Immortal Muse (24 page)

It was probably the wine. That's what she told herself afterward. Camille sprang up from her chair as David was talking. Before she could allow herself to think about it, she bounded from the roof to the brick ledge of the building, teetering there with her arms outstretched fifty feet above the street.

“Chris'sake, Camille!” David jumped up from his chair. He started to run toward her, then evidently thought better of it. He stopped two paces from her, his hands outstretched imploringly. “Camille, please come down from there.”

“What if you really
couldn't
die?” she half-shouted to David as she walked along the narrow, rounded concrete top of the ledge. “What if no matter how badly hurt you were, no matter what agony you endured, your body simply wouldn't
allow
you to die? Then eventually you might not feel anything. There'd be nothing to be afraid of: not for yourself, only for everyone else you knew . . . And
that's
the real problem: having to worry about those you love because they're so damned fucking
fragile.
”

She let her hands drop. She looked down. The pavement seemed to beckon her, spinning about with the fumes of the wine.
Maybe this time it would really be the end. Coda and finale. It would be so easy to let go, to find out . . .

But she could feel David's concern and his affection and his energy. The tendrils of his soul-heart held her, and for the first time with him she could see rivulets of lapis invading the green, and she knew that she could no longer leave him. She was bound to him now.

She had found
that
kind of love again, all unlooked for, and just as compelling. Now he was her responsibility, and she had to protect him.

The realization did not make her happy. She knew the consequences of love. Nicolas had taught them to her. Now she
had
to find him, and find him quickly. Tomorrow: she would call Walters tomorrow and push him; she would redouble her own efforts, go and check out all the hospitals, maybe even send an anonymous tip to the cops about the Black Fire murders . . .

The world spun about her, wine-flavored.

“Camille . . . Please . . .” David stretched his hands out to her. His skin glowed emerald and aquamarine in the dark.

She took his hand and let him guide her down.

“Christ, you just scared the shit out of me.”

“There was nothing to be afraid of,” she told him. “I'm not going to die from a fall. That's not my fate.”

 * * * 

After they made love, she couldn't manage to find sleep. Her body was shaking as if she had a fever, while David lay snoring softly alongside her. After a time, she rolled quietly from the bed so as not to disturb him, and padded barefoot in her nightgown up the stairs to David's studio. He had a haphazard collection of watercolor tubes and half a block of 14x20 Aquarelles Arches paper. She managed to find a clean brush that would serve; she borrowed an old plastic dinner plate from the kitchen to use as a palette for mixing the colors, and brought up a cup of clean water and a roll of paper towels.

She began to work, without any plan, without sketching on the paper first, laying down washes of color that grew more intense and dark as she worked. A face emerged from the paper: male, scowling, furious, mouth open in a shout of rage, spittle flying from engorged lips, nostrils flared with emotion. She slid a palette knife under the opening in the pad, slicing away the top sheet to expose a fresh one, and she began again: another face, this time with furrowed eyebrows over dark eyes that nearly filled the paper, stark and staring, all reds and purples.

Again she sliced off the paper and began painting: an elongated figure, half-emerging from bloody shadows, ominous in stance, a single hand in the light holding a sword that glimmered menacingly, the white of the paper shining through.

“If those are your dreams, then no wonder you didn't want to sleep.”

The voice, from immediately behind her, broke her from the half-trance. She started and tried to rise from the stool on which she was sitting, the brush dropping from her hand onto the plate with its dabs of pigment. Hands went around her, and she stiffened momentarily before relaxing.

“David!”

“Of course,” he said. His stubbled face rubbed against her neck as she leaned back against him. “Who else were you expecting?” He kissed the top of her head. He let go of her with one hand, picking up the first sketch she'd done. “You're frightened of someone,” he told her. “I can see it right here.” He shook the paper; it rustled in his fingers. “Is this the man who's stalking you?”

She shrugged in his embrace. “I don't know,” she told him.
Yes, it is. That's Nicolas' eyes, his face . . .
“They're just what I felt like painting. They're not very good.”

He echoed her shrug. “I wouldn't say that. A little crude, maybe, but I'd say there's an honest darkness here. Tell me about him, Camille. Tell me what you're trying to say with your brush.”

“I don't know that I can,” she answered, knowing it was another lie, knowing that she wasn't going to tell him because she didn't trust that he'd believe or understand the tale, and that if he did, he might leave her to protect himself. “I wish I could, I really do. But . . .” She shrugged.

He nodded at that and kissed her head again. “Then I'll just let you work it out this way. I understand.” His warmth left her and she turned and caught his hand before he could move away.

“I think I'm done for the time being,” she said. “Let me clean up this mess, and I'll come back to bed.”

He smiled at her and started to walk toward the stairs and the bedroom below. “David,” she called out to him as he put his hand on the railing. “Thank you for not pressing. I . . .”
Love you.
The words were there, hanging in the night air, and she almost said them. Almost. “. . . appreciate that,” she finished.

He yawned. He waved a hand. “Come back to bed,” he said.

She stared at the paintings for several minutes, half-tempted to rip them up and destroy them. Instead, she picked up the plate, her brush, the cup of now-dirty water, and the paper towels.

She went downstairs.

1737

S
HE WASN'T SUPPOSED TO hear the comments, but she did.

The stone-and-brick tiles of Venice were puddled, washed temporarily clean as rags of dirty gray clouds scudded like sooty gondolas across the sky. Those people caught out walking in the Piazza San Marco kept the hoods of their cloaks pulled up, crouching near the shelter of the Doge's Palace or the Basilica. The figures of the four tetrarchs at the corner of the Basilica seemed to be huddling together in misery as the rain pelted them, the dark porphyry stone from which they'd been carved black with moisture. The awnings of the market stands sagged under the tempest, drooling streams of water as the merchants scowled at the largely vacant square in front of their stalls. Even the flocks of pigeons searching for food on the piazza appeared to be forlorn.

Anna paused in the shelter of the arches, waiting for the rain to abate. She had visited one of the minor functionary's offices within the Doge's Palace with Paolina, making sure that their travel papers were in order. Carlo Goldoni, the Venetian playwright whose tragicomedies
Belisario
and
Rinaldo di Montalbano
had recently played to rapturous reviews, was speaking to a knot of his sycophants under a nearby archway, his voice carrying faintly but audibly across the space between them.

“Ah, that lady there, you mean?” he said, obviously in response to a comment one of his companions had made. His heavy-lidded gaze slid in Anna's direction as he spoke: Goldoni reminded Anna of an overgrown frog. “Well, there's a story there. That is Anna Giraud. You know the red priest, the one who writes music for the orphans' choir at the Ospedale della Pietà? Antonio Vivaldi? The man is an excellent violinist but a mediocre composer—if you remember, I did the libretto for his
Griselda
a few years ago, and his melodies hardly did justice to the words I gave them.” The sycophants chuckled agreeably at that.

“In any case,” Goldoni continued, “Vivaldi's taken on Signorina Giraud as his favorite singer; she's been given the lead in all his operas since
Farnace
. Look at her; she must be three decades younger than him, and common-born as well: the daughter of a French periwig maker, I'm told. She's hardly beautiful, though I must admit she is elegant. She has a small voice,” and here he put his thumb and forefinger so closely together that they nearly touched, then spread his arms wide, “but many languages in which to harangue.”

His sycophants burst out into more laughter at that. “She and her half-sister—that's the older woman accompanying Signorina Giraud—they both stay with the red priest as his housekeepers, and Signorina Giraud travels with Padre Vivaldi wherever he goes,” Goldoni continued. “All entirely innocently, no doubt.”

He snorted his amusement, and the others guffawed with him. Then, as if Goldoni were entirely unaware that she had overheard the entire commentary, he faced Anna directly, gave her a small wave, and bowed ostentatiously in her direction, smiling at her as if they were old friends coming across one another in the great square.

“Pay no attention to the man, Anna,” Paolina huffed, sniffing in irritation and taking Anna's arm to pull her along, away from the cluster of men. “He's a boor, and has no real talent at all.”

That wasn't true; Anna knew. She was aware of Goldoni only by reputation, but she could sense the man's soul-heart even from this distance. While the energy there wasn't towering and overflowing, the pool of talent within him was substantial with as yet untapped potential. But the internal glow was riddled with a sickly yellow from the man's enormous ego—he
knew
he possessed talent, and probably believed he was destined to be remembered forever for his work.

Anna hoped he was wrong. He would hardly be the first great talent lost to history.

Unfortunately, she had to admit, Goldoni's assessment of her own talent was all too accurate, and that rankled most of all. She had always been able to sing, but in her bonding with Lucio—as she called Vivaldi in private—she had found that while she fed his green heart, he was also feeding hers, enough that she had become passable, if barely so, as a professional singer.

Passable, but no virtuoso. Certainly not as polished and radiant as many of the singers who had accompanied her in Lucio's operas. She had some talent in that direction, but unlike other creative endeavors where the talent resided in the mind, the intellect, and the imagination, the
body
was also involved in singing, for it gave the voice's basic qualities. She knew that it was simple nepotism that gained her the starring roles: the fact that she was Lucio's lover, that she was his companion. Like too much of her life, her status as a singer was a charade.

She'd attempted to convince Lucio that his performances would be even more stunning should he choose someone else, someone with a more powerful voice who could do proper justice to his music, but he would never listen to her. He would shake his head—that shocking mane of bright orange-red hair that had given him his nickname as
il Prete Rosso
, the “red priest”—and fling his arms about in animation. “No,” he'd wheeze, with a breathy, almost panting voice; Lucio suffered from
strettezza di petto
, a “lightness of the chest” and could not exert himself physically. “
You
are my singer. No one else. You. No one else understands my work as you do.”

So Anna glared at Goldoni but said nothing. The ranks of his sycophants shifted slightly as she and Paolina continued on their separate ways, and Anna's own breath caught, as if Lucio's ailment had suddenly afflicted her.

That one, the one whispering in Goldoni's ear: his stature, his features, the way he stares at me . . .

She touched her face, as if feeling invisible scars from a century ago. “Please don't let him have found me again.”

“Anna?” Paolina asked. “What did you say?”

Anna shivered in the rain, realizing she'd spoken aloud. She stared at the men around Goldoni as they were walking away, uncertain.
No, it couldn't be him. It can't be him.
She pulled her cloak closer around her face. Her clothing hung heavily on her with the rain, and the hem of her dress and overcloak were soaked through. “We should get out of this weather,” she said. “We need to make sure Signor Vivaldi has had the servants pack everything. I'll be glad to leave Venice behind. The damp isn't good for his health. Come, sister . . .”

Paolina had been three when Anna had taken her from her father in Corsica. Anna had come there after leaving London, where she was involved with a minor English musician, Edward Braddock, the Master of the Choristers of Westminster Abbey. Braddock had been her lover for years, and she was looking far too young. Braddock was not one of those with a green heart of incredible depth, so it had been easy to walk away from him, to take on yet another identity elsewhere, and traveling south against the English winter had been a pleasant thought.

There were few in the little village outside Bastia in Corsica who had even a hint of the green heart about them, but Paolina's mother Maria was one. Anna—who was not yet Anna—lived next door, and she encouraged Maria to follow her passion for art and become a painter, even though her husband had expressly forbidden it. Anna had paid for Maria's surreptitious lessons with an artist in Bastia, had brokered the sale of a few of her sketches. But, in the end, Anna's encouragement had ended up costing Maria her life: the husband had discovered the deception, becoming enraged and jealous, and he had beaten Maria to death in a drunken stupor one night. Anna had been the first to discover the body, with the frightened and wailing Paolina clutching at her dead mother while her father snored, his clothing smeared with Maria's blood, in their bed. Anna had taken the child and left the village and Corsica altogether, sick at heart and racked with guilt over Maria's death.

She couldn't blame Nicolas for that. She had done that terrible damage all by herself.

Paolina, like her father, had no green heart at all. But Anna had declared that Paolina was her relative to anyone who asked: first masquerading as Paolina's aunt, then as her much older sister and, more recently, as her younger sister. She made up a plausible story of how she had come to be the girl's caretaker. She sometimes wondered whether Paolina remembered anything of her old life or her mother's tragic death. Paolina never mentioned her old life, nor commented when people assumed she was the elder of the two of them. With the lines growing more prominent on Paolina's forehead, Anna knew that one day, all too soon, the charade would fall apart as Paolina continued to age and she did not. One day, if they remained together, people would see Paolina as Anna's mother, then her grandmother.

Like the rest of her affairs and lovers and marriages, her relationship with Paolina, and thus with Vivaldi, could only be temporary. That would be true with or without Nicolas' presence—but if Nicolas was here, it might be a short time indeed.

She shook her head at the thought.
It's not Nicolas. It can't be.

She glanced back once again at Goldoni and his people as she and Paolina made a dash across the piazza, scattering pigeons. She looked for the shorter man, whose face averted from her so she could not see it again, and she worried as she pressed her fingers against the sardonyx pendant under the front of her dress.

 * * * 

In
her dream that night, she saw Nicolas' face. When she laid out the Tarot the next morning, she felt his presence in the cards. His mocking laughter was held in the sound of the vials in her alchemical lab striking together as she packed them for their journey. The Vivaldi household in Vienna was preparing to move to Ferrara for several months, where Lucio had been asked to stage an opera season, including at least one new work of his own which would, of course, feature Anna.

She stared from the windows of their house looking for Nicolas' features, searched the faces of those crossing the bridges or gliding by in the hired boats.

“Signor Vivaldi is asking for you,” Paolina said as she entered Anna's bedroom on the third floor. “The servants have moved all the furniture from the ground floor up to the next in case of flood, and sheeted most of it already. I'll make certain that the house will be ready for your return next August.”

“Thank you,” Anna told the young woman, embracing her. “I don't know what we'd do without you running the household.” She kissed her forehead. “I'll go see Lucio,” she told her. “If you'd finish packing my dresses, I would be so grateful, dear.”

Vivaldi was in the first-floor drawing room, sitting on one of the cloth-draped chairs as servants bustled about around him. The score for a new opera was laid on a table in front of him, and he tapped his chin with a forefinger as he looked at it. His powdered white periwig was askew, with curls of red hair now fading with age escaping from underneath. Anna clucked. “Lucio, really,” she said. “This will never do. What will they say if you go out this way?” She knelt alongside him, adjusting the wig and tucking his hair underneath again. His frock coat was stained with ink from the score, as were his fingertips. She
tsked
again. “Look at you. You're a complete mess.”

“Anna, you fret too much. I was just resting here waiting for you.” He rose from his chair with a groan, reaching for the walking stick that rested against it. The effort made him lean hard on the stick for a moment, bent over as he regained his breath. His face flushed a blotched pink, then regained its normal color.

“The air here's bad for you, Lucio,” she told him. “It's good we're leaving Venice again. I know it's your home, but the dampness gets into your chest.”

“Bah,” he said, waving one hand in dismissal. “It's nothing. We'll go to the performance at Teatro San Salvatore this evening before we leave; the music will make us feel better. The program is Pergolesi's
Il prigioniero superbo
, with a
buffa
intermezzo,
La serva padrona
. They played in Naples last season to a good response, I'm told. That sounds interesting, doesn't it?” She could hear the whistling in his chest as he drew in a breath.

The memory of the afternoon's encounter made her shake her head. “Perhaps we should remain at home tonight, Lucio,” she told him. “That way you can rest before we set off to Ferrara. We could ask a few of our friends to come over and dine with us. We could create our own musical evening. There's still time—the servants could uncover the pianoforte and the furniture in the drawing room . . .”

He shook his head. “No, no. I've already accepted the invitation for us. What's the matter, Anna? You usually look forward to these evenings.”

He was right in that. The last several years had been kind to Antonio Lucio Vivaldi, and through him, to Anna as well. The “red priest”—Vivaldi was nominally still a priest, though he hadn't had official functions within the church or celebrated the mass in decades—had met Anna in 1721; she had become his lover soon after, and she and Paolina had lived with him since 1723, the longest time she'd lived with anyone since Nicolas himself. In 1730, she had accompanied him to Prague along with his father, where two new Vivaldi operas had premiered. They returned to Venice, but also had resided briefly in both Mantua and Verona, where
Semimmide
and
La Fida Ninda
were performed. The Ospedale della Pietà paid Vivaldi a fixed honorarium of 100 ducats a year to produce concerti for the musical students there; recently, the English librettist Charles Jennens had purchased a few of his compositions, and there were commissions for Vivaldi from both the Austrian and French courts. Anna's life with him was easy and peaceful, and his capacious soul-heart surrounded and nourished her as few before had.