Daughter of Mystery (25 page)

The office door was locked, as might be expected at a time when businessmen took dinner. No late hours in this part of town. She pulled at the bell that would ring upstairs and in a few minutes Iannipirt was there, greeting her as an old friend. He motioned her up the stairs ahead of him, not so much for courtesy as from the stiffness of an old wound. That wound and his raffish moustache were the only souvenirs he’d kept from a brief stint conscripted into the hussars during the French Wars.

LeFevre rose from the table in some concern on seeing her. “There’s nothing wrong?”

“No—that is, Maisetra Sovitre is well. I—” She looked over at Iannipirt as he bustled to clear a pair of plates from the table. “I want to ask about…a personal matter.”

He looked at her oddly for a moment then laid a hand on the other man’s arm and said, “Ianni, leave that for now. Could you set us up with some tea then make yourself scarce?”

When they were alone, Barbara found it easiest just to pour out the tale of her shadow and the confrontation. She would have preferred to leave out the matter of the book, but then how to explain her disguise? And it would be against a lifetime of habit to lie to him. There was no one alive who knew more of her secrets, not even her confessor. He listened carefully and nodded occasionally and when she had finished asked, “And so?”

Here Barbara faltered. “I know there are things you can’t…you may not tell me. But what if the secrets of my past make me a danger? Who is this man? And what does he think I can pay him?”

LeFevre sat silently, staring into the bright coals that did double-duty in warming the room and heating the kettle. It was the same look he had when calculating long sums so Barbara waited patiently for the equation to resolve.

“The baron had his reasons,” he began at last. “Even if he’d had none except his whim, my tongue would still be tied. But there are reasons still current why you must remain in the dark. I
can
tell you that those reasons will end when the terms of the baron’s will are fulfilled, and you may know however much you choose on that day. But there are plans still in train that would be marred or broken beyond repair if the wrong people knew all the baron’s secrets. Even I don’t know all his secrets,” he added.

Barbara stood and began to pace impatiently. “But the danger is
now
. I’m being followed and watched. And if I’m being watched then Marg—Maisetra Sovitre is being watched.”

“And is she doing anything that won’t bear watching?”

She turned on him and said, “No!” a bit too hastily. “But I don’t like it. And he threatened to make the Maisetra pay whatever this debt is I’m supposed to owe.”

“No,” LeFevre said confidently. “He tried to make you
believe
that he could make her pay—which nearly got him killed, I understand. But he has no power to touch her by law. And if he tries other means, that’s what your protection is for. And—believe me when I tell you this—he currently has no power to touch
you
by law.”

She frowned at him uncertainly. “How do you know?”

“Let me—hmm.” He tapped a finger against his lip as if working through a problem. “I believe I can thread my way between the baron’s commands to give you something of an understanding. Let me think on it.”

He escorted her down through the office to the street but at the moment before taking leave another thought came to her.

“What do you know of Charul Pertinek?”

LeFevre shrugged. “A nice enough fellow from all I’ve heard. A neighbor of yours, isn’t he? The family are sound but they’ve tended to breed beyond their income. I think there was some illness in his youth that kept him from trying military life. No politics that I’m aware of. He—” An incredulous expression came over his face suddenly. “He’s never made a play for Maisetra Sovitre!”

Barbara grinned. “Well, yes, perhaps. But not the one you’re thinking of.”

“The aunt?”

Barbara nodded and he shook his head wonderingly.

“There’s nothing been said in so many words yet, but—” She shrugged. “I find it hard to believe he’s fallen madly in love, as they say. But neither does he seem to have illusions of fortune-hunting. Still and all—”

“—perhaps I might make discreet inquiries?” LeFevre finished for her.

“Only because it touches on the maisetra’s security,” she added hastily.

“Of course.” Unexpectedly he burst out laughing. “Oh Marziel! You had no idea how far the ripples would spread!” And to her, “Go, go. I’ll see what can be done.”

She was left wondering which of her errands he covered with that assurance.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Margerit

It was nearly a week before she’d worked her way sufficiently through Gaudericus’s circuitous prose to begin answering the question that had sparked her interest. There had been promise enough at the beginning. That was clear from the allegory with which he began.

A blind man may shoot an arrow, but how can he know whether the target is struck? A one-armed man may tell him where the arrow strikes, but if he has never pulled a bow, how can he tell him how to improve his aim? A charlatan will shoot ten arrows then name the targets after they are home. In battle, forty archers loose a flight of shafts and one strikes the enemy, but each man takes the credit. So it is with the working of mysteries.

Barbara had said something much the same on that day they first debated Fortunatus together. The Mechanistic Heresy she had called it: the idea that the mysteries could be teased out into equations and formulas if only one knew how to measure them. Fortunatus may have flirted with the heresy but Gaudericus was a serious mechanic.

It was another thing entirely to move from that promise of understanding to its fulfillment. Gaudericus seemed to have created his own language to describe his philosophies: a bastard mixture of the Latin of formal theology with bits of Greek that he used to distinguish his own theories and occasionally a wordless glyph when all available language failed.

At first, Barbara dove as deeply into the text as she did, sorting out the places where he left familiar paths to strike out into the wilderness. Barbara’s Greek was far better than her own and better suited to the obscure language of Gaudericus’s code. But when it came to matching the text’s descriptions with her own experiences and memories she could sense Barbara’s growing frustration.

“You talk about
charis
and
periroe
as if you could see it right in front of you!” she burst out one evening after another puzzled description of the oddities at the cathedral.

Antuniet’s words came back to her.
Not everyone does, you know.
Did Antuniet see things? She wasn’t ready to ask. There was something in the other woman’s cool aloofness that made her want to be sure of her own ground first before exposing herself. Now that she was analyzing them, she saw her memories in a new light. Her childhood visions were coming back in more clarity through the habits of dismissal and denial that had been imposed on her. It was time to unlearn those habits—to stop simply accepting the movement of trees and clouds and re-learn to see the wind.

Margerit put her pen carefully back in the stand and rubbed her eyes. When she started thinking in Gaudericus’s flowery metaphors it was time to stop for the day—the night, really. Once again she’d outlasted any trace of movement downstairs. She felt a twinge of guilt. Barbara had long since gone to bed but Maitelen would be waiting up for her, or more likely napping in the chair by her fire. Margerit had once suggested that she didn’t need to wait up when she was only studying and didn’t have the complexities and ornaments of an evening gown to undo, but Maitelen had responded tartly that she hoped she knew her job better than that.

Once she was changed into nightclothes and alone again, Margerit slipped out of bed for one further question. It seemed strange that she couldn’t recall ever noticing the
fluctus
—the swirling flow of colors that tracked the forces at work—during her private prayers and celebrations of minor mysteries. It only appeared during the formal public rites. She pulled out the small medallion of her name-saint that she always carried and called to mind the oldest of the daily mysteries she’d learned. One she knew best by heart. The familiar Latin formulas rolled off her tongue almost without thought.

She strained her perception, trying to see actively what had always been a passive thing before. Nothing. Was it a matter of setting? Did it need more people? Was it the nature of the petition? Was it that she, herself, was only a Seer and not a Doer? But no, there had been Chertrut’s blossoms. For all that Gaudericus took a practical approach, her questions still seemed more specific than his answers. Perhaps the best plan was to begin where she had last seen the greater effects. Not at Sunday’s Mass; the Holy Mysteries just…were. If anything, the contemplation of Christ emptied her mind rather than filling it with visions. No, she’d try afterward, when people stayed behind in the cathedral for more personal and pointed conversations with the saints. That would be the time to watch and see what was to be seen.

* * *

Aunt Bertrut was not so much surprised as amused at her apparent sudden devotion. “Is there something in particular you need to pray for?” she teased.

“I’m…studying,” Margerit offered as explanation. “There’s no need for you to stay. Barbara will be with me, of course.”

And Mesner Pertinek, who had happened by no chance to be standing near, offered quietly to see her aunt home. Margerit saw him exchange the briefest of glances with Barbara and found herself wondering what might have passed between them in those hidden negotiations of the world of armins. At what point did Bertrut’s personal life become Barbara’s professional concern?

“Take the carriage,” she offered. “I don’t know how long I’ll be and it wouldn’t do to leave the horses standing. We can walk home.” Indeed, it was only the rules of fashion that made a carriage necessary for the short trip to the cathedral at all.

When the others had been swept away in the crowd of departing worshippers, Barbara asked, “What do you have in mind?” Her tone implied some doubt of the stated purpose. Margerit realized that she hadn’t had an opportunity earlier to share her plans.

“Watching some small mysteries. I didn’t ask—that is, I know I don’t usually need you after Mass on Sundays.”

Barbara shrugged, but it was the shrug that said whatever plans she may have had were set aside.

Those coming to the church to work personal mysteries, Margerit reasoned, would choose the side chapels: the spaces and altars dedicated to the favored saints of the city. She chose the Lady Chapel as her starting place, mostly for the greater traffic it saw. On the opposite side of the aisle from the chapel proper, set against a screen that stood between two pillars, there was a plain wooden bench. Margerit settled herself where she could easily see all those who knelt at the altar, bringing candles, relics, prayers and the other essentials of their petitions. She schooled her mind to a waiting—if not entirely patient—stillness.

Although the Virgin’s petitioners were many—there were rarely fewer than six or eight figures present—it seemed nearly an hour before the first hint of
visio
brushed against her senses. It came when an elderly woman, a widow by her clothing, drew out a slip of folded paper. She spread it out and tilted it to catch the flickering candlelight. As she stumbled indistinctly through the words written on it, the paper seemed to take on a soft glow. Margerit caught her breath and leaned forward. From the corner of her eye she saw Barbara stiffen and shift her stance to look around, then relax once more. Now the widow folded the paper once more and lit a candle from one of those already burning around the base of the altar. She held the twist of paper into the flame. The light flared, blooming into a quickly-fading haze that enveloped the woman’s hands until the heat of the flame forced her to flick the last scrap into the pooled wax beside the wick. The widow seemed to notice nothing. She whispered her way automatically through an
Ave
then crossed herself and struggled to her feet and moved slowly out of sight through the next archway.

If she had looked away for two minutes she would have missed it. From another angle, the
concrescatio
—the flare when the petition was concluded—might have been lost against the light of the earthly candles. And from the look of patient resignation on the widow’s face at her departure, she had no knowledge that her supplication had been heard so clearly. What had she asked for? The shape of her petition was a common one, differing only in the nature of the verses, the symbols on the paper and the saint to whom they were addressed. Gaudericus had indicated that the form of the
visio
would often echo the nature of the mystery, but as always he had been maddeningly unclear. Perhaps something to do with her hands? But that could mean anything from relief for rheumatism to a plea for skill in some work.

While she was still contemplating those questions, a second flicker of
fluctus
caught her eye but this time it was brief and off to one side. By the time she had turned her head to follow it, it was gone.

When another hour had passed, Margerit had learned one important lesson: she had been looking too large. The splendid swirls and swellings of color of the formal public mysteries were as the noonday sun to starlight. And like starlight, the flickers and glows of these small personal mysteries were often best seen obliquely. On two occasions, when she stared directly, only mundane objects remained, but when her eyes slid past, the other light returned.

She was beginning to suspect one other thing that Fortunatus had hinted at. The notice of the saints—if that was indeed what she perceived—was not granted for need or for devotion or for depth of learning or even to those most in want of grace. The young mother, come to plead for the life of a child wracked with fever, was lit only by the golden candlelight. An older man who had not brought any petition at all but was making a circuit of the side chapels was followed by the faintest of afterglows as he moved, as if his whole self were a mystery waiting to be invoked. The young man in scholar’s robes who laid out the paraphernalia of an elaborate invocation stirred a bright, complex vision that dissipated abruptly, leaving him untouched by the Virgin’s blessing. For some who were touched, the
fluctus
sometimes seemed to come from within; for others it centered on the objects and actions of their celebration. Once, when a cloaked figure passed by without pausing, the altar itself shimmered briefly, like the ripples on a lake caused by a passing breeze.