good. Do say you will join me, if not Saturday then another day soon. Trust me, Prudence. I have only your best interests in mind.”
Pru’s formerly stalwart sensibilities had taken on a feral quality, like those of a forest creature that senses a danger it cannot see. And then it came to her, the thing about him that she’d been unable to define. He was lying. She saw it in the way he grasped his earlobe as he spoke to her and how his hands, ordinarily so animated, had gone suddenly still. Her skin grew clammy beneath her smock and a small voice at the back of her mind cautioned her to be wary.
“You’re very kind, Edmund, but I don’t think that will be necessary.”
He lifted an iridescent glass inkwell from the desk, ran his fingers over the brass inlay and placed it back down. “Then it appears we have nothing further to say to each other.”
It was only after she had walked him to the door and closed it behind him that Pru let the air trapped in her lungs out in one long, low whoosh of relief.
“I do hope you had the good sense to reconcile with that young man.”
Pru rolled her eyes at the sound of her aunt’s voice. She was in no mood for reproaches. Turning, she saw her aunt gliding down the narrow staircase in a swish of Spitalfields silk. In a deep blue mantua with a closed petticoat and open-fronted bodice she managed to look wellborn despite their middling class. The rouge she had daubed on her cheeks made a pleasing contrast to her pale, powdered face. She paused at the mirror at the base of the stairs to admire herself.
“Fashion must be obeyed,” Vivienne said, patting the complicated style into which she had arranged her hair. “I allow myself the hot tongs and white powder, but I draw the line at having my hair larded. I prefer to catch the attention of men, not hungry mice.”
“Going out, Aunt?” Pru ventured.
“Of course. I’ve met the most delightful gentleman. We are dining out and then we are going to his house. He plays a marvelous game of dominoes.”
Dominoes, indeed! Pru was tempted to say, but held her tongue.
The lace at her elbows fluttered when Vivienne flicked open her paper fan and waved it before her face. “So? Have you?”
“Have I what?”
“Reconciled with him?”
“I have not.”
“Prudence—”
“Aunt, please. You rule your life. I rule mine.”
Vivienne frowned. “Very well,” she said tersely, “but if you will not commit yourself to a proper marriage, then do not consign yourself to a life void of love.”
Pru’s temper flared. “You call it love? Falling into the beds of men you hardly know?”
“Love. Pleasure. It’s all the same thing. If you are waiting for one true love, I’m afraid you are going to be much disappointed.”
Pru met her aunt’s gaze without flinching. “I wish you joy with whomever you choose to couple with. I will know my one true love when he comes.”
With a dismissive laugh, Vivienne said, “How can you know the one when you have not tested others? By what will you compare him to? Men place a high premium on virginity, but I assure you, it is much overrated. Men will even overlook the absence of it when properly pleased.”
Pru face suffused with anger. “We are made of different stuff, you and me.”
“You refuse to take that which is rightfully yours?” Vivienne demanded, her eyes flashing with fire. “To go the way of all womankind?”
It’s not true, Pru wanted to cry. She knew about the pleasures of the flesh. She’d been taught by a master. She bit her lip to keep from shouting the truth and looked questioningly at her aunt. “All womankind? You sound like something from the dark ages.” She could not keep the caustic tone out of her voice.
“You think that much as changed since then?” Vivienne laughed harshly. “Men like to think of themselves as the superior sex, but let me tell you, Prudence, since the time when the earth was young it has always been women who ruled.”
Pru stood transfixed. More and more these days her aunt’s changeable moods were becoming erratic. Her eyes were sweet and loving one moment, wild with undisguised vehemence the next. “Despite the sheer numbers of your lovers, it is obvious that you are not happy here. Perhaps it is time for you to return to Paris. Excuse me. I must see to Papa. Enjoy your evening.”
“Oh, I shall. And Prudence, you mustn’t mind me. Women go through, what shall I call it, changes, when they reach a certain age. It’s nothing more than that, I assure you. Good night, dear.”
Despite the coo in her aunt’s voice, Pru noticed that the fury had not dimmed from her eyes and was glad when the door closed behind her.
***
A figure lurked in the shadows, eyes glowing with an unearthly fire.
Goddess, Mother, how long must I endure this suffering? Why am I judged by the morals of mortals? When will you free me from this worthless shell and restore me to myself?
The rain that had been coming down in fits and starts all day was now coming down in earnest, running over her face and soaking her to her flesh. The slow, plodding hoof beats of time carried her back, far, far back to a place almost beyond memory, to another rain-soaked night, to the smell of sputtering torches and the wet fur of t
he howling dogs that chased her through the woods. The wagons and drays that made such a hideous sound on London’s cobbled streets could not drown out the sound of her own screams tearing from her throat and the cries of “Death to the witch,” that still rattled in her brain.
She had inherited her mother’s spirit of enchantment and for that she’d been branded a witch. But it was for taking her pleasure with a girl that she had been sacrificed that terrible night so long ago. Worse than the blood ritual with its offerings of herbs, mead and cakes was the music. The ollamh re ceol, the master musician, playing his harp to lure her toward the forest where the others awaited. And then the same notes played over and over again as she lie writhing on the stone altar, the keening, the death song, resounding in her brain even now, a thousand lifetimes later. Gods above, how she hated music, all music.
Her fiery eyes strayed to the candlelit windows of the house in Folgate Street. At least the old man was not still making his infernal music. She’d seen to that. But she was not finished with him yet. She would make him pay with his mortal life for the life that had been stolen from her. A life for a life. She could have taken him in the blink of an eye, but that would have been too easy, and certainly no fun for her. Like a cat she toyed with her victims, slapping them between her paws, back and forth, back and forth, until there was no more life left in them. The old music master was merely the latest in a long line of playthings to meet their doom at the hands of her wicked vengeance.
Through a thousand lifetimes of regret and despair she had wrecked havoc on all who crossed her path, leaving a swath of destruction in her wake. When she was finished with the old man, she would move on to another. Who knew? Perhaps that simpering daughter of his would be next. With that thought in mind, a savage sense of triumph swept through Lienore as she hurried off into the rain-soaked night.
CHAPTER 15
“You go on ahead, dear. I see an old friend I want to say hello to.”
Pru glanced in the direction her aunt was gazing. Across the crowded walk a man was smiling back. He was tall, handsomely dressed, and impossibly young. Another of her aunt’s many lovers, she supposed, as she watched Vivienne glide away. It was not likely she would see her aunt for the rest of the evening, but that was all right. She had brought Vivienne along only because Papa had insisted on it, but knowing her dislike of music in general and of Nicolae in particular, it was just as well that she amused herself with her young lover.
At the gate Pru delved into her pocket, paid the one guinea admission to the tea garden and entered an enchanted world laid out into avenues and covered walkways where crowds of people strolled up and down. The walks were lined with tents in which wine and snuff and almost anything else was sold at very dear prices. Fountains splashed, colored lights glittered in the twilight, and ladies walked unaccompanied dressed in their finest gowns with gold watches hung around their necks.
Before her was a grove from whose treetops sang a choir of birds and spreads of flowers gave the place a wild, untouched look, their magical fragrance in the air all but obliterating the smell of the oil lamps. Passing through a triumphal arch she came upon a statue of Handel. Beyond it, illuminated with the luster of crystal glass, stood the orchestra.
Pru’s heart gave a thump in her chest, not only for the elegance of its decoration, but for the thought that in a short time Nicolae’s music would stream forth into the garden and fill the spring air with its unparalleled beauty.
She found a seat in the second row where she would have ample view of the musicians. But there was really only one musician she wanted to see and hear. Flicking open her fan, she fluttered it before her face while she waited.
Members of the orchestra walked on stage and took their seats. As if on cue, hundreds of candles enclosed in crystal glasses were lit. The air was still and sweetly scented with the fragrance of the gardens’ flowers. A little breeze fanned the leaves as the orchestra began to play one of Handel’s cantatas. Pru smiled. She could just hear Papa complaining that Handel adapted his style to satisfy the public because, although he ran his own company in London, he constantly struggled to turn a profit.
From there, the music progressed to an oratorio and finally to a moving concerto for viola and orchestra. It was a quiet, graceful piece, and after the viola's last trill, the work drifted off into peaceful nothingness.
The musicians stood and bowed to an appreciating audience, and then took their seats again. The crowd settled down and the musicians grew quiet in their places. Pru’s pulse began to race with expectation. Her eyes grew bright and dazzled, her head giddy when a tall, slender figure stepped onto the stage and seated himself behind his beautiful gilded instrument.
The concerto opened with a dramatic flourish, the solos alternating between the violoncello and the viola, the main theme passing back and forth between the two instruments, the viola presenting a light-hearted, lyrical section followed by the noble and stately undertones of the violoncello. In Nicolae’s hands the instrument virtually sang, sweet and nostalgic one moment, dark and menacing the next. How like the man himself, Pru could not help but think.
The piece closed to thunderous applauds.
This time Nicolae stood up with the rest of the orchestra and bowed deeply from the waist. His gaze pierced the candlelit dusk as it searched the faces in the audience. Pru sucked in her breath when those penetrating green eyes found her in the crowd and lingered on her face for a moment. He smiled, a simple uplifting of the corners of his lips, as if some secret existed between them, and then turned away to take his seat again. It was brief, an instant really, but it filled her with a pleasure that was both sweet and fierce, a heartrending reminder of the intimacies they had shared flooding her face with color. The fan fluttered rapidly now.
She tried not to dwell on those memories, of the bruising pleasure he had given her, of his warm, wine-scented whisper against her mouth, of his voice silky soft and smooth telling her she was beautiful, of the cold press of his palm against her hot flesh. When she recognized the opening notes of Bach’s Suite Number One for unaccompanied violoncello, she struggled to push the unsettling thoughts aside and concentrate solely on the music.
This was the piece her papa had instructed her to work with Nicolae on, not that Nicolae needed any guidance from her when it came to music, unlike she who had needed guidance from him when it came to lovemaking. Was there no way her thoughts could turn that did not lead back to that flood of dark hunger he had unleashed in her? That little smile on his lips when he spotted her in the audience seemed to suggest that he could read her thoughts. Was that one of his powers? Did he know how much she wanted to tell him about the true nature of the soul and hope for its reclamation? Could he guess at all the questions she had that begged to be answered, like why he had not shown up for his final lesson, and if it was because of anything she had done? But as she sat beneath the flickering light of a thousand candles, the questions fled from her mind as the music took control.
And then, the moment arrived for which she had been waiting. The tempo of the Bach Suite slowed until it became almost stagnant. A faint rustle of whisperings and uncertainty sifted through the crowd. The audience was confused by what they were hearing. Until he sounded the first note of her papa’s composition, and then an expectant silence passed over the crowd. Even the birds in the treetops ceased chirping, as if they, too, felt that something magical was about to happen.
Pru quickened like lightning as the first notes filled the air. It felt as if she were hearing the piece for the first time. She closed her eyes to its rhapsodic beauty as its passion and yearning infiltrated her blood and spread through her being like a forceful seduction from which there is no escape except to yield. With its blistering energy and anguished tones, the piece moved like an ocean tide. To her papa’s prayerful, meditative notes, Nicolae added his own broad, expansive tempos and introspection in a work of technical brilliance and impeccable communication, leaving her breathless. The intimacy of the
piece made it feel as if they were alone in the world, just the two of them, secreted in the garret room of his house in Hanover Square, and that he was playing it only for her. She closed her eyes, drinking in the music, every nerve swaying in time to the tempo. Like a dark lover it carried her far from this place of fragrant flowers and lustrous candlelight to a bed draped in billowing hangings of silk and lace.
He played with his eyes closed, hugging the instrument against the long line of his body, the sunset playing across the dark hair that fell onto his brow. His features were harshly etched in the angled light that fell across his face. Anguish and despair radiated from him like a beacon of light warning ships to stay far out to sea lest they venture too close and crash against the perilous, jagged shoreline that was his life.
Up, up, the music lifted her, like a feather borne aloft by the wind to heights scarcely imaginable, where she tossed and tumbled and floated on the glorious currents that streamed from the violoncello. Caught up in the rapture, she was unaware that the bow had slid across the strings for the final heartrending note, until she heard the audience erupt into deafening applauds.
She opened her eyes, and through her tears, she saw Nicolae rise from behind his instrument and walk to the edge of the stage. Dark locks tumbled into his eyes as he bowed deeply. In the lingering light he removed his violoncello from its endpin and placed it in its velvet-lined case. With nary a glance back at the audience, he strode from the stage and disappeared behind its curtain. As the orchestra began another piece, Pru jumped up from her seat and hurried from the row.
***
Tree by tree, the twilight gave way to night, until the moon glimmered through the tangled branches and the lights in the glasses twinkled like stars spread across the sky.
Nicolae handed the case off to his manservant. “Take it home,” he brusquely ordered. “Put it in the garret room.”
For the first time in his monstrously long life, he could not wait to get the instrument out of his sight. Those fools had no real idea of what they were hearing or from whence came the tortured emotion behind the piece. My God, he thought, if only they knew for whom…or for what…they were applauding, they would stampede out of here so fast they would trample themselves to death in the process. And what a bloodbath that would be, he grimly mused.