Maisetra Pertinek’s maid had come in to do her hair for me. There were pearls for her neck and her ears and new white gloves and a beautiful shawl that was a gift from the baroness. Then one last stare at the looking glass.
“You look so beautiful, maisetra,” I said. I could see how she’d be an elegant lady any time she chose to be. Right now she grinned like a schoolgirl.
“Thank you, Roz,” she said and kissed me quick on the cheek before heading downstairs.
That was the sort of thing she did that made you love her. I don’t mean love like the way I’d loved Liv, all confused and hurting inside. Or the way I loved Celeste, like a burning candle. It was more like the way you might love Princess Anna, when you saw her in a parade or passing by in the cathedral. When you knew that you lived in different worlds, but if she ever smiled at you in passing it was like the sun coming out on a winter’s day.
I had a bit of a foolish grin from that all through tidying up, then I went off to my room for a nap. They wouldn’t be back until late. I’d have to get her undressed and settled down to sleep and wouldn’t that be a task tonight!
I’d expected to sleep through until someone came knocking to tell me the family were back, but instead I was restless with dreams of longing. Not like the dreams I used to have about Nan or Liv, but about a lady standing on a bridge and something like lightning or fire all around her. I felt that aching as the fires rose up like a wall or a wave and it went all through me and I woke up with a start. It left me all done and spent. I tried to sleep again after that, but it wouldn’t come.
I’d expected Maisetra Iulien to come home chatty and excited, but she was quiet, thoughtful-like. I waited to ask her about what happened until I’d gotten her undressed and the jewelry put away and brushed her hair out, humming the quieting charm that Maitelen had taught me.
“How was the opera, maisetra?”
“It…worked?” And then more confidently, “It worked. They’re all certain of that, but—”
She didn’t finish the thought, but I knew what she meant. Celeste talked about that—how you couldn’t always be sure what else your charm had done. And how much more for a great mystery than for a charm?
“As long as the curse is broken,” I said. “And we can get back to how things were.”
Chapter Twenty
September 1825—Floodtide
I wasn’t the only one visited by dreams that night. Half the house was restless. Maisetra Sovitre had nightmares that you could hear all through the upper house until someone woke her. When I asked Maitelen the next day, she said the maisetra had been very tired and no wonder, which was all the answer I got.
With a day’s work to make up in the busy season, I was off before Liv brought the deliveries. Few people on the streets would have seen the great doings the day before, but you could see some folks walking around all sleep-haunted like the maisetra had been. Celeste says lots of people can feel a tiny bit of magic. She says that’s why the great mysteries work—because if you get enough people celebrating them together then it’s like a lot of tiny whispers together getting loud enough that the saints will hear. She must have learned that from Maisetra Talarico. She didn’t used to talk about charms that way. So, people might have felt something when the curse was broken, even if they weren’t right there in the middle of things.
I’d barely stepped in the shop door when Celeste asked, “Did you see it?”
“Did I see what?”
Celeste shook her head. “You’ve never had a scrap of proper vision, have you? But it’s so bright, I thought maybe…” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “The river’s on fire again.”
“Like it was at Easter?” I hadn’t seen anything coming down the Vezenaf.
“Much brighter. Like there’s a fire under the water, burning at the bottom of the river.”
Celeste shook her head like she was trying to clear it. “Something woke me up last night, like a storm rolling through the city—you know the way the air changes all at once sometimes? I figured it was part of…all that.” She waved her hand in the direction of the upper town. “I saw the river on fire when I went out to fetch the bread.”
“Maybe that’s what it’s supposed to do,” I offered. “What Maisetra Sovitre and the others made it to do. Didn’t Liv say that when floodtide comes properly again the river’s supposed to wash away the bad luck? Maybe it’s like that, except burning away the bad luck instead.”
But I thought about what Maisetra Iulien had said and I wasn’t sure.
* * *
I figured Maisetra Talarico might know the answer, but it was a couple days before we saw her again. Celeste dropped her work the moment we heard her voice at the door and rushed to pester her with questions. Mefro Dominique frowned at that but told me to bring some tea to the parlor and said, “Don’t keep the maisetra too long.”
I think Maisetra Talarico would have liked the two of them to be friends, but she wasn’t sure how to do it with Mefro Dominique always treating her like a customer. Serving tea in the parlor was part of that. We called it the parlor to customers, but most days it was the fitting room where we took measurements and showed off fabrics.
As I poured out four cups, Maisetra Talarico said, “Now tell me what you’ve seen, Celeste, and what you think it means.”
I got to hear again what she’d tried to explain to me that morning, except this time Celeste used bigger words and some words I didn’t understand. Maisetra Talarico sat quietly after that for a long time while Celeste tried to be patient for her answer.
“The river was part of the mystery, it’s true,” she said at last. “It was a road for the mystery to travel, up to the mountains where the…the curse was. I saw how it carried the power when we performed the opera at Easter. That time it was an opera, not a mystery. When I was traveling to Rome—” She gave Celeste an apologetic glance and reached over to lay a hand on hers. “—I could see traces of power following the sources of the river. They teased at the edges of the curse. It’s all tied together, you know: how the curse bound winter to the mountains and kept floodtide from coming. The Rotein was a powerful symbol to connect us here in Rotenek with the goal of our work.”
She sang softly, “‘Let the waters rise up and wash away my sorrow.’ That’s what Tanfrit sings in the opera. It was what carried the strength of the working. I think what you see is only the remnants of the fluctus left behind.”
“You think,” Celeste said, sounding doubtful.
Maisetra Talarico looked doubtful too. “It was a new type of mystery. We weren’t sure how it would work. The church mysteries did their part, but it was the opera that finally destroyed the curse. It needed to be very powerful. There may be…leftovers in the water.”
Her eyes got a far-away look. I think maybe she was seeing visions. “I don’t think you need to worry about it. It’s doing what it was supposed to do. It’s still at work there, following up the rivers and the streams, washing out the last traces of the sorcery in the mountains.”
Celeste searched her face with a frown. “What did you see when you were there in the mountains? When you saw how it worked back in May?”
Maisetra Talarico’s voice was soft, like you might think a fortune-teller’s would be when they were saying true. “I saw Tanfrit calling to the ice-choked streams. I saw the fingers reaching up through the stony valleys, calling to the water, rise up, rise up. And the water was trying to answer.”
“And now it will?” Celeste asked.
“In its time, it should.”
“When?”
“I don’t know.” Maisetra Talarico seemed to wake from her vision. This time she sounded less certain.
When she’d left, Celeste repeated, “The water will rise up. Does she know what that means? She’s never seen it: the plaiz under water and all the lower city flooded. Fever everywhere.”
“You’ve never seen it either,” Mefro Dominique said sharply. “You were barely out of your cradle the last
time the water came that high.”
I could see a stab of worry in her eyes. I wondered what it had been like with the city flooded and a small child and river fever running through all the neighborhoods. I made myself busy clearing away the tea things while the two of them argued.
“Maman, you heard what she said. The mystery calls out to the Rotein and the Rotein calls to the mountains: let the waters rise up. I can feel it in the river. Do you think floodtide will wait on its proper season in the spring?”
“Celeste, it isn’t your place to worry about mysteries.” She sounded frightened. “Leave that for those it belongs to.”
“Maman, I think we should move things upstairs.”
Her mother frowned at her silently for a few moments, then said, “When the season is busiest.” It wasn’t really a question.
I saw Celeste nod silently. I wanted to think that Maisetra Sovitre and her friends would have thought of all this when they celebrated their mysteries. I knew how hard they’d worked all summer to prepare them. But I also remembered how they’d talked of floodtide at Tiporsel House. An inconvenience. An excuse to leave the city on holiday. I thought of the days we’d spent moving boxes and baskets up and down the stairs here in the spring. Then I thought of all the lovely fabrics that could be ruined if the river rose and caught us unaware. The half-made gowns in the workroom, the silks and embroideries.
I heard Mefro Dominique sigh and knew she was thinking the same things. “Very well, but don’t you go around talking about visions and mysteries. Charmwork is enough to worry about. Roz, let the dishes be for now. Celeste, go up and get things out of the way in the bedroom and we’ll start packing.”
* * *
We worked all night until my legs were ready to collapse from carrying boxes up the stairs. At last everything was moved from downstairs except the dresses we were working on and what was needed for them.
Mefro Dominique looked around the empty workroom with only tables and chairs showing in the lamplight. “If you’re right, we’ll be forgiven all. If you’re wrong, there will be rips to mend.”
She didn’t mean rips in the dresses. We were real careful about that. I wanted to go home to Tiporsel House right then. I thought maybe I could slip in without anyone knowing how late I’d been, but Mefro Dominique wouldn’t hear of me walking up the Vezenaf in the early morning.
“You lay down for a bit. I’ll wake you at dawn.”
So Celeste and I slept together on the pallets rolled out in a corner of the workroom. There was no place to sleep in the bedroom with all the stores there, and the pallets could be rolled back up and moved in a hurry. If I hadn’t been so tired I would have enjoyed lying there under the same coverlet as Celeste, feeling her beside me and hearing the sound of her breathing. I hadn’t slept next to someone for a long time and I missed that. I didn’t even want to cuddle or anything like that—I was too tired and it wouldn’t be right unless she wanted to. But I barely closed my eyes before Mefro Dominique was shaking my shoulder gently and whispering, “Get up, child.”
It was light enough to feel safe but too early for much of anyone to be awake or on the streets. I’d been foolish to think I could slip back in without anyone knowing, because of course the doors were still locked. I tapped on the glass window beside the door around back to catch someone’s attention. Cook opened it with her arms full of baskets to head off to the market. I was that early.
She looked me up and down with narrowed eyes and said, “You’d best go talk to Charsintek.”
The housekeeper was in her office next to Ponivin’s pantry. She fixed me with a look that had me quailing. “Where have you been running around all night?”
I hadn’t thought how it would look. And of course Ailis would have worried and told her I wasn’t there. “I was at Mefro Dominique’s,” I said.
“All night?”
I nodded. “There was—” Would she believe me if I told her about Celeste and her visions of floodtide? In a house like this, maybe. But all I said was, “There was an important job. It took all night to finish.”
“And Dominique will tell me you were there with her all night?”
“I was!”
Her face relaxed a little, but not into softness. “I hope the dress was more important than your sleep. I’d like to get this house back to regular hours now.”
For a few days, Charsintek had her wish. The maisetra went down to her school every day. The others went off to their visiting and the rest of what the family does. Maisetra Iulien did some of both now. She wouldn’t put off the question of a full-time maid much longer. I didn’t know if Maisetra Talarico had spoken with the maisetra about Celeste’s fears. It wasn’t a thing I could ask.
It was like I lived in two worlds: Tiporsel House, where everyone thought things were back to normal, and Mefro Dominique’s, where we sat in a nearly empty workroom, sewing and waiting. Then one morning Liv came pounding on the back door of the shop with Chennek barking at her heels.
Celeste led her in to the shop with wide eyes and a determined look. “It’s happening.”
Liv explained, “There’s a muddy streak down the center of the river and it tastes like flood.” I thought of the rivermen’s prayer where she kissed the water at every trip. They knew the changes day to day from the taste of the water.
Mefro Dominique looked sharply at us and said, “Back to work. We’ve done as much as we can. Nothing more to do until they ring the floodtide bell.”
“When will they ring it?” I asked. “How long until the water’s high enough?”
Liv frowned. “Hard to say. A regular floodtide might take a few days or a week to get Nikule’s feet wet. This one will rise faster.”
She sounded certain.
“Maman!” Celeste pleaded.
“What would you do? It doesn’t belong to you to worry about the flood.”
“I could speak to Father Mazzu. He might believe the rivermen. Maman, no one’s ready for the water this time of year. What will they think if we’re the only ones who were prepared?”
That must have convinced her. She shooed us out of the shop. The three of us walked over to the Nikuleplaiz, Celeste almost dancing a few steps ahead and me keeping pace with Liv. Liv hailed one of the other rivermen to come with us to speak of the signs. “He might not listen to me,” she said.
When it came to the point, Father Mazzu listened, but that was all he would do. He nodded and said, “If it’s God’s will that the river rises, then it will rise.” He said it kindly. Not as if he didn’t believe us, but like you might talk to a child who keeps asking after a treat.
The riverman said, “It’s rising, no doubt. The current doesn’t lie about that.”
Celeste was looking down at her feet the way she did when she said something she thought people might not want to hear.
“Father Mazzu, the river is rising and people need to be warned.” She didn’t tell him about her visions. Maybe it wouldn’t make a difference.
“We will warn them when the water reaches the mark.” The priest’s voice was patient, but that was exactly the wrong tone to take with Celeste when she had her mind fixed on something.
“By then it will be too late. Should people wait on the floodtide bell to move stores up out of the river’s reach? Should they wait on the bell to set aside sweet water to drink?”
“The flood comes every year,” he began.
“In the spring.” Celeste was pleading now. “People expect it in the spring.”
Father Mazzu looked to the burly riverman who had come with us. He didn’t know about Celeste’s visions either, but he knew the water and stood there with arms folded, waiting on an answer.
“I will send word to the archbishop,” Father Mazzu said, “and he will consult with the palace. I suppose there’s no harm in telling people to prepare.”
That was as far as he would bend. The riverman went back to his boat, but the three of us stood on the church steps wondering what to do next.
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“We could go door-to-door…” Celeste began.
I thought of how I’d need to get back to Tiporsel House before long—Maisetra Iulien was going out visiting in the afternoon and I’d promised I’d be back in time to help her dress.
“The priest said we should warn people,” I said.
“That’s not exactly what he said,” Liv protested.
“He said there was no harm in us warning people.” I could see Celeste was twisted up with frustration. “What’s the best and easiest way to warn people of floodtide?”
In that moment, I thought about the heroes in Maisetra Iulien’s poems and stories. I wanted to be Celeste’s champion, carrying her banner into battle, taking up a sword to fight duels for her. But what I did was to run to the bell tower that rose at the edge of the plaiz.
The tower had been part of a warehouse once long ago, but all that was left was the tower and the arcade along the front where the charmwives sat. The bell didn’t belong to the church, even though it was the priest who rang it. It belonged to the city and the merchants. To all of us. There were other bells in the tower besides the floodtide bell: a deep one for thick fog on the river, to warn barges where the channel turned, or to sound an alarm during the fires a year past. There was no door or lock on the stairs to the bell tower for that reason.
I could hear Celeste calling far behind me as I started up the spiral of stone. I knew the floodtide bell by the double chime, worked by a single rope. I untied it from the cleat and set the wheel to swinging. After a slow creak, the first peal rang out sweet and high over the Nikuleplaiz, followed by the double tone. Around me the stones shivered. Nothing else sounded like it. You could tell the floodtide bell even with other chimes ringing.
Floodtide Page 19
