Mother of Souls: A novel of Alpennia

by Jones, Heather Rose

  Well, Aunt Bertrut wouldn’t consider that a burden. But she meant to hold to her first impulse. Iulien would need to earn that privilege. After a brief council of war with Barbara and the Pertineks, Margerit summoned Iuli to set out the conditions of her continued presence.

  “You’ll attend a full program of classes at the Tanfrit Academy. That is the only sensible reason we can give for your sudden presence. I’ll help you choose the program and on days when you have classes you can ride down to Urmai with me in the morning. In a month’s time we may allow you to go visiting on days when you are free. If you are allowed to go out in society, it will be under Maisetra Pertinek’s supervision and she will decide what invitations you may accept.”

  Iuli nodded gravely.

  “You are never to leave the house alone. This isn’t Chalanz where you can run wild. If you have good reason to go out, you must either be accompanied by your maid or by Maistir Chamering, and then only to the Plaiz.”

  Here Iuli protested. “But you said I’d only have Rozild half time, just to dress me mornings and evenings! That means I can’t go shopping or walking or anything!”

  “Or by Maistir Chamering,” Margerit repeated.

  “Brandel isn’t any older than I am,” Iuli said, clearly feeling the injustice of it.

  “It isn’t a matter of age. Brandel’s a man.” It was stretching the point, but Margerit was willing to do so. “And he’s in training as an armin, so his reputation rests on not allowing you to get into trouble. That’s what protects you. Or,” she added firmly, “you can simply stay home when you aren’t in classes.”

  Margerit watched Iulien’s face closely for signs of rebellion, but the girl had taken herself in hand once more. Good.

  “If you follow my rules, you can start going out in the evenings after the Mauriz term is finished. And if you behave yourself for the whole season, then I might be persuaded to hold a ball for you in the spring. You’d be the envy of all your friends back in Chalanz. And if you don’t follow the rules, I’ll send you back to your father. Do you promise?”

  “I promise.” She looked subdued and chastened for now.

  It wouldn’t last, Margerit knew, but it was a start.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Serafina

  Late September, 1824

  The cathedral echoed with the soft voices and restless movements of hundreds of expectant worshippers. How could it be two years? She’d never expected to stay this long. Not quite two years. She hadn’t arrived early enough that fall to see this ritual, the Great Mystery of the city’s patron. That had come a year past at Margerit’s side, sitting on the bench belonging to Tiporsel House. But Margerit had washed her hands of this tutela. She had mapped every flaw she could see and petitioned every ear she thought might listen. This time, Margerit would participate in the rite as an ordinary celebrant.

  Serafina watched the preparations from an uncrowded space by one of the side chapels. She had nothing of Margerit’s driving ambition and so nothing of Margerit’s impatience at Archbishop Fereir’s seeming unconcern. She wanted only to understand. The dais with the lay presiders was hidden from her view behind a row of pillars though the altar could be seen. It didn’t matter. She would be turning her vision elsewhere, as she had that day in the park in Urmai for Mesner Kreiser. It was enough to be in the midst of the mystery and feel it all around her. That would anchor her vision when she cast it out to see where Mauriz’s blessing traveled.

  A quiet voice at her side asked, “Maisetra, are we truly permitted to be here?”

  She touched Celeste’s shoulder in reassurance. “Yes.”

  She guessed that the girl had been shooed out of the cathedral on some previous visit. Technically, the Mystery of Saint Mauriz belonged to the immediate parish—to the upper part of town where the palace and all the grand houses stood. And as the mystery marked the start of the season, everyone who had returned to town had taken their places, filling the benches to capacity. That was why she had positioned herself to the side. Luzie’s house fell in the ambit of Saint Nikule’s and therefore so did she. If she’d asked Margerit, she would have been welcome on Tiporsel’s bench, but they were here for worship. Today she was here to work.

  “What do you want me to do?” Celeste whispered.

  “Just what I explained before,” Serafina responded. “My visio may take me out of my senses for a while. Just watch over me in case something happens. But watch the mystery as well.”

  The two ideas had come together in her plans. It was unlikely that she’d faint or cry out—her visions rarely took her that way. But she meant to look more deeply than she ever had before. She wanted someone else at her side whose eyes were on this world. And she recalled the little shrine to Saint Mauriz—the erteskir that Celeste had shown her so proudly—and the fierce possessive way the girl spoke of the city’s patron. She recalled the hints Celeste had given that a girl from the wharf district hadn’t found a welcome at this ceremony. And so she’d begged Mefro Dominique for her daughter’s company for the day. The cathedral staff knew her as Maisetra Sovitre’s friend and would let them be.

  Now the sounds of the choristers rose as the presiders entered the nave. The echoes gave the processional a haunting quality, but it was only music, not part of the mystery. Not like the way Luzie’s compositions called up the fluctus.

  Luzie. A sweet longing stirred in her. The summer was past, the boys returned to school, and there was no longer an excuse to share Luzie’s bed. It would be different now. No longer the easy, lazy closeness of the summer nights and the faint scent of roses, waking at her side. No more of the way the darkness washed away Luzie’s shyness. Now when their hands touched over the keyboard, it wasn’t a promise for later, but scant bread to feed their hungry skin. More hungry now than before those months of being fed with furtive meals. In time, would the hunger dull? Or would it drive them beyond caution in a house where they no longer had an excuse to be alone?

  It felt like Costanza once more—the brief teasing touches in public. Except that Luzie didn’t mean to tease. Not the way Costanza had. And there was no private palazzo where they could retire for wanton pleasure under the guard of a smirking maidservant. The close homely circle of Luzie’s servants and lodgers felt like a cage, confining them in separate prisons where they could only touch briefly through the bars.

  Serafina smiled wistfully and shook off the image. What had she expected? Both their lives belonged to other people. There was no future, only scattered nows.

  The choristers had quieted and a strong voice began chanting the markein from the space before the altar. Serafina leaned against the pillar and closed her eyes, watching the stirrings of power rise and filter through the echoes of the cathedral’s stones in her mind. The altar, the cathedral, the parish around it, Rotenek, Alpennia itself. The mystery took shape in slowly spreading waves of light.

  The flaws were familiar this time: the way the archbishop’s words tugged and pulled at the structure of the fluctus. Serafina had a vision of a cracked fountain, where the water that filled it up and should have flowed out from tier to tier instead drained through cracks, leaving whirlpools and eddies within the basin. She set the image aside. There was a danger that imagination could shape perception, like the way Luzie’s arias formed themselves into the figures from the opera’s story. The image of Tanfrit floated before her and once more she set it aside.

  The work with maps she had done with Kreiser helped. This time she watched as Mauriz’s blessing and protection lapped out further and further across the land, like waves reaching up the shore and falling short to drain into the sand. It was hard to know what form the tutela had been meant to take. The mysteries in Rome were shaped differently. The Great Tutela of Saint Peter rose in three tiers like the papal crown, blessing the basilica itself, the city of Rome and all of Christendom as echoes of each other. This had a similarity of intent, but the outcome was different. Was that by design or was it part of the flaw? The imag
e of the overlapping waves returned.

  She had felt that sense of waves before. Last year, the dark chaotic surge of the weather mystery appeared to lap at the foundations of Alpennia’s defenses. That mass of power over the mountains was still present. It felt ragged and corroded but even more powerful, in the way a madman could summon immense strength. Focused as she was on the tutela as it spread outward, she saw only fragments of the other, no longer as a pulsing force, but lashing out randomly like lightning or like tongues of flame, slipping down the valleys to meet with Mauriz’s protection. The invading mystery had no aim or intent; whatever will had directed it had turned elsewhere. But neither were the defenses directed against it. The tutela kept slipping back down the shore, to its core, to the cathedral.

  The shape of her visions shifted. The waves of the tutela left behind, not the flat sand of a beach, but a broad expanse of mud, cracking and shrinking in the sun until it looked like a crazed mosaic. And the chaotic mass that lurked at the borders of Alpennia flowed into the cracks, following the flaws like rain filling a streambed, like floodtide running through empty chanulezes, like ice water seeping into the fractures of a rock face, freezing and swelling until the stone sloughed off in layers onto the travelers below…

  The human voices had faded from her consciousness. Her inner vision saw only what those voices called forth, invoked, invited. But what had they invited? More powers than the saints were listening. At last the awkward slosh and swirl of the fluctus called her attention to the mystery’s conclusion, the way the charis brightened momentarily and then drew into itself, like the opening of a drain, pulling Saint Mauriz’s attention back, turning inward and collapsing deep into the foundations of the cathedral where his relics rested. The murmur of ordinary voices rose around her and Serafina opened her eyes once more.

  At her side, Celeste was staring at her with an intent and worried expression.

  Serafina frowned. “I’m back.”

  She looked over the crowd to the Tiporsel House bench. Should she seek out Margerit now to tell her of this new vision? Was the change in the effects of the ritual itself or had her imagination given it new shapes? No matter; that could wait.

  Whatever Celeste had seen for herself of Mauriz’s grace, it seemed a private thing and untouched by the shadows that haunted her own visions. There was a hidden glow within Celeste as they walked back from the Plaiz. Serafina was content to leave the two of them to their secrets.

  * * *

  “Is she serious?” Luzie asked, when Serafina passed on the inquiry brought back from Urmai.

  The dinner table seemed unnaturally quiet these days without the presence of the boys. Serafina had saved the note and its contents to provide them with conversation.

  “Of course she’s serious,” Charluz said and helped herself to a second serving of buttered carrots. “The question is which of you would benefit more.”

  “It isn’t—” Luzie hesitated. “Serafina, it isn’t just because we’re friends, is it? You didn’t ask her…”

  Serafina shook her head as she waved away the dish Charluz offered. “The college needs more classes that will attract students from the upper town. Margerit’s worried that the presence of all the Poor Scholars will make people think it’s meant to be primarily a charity school. You’d be quite a prize to add to the faculty.”

  Luzie blushed. “Only one day a week? I could manage it if I can convince a few of my students to change days. But I don’t know about the rest of it. Lecturing in music theory? I’ve never done anything like that.” She skimmed through the letter Serafina had given her. “And other items as agreed. What does she mean by that?”

  “I think,” Serafina said carefully, not wanting to frighten her off, “that Margerit has concluded there’s enough in your music similar to the mysteries to be useful for her thaumaturgy students.”

  Luzie made a startled noise and set down her fork. “Truly?”

  “She said something about having them practice observation and description. I think she only wants you to play for them. She said it would be safer than performing true mysteries all the time for practice.”

  Elinur asked doubtfully, “Are you certain you want to get caught up in that sort of thing?” With a brief glance toward Serafina, “It’s all very well for scholars and philosophers, but not for the likes of you and me.”

  “I don’t suppose there’ll be any harm,” Luzie said slowly. She toyed idly with the last remnants of stewed beef on her plate. “And she would pay me? Just to play music for them?”

  Issibet took a more practical turn. “It sounds like it would be a fixed fee for the whole day. Be careful about how much you get asked to do. It’s no bargain if you aren’t home until midnight.” She clearly had experience with that sort of contract.

  Luzie still looked bemused. “I’ll write up a note this evening that you can take with you in the morning, Serafina. I don’t think I could start before November, though.” She folded her napkin onto the table. “Now if we’ve all finished, I have a surprise.”

  She led the way into the parlor with self-conscious ceremony and settled herself before the keyboard.

  For all that they often gathered in the parlor in the evenings with sewing or correspondence or other tasks and listened to Luzie practice, she never concertized or demanded their attention. This, it seemed, was different. Serafina felt a growing excitement as she guessed what it meant.

  The strains of the overture confirmed her expectation, filling the room with such a rich texture of sound and vision that you scarcely guessed it was no more than the fortepiano. This was the first time she had heard the work played straight through. The first time complete with lyrics as well as music. As Luzie fumbled to turn the first page, Serafina rose and went to her side, turning the pages at each commanding nod.

  Luzie chanted the songs, more than singing them, with only the instrument to fill in the melodies. And on the duets and trios, she held to Tanfrit’s line and only sketched the others in fragments into the pauses. But it was done: from the initial proud, triumphant entrance, to the climactic crashing tragedy, to Gaudericus’s soft final lament. It was complete and whole and Serafina could see the bones underneath that held it all together.

  When the last notes had died away it seemed too formal to applaud, but Serafina sank down onto the bench to embrace Luzie as she turned to face them.

  “It’s wonderful!” she exclaimed. Her mind was still filled with the music, both heard and seen.

  “It’s just a rough draft,” Luzie said dismissively. Then she grinned. “But it’s done!”

  “Next we should find you a patron,” Charluz said. She, too, embraced Luzie in congratulations. “You can’t take the next steps until you know whether it will be a chamber performance or the opera house.”

  “Don’t tease!” Elinur chided. “But Charluz is right. You should start looking.”

  Luzie blushed. “Not yet! It needs to be more polished before I talk to anyone.”

  “I could ask some friends to inquire for you,” Issibet said. “Or…Serafina, you’re friends with de Cherdillac. She could be very useful. She’s always matching people up with patrons.”

  “Please don’t,” Luzie begged. She was growing increasingly flustered. “I couldn’t bear for anyone important to hear it until it’s perfect.”

  Serafina had doubts that Luzie would ever consider it perfect, but there was no use in pushing if she found it so upsetting. “Never mind, then. When you’re ready I’d be happy to ask the vicomtesse.”

  * * *

  Serafina carefully laid out the series of sketches and paintings along the center of the table in the thaumaturgy workroom as the small crowd of girls gathered to study them. The students had taken to calling the room the Chamber of Mysteries as something of a joke and Serafina found herself almost using the name herself, though Margerit was scandalized at the thought.

  She held an odd position: a student, yet not a student. She’d never felt strange
that way working alone with Margerit, or with the small circle that gathered at Tiporsel House. But here at Urmai, she was reminded at every turn of how young the true students were. Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen. Girls not yet out, or in the slow start of their dancing season, or the Poor Scholars at an age when they would have just begun earning a living were it not for the chance given them by the House. A few were older: dedicated young women who had been following Margerit’s lectures and had begged their parents for more. The sort who might have lingered a few years as girl scholars at the university until marriage claimed them one by one.

  She was older than many of the instructors—women like Akezze at the beginning of their careers, still full of fire from their taste of academic life. But there were older ones as well. Mesnera Farin had dabbled all her life in mathematics and never before had the opportunity to pass that love on. Now she’d been coaxed into covering astronomy as well. They rattled around in the old mansion, even with the addition of the Poor Scholars, who arrived in clumps every morning in the back of a market wagon and made their way home at the end of the day by similar means.

  Having watched the buildings change from damp ruin to vibrant life, Serafina still found the transformation striking. Sometimes she thought she could see the ghostly promise of what the halls and classrooms would look like in years to come when completely filled.

  “Mais— Serafina, I don’t understand.” The question came hesitantly from Valeir Perneld.

  The hesitation in her voice was not from what they studied, for Valeir was one of Margerit’s most promising thaumaturgical finds: an auditor who heard the fluctus as choirs of angels. No, they all still stumbled over how to address each other. Margerit had declared that there would be no distinction of rank among the students. No constant reminder from mesnera to mefro of the distance between them outside these walls. And there, too, she held an awkward place. Not a teacher to be given the respect of a surname, and yet one who stood on familiar grounds with most of those who were. If the other students stumbled over addressing her as Serafina, she too stumbled to remember to address Akezze as Maisetra Mainus in their hearing.