Mistress of Night and Dawn (26 page)

The room was on the top floor of a towering hotel on 2nd Avenue overlooking Waterfront Park and once she drew the curtains, the window afforded a glorious view of the bay and its distant spread of islands beyond the ferry terminals.

Aurelia was taken back as she stepped out of the shower later that morning, waving the steam away to glimpse a sight of her nudity in the mirror, to note the third image on her body. In the midst of all the wonderful madness, she had briefly forgotten its recent appearance.

It was crazy, she knew. And she could not come up with any logical explanation, not that her imagination was lacking in talent or sense of wonder. But neither did it worry her any longer.

Barely bothering to dry herself, she pushed the bathroom door open with her toes and emerged back into the bedroom still naked. Andrei was lounging in the bed amongst the tangle of bed sheets, his arms behind his head, his curls a crown of untidy luxuriance, the angle of his jaw square and masculine and unshaven.

He looked up as she approached.

‘You are fucking beautiful,’ he remarked, his eyes lingering tenderly over her body.

And Aurelia realised for the first time, with a shiver of apprehension, that Andrei did not have the trace of an accent. He wasn’t American, but then neither did he sound English, or betray any form of regional accent. His voice and spoken words were disconcertingly neutral, and she was unable to place him, pin him down to any specific locale.

She stood there, legs slightly apart, gazing at him, questions swirling through her head, oblivious to her nudity. Anyway, he had seen so much of her already, hadn’t he?

‘Where are you from, Andrei?’ she asked.

‘The Ball,’ he said simply. ‘Where I was born is unimportant. Ever since I was a child, I’ve travelled with the Ball.’

‘Where?’

‘Everywhere. Once a year it ends up somewhere different. It happens. Then it moves on.’

Aurelia paused, gathering her thoughts.

‘Tristan, the man who brought me to the Ball,’ she finally said, also remembering Lauralynn’s possible involvement, ‘he told me I was meant to attend the Ball. Insinuated that my presence was somehow preordained. And some parts of it seemed so strange . . . unreal, as if it were a dream. What is it, exactly?’

Andrei ignored her question. With a wave of his hand, he beckoned her back to bed.

‘You’ll catch cold standing there. Come.’

He raised the sheet, to make space for her.

‘Won’t you tell me?’ she pleaded as she slid back under the covers. Having spent all night and morning enjoying blissful ignorance, it seemed important now. As if her whole life somehow hinged on this mysterious annual event.

‘It’s a long story,’ he said.

‘I’m not in a hurry,’ Aurelia replied. It occurred to her that she wasn’t sure what day it was, and that she now had a whole list of things she ought to do. Drop Edyta and her godparents a line, and write a reply to Irving, Irving & Irving. She mentally totted up and decided that only a few days could have passed. They felt like a lifetime. A little longer wouldn’t hurt.

Andrei threaded his arm beneath her shoulder and pulled her against him. As she settled by his side, the heady smell of sex that still clung to his body wrapped itself around the soapy fragrance that now shielded her own skin.

‘You are the Ball, Aurelia. You are the Mistress of the Ball, you always have been.’

She blinked, uncomprehending.

‘No one really knows when the Ball began,’ he said. ‘Its origins are buried deep in time, but there has always been a Mistress, a woman whose destiny it is to overlook the Ball. There have been many Mistresses along the centuries, many fondly remembered . . .’ His eyes lost focus and his voice took on a dream-like quality, as if he was reciting a story that he had told many times over, or perhaps had heard many times over in his own association with the Ball. Then he stopped, as if returning to the present and aware that his next words might not be welcomed by Aurelia.

‘What do you know of your parents, Aurelia?’

Her throat turned parched dry in an instant. It was the one question she had not been expecting.

‘Very little,’ she replied. ‘I was still a baby when they died. I was told it was an accident. I was raised by my godparents. My father was an engineer but I’ve never known what my mother did.’

Did she now truly wish to learn more? Aurelia was unsure. She had stopped asking questions about her real parents out of respect for John and Laura, who she considered her family now.

‘She was a dancer,’ Andrei said.

‘A dancer?’ The whole concept felt unsettling to Aurelia, more so because of everything she had witnessed so far at the Ball.

‘She was one of ours, belonged with the Ball . . . But I never knew her. I was still young then, and had been sent away to a school in Europe to complete my education.’

‘What sort of dancer?’ Aurelia asked.

‘Not just a dancer. She was to be the next Mistress of the Ball. It was what she was born into.’

Aurelia’s mind went blank. She felt unable to fully comprehend the revelation.

Andrei continued. ‘She met your father at the Ball. He was a talented engineer and had been engaged to design some of the Ball’s attractions in preparation for future events. They fell in love and she became pregnant. In the outside world it’s a commonplace story, but for the Ball it proved a major disruption. He was an outsider and when he discovered the implications of your mother’s destiny as Mistress, he couldn’t find it in himself to accept it. He convinced her to elope, to flee. Which is what they did. The Ball officials tried to get her back but . . . it was too late. Ever since then the Ball has – how can I put it? – been orphaned too, without a reigning Mistress. It’s something that had never happened. We were unprepared. A Protector was named to care for the Ball in the interim period until we could celebrate a new Mistress. This was my uncle, but he was already quite ill and I succeeded him shortly after.’

‘I was always told they died in an accident,’ Aurelia said, concern etched deep in her face, a cloud of suspicion shrouding her senses at the possibility the Ball might have been involved in her becoming an orphan.

‘It was. We had nothing to do with it, I assure you,’ Andrei said, as if he had guessed what was going through her mind. ‘We were devastated when the news reached us. But then we learned through our investigations that they’d had a child before the tragedy. A girl. You. And thus you became our new Mistress-in-Waiting . . .’

‘Why? Why couldn’t you just appoint a new Mistress? Why did it have to be me?’

‘It’s in your blood, Aurelia.’ He sighed. ‘You can’t escape your destiny. No one can.’

‘I don’t understand.’

He was silent. Waiting for the cogs in her mind to continue turning and make sense of it all.

‘I’m not sure what this all means, Andrei.’

‘The Ball is more important than all of us,’ he pointed out. ‘We are sworn to honour its traditions and, try as we may, we cannot escape its lure.’ He sighed.

‘So my arriving here was no accident? Lauralynn? Tristan? The chapel in Bristol?’ Aurelia’s mind was frantically racing in every direction, weighing up all the implications of Andrei’s confession. ‘The funfair in Hampstead . . . You were behind it all . . .’

‘Yes,’ Andrei admitted. ‘It took us years to locate you. The Network, the organisation that assists us in coordinating each Ball and supplies many of our performers, had been investigating your whereabouts for years. Eventually they uncovered your adoption papers and informed us we might find you in England. I was sent to check whether you were truly who we thought you might be. We’d been scouring funfairs, circuses, celebratory events and such for ages, as we felt it was the best way to find you, that you’d be instinctively attracted to them . . .’

‘It wasn’t even my idea to go in the first place. It was my friend Siv’s. Who’s now with the Ball,’ Aurelia told him with a pang of wistfulness.

‘A wonderful coincidence.’ Andrei smiled kindly. ‘In fact, when I first set eyes on the two of you that evening I initially thought Siv was the possible Mistress-in-Waiting. The way she walked, dressed, laughed . . .’

Aurelia pondered. Distractedly passing her fingers through her hair as she often did without realising it, she caught a brief glimpse of the red heart on her wrist again.

‘So you’ve been stalking me?’

‘It was never intended that way. Truly.’

‘And in Bristol, what happened, was it something you were ordered to do, out of duty to your Ball?’ she asked, fearing the answer.

‘No,’ Andrei replied. ‘It happened. The more I saw you, the more I wanted you. And then when I was near you – at the funfair – something happened. It was like electricity. I know you felt it too. I never planned for any of this. It was never deliberate. I wanted to be your first. As if a voice inside me said it had to be that way. It had nothing to do with the Ball, I swear. You were – you are – so damn beautiful and it felt as if everything was drawing us together, that I couldn’t fight circumstances even I wanted to. There have seldom been Ball Protectors before these times; it’s a function which is ill-defined. I’ve been improvising as I go along. I never planned to fall in love with you . . .’

Her heart leaped as he uttered those words, an intricate blend of fear and elation.

But why was he looking so despondent now, if he was in love with her as he affirmed, Aurelia wondered, a tight knot now weaving around her gut.

‘The trust fund? You? The Ball?’ she queried. ‘Nothing to do with my parents?’

‘Us. You are part of our family.’

‘Lauralynn and Tristan?’

‘Tristan is the next Protector in line, should anything happen to me. His family has been with the Ball for many years. And Lauralynn is merely a fellow traveller. Just a welcome visitor to the Ball, she sometimes works for it and the Network and we hold her in great respect, but she is freelance and has a mind of her own . . .’

Andrei took her hand in his, and the heat of his body rushed towards her in concentric circles of invisible warmth.

‘I know it’s a lot to absorb. But now we have found you and you have found us and that’s all that matters . . .’ He hesitated. ‘And the decision is yours to make. Neither I nor the Ball will force it on you,’ Andrei added.

‘What decision?’ Aurelia asked. Right now she didn’t know what to think. About anything.

‘Whether you wish to become the Mistress of the Ball. Assume your role.’

An imperceptible chill ran through the room and all four of her hearts, the three on her skin and the one inside her chest, were pulsing in unison.

‘And if I do?’

‘You will be trained.’ There was a distinct note of sorrow in Andrei’s voice.

‘Trained?’ Aurelia asked in a small voice. Her question was rhetorical. She knew exactly what he meant. Immediately she recalled the art exhibition that she had attended with Siv and the various displays that they had seen there, particularly the shrouded ballet dancers who had responded to Walter’s bidding with such automatic precision it was obvious that for the duration of the performance he had controlled them utterly, right down to the tiniest movement of muscle and limb. They had responded to his commands as instinctively as if he had been orchestrating their performance through a direct link to their thoughts.

Because they had been trained, Aurelia saw now.

The marks on her skin continued to pulse although she was not aroused. It was as if her nervous system had begun to rule her brain. Rationally, it occurred to her that perhaps she ought to be upset with Andrei. He had misled her, perhaps not purposefully, but undeniably she had been merely a job for him, at least in the beginning.

And yet . . . She could not deny that the news he had imparted about her place in the Ball excited her. And that lying next to him, cuddled into his shoulder with the scent of his skin permeating her every in-breath, all that she wanted was for him to take her again and again. He was right, it had been like electricity, and if she was so powerless to fight it, why should she imagine he would be any different? What was the point in trying to fight biology?

All that Andrei had told her only confirmed her sense that she had spent her entire life being swept along by the winds of fate. Her adoption. The funfair. Ginger and the party at the chapel in Bristol. Her inheritance, which had ultimately led her to move abroad. Siv’s disappearance.

In that moment Aurelia decided that her situation was no different to that of Walter’s marionettes. It seemed to her that the only thing that separated her from those shrouded women whose voluntary subservience had been so disturbing was that they had accepted their fate – no – they were complicit in it, creators of their own destiny, not simply blown along by forces of which they were unaware and did not understand. She should probably be furious about the whole affair. With the Ball, with the Network, this bizarre organisation that had apparently controlled her life from birth, without her consent or even understanding, even permanently altering her own flesh somehow without so much as an explanation.

But behind all of her fear and confusion Aurelia was filled with a certainty, a sureness right to her bones that she belonged with the Ball. As if every molecule of her body and soul had been leading her here all along without the knowledge of her mind.

She had come home. And more than that, she belonged with Andrei. If she chose to become Mistress, then the Ball would become her life as it was his and she too would travel with it. Andrei would be her anchor, the stillness around which the rest of her world rotated.

She had just one question.

‘Why? Why must the Mistress be trained? If it is an inherited position then surely it’s just passed on at birth. Like a royal line.’

‘But even kings and queens must be educated in every respect before they can adequately fulfil their office,’ Andrei explained patiently. ‘The Mistress of the Ball is the embodiment of all that the Ball stands for. It is a celebration of sexuality in all its forms. And until you understand all of those forms – truly understand them – you cannot be Mistress. And the only way to understanding is through experience. Observation alone is not enough.’