Coronets and Steel

  Alec returned and handed me a mug of coffee with a big dollop of zhoumnyar in it.

  “Why did he stop the journal when he did?” I asked.

  “He left it behind after some trouble that kept him on the move until after the miners’ strike in Romania. It was some years before he found where he’d left it, and he’d lost the habit by then. Then—this was the late eighties—he suffered a slight stroke, was ordered to take it easy for half a year. That’s when I first assumed some of his duties. And when I didn’t fail too spectacularly, the six months stretched into a longer time.”

  “You must have been super young! ‘Fail too spectacularly.’ Is that modesty, or did you make mistakes?”

  “I made plenty of mistakes. I was an insufferably callow know-it-all in those days,” he said calmly. “Impatient with what I considered the lumbering and superstitious trappings of the past, I was going to appear like a comet and brilliantly gift my backward country with modernity.”

  “Like Joseph II.”

  “Exactly like him. Except that I didn’t have an entire empire to piss off. One small country was tough enough to handle. I learned fast. Had to.”

  “But . . . wait a sec. I hope this won’t sound like he-said she-said, but Tony said you were, ah, conservative. Like your dad.”

  Alec’s laugh was so soft it was more like a snort. “Tony wasn’t around when I made those errors. Heh. I thought he would have heard about them.” He leaned his head back and smiled skyward, obviously deep in thought.

  From the hillside below came the sound of a wind instrument, and then another joined in, the melodies braiding in a dancy folk beat. We listened in silence; gradually I began to sense the question that lay between us.

  My nerves began to send warning sparks through me. I was hyperaware of sitting in the chair with soft, blossom-scented air caressing my face, Ruli’s silky crepe dress cool against my skin. Alec gazed across the starlit valley, feet stretched out before him. He had rolled his sleeves back to his elbows; the white of his shirt glowed in the starlight but his forearms, throat at the open collar, and face were in darkness, his profile a silhouette against the stone wall.

  I stared down at my hands. What was it he had said, when I demanded to know if Armandros was my grandfather? “I did not want to be the one to tell you . . . multiply the personal consequences . . .”

  His hand came up with the drink, and his ring flashed a cool blue wink. “That ring,” I spoke up randomly. “It’s a signet, isn’t it?”

  He dropped his hand to the chair arm. “Yes. My great-grandfather had it made.”

  “Then it’s comparatively new? So it wasn’t used to seal secret letters in the good old days?”

  “No. Disappointed?” I heard rather than saw him smile.

  I turned my attention to the rooftops, and beyond them the palace crowning the hill, silvery in the summer moonlight. The air was charged with promise, but it was not for me, not for me. I’d made a pass at him once, and been turned down: he was marrying someone else. I looked like her, but I was not her.

  Time for a joke. “First time I saw it,” I said with a fair assumption of carelessness, “I had you pegged as a Regency rake.”

  “Regency? Oh, the Beau Brummell fellows—Hell! The ones who wore patches and rouge and ponced about on heels higher than yours?” he asked with mock affront.

  “Think of Byron, then.”

  “Even worse,” Alec stated, and I choked on my drink. “Though he wasn’t the ass he appears in what they call Byronic fiction. I read his journals and letters the last year before I left school.”

  “I know, I’ve read ’em, too. He was good to a lot of people. Had a sense of humor about himself. Sad, at the end—reminds me of Oscar Wilde in ‘Ballad of Reading Gaol’ and not like the ranting Baron Wildenhaim at all.”

  He frowned, then turned my way. “Wilden—ah. Lover’s Vows by way of Mansfield Park.” His tone was difficult to define. Almost meditative.

  “Right.” I pictured a lounging figure with curly blond hair and wicked black eyes. “Maybe Tony should be Byron, then. But he’s a far better Henry Crawford.”

  “He’s Byronic enough galloping around with rifles and swords up in his hills,” Alec said, getting to his feet. “I had better get back to work.”

  Leaving me wondering what I’d said wrong. Or rather, what my words had done inside his head. Because I hadn’t said anything wrong. But something had sure changed the atmosphere.

  TWENTY-NINE

  I DID NOT EXPECT to see Alec again before the masquerade dinner.

  I was standing in the library looking out the window, thinking about how best to reach Father Teodras (Josip, maybe? Only how could he help me fend off Reithermann or his minions if they jumped out from behind the bushes?) when the door opened behind me. Assuming it was Emilio with another of those notes from my aunt, I said, “Does it require an answer?”

  “You haven’t heard the question,” Alec said.

  I whirled around, every nerve flashing hot and then cold.

  “How about another drive? The weather is perfect.”

  “Sure.”

  “I take it Aunt Sisi has been bombarding you with communiqués from the front?”

  “Twelve so far today,” I said. Each couched in affectionate terms, assuring me that she was only thinking of my comfort, but together the effect had been the opposite: intimidation. But she’d gone to a great deal of trouble to organize this masquerade for me, so I was determined to see everything in the best light possible. “I know she means to help. I don’t know the etiquette up here, my pirate life in Rio and so forth aside.”

  He laughed as we got into his Fiat. “Do what you like, and forget the rest,” he said. “There’s nothing wrong with your manners, and at masquerades, nobody worries about precedence.”

  “Got it,” I said, as he pulled away and drove slowly down the street. No Secret Service. No phalanx of sinister minions talking constantly into pin mikes—in view, anyway, making me wonder how much of “security” is visible intimidation?

  We rolled slowly through the main streets of Riev. It was two o’clock, the traffic heavy as shops reopened for afternoon business. Alec occasionally nodded or smiled or lifted his hand at individuals in the crowded streets. Doing the Royal Appearance thing? If they thought I was Ruli, I could do my bit. I smiled and lifted a hand whenever I caught the eyes of staring citizens, feeling fake. Especially when some of the people bowed.

  It was a relief when we passed the quarry at the edge of Riev. Abruptly the city ended in open road. He sped up the hairpins into the mountains westward. I asked over the engine-roar and wind, “Someplace in mind?”

  He gave me a brief nod. Sunbeams flashed between tree branches to emphasize the rocky striations in cliffs and limn leaves and petals with glowing light. Alec put on sunglasses. This was the first time I regretted the loss of my hat down the river off Tony’s mountain. I shaded my eyes as I took in the misty green scenery. The recent rain had caused cataracts of frothing water to hiss and thunder down under bridges and through canyons; the thick forest growth had deepened in color to a blue-green mystery, and the flowers to light-giving brilliance.

  Alec slowed as we neared a sleepy-looking village near a roaring river. A rare sight caught my attention, a reasonably new vehicle—a Renault altered into a jeep. It was parked in front of a tavern. Two men leaned against it, both holding beer mugs. A third, older man sat on a bench in the sun. As we passed, all three raised their heads, and as Alec lifted his fingers in greeting, and a man wearing a scarlet-embroidered Dobreni tunic genially hefted his beer mug.

  This happened about three times more. I finally said, “Is today the beginning of that holiday you were talking about?”

  “The holiday begins the fifteenth. The Feast of the Assumption.”

  “Sounds religious.”

  “It is; for the Roman Catholics the holiday commemorates the Virgin Mary’s assumption into Heaven. But it also marks the beginning of our
national holiday as well. I’m taking you to where it all begins.”

  “There seem to be a lot of people lingering about. Is that because it’s such a pretty day, after all that rain?”

  “That’s part of it,” he said.

  We were above the city now, on the steep eastern slope of Mt. Adeliad. Alec turned up a drive, then pulled out onto a wide promontory which afforded an unimpeded view of the northern portion of the river valley. Huge moss-barked spruce crowded the edges of the ledge, creating a natural frame. Behind us, set deep in the trees, was an old stone Romanesque church. And before it, spreading nearly the entire width of the ledge, was a mosaic of chipped and fitted stones of all colors and shapes. The mosaic was laid out in geometric patterns that suggested stars and planets. Except for the cross at the center and the Christian symbolism around the edges, it had a Roman feel.

  “It’s beautiful,” I breathed. “And so’s that.” I jerked my thumb over my shoulder at the splendid view. “I don’t know who’s done better here, humans or nature.”

  “The site was originally a Roman temple. There’s evidence that even older civilizations celebrated here. The stone ledge is the most modern addition, having been repaired in the mid-1300s on the old pattern, but with the religious symbolism added. After plague ripped through Dobrenica in the 1380s, this church was dedicated to Our Lady of the Assumption, and the Fourteen Holy Helpers were added for good measure. September second is St. Xanpia’s feast day, and it often begins the Jewish High Holy Days; gradually all these holidays came to be connected into the national celebrative week, and it all begins here. Here, have a look.”

  We walked across the ledge to the edge. The mosaic under my feet was fitted together without any grout. Riev lay spread below us, vaguely circular in shape.

  Southward below the city the patterns of farms spread straight to the river, which gleamed like molten metal in the sunlight. In the city center the cathedral spire reached heavenward, and around it lay splashes of green: the parks. We were too high to see individual cars or people, though there were flashes of the sun on metal or glass.

  I wondered what Alec thought when he gazed down on the city like this. I sensed an undercurrent of excitement.

  His head turned; he caught me staring. “Question?”

  “Let’s say the Blessing is real. Why bother with it now? I could see the Dobreni trying in 1939, or during the Iron Curtain days, when your dad married your mom. But things are pretty peaceful in this particular area now, or as much we humans ever seem to get.”

  “On the surface, yes.” He looked away from me, at the hazy mountains on the other side of the valley, crowned by Devil’s Mountain. “Historically, the five ruling families were known as guardians.” He spoke slowly, choosing his words. “I think the easiest way to explain is to say that if we lose those mines, we lose the country. We need to be united to resist . . .”

  “Economic pressure? The rampant black market extralegal shenanigans going on in Russia? Some jackbooted tyrant popping up from one of your neighboring countries to reclaim all this territory?”

  “All those,” he said.

  “And more,” I ventured, eyeing him.

  He faced me. “I’m trying to stay with Realpolitik.”

  “I get it,” I said. “Or maybe I don’t, but I do get that there’s way more going on than meets the eye.”

  “Yes.”

  “So tell me this. Is Xanpia a real historical figure?”

  He clasped his hands behind him, staring down at the city. “The details of various legends differ, but certain facts are common to all versions: whether the people who saved her were traders, refugees from the Mongols, or Christians, and whether the chasers were bandits, Roman soldiers, or Mongols, she was a kid. A shepherdess. You know from your history that kids usually had jobs at a young age, or at least were apprenticed.”

  “Right. Some say they did not have any childhood.”

  “Certainly not in the modern sense, organized around the school year. She was roaming the mountainside with her sheep when she found a starving band of orphans from some war and took them in. Then they in turn were saved from the pursuers by the united efforts of the locals. When the pursuers tried to surround them a freak snowstorm hit, though this was late summer. The pursuers searched and searched but went around in circles before they found their way out of the mountains and back into the west. Meanwhile she and her band dedicated this site in thanksgiving.”

  He waved a hand back at the church behind us. “From there the legends get obscure—some saying the band split up and moved to other mountains, others that they passed into the Nasdrafus and remained there for a century before returning. The modern view is that they moved down the mountain into the trade village that eventually became Riev and took up life there.”

  Birds scolded from the trees lining the parking apron; I turned in time to see some kids chase each other around Alec’s car and vanish into the church.

  The sound of childish voices chanting drifted out moments later. “What happens during the festival?”

  “Beginning early on August fifteenth, a crowd of girls, usually thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds but often brides-to-be as well, dress in white and gather here on the ledge. They march with lit tapers down the path beyond that stone archway. It’s an old sheep path—never widened for vehicles. Leads directly down the mountain to Riev, through the palace grounds. Legend has it that Xanpia marches with them if their hearts are pure.”

  “Pure! The boys don’t have to be ‘pure’?”

  “You know your history.” He turned out his hands. “But purity is not always equated with virginity. That’s been debated, if you look at certain records, especially when a number of Salfmattas claimed to see the saint marching along with a pregnant bride-to-be. I used to wonder if the Salfmattas were doing some social damage control when claiming to see their spirits, though a friend insists they were seers.”

  “Now that’s interesting. So then what happens?”

  “The girls go straight to either the cathedral, the Russian Orthodox church, or to the temple, which they reach at dawn. This signifies the beginning of the Lady Festival; she’s a saint to the Catholics and an angelic figure to the Jews.”

  “I thought angels were a Christian thing.”

  “Some conservative Jews in the Hassidic tradition accept angels as delineated in the works of the scholar Maimonides.”

  “Okay. Go on.”

  “The streets and houses of the city are decorated with green boughs for the duration. On the fifteenth and again on the second white flowers appear, mostly worn by girls. A side note.” He smiled, his eyes narrowed, reflecting pinpoints of light from the sun. “The white was not only a symbol of purity, but of magic, the white of the mysterious snow. During times of occupation—including the last war—the conquerors were bemused by the white flowers that young women wore in their hair and on their clothes during those two weeks. Flowers that the young ladies would smilingly toss at them.”

  “In hopes that the magic would work again and get rid of them? I don’t know if that’s sad or cool!”

  Will you be here? I heard the question in my mind, but when he spoke, it was different words: “Shall we go into the church?”

  “If the kids are done,” I said, distracted.

  “Kids?”

  “A minute ago. While you were telling me about the festival. Chanting. I thought they were doing a church service.”

  “I wasn’t aware—but then I was talking. Probably too much,” he added ruefully.

  “No, I find it interesting.”

  “You didn’t have a religious upbringing?” he asked as we crunched across the well-raked gravel.

  “Dad calls himself a neo-Platonic syncretist, which means he’s open to anything, he says. Mom wasn’t raised with anything. She told me once she vaguely remembered attending Mass, but by the time they reached California, Gran had stopped going. About ten years ago, Gran went missing Sunday mornings, and Mom
said she was going to Mass again. Gran didn’t say anything. Kinda weird, isn’t it, though I didn’t think anything of it at the time.”

  He said mildly as we entered the nave, “Seems there was a lot she didn’t tell you.”

  Cool air smelling of incense bathed our faces. The church was lit by lamps on two levels: down the outer two aisles, and high above in the triforium. Candles burned as well, but the massive stone of the chevron-carved drum piers overshadowed the flickering tongues with impassive patience.

  The children had left by some other exit. I turned toward the apse and was startled by vivid color and human figures. What I took at first to be a crowd of people moving about the altar proved to be statues. But so lifelike!

  Central, up high over the altar, was the Virgin Mary, garbed in white, eyes and a hand lifted ecstatically heavenward. The other hand stretched protectively toward one of the six male figures crowded at the side. He had a hand out, and from it dangled a length of blue fabric, which blended harmoniously with the figures around.

  Near Mary stood a strong, white-robed male who had to be an angel. He carried in both hands a container. Each figure was individual, expressing through its pose a different mood, or mode of faith, was my guess. The statues, the utter quiet, the cool air blended with the echo of childish voices rising and falling, the treble chant floating high overhead. The children had to be in the gallery—no doubt they were a choir.

  “So those are the Fourteen Holy Helpers with Mary?”

  Alec had stopped behind me so as not to limit my view; his heels rang on the ancient stones as he rejoined me. The chanting ceased.

  “Those are the twelve Apostles and the Archangel Michael.” There was an odd quality to his voice. “The statues were replaced half a century ago. These new ones are in roughly the same grouping as the old.”

  “Were the old ones this beautiful? These seemed alive when I first came in.” My eyes rested on Mary the Virgin’s upturned face, which was lit by two high lamps. Even from this distance, her expression was exalted.