Coronets and Steel

by Sherwood Smith

  “No. That is, not from what I’ve heard. The old ones were stiff medieval figures, carved from wood and painted and repainted. They were rotten by the turn of the century, so the process of change was begun. These things take time in churches, you know.” He smiled.

  As I got closer, I discovered that the figures were larger than life-size. I peered more closely, appalled to discover bits of plaster gleaming spottily in the figures’ robes. Chips and hairline cracks marred faces and hands; on some, the paint had discolored from smoke, weather, or from being poor quality paint in the first place. In others the paint had puckered and peeled. “I guess it’s a poor church?”

  Alec’s soft laugh this time was more like a sigh.

  “The art that went into making those figures deserves decent materials. Plaster, in this climate? Why not chop down one of those trees outside? A whole army of saints could be carved from a single tree.”

  Alec did not immediately answer, but stared up at the figures for a time. Then he said, “The Germans and Soviets thought so, too. They left this church alone. In fact, its being out of the way to almost everyone, as well as unprepossessing in appearance, made it one of the few allowed to function during the antireligious period.”

  “This is where the Blessing is supposed to be invoked?”

  “Right. This is it.”

  “What happens exactly?”

  “According to the records, it has happened three times. All five leading families were present, the occasion a royal marriage and a vow of peace. Afterward no one could get in, or out, of the country for the duration of whatever war was going on. Until the Dobreni began fighting among themselves.”

  “Exactly what constitutes this mysterious Nasdrafus? Walls that miraculously appear? Mysterious beams of light?”

  He brushed his fingers over the back of a pew in a restless gesture, then started up the aisle. “From the outside? Snowstorms. Fog. Travelers always seem to find their way right back to where they began. Go in circles. Nothing miraculous or mysterious. From the inside? In modern terms, the country shifts to what we call liminal space, out of reach of the dimension in which we stand now. In historical terms, otherworld beings exist side-by-side with humans. Notice I do not say ‘live’ as life and death are defined differently.”

  I paused to look back into the empty sanctuary to discover that it wasn’t empty. One of the choir kids stood before the altar, looking up at the silent figures. She whirled around, her tangled yellow hair flopping. She wore the same sort of smock I’d seen on kids running around on Riev’s streets, her skinny legs sticking out below like twigs. Her face lifted in a sudden smile, and she waved at me, a quick twinkle of fingers. I waved back, and she dashed into the shadows and vanished.

  “Whatever happened, your history seems bound up in this church, this site, this mountain,” I said.

  Alec halted on the mosaic and took in the church, the valley, and the mountains beyond with a sweep of his hand. “Our history is bound up here,” he said as we passed into the afternoon sun.

  I threw back my head, my eyes tearing as they readjusted to the streaming light, and took in the rustle of breeze high in the trees and the chirp and caw of unseen birds. “Someone ought to have those figures recast before they disintegrate.”

  “I will. Soon,” Alec promised, smiling.

  THIRTY

  WE PASSED SEVERAL more groups of men sitting out in the sun chatting and drinking beer. Alec exchanged waves with them, everyone genial; I wondered if the women were inside working while their menfolk took advantage of the lovely weather, but I didn’t say anything. Why destroy the good mood? It wasn’t as if my opinion was going to change anything.

  When we reached Ysvorod House I remembered the ball, and I clapped my hands and rubbed them. Alec gave me a peculiar grimace which I understood immediately. “Don’t tell me you’re one of those dull guys who moan about having to wear a costume?”

  “I like them very much—at certain times. This isn’t one of them.”

  “Politics again?”

  “Yes.”

  “What are you going as? Herod the Horrific? Or Ivan the Terrible, with pointed shoes and a bearskin cap?”

  “My fallback is King Alexander, whose wife was a Ysvorod. Then I only have to put on a ribbon and a few of his medals over my Vigilzhi uniform. The most formal uniform has altered little in a hundred and fifty years.”

  “Then that’s not a costume at all.”

  “True. But so much easier to manage while dancing. Would you like your ankles impaled by pointed shoes?”

  “No, and I wouldn’t want to give up waltzing for medieval verisimilitude—there will be waltzing, won’t there?” I had a sudden terrible thought. “Not stuff like the cha cha or two-step? Though those are better than the prom shuffle.”

  “Aunt Sisi shuffle at a formal masquerade ball? Aurelia Kim, where are your wits?” he teased, leaning on the banister and laughing up at me as I started slowly up the stairs.

  I heaved a loud sigh of relief.

  Alec added, “We’ll leave for Mecklundburg House at twenty after six. If you need a hand before then, holler for help.”

  “One of Aunt Sisi’s notes promised honest-to-princess maid service. If they don’t show, send up the Vigilzhi. I’m gonna need ’em to lace that waist over my abs of steel.”

  The phone rang in the library. He laughed, waved a hand, and vanished.

  True to her word, Aunt Sisi sent a pair of women to do my makeup and hair. The women were quiet and efficient; my hair was piled up in eighteenth-century loops and swirls. The headdress, a faux coronet made of pearls attached to feathers and bits of lace, fitted securely into the complicated hairdo. Even without powder, I looked unnervingly like the portrait of Queen Maria Sofia.

  I turned reluctantly from my own image in the mirror, which I’d been staring at, wishing I could get into the minds of my long-ago ancestors before they attended their first ball. You’d think with all those weird imaginings I could have a fun one—but no, my brain remained stubbornly fixed on my own image in the mirror.

  At 6:15 Alec knocked on my door. “Kim?”

  “I’m ready,” I called.

  “I’ve got something for you,” Alec called back.

  I tore myself from the mirror and tripped in my buckled shoes to the door, glorying in the rustle and hiss of my skirts. I knew I looked my absolute best, but what I was not prepared for was how hot Alec appeared in that uniform.

  Those tight-chested, high-collared tunics were designed to set off male bodies, and as he already had a good basic structure he was magnificent—his fine, dark hair combed back so it fell in waves at either side of his temples, his straight shoulders emphasized by the epaulettes and the baldric with the loops of gold braid, the blue of the tunic’s fabric reflected in his eyes and echoed the sapphire glow on his signet ring. He carried his gloves in one hand. The other rested on the graceful hilt of a dress sword.

  I met his eyes—he was clearly enjoying my astonishment. “Pretty spiffy,” I managed finally.

  “May I return the compliment?” He lifted his hand. Under the gloves he carried a flat black case.

  “Oh no.” I backed up, covering my throat. “Not if that’s your mother’s stuff.”

  “She had no daughter and her sister had no children. There’s no one to care whether her jewelry gets lost or not. Any child of mine will inherit such a quantity the parts will never be distinguished from the sum. Please.”

  “If Tony were a Regency fellow he’d have known to get his mother’s jewels copied,” I said nervously. “Then he could finance anything—” I stopped gabbling when Alex opened the case. “Ack.”

  I stared down at a diamond necklace of the sort Florence Ziegfield chorus girls got from machine-gun toting gangsters in the Damon Runyon days. It was a string of diamonds. Any of them would have made a killer ring. From the center three delicate diamond pendants hung, the middle pendant the longest, with a teardrop shaped stone the size of my littl
est toe. It glittered and winked on its black velvet bed as if it were alive—sentient. “No way!”

  “Throw it off a cliff at the end of the evening if you’ve not lost it,” he said recklessly, lifting it out.

  “Oh, be serious. I couldn’t.” But I stood, frozen, as he stepped behind me and clasped it around my neck.

  The unfamiliar weight settled about my collarbones, but my attention radared backward as his fingers lightly brushed the nape of my neck. A shiver ran through my body, and as I could not suppress it, to hide it I bustled to the mirror.

  No doubt about it. I had been happy with my appearance before, but the necklace made the costume.

  “Your mother’s family must have been the local Rockefellers,” I said nervously, putting a finger up to touch the largest stone, which flashed and glowed with my breathing. The brilliance didn’t just reflect and refract light, it seemed to gather it; barely audible was the high, pure tinkle of the crystal prisms hanging on my lamp. Had I left my window open?

  “This particular necklace is an Ysvorod heirloom. Goes to the brides. No one will recognize it, except perhaps Aunt Sisi. Heirloom jewels seem to be a hobby with her. She knows everyone’s—that’s how Ruli got into it.”

  He had taken a step forward, so I could see him reflected behind me in the mirror. The room seemed filled with light as our eyes met in the glass, and held—

  And there it was again, the sudden awareness of him, and I could feel in the change in his breathing, the contracting of his pupils that he felt it, too.

  My nerves flared with expectation, and for the first time I saw past the surface of his cool, competent mask, sensing the electric flow from me to him—from him to me. We stood there, not touching, our gazes met and blended in the reflection of the glass, until expectation fluoresced into desire, and I found it difficult to breathe.

  It is not the right time.

  My thought or his, it didn’t matter. Time—responsibility—the world broke the spell enclosing us, crowding with other demands.

  Someone knocked at the door.

  “We gotta go.” I drew a deep breath. Okay, that sounded pretty normal. I touched the necklace. “Thanks. It’s too pretty for cliffs. I’ll do my best to see that it lives through the evening. Um, don’t you have a mask?” I asked, seeing that he held only his gloves.

  “Not everyone wears them anymore, though all the old traditions are still observed. Watch the feathers,” he added with a smile as we left the bedroom, and I ducked down so my headdress would not get knocked askew.

  I paused in the door way to check that I hadn’t left anything behind; I noticed the prisms were still.

  Aunt Sisi’s face blanked when she saw the necklace, but after a glance at Alec her usual composure returned and she gave me the most gracious of compliments on my appearance.

  Phaedra was gorgeous in a high-waisted Directoire gown à la Josephine Beauharnais, but when I complimented her she thanked me in a kitten-mew of a voice, so cold it was as if I’d thrown mud on her. I didn’t dare compliment Madam Robert in her (probably vintage) Worth gown, with ropes of pearls and an Art Nouveau headdress of pearls and diamonds fitted around her narrow head. From the way her angry gaze touched me and shifted, I knew I’d chosen right.

  Oh, it was going to be a charming dinner, I could tell already. But I was determined not to let them spoil my evening.

  It didn’t help that I caught the first note of sincerity in Robert’s voice when he complimented me on my looks. Tall, heavy-chinned Percy did not attempt to hide his admiration. Cerisette, who reminded me of a black widow spider—an elegant one—in her vintage Chanel gown and jeweled cloche hat from the twenties, had absolutely nothing to say. I could see by the bitter compression of her lips that she was working hard to fix that.

  Aunt Sisi was statuesque and elegant in her soft Edwardian-style gown, with her silvering blond hair piled high and curled gracefully. On it rested a gold and pearl coronet with three graceful arches. No, a tiara; those were diamonds at the peak of each arch.

  When I complimented her she touched the pearls at her neck in an uncharacteristically quick gesture and said, “Thank you, dear, but tonight is for you young people.” And she led us in to dinner immediately thereafter.

  Dinner was . . . weird. Not the food. P. G. Wodehouse’s great Anatole could not have surpassed the superb offerings Pedro sent up for Aunt Sisi’s guests. I was seated between Percy and Robert, who looked like a Russian emperor in his fur-edged velvet tunic and elaborate bearskin cap. Both men seemed to have made liberal inroads into Aunt Sisi’s liquor supply before we had arrived, and during the dinner they kept Aunt Sisi’s butler on the hop with demands for refills.

  The butler topped my nearly untouched goblet so many times I felt a silent reproach, as if my manners were lacking because I wasn’t downing wine like most of the rest of them. And they shouldn’t have. Robert kept patting my hand every time his wife and Alec, who were dinner partners, were exchanging small talk, and his pouchy dark gaze rested frequently on the low neck of my gown. I longed for his former rudeness.

  The von M’s ignored Madam A so I leaned over and talked to her until I noticed Robert leaning out to look down my dress. Ew ew ew.

  On my other side, Percy seemed nervous. I wondered if this was his first masquerade, too, the way he chortled and rambled on about the clever mask he had ordered. He was costumed as a buccaneer, in a black velvet pirate coat with huge gold-edged cuffs. Under that was a front-laced white shirt, tied with a crimson sash through which he’d thrust a long-barreled toy pistol. Black velvet loose pants were stuffed into wide-cuffed buccaneer boots with high square heels and dashing buckles on the uppers.

  Three or four times toward the end of the dinner he pulled the pistol from his sash and waved it around growling “Arrrr!” until Aunt Sisi finally asked him, in the nicest way, to zip it.

  We seemed to have fifty courses before that horrible dinner was finally over. As soon as everyone rose from the table to adjourn for coffee Alec promptly excused himself.

  “You’re leaving me here?” I sidled up. “Tell me you’re not.”

  “Have to,” he said, sending a flick of a glance toward Aunt Sisi that revealed suppressed anger. “I’m already late.”

  So, more of the subtle game playing—the dinner had been deliberately dragged out? Talk about grade-school, I thought, but I kept my social smile firmly in place. Nothing was going to ruin my night, I vowed. “You rat,” I muttered to Alec out of the side of my mouth. “Cowardly rat.”

  Alec flushed and hid a laugh behind a cough.

  Aunt Sisi turned, clasping her thin hands in consternation. “I fear I was not prepared for you to leave alone like this. I already have five to be fitted into my car.” She indicated my miles of puffy skirt. “We do not have the space.”

  “I thought we arranged this,” Alec said to her, smiling and polite, but I sensed every line of him radiating tension. “I must get there early. The council is waiting for me right now.”

  “My dear.” She met his steady gaze with hand-folded composure, “I did offer to convey your ladies to the ball, but when I discovered you were bringing them here yourself I assumed you had arranged to transport them from here as well.”

  So Alec had to send for Kilber; as soon as he got hold of him through Aunt Sisi’s telephone, he took off. I hadn’t known she had a phone—all her messages to me had been written on scented notepaper. I wondered what she used the phone for as Alec picked up his gloves and departed.

  This was a matter of maybe ten blocks they were talking about, on a pretty night; I would have loved nothing better than to walk, without any more von M company than necessary, but I knew Madam A would not wish to walk, and my buckle shoes were tight. So I kept quiet.

  Percy touched my arm. “What do you think of my mask, eh? Isn’t it handsome?” He slipped it over his face, clapped his hat on, and posed. “Savvy?”

  The Captain Jack Sparrow reference made me like him a lot more, even if
he’d obviously drunk too much. I smiled at his mask, which was full face, with leering pirate features. Over the back he wore a long black wig, and on top a tricorn hat with plumes held in place by a rhinestone buckle. “Like the feathers?” His voice was muffled. “They were my own idea.”

  His cousins stood around and smiled and uttered fake variations of, “Oh how clever!” as he postured and flourished.

  When he caught his cutlass in the curtains, Cerisette and Honoré (who looked more like a sinister Bertie Wooster than ever in his elegant Oscar Wilde evening dress) rushed to help, Cerisette disentangling the brocade from the steel, and Honoré thrusting his cousin’s sword back into the baldric, then muscling Percy in the direction of the coffee service.

  After all those parties, I still didn’t know any of them—but the way they cooed over Percy, who’d obviously had about a gallon too much of whatever had been in those crystal glasses, I wondered if he was the richest of them, as he wasn’t the most titled. Or the smartest, I added mentally when he staggered and nearly trashed a cloisonné lamp on an ancient Chinese table.

  Aunt Sisi joined Honoré. “Coffee, Parsifal?” was the last thing I heard before the butler announced, “The automobile is here for Madam and Mademoiselle.”

  By which were to understand that Kilber had arrived at last.

  I couldn’t get out of that house fast enough. Madam A looked like an escapee from a gulag as we climbed into the Daimler.

  I’d scarcely settled my billowing skirts across three quarters of the back seat when we pulled up at the palace in front of a rolled out red carpet.

  There was no announcing, not at a masquerade. But an army of liveried servants came out to take wraps, offer drinks, and escort us inside the ballroom. We blended into the arriving guests; Madam A found some old friends and seemed to relax.

  After some self-conscious or laughing introductions (“Queen Maria Sofia, may I present Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine?”) and smiles all around, I excused myself to walk about and see the sights. Madam A seemed to think that was all right, so I took off, feeling like a ship under full sail in my miles of tulle, brocade, and satin, the diamonds bobbing gently against my collarbone.