Jo Graham - [Numinous World 05] Read online

  I looked away from the window, and when I looked back he was gone and the line of carriages was in motion again.

  Was he happy? How could one know? They had two children, a boy nearly two and an infant three months old. There was no gossip of strife between them, no separate residences or at least no more of such than his duty required. It had been three and a half years. Did he think of me sometimes? I rather doubted it. Such things were not meant to last, not for a young man on his way up.

  If I had no lover at the moment it was rather a relief. I had spent too many years at the beck and call of one man or another to want one just now. I did not need to have a patron at the moment, and I must face that I was not as young as I once was. Of course twenty-eight was not dead and buried, but there were younger, fresher faces in town. It was time to learn to declaim Racine rather than to rely on looks alone.

  Of course, being the Emperor's agent ought to eventually pay something. He had been generous enough in the past that I had not liked to bring up money. But I would hardly expect a purse for doing nothing, which was precisely what I had been doing.

  Best to prepare while one could, I thought. And so as that long winter turned into spring, I did my theatrical bits and spent an afternoon a week with Signore Vincenzio, the fencing master Michel had originally taken me to in Paris. I also added two mornings a week of shooting. While I had killed a man with a pistol on the road from Milan, it required no special marksmanship to hit a man at point blank range. Now, clad as Charles, I practiced target shooting industriously until the instructor asked me if I intended an affair of honor.

  "It is always possible," I said mysteriously, and let that stand. For all that I enjoyed fencing more, I had no doubt that under many circumstances a pistol would serve me better. A bullet pays no attention to size or physique, and I was well aware that I did not have the strength or the reach of most men I would face. So my father had taught me when I was a child, and so I had learned well.

  In my earliest memories he had been a fencing master -- sometimes. Sometimes he had been a gambler and made our way at the gaming table, my father, my mother, my younger brother Charles, and I. It had always been only the four of us, the four of us against the world. But sometimes he had been a fencing master, giving lessons for pay to guardsmen and children alike. He had taught us together. Charles needed someone to practice with, and after Charles had died there had been only me.

  My father had laid the saber in my hand, spreading my fingers a little and laying my thumb over the pommel. “Like this, princess. Don’t clutch it. Hold it firmly and lightly. It’s not heavy.”

  It wasn’t, even for my childish hands. It was a practice saber, thinner and lighter than a real one, but it curved just as a saber should, with a basket hilt to protect my hand. Even with my left arm held straight out in front of my body and the foil extending outward, it was no strain to hold it. I straightened my body in my boy’s clothes, eight years old and tall for my age.

  My father smiled. He was a big man with brown hair pulled back in an untidy queue. He shaved in the evening for the gaming table, and so morning always found him with a prickle of beard along his chin and across his upper lip. He smelled of sweated velvet, brandy, and tobacco smoke. “Get the feel of it. You move from the wrist and shoulder, not from the elbow. The elbow just flows along.” He took my right arm and moved it down and low. “Now when I was learning they were doing this silly thing of holding your off hand up in the air next to your shoulder. It ruins your balance when you’re using a real sword. And now the fashion is to tuck your off hand behind your off hip. It minimizes your profile in a duel, but again, it throws you off with a real sword.”

  “Have you used a real sword?” I asked. I had seen him fence with students and with friends often enough over the years, but never with anything more than a dress epée.

  A shadow crossed his face. “I was a hired sword for five years before I went to Amsterdam,” he said. “Yes, I had a real sword.” He took my right hand and positioned it low again. “Keep your off hand natural. It helps your balance.”

  We were in the garden of a house in Genoa. It belonged to some friend or other of theirs, smaller than the place we had had in Rome, but exquisite, all rosy stone and gardens with antique bronzes. We had left Rome as soon as we could travel.

  My father and I had recovered well from the fever that had killed Charles, though my mother was sick for weeks, and when at last the fever broke she was left so thin and pale that her skin seemed little more than paper stretched over bones. Her glorious platinum hair had been cut, and it made her head look like a skull.

  She would not believe that Charles was dead. She had not seen him die. She had not seen his body, and a gravestone could belong to anyone. My father explained over and over that Charles had died while she was so ill that she could not attend him, could not see to the funeral. She did not believe him, or for that matter anyone else. She was certain that Charles lived. Now she stayed mostly in her rooms, walking a bit about the house and gardens, eating little and regaining little of her strength.

  My birthday had come in September, and I was as strong and active as before. And I had my father to myself.

  There were no parties here, just card games for a few gentlemen that broke up well before dawn, sometimes leaving my father flush with coin and sometimes not. There were no masques or balls. My mother had no friends here. And there was nothing to remind her of Charles.

  Nothing but me.

  My father was correcting my stance, moving my breeched knees into the right pose, when she called out from the door of the house. “Charles! Dear sweetheart! Come here right now and give me a kiss!”

  My father and I looked at each other. I dropped my point, and my father took the practice saber. We walked to her together.

  “Adeline, this is Elzelina,” my father said quietly. “You know that Charles is gone.”

  She seized me in a hug and kissed my brow and my cheeks. “Dear, darling boy! Oh my sweet boy!”

  “Adeline, this is Elzelina,” my father said again, one hand on my shoulder, his voice low and urgent.

  She glared up at him. “Leo, it’s unkind to play games with me. You know I hate to be reminded of our lost angel. Elzelina died in Rome.”

  A chill ran down my back and I stood stock still while she caressed me.

  My father took her hands and drew her up, searching her face. “Adeline, dearest, this is Elzelina. Charles died in Rome. We lost Charles.” His face was white beneath his tan.

  “We didn’t,” she said, and her face was paler than his, a fine film of platinum down covering her head, a finger’s length long. “We lost Elzelina, and it was better that way. I could not have stood losing Charles.”

  I don’t know what my father said, because I broke from them and ran out into the gardens, running until I found the most remote corner. There was a place where the rosy bricks of the wall made a small walk beneath an arbor, a love nest with a fountain. There were roses in abundance climbing up the wall, their blossoms nearly spent. When my father found me later I was sitting on the rim of the pool watching the droplets fall from an urn held by a laughing cherub with an erect phallus. I was not crying.

  He came through the arbor quietly and sat down beside me. He was only thirty-four, but for the first time I thought he looked old. His jaw was beginning to sag a little, his waist was broader than it had been, and his eyes were bloodshot. His lace cravat was mended, and as usual he hadn't shaved. “Elzelina,” he said. “Your mother isn’t well.”

  I shrugged, watching the fall of the water.

  “She’s not right in her mind. She can’t help it.”

  “She loved Charles more,” I said.

  He trailed one hand in the water. “We can’t help who we love. All parents try to love their children and love them equally, but we can’t. Because we’re not perfect, and there are things we like better than other things and people we like better than other people. We try to be fair and kind
and do what’s right. And when we’re in our right minds, we never say things that hurt. But your mother isn’t in her right mind. She’s very sick. And she can’t help the things she said.”

  I watched the water falling off his fingers, splashing back in the fountain. “Do you love me?”

  He smiled and didn’t raise his head. “I love you more than anyone in the world. You’re fearless and clever and beautiful and warm. You love dogs and cats and horses, roses and sunshine and beat up old bronzes. You can make anyone smile. And you want to know everything there is to know in the world, questions I have no answers to. Why do clouds move? What is there above the stars in the firmament? Why do people have wars and fall in love? You’d stump a philosophe.”

  I looked at him sideways. "I want all the stories there have ever been," I said.

  He lifted his eyes and met mine. “I love you more than you can possibly imagine, princess. You’re the most wonderful daughter in the world, and I am proud of you every instant of every day.”

  I felt the prickle of tears in my eyes, and asked what I knew I shouldn’t. “Do you love me more than Mother?”

  “God help me, I do,” he said, and looked away. The fountain ran on, water endlessly recirculating. “Differently, of course. But more. Adeline has never had your courage. The world is a dangerous place, Elzelina. If you're not quick and brave enough you get swallowed up by it. It has nothing to do with being good. Only with being strong."

  I waited.

  My father shook his head. “She's not weak, or she’d never have survived the childhood she had. But it's left her…damaged. I don't know if she can ever be whole. You know your grandparents died when she was a baby, and she lived with her uncle, yes?”

  I nodded.

  He ran one hand through the water. “He did things that were wrong, things that men shouldn’t do with little girls, with his own niece and his own daughter both. Adeline was fifteen when I met her, and she was getting over a miscarriage. He had beaten her when he found out she was pregnant.” He didn’t look at me, but his mouth twisted wryly. “These things happen, even in the best families.”

  I said nothing. I wasn't entirely sure what he meant.

  “I convinced her to run away with me. We’re not all like that, I said. I promised her I would keep her safe.”

  “You loved her,” I said. I understood that.

  My father almost laughed, tilted his head back in the sunshine. “I did and I do. And I’ve done everything I could to keep her safe. We’ve built a life. Not much of one, sometimes, but we get along. And every time I start thinking about mercenary work in Bavaria or Hesse, or of going off to the Indies or something, I have you and her like a silver chain. And I will never leave.” He looked at me. “I will never leave, do you understand, princess?”

  “I do,” I said, and put my arms around him, pressing against his worn frockcoat. “I love you too, Daddy.”

  It was in the autumn a year later that the letter came. My mother’s uncle was dead, and there was some legal matter. I heard my parents arguing about it when I came in from the garden covered in mud from climbing vines and falling off the wall. I stopped outside the door and listened.

  “You said we’d never go back,” my mother said. “Leo, you promised! You promised I’d never have to go there again, never see that house again.”

  “Dearest, your uncle is dead,” he said gently. “He can’t harm you now.”

  “You don’t understand,” she said, and I knew from her voice that she was crying. I slipped closer, so I could see them through the crack with the hinges where the door stood half closed. She was sitting on the sofa and he was kneeling in front of her, holding her hands. “You don’t understand. You promised me, Leo.”

  “Adeline, it’s a great deal of money.”

  “I don’t want any money from him.”

  He shook his head. “It’s not from him. It’s your parents’ money that he had in trust for you. He should have given it to you when you came of age, if he’d been an honest guardian. Your parents would have wanted you to have it.”

  “I don’t remember anything about them,” she said. “You can’t appeal to me that way. You know my father died before I knew him and then my mother committed suicide.”

  My father sat back on his heels, releasing her hands. “Adeline, we need the money. You know as well as I do that we can’t go on like this.” His voice was low and sad.

  “I know,” she said softly.

  “And what kind of future can we give Elzelina this way? A dowry if I win at cards? Who's going to marry her? No respectable young man. Don't we want better for her than being the mistress of anyone who can afford to keep her, or worse?”

  “And what kind of career for Charles?” she said. “He’ll be old enough that he needs to go to school soon. We need to send him somewhere. I don’t think we can afford a tutor who is any good.”

  My father dropped his head, but let it go. “Adeline, it’s a fortune. And it’s yours. All we have to do is go to Amsterdam and sign some papers. Then we can come back to Italy or go wherever you want. We never have to set foot in Amsterdam again.”

  She shivered and reached for his hands. “Leo, you don’t understand. There’s a curse on that house. Everyone who lives there is unhappy. It’s haunted by old slaughters. By our tainted blood.”

  He stroked her fingers. “There are no ghosts, dearest, except in our minds. It’s a place of horror for you. I see that. But your uncle is dead, and no harm will come to you now. You are beyond his power forever and ever. Is it worth it to throw away our entire future because you’re afraid of his ghost?”

  She searched his face, and seemed to draw some strength there. “You will be with me, Leo? You will protect me?”

  He nodded. “I promise. I will be there. Nothing bad will happen in Amsterdam.”

  I don’t remember much of our journey. It was in the early fall, and the weather came down to meet us in Grand Saint Bernard, lashing freezing rain at us in the pass. We pressed on, my mother and I huddled in furs and lap rugs. My father rode beside the carriage on his great gelding, quiet and concerned. My mother was prone to fits of shaking, when her body would convulse and her limbs tremble. It got worse the further we went from Italy, as though the pass itself were a barrier in her mind. She spoke seldom, and then did not know me at all. I was only Charles.

  One morning I woke in some inn I did not remember arriving at, got up and went to the window. The mountains rose to one side, snowswept on the heights, the road already a handspan deep in snow where we had traveled yesterday. Below, the valley gave into a rich plain, trees bright with autumn, leaves of a million colors bright as paints, the wind coming to me cold and touched with the scent of apples from the orchard just below the wall. The sun had not yet risen, but the sky was primrose and birds were calling.

  My mother was still sleeping but my father was not there. I got up and dressed quickly, went down to the inn yard and climbed onto the wall.

  Somewhere below a dog barked. Morning came. The sun was rising behind the mountains, spreading their shadow onto the town and fields. Grapes were purple on the vines. I hugged my arms around me.

  My father came and stood beside me.

  “It’s beautiful,” I said.

  “La Belle France,” he said. “Frenchmen say there is no more beautiful country on Earth. And they may be right. I have seen some beautiful places, but this is beautiful indeed.”

  “I had to get up and see,” I said. “I might miss something.” I sniffed the air like a hunting dog. “Anything could happen. There could be anything just over the hill.”

  My father laughed. “Do you suffer from pothos then, like Alexander the Great?”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  He thought a moment. “Longing,” he said. “But more than that. It’s hard to translate, and I had only started Greek when my father died. The desire that has wings.”

  “Like an angel,” I said.

  He ruffle
d my hair. “There are no angels or demons either. No ghosts or evil spirits. Those are just things that people made up to help them explain the world. But now we can explain the world rationally, through logic and science. We don’t need those things anymore.”

  “We don’t?”

  He smiled at me. “Because of pothos. Because people wanted to know. Because there have always been people like you and me who wanted to understand things and know how they work. And because of that we’ve sailed the seas and tamed the earth. Religion and superstition just give people an excuse to fight with their neighbors.”

  “What happens when we die?” I asked, and he knew I was thinking of Charles.

  My father folded me in his arms. “We end,” he said. “And nothing more.”

  Perhaps he meant it for comfort, but I had found none in it as the years passed and one after another went ahead of me into the dark.

  The Emperor's Hand

  The Emperor's coronation was past, and soon winter passed as well. Spring came, the glorious days when Paris was at her most beautiful. Roses bloomed in every garden, and the theaters made ready for their summer hiatus. I had nearly stopped waiting for the Emperor's summons. Perhaps he had forgotten me, or perhaps he had never intended for my fevered promises to come to anything.

  It was a warm night on the cusp of summer. I was coming in from dinner with Delacroix and some friends a little short of midnight, and almost did not pay attention to the immaculately groomed lieutenant of the Imperial Guard waiting downstairs in my apartment building. He sprang to his feet when I came in. "Madame St. Elme?"

  "I am," I said.

  He bowed very politely. "If it would not inconvenience Madame to accompany me? There is a certain gentleman who would like to speak with you immediately. He sends his regards, and hopes that you are still amenable to your agreement."

  "Yes," I said steadily, though my heart was suddenly beating fast. Anyone who had heard us would think we were speaking of an assignation. But I knew who it must be.