Songspinners

by Sarah Ash

  Gold of sun on marigold meadows in distant Allegonde…

  ‘Fiammis,’ he murmured. It must be coincidence. It must be a trick of the sunlight. And yet he had heard it rumoured that Fiammis assumed many disguises in her work for the Cause.

  The woman was coming nearer unhurriedly, strolling across the cobbled street as if to gaze at the smooth lawns and the green hills beyond. Acir turned his head away.

  ‘Good day to you, Captain Korentan.’

  He gave a little gasp as if he had been shot.

  ‘It is you.’

  She nodded. She seemed as cool, as self-controlled, as he remembered her. And as perfect. To look on her heart-shaped face, translucent skin as pale as narcissus petals, tore open a deep wound he had thought healed long ago.

  ‘Fiammis.’ He heard the tremor in his voice, struggled to control it. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Taking the waters, dear Acir. Why else does one come to Sulien?’

  The Contesse Fiammis. Girim’s secret agent.

  ‘He’s sent you, hasn’t he?’

  ‘Did I take you by surprise, Captain? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.’

  A ghost from my past, the past that might have been.

  He was seized with a sudden irrational urge to go in and warn Amaru Khassian.

  But all he said was, ‘This is my mission, Fiammis,’ with as much dignity as his damaged pride could permit before another sneeze threatened to explode. He fumbled for his handkerchief to smother it.

  ‘Dear me. What a nasty cold. But then, you shouldn’t go river-bathing at this time of year.’

  She took out a folded newspaper from her reticule and showed it to him.

  ‘Haven’t you read the Sulien Chronicle? “Heroic rescue in swollen Avenne. Man swept away by flood waters rescued from drowning. The selfless rescuer, a visitor from Allegonde, modestly refused to reveal his name but was thought to be one Acir Korentan, a Captain of the Commanderie.” ‘

  Acir silently handed her back the Chronicle.

  ‘Maybe Girim will see it as good publicity for the Cause, Captain. Or maybe… he will wonder why you did not let Amaru Khassian drown?’

  Khassian lay watching golden motes slowly spiralling in a thin shaft of spring sunlight. The darkness of the curtained room by day suited the darkness of his mood; he shunned the sunlight, preferring to hide from its brilliance in his room.

  A debilitating lassitude had overcome him; he had awoken from a night of troubled dreams to a feeling of dread and hopelessness. His breakfast tray lay untouched, his favourite cup of mocha cold, with a thick skin congealing on the top.

  He did not share Cramoisy’s confidence in Orial Magelonne’s gift. The girl was so young, so inexperienced. Even if she possessed a telepathic ability to hear the music in his mind, he suspected she would not have the musical skills to notate it accurately.

  ‘What! Still abed?’ The Diva came in and dragged open the heavy swagged velvet curtains. Khassian turned his face away from the dazzling daylight. ‘It’s past noon! And are you to be still abed when Orial arrives? Look at you – unshaven, undressed. The valet tells me you’d have none of his help! Must I do everything for you?’

  ‘I want you to cancel this meeting with Demselle Magelonne,’ Khassian said, slowly swinging his legs over the side of the bed. ‘There’s no point. It’s not going to work.’

  ‘How can you be so sure?’ Cramoisy continued to bustle about the room, pouring water into the wash-basin, gathering up brushes, razors, towels, in readiness. He patted the chair, inviting Khassian to sit down before the mirror.

  ‘The mother. Iridial. Maybe if she were still alive, she could have helped me –’

  Cramoisy smoothed shaving lather on to Khassian’s cheeks.

  ‘Iridial is dead, Iel rest her soul. Her early death was a tragedy and heaven knows what killed her off so young – some said it was a chill on the lungs… But the daughter lives and she wants to help you.’

  ‘Help me!’ The word was distasteful to Khassian; it smacked of genteel charitable work and condescension.

  ‘This is the last time I do this for you.’ With short, deft strokes the castrato drew the razor across Khassian’s cheeks, complaining all the while. ‘I pay good money for Mistress Permay’s nephew to be your valet – and you send him away!’ He wiped off the last of the lather with a flourish and slapped on some bay lotion; Khassian’s eyes watered with its aromatic sting.

  ‘At least give the girl a chance.’ Cramoisy seized a brush and began to tug it through Khassian’s tangled hair.

  He caught sight of his reflection; caught the dull, weary glint of despair in his eyes.

  ‘It won’t work,’ he said.

  Orial sat on her bed, hastily turning over and over the worn pages of her mother’s Treatise, trying to remind herself of all she had learned. How inadequate a training it seemed, now that she was to be put to the test by a real musician.

  A pang of fear fluttered in her stomach. The flaws in her knowledge could so easily be exposed. She shut the Treatise and clutched it to her like a talisman.

  ‘Isn’t this what I’ve always wanted?’ she whispered to herself as she knelt to put the book back in its hiding place. ‘A chance to prove myself?’

  The fluttering surged again, charged with exhilaration.

  ‘Yes,’ she said to her reflection as she tied on her bonnet, determinedly tugging the ribbons tight under her chin, ‘this is my chance, the only chance that may ever come my way. I have to take it.’

  She went down the stairs and was just crossing the hall when the door to her father’s office opened. She froze.

  ‘Where are you off to, my dear?’ called Dr Magelonne.

  ‘Out… to take the air.’ She dared not turn around for fear he should see that she had blushed.

  ‘Such a fine day! A walk in the gardens is an excellent idea. Shall we go together?’

  Together! Orial bit her lip, at a loss to know what to say. If she demurred, he would become suspicious. But if she was late for her appointment with Amaru Khassian…

  ‘I – I’d love to Papa. But –’

  ‘Doctor, you’re not busy, are you?’ Sister Crespine appeared, looking flustered. ‘I think you’d better take a look at General Talley’s gout. I suspect he’s been at the spirits again.’

  Orial held her breath, hoping.

  ‘I’m so sorry, my dear.’ Dr Magelonne kissed her on the cheek. ‘Enjoy your walk. Maybe we can go tomorrow?’

  Spring sunshine gilded the plaster cornices of the elegant Crescent salon, glinted in the glass of the oval mirrors. Orial saw that Khassian was standing staring out of the tall windows; he did not even turn around as Cramoisy brought her forward.

  ‘Orial, this is His Excellency the Illustre, Amaru Khassian.’ Cramoisy took Orial by the arm and led her forward. ‘Illustre – Demselle Orial Magelonne.’

  Orial, well-trained in etiquette at the Academie, dipped a curtsey. When she raised her head she saw that Amaru Khassian was regarding her with a guarded air. She knew at once that he was bitterly sceptical, that he had already dismissed the whole plan as hopeless. And this realisation gave her a sudden surge of defiant energy. How dare he prejudge her? Was he too proud to accept her help – even if it was that of a mere novice?

  ‘Demselle Magelonne.’ He cleared his throat, evidently as ill at ease as she was. ‘It is – generous of you to offer your help in this way. I hesitate to ask this of you – but if we are to proceed, would you be so kind as to seat yourself at this desk and transcribe a few notes for me?’

  Cramoisy ushered Orial to the desk and patted her arm reassuringly. Stave paper, rulers, pens and ink were neatly laid out.

  ‘What shall I write?’ she asked.

  Khassian went back to the window and leaned his arm against the pane in what seemed to Orial an attitude of weary melancholy.

  ‘I’m rehearsing a simple four-bar melody. Shall I tell you the pitch it begins on?’

  ‘No.
’ Orial shook her head, concentrating. ‘It’s bémol…‘

  The clarity of the Illustre’s thoughts astonished her. She could ‘hear’ the melody almost as clearly as if he were playing it aloud for her. She reached for a pencil and began to scribble the notes down, stopping to chew the end as she puzzled over the number of beats in a bar. Was he trying to catch her out?

  He walked over and stood behind her, looking over her shoulder. She held the paper up to him and watched with a certain self-satisfaction the way his dark brows rose – not in scepticism this time but in slow surprise. He turned on Cramoisy.

  ‘This is a conspiracy. You planned it between you.’

  ‘Me?’ Cramoisy said sharply. ‘How could I plan anything of the sort, Amar? How could I know what tune you were thinking?’

  ‘Look. Look for yourself.’ He gestured towards Orial and she noticed for the first time the ruined hand which the loose lace on his cuff had concealed, the stiffened claw coated in red scar-tissue.

  ‘I don’t need to look.’ Cramoisy was regarding himself critically in the mirror, tucking back an errant curl. ‘I know she can do it. You’re the unbeliever.’

  ‘The handwriting is somewhat crude,’ Khassian seemed keen to find any reason to be critical. ‘And she reverses the tails on the quavers.’ He wheeled back to Orial. ‘Did you know the stems should be on the left of the notes above the centre stave line?’

  ‘For Mhir’s sake, Amaru, don’t be such a perfectionist! Could you have done as much?’

  ‘So – in spite of the stems – I transcribed the tune correctly?’ Orial asked.

  The muscles in his face twitched with the passage of conflicting emotions. She saw that he could not begin to allow himself to hope again.

  ‘A lucky coincidence. I need a professional amanuensis.’

  ‘Give her another chance,’ urged Cramoisy.

  Orial was angry now. She had lied to her father to gain an hour’s freedom to come here – and now he was treating her in this contemptuous fashion.

  ‘I think I should go,’ she said, rising.

  ‘No, no.’ Cramoisy rushed over to her, pressing her back into the seat.

  ‘Amaru is being unpardonably rude. Amar – stop behaving like a boor. Show some courtesy to Demselle Magelonne.’

  ‘I –’ He stalked back to the window, his face a mask. ‘Very well. A second chance.’

  The music, when it came, took Orial by surprise. The first melody had been simple, a child’s nursery-tune. But this echoed the dark-hued, twisting, tormented line of the music she had first ‘heard’ in the Sanatorium. It taxed her skills in notation to the limit. Her mind filled with darkness; the notes gashed the darkness with the brilliance of forked lightning. It was alien, unlike any music she had known before.

  She looked up from the stave paper, blinking. What she had written was untidy, slashed out, altered as she struggled to notate unfamiliar intervals, rhythm patterns.

  He stood above her, looking down at what she had written.

  ‘You heard me think that?‘

  She sensed his hand, hidden beneath the soft lace, give an unconscious twitch – as though desperate to seize the pencil from her and score through the scrawl.

  ‘I am unfamiliar with your style,’ she said. Afterwards she would wonder how she had summoned the courage to do it.

  ‘She’s your only hope,’ Cramoisy pleaded.

  ‘I’ll be difficult to work with. I’m impossible to please.’ The eyes that met Orial’s were suddenly the eyes of a mischievous boy, sulky yet seductive, used to getting his own way. The eyes of a spoiled child. ‘Cramoisy said you wanted to learn. Your first devoir is to improve your hand. If we are to work together, I need to be able to read what you write.’

  ‘I’m self-taught.’ Indignant at the criticism, Orial felt her face go red. ‘My mother had begun to teach me to read music when – when she died. I could just read the pitches. I worked the rest out for myself with a treatise.

  You obviously need someone who has been properly trained She stood up and went towards the door, one hand blindly reaching for the handle.

  ‘Wait,’ There was a catch in his voice, the first genuine hint of emotion she had heard. She paused. ‘I’m sorry if I have been a little – abrupt.’

  ‘We can always employ a professional to make neat copies,’ Cramoisy said. Don’t go, his eyes implored Orial.

  ‘So my transcription was accurate?’

  ‘Yes. Untidy – but astonishingly accurate. An uncomfortable sensation… knowing that someone else is reading your mind.’ The lambent brown eyes rested on her. ‘Well, demselle. Are you prepared to try to work with this unreasonable, ill-tempered brute?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Orial. ‘I am.’

  Outside in the sunshine, the Crescent suddenly spun dizzyingly about her. Orial put out a hand to grip the spiked ornamental railings, steadying herself. The effort of concentrating on the mindmusic and the tension of the encounter must have taken a greater toll on her energies than she had realised. Now she felt achingly tired. The ten minutes’ walk back to the Sanatorium seemed like ten miles.

  Maybe I’m making a mistake. Maybe I’m not ready to take on such a responsibility…

  She set out slowly, shading her eyes against the brilliant sunshine.

  Crocuses, saffron-yellow, carpeted the grass, opening their gilded petals to the sun. She moved through a sea of sunlight, sniffing the saffron perfume of the ochre pollen dusting the heart of each waxen bloom.

  Floating through golden waters…

  She lifted her face to the sun and felt its light warming her, restoring her.

  At the Sanatorium she hastily shrugged off her cape and, clutching her cap, went hurrying down to join Sister Crespine in the steam room.

  The Sister looked up from her work and a slight frown passed across her face.

  ‘I’m not late, am I, Sister?’

  ‘No, no. Not late.’

  A little later, the Sister whispered to her in passing, ‘Who is he?’

  Orial looked at her blankly.

  ‘I promise I won’t breathe a word to your father, but I can tell. There’s a glow about you. It always shows.’ She gave Orial a conspiratorial little nudge and a wink.

  Astonished, Orial found herself nodding in reply.

  A glow? As she passed the mirror she sneaked a glance at herself. Then she stopped and looked with more attention. Was it a trick of the light or had her eyes darkened again? And were those striations of topaz, striping the blue – the intense gold of the spring crocuses she had walked amongst on the Crescent lawns?

  Passing the open kitchen door, she heard Sister murmuring to Cook, ‘Have you seen our little Orial? She’s growing up fast. Radiant. Quite radiant.’

  And Cook, growling back a terse reply.

  ‘That was how her mother was. Before.’

  The Museum office was cluttered with rubbish. Empty mugs, stained with a dirty dried sediment of qaffë grounds, lined the windowsills and a faint odour of stale candlesmoke hung in the air.

  ‘Jolaine?’ Orial called.

  Open notebooks lay strewn everywhere, showing meticulous sketches, line drawings of the Under Temple stelae and their hieroglyph inscriptions. The lifetime’s work of a scholar.

  And then Orial saw her.

  Dame Jolaine Tradescar lay slumped over one of the open notebooks, her head on her arm, her wig tipped awry.

  At first she lay so still, Orial thought she was dead.

  Given Dame Jolaine’s advanced years, this was, Orial allowed, a possibility – and yet her soul-guardian had always seemed indestructible, the one constant in her life on which she could rely.

  Orial crept forwards… and as she came nearer, the Antiquarian sighed and let out a rattling snore.

  She had fallen asleep at her desk.

  Orial knelt beside Dame Jolaine and gently tried to replace the wig. Her scalp beneath was shinily pink, still tufted here and there with straggling white hairs.

&n
bsp; ‘Jolaine,’ Orial said again, close to her ear.

  ‘Eh? What?’ Jolaine Tradescar opened her eyes and stared blearily at her. ‘Dear me, I must have nodded off for a few moments there.’

  ‘More than a few moments! Have you been taking care of yourself? Have you been remembering to eat?’

  Jolaine sat up, adjusting her wig.

  ‘What hour is it?’

  ‘Past ten.’

  ‘Dear me. Dear me. More than a few moments, then.’

  ‘Shall I go fetch you some breakfast from the pastry shop?’

  ‘There’s no need to fuss over me, child, I can look after myself,’ Dame Jolaine said tetchily. Then she leaned across and patted Orial’s hand. ‘Been so busy here, I seem to have lost track of the hours… the days…’

  Orial regarded Jolaine anxiously as the Antiquarian stood up and slowly stretched.

  ‘It’s my latest find,’ she said apologetically. ‘I think I may have stumbled on something of significance.’ She winced as she tried to reach for a bound notebook that lay on the table beyond. ‘A curse on this rheumatism.’

  ‘A find?’ Orial’s curiosity was aroused.

  ‘At first I feared someone was out to dupe me. I thought it must be a fake. But it seems genuine.’

  ‘What seems genuine?’

  ‘I’ve just got to… pop out the back a moment. Bladder plays tricks too at my age. Take a look at this whilst I’m gone.’

  Jolaine handed her the notebook and hobbled out. Hieroglyphs had been copied on to the page… but below them Orial saw Jolaine had begun to enter tentative translations: ‘Elesstar’; ‘Goddess’; ‘winged one/soul/dragonfly?’

  ‘Well? What do you think?’ Jolaine appeared in the doorway.

  ‘Is it – is it true? Have you really broken the code? Do you know what the stelae say?’ Orial was so excited the questions came spilling, all jumbled up.

  ‘I’ve cracked a little of the code. Thanks to the vindictive obsession of one of our distant ancestors. A curse, scratched backwards on pewter, thrown into the spring. Heaven knows if the Goddess read it! But because our curse-writer was unsure which language She best understood, he took the trouble to inscribe it in both tongues.’