Revenant Eve (57 page)

We reached the Graben street to find it full of uglies fighting locals. I ran forward, sword ready. The guys kept pace at either side. We began spreading out as a clump of uglies took down a guy with a scimitar. The man fell full length, the sword clanging on the cobblestones. The uglies howled and turned to attack someone else as more of those silent, tidy servants came out of the deep-set doorways. Sometimes they tended the person right on the street, but a few of the fallen were borne away.

That’s when the uglies saw us.

Mord took point, his sword whirling. Jaska and I fought at either side of him, taking on the scatterers.

We made it all the way to the crypt, but as soon as we got inside, an ambush party rushed us. We tried to fight our way past—we were in sight of Maria Theresia’s sarcophagus—but there were too many, the light too dim, and we were forced back outside again, foot by foot. None of us wanted to end up taken away to wherever the fallen went, even if it wasn’t death in the sense that we understood it.

The fight spilled back into the street. I switched hands. From the sidewalks shouts of encouragement rose as people streamed from cafes and theaters, restaurants and other emporia. Most joined the battle, some preferred to cheer from the sidewalks.

“Heroes!”

“Kill them all—they’ve made it impossible to go about at night!”

More people poured out, and the street filled with mass fighting until every ugly had been popped.

That left the Viennese smiling in triumph at one another. A few paces away, the woman in the swashbuckler costume sheathed her sword with a flourish. She saw my glance, doffed her hat and bowed. I bowed back, flourishing my hand as if it held an invisible plumed hat. When I clapped my pretend hat back on my head, she laughed.

Aurélie blinked back tears. “She looks like my mother,” she whispered.

I gazed back in surprise. The woman didn’t look like my memory of Anne, except for the blond hair. For one thing, she was at least ten years younger than Anne had been in 1795.

“Come celebrate!” someone called.

“No charge for the heroes,” a restaurant owner declared, to general cheering.

Mord shook his head. “We have to go.”

The smiles vanished from the faces. Quick as lightning the crowd’s mood changed. “What, too good for the likes of us?”

“Got a better offer?”

“Their majesties are expected at the Hofburg!”

A threat would have caused the two guys, at least, to ready for action. But an accusation of anti-egalitarianism hit us all.

“A glass, thank you,” Jaska said. “But then we have someone else to rescue.”

The crowd sent up a cheer at that and closed around us. We ended up in a Heuriger, a wine tavern, with beautiful Egyptian-themed décor, and a light, crisp, local white wine was poured for all. Before I drank mine, I stared into the depths of the cup, trying to recall if anyone had
said that eating or drinking was dangerous in the Nasdrafus. Not that I remembered. Fairy food and drink, yes, but then everything with them was fake.

This wine smelled like wine, and Jaska was already toasting and then drinking. Aurélie followed with an air of
whatever happens to you will happen to me
. Mord raised his glass, and sipped—or pretended to, I wasn’t sure.

Then out came baskets and wrapped packages of food to be shared around, and people gathered expectantly as musicians muscled through the crowd.

I tried a sip. The flavor of wine burst along my tongue, but when I swallowed there was a sense of the liquid vanishing like vapor somewhere inside me. Excellent. I didn’t want to be soused in case another batch of uglies trundled up, swords a-waving.

We drank our wine, not feeling it in the least. The innkeeper kept pouring it out, everyone’s mood happy and generous as they clinked glasses and drank to heroes.

Bouncy, catchy
Volkslieder
were the order of the day, branching out into other types of folk music. When a Gypsy tune was offered, the woman with the pistols, who reminded Aurélie of her mother, moved out on the floor and began dancing a kind of sailor’s hornpipe/clog dance, causing everyone to start clapping.

And so it went around, people expected to play or to sing or to dance in turn. A very fine harpsichord was disclosed, upon which Aurélie played; instruments were shared, Jaska picking up a Pandean pipe. When eyes turned my way, I didn’t want to say that I’d never learned an instrument, so I moved out to dance, and discovered that though I hadn’t done any ballet for a long while, my skills were, if anything, better than ever.

It was exhilarating! Without much effort, I turned a series of twenty fouettés, with double-pirouettes every fourth, causing the crowd to roar its approval and clap in time. I finished without being breathless, took a bow to a storm of applause, and as my hair swung down to my skirts in a waterfall, free of the slightest tangle, I thought,
I could do this forever.

I definitely wanted another turn and waited eagerly as the songs came and went, working around the circle.

“That was wonderful,” Aurélie said to me as a shift in the crowd put us side by side. “I didn’t know you were a dancer.”

“You didn’t know me with a body!”

She laughed, then looked up expectantly when it was Mord’s turn. The fiddle that had passed from hand to hand came to him. As he touched the strings lightly and tuned them, he said, “Let us play the Beethoven.”

They began the Serenade in D Major, with Aurélie adapting the harpsichord to the viola part. For the first few pages, that is. They were playing from memory, but as yet they had not learned it the way they knew the repertoire from their travels.

When Jaska faltered on a note, then repeated a phrase, Mord shut his eyes. He’d been pacing them, gathering his strength, or his thoughts. His eyes closed, and the music took off, rapid as a kestrel, soaring high and remote. The battered fiddle was again a violin, reaching for spiritual union, or as Mord would say,
davening
in
nigun
.

The entire room fell silent, eyes focused beyond the tall man swaying before them, his expression exalted. Then, one by one, they slowly sank down onto benches and barrels, stools, even the floor, and their eyes closed.

When Mord drew out the last poignantly sweet note and lifted the bow from the violin, everyone was asleep but us.

He slowly lowered violin and bow, looking around in bemusement.

“What did you do?” Jaska whispered.

“Evening prayers. I sought to bring them to contemplate the divine, um, mysteries,” Mord said softly, setting the violin noiselessly on the counter. “I did not think it would succeed.” He wiped his hair back, and blinked. “We should leave before they stir.”

We picked our way among the recumbent figures, halting when we reached the door. Someone was waiting, a man of medium height, wearing a long satin coat of gray, turned back cuffs, a wig…it was Mozart. Or someone who looked like Mozart.

“If you come play for me, I will write you a symphony,” he said to Mord.

Mord stopped just outside the doorway. We could see from his expression the intense inner conflict. He looked up sharply. “There is someone in need of rescue.”

“Did you write down what you did to that composition?” Mozart asked. “Those embellishments—” He went off into highly abstruse commentary.

For a time Mord answered, and they talked rapidly back and forth, one or the other sometimes sawing the air or humming snatches of melody.

“Have you heard my concerti for Haydn?” Mozart finally asked, humming a main theme. “I mention them only as proof that I can write for others. I have been making further experiments with polyphony and with glass harmonica, binding charms from the Craft—you know the Craft?—through the form of
opera seria
, for I have come to the conclusion that opera should not belong exclusively to the Italians! Come, pick up your instrument, for I have need of your skill to play these pages I have written out. But as yet I’ve no one,
no one
, who can play with the skill I require.”

“I cannot,” Mord said, after a painful pause. And then, more forcefully, “I must go. Now.”

Mozart put out a hand. “Is it love? You go for
amore
?” He gave the word the Italian pronunciation.

Mord reddened slightly, but gave a short nod.

“Ah.” Mozart kissed his hand to Mord and waved it airily. “Go! Find your beloved. Then you will return, yes? If you work for
amore
, then you are one of
us
. I have an instrument for you,” he added in a low voice. “It is the finest ever made. By one of the Craft, every piece of wood charmed…”

“I promise to return,” Mord said. “After I am successful.”

Mozart threw his hands wide. “I shall count the moments until I have you back, and with my music before you.”

Now that we were outside, urgency returned. I could see it in everyone’s face. I gripped my sword, ready for a new batch of uglies, but this
time nothing got in the way of our reaching the crypt. We ran inside, stopping when we reached the portal beyond Countess Fuchs-Mollard’s sarcophagus.

“Think of the bell tower at Nôtre Dame de Paris,” I said.

There was that brief soggy sense of pressure, almost of suffocation, and then we were through.

B
ACK IN PARIS.
The noises were the same. I sniffed, bracing for the famous stench, but at the same time realized I had yet to eat anything, nor did I feel the need. And the wine I’d drunk in Vienna had no effect.

So here we were in Paris, even farther from Dobrenica than before.

Not so far by portal
, I reminded myself.

We emerged from the bell tower and found ourselves in the cathedral as the great bourdon bell Emmanuel rang once, the sound shivering through the air.

Before the altar stood a choir of children dressed in white robes, singing Palestrina’s “Kyrie.” The slow fading of the bell’s tone, the sweet young voices echoing, resonated through bones and spirit.
Nothing here is what it seems
…The music had intent, I knew it, but could not discern what. I could not even tell if those children were ghosts.

We stepped outside the massive doors. Mord began to speak, his hands closed around Elisheva’s amulet. He halted when he saw the three seraphs standing outside the cathedral awaiting us: Uriel, Raguel, and the beautiful Jeremiel, who spoke in that voice like wind chimes, “You are in good time!”

“We seek the demons’ garden,” Jaska said.

“It is here.” Uriel extended a long hand, indicating the Place de Grève
on the other side of the river. We could see a series of tall maples in full summer leaf. There must have been hundreds of them.

We stared, for none of us had seen a forest of maple in that spot. Moving among the trees, almost invisible in the slanting ochre rays of the sinking sun, uglies hopped, slithered, lumbered, as they carried little pails to the trees, inserted taps, and let clear liquid drain.

“It is going to take time to determine which is the person you seek, and then to accomplish the transformation,” Raguel said kindly, indicating the glorious late-afternoon light, lurid with high clouds against which thousands of tiny birds flew in streams.

An ugly sidling along nearby raised a weapon and charged. We put hands to weapons, but Jeremiel lifted a hand, palm toward the ugly, whose face corrugated in fear a second before the thing went pop. “The demons fear us,” Jeremiel said. “We can walk among them without harm, and find your companion.”

Mord held the amulet tightly. “I think we can find her.”

“Will you know how to transform her?” Uriel asked.

Mord looked our way. No one answered.

Raguel murmured, “It would be our delight to restore her to you. Give us a few hours, and then you will be free to regain your world.”

Jeremiel said, “Once you go through the portal to your world, you cannot return here. Or to be more correct, you could, but nothing is ever the same.” And to Mord, “Is there not something dear to your heart that you could do while you wait?”

Uriel said, “I expect we shall find her by the time the bells ring at
None
. If not before.”

Mord looked down at his hands, then at the trees. He was taut with uncertainty—responsibility—and a new love of three days, against music, the passion of his life, and a musician he admired.

“Go,” Uriel urged with infinite kindness. “Be back by nightfall. Surely it will take no longer than that.”

“Listen for the bells.”

“It is so short a distance.”

Mord dipped his head in a nod, said to us, “I’ll be back at nightfall. Come for me. You know where, if she’s found sooner.”

“I promise,” Jaska said.

“You have the entirety of Paris before you, and a short time to enjoy its attractions,” Uriel said to Jaska and Aurélie. And to me: “Tonight is the premier of the ballet
Cyrano de Bergerac
.”

“Ballet?” I repeated, startled. Wasn’t that ballet mounted just a few years before I first visited Europe?

“A new ballet, by Jean-Georges Noverre,” Jeremiel said, smiling. “Very innovative. He has forbidden the traditional mask. The new ballet is based upon the life of the famous duelist and writer. If you leave at once, you should be able to arrive in time.”