Perhaps he was right. Or perhaps… A spark of mischief took flame as she sat down in one of the chairs beside the instrument. “Have you ever tried your hand at setting verses?” she asked. “I have a friend—” That was stretching the word considerably, but no need to frighten her with Baroness Saveze’s title for the moment. “A friend who’s interested in commissioning some settings of one of your poets. I think the name was Pertolf?”
“Pertulif?” Maisetra Valorin interjected. “Oh, I couldn’t do that. Fizeir has already set his works.”
“All of them? And no one else is allowed to touch them?” Serafina added a touch of wide-eyed surprise to soften the question. “Which one is your favorite of his poems?”
The other immediately launched into a series of couplets, too rapidly for Serafina to catch more than a word here and there of the Alpennian, but the rhythm of the poetry was clear enough and drew her in.
“That one,” she urged. “Try a setting of that one. If my friend likes it, there might be a commission in it.” She had seen enough of the woman’s circumstances to know that money might be a draw if vanity failed.
The uncertain look on Maisetra Valorin’s face turned thoughtful and she picked out the beginnings of a phrase. There were no explosions of song and color this time, just the wisps of fluctus weaving around her hands, fading in and out with the hesitant notes. Serafina bit her lip. To have such talent that it leaked from your very fingers, even in idle experiment! She rose, feeling the tears starting again.
“I won’t disturb you?” Maisetra Valorin asked.
“No,” she managed. No, it wouldn’t disturb her in that way.
Chapter Four
Margerit
Mid-September, 1823
Saint Mauriz presided over the start of the Rotenek social season as the residents of the upper city returned from far-flung estates and watering places to once more inhabit the salles and ballrooms. Margerit counted the feast of the city’s patron as the anniversary of her study of the mysteries. When Marziel Lumbeirt’s legacy had turned her life upside down and against all expectation she found herself in Rotenek, it had been the tutela for Saint Mauriz that set her to questioning and studying the visions she’d learned to ignore in her youth.
Every year since then she had carefully noted and sketched the flow and swell of the fluctus as divine grace poured throughout the cathedral in response to the ritual. Prince Aukust, and now Princess Anna, had butted heads with Archbishop Fereir over the churchman’s revision of the text, and she had traced the reflection of those changes in her visions.
But the great tutelas belonged to the cathedral, and Archbishop Fereir showed no interest in a young woman’s opinions on their efficacy. He had respected her talents enough to accept her as Princess Annek’s thaumaturgist, but no more than that. Fereir had ignored her careful analysis of the fatal flaws in the Mauriz tutela except for sending her notes and sketches to the Vatican for study. There they had netted only one return: the chance interest of an archivist’s wife.
Serafina had come to Rotenek hungry to study thaumaturgy with someone willing to teach her. Someone whose descriptions of the mysteries echoed her own experiences. It was only for Serafina’s sake that Margerit returned to the Mauriz this year with a trace of her former interest. Few people had enough sensitivity to follow the mechanics of a mystery. Antuniet could follow only the broadest outlines. Barbara was entirely blind to divine visions, though she could imagine their structures from mere descriptions and she had a sharp understanding for how the details of language could build or destroy a ritual. But in Serafina, Margerit had found her equal in perception.
Margerit had no authority to claim a better vantage for this ceremony than the pew belonging to Tiporsel House. This wasn’t a ritual of the Royal Guild where she had a place and a role. For long days past, she and Serafina had pored over her notes and sketchbooks, but today those were left behind.
Even with the whole household gathered in attendance for this, the most important mystery of Rotenek’s year, there was no crowding on the bench. Antuniet and Jeanne made a habit of joining them for the great services, and of course her Aunt Bertrut and Uncle Charul were there on Barbara’s other side. Aunt Bertrut looked younger than she had when they first came to Rotenek. Marriage had come late into her life and she had accepted the proposal of a penniless nobleman with the understanding that convenience and affection were all that was promised on both sides. But marriage suited her, and affection was growing into something deeper.
At the far end of the bench, Barbara’s cousin Brandel completed their numbers. The armins stood in the aisles to either side like bookends: Marken’s stolid bulk was a well of calm at her end, while Tavit’s restless attention anchored the far end. Their numbers were fewer than might be expected for the seat of an ancient household, but on feasts like this, when she gathered everyone in, she had a taste of how such a household might feel.
“And what will we see this time?” Serafina asked, her voice pitched low, so as not to disturb their neighbors. She had regained some of the eagerness that the summer’s failures had worn away.
“I’d rather wait and let you tell me what you see,” Margerit answered. “It won’t be quite as confused now as when I first saw it in Prince Aukust’s day.” She leaned more closely to explain. “Then the old and new rites were jumbled together more and you could see the fluctus wavering between them. Now most of the language from the old Penekiz rite has been erased, though the forms still remain. You’ve seen some of the Lyon mysteries before. There were a couple that we saw last spring. You were telling me how different they are from the Roman rites.”
Serafina was looking around with sharp curiosity. The service itself was yet to begin, but any time an entire cathedral of people waited in expectation of a Great Mystery there were wisps and eddies of worship drifting about, waiting to be gathered up into the whole. Margerit saw others looking around as well, though most for more ordinary reasons. Who had returned to town and who was still missing? Who spoke to whom and who turned pointedly away? Who had taken up the newest fashions? Margerit cared little for fashion but she noticed uncomfortably how threadbare Serafina’s dark blue pelisse had grown. She tucked that thought away as Serafina turned to answer her.
“It isn’t set as much by rule as all that. Of course the Vatican follows the official Latin Rite, but Rome is such a patchwork of districts. A thousand churches and almost as many traditions. San Stefano where the pilgrims’ hostels are gathered had a taste of every flavor we brought to it. In private, Mama never gave up the services she knew best, though I was baptized in the Roman church. Not all of the ceremonies performed there came to life, of course.” A wistful look came over Serafina, but then something caught her eye and she pointed off toward the base of the donor’s windows where the seats had been placed for the royal family. “What’s happening there?”
Margerit stared where she was pointing. The effects were pale and masked by the beams streaming through the colored glass. She had never noticed anything odd about the design before, but now that her attention was drawn to it, she could see a thin rain of light drifting down from the fragments of the original window where the saint’s halo encircled the darker glass of his face. The newer portions of the glass only let through mortal light.
“I never noticed that before,” she whispered back. “There’s a legend that one of the glassmakers for the cathedral had set mysteries in the panes, but I never thought what that might mean. Or that any of them remained.” Now that she was looking for it, she could see the fluctus drifting down to the dais where Princess Annek and her family would sit and then pooling as it faded there. Some ancient blessing? Or a protection perhaps? Or was it chance that it fell in that spot? Had all the windows trapped fluctus like that at one time? Most were from the renovations in Prince Filip’s day.
“There’s an entire section in the Vatican library on mysteries of the craft guilds,” Serafina whispered. “I never had permission
to explore it. A few people still study them, but they say most of the secrets have been lost or were never written down in the first place. If words and prayers can weave a mystery and art is a prayer of the hands, then why shouldn’t any creation be capable of carrying the living word? I’ve always thought Mesnera Chazillen’s alchemy to have more of mystery than science to it.”
Margerit shook her head, pitching her voice even lower as a ripple of anticipation spread through the crowd. “I doubt it. I know that many alchemists combine their work with meditation, but the heart of the practice is different. It must be, for so much of alchemy was learned from unbelievers. A true mystery can only come from God through the saints.”
Serafina gave her an odd sidelong glance. “If you believe that, then there must be many strange and wonderful things in the world that are not true mysteries.”
Margerit shrugged. It wasn’t the time or place for a theological debate. “Look, it will be starting soon.” She saw the archbishop and the other priests moving toward their places and then there was a bustling in the back of the nave as the royal party entered and made their way slowly to the place reserved for them. Princess Annek led the way, her sharp glance and strong features giving her the look of an eagle among lesser birds. She would take part as speaker for the congregation. Behind her came the Dowager Princess Elisebet. She had been accounted a beauty in her youth, but now her dark-browed, florid looks were more commonly described only as pleasant. Her hand was tightly clasped with that of her son Aukustin. The gesture made him look younger than his sixteen years. He had grown visibly taller over the summer and something in his chin and nose was reminiscent of his late father. Only the last member of the royal family, Annek’s son Efriturik, was absent.
Margerit relaxed into a light awareness of the entire panorama before her as the opening blessings shifted into the back and forth of responses as the celebrants laid out the markein—the definition of the scope and extent of the blessing—and then moved on into the core of the mystery. She had become accustomed to the chaotic confusion of the fluctus as it wavered between the contradictory demands of the ritual, but this year it felt weaker, less directed even than it had before. For hundreds of years Saint Mauriz had answered their petitions and protected the city. Did no one else feel the loss of that care?
As the ceremony rose up later toward the missio that was intended to send the saint’s blessing and protection out into the world, she leaned more closely toward Serafina and whispered, “Watch this closely now. This is where it goes most awry.”
The light and sound that had built in waves and arches throughout the ceremony now collapsed and fell in muddy eddies toward the floor by the altar. Margerit was certain that it marked the place where the saint’s relic was hidden away. She saw Serafina’s wondering gaze dart toward the same location before she gazed around once more, looking for remaining traces of the fluctus, as the priests intoned the final prayers and the congregation gave its last responses.
* * *
“Did you see what I was describing?” Margerit asked much later, when dinner was finished and they had all retired to the library at the back of the house. Barbara hadn’t been able to join them until after the meal. Antuniet had stayed, but Jeanne had taken her leave, pleading that she had little to add to a philosophical analysis. So only now had Margerit let her curiosity loose. “Did you see how Saint Mauriz’s protection is meant to flow out and seek the boundaries and landmarks of the city? Did you notice how instead it covers only the relics themselves?”
“But more than just the city,” Serafina said. “Surely it’s intended to reach the boundaries of Alpennia itself?”
Barbara frowned a little. “Saint Mauriz is patron for the land, it’s true. But this tutela is meant only for the parish and by extension to Rotenek.”
“But I thought I saw—” Serafina began.
“What? What did you see?” Antuniet asked quickly.
Serafina shifted uneasily in her chair. She had declined the offer of one of the overstuffed seats by the fireplace, and so they had all gathered around the library table instead. She looked from one to the other seeking permission to disagree.
“What did you see?” Margerit echoed. “You noticed that bit with the stained glass that I missed. Maybe I’ve been focusing too much on the cathedral itself.”
“I could see the fluctus like a layer of cloud, going out across the land,” Serafina began hesitantly. “Not bright, like what happened around the altar. More like that high haze you get sometimes at mid-summer. But at the edges, it was as if a storm were tearing at it.” She shook her head with the faintest of jerks. “I don’t know; it’s so hard to describe, because I couldn’t actually see it, of course. Not the part outside the cathedral. And I don’t know the land the way you do.”
Barbara gestured dismissively. “Don’t worry about that. I’ve become used to people talking about things I can’t see.”
Serafina shrugged. “And then, at the end, it was like the sun coming out from the clouds and the mist faded away. But the sun usually symbolizes something good. This was…a destruction. I’m not describing it very well, am I?”
“No, continue,” Margerit said, scribbling down a few notes to remember later. “Use whatever words work for you.”
“It…it tried. I could see that. It was trying—the blessing, I mean. But it wasn’t only the collapse at the missio. There was something out there. I could tell. Something that worried at it from the edges like…like waves eating away at the shore. And when the fluctus collapsed, whatever was out there followed it, like a wave reaching up the shore before retreating.”
Margerit felt a chill touch her heart. When she had first noticed the warping of the mystery, she had worried that it might leave the city unprotected in some way. Was something—or someone—finally taking advantage of that weakness? She thought back to Serafina’s observation of the window. “You see so much. I wish you’d said something at the time and I would have known to look for that.”
Serafina’s lean face twisted in an impatient scowl. “And what good is it?”
They’d been arguing over this for most of the summer. “It will come,” Margerit said patiently. “I’m sure it will. I couldn’t perform mysteries on my own until—” She thought back to that desperate night when Barbara had been attacked and she wanted to weave a protection for her. “Until I had a deep need.”
“If need were all it took, then every child in the gutter would be a miracle worker!” Serafina’s eyes flashed in scorn. “Don’t think to tell me I haven’t enough need. You’ve said yourself that neither need nor holiness seem to matter.”
Antuniet chided, “She’s right. Margerit, don’t promise her something that may never come.”
“I’m sorry,” Margerit said quietly. Whatever it was that drove Serafina, it had brought her on this long journey. And she was right: when you watched carefully whose prayers were answered by the saints, there was no rhyme or reason to the response. Was it only chance that her own voice was heard? “Tell me more about this fraying at the edges. I want to know more about what’s out there trying to get in.” They turned again to the diagrams laid out before them.
* * *
Frances Collfield always appeared unexpectedly. The first time, Margerit had encountered her by chance in the university library. On the second occasion, the English botanist had been collecting samples along the rocky slopes of Saveze, unaware of whose lands she had stumbled into. To be sure, this time Frances was invited and expected, but not for a month or two yet. In October perhaps, she’d said. When her book would be published. Perhaps later if the printing were delayed. The years of collecting and sketching lichens throughout the western side of the Alps were at last to be preserved in print. Yet here she was, before September was quite past, her stout walking boots and heavy tweed traveling cape looking strikingly out of place against the polished wood and embroidered cushions of Tiporsel House’s front parlor. As always she brought a scent of moun
tain hillsides, of pine and gentian and artemisia, though in fact she had traveled directly from London.
“Frances!” Margerit cried, when she saw who was waiting. “Why didn’t you write to tell me your plans had changed? Has Charsintek made up a room for you yet? Where are your bags?”
“I left them at the coaching office,” she said in her somewhat stiff schoolroom French. “I wasn’t sure—”
“Don’t be silly,” Margerit interrupted. “Of course there’s room for you.”
She stepped back into the entry hall and found Ponivin waiting. The butler didn’t need his years of experience to tell him that unexpected orders were imminent.
“Could you send someone to pick up Maisetra Collfield’s luggage? Where did you say it was, Frances?”
“It’s an inn at the west end of the city, where the diligence from Paris stops. I believe it’s called the Concordette? The trunk is rather heavy,” she added doubtfully. “That’s why I left it there. The journey was dreadful. I’ve never had such difficulties. You’d think we were at war with France again, the way I was treated.”
“I’ll see to it, Maisetra,” the butler said.
To the maid who had been waiting behind him, Margerit rattled off quick instructions. “Tell Charsintek to make up a guest room and have a bath drawn. And then tea if you please.” And back over her shoulder, “Frances, can you wait for dinner or would you like something more than cake now?”
“Whatever’s no trouble,” she answered. “But tea would be lovely.”
Aunt Bertrut joined them by the time the tea was served and Uncle Charul poked his head in long enough for a greeting before disappearing to his own room. So there was no chance to draw out Frances’s story before a chorus of thuds and grunts heralded the arrival of the luggage. Frances took possession of a valise while two men struggled to bring a small trunk up the steps from the courtyard.
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