Mother of Souls: A novel of Alpennia

by Jones, Heather Rose

  Margerit stifled a protest but not before her uncle had seen the impulse. Be still, she told herself. Give nothing away.

  LeFevre took up the gauntlet. “Maisetra Fulpi cannot marry without her father’s consent until she is of age. That is already specified in the contract, even though she will be on Maisetra Sovitre’s purse. After she is of age, he may retract his portion of her dowry if she chooses against his consent. That is the law and is separate from our contract. But it is not reasonable for Maistir Fulpi to control the portion of her dowry that Maisetra Sovitre has contracted for.”

  The lawyer once again exchanged glances with his employer. “We grant that. However we are concerned that Maisetra Iulien’s dowry may come to the interest of fortune hunters. Maistir Fulpi is not entirely satisfied with the provisions for her…ah…protection.”

  It was a valid concern. A large dowry was a two-edged sword. Just as it tempted Iuli’s father to agreement, it might tempt suitors to go to unfortunate means to secure her hand. In the previous season, there had only been her reputation to protect.

  They wrangled politely for the next half hour over whether it was necessary or reasonable to specify a list of approved vizeinos who might provide chaperonage at formal events, and whether it was advisable to hire an armin for her protection.

  “And I don’t mean that boy,” Uncle Fulpi said, interrupting the discussion.

  LeFevre once more calmed the waters. Maistir Fulpi should be assured that this was a household that took seriously the hazards for a young woman with a tempting dowry. He need not be concerned regarding the training and qualifications of anyone entrusted with responsibility for his daughter. Somehow the question of Brandel’s suitability was never directly addressed.

  In the end, the papers were signed as originally drawn up. Margerit was to be Iulien’s guardian in all matters except final consent to her marriage. Iulien was to become a comfortable heiress, though not in any way close to what Margerit’s own prospects had been. It was a second benefit, Margerit thought, that she was slowly chipping away at those prospects, trading the mansion at Chalanz for the Tanfrit Academy, signing away the Zortun estate. There was still a considerable income from investments, but with only Tiporsel House remaining to her own name, perhaps there would be fewer misguided suitors of her own to discourage.

  Iuli was brought in and admonished to be an obedient girl and behave herself and that in future she was to spend at least a portion of her summers in Chalanz, lest people think her own family were no longer good enough for her. But then there were embraces and at least a few tears. Uncle Fulpi wasn’t a monster, Margerit thought. He never had been. But it was a new world that she and Iuli lived in. He was a man accustomed to being master in his own house, not a guest in hers.

  The visitors from Chalanz left to see to other arrangements that could only be made in the city, but LeFevre lingered. “Is the baroness receiving?” he asked. “Or would my presence be an imposition?”

  “As if you could ever be considered an imposition!” Margerit protested. “In truth, she’s going a bit mad to be out and about. Every person who comes to see her helps keep her still a little longer.”

  “How is she recovering?”

  Margerit shook her head. “Too slowly. At least it seems that way. I know it’s barely been a month. The fevers have mostly gone. Antuniet and Anna have spent weeks trying to perfect amulets against bleeding and inflammation and to calm fevers. I think there’s an entire jeweler’s inventory wrapped up in Barbara’s bandages: emeralds, jaspers, carnelian. Healing the muscle is harder. The surgeon is satisfied and I’ve been doing what I can, but it may be the only miracle I’ll be granted is that she’s still alive. I’ve had so little luck with healing mysteries.” She smiled bleakly. “I want to believe that patience will do the rest.”

  “But it was her right arm.”

  Margerit knew what he meant. Her sword arm. “Go up and see her. And try to convince her that the world will wait on her recovery. And convince her that there’s no use in hiring a company of shadows to hunt down Mazuk and drag him into the royal court to lay charges. September will be soon enough. After all, where else could he go?”

  * * *

  Leave the attack to the guildmasters, the archbishop had said, but for all that she tried, Margerit couldn’t be complacent. The castellum needed little additional work on the structure of the mystery itself. She had been waiting impatiently for permission to add the accumulated refinements. It only required more intensive rehersal and the substitution of key roles. That left time for thoughts to turn constantly to the remaining problem. They were assembled once more at Tiporsel House rather than the mystery chamber at Urmai. Barbara had insisted. Or rather, Barbara had threatened to go down to Urmai herself if they tried to leave her out of the discussions, and Margerit believed her. Traipsing up and down stairs was as much as Barbara was to be allowed yet.

  “One more time, from the beginning,” Margerit suggested, and as she’d done at least once each day since they’d begun to tackle the question, Serafina closed her eyes and began to recount the visions she’d had on the road from Almunt to Sain-Perinerd. Margerit took up her pen and began adding notes to those already crowding the page before her.

  The Tanfrit piece…she still didn’t know how to understand that part. But there must be something in the descriptions of how the foreign mystery fought with the attenuated edges of the Mauriz tutela, that would give them a clue.

  Antuniet interrupted the recitation when Serafina came to the point of plunging through the vortex. “We’ve been over this again and again. It hasn’t brought us any closer to a way to break the weather mystery. The Mauriz and the Castellum, they’re both meant at heart to be protections. I don’t see how they could be turned to attack unless you propose to include the turris against invasions again?”

  A unanimous rejection ran around the room. The invasion tower had been the serpent in the garden, the dagger aimed at Princess Annek and her sons, inserted into the original mystery by Estefen Chazillen’s agents. Antuniet knew better than most how unwelcome its return would be, even if completely rewritten.

  “By rights,” Akezze said thoughtfully, “an attack should belong to Mauriz. He was a soldier and bears a soldier’s symbols. If the archbishop is already willing to make changes to the tutela, why not suggest adding it there?”

  Barbara shook her head. “The Mauriz is meant to stand for the ages, not to be adapted each season like an old dress with a new hat. We need a mystery intended to strike this one target.”

  “We already have one,” Serafina said quietly. “The opera.”

  There was enough conviction in her voice that the other conversations all paused.

  “Use the opera,” she repeated. “It makes sense. We already know it can affect the weather mystery. It’s already an attack of sorts. And there are already plans to stage it in the fall. It’s one thing we could have full control over.”

  “Could we?” Akezze asked. “What would your Maisetra Valorin think of that?”

  Barbara followed with, “Would it have enough power? You said yourself that there were only traces of the…I don’t know what we should call it. The song-mystery? It might have raised the river, but only by inches. If an attack carried no more power than that, it wouldn’t be enough.”

  “But it isn’t a mystery!” Margerit protested. “There’s nothing of ritual in it. It doesn’t invoke the saints—”

  Serafina turned on her impatiently. “It doesn’t matter that the opera doesn’t invoke any saints. If it works, it doesn’t matter. Lots of market charms don’t call on saints. Or they call on people who aren’t saints, like Mama Rota.”

  “Every market charm I’ve ever examined intends to call on divine grace, even if the names are wrong.” Even to her own ears Margerit’s protest sounded weak.

  “Then perhaps your precious Tanfrit should be canonized!” Serafina said in exasperation.

  How many saints had been unknown before un
deniable miracles brought them to official attention? If Tanfrit’s opera worked… Now that could be rather awkward for the academy if it became a site of pilgrimage!

  Antuniet picked up the threads. “The power is just a matter of amplification, like the size of a guild. Margerit, you remember the first time we saw the Rotein awash with fluctus a year back. That was only the fortepiano and it was little more than a pretty show of lights. A half-dozen musicians and a crowd in the Plaiz raised something strong enough to pull a flood, however small. Now imagine if it played to a full audience in the opera house with an orchestra and a dozen singers in the chorus behind the soprano. It would be the difference between what I can call in the chapel with a single candle and one of the Great Mysteries in the cathedral. The opera’s power is already connected to the weather mystery through the river’s flow. It’s only a matter of using that to channel the fluctus.”

  “If it works the same way as a true mystery,” Margerit protested.

  “Kreiser thinks it does,” Barbara offered.

  Antuniet turned on her with a snarl. “I don’t give a damn what Kreiser thinks!”

  The two glared at each other. They were all on edge. The suggestion was a good excuse for a break. Margerit rose from the table and said, “There’s certainly no harm in preparing a second weapon in case the work of the guildmasters fails. Serafina, ask Maisetra Valorin to join us tomorrow, if she can.”

  When the others had left, Barbara refused to be helped back to her room. “I don’t care what Delacroix says, it does me no good to convalesce in bed this long. If I can’t manage the stairs without assistance it’s because you won’t let me walk farther than one room to another.”

  Margerit would have protested the word “let,” but it was true that between the surgeon Delacroix, Tavit and herself, they’d hemmed Barbara in with concern and love. It was hard not to, after those first weeks. She went to caress Barbara’s cheek and slipped an arm around her, careful to avoid jostling the sling that kept the wounded arm in place.

  “I wouldn’t fuss as much if you knew your own limits,” Margerit said.

  “How can I know my limits if I don’t test them? I’m going to walk in the garden.”

  Margerit bit back her first response. “That’s a good idea. But take someone—Tavit, a footman, I don’t care. Someone who can help if you need it.”

  * * *

  The opera frustrated all Margerit’s skills. She could see how the story built the basic structures—the equivalent of a markein and invitatio and concrescatio. But there seemed no logic to the workings, more a shaping of the emotions through word and voice. Serafina seemed to have an instinct for it that she lacked, and so she left the reworking of the performace in Serafina’s hands. Hers and Luzie Valorin’s of course. And—somewhat to her surprise—Iuli’s.

  “Are there any other of your compositions I might want to know about?” Margerit asked over dinner after Iuli had explained that she’d spent the day working on the new aria.

  Iuli flushed. “Should I have asked permission? But I told you when Maisetra Valorin asked for my help with the libretto back in February. And you didn’t say anything about it then.”

  No, but in February she hadn’t been thinking of Tanfrit as a mystery. That wasn’t Iuli’s fault.

  “I’m sorry, I remember now. But what is it exactly that you’re doing? Every time we’ve tested you, you’ve shown no talent for mysteries at all.”

  “It’s just poetry,” Iuli said. “Nothing magical.”

  Margerit had only begun to interrupt when Iuli anticipated her.

  “I’m sorry, Cousin Margerit. I know you don’t want me to call it magic. But you don’t want me to call the opera a mystery either, so I’m never sure what to say. But it’s just…just words. Maisetra Valorin says I have a way with words. And it’s so much easier when she’s already written out the ideas and I have the music. And then we put it all together and Serafina…I mean Maisetra Talarico, tells us where to fix it. And Maisetra Valorin’s father is teaching her to conduct the rehearsals.”

  Bertrut commented, “That would set the traditionalists on their ears. Though Luzie Valorin should know her own music best, so why not?”

  “No,” Iuli said. “He’s teaching Serafina to conduct! Because she can see what shape the music is supposed to be.”

  The image rose in Margerit’s mind: Serafina raising her hands and drawing fluctus out of the air with the music. It would be the music that drew it, but for those who could see, how might it appear? Perhaps magic was the right word after all.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Luzie

  Mid-September, 1825

  Luzie bobbed her head—indeed, she moved her whole body—in time with the music. It was an odd sort of dress rehearsal. At Serafina’s insistence they performed in fits and starts, to prevent the mystery from building before its time. Her father was doing his best but it was impossible to tell how the work would come together. Except that it had once before. She turned to where Serafina stood frowning at her side.

  “Are you sure this is necessary? It isn’t how they’re used to working.”

  “I don’t know,” Serafina said slowly. “We’ve never done anything like this before. The effects will be different, that’s as much as we know. We’ve tuned every part of it as precisely as Margerit’s castellum, but in the end it comes down to performance just the same.”

  The singers, too, were frustrated with the constant pauses. Madame Cavalli had returned—indeed, insisted on claiming the part of Tanfrit—but the others were new to their parts. The staging for the larger cast was different. More powerful, Serafina had said, but she’d also made some quiet suggestions in choosing the performers, based on talents only she could recognize. Everything had needed to be worked out anew.

  From behind them came Count Chanturi’s lazy drawl. “Perhaps, Maisetra Valorin, the next time I’m engaged to finance one of your operas, you will inform me in advance that it’s to be a charitable project.”

  Luzie turned and curtseyed to him in welcome. She was always flustered in the presence of her patron. One never knew how seriously he meant anything. Where was Jeanne? She could tease and banter with the man as easily as breathing.

  “I didn’t…that is, we hadn’t intended…”

  But he knew that. He must be teasing. The decision to distribute tickets without charge had been part of Margerit’s plan, only recently decided.

  Chanturi raised her hand to his lips in salute and smiled. “No, of course, forgive me. The performance is at Her Grace’s command and I do it only for the glory. Is my dear friend de Cherdillac here?”

  “She was here earlier,” Luzie said. “I think she might have left.”

  She relaxed when Chanturi, too, left. Couldn’t it be over already? By royal command—but it went beyond that. Maisetra Sovitre had spared her the arguments over including her Tanfrit in the ceremonies for the Feast of Saint Mauriz. She only knew the result: by royal command the opera would be performed tomorrow evening after the other rituals. She didn’t know how she would survive until then. Serafina’s hands were twitching in time with the music. The wait must be just as hard on her.

  “Serafina, have you…?”

  No, this was no time to ask about plans. It was clear what had brought her back to Rotenek. Luzie hadn’t understood even half of the story of her mountain journey with her talk of visions and storms and sorcery. But the drive to solve the puzzle—to understand and, by understanding, to turn disaster back to order—that was plain in Serafina’s every word and expression. It might not be from love of Alpennia—what concern could she have for this place? It was the same love of learning—of truth—that they had written into Tanfrit’s character. That could be enough of a purpose.

  The additions to the third act now hinged upon that love of truth to serve the needs of the mystery. It still felt strange to think of her music as a mystery. Who was it that Serafina had quoted? The one who said that every act of man can be a m
ystery if done for the love of God? If God is truth, then perhaps that was enough.

  The scene where Gaudericus refused Tanfrit’s gift of the forbidden book had been expanded and rewritten. Now they both came to realize it was learning, not power, they sought. And in a soaring duet they reject and refuse all sorcery, consigning the text to the fire and pledging themselves to seeking only wisdom and knowledge. That was the heart of the mystery, where the power of the music, amplified through the attention of the audience, would strike out against the…the whatever it was they were fighting. A blow that might be unneeded or might be their last hope of success. In the opera, the moment was Tanfrit’s glorious triumph before her tragic fall, when Gaudericus refused to return her carnal love. And then, as before, the river, the flood, the remorse, the dedication.

  She saw that finale differently now.

  “Serafina?”

  “Yes?” Serafina turned, her hands still trying silently to guide the musicians to her vision.

  “It was a tragedy—that Gaudericus couldn’t love her the way she wanted—but it wasn’t wrong. It was only his nature. Serafina, promise me you’ll never throw yourself in a river. Not for me. Not for anyone.”

  Serafina looked confused for only a moment, then said solemnly, “I promise I’ll never throw myself in the river. But never forget that we wrote that story. We chose that ending. We don’t know what was truly in their hearts. We don’t even know that Tanfrit really did drown herself.”

  That wasn’t what she’d meant. Luzie swallowed hard and tried once more. “I want you to find…to find what you’re seeking. I wish I could have been it.”

  Serafina’s mouth twitched, but the expression was too quickly controlled to read. “How could I wish you to be anything other than what you are?”

  * * *

  They had been invited to witness the cathedral mysteries in company with Margerit’s household, but Luzie had let Serafina go without her thinking she would be too nervous to sit still. That had been a mistake. There was nothing for her to do until the evening. In truth, there was nothing for her to do at all except wait and watch. Her father had taken her to the lower rooms at the Café Chatuerd to sip tea and watch the activity out in the Plaiz. They could sometimes hear bits of the ceremony when the tables around them chanced to fall silent. Would it work? All her life she had thought of the mysteries as mere ceremony. Not meaningless—not at all! No more than the Mass was meaningless, or confession, or any other sacraments. But as something that involved the soul and not the body. If she allowed herself to think of all that depended…How she wished she had Serafina’s vision so she could know. Her hands began shaking, causing the teacup to rattle against its saucer.