“But you could argue,” Myrica said, “that for Orpheus, music was power, and possession. Isn’t that why he went into the Underworld—to demonstrate his power and reclaim his possession?”
“You could argue that,” I agreed. “In fact, I did, when Dellacrusca put me on the spot—but speaking for myself, I’d prefer to see him a more generous light, if I can, albeit a tragic one. Orpheus, that is, not Dellacrusca”
“You only pretend to be a cynic, Axel,” she accused. “You’re a romantic at heart.”
“I have never pretended otherwise,” I said, “and whatever the vulgar might think, the two are not incompatible. Quite the contrary.”
“I think you’re a sorcerer too,” she said, almost half-seriously. “I think you’re working magic now, as rapidly and furiously as you can. You haven’t lost hope, have you, that Hecate and Elise might bring off something truly spectacular tonight, and change everything?”
“I never lose hope,” I said, “until hope is gone—but nor would I place a wager on success, though, when the odds are against a successful outcome, as they are on this occasion. I really can’t imagine any likely event that might prevent Dellacrusca not merely from taking possession of that child, but molding her in his own image—or causing her to snap under the pressure, like her mother… either of which eventualities would fit my definition of harm. And if I could stop it by sorcery, I would... but I can’t. All I can do is try to take my mind off it, by painting. And as you can see, I’m not doing that very well at present, considering that I’m supposed to be a genius. I should never have taken this commission, and only my loyalty to you is keeping me going.”
She didn’t believe that. Personally, I didn’t know what to believe. I was just letting my hand move of its own accord, drawing on the resources of habit and the unconscious. Any resemblance between the head of Orpheus and Dellacrusca wasn’t deliberate...although I had to suppose that if there were any image still left in Dellacrusca’s eyes of his dead wife or his long-lost daughter, they would be nothing more by now than cold gray smudges, like volcanic clouds blotting out the light of life.
XVI. The Reception
The journey from the headland to Mesmay’s house was, as might be imagined, a trifle subdued. There were four of us in the sociable, Hecate having gone home to change and taking Myrica with her. Hecate would make her own way there, along with Myrica, probably in Vashti Savage’s carriage. That meant that Elise didn’t need to sit in anyone’s lap. She was sitting with her viola, still in its case, between her knees. She knew now that it was the only thing she had left of her real mother…except for her bizarre grandfather,
Did she think that she could manipulate him as she had learned to manipulate Charles and Mariette? Did she think that all adults could be charmed as easily as those she presently wrapped around her little finger? Probably not—she had after all, been raised on Martyr’s Mount, where she would have had every chance to see life in the raw, and the scars it left.
I felt the need to say something, for my sake rather that hers, so I asked her how the ending of Hecate’s poem resolved the puzzle of Eurydice’s lament. It was a stupid question, but it seemed a safer subject than any other.
“She didn’t finish the poem you saw,” Elise told me, almost absent-mindedly. “We worked out something else.”
“Something else?” I queried, helplessly.
“I could hear, you know,” she said, looking up at me, a trifle resentfully. “Even though you shut me out, I could hear.”
I thought she was talking about the conversation I’d had with Charles Parenot when I’d given him the bad news about Dellacrusca.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “But...”
“You could have let me sit in the circle,” she added, revealing that she was, in fact, taking about Vashti’s séance. “I wouldn’t have broken it, and I wouldn’t have been frightened. I’ve lived on the Mount—I know what death is… and I understand the language of sighs as well as you do, even if you’re as old as Methuselah.” She was just using a colorful turn of phrase; she didn’t mean it literally.
“It wasn’t me who excluded you,” I said, mildly. “It wasn’t Charles and Mariette, either. It was Vashti. She has rules. The conditions have to be right for her to… do what she does. At least, she believes that they do, which comes to the same thing.”
“She should have let me in,” the child insisted. “You should all have let me in.”
This time, I thought, she really was thinking about secrets other than those of the séance.
“It’s a universal problem,” I told her. “At some stage, children have to be let into the adult world. It’s never an easy decision to make, and there probably never was a child who didn’t think that the timing was wrong.”
She took that in good part. She reached out, impulsively, and took Mariette’s hand. It wasn’t an exclusion of Charles; Mariette was sitting next to her and it was her hand that was within reach.
“I suppose it wasn’t easy,” she said, trying to prove her maturity. Then she added: “At least you never tried to pretend that I was your real daughter.” That didn’t really qualify as evidence in the same cause.
“We don’t love you any less,” Mariette murmured, just to place it on the record.
Elise didn’t argue, but she wasn’t convinced. She’d lived in the Mount. She’d had more opportunity than most children to see what adult life was really like, in its least flattering aspects. At least she was holding Mariette’s hand, not turning round and accusing her of being some cheap whore who’d only volunteered to look after her so that she could get her hooks into Charles. There would be time enough for Dellacrusca to pour that kind of poison into her ears, and perhaps even convince her that it was true, even though it wasn’t.
“What exactly is this something else that you and Hecate have worked out?” I said, trying to steer the conversation back to safer ground.
“I can’t explain it,” the child said. “You’ll have to listen to it to understand. It might not work, though—we haven’t had chance to rehearse with the marine trumpets, and they’re essential to create the atmosphere of the Underworld. Hecate says that the nuns are expert players, and she’s sent them all scores so that they can practice in the convent, but until you bring everyone together…and I want my new grandfather to be impressed. I want him to see what I can really do. Last time, I was just playing tunes.”
“You’re supposed to be accompanying Mademoiselle Rain, darling, not the other way around,” Charles Parenot put in.
“That’s all I wanted to do, at first,” Elise replied, “But it’s not like that anymore. You’ll see—if the marine trumpets play their part. I’m sure of myself, and Hecate…but they might mess it up, if they don’t get it… and they’re only a bunch of nuns.”
“There’s no only about it,” I told her. “Sister Ursule impressed me—and that’s not easy.”
“Sister Ursule won’t be playing,” said Elise. “She’s sending eight of the younger sisters.”
“If she’s trained them all,” I said, “They’ll be good. I’d be inclined to trust them.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Elise!” said Mariette softly reproachful, squeezing her hand.
The subdued thoughtfulness had worn off now; without intending to, I’d provoked her, and had brought other feelings to the surface.
“Do you still want to paint me?” she demanded, looking me in the eye.
“I believe that Lord Dellacrusca has commissioned your father to do that,” I answered, in my most soothing tone.
“That’s not what I asked,” she pointed out, accurately.
“I would still like to paint you,” I admitted, “if the opportunity arises.” I could have added, but didn’t, that it might not be easy to persuade Dellacrusca to allow it, even though I’d painted his other children.
“On the Mount,” Elise said, “people say that Charles is the only artist there who only fucks one of his model
s. Do you fuck them all?”
“Elise!” said Mariette, rather plaintively—which probably wasn’t the reaction the girl was trying to elicit. She had been brought up on the Mount; she was hardly likely to have unaware of how sexual relationships worked, especially in their tawdrier manifestations. Mariette must have been all too familiar with it long before she reached the age of twelve.
It was not a time for exaggeration. “First of all,” I said, “I think of it as making love, and I mean it, unlike some of the artists on Martyr’s Mount. But to answer your question, not very many, even in my young days—and now I’m as old as Methuselah, hardly any. I suspect that the artists on the Mount do a great deal more boasting than... anything else... and in my opinion, they’d be better off trying to make love. Artists all do a good deal of boasting, but I mostly boast about my genius—which is safe, because no one believes me.”
“Me too,” said Elise, “and nobody believes me either—but Charles doesn’t boast at all.” It was impossible to tell from the way she said it whether it was intended as a compliment or an insult.
“I don’t have much to boast about, alas,” said Charles Parenot.
“False modesty is as much a sin as boasting,” I remarked. “A little more faith in your own genius would probably do you good—not that I ought to be telling you that, now that your reputation is about to overtake mine, reducing me to the rank of jealous rival.”
He looked at me as if he didn’t know whether or not to believe any of that.
“Do you still want to paint me, too?” Mariette put in, also in search of safer conversational ground.
“Yes,” I said. “Provided that it’s as yourself, not Persephone… or Eurydice.”
“I’ll be happy to pose,” she said. “It will make a change.”
“To be yourself?”
“To pose for someone other than my husband—and to be out of the Underworld.”
We were on the verge of developing a snappy double act, but we didn’t get a chance to go any further. The carriage pulled up. We had arrived.
Without really meaning to, we had arrived fashionably late. Most of the guests were already assembled: all the participants in the séance, all the members of the Island Council, a dozen of Dellacrusca’s hangers—and, at the back of the room, discreetly placed behind the podium and the music stand, eight Sisters of Shalimar in their cream robes and head-dresses, patiently unpacking their marine trumpets.
There was a marked shortage of women in the audience; the Mesmays, with Dellacrusca pulling their strings, hadn’t aimed for the conventional balance. There was also a marked lack of color; aware of the danger, all the women had adopted for dark silks and satins, which wouldn’t show the stains of any ash that descended from the skies. The overall result was a trifle sepulchral, more like a funeral than a welcoming party. I wished that I could find that inappropriate, but I couldn’t.
At least, I thought, it will provide a suitable Underworldly backdrop for Hecate’s new version of Eurydice’s lament. The cream costumes of the Sisters of Shalimar don’t really help in that regard, though, and they don’t, for the most part, seem slim enough to pass for shades.
After being formally greeted by the over-effusive Marquis and the under-effusive Marquise, I was buttonholed by Fion Commonal, nowadays the President of the Council as well as the island’s leading physician.
“Why is Dellacrusca here out of season?” he asked me “Something’s going on, isn’t it.”
“Nothing for you to worry about, Fion,” I assured him. “Just a little bit of personal business. No matter what anyone thinks, it really wasn’t him who ordered Hekla to erupt and commanded Hades to pop out of the Underworld to place himself at his orders.”
“It’s going to be a bad winter, they say,” Fion admitted. “Some people are saying that there are going to be epidemics—that volcanoes spread disease. I don’t know—there’s no one alive on the island who remembers the last time it happened. Naples is a fever-pit, of course, but I really don’t know whether it has anything to do with Vesuvius.”
“You’re the doctor,” I observed. “If you don’t know, nobody does.” It wasn’t strictly true, but it’s always as well to keep on the right side of the Island Council, and flattery never hurts.
“Is the girl any good?” the physician asked. “I’ve seen these so-called child prodigies before, and they’re usually a disappointment.”
“I haven’t heard her play, but Dellacrusca has, and so has Hecate. They obviously think there’s something there.”
“I never thought I’d see Hecate allowing anyone to accompany her, let alone a child,” Fion Commonal admitted.
“Not to mention an entire chorus of marine trumpets,” I pointed out. “When she changes her mind, she goes all the way.”
“I’ve never understood why they call them marine trumpets,” the physician complained. “I have to be at all the concerts they play, of course, being on the Council, but it’s always seemed to me to be a sufficiently ridiculous instrument without giving it a ludicrous name. I don’t recognize the players, but the Mother Superior always trains them well. I’ve never met her, obviously, but she’s said to be quite a scholar.”
“She is,” I assured him. “She dropped round to my studio the other day, concerned for the welfare of my soul. We had a very pleasant chat.”
“You really are a sorcerer, aren’t you, Axel?” he said, shaking his head. He didn’t mean it.
“It’s always useful to have friends in celestial places,” I told him. “When one gets to my age, it’s comforting to know that someone’s taking an interest in one’s soul. Sometimes, I wish I’d taken better care of it myself.”
“No you don’t,” he retorted. “You wouldn’t want to be anything other than the old reprobate you are.”
It would have been pleasant if he had been right, and he would usually have been right, but I was still caught up in a role that I didn’t relish at all. My gaze strayed sideways, and I saw Elise walk up to Dellacrusca, and greet him very politely, and very respectfully, exactly as he would have wished. He didn’t favor me with a grateful glance, because he didn’t believe that I had made any useful contribution to making things go the way he wanted. No matter what he’d said, all the steps he’d taken to involve me in this affair had been malicious, taking out on me the seething wrath he could no longer vent on the unfortunate Almeras, the painter who had, in his view, stabbed him treacherously in the back.
A pity, I couldn’t help thinking, that he didn’t use a real knife. It was an unaccustomed thought, for a confirmed pacifist—but sometimes, the unconscious gets the better of finer feelings and nobler thoughts. Nor could I really justify the flash of resentment because Dellacrusca was a wicked man, although he was. What I couldn’t forgive him for was instructing Tommaso to put one over on me—and I couldn’t forgive myself, for falling for it.
I finally managed to get away from Fion in order to return to Charles and Mariette. Dellacrusca had placed himself in the middle of the front row of the audience, directly in front of the music-stand and the chair where his granddaughter would take up her position. Mariette and Charles, by contrast, had automatically selected seats on the very edge of the same row, as far away as possible from their nemesis while still remaining close enough to be offering evident support to their child—the child, that is, who was no longer theirs. I sat down beside them. Myrica Mavor sat down behind Mariette, on the edge of the second row. Vashti, even more discreet, was behind her, next to Niklaus Hylne. We were all outsiders, in a way; the bulk of the audience consisted of the island’s upper crust and various temporary incomers, ninety per cent of whom were presumably secret members of Dellacrusca’s Cult of Orpheus, or his secret police, if any distinction could be drawn between the two.
As Elise turned to walk back to her chair, against which the viola da gamba was carefully propped, I saw her take something from her grandfather, and realized, with a sight shock, that it was the parchment, now caref
ully enclosed in a glazed frame. Evidently she had asked him for it. Did she really think that she could read it, or draw some inspiration from it as she played? Did he? Presumably not: presumably, it was a purely symbolic exchange, as if he were welcoming her into the Cult and into the family, and she were accepting the welcome. It was ceremony.
That child, I thought, is far too clever for her age. She’s already started trying to take control of him. Is there a possibility that she might actually be able to do it?
She was only twelve, though. Even geniuses as old as Methuselah couldn’t stand up to Dellacrusca. That would require the Devil himself, or Hades, at least.
I saw Charles take Mariette’s hand, far more tentatively than he should have done. It was as if he were seeking reassurance from her rather than offering it. He really did need some intensive training in the art of arrogance, but Mariette didn’t seem annoyed by his failure.
Perhaps it’s the fact that he can’t admit to himself that he loves her that keeps her dangling, and maintains her love for him, I speculated. Perhaps, if he’s been more passionate and forthright in the beginning, she’d have moved on years ago. Who can tell?
There was an atmosphere of expectation in the hall now. There weren’t going to be any speeches, any empty formulae or polite applause. Dellacrusca, the one and only architect of the occasion, wasn’t going to bother taking the pretence of welcoming Charles Parenot to the island any further. This was all about him, and no one else. He wanted to hear his new-found granddaughter play, knowing as she did so that she was his granddaughter, that she was a Dellacrusca—and he wanted to show her off to his inner circle, so that they too would know that she was a Dellacrusca, under his dominion.
The Sisters of Shalimar were all in position, holding up the marine trumpets that were as tall as they were, in a semicircle behind the podium and the chair. Elise sat down and placed the viola da gamba carefully between her knees. Hecate stepped up to the podium. Unusually, she didn’t look toward me for reassurance. Even more unusually, she wasn’t holding a script. Apparently, whatever she was going to recite had been committed to memory.
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