Mother of Souls: A novel of Alpennia

by Jones, Heather Rose

  Luzie needed do no more than mention that composition books might be of use and the printers were set to work producing sheets of staff paper.

  But this class was the one that left her most unsettled and yet most joyful. Late in the day, the small group of girls identified as having thaumaturgical talent clustered around the fortepiano with notepads in hand and she would play. It might have been awkward, except that Serafina was there as their teacher, though she disclaimed the title.

  “Begin with your nightingale song,” Serafina had suggested in the very first session.

  And so she had played that simple tune over and over again for an hour, learning to ignore the delighted exclamations and puzzled comments of the students as they learned to record on paper whatever it was they saw or felt.

  She played more than her own compositions. By trial and error, she and Serafina had identified some works of the great composers who had imbued their music with power. And at least one of the sessions had dissolved into an argument of whether all music that had the power to move a heart partook of mystic forces, or whether one could distinguish those that disturbed what Serafina called the fluctus as standing apart from those that only touched the emotions.

  It had taken most of November for her to sort out the thaumaturgy students. There was Mari Orlin, who had studied with her for years and shyly confessed that she had never understood that not everyone felt music as a singing in the blood, as a spiritual joy like she felt during prayer. And only now did she have words for the thrill she felt when playing Luzie’s exercises.

  There was Valeir Perneld who had joined the small group of students with private lessons, not to learn the keyboard, but for practice in distinguishing the notes of the instrument from those she heard only in her own mind. There were times, she said, when the two jangled in conflict, and other times when they sang in a harmony that left her breathless. Luzie had no idea what it all meant, but they had set out a plan for Valeir to learn composition in the spring so that she could record her “angel voices.”

  The girls from the Poor Scholars were not among her performance students, of course. They hadn’t enjoyed the advantages of the others, though one said she’d played the fiddle on street corners as a child. But three of them had been found to have visions of some degree—perhaps only a soft glow, perhaps more. Doruzi perceived the music in pictures, describing the little nightingale piece as a tree growing into arches and rafters like the stones of the church.

  Today Iulien Fulpi had been added to the class when Serafina had suggested trying a song, and Luzie had demurred at using the Tanfrit pieces. Back last spring, Maisetra Sovitre had given her several short poems and commissioned settings for them. Luzie had envisioned the author as a somewhat older woman, sharing verses among her friends and perhaps aspiring to a slim volume some day. Though the works could not be said to be mature, there was an energetic freshness about them, a startling imagery and a playful way with rhyme. If she’d known they’d been penned by a girl not yet out, she might have balked. It would be too easy for her composition time to be bought by amateur poets whose talents would do little to enhance her reputation.

  But the verses had called to her, and as the resulting songs had been sent back to the provinces, she hadn’t given it further thought. There had ben no connection in her mind between Maisetra Sovitre’s poetic cousin and the girl she’d been begged to work into her schedule. Not until Iulien Fulpi had shyly opened her music case one day during a lesson and asked if they might work on a piece with the title “Souvenir” penned across the top.

  “Where did you get this?” Luzie had asked.

  “Cousin Margerit sent it to me. Maisetra Sovitre, that is. I was so thrilled!” The enthusiasm in her voice had been embarrassing. “She told us all about your mystical music. And of course I couldn’t tell whether you’d done that with my songs, because I haven’t any sensitivity at all, Margerit says. But just the thought that the great Luzie Valorin…”

  Luzie remembered her sharp retort, “You needn’t try to flatter me.”

  “I wasn’t—” Iulien had looked down with a smile.

  The girl was both utterly charming and completely impossible. Luzie did not envy Maisetra Sovitre having the charge of her in a place as tempting as Rotenek. If Iulien were properly out in society, instead of substituting a study year for her dancing season, she would be causing havoc and devastation. Assuming that…It occurred to Luzie that she didn’t know what Iulien’s prospects were.

  Like all of Rotenek, she knew of Maisetra Sovitre’s fabled inheritance, but she knew nothing of her family. What were their circumstances? And would Iulien cause more disruption as an heiress than if that charming personality were paired with only respectable expectations?

  Those speculations returned as she listened to Iulien’s nimble fingers accompany her only passable voice, while the thaumaturgy students sketched and took notes and laid splashes of color across their pages. If Margerit Sovitre were older, then Rotenek society might expect her to name her cousin as her heir. But surely Margerit still expected to marry and have children of her own. She wasn’t yet at the point of being considered on the shelf, and her fortune made up for any deficiencies in traditional accomplishments. She might—

  It was the sight of Serafina, moving among the students as they worked, that diverted that path of thought. Perhaps Margerit Sovitre had no plans to marry at all. She’d heard the gossip of course, but there were always speculations and rumors about eccentrics. It was one of the entertainments they offered, as long as no actual rules were broken. But for as great an heiress as Margerit Sovitre to decline to marry…did that constitute the breaking of a rule? Before this summer it might not have occurred to her that a woman could have more reasons to remain unmarried than a lack of opportunity. Or that two close friends might be enough to each other to set at naught all the attractions of a conventional life. If she had thought of it at all, she had accepted the story that the odd way in which Maisetra Sovitre’s and Baroness Saveze’s lives had been braided together was reason enough for their closeness. Now she wondered. And wondered if Serafina would know.

  She set the thought aside. It was mere curiosity and none of her affair. Even the question of Iulien Fulpi’s prospects was nothing to do with her. If she wasn’t careful, she’d become as nosy as the old women in the marketplace.

  Iulien finished the song and sat quietly while the other students hurriedly moved to finish their notes and sketches. Serafina was strict about the need for swift work. This isn’t art, she’d said. You can’t ask a guild to pause in the middle of a ceremony so you can catch up.

  While they waited, Luzie commented quietly, “You’ve changed the lyrics.”

  “Only a few words here and there. It felt…I don’t know, ill-fitting? Like when I used to try on my mother’s gloves and they were both too large and too small.” Iulien held up her hands, staring at the unfashionably broad, blunt fingers. Not the hands of a great performer, but sufficient for the parlor.

  “You have a way with words,” Luzie said, thinking both of the song and what she’d said about gloves.

  Iulien ducked her head in what seemed to be a habit, but this time it looked like genuine embarrassment and not coy pretense.

  Serafina came over as the students returned their pens and brushes to the cabinets. “That worked very well. It was a different flavor than your usual work, and it’s interesting to see how a different performer changes the effect. A good exercise.”

  But there was an edge in her voice, as if the difference had surprised and unsettled her. Not for the first time, Luzie wished she had the talent to see her own work the way Serafina did. At times they spoke entirely different languages.

  * * *

  With the break between school terms at the turning of the year, Luzie dedicated her free days to composition. Christmas passed, with its familiar rituals, then the New Year, celebrated more in the upper town with balls and concerts revolving around the glittering cour
t. As she worked to turn the keyboard sketches for Tanfrit into a score that could be shown to potential patrons, Luzie became ever more grateful for the copywork she’d done for Fizeir. Splitting the parts for an orchestra—even a small chamber group—that would stretch her even more. She’d learned the basic principles under her father, but Fizeir’s work had given her practice.

  There had been another benefit to working with Fizeir: glimpses of his compositions before their debuts. He was notoriously close-mouthed about new work. Some of her own reticence in discussing her project outside a small circle had come from his example. I don’t care to puff it about and have interest satisfied before the curtain rises, he’d said. Keeping such matters quiet was difficult among the close-knit community of performers and theater staff. But few challenged Fizeir’s desires after the affair of his Arturo en Avalon, when the leading soprano had been dismissed the night before opening for having performed selections for friends in a café. People had learned to keep his secrets if they wanted to ride on his success. Luzie had made certain that he never had reason to doubt her own discretion.

  But Luzie hadn’t had time or need to do any copying for the composer since last winter, and Issibet had delegated the wardrobe for his new work Il Filosofo Dannato—The Damned Philosopher—to her assistant. So it was that the first inkling of disaster came on the morning after Fizeir’s new opera debuted, when she was startled by an unexpected visit from the Vicomtesse de Cherdillac.

  At hearing the reverence in Alteburk’s welcome, Luzie hurried out from the parlor where she’d been preparing for the next lesson, saying, “Mesnera de Cherdillac, I’m afraid Serafina has left for Urmai already. I’m so sorry, but she doesn’t seem to have left a message for you.”

  “I’m not here for Serafina,” the vicomtesse said.

  Something in the overkind tone of her voice suggested sorrow and sympathy. Luzie’s heart clenched.

  “Is something wrong? Serafina—”

  “No, no, nothing like that! But perhaps we should sit. Do you have the time?”

  Luzie glanced at the clock at the end of the hall and nodded. Dread was replaced by puzzlement as the vicomtesse allowed the housekeeper to take her cloak.

  “No, no tea,” de Cherdillac said, interrupting the beginnings of a request. “This isn’t a social visit.”

  The vicomtesse took her hand and drew her down to sit beside her on the sofa and continued holding it like one breaking tragic news.

  “Serafina has been talking about a composition you’ve been working on. About Tanfrit the philosopher.”

  “Yes?” Luzie acknowledged. Had Serafina gone against her wishes and asked de Cherdillac for her support?

  “I thought so. And Margerit said something about her library being plundered for the research!” De Cherdillac smiled to indicate it was a little joke, but the expression didn’t reach her eyes. “Is it very far along? Have you talked to many people about it?”

  “Only a few friends,” Luzie said slowly. “It’s complete, but I’m still polishing it. It isn’t quite ready to show to anyone else yet.”

  More gently, “Then there’s no reason why the composer Fizeir would know of your plans.”

  “I…yes, I mentioned it to him in the spring. I used to do some work for him. I wanted his opinion on the initial sketches. He wasn’t very encouraging, I’m afraid.”

  “Well he seems to have changed his mind,” de Cherdillac said. “Last night he debuted his new work, Il Filosofo Dannato.”

  She nodded vaguely. “A new version of Faust, I thought.”

  “The story of Gaudericus and Tanfrit.”

  Luzie could only stare, open-mouthed. “But…he…there must be some mistake.”

  “No mistake,” the vicomtesse said. “And I find it an odd coincidence. It would be a different matter if you had both been inspired by the same source. Were you?”

  Luzie shook her head. “I don’t believe it,” she said helplessly.

  But in her mind she could see how it had happened. What had he said? Perhaps in other hands… Of course he’d never thought she would finish a work of this size. He wouldn’t have thought of it as trespassing. If he’d known, he surely wouldn’t…

  She stood and went over to where the overstuffed music case sat on the desk beside the fortepiano and brought it back to place it in de Cherdillac’s lap.

  “This is my work. Tell me. He must have done something entirely different.”

  De Cherdillac left the case closed, saying, “I’m not enough of a musician to compare the two. But you should see for yourself. Come with me tonight. I’ll manage an invitation from someone. Bring Serafina if you like. I’ll come to pick you up.”

  And then there was a knock at the door, and her student arrived, and there was no time to do more than agree.

  * * *

  Afterward, Luzie couldn’t remember the names of their hosts, or who else had been present in the box. Only the stifling closeness of the velvet draperies and the growing unease as Fizeir’s work rolled out through the familiar scenes and acts. It wasn’t a copy. Far from it. Her libretto had still been incomplete when she showed it to him. And Fizeir’s was in Italian, like all his operas. Only occasionally could she glimpse traces of her musical themes—the ones he’d seen that day in July. But the shape—the story that she and Serafina had devised between them—the pace and tempo of the work…He hadn’t stolen it exactly, but he’d built an edifice in the middle of the ground she’d prepared for planting.

  She sat rigid and silent in her gilded chair in the corner of the box while the others chattered through the interval. She’d meant to see it out to the end. But when the climax began…Fizeir had rewritten Tanfrit’s aria to a mournful dirge. Let the waters cover me as a grave. She could take no more. She stood and hurried out with no farewell to her hostesses. Indeed, she had to bite her lip to keep her emotions silent.

  She heard quick footsteps behind her in the nearly empty corridor then felt the warmth as Serafina draped her cloak around her shoulders.

  The walk home was like a dream in a fever. She set out blindly, the cobblestones cold through her thin slippers, barely hearing Serafina protest that they could hire a fiacre. That it was too late at night to walk alone.

  But walk she did—across the empty Plaiz and into the maze of narrow streets that lay between the palace grounds and the river. The quickest route home, though not one she would normally take. Voices came out of the dark. Questions, rough offers. She heard Serafina answer one back in gutter-Italian.

  The cold couldn’t touch her. The walk seemed hours and no time at all. The street turned familiar, the walkway, the steps to the door, the hall, the parlor. As she felt Serafina take the cloak from her shoulders, her eyes lighted on the music case where it sat on her desk. With a quick movement, she opened it and seized a handful of papers, crumpling them in her fist and throwing them at the hearth.

  Serafina pushed past her with a cry and snatched them back, patting out the burning edges with her gloved hands.

  A rising wail forced itself out of Luzie’s throat and she threw the rest of the papers into the air, scattering about the room like dead leaves. She felt Serafina’s arms around her as she sank to the carpet, wailing and sobbing.

  Then the room was filled with people: Gerta, Alteburk, Elinur, Chisillic and the others. Serafina’s voice explaining what had happened. Hands, touching, patting, holding her. The soft rustle as someone began gathering up the sheets of music. The gradual fading of her own sobs. The dusty smell of burnt paper, masked by the scorch of leather from Serafina’s ruined gloves. The comforting kitcheny aroma that clung to Silli’s clothing, as the cook’s strong arms lifted her to the sofa by the front window. The sweet spicy scent of Serafina, who held her tightly and rocked her softly and whispered that everything would be all right.

  “He stole it from me!” she managed at last. “It was mine and he took it!”

  “It wasn’t really very like,” Serafina protested. “Not in the mu
sic.”

  “But don’t you see?” Luzie protested. “Mine will never be performed now. Everyone will think I was just copying him. ‘A poor imitation,’ they’ll say. No one will even touch it.”

  “Yours is better,” Serafina said fiercely.

  Luzie knew it was loyalty, not truth. What did Serafina know of opera?

  “Yours is better,” Serafina repeated. “And when it’s performed, everyone will know whose is the poor imitation.”

  It was useless, Luzie knew, but she let Serafina tell her comforting lies. And then Charluz pressed a glass of brandy into her hand and she gulped it down, punishing herself with the fierce burn down her throat. They helped her up to her room and off with the crumpled gown. And Serafina’s voice was saying, “I’ll stay with her, in case she wakes in the night.”

  Then, much later, oblivion.

  * * *

  Comfort and familiarity. Serafina’s warmth beside her in the bed. Serafina’s arm resting easily over her hip, warm under the covers.

  But summer was past, they’d had to…

  Why was Serafina here? Memory. The opera. That blind flight through the dark streets. Her music…the fire. No, Serafina had stopped her.

  The body beside her stirred restlessly and turned.

  “It is better,” Luzie said aloud.

  “What?” came a sleepy voice.

  “My opera. It is better than his, and I won’t let him take that from me.”

  Serafina rolled over so they faced each other, warm breaths mingling in the cold morning air. “Of course it’s better. His doesn’t have any magic.”

  Luzie made a rude snort. “Magic doesn’t matter. Most people can’t see the magic. But my music is better. Fizeir’s grown lazy,” she complained bitterly. “No one dares to say anything because he’s the great Alpennian composer. My music is better and he knows it. That’s why he bought my tunes. It’s why he tried to discourage me from taking commissions. Or maybe he truly believes women shouldn’t concertize. But in his heart, he knows.”