Songspinners

by Sarah Ash

  ‘What an excellent memory you have!’ Jolaine took the bowl and pressed her spoon against the slice of lemon, releasing its sharp fragrance. ‘I’ll wager you can remember when they pulled down the old town hall and started work on the Guildhall dome?’

  ‘Lady bless us, I do indeed.’ Cook eased herself down into a chair with her tea. ‘Such a fine building. Not that all the changes you and I have seen have been for the better.’

  ‘Too many of the old ways forgotten or pushed aside to make way for the new.’

  ‘These young people – excepting our Orial here – they want to make change for change’s sake.’

  Dr Philemot’s eager face briefly floated before Jolaine’s eyes.

  ‘True, true… Look how the old traditions are swept away. I’ll also wager you know tales and songs that the young today have never even heard?’

  ‘When I was a girl, there used to be this custom – surely you remember it? The morning after the souls flew free on the Day of the Dead, you had to get up before dawn and go into the hills. The Faer Folk held their revels that night. If you could catch one, they were bound to grant you a wish.

  ‘Well, I saw one of them. With these very eyes. And no one ever believed me – they all laughed when I told them. I was nine years old at the time. We were up in the hills over Illyn way, collecting bilberries. At the rocks, near the waterfall. You know how the sun on the spray makes rainbows? That’s what they said I’d seen. But I know different.’

  ‘One of the Faer Folk?’ Jolaine said softly.

  ‘I heard something. It was like – a bird flying over my head. Wingbeats. But when I looked up, I saw. Behind the waterfall. A figure. It knew it had seen me, for it was gone in a flash. But I’ve never forgotten the way it looked on me. Never forgotten the eyes. Rainbow eyes, Dame. But not human. Wild. Wild like a wildcat’s eyes. Faïe.’

  ‘Faïe. Now that’s a word I haven’t heard in many a year.’

  ‘An old word and none the worse for being old!’ said Cook, noisily draining the last of her tea. ‘I dearly wanted them to grant me a wish.’ She gave a wry little sigh. ‘I’d go chasing them again if a wish would bring Orial back to us.’

  ‘Perhaps it might,’ Jolaine said pensively.

  ‘A wish? Now you’re supposed to be a learned woman.’

  ‘And if the old tales hold a grain of truth?’

  Cook gathered the tea things on to the tray. ‘Well, I’d best away to my soup, I don’t want it boiling the pot dry.’

  ‘Amar…’ murmured Orial again.

  ‘Did you hear?’ Cook turned to Jolaine.

  ‘I heard. A name.’

  ‘Sister Crespine and I, we thought she had a sweetheart. A beau.’

  ‘Amaru,’ Jolaine said. ‘Of course. Amaru Khassian, the musician.’

  ‘Ohhh…’ Cramoisy raised his handkerchief to his mouth to stifle his sobs. ‘It’s all my fault. I should never have brought you together.’

  Khassian paused in his pacing.

  ‘How was it I didn’t know? Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘I didn’t know. I never knew till now. I heard Iridial was dead – but they said it was from fever. Not this… Accidie.’

  ‘Then why didn’t she tell me? Why did she have to play the martyr? Why?’

  But Khassian already knew the answer. And it only made him more disgusted with himself. She had given him her gifts because she wanted – more than anything – to become part of the musical world he inhabited. And he had used her, he had played on her sympathy, on the generosity of her character.

  And now it was too late.

  The score lay on the table, the last pages smudged with her tears.

  Even to look on it made his stomach crawl. It recorded the disintegration of a mind. Her mind. It was evidence of the insidious progress of a mental disorder so devastating it could kill her.

  He should have recognised her distress earlier. But instead he had forced her to continue.

  And now the score lay there, a constant reminder of his wanton selfishness.

  A sharp rat-tat at the front door made them both start.

  ‘Suppose it’s the police?’ whispered Cramoisy. ‘The permits.’

  ‘You said you would go to the Mayor.’

  Cramoisy waved his damp handkerchief. ‘All this business with Orial has quite put it out of my mind.’

  They stared at each other as footsteps could be heard coming up the stair.

  ‘Out of your mind!’ began Khassian.

  Mistress Permay appeared.

  ‘There’s a Dame Jolaine Tradescar downstairs wanting to speak to you.’

  ‘I’m not at home to visitors.’

  ‘She’s most insistent. Says it’s urgent.’

  ‘Tradescar?’ The name was familiar to Khassian but he could not remember where he had heard it before.

  ‘You won’t know me,’ announced a voice from the hallway, ‘but I come on behalf of a mutual acquaintance. My soul-child, Orial Magelonne.’

  Orial. Khassian closed his eyes. When he opened them again, he saw a crook-backed old woman in the doorway, eccentrically attired and periwigged in the fashion of some thirty years ago.

  ‘May I come in?’

  Khassian shrugged; Dame Tradescar was in already. He dreaded what she might have come to say to him – and yet there was something in the sprightly bearing of the old woman that belied the bearing of bad news.

  ‘Please… sit down.’

  Jolaine Tradescar spread the panniers of her ancient gown and sat.

  ‘I’ll come straight to the point, Illustre. Orial’s affliction is very grave – but I believe there may be a way to restore her sanity.’

  ‘I understood the condition was incurable.’

  ‘Did you know that she has been calling your name?’

  ‘My name?’ Khassian felt his face flood with fire. Sweet Mhir, this woman obviously believed he had made some kind of advance to her soul-child. Who would begin to understand the true nature of their relationship? Should he blurt out that he had never so much as laid a finger on her?

  ‘I hoped you would want to help,’ Jolaine Tradescar said bluntly. There was something of the directness of Acir Korentan’s stare in the old woman’s blue eyes, light as a summer’s sky.

  ‘I wouldn’t be of much use,’ Khassian said, revealing his hands.

  Jolaine Tradescar seemed barely to notice them. ‘Maybe you can reach her in ways the rest of us cannot. Through music.’

  ‘My music has wrought the damage! I don’t want to make matters worse.’

  ‘Tell me, Illustre,’ Jolaine Tradescar said, leaning forward, ‘exactly what happened before her collapse?’

  Khassian swallowed hard; even to recall that afternoon gave him a feeling of nausea, the griping headache that precedes a storm.

  ‘I should have noticed she was not… herself. She was playing a tune, over and over again on the keyboard. Obsessively,’ He could not suppress a shudder as the notes of the bizarre melody wound their way back into his brain.

  ‘Over and over again?’ repeated Jolaine Tradescar. She seemed excited. ‘I don’t suppose you recall the melody?’

  ‘I find it hard to forget.’

  ‘Could you sing it?’

  ‘Of course. But I fail to see –’

  ‘The melody may be of some significance to her. It may act as a stimulus to restore her to herself. Or it may lead us to others who can help save her.’

  There was something in the way she pronounced the word ‘others’ that made the hair at the back of Khassian’s neck rise.

  ‘D’you know, I owe you a debt of gratitude, Illustre?’

  ‘Me? How?’ he said, surprised.

  ‘It was you, wasn’t it, who discovered the hidden hieroglyphs in the Hall of Whispering Reeds? And those hieroglyphs may hold the key to solving Orial’s predicament.’

  ‘You’re the Antiquarian!’ At last Khassian realised who his visitor was.

  ‘Was the Antiquarian,�
� said Jolaine Tradescar. ‘I have just been replaced without so much as a by-your-leave – but that’s a story for another day. I’d like to propose that you come with me into the Undercity. Your keen eyes may yet discover some hidden hieroglyphs that we scholars have missed.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think I could possibly be of any use to you –’ began Khassian. A polite but firm refusal, his customary response in such circumstances. And then he was seized by a curious impulse and heard himself saying, ‘But, seeing as I have no other pressing engagements, I think I might accompany you, Dame Tradescar.’

  Jerame replaced the sedative tincture in the drugs cabinet and turned the key in the lock; each movement slow, automatic, as his thoughts chased each other in a frenetic fugue whose subject was Orial, Orial, Orial.

  Wild eyes staring at him through a cage of slender fingers, eyes whose iridescent colours were muddied with tears.

  ‘Iridial?’ Time somersaulted, spinning him back to a chaotic vortex where all was madness and despair.

  The revenant raised one trembling hand to him: the finger-tips were stained with blood.

  ‘Papa… make it stop. Please make it stop.’

  Not Iridial but Orial, their daughter, flesh of his flesh, blood of his blood, her face torn by her own nails, her body hunched, drawn in on itself, shaking…

  The Accidie.

  Why had he not kept better watch over her? Why had he not recognised the signs of imminent collapse? Should he consult the experts from the Medical School? They had been of no use at all when Iridial had shown the first symptoms of the Accidie. Which left one alternative: should he call in Ophil Tartarus?

  No. Not Tartarus. He would not have that man poking and prodding with his yellowed finger-tips, peering into her wandering eyes with his glass, pawing her – and all in the name of his research.

  ‘Dr Magelonne.’ Sister Crespine tapped discreetly at the half-open door. ‘There is a woman here to see you.’

  ‘Send her away. I cannot see anyone. My daughter is ill. Desperately ill.’

  ‘I think you may wish to see me, Doctor.’

  That grave, cool voice subtly inflected with its Allegondan accent – he turned to see the Contesse Fiammis in the doorway.

  ‘I cannot see anyone –’ he began again, but she came in and closed the door, placing herself in front of it.

  ‘Are the rumours correct? Your daughter was taken ill in the apartments of Amaru Khassian?’

  ‘Him and his damned music!’ Jerame choked on the words.

  She drew close.

  ‘Are you prepared to lodge a formal complaint against him? With the Constabulary?’

  ‘On what charge?’ Grief-drunk, he almost laughed aloud at the thought. ‘Abusing my daughter – with music? ‘

  ‘Corrupting your daughter’s mind.’

  ‘I don’t know, I don’t know.’ Jerame let his head sink into his hands.

  ‘You want him out of your daughter’s life?’

  ‘I – don’t know if my daughter has any hope of a life now –’

  ‘Then make a formal complaint.’

  Jerame slowly raised his head to gaze at the Contesse.

  ‘Were you aware he was making your daughter work long hours transcribing his music?’

  ‘No, I was not aware,’ he heard himself saying in a voice bleared with fatigue. Even though Khassian could not have known of Orial’s condition, the composer must have sensed he was pushing her to the limits, he must have seen her pallor, her exhaustion. Doubtless he thought he was bestowing some privilege upon her in using her as his assistant. And Orial had such a kind, giving nature, she would have striven to please, not heeding the cost to her own health.

  ‘And can we be certain that is all he was making her do?’ said the Contesse in a silk-soft voice.

  Her words conjured lewd images of seduction, as loathsome as they were lascivious. All those long hours they had spent together, alone, unchaperoned…

  ‘I have no proof, of course, but…’

  ‘Orial,’ whispered Jerame. His beloved daughter wasting all the promise of her young life on a selfish, over-indulged composer.

  A father’s anger, pure animal instinct, raw and primitive, flared up within him. His child, his only child…

  ‘I am on my way to see the Commissaire now,’ said the Contesse. ‘Can I count on your support, Doctor?’ She opened the door and went out into the hall, her taffeta gown whispering with the soft rustle of willow leaves as she walked.

  ‘Wait!’ Jerame took up his hat and gloves and strode swiftly after her. Amaru Khassian must answer for the consequences of his actions.

  CHAPTER 18

  Faint strains of music drifted from the centre of the city, transient as windscattered petals.

  Khassian paused on the doorstep of Mistress Permay’s house, listening intently.

  ‘D’ye hear that?’ Jolaine Tradescar cried. ‘Damme if we’re not already too late.’

  ‘Too late?’

  ‘Have you never before seen Sulien on the Day of the Dead?’

  ‘I am a visitor. I know nothing of your ways, your customs.’ Khassian was fast becoming irritated with Tradescar’s oblique comments.

  ‘They’ll have sealed off all the doors into the Undercity – all but the doors in the Temple. The only way in is through the Temple with all the crowds.’

  ‘Then let’s join them.’

  ‘My dear young man, have you any idea what you’re suggesting? It’s such a crush.’

  ‘A crush in which we can slip into the Undercity unnoticed.’

  ‘Hm.’ Jolaine Tradescar was fingering her collar as if it were too tight. ‘It’s worth a try.’

  The Day of the Dead. To Khassian, the name evoked a sombre, macabre festival. Already he could imagine leaping figures wearing grotesque death masks, dangling skeletons, candles set inside human skulls. Perhaps the staid, provincial people of Sulien practised some bizarre ritual of death, such as he had read of in the far islands of Ta Ni Gohoa, carrying the wrapped mummified corpses of their venerated ancestors around the city to the sounds of music and firecrackers…

  The reality could not have been more different. The shops and boutiques approaching the Temple forecourt were hung with rainbow banners and paper star-lilies. The most grisly souvenirs Khassian saw were the wriggling water-snakes made of blackcurrant jelly which a confectioner was selling to a crowd of clamouring children.

  ‘It’s too commercial nowadays,’ complained Jolaine Tradescar. ‘Too many stallholders making a profit out of it. Prefer to remember the dead my own way, not in some public jamboree.’

  *

  ‘So – where is the patient?’ Ophil Tartarus handed his cloak and hat to Sister Crespine.

  ‘I’ve sedated her.’ Jerame led the way upstairs. ‘But she’s very weak – she’s taken no nourishment for two days now.’

  ‘Two days!’ Tartarus’s wild eyebrows lifted. ‘Why didn’t you call me sooner?’

  Jerame gruanted an inaudible reply. He could not tell Tartarus the real reason; he had only called him now because nothing he had tried had worked. He was desperate.

  In the darkened sickroom, Orial seemed no more than a pale shadow on the bed.

  Tartarus checked her pulse at wrist and throat, raised her eyelids, one at a time. Orial murmured, twitching at his touch. Jerame clenched his fists, willing himself not to interfere. He must respect Tartarus’s professional judgement, he must remember that the man’s medical methods might be unorthodox – but they were Orial’s only hope.

  ‘How much longer can you keep her sedated? She’s fighting it,’ Tartarus said. ‘And how great a dose can her body tolerate? There’s little enough of her as it is.’ His fingers passed over the scars striping Orial’s pale cheeks. ‘Self-inflicted?’

  Jerame nodded.

  ‘But no other indications?’

  ‘Well, no…’

  ‘Then how can you be certain it is the Accidie? You must stop the sedation at once.’

&nb
sp; A band went along the street below, squeaking out a carnival tune: strident pipes and fiddles scraping to the hectic beat of a tambourin.

  ‘You hear that?’ Tartarus said.

  Jerame nodded grimly. ‘The Day of the Dead.’

  Orial twitched again, jerking her head to one side. Her hand fluttered up, moving involuntarily towards her temples.

  ‘See? She can hear it too. Maybe she can even sense the music from other bands further away. Or maybe all we’re observing is an adverse reaction to the sedative drugs.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous.’

  ‘Your medical judgement seems more than a little clouded by your feelings as a father. Let me take her back to the Asylum, away from the festivities.’

  ‘No,’ Jerame said instantly.

  ‘Of course you want to keep her here, in familiar surroundings. But at the Asylum she will have calm, quiet, experienced nursing. If the fit comes upon her again, we can restrain her safely.’

  ‘I will not have her tied down to the bed like a madwoman.’

  ‘How else can we be sure this is fully developed Accidie – and not just hysteria, induced by excitement and overwork? I need to observe her to confirm your diagnosis – and I can tell nothing whilst she’s so heavily sedated. At the Asylum we can employ the new electrical methods if the fit comes upon her again.’

  ‘You will not subject her to your accursed electrical contraption! She is not a laboratory rat to be used in your experiments.’

  ‘Then, my dear Jerame, if you refuse all the treatments I have to offer, why did you call me in?’

  Jerame did not reply.

  ‘What is worse? To poison her slowly with laudanum, or to risk loss of memory?’ Tartarus came closer, closer, until he stood just behind Jerame, his voice low and persuasive. ‘Ask yourself, what are the alternatives?’

  When Tartarus had gone, Jerame stood looking down at his daughter for a while, a long while.

  Tartarus’s accusations still stung. How could Ophil suggest his medical judgement had become impaired?

  Orial stirred; her lashes fluttered open a slit… then closed again. She was slowly surfacing from the drugged sleep – and it was time to administer another measure of the sedative.