Daughter of Mystery (36 page)

The lights came up for the interval and Margerit insisted on the long walk around to the Aruliks’ box where she had seen the Waldimens were guests. Barbara had been keeping a wary eye out for the vicomtesse and she appeared at last as they returned to Margerit’s box.

“And how are you enjoying the performance?”

Margerit curtsied and invited her to join them but the offer was waved off. “The music is very pleasant,” she answered politely. “I confess my Italian is better for books than for singing.”

Jeanne leaned toward her with a conspiratorial air. “You should ask Barbara to translate for you. Her Italian is excellent and she loves opera.”

Margerit smiled faintly and thanked her as the sounds of the orchestra called them to their seats.

Barbara took her accustomed place by the door but as the singing began Margerit beckoned her over to her side. “I haven’t been following it much except that it’s all ancient Greeks and battles and such. What’s happening now?”

Barbara knelt beside her and leaned close to whisper so as not to disturb the rest of the party. A brief synopsis of what had gone before took up the time while the chorus escorted the principals to the center of the stage. “I haven’t seen this performance before,” Barbara added, “but I imagine this will be the grand love duet.” As the soprano began she concentrated on the stage to follow the opening phrases. The chorus had abandoned the field to the principals who faced each other against a backdrop of fluted columns.

“O! What strange fate is mine!” Barbara paused as the signature line was repeated several times. “I loved you in the guise of Mars, but now I am betrayed by Venus. The iron in your glance turns soft beneath my touch. I am undone. O Venus, you are cruel to mock me so.” It continued on in the same vein until it was the mezzo’s turn. Her lyrics ran much in parallel with the soprano’s. With less concentration required, Barbara ventured a glance to see Margerit’s reaction. Margerit turned at the same moment and their eyes met as Barbara whispered Ifis’s lines.

“O! What strange fate is mine! In the guise of Mars I loved you, but now as Venus I’m betrayed. The iron in my soul turns soft beneath your touch.” Unconsciously, Margerit placed a hand on hers where it lay on the arm of her chair. “Fire runs through my veins—I am undone.” Fire indeed ran through her veins. Her hand burned sweetly where Margerit touched it and she dared not take it back. Her voice grew husky. “Why do the gods mock me with desire I cannot sate?” Their eyes were still locked and Margerit’s lips had parted in a little “o” of wonder. “O Venus, have mercy on one new come to your shrine.”

When the soprano joined again for the duet, Margerit breathed along with her, “O! What strange fate is mine!”

With an effort, Barbara wrenched her gaze away. “And now they’ll repeat the whole thing over again for another quarter hour.” They both turned to watch the stage again as the singers joined hands and sang an intricate counterpoint of their two themes. When the next scene began, Barbara confined herself to merely glossing the lyrics in short descriptions.

The finale was grand and triumphant and hollowly disappointing. Barbara could see it left Margerit troubled and she dodged the opportunity for awkward questions by sitting up with the coachman for the return home.

It was less possible to escape when the Pertineks had headed upstairs and the servants had dispersed into the back hallways. Margerit stayed her with a hand on her arm when she would have slipped away as well. “It didn’t seem fair or…or just.”

Barbara waited. She didn’t want to second-guess what Margerit meant.

“It was as a woman that she loved her. There was no need for the gods to change her to a man.”

Barbara shrugged. “That’s the way these stories always end. If there isn’t a miracle then there’s a convenient twin brother waiting in the wings.”

“And what if there are no brothers or miracles available?”

They were standing on the edge of a precipice. Barbara wanted to do something irrevocable—to take that plunge against all duty. Instead she kept herself to a wry smile. “In that case, I guess they’ll have to muddle through as best they can. Good night,” she added firmly and turned to mount the stairs without looking back.

Chapter Forty-Five

Margerit

Margerit had envisioned the spring floods as coming with a torrential downpour, the skies dark and roiling with clouds, the gutters swelling with runoff until you couldn’t tell the difference between streets and streams. But they started on a bright sunny day. A light sprinkle had passed through just around dawn and there were still a few wisps of clouds overhead. The mountains to the east were cloud-capped, as always. It started with a change in color. The center of the great Rotein where the current ran quickest grew pale and muddy. The color spread and the surface grew troubled, hinting at activity below. Along the banks, the water began to rise. You would look away for a moment and then back to see another bit of pathway swallowed up.

The gardens had long since been cleared of any movables—the heavy marble benches were not counted as such. The early flowers had bloomed and gone but later there would be work for an army of gardeners setting things to rights and setting out the summer plantings. The lowest levels of the house were cleared. It wasn’t common for the water to come so high, they said—only once in ten years or so—but prudence was best. Everything crowded upward, like petticoats lifted to avoid a puddle. Boxes stood in every hallway.

But however much inconvenience it caused, tradition ruled that flood season didn’t begin until water covered the feet of the statue of Saint Nikule where he stood watching over merchants and boatmen at the wharfside. Late one afternoon Margerit heard the bell at the saint’s chapel ring twice to mark the event. Then, like an echo, every other church took up the simple two-tone signal and the city was released from the bondage of custom. A few carriages passed through the gates before dusk—those that had only a short distance to go, or those whose road required them to cross the bridges before leaving and who didn’t care to gamble on what the footings might look like in the morning. But for the most part the departures began in the morning with the stately dignity of a ceremonial procession, not the air of hurried flight.

It seemed, like all else in the city, that the exodus at flood-tide had its layers. Those at the top dispersed to their country estates. For them, the floods weren’t the end of the social season but only marked its transition to a less formal venue, like the annual arrivals in Chalanz. Next were those who flowed out in their wake, taking advantage of whatever ties and obligations could be claimed to enjoy a week’s holiday. They would return to their homes in Rotenek neighborhoods not quite fashionable enough to have been in danger from the waters. Lower down were those for whom flood-tide meant only a temporary bar to movement and a pause in all but the most desperate river traffic. If their homes were threatened by the rising waters, they had nowhere but the streets to flee to.

The university held to a stricter calendar than society. While the students might have their flood-tide holiday with the rest, the lectures stretched out until the term was complete, whatever the river might do. And as Chalanz was too far for a week’s holiday, at first Margerit thought to join the Waldimens and another family in nearby Iuten for the festival there. But once again she bent to Aunt Bertrut’s ambitions—no, ambition was the wrong word. The invitation from the Pertineks was only to be expected and it would be rude to refuse regardless of what advantages it might confer. Particularly as her aunt would be constrained to accompany her whichever invitation she accepted.

The Pertineks’ country home reminded her in many ways of Aunt Fulpi’s family home at Mintun. It had the feel of a working estate—the sort that supported a family’s wealth rather than draining it. The multitudinous Pertinek clan that rubbed elbows so closely on the Vezenaf spread out and blossomed here. Cousins who had been silent faces at a dinner grew garrulous and good-humored. Names that had previously eluded memory acquired personalities. And, of course, there were any number of people—some merely acquaintances of the family—that she hadn’t met before.

They all knew her, it seemed. New additions to the gathering were not so common that she and Aunt Bertrut hadn’t been discussed and speculated over long before they stepped down from their coach. In the strict and formal confines of Rotenek, such obvious scrutiny would have been intimidating. Under the relaxed atmosphere of flood-tide it had more the air of marketplace gossip. The consideration was not all one-sided. In ten days of picnic luncheons and garden walks, Margerit learned more about the prominent figures of Rotenek society than she had gleaned in the previous half year.

The old Pergint place on the Vezenaf had finally been sold after years tracking down the last heir and of all people Estapez had purchased it. “And you know he got his hand in before anyone else because he has the right friends in the palace. Chozzik thought it would be his. He even tried to challenge Estapez over it but his duelist wouldn’t fight. Said there was no insult to being the princess’s friend so there was nothing to defend.”

“Friends won’t be there forever. Chozzik’s ship was left high and dry when old Lumbeirt died. No one cares for his opinions now but the wheel will turn for Estapez some day.”

Even the royal family and the question of succession evaded their usual constraints. “Elisebet must have smelled the wind changing. I hear she’s talking to the old men these days and not just their sons.”

And among those of an age to remember, Alpennia’s small part in the French Wars was refought at tedious length. “Tarnzais should never have happened. They should have known long before the battle that it was no mere border skirmish where a handful of bright uniforms and a cavalry charge could serve the needs of honor.”

“I don’t think they could have known. The world was turning differently. Our alliances had always held the balance—” the speaker crossed himself reflexively “—and the protection of Saint Mauriz, of course. How could we see this was a new age with new ideas and new rules?”

“All I know is we lost the flower of our youth that day and for what? For a shameful treaty and years of tribute.”

“The Atilliet did the best he could, and that considering what he himself had lost.”

There were nods all around at that and a few murmured blessings for the souls of the lost princes.

“Not everyone lost that day,” came a querulous voice. “She’s proof of that.”

Margerit realized this was being said with a nod in her direction.

“Yes, Marziel Lumbeirt turned out to have quite a knack for turning manure into roses.”

There was a pause, as if waiting for her to make some objection. She ventured, “I really know very little about my godfather’s history.”

As if to oblige, the topic turned in that direction with a confused jumble of voices. “I’m not sure you could count it part of Lumbeirt’s luck that his brother died at Tarnzais. Remember that the title wasn’t worth much then. It was afterward he turned things around.”

“Turned around—that’s one way of putting it. There’s a name for a man who turns a profit in wartime when all around him are wearing last year’s clothes. And that’s aside from the matter of soiling his title with trade.”

“Well, when the profit was made at the expense of foreigners, I’m willing to make that name ‘patriot.’”

“But what did it get him in the end? Never married. He certainly wasn’t doing it for his sister’s boy—those two were always at cats and dogs. I know he was a strange and acid fellow, but you’d think that some woman would have dared the chance.”

“I always rather fancied that his heart was broken by an unrequited love.”

“The way I heard it, it was requited well enough. Problem is, it was another man’s wife. And that would explain rather a lot, I th—”

The speaker broke off, calling more attention to the thought than completing it would have. Margerit once again saw eyes turn toward her. She rose, feeling her face flush brightly, and fumbled for a response in the sudden hush. “I don’t…you…”

From behind her, Barbara’s voice cut through in a carefully even tone. “You have come perilously close to slandering Maisetra Sovitre’s mother.”

There was a nervous titter from the direction of the speaker. Someone else said, “Come now, it was only ancient gossip, nothing more. No names were named.”

And then Uncle Charul was taking Barbara aside and speaking rapidly and intensely to her, too low to hear. Margerit stood frozen, not knowing what to do, knowing only that she couldn’t face these strangers at the moment. She turned and strode out of the garden, heading blindly out along paths that led back toward the manor.

The tiny room she shared with two other guests was an uncertain refuge. By luck it was empty and she locked the door behind her. There hadn’t been tears before but they came now.
Is that what they all thought?
It was ugly.

There came a tap at the door and Barbara’s voice. “Maisetra? Margerit?” Of course. There was no question that she could be left alone.

“Go away,” she called out, knowing that Barbara would do no such thing.

There was a brief respite and then a hand tried the door and Aunt Bertrut’s voice came through. “Margerit, let me in. Don’t be such a child.”

The idea of throwing herself on the bed sobbing had already lost its appeal. Her aunt, of all people, could answer her questions. She turned the key in the door.

“It’s not true, is it? What she said?”

Aunt Bertrut entered with a brisk no-nonsense response. “Do you even have to ask?”

Bertrut took her face in her hands and gazed at her with sympathy. “These people may know old gossip about the late baron, but I knew your mother. She and my brother came to love each other very deeply. I saw how happy they were together. The only mystery around your birth was the one your mother went to Saint Orisul’s to ask for.” Her voice became softer, remembering, as they sat together on one of the beds. “They had been trying for so long. You had a brother, you know, who only lived for one day. The others—not even that. Your father wanted to…to let things be. Each time it was harder and she wasn’t strong to begin with. She thought the only hope left was a miracle—and here you are. Does that sound like a woman who had need for a passionate affair with a stranger?”