Revenant Eve (42 page)

“You want me to go to his country?” Aurélie asked later.

I’d made so many mistakes that I’d resolved to start small. If she asked questions, I’d answer only that question. But no information offered beyond. “It has a reputation for its music. And magical studies,” I said.

She looked down at her hands for a long time, as if turning ideas over in her mind. Then she changed her coat and neck cloth and brushed her hair again, to prepare for the night’s concert.

From the first broody chords of the oratorio, Aurélie was enthralled. All the way back she and Jaska talked about musical theory, and both predicted a great future for Herr Beethoven with all the enthusiasm of a couple in our day who has just discovered a great new band.

Over the next few days, they attended as many musical events as Jaska could locate. He was scrupulously careful, treating her rather like James had, as if she were a fellow student, but betraying by little signs his awareness that she wasn’t, in spite of her boy’s wear. I don’t think she saw them, because she avoided his glance and kept a scrupulous distance, betraying her own growing interest only when his gaze was elsewhere.

Occasionally, Aurélie glimpsed the elusive Hippolyte (de) Vauban, a
tall Frenchman with an eye-patch, so homely he was appealing. Or maybe it was his smile, his air of gallantry. He appeared and vanished like a stage magician, supplying the legation coach and tickets. He also looked at her with an interest that made me wonder if Jaska had confided in his old army buddy.

I hoped to get a hint about Jaska’s identity from Hippolyte, but he was too circumspect. The only time Aurélie and Jaska got into personal stuff was when the bells tolled at midday on Good Friday, when everything was draped in black. “Do you not wish to attend Mass?” Aurélie asked. “Or are you still an apostate?”

Jaska looked around their café with an air of discomfort. “Mord once said that he was angry at God for the curse of free will. That we had to live in a world that contained Russians like Suvorov and Cossacks who could murder good people like his grandfather and his intended wife. I share that anger, yet a world without God somewhere makes no sense. That is, it implies no meaning when anyone can see there is an order to the stars and in the patterns of small things, to the patterns of colors in the shells of snails. Perhaps, though, I am merely unwilling to live in a world of no meaning.”

Aurélie gave a short nod of agreement.

“But I am not ready to confess and to mean it. ‘Thou shalt not kill’ is one of the Ten Commandments, a mortal sin. I killed in the battle at Praga. I enjoyed it. The first death was a Russian who looked this tall when he came at me.” Jaska held his hand up high. “When he was dead at my feet, his face smoothed out, I saw he could not be any older than I was. After that…it was easier. If God is there and listens to us, then He knows what lies in my heart. Until I get home…” Jaska looked away bleakly. “I have a close relation in the Benedictines. We used to debate. He always had a knack for explaining things,” Jaska added, then said with a quick, sideways look, “Mord will only marry within his religion, if he marries at all.”

Aurélie spread her hands. “I pity his wife, if he does choose to marry. That is, I’d pity her for having to support his moods, though she would be a very, very lucky woman if he plays music for her.”

Jaska listened to that with muted surprise. She tipped her head. “He is a very romantical person. A little like a fire, I have come to see. Very bright, but you do not want to draw too near.”

“He is a very loyal friend,” Jaska said, his tone reflective, midway between relief and question.

“Very,” she agreed. “My cousin Diana is just such a one.”

On Easter Sunday, they were out in the streets with the Austrians when St. Stephen’s rang the
Pummerin
, the great bell—one of the largest in all of Europe. Its deep, voluminous sound reverberated through stone and wood and bone and muscle. That day, I noticed no winged beings around, though I could not tell you if there was a connection.

The next day Jaska appeared at Aurélie’s hotel with a pair of excellent horses, and they departed for Dobrenica.

Alec, I’m coming home
, I thought.

E
ISENSTADT WAS NOT THAT FAR
from Vienna. Mord was waiting for them on the road that afternoon, looking like something out of a vengeance movie with a killer soundtrack—you know, like
Reservoir Dogs
—with his wild hair, scruffy chin, violin case in one hand, sword, pistol, and cavalry carbine in a holster at his back.

“There are more seraphs following you,” he said by way of greeting.

Aurélie slewed around on her horse (she was still a death-grip rider) and I saw…nothing.

Mord blinked. “They evaporated. But they were there.”

“Let’s go,” Jaska said, clucking his mount into a trot. “I would rather get to an inn before dark.”

We didn’t see any more of them as the days wore on, and we gradually moved into increasingly wild countryside.

I was not prepared for the cascade of memories and emotions when I heard the first clickety-clack of waterwheels, hidden in the soft fan-spreads of fern and wild tangles of ancient trees. Dobrenica is basically a large comma-shaped valley surrounded by mountains, whose streams and rivers trickle and splash into countless gorges and vales and hollows, some of which get only the occasional shaft of sunlight during the warm months of the year.

Jaska seemed to expand as we neared his homeland, or maybe the
guises of soldier, student, diplomat, and aide de camp all coalesced. He didn’t turn gabby or bossy. I don’t think Mord would have put up with that—or Aurélie, either. It was more that he seemed to draw on a sense of alertness, even responsibility, which you’d expect when taking people to your home turf. Yet he still didn’t talk about his life there.

Then we reached the border.

What would be a rough few hours’ drive in my time was now a week of tortuous travel up a very narrow road that too frequently dwindled to the width of an animal path, due to fallen trees or rocks or landslides. Then the road would widen again as it caught up with hidden thoroughfares between concealed villages.

Jaska said one night, as an entire small inn turned out to welcome them, “I sent a message ahead with the legation courier. We should be met along the road here somewhere.”

The next morning, as they rode out under the still dripping conifers into a world scrubbed into bright spring colors by a midnight thunderstorm, they heard noise ahead that resolved into many horse hooves. The rumble of male voices was punctuated by the ring and clatter of heavy martial gear.

Mord rammed the book he had been reading into his saddle bag, snatched off his spectacles, then snapped the carbine out in two practiced moves. Jaska put his hand to his sword, and Aurélie whipped from the saddle sheath the pistol that she had not fired since they had reached Linz.

The first of the cavalcade arrived. Pistol and carbine leveled, sword loosened in scabbard.

Then Jaska let out a shout of laughter. “Piotr Andreyevich! I did not expect you so early.” Mord and Aurélie holstered their weapons.

The leader was a slim guy of about twenty-five, dressed in the eighteenth-century version of the Vigilzhi uniform; that is, the deep cuffed sleeves and full skirted coat of blue, the cross belt instead of a Sam Browne, a plumed shako instead of a helmet. The front of the shako had the same brass plaque of the Dobreni falcons as the one on the Vigilzhi helmet of modern times.

This particular shako was worn at a rakish angle on wild blond curls that framed a face with the sharp cheekbones and uptilted eyes that hinted at Mongol ancestry. He held up a gloved hand to slow the column following behind him, drew his horse alongside Jaska’s, then murmured in Dobreni, “
She
would have it her way.”

Jaska whispered in consternation, “You do not mean Irena?”

“Insisted. And as her brother is my commanding officer, and you did not specifically order to the contrary…”

Jaska became aware of Aurélie’s and Mord’s curious looks at either side, and his horse sidled, ears back. “René—Aurélie—Mordechai, this is Captain Piotr Andreyevich Danilov, of the King’s Guard,” he said in French, then quickly, in Dobreni, “How long do we have?”

“She hadn’t left the Golden Chestnut when we departed. We thought we ought to ride ahead as fast as we could.” He moved his horse aside as someone left the column and approached. This was a tall, sober-faced young woman with a hint of blond braids under the hood of her riding cloak, diamonds winking at her ears.

“Margit,” Jaska exclaimed with unmistakable relief. “I knew I could rely on you. Though I did not mean to put you to this trouble. A trunk would have sufficed.”

The hood was thrown back, disclosing a pretty bonnet above a face so much like Jaska’s it was instantly clear that not only was this young woman his sister, she was his twin.

She drew her horse alongside Jaska’s, laughing and crying both, then leaned out to grab his arm. They kissed, the horses sidled, ears awry (unlike their riders, they did not know one another) and Margit whirled her mount back into line with an expert turn of wrist and knee.

Then she swept a speculative gaze from Aurélie’s much battered hat to her mud splashed, worn soled, buckled shoes. With that steady, assessing gaze still on Aurélie’s masculine coat and her trousered legs, Margit said in Dobreni, “Irena is not far behind.”

“We will have to ride back to Mierz.”

“Did you leave suitable clothing in Mierz?” Margit asked, without removing her gaze from Aurélie.

“All we have is what we carry,” Jaska said.

“What is the problem?” Mord asked in German.

Aurélie’s wide gaze flicked from one to the other, as in the distance, the clopping of hooves heralded new arrivals. Not knowing what was going on, she nipped her pistol from the saddle sheath and held it ready as Margit muttered in Dobreni, “I always fight fair,” to her brother, and fumbled at the neck of her cloak. She gathered the fine yards of wool in her arms as she kneed her horse closer to Aurélie, who looked at her with a pucker of apprehension in her brow.

Margit snatched off Aurélie’s hat, and then, with a quick flick of her wrists, threw the cloak around Aurélie’s shoulders. “Pull it together. Pull the hood forward,” she ordered in German.

Aurélie stuffed the pistol in her waistband and pulled the cloak around herself. She tugged the hood over her head about five seconds before another cavalcade of Vigilzhi (or King’s Guard, as I guess they were called in 1803) appeared, with another woman in their center. This woman was short, wearing a masculine-looking riding habit that made the most of a very curvy figure and a ramrod-straight back. An enormous diamond glittered in the lace at her high collar, and I bet myself it was loaded with anti-vampire spells. Her black hair, drawn away from an extravagant widow’s peak, was pulled up into a dashing riding hat rather like a laced shako with wide scarlet ribbons pulled down to tie under her chin. Wide-set black eyes gazed from below straight brows, in a face pale as porcelain.

“Jaska.” Her voice was high and clear. “We could not wait a moment longer. Seven years!” Her clear tones tried, convicted, and sentenced Jaska to a lifetime of guilt. “Seven
years
.”

“Irena Sergeyevna,” Jaska said, without answering the prosecutorial query. The black-haired Irena forced her horse between Jaska’s and Aurélie’s, and he kissed the gloved hand she held out imperiously.

He relinquished her hand and indicated Aurélie. “May I present Lady Aurélie de Mascarenhas, and here is Domnu Mordechai ben Aaron Zusya.” And to the two, “Countess Irena Sergeyevna Trasyemova.”

Irena had no interest in Mord at that moment. She lifted her brows
and made a business of searching the air earnestly behind Aurélie, as if to spot an invisible train of respectability. “Donna Aurélie?”

Again the accusatory tone.

Jaska said, “Alas, Donna Aurélie’s maid—” He faltered.

Margit took over without a hitch. “—is down the hill, with a delicate complaint. I shall have to make suitable arrangements, but leave such tedium to me, Irena. Why don’t you lead everyone back to the Golden Chestnut? Domnu Balik will require a number for ordering dinner.”

Aurélie looked down at her hands in their masculine gloves and let the hood fall over her face. “Where have you come from?” Irena asked of Jaska. “Your mother—”

“I beg your pardon,” Jaska interrupted, speaking in German. “But not everyone understands Dobreni. We will continue in a tongue comprehensible to all.” And for the next forty-five minutes or so, as they rode up the mountain from where the cavalcades had just come, Jaska spoke steadily, in German, about all the musical events in Vienna. Nobody got a word in edgewise.

We rode past a stone plinth, which I took to be the official border into Dobrenica. Jaska’s music lecture ceased when the road widened, and the hard-packed ground gave way to stone flagging. A village of stone houses appeared, their walls cream-colored, the roofs sharply slanted. Window boxes were everywhere, including in the dormer and attic windows, giving the buildings a festive air.