Euridyce's Lament

by Brian Stableford

  “Your poem isn’t finished,” I said.

  “It will be,” she stated, firmly.

  “Do you really think it’s a good idea?” I asked, lamely.

  “It’s what Elise wants,” said Hecate, with only the slightest hint of mischief, “and what Elise wants, Dellacrusca is going to get—musically, at least. If Eurydice can be raised from the Underworld, we’re going to pull out all the stops to make it happen.”

  XIV. The Marquise de Mesmay’s Séance

  The Parenots traveled to the Marquise to Mesmay’s séance in my carriage, having not yet acquired one of their own. Hecate arrived separately, with Vashti, Niklaus Hylne and Myrica Mavor. Dellacrusca brought his two sons, which, with the Marquise and her husband, would have made thirteen if Elise had been allowed to participate in the séance, but she was banished to the servants’ parlor, in spite of her protests.

  “I’m not a child,” she declared, inaccurately, “and I’m not afraid of spirits.”

  Presumably, she wasn’t, but she didn’t insist as hard as she might have done; if she had take her protests to the extreme, she could probably have contrived to include herself, but she was in the presence of a Duc, the nearest thing to an emperor of its own the province had, and a Marquis. As a poor girl from Martyr’s Mount, she could hardly help being impressed and intimidated. She was, however, allowed into the small drawing room long enough to have a look at Mariette’s portrait above the mantelpiece, playing Eurydice as a shade.

  I watched her looking at it, and was not the only one watching her. If she was conscious of being observed, she was careful not to react.

  “It’s beautiful,” said Hecate, meaning the picture.

  “Yes,” I said. “You really haven’t seen it before?”

  “No—but I understand now why Aethne asked us what I knew about the story of Eurydice at Davida Amalek’s salon, and stirred my curiosity enough to prompt me to start work on the poem. It really wasn’t you, Axel, although it might have been, if the timing had been different.”

  I took note of the fact that all three of the recent manifestations of Eurydice in our little colony had originated in Mesmay’s house—perhaps in this very room. If I had known that earlier, I could have told Dellacrusca when he asked me about the coincidence. I was in no hurry to make up the deficit now, though, and he did not take advantage of the presence of the picture to ask me again. He took no interest in it, apart from watching Elise studying it. To him, it was just an image of a tawdry model by an untidy artist he did not like, not a vehicle by which Eurydice might reach out from the collective unconscious to stir individual inspiration.

  Tommaso Dellacrusca, however, took me to one side to apologize. “I’m truly sorry, Master Rathenius” he said. “You’re the only person who has ever trusted me, and I betrayed you.”

  “Not at all,” I assured him. “It was very artfully done—a brilliant performance. I can still hardly believe that Lorenzo’s tibia is intact. Who did I draw, by the way?”

  “A centurion at the local barracks. He is Italian, though.”

  “There you are,” I said. “Attention to detail. Masterly. And you’ve won your father’s approval too. A superb result.”

  “You’re making fun of me,” he accused.

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” I assured him.

  He couldn’t meet my gaze, so he too fixed his own on Elise, still looking up at the portrait of the woman she had always considered as a mother, even though she knew that she wasn’t really.

  “They haven’t told her yet,” Tommaso observed. Obviously, his father had told him.

  “Not yet,” I said. “But they will, before next time. “Her father will do it. It’s up to him. I’ve talked to him, but it wasn’t really necessary. He can see the logic of the situation.”

  “She is his flesh and blood,” Tommaso said, defensively. “And she’s our niece. We won’t let any harm come to her, I swear. Neither will he.” He nodded in the direction of his father, who was watching his granddaughter with an expression that was almost soft.

  “He could give her the choice,” I pointed out. “He and Parenot could have explained the situation to her, and asked her what she wanted to do.”

  “She’s just a child,” Tommaso said, doubtless reciting the official family line. “She can’t know what’s best for her.”

  “So were you, a little while ago,” I pointed out. “How did you feel about it? How do you feel about it now?”

  He finally contrived to meet my gaze. “I’m not a child anymore,” he said. “I have obligations now. You have no idea what it’s like, Master Rathenius. With all due respect, you have no idea what it is to be in our position—what it requires. You’re an artist.” He didn’t pronounce the last word in the contemptuous fashion that his father would have done, because he had no reason to hate artists, as yet.

  “No, I can’t understand what it’s like to be in the position of a man like your father,” I said. “I am just an artist, free to think and act within a comfortably limited sphere. I realize that there really are compulsions operating on him as well as on you, and that a loss of control over the affairs of the Empire, as they apply to its largest province, might have disastrous consequences—but while you and your brother still have some vestiges of conscience left, you might want to ask yourself whether your father really has gone about this business the right way. As you say, she’s your niece—your blood as well as his.”

  He nodded his head, to imply that he understood.

  “Are you in love, Tommaso?” I suddenly asked him, out of the blue.

  He blinked in surprise, and even blushed slightly. “Chance would be a fine thing,” he said, trying to be witty.

  “Yes,” I said, “it would. And when you are—which certainly won’t be long, now, you might care to ask yourself whether your father’s way of being in love really worked to the advantage of anyone: his wives, his children… even himself.”

  This time, Tommaso shook his head. “He can’t help the way he is,” he said.

  “Maybe not now,” I said. “But there was a time when he surely could. You still can.”

  I wasn’t sure, though, that it was true. I wasn’t sure that the education that Dellacrusca had given his sons left them scope for any freedom of thought and action, except for the occasional rebellious prank, impudent and resentful but not constructive.

  Elise was leaving the room now, placed in charge of an aged maidservant who had plenty of experience in looking after children. Dellacrusca didn’t come to talk to me when Tommaso went back to his brother; instead, he continued standing still, now scrutinizing Charles and Mariette very carefully. He probably didn’t read anything into the fact that they conscientiously avoided his gaze. He met few people who didn’t. He must, however, have judged by their attitude—correctly—that they weren’t going to put up any futile opposition to his determination; that they would do their best to persuade Elise that she must try as hard as she could to love her grandfather, even if he was the most feared and hated man in the entire province.

  Needless to say, nobody went to talk to Dellacrusca; nobody ever approached him without being summoned—except that, when we went to take our places at the table, he didn’t have to summon anyone. Without even being invited, let alone commanded, Hecate took the chair next to him, in a position where she would be obliged to take his left hand. He didn’t raise any objection, and even nodded to her politely. He had nothing particular against poets, or women.

  “I shall have the honor of playing for you, it seems, Milord, at the Marquis’ reception in two days’ time,” Hecate said to him. “I’m still working on my poem, but I hope to have it finished on time.”

  Even though I was taking a seat opposite, from which I could see his face clearly, I couldn’t be absolutely sure that the ghost of a smile crossed his face—but there was definitely a certain satisfaction in the way he replied: “I’m delighted to hear it, Mademoiselle Rain. I shall look forward to it.”
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br />   “The Sisters of Shalimar will accompany me on marine trumpets,” Hecate told him, “as well as Elise, on the viola da gamba. I think you’ll be impressed.”

  The ghost of a smile, if it had really been displayed, gave way to a tiny hint of surprise.

  “Indeed?” he said, without any conviction at all.

  “Truly,” Hecate assured him. “It wasn’t my initial plan, but the child insisted. She’s very hard to resist, isn’t she?”

  Dellacrusca’s stare was as hard as flint. He knew that Hecate knew, even though Charles hadn’t yet had the deadly discussion with Elise, but he wasn’t about to make any reference to the diabolical pact he had imposed on the poor painter—and on me. “Utterly charming,” he agreed, calmly, “and very talented. I’m sure that she’ll do your work justice.”

  Then the séance got under way. So far as I could tell, Dellacrusca’s grip on Hecate’s hand was perfectly light and casual. I couldn’t be sure about his other hand, which was gripping Tommaso’s. I was between Mariette and Myrica; Charles was between Mariette and Vashti. Niklaus was to Vashti’s left, and Lorenzo was between Hecate and Myrica. The Marquis and Marquise de Mesmay were also hand in hand, the former taking Tommaso’s other hand and the later Niklaus Hylne’s. I couldn’t be absolutely certain, but with the exception of Vashti and Aethne de Mesmay, I didn’t suppose there was a single believer present, and I couldn’t be absolutely sure about Aethne. I doubted that Vashti had ever performed for such a dubious company before, and had a suspicion that she might not be able to function without her usual sympathetic support.

  The lights were dimmed and silence was demanded. Vashti descended slowly into her trace by measured degrees, accompanied by the occasional murmur and groan, and eventually began to call upon the spirits. As I had expected, she seemed to be experiencing difficulties, but she started in a relatively modest fashion, by summoning Aethne’s mother, with whom she had made contact before.

  Unlike Hecate, who met Aethne regularly at the kind of salon from which men were excluded almost as rigorously as they were from the Convent of Shalimar, I hardly knew her, and although I certainly would not have refused a commission to paint her, I had no strong desire to do so. She seemed bland, meek and dim-witted—the perfect wife for a Marquis—although I was not entirely convinced by an appearance that might have been deceptive.

  However, the dialogue between the mother and daughter, across the divide of death, had nothing in it to challenge that appearance. It was spectacularly banal, and confirmed my long-held opinion that it was hardly worth pretending to breach the boundaries of nature merely for the sake of polite chitchat and conventional reassurances that sounded as hollow coming from the dead as they usually did from the living. I wished that Sister Ursule were there to investigate her late sister’s condition a little more inquisitively, as she would sure have done. While she was relaying answers from the beyond, however, Vashti seemed to relax further into her trance, and delve a little deeper into her own inner depths; Aethne’s mother bid her au revoir, and was replaced by more enigmatic invisible presences, from whom Vashti could not elicit anything—so she said—but faint sounds of lamentation that the rest of us could not hear.

  I was just beginning to suspect that boredom might set in when something strange happened. I felt a remarkably strong conviction that there was someone else in the room: a thirteenth presence. I actually looked around, searching the shadows for a servant, or perhaps for Elise, who might have sneaked in to see what was happening—but the doors were shut and the shadows were devoid of any solid presence.

  I was not the only one looking round, though, and I could see signs of anxiety, or at least puzzlement, in some of the faces opposite, including Tommaso’s and Hecate’s. Dellacrusca’s features, however, seemed set in stone, and his head had not budged. He was staring at me, as if he suspected me of somehow contriving the curious sensation.

  In the meantime, I felt the grip of the two hands clutching mine change, in markedly disconcerting ways. Myrica Mavor’s hand, the fingernails of which were as carefully tapered as ever, began to clench, and those carefully shaped nails slowly began to dig into my flesh. I moved my wrist, trying to let her know that she was hurting me, but she took no notice, and in any case, my attention was deflected away from the pain by the other hand gripping mine—Mariette’s—which was slowly growing colder and colder.

  I wanted to let go, on both sides, even at the risk of incurring Vashti’s wrath for breaking her circle, but try as I might, I could not free either hand. I became convinced that the fingernails plunging into my left hand were about to hit bone, and that the hand must be bleeding copiously, whereas the right hand was burning and blistering, as if it were gripping a lump of Arctic ice.

  I would have gasped, to express the pain, but the breath seemed to congeal in my throat as I heard someone else utter a sigh that would have made my tentative gasp sound very feeble indeed.

  I had never heard such a sigh; it seemed to swell and spread, extending lamentably without ever quite becoming a groan. And before it ended, another began, and another, until there were half a dozen overlapping—and every time one died away, it would be replaced by another, so that the chorus went on and on, almost uniformly, always coming from at least four different directions.

  It’s us, I thought. It has to be us. We’re doing it ourselves.

  But we weren’t—not all of us, at any rate.

  Vashti was as silent as the tomb; it was not her who was channeling those uncanny voices. And even though they were coming from different directions, as if from all the points of the compass rose in turn, I gradually realized that they had only two authentic points of origins, and that all the supplementary sighs were echoes.

  Of the two authentic points in question, one was beside me: Mariette.

  The other was the chimney breast: the portrait of Mariette, as the shade of Eurydice.

  That, perhaps, was where the thirteenth presence in the room was located, if there really was a thirteenth presence external to our minds, capable of occupying a real location. Perhaps, though, that one was an echo too: the primary echo, relative to which the others were echoes of echoes.

  But if so, than Mariette was probably not a real source of sound either, for her features, as pale as marble, seemed to be frozen stiff; there was not the slightest evident tremor in her throat of her lips. The sighs were not coming from her, in any simple, physical sense, but through her… if, in fact, they had any real substance, as sonic vibrations in the air, rather than being simple auditory hallucinations, stimulated in our minds by communal suggestion.

  There was nothing in the sighs that could not have been produced by a human voice, without a little effort and torment, but I was morally certain that none of the twelve larynges in the room was producing them consciously, if at all. It seemed to me that they really did have a more distant source in the underworld of awareness—but that did not help me to determine what they were endeavoring to communicate. I had, as yet, no inkling of meaning in the language of sighs, save for the symbolism of lamentation, sorrow and regret.

  How long it went on, I have no idea. I lost track of time completely. It might have been two minutes, or ten… but surely no longer than that, because someone among us would have found it too difficult to bear.

  No one did; no one broke the circle of contacts, in spite of the fact that I could not have been the only one suffering pressure and pain, and presumably not the only one to be suffering both.

  Eventually, the cold vanished from Mariette’s left hand, and the fingernails of Myrica’s hand were retracted from my flesh.

  When the circle did break, and I looked at my hands—and I was far from being the only person at the table doing that—I saw that the one was not bleeding and the other was not singed or blistered. The sensations had been subjective and hallucinatory.

  Absurdly, when Vashti woke up, she apologized profusely for having failed to summon the spirit of Eurydice. She alone, it seemed,
had not been aware of the visitation.

  All that Mariette said, however, was “I feel cold.” Charles Parenot took off his coat and wrapped it around her shoulders, solicitously. She probably felt better when the Marquise had run to summon her servants, and hot coffee was brought in.

  At that point, everyone stood up, in order to move to the side-tables where the coffee cups were set out, and the circle was well and truly broken, along with the spell. There had been very little conversation. Nobody seemed to feel the desire—or perhaps they could not think of anything to say. Even Niklaus Hylne was temporarily tongue-tied.

  Dellacrusca took me aside, however, and said: “I would be very glad to know exactly how you did that, Master Rathenius.”

  “Me?” I protested. “I’m no medium.”

  “The effect was not coming from Madame Savage’s direction. It was coming from your side of the table, and it was obviously a product of one of our supposedly-secret communication devices. As if anything routinely employed by the diplomatic corps could possibly remain secret for long! Even so, it was an exceedingly clever trick, and I still have no idea where the apparatus is concealed. Mesmay must know, presumably?”

  “Ask him,” I suggested. “But it really wasn’t me—didn’t you have the impression that the sighs were coming from Mariette’s direction rather than mine?”

  “Of course I did, because that’s the way you contrived it. But don’t try to persuade me that the whore was responsible. I don’t believe it. There was far too much theater in it for it to be anyone but you.”

  “She’s not a whore,” I said, feeling that any other denials would probably be pointless at that point.