Daughter of Mystery (21 page)

Barbara’s heart raced.
I should have been there!
But the time of their return argued against any serious encounter. “How much trouble did he cause?”

Marken waved his hand dismissively. “Wasn’t even there. Only the mother and sister and a few hangers-on. The old lady cut up all stiff but the house manager was there. Knew there’d be a face-off but not worth his trouble to interfere until the maisetra came to town. He set things clear quick enough but the old lady was mortified.”

Barbara could just imagine her expression. The late baron’s sister was most punctiliously correct in everything she did. She must not have known. “And the maisetra—was she upset?”

“Well now, that was a bit curious. It seems she knows the Chazillen girl and invited them to stay as her guests. You can imagine how Mesnera Chazillen took that! You could have froze a pond with her refusal.”

That was interesting, she thought, after dismissing him for the night. There was certainly no harm in Margerit being seen to be a peacemaker but it would complicate matters if she got too close to Estefen’s family. Fortunately the Chazillen matriarch was unlikely to forgive her brother’s unexpected heir.
Froze a pond.
Yes, she could well imagine the baron’s sister pulling together every ounce of pride and delivering a withering refusal from her lofty height.

Elsewhere in the house she could hear the creak of boards and the indistinct murmur of voices as the opera-goers settled in for the night. From her old room she could have told within inches where each person was moving. There were times when the attic felt like exile. The windows were narrow and looked only on the walls of the neighboring house, not the courtyard view she’d had before. She preferred being able to see the comings and goings. At moments like this she thought she would give anything to turn the clock back a year. Anything except knowing Margerit.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Margerit

Margerit tried sincerely to throw herself into Rotenek society. There was no rushing the start of the term and she was only beginning to feel the gulf between the foundations that Sister Petrunel had been able to give her and the structures—the walls, rooms and hallways—that the professors would take for granted in their lectures. But teasing out the players on the social stage was just as deep a puzzle.

In Chalanz, society wasn’t just the handful of noble families whose summer villas dotted the outskirts of town. Invitation to one of their balls might be an envied and sought-after prize, but the meat and bread of life was among the pillars of the town: old families, but untitled. The two worlds mingled rarely.

Rotenek was different. The nobly-born and the merely moneyed intertwined on the landscape like roads and rivers. In Chalanz, Margerit found it easy to speak only to those she’d been introduced to because everyone knew everyone. In Rotenek, she was in constant fear of stepping across those solid but invisible fences that wove through every gathering. It was no faux pas to dance with a man of titled family, but heaven help you if you unwittingly addressed him as
Maistir
and not
Mesner
!

Cheristien and Amiz eased her path to some degree: the first because she moved easily among all ranks, the second because she did not. Amiz knew far better the delicate balance required of someone welcome only for the size and cleanliness of her bank account. She might not be out yet herself, but she’d watched both her older sisters tread that path and vicariously charted her own future plans within her advice. Margerit drank up every word. Aunt Bertrut was learning quickly but for the moment she was of little practical use except as
vizeino
, providing the chaperonage expected for any unmarried woman. Her connections—and they were few to begin with—were older women with no marriageable daughters. They neither held nor received invitations to the most sought-after events. And by the complex rules of hospitality Margerit couldn’t issue invitations in her own name to anyone she didn’t yet officially know or to anyone of higher rank to whom she had no ties.

Barbara knew everyone and all the rules, of course. Margerit found herself on more than one occasion staring across a crowded floor from her aunt’s side to the clusters of watchful armins, wishing that Barbara could be there instead: whispering names in her ear, explaining the braided threads of lineage, history and influence that would allow her to make sense of what passed before her eyes.

It was the feast of Saint Mauriz—coming hard on the heels of the start of the term—that gave her the opportunity. A house on the Vezenaf meant the cathedral also counted as her parish church and services there had become familiar. But Saint Mauriz was not only the patron of the cathedral and the district around it but, by extension, of all Rotenek. Like all else in the city, the celebration of mysteries was a complex intertwining of participants. Ordinarily the highest nobility—the prince and his family—attended private ceremonies, ruled by long established guilds and presided over by no priest less than a bishop. But the celebration for Mauriz overlaid the ordinary mystery of the Mass with the pomp of a Great Mystery, intertwined with the familiarity of a local festival, belonging to all whose residence fell within its ambit. And as that extended from the palace to the riverside townhouses, Prince Aukust would preside as the chief lay participant, the same as any mayor in his parish church.

So Margerit led Aunt Bertrut—for Uncle Fulpi declined to attend the mysteries, even for his own namesake, unless he saw some clear benefit—through the crowd of witnesses out in the
plaiz
to take the place guaranteed to them in the nave. Margerit had studied the general forms of the service in Bartholomeus, but his
Lives and Mysteries
dealt in generalities, and what was asked of the common worshippers was little more than the standard responses that she could have performed in her sleep. So she took the opportunity to quiz Barbara on the richly clothed nobles who took the lay parts of honor, welcoming the saint and listing through the
markein
that defined the ritual’s scope.

Barbara bent to whisper their names and give their stories. “There is the prince—Aukust Atilliet—there in the seat to the left of the altar by the choir.”

“In the blue?” Margerit asked, looking for the one who best fit her image of a prince.

“No, no, the older man. I don’t think you will have seen him before. He never goes out in public these days. Not unless he must.”

Margerit peered at him as he rose to intone the
invitatio
. His thin gray hair draped limply over his high stiff collar and his eyes were sunken and hollow. But now that she looked again, Margerit saw command and determination in the set of his mouth and the way those deep eyes swept across the crowd. Later in the ceremony, as she recalled from her reading, he would also act in his role as prince, but now he spoke on behalf of the people of the district. To the far side of him sat a tall sturdily-built woman in a gown of that just-out-of-date style that marked it as formal court wear. The traces of a grand beauty still lingered in her dark arching brows and the dainty curve of her mouth, but the eyes below those brows darted back and forth as if she were ever mindful of an audience. “Is that his daughter?” Margerit whispered.

Barbara gave her an odd look. “That’s Her Grace the Princess Elisebet, his wife. Second wife. It’s true she’s younger than his daughter, Duchess Annek, but
she
isn’t here of course. She married an Austrian duke back in the middle of the French Wars. The alliance proved useless for the purpose at the time, but at least it saved her from being married off to one of the Corsican’s cousins.”

“Oh, of course.” Margerit thought back to her history books and did the calculations. “She would have been just a child.”

A shrug acknowledged the truth of it. “A daughter of royalty grows up quickly. Her brothers fell in the battle of Tarnzais. Prince Aukust knew he was facing surrender. The Austrian alliance was a last chance and there wasn’t time for a long courtship.”

They rose then to give the responses as they moved into the body of the ceremony and Margerit felt her heart swell as the spirit moved through her and swirled around the columns like vine tendrils in the sun. She recalled what Barbara had said in Mintun in the spring. Did others see the mysteries in drifts of transparent color and soundless music? The vision rose up like bright smoke above the altar and dissipated in the darkness of the arches above. She sighed amid the rustle of the crowd as they sat once more and her mind came back to picking out the unfamiliar faces surrounding the prince.

“The young boy…”

“Yes, that’s young Chustin—Aukustin—Princess Elisebet’s son. Her only child and that’s caused some talk. It’s said the prince wouldn’t have remarried at all except that a single remaining daughter was a thin thread for the succession, even with a scattering of eligible cousins. She was one of the French exiles—Isabelle de Villemont she was then—but her mother was Baron Perient’s daughter so she wasn’t too foreign.”

Margerit looked back at the fidgeting boy on the ornately carved bench. “Then he will be prince hereafter?”

“Shh! Not here.”

Their voices had been pitched low so as not to disturb those near, but Barbara looked around sharply as if to see if anyone had heard.

One of those hidden traps, Margerit thought as she moved on to the next rank of unfamiliar celebrants. As Barbara laid out the web of family connections their faces and names began to settle into patterns in her mind. There was where Estefen’s family fit into the pattern. There, an odd gap where an entire lineage had been lost to war and the disease that had come in its wake. And there, the welling up of a new family to fill the gap. New blood could even become noble through the proper refinement, it seemed.

The archbishop turned from the altar to signal the closing exchanges of the mystery and Margerit once again became aware of the currents swirling around her. This time they seemed to circle in the space around the altar like a slow whirlpool. With the final blessing the clear light pooled into one of the faintly carved paving stones at the right-hand foot of the altar and faded away as if it had been a drain. Margerit wished she could go examine the stone to see if it held some clue but now was not the time, for the ceremony shifted to the regular rhythms of the Mass. The dramatic visions that accompanied the special ceremony settled into the almost invisible glow that Margerit associated with the sacraments.

* * *

After the dignified procession of the royal party down the aisle and out the massive doors, the remaining celebrants emerged into the
plaiz
with a burst of chatter and the excitement of a market holiday. Barbara hurried her through the jostling crowd and off to one side where the carriages would meet them. When they paused, Margerit realized Aunt Bertrut had been left behind somehow. No sooner was this discovered than she emerged slowly among the stragglers, leaning heavily on the arm of a strange man. Was he someone they had met at the Aruliks? She tried to match the reddish-blond hair and florid complexion against the names she’d been working to learn.

As they approached, Bertrut began a soft stream of apology, which the stranger ignored steadfastly until they had come up to where the others waited. Then he bowed slightly to Bertrut and murmured, “I think the foot is not too badly twisted, but you have a carriage?”

“Yes, yes,” she said in some confusion.

He looked up and Margerit saw him glance at Barbara in recognition and then back to her. His expression worked its way through surprise, calculation and curiosity, but he said nothing further, only bowed again and left.

The carriage came up and as the footman busied himself with the door and steps, Bertrut said, “Barbara, you know him I think. Who was that?”

“One of your neighbors, Maisetra. One of the Pertineks, although not near to the title. Mesner Charul. He lives with his cousin’s family in the house with the spiral columns at the gate.” She fell silent to help the older woman up the steps.

Margerit followed her aunt in and as the door was shut behind her teased, “Do you have an admirer, then?”

“Don’t be absurd,” she said quickly. “He was only kind enough to help when I stumbled in the crowd and put a foot wrong.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Barbara

With the feast of Saint Mauriz past, the university term was upon them. Lectures filled half the mornings now and free afternoons were spent studying. Barbara found herself on the move from dawn until late into the night when there were evening invitations. The day visits that had been a staple of Chalanz society were less important here, but they fought for attention as well. The baron’s schedule had been less hectic and the house had been quieter in his day. Margerit had declared the library her sanctuary against her guardians and for now they were willing to humor her. Barbara also treasured it as their place of absolute truce: no mistress and no servant, only two scholars in pursuit of truth. It was there that she found Margerit several days after the Mauriz mystery when the new schedule had settled enough to bring them together.

Margerit looked up from her books as she sat beside her and asked, “What couldn’t you tell me about the prince’s heir?”

Barbara looked over her shoulder by reflex to make sure the door was closed. “It isn’t a safe thing to discuss where others can hear. To ask is to speculate. To speculate is to predict. To predict is to plan. To plan could be treason. Princess Elisebet naturally wants her son to succeed. But the law is complex and unclear. The bridal charter for the Princess Iohanna, Aukust’s first wife, specified that her children would have first right to the crown.” She went to a shelf and pulled down a volume covering the history of the Atilliets. “You see here, in this lineage, Aukust has two cousins and they both have children. The inheritance isn’t fixed. The council of nobles elects the successor, though it’s rare to go against the prince’s will. If Aukust had died,” she crossed herself reflexively, “when his children were young, the choice would normally have fallen elsewhere. But Iohanna’s family had influence and he needed the alliance at the time. It’s said he was also deeply in love. So he pledged that their descendents would have first place.”