by Alex Oliver
"That's..." Frank's eyes widened as though he'd been about to say something uncomplimentary. "Rather fun," he finished, gamely. "What were you saying?"
They were, thankfully, side by side, so he could lean closer and under cover of the music and the roar of conversation, nod up to the top of the table and ask again, "What do you see when you look at her?"
"I..." Frank gave him a startled look that morphed rapidly into revelation. "She's the most beautiful creature. A goddess. But more than beauty, she has a kind of spiritual perfection. I mean, you can't look at her and imagine that she's capable of anything wrong. She's kind and wise and perfect, and you can see all of that in her eyes. Now that you mention it..." He drained his wine, had another glass placed beside it instantly. "That is rather hard to believe. You think it's a glamour?"
Radu's parents had always told him that magic was for the feeble minded - for peasants who didn't have enough to worry about in their lives and must therefore invent curses and witches and spirits to trouble their placid dreams. They, the strigoi, were as perfectly natural as the mountains. An act of an inexplicable God. And perhaps that had been true for most of their three hundred year lives, but since the Rising things had changed. It now seemed dishonest to deny that something was going on that natural philosophy could not explain.
"I have no idea. But I see a very plain young woman. Do I see false or do you?"
"What I want to know is: where is Gabrielle Giroux?" Frank went on. He too was looking a little loosened, merry with wine and plum brandy, pink across the cheeks and the bridge of his nose and with wisps of his gold hair curling all around the brimless lip of his black hat. "She came to London last year, but I wasn't able to attend. But the sensation! I don't think anyone stopped talking about it for months. If you can't see her art, I will say you need to be most earnestly pitied."
Another three courses, and the plates rose to teetering towers all over the table. Hot fried pastries filled with cream cheese and jam had given way to halva and chimney cake and croissants stuffed with Turkish delight.
Then an incautious flirtation two places down from Radu made the lady recoil theatrically. She flung out an arm and her puffed sleeve brushed one of the stacks, made it wobble, lurch and finally tumble to the floor. Crockery smashed and rolled underfoot, knives and spoons pinged off the floor, and the whole company roared with laughter.
It seemed to be the signal for those who were not too drunk or stuffed to rise and filter out through the further doors into the gardens. Radu found himself eddied by the crowd back into a position close to the family. They had taken up their place on one of the upper terraces of a garden that covered both sides of the river valley. A private bridge spanned the Dambovitsa's sluggish flow - scarcely more than a hand's width of silver under what was now a dark sky full of stars.
Despite the alcohol, Radu shivered. He had not noticed night falling, had forgotten to be alert. It would be a mistake to forget to fear the night, but in this company all too easy to do.
On the other side of the bridge, a pavilion like a shepherd's hut had been assembled from canvas and flowering creepers. The tent door opened onto a small stage. A light inside threw a slender silhouette on the white walls, odd looking with its bulbous skirts and huge, triangular head.
The balcony around him began to fill up. Frank squeezed into the space on his left, and young Stefan, who had been in front of him, angled around to talk over his shoulder. Stefan too had the beginnings of the Sterescu nose - handed down from some Roman ancestor doubtlessly - and paired with his auburn curls and round, solemn little face, he might have been a young Augustus, except that he wanted to talk about nothing but horses. "My father has bought me an Arabian, and I want to go and ride him, but I have to do this instead."
"Which stud is he from?" Radu asked, conscious that the boy's sister was watching him again, with that same look of suspicious interest with which she had favored him all evening. Stefan opened his mouth to answer, closed it again as all the folk tight packed around Radu gasped with expressions of mingled discomfort and awe.
"What?" He elbowed Frank. Stefan's head had snapped back to watch the little stage, onto which a woman in an astonishing hat was cautiously squeezing herself. Her skirt had enormously emphasized hips, which she had to fold up against herself in order to pass the tent doorway. Her face was powdered to a stark white and the shape of her huge triangular head was caused by a wig almost as large as a Sultan's turban, topped with a miniature palace constructed from colored feathers. It seemed an odd figure to inspire such awe.
He elbowed Frank again. "What just happened?"
"All the lights went out at once," said Frank, apparently heedless of the fact that a lantern burned over the doorway through which they had come, and small candles flickered along all the branches of the tree in the center of the terrace, lighting his stupidly wide eyed look with gold. "There's a mist in the river valley and milky shapes moving in it like fish. Fish... in armor. Ah!" He laughed, the crowd with him. "And mer-creatures. How are you not seeing this?"
That was rather the question wasn't it? Because what Radu was seeing was the back of someone dressed in black, hiding in one of the bushes, bent over a sullen orange glow. They piled on black handfuls of something and then he did see a thin trickle of smoke, smelled the rancid choke of wet leaves.
"Oh!" Pleasant as it was to watch the elegant lines of Frank's face express wonder, the sense of being excluded from a treat everyone else got to share made him feel as hard done by as Stefan for a moment. "Now the mist is gone and she's there, all in golden armor and shining like the sun. And everything is glittering as if it was made of diamonds. There are palaces of glass and stars, and—ah!"
Stefan laughed aloud and clapped.
"Horses," said Frank, grinning, pressing his hands to his ears, "across the whole sky. They look like they're made of clouds, but they sound like thunder."
A second small fire had been lit down by the river, and shone doubled, tripled. It took Radu a while to see mirrors in the dark, to guess that the scurry of six helpers was truly only the reflected endeavors of two.
Ecaterina dropped back from where she stood by her father's side to eye him as if he was as puzzling as what he was seeing. "You're not enjoying the greatest illusionist in the world?"
"All I see is smoke and mirrors." He pointed them out, and she scoffed.
"Mademoiselle Giroux lives in a country where it is still legal to burn witches at the stake. Naturally she provides mechanisms behind the show by which those who would accuse her may be confounded. If ever France lost its head and chose to drag her to trial, she would be able to provide evidence that it had all been mere trickery and suggestion."
Her earnest look, sister to Stefan's grave solemnity about horses, gave way to delight. She raised her hand as if to grasp something delicate, precious, that hung above her. "But you cannot tell me you look at that and do not see magic."
"I see nothing at all.”
No, there was something swirling, pale among the unmoving stars. He reached out, caught a little, paper butterfly, crushed from the pressure of his hand. Caught too the sight of another black-clad helper in the far corner of the terrace, wafting scoops of the things into the air with the aid of a large fan.
"Frank?"
"They're like little angels," said the Englishman, holding out a hand flat as if to support a tame bird, "Or fairies, I suppose. And they're singing."
Radu looked around the crowd of his peers, to find every one of them with the same spellbound look, every one of them smiling, exalted and delighted. "Would they really believe, in the morning, when the scars of fires are revealed, and they find colored paper lying crumpled in the bushes, that that is all they saw? Are people so easily deceived?"
Ecaterina reluctantly took her gaze from the empty sky. "You would not believe how easily the masses of people are lied to. But even if they do not believe, the point is simply to provide evidence, just in case. There is no need to tr
uly reproduce the spectacle without magic. It couldn't be done. The point is simply to produce doubt. This is as visible as magic ever gets, and although her audiences rejoice in it tonight, who knows whether tomorrow some priest or monk or pious lady might report it in a fit of conscience. That is why Mademoiselle Giroux refused to join the party, and refuses still to meet our guests afterward. She does not wish to be recognized enough to be denounced."
"I am the last person who could ever accuse her of anything."
The pleasant warmth of feeling as though he might have a talent of use slid away as Ecaterina jumped with a shout of surprise and turned to gaze raptly at nothing.
"Dragons," said Frank, without prompting. Just like a man who has accepted that his companion is blind - knows that he needs to explain, describe, guide him by the hand through experiences that everyone else in the world takes for granted.
Radu had thought of this newly revealed talent of his as an ability to see the truth, but now it showed more as an inability to perceive something that all others could. A lack of one of the senses common to mankind. It seemed he was a skeptic not because others imagined a magic that did not exist, but because he was blind and deaf to experiences that other humans shared.
"I'm glad to hear it," Ecaterina took up the thread of the conversation again, but didn't turn to look at him, fully engrossed in whatever was happening above the river valley. The experience was boring as well as disheartening, and he wondered if he could go back inside and find a nip of tuică and a book.
But the habit of secrecy was too ingrained. Everyone would notice if he did. Everyone would want to know why, and his peculiarities would be discussed. He could not afford that.
"There is such need for a school of magic in our country, we have so much talent and strength, and all of it is currently undeveloped, our theoreticians ignorant, our practitioners untrained. We cannot afford to allow it to continue. Not if our neighbors discover how to harness it first.”
The thought was intriguing. If magic did indeed exist, and he had to admit it was beginning to seem likely, then perhaps this was a new possibility of working out his situation with least damnation to all. Magic could do anything, yes? Then perhaps it might be possible to reverse the curse on his parents - make them human again. Let them live out their remaining years and atone and repent, so that when they did die naturally, they would have no reason to come back.
It was on his tongue to ask 'can magic cure the strigoi?' but that would be a loose end that demanded to be pulled until it had unraveled all his secrets. "If I believed in magic," he allowed instead, "I should like to know our country was well provided with it. Frank came here from England with a friend who studied it."
Ecaterina strained her neck back to gaze at something in the sky. Something momentous, undoubtedly, from the hands she had clapped over her mouth to keep in sound. Behind her a woman in emerald green was less restrained and shrieked. Oaths and sharp laughter, and then the whole packed balcony of nobles applauded at once.
A moment of silence and then an eddying through the crowd as a dozen conversations started at once, and guests began to dissipate, taking the smoothed paths down to further beauties of the gardens, or going back indoors. Ecaterina turned to Frank. "You couldn't ask your friend to visit us?"
Frank stiffened, relaxed a little and then stiffened again, as though he felt the pain twice - as though it echoed. "He's dead, I'm afraid. A bandit attack."
"I'm terribly sorry." It looked like a formality to Radu, but Frank must have seen a more sincere portrait of sympathy - he ducked his head and gave an embarrassed smile.
"I don't suppose you have his notes?"
Radu bit down on a laugh. Ruthless girl! He quite liked that.
"Everything was lost," Radu answered, sparing Frank the need. "Though if you put out a reward for them it's possible the bandits may find them again. But it shows they're taking the subject seriously in England, yes? Perhaps you might find someone else at Cambridge with whom you could correspond."
By way of apology, Ecaterina took Frank's arm. He looked alarmed and delighted at the honour, like a fawn lured out of hiding by its loving mother. "You must absolutely come to the salon, and tell us all you know. Bring your friend and anyone else with a gift that you know of. There are not so many of us that we can afford to turn anyone away."
"Anyone?" Frank asked, still looking at her as if she was an angel come to earth. "Of any rank? Of any race?"
Go to Hell! Radu didn't choose to move the weight of his habitual silence, but he allowed himself some inner incredulity and amusement. Frank meant to bring the gypsy, what was her name? Mirela. That would be something to watch.
Ecaterina's fierce look gave way to uncertainty. He wondered if she feared Frank would bring a Phanariot Greek, or a Turk. "If you think they have the interests of our country at heart," she managed at last, giving as little cause for offense as the diplomat's daughter she was.
~
"It's remarkable," said Bogdan Ilionescu, the highest ranked of the onlookers who crowded around Frank's chair. They were all, as far as Radu could see, admiring the empty palm of his hand, but he gathered he was as usual missing something important.
Ecaterina's salon turned out to be a meeting with a cross section of Wallachian society, from Roma seers and witches to boyars of Radu's rank. The meeting was held in a large apartment rented for the purpose, in the center of Bucharest's artistic quarter. It was brightly hung with Oltenian carpets and filled with furniture in the French fashion, rose pink beneath the warming spring sunshine. May was passing into June, and summer could be felt prickling at the skin at midday. Winter's cold wind battled fitfully with summer's desiccating blow, and one wore linen waistcoats and carried a fur lined cloak against the two extremes.
Tea was being served, a new fashion he did not see catching on. The proffering of small meat rolls and dainties was well enough, but Frank was the only man not to have brought his own alcohol and switched it at once for the steeped leaves.
"Are you going to tell me, or are you going to leave me to guess?"
"You really can't see?" If he'd known that attending this soiree meant being prodded like an experimental specimen and looked at like some kind of prodigy, he would not have come, Frank's protest notwithstanding. Next time, now he had had a proper introduction, the Englishman could come on his own. He certainly seemed to be causing almost as much of a stir in his own right.
"Domnu Ilionescu here can call fire," said Frank, still holding his hand as though it was full of something. "When he showed me how, it wasn't hard for me to do it, too. Apparently that's not normal."
Ecaterina put down the large volume she and a companion had been examining at another table, dragged herself over. She looked worse than usual today, her eyes bloodshot and the bags beneath them so dark as to look bruised. She moved badly too, as though her knees and hips ached.
"Typically those who have a gift have a gift. They can make fire, but cannot influence water, they can herd mice, or bake excellent cakes, or see into the future. One gift for one person. But Frank here seems to be able to learn to do anything. He's shown us that he can call sunlight and darkness, he can see into other rooms through the mirrors. His swift understanding of languages may also have some magical component."
"They say I might be..." Frank smiled the little depreciating smile he used whenever forced to talk about his own virtues, "a true mage. That's rare, apparently. I remember Protheroe saying as much. 'Many people have magic, but only the mages use magic.' That's what he said."
"My mother used to say the same," Mirela agreed. She had put Radu's money to good use and now wore a sturdy red skirt, a clean blouse and waistcoat and headscarf, though there were boots rather than shoes on her feet, suggesting she had not shed the habit of wearing trousers as well. He didn't know what she looked like to the others, but from the way the other witches had taken to her - from the way everyone startled a little at the fact she had dared to speak - he thought
perhaps she was being herself.
"Most people have a little dash of power, but it's still only the wise ones who have enough to do everything." She grinned at her compatriots, who didn't look happy to have their secrets shared with a gorjo. The disapproval only made her tilt back her head and laugh. "We should have a toast to Frank, first mage of Bucharest. Maybe a party. Now you have to show us something else, though. What else can you do?"
"I don't... this is all rather..." Frank stuttered, taking refuge in his tea. "It's all very well to say I might be able to do things, when I don't know how. I can't just make it up." He was not at all the kind of great magician Radu had pictured from the folk tales, and it was hard not to be charmed. Excited too, for Frank was his, and that meant the first mage of Bucharest was his. Perhaps it hadn't been such a bad thing to save the man after all.
"Are you saying," Radu asked cautiously, "that if you can find a spell for something, Frank can cast it? Could he call up demons, or banish them?"
"Why would he want to?" Ecaterina lowered herself to sit on a rose-upholstered footstool, in a bright patch of sunlight through tall windows, attracting perturbed looks from her little coterie.
Frank exchanged a glance with Radu, bless his quick mind. "Well, suppose someone else had summoned them - could I banish them?"
"I see no reason why not." She joined her hands across her open mouth as she yawned, and then rubbed her forehead as if it pained her. "But that would certainly require the right ritual, the right spell. She seemed to forget her weariness when she was lecturing, and the disturbed expressions on her guests' faces eased as she grew enthusiastic. Even the women, Radu noticed, still looked at her as if she was a gracious queen deigning to step down and explain concepts beyond the grasp of mere commoners like themselves. " The more complex something gets the more difficult it becomes to hold all the elements in your mind at once. That's why there are rituals, to pin down each aspect before you move on to the next. To take something extremely complex and break it down into more manageable pieces until the final incantation can release all the parts at once."
