The Alleluia Files (10 page)

She knew her meager hoard of coins wouldn’t buy much, but she didn’t care about souvenirs anyway; it was enough for her to be able to stare and absorb. The scarves, gloves, blouses, skirts, shoes, rings, bracelets, hats, belts, statues, paintings, mugs, dolls, and other treasures formed a fabulous array, gorgeous and dizzying, and she moved from booth to booth content just to look. She bought two more ice creams (different flavors) and kept moving down the aisles.

She did have trouble negotiating the crowds because of her wings. She was not used to having to hold them so tightly to her body to keep them from being trampled on or knocked against, and more than once she cried out sharply when someone’s unwary foot came down hard on a trailing wing feather. Everyone was profuse with apologies, and she knew it was her own fault; she saw other angels moving easily about, seeming none the worse for wear. But then, they had had practice living among throngs of people.

Of course, she didn’t know a soul here, so she was pleased when total strangers made a point of stopping her more than once as she browsed. They didn’t say much, and kept their voices extremely respectful—“Beautiful song, angela!” “I enjoyed your solo so much!” “Jovah is sure to have heard your voice, angela, you sing like the god’s own chosen child”—and she wished she could have more extended conversations with one or two of them. And she wondered why they called her “angela.” No one on the island did so.

Eventually, she got a chance to ask. She had come to a stop
before a booth that sold musical recordings, and she was fingering the black disks when a smooth voice spoke in her ear. “Are you considering buying a mass, angela? I’d recommend one of the ancient recordings over the modern ones. Our singers have their virtues, but none of them approach Hagar’s brilliance.”

She turned with a ready smile, for she had recognized the voice. She had met Bael’s son Omar two nights ago at a dinner so huge she had been tempted to count the plates to see how many sat at the table. They had exchanged only a few words, but he had seemed pleasant enough then. And now she was eager to talk to anyone.

“I cannot buy one,” she said. “I have no equipment to play it on. But wouldn’t I love to have a handful of these!”

“The equipment is not expensive. Perhaps your aunt will buy one for you to take back with you. I would think music would hardly be considered a luxury in such a lonely place as Angel Rock.”

“It’s not so lonely,” she said, smiling again. “And as for music, I have always been willing to make my own.”

“And a fine job you do with it. I enjoyed your piece very much, angela.”

“Thank you,” she said. “But why does everyone call me angela?”

He looked amused. “I suppose they would not on the island. It is a term of courtesy—angela, angelo—bestowed upon angels. And the Archangel’s spouse, of course. If you want to be very polite, that is how you always address an angel. And the angelica.”

She shook her head. “There is so much to remember. We don’t have this many rules on Angel Rock.”

“Well, rules multiply in direct proportion to the number of human beings gathered together in one place. I suppose, on Angel Rock, you would need no more than one or two laws to satisfy everyone. But here on Samaria—” He laughed softly. “We cannot have nearly enough.”

She was not sure how to reply to that and was relieved when he continued after a very brief pause. “So how are you enjoying your visit to the mainland? This is your first trip back since you were very small, as I understand it?”

“Yes. I can’t even remember having been here before, though
Aunt Gretchen says I was three when we left. But I love it! It’s so exciting! So much to do and see and find out—”

“So you aren’t feeling a little overwhelmed by all the splendor?”

“Not at all!” she replied sunnily. “I just wish it would go on for days and days.”

“Well, most of us feel that one day is about all the revelry we can stand. But I’m glad you’re enjoying it Would you feel up to having a light meal with my father and me? He sent me over to fetch you, in fact—if you have no other obligations.”

One can’t gainsay the Archangel
, she heard Gretchen’s voice in her ear, but it wouldn’t have occurred to her in any case. “I’d be delighted,” she said. “Where is he?”

Omar led her to an open-air café set up under a red-striped tent. Bael and Mariah were already seated at a white wrought-iron table set with low stools that allowed angel wings to be comfortably folded in place. Bael’s silver wings, in fact, lay behind him in a pleated cascade over the grass that formed the café’s floor. Lucinda stepped carefully to avoid treading on them.

“Lucinda! My girl! Come sit with us, angela, please do!” Bael addressed her in a booming voice that seemed designed more for prophetic utterances than simple social conversation. She settled herself across from him; Omar sat to her left, facing Mariah. “We’re so pleased you could join us for a little luncheon. Are you quite starved?”

She laughed guiltily. “Actually, I’ve been eating ice cream for the past hour. We have nothing like that on the island. I just love it.”

“I hope you haven’t made yourself sick,” Mariah said in a quick, worried voice. “That ice cream is so sweet and rich. I can only eat a few bites before my stomach—well.”

“Oh, I feel fine,” Lucinda said blithely. “But I’m not too hungry right now. Maybe I’ll have something to drink.”

“Sir!” Bael called out, summoning the waiter. “The young lady would like something to drink!”

In a few minutes they were all settled with their iced juices and their trays of cheese and breadsticks, and Bael was able to refocus his attention on his guest. He leaned slightly forward across the table, fixing her with dark blue eyes that seemed capable of staring at hell without wavering.

“So! Are you enjoying your first Gloria?” he demanded in that rolling voice.

She was getting just a little tired of this question. “Very much. The music was amazing. I was just spellbound during your performance. Angelo.” Belatedly she nodded at Mariah. “Angela.”

Bael waved this off. “My angelica and I have sung at nineteen consecutive Glorias. We are expected to be brilliant. But your voice took us all by surprise. Tell me, who have your teachers been?”

“My aunt Gretchen, mostly. From the time I was very small, she taught me—oh, everything. Scales and breathing exercises and basic harmony until I was old enough to start learning real music.”

Mariah leaned over and spoke in her husband’s ear, although everyone at the table could hear her. “Strange. I don’t recall that Gretchen had a particularly exceptional voice.”

“Adequate merely,” he replied, again as if no one else could overhear. “But as long as she understands music, her voice is of little consequence.” He addressed Lucinda again. “And what is your repertoire? You performed the solo quite impressively, but can you sing the masses as well?”

“Oh—of course—maybe a hundred of them,” she said. “I haven’t counted.”

“A
hundred
?” Bael repeated. “All by memory?”

“I was taught that it was impolite to sing with the score in front of you. As if you didn’t care enough about the music to learn it.”

To her left, Omar laughed softly. “And Gretchen Delmere was always certainly an expert on politeness.”

“Well. A hundred masses. That is certainly a remarkable number,” Bael said. “I take it that you actually can read music—that you did not learn these merely by listening to a recording and memorizing?”

Aunt Gretchen had been right; Bael wanted to make sure she had had the proper instruction and made it clear he didn’t believe she could have. “I can read music,” she said.

“She has no equipment to play a recording on,” Omar said. “So she told me. Which makes her accomplishment even more amazing.”

Lucinda looked at him. She was not enjoying this part of the
conversation, though she was making an effort to hide it. More of Aunt Gretchen’s politeness. “Is it such a high number, then?” she asked him. “How many do you know?”

He laughed aloud. “Maybe a dozen quite well, and fifty or so well enough to remember them if I practice,” he said. “Those serve me adequately on the occasions I am called upon to perform.”

“So your musical background is sufficient,” Bael went on, addressing Lucinda again. “And your deportment seems satisfactory. I assume you have been taught the other basics—literature, history, rudimentary mathematics?”

“Well, I suppose you could quiz me,” she answered with a smile. “Otherwise, how will you be sure I really do know what you think I should?”

There was a short pause while everyone else at the table assimilated the fact that they had been rude and that she was not so unsophisticated that she did not realize it. Bael, however, if he was nonplussed, did not show it. He reached across the table to pat her hand.

“There, now,” he said, in a voice too loud to be as soothing as he intended. “You mustn’t be offended. You seem a rare, exotic creature to us, and we only want to get to know you.”

“I don’t seem exotic to me,” she replied, but she managed to smile. “You’re the ones whose lives seem strange.”

“As they are,” Omar murmured. “As they are.”

“But then, tell us more of life upon this island,” Mariah said in her high nervous voice. “Is it really just you and your aunt living there? No one else?”

“Oh, no. There are twenty-two other people there right now. And Hammet is expecting his brother and cousin to come out any day now, because the inn has grown so much he needs help to maintain it. Actually, Hammet has talked about building another hotel—more of a luxury place, you know, because we
have
been getting more tourists during the summer months— and then he’d probably have to hire five more workers. So we could be growing pretty rapidly in the next few months.”

“And exactly how do you—well, how do you entertain yourself? Out on an island with twenty-two other people?” the angelica asked.

Lucinda grinned, “Mostly I work. There’s only me and Aunt Gretchen and Emmie and Jackson, and the hotel has eight rooms. So I clean, and do laundry, and work in the garden, and sew, and trade with the merchants who put into port, and help in the kitchen and—” She laughed. “If it needs to be done, I can do it. There’s never time to sit and be bored.”

“And do you have any friends there, child?”

“Child” did not seem like the right word for someone who was nearly thirty, but Lucinda let it slide. “Twenty-two friends, “she said with a smile. “How many do you have?”

That stopped Mariah; indeed, it stopped the whole table, although Omar was silently laughing. Lucinda just let the reply hang there, too stubborn to soften it with another comment. She might be a wide-eyed miss from the desolate island, but she had dealt with her fair share of unscrupulous shipowners and wily Jansai, and she knew how to hold her own in any transaction.

“Mariah counts all the people of Samaria as her allies and friends,” Bael said finally. “And here comes one of them now. This is another I would like to have you meet.”

He was gazing beyond her, so Lucinda quickly turned her head to see a middle-aged, dark-haired woman making her way slowly through the crowd. She was dressed very simply in a white robe and sandals, and she held the arm of a young girl walking beside her as if she needed physical support.

“Jecoliah,” the angelica said in that voice she still appeared to think was a whisper. “I did not know she was here.”

“I saw her briefly last night,” Bael replied. “Omar, could you direct her to our table?”

“Certainly, Father,” the young man said, and came smoothly to his feet. In a few moments he was leading the white-robed woman to their table and helping her seat herself on his own stool. Then he and the girl with Jecoliah stood a few paces behind her, patiently waiting.

“Jecoliah,” Bael said, his deep voice raised even a little more than usual, as if he spoke to a deaf woman. “We are pleased to see you here. Are you enjoying the Gloria?”

“Very much,” she said. “Are you?”

Bael missed the humor in the reply, for he went right on speaking, but Lucinda could not help a private grin. “Indeed, I am. Jecoliah, I wanted to introduce you to one of our young guests. Her name is Lucinda, and she has come in for the week from Angel Rock. Lucinda, this is Jecoliah, the oracle of Mount Sinai.”

Jecoliah peered in Lucinda’s direction out of friendly, cloudy eyes, and Lucinda realized that the older woman was not deaf, after all, but nearly blind. “You must be David’s daughter,” she said instantly. “I am indeed pleased to meet you. You look something like him, though he was darker than you are. But you have his eyes.”

Jecoliah was the first person in Samaria who had mentioned her father’s name, and Lucinda immediately liked her. She was delighted when, at that very moment, someone called out to Bael, and the Archangel and his wife left the table. Omar slipped quietly into Mariah’s deserted seat.

“I know nothing about my father except what my aunt has told me,” Lucinda said. “And she does not talk about him much.”

“Well, he was young, which made him rash, and he was in love, which made him ill-advised,” Jecoliah said with a sigh. “But other than that he was sweet-tempered and good-natured, and you couldn’t find a soul to say an unkind word about him. He was a good man.”

“The oracle speaks, and thus every word is true,” Omar murmured.

Lucinda ignored him. “Forgive my asking,” she said to the other woman, “but I am not certain what an oracle is. Or does.”

Omar smiled, but Jecoliah merely nodded. “You would have no knowledge of us, there on Angel Rock. There are three of us, one in each province, and we serve as mediators with the god. We can speak to him—not directly, not by voice—but through special screens that allow us to ask him questions and receive his written reply.” Jecoliah smiled. “I do not see well at all—that is why I have one of my acolytes lead me around as if I were an old woman—but I can see well enough to read the script of Jovah’s hand.”

Lucinda was fascinated. Gretchen had never talked about oracles. “And what sorts of questions do you ask the god?”

“Lately, who will he Archangel, but he has not replied,” Omar said.