The Mystic Marriage

by Jones, Heather Rose

  But as the door was opened and the step lowered for her she turned to him, saying, “Thank you, that was deftly done.” And then, almost as an afterthought, “Remind me on Friday to take you to see LeFevre to have your contract drawn up.”

  * * *

  It would have been wrong to characterize her first participation in the sessions as a triumph but neither had it been a disaster. Margerit teased later, “Do you plan to make a career of politics now?”

  Barbara shook her head. “Not even if Annek and Christ himself begged me. There are few topics where the old men are likely to listen to my opinions.” They were lying entwined just before sleep in that time when the day’s thoughts were most easily shared.

  “Have you read any more of the letters?” Margerit asked.

  “A few more. It’s slow going. It’s so hard to make them fit into what I thought I knew. It’s as if these people are strangers to me. But they are,” she added. “I never knew my mother outside the stories the baron told. And those were few enough. And now? I still only see her reflected in his words. It’s strange to think that these are the people closest to me.”

  Margerit moved against her softly.

  “Except for you, of course,” Barbara added quickly and bent to kiss her.

  “But you do have relatives,” Margerit pointed out. “There’s your mother’s sister. Do you see her in a new light now too?”

  “I don’t know. She doesn’t figure much in the baron’s letters. Only a mention here and there of ‘your sister.’”

  “She could tell you more herself. Would you consider—”

  “Perhaps,” Barbara said. “When I’m ready.” She didn’t mean to be quelling but she wasn’t ready yet to ask those questions…or have them answered.

  “And then there’s Antuniet,” Margerit said with an air of broaching a new subject.

  “Yes. Antuniet.”

  “She is your cousin, after all. I thought I might—” Margerit hesitated. “I thought about inviting her to join us for floodtide, if you didn’t mind. She hasn’t anywhere else to go.”

  “Did Jeanne suggest it?”

  “No. That is, I don’t think so. You know, I’m not entirely sure. She has a way of slipping her plans into your own before you even notice! But there almost seems to be a coolness between them at the moment.”

  “That one’s a strange friendship,” Barbara said. “Yes, invite Antuniet if you wish. If she’ll come.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Antuniet

  The gates of Rotenek were but a few hours behind when Antuniet began to regret accepting Margerit’s invitation. The work could wait. Little enough would get done over the summer that a few weeks of idleness would make no difference. And a floodtide invitation was not a gesture to be brushed aside lightly, whether inspired by friendship or patronage. But the journey out to Chalanz in one of two coaches stuffed full of Jeanne’s friends was no pleasant holiday.

  Jeanne still blew hot and cold: now attentive and solicitous, now chatting merrily about nothing. Just when she most seemed the Jeanne of those intimate lunches in the workshop, she would turn away with a jest. Sometimes Jeanne seemed to forget her very presence, but other times that mortifying scene with the dancer at Carnival came back and she was glad of the inattention. It was hard to believe that one woman could hold in her head the depths Antuniet knew were there and the empty insincerity now on display. And why did it bother her so much? Jeanne was Jeanne, as she had always been. The endless stream of empty gossip droned on.

  What could have been a three-day journey with only a little care stretched into four when they reached Sain-Petir and found the river topping the bridge just enough to spook the horses. It was decided to go up to Pont Estan, where the crossing was safer. Their hostesses had gone ahead, setting out when the first signs of the rising Rotein were seen, not waiting for the official end of the season. With luck they had outpaced the waters and crossed before the bridge was flooded, though Antuniet couldn’t imagine Barbara letting a bit of water stop her.

  On the final day of the journey, she took refuge in the third coach with Akezze and the trio of musicians hired out from Rotenek for the dancing. It was that or go mad. Even the wagon with the luggage would have been an improvement. Jeanne’s friend Tionez had a knack for finding the most tender spots on which to sharpen her tongue. It hardly mattered whether the wounds were intended or not. And Tio’s friend Iaklin giggled at every supposed witticism. Why Iaklin Silpirt had come at all was a mystery, unless it were simply to make up the required numbers. Tionez must have dragged her along, for Jeanne had more sense than to bring such an innocent into this fold. No, Akezze was a far more congenial companion, for she spent most of the trip with her eyes closed and a handkerchief pressed closely to her mouth. Conversation was entirely out of the question.

  The musicians ignored both of them and kept up a low murmur barely audible above the noise of the road. They were another of Jeanne’s conceits: bringing only women to entertain at their May Day revels. Antuniet sometimes watched them sidelong and wondered whether Jeanne had enjoyed more than just their music. She jerked her thoughts away. Jeanne’s amusements were none of her affair.

  The travelers arrived at last late on that fourth day and instantly turned the gracious calm of Margerit’s house into a cacophony of confusion, misplaced baggage, reorganized arrangements and giggling dashes in and out of rooms. One might think they were schoolroom girls rather than the grown matrons and widows who formed Jeanne’s most intimate coterie. Hopefully Margerit’s servants were sufficiently accustomed to their mistress’s irregular life to be too scandalized by any lapses in discretion. It was clear that the women considered this trip to be a holiday from their ordinary caution. Antuniet had taken note, with wry amusement, of the moment when Akezze worked out what interest it was that most of the other women shared. No doubt they had considered the scholar to be of no more importance than the musicians and servants in moderating their behavior. Antuniet supposed that she, too, now fell in the category of those whose opinion didn’t matter. Who was she likely to gossip with who wasn’t already present?

  Escaping the chaos, Antuniet retreated toward the back of the house and found herself in a flowered courtyard nestled between the two wings of the building. An ornate fountain played in the center of a tiled expanse. She sat on the rim of the pool and closed her eyes, drawing in the scent of the roses and heliotrope and letting the sound of the splashing water wash away the tension and weariness of the road. She should return to her room. If she hoped to take advantage of the luxury of a bath before dinner, it would be good to put her request in before too many others. Instead, she rose and followed the sound of birdsong through a columned pergola.

  The path led out onto a terrace behind the house and then farther down through wilder gardens and shrubberies spilling out toward the river. It reminded her of Tiporsel House but in larger scale. One could lose herself on these paths. Indeed, she hadn’t gone more than a few turns when she came face-to-face unexpectedly with Barbara. She, too, looked as if she were escaping the invasion. Recovering quickly, Antuniet curtseyed with her usual brief, “Baroness, your pardon,” as she turned to find a less traveled path.

  “Cousin,” Barbara returned. And then, “Still always so formal.”

  It seemed an invitation to conversation. She could think of nothing to say but, “Still always so impersonal.”

  Silence hung between them. How did one begin? On impulse she added, “You know, it doesn’t bother me anymore. Being addressed as Maisetra.”

  The corner of Barbara’s mouth twitched, but she couldn’t tell whether it was humor or distaste. “I’ve tried, but ‘Maisetra Chazillen’ never sits right in my mouth. Which leaves us in the awkward place we find ourselves.” She seemed to contemplate a question and then inclined her head in invitation. Their steps fell together on the path. “It’s easier for you and Margerit,” Barbara continued. “You long since made each other free of your Christian names
.”

  It was, perhaps, an invitation, but she couldn’t be sure. And it was an invitation only Barbara could make now. “That happened…before.” Before her fall and Barbara’s rise. “I wouldn’t want to presume—”

  Barbara stopped in the middle of the path and turned toward her. “Someone once asked me whether it meant anything to me that you and I are each other’s nearest living kin. I’ve been thinking about that recently. I find it means a great deal.”

  The moment stretched out between them, then as one they began, “Barb—”

  “Antun—”

  It might have called for laughter. Instead they turned and continued side by side down the path toward the river, but the tension had drained away.

  It was Antuniet who broke the silence. “He never invited us here, you know, old Marziel. He couldn’t avoid having us out to Saveze a few times, with Estefen being his heir-default. That’s where I first remember seeing you. But I’ve never been to Chalanz before.”

  Barbara looked back at the house. It was barely visible now through the branches. “It’s a dreadful waste. We barely spend a month out of the year here at most. It’s a lovely place, but it isn’t Saveze.”

  Her voice had a possessive edge that Antuniet both understood and envied. The house on Modul Street had been home, but never in that same deep-rooted way. The Chazillen lands had belonged to another branch of the tree: a place to summer if nothing else offered, but not to pin your heart to. And even those were lost to her now. “Do you begrudge spending so much of the year in town?”

  “No.” And then a laugh. “You know, it never occurred to me to think about it before. The baron…the court was his life’s blood. And now I could hardly drag Margerit off to rusticate for most of the year. She needs Rotenek like a fish needs water.” Her voice turned almost shy. “She is my home. Nothing else matters. Saveze will always be there. And they hardly need me to run the estate,” she finished more briskly.

  Antuniet thought, In five minutes I’ve learned more about you than in the last twenty years. She offered her own confidence. “I wish we could have been cousins long ago. How different it might all have been.” They had come at last to the stone wall marking the end of the property and the edge of the river. The water flowed past quietly but the flotsam traced a path that gave hints of swift currents and roiling eddies. The air had turned cold. “These days the world seems all out of balance and I feel like that leaf.” She pointed to a green mote, spinning in the shadows under the bank. It bobbed as if tugged by a hidden anchor, spun once more, then sank under the water. Antuniet shivered, and not only from the rising damp.

  “Pertulif,” Barbara said cryptically.

  “What?”

  “Oh, he has a poem about leaves in the wind that I used to quote. But we aren’t leaves, you know. We make our own destiny.”

  Antuniet scanned the water farther downstream, but the leaf did not resurface.

  * * *

  There was an expected rhythm to a country floodtide retreat. No one rose much before noon except the eccentric and the very young. Then there would be long hours sitting and walking in the gardens, engaged in idle talk, followed by whatever entertainments had been planned for the evening, stretching late into the night. There wasn’t a one of the guests who couldn’t lay claim to the title of eccentric—except, perhaps, for Iaklin—but Antuniet found herself one of the few whose eccentricity extended to rising early and seeking the calm of the gardens before it could be shattered.

  They saw very little of their hostesses the first few days. Margerit had duties to her family and a circle of old acquaintances that must be tended. Jeanne had taken charge of their program, arranging little games and amusements and setting in motion plans for their private ball. The timing of the river’s rising had inspired her to name the first of May for the crowning celebrations of the week. She was collecting everyone’s memories of the country customs of their youth to add to the plans, starting with rising at dawn to collect wildflowers and the first dew, all the way through a late-night bonfire on the terrace. Even Margerit joined in the planning with a will once her obligations had been completed. But when they brought out ribbons and armloads of rushes onto the terrace to make flower-gathering baskets, Antuniet slipped back into the house to find some more rational refuge.

  It had taken three full days to discover the library, though it held pride of place just off the front hall. The door had been locked—perhaps to protect it from careless depredations—and Antuniet had passed it by several times before searching deliberately and requesting admittance from the housekeeper. She sought that refuge again now, finding the door already open and the curtains thrust back to let the afternoon light spill through.

  The shelves held an odd assortment. Uncle Marziel hadn’t been known for his bookishness but he’d understood the value of a good collection that went beyond long ranks of matching bound volumes. And, of course, Margerit had set her hand on it since then. But it wasn’t the tidy cases of well-read tomes that drew her interest. Rather it was the high shelves: the odd corners stacked two-deep, the texts no one had thought to examine since they’d been placed there long years since. When was it that Marziel had bought the place? She pulled out a red-bound volume thick with tipped-in color plates. Some of the collection must have belonged to the previous owner, as she didn’t recall that the baron had been interested in cataloging the insects of the Carpathians.

  As she stood balanced on the rolling ladder, reaching back behind a set of German poets for a more interesting-looking volume that had fallen almost out of sight, a rustling sound behind her made her turn so quickly she had to grab for the rail to keep her balance.

  “I’m sorry to startle you,” Akezze said from the far corner of the room. “I hadn’t realized I was being so quiet.”

  Antuniet descended with her prize. The other woman had chosen a chair beside the tall windows, and the glare through the panes had made her nearly invisible. Now, leaning forward, the light turned her red-gold hair into a halo. “So this is where you’ve been hiding,” Antuniet said. “Did you, too, find the chirping birds in the garden a bit too loud?”

  A smile and a nod acknowledged that they weren’t speaking of the ones with feathers. “We all find our own refuge. I could almost think I’d stumbled on heaven here, except that I’d seen the library at Tiporsel first.”

  Antuniet settled opposite her and leafed through the thin volume. Nothing but a book of household receipts after all. She set it aside on a table. “What brought you along on this expedition? I’d meant to ask on the journey out but you were in such distress I thought it better to leave you alone.”

  She grimaced. “Thank you for that. I’m not looking forward to the rest of the journey to Saveze; I’d forgotten how much I hate traveling by coach. I’ll be spending the summer there tutoring Maisetra Sovitre in logic and rhetoric.”

  “Ah, I had forgotten. So she’s grown tired of crumbs? Good. I always thought she was too weak on the formalisms. You can only go so far on mere talent.”

  “Far enough,” Akezze said. “Did you know they sent a copy of her analysis of the Mauriz tutela to Rome?”

  “Now there’s a terrifying thought.”

  Akezze shrugged. “Likely some clerk will file it and it’ll never be seen again.”

  “I thought Margerit was trying to gather enough students to keep you in Rotenek in the fall.” Antuniet asked, “Will she succeed?”

  Another shrug. “There’ve been enough inquiries already to make it likely. She’s planning a whole series of…I don’t know whether to call them lectures or salons. A bit of both, I suppose. And not just from me. We’ve been discussing other women whose work should be more widely heard. I’m surprised she hasn’t asked you already.”

  “She has. But—” No, she didn’t care to rehearse those arguments yet with too many others. “It’s a worthy project, though to hear her talk about it you’d think it was entirely selfish.”

  This time Akezze la
ughed. “To her, it is. But if she isn’t careful she’ll be a second Fortunatus, gathering an entire college around her by accident! And you…What brings you along to Chalanz? I hadn’t taken you for one of de Cherdillac’s set before this. Or did your cousin the baroness invite you?”

  One of de Cherdillac’s set. That was a delicate way to inquire. Before she could think how to answer, the sound of the door knocker out in the entry hall startled them both into silence. It was unlikely to be ordinary visitors. One of the conventions of floodtide was the suspension of casual visiting.

  The footman’s voice drifted in, piquing their curiosity. “Maisetra Iulien, are you expected?”

  A young but not childish voice answered, “Oh, you know Cousin Margerit never cares for that! Is she at home?”

  So it was one of the country cousins. Antuniet went to the door and peered out. The girl was still a few years short of being brought out. No longer a child but not yet a young woman. She had an animated heart-shaped face, spoiled by the petulant look that crossed it when the footman asked, “Are you here alone?” Evidently she was well enough known to the household that liberties were taken.

  “No one cares where I go or who I go with. Is Cousin Margerit here or not?”

  “I believe she is entertaining guests,” the man replied with no success at giving the hint.

  Antuniet took pity on him and stepped out, saying, “I think everyone’s in the garden. I can take you back if you like.” And to the waiting servant, “Perhaps a messenger might be sent to let the, ah—”

  “The Fulpis,” he supplied.

  “—the Fulpis know where their daughter has wandered off to.”

  The girl Iulien was staring at her and Antuniet could tell she presented a puzzle. “This way,” she invited, leading off down the hallway. “I don’t believe we’ve met before. I’m Antuniet Chazillen. You might almost think of me as a distant relation of yours—Baroness Saveze is my cousin.”