Part 35 (1/2)

My news about the Margravine's catalogue did not impress her ”We all have our lullabies, don't we, m'sieur?” was her cryptic response but my report on the clocks seemed to plunge her into melancholy.

”No,” she said in response to my enquiry, ”it is not new, though it seems to be accelerating. How terrible ...” She closed her eyes and laid a hand across the lids. ”Do you miss your wife, M'sieur Saint-Pierre?”

I literally choked on my wine. ”Madame, you may as well ask if I breathe.”

”She doesn't haunt you, then?”

”No,” I said, remembering my thoughts from last night. ”Forgive me, but I don't think-”

”Do you know that the carousel is broken? It hasn't worked in twelve years.” She lifted her hand from her eyes. ”It's a terrible thought, isn't it, M'sieur Saint-Pierre, that all their work dies with them?”

Involuntarily, I shuddered.

”There are days you wish, don't you, that you had something of hers a letter, a lock of hair something you could hold and say, this is her. This exists because she did.” Porphyrogene stood and began pacing between the parlor windows. ”The rhymes didn't lie entirely, you know. I did leave her blankets turned down. As if that was all it would take to keep her here.”

Keep her here, she said not bring her back. There was a brief silence. I said, quite softly, ”I understand.”

She turned to me, and I felt my face heating. ”Violeta could have moved the world,” I said. ”When she died, I could only watch as it rolled back into place.”

”The cruelest things on earth,” Porphyrogene said, ”are that it never changes and it never stops. Grief, M'sieur Saint-Pierre, is a carousel. You get on and you ride as fast and as hard as you can, but it only brings you back to where you started.”

We finished the meal in silence. It must have been clear from my eyes, as I know it was clear from hers, that neither of us was whom the other wanted to see across the table.

30 September That dream again. I am standing on the sh.o.r.e as the sea rolls in, staining the bleached stones with all the colors of a jewel box. Suddenly, the smell of lavender and fever. I turn and see the Margravine of Blois.

This time, I reach for her. Her face becomes Violeta's the moment before it slips through my fingers like foam.

1 October I have found the bedroom of the Margravine of Blois.

It is at the end of a long corridor in the north wing, which I discovered by means of a concealed pa.s.sage behind one of the library shelves. I cannot say the existence of the pa.s.sage surprises me very much. From what I have seen of Summerfall, and of Jean-Baptiste's miraculous powers of apparition, I'd expected to encounter one sooner or later. On emerging behind a standing clock of prodigious size, I had planned merely to look around, perhaps trying the keys from Porphyrogene's ring; but upon seeing in one room the distinctive handwriting of the Margravine of Blois, I abandoned caution and went to investigate.

The writing, incidentally, which arches over the bed and would normally be hidden by the curtains, quotes only a line of poetry: Here I took my rest; my joy came in other places. I cannot imagine why, as the chamber itself seems cheerful enough, I was going to say, but truly a great deal more than that. The walls and bedclothes are covered in golden silk, painted, in the case of the former, with emerald branches that serve as perches for dozens of painted birds. A portrait over the dressing table shows Porphyrogene seated on a garden bench, the Margravine of Blois kneeling at her feet. There is only one clock in the room, standing on a window ledge, its hands formed by a pair of racing blood bays.

As I came closer, I saw that there was a slip of paper wedged into the door of the pendulum box, yellowed and ratty, as though it had been taken out and stuffed back in many times more times, indeed, than its contents seem to warrant. Here they are, transcribed from the writing of the Margravine of Blois: 13 April Ha! You see, madame, that I bow as always to my lady's request. Though your sad little jest alone could not tease laughter from these lips, your command shall be to me as G.o.d's.

19 April Another, my love? Are all your riddles so miserable? Pray bring something more cheerful, lest I am forced to drastic measures to steal a smile from your sweet mouth.

24 April I am forced to reply in kind: what goes on scales in the morning, on feathers at noon, and sleeps at the end of the day on flesh and bone?

24 April A ring, madame: the jeweler's scale when it is made, to the down box in which I purchased it (at no small cost, I might add), to my lady's finger, if she is clever enough to undo the knot with which it is bound to Phosphorus's neck!

And indeed, the miniature bay on the hour hand still wears a silver ring. Though tempted, I did not try the knot.

2 October I had been hesitant to pull the golden cord, but curiosity, as always, had finally gotten the better of me. For days I had pondered a question to which, it seemed to me, Jean-Baptiste would know the answer.

”Why did she ask me to come here?”

He blinked, his large pale eyes moving slowly down and up. ”Monsieur?”

”Be honest, Jean-Baptiste you know there is no ghost in Summerfall. Certainly no ghost of the Margravine of Blois.”

He nodded slowly. ”I suspected so, monsieur. She was not the sort to linger. I myself have seen nothing nothing but the clocks, and while they are haunting enough in their own way, I daresay Monsieur Christopher of Cloud could put them in their place.”

It occurred to me to wonder how familiar a servant could be with Monsieur Cloud, but I let it pa.s.s. There is no denying that the Margravine of Blois was a genius Clockmaker; perhaps it permeated her conversation, even with her lover's valet.

Jean-Baptiste was watching warily as I paced the room. ”Monsieur? Will that be all?”

”No,” I said. ”I know Porphyrogene is no fool. What did she expect to gain from me, if this place isn't haunted?”

”Perhaps she wants to be haunted, monsieur.”

It took every ounce of self-control I possess to limit my reaction to a raised eyebrow.

”I beg your pardon, monsieur.” He waited until I gestured for him to go on. ”Porphyrogene is not grieving for the Margravine of Blois. It seems to me she cried all her tears for the woman twelve years ago. But for the artist, the builder of the carousel? That is a hard thing to let die.”

”I suppose it is,” I said. And weak fool that I am, I began to cry.

2 October, later In the northernmost room of the library, there is a book by the Margravine of Blois called Clockwork Souls. I have always thought it was a silly concern, and a quintessentially artistic one what happens to automata after they die? In all probability, they are simply gone, vanished as if they never were. With all my experience, I have never met a clockwork ghost.

Nor have I met the ghost of the Margravine of Blois. Does this mean that she, too, is simply gone? And even her clockwork is vanis.h.i.+ng the carousel is broken, the clocks are dying or dead.

Isn't it a terrible thought, that all their work dies with them?

And here is a worse thought: The night Violeta died, I climbed up to the rain-slick roof and looked up at the sky. One by one, the heavy clouds were clearing and the stars emerging from the darkness. In a feverish fantasy, I imagined that there had been a time, when the world was young, that stars filled the sky made it a solid sheet of light arching over the earth. But one by one, the stars began to die and Man, having a poor memory, began to believe that the sky had always been black.

I am a widower. I am the black spot left in the sky when a star has guttered out.

9 October For a week, I have been gone with fever. I need not detail my dreams, save to say that they were the haunting grounds for more than one ghost. I woke this morning to find Porphyrogene standing over me, a moist cloth in one hand and a look of profound unease on her face.

”You were calling for Violeta,” was all she said.

I flopped back on my pillows, and found myself staring at the portrait of the Margravine of Blois hung over my head.

”Why did she leave?” I asked.

Porphyrogene followed my gaze, her lips pressed thin. ”An accident,” she said finally. ”On the carousel. The simple fact, M'sieur Saint-Pierre, is that all clockwork goes mad eventually, and she built that carousel too big. We thought it was going to be Phosphorus first he was such a violent, crazy thing, and wouldn't be tame for anyone but me but it wasn't. It was his brother.”

She chaffed her wrists, heedless of the cloth in her hand. ”Hesperus was carrying evariste of Blois the Margravine's cousin, son of the famous composer. The carousel had stopped, and the Margravine was helping me down from Phosphorus's saddle. Hesperus reared suddenly. She managed to roll out from under his hooves, but evariste fell.”

”Was he ... ?”

”Trampled. The corpse was unrecognizable.” Porphyrogene looked down at her hands, then swiftly dabbed at my forehead with the damp cloth, as if that glance had brought it back to her mind. ”I begged her to stay, of course. It was a nasty scene all around. She said Hesperus's madness had been a much-needed awakening, showing how enslaved she had become to me a gelding, like Phosphorus when I held his reins. Those were the last words she spoke to me. She did something to the carousel before she left, and it hasn't worked since.”

”You said she died here because of the carousel.”

”I think ...” Porphyrogene frowned, biting her lip. ”I think she wanted to reawaken it. She was terribly sick by then consumption she knew she was dying. I think she wanted to leave something behind.”

I sat up. It was a slow, laborious process, and it left the room buzzing around me like a swarm of bees. ”Why is it so hard,” I asked when I'd caught my breath, ”to believe she came back for you?”