The woman at the keyboard shook her head. “I’d need to experiment further.”
“Let me—” There was an odd note in Maisetra Talarico’s voice, a yearning that went beyond the desire to take a turn.
Luzie watched those long dark fingers pause over the keys before beginning. She played with awkward hesitation, like someone who had never received proper lessons, pecking out the beginning of the melody line. Then she dropped her hands to the keys in a jangled cacophony. “Nothing. Nothing!” she cried. She turned a face suddenly streaked with tears.
It hadn’t been that bad, Luzie thought, and she began the reassurances she would have given any student. “It only takes practice.”
“You don’t understand!” Maisetra Talarico said, standing abruptly and sounding even more like a frustrated schoolgirl. “You leak magic like a sieve and don’t even know it! And I—” She gestured wildly to unseen things in the room. “Nothing. I have nothing.”
“But we know,” Maisetra Sovitre began, her voice wavering between crisp analysis and consolation. “We know that even an effective ritual depends on the celebrant. That many people never evoke a response. So this—whatever it is, is no different.”
Luzie could taste the tension between the two women. It went deeper than whatever had happened just now in her parlor.
Maisetra Talarico held her hands held up before her and started at them accusingly. “And I’m not good enough. I’m never good enough.” She turned suddenly and rushed up the stairs toward her room. It would have seemed less absurd if their ages had been reversed—if Maisetra Talarico had the excuse of impatient youth.
The awkward silence drew out until they heard a door close from above. Luzie could think of nothing more useful to say than, “Perhaps a fresh pot of tea?”
* * *
The visit left so much to ponder and so little to understand. Had she ever heard of such a thing before? Poets were always saying that music had the power to transform and transport the listener. She’d never thought those claims were anything more than pretty words. But Maisetra Sovitre had clearly been speaking of something more concrete, more tangible. And how could such a thing be true without her knowing it? If it had only been Maisetra Talarico, then she would have thought it no more than the woman’s mercurial humor, but Sovitre did not seem one to play jokes of that sort.
The remainder of the afternoon had been scheduled for copywork and accounts, but when she settled at the mahogany secretary desk, Luzie pulled out a sheet of writing paper, trimmed her pen and began, Dearest Papa, the most peculiar thing has happened to me today…
Supper passed with only Charluz and Elinur as company. Issibet would be out late. First performances at the opera always meant last minute adjustments and repairs and she didn’t dare leave the sewing girls unsupervised. And Maisetra Talarico was still upstairs. The others were too accustomed to concerts to be curious about last night beyond success and failure. And though Maisetra Sovitre had given no hint that their discussion was to be kept secret, Luzie was still too confused to try to explain it to others. Then Elinur was off and Charluz settled in to the parlor with her mending while Luzie sat at the fortepiano, alternately playing a few notes and scribbling changes to the score before her.
It was later, after Charluz had packed up her mending basket, that she heard footsteps coming down the stairs and passing along the corridor toward the kitchen. Luzie frowned over the music and penned a few more changes. Half an hour later, a curious stillness made her look up to see Maisetra Talarico’s face barely visible in the shadows of the doorway as she looked in with a wistful expression. Well, they would need to have it out either now or later.
“I don’t care to be made a figure of fun,” Luzie began. It wasn’t how she’d intended to begin. She sounded too waspish; Maisetra Talarico wasn’t one of her students to scold.
“I never meant—”
“I thought you recommended me to Baroness Saveze because you liked my music, not because you thought it would be a clever trick.” Even as she said it, Luzie knew it was unfair. The concert had been a success. She had one new student already because of it.
Maisetra Talarico’s expression slipped from wistful to mournful. “I do like it. And the other…I didn’t want to spoil the surprise. For Margerit—for Maisetra Sovitre.”
“And for me?”
When Maisetra Talarico was silent for long moments, Luzie returned to picking out her tune on the keys. It was meant to be an exercise for the Lozerik sisters. The younger girl wouldn’t be able to manage the run in the upper hand yet, but it felt a shame to simplify the tune so much. She ran through the part again in the easier version.
Maisetra Talarico stepped out of the shadow of the doorway and came to sit beside her on the bench. “Why did you change it?”
Luzie moved the page in front of her and took up the more advanced part, explaining about the sisters. “Try that. I want to see how they go together.”
“I can’t. I’ve never learned properly. A…a friend tried to teach me a little, but I was hopeless.”
“I heard you this afternoon. You’ll do well enough for this. Try it.”
They played side by side, slowly at first, then with more confidence.
“And now the original,” Luzie said. Slowly again and much more awkwardly with constant mistakes. “No, that won’t do,” she sighed.
“You play them both,” Maisetra Talarico urged, sliding the music across to her.
Luzie felt her intense gaze as she deftly played both versions in turn. “I need to take that run out. Maybe in another year…”
“No, the music needs it. What if you—” She hesitated until Luzie nodded to continue. “What if you change the easier part like this?” She played a few notes. Just a bare sketch. “And then shift the flowing part to the other player?”
“Perhaps,” Luzie said. “It would still stretch her abilities.” She tried the altered version, her hands darting back and forth to play both parts.
The other woman nodded in satisfaction. “Yes, that’s better.”
Luzie could tell she was speaking of more than the harmony. “What do you see?”
Maisetra Talarico’s gaze became unfocused. “The simple version—it stays inward.” She gestured toward her heart. “The light is…too brownish, not crisp enough. When you include the run, it flows all over.” Now she waved her hands along the keyboard. “There are…stems, vines that reach out for the other player. Green and gold. I think if the other player were…were someone capable, they would twine together. It’s so hard to explain. There isn’t really a language—at least not one I know.”
“Why didn’t you tell me? You saw it that first evening, didn’t you?”
“Would you have believed me?” Maisetra Talarico didn’t wait for an answer. “I must apologize for my behavior this afternoon. It was…can you imagine what it would be like to see—no, to hear all the most beautiful songs in the world? To hear them every moment of every day in exquisite perfection, and to be mute and never able to join in the harmony?”
She gazed up at the ceiling and Luzie could see the tears welling once more in her dark eyes.
“And can you imagine meeting someone who has the most beautiful voice you’ve ever heard and discovering that person was deaf, and could never hear their own song.”
“Like Beethoven,” Luzie said without thinking. “They say he’s losing his hearing.”
“And what if he had never heard any of his works, and yet been able to compose them? What if he had done all that and never known what it was he had created except from what others told him?”
That part she could understand, though she flinched to be compared to the great master. “But why does it pain you so to…to be unable to play yourself?” She couldn’t think of the words for what had passed that afternoon. “Maisetra Sovitre said that many people lack the talent.”
“But they don’t know they lack it. It’s a rare skill that I have.” She said it simply, withou
t any sense of boasting. “Much rarer than the ability to catch the ear of the saints, as Margerit puts it. To work mysteries. Most people have some very slight skill for that. Not enough to raise a miracle on their own, but that’s why we come together in groups for the Great Mysteries.”
Maisetra Talarico turned on the bench to face her. “It’s far less common for a lone voice to invoke divine grace, the way you can. Rarest of all, to have what Maisetra Sovitre has: both the voice to speak and the ear to hear, to better shape her mysteries to be answered. If I had even a little of that talent—” She held up her hands before her though she was no longer speaking of musical skill. “Even the slightest bit and I could shape it to work miracles. But there’s nothing. Nothing to work with. I open my mouth and not even a croak comes out.”
And then she seemed to wrench her mood sideways and she smiled and stood up. “Now will you play for me? Something of your own?”
Luzie moved the manuscript to one side and let her fingers choose the piece. As she played, she tried to imagine what shapes and colors the music might be taking in that vision that she lacked.
Chapter Six
Jeanne
Mid-October, 1823
Though morning visits were never a chore, Jeanne was glad when she was free to direct the driver of the fiacre to set her down at the north gate of the palace grounds. By custom, the gardens were open to all, but the guard on duty at the pedestrian gate was new enough to ask her name and business before his companion stepped in to admonish him, “Mesnera de Cherdillac is here to see Her Grace’s alchemist. Let her through, she knows the way.”
The workshop was located in the old summer kitchens on the north side of the palace grounds where they had been set apart against the risk of fire. A stretch of garden separated them from the main palace buildings. That same risk had directed the choice to build the alchemical furnace here. The suite was a change from the dark, cramped rooms on Trez Cherfis where Antuniet’s work with alchemically enhanced gemstones had first found success. No, not first—that had happened in Prague and Heidelberg where Antuniet had spent her exile. Jeanne knew only bits and scraps of those years. Trez Cherfis would always hold a place in their hearts. How could it not, when it was there that love had grown, layer on layer, like one of the gems in Antuniet’s furnace? But these rooms were more worthy of a royal appointee. The furnishings went beyond the merely practical and reflected Princess Annek’s pride, from the tiled zodiacal motifs on the floor to the chased decorations on every shining brass surface.
Antuniet looked up briefly and smiled as she entered, but Jeanne could tell from the tenor of the work that it would be some time before a break was possible. She could wait. Goodness knew, she’d waited long enough back when they were sorting out their hearts, when Antuniet had been consumed with the thought of redeeming her family’s lost honor. Love had caught her by surprise. The work was less frantic now, more thoughtful and experimental. Jeanne didn’t miss the hot, grimy summer afternoons when even her own hands were needed for grinding ores and picking over the fired matrix for the stones that lay within. But she missed the close camaraderie of that summer when it was only her and Antuniet and the apprentice, Anna Monterrez.
Anna, too, had bloomed in the new setting. Her father no longer treated her as a girl to be chaperoned to and from the workshop by a cousin or by one of his servants. Now the goldsmith was content with the security of a hired fiacre that carried her across the river from the Jewish neighborhood to the palace grounds or to the evening lectures that Margerit sponsored. The work no longer held the dangers that had left the long ugly mark that crossed Anna’s cheek. That hadn’t come from the alchemy itself, but from the enemy that had pursued Antuniet from Heidelberg. A battle scar earned in defence of Antuniet’s secrets.
When Jeanne first met her, Anna had given the illusion of maturity by a trick of her height and the sober braided crown of her sable hair. Since then, she’d grown a little into that illusion, and to that was added the confidence that came with supervising the two new assistants. Yet Jeanne knew that Antuniet still felt it as a rebuke every time she saw that marred face, or when she saw Anna arranging her shawl over her head to cover that cheek before going out in public.
Now Jeanne watched Anna instructing the new apprentices who had taken much of the hard work off her hands. There had been no formal promotion to journeyman, but she’d taken to the task of managing them like a housewife overseeing a pair of clumsy kitchen maids. Now she snapped at the younger of the two, “Marzin, what are you about?”
He jumped. “The alumina. You said to regrind it one more time.”
“These aren’t kitchen spices,” Anna said. “Where are your instructions?”
He sheepishly picked up the slate on which he’d copied down his tasks. “Grind at the rise of Capricorn,” he read.
“And when does Capricorn rise?”
“I don’t know,” he whispered. “The grinding takes so long, I wanted to get started.”
“If you didn’t know you should have asked,” Anna said sharply.
Jeanne hid a smile as Anna pulled Antuniet’s zodiacal watch out of her pocket and opened the case to show him.
“You see? Not for two hours yet. If you haven’t the wit to know why a thing is done, at least have the wit to follow instructions.”
It wasn’t entirely fair to chastise him. They really should have a better system, perhaps a standing horologe. Was there anyone in Rotenek who could build one to their needs? They might have to send as far as Geneva and risk transporting the delicate mechanism over the mountains. And if that were the case, it wouldn’t happen this year. Not with the unseasonable weather keeping the roads closed to carriage traffic.
Antuniet interrupted the pair of them without making it a challenge to Anna’s authority. “And that means you should take the time to clean up and eat something. Marzin, put the kettle on for tea after you’ve washed your hands, and then you’ll have at least an hour.”
That was Jeanne’s cue to leave her perch. She placed a chaste kiss on Antuniet’s cheek in an unsmudged spot, breathing in her sharp chemical perfume. No one but Antuniet could make a trace of sulfur smell so heavenly. “Shall we go sit in the garden? It may be our last chance this year. Anna, I’ve done my shopping at Lenoir’s patisserie so you need have no qualms about joining us.” She held up a neatly-tied box brought from the bakery.
Anna frowned a little. “You didn’t need to do that.”
Jeanne gave an inward sigh. Anna had long since relaxed her rules about dining with them. And now it seemed she disliked having attention drawn to the matter, even when it was intended as kindness. “But they make the most delicious cakes. Even better than the ones served at the Café Chatuerd, and that’s saying a great deal.”
The building in which the workshop was located had been surrounded at one time by the kitchen gardens, but they had fallen into riotous chaos. Only the herb beds were still kept in order as part of the pleasure garden. Now in October the flowers were well past and the weather uncertain, but just for today the afternoon sun still warmed a few small stone benches. There remained a delicate wrought iron table and chairs, not yet taken in for the winter. They served for the moments when Antuniet was able to tear herself away from the work.
Jeanne poured the tea, saying, “Was it only last summer we’d take our picnic to the river wall down on the south bank! How much has changed.”
“How much indeed,” Antuniet echoed. “Have some cake.” She picked up a tiny almond pastry and playfully slipped it into Jeanne’s mouth.
They caught each other’s eyes as she savored it, and when her mouth was free again she said softly, “I still love my bread the best.” But Anna was there and serious flirtation would have to wait for later.
Their visitor’s approach was heralded by Anna’s quick scramble to her feet to curtsey. Jeanne rose with more dignity to greet the bright-uniformed figure who strode along the path toward them.
“Mesner Atilliet,�
� Antuniet hailed him. “I hadn’t expected you until later. Do you have time to join us or only enough to collect your talismans?”
The cavalry uniform did much to set off the person of Princess Annek’s son, Jeanne thought, as he lifted the hat from his auburn locks and bowed over her hand with that charming Austrian mannerism he’d chosen not to shed. She approved of the addition of a small moustache. She was not so old or so settled that she couldn’t take pleasure from the attentions of a handsome man.
“I have a little time, yes,” he said.
Antuniet received the same greeting and then he turned to Anna, bowing over her hand and whispering something that sent her into blushing confusion. Really, he shouldn’t tease the girl, for all that they’d spent long months working side by side last year like brother and sister.
Jeanne said, “Anna, go fetch another teacup if you would.” That would allow her to regain her composure. Brief moments later she returned, unwilling to miss a word.
“Are you back to your regiment for the winter?” Antuniet asked.
“No, my mother sends me off to Paris with Albori. I’m to be apprenticed in diplomacy, it seems, though officially I’ll be nothing more than an aide. Albori thinks—” He paused, though it was impossible to tell whether he’d realized he was being indiscreet or thought the topic too weighty to discuss over tea.
Antuniet didn’t seem to notice the stumble. “Ah, that would explain some of the particular stones she requested.”
Jeanne had been paying only slight attention to the current projects in the workshop, but there had been something about a special commission from Her Grace. The alchemical gems Antuniet created went far beyond the techniques DeBoodt had developed two centuries earlier. Careful layers of enhanced crystals magnified the natural properties of the gems, lending the wearer their strengths. No wonder at all if Annek wanted to send Efriturik off into the world as well protected and fortified as possible. Emerald to sharpen the wits and the memory, topaz to detect poison, jacinth for good fortune in traveling, carnelian against curses and spells, and so many more, all combined and layered for best efficacy, whether in a ring, or set on a sword hilt or kept even more closely about his person.
Mother of Souls: A novel of Alpennia Page 9