“I’m sorry, I had forgotten.” How could she have been so thoughtless? “But when you go home—”
“It isn’t home,” Serafina said. “It hasn’t been home for a long time.”
Luzie laid her arm around her shoulders and squeezed gently. “Then we have come to the same place.”
“Once—” Serafina began. She turned and her eyes were shining. “Once in Palermo I was home again.”
“With your husband?” Luzie ventured.
She shook her head. “It was a mystery—not quite a proper church mystery but more like what your guilds celebrate. It was in the piazza by the harbor. I don’t even know what it was meant to do. I was a stranger there and I didn’t like to ask questions. All I know is that the music surrounded me and embraced me and took me home.” Now it was Serafina’s cheeks that were wet with tears. “I was there again. Mama was singing, and I could taste the air of my childhood, and for one moment everything was right…and then it was gone. I have to build my own mysteries. It’s the only way I can ever get it back.” She shook her head again, but this time to shake something off.
Luzie knew how that story had ended: the long lonely journey here to Alpennia to study with Maisetra Sovitre, only to find that she hadn’t the talent after all. Her arm squeezed Serafina’s shoulders gently again. It was easier to comfort than to be comforted. “And now you are missing your husband too, no doubt. How can you bear to be parted from him all this time? You must be lonely.”
Now there was a silence so long that Luzie was certain she’d stepped beyond the boundaries of their new-grown friendship.
Serafina’s lips were pressed tightly together, but at last she said, “I was lonely before we parted.”
Luzie felt a pang of guilt, recalling that not all marriages grew as close as hers had promised to. Serafina was here—alone—that said most of what needed to be said. “Did he have other women?”
A shrug.
Men could be such fools. “And you never took a lover in turn?” Such things were common in Italy, she knew.
Another pause. It seemed they had crossed over into a land of confidences. Serafina answered slowly, carefully, like plucking her words from within a nest of thorns. “It would break my marriage vow to lie with a man who was not my husband.”
Something left unsaid hung heavy in the air between them, a door begging to be opened. “But…?”
In answer, Serafina leaned toward her, the sweet-spicy scent of her hair making a curtain around their faces. She pressed their lips softly together.
Luzie gasped in surprise and jerked back.
In an instant, Serafina was on her feet, crying, “I’m sorry! I thought— I never know how to behave properly. I thought you wanted…” She backed away with a hand covering her mouth.
Luzie stood too. Her thoughts tumbled over themselves, trying to sort out what had happened. But before she could collect them there came the sound of the door and Charluz’s cheerful voice in greeting.
Chapter Ten
Margerit
Mid-January, 1824
January had been alternating between wet sticky snow that turned the streets into an ugly mess, and gray days of constant drizzle that dampened the spirits of travelers and stay-at-homes alike. Frances Collfield paced the front parlor, grumbling that no one would venture out to the exhibition of her prints, until Bertrut was driven to snap at her. Brandel, at least, was as careless as a duck of the weather. Between his new studies at the palace and practice at Perret’s fencing salle, he was rarely underfoot.
Even Margerit found herself looking up constantly from her books to stare out through the panes of the French doors of the library across the dull expanse of the Rotein where it flowed at the foot of the gardens. Every time the weather changed, anxiety clutched at her as she wondered if some new threat had slipped through the protective walls. It was only a storm. There were ordinary storms, after all. Not everything had hidden meaning. Not too long ago, she had been so confident that she understood the protections that the mysteries cast over Alpennia. Now there were so many questions, and not only her own. She glanced down at the brief note she had been folding and unfolding. You have my every confidence. AA The fact that Her Grace had felt the need to send it spoke volumes. It was only rumor, but it was said that the guildmaster of Saint Benezet’s had challenged her appointment.
She looked out across the water once more. Curiosity replaced worry when she saw Barbara striding up the path from the private wharf at the river’s edge, a heavy driving coat swirling around her ankles. Had she been out on the river? The landing was rarely used in wintertime except for deliveries. It was scarcely a day for pleasure boating.
A few minutes later the library door opened and Barbara entered, divested of coat but still wearing boots and traveling clothes.
“I have a riverman waiting down at the wharf. Could you manage a little excursion?” she asked, bending over Margerit’s chair for a brief but unhurried kiss.
“In that?” Margerit swept her hand toward the windows where a soft patter of drops had obscured the view once more.
“In anything at all. I received a message this morning from Eskamer.”
Margerit’s heart leapt. There was good news for a change! Some of her most treasured books had come from the pawnshop owner. Given that, she was willing to overlook his less savory reputation when it came to more conventional valuables. “What has he found this time? Or won’t he tell you?”
Eskamer played his little games; he had a living to make, after all. But she’d pay any fair price so long as the goods were sound.
“This time it was a bit of early news as a gift. It seems Mesner Chasteld has died at last. It seems the cough took him, though he’d been poorly for a long while.” Barbara waited while that information sank in.
“The poor man, God rest him,” Margerit exclaimed as she crossed herself and promised a prayer for his soul. “But now we may never see what else that library of his could offer up.” She felt a moment’s guilt that the man’s death itself meant little to her. She’d never met him that she could recall. But she was intimately familiar with the contents of his bookshelves. The early draft of Gaudericus with Tanfrit’s notes had only been the most valuable of the works that Eskamer had brokered for the elderly recluse. Who knew how long it might take his heirs to sort things out? She said as much to Barbara.
“That’s why Eskamer suggested we might want to make a little inventory of our own,” Barbara said. “He’s well known to the staff there. He thinks he can get us in to look things over before word spreads too far.”
Even bundled up warmly, Margerit was glad of the canvas shelter arched over the back of the riverman’s boat. The armins made do with an oilcloth in the bow. The riverman himself plied his oars with little heed of the water rolling off his heavy woolen coat and cap.
Margerit leaned into Barbara’s side, stealing some of her warmth. “I still don’t understand why we couldn’t have taken the carriage.”
“If rumors get out that we’re interested in Chasteld’s library, I know a dozen other collectors who might descend on it. As it is, we’ll have to forsake decency. The corpse is in the church but not yet in the ground, I understand. But if we drive up in a carriage with the crest of Saveze on the door, we might as well post our interest in broadsides in the marketplace. Chasteld’s place has its own wharf. This way we won’t attract notice until we’ve staked our claim.”
The old Chasteld place—it seemed to have no other common name—lay a short distance beyond the sprawling edges of Rotenek just by the village of Urmai. Back when the city had kept within the ambit of the old walls, Urmai was considered sufficiently distant to serve as a floodtide destination or a summer residence. Some Chasteld ancestor had built a sprawling villa there. Now Urmai was thought too near the bustle of the city to be truly fashionable, but in the sweltering heat of summer, its public gardens were an easy distance for a day’s outing.
In midwinter the place was less
inviting. A strong-backed riverman could make the trip downstream in less than an hour—better than a carriage ride if the streets were crowded, and more discreet, as Barbara had noted. The broad stone steps of the private landing were thick with sticky mud, less from the low level of the water than long neglect in cleaning. Marken sacrificed the dryness of his boots to help secure the boat, and Tavit scrambled out after him to offer a hand to the passengers as the riverman sculled gently to steady his craft.
Margerit noticed the briefest of hesitations as Barbara reached out to take the offered hand. A check, and then a second check as she grasped it and stepped across to drier ground. Margerit knew what lay behind that reflex. They kept no secrets between them—certainly not ones that might touch on safety or reputation. Barbara had related the aftermath of the duel at the New Year: Tavit’s revelation and her confused acceptance of it. Now Margerit could see the corresponding flinch in Tavit’s expression at that silent reevaluation of trust. Not trust in his loyalty or abilities, but in what services it was right to expect. Barbara herself would have raged at such doubts when she had held the post of armin. And she knew it, and pushed past those doubts. But Margerit could tell the matter was still a wound between the two of them.
The riverman was dismissed to take his ease in Urmai proper, glad of the day’s sinecure, and they followed the leaf-strewn path up to the twin stairs arching to embrace the grand entrance doors. It took three times pounding with the iron ring to summon faint footsteps within. A crack opened in the smaller wicket door.
The woman who confronted them had a suspicious and careworn face. She looked too young to be housekeeper for such a large estate, but she wore a ring of keys at her waist and peered at them with a proprietary air. “Yes?”
Barbara stepped forward. “We regret to intrude on your recent loss, but Eskamer the bookseller suggested that—”
“If you’re friends of that thief Eskamer, then you may go to hell!” she spat out and would have closed the door in their face except that Marken laid an immovable hand on it.
Margerit hurried to take a softer approach. “Forgive us for overlooking the introductions. I am Margerit Sovitre, thaumaturgist to Her Grace Princess Anna. In the past, your late master has sold me several ancient books that have been valuable to my work. We were hoping to assist in sorting out Mesner Chasteld’s library to advise his heir in how to dispose of it. And this,” she added belatedly, “is my friend Baroness Saveze. If it is convenient for you, would it be possible…?”
The housekeeper’s brief temper had retreated into wariness and she hastily curtseyed to the both of them. “I suppose you may come in if you must,” she conceded.
They followed her through the wicket door into the gloom of the echoing entryway. The housekeeper picked up a lamp from beside the door and led the way between another pair of arching stairs and into what must once have been the ballroom beyond.
Light filtered in through filthy windows set high in the walls above the gallery. Lumps of covered furniture huddled around the edges of the room, thick with dust. The housekeeper turned when she heard their echoing footsteps pause. “Mesner Chasteld had been an invalid for a very long time,” she said by way of explanation. But that scarcely explained the neglect.
“Where is everyone?” Barbara asked. The house had a stillness that spoke of a deeper absence than only the late owner. The air was chill and dank.
“Gone,” the housekeeper said shortly. “Been leaving one by one for years now. And taking most of what’s valuable with them.” She fixed Barbara with a critical eye. “Your friend Eskamer doesn’t ask many questions.”
Margerit winced silently. They knew what sort of man Eskamer was. She wondered now whether her books had indeed been purchased from Chasteld or obtained only by way of some greedy footman who’d pocketed the money himself. And who was Chasteld’s heir? No one close enough to have kept an eye out for him. Or had Chasteld been one of those sharp-tongued, bitter old men who drove away anyone who might have taken care for his interests? He seemed to have kept at least one loyal servant, as attested by the presence of Mefro Montekler, as she introduced herself.
They stopped to gather two more lamps before unlocking the dark oak door to the library. The chaos was more orderly here: close-packed shelves, volumes stacked two and three deep on small tables. Mefro Montekler cleared spaces for the lamps saying, “There’s no point to opening the curtains. The ivy’s grown so thick it wouldn’t matter.”
Even so, Barbara crossed to the window and pulled aside a heavy drape to let in the green-filtered light. A different light caught Margerit’s eye.
“What—?” She followed Barbara to examine the stiff fabric of the drapery. Pale ghosts of figures showed on the side that had faced the glass. Not brocaded arabesques, but a face, an arm, the folds of an ancient gown. It was an old tapestry, repurposed for its thickness and weight to keep sunlight from the books. But what she had seen was not the designs themselves but the faintest overlay of fluctus, following the fabric as it moved. “How curious,” she said, explaining to Barbara what she’d noticed. “That’s the second time this year I’ve seen a fragment of mystery bound into an ancient object. There isn’t enough to tell what it was meant to do. Not enough for me, at least. I wonder what Serafina might make of it.” But the books were calling more strongly, and calling was what she hoped they’d do in truth.
Barbara was looking over the contents of the room in something like dismay. “We could be weeks in here and still miss the best of the lot.” And to the housekeeper, “I don’t suppose you could find us an empty ledger book and pens to start a catalog?”
Margerit stopped Barbara with a hand on her arm and then pulled open her reticule. “We may be able to work more quickly. Mefro Montekler, could you find me a couple of wax candles? The lamps will do for light, but not for this.”
The housekeeper frowned at them suspiciously, as if she expected to return to find the room entirely emptied. And it didn’t help that Marken and Tavit had taken on that alert, wary stance of an armin in uncertain territory. They must seem quite the invading army! But at last Montekler shrugged and disappeared to return with a few stubs that had clearly been dug out of neglected sconces.
“I hope these will do.”
Margerit nodded and set them beside the materials she had laid out: several small packets of parchment, marked with words and symbols.
Barbara grinned at her. “Antuniet’s book-finding charm?”
“I thought it might be useful today,” Margerit answered. “That was why I was so slow getting ready.”
It was the little mystery that Antuniet had once used in Prague to find her book of alchemical secrets—an adaptation of an old nurse’s charm to play sweetheart games at floodtide. But now when the contents of the packet were burned, rather than pointing to your true love, the smoke would pick out the object you would find most useful.
When Margerit lit the largest of the candle stubs and cracked the seal of the first of the packets, Mefro Montekler stepped back and crossed herself. Margerit felt a twinge of guilt. The housekeeper was right. It was too easy to treat small mysteries like this as mere sorcery and not a gift to be granted. She echoed Montekler’s gesture with her hand and said, “In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, lend your grace to my work today. Hear the pleas of my intercessors to allow what I would accomplish.” Only then did she continue on with the words of the ritual as she tipped the fine contents of the packet into the candle’s flame.
The floodtide game was meant to be showy, with a cascade of bright sparks choosing the target. That wouldn’t do at all in a room full of books, and Antuniet had altered the charm so it would produce only smoke. The dark thread hung in the air over the candle for a long moment, then curved gently toward a corner of the room. Margerit followed it, scarcely daring to breathe for fear of disturbing the air. It took one more working to trace the path to the particular tome it had picked out. She pulled the book from the shelf and
brought it back to the lamps. A dark powder streaked the covers and left stains on her gloves.
“How long has it been since there was a fire in this room?” she asked.
Mefro Montekler shrugged. “Last winter, perhaps. We’ve had to save the coal for the inhabited rooms.”
Her tone was not one of indifference, Margerit thought, but more of resignation. How long had she been struggling to manage like this? Margerit opened the covers of the book carefully. At least the pages weren’t touched by rot. An early, minor work of Chizelek, but leafing through she could see annotations that might be of more value.
“Is it worth the trip?” Barbara asked, leaning over her shoulder.
“Perhaps. Let’s try again.” Margerit moved to a different part of the room and relit the candle stub.
There seemed promise enough in the collection. The finding charm identified three books of interest and sometimes seemed to hesitate as if confused by the bounty. What a shame it would be if any of it succumbed to the damp before it could be examined properly! Margerit turned to Mefro Montekler decisively.
“I need to have a fire in this room. Constantly for at least a week to dry things out and at least half of each day after that until other arrangements can be made.” In the face of the housekeeper’s protest, she said, “I will pay for the coal and for a girl to tend it. I’ll send someone to make arrangements before the end of the day.”
The housekeeper gaped at her, but before she could speak there came the tinkling of a distant bell.
“I thought there was no one else left,” Barbara said.
Montekler looked pained. “My grandmother,” she said, almost in a whisper. “She’s an invalid. Mesnera, may I—”
Barbara gestured permission and, after the woman had left, said, “Well, that might explain why she didn’t leave with the others. What a sad ruin! I never knew Chasteld well. He was a recluse even in the baron’s time, though he’d put in an appearance at court a few times in the year. If I’d known…”
Mother of Souls: A novel of Alpennia Page 17
