19. Chapter 19
Roses, lilies, ferns, jonquils, baby’s breath, and tulips. Pink, gentle white, burgundy, and fire orange. Everything clashed, but still—it was the most beautiful bouquet she had ever seen.
The light from the large windows in the dome room streamed around Cassius, softening his straw-coloured curls and lighting him like a halo. He adjusted his suit buttons, tugged at his waistcoat, and shifted the brilliant bunch of flowers from hand to hand. Left. Right. Left.
‘You cannot have those here,’ Odette called from just inside the door. ‘Not before opening night. It is bad luck to give the cast flowers beforehand. You know this.’
‘They aren’t for the performance.’ He stepped forwards as he spoke. Odette took a step backwards, still watching the flowers, not convinced they weren’t still carrying bad luck. ‘They aren’t anything to do with the show. They’re for you. Not for the performer, not for Marietta… For you. From me.’
Odette took a breath as the world swam. The doctor, he’d let so much blood today.
She’d barely made it up the stairs without fainting.
He’d tried three different veins, swearing that the last one would remove the impurities and bad humours from her body.
That this would, finally, make her ears strong again.
‘When?’ she had asked him. ‘When?’ trying to remain composed as he worked, even though she wanted to scream.
When, when, when? Before we open? Before he goes?
Before he forgets me? Before everyone forgets me?
But the doctor only did what he always did. He counted his coins and said, ‘Soon.’
‘I want you to know that I know.’ Cassius toyed with the ribbon that held the flowers tightly bunched. ‘And it… it doesn’t change how I feel. I still want you to come with me.’
‘How could you know?’ Odette crossed the room in a rush. He couldn’t possibly. Only Daniel and Nora knew, and they would never breathe a word. If Cassius had spotted that she sometimes did not hear things right, had Karl? Had Ezra, or the cast?
‘You’ve not been yourself of late. The dizziness, the feeling unwell. It explains why you don’t want to come to Vienna, and why you are so worried. But I’ll look after you.’ He laid the flowers on the piano, then reached out to her. ‘I’ll raise it as my own.’
Odette’s galloping heart slowed as fear was replaced by a slow tightening in her shoulders and chest. ‘Your own?’
‘It is too soon to be mine,’ he said, with a shrug and a smile. ‘But no one need ever know.’
‘You think I am with child?’ Anger dripped through her, cold and clear as ice water. ‘And now you want to save me? Because a fallen woman must always be saved. You will become a martyr and make me honest. Yes?’
‘God damn it, Odette, not everything has to be a drama. I am trying to help,’ he said, his voice rising. ‘What will you do otherwise?’
‘Perhaps I will see a wise woman for some herbs. Or one of the barber doctors in the back streets who can make such things disappear. Perhaps I will go abroad, pay to leave it with a simple family, and pretend nothing happened. Or perhaps, I will raise it alone and live a scandalous life, daring to be who I am!’ She didn’t want to shout, but this was too much.
‘You want to make me an honest woman? Liar. You want to trap me, to make me behave. I am not with child.’ She spat the last word, even as the world swam.
‘You are no different to Karl or the press! Go!’
‘If it’s not that, then what? Something is wrong. I know you.’
‘I said, go! Or I will call Daniel, and he will make you leave.’
‘Talk to me, damn you!’ Cassius grabbed both of her arms, held her, his thumbs clasping the crook of her elbow.
He stared down at her with his storm grey eyes, his voice sharp as a thunderclap.
Odette twisted in his grasp to pull herself free, and he tightened his grip—not hard, barely enough to hold her, but his thumb dug into a fresh puncture and the bruise it had left behind. She flinched, crying out with pain.
Cassius released her. Remorse flooded his features.
‘I didn’t mean to—I’m sorry—’ he stammered, then paused.
He grasped her wrist, tugged at the cuffs, and pushed her sleeve up.
Odette twisted away, but not before he’d revealed the sequence of light red cuts, the mottled purple, and the small red puncture wounds which rose stark against the softness of her skin.
A look of horror spread across his face. ‘Bloodletting? Why?’
She tugged down her sleeve. ‘It is not your concern.’
‘Why can’t you let me in?’ he roared. ‘Let me help you!’
‘You don’t want to help me. You want to save me. Save me from my moral failings, save me from my weaknesses, make me honest. You want to sacrifice yourself for me.’
‘And what is so terrible about that! We have been alone, both of us, when things could have been different. I am trying to be with you, I am trying to l—’
‘I am losing my hearing!’ The words scratched her throat as they left her, harsh as spurs with bitter truth.
They bounced through the air, off the walls, before collapsing onto the floor between them.
The air between them grew cold. Odette looked away from Cassius, who had frozen with the word she could not bear to hear still on his lips.
She could not hear it from him, because it would complete and shred her in a breath.
‘No,’ he said.
Odette tried to hold her head high, but there was too much in his short denial.
She covered her face with her hands. A cloistered inhalation through her fingers helped to still the giddiness, but it was not enough to lift her spirits, to lend her hope, to give her optimism.
Cassius would understand what it meant. The doctor might not see the problem in being too loud or a little out of sync or a little off-key, but he understood the importance of perfection for performers like them, where no room for praise remained, only the tally of small mistakes.
The risk of missing a cue, of not hearing a whisper from offstage and, worst of all, of not hearing herself and continuing to be half a note out. It wasn’t fair.
It just wasn’t fair.
Anger flared inside her at the pathetic look on his face. Even worse than his determination to save her was his pity.
‘Conductor Zadora.’ Odette raised her chin.
‘How will you save me from this? Will repenting make my hearing sharp again? Will a life of propriety make the ringing stop? Will being a subservient woman make me whole? Stop the percussion from making it worse? Will Vienna save me, the way you want it to save you?’
Cassius stiffened, almost flinched. There it was. A chink in his armour. A place to make him bleed.
‘Is that what you imagine?’ she pressed, taking a step forwards as she lowered her voice to a malicious snarl.
‘That the orchestras in Vienna will chase away your demons? Will turning your back on a new audience give you freedom? Absolution? Or simply a new place to hide? Only you can write your songs. Only you can play your music. I do not need to be saved. Save yourself, Cassius. Save yourself from being the prodigy who did nothing with his gifts.’
‘An orchestra needs a conductor,’ he spluttered, his voice rising. ‘An orchestra needs direction!’
‘And you need an excuse to stay away from the keys, even though they call you the same way the stage calls me. You need a reason to hide from your failures. Are you a failed Mozart, with the overbearing father? Are you a failed Beethoven, the master who can play, but is never accepted by the nobility? Or a shadow of Liszt, playing for your own amusement and to seduce the wives of nobles? Or a failed Chopin, refusing to write for your homeland, to use the music to fight. No. You are too scared to even try to be any of them.’
‘Stop it.’
‘You even fail at being a failure.’ She flung the words at him, selecting the sharpest points, aiming to hurt.
‘I said stop it! You know nothing! You had love. You had care. I had none of it! And when I managed a little of my own, I tried to give it to you. But nothing is ever enough for you. You are always wanting more, never happy, because you cannot bear to be yourself! They are just stupid little songs that mean nothing. What difference will it make if you cannot hear? It’s not as if you ever took a moment to listen! ’
‘Go!’ she screamed, loud and harsh enough to strain her voice, but it no longer mattered. It was over. Everything she loved, everything she was, everything she cherished, all of it. Gone.
Odette steadied herself against the piano. Only when his footsteps had faded away did she allow her knees to buckle and her body to sink onto the bench.
Daniel swept into the room. He looked from her to the flowers. ‘Would you like me to dispose of these?’
Odette shook her head. ‘It doesn’t matter. There will be no opening night.’