Sedition (3 page)

“Five girls,” Annie said.

“They’re to play at a concert.”

“A concert!” Annie echoed. “My, sir, they must be accomplished.” The candle dripped and Annie, shielding it, curtailed the light. Drigg felt Annie was a nice girl. She would help him do the right thing. “They
are
accomplished. They’re to play for potential husbands at a concert party. That’s why we need a good pianoforte, one that can fill a large drawing room, or perhaps a saloon. We may have the concert at home, we may have it elsewhere. We really need what I think is called a ‘grand.’ We want our girls to have the best. Our girls deserve the best.” His confidence grew as he spoke. Why shouldn’t his idea be a success?

“Of course, sir,” Annie said. Her voice grew wistful. “If your girls want love to flourish, what better way than through music?” Annie did not usually betray her soul’s romance except at the keyboard, but she felt there was romance in what Drigg told her and she was happy to encourage it.

Drigg was happy to be encouraged. “Love?” he confided. “Between you and me, I don’t think they know much about that. It’s not a consideration. Getting on’s the thing.”

“Love’s a good way of getting on, at least in music,” Annie said. “To make good music you must know about love.” She believed this utterly.

Drigg was indulgent. “My dear, I suppose girls like you set great store by love, since, as they say, love is blind. But you see, that’s not the way our girls look at love. They’ve no need.” He closed the lid of the pianoforte with a thump.

“Thank you,” said Annie, her tone colder. She could see the proposed concert now. This man’s satin-skinned daughters, their rosebud lips, the fluffy playing, the false adulation, the offers, the ring, the wedding party, and the faultless children to follow. After a long moment, she said “Come” in her shopkeeper’s voice. “I see now that you need quite a different sort of pianoforte.” She blew out the candle, lowered the lamp, and led him into darkness.

In an alcove apart was a large instrument. Annie swept off the covers. Its brutally handsome frame bore no trace of the experiments with detachable hitch pins, gut lift rails, and skin-packed hammers to which her father had subjected it. Inside, although everything was fixed, nothing was quite mended and, as a result, the pianoforte was unpredictable as a nervy carriage horse. The keys, when depressed, sometimes clanged, sometimes made no noise at all. Strings were always bursting and scraping over their fellows. This pianoforte was destined for butchery. Even Cantabile agreed.

“This, sir, is just the pianoforte for your purposes,” Annie said. “We’ve been waiting for that very special customer. It was too expensive for the Duke of Granchester. But you, sir, with your marvelous girls so anxious to get on, won’t begrudge the money. Would you like to hear it?” She did not wait for a reply.

Annie knew this carriage horse. She alone knew how to coax it, drive it, steady it, and, more important, how to weave its percussive hiccups into the counterpoint. Under her fingers, it would bend its head and accept a rein meant for a harpsichord. This was the pianoforte Mr. Drigg and his dreadful girls deserved. Annie chose to play Maria Barthélemon’s sonatas, works her father had come to admire after meeting the lady herself. He had sent Mrs. Barthélemon his compliments. Mrs. Barthélemon had sent these, with a dedication.

To warm the instrument, Annie spread a chord and executed two quick runs in thirds and sixths. Drigg clapped his hands over his ears. “Mary have mercy! The noise! The clacking of those keys will bring the house down.”

Annie put her hands in her lap. “You wanted a grand pianoforte,” she said. “This is the sound they make.” She half got up.

“No—no,” said Drigg, removing his fingers from his ears. “Sit down. I was only surprised. I’ve never heard one”—he did not want to confess to “ever”—“so very close.” He stepped back.

Annie started again, the Larghetto, not the Allegro. She concentrated. If the music was to work its magic, she needed more from this pianoforte than a grudging acceptance of her instructions. She scolded; she flirted; she ordered; she cajoled. After fifteen bars, the pianoforte submitted. Together, they set to work on Drigg.

Once he grew accustomed to the sound, dimmer and more clinging than the sharp pluck of the harpsichord, there was no sham in the trembling far beneath the skin, a trembling that increased to a nostalgic twitch as the music revived memories of Mrs. Drigg on their wedding night. How shy she had been. The tone changed. Now he was reminded of Marianne’s childish ringlets—sadly long gone—and the tiny eyelashes of his poor dead son. His mouth opened slightly. Through some trick of memory, he could hear a mother sing. Perhaps it was his own. His eyes pricked.

When the music stopped, he cleared his throat. One thing was certain: if Marianne and Everina could play this instrument as Annie had done, so moving, so pure, there would be offers for them before the concert had finished. He spoke as soon as he was able. “A glorious instrument, my dear, and after that first shock, how well it sounds. Shall we return to your father?” It was dark. Annie may have smiled.

“I’ll have the large pianoforte in the back, Mr. Cantabile,” Drigg said, rhyming “Cantabile” with “crocodile.” He took a part-printed bank note out of his pocket. “You know. The one too dear for the Duke of Granchester. Oh, and I’ll need the name of the person who taught your daughter. She plays with great skill. How much shall I write?” He unfolded the note and picked up Cantabile’s quill. He was in a hurry.

Vittorio Cantabile ignored Drigg. He eyed Annie up and down. “That black piano, eh?” Annie stared straight back at him, for once father and daughter rather than aggressor and defender. Cantabile thought, she’s a wily one, this Annie of mine. Why not let the black devil loose to do its worst? Annie thought, don’t deny me this small revenge, Father; surely even to you I’m worth more than this City creature. Cantabile offered the tiniest of nods. Annie felt as if he had embraced her.

“And a teacher?” Cantabile asked. “Can’t your girl play, Mr.…?” He had not cared to remember the name. “Not much point in having a pianoforte, and certainly not that black one, if she can’t play.”

Drigg bridled. “Of course my daughters—as I’ve just told your daughter, I have two girls—can play. All the girls can play. Naturally, they’ll need help moving from harpsichord to pianoforte and I’ve heard that these instruments need to be well regulated. A teacher is skilled in that too, I believe.”

“All the girls?” Cantabile’s face turned to stone. Like Annie, he saw a parade of girlish perfection. Where was the justice in that? Annie took Drigg’s note and removed the lid from the inkwell.

“The instrument is to be shared,” said Drigg, fiddling with his wig. “Although perhaps my Marianne and Everina could have special tuition, at home, on our present instrument, as well as on this one, just to, well, to help perfect their technique?” Harriet Frogmorton’s trim beauty and Alathea Sawneyford’s troubling charms loomed. Marianne and Everina must be best at something. “The girls are to give a concert, you see,” he said in tones he thought commanding.

Mr. Cantabile watched Annie smoothing Drigg’s note. “If you want a good teacher, why not take Annie herself? There’s no better player and she can keep a pianoforte up to scratch. Believe me, you’ll need her for the black demon she’s sold you. She could help your girls at home and direct the concert from the stage. What do you say to that?”

Drigg dropped his wig-ends. “Oh,” he said, “I’m not … I’m not sure … I’m not … you see, they’re … well, they’re … and your daughter is…”

“My daughter’s what?”

“She’s…”

“Yes?”

“Well, you know what I mean. I mean—oh dear—I mean if she perhaps could cover herself up? Then it might be possible, Mr. Cantabile?” Again pronounced wrongly.

“Why should she do that?”

Drigg silently appealed to Annie. She was as stony-faced as her father. “Our name is Can-ta-bi-lé,” she said. “The end does not rhyme with ‘vile.’ It has two syllables:
i
and
é
.”

Drigg felt he had doubly insulted her but how could he apologize without saying rather more than he meant?

“I’m willing to teach your daughters,” Annie said, “if you’re willing to have me.” And how I’ll teach them, she thought. I’ll teach them their just deserts. Her eyes almost sparkled.

“But we cannot have you,” Drigg cried. “You must see.” He could not look at Annie; he looked straight over her head.

Cantabile waved his hammer. “I don’t see at all. You’ll get no teacher as good as she and you’ll get used to the lip.” He cackled. “Useful thing, in fact! If you’ve sons, there’s no need to worry.” He glanced slyly at Drigg’s crotch. “No one will ever want Annie in that way, eh!” He lunged forward and peered at her. Realizing he had hit a nerve, he gave a little crow. “Annie a wife! Why not? I suppose you’d be happy with a blind man?” He turned back to Drigg. “Do you agree, sir. I mean, if a blind man heard Annie play at a concert, he might imagine that only a beautiful girl could create such a beautiful sound. But oh, the horror of a kiss! Like kissing an oyster.”

All sparkle was extinguished in the flood of Annie’s flush. That earlier silent communion with her father over Drigg had been a trap. She should have known. Her concert dream tottered. Her belief that her music could triumph over her deformity began to shrink, her vision of Monsieur kneeling before her to fragment. She tried to blot out her father and bolster her belief, reminding herself that when she was twelve, Monsieur Belladroit had arrived at the workshop worn-out and sad and she had played from Herr Bach’s
Well-Tempered Clavier
. After, Monsieur had kissed her like a grown-up. Not on the lips, to be sure. Nearby. Eyes open. Certainly, Monsieur had not been back to London since then, but that had not stopped Annie’s concert taking real shape. She knew what she would play and in what order. She knew what she would wear. She knew what she would say to Monsieur as he took her hands.

But no matter how hard she fought to keep her dream clean and clear, her father, with his guess, had poisoned it. Even as she struggled, she knew she would never again dream without his tainting intrusion, never again imagine Monsieur’s words of love without hearing her father’s mockery. Monsieur would never kiss her. She stopped struggling and stood helpless as her dream darkened and soured.

Drigg blustered into the silence. “Of course Annie is—of course such a girl would be—of course there’s no question.” He was out of his depth. “Now, look here. You must understand. Sorry as I am for your daughter, Can-ta-bi-lé, and really, her, er, her, her
affliction
is hardly that bad—I see worse, far worse—almost every day. But we need everything to be perfect. We simply cannot have her.”

“Well then, you cannot have the pianoforte!” Cantabile twirled the hammer and shot Annie a bolt of pure malice.

Annie leaned hard on the desk. She was barely aware of making a decision, but a decision was made. There would be no tremor in the floor as she crumpled, because she would not crumple. She went straight to her father’s pride and joy. Cantabile, quick to understand, tried to slam the lid. Annie thwarted him with a shoulder strong enough to unbalance. She sat down. Haydn’s Capriccio in C major sprang from her fingers, spirited, charming, ruthlessly in time. Cantabile righted himself and tried to push Annie off the stool. Drigg, emboldened by the music, rushed forward and knocked the hammer from Cantabile’s hand. The men seized each other around the neck and rocked around the instruments, grappling and grunting. Drigg was short but strong. Cantabile, randomly flailing and kicking, wasted himself hurling abuse. In the end, and without much trouble, Drigg neatly crushed Cantabile’s arms together and they stood locked in a wrestler’s embrace.

All the while, Annie played. It did not matter that Cantabile continued to shout. The music drowned the man. Through the grunts and groans, Drigg listened with new wonder. This sound, this particular sound, was exactly what he wanted. Brighter than the black pianoforte, less smoky, less troubling, this pianoforte caused shudders, yes, but nothing discomfiting—more like shudders of joy. What had he been thinking? He almost blushed. Compared to this instrument, the other was improper. He saw that now. A narrow escape. This pianoforte was the one. It sang like a bird, flowed like water, fortified like wine, and its virginal innocence was just the thing for virginal girls. How could two instruments called the same name be so different? No matter. As Annie’s fingers drew everything from the brown pianoforte that it had to give, the pauses in the music teasing and tantalizing, Drigg dismissed the black pianoforte. Forget that one. This was the ship sailing into harbor, the path up the splendid aisle, the investment paying out.

He let go of Cantabile, who rushed at Annie and slammed the lid almost on her fingers. Drigg said, thinking to be placating, “This is a pianoforte, a pianoforte indeed!”

“Quite right, sir,” Annie said with some animation as she slid past her father and returned to the desk. “It may not be as handsome as the other, which is why I thought it wouldn’t appeal. I apologize. This is the best pianoforte in London, possibly the world. With the other instrument, your girls would amaze. With this, they’ll astound.”

“This piano’s not for sale. You can’t have it.” Cantabile poked the hammer at Drigg. “Nobody can have it.”

Drigg ignored him. “We can pay,” he said. His note had fluttered to the floor. He picked it up and imagined himself telling Frogmorton, Brass, and Sawneyford that he had secured the best pianoforte in the world. “We’ll pay top price.”

“And so you should,” Annie said, picking up the quill. “You’ll not get such a chance again. This piano has six octaves and the pedals—well…”

“Six what? Never mind. How much?” Drigg blew sawdust from the note.

Mr. Cantabile was a dervish between them. “I’ve told you. It’s not for sale.”

Annie opened the inkpot. “There’s no fixed price, sir. You take the pianoforte and I’ll send you my mother’s doctors’ bills.”

Drigg balked. He did not want that kind of a bargain. It was not what he was used to.