The Mystic Marriage
Read The Mystic Marriage Online
Authors: Heather Rose Jones
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Synopsis
Antuniet Chazillen lost everything the night her brother was executed. In exile, she swore that treason would not be the final chapter of the Chazillen legacy in Alpennia’s history. A long-hidden book of alchemical secrets provides the first hope of success, but her return to the capital is haunted by an enemy who wants those secrets for himself.
Jeanne, Vicomtesse de Cherdillac is bored. The Rotenek season is flat, her latest lover has grown tediously jealous and her usual crowd of friends fails to amuse. When Antuniet turns up on her doorstep seeking patronage for her alchemy experiments, what begins as amusement turns to interest, then something deeper. But Antuniet’s work draws danger that threatens even the crown of Alpennia.
The alchemy of precious gems throws two women into a crucible of adversity, but it is the alchemy of the human heart that transforms them both in this breathtaking follow-up to the widely acclaimed
Daughter of Mystery
.
Table of Contents
Other Books by Heather Rose Jones
Author's Note on Pronunciation
Copyright © 2015 by Heather Rose Jones
Bella Books, Inc.
P.O. Box 10543
Tallahassee, FL 32302
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
First Bella Books Edition 2015
eBook released 2015
Editor: Katherine V. Forrest
Cover Designer: Kiaro Creative
ISBN: 978-1-59493-441-4
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
Other Books by Heather Rose Jones
Daughter of Mystery
Author’s Note on Pronunciation
For interested readers, there are three basic rules for Alpennian pronunciation. Names are stressed on the first syllable. The letter “z” is pronounced “ts” as in German. The combination “ch” is pronounced “k.” Non-Alpennian names follow the rules for their language of origin. So, for example, Antuniet Chazillen’s surname is pronounced “katz-ill-en” (hence Gustav’s joke about calling her Kätzlein “kitten”) while Jeanne de Cherdillac’s surname follows French rules and is pronouned “share-dill-ack.”
About the Author
Heather Rose Jones is the author of the “Skin Singer” stories in the
Sword and Sorceress
anthology series, as well as non-fiction publications on topics ranging from biotech to historic costumes to naming practices.
Visitors to her social media will find the Lesbian Historic Motif Project she began to change the unexamined assumptions about the place and nature of lesbian-like characters in historic fact, literature, art and imaginations. She has a PhD from U.C. Berkeley in Linguistics, specializing in the semantics of Medieval Welsh prepositions, and works as an industrial discrepancy investigator for a major Bay Area pharmaceutical company.
Chapter One
Antuniet
Heidelberg (July, 1821)
Antuniet looked up from the ruined crucible on the workbench and swore softly. Dawn had come and gone while the delicate mixture cooled from a glowing slurry to a glassy, charred lump. Another failure. She checked the astronomical alignment on her zodiacal watch—rather, her mentor Vitali’s watch that he’d lent her in Prague. She felt guilty every time she looked at it. It was twelve hours since the firing began and the watch showed Virgo just rising. The instrument was still accurate; the process had begun according to the instructions. Altmann should have been here to tend to the furnace, but she was too honest to lay the blame on her absent assistant. The cause was impurities in the materials; it had to be. In Prague she’d had reliable sources for the best, but here in Heidelberg it was buyer beware. She’d need to start refining her own ingredients and that would add weeks to every step of the process.
She looked out at the gray sky and tried to judge the time—Vitali’s watch was no use for ordinary hours. She slipped it back in the pocket of her skirts, stilling the twinge of guilt. Someday she must return it to him. Someday when she dared return to Prague. The loan of it hadn’t been meant to last this long. Had the bells rung the hour yet? She couldn’t remember. No, there they were, echoing over the distant market calls and the clopping of the cart horses crossing the Old Bridge. Still another hour before there would be students expecting her. And since it was the tutoring that paid for the equipment and supplies, it was sleep that must wait. Antuniet closed her eyes just for a moment. The weariness swept through her and she felt herself sway dangerously. What would it be like to let it all go? To leave her past entirely in the hands of the dead? To change her name from Chazillen and never return to Rotenek? But then what would be left to live for? Everything else had been cut away by the executioner’s sword.
The memory of her brother Estefen’s betrayal could still leave her shaking with rage. Not his treason against the prince, but his betrayal of the family. His stupid, selfish, greedy, shortsighted… She slammed her fist against the tabletop to pull her mind back from that dark path. One thing remained: the oath she’d sworn after the night of his execution. Estefen would not be the Chazillens’ final legacy. She would find a way to restore their honor in spite of everything.
At first, the alchemical Great Work had been no more than a distraction from what she’d lost. A turn of fate had transformed it into her first true hope of redemption. No, she would start again because to let go of the work would be to let go of all reason to live.
She banked the coals and methodically put things in order, setting the crucible aside to finish cooling before it went into the rubbish heap. Just before leaving, she took out the stub of a candle—carefully hoarded since she’d obtained it from the altar at Saint Leonhard’s in Prague—and lit it from the remains of the fire. With the door closed behind her, she worked a brief mystery over the heavy iron lock. Saint Leonhard was the patron saint of prisoners, but the curious logic of patronage gave him responsibility for locks and locksmiths as well. The brief prayer, sealed with a drop of the consecrated wax, would keep out the ordinary run of lock picks. A faint, flickering light ran across the iron telling her that the saint had answered.
She glanced up and down the street to see if anyone had noticed. Heidelberg had worked free of the worst of the religious battles of the last centuries, but her Lutheran neighbors still looked askance if one worked the saints’ mysteries in public. She pinched the wick out. She had only one more of the candles when this one was used up. Experiments with remelting it into ordinary wax to extend the effectiveness had proven useless. For the thousandth time she wished she could master the more powerful version that would allow her to sense when the lock was being meddled with. The apparatus for that was harder to obtain, calling for a true relic of the saint and a text written in the presence of his altar. She hadn’t the time to experiment and see if substitutions could be made. But if she’d had just that much warning, she could have brought more possessions away with her from Prague. At every move she left more behind. She gave a mental shrug. She’d saved everything that mattered.
As she worked her way up from the riverside and along the Hauptstrasse toward the heart of the students’ quarter, the streets were beginning to fill and Antuniet elbowed her way through the tide, heading for a narrow alley off the Heumarkt.
If she had at least three students today she could purchase a new crucible. If she could hold off the landlady until next week. And if she didn’t eat. It was tempting to accept Gustav’s persistent offer to take her for dinner at the Golden Falcon. Most of the students who came to her for tutoring were there to be drilled in Greek and Latin. Gustav von Lindenbeck also used it as an opportunity to lay siege to her virtue. She’d known so many young men like him back in Rotenek: rich, privileged, accustomed to being granted whatever their whim of the moment might be. When she’d been Mesnera Antuniet, niece and then sister to a baron, she’d found his sort merely tedious. Now it was a delicate balancing act. Not so rude as to drive him away, but not the slightest hint that she would bend to his will. For him it was a game to greet her with ever escalating offers of gifts and luxuries. It was clear he doubted her claims to virtue—virtuous young noblewomen did not traipse about Europe on their own, earning their bread by tutoring—but her refusals were no game. If just once she stepped across the line that lay between her and Gustav, it would be impossible to redraw it. No, she could put off the new crucible until next week and spend the time trying the alternate method of calcination.