Revenant Eve (41 page)

The city streets were pretty clean. That, too, was a result of the resolutely enlightened Emperor Joseph II. It was strange to think that this guy had died only thirteen years before. At least he didn’t see the horrific excesses of the French Revolution, or what happened to his little sister, Marie Antoinette.

The trio took a coach into the inner city, which was an amazing tangle of narrow streets and palaces, a fantasia of statuary, carvings, ironwork, bow windows, fountains, and pediments rich with images from Greek, Roman, and Christian myth.

Jaska looked around with a kind of alert, subtle tension, then finally
said to Aurélie, “I will take you directly to the Piarists, or you will have to wait until Monday, as they will be busy from Maundy Thursday through Easter.”

The coach stopped outside a street too narrow to admit passage. The walls were high with no windows. A door was fitted into them, however, with a tiny peephole. Above the door jamb was a bell pull on a chain. Aurélie rang the bell.

The elderly nun who opened the peephole said, “We do not interview during Holy Week. And we only educate the daughters of the poor.”

She began to shut the peephole, but Aurélie leaned up and said quickly, “I am sent by Madame Bonaparte. I’m a woman, and I must speak to the prioress.” Her French accent was unmistakable.

The door opened, and Jaska said from the coach door, “I’ll return for you.”

Aurélie cast him a distracted glance then followed the nun inside. She was conducted into a plain, clean hall. Distant voices could be heard—girls’ voices praying, rising and falling in unison. Aurélie in a small room furnished with nothing but a couple of benches and a crucifix on the wall.

“It smells of incense here,” she whispered to me. “Oh, that takes me back to Saint-Domingue.” And she put her hand to her chest, where she had been carrying her mother’s letter inside the waistcoat, ever since that night at Saint-Cloud.

An older woman appeared. From her manner she had to be the prioress, though her robes—plain black except for the thin band of her white wimple—were exactly like those of the first nun.

She sat down on the bench next to Aurélie. “You wish to speak to me, my daughter?” Her French was accented and quaint.

Out came Josephine’s story, exactly as Aurélie had heard it. “And so,” she finished. “What can you give her for a cure? She said she would pay anything. See? I brought these gold coins all the way, minus a small amount as my portion of our travel.” Aurélie brought out the small purse and shook its clinking contents.

The prioress bowed her head and was silent for a time, then opened
her eyes. “It is true that some of us can, at times, see and hear a little of the world unseen. Our sacristan is one of these. We also know enough to effect cures for some of the ills common to this world, though that is not our primary calling. But I would have to see her directly.”

“She is in Paris and does not believe the First Consul would let her come here to consult you.”

“Sometimes,” the prioress said, “the path we see is difficult to explain, except in terms of sacred image. Are you a daughter of the church?”

Aurélie said, “I was baptized by my grandmother in Saint-Domingue, but I have been part of many traditions.”

The prioress was again quiet for a time, then lifted a hand. “Here is what I can tell you in practical terms. The way to Paris lies in shadow. The reason you were sent, a young girl, traveling in dangerous times, instead of a diplomatic query, is the very reason you cannot return.”

“But I must return,” Aurélie said. I could hear the stress in her voice. “I promised Madame that I would.”

“If you do, you will endanger her.”

“Madame Josephine? Endangered by my return? How?”

“Your reappearance, even with a verbal message, will occasion exactly the questions your friend wishes to avoid.”

“The
mouchards
,” Aurélie exclaimed as I said to her, “She’s right. You can’t go back to Paris.” Relief flooded through my invisible self.

“Then I must send her a letter,” Aurélie said.

“A letter would meet the same treatment. However, I know of a way to get an answer to her through ecclesiastical channels. One of our order is being sent to Paris to consult with fellow Christians who are re-establishing schools. I can charge this nun with a simple message to your friend that will not endanger either party. If Madame wishes to hear what I have to say, she must find her path to me. She has the means. She must have the will, and perhaps I can do something for her, even if it is only to attempt to give her peace.”

Aurélie handed the prioress the remainder of Josephine’s gold coins. “I think she’d want you to have these, for your students. Perhaps you could pray for her, until she can come here?”

“We will put the money to good use,” the nun said. “And we will dedicate a Mass to her.” She made the sign of the cross between them, and said, “Go in peace, my daughter.”

Aurélie thanked her politely and walked out. The moment the outer door shut, she leaned against the whitewashed stone wall, her eyes closed.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

“I am giddy,” she whispered.

“With relief that you do not have to go back to Paris?”

She opened her eyes. “No. Yes. I’m glad that I needn’t return to Paris, but I cannot say I need never again be afraid of Bonaparte, because is he not going to bring war all this way?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Duppy Kim, the conversation with the prioress, I dreamed it. Every word, only it was as if I saw myself through someone else’s eyes.”

“When did you do that?” My relief vanished like smoke, leaving me kind of creeped out.

“Long ago—very long. So long ago I had forgotten, until she began talking about Madame Bonaparte. I think it might have been when Aunt Kittredge confined me to my room for lying, or right after. None of it made sense, because I did not then know what
eine Priorin
—a prioress—was, or a Piarist, or who Madame Bonaparte was. I had never heard the name ‘Bonaparte’ when I was twelve. I only knew of her by her previous name, which was Rose Tascher de la Pagerie, and sometimes Madame de Beauharnais.”

“Aurélie, I think you are dreaming people’s actual lives.”

“Yes. I came to that conclusion a fortnight or so ago. Each woman who wore the necklace. But this is different, because it’s part of my own life.”

“You saw a possible future,” I said, trying to be comforting. “Dreams can’t harm you, even if some of them don’t end that well.”

Aurélie’s hands pressed flat against the gray stone wall, her eyes wide. “You don’t understand. There is one more dream with me in it. Jaska is in it, too. In some place I have never seen.”

I kept back a yip of joy. “That can’t be bad,” I said cautiously.

“But you are also in it. Standing next to me, in your body.”

S
HE BROKE OFF AT THE SOUND
of horse’s hooves and wheels rattling over cobblestones. She looked as scared as I felt. I was in my physical form, in her time?
This cannot be good
.

She fingered her pistol inside the waistcoat as a very fine carriage pulled up, a coat of arms painted on the door. Then I recognized the Dobreni golden twin falcons, each holding sprigs of green, one acanthus and the other amaranth, against a red background.

Aurélie pulled her fingers away from the grip of the pistol when the door opened and Jaska leaped out. “Come inside,” he invited. He was still in his travel clothes, his forehead taut with tension.

Aurélie settled onto the bench opposite him and looked around appreciatively. “This is a very fine coach. Where did you find it?”

“It belongs to the legation from my homeland. Dobrenica is a subject of the empire, and my friend Hippolyte is first secretary to the legate. I’ve taken the liberty of engaging you a hotel room, which we’ll go to directly. Feel free to give orders for laundry and to have your coat brushed. Or did you wish to become a female again?”

“I thought of that.” Aurélie set her satchel down, dug way to the bottom, and pulled out a tight roll of fabric, which unrolled to disclose one of her pretty little French gowns with the cap sleeves, edged with Grecian patterns.

In Paris this gown was the latest fashion, perfectly tasteful. But a single day’s look at people on the streets of Vienna made it plain that here, Paris fashions were out of place. Aurélie regarded the rumpled gown in dismay, then shoved it back into her satchel. “Perhaps I’d better go as I am.”

Jaska said, “Yes. There’s another aspect that we didn’t consider. As a young lady, you’d require a maidservant. Those are easy enough to find, but more difficult would be a suitable
dame de compagnie
.”

Aurélie sighed. “
Les convenances
. It’s so much easier to be a boy.”

“So my sister used to say, when we were small. She used to steal my clothes from time to time, and go out as me. Everyone was properly scandalized when at last she was caught, but I sometimes wondered, what’s the harm, really, when she did nothing but what every boy does when he has time on his hands? No one could give me sufficient answer except,
Her reputation will be forever ruined.
” He smiled.

Aurélie smiled back, and I waited impatiently for her to ask more about his family. Her lips parted. But then she gave her head a tiny shake and said, “’Twas the same in England. My cousins and I couldn’t understand it either.”

Jaska gestured toward the coach window. “I’ve a suggestion. Vienna is famed for her music, and Hippolyte told me that there is an oratorio being performed tonight by a newcomer named Beethoven. He and a Herr Wölffl are reputed to be the best pianists since Mozart, and he also writes music, they say. There’s a new theater out by the market.”

Her whole face brightened with anticipation, causing his to brighten as well.

He’d arranged for a room in a hotel not far from St. Stephen’s, whose bells echoed carillons down the stone canyons of the streets. The hotel seemed to cater to young, well-born secretaries to ambassadors and legates, and to local imperial officers, couriers, and gentry-class music students.

As servants carried up hot water to the copper tub set in an alcove off the room, she retreated to the window seat and looked down at the busy street below.

I poked her and asked, “Why didn’t you ask about his family?”

She blushed. “I thought it would be too forward.”

“He looked like he wanted to tell you.”

She pulled the mirror up and peered earnestly at me. “I thought so, too. And yet I’m afraid. If he answers such questions readily, will he not want to ask the same sorts of questions from me?”

A servant came into the room to inform ‘the young gentleman’ that the bath was ready and would he like anything else?

She dismissed him with thanks and retired to the bath. When she emerged, her damp hair fluffed and curled around her neat queue. She dressed in her second-best shirt and waistcoat and breeches. The servant had brushed her coat and borne the rest of her clothes off to a laundry. She looked very young as well as strikingly handsome.

She arrived downstairs to find Jaska waiting in a sober-colored coat, his hair neatly tied back, his cravat plain, no rings or fobs. It was impossible to guess his status, from his clothes—he could have been anything from a prosperous middle class student to a slumming prince.

Here was something new, though. The expression on his face as she appeared, was quick and unguarded. And tender.

But she didn’t have the experience to see what I saw. She blushed and wouldn’t look at him at all as he opened the door and led the way out.

When they reached the street, she absently smoothed her ruffled curls off her brow and said, “Where is Mord?”

“He left for a place called Eisenstadt, but he’ll return.” Jaska glanced down the street, then back. Then he electrified me by speaking quickly, as if he’d rehearsed his words: “I hoped you would consider riding with us to visit my homeland.”

Aurélie gave a start.

“Sorry,” I whispered. “I did not mean to poke you.”

Jaska continued, “…and I flatter myself by thinking you might like it in spite of its being small and provincial, as the French say. There is always music. It resembles Vienna in that way, though Riev is a very small capital of an equally small kingdom. But—” He switched to Latin. “They understand magic there, and they might be able to help your spirit
to return to where she belongs. And Mord is going to rejoin me on the road,” he added, as if that offered additional incentive. “He has no home to go to, like you. Though Dobrenica has been subject to the empire for over a hundred years, our laws respecting the Jews are closer to the Polish enlightenment.”

If I’d been breathing, I would have held my breath.

But Aurélie didn’t hesitate. “Thank you. I would like to see your homeland.”

If I’d had a body I would have cried for joy, and grief, and worry, and…well, you get the idea.
Okay, that’s the first hurdle. Now for his identity
…
and I hope by then I’ve figured out why and how I’m to save Dobrenica
.