Songspinners

by Sarah Ash

  But this petition was older and more fragile than any other Dame Jolaine had examined before. It might so easily have been lost for good if she had not spotted it in the silt the workmen had raked from a blocked drainage channel.

  She peered at the faint scratches inscribed on the lead sheet. Backwards. Remember: transcribe the letters first, then reverse…

  And then she peered more closely.

  There were two inscriptions. The first was in what seemed to her eyes to be an archaic form of the Allegondan script. And the second below was in –

  In the Lifhendil hieroglyphs!

  Her heart pounded a wild jig against her ribs. She sat back, one hand on her breast, trying to control its leaping beats.

  ‘Steady, Tradescar,’ she murmured. ‘It could be a fake. A forgery. No point having a seizure over a trifle.’

  It could be a fake – but it could also be the petition of a long-dead worshipper from the Dark Age, child of an Allegondan-Lifhendil union. Certes, such children had been born. She let out a dragging sigh: little Orial was living proof of that.

  And if it was what she hoped – maybe she had at last found the key to the lost language of the Lifhendil.

  The faint script dimmed before her eyes. The room grew suddenly dark; shadows loomed across her vision. Pain burst in her chest, bright as an arrowstar. Her hands fumbled over the desk for her enamelled box of pills. Shakily, she opened the lid, picked one out and popped it under her tongue.

  ‘Easy now. Easy.’

  She leant back in her chair, waiting for the flaring pain to fizzle out.

  This faulty heart was becoming a damn nuisance. Always letting her down just when she needed it. The doctors had told her to retire. Maybe they had a point…

  Chronicle journalese flickered through her mind: ‘Eminent scholar found dead in Museum. It is believed that Dr Tradescar was on the brink of a remarkable discovery. Her sudden death robbed us of the enlightenment…’

  ‘No other scholar is going to get their hands on this! It’s mine. I’ve waited a lifetime for this.’

  And there was Orial to consider. Her soul-child. Orial was rapidly maturing – soon she would come into her full Lifhendil inheritance. The musical gifts to ravish and delight – and then the madness. Jolaine had to save her. She had to try. Maybe her theory was crackbrained, the ramblings of a crazy old academic. But suppose – just suppose she was right and the Lifhendil stelae held the key to the Accidie?

  Khassian lay on the striped couch whilst Cramoisy paced to and fro. The Diva was twisting a lace handkerchief agitatedly between his fingers. The situation was, Khassian realised, curiously reminiscent of Flamilla’s scena in the opera The Fires of Fate.

  He knew Cramoisy was waiting for him to speak. To give him an explanation. But he would not explain himself – not to the Diva or anyone else.

  ‘How could you do it?’ The Diva’s voice trembled with tears of accusation. ‘Just – throw your life away! When we have all worked so hard to save you? It’s so – so selfish!‘

  Khassian stared through him.

  ‘Oh, don’t go on pretending it was an accident. I know what you were about. I found the smashed bottle of opiate on the floor in your room. When that failed, you decided to drown yourself. If Korentan hadn’t fished you out, you’d be dead – and what good would that do our cause?’

  ‘So I’m to keep myself alive to further our cause? Even though I’m useless. I can’t hold a sword, fire a pistol –’

  Cramoisy flung himself on his knees beside him.

  ‘You mustn’t give up, Amar. If you lose hope, how will the rest of us carry on?’

  ‘There’s no point in carrying on. I’m no use to anyone. I can’t compose.’

  ‘But with an amanuensis –’

  Why couldn’t Cramoisy understand? Suddenly it all came spilling out, all the hopelessness, the despair.

  ‘I thought I had found the will to compose again – Elesstar’s duet. And today I heard one of the nurses singing the tune in the Sanatorium. Singing it aloud!’

  ‘Which nurse?’ Cramoisy asked.

  ‘The girl who found us. Magelonne’s child. Can’t you see, Cramoisy? I’d been deluding myself. I hadn’t composed anything new at all, I must have cribbed the tune from a common street ballad.’

  ‘Orial Magelonne was singing one of your tunes?’ said Cramoisy.

  ‘I felt so cheap. So worthless. Elesstar’s final duet – filched from some tawdry tavern song.’

  ‘Amar. Listen to me.’ Cramoisy cupped Khassian’s face in his hands, suddenly earnest, the tragic mask of Flamilla abandoned. ‘Think back. Had you been rehearsing the tune in your mind that morning?’

  ‘But I don’t see what relevance –’

  ‘Think, Amar!’ Cramoisy’s finger-tips pressed into his cheeks.

  ‘Well, I might have been… maybe I was…’

  ‘Have you noticed her eyes?’

  ‘What have her eyes got to do with this?’

  ‘She’s her mother’s daughter. She has a gift, Amar. A gift that could save your life.’

  ‘For God’s sake explain, Cramoisy.’

  ‘She’s – different. And she doesn’t know it yet. Rainbow eyes, Amar. I told you her mother was an exceptional musician, didn’t I? They are descendants of a race of musicians. I sang her Firildys’s arioso – and she sang it back to me, note for note. And she had never heard it before in her life.’

  ‘So? My father taught me to do the same,’ Khassian said dismissively. ‘With discipline, children can develop remarkable memory skills.’

  ‘And can they also hear the music in your mind?’

  Khassian gave a sceptical snort.

  ‘Oh, come now, Cramoisy.’

  ‘Her mother Iridial could.’

  ‘Musical telepathy? What kind of crazed fantasy did this Iridial spin you? To hear the music in other people’s minds… it would send you mad.’

  ‘Don’t you understand? You didn’t filch the tune. She learned it from you.’

  ‘You’re saying that Orial Magelonne could be my amanuensis? That she could transcribe what’s up here –’ Khassian nodded his head, ‘– directly into written manuscript?’

  ‘She’d need some training. From what I understand, she’s self-taught. The good doctor has expressly forbidden her to take any kind of music lessons. But talent will out…’

  ‘Ach, Cramoisy, this is like some bizarre faery tale. And I don’t believe in faeries.’

  ‘Just imagine, Amar,’ Cramoisy leaned close to him, his breath warm on Khassian’s face, ‘the opera coming to life again, here in Sulien. You already have Valentan for the peace-bringer, Mhir. And you have your Elesstar here beside you. If other musicians can make it across the mountains, we can put a cast together –’

  ‘But the girl. Orial. Suppose she doesn’t want to do it? It will mean days, weeks, months of transcription. And if her father is so opposed to her coming into contact with music…’ Khassian struggled to express the doubts that had already arisen in his mind. ‘It seems – wrong, Cramoisy. To ask her to disobey her father.’

  Father. The word still stirred unhappy memories: bitter words, slammed doors, letters returned unopened…

  ‘After all I’ve done for you. All I’ve given up for you, Amar. My whole life dedicated to the furthering of your career, your talents, to treat me so shabbily. My own son!’

  ‘Let me talk to her. She’s eighteen, old enough to make up her own mind about the matter.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘And no more silly suicide attempts, caru?‘

  Silly. Khassian winced at the word. Was that how Cramoisy saw it? The petulant gesture of a child who can’t get what he wants? There had been nothing petulant about the grey clouds of despair that had enveloped him, leeching all colour from the world.

  ‘Promise me.’ Cramoisy nuzzled his cheek, skin soft as rose-velvet against the unshaven stubble.

  He nodded his head, wishing the Diva would leave him alone.


  ‘Tried to drown himself?’ Orial repeated, wide-eyed. She set down her bowl of tea and stared in alarm at the Diva.

  The tea-shop echoed to the tinkle of cutlery and a low murmur of discreet conversation.

  Cramoisy nodded – though not too vigorously. He was sporting an elaborately curled powdered wig of a construction as frothily light as the cream-filled pastries piled on the plate in front of him. Orial noticed that the wig had already occasioned several envious glances from the ladies of Sulien.

  ‘Not a word of it to anyone, Orial. He was in such deep, deep despair.’

  ‘Because of his hands?’

  ‘Exactly so.’ Cramoisy helped himself to a second meringue.

  ‘How terrible.’ Orial stared at the pastry which lay untouched on her own plate. She saw again the shambling figure of Amaru Khassian in the Sanatorium corridor, saw the pale face, the daemon-haunted eyes.

  ‘And I fear he may try again – he can be so stubborn once he sets his heart on something – unless we can prevent him.’

  ‘We?’ Orial echoed. ‘You mean I could help?’

  ‘Mmm.’ Cramoisy’s rouged mouth was full of meringue; he lifted his napkin and delicately dabbed the traces of whipped cream from his lips. Orial saw the red rouge-stain on the white linen.

  ‘But how could I help?’ Orial picked up her fork and toyed with the cake, pushing it around the plate. ‘I’m only in my first year of training. I haven’t learned neurology or musculature yet –

  ‘I’m not referring to your medical skills, carissa. I’m referring to your other gifts.’

  ‘I don’t have any other gifts,’ she said, confused.

  ‘Let me share a confidence with you,’ Cramoisy leaned closer across the tea-table. ‘Amaru Khassian did not just lose the use of his hands in the fire. He lost the culmination of his life’s work: his new opera. And now he just sits there, thinking through the lost music day and night. It haunts his dreams. At night I can hear him murmuring and weeping in his sleep. It’s destroying him, Orial.’

  ‘Because he can hear the music in his head but can’t write it down?’

  ‘To Amar music is much more than a profession. It’s his own personal language, his means of expressing himself. “Music begins where words fail…” ‘

  ‘But why me?’

  ‘Think back to a morning last week. Amaru was being treated in the Sanatorium. You were singing in the next-door cubicle as you worked. What were you singing?’

  Orial frowned. That melody. That dark, haunting melody with its sinuous, twisted intervals… How did Cramoisy know she had been singing?

  ‘I don’t know its name. I don’t know where I heard it. I just found myself humming it.’

  Cramoisy reached out across the table and took her hand in his own, squeezing it reassuringly.

  ‘Don’t distress yourself, child. Listen to me. You were singing a fragment of Amaru’s opera.’

  ‘B-but you said it was burned. How could I have –’

  Cramoisy raised his hand to stroke her cheek.

  ‘You are your mother’s daughter. You have inherited her talents, her gifts. You will need guidance in how to use them…’

  ‘You mean – I heard the music in the Illustre’s mind?’ Orial could not begin to make sense of the revelation.

  ‘It’s a kind of musical telepathy. That’s how your mother once described it to me. You will need to develop great mental discipline if you are to use it effectively.’

  ‘And you want me to transcribe the Illustre’s thoughts?’

  ‘He needs you, Orial. You could be the one to save him from his own despair.’

  ‘But I’m untrained. I’ve never had a lesson in my life.’

  ‘Valentan and I will give you instruction in notation, theory, all you need to know.’

  ‘Ohhh…’ Orial let out a little sigh of excitement. It was more than she could bear. Her dearest wish come true. And then she remembered.

  ‘Papa –’

  Cramoisy’s expression became pensive.

  ‘I don’t want to upset him.’

  The sound of pastry forks on plates, spoons stirring tea-bowls, had suddenly become a clatter, intruding on Orial’s thoughts.

  ‘You’re a loyal and loving daughter. I understand that. But whose interests is your father fostering? He has deprived you of the musical training that is your birthright. Forgive me if I speak plainly, Orial. If he cannot bear to hear music played, then so be it. But why should you suffer? It is wrong. Very wrong.’

  Orial gasped.

  ‘There. I’ve said it!’ Cramoisy leaned back in his chair, triumphant.

  ‘The decision is yours, Orial. Not your father’s. You’re no longer a child.’

  Orial looked down at the table; her own hands, slender and unscathed, rested on the embroidered cloth.

  Not my hands. But his…

  She looked up.

  ‘When can I meet the Illustre?’

  CHAPTER 7

  Dame Jolaine Tradescar rubbed sleepdust from her aching eyes and looked down at her work again, blinking.

  What hour was it? She picked up the qaffë pot to pour herself another cup but only a cold, dark sediment dribbled out. The oil was burning low in the glass lamp… but daylight seemed already to be seeping in under the blinds. She had no need of oil-light now.

  She tugged at the cord and the frayed linen blind slowly creaked up, letting more light into the study. Jolaine slowly stretched, groaning as stiff joints creaked.

  She had been working all night. She should be tired. In fact, she had passed beyond tiredness to that state where she moved in a waking dream and a strange lucidity of mind illuminated her thoughts.

  She sat down again, eager to look over the night’s achievements. Yes, it was all there, she had not dreamed it! It had been slow, painstaking work to transcribe the indistinct scripts – and then to translate. But she had the beginnings of a match. She had traced enough concordances between early Allegondan script and the Lifhendil hieroglyphs to make a tentative translation:

  To the divine [?] Goddess Elesstar. I give to you, Lady Goddess, the gold pendant that has been stolen from me this day. Let the thief, whether man or woman, Allegondan or Lifhendil become as liquid as the black waters of the [[?]] reservoir. May his soul not fly to join the winged ones –

  She had underlined certain words in the translation which seemed to link with hieroglyphs she recognised, hieroglyphs which appeared again and again on the temple stelae: divine, Goddess, Lifhendil, liquid, waters, reservoir, soul, winged ones…

  She was so excited that, in spite of the stiffness, she stood up and went frollicking out of the Cabinet of Curiosities, seized with an insane desire to embrace the very first person she met.

  It was a fine spring morning. The terraces and crescents of Sulien seemed to glow rose-gold. Wild jonquils carpeted the grassy banks in the River Gardens, like pale sunlight gilding the green. Blue tits twittered and chaffed in the branches; willow warblers piped liquid trills from the long strands of yellow willow hair that trailed in the Avenne.

  And everywhere there was a stir of activity. Maids leaned out of upper windows to air quilts and blankets; housewives threw open shutters and doors to the sunlight to banish the frowsty humours of winter. Servants polished window panes, beat carpets, shook out dusters.

  Acir Korentan walked slowly past the entrance to Mistress Permay’s lodging house for the third time, oblivious to the domestic bustle that surrounded him. A convulsive sneeze shook his whole body; resignedly, he pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his streaming nose. The virulent cold had struck him down the very day after he had pulled Khassian from the river. He had been to the apothecary’s who had given him infusions to be inhaled, infusions to be taken, and advised a visit to the steam bath to ‘draw out the evil humours’. Now the brilliant sunshine made his streaming eyes worse and the pollen from the catkins seemed only to aggravate his ticklish throat.

  The purpose of his v
isit was, he told himself, to return the parcel of neatly laundered and pressed clothes he had borrowed to Amaru Khassian’s household. Why, then, did he find himself so reluctant to go up to the front door and ring the bell?

  He sat down on a bench by the curved railings that separated the pavement from the wide green lawns that rolled down towards the river. Another sneeze racked him and, as he tugged out his handkerchief, the letter fell from his pocket. He sighed and read it for the second time that morning.

  My dear Acir,

  I am concerned to note that the dangerous revolutionary Valentan has arrived in Sulien. Watch him. He is a trouble-maker. Our intelligence tells us that others may try to join him and orchestrate their plots using Sulien as their base.

  The Commanderie is currently discussing with the Prince the possibility of obtaining extradition orders so that you may arrest the revolutionaries in Sulien and bring them back to stand trial in Bel’Esstar. This requires subtle diplomatic negotiation with Tourmalise so do not make mention of this to anyone.

  If there is still any means by which you can persuade our friend to return of his own accord, then in Mhir’s blessed name, I beg you to do so. I thought I detected from the tone of your last letter that you may be experiencing doubts as to your suitability for carrying out this mission. Please assure me, dearest confrère, that I am wrong.

  Yours, in the Blood of the Rose,

  Girim nel Ghislain

  Acir looked up at Mistress Permay’s house, shading his eyes against the sheen of spring sunshine. A shadow passed across the tall first-floor window… the Diva maybe? Or Khassian himself, trapped in the prison of his mutilation?

  Girim’s letter left him with a sick, sour taste in his mouth. It smacked of conspiracy and underhand dealings, rather than a divinely inspired purpose.

  As he rose to cross the wide curve of the Crescent, he noticed a woman, elegantly dressed, also staring curiously up at Mistress Permay’s house. It was the brightness of her hair that caught his eye, a brightness that made his heart stop.