Glamour in Glass (10 page)

“I see. They are very pretty.”

“I am working glamour like Papa.” Miette moved the prism again. The rainbows danced on the marble stairs as the prism twisted in the sunbeam.

“What a good girl you are.” Jane sat on the stairs by her, content for a moment to enjoy the simple pleasures of forming a connexion with a child.

Entirely trusting, Miette slid one of her small hands into Jane’s and smiled up at her. “Mama says rainbows are
flèche lumineuse
. Is that true?”

Tripped by the words she did not know, Jane was forcibly reminded that she did not even have the vocabulary of a child, but her embarrassment was less acute than had she been speaking with an adult. “I am not certain. What does
flèche lumineuse
mean?”

Miette shrugged. “Decorations. Like at a birthday party.”

“Oh, yes. That is what I have heard. When Zephyrus wed Iris they … made their wedding pretty with glamour. Rainbows.”

“I like them!” Miette clapped her hand, forgetting the prism, which momentarily obscured the rainbows. She hummed a wedding march and stuck the prism back in the sunbeam, bobbing her head in time with her own music.

The rainbows dimmed as a cloud slid across the sun. Miette made a small sound of despair. “The party!”

Beyond the window, the sky had become quite dark, with the sort of heavy clouds which presage a snow-storm. Jane reached into the ether and pulled out a single fold, which she tied off into a strand of sunshine falling from floor to ceiling. With all the other glamours in the house it was barely noticeable, but for the bright patch it seemed to cast on the floor. She guided Miette’s hand into the light. Though more faintly than before, rainbows still danced around them as the glamour bent on its path through the glass.

Jane cocked her head to the side, staring at the prism. All her life she had known what prisms did, and yet using one
with
glamour had never occurred to her. Doubting her memory of the glamour for rainbows, she grabbed another fold and divided it to match the colours Miette’s crystal cast. To weave the rainbow, she split the glamour in exactly the way the prism split light. Jane let her vision expand into the ether, watching the sunbeam she had created for Miette and the way it neatly split itself inside the prism to emerge on the other side in a collection of dancing rainbows. The sole difference between Jane’s glamoured rainbow and the prism’s rainbow was that the glamoured one was fixed, unless Jane added additional folds and threads to make it dance.

Miette’s prism took a simple glamoured sunbeam and scattered it into rainbows, which she was moving with no effort.

The glass, in effect, contained the pattern of a glamour
which could be moved.

In a flash, Jane’s head filled with the pattern of other glamours, and how each visual illusion was composed of the threads which might be described in the colours of a rainbow. The way they bent and twisted could—she was certain—be
recorded in glass.

The epiphany was so strong that Jane was at the foot of the stairs before she realized she had decided to stand.

“Where are you going?” Miette called.

“To find my husband.” Jane paused only long enough to say, “Thank you for the rainbows!”

Seven

Ensconced in Glamour

Jane matched intent with action and, gathering her skirts, dashed across the courtyard to the studio. Bursting inside, she tried to slow down to a semblance of reserve, but her excitement moved her through the space at a speed which only narrowly escaped being a trot. Jane spotted M. Chastain standing with M. Archambault, the student who had created the glamour
à la Chinoiserie
.

“Madame! What can I do for you?” Chastain left M. Archambault and met her half-way.

“Forgive me for troubling you, but I wanted a word with my husband.” She looked past Chastain, expecting to see Vincent ensconced in the glamour.

“I am sorry your trip is for nothing. He left shortly after you.” He smiled. “Is there anything I can help you with instead?”

“No, thank you.” Though Jane was bursting to talk of her idea, she wanted to share it with Vincent first. On reflection, she thought that it was probably prudent as well, for if there were a flaw in her scheme, he would spot it. “Did he say where he was going?”

“Back to the house, I believe.”

Jane thanked him and returned at a slower pace to the house, wondering how she could have failed to see him, sitting as she was on the main stairs in the entrance. The wind had kicked up while she was indoors, and the first snowflakes, which had been predicted by the dark clouds drifted down, encouraging her to speed her way into the house. It was quite possible that he had entered during the very moment she had her epiphany, as her sight had been directed almost entirely inward.

The idea of catching a glamour in glass would not let her go, so she went to the parlour, hoping to find Vincent there. Mme Chastain sat sewing by the fire, and Jane had to endure some conversation with her as the snow coated the courtyard. Her thoughts ticked in time with the falling flakes as she spun through the possibilities opened by her discovery.

She had to constantly apply herself to keep her attention on Mme Chastain. They spoke of the children, the weather, and dinner parties to come, none of which held the slightest interest for Jane at that moment.

She resisted the urge to ask Mme Chastain for the addresses of glassblowers in town, though she wanted nothing more than to start experimenting right away. More than that, though, she wanted her husband.

As if someone had unstitched a pillow, the snow-storm wiped the courtyard from view in a wash of white. Miette and her brothers scampered into the room to seek their mother’s permission to go out and play.

With this excuse, Jane made her escape and went up to her room. Though she could not see how it was possible to have missed Vincent on the stairs, she could still set her thoughts down on paper, which would give her some measure of peace. It might be that she would discover a flaw in her thinking as she did so.

And yet, Jane was certain that she would not. The theory was sound; the practice would be telling.

She opened the door to their rooms, anxious to begin at once, and stopped with her hand on the door. Vincent’s coat, snow melting on its shoulders, hung on a chair by the fire and dripped upon the hearth. Her husband stood at the table by the window, his hair plastered against his skull and his high collar quite wilted by the damp. “I believe the snow is wetter in Belgium than in England.” He dropped a paper into his writing desk and locked it.

“You are soaked through!”

“Believe me, I am well aware of that.” Vincent undid the buttons at his cuffs.

Jane hurried to his side and began working at the buttons down the shirt’s front. “Where have you been? I have been searching everywhere for you.”

“The studio.” He lifted his cuff to his mouth to pry a stubborn button with his teeth. “Caught by the snow on my way back.”

Jane pulled his arm away and undid the button herself. His hands were cold to the touch. “I was just there, and M. Chastain said you had returned to the house.”

“I had planned to, but was delayed.” He slid the shirt off, revealing his broad shoulders and the deep ribcage of a glamourist. “Why were you looking for me?”

Now that it was time to explain her idea, Jane’s doubt in her own abilities came back with force. “I had an idea and wanted to share it with you to see if you thought it had worth.”

He waited, prompting her to continue by his attentive silence. She explained. “I chanced upon Miette on the stairs, and she had a discarded crystal from a chandelier. She was using it to make rainbows on the wall.” Jane smoothed the damp shirt and carried it to the fire, hanging it on the corner of the mantel, suddenly afraid that her idea was without merit. “It occurred to me that the prism bent the light in exactly the same pattern I use to create a glamoured rainbow. It seemed, looking at the prism and the rainbow, that one might craft a glass that could bend glamour in other ways, almost like a lens.”

“Of course. Isaac Newton demonstrated this in his treatise on opticks. But splitting glamour into colours has no practical use other than giving us a greater understanding of how visible glamour relates to light.” Vincent shook his head. “Besides, Newton’s theories have been discredited by Thomas Young, who proved that glamour and light are not particles but related wave forms. The effect is interesting, but not useful.”

Jane clenched her jaw, momentarily annoyed that he would assume that she had not read the latest works. Young’s paper had been written in 1803, and she had read it eagerly. “Actually, it is Mr. Young’s theories on the wave nature of glamour which led me to the realization that since glamour affects certain substances it might therefore be possible to record a glamour’s pattern in glass. Such a record might stand in for a glamourist’s hands, and create a path that the glamour is compelled to follow. The visual aspect, at any rate. I do not think it would work with other folds.”

Vincent stood exactly as she had left him, feet spread wide and hair slicked against his skull. His eyes glazed over as he sketched a rainbow in the room. “My God.” He raised his hands, tangling them in his wet curls. “My God, Jane. That might … I think.” Abandoning words, he pressed her to his heart, the fine hairs of his chest tickling her cheek. His pulse thundered in her ear. Vincent squeezed her tightly, then lifted her off the ground, spinning in place with a laugh.

“You think it might work, then?”

Setting her down, he kissed her soundly. “Muse, we need to find a glassblower.”

Eight

Language and Politics

By mutual consent, Jane and Vincent did not share their theory with M. Chastain, though each for different reasons. Jane feared that it would fail, and did not wish to appear the fool. Vincent, sure it would succeed, wanted to work out the technique and present it as fait accompli to his friend. Jane could not truly begrudge him this small professional competition, as it was not that far from her heart, either. This decision, though, hampered their ability to enlist his aid in a search for a local glassblower who had the requisite skills. Every event they had to attend, even those intended for pleasure, tried Jane’s patience and seemed an insurmountable obstacle.

On the day following Jane’s revelation, their attention was taken up by preparations for a dinner party that Mme Chastain was throwing in their honour. All the first families of Binché were to attend, and Chastain’s students were pulled away from their studies to strip down the overwrought glamour in the hall and replace it with a more decorous glamural.

Upon learning of the dinner, the first thought to come to Jane’s mind was of how she could possibly survive an evening in which only French was spoken. When Anne-Marie came to help Jane dress, she confessed her fears to the maid and begged for her help. “I am only comfortable speaking with children, and that will hardly suffice tonight.”

“Never fear. I have seen the seating plan. Mme Chastain has you paired with Colonel de Bodard, who speaks competent English, having been an émigré during the Revolution. He and M. Chastain should keep you tolerably occupied during dinner, though the conversation will tend toward war recollections.” She opened the wardrobe. “What shall you wear tonight?”

“The primrose with the demi-train.” Jane began pulling pins from the muslin frock she had on. “War talk is sure to be an improvement over hunters. At any rate, that is such a relief. I do dislike forcing others to speak in English for my benefit. My comprehension has improved in just the short span since our arrival, but I despair of my speech ever being fit for company.”

Anne-Marie laid the dress on the bed and took a delicate bodiced petticoat from the bureau. “Madame, you do not need to fret. My mother never became fluent in her adopted language, and yet made herself well understood. No one will expect you to speak without error.” Switching languages, she said, “And now, I will speak to you only in French. You must answer me so as well.”

Choosing the easiest answer
en français,
Jane said, “Yes.” After a moment, she added, “Thank you,” and felt her vocabulary exhausted.

“Lift your arms, madame.” Anne-Marie pulled the old petticoat off and slipped the new one on. Jane obeyed each instruction, sometimes gathering the intent from the actions rather than the words, but they managed to proceed with only the occasional bout of laughter born from misinterpretation. Through it all, Anne-Marie was unfailingly gentle of Jane’s sensibilities, and yet firm in not allowing her to speak English.

Forced to use the language thus, even for simple tasks such as getting dressed, Jane began to realize that she knew more words than she had thought. Once dressed, Anne-Marie had her sit as she attended to Jane’s hair. “I suggest that we play at conversation. I will pretend to be another guest and plague you with questions.”

“That seems a good plan.”

Heating an iron in the fire, Anne-Marie began the thankless task of attempting to force Jane’s straight hair into fashionable curls. “I will begin with the most obvious questions. Where are you from?”

“I am from near Dorchester.” She wrinkled her nose at the smell of heated hair.

Releasing the curl, Anne-Marie took up another section of hair. “Have you lived there always?”

“No. We lived in London these three months past.”

“What did you do there?”

“We created a glamural for the Prince Regent.” To her surprise, Jane realized that since so many of the common terms for glamour were French, she was suddenly possessed of a broader vocabulary than she had hitherto suspected. She chattered happily about the glamural as Anne-Marie worked her way through the rest of Jane’s hair, leaving her with a respectable set of curls.

“All of that sounds lovely. I am consumed with jealousy that you got to see the Prince Regent.” Anne-Marie took a tortoiseshell comb out of Jane’s jewellery box and held it up to try the effect.