“That one was so sad,” Pietro said, the following afternoon. Uncharacteristically, he had joined Carolina in the music room when he heard the old man playing. “Don’t you have something more lively?”
In response, the old musician launched into a furious composition that raced from the top of his cello’s range to the bottom, where it turned and skipped lightly back up the chords to a great height. It hung there for a moment, as if pausing to take in everything it could see from that vantage, then found a narrow path between the high rocks, and wandered thoughtfully along it.
“I’m not sure that’s what I meant,” Pietro muttered, shifting in discomfort on the divan beside Carolina. She had been curled up in the sweep of the divan’s single wing before he came in, so all his bulk was balanced awkwardly on the tail of the couch, where her feet were meant to drape. At that point, the back of the couch dropped away, leaving him nothing to rest against.
“He doesn’t like it when you call the music sad,” Carolina whispered.
When the song drew to a close, Pietro rose, applauding loudly. “Bravo! Bravo!” he said. “Beautiful! I think we are done for this afternoon. Thank you!”
Carolina sat up, frowned, and waited for the sound of Pietro’s footsteps to leave the room so that she could tell the old man to continue. But Pietro remained rooted beside the divan. After a moment, the old man’s chair slid along the wood. His instrument thumped hollowly as he began to pack away his things.
“But he only played two songs,” Carolina protested. “I listen for hours.”
Pietro didn’t answer.
Fear pricked the back of Carolina’s neck. She folded her hands in her lap.
The old man swept his music from the stand. His bow clattered in the lid of the case. The fasteners snapped shut. Then he began to turn it on its end.
“Here, let me—” Pietro began, alarmed. Then: “Well, look at that!” He laughed. “I wouldn’t have known you had that in you, old man!”
“Good afternoon to you both,” the old musician said, and rolled his instrument from the room.
Pietro reclaimed his awkward seat at the foot of the divan and took Carolina’s hand. He didn’t speak.
Blood rushed from all corners of Carolina’s body to her heart, which sent it flying back out again. Her chest and face burned. Her hands were frozen. “Pietro—” she began.
“No!” he said, his voice thick with some deep emotion.
Carolina sank into silence.
Pietro collected her other hand, pressed her palms together, and cupped them both gently in his own, like a boy trying to carry a captured butterfly home.
“Carolina,” he said, as quietly as she had ever heard him speak. “I have not been true to you.”
“True?” she repeated.
“Faithful,” he said, his voice rising slightly, as if surprised by the sound of the words he must use to confess. “I have—with Liza,” he finished.
Carolina’s mind made several false starts. Then darkness began to pour into the room from every window, sweeping away the tables, the rugs, the piano. She took her hands from his.
“How dare you?” she said, very low.
“I thought you knew,” Pietro said, as if trying to work out a math problem aloud. “You caught me in the hall that night. And you asked me about the perfume I gave to her.”
When Carolina didn’t speak, he plunged on. “She’s just a girl,” he said. “A foolish thing.”
“I know what kind of girl she is!” Carolina said, rising.
Pietro bowed his head against her belly. “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice breaking.
Carolina lifted his face to meet the gaze of her blind eyes. Whatever the effect was, it startled him to silence.
“Would you have told me this if I could see?” she asked.
His chin turned in her hand. She held his face steady.
“I am your wife, not your priest,” she said. “I don’t want your pity.”
She walked precisely through the maze of furniture, out of the room.
Upstairs, she didn’t hesitate.
She rang immediately for a servant. Then she went to Turri’s machine and tapped out a message: I’ll leave with you tonight. Below, she set the time and place, two in the morning, the lake house.
“Here I am,” Giovanni said.
Carolina pulled the paper from the writing machine and folded it.
“You will take this to Signor Turri at once,” she said, extending it to him. “If you have any other tasks, make another boy do them.”
“I will be back before they know I am gone,” Giovanni promised.
“Good,” Carolina said. “Thank you.”
Still, Giovanni hesitated. “But you haven’t sealed it,” he said.
“That doesn’t matter now,” she told him.
She waited out the day in a seat by the window, her heart numb and her mind gone still, not through any effort of her own, but like a machine stopped by a shock. Still, her remaining senses worked. She heard the anniversary clock measure each fraction of the hours, and when it chimed twelve, she rose, found her cloak, and fastened it at her throat.
As she passed, she brushed her fingers over the double rows of keys on Turri’s machine. They were cool to the touch, as if the moon’s light actually leached heat from them, instead of warming them like the sun. The machine contained no paper, but she tapped a few stray letters on the familiar keys. Then she turned and went out.
The footsteps must have been waiting outside her door.
Halfway down the stairs, they started after her, following close. At the foot of the staircase, instead of crossing to the door, Carolina doubled back down the long hall. The footsteps followed, along with the faintest trace of perfume.
Carolina whirled where she stood.
“Liza,” she said.
The footsteps stopped.
Carolina lunged forward and caught a slim arm and a handful of hair. She loosed the hair, caught the other arm, and shook the girl, hard.
“You’ve followed me like a thief since I came to this house,” she whispered fiercely.
“I wanted to see where you went,” Liza said. Raised in pleading, her voice sounded like a child’s.
“You left me out in the yard with no way to get back.”
“You wanted to go out, but the door was locked,” Liza said. “I saw you try it.”
“So you are just a good servant, day or night?” Carolina asked.
“I don’t know,” Liza said, her voice breaking.
Carolina released her grip and pushed past Liza to the door.
“Where are you going?” Liza whispered, frightened.
Carolina found the knob. This time, it turned under her hand. She stepped out into the darkness.
For the first time since she had gone blind, she ran.
The landscape around her buckled in her mind. One moment, the house and trees stood just where they had always been. The next, stars glinted below her feet and strange mountains loomed in the distance. Somehow she descended the slope to the river’s edge. Using the sound of the water as a guide, she made her way along the bank, catching at the reeds to keep her balance. This was the long way to go, but the only one that wouldn’t leave her wandering in circles in the woods. They could pull up the stakes of the path she’d made, but they couldn’t change the river’s course to her lake.
Beyond Pietro’s landing, the river grass leapt up to her waist and slashed at her hands. Carolina wrapped her smarting fists in the folds of her cloak and pressed on until the grass gave way to thorny scrub and untamed trees. Head down, she clambered through them, her coat yanking and tearing on the unseen branches. Finally the brush gave way to mud, and the mud began to curve in a long arc. She had reached the lake.
Hands extended, she made her way along the far bank, marking her progress between the trees. She found the twins by a lucky guess, took a heading from the way their trunks branched, and located the sapling just down the bank, then
the thick oak beyond it. The apple tree led her on by the sweet smell of its rotting windfall. From there it was only a few steps into the branches of the willow that leaned over the bridge to her side of the lake. A moment later, she had found the railing: a slender limb that led her over the low rise of the dam where the river muttered under its breath as it collected itself after the drop from the lake.
Now she knew the way. Even as a child, she could have taken these last steps with her eyes closed. She followed the waterside reeds until she found the place where her father had rooted them out to create a landing. Then she turned and climbed the slight hill to her house. Her unconscious calculations were exact: when she reached for the railing that led up the steps, it was just where she guessed.
Inside, a short, angry sob escaped her. She let the cloak drop from her shoulders and kicked off her shoes. Her skirts were still heavy with mud and dew, but she curled into the cold blankets anyway. Darkness rolled in and took her under like a wave.
When she rose through the crowns of the trees, the light of the stars faded, as if someone had pulled a veil over her face. Then they winked out. Carolina guessed that she must have flown into a night cloud and rose higher. Still no stars, no shadows.
Frightened, she dropped back toward earth. The descent seemed endless and the darkness absolute. Breathless, dizzy, she spread her hands out in hopes of catching a branch or leaf. Nothing but cold air slipped through her fingers. A new terror began to set in: that she might also be blind now in her dreams.
The instant this thought broke in her mind, she touched down on soft carpet. When she found her balance, she reached out in search of clues to the room she was in. She caught the beveled edge of a familiar table, found the anniversary clock just where she had left it, and leaned down to gather a handful of the covers on her own bed. Following its contour, she found the window and threw the curtains open.
But in this dream, as in her days, she could see nothing but darkness. She laid her palms flat on the glass, waiting for the dream to end and another to begin, but the ground held steady under her feet. She sank into a chair and bowed her head, pressing the heels of her hands into her useless eyes.
Green lightning cracked through the dark.
Carolina caught the light and froze it in her mind with a fierce blend of memory and will. She had taught herself to move freely in her dreams, but she had never tried to change the dream itself. For several ragged breaths, she held the image captive. Then she glanced away from the lightning bolt to see what it illuminated. Outside her window, a cliff plunged down into a black ocean. White foam swirled around the foot of the rocks like punished ghosts. She let out a long sigh. Lightning cracked, and the scene vanished.
“No,” Carolina said. She rose and beat on the window, tears running over her face. Her mind raced through the dark, throwing open doors, knocking over cabinets, searching for anything it ever remembered seeing. Then the lightning flashed again.
Carolina captured it before it even struck land, a jagged scar of silver light suspended over the black chimneys of a sleeping city. She narrowed her eyes at the incomplete bolt until it shimmered and broke. With one sweeping glance, she cast the bits of light across the eastern sky as stars. Thunder roared in her ears and lightning cut the sky again.
Her stars held steady over a ghostly desert. Another bolt charged down the night, but she caught it before it could turn the sand to glass, broke it into pieces, and lit the west. Thunder grumbled in the distance. Miles away, a dark dune consumed a slender tendril of lightning in perfect silence. Carolina closed her eyes and erased the rolling sand. She thought for a moment, and opened them on the dip of Pietro’s yard and the old hills of Turri’s land.
Then she decided it was time for dawn to break, and the first rays of the sun slipped over the familiar horizon.
When she woke again, it was morning. Birds celebrated in the trees and a disoriented bee buzzed from wall to wall inside the house.
Carolina frowned. Then she thought that Turri must be there after all, watching her sleep.
“Hello?” she said.
He didn’t answer.
Carolina pushed the covers away and made a quick investigation: the square of rug by the couch, the desk littered with his books, the chair, all empty. She stepped out onto the top stair.
Some bird unleashed a long, gaudy call, followed immediately by a chorus of taunts and applause that fell away into the forest’s usual polite conversation: bits of news passed between neighbors, morning greetings, casual observations.
“Turri,” she said.
The word bounced across the lake and died in the branches on the far shore.
Carolina stepped back into the house and let the door slam behind her. The cuts on her hands and arms, awakened by the motion, began to sting. She sank down on her couch.
Outside, footsteps swept through the wet grass outside and mounted the steps. The door swung open.
“Turri,” Carolina said, rising.
“No,” said Pietro.
The cook, who believed herself to be far more valuable than a simple maid, was insulted that she had been ordered to pack Carolina’s things.
“They all look the same to me,” she said. “I hardly know what to pick.”
“Can you count to seven?” Pietro asked her. “Then count out seven of them. We will send later for the rest.”
He had not spoken a word to Carolina as he guided her through the woods on the long walk back from the lake, and he didn’t address her now. All afternoon she had heard shouts and confusion as preparations were made for some kind of journey. She had been too proud to ask the cook about his plans. But now she saw her chance to wring an answer from him in the woman’s presence.
“We’ll be gone more than a week?” she asked.
The cook interrupted her steady shuffling of fabric and paper to listen.
Pietro laid a hand on Carolina’s face. His touch was just as gentle as it had ever been. It frightened Carolina more than his silence had.
“Tell her if there is anything you want,” he said. “We are not coming back to the valley.”
He kissed her forehead and went out. Carolina braced herself, expecting an onslaught of darkness, but the lines of her room remained sharp in her mind, the yard wide and bright, the sun clear in the sky.
The cook resumed her duties. She grumbled and hummed, stuffing silk and taffeta by the armload into the open trunk.
“That’s thirteen,” she said finally. “And I even fit four pairs of shoes, for all the good they’ll do you.”
“Thank you,” Carolina said.
Babolo chirped his irritation with the uninvited guest.
“What’s this?” the cook said, as if she’d just discovered a mouse in her flour.
“What?” Carolina said.
A child’s voice, one Carolina didn’t know, answered from the door. “I have a message,” the girl said. “For the contessa.”
The cook slammed the cover of the trunk and thumped the latches shut. “Will you require anything else?” she said with elaborate politeness.
“No, thank you,” Carolina said.
The cook trudged out, her tread heavy with displeasure.
“I’m sorry,” the girl said, her voice wavering under the older woman’s rebuff.
Carolina held out her hand. “No,” she said. “Don’t worry.”
The girl placed the letter in it.
“Can you read?” Carolina asked her.
“Master Turri taught me,” the girl said. “Shall I—”
Carolina laid the letter in her lap and covered it with both hands. She shook her head. “Thank you,” she said. “That will be all.”
Her step fairy light, the girl turned and left the room. Halfway down the stairs, the sound of her feet faded completely, as if she had suddenly taken flight.
Carolina turned the envelope over once, without curiosity. Whatever Turri promised or explained, it was too late to change anything. The thought of
him moved her only faintly, like a feeling from a dream that lingers for a few moments after waking. But despite the fact that she was wide awake, elements of her dreams filled her mind. The galaxies she’d created the night before appeared in the afternoon sky, white lights scattered through the even blue. She blinked, turned the afternoon to twilight, and reordered a handful of stars into a new constellation. Then she wiped the whole room away and replaced it with the familiar banks of her lake. It didn’t matter where Pietro planned to take her. She could make her own world.
She laid the letter beside her on the bed and went to the chest. She unfastened the latches, pulled out the top dress, and let it fall to the floor. Then she collected the writing machine and the sheaf of black paper from her desk. She settled the machine on the top gown in the chest, and covered it again with the other dress.
Then she went down the stairs, leaving the letter unopened on her bed.
The horses shuffled, eager to be gone.
“Very good,” Pietro told Giovanni, who had run from the stables to load their things for them. “Someday you’ll make a fine coachman.”
“I can run faster than the old horses,” Giovanni said, breathless.
“Careful there!” the coachman called.
Pietro left Carolina’s side to rescue some last piece of luggage from Giovanni. A moment later, it landed on the roof of the carriage with a satisfying thud. “There we are,” Pietro said. “That’s all.”
“Giovanni,” Carolina called.
The boy scrambled to stand before her.
“I left Babolo in my room,” she said. “I’m afraid he’ll get lonely. Will you take care of him for me?”
Giovanni didn’t reply.
“All right,” Pietro said uncomfortably. “There’s no need for tears.”
Carolina held out her hand and Giovanni clasped it to his boy’s chest. After a moment, she freed herself gently and stepped away.
The Blind Contessa's New Machine Page 17