Serafina listened to Akezze’s wry and self-mocking stories of how she came and went at the palace now, and might have a hand in shaping the thoughts of the next prince. But there was another thread in Akezze’s stories. The third time that young Mesner Atilliet’s tutor was mentioned as Cherstuf rather than as Maistir Chautovil, Serafina interrupted, exclaiming, “Do you have a sweetheart?”
There was no chance of missing the blush that spread across Akezze’s pale, freckled skin.
Serafina laughed. “I thought there must be some attraction at the palace other than teaching young men to work proofs! And does he feel the same?”
Akezze sighed. “We haven’t really discussed it. He’s in no position to support a wife, and I don’t care to give up my hopes of starting a girls’ school back in Falkoiz. I’ve saved up quite a bit of money thanks to Margerit’s connections.” Her mouth twisted in a smile. “I’ve been working with the orphans’ school here in Rotenek to get experience. It isn’t just a matter of teaching classes, you know!”
“I thought Margerit had plans for you to teach at her college,” Serafina said.
“For the first few years, perhaps.” She shrugged. “I’ll see. It depends on what direction it goes. I know Margerit expects it to be an excited gaggle of book-mad girls like she was, but it could end up just another finishing school. I have no interest in spending the rest of my life teaching elocution and rhetoric to debutantes. She’s put an Orisul in charge of the place and they have a reputation for safe and ornamental learning, at least for the secular students.”
Safe and ornamental. That was a description that would never fit Akezze. It didn’t fit Margerit either, but Margerit was wise enough to know her own style of careless study would not do for a formal institution. And what was her own place in all this? She was only a student herself. There was nothing she could contribute to Margerit’s plans. There was still everything to learn. And to what end? It seemed increasingly unlikely that she would ever put it to use. Even Kreiser’s scrying seemed to have no larger purpose.
With mysteries on her mind, on the third day Serafina went to sit quietly in the church of Saint Nikule to watch for scraps of everyday miracles as the parishioners came and went.
It was one of the first exercises Margerit had suggested that she tackle. One of the first Margerit had done herself. To sit quietly in a place of worship and watch the signs and effects of people as they performed ordinary prayers, desperate petitions, private desires. It was meant in part to remind one of humility: that God and the saints do not answer prayers for power, or for virtue, or for need, but for reasons of their own, unknowable by mortals.
The purpose wasn’t to judge, but to see—truly see—the workings of divine grace. But was it divine grace? Margerit was so sure in her faith. Serafina had learned to be silent with her doubts.
If the traces of luminous color, the wisps of half-seen power truly were a sign of God’s blessing, then the priest who tended to the altar at Saint Nikule’s was a holy man. For a while, Serafina watched him at work with the light following his every action like an afterimage, lingering in the candles as he lit them, briefly brightening the pages of a prayer book, hovering in the air in the shape of the cross as he rose from his knees and returned to the sacristy.
Did he know? Did he have visio as well? What might it do to the spirit of a priest to see that echo of grace in his own work. Did those who ordained and appointed him know? Growing up in Rome it was too easy to think the choices of the Church were made for worldly reasons. And however such decisions were made, they were unknowable to those outside the hierarchy.
If fluctus reflected divine grace, then why should it respond so brightly to old Mefro Efriza, sitting on a bench before the Lady Altar, speaking bright words into the scraps of scribbled prayers and charms that she had brought, then folding and sealing them within to be sold in the marketplace for a teneir or two.
From the way that she worked, Serafina could guess that she had both talents: to do and to see. What was it Efriza sold? Scraps of luck, both good and ill. The ability to draw the eyes long enough to make a sale or attach a heart. Or the ability to turn the eyes away from things best not observed. A bit of strength to see one through hard times, or a curse to drain the strength of rivals. Efriza had few scruples—the poor couldn’t afford them. And why should someone with such talents remain poor all her life? An accident of birth could have gained her training and status as a professional thaumaturgist like Maistir Escamund, who waited on the Dowager Princess. Where was the grace of God in all that?
But the priest and Efriza were only the extremes. In between were those whose abilities and motives were less certain. Those who might have been deserving of grace, however one might judge deserving.
What do I deserve? Serafina wondered. Does it matter whether I deserve it? Is my failure a lesson in humility or a judgment on my own sins? The sin of pride? The sin of lust for things I shouldn’t desire? She had never truly repented of that.
A familiar figure moved through the shadows of the church, only her white linen cap showing brightly in the candlelight. Serafina watched as Celeste genuflected before the main altar before moving to the small shrine of Saint Mauriz to one side. The city’s patron saint was honored to at least some small degree in every church that had more than a single altar. Serafina quietly moved to a different vantage point, the better to see what happened. She felt a stirring of guilt she hadn’t felt when observing strangers.
At first, Celeste was lit only by the flickering glow of the waxen candles in the shrine, as she raised her face to the saint’s image and moved her lips in prayer. But then she sat back and, like a number of other petitioners, drew out the paraphernalia for small mysteries. She was more self-conscious than the priest had been, less perfunctory than Efriza.
Like the old woman, she seemed to have brought the apparatus for future mysteries, drawing in the saint’s power and fixing it for future use. It was a different tradition than the one Margerit followed, even apart from Margerit’s focus on the large public mysteries. Serafina thought back to Celeste’s erteskir, the small private shrine she had seen at Dominique’s house, with its chest filled with bits and snippets of apparatus. The candle from the cathedral, jars of herbs and powders, scraps of paper written with names and symbols, strips of red flannel.
Serafina imagined generations of charm-women passing down recipes by faith, and now and again those recipes falling into the hands of one whose petitions would be heard, as Celeste’s were.
And she was heard. As she held each object and spoke over it, a glow coalesced around her hands and, through them, entered into the objects. Sometimes it faltered and then she would hesitate, try again and perhaps discard the item. She was sensitive enough to guide her own work in the details. To pick and choose from what she’d been taught. And how did she understand the workings of mysteries? What did she know of what she was doing?
When Celeste finally gathered up her things and dropped a single coin in the offering box by the shrine, Serafina followed her out into the porch of the church.
The girl turned at her approach with a sharp intake of breath, and then relaxed into a wary greeting.
“Good day, Maisetra.”
“I shouldn’t have surprised you,” Serafina said. “May I apologize by sharing a bite to eat, or are there chores calling you home?”
Celeste hesitated, perhaps weighing the excuse to decline. “There’s no need for apology, Maisetra,” she said stiffly.
“If you wish,” Serafina said with a nod. “But I would enjoy a word with you, the same.” Would it frighten the girl off to show too much interest? “I hoped you might tell me something about your training.”
“If you wish,” Celeste echoed, and fell in beside her, walking across the open space of the Nikuleplaiz.
It wasn’t a market day, but there was a woman in the corner of the square selling fritters and they found a place to sit along the embankment that looked out over the riv
er. Serafina thought of the last time the two of them had met there. The charred ruins of burnt warehouses were still visible on the other bank. Before she could think better, she asked, “Has your father given you any more trouble?” No, how could she have said such a thing? That wasn’t something one asked!
Celeste only shrugged. “He’s off downriver again. I won’t have to worry for another couple of months. And he doesn’t really bother me—not unless he’s drunk, or when he wants something from Maman.”
A silence, and then Serafina tried again. “How did you learn to work mysteries?”
“I don’t do mysteries,” Celeste said hurriedly. She sounded almost frightened. “Just charms and such! Nana Charl taught me.”
“Your grandmother?”
Again the diffident shake of the head. “Don’t have any grandmothers. Nana was—” Now she seemed to turn shy. “When I was a girl, Maman got sick. Baby sick, you know? Nana took care of it. I decided I wanted to be able to do that, to keep people alive when they were sick. Maman wasn’t too sharp for it. You can get in a lot of trouble doing charms, especially if you’re—” A quick apologetic glance. “—if you’re foreign, you know? But Nana said I had the knack and she’d teach me. She wouldn’t take just anyone to teach.” It might have been pride or boasting, but she said it as simple fact.
“She taught me all her charms—the ones she could remember. Maman taught me a few things too. Stuff she learned…back there.” Celeste gestured to indicate some far-off time and place. “Some I got from watching other folks. And the rest I figured out for myself. There’s always something to learn.” She looked sideways with a little challenge. “Who did you learn from?”
“From books, mostly,” Serafina answered. “And some from Maisetra Sovitre and her friends. But I can’t work mysteries, nor even charms.”
Celeste leaned toward her to whisper, “Most of them can’t either,” she said, nodding in the direction of the arches where the charmwives congregated, though there was no one there to overhear at the moment. “But don’t tell anyone I said that. If you start pointing fingers and telling tales, things might happen to you.”
The laws of the street, Serafina thought. Part of those dangers that Mefro Dominique worried over, no doubt.
“There was one woman,” Serafina began. “The one with the cards. She told my friend’s future. She knows what she’s doing.”
Another sly, sidelong glance from Celeste. “I thought you said you couldn’t do charms.”
“I can’t do them but I can see them,” Serafina said.
“Ah,” Celeste answered.
Somehow there was a world of acceptance in that one word.
“Why did you have to learn from books?” Celeste asked. “Didn’t your own Maman teach you?”
“She didn’t know any. Not any in a language I knew.” But Serafina thought back to all the little songs and exclamations that had made up her mother’s daily rituals. The ones that had first stirred her visions. What you said over the bread to help it ferment. What you sang to keep spiders out of the house. She had explained what they were for in her careful, halting Romanesco, but Serafina had never learned the charms.
“Maybe that’s why the saints don’t listen to me,” Serafina suggested. “Because I should be talking to them in Tigrinya.” It was a thought that had come to her now and then, when her father told stories of the marver ceremonies back in his home.
But Celeste made a rude noise. “I can’t understand the priest’s Latin, but the charms still work for me. Some can and some can’t, that’s all. No use fretting.”
No use fretting. Serafina wondered if that were a phrase Celeste heard often from her mother. On impulse she asked, “Have you ever thought of studying from books? Maiestra Sovitre is beginning a school. Some of the classes will be about mysteries. She—” Even as said it, Serafina was certain the question would come out badly. “She has space for students who can’t pay the fees if they have talent. Like you do.”
For the briefest of moments Celeste’s face brightened before closing down again. “And what would Maman do if I were off at classes all day? Who would help her take the measurements and do the sewing and run errands to the market? I have to go,” She stood and brushed the crumbs from her skirt. “I need to finish my work before supper.”
Serafina rose too. She had no response to offer. “Thank you for your company. Do you…have you used up the Mauriz candle I gave you?”
Celeste’s eyes narrowed. What did she think the offer meant? “There’s still some left,” she said. “I don’t need anything.”
And then with a brief curtsey she was off.
The talk with Celeste had lightened Serafina’s mood more than she had expected. No use fretting. Could life be that simple? To do what you can and let go of what you can’t? But how could one know what was possible and what should be set aside?
One decision had fallen into place without conscious thought. In the parlor after supper, when the day turned to music as it usually did now, Serafina ventured, “Wherever I end up staying for the summer, I’d like to come back to keep working on the opera with you, if I may.”
Luzie looked startled. “Of course! I thought…I mean, I assumed, I hoped…” Her answer fell into confusion.
“I can stay at Urmai, at the Academy. It’s easy enough to come and go by the river.”
“Would you prefer that?” Luzie began slowly. “I was thinking—”
Whatever the thoughts were, she struggled to voice them. Serafina could see Luzie’s hands shaking a little over the keyboard.
“I have room,” she said quietly. “My room, that is. I was thinking…”
Serafina’s heart thudded heavily. What offer was she making? How mortifying it would be to guess wrong!
Luzie struggled to continue. “I don’t know if…” She took a deep breath and began again. “What I want to say is, I wouldn’t mind trying.” She moved her hand the short distance to cover Serafina’s where it lay in her lap and looked up to meet her eyes.
This is different, Serafina thought. She’s no Olimpia, certainly no Marianniz. This could go so badly wrong.
And yet it could be so right. She remembered the evening with the near-disastrous dinner and then the music that had swept her back to that sweet, safe, comfortable place inside. Perhaps this place could be home.
“Shall I move my things tonight?” she answered. “There isn’t much to gather up.”
Chapter Sixteen
Barbara
June, 1824
Summer was already out of balance and it had barely begun. When floodtide came late and by fiat, half the families simply left for their summer estates. There was no reprise of the social season after the holiday, nor any sense of a deliberate close.
The council debates had accomplished nothing of value, not by Holy Week, or even by the floodtide exodus. Princess Annek released them with a summons in hand to return at midsummer. In the usual way of things, it would have been a hardship to come all the way back from Saveze simply to sit in the Assembly Hall and listen to speeches in the heat of a Rotenek summer. But with Margerit staying in town, it would be a pleasure to return.
Barbara first turned her journey south to Turinz, as she had the year before. Confidence had slowly replaced uncertainty, but affairs in Turinz were not yet so predictable as to require only a light hand. She glanced back at the traveling coach. Maistir Tuting had done well enough in keeping the books so far but he had no experience with managing a working estate. Shipping and warehouses were more in his line. Young Akermen in Turinz was punctilious in his reports, but they felt less than candid. Odd gaps and omissions led to probing questions; details were forthcoming only when pursued. The two men had yet to pull evenly in harness.
A sharp whistle from Brandel where he rode ahead signaled the approach of another vehicle. The broad road allowed for two vehicles to pass—no need even to slow to a walk. She heard the quick hoofbeats of Tavit closing up from behind. He’d done hi
s duty this morning and advised her to travel in the coach. The dignity of Saveze and all that, and it was safer than the open road. She had, as usual, listened to the suggestion and declined. She felt too fidgety to be closed in a box all day. Tavit had become almost tiresome in his insistence on the protocols. His insistence on reminding her, at least. Hence, his choice to bring up the rear where he could keep an eye on the entire party and bear the brunt of anyone overtaking them from behind. It was a concern meant for wilder roads than this. Turinz had no reputation for highwaymen.
A battered wagon packed tightly with barrels passed at the leisurely pace dictated by oxen.
So, Barbara thought. Nothing’s traveling by water yet. Or perhaps Mazuk had forgotten the agreements made last year. Or was he waiting to see if the council regulated canal traffic after all? He’d never been that cautious before. When they rounded the bend near Sain-Mihail it was no surprise to see the canal standing idle.
Barbara cantered over to the edge with Tavit following closely behind. The ditch had been completed, at least that much was forward. The narrow, stone-faced channel skirted gracefully around the scatter of tumbled boulders that had forced its path across the boundary into Turinz. Now the two sections that had stood separate last year were joined. The water was low and stagnant—only the several feet that rainwater had filled.
Whatever the delays, they must be of Mazuk’s own making. He blamed her; that much was clear from the way he needled her every time they met. It wasn’t her fault he’d had to look so long and hard for investors. Nor her fault that he’d settled for one whose irascible temper had led to his doom. It was by her word that certain other of his projects in Turinz had turned sour, but those were ventures he’d had no right to begin. She turned her horse’s head back toward the road.
Barbara had managed one brief visit to Turinz during the winter, feeling helpless to address the plague of crop disasters. The tenants in her title-lands were still wary, but glad of assistance. Even without the new problems, it would have been some time yet before Turinz had its feet under it again. And with only the bare skeleton of the title-lands, the position of Count Turinz would never again be prosperous. It was well she had no need for it to be so.
Mother of Souls: A novel of Alpennia Page 26
