Songspinners

by Sarah Ash

  ‘But if they go back to Allegonde, they’ll be arrested – tortured –’

  ‘My dear, our business is to ensure that the Illustre receives the very best medical treatment we can provide. What becomes of him when he leaves the Sanatorium is not our concern.’

  ‘But –’ Orial began and then subsided. She knew it was no use arguing with Papa. She would have to employ more subtle means to maintain contact with the man who had known her mother: Cramoisy Jordelayne.

  ‘Now what about lunch? I’ve worked up quite an appetite this morning.’

  It only took a pasty and a mug of mulled ale to bribe the porter into telling her the address of the Diva’s lodgings. But Orial would have not have had much trouble locating them; a street away, she could hear the sound of vocal exercises trilling out over the rooftops.

  Cramoisy had taken lodgings on the first floor in one of the most exclusive of Sulien’s crescents. The household was run by Mistress Permay who took great pride in gossiping about her aristocratic residents at the Assemblies. Mistress Permay looked at Orial with great suspicion when she asked to be taken to Cramoisy Jordelayne.

  The apartment was reached by an elegant staircase of polished wood which curved upward from a marble-pillared hallway.

  ‘Orial! My sweet!’ Cramoisy pressed Orial to his bosom, kissing her cheeks, as if greeting a long-lost companion. ‘You’ll take tea with me? Splendid! Tea, Mistress Permay, if you please. Cream – and sugar.’

  Mistress Permay gave a sniff and retreated.

  ‘Does your father know you’ve come?’ Cramoisy said in a conspiratorial whisper.

  Orial shook her head. She wished the Diva had not mentioned her father.

  ‘I can’t stay long. He’ll ask questions.’

  ‘I won’t breathe a word.’

  Orial glanced shyly around her; taking in the gilded mirrors, the swagged brocade curtains, the elegant cushioned couches upholstered in delicate stripes of green, gold and ivory. Vases overflowed with spring flowers: pheasant’s eye narcissus, vivid jonquils, muscari of a deep and tender blue.

  ‘Diva –’

  ‘Please. Call me Cramoisy.’

  ‘Cramoisy. A man has been asking questions. About you. And Khassian.’

  ‘Ah.’ The Diva sat down, suddenly still.

  ‘Someone must have followed you.’

  All the animation had leaked from the Diva’s face.

  ‘But you mustn’t be too concerned,’ Orial ventured, trying to cheer him. ‘Suliens don’t like to talk to strangers – particularly nosy strangers.’

  ‘What did he look like?’

  ‘Tall. Long hair – grey – but he didn’t seem old.’

  Cramoisy shook his head distractedly.

  ‘It could be anyone.’

  ‘But what harm could they do to you here? You’re beyond Allegonde’s jurisdiction –’

  The door opened and Mistress Permay reappeared, bearing a silver tray of tea. Cramoisy instantly reassumed his earlier vivacious manner.

  ‘Tea! And some of your delicious petits fours, Mistress Permay. How thoughtful of you. I suppose it was only to be expected,’ he said as he poured the tea. ‘Girim won’t let Khassian go. I wonder how many of the others managed to get away…’

  ‘Tell me,’ Orial said, ‘about the Opera House. Before the fire.’

  As Cramoisy talked, Orial saw the Opera House, alight with the glow of a myriad candlelamps, the sudden hush before the curtains opened, the surge of music from the orchestra hidden below the stage, the roar of the crowd as the Diva entered to sing his first aria…

  The world of music in distant Bel’Esstar glittered like a dream-mirage. Entranced, Orial listened to Cramoisy’s reminiscences and all the while she listened, she felt a terrible hunger.

  ‘What do you feel when you first walk out on stage?’

  ‘Fear. And elation. Such an intoxicating mix! It’s like standing on a high, high cliff – and leaping off into the clouds, floating upwards on a current of music, almost touching the heavens –’

  Arias, coloratura, cadenzas… Orial blinked as the unfamiliar terms rolled lightly off the Diva’s tongue. He mentioned composers she had never heard of: Serafín, Capelian, Talfieri… She felt awed, humbled by her lack of knowledge. Her mother Iridial must have known it all – and more – at this age.

  ‘Would you do something for me?’ Orial, suddenly shy, could hardly enunciate her question. ‘A favour?’

  ‘Name it, child.’ Cramoisy seemed in a generous mood.

  ‘Would you sing for me?’

  ‘But, yes. Yes of course I will sing for you.’ The Diva rose to his feet and, clasping his hands, appeared to drift into a trance. ‘Something simple, something requiring no accompaniment… Ah, I know. The little air Firildys sings when she is imprisoned: “Let me not die enslaved…” ‘

  Cramoisy slowly walked away from Orial towards the door.

  When he turned, she almost gasped aloud at the transformation. With one flick of the hand, Cramoisy pulled off his crimson perruque and dark red locks came tumbling down about his shoulders. His face, no longer animated, seemed pale and wan, his eyes dulled as they fixed on some distant point. He sank to his knees.

  And as if from deep within the voice issued, low yet laden with longing. The melody gradually uncurled itself, a slow spiral yearning upwards yet never resolving…

  Orial sat utterly still, transfixed. The music seemed to insinuate itself into her whole being; she was here, on the striped couch, and yet she was also, simultaneously, within the warp and weft that Cramoisy’s voice was weaving. It had become the pattern of her breathing, the pulse of her blood…

  Suddenly the air seemed to express all her lifetime’s yearning to be one with the music, to live and breathe it as Cramoisy did. Suddenly everything she had done until this moment seemed meaningless – a fading shadow-world – and only the gold-spun threads of the music mattered.

  And then it was over – and there was only emptiness.

  ‘That was so… so beautiful.’ To her horror Orial found her eyes had filled with tears; she was afraid Cramoisy would tease her for it. Her spectacles misted over; awkwardly she prised them off and tried to rub the thick pebble lenses on her apron to clean them.

  ‘Look at me, Orial.’

  Cramoisy’s hand gently touched her chin, tipping her face up towards his. She tried to look away.

  ‘You have your mother’s eyes,’ he said softly.

  ‘Wh-what do you mean?’ Orial swallowed back her tears.

  ‘Has no one ever commented on them before? On their unique colours?’

  ‘N-no.’

  ‘And have you ever seen anyone else with such unusual eyes? Has no one ever spoken to you about them?’

  ‘About my eyes?’

  ‘I’m not trying to alarm you, child. Heavens, you’ve gone quite white! Here. Sit next to me.’

  ‘You know something,’ Orial said. ‘That’s why Papa didn’t want me to talk to you. You know something about my mother.’

  ‘I remember a great deal about your mother.’ Cramoisy twisted his hair back and tucked it expertly beneath the perruque. ‘But I don’t want to antagonise your papa. Surely it is for him to answer any questions you may have about Iridial, not a virtual stranger?’

  ‘Papa doesn’t allow me to do anything!’ Orial burst out bitterly. ‘I’m not allowed to play music, to hear music. He won’t have it in the house, not since Mama died.’

  ‘So you have had no training, no lessons? No exposure to music?’

  Orial stared down at her hands in her lap. Her secret. Could she trust Cramoisy?

  ‘I – I have taught myself a few things.’

  ‘Aha!’ Cramoisy seemed genuinely interested and strangely unsurprised.

  ‘I don’t know if I am any good.’

  ‘Let’s give you a little test. The arioso I sang. I wonder if you can recall any of it?’

  Orial focused her memory.

  ‘Y-you must forgive
my voice –’

  Cramoisy merely made a graceful little gesture with one hand.

  Orial cleared her throat. The green and ivory room receded, the ticking of the clock faded to silence. In her thin, clear voice she began to recall the poignant melody. The words escaped her… but the melody was as familiar to her as if she had known it all her life. After a while, aware that Cramoisy was staring at her, she stopped singing.

  ‘Have you ever heard that melody before today?’

  ‘Did I make a mistake?’

  ‘You have an exceptional musical memory. Did you know that? Just like your mother. And –’

  A whirring from the pendule clock on the mantelpiece interrupted Cramoisy as it began loudly to strike the hour. Orial started up.

  ‘Five! I should have been back at the Sanatorium by now. And if Papa asks where I’ve been, I’ll –’

  She grabbed her cape and sped down the curved stairs.

  ‘Thank you for the tea!’ she called over her shoulder.

  It was almost dark outside, a grey, misty Sulien twilight that dulled the roseate pink of the old stones to a sombre carnelian. The cobbles glistened with rain; one or two people hurried past, heads down beneath umbrellas. Orial stopped in the doorway to pull her hood up over her hair – and saw that someone was watching her. He drew back into the shadows of the doorway of the next house but not before Orial had recognised the tell-tale glint of watchful eyes, blue as polished steel.

  CHAPTER 3

  Khassian lay watching the raindrops slowly trickle down the unshuttered window panes. Beyond, a rainmist hid the distant green hillside from view. Did it always rain at this accursed spa? It had been raining since before dawn; he had lain awake listening to the drops pattering against the windows until the first wet light illumined his room.

  Sleep eluded him. Whenever he drifted into a doze, images of flame and fire scored his dreams and he woke, sweating, terrified. There were other dreams too, drugged dreams, poppy-drowsed and darkly narcotic. Teetering on the edge of a black abyss, a stinking pit from whose smoke-wreathed deeps shrouded things crawled, clawing at him, threatening to pull him down into the depths.

  Better to stay awake than to dream these terrors. Better to watch the dawn bring in yet another day.

  I am twenty-five – and my life is over. All I have ever known, all I have lived for, is music. What use is a musician who cannot play? What use is a composer who cannot write down the music he composes?

  He looked down at the burned ruin of his hands. He forced himself to try to move his right thumb, then the left. The new skin cracked and groaned. He bit his underlip until he tasted blood.

  Nothing happened. He was willing the damn things to move – and the message was somehow not transmitting itself from mind to hand.

  Fear. That was it. Fear of pain.

  He must make himself endure the pain. It must be possible to make the mind triumph over the flesh, to learn to concentrate on the act of movement itself, not the sensation…

  Exhausted by the effort, he slumped back, overcome by a sense of self-loathing. His physical frailty disgusted him. How could he be so weak-willed?

  There was so much he still had to do. The opera. The burned opera. His most dearly cherished work. He had devoted a whole year of Ms life to the writing of Elesstar. It had become an obsession. It had not merely been a statement of his personal philosophy, it had become something of far greater import. It had become a plea for freedom, an anguished cry against the repression of personal liberties and the loss of free speech. It had been a single torch burning against the oncoming night.

  And the forces of repression, they who proclaimed themselves to be the enlightened ones, had all but destroyed it and its creator together.

  ‘Better they had destroyed me,’ he whispered into the grey dawn. ‘Better oblivion than this dragging life-in-death…’

  It was all still there, in his mind. The score, the instrumental parts, the libretto, had burned to ashes along with the sets and costumes. But the phenomenal memory, legacy of the rigorous training his father had subjected him to from early childhood, retained every nuance, every note. Girim nel Ghislain might be congratulating himself that all trace of the heretical opera had been eradicated.

  Girim was wrong.

  There was some irony in that, at least, Khassian thought, a bitter smile twisting his lips. Somehow he would find a way to write it all down again. And, once it was written down, he would gather musicians, singers, to him here in Sulien… and there would be nothing the Grand Maistre and his Commanderie could do to silence his voice this time.

  Another, more pressing, need had been nagging him for some while. He had tried to resist it but the urge to void a painfully full bladder had become inescapable.

  Shamed, Khassian tried to reach for the bell on the table. Impossible to pick it up, let alone ring it! If no one came soon, he would wet the bed. Helpless as a doddering old man. His face burned with embarrassment at the thought. He leaned over the table and, after a few redundant attempts, caught hold of the bell handle in his teeth, shaking it from side to side.

  In the distance he heard the sound of footsteps coming nearer. The bell dropped with a jangle to the floor as he lay back, exhausted by the effort.

  When the nurse had departed with the noisome bedpan discreetly covered by a cloth, Khassian lay back and tried to forget the humiliation.

  In the space of a few days, his life had shrunk to the confines of this room, his needs to the basic human necessities. He could do nothing for himself. He must be washed, shaved, dressed, fed like a baby. He, who had been the idol of the court at Bel’Esstar, was now reduced to this halflife –

  ‘Illustre.’

  Khassian looked around, startled. He had not heard the door open. And now a stranger stood in the room, a tall man, sombrely dressed.

  ‘Who in hell’s name are you?’ Khassian stared at him through narrowed eyes.

  ‘My name is Korentan,’ said the stranger quietly. ‘Captain Acir Korentan of the Commanderie.’

  ‘So you’ve come to arrest me? Where’s your warrant?’

  ‘No warrant,’ said Captain Korentan. He lifted his hands to show they were empty, as though yielding to an opponent in battle. ‘And I come unarmed, as you see.’

  ‘Get out.’

  Captain Korentan stood his ground.

  ‘I have nothing to say to you – or to any member of the Commanderie. Understand me? Nothing.’

  The Captain sat down on the chair at Khassian’s bedside. Khassian glared at him.

  ‘At least listen to what I have to say, Illustre. The leader of our order, the Grand Maistre, is exceedingly distressed at what has –’

  ‘Exceedingly distressed?’ Khassian repeated, trying to hide the catch in his voice. Anger threatened to unman him, self-righteous anger that flared up, fiercer than the Opera House conflagration. ‘Look, Captain Korentan. Look at my hands.’

  Maybe he had hoped to see revulsion in the Captain’s eyes, revulsion – and guilt. But the expression that momentarily softened the formal military mask was one of compassion.

  ‘This should never have happened,’ Korentan said.

  Khassian heard the softer nuance in Korentan’s voice but was so absorbed in his own anger that he ignored it.

  ‘The Grand Maistre realises there is no way he can make adequate reparation to you,’ Korentan instantly became formal again. ‘He wishes at least to ensure that you have the very best medical treatment available.’

  ‘And what’s the catch?’ Khassian said sneeringly.

  ‘No catch.’

  ‘Oh, come, Captain Korentan, do you think I’m that naive? What service must I then render in gratitude to the cause of the Commanderie?’

  ‘No service, Illustre. We are a charitable order –’

  ‘I don’t need the Commanderie’s charity,’ Khassian said, almost spitting out each word in Korentan’s face. ‘Go back to your Grand Maistre and tell him he can keep his money. I wa
nt nothing from him.’

  The Captain paused a moment as though about to speak – and then seemed to think better of it. He clicked his heels together, gave Khassian a curt bow and left the room.

  In the kitchens, Cook was chopping vegetables and herbs for the lunchtime soup: leeks, waxy potatoes, spring parsley and chives.

  ‘Morning, Demselle Orial,’ Cook grunted, hardly glancing up from her work.

  ‘Shall I help you?’ Orial had been sent to restock the linen cupboard with clean towels from the laundry but if she was a few minutes delayed, no one would complain. And this was a good time to talk to Cook whilst no one else was around.

  Cook shrugged and passed her a knife.

  ‘Mind your fingers. It’s sharp.’

  ‘Cook…’ Orial said, carefully shredding a leek into fronds of the palest green. ‘What exactly did my mother die of?’

  ‘She got sick,’ Cook said bluntly. ‘And there wasn’t a cure for her sickness.’

  ‘But what exactly was the sickness?’

  Cook did not stop her work; if anything she seemed to chop rather more vigorously.

  ‘I never knew the name for it. Doubtless your father did.’

  ‘Cancer?’ Orial said. ‘Diabetes? Or was it some kind of contagion? Plague, cholera, smallpox?’

  Cook slapped her knife down on the table.

  ‘Heavens, child, why this sudden morbid fascination?’

  ‘I’m not a child anymore,’ Orial said defiantly. ‘And I need to know. I deserve to know. Why won’t anyone tell me the truth?’

  Orial slammed her door shut and flung herself headlong on the bed.

  Why would no one speak of it? Were the facts of her mother’s death so horrible that they were trying to shield her from the truth?

  Morbid fantasies invaded her mind, sickroom visions of decline and decay. These fever-tainted imaginings were beginning to distort her most cherished memories of her mother.

  A loose tile in the bedroom fireplace concealed a hiding place where Orial had secreted her treasures since childhood. It was one treasure in particular which she sought now for comfort.

  She drew out from the dusty crevice a slender volume wrapped in cloth. Opening the leatherbound book, she let her fingers stray over the yellowed title page, caressing the faded writing. The book’s title, A Treatise on Musical Notation with Divers Examples, was underwritten in a graceful script ‘Iridial Capelian’. This volume had escaped the bonfire Jerame Magelonne had made of all the musical scores the day after her mother’s death, by virtue of its slenderness; it had slipped down behind the armoire where Cook had found it some weeks later and kept it hidden for Orial.