Settling in

[Erika Leroux]

She busied herself doing what needed doing. All the small, insignificant tasks that meant they’d be comfortable here. She glanced up from her notes – Christine was buried deep in a score, nodding away to herself, her lips moving silently, her eyes scanning the music hungrily. Erica smiled slightly, vaguely reassured, and returned to writing her letter to the Harpy.

She wasn’t certain how well they would both be accepted. Christine, that was a given. Her beautiful, talented, wild and broken Christine, upon whom everyone doted, she would undoubtedly be accepted. Oh, she’d noticed how the Prince…Consul Maximus had listened to those dulcet tones. How the Toreador had gazed, entranced by the music, by the beauty. They always remembered Christine.

The candle flickered slightly and she paused in her writing. Yes, Christine was always accepted. As she had once been. When she was young and beautiful and talented. She could have been all that. She could have been the one making the Toreador beg for more, and lightening the Prin…Consul’s burden a little. She silently damned her sire for breaking her so thoroughly, killing her more than a thousand times over in so many different ways. And then she silently damned Christine for constantly reminding her of what she had once been.

And then, once she had damned the whole of her pathetic life, she returned to finishing the letter, before turning to her ward.

“You can sing that for me now, mon ortolan.”

[Christine Daye]

Christine looked up from the score, blinking in surprise, as if awoken from some reverie.

"Yes, Maestra. Of course, Maestra."

And she sang, unaccompanied, sight-reading, with the voice of an angel.

When the last page of the music had been sung, she let her voice fall to silence. Then:

"Was it enough, Maestra? That passage, in the thirty-second bar, that descending sequence of running arpeggios - I do not think I got the rhythm right. And my control was not as it should be."

She's humming now, in agitation.

"Is this what I shall perform at the ball? For the Consul Maximus? I shall try it again. I must be perfect. Nothing but perfection for you, Maestra, for the Consul Maximus. I shall sing it again, that passage..."

And she does. Again and again and again and again.

[Erika Leroux]

Erika closed her eyes. Christine's voice sent her back once more, as it always did, to her own glory days. To the Teatro San Cassiano during Carnival, her very first public performance, as Alinda. She'd always had a fondness for Cavalli's work, which increased, as did her own reknown, with each role she was given. She had been so looking forward to performing as Deinaira at the Tuilleries in Paris, in front of French royalty.

A role that she never performed.

She heard later - much, much later, while still dazed by pain - that she had apparently "gone missing", that the role had now been given to Leonora Ballarini. Her absence had caused the production little problem. They'd had over a year to replace her.

And then she snapped back to the present, the repeating arpeggios, perfect now - they had been for the past twenty minutes. Exquisitely perfect. Repeatedly perfect. Gratingly perfect.

"Enough, little songbird!" - a sudden stab of memory as she used that phrase, perhaps a little more sharply, the anger showing through more than she'd intended - "Enough! You have done well tonight. It is perfect."

[Christine Daye]

Christine flinched, rocking back on her heels. She hummed a short phrase, softly, then quieted.

Hesitantly she stepped over to where Erika sat, looking down at the other woman.

"Maestra... are you well? Are you hungry?"

The words started hesitant, then spilled out in a rush.

"Only... you have been so busy and done so much to see us settled here... and yet there is still so much to do... and you do it all... for I am no use to you... but I worry, Maestra, that the strain on you is too much! Is there truly nothing I can do to ease your burden?"

[Erika Leroux]

Startled by Christine's words, Erika looked up at her ward, eyes narrowed, scrutinizing her expression, attempting to read the reasoning behind this sudden show of compassion. She smiled at Christine, wanly.

"It has been tiring, that I will admit. But it is nothing that will not pass. I have been so used to travelling by myself, unseen, unheard. It is...It has been a long time since I was surrounded by so many of our kind. Much of what I have done for you this far has been undertaken by letter, or quiet moments with no more than a handful of others, and always when I am with you for your performance, I can remain unnoticed in the wings. Here, however...here I must talk...I must...be seen, at least a little, for you to truly come into your own." She smiled again, this time less wanly, hoping to semi-reassure Christine, while carefully selecting her words. "I would not begrudge you a single moment of my many discomforts though. Not a single one. I do this all for you."

She reached out and took Christine's gloved hands in her own for a moment, drinking in the moment, as hungrily as if it were vitae, before sinking back into her seat, and affecting tiredness.

"But, my sweetling, you asked if there was something you could do? Indeed. There is. This masquerade ball - there are items that we still require. Firstly a dress for you. And gloves, you have gone through pair after pair after pair. Another fan, perhaps. Oh, and a mask. You need a mask. Do not fret about mine. I believe I have one from a Carnival that will suit. I shall...adjust it accordingly. There is money in that box over there, which I have set aside specifically. Go, be careful and do not dally too long!"

[Christine Daye]

Christine froze when Maestra took her hand, but it was only held but for a moment. Then, at Erika's words, Christine's expression lit up with delight.

"Truly, Maestra? Truly? You wish for me to go find the necessaries for the ball? By myself?! Truly?!"

She looked as if she couldn't quite believe it, a radiant glow of hope on her face.

At Erika's nod of confirmation, she grinned, as delighted as a child.

"I shall go at once!" she declared. "Oh! My hat!"

Laughing, flustered, she gathered her hat, and paused at the door.

"Thank you, Maestra. I will be careful, and I will return soon."

And with that she was gone, out into the night.

[Erika Leroux]

Erika watched her ward skip off delightedly into the night, smiling to herself. It had been worth the deception to see Christine's reaction. She waited a few moments longer before rising from where she'd slumped, no trace of tiredness in her body now.

Pausing only to collect her deeply hooded cloak and a veil, she slipped out into the shadows of the night. She had tasks of her own, and she was certainly not going to expose her bright little songbird to the dark, stinking underground paths that she was about to tread, roads containing certain truths of filth, of hopelessness, of poverty and despair.

No. It was better that Christine did not know.