“Giving the Sisters of Shalimar a line of communication to the heart of the Orphean cult,” I said.
“Not its heart, Master Rathenius, or even its wing… but a part of it, yes.”
“Do you have other nieces married to Dionysians?”
“Alas, no… which might, I admit, give me slightly distorted view of that rival cult, most of whose members are probably meek clubmen. Still, just as there seem to be some Orpheans who regard the Dionysians as the direct descendants of the murderer of their founder, so there are rumored to be some Dionysians who regard the Orpheans as the treacherous slanderers of theirs. It probably seems as absurd to you as it does to me that a vendetta occasioned by an imaginary crime could extend over more than three thousand years, still drawing blood, but there have been political complications and schisms, as I suppose you’re vaguely aware, which have served to keep hatred alive and occasionally to stoke it up. Even if that document is utterly meaningless, as it might well be, the mere fact of its existence and its history has been enough to cause murders in the past, and might continue to do so in future.”
“Would you care to tell me why? Given that I’m currently holding the object of desire in question, albeit reluctantly, I’d like to know why someone might be prepared to kill me to take it from me—if, in fact, your judgment in that matter is correct.”
“You’re probably correct to doubt it—I’m uncomfortably aware myself that my knowledge of the world is limited to what I can obtain from books and the fragile lines of communication opened to me by a few confidantes. I might be completely mistaken—but I’ll tell you what I know… except that some of it, I fear, is mere conjecture. No one really knows the truth, because no one really knows how to decode the myth of Orpheus’ excursion to the Underworld.
“The legend pertaining to the manuscript of which your parchment is a partial copy claims that that when Orpheus succeeded in charming the shades with his music—including Hades and Persephone themselves—he was able to do it because he was inspired with the ability to play or sing the language of sighs: the language of the dead, which only Hades and the infernal judges were supposed to know how to write. Having learned to sing it, though, when Orpheus came out of the Underworld again, he contrived to write down the song he had sung: the song that has the gift not merely of charming shades, but of charming Hades, the god of death, himself. Whether he supposedly wrote it in Hades’ own script, or whether he invented his own notation, is unclear, as is the precise content of what he wrote, which is probably more akin to a sequence of musical notes than words.
“Whatever the truth of the matter, Orpheus’ alleged record of the charming of the dead, and of death itself, became one of the most precious artifacts of the ancient Orphean cult, guarded with the utmost jealousy, even though no one, after his death knew how to read it. The Orpheans believed that if and when the time came for it to be read and sung, the spirit of Orpheus would possess or inspire the destined player, and Orpheus’ quest to liberate and reclaim Eurydice would be reenacted—successfully, this time.
“Before the appointed time arrived, however, in the course of one of the conflicts between the Orpheans and the Dionysians, the original document was destroyed. The Dionysians thought that that would put an end to the Orphean cult, or at least what the members of the cult regarded as their sacred quest, forever. However, the Orpheans believed, or at least put the word around, that several copies of the original document had been made, and that they were still being preciously guarded, all the more carefully because the original was gone. It’s said that the Dionysians tried to hunt them down, and found one or two pieces of parchment that they burned religiously—but they could never be sure that what they’d destroyed were the actual copies, or whether or not they had destroyed them all. The rumor persisted for a very long time, as one might expect, that one copy was still out there, somewhere.
“Eventually, the Dionysians began to claim that they had found the last copy, but that, instead of destroying it, they were preserving it themselves, preciously, in order that when appointed time came, it would be one of their members, inspired by Dionysius, rather than one of their rivals, inspired by Orpheus, who would be able to charm death, and thus claim Eurydice and all that she represented, for themselves.
“The likelihood is that the assertion in question just a provocation: a kind of challenge, turning the tables on behalf of the cult that refused to die. In my personal opinion, what you have there is a forgery, of the same ilk as thousands of other supposedly sacred or magical documents, grimoires and the like—but I might be wrong. Even if it is a fake, though, and perhaps a fake of something that never had any real existence in the first place, it retains a certain symbolic value. If the Dionysians think that they had it, but that they’ve just lost it, and the Orpheans think that they’ve reclaimed it… well, even if it’s a worthless piece of gibberish, it might have too much talismanic importance for the Dionysians not to want it back… and to want all the copies you’ve made destroyed.”
I weighed all of that up, as carefully as I could. It was a farrago of nonsense, and I was inclined to agree with Sister Ursule that the parchment had to be a fake, of no real value—but the kind of fake that could nevertheless become a powerful desideratum.
“In effect,” I said, “I’ve been caught in the middle of a feud between two gangs of lunatics. But why on earth would Toustain bequeath the poisoned chalice to me? Why not to one of his Dionysian friends?”
“I don’t know,” said the Mother Superior. “I never met the man. But if he really has been living in hiding here for more than a decade, the probability is that he was hiding from his Dionysian friends rather than, or as well as, the Orpheans. Mystery cults are always prone to schisms and dissent. If he went into hiding in order to keep the parchment away from both parties, it’s possible that he genuinely thought that leaving it to you would be a secure continuation of its concealment.”
“Which it would have been,” I murmured, “if his stupid notary hadn’t carelessly broadcast his real name, as a matter of teasing gossip. I could wring his neck.”
“As an officer in the Bardic Order,” the Mother Superior observed, “I’m obliged to counsel you against that. Respect nature, respect life, do no murder. That’s the creed we live by.”
It was a creed I approved of wholeheartedly, even though I had no religious affiliation myself. I approved of the Christians’ creed too, although I wished that all their ostensible adherents took those creeds as seriously as Sister Ursule and the Sisters of Shalimar seemed to do.
“And what would your creed counsel me to do with the parchment?” I asked.
“I’m not sure that the creed has anticipated the situation,” she remarked, not without a certain ironic appreciation. “As a scholar, of course, I could never recommend that you burn it—and as an interested observer, I’d have to say that it probably wouldn’t do you any good to do that, because no one would ever believe that you had. The same interested observer might guess that the reason Antoine de Mesmay didn’t attempt to take it from you is that he’d rather you were a target for the Dionysians than him. Handing it over to the Dionysians probably wouldn’t do you any good either, because the leader of the Orpheans in the province isn’t a man it’s safe to annoy, if what Aethne tells me is true.”
I weighed up all of that too, and thought that it probably wasn’t too difficult to improvise a language of sighs, if one had an appropriate incentive.
“Is there any mention in the legend of black snow or pillars of fire?” I asked.
“Not in the versions I’ve read,” she replied. “Why do you ask?”
“Because portentous prophecies about appointed times for great deeds usually come with signs attached, and as we have the signs, I thought that time might have arrived for the ritual charming of death to be attempted.”
“What signs?” she asked.
I stood up and went to fetch her cloak from the peg in the hall. Holding it up before her, I
brushed my hand down the sleeve. As expected, it came away dirty,
“Black snow,” I said. “And at least a couple of the boats that docked in the harbor this morning brought back rumors of a pillar of fire sprouting from the sea way out in the Ocean.”
That, at least, was something I had known and she had not. “That’s odd,” was her only comment, though.
“Odd, indeed,” I confirmed.
At that moment, the door opened, and Jean-Jacques came in, having returned from the old Toustain house, as instructed, at dusk.
He was not alone. Mariette and Elise were with him, along with a man who had to be Charles Parenot, the haunted painter of Martyr’s Mount.
As Hecate had pointed out to me, when catching me out in a trivial lie, I fit the standard image of a mature, established and experienced painter very well: distinguished rather than conventionally handsome, a trifle stout, sober, fastidious and utterly confident. Charles Parenot, still at the younger end of the spectrum, was completely different: handsome without being distinguished, slender, excitable, a trifle unkempt and anxious. He was also pale, blue-eyed and fair-haired—three more features that he did not share with me…or with his adopted daughter.
Enthusiastic as I was to meet my neighbor, rival and potential friend, however, I cursed the interruption. Accepting the inevitably, though, I simply handed the Sister’s cloak to Jean-Jacques, telling him to hang it up again, and got ready to make the introductions.
IX. The Child Prodigy
Jean-Jacques took the cloak, but immediately dissolved into apologies, excusing his indiscreet intrusion on the grounds that he had had no idea that I was not alone. I accepted his apology and told him to instruct Luzon to make a large pot of tea, and then, as there was still no fire in the drawing room, to fetch some extra chairs, so that we could all sit around the studio fire.
Then it was Charles Parenot’s turn to apologize for disturbing us, excusing his intrusion on the grounds of the extreme gratitude he wasted to express for my lending him my servants to help him bring some order to his new residence.
After that, of course, it was my turn, apologizing for the mess in the studio and the absence of a fire in the drawing room, excusing myself on the grounds that I hadn’t been expecting visitors.
Eventually, Parenot and I got around to shaking hands formally, and then I was finally able to make the introductions: “Sister Ursule, Mother Superior of the Convent of the Sisters of Shalimar; Monsieur Charles Parenot, painter, his wife, Mariette and his daughter Elise.”
Jean-Jacques, who was bringing in the chairs by then, nearly dropped them in astonishment when he heard the name of my unexpected visitor. The newcomers, who had little or no idea of how remarkable her presence was, took it in their stride.
“Monsieur Parenot’s painting of his wife as Eurydice is hanging in Monsieur de Mesmay’s small reception room,” I told Sister Ursule, for the sake of having something to say.
The Mother Superior looked at Mariette with interest, and then at Elise. Her failure to notice any resemblance was almost tangible.
Everyone sat down except Elise, whose curiosity had been attracted by the triptych near the window. She drifted away, her expression still unreadable. I presumed that she was still uneasy and a little shy, but trying to overcome both.
“It’s all right,” Charles Parenot assured me. “She’s lived in an artist’s studio all her life—she won’t touch anything, and she has a real interest in and appreciation of art.”
I nodded, not entirely satisfied by the reassurance—but Elise was twelve years old, after all, not an irresponsible infant. I kept an eye on her anyway.
“You shouldn’t have walked here in this dreadful weather,” I told them. “I’ll get Jean-Jacques to take you back in the carriage—and you, Sister, to the Convent. You can’t possibly go out on foot again while it’s snowing like this.”
“The weather is remarkably hostile,” Charles Parenot remarked. “Your manservant tells me that a pillar of fire has been seen out at sea. I hadn’t expected the elements to go to such lengths to greet us—is it a warning, do you think?” He was joking, but there was an evident unease beneath his humor.
How, I wondered, had Jean-Jacques got hold of that information? He had probably run errands for his temporary masters in the course of the day, though, and he had had specific orders from me to keep his ears open.
“It’s unfortunate,” I said to Parenot. “Hopefully, the weather will clear up soon, and you’ll see us as we really are.”
“Thanks to your servants, we’ve managed to render the house habitable,” Mariette put in. “I’m sure I can cope with it, even though it’s larger than our little house in the capital.”
“I’m truly sorry that I didn’t introduce myself yesterday evening,” Parenot said, “But I have so much fragile equipment that I had to supervise the unloading of the lighter and the packing of the cart myself. You’ll understand, I’m sure, Master Rathenius.”
“Absolutely,” I assured him. “I hope you’ll be happy here, and that you’ll find it an inspiring location in which to paint. As you’ve already had an overabundant opportunity to see, it’s a good deal closer to raw nature and the roots of mythology than the Capital.”
“I’m sure the change of scene will to me good,” said Parenot. “I’m thinking of branching out from mythological painting, and tackling a wider range of subjects.”
“I fear that I’m only just beginning to dabble in it,” I said, nodding my head toward the triptych, invisible from where we were sitting because the backs of the panels were turned toward us. Elise was still studying it from the other side. “What do you think, Elise?” I asked.
“I can’t see Eurydice,” she replied.
“She’s in the crowd,” I said, “but there’s nothing in particular to designate her; for the moment, she’s just one of the shades.
“But she isn’t in the first painting at all,” she observed, “and she’s hardly visible in the third, if you don’t know where to look.”
It was news to me that she was visible in the third at all. Obviously, I didn’t know where to look. I stood up and went to join her. “The thing is, you see,” I tried to explain, party addressing Parenot, Mariette and Sister Ursule as well as the child, “that I’m not at all sure that Eurydice is as important as the popular versions of the myth make out, and I can’t quite make up my mind about the underlying significance of Orpheus’ excursion to the Underworld. But where can you see her in the sketch?”
“Reflected in Orpheus’ eyes, of course,” she said, as if it were the most natural observation in the world.
Orpheus’ dead eyes were just two smudges of charcoal. There was nothing reflected there… or was there? Sometimes, if you look with sufficient imagination, smudges can suggest forms, like wisps of smoke or cloud. For a moment, I wondered whether Eurydice really could be seen reflected in Orpheus’ dead eyes—and whether, if so, I had put her there, unwittingly.
Then I rejected the ideas and said something to myself, silently, that I had never imagined that I would ever say, so heretical was it in the context of my own private creed: That child has too much imagination.
Immediately, I apologized to her, silently, for the inaudible insult. Of course she did not have, and could not possibly have, too much imagination.
Aloud, to cover up the internal monologue, I said: “I hear you play the violin?”
“I used to,” she said. “I have a new instrument now.”
I knew that it couldn’t be the marine trumpet; she wasn’t yet tall enough. “What is it?” I asked, reflexively.
“It’s like a violin but larger,” she said. “Charles calls it a viola da gamba.” She calls him Charles, not Father, I noted.
“I have a friend who’s learning to play the marine trumpet,” I told her. “That’s like a violin too, but much longer, with only one string.
“Then why is it called a trumpet?” she asked.
“It’s a kind of joke,”
I said. “Do you think that… Charles would allow me to paint your portrait when I’ve finished my triptych?”
I was currying favor, although I wasn’t quite sure why—perhaps trying to conjure up the delighted expression she’s taken on the previous evening when I’d mentioned the possibility.
“Of course,” she said, “if I want him to.”
I met Mariette’ gaze at that moment. I could see clearly enough that she was no better disposed to the idea now than she had been previously—but I guessed, too, that what Elise had said was precisely true. Charles would permit whatever she wanted him to permit. And I understood the dimensions of Mariette’s unhappy anxiety a little more clearly.
Sister Ursule began making polite conversation with Parenot while they sipped the tea that Jean-Jacques had just brought in. Mariette did not join in; she was watching Elise and me, with an attention that was slightly discomfiting.
“Come and have some tea,” I said to the girl. “I’ll show you round the studio properly another time, when the light’s better,” It was probably not the most diplomatic of remarks, and I looked at Mariette, trying to radiate harmlessness and reassure her that I had no evil designs whatsoever on Elise, or anyone else.
As we walked past the table, Elise stopped. The accursed parchment was still there, on open view, practically begging to be stolen. Elise looked down at it, peering carefully in the dim light.
“It’s supposed to be suspiric language,” I told her, for the sake of something to say.
She nodded her head. “I see,” she said. “I wondered. I thought it might be music.”
“Why did you think that?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “But I can see that you’re right: it’s the language of sighs.” Obviously she had a little Latin too. And a great deal of imagination. Perhaps, in spite of the heresy of the notion and my recent recantation of that heresy, too much.
We sat down, and drank tea. It was very civilized. None of the other guests realized how bizarre it was that we were sitting there, having a civilized cup of tea with the Mother Superior of a Bardic Order, who had emerged from her seclusion to warn a reputed sorcerer that members of the Cult of Dionysus might try to assassinate him in order to take possession of a fake document.
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