Revenant Eve

by Sherwood Smith

  “That letter came to my hands months after it was written. Surely the mouchards read it many times first. A child could see that the seal had been broken and reheated.”

  “All true,” he said. “But it could have been in a code. Such things often are.”

  “A letter from my mother?”

  “How are they to know that?” Jaska asked. “It was conveyed through English diplomatic channels, and if there is now a state of war…” He sobered. “As you predicted.”

  “Kim predicted it. My duppy.”

  “That is true, I am corrected,” Jaska said. “Perhaps we ought to get well away from the city before we discuss this subject any further?”

  Aurélie looked around with startled eyes at the shoppers and travelers on the busy street. She bit her lip and said nothing more.

  Later in the day they reached the outskirts of the city and started up the road, but the subject of Aurélie as a spy was not revived.

  Nor was it during the following days. Aurélie never introduced it. I think, from the wary way she regarded Jaska if he began a question, that she was dreading interrogation about her origins.

  After a long tramp spent translating the second volume of Titan and practicing German, they traded the serried vineyards of Charlemagne’s empire for the Hapsburgs’: the many castles with their carvings of angels and heraldic devices, the Gothic spires and reaching arches, jutted upward from beyond the increasingly rough hills. Late in the day, lamplight shone through stained-glass windows in martial or saintly scenes, beckoning gemstones for the tired traveler.

  Mord commented one day that the news about the war declaration had probably gone to French forces via semaphore within a day but had taken longer to spread to ordinary people, and then make its way into the empire. They could tell when the empire had heard because the signs of military preparations were evident in the increased patrols, the many soldiers marching hither and yon in towns and villages.

  They jigged north from Kiel to ancient Baden in order to avoid a climb, then cut south of fortified Stuttgart and down into Württemberg, where the duke would shortly make himself a king.

  Those winged beings showed up again, drifting like vaporous clouds along roads, through trees in dark forests, over the heights of the many castles. It was the end of March, and spring had loosened the last of the snow underfoot in the deeper valleys. The world was full of the trickle, tinkle, gurgle, and rush of water as winter snow melted, added to intermittently by rain.

  The weather was as vile as the roads, but sometimes a wagon stopped to give them a ride. By now Jaska and Aurélie were chattering regularly about reading in their new languages. Sometimes (usually when least expected) Mord would put in a word or two. During the early days, while they were still in French territory, Mord, the ferocious warrior and moody musical genius, revealed a lamentable taste for puns; the worse they were, the more he would shake with silent laughter. But as they reached deeper into the Austrian empire, his whimsical moments were replaced by a wary—even bitter—silence.

  They’d finished reading Tom Jones, the reading lengthened by much discussion of Fielding’s opinionated, frequently funny introductions to the various subsections. Their next morning book, found in a narrow printshop on a street that looked unchanged since the 1400s, was Orlando Furioso.

  “I do not know Italian,” Aurélie said.

  “Tchah,” Jaska scoffed. “It’s the next thing to Latin. I promise, you will like this one, and why not learn yet another tongue?”

  They pulled discussion of that into their ongoing talk about Titan, once they located volume three. There was no personal talk. It was all wider subjects: chivalry, romanticism, republicanism, extreme philosophies of any kind, what they meant in human terms, and what I would call political terms: the responsibilities of kingship and power.

  Mord either stayed silent, or sometimes he’d interject a trenchant quote in Yiddish, German, Polish, French, and once, in Latin: “Qui male agit odit lucem,” he said on a day when a cold wind rushed and roared through the new leaves. He who is evil despises light.

  Aurélie had told me, when we were alone in her room, that she didn’t recognize many of his quotes. He didn’t offer translations, and she hesitated to ask, given their odd relationship. So this time, as they tramped downhill in a misting rain, she said with mild triumph, “That is from the Bible, John 3:10.”

  “The Christian Bible,” Mord said. “But as it happens, I was thinking of Camille Desmoulins.”

  Aurélie frowned, and then got it. She bent her head to hide her grimace. “Ça ira,” she whispered under her breath.

  “We played it often enough,” Mord rejoined. “Did you not listen to the words, Citizen René?”

  “I didn’t always understand them,” she admitted. “But enough to know that in spite of the cheerful tune, it is a very cruel song. Marie—a chambermaid—told me about the lamppost at the corner of the Place de la Grève. Where the crowd would hang people without so much as a trial.”

  “Correct enough. ‘The universe and its follies,’” Mord said. “After several years of encouraging the worst in men, Desmoulins published Le Vieux Cordelier, begging for clemency, a turnabout from his fierce demands for blood and more blood. His wish for clemency turned out to be his death sentence—” He stopped himself, shook his head violently, then muttered in Yiddish, “‘Everything that happens is merely working a thin thread of metal in relation to the Infinite.’”

  “Who said that?” Jaska asked.

  “Rebbe Nachman. When I reminded him that a thin thread of metal can cut to the bone, he said, ‘Yes.’”

  They walked in silence, until Mord peeled off and played in the woods, the violin solo beautiful in its anguish.

  There were no brigand attacks. Marauding revolutionary veterans had been left behind, and the locals might have been dissuaded from attempting a career change as highway robbers by the increasing numbers of soldiers riding back and forth along the road.

  At first the trio ignored these, merely walking to the side when they heard the rumble of horse hooves or the tramp of boots. But one morning a party of young toughs in faded Jäger uniforms rode by, their gilding tarnished, but they made up for it in attitude. “Who are you?! Where are you going?”

  Jaska said, “We are musicians, going to Vienna to study.” He pointed to Mord’s violin case, as his clarinet case was in his haversack.

  “Musicians?” the youngest one scoffed. From the fluffiness of his mustache, he couldn’t have been over eighteen. “Too cowardly to put on a uniform?”

  “He’s walking with a stick,” another pointed out. “Cripple.”

  The leader was a stout guy with corn silk hair and a heavy scar on his left cheek—either a dueling scar or from battle. He squinted at Jaska, then said, “You seen some fighting, musician?”

  “I was at Warsaw in ninety four,” Jaska replied with heavy irony.

  The second one whistled, and the leader said appreciatively, “That was some hot work. Those damned Poles can fight.” He was about to turn away, when he hitched, and slewed around again to scowl at Mord. “That one a Jew? A Jew, carrying a pistol?”

  Jaska said, “He’s my servant. And this one is my apprentice.” He indicated Aurélie.

  The soldiers ignored her and eyed Mord, whose hand tightened on the sword hilt, his eyes narrowed to slits. He was probably only trying to bring them into focus, but he looked really dangerous. The young soldier actually backed his horse away, and the leader slid his hand to his pistol belt.

  Jaska’s fingers tightened on his stick, his thumb pressing. I heard a faint snap. It was a sword stick!

  Mord glanced his way, then said, “I am a Pole.”

  The second one said, “You better get rid of that beard, fellow. Someone might take you for a Jew and string you up for bearing arms.”

  The young soldier with the fluffy moustache seemed to regret having backed off. Now he had to make up for it. “My father says, if in doubt, shove som
e bacon down their throats and take a stick to their backs. If they yell Oy! Oy! Oy!, you know it’s a Jew instead of a man.”

  “Let’s be off,” the leader said impatiently.

  Fluffy Mustache guffawed, echoed by the second guy as the leader raised a genial hand. They rode on by.

  Mord glared after them, a vein ticking in his forehead.

  “Animals. They do not think,” Jaska said wearily, as Aurélie glared after the vanishing soldiers.

  Mord began walking. Jaska picked up in the book where he’d left off.

  After that, when they heard the jingle of many horse harnesses, they drew off the road altogether, and Jaska always chose to stand between Mord and whoever rode by.

  In the next large town, they got their usual two rooms, and the next morning, Mord came downstairs clean-shaven once again.

  At the others’ concerned expressions, he said flatly, “It is just a beard. And I’ll not have it be the cause of your murders.”

  There were no more incidents like that one as they progressed. However, there were other things to think about. For one thing, I was fairly sure that I sensed that deep-freeze chill of vampires, though I never saw any.

  What I did see were some of those dark winged beings. They floated over valleys and towns, sometimes crossed the road with dreamy languor. Three of them, the ones I thought of as Fake Jaska, Pewter Hair, and Lady Midnight, were familiar. But they never came close enough to speak, and it wasn’t like they’d ever done anything threatening. They were just weird.

  THIRTY-ONE

  WHEN JASKA, Aurélie, and Mord reached Ulm and stood on the stone ramparts gazing down at the waters of the Danube, Mord said abruptly, “I have a question. But I will ask it when next I play.”

  Jaska set about finding an inn, one that might cater to musicians. They were directed to a place known for its musical gatherings. In the low-ceilinged common room with its rough-hewn walls, many locals brought instruments and played for one another. The trio performed to enthusiastic applause.

  Then Mord launched into one of his own pieces. He played with his eyes closed, his long, taut body swaying and twisting like a young tree in a wind.

  And at the end, he addressed the audience in his heavily accented German, “What heard you?”

  Aurélie and Jaska burst out in praise, as did the circle of listeners. He thanked them politely, but when the three withdrew a little so that someone else could play, he asked more quietly, in a tone that indicated the question had more than idle importance, “What did you hear?”

  “Music,” Aurélie said. “But it made me think of things.”

  “Ah! What was that, Monsieur Baptiste?” Mord seemed to prefer formality as well as her boy’s name, though he was still careful that they never touched.

  “It made me think of home. My first home, but it was not all happy, for I remembered the pirate attack, and…and other things. But good things, too,” she added hastily when Mord’s brows knit pensively.

  “I thought of the good days in Warsaw,” Jaska said. “When we gathered with the General at Czartoryski Palace, with the other cadets, and how people would crowd at the windows trying to get a glimpse of him.”

  “Ah,” Mord said sadly. “Then I have failed.”

  Jaska held out a hand. “How can you say that? I have never heard you play better than you have since your return. Never. And you were always good.”

  But Mord went silent again. Except for his playing.

  They turned their backs on the towering spire of Ulm Minster, untouched by revolution, and descended past the interlocking pattern of slanted roofs, careful on wet cobblestones. Here and there the double-headed eagle marked corbels and mullioned glass; this city belonged to the emperor who would be surrendering to Napoleon within a couple of years.

  I didn’t tell them that. I wasn’t talking at all, as they drew ever eastward. I was watching how Aurélie and Jaska fell into patterns of talk, each turning automatically to the other when they met in the mornings, or when ideas occurred. I didn’t know whether to be apprehensive or glad, because I still didn’t know if Jaska was the third son of some cadet branch of the Dsarets, sent off to Poland to get rid of him; or whether, no matter who he was, he would be the means to get Aurélie to Dobrenica.

  Aurélie gazed in awe at the ranks on ranks of Alpine mountains, still clothed in blue-white snow, until they were swallowed again by the trees and towering buildings with their tripled tiers of oriel windows.

  The food had changed again. Aurélie devoured the different kinds of potato dishes and dumplings, many covered thickly with cheese, and the ubiquitous cabbage, here doused with vinegar and a spot of sugar.

  In one inn, the stout, friendly innkeeper set down a tankard of foam-topped beer in front of Aurélie, saying, “Trink, Jüngling!”—following with a kindly speech about how the boy was too thin, he would fly away on the wind, he must fatten up!

  And as Aurélie tasted the beer, the man bent toward Jaska, whose German was perfect, and said in a voice that was probably supposed to be low but sounded like a rumble of thunder, “He’s a dark one, your apprentice. Spanish?”

  Aurélie said nothing.

  Jaska glanced her way, then said, “Portuguese. A noble father.”

  “Ah.” The innkeeper put a finger in the air. “A second son, perhaps? Or born on the wrong side of the blanket? The important thing is nobility. Rank has its privileges, the world says. Excuses many sins. In everyone’s eyes but the church.” He laughed then hastily crossed himself.

  Aurélie ignored all that and sipped the dark beer. Her expressive face altered to a muted surprise. She liked it. She sipped some more, and as conversation languished—Jaska thoughtful, Mord lost in his inner world—she finished the evening rather owl-eyed.

  Later that night, when she was alone in her room, she broached the subject of Mord. “He is very unhappy. Why does he not like what we say about his music?”

  “I don’t know. He plays better than he ever did. If I had eyes, I’d be crying, sometimes.”

  “I do weep, a little. I’m so glad that I can finger without looking. Oh, he makes me think of the pure blue sky over Jamaica when there is no storm, and of the roses at Undertree, and the magical symbols on the stone wall that Diana used to touch when we walked past. I think of Mama, and Tante Mimba. Of Diana. Even of James, though I no longer want to marry him. It is more that I miss how, oh, how hopeful we were. But Mord! Did you see, he no longer touches the pork, or any meat. What do you think his reason might be?”

  “I think he might be trying to keep the Jewish laws about food.”

  She said, “Would that and the way that he plays at prayer times, and the fact that we do not move on Sabbath, not mean he’s recovered his faith?”

  “I don’t know what it means. It’s not an easy question to answer.”

  From time to time, as the trio moved from village to walled town, through hills and thick green conifer forests, Mord would ask them, after one of his remarkable, even heart-rending solos, “What did you hear?”

  He’d listen intently to their answers, then turn away with an air of silent defeat, and vanish, making it clear he didn’t want to talk about it.

  Castles were seldom completely out of sight, and the trio avoided them easily enough, for there were always villages or small towns. Spring had finally come. Marsh weed and rushes shot through the brown mud. Brambly shrubs fluffed out in civilizing green, and the deciduous trees tufted with nubs that began to leaf. The wild, fairy-tale landscape of Bavaria and upper Austria closed around them, opening to golden baroque castles and beautiful little hamlets.

  They navigated by church bells, echoing through hill and forest. People in the villages were largely friendly as long as they heard German; the trample of the French three years ago was beginning to fade, except in memory. Aurélie loved the onion domes poking up here and there above the rocky hills and treetops.

  Between the villages the countryside was rough, always uphill, downhill,
the road often running alongside bubbling streams, then plunging them into thick forest, which caused everybody to loosen weapons for quick grabbing. Sometimes they heard the howl of Austrian wolves, which didn’t sound any different from French ones. Jaska seemed to lose himself in thought more frequently, which meant fewer book and language conversations.

  I wondered if it was his knee until his occasional gazes Aurélie’s way made it clear he had something on his mind.

  They joined up with the Danube again at Linz.

  The town was half destroyed, the castle a dramatic ruin as a result of the French cruising through in 1800. Everywhere people were busy rebuilding. I couldn’t help thinking, Don’t bother, Napoleon is going to be back through here a couple more times. One of the worst things about knowing what was to come was the sheer helplessness.

  The gossip in inns, and the newspapers shared around, made it clear that everyone was expecting war. For the most part, however, their attitude was, If he comes back, this time we’ll be ready for him.

  I was so glad that our route didn’t take us through Austerlitz.

  The trio tramped through what remained of Linz’s old town, unsuccessfully trying to find lodging. The sky was building toward a spectacular spring storm, and no one wanted to be caught out. Desperate, they were willing to settle for a single room.

  One innkeeper said, “Holy Week is a very bad time for travelers. Every bed is taken, twice over! We’re sleeping four to a mattress.”

  Listening to the conversation was a round-faced draper who had just delivered a bolt of cloth. He eyed the three, taking in their travel-worn but fine clothing, and said, “My brother, who runs a stable, sometimes lets his attic during harvest season. It’s not fine enough for an archduke, but for students? It’s clean and will cost you no more than a room here. You can walk into town for meals.”

  “Thank you,” Jaska said, emulating the south-German accent. “Where will we find him?”