Sarah Ash - Airs From Another Planet

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2024-11-23 1 0 94.45KB 11 页 5.9玖币

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The manuscripts had lain gathering dust in the Conservatoire Library for countless years: a suite of

ancient ayres and dances; mystical songs of an antique and piquante melancholy...

The name of the composer, inscribed in an ornate, old-fashioned hand, was unfamiliar.

Rueil Serafin.

Yet when I sat down to analyse the music, it defied my skills. I could describe the harmonic

progressions, the form, the architectural proportions according to the differing theories of several eminent

musicologists. The closer I penetrated to the heart of the mystery, the more elusive it became. It was

almost as if Serafin had opened a casement into another dimension.

Cilia and I gave the first performance of my transcriptions at court that summer... the songs suited my

Cilia’s glowing voice as if they had been written for her.

Prince Ilsevir summoned me to his privy chambers after the concert. His eyes were red-rimmed and

when he spoke, his voice trembled with emotion. “You have unearthed a rare talent, Professor Capelian.

A unique voice, speaking straight to the heart from the dusty shadows of the past.” A keen amateur

player, he begged me to transcribe more of Serafin’s work. He opened the Royal Libraries to me. I

searched and searched... but to no avail. No portraits. No documents. Not even a record of the man’s

decease.

I set Marles, my secretary-valet, to sift through the court annals whilst I attended on the Prince.

“I’ve been thinking, Capelian.” The Prince looked up at me from the frets of his theorbo. “Next summer

I shall be twenty-one. I want to commission an Ode to celebrate my birthday: drums, trumpets, double

choir, you know the kind of thing...”

My hand stilled as I reached to turn a page of the score; my fingers trembled slightly. Such a commission

would establish the fortunate composer as the most eminent in Bel’Esstar - “By rights the commission

should go to old Talfiere at the Conservatoire but I don’t like his style. Indigestible, dry counterpoints.”

He made a moue of displeasure. “So I’ve decided to award the commission to you.”

My brain was ablaze with grandiose themes and soaring fanfares as I hurried home to my apartments. At

last - the recognition I had been waiting for so long.

In Bel’Esstar if one lacks ‘connections’, one might as well abandon all hopes of a musical career. My

slow rise from obscurity had been hampered by setbacks and disappointments; I had no illustrious patron

to protect me. I watched in frustration as fellow student after student - significantly less talented than

myself - rose to positions of esteem within the Prince’s household, whilst I was forced to eke out some

kind of a living tutoring the spoilt children of the petty nobility and laboriously transcribing the scores in

the Conservatoire Library. Maybe it was thought that, as a foundling child, I must in some way make

reparation for my dead mother’s shame... whoever she had been...

When I emerged from the Prince’s appartments next day, Marles was waiting for me.

He had copied out an obscure entry from the court annals. The first clue in a long, frustrating search:

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

‘Most eminent and revered Potentate,

‘In answer to your enquiry as to the health of your court musician Rueil Serafin I enclose the report from

the Head Physician at the Sanatorium.

‘”Could find no physical reason to explain this devastating collapse

though much struck by the unique irises of the man’s eyes. He is a

native of the distant city ofSulien; I have read that children are

sometimes born there with these richly-variegated irises but never

before have I seen proof positive. Such children are said to possess

phenomenal musical gifts...”’

“Come, Marles.” Sweat was trickling down my forehead although it was a chilly autumn day; I tugged

off my heavy court perruque, thrusting it into his hands. “The Sanatorium!”

As the fiacre jogged over the cobbles, the name of the place whispered again and again through the

chambers of my brain. Sulien.

Resonance of another mystery. A mystery that intimately concerned me. To the gallants of the court,

Sulien was nothing more than a faded watering place, once fashionable as a royal spa... but now a resort

for the aged, the gout-ridden and the poxed...

All I had from theFoundlingHospitalwas a scrap of a tavern bill found tucked in my swaddling clothes.

The writing on the back begged the finder to take care of the child; the name of the tavern was

‘Capelian’s Astrolabe’ after the explorer. On enquiry, the tavern-keeper swore and said that the cursed

Sulien whore had died of the puerperal fever. He had employed her as a ballad singer, not realising that

she was already with child, some courtier’s unwanted bastard.

She had been known under the name of Epinette Celestin. All further enquiries, I was told, had proved

fruitless. The woman who may have been my mother had gone to her grave, taking her secrets with her.

I sat agitatedly tapping a staccato tattoo on the Physician’s lacquered desk. Why would he not permit

me to look in the records for myself? What had he to conceal?

“I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting, Professor Capelian.” The Physician

re-appeared, a dusty ledger in his arms. “My librarian’s filing system is

somewhat eccentric.”

“You have found something?” I could not conceal the eagerness in my voice.

Even Marles’s countenance betrayed a certain uncharacteristic animation. “Very little, I’m afraid. A

century ago the records were not so scrupulously kept as they are now. There are lacunae, lamentable

lacunae...”

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Sarah Ash - Airs From Another Planet

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