The Mystic Marriage (49 page)

“You should commission your own setting,” Margerit whispered back to her.

Now there was a thought. She cast her mind about but couldn’t think of any composer she’d be willing to trust with the task. Fizeir was the best Rotenek had to offer at the moment. The performers moved on to a selection of operatic pieces and when the French alto came out costumed for
Romeo
and began her aria from the balcony scene, Barbara could see why Jeanne refused to miss the performance. She reached over to entwine her fingers with Margerit’s and they shared a brief glance. Young love…but theirs had escaped tragedy.

At the phrase where the singer should spot Juliet emerging on the balcony, La Rossignole reached out invitingly to the women in the front row of chairs where Jeanne’s coterie had ensconced themselves. At a laughing push from her companions, Jeanne allowed herself to be installed standing beside the harpsichord as the object of affection. She took it in good part, lending just enough response for the performer to play to without distracting from the song. And as the applause rose up to signal the end of the set, La Rossignole drew Jeanne forward by the hand to include her in the bows, bending over her fingers with a gallant kiss.

Barbara lost sight of them as the crowd rose and refreshments were circulated once more. A greeting here, a word there, a glass of punch to bring over to Margerit, who had been cornered by one of Mesnera Arulik’s protégés hoping for goodness knows what. She looked up and saw Jeanne close by, arms entwined and heads together with the singer, still playing the part of her Juliet. And then, looking past them, framed in the doorway at the other side of the room, she saw Antuniet: just arrived and flushed with what must have been a hurried pace.

It was like that moment when one saw someone fall from a great height, or the drift of a boat toward a waterfall, rushing faster and faster to the precipice. She saw Antuniet spot Jeanne across the room; saw the delighted smile, the eager approach. Jeanne turned, following her gaze. La Rossignole turned with her, standing too closely for accident, a laugh on her lips. Antuniet stopped two steps away. Her face folded in on itself: not the crumpled fall that presaged tears, but a slow closing like the unblossoming of a flower.

“Toneke…” Jeanne began uncertainly.

La Rossignole looked between the two of them and had the wit to say, “Pardon me, I fear I am
de trop
,” before disappearing.

Antuniet’s voice held no emotion that could be read. “I knew you would grow tired of bread and water someday, but I hadn’t thought it would come so soon.”

“Toneke—” Jeanne began again, reaching for her.

Antuniet raised her hand. In denial? To ward off a blow? She continued in that quiet, closed voice. “Don’t fear that I’ll enact you tragedies or embarrass you before your friends.” And then she turned and left by the same path she had come, neither hurried nor taking note of anyone in her path.

Jeanne watched her silently, one hand pressed against her mouth, until Antuniet had disappeared through the doorway. Then it was Jeanne’s face that crumpled with tears. Barbara looked around hurriedly and drew her off into a corner that afforded some privacy. She saw Margerit catch her glance and shook her head slightly to warn her away. What a tangle. She pulled out a handkerchief and thrust it into Jeanne’s hand. “If you want to avoid a scene, take yourself in hand,” she instructed sternly and a little savagely, as Jeanne dabbed at her eyes. “Don’t worry, you’ll fall in love again soon enough. You always do.”

Jeanne looked up and for the first time, Barbara wondered how deeply this cut. “You don’t understand,” she said tightly. “Antuniet…she isn’t one of my little entertainments. You don’t understand,” she repeated, once more fighting for control. When she continued, her voice was quietly fierce. “I have loved—truly loved—only four women. One of them is dead. One never found the courage to say either yes or no. You were the third. And Antuniet—” Her voice broke anew.

Barbara was startled by the revelation. She’d always counted herself as one of the “little entertainments.” Now a flood of memories streamed past in a different light. That summer—and how it ended. And later, the risks Jeanne had taken and the unexpected loyalty. It felt as if an apology were called for. “Jeanne,” she offered. “Jeanne, you know that when we were together I wasn’t free to give my heart.”

Jeanne smiled wanly. “And yet, somehow, when you were free, your heart was already taken. No, you had a destiny, I could see that.”

“But Jeanne…why?” She was near to exploding in sudden exasperation. “If Antuniet means that much to you, then…why?” She made a small gesture to encompass the preceding events.

“I don’t know! I get restless and a…a madness comes over me. I need to be doing something, to be out and about. I need the crush of the crowds, the attention and the champagne. I can’t sit home waiting for her to spare me a moment. Antuniet has no use for me; I need to be
useful
.”

“It seems to me you need entirely too many things,” Barbara retorted. “Have you thought about what Antuniet needs?” Jeanne’s silence was hard to read. “You think yourself ill-used if you’re left to attend a few parties unescorted. But where have you left her? She’s trying to claw together a few scraps of pride and honor, working long nights to complete an impossible quest. You’re willing to play at alchemy when it suits you, yet you abandon her if she hasn’t the time to dance attendance on you. If you were a man I’d call you out.”

There. That cut through the self-pity. Jeanne met her eyes and said hollowly, “If I were a man I would deserve that. But breach of promise requires that a promise be made. There’s nothing I’m allowed to promise to her, or she to me. I learned that as a girl in my first season.”

“Then what is your love worth? No, don’t protest to me. I’m not the one who needs to hear it. Jeanne—” No, she couldn’t bear to go on hurting her just now. Everything necessary had been said. She couldn’t bear to see either of them hurt, that was the dilemma. “Gather your things. I’ll send you home in my carriage.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Antuniet

Antuniet would have thought sleep impossible but habit drove her to her bed to toss and turn in misery, until a dream overtook her in spite of all precautions. There was in her hand a crystal, a perfect pure gem that drew the eyes of all about her. And while she held that stone, a crowd gathered around her and bowed to her and watched her with adoring, obedient eyes and she knew it was the power of the stone that drew them. And for fear that she would lose it, she swallowed it and felt the edges and corners sharp inside her belly. But then she was alone in the cold and dark with her mother’s voice sounding, “It was an unsuitable friendship. I have put an end to it.” The stone burned inside her and she would have cried out but for that voice, “Remember always: you are a Chazillen. Do not disgrace me.” And so she turned her face itself to stone even as her belly burned and bled until she could bear no more. She screamed but no sound came. And all around her rang the sound of mocking laughter until she came awake with a gasp.

Anna had the day off; that was one small mercy. At least one more day before there would be any need to find explanations. Antuniet lifted the crucible out of the cold furnace and readied it on the bench, undoing the clamps and cracking off the seals. She had prepared the quenching liquor while tending the heat the evening before, so it was only a matter of drizzling it over the hardened matrix to begin the putrefaction. That much could be done without thought or decision. After that, habit took charge. Washing. Food. Checking the progress of the putrefaction. Hours passed. The matrix had grown softer. Draining the quench. Three rinses with twice-distilled water. Upending the crucible onto the work tray and tapping the matrix out. The tapping continued. The front door. She heard the watchman’s footsteps in the corridor, then a gruff, “Mesnera,” the click of the latch and his footsteps receding again.

Antuniet turned toward the doorway, steeling herself. Jeanne looked as though she had been haunted in her sleep as well. She glanced at the emptied crucible and said, “What do we work on today?”

Part of her had longed for that knock, that voice. Part of her had dreaded it. Did Jeanne think they could simply begin again? Was the summer to be repeated? Slow courtship, fleeting moments of joy, then weariness and betrayal and a return to the start? It would be wiser to send Jeanne away before her presence renewed the gnawing hunger. But she kept those thoughts inside, deep in her belly with the stone. If work were the excuse for coming, then work she would have. “The matrix needs to be broken up and the gems cleaned,” she said, turning away from the tray and ostentatiously sorting through her notes from the day before. “The tools are there in the rack. You’ve seen it done. Sort out the green jaspers by size but take extra care with the red ones.”

It took all her will not to look back. She pulled out the list of planned work. She hadn’t meant to begin a new process today but distraction was needed. Something complex enough to fill the brittle stillness. Behind her a chair scraped across the stones and the tink-tink of chisel on stone began. She took out a clean sheet of paper and began copying out the recipe for chrysolite. If she could combine the enhancements to strengthen knowledge and to dispel fantasies and terrors it might be adapted to good use.

There were days when she became so lost in the work that hours passed without noticing. This was not one of those days. The click and tap of the tools could only be drowned out by the recited verses that enhanced the
materiae
as she measured and mixed. Hunger was only driven away by the other ache. The corner of the room where Jeanne worked was ever in her awareness, tugging at the edges of her vision. When the tapping stopped, the silence echoed with her heartbeat. She paused in beginning to clear away the jars of
materiae
. Chair legs scraped across the stones, tearing the silence. She felt, rather than saw, Jeanne standing at her side and looked up at last. “What do we have?” Her voice creaked a little from long disuse.

“I think this is all of them,” Jeanne said. “It was hard to clean the small ones completely. Six green, none larger than a pea. Two are something of a muddy brown; you didn’t say what you wanted done with them. Only one true red but it’s the largest.”

Antuniet picked up the crimson stone and held it against the light from the window to check the clarity. No fractures or bubbles. No hazy patches where the fibers were misaligned. It was warm between her fingers and she could feel herself bending to the power it carried: softening, yearning. Her own art betrayed her. She shook off the influence. “There you are,” she said bitterly. “Red jasper to cure pains of the heart and ensure love returned. Pure, perfect, flawless…and utterly false.”

“It isn’t false,” Jeanne countered with quiet intensity. “It was never false, but it’s never pure. That’s where the poets lie to us. We’re all of us impure mixtures and flawed gems.” She snatched the jasper away and held it up. “There are no pure feelings. How can there be honor without the pride in keeping it? What does love mean without the courage to follow it? Bravery without wisdom is folly. Loyalty can’t be only a fishhook on a slender line; it must be a thousand tiny stitches binding one heart to the other.”

With a sudden swift movement she took up one of the empty crucibles from the bench and started scooping minerals into it from the open jars. “There’s love; that’s true.” Five large scoops of the first and the jasper thrust into the midst of it. “But there’s vanity as well.” A spoon from the second. “And jealousy.” A dusting from a smaller jar. “There’s memory of loss and dreams unrealized. There’s fear.” She stirred the powders roughly with one of the small chisels that still lay on the tray. Traces of the colors swirled through the mixture like eddies in the river. “And there’s pain.” With a sudden movement she jabbed the chisel’s tip into her finger and watched the drops of blood well up and fall. “There’s always pain. It doesn’t matter that it’s often by my own hand.” Jeanne thrust the crucible toward her.

Antuniet took it by reflex and Jeanne wrapped cold hands around her own to keep them there. “This is my heart: it is what you see. I don’t know if it will come through the fire. But it’s yours, if you will have it.” Her voice was rough and low. She turned away abruptly and strode out of the room. The clatter of the door latch punctuated her departure.

Antuniet realized her hands were shaking with the strength of her grip on the crucible and she set it down on the workbench as if it were fragile crystal. It hadn’t been an apology—not even an explanation. Only a plea for one more try. Could she bear to go through this again?
I needed bread and you offer me a stone!

The two crucibles sat side by side. She should dump out the jumbled mixture and retrieve the jasper. That, at least, was a good day’s work. But still she hesitated. She put little weight on signs and portents. It would never survive the firing—there was no hope of that. She didn’t know which powders had gone into the mix, but certainly not the recipe for jasper. She paused with her fingers gripping the rim of the crucible but the thought of tipping the contents into the rubbish was unbearable.

This is my heart.

She didn’t care for signs and portents. She could discard the ruined mixture and decide later what to do about Jeanne. The firing meant nothing. Either she was willing to forgive or she wasn’t. If the answer were yes, then it wouldn’t matter if the crucible burned to slaggy ruin like so many before. If the answer were no, then not even a perfect diamond would change her mind.

It’s yours, if you will have it.

She feared to rely on signs and portents. What if it failed in the firing? She couldn’t bear either path—couldn’t bear the thought of never again feeling Jeanne’s touch, couldn’t bear to have her heart torn out time after time. She needed an answer. And it seemed a coward’s trick not to try.

She stared at the jars of
materiae
still ranged along the bench, trying to remember which ones Jeanne had used. The whitesand? Or had it been lime? Some of the hematite, certainly, but how much? What process would bring them all into solution? No, not complete solution, for the jasper must be accounted for. Ceration, then. Strong waters to soften the jasper’s nature without destroying it. Then in the outer spheres the heat and flux needed to conjoin the minerals into the salamander’s blood, bathing the seed-stone with nourishment. As she measured and poured, the verses of the twinned cibation came to her lips. There was no partner to take the echo, but in her mind she heard the words in Jeanne’s voice. Not Mercury this time. No king to join in the mystic marriage, only the twinned queens. Even as she worked she wondered at herself, as if watching from afar. This was no longer the Great Art but a form of madness.