A Soul of Steel (21 page)

“I should think, Godfrey,” Irene commented
sotto voce
, “that, from what you have said, one Russia is enough to lord it over, just as a single cobra is sufficient for target practice.”

“Indeed,” I said, gathering myself to observe the progress of my first empress.

Imagine my surprise to see a tiny, dark-haired woman as slender as a schoolgirl enter the chamber. Her exquisite gown and jewels, however, commanded a respect her diminutive person could never enforce alone.

She illuminated that smoky, decadent salon like the sun bursting full power upon the sulky shadows of a swamp. Her yellow taffeta gown dripped blonde lace. Canary diamonds circled her neck and wrists and glittered in a tiara against her raven hair. Most glorious of all was the cheerful smile on her face.

Sarah had risen and curtsied deeply to this doll-like figure. After exchanging a few, unheard words, she turned to present Irene, who had appeared behind the actress. Irene sank into her rosy skirts in a profound but less effusive curtsy than Sarah’s.

Godfrey was presented next. I had never seen him bow from the waist, but he managed it quite nicely. Then I, oh dear... I hardly recall the actual moment, a propensity of mine under great stress.

We Shropshire girls had always practiced our curtsies in the unlikely case that we ever “met the Queen.” I had never expected to meet an empress, but gave her slightly less than the same curtsy I would our own Queen, and thought that should suffice.

After all, Godfrey had described the relations between my country and hers as “uneasy.” A bit of coolness seemed appropriate. I most remember her remarkable eyes, darker than Irene’s, but bright with amiable pleasure.

Others were presented, as well as the six or seven with the Empress—large, blonde, uniformed men like the King of Bohemia, tall women glittering with jewels and foreign eyes whether blonde or dark. The faces are a blur, save for the tall blonde woman I had noticed earlier; so she
had
been Russian! I asked Godfrey for the time, to which he produced a gold pocket watch and the answer, “nine-fifteen.”

I suddenly found Irene at my side. She took my arm while Godfrey took the opportunity to pay his respects to the barbaric buffet table, much to my surprise. Irene never ate before a performance, and Godfrey knew that I would never consume a crumb from the Divine Sarah’s table; some men, however, can eat anything, anywhere. It made me speculate unpleasantly on Quentin’s past eating habits.

“Now, Nell,” Irene told me, unworried by Godfrey’s culinary intemperance. “You must sit at Sarah’s rather decrepit piano and play an F-minor chord.”

“I? You mentioned no such necessity before!”

“I expected to accompany myself, but had not inspected Sarah’s piano before. Utterly unreliable. Do not fret. I anticipated as much and came prepared to sing a cappella, but I must start someplace. One chord. Surely you can manage that.”

“F-minor?”

“F-minor.”

“I... believe that I remember where that is.”

“I will show you before we start.”

“And then what do I do?”

“Remain seated and try not to draw untoward attention to yourself,” she answered dryly.

“F-minor?”

“Yes!”

“I did play a bit of piano as a child.”

“I know.”

“But I’ve never
performed
before.”

“This is not a ‘performance.’ Casanova could do as much. With two feet. I only need one hand.”

“How long should I hold the chord?”

“Until I start singing.”

“Oh.” I was being steered to the piano corner and seated on the small stool upholstered in leather—leather well scored by rather large cat claws. ‘‘Oh!”

“Never mind, Nell.” Irene placed my right hand on the keyboard and guided my fingers to the appropriate keys.

“There. Simply press down, hold and then—gently—release.”

How gently? I was going to ask, but Irene had turned to face the salon. I looked beyond her to see that during our intense discussion the Empress and her entourage had been seated in a semicircle around us, to see even Sarah Bernhardt sitting on an ordinary upright chair!

I glanced quickly to my fingers. They had not moved. Apparently. Unless a finger had slipped onto an adjoining key when my attention had been distracted and I would strike a disastrously off-key chord...

Irene stood but two feet from me, calmly shaking out her skirt folds and clearing her throat. I had meant to tell her: smoking could not be doing her voice any good. I would misstrike the keys, and she would croak, and that would be the end of this little charade
chez
Sarah!

Several gentlemen were standing at the back of the room among the parlor palms, birdcages and hidden snakes, among them a flash of flesh-pink bald head and relentless blue eyes. In their evening dress they resembled a phalanx of penguinlike little tin soldiers.

That comparison immediately made me think of the purported reason for this expedition, the abruptly absent Quentin Stanhope. Could he possibly resurface here, now? Would I truly see him again... or would he see me making a fool of myself at the keyboard of a neglected piano? Oh, dear...

“My most honored guest and her companions, and my dear friends,” said Sarah, rising to stand beside her chair. “I present at Her Majesty’s request my own friend, Madame Norton, performing a song of her selection. She will be... ah, accompanied by her friend, Miss Uxleigh.”

I shook my head violently, but Sarah was sitting down with the blithe satisfaction of one who has performed her duty.

The striking blonde woman broke from the knot of the Empress’s attendants and came crackling toward us, her glittering bodice clicking violently.

“Her Imperial Highness is ready,” she told Irene in French with a throaty accent. “I myself anticipate your performance. I have heard your talents spoken of most highly.”

“I hope you will not be disappointed.” Irene answered the odd undercurrent in the other woman’s voice. “I am but a modest avocational singer,” she added lightly.

“Oh, you do yourself an injustice, Madame,” the woman returned, her eyes the color of Russian cherry-amber glittering in tandem with her gown’s beadwork. “Begin when you are ready.” She clicked and rustled off... to join Captain Sylvester Morgan at the back of the salon!

Irene had not followed her departure, instead reaching inward. A moment of concentrated quiet always prefaced a performance. Then she glanced over her shoulder at me and nodded.

My miserable hand pressed down the miserable keys upon which my fingers rested. The chord that rang out was certainly minor, but where one might find a starting note in it I could not imagine.

Then Irene’s voice began, deep and mournful as a bell. She poured out pure sound, not song. Melancholy, ponderous sound, mourning made music. I cannot say how long it was before I realized that the sound had become words, and that those words were not German or French, or even Bohemian, but something very near the latter—Russian! When had Irene learned Russian? And when had she mastered this alien piece, which was a far cry from the robust peasant melodies of Dvořák?

While I pondered the strange new music, I kept my fingers tensed upon the keys. I was terrified that taking my hand away, even though the chord had long since faded, might disrupt the song. Yet my hand protested its unnatural position. Just when I decided to ease one finger from the keys at a time, a motion on the piano top caught my eye.

The fringe of the piano scarf that draped the closed top and dangled over the front and sides was wavering. While Irene’s voice seemed at times to make the walls vibrate in sympathy, I seriously doubted that silk should follow suit... especially since the area that trembled now
migrated
slowly from one side of the piano case to the other.

I remained unmoving, my right hand crippled into its awkward position, my eyes never daring to leave the cloth as its horrid undulations seemed to sink and swell in response to the expression in Irene’s voice.

Where was little Oscar? More to the point, where were the larger snakes that Sarah Bernhardt kept: the huge muscular spotted species familiarly called boa constrictors? I had heard of snake charming; was it possible that Irene was a born snake singer? That I would be the first “accompanist” to perform in tandem with a reptile?

I eyed my general vicinity for a discreet means of escape. None; I had no recourse save tumbling over backward on the stool and hoping to arise from the tangle of my gown in time to avoid the snake’s following me into disgrace.

Although Irene’s voice throbbed with the pathos of a violin while delivering the strange, thick-throated words she sang; although one part of my mind noted that she was giving a magnificent and moving performance, and that her unaccompanied voice had a rich power I had scarcely suspected before; although I had to concede that her musical selection was brilliantly chosen and was delighting her audience, I simply could not sit here mesmerized by the ever-nearing manipulations of a snake, no matter what it was wearing!

I lifted first my forefinger. Then my ring finger and my smallest finger. It only remained for me to remove my thumb from the ivory and I would be free of the piano. Perhaps tiny pushes of my feet could ease the stool backwards, and then I could unobtrusively edge sideways, jump up and run!

Sound exploded around me, and I did exactly that in a flash, save that I could not run. Everyone was standing to applaud Irene, except the Empress, who would have stood had she been sitting where I was, even if she was an Empress.

“May I?” came a male voice from much closer to me than it should have been.

I glanced toward the piano to find the odious bear-slayer awaiting my permission for something. I nodded numbly.

He tore back the cloth.

I gasped and covered my mouth to muffle the sound.

A long, dark, furry... appendage writhed on the polished wood.

Captain Morgan smiled that mirthless smile of his and lifted the slightly open piano top. From within he extracted a hairy little gnome of a creature.

“A Capuchin monkey,” he said. “A good thing that you did not actually play the instrument. The rascal was inside, with only his tail—keeping time to the music, I think—protruding. I trust that he did not disconcert you.”

“Not in the least,” I managed to croak.

Captain Morgan let the creature run up his arm to his shoulder and loop its extraordinarily long tail around his neck. He looked to Irene, who had been called over to receive the Empress’s congratulations.

“She is a politician, this Madame Norton,” he mused, oddly, since Irene had earlier professed finding politics dull.

“Beautiful women make very dangerous politicians. Tell her that my interest in the cobra remains keen. Tell her that she should surrender it to me.”

“ ‘Surrender’? A most odd phrasing, sir.”

“Tell her exactly what I said. Can you do that?”

His condescending question reminded me that in some quarters I was considered an adventuresome woman. I drew myself up. “I will report your words precisely.”

He nodded, that awful man, with the monkey cradled around his head, its clawed paws curving over his bald scalp. For a moment, the two seemed a hellish hybrid of man and beast.

“You had better,” said he curtly, and left me.

Chapter Fifteen

HOMEWARD BOUND

“I have
only one question,” Godfrey said on the morning after our command performance on the Boulevard Pereire.

We were gathered after a late breakfast—Irene’s and Godfrey’s had been taken in bed—in the small front parlor that served as music room. Casanova’s cage shared the space with a handsome, square grand piano, on whose shawl- strewn top he was forever casting grape stems and seed hulls.

“What is that, my darling?” Irene asked lazily. (Though she usually possessed an almost demonic energy, she all too easily evinced that post-performance sloth so deplorably common to those of a theatrical bent.)

Godfrey put down the Paris papers, which were printed on exceedingly thin tissue, like that which wraps pastries. I often suspect that the word “insubstantial” was invented in Paris.

“What was the name of the piece you sang for the Empress last night?” he queried further.

Irene wrapped herself tighter within her violet taffeta robe with a self-congratulatory rustle. Her feet, clad in purple satin slippers, were crossed upon an ottoman.

“I am so delighted that you asked. It was an aria from the most recent Tchaikovsky opera,
Eugene Onegin.
Melancholy stuff, but then there is so much of Russia, and so few Russian cities of gaiety and style. No wonder that everything composed there sounds like a dirge.”

“Melancholy suits you,” Godfrey replied, “or, rather, your voice. Not a soul in the salon moved an eyelash while you sang.”

Irene sat up to regard me over her balloon-sleeved shoulder. “Our dear Nell, I understand, was a veritable pillar of salt during my rendition: so smitten that she could not even lift a finger to remove it from the keyboard.”