Luzie opened her eyes again and scratched a few more notes onto the staff. The parlor looked the same as it always did: a cozy, comfortable space as far removed from magic as one could imagine. It was impossible to tell whether the phrases were worth keeping or whether she should begin again with a blank page. Perhaps she should beg Maistir Fizeir for his opinion. He wouldn’t hesitate to be honest with her. But every commission made her ground firmer. She’d been able to send the entire fee for the last one to Iuten. You see, Papa, my music is in demand now. She couldn’t afford to disappoint her patrons.
“That was lovely,” Issibet commented from the sofa, where she bent over her sewing in a pool of lamplight. The work wasn’t opera costumes this evening, but the long overdue mending of bed linens. Issibet couldn’t bear to have idle hands and it might be months before Alteburk would find the time.
Luzie nodded and thanked her absently. Issibet thought whatever she played was lovely. Quiet company was appreciated, and Issibet’s uncritical enjoyment was comforting, but not much to the point. In the pause before she began the strain again, Luzie heard the front door open and close. She felt, rather than saw, Serafina pause in the doorway as her fingers moved over the keys, trying to recapture the image she was reaching for. Without breaking the sequence, Luzie threw a quick smile over her shoulder and tilted her head to invite her in.
It was a deliberate habit now to make that invitation. In the first months of her residence, Serafina had seemed to slip crosswise through the movements of the household. After that disastrous affair dressing for the palace dinner at the end of October, Luzie realized it wasn’t only shyness, but a deliberate reticence, hidden under the uncertain schedule of her studies and masked by her outward moods.
Elinur had opined that Maisetra Talarico thought herself above sharing a table with working women. But that night of the Royal Guild dinner had broken an opening through the hedge of diffidence. When your shoulder had soaked up someone’s tears, it seemed unnatural not to move on to exchanging Christian names. Once you had done that, you noticed the hesitations and excuses. Now Luzie made certain to draw the scholar more closely into the rhythms of the house.
Serafina settled onto the bench beside her bringing a wash of sharply acrid scent. Luzie’s nose crinkled. “Have you found a new pomade? I prefer the one you found at the market. It was almost as nice as the broken one.”
After a moment’s confusion, Serafina laughed. “I’ve been sitting all day for Olimpia. No wonder I reek of turpentine and linseed oil! I’m sorry, I’ll go change.”
“No, no, stay,” Luzie urged. “I want your opinion on something.” Yes, now she could recognize the aroma of the painter’s studio. “I thought her piece for the palace was finished.”
Serafina looked away. “This was just…she finds my face interesting, she says. She’s been doing sketches…studies she calls them.”
Interesting enough for regular visits to the studio over the last two months! It was easy to see what Olimpia Hankez might find fascinating in the luminous tones of Serafina’s skin and the bright glance of her eyes. Serafina seemed embarrassed to speak of it. Did she realize how sought after Hankez was?
“Will we have a portrait to hang on the wall?” They had grown easy enough that some teasing was permitted.
“No, it’s only for her private notebooks.” Serafina’s cheeks darkened in what must have been a blush. “What did you want to ask?”
Luzie spilled out her concerns with the sonata. Her hands moved restlessly over the keyboard, punctuating her doubts. “I never thought about it before, this thing you say my music does. But now they expect…they expect miracles. I feel like the girl in Rumpelstiltskin. Everyone expects me to spin straw into gold because they’ve seen me do it before, and I don’t know how!”
From the sofa, Issibet chided, “You’re making too much of this. You’re already a good composer. Don’t tie yourself up in knots just because you have a few commissions.”
Serafina laid a hand on hers where it still rested on the keys. “There isn’t a single work of yours I’ve heard that hasn’t sung with power. I don’t think it’s possible for you to fail.” Her fingers tightened before releasing. “Play it from the beginning.”
Luzie shuffled the pages and found her place. The first chords rang out, dissolving into runs in the treble while the bass settled into a restless rhythm.
“Wait,” Serafina interrupted.
Luzie paused with her hands over the keys as Serafina glanced around the room, tracing invisible patterns.
“For a betrothal, you said? I think it begins too…too deeply, too many colors. The power is there but it’s…” Serafina waved her hands, clearly finding it as frustrating to explain as it was to try to understand. “Give me just the upper part.”
Luzie picked out the treble line one-handed as Serafina nodded in time. And then, because she couldn’t bear to leave it so naked, her left hand added just a note, here and there. The barest skeleton of the original part.
“Yes, like that. Now it’s green and soft, and spreads out without pushing. A young girl in a garden at the beginning of spring, when only the first shoots are rising through the earth.”
With that image in mind, Luzie moved on to the second theme. Serafina’s descriptions were entirely different from what she had envisioned for the music, but she could see how they matched up, side by side. Not the essence of the music, but a cipher, in the same way the black notes on the page were not the sound but only instructions for the sound.
Measure by measure they began to build a vocabulary, a language. In the manuscript for the third movement she found herself scribbling notes couched in colors and textures, with little diagrams of sharp-edged shards and smooth spirals. It was still her music—that hadn’t changed—but she could see new patterns in how the pieces fit together. Distinctions that she might once have felt her way toward by ear, but that were entirely apart from the rules of harmony.
Luzie sat back and gave a deep sigh, feeling drained. There was a waiting stillness from Serafina beside her. “Is it like that for you?” she asked. “All the time?”
Serafina shrugged. “Not like that. Not so strongly. But yes.” She searched for words. “The great miracles…they’re like storms. They move you—change you—whether you will or no. Most people, if they can sense anything at all, only know the storms. Or they know a storm has passed because the limbs have been torn from the trees, or the ships were heeling over almost foundering. But I…I feel every breath. The air is never still, whether it’s the sharp cold before a snow, or the cool breeze coming off the river in high summer, or even just the rush of air behind someone walking past. And sometimes, even if I can’t feel the wind, I see the leaves moving high in the trees, or the way a kite hangs suspended above the hill.” Her eyes had gone unfocused, seeing all those things before her within the parlor walls.
Luzie shivered. It was frightening to think herself a part of that vast invisible force. And yet…to think that one might call the wind and send leaves skittering down the cobbles, or drive the ripples on the river into caps of foam. She stared down at her hands. What was it good for? To warm the spirits of a hesitant student? To send chills down the spines of a salle full of listeners, curious to experience the frisson of something more than music?
Serafina was watching her again with that wary caution. Impulsively, Luzie threw an arm around her and drew their heads together briefly. “Thank you. Thank you for giving me that.”
* * *
Rain beat against the glass of the parlor windows when Luzie began packing the latest batch of Fizeir’s copywork into her music case. She pulled the curtains aside and peered out, trying to guess how long it would last. January should have snow, not rain. It wasn’t a good day to travel across town, but she’d promised delivery. And she needed distraction. On today of all days, she needed that.
It was growing harder to fit in the time for Fizeir’s work, and the pay was little enough compared to the new
students, but she hated to lose her contact with the man. She could never really call him a mentor—certainly not a patron—but he was the only composer who had condescended to comment on her work. How she wished her father were closer! Fizeir had promised to look at the commission for the Honistins. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Serafina’s opinion, but she wasn’t a musician. Together they’d coaxed and teased the work into something Serafina called bright and marvelous, but how many listeners would be able to see it as she did? The piece needed to work purely through the ears as well.
The wind slackened briefly and Luzie held the case close under her arm for a quick dash across the little bridge and over to the edge of the Nikuleplaiz where it would be easy to find a fiacre. At least she needn’t count teneirs in that fashion anymore. The rain had turned the little chanulez into a brief torrent, washing out the stench of the mud, but she held her breath by habit while crossing over. If the spring flood were low again, they’d need to dredge, and wouldn’t that stink!
By the time she arrived across town, the storm had settled into a sullen drizzle. Fizeir’s mood, in contrast, was as cheery as the bright coals cracking on the grate.
“Finished already? Good, good.” But he set the bundle of scores aside, next to a folio inscribed across the cover with the title, La Regina di Saba.
“Your new work?” Luzie asked.
Fizeir quickly laid his hand across the title, then changed his mind and pushed it toward her, with a finger across his lips and a broad wink. He was notoriously close-mouthed about new compositions. Sometimes everything but the title was kept a secret from all but the cast until opening night. Once, he’d canceled an opera entirely when the singers had performed excerpts at a private party before the opening.
Luzie appreciated the confidence as she opened the cover to scan the beginning of the overture. Not another tragedy, but a Biblical spectacle. In some ways she admired Fizeir’s disdain for the modern fashion for operatic farce. Surely the grandeur of the stage was meant for more than adulterous comedies. “And who is singing your Queen of Sheba?” she asked.
“Benedetta Cavalli,” he said shortly.
The temperamental Italian soprano would do justice to his work, Luzie thought, but it was hard not to imagine Serafina’s face instead in the role of the ancient Ethiopian queen. Perhaps they could go to the opening…no, even her careful budgeting wouldn’t yet extend to good seats, and Serafina was so shy. She wouldn’t subject her to the common crowd. Issibet could be relied on to arrange something once the chaos of the opening was past.
Fizeir closed the cover of the folio and slid it away from her reach as he handed her the note with his payment. “You had a new composition you wished me to judge?”
Grateful that he’d remembered, Luzie found the sonata at the back of her case. She waited anxiously as he played it through, first deliberately and then at speed with broad showy movements of his hands. She scanned his face, looking for some sign of the surprise and delight that Serafina always betrayed. But perhaps he wasn’t sensitive to—what did they call it? Fluctus? And that was why she had asked his opinion. She needed that distance.
Fizeir gave her a small, tight smile as he returned the manuscript to her. “It will do for the purpose. I’m sure the Honistins’ guests will enjoy it. You seem to have found your calling.”
He meant it for praise, Luzie knew, but she’d hoped for more. “I’m enjoying the opportunity for longer works,” she said as she packed the papers away once more. “I’m working on another motet like the one I showed you last spring. Perhaps some day I, too, will try my hand at an opera.” She had meant it as a jest, but even as the words escaped her mouth she knew it had been a mistake.
“You? An opera?” He was too startled for polite lies. “You have no idea what that would require. And who would perform it?”
“My father’s work was performed at the Royal Opera House,” she said quietly.
“Your father was a great composer and Alpennia is the less for his retirement. Perhaps some day your brother will take up his banner and continue the name.”
Luzie bit her lip and nodded as she turned away. There he was wrong. Gauterd was a superb performer, but he would never make a name as a composer. Perhaps one of his sons. It would be good to see a return of the Ovimen family to Rotenek’s concert salles.
* * *
Luzie hadn’t expected to return to solitude, but Issibet was still at the opera house sewing room, with the opening coming so soon. Elinur had taken to her bed with a wet cough—she would need to make sure that Silli made up some broth for her. The cough often ran through the city at midwinter but rarely this badly. The apothecary’s physic was having some effect but perhaps she should send Charluz for a thaumaturgist. No, Charluz was out for the whole day. And there was never any telling when Serafina would come or go. A cough could turn bad so easily. It could… A dull ache began to grow beneath her heart.
The house was still except for the faint pattering of the rain on the windows again and the distant footfalls and clinks of Mefro Alteburk and the maids at their work. Luzie brushed her fingers across the keys of the fortepiano, but she’d lost all chance of denying the date. The tenth of January. Ten years to the day since Henirik’s death on yet another cold, dreary winter day.
Luzie crossed to the secretary desk and fumbled in the back of a drawer until her fingers closed on a small round object. She took it out and sat in a corner of the sofa by the front window, opening the chased cover of the pocket watch and gently touching the dark curl of hair tucked into the case. The timepiece itself had stopped ten years past and she had never rewound it. Some day she would pass it on to Iohen.
She shut the cover again and closed her fingers around it. No portrait to gaze on. They’d always meant to have their likenesses taken, but time had slipped away. She could still see his hands—the way they drew the watch from his waistcoat pocket and clicked it open, all in a single movement—but his face had faded.
A tear slid down her cheek, then another. She no longer mourned the loss of the man she’d thought to share her life with. Now she mourned the loss of the memory of him. Life had always been as it was now. Alone. Even her sons had been given up to the dreams Henirik had traced for them. Every summer they were more and more strangers. It had seemed so important to hold on to Henirik’s home here—equally important to send the boys to the school he’d chosen. Perhaps it would have been better to remove to Iuten with her parents where she could be near them all. It would have meant giving up teaching music, but she wouldn’t have needed as much income.
Luzie wasn’t sure how many hours had passed in reverie when she heard the front door open. Gerta had come in to poke up the fire but had carefully left without speaking. Luzie recognized the soft tap of Serafina’s boots, met by the quicker staccato of Gerta’s steps as she hurried to take her wet coat and parasol. A few indistinct words passed in the entry hall, then Serafina’s face appeared in the doorway. Luzie expected her to withdraw silently. She was grateful when Serafina instead crossed the parlor to sit beside her and take her hand without a word.
“Usually it’s at Christmastide that it hurts,” Luzie began. “You haven’t been here long enough to know. That’s when we always come together in Rotenek. For the important folk, it’s for the New Year’s Court, but for people like us it’s simply family coming home. My parents moved to Iuten a year or two after I married, and then it was Henirik and I who invited them all. My parents, my brother Gauterd and his family, if he wasn’t traveling, and Henirik’s sister Anniz before she married. The house would be full of music and baking. And somehow the night was always clear and fine to walk down to Saint Nikule’s for midnight Mass. We’d walk arm in arm singing noelle all the way—even Henirik who couldn’t keep a tune to save his life!” Her voice caught.
“And now it’s only me. My mother’s too frail to make the journey in winter. And the boys go to stay with them for their winter holiday. Their school’s only a half-day’s j
ourney from Iuten, and in any event they’ve grown too old to be tucked in here with me when the rooms are all let. Anniz is off in Suniz now. Gauterd was here two years past for some concerts, but it wasn’t the same.”
Though it all must have seemed like babbling nonsense, Serafina’s hand squeezed hers tightly.
Luzie forced a smile. “Did you have a favorite holiday as a child?”
She felt Serafina stiffen. Had she touched on a tender spot?
“The feast of Christmas was a special time for us too,” Serafina said quietly. “But my parents celebrated it as they did in their homeland. I don’t know what other families in Rome did.”
“Tell me,” Luzie urged, when Serafina fell silent again. Anything was better than falling back into her own memories.
Bit by bit she coaxed enough of a description from Serafina to build a picture, eked out with memories of paintings she’d seen where dark-skinned figures lounged on carpets and cushions. She imagined a tray shared between them with curious flat leaves of bread—a type of crêpe, she supposed—used to dip up bits of spicy stew with paprika and ginger and onions.
“And then mother would sing,” Serafina said, her eyes staring unfocused into the past. “There should have been a drum, she said, but she would clap along in time. I never knew what the songs meant because they were all in Tigrinya. I never learned it. That is, I must have lost it before I can remember. Papa thought we should speak Romanesco.” She began crooning a wordless melody. It had the feel of calling and response, like the work songs of the bargemen on the docks.
Luzie stored the tune away in memory to copy down later. “And does she still sing the songs when you visit?” she asked.
Serafina’s expression hardened. “My mother died, and my sister-in-law keeps a proper Roman household for them now.”
Mother of Souls: A novel of Alpennia Page 16
