Jeanne smiled at that impossibility. But it was true that Princess Annek was ambitiously filling the palace with new works. Her father hadn’t turned his attention in that direction, and the Dowager Princess had been a follower, rather than a leader in the arts.
“So will we all be included? Margerit and Efriturik and that friend of his, Charlin Osekil?”
“And Anna,” Antuniet added, “and even Barbara if she’ll agree, though I don’t know that she cares to be considered part of that crew. You needn’t worry about spending long hours posing. Hankez brought in models to do the rough layout. But now that she has the poses decided, she needs to do studies for the faces. It’s easier to bring everyone to the workshop. She says there’s something about the light that’s hard to duplicate.”
It wasn’t entirely a reunion from those intense days when Antuniet’s dream of redemption had burned as fiercely as the alchemical furnace. Charlin had already completed his sitting. And there was no hope of Margerit making the time, but Hankez had a full series of studies remaining from her own portrait. That one had been unveiled at the New Year, showing Margerit standing triumphantly before the college buildings, her arms uplifted in a gesture that might either be prayer or a command for the restoration to begin. You could see in her eyes the dream of what she hoped to build. But as the portrait was meant to show her in her role as Royal Thaumaturgist, the painter had traced hints and illusions of mystical visions throughout the background. Hankez might have been working from the sketches Margerit was always making of how she saw fluctus, but somehow she’d made the images come alive. Staring at the painting, one had the sense of actually seeing the mysteries as Margerit did. It was that elusive quality, Jeanne knew, that made Hankez so sought-after as a portraitist, though only a few of her works evoked it.
While Antuniet and the apprentices attempted to carry on their work, Jeanne took her turn posing. She was to stand before the furnace holding out her hands as if carrying a sealed crucible to be placed in the blaze. At first she’d been afraid she’d be asked to hold one of the heavy vessels while Hankez sketched and frowned and scribbled color studies in pastel. But before her arms even had time to become tired, she was told, “Enough. I have the hands. And you may sit now for the head study.”
It was hard not to smile at the peremptory commands. It wasn’t simply that Olimpia Hankez was famed enough that people put up with it. It was that you understood you were in the presence of a master who wouldn’t waste your time and expected you not to waste hers.
Jeanne passed the time by trying to recapture her thoughts and feelings from the days the painting was meant to portray. Scarcely two years past and it seemed like another age entirely, one when she and Antuniet were still fumbling their way toward a place where both their hearts could live. Their hearts…her eyes went, as always, to the irregular crimson stone that lay on Antuniet’s breast. I don’t know if it will come through the fire, but it’s yours, if you will have it. She had been speaking of the stone and her heart both. She watched Antuniet straighten momentarily and stretch to ease her back. They were still going through fires, but now they entered them together.
“Perfect.” Maisetra Hankez set down her tools and signaled an end to the sitting. “You captured the spirit of transformation I was looking for.”
Jeanne stood and stretched in echo of Antuniet’s gesture. “May I see?”
The painter examined her critically. “If you wish. Not everyone cares to.”
What sort of warning was that? Jeanne waited until Maisetra Hankez had cleared her things away then stood before the easel where several sheets of paper were clipped with sketches in various levels of detail. The last one, still commanding the center of the space, was in many ways the simplest. Only a few spare lines in pencil, without any of the color that was roughed in on the more complete ones. But Jeanne could see what Hankez had meant. The expression that had been captured showed none of her private thoughts, but said plainly, we will come through the fire and we will be transformed.
Jeanne let out an admiring sigh. It would be almost insulting to praise Maisetra Hankez’s skill. This went beyond mere talent. She peered more closely at some of the other drawings. It was like a child’s puzzle blocks with little bits of a larger picture scattered here and there. An alembic, a mortar, a pair of hands grinding, the play of light from the furnace on a faceless figure who was working the gears for the alignment.
There were a few head studies as well, but not ones intended for the larger arrangement. These seemed to be quick sketches, snatched at a moment’s whim when the subject was unaware. There was one of Antuniet frowning over some problem. Another capturing a rare expression of tenderness that made you wonder what she’d been gazing at in that moment. There were several of Anna: laughing, studious, biting her lip over some perplexity, and one simply staring thoughtfully into space. The last was finished almost to the point of being a portrait, perhaps from the length of time available, though it was barely larger than thumb-sized. It had that captivating quality of Hankez’s best work.
At a movement close behind her, Jeanne turned to find Efriturik examining the sketches over her shoulder.
“I hoped I’d see you here,” she exclaimed. “Antuniet said you hadn’t done your sitting yet. And no doubt you’ll soon be off about your mother’s business to Paris again!”
Efriturik grinned and bowed over her hand. She so loved his attention to old-fashioned courtesies, even if it was only for show.
“No more Paris for now,” he said. “Not until matters either settle down or heat up. No, I have an entirely different commission for now. My unit will be overseeing a survey of the navigable waterways of Alpennia.”
He said it with an air of exaggerated martyrdom and she could almost hear the phrase as the title of a thick and tedious report. A cavalry unit might be ideally suited to traveling throughout the country, but it was hard to imagine a group of bold young men taking enthusiastically to engineering surveys. But when she looked again, he had a sly expression and laid a finger across his lips. So. Gathering information, perhaps, but not on waterways.
“Then perhaps we will see more of you in the salles this winter.”
“Of a certainty,” he answered. “And perhaps I will win an even more treasured invitation—one I thought I’d been promised.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“To the Vicomtesse de Cherdillac’s salon, of course.”
Once again she found her hand twitching for the movements of a fan. She really must try to make them fashionable in the daytime once again. “For that you must petition the mistress of my revels. Anna has the charge of invitations.”
They both looked over to where the subject of their conversation was working and saw her quickly look down as if she didn’t want to be known to have been listening.
“With your permission,” he began, but then he was commanded into place by Maisetra Hankez, who once again was no respecter of persons.
Jeanne remained for a while, watching both artist and alchemists at work, but she wasn’t free to dawdle the entire day away, and she would need to return home and change clothes before any of her other errands.
She took her leave of Anna with a brief embrace, and more discreetly of Antuniet with a touch of her fingers to her lips and then to the crimson amulet around Antuniet’s throat, saying, “I look forward to seeing the painting. Perhaps I might try to commission one of you for myself.”
“If you can manage that, it would be a wonder. Though I plan to ask for one or two of the studies, if Olimpia’s willing to part with them.”
Jeanne had been thinking the same thing. Particularly the small portrait of Anna that had captured her so well. She glanced at the easel one more time before leaving, but the little sketch was gone. She frowned. Efriturik had shown quite an interest in the same drawing. Had he…? There was no way to ask.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Serafina
February, 1825
Serafina
recognized the small creature that nestled in the pit of her stomach. It was jealousy. She’d learned to recognize it long before she’d learned to ignore it. Who was she to be jealous of anyone? Just as she had no right to give herself wholly, she had no right to expect the same in return. She’d been the first to urge Luzie to draw others into the plans for Tanfrit. But it had been theirs—just the two of them—for so long. Now here was Jeanne, visiting or summoning Luzie to discuss the business of the performance. There were the regular letters from Maistir Ovimen that left Luzie glowing with a pride that no one else could have given her. And there was Iulien Fulpi.
“I was thinking,” Luzie had said, as they rode back together from the academy at the end of one of the music days, sharing the fiacre with Doruzi Mailfrit and another of the Poor Scholars. “I was thinking I might ask Iulien to look at the libretto.”
And when Serafina hadn’t responded immediately, Luzie continued, “I know, she’s dreadfully young. But you couldn’t tell that from her poetry. And that’s what we need: poetry. The libretto tells the story well enough, but we both know it isn’t what it might be.”
The lyrics of the two pieces Iulien played for the depictio class had seemed nothing special—perhaps she simply hadn’t an ear for Alpennian verse—but the way they wove into Luzie’s settings…There was a crispness, a definition.
Margerit had acquiesced with only a few rules. “She must be properly chaperoned. She isn’t allowed to be wandering around the city by herself.” With a wry smile, “She’s already sweet-talked me into letting her go down to Urmai by boat in the mornings so she isn’t tied to my schedule. It isn’t that I don’t consider Maisetra Valorin a proper chaperone, but…”
But trips to the academy were a simple matter of going back and forth from the private dock at Tiporsel House. Evidently it was less thinkable to let a girl like Iuli walk alone through the Nikuleplaiz, even with a maid for company.
“I’ll ask my Aunt Pertinek if she can find time to bring her,” Margerit concluded.
And so Serafina sat on the sofa with Maisetra Pertinek, while Iulien sat beside Luzie on the fortepiano bench and eagerly followed along in the libretto as they worked, part by part, through the score.
“Are you enjoying teaching at Margerit’s school?” Maisetra Pertinek asked.
Serafina pulled her attention away from the music and its effects. It was always hard to remember that most people were blind to the visions.
“I’m not really teaching,” she said. “Just helping at this and that. I’m there as a student.” She was enough ahead of the other students in the philosophy and thaumaturgy classes to be frustrated at their progress. That would improve, Margerit promised, once enough students had learned the basics that they could hold advanced classes. But would she have that long? Every day she expected a letter that Paolo’s duties in Paris were over.
“Oh,” Maisetra Pertinek said. “I had thought from what Margerit said…Well, never mind. What do you know about this opera that Iuli will be helping with?”
What do I know? I was there when the seed was planted. I dug through Margerit’s library to find every scrap of history we might use. I’ve sat by Luzie’s side for months shaping it into being.
“It’s a historic drama. One of your Alpennian philosophers. Did Maisetra Sovitre warn you that it’s to be a surprise and we don’t want it talked about before the performance?”
Maisetra Pertinek looked affronted. “I should hope that I know how to hold my tongue when asked. Margerit can tell you that.”
Yes, that must be true. There were secrets enough at Tiporsel House to practice on.
They had progressed to the scene in the second act where Tanfrit was being tempted to accept the book of forbidden knowledge that would put her soul at risk. It was one that had never felt entirely right, and Iulien must have thought so as well, for she stopped Luzie after the first exchange between Tanfrit and Theodorus to ask, “Why would she do that?”
Luzie took her hands from the keyboard and the cessation of both sound and vision left Serafina blinking.
“Why would she do what?” Luzie asked.
“She’s already a famous philosopher and you show in the first act that she and Gaudericus like each other. So why would she think she needs sorcery to win his love? It doesn’t make sense.”
Luzie smiled at her. “It’s an opera. Not everything has to make sense.”
Iulien frowned at the lyrics in her hand. “But it could. Look.” She pointed to one of the lines. “Theodorus tells her that what he’s offering her is forbidden. Instead he needs to make her think it’s valuable. He either wants to win her or to destroy Gaudericus. It doesn’t make sense that he’d tell Tanfrit something that might make her refuse the book outright. Once she accepts the gift, then either she’ll be grateful to Theodorus or she’ll share it with Gaudericus and so betray him. But why would she do something if she knows it’s wrong? She’s supposed to be the hero, isn’t she?”
It made sense, Serafina thought. Luzie had convinced her that people would expect a broad gesture. But it made Tanfrit look weak rather than misled.
“What about something like this,” Iulien said. Frowning, she sang the lines with only a few changes.
Luzie picked up a pen and made a few notes on a separate page, then set it beside her score on the fortepiano. She set her hands to the keys and began again.
The fluctus shifted, hummed, circled.
Serafina rose silently and headed for the stairs. She paused briefly at the doorway to the parlor and looked back. They didn’t need her for this. She had her own work waiting up in her room.
* * *
It was hours later when footsteps on the stairs were followed by a quiet knock. Serafina called out, “Come in,” and placed a marker where she’d been reading. The closed doors had muffled the sound of the music somewhat, but only concentration had blocked out awareness of the other currents it stirred. She rose and turned as Luzie closed the door behind her.
“Serafina, is there something wrong?”
She wanted to lie. That would be easier than to speak the truth aloud. Every time she reached for something, it seemed she managed to do nothing more than brush it with her fingertips before it slipped out of reach. That glimpse of welcome and belonging in the church in Palermo. Paolo’s promise to teach her. Costanza’s eager desire. Margerit’s brilliant insight. Luzie’s enfolding warmth and the music that tied them together, closer than sisters. Or so she had thought.
“I miss you. I want you.” There, she’d said it. But that wasn’t really the truth either.
Luzie stepped closer and wrapped her arms around her. “I do too. I wish—”
Serafina stopped the wish with her mouth. During the summer, the dark had hidden their embraces. Now she moved her lips across the pink blush of Luzie’s cheek, the pale column of her neck and back to her mouth once more.
Luzie leaned into her arms with a small contented sound and then stiffened at the creak of a floorboard and moved away. “Serafina, we mustn’t…”
There was no hint of guilt or shame in her voice, only an abundance of caution. The same caution that had driven Serafina back to her separate room when the boys returned to school. The caution that kept their touches only to what might be excused by chance or circumstance. Serafina remembered the bittersweet night after Fizeir’s opera, holding Luzie until she slept. Even then, she had known the summer’s closeness was already lost. But how could she say that? I miss the dream that we might have reached for if we had both been free. I want the illusion you gave me that I might have found somewhere to belong, someone to belong to.
“Will you play me my mother’s song? The one you wrote for me?”
Luzie touched her cheek. “Of course. Anytime you ask.”
They returned to the parlor. The air was beginning to fill with the aroma of Chisillic’s cooking—a thick hot soup that would keep on the stove until Issibet straggled home after the performance. The score for Tanfrit was st
ill propped up on the stand of the fortepiano but Luzie simply folded it away and began the strains of the other piece from memory.
Serafina closed her eyes and leaned against Luzie’s back, her hands resting gently on her shoulders. She could feel the play of muscles in an echo of the pulse of the fluctus. The magic ran through her, holding her, stroking her. The brush of her mother’s thin white gauze shawl. The deft touch of her hands twisting hair into tight curls that fell around her face and neck. The scent of garlic and cardamom and clove. It blended in with the real presence of Chisillic’s cooking: onion and rosemary and basil. And even so, those were all just the threads that wove the cloth. She wrapped herself in the garment of light and felt it sink within her, reaching for that inner core that was always empty, always hungry, always searching.
How could anyone think that music like this could be created in imitation of another’s work? If the Tanfrit could stir one tenth this response in its listeners…
Serafina’s hands clamped onto Luzie’s shoulders and the music stopped abruptly. “That’s it!” she breathed.
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing! Nothing!” Serafina was laughing through the tears that the piece always drew from her. “We’ve had it sideways all along.”
She slipped down onto the bench beside Luzie and opened out the opera score. “We’ve been using the fluctus to tune the music, but we should be using the music to tune the fluctus.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Do you remember what people said about your setting of Pertulif?” Serafina asked. “That they could almost feel the chill of the mountain wind and the touch of the snow? That’s what we need more of. We need to make them feel the story, not just listen to it. I’ve been using my visions as a way of understanding how the music works. But we could use them like…like what I’ve been doing for the archbishop. As a map to show the path.”
Mother of Souls: A novel of Alpennia Page 40