Мэтью Перл - The Dante Chamber

She had. She had trembled down to her feet at the presence of the brilliant, nervous pupil of her father’s. Though she was not going to tell him that, not then, not now, never. “Were you going to ask something a moment ago, Mr. Cayley?”

“This is terribly presumptuous of me, but if you are half as miserable going back to that noisy, crowded banquet as I am... well, do you fancy taking a walk?” He offered his arm.

Christina looked back at the windows of the opera house, blazing yellow and red.

She offered her arm and gave a slight nod, proud of herself that she managed to hide the slightest hint of a smile.

Browning took in the scene before him. Some of the women wore masks over the upper part of their faces, and many members of both genders wore dominoes, or long, satin robes of all black or all white.

Browning knew — even from across the room — how uncomfortable Christina was. Her eyes, made mysterious by their unusual tint of bluegray that at times appeared hazel, projected a fearful glare at her surroundings. The traditions of the opera balls were associated with times of decadence and celebration that brushed against Christina’s every fiber. Browning knew this and hated making her come along. Still, Christina was their best hope for recognizing associates of Gabriel’s, which made it all the more alarming when a few minutes later he could no longer spot her. As for Holmes, Browning was impressed with his superhuman conversational powers as the doctor fluttered through the room like a hummingbird, progressing gab by gab.

For a while, Browning also lost sight of the woman he’d been curious to try to interview — the one, though not masked, who concealed her face in her hands.

When he found the same young woman again, he could see the reason for her posture. She was periodically sobbing.

“For just such occasions,” Browning said, holding out his silk handkerchief emblazoned with his initials.

She smiled a little and introduced herself as Jane Cary. She had wide-set green eyes, which she now dried with his handkerchief, and pinned-up hair the color of wet sand. He recognized her from her small part in the opera.

“It was a terrific success, wasn’t it?” she said.

“But...,” Browning replied, gesturing at her tears.

“Oh, don’t mind what a sight I am, sir. This all — well, not to burden a stranger, but it just makes me miss Lilly even more.”

Browning nodded sympathetically, trying to hide his desire for more. “You were a close friend of Miss Brenner’s?”

“Inseparable,” the young woman corrected him. “A day didn’t pass when we weren’t together. Hardly ever, at least. I was in the countryside with my sister’s family for a few weeks when she vanished. I curse myself that I wasn’t with her! What kind of villain, what kind of devil would do such a thing? To think of the terror she must have felt, to die like that, alone in the streets, and her eyes...”

From the emotion she showed as her lips trembled, Browning’s mind turned back to the unimaginable moment Brenner would have experienced when realizing her situation. With her eyes sewn, she would be lost in a whirlpool of unhelpful voices and noises. When I approached close enough to see their condition , Dante Alighieri recounts in Purgatory ’s Canto Thirteen, the heavy grief pushed tears from my eyes .

The young woman continued, telling stories of Lillian’s career and family. “Lilly’s father was a great singing teacher, and kept her in a military regimen of lessons before he abandoned the family. That changed her.”

“Did it?”

“Indeed. I think she always wondered had she been a different singer, a better one in the upper registers, for instance, which her father reprimanded her about — had she practiced more, might he never have left?” The weeping young lady turned fierce with anger. “There! That’s who took it all away from her!”

Browning wheeled around ready to confront a monster. Her accusation was directed toward the lovely prima donna of the evening’s performance, who sang the part of the heroic wife.

“What do you mean? She did it?”

Jane explained that this new prima donna, Miss Spalding, had been eyeing the position held by Lillian for the better part of a year.

“Lilly worried about it all the time,” explained Jane.

“Did she?”

“She worried Miss Spalding was younger, prettier, with a better range of voice.”

The sin of envy is scourged within this terrace , Browning heard Virgil’s lesson (and warning) to Dante. He tried casually asking, in a quieter voice, “Tell me something, Jane. Did Miss Brenner speak about her feelings toward Miss Spalding — this envy that plagued her — with anyone other than you?”

“Oh, yes,” Jane said, leaning in closer with a confidential tone. “Lilly spoke about it with almost everyone she met.”

Browning frowned.

“I remember once,” Jane went on, “being at a grand banquet like this with Lilly — oh, wasn’t she feted by everyone there! Every man wanted to dance with her! Real aristocrats, too. Then when we left she immediately burst into tears.”

“But why?”

“Lilly said all the attention made her realize she was a mere opera singer.”

Jane reached for champagne from a passing tray, and when dancing recommenced, Browning was divided from her by a sea of revelers.

Later on he noticed that the spirits Jane drank seemed to free her from her melancholy over Lillian Brenner, at least temporarily, and he overheard her ask Holmes, in a giddy, intoxicated treble, “Is it true you’re a doctor?”

After exchanges with a few other people, Browning pulled Holmes aside. “Have you seen Miss Rossetti?”

“I leaned out the window for some air, and saw her walking with someone,” Holmes answered.

“In this cold? Whom?”

“A man.”

“Are you certain?” Browning replied, swallowing down an unwelcome sensation of amazement and resentment.

“I couldn’t see the fellow clearly,” Holmes added.

“Miss Rossetti can take very good care of herself. And if she is walking on the arm of a man, he must be some kind of saint. Holmes, there was one of the lesser singers here, Jane, who spoke with you...”

“Strange girl.”

“How so?”

Holmes explained that Jane had apparently overheard him speaking to someone else about his medical lectures. That’s why she approached him and asked him if he really was a doctor. Though she was not familiar with Holmes’s poetry (a fact Holmes found extremely hard to believe), she was quite interested in his profession.

“I wonder why,” Browning said.

Holmes’s reply was unexpected. “Opium.”

“What do you mean?”

Jane had insisted to Holmes she used it only occasionally, but that both the apothecaries and the shady street dens had been insisting that supplies were running short, depriving even some injured soldiers and others who depended on long-term use of the medicines. She thought Holmes, as a doctor, might have advice.

“What’s bothering you now, Browning?”

“It’s about the opium,” Browning replied, struck as though by a thunderbolt. “It reminds me of something you said shortly after your arrival. Let’s find Miss Rossetti — right now.”

Along the way on their walk, Cayley spoke about the histories of the buildings and squares and monuments they passed in the halos of the street lamps, recalled the old structures that had been swallowed by long-ago fires, chronicled the riots and scandals that had occurred at various spots. Christina for the most part listened, not minding at all Cayley’s arbitrary pauses and the hurried tone of speech that many mistook for madness. To be out around the city at night brought a thrill and fright like a sailor’s discovery of a new world. As rain began again, Cayley held up an umbrella, trying to place it over her head more than his own, accomplishing neither.