Songspinners

by Sarah Ash

  Slowly, their careful brushwork revealed a fragment of an enamelled lotos flower: ivory-white set on green and gold. Producing a palette knife, Jolaine slipped it beneath the fragment and gently began to lever.

  ‘It’s coming, it’s coming –’

  ‘Be careful,’ begged Orial.

  ‘Seems to be set in some kind of stone plinth.’ Jolaine wiped her sweating brow.

  ‘Perhaps we shouldn’t remove it.’

  ‘I’m only going to examine it, clean it, record it. I’ll put it back.’

  There was an acquisitive glint in Jolaine’s eyes; she was not to be diverted from her purpose. ‘In a few days or so…’

  Orial sat back on her heels and watched the Antiquarian work.

  ‘That’s it… out you come, my beauty, out you come…’

  Jolaine lifted the enamel out from the encrusted dirt that had held it in place over the centuries and cupped it in her palms.

  ‘But where’s the other half?’ Orial asked.

  Jolaine began to dig again – but only uncovered an indentation in the stone where the other half-lotos had been.

  ‘Damme if it isn’t gone!’ she said, exasperated. ‘Someone’s been here before us. Still, one half is better than none and this is the finest piece of Lifhendil enamel work I have ever seen. How did you know it was here?’

  ‘I didn’t,’ Orial said. ‘I just… had an intuition.’

  ‘There may be other treasures concealed beneath this dirt floor.’ Jolaine spread her hands, encompassing the whole chamber. ‘I have a theory that this chamber is of far greater significance than anyone has ever imagined. The inscriptions on the walls, the ritual paintings –’ She rubbed her hands together in anticipation. ‘There’s no way the Mayor can force me to retire now. Not when I’m on the brink of my greatest discovery!’

  CHAPTER 13

  Orial stood beneath the bleak walls of the Sulien Asylum, shivering in the rain-damp wind.

  Better to turn back now. Better not to know.

  An attendant ushered her across a windswept, weedy courtyard. Barred blank windows stared down at her. And from deep within the building, she heard someone laughing, a cracked, crazy laughter that echoed on and on.

  The Asylum Director looked as dishevelled as his Asylum, his stained white coat unbuttoned, his hair ruffled, ill-combed. Orial began to wonder if she had made a grave error of judgement in coming. The gloomy office into which he ushered her did nothing to improve her first impressions: a yellowing skull leered at her from the desk. The walls were covered in a gloomy dark brown wallpaper with faded medical charts showing sections of the brain, highlighted in lurid greens and pinks.

  ‘How can I help you, demselle?’ He was staring at her in a way that made her feel distinctly uncomfortable, as if she were a laboratory specimen pinned out on a board. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name?’

  ‘Magelonne.’

  He let out a sudden, wild bark of laughter that made her jump.

  ‘Orial Magelonne! Let me introduce myself: Tartarus. Ophil Tartarus. Your father may have mentioned my name…’

  Orial looked at him blankly.

  ‘Or maybe not.’

  ‘Dr Tartarus – what can you tell me of an illness called the Accidie?’

  ‘It’s rare. Exceptionally rare, demselle.’ He was still staring at her. ‘Before we proceed – does your father know you have come to consult me?’

  Orial hesitated. If she said no, would he send her away?

  ‘I can tell from your silence that he does not.’

  ‘And does that prevent you answering my questions?’ Orial asked. She had summoned the courage to make the journey here; she would not come away unsatisfied.

  ‘Please. Sit down.’ He held out a chair for her; the worn leather upholstery creaked as she sat down.

  ‘If you know my father – then you know what happened to my mother?’

  He sat opposite her

  ‘Iridial Magelonne? Yes, I treated her.’

  His prompt reply took her by surprise.

  ‘So she did go mad?’

  ‘Mad? Such an imprecise term. Your mother was suffering from a kind of mania. She claimed she could hear the music in other people’s minds. Constantly.’

  ‘The Accidie?’

  ‘Before we proceed you’d better read this – a monograph written by my predecessor.’

  He pulled out a bound ledger and smoothed it open: the page he presented to Orial was filled with a tightly written script in fading brown ink:

  As the Accidie only seems to affect females at or after puberty, how can we be sure that the patient is suffering from the Accidie and not hysteria? The eyes (cf. my pamphlet on this subject) show a tendency to myopia and astigmatism. If the irises have developed marked striations of several colours, then this is a certain indicator.

  The patient will manifest musical ability of a prodigious nature.

  The madness begins with a state of confusion. The patient claims to hear music emanating from the minds of other individuals. Anyone who has ever been plagued by a melody ‘on the brain’ will understand what a terrible affliction this must be. This stage may last – with remissions – for anything between a few months to several years. The confusion culminates in a sudden devastating deterioration from which there is no recovery.

  ‘No recovery?’ Orial whispered.

  ‘When I was called to your mother, she had already tried to drown herself. In the end, of course, she succeeded.’

  ‘She – drowned’?’ Orial stared at Ophil Tartarus. She had gone rigid with shock.

  ‘I’m sorry. You didn’t know?’ She numbly shook her head.

  ‘Here.’ He poured liquid from a flask into a glass and placed it in her shaking hand, guiding it to her lips. ‘Drink this.’

  A few drops slid down Orial’s throat; she choked on their bitter fire, waving the glass away as tears clouded her eyes.

  ‘I assumed your father had told you.’

  ‘My – father –’ Orial said between coughs, ‘has told me – nothing.’

  ‘Then maybe –’

  ‘No. I appreciate your frankness. Where did she drown?’

  ‘In the River Avenne. It was most unfortunate. After a week or so here, our regime seemed to have calmed her. So when your father came to visit her, we let him take her to walk in the gardens. Suddenly she broke free, ran to the riverbank – and threw herself in. By the time he had pulled her out, she was dead. Drowned.’

  ‘Dead,’ Orial repeated. ‘You are sure she was dead?’

  ‘Great heavens, demselle, both your father and I are doctors! What are you implying?’

  Orial sat silent a moment. The sour taste of the spirit still stung the inside of her mouth; she centred her mind on that one sensation. After a while she said, more to herself than Tartarus, ‘So that’s why.’

  ‘Why what, demselle?’

  ‘Why my father has kept all music out of the house. To protect me.’

  ‘An intriguing theory. Most intriguing.’ Tartarus began to scribble in a notebook, murmuring to himself, ‘By eliminating the stimulus… maybe hoped to delay or even avert the onset of the symptoms of the degeneration…’

  ‘But has it worked?’ Orial asked.

  ‘Demselle?’ Tartarus said, regarding her warily.

  ‘Please be frank, Doctor. What are my chances?’

  ‘It’s impossible to make an accurate prediction without examining you properly.’ He leaned closer across the desk, staring into her eyes. Orial, suddenly uneasy, sprang to her feet.

  ‘Well, thank you, Dr Tartarus. If I need to consult you again…’

  He was still staring at her in that disconcerting way.

  ‘Maybe if I could just visit the gardens and see where my mother…’

  ‘Please.’ He did not rise from the desk but she felt his piercing stare follow her out of the office.

  Outside in the courtyard, she took in several breaths of fresh air. The spirit had made her
light-headed and her heart was pounding.

  A sudden devastating deterioration from which there is no recovery.

  Orial wandered through the neglected Asylum gardens. Weeds choked the borders; the path led past a sundial, half-smothered in bindweed. She parted the clinging stems, revealing the slate dial beneath.

  The faint shadow of the broken finger flickered across the dial… backwards?

  Overhead, clouds scudded on fitful gusts of wind, obliterating the faint sun.

  This was where Iridial had spent her last moments. This was where, distracted beyond endurance, she had turned towards the river, seeking oblivion.

  The rusting iron gates that led out into the river marsh should have been locked… but the links of the chain securing them had snapped. Orial pushed open one of the gates and went out to stand on the bleak banks of the Avenne beneath the fast-scudding clouds. Here the lonely marsh seemed to stretch on forever into the distant hills. No birds, no stir of life, only the wind: just sky… and rippled water.

  Banks of dry reeds whispered, moving to the wind’s incessant whine. She closed her eyes a moment, listening.

  ‘Or–i–al…’

  ‘Who’s there?’ she cried aloud.

  The green riverwater shivered. Where the stooping willows trailed their yellow tresses in the river, Orial caught a tremor of movement.

  She squeezed her eyes shut – and half-opened them again.

  Fingers part the rippling riverwater. Hair, green as riverweed, drifting on the current. A woman is floating in the cold waters of the Avenne, her naked body tinged with the chill grey of the river’s sediment.

  Drowned…

  Orial’s fingers cage her eyes, she dare not look, she dare not – for if she looks, who will she see?

  Dead Iridial… or her own body floating past?

  Jerame Magelonne hung up his white coat, washed and dried his hands and set out along the Sanatorium corridor for the parlour.

  It was time for tea. Even if the pendule clock had not struck the hour, he would have known for Cook had been making girdle cakes: he had smelt them sizzling on the range. He rubbed his hands together in anticipation; his mother had made girdle cakes for him when he came in from school and that warm, comforting smell of eggs, flour and buttermilk always made him remember his own childhood with happiness.

  Orial stood in the parlour, staring out the window.

  ‘Girdle cakes, eh?’ he said, lifting the cover off the dish and looking with pleasure at the round, crisp pancakes, helping himself to several.

  ‘Tuck in, Orial!’

  She did not move.

  ‘Mmm. They’re very good.’

  She turned around. Her face was taut, her fists clenched at her sides. And when she spoke, the words were wrenched out of her in a tortured whisper.

  ‘Why? Why did you never tell me?’

  He shook his head, not understanding precisely what he had not told her, yet dreading to hear.

  ‘That she drowned.’

  She raised her face to him and for a moment he saw Iridial’s drenched face, water pouring from her water-logged hair. He swallowed the half-chewed mouthful of girdle cake as if it were bitter medicine; it had lost all its savour.

  ‘Who’s been talking to you?’ he said. The question rasped out more roughly than he had intended; fear for her sanity filled him with anger. ‘What mischief has someone been stirring up? Has Dr Tartarus been here behind my back?’

  ‘No one’s stirred up anything but me,’ she said defiantly. She had begun to twist a loose strand of hair repetitively round and round her finger. The obsessiveness of the gesture disturbed him.

  ‘Then how did you find out –’

  ‘I went to the Asylum.’

  ‘Dear Goddess.’ His legs felt weak all of a sudden; he sat down, fumbling for his kerchief to wipe his brow. ‘Orial – why didn’t you come to me?’

  ‘Why do you think?’ Blue-ice stare, streaked with frost.

  He had forgotten how the rainbow eyes could change with different emotions, could reinforce those emotions with startling impact.

  ‘I –’ He lifted his hands as if to protest – and then slowly let them fall back. ‘I wanted to protect you. To shield you.’

  ‘But you could see I was changing.’ The accusing eyes still bored whitefrost into him; he almost shivered under their chill. ‘I needed to know.’

  ‘What exactly did Tartarus tell you?’

  She pressed her lips together; he could see from the trembling of the lower lip that she was fighting to keep from crying.

  ‘That there is no cure.’

  ‘Such insensitivity!’ Jerame got up again, almost knocking over the chair; she flinched as she had always flinched from loud noises as a child. ‘He had no right.’ He turned on her. ‘He had no right to tell you such things.’

  ‘On the contrary,’ she said in a flat, hard little voice. ‘He was honest with me.’

  The implied criticism hurt more than he could ever have anticipated.

  ‘What else haven’t you told me? What else am I going to have to learn from strangers about my life? About my own mother?’

  ‘How dare you!’ He was shouting now. She had touched the rawness of his secret pain. ‘You will not speak to me like that! You will go to your room!’

  ‘Yes, I’ll go.’ She retreated, one step at a time. ‘But not to my room. I’m not a child anymore, Papa. I’m going out.’

  ‘Come back, Orial!’ He went after her but she grabbed her cloak and evaded him, slamming the front door behind her.

  ‘Tsk, tsk,’ Cook had appeared with her tray. ‘Another unfinished meal. Why do I go to all the trouble to prepare it, I ask myself…’

  Jerame found he was still clutching his napkin. He threw it down on the table.

  ‘I’m not very hungry, Cook.’

  The Hall of Whispering Reeds echoed to the voices of Cramoisy Jordelayne and Celestion Valentan. Khassian stood behind Azare’s shoulder, following the score.

  Orial sat close by, hugging her knees to her, listening.

  The sight of her face, transfigured by an intense delight, caught Khassian’s attention. She seemed utterly absorbed in his music.

  And was it a trick of the lantern-light – or had the colours in her eyes deepened, intensified? She had been such an awkward, sallow chit of a girl when he had first encountered her, bespectacled and gauche. Now her gaucheness seemed nothing more than a charming shyness.

  Cramoisy and Valentan reached the end of their duet – and the keyboard notes suddenly came to a stop.

  ‘What’s the problem?’ Khassian asked.

  ‘We have no one to sing the Angel,’ Cramoisy pointed out. ‘Why you had to write it for a boy treble when we have no boys –’

  ‘Orial can sing it,’ Khassian said.

  ‘Me?’ she said, startled. ‘But I can’t sing. I –’

  ‘You transcribed the notes. You can sing.’

  Valentan handed her the manuscript; Khassian saw her hands tremble as she took the sheets.

  ‘Two bars from the cadence,’ Azare said.

  Orial missed the cue.

  ‘Sorry,’ she whispered.

  ‘Two bars,’ Azare said, starting again.

  This time she caught the cue – just – and in a thin, true voice began to sing. Khassian closed his eyes. He could hear her fear – she could barely sustain the longer notes, dying away into a whisper. But there was an ethereal quality to her singing that sent chills through his body. For a moment he believed he was listening to a voice from another world –

  The soft light of the lanterns reflected the rainbow shadows in her eyes. Ripples of iridescent notes spread through the hall, a shifting spectrum of sound, as the song reached its climax… and final cadence.

  ‘Forgive me.’ She cast down her eyes, blushing. ‘That was awful. So many silly mistakes.’

  ‘No,’ he said, dazed. ‘It was – different. Maybe I’d better rethink my original concept. Maybe a girl’s vo
ice… Maybe yours…’

  The eyes softened, glimmered silver-rose.

  ‘Me? Sing the Angel?’ She clasped her hands together, thrilled as a little child who has been given an unexpected present. Her pleasure touched him; he was so used to seeing singers fight each other over roles they felt to be rightfully theirs.

  ‘Go practise with Azare,’ he said. She seized the sheets and ran back to the keyboard.

  The Diva drew near; his lips tightly pursed, his eyes narrowed, purposeful.

  ‘You’re making a mistake, Amar.’

  ‘She will in no way rival you, Diva,’ Khassian said, still watching Orial as she repeated the first phrase with Azare.

  ‘That’s not what I’m saying.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘I’ve taken a liking to the girl.’ Cramoisy snapped open a pocket mirror case and re-adjusted his beauty spot, a tiny crescent of black velvet. ‘I feel responsible for her.’

  ‘This is most unlike you, Diva.’

  ‘A debt to her mother. That’s why I say you should be careful.’ Then she added in a stage whisper, ‘Besides – I think she is growing fond of you.’

  Acir Korentan saw Fiammis pause at the entrance to the Botanical Gardens and then go in. He followed at a discreet distance.

  He had taken care to make sure she knew he had left Sulien on the overnight diligence. A little distance outside Sulien, he had asked the coachman to set him down and had walked back to the city before dawn.

  By the time he called at Mistress Permay’s, Khassian had already left. Mistress Permay told him that a letter had come for the composer; she thought it might have been an assignation with a lady, for he had asked her how to find the Botanical Gardens, and if young gentlemen visited the Botanical Gardens, with their shady arbours and hidden pavilions, it was rarely to examine the plants.

  A lady.

  When Acir caught sight of Fiammis in the dappled shadows, slowly twirling her parasol over one shoulder as she walked, he knew his suspicion had been correct.

  Winding paths led around an ornamental lake covered with pallid water-lilies whose crimson stamens seemed to exude a peculiarly foetid scent. Beneath the jade leaves finned silver-spotted carp, nosing up to the surface, then diving in a trail of bubbles.