FIC: Battaglia Con Brio, Part 4/4
Title: Battaglia Con Brio (4/4)
Author: metacheese
Word Count: ~8,000 this part; roughly 35,000 over all
Team: Angst(y romance)
Prompts: Ghost, Smile, Ring, Balcony, Whiskey and Rum, Completion
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Sex?
Summary: Arthur finds what he's good at. Eames finds Arthur. Weddings (not Eames's and Arthur's), sex, and operas.
Beta: eternalsojourn
Notes: Title is an Italian musical term meaning “battle, with spirit”.
Part 3
“Are you sure it’s necessary to dismiss us?” Christina paced back and forth in the doorway, leaning against the doorjamb, her face twisted in sadness.
“I’m sorry, Christina, but it is.” Arthur layered his books in a trunk, not pausing to look at the titles or run his fingers over the smooth leather bindings. At that moment books only seemed like an inconvenience, like heavy, dusty bricks one nevertheless felt guilty for abandoning on the roadside. “I’ve decided it’s time for me to live a simpler life. And yes, you may keep the parrot.”
Christina glanced over at the brass cage where a brilliant green bird fidgeted on its perch. Her face lit up, and she coughed to restore her solemnity.
“I think Anton was crying earlier,” she confided. “He can’t even talk to you, he’s so terribly sad.”
Right on cue, Arthur heard Anton’s footsteps rattling the stairs.
“Sir, Herr Cobb is here to see you,” he called from the top of the stairs. It was unlike Anton not to come into a room before making an announcement.
Arthur breathed into his fist. “Tell him I’m not home.”
“He said he’d be willing to wait as long as he had to.”
Arthur sighed and scrubbed his face with his hands. “I’ll be down in a moment. Please stay up here, both of you.”
Cobb would probably challenge him to a duel. Or he would kill him on the spot. Either way, Arthur knew he deserved it. He walked down the stairs feeling like a man about to face death. But all he could think about was the ferret in the piano, trapped and boggled in its little black jacket. Grabbing it by the scruff and holding it against his chest to keep it calm. If only our problems were as small as being trapped in a piano, he thought, slowly lowering his foot onto the final step. If only they could be solved by a hand on the neck.
“Herr Cobb,” Arthur greeted him. He was sitting on one of the few chairs that had not yet been sent away. His arm was draped over the chair’s arm, and he looked deep in thought.
“Arthur, how long have we known each other?” Cobb turned his head.
“I did not think that I was someone you wanted to know any longer,” said Arthur.
“I am angry,” Cobb admitted. “After the performance, I wanted to slit your throat. All those years I blamed myself for her death, for why she lost the will to live. And to think that you might have helped her-“
“I tried,” said Arthur. “That was what I was trying to do in the beginning. And then I couldn’t give it up. I was finally worth something.”
“I don’t know if anything would have saved her,” Cobb said finally. “But I didn’t support her. Maybe if I’d supported her composing things would have gone differently.” Arthur saw that Cobb was rubbing a small glinting object between his thumb and forefinger, staring at it as if it were an indecipherable letter.
Arthur didn’t know how to respond.
“I suppose we should thank Eames for making me come out with the truth, then,” Arthur smiled weakly.
“Why Eames?” Cobb frowned.
“Eames read my diaries,” Arthur said. “He broke into my cabinet and read my diaries. And in them I confessed my sin. I considered burning it after I wrote it down, but I didn’t feel I deserved to forget. And I drew a picture of her-I had so many dreams about her, and so many things reminded me all the time. So I have reason to believe that he hired the woman to torment me so that I’d be reminded of my guilt.”
Cobb looked down at his knees and shook his head. From what Arthur could see of his face from that angle, he looked nearly amused. “My God, you’re paranoid. Eames had nothing to do with it.”
“What?” Arthur asked.
“I know that Eames had nothing to do with it. Because I hired her.”
Arthur was so taken aback that words would not form.
“I saw her at a tavern one day, and she looked so much like Mal it was as if--it was as if she were still alive. I could convince myself for a moment that I had not missed my chance to be a better husband. So I paid her a little money to come and sit at rehearsals, and to be near me at parties. To help me pretend.” Cobb’s eyes were glassy with unshed tears. “I think you ought to forgive Eames, Arthur. He has a great deal of affection for you, despite the sadness you’ve caused him.”
Arthur draped his arms over the back of a chair and hung his head. “Surely it’s just pity.”
“I had her wear this,” Cobb said softly, uncurling his hand to reveal the shining object fully. “I had the woman who was pretending to be my wife wear the ring belonging to my real wife.”
“I-I’m sorry,” Arthur stammered, unsure of the proper response. He could hear Anton bellowing “SHUT YOUR BLOODY MOUTH!” to someone or something upstairs.
“What I am saying,” Cobb continued, “is that we have both done terrible, selfish things. We will probably continue to do terrible, selfish things all our lives. It’s the natural condition of humankind. I thought I could allow myself to try to live in ignorance of my failures for a time. But that night, when you confessed, I realized the hollowness of what I was trying to do. She was gone. Anyone else could only be a pale imitation. And leaving all of this behind will not change your past either. You do have friends here, Arthur.”
“I’m leaving tomorrow,” Arthur said stiffly.
“Stay for the wedding at least.” Arthur could tell from Cobb’s tone that he would brook no dissent.
Arthur laughed bitterly. “Surely they all think I am a liar and a fraud. I passed Yusuf in the street the other day. He did not acknowledge me. I have been laughed at and hissed at in public. Someone had a talking parrot delivered here that said ‘I’m a parrot too! But I’m honest!’ It’s still upstairs.”
Cobb smiled. “You are a liar and a fraud. But they’ll get over it soon enough. And Eames-I don’t believe he pities you. He treasures your friendship and your regard. He loves you.”
“I don’t-“
“Perhaps you’re right,” Cobb murmured. “Perhaps you’re not worthy. But whether or not you are worthy, it is not for you to disallow someone from loving you.” Arthur noticed that Cobb had slid the delicate filigreed ring onto the ringfinger that wore its twin and was twisting it around the finger’s first joint. “That is not your decision to make.”
§
And so it was that Arthur, in his second-finest jacket, attended Yusuf and Ariadne’s wedding on a clear November day. Though they’d been scheduled to marry in August, they’d postponed the wedding these few months, though neither Yusuf nor Ariadne had been straightforward in telling Arthur why.
A modest number of guests filled the pews. One of the front benches was occupied by Ariadne’s brothers and their wives, her parents being long dead and her sisters accompanying her in the bridal party. Yusuf’s widowed father, a middle-class bookbinder from Wagenheim, sat tapping his thumbs together on the opposite bench. Cobb was in attendance--minus the ghost of his wife, Arthur was pleased to note-and Arthur took his seat next to Cobb’s daughter, Philippa, who had grown taller and less blonde since Arthur had last seen her. Arthur took her hand in greeting. She had long fingers, he noticed. A pianist’s fingers. It would not do to have her learn on a piano that sounded as if its notes were struggling feebly to shout through fathoms of heavy water.
Yusuf, at the altar before the priest, seemed uncertain where he should be looking, so he craned his neck and stared up at the ceiling. He glanced at the door once or twice, but just as quickly glanced away, as if afraid too much expectation would bring about disappointment. Or perhaps he felt that not being disappointed would be almost as frightening-hoped for, longed for, yes, but still terrifying, still sending through the body that tremulous feeling that seeing the object of one’s desires might actually literally destroy one, body and mind.
Arthur could understand that sentiment.
Arthur was not surprised to see Eames playing a sprightly toccata on the organ, dressed in a hyacinth-purple frock coat, looking unusually somber from behind at least. Arthur was surprised, however, to see a full choir clad in gold and white standing as still as humanly possible, like lanterns poked at by the lightest breeze. Choirs did not usually sing at the weddings of the middle and lower classes. They were reserved for the gentry and the nobility, the sorts of people for whom symphonies were named.
He did not have the opportunity to dwell on this mystery for long. The doors split and Ariadne entered, shadowed by attendants of various ages and sizes, unmarried girls all. Two he recognized as her sisters; they shared the same slight build and features that translated well to portraiture. Ariadne’s eyes were wide in the flickering bronze candlelight. She looked nervous, one hand moving up and down on her diaphragm to remind her to breathe. Arthur thought she looked lovely, her cheeks rouged and her hair done up in ringlets. Her dress, too, was splendid, cream with subtle mint-green needlework scrolls running down the sides of the skirt which, as per the latest style, was as wide as the average kitchen door. As Arthur remembered, Ariadne had never been much for needlework (she much preferred to paint). He wondered who had helped her.
As she began her walk toward the altar, Eames lifted his hands from the organ for a moment, and she stopped in her tracks, as if the music were animating her. He touched his hands to the keys once more, creating dense, growling chords, practically the diametrical opposite of the hopscotching piece he’d been playing before. Again she began to glide forward. After four bars, the choir added their voices to the strident welter:
I am a sinner and my soul is a roving shadow of hell.
I have tried to fold myself back into darkness
But darkness spat me back onto the earth.
And now a window opens like the wings of a hawk.
I shrink from its fearsome light,
But its cleanness strikes with unerring claws
That have lifted so many lowly creatures toward the sun
And I have not the speed or cunning
To run from you who have opened love before me.
At first Arthur did not recognize the words. They sounded deeply, unnervingly familiar, but he could not place them. Then they found a place in his mind. He remembered them.
He remembered writing them.
Nearly two years ago, late December, brown ink in a burgundy notebook. They had just buried Mal, and no sooner was her casket lowered into the ground and the first shovels of dirt spooned into the lightless black earth-door than the snow had begun to fall, her grave erased by a gentle floury softness. When Arthur had walked by the churchyard he could almost allow himself to forget, pretend that no one was buried there but the long-dead and nameless. And that night he and Robert had made love in a clean, warm room. And Arthur, sitting awake, watching the whale-oil flames reveal the relaxed tenderness on his lover’s sleeping face, had nearly, nearly persuaded himself that he could love and be loved without feeling like an impostor whose love meant less than a scrap of moldy bread.
The snow melted.
Arthur’s mind was absent throughout the brief ceremony, the priest admonishing Yusuf and Ariadne to give each other mutual society, help, and comfort, both in prosperity and in adversity. He was glad for them, but his embarrassment at hearing those words of his, which were never meant to be spoken aloud, surrounded his gladness in a noxious fog. That was all he could bring himself to feel. Embarrassed. He felt he had vomited the contents of his heart before a crowd once again; the difference this time was that he had not been prepared, and that he had not felt a need to confess these particular secrets.
It didn’t matter that the music was darkly magnificent and entirely new for Eames, whose tone had until now usually contained a note of nimble mockery. It didn’t matter that the words locked into the music as if they were warp and weft of a single fine sheet of linen.
It didn’t matter-or it barely mattered-that Eames had elevated Arthur’s words, words to which Arthur had barely given a second glance, to the level of art.
It was not until Eames began to play the recessional that Arthur realized he had not been paying attention as the couple exchanged vows. Arthur tried to drown out the words the choir was singing as he followed the bride and groom and their companions out of the church. Through the spaces between the people he caught glimpses of the newly wedded couple arm in arm. Their faces shone with happiness. As per tradition, some of the young men in the groom’s party tried to steal the bride away, but Ariadne elbowed them--from the looks on their faces it seemed to genuinely hurt--and clung more tightly to her husband.
“Did you know about this? What Eames was planning to do?” he asked Cobb, who carried his two-year-old son, James, on his hip and led Phillippa by the hand.
“I didn’t,” Cobb responded casually. Arthur knew he was lying.
“And you thought it would be a good idea to allow him to go ahead with it.”
Cobb looked Arthur in the eye as daylight hit them. “It was a piece of such brilliance, Arthur, that frankly I didn’t care where it had come from. He could’ve gotten the words and music from killing the Emperor’s stallions and draining their blood and I wouldn’t have cared.”
Arthur glared at him incredulously. “Ever the bloody opportunist.”
Cobb covered James’s ear with his free hand. “You watch your language around my children.”
Arthur stepped into his carriage, where Anton awaited him, and they followed the line of carriages heading to the reception at Cobb’s home.
When they arrived, Arthur was surprised and pleased to find that someone had given the place a thorough scrubbing. It no longer smelled of dust and mold, and Arthur’s nose did not immediately twitch in a prelude to a sneeze the instant he and Anton walked in the door.
Arthur tried to keep his distance from the others. He offered his congratulations to Yusuf and Ariadne, shook his hand and kissed her cheek, and tried not to make it obvious that he was looking toward the door. Looking for Eames. He usually tried to refrain from drinking, but he found that filling and refilling his cup with rum was the only thing that made the noise and the embarrassment and the loneliness and the weight bearable. Soon the room began to look blurry and refracted, a view through cut crystal, and he was glad of it, though Anton put his hand on Arthur’s shoulder, whispering, Sir, don’t you think you’ve had enough? At least for now? He tried to take a step forward but lost his balance and wobbled forward into Anton, who held him up by the elbows and whispered You’re alright. You’re alright.
Just then he looked over Anton’s shoulder and watched a flash of hyacinth purple wend its way through the crowd. He heard Eames’s accented voice thanking people for their praise and congratulations. Arthur grabbed Anton’s shoulders and positioned him so as to obscure himself from Eames’ line of sight.
“Are you all right, sir?” Anton asked, glancing behind him in the direction where Eames was smiling and kneeling to inspect the embroidery on Ariadne’s skirt.
“I think I need some fresh air,” Arthur uttered weakly. Anton his elbow, and Arthur grabbed it, letting Anton support most of his stubborn drunk weight. They stumbled together through the crowd, Anton uttering apologies, Herr Hahnemann is not well, I am sorry, and Arthur trying not to meet the disappointed and pitying eyes. He was sure he knew what they were thinking: a thief and a drunkard, what use is he to any decent folk?
Anton led Arthur down the winding iron staircase to the back courtyard.
“I am supposed to be a model of excellent behavior,” Arthur lamented, looking up at the wan light from the balcony and scrubbing his tight, itchy face with the palms of his hands.
“Everyone has lapses now and then,” Anton soothed as he placed a steady hand on Arthur’s upper back. “You must forgive yourself.”
“Forgive myself?” Arthur cried. “Anton, if you had any idea what I’d done-surely you’ve heard-“
“I have heard nothing,” Anton replied. “If anyone has tried to tell me anything, I have refused to hear it, because I know that you are a good man.”
Arthur shook his head slowly, but had to stop himself because it was whipping up his nausea. “I am not a good man, Anton,” he muttered. “I didn’t want to tell you what I did, but I can’t stop now. Too drunk.”
“I am sure it is not as bad-“
Arthur interrupted him. “I took credit for a symphony I did not write. Even after its rightful author wanted me to set the record straight. I refused. Every appointment I had was because of that symphony, Anton. I could not have afforded the home I lived in, or the clothes I wear, or the food I eat without it. Anything. I am a thief.”
Anton only stared at Arthur dumbfounded.
“Well?”
“I am surprised at you, sir,” Anton said at last, eyes downcast. “I have to say I expected better of you.”
“You always thought I could do no wrong,” Arthur said sadly. “Since we were children. And I let you think that of me, I encouraged it, because it made me feel like I was perfect. So every time I stole or lied, I blamed someone else, so that you wouldn’t think any less of me.”
“Oh, Arthur,” whispered Anton sadly. Arthur placed his hands on Anton’s shoulders.
“Look at me, Anton,” Arthur urged. “Please tell me you forgive me.”
“I forgive you,” Anton said weakly.
“You don’t really.” Arthur bit his trembling lip to keep his restraint, and Anton reached up to touch his cheek. Arthur leaned into the soft touch, and without thinking, he pressed his lips onto Anton’s. His mouth slid messily over Anton’s for what felt like a long time, though the motion was all Arthur’s; Anton remained still, holding Arthur in place with a sober hand on his upper arm. At last Arthur drew back, wiped his mouth, and tried to balance himself on his shaky legs.
“I’m sorry. I should not have done that,” Arthur apologized. Anton rubbed Arthur’s shoulder placatingly and looked up.
“I think someone’s watching,” Anton announced. “Should we go back upstairs?”
“I’d rather leave,” said Arthur. He knew they’d have to go back through the house anyway.
They ascended the staircase; their observer was gone by the time they got to the balcony. Inside the girls were dancing in a circle and young men were trying to break the circle to grab them. It was an old Marchian wedding tradition. Eames usually loved games, but there was no sign of him, and Arthur thought-the first comforting thought of the night-that Eames had left the celebration, or was upstairs. Somewhere out of the way, where Arthur would not have to meet his eye.
Anton took Arthur’s overcoat off of the coat rack and draped it over Arthur’s shoulders; they went out together into the damp raw cold of the night.
“Wait,” said a voice from behind Arthur.
That voice.
Arthur turned around as slowly as possible.
“You can’t run from me forever.”
“I can. The world is getting larger every day,” Arthur said coldly and began to walk, though more slowly, toward his carriage.
“What have I done this time?” Eames demanded as he strode towards him. “You know I had no ill intent in opening that cabinet. Until last week I didn’t even know that that was why you sent me from your home that day. It was just a bloody cabinet full of papers. I stole nothing.”
“You stole nothing?” Arthur laughed. “You’ve got such an incredible sense of entitlement, Eames. It’s unbelievable. You think everything is for your amusement. You stole things no one was ever meant to see.”
“And look what I did with them! Arthur, if it weren’t for me all of that would still be locked away, and no one would know what you were capable of.”
“They were mine to hide away,” Arthur said sullenly. “You had no right. At least you could have asked.”
“I’m asking now,” Eames said. “Work with me. You don’t even have to like me. But the Duke of Pfefferburg has commissioned an opera from me, and I cannot write it with anyone but you.”
Arthur glanced back at Anton, who watched them with worried curiosity surrounded by the light of his lantern. Then he looked back at Eames. Eames who was neat and sober and sad-looking tonight, yet who was, Arthur reminded himself harshly, the same impulsive, selfish, wicked-tongued man he’d always been and probably always would be.
“I don’t enjoy getting people angry with me,” Eames declared. “Not always. But I can’t keep my mouth shut or my fingers still sometimes.”
Arthur took a step toward Eames. “I will try to work with you,” he said resignedly.
The gleam of Eames’s grin cut through the darkness. “I will try my best not to be jealous of your lover. I know that what we did, it wasn’t what you wanted, and I can’t claim you as my own.”
“Eames, that’s not-“ Arthur rushed to correct him but found himself unable to say the words. “And you’ll have to promise me that you’ll be able to restrain yourself. I don’t want to have to tie your hands or anything like that.”
Eames straightened his shoulders and cocked his head. “For you, I will be on my best behavior.”
§
April, 1799
“So when Girolamo first meets the sorcerer, who do you think should speak first?” Arthur pondered aloud.
“I leave that decision in your immensely capable hands,” Eames answered.
For seven months now they had been working on their opera, The Descent of Girolamo. Its libretto was taken from the story Arthur had told Eames when he lay in bed in a fog of pain and laudanum. The morning after Yusuf and Ariadne’s wedding, and quite early in the morning at that, Eames had arrived on Arthur’s doorstep waving a crinkled piece of paper which he shoved into Arthur’s hands. When Arthur examined it, he found that it was, almost word for word, the story as Arthur had told it. I never forgot it, Eames swore.
Then why didn’t you write the opera yourself, tell everyone that the story was yours? No one would believe me if I claimed authorship anyway.
Because, Eames had said softly. I am not that kind of thief. I’m sorry-I didn’t mean it that way-I meant that I could never deny you the glory that belongs to you.
“I meant to congratulate you on your vow of chastity.” Eames, straddling the piano bench, jabbed the needle into the piece of brown moire in his hands. He’d been working for hours at attaching a span of fringed lace to it, and Arthur had tried not to watch his hands conducting the thread through the garment in quick, skillful sweeps, hypnotic as it was to watch.
“My vow of-what?” Arthur asked, confused. He tapped the soft end of a quill against his lower lip, wondering how best to end one of the inkblob-studded metrical lines on the page beneath him.
“The other day. When Yusuf asked you about your romantic prospects, you told him you’d taken a vow of chastity. Is that true?” Eames asked.
Arthur felt his cheeks redden. “I told him that because my romantic life is none of his business,” he fairly snapped.
“And, by extension, none of mine. Fair enough,” Eames said breezily, then returned his attention to the needle’s rhythmic rise and fall.
“While we’re on the subject, how is your Annette?” Arthur asked, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible.
“Nonexistent,” said Eames.
“What? You mean you’re no longer together?” questioned Arthur.
“No.” Eames smiled. “Meaning that she doesn’t exist. I wanted to see how you’d react to the news that I had a lover, so I-well, I made her up.”
Arthur shoved the paper and his lap desk aside and rose to his feet to stand over Eames angrily.
“For six months you led me to believe that you’ve got a lover, that it’s serious, that you feel nothing for me anymore? Did you really expect that I’d throw a jealous fit? I was willing to accept that you’d bloody well moved on.” Arthur shoved Eames lightly, causing Eames to jab the needle into his own thigh.
“I didn’t think you cared about me,” Eames said bluntly. “Not the way I care about you. Perhaps you wanted to fuck me, and maybe you felt some sort of responsibility towards me, like a wayward child who needs to be looked after. But whenever I tried to show you how I felt about you, you looked so cold, so distant.”
“I risked my life for you,” Arthur hissed.
“I know. It’s one of the reasons why I love you.” Eames gazed earnestly up into Arthur’s eyes. “And I am grateful to you for that. You know I am.”
“So what, do you want sighing and fainting and passionate declarations?” Arthur spit the words out.
“Nothing of the sort. But still, bringing a criminal to justice isn’t exactly much of a cure for an empty bed or a lonely heart.” Eames’s tone was glum.
Arthur nearly snarled. “But you’re alive.”
Arthur seized Eames by his lapels and pulled him in, and ground his lips against Eames’s lips furiously, then sucked hard enough on Eames’s bottom lip that he could imagine a dark bruise rising on it. Eventually Arthur gave into Eames’s attempt to apply a gentler touch, and he lessened some of the kiss’s punishing pressure. Arthur kissed a truce into Eames’s vulnerable open mouth, kissed his sorrow and confusion and crushing loneliness into the softest gentlest part of Eames’s body, willing him, begging him to understand.
Eames drew back, touching his knuckle to Arthur’s cheek as a signal that he didn’t mean the pause as a rejection. “You do love me.”
Arthur nodded and swallowed back a swarm of denials and aversions. “I do.” He lifted Eames’s palm to his lips and kissed it softly. “I have. For what feels like a very long time.”
Eames wrapped his hand around Arthur’s. “Let me make love to you.”
They undressed in the quiet bedchamber, sliding off wigs, working open cravats, pulling off each item of clothing-frock coat, waistcoat, trousers, stockings, undergarments --with increasing urgency. Unless they needed to bend to take off a distant garment, they kissed long and steadily all the while, as if it were a non-negotiable state of their being and undressing. When they’d finally shed all their garments Eames guided Arthur down onto the bed face-down, soft palm and rough fingertips splayed between his shoulderblades; the hand traveled down Arthur’s spine in smooth arousing strokes. Eames petted Arthur till his vision went hazy and he was grinding his hips into the bedclothes, his lips parted to allow harsh, heavy breaths to pass. Wet lips massaged Arthur’s back, sucked red marks into his skin. After what felt like an eternity of thrusting his arse up towards Eames’s cock, of telling Eames what he wanted and needed, Arthur felt Eames’s hands part his arse, felt a fingertip-deliciously calloused-brush against his hole.
“Fuck me,” Arthur breathed, half his face smashed into a cushion. He knew his cheek would be embossed with the lines from the fabric for some time afterward, and he didn’t care. “I need it. There’s oil in the bedside table drawer.”
Eames left another lingering kiss on the nape of his neck before reaching over to get the tiny bottle. Arthur didn’t look up; he wanted to hear Eames unscrew the cap, wanted to hear the soft glug of oil onto Eames’s hands, to anticipate the first cold slippery touch without knowing exactly when. Before Eames worked Arthur’s hole open he ran his oiled hands over Arthur’s buttocks, up and down, and kneaded them. Then he began the slide of a finger into Arthur. The pace was glacial, and Arthur needed more now; he canted his hips, pushed them upwards to take in more of Eames’s finger. Eames took the hint, and began to move his finger around in gentle ever-wider circles, patiently, patiently stretching the tight opening.
“Another finger,” Arthur demanded, and Eames obliged. Arthur reveled in the new fullness, and when Eames began to scissor him he felt a delicious pressure against his inner center of pleasure, and he wanted the thick head of Eames’s cock to press against that place inside him. He reached backwards for Eames’s wrist, stilling the motion of Eames’s fingers, and put voice to those desires.
Arthur heard Eames slicking up again. It was only seconds before he felt the tip of Eames’s cock against him. Arthur was stretched wide open and everything was in place ready for Eames to just sink in, but he didn’t. He rested his cock at the top of Arthur’s cleft, rubbing it against the very lowest part of his lower back.
“You know, you’ve got some lovely dimples here,” Eames said, touching the aforementioned dimples on Arthur’s lower back with a finger. He moved his cock away and slid back, and he pressed his mouth to the two indented places his fingers had just touched. “Maybe I’ll just come here instead.”
“Eames,” Arthur groaned.
“Alright, alright. But you have to promise me that someday I can.” Eames lined his body up parallel to Arthur’s again so that he was practically lying on top of him, his forehead touching Arthur’s shoulder. He arched back like a cat to line up once more, using one hand to brace himself on the bed and the other to part Arthur’s buttocks for entry.
“Right now I will promise you anything,” Arthur said, though it was getting hard to speak. “I need you inside me.”
Eames slid into him. The further in he slid, the more Arthur could feel Eames’s body weighing him down. At the moment he wanted nothing more than to bear Eames’s entire weight and be fucked into place. The position kept their lovemaking slow. When Arthur reached down to touch his cock and lifted his hips off the bed, thrusting Eames’s cock a little deeper inside him, Eames pushed Arthur back down by the small of his back.
“Not so fast, love,” Eames whispered, and kissed the edge of Arthur’s ear.
Arthur’s cock was trapped beneath him, and he could feel the sticky clear liquid seeping onto his skin. Every time Eames’s cock slid as deep as it could go, every time Eames angled his hips to fit inside Arthur fully and smoothly, the dizzy swell in Arthur’s stomach spread a little more ruthlessly. At last he wriggled his hand beneath their shared weight and squeezed his cock, choked it tight as Eames kept rubbing him deep and slow and the pleasure mounted and then, then, when he thought the bottled-up pressure would implode and possibly kill him, he finally came all over his fingers and bedclothes.
Eames sat up without warning, knelt between Arthur’s legs and pulled him up by his hips so that Arthur was on all fours. He began driving into him fast, faster, and Arthur knew by the speed and desperation of his movements and by his grunting that Eames was about to come inside him.
After Eames did come, he rolled onto his side and pulled Arthur close to him. Arthur shied away.
“I’m just going to go clean myself off,” he said apologetically. “Just-while all of this is still new.” He hoped that would suffice for explanation.
After he had gone behind the screen and used the washbasin to clean himself out, he came back to the bed with a damp towel and sponged off Eames’s sticky cock. He flung the towel to the floor and arranged himself Eames on his back, Arthur on his stomach, their shoulders just overlapping. Eames’s hand crept across Arthur’s waist and held him there, urging him nearer. Finally Arthur relented and draped his body over Eames’s chest. Arthur’s fingers tripped up the smooth underside of the arm Eames had flung on the pillow over his head.
“In case you need to have it notarized, I love you,” Arthur mumbled into Eames’s collarbone. Eames’s hand played in Arthur’s short dark curls, spiraled a lock around his finger and let it unfurl lazily against Arthur’s cheek.
“Mmmm. Thank you,”
“Thank you?” Arthur laughed.
“Why not?” Eames asked, kissing the top of Arthur’s head.
§
“What are you talking about, Arthur? I’d make a wonderful manservant.” Eames smoothed the fabric of the jacket over Arthur’s shoulders and tugged it down over his hips until it fell just right. “I do all the important things well. I dress you, and undress you, and relieve your tension in all the best ways…”
“Yes,” Arthur admitted while looking down and admiring the elegant lines of the rich brown jacket trimmed with Albionorian lace. “You do all of those things well. You also tend to lie in bed until two in the afternoon and demand that I give you sponge baths even though you aren’t even remotely ill.”
Eames shrugged. “One must sometimes put up with unpleasant things for the sake of good service. Though if what usually happens afterward is any indication I don’t think you find it all that unpleasant to bathe me. I’m still sore from last time.” He took a step back, unable to tear his eyes from his own admittedly impressive handiwork. There were still times Arthur felt pangs of envy, that Eames had been aware of his true gifts all his life, that he had known how to blend them seamlessly and fill each role required of him without effort. Not without pain, though, Eames had told him once. I have had to live with the feeling that no one but my sister has ever truly liked me except as a precocious performing monkey.
“Beautiful,” Eames said, kneeling at Arthur’s side and fingering the jacket’s hem. “The jacket, partly, but mostly you.” He moved around to Arthur’s front, raised himself up on his knees, and fit his mouth over the soft bulge in Arthur’s trousers.
“You can’t make me come in my pants an hour before the performance,” Arthur said, though not without regret.
“Then take your pants off,” Eames said, still mouthing over Arthur’s fast-hardening cock. “I still owe you for the way you licked my arse out this morning. Dear God.”
“I take back what I said about you being good at dressing me,” Arthur groaned as Eames slid his trousers down and pumped his now-naked cock. “You’re incredibly inefficient. For every item of clothing that goes on, two seem to come off.”
“Hush,” said Eames, and his mouth enveloped Arthur’s cock.
Time constraints notwithstanding, coming in Eames’s mouth was preferable to Arthur coming in his trousers, and both were far preferable to not coming at all. Arthur bit his fingers as he came to keep from crying out too loudly, although he knew that stifling his pleasure was just a formality--his servants knew what he and Eames were to each other.
Eames used his tongue to clean Arthur up, followed by the silk handkerchief Arthur reluctantly allowed him to extract from the pocket of the brown frock coat. He then allowed Eames to undo the buttons of his coat and waistcoat--proving his point about Eames’s dubious dressing skills exactly--and let Eames nuzzle at his belly for awhile before the crystal-encased clock on the piano struck struck the half hour and Arthur was forced to push Eames’s head away, though Eames protested sourly.
“You can have this at any other time,” Arthur soothed, tilting Eames’s chin up. “But now you have to get dressed.”
While Eames dressed, Arthur sat in the parlor and poured them each a glass of Eames’s favorite whisky, distilled in a village near his childhood home. He’d never quite gotten used to the oaky, sweetish taste, but he poured it down his gullet for Eames’s sake, because for Eames it was good luck and celebration and comfort and nostalgia. When Eames emerged from the bedchamber, wearing the oxblood jacket Arthur had bought for him-ornate brass buttons and fashionably wide cuffs-Arthur handed him a glass.
“Lovely,” Arthur said, admitting what he often thought and often could not say. “Partly the jacket, but mostly you.”
They toasted to the success of The Descent of Girolamo and drank their glasses down. Arthur leaned over and kissed Eames’s whisky-stung lips.
“It’s a good thing you’ve already had your first brush with scandal,” Eames murmured into Arthur’s cheek. “This opera is not going to sit too well with polite society, you know.”
“I have so little to lose in popular opinion anyway.” Arthur laughed. “I’m not concerned.”
There was a knock on the door just as Arthur dove in to kiss Eames again.
“Come in,” Arthur called.
“Herr Hahnemann, Herr Eames, your carriage is waiting,” Anton announced. “Congratulations to you both, gentlemen,” he offered as they passed, and Eames clapped Anton on the shoulder. They heard sobbing from down the corridor, and Christina approached, holding a balled-up handkerchief to her eyes.
“For once, I’m the one crying and not him,” Christina said through her tears, indicating Anton with her elbow.
“I have cried twice in my life,” Anton replied. Christina choked on a laugh.
“Well?” Eames plucked Arthur’s hat from the wall and placed it atop Arthur’s head, then offered Arthur his elbow. “Our public disgrace awaits.”
“If someday I left Marchia for somewhere else, another country,” Arthur said softly as they’re walking down the stairs, “do you think you might consider coming along?”
Eames’s silence worried Arthur until he ran a comforting hand across Arthur’s back and laughed. “My dear fellow, of course I would. I would follow you to the ends of the earth whether you wanted me there or not. But you’ll never leave Marchia for good.”
Arthur raised an eyebrow. “I won’t? How do you know this?”
“The biscuits. You like the biscuits here far too much.”
Arthur smiled in spite of himself. “I’m sure there are quality biscuits elsewhere.”
“Come home with me,” Eames whispered as they ducked their heads and slid into the carriage, Anton sliding in after them. The carriage jostled about as the horses began trotting.
“Home? Down the street?” Arthur was confused.
“I haven’t been back to Albionoria in a year and a half,” Eames said. “I hadn’t wanted to go back. But there are things I want to show you. I’m from Olcan City. The noisiest, filthiest, most dangerous place in the world. Communal graves ten people deep and fantastic organ meats, though the latter I hope has nothing to do with the former.”
“Sounds like a wonderful place,” said Arthur, unconsciously stroking the intricate lace on his coat.
Eames snuck a wry look at him. “It will be.”
§
The last strains of the overture died away and the curtain rose to reveal Girolamo, as played by Yusuf, alone in a city square. Behind him appeared to be a maze of slick streets writhing with mist as he sang out his sadness and ire at his lack of a soul. Then a figure in a black cloak emerged from the darkness. In his rumbling bass he seduced Girolamo into taking the glass jar he held in his gloved hands: the Jar of Souls. Girolamo tried to resist, but his greed won out, and he ran into the night, singing of his certain damnation as the screech of the violins pursued him like harpies.
The next part of the opera was almost comical. Girolamo tried to cajole a fellow student, a boy who had a soul like a golden bell, into breathing into a jar. He told the boy that the jar contained the larva of a golden fly which could be awakened only by a human’s breath. When the boy marveled at his own soul, which did indeed take the appearance of a golden fly, he asked if he could keep it, but Girolamo refused, and when Girolamo returned to his own room, he swallowed the fly and the boy’s soul became his.
But soon one soul was not enough. Whenever Girolamo met a man with a gift for oratory, or a talent for seducing women, he would tell him the story of the golden fly. There was a scene where hundreds of souls fought for dominance within Girolamo’s body, and Arthur didn’t know how he managed it, but Yusuf played dozens of characters within the span of a minute, adopting and discarding each face and voice and posture as though he were shuffling through a deck of cards.
And when Girolamo met Simonetta, his love, his demeanor was so bright, so boyish, so determined to begin anew, that one could truly believe that he meant to destroy the Jar of Souls. But it would not be smashed, and when he tried to send it down the river it was returned to him on his wedding night by a Mysterious Gondolier who, accompanied by mandolin, sang a cryptic lullabyish refrain about the difference between the things we own and the things that truly belong to us.
And after the jubilant Wedding March and the joyous duet where the young couple narrated the decorating of their new home, Girolamo’s real troubles began.
One night, as he sat to play the piano, he heard an unearthly voice from the adjoining room. It was Simonetta, singing along as she pounded her fist into a bowl of bread dough. He tried to sing along with her, and here Yusuf quite convincingly sang as if he couldn’t sing. His voice, compared to the clarion beauty of hers, was dull and flat, like a donkey straining to overtake a racehorse. The following morning he watched her sleep, agonizing over his jealousy of her effortless charm, her wit, her beauty. When she awoke, he asked her to breathe into the glass jar.
She was suspicious. His efforts to convince her echoed, musically and lyrically, the voice of the black-robed magician who seduced him into taking the jar of souls. At last he grasped her by the shoulders and she, frightened, relented.
After she had breathed her soul into the jar, she was as passive as a doll. When Girolamo tried to speak to her, she answered in single syllables, and she lounged on the couch and stared straight ahead at nothing. Girolamo began to despair. He took to the streets at night, searching down every alley for the man in the black robes. At last he found him and begged him to allow Girolamo to give Simonetta her soul back. The magician agreed that he would give Simonetta a soul if he, Girolamo, would bring the girl to his lair the following day.
Girolamo did so. The magician put them to sleep with a magic draught, and when they woke up she was once again bright and charming. Uncannily so. She sang an aria shimmeringly seductive, overwhelming in the sheer technical skill required; it was as if she were three singers in one. And so captivated was the magician that he seized her at once, and they both disappeared in a clap of thunder, leaving Girolamo broken and bewildered.
Sick and bedraggled, Girolamo staggered through the city until he to the river, where he sang of drowning himself. Just before he cast himself into the swollen waters, the Mysterious Gondolier pulled up beside him and offered to ferry him to the underworld for the price of a song. Along the way they sang a mournful duet, slow as the sweeping of the oars that pulled them along.
After the Mysterious Gondolier dropped him at the gates, unable to accompany him further, Girolamo wandered through the underworld, battling temptations of increasing magnitude: personifications of money, sex, power, revenge. At last, while he walked through a dense forest on weary and failing legs, he heard the voice of his beloved echoing through the trees, and he followed it to find her trapped inside a cave, lamenting her abduction and her betrayal by the man she loved. He began to unchain her, to beg her forgiveness, when the wicked magician returned from the hunt with his arms full of human bones.
The magician began to fling spells at Girolamo, and he fell to his knees, crying out for mercy from God. His pleas were to no avail. The magician sang out his triumph, thrilling at the thought of possessing Girolamo’s soul. Without your heart distracted by this foolish mortal, Simonetta, the magician crowed, you and I can rule the underworld as gods; all of mankind will be our carrion feast. Prying Girolamo’s mouth open with his hands, he recited the incantation to draw Girolamo’s soul out of his body.
Sweetly, Simonetta asked the magician to unchain her so that she could spit on Girolamo’s corpse and then kiss her rightful lover. The magician, gloating, with wide sweeps of his cape, obliged. The young woman knelt over Girolamo’s body and spit into his open mouth.
No sooner did she do this than Girolamo’s body began to come back to life.
The magician, in a rage, began to strike at the walls of the cave, while Girolamo, dazed, his face full of wonder, asked how it was that the magician had taken his soul, yet Simonetta had given it back to him. Simonetta replied fervently that she had always believed that when one person loves another, they carry a piece of their soul, not for use, but for safekeeping.
And where was your soul inside me when I stole yours? Girolamo asked her.
You did not have it. Because you did not love me yet.
They escaped as the cave collapsed. The way through the woods is perilous, he warned her, and grasped her hand.
But we will keep each other strong, she insisted.
We will keep each other strong, he agreed, and the orchestra provided the exclamation mark as the curtain fell.
From his box Arthur peered down into the audience. They were still and silent as if sleeping.
They hate it, he thought. As I expected. He looked down, but all he could see was the top of Eames’s head; Eames, too, was facing the audience expectantly.
The sound of a single, slow clap--the Emperor, probably--resonated through the concert hall and began to pick up speed. It was followed by another, and then another, and the sounds of applause multiplied exponentially. Then the cheering began. The audience rose from their seats, clapping thunderously, shouting barely intelligible words of praise.
But Arthur could see only Eames as Eames looked up at him with a wide grin on his face. He winked, mouthed some words Arthur couldn’t quite read, then bowed deeply in the direction of Arthur’s box.
Arthur thought how absurd the smile on his own face must look, and he was grateful for the relative safety the box afforded. But he was certain that Eames knew everything in his mind at that moment.
The audience was looking in his direction, he realized, and as he made his own slightly embarrassed bows he thought about what the first thing he’d say to Eames would be when they were alone at last, after they’d been congratulated and celebrated and hugged and blushed at and coughed upon by everyone who was anyone in the city. Perhaps he’d say It’s true. All of mankind is our carrion feast. Or Looks like you were wrong about our public disgrace. And you always said I was the pessimist between us.
But no. None of that.
He had something better in mind.
Author: metacheese
Word Count: ~8,000 this part; roughly 35,000 over all
Team: Angst(y romance)
Prompts: Ghost, Smile, Ring, Balcony, Whiskey and Rum, Completion
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Sex?
Summary: Arthur finds what he's good at. Eames finds Arthur. Weddings (not Eames's and Arthur's), sex, and operas.
Beta: eternalsojourn
Notes: Title is an Italian musical term meaning “battle, with spirit”.
Part 3
“Are you sure it’s necessary to dismiss us?” Christina paced back and forth in the doorway, leaning against the doorjamb, her face twisted in sadness.
“I’m sorry, Christina, but it is.” Arthur layered his books in a trunk, not pausing to look at the titles or run his fingers over the smooth leather bindings. At that moment books only seemed like an inconvenience, like heavy, dusty bricks one nevertheless felt guilty for abandoning on the roadside. “I’ve decided it’s time for me to live a simpler life. And yes, you may keep the parrot.”
Christina glanced over at the brass cage where a brilliant green bird fidgeted on its perch. Her face lit up, and she coughed to restore her solemnity.
“I think Anton was crying earlier,” she confided. “He can’t even talk to you, he’s so terribly sad.”
Right on cue, Arthur heard Anton’s footsteps rattling the stairs.
“Sir, Herr Cobb is here to see you,” he called from the top of the stairs. It was unlike Anton not to come into a room before making an announcement.
Arthur breathed into his fist. “Tell him I’m not home.”
“He said he’d be willing to wait as long as he had to.”
Arthur sighed and scrubbed his face with his hands. “I’ll be down in a moment. Please stay up here, both of you.”
Cobb would probably challenge him to a duel. Or he would kill him on the spot. Either way, Arthur knew he deserved it. He walked down the stairs feeling like a man about to face death. But all he could think about was the ferret in the piano, trapped and boggled in its little black jacket. Grabbing it by the scruff and holding it against his chest to keep it calm. If only our problems were as small as being trapped in a piano, he thought, slowly lowering his foot onto the final step. If only they could be solved by a hand on the neck.
“Herr Cobb,” Arthur greeted him. He was sitting on one of the few chairs that had not yet been sent away. His arm was draped over the chair’s arm, and he looked deep in thought.
“Arthur, how long have we known each other?” Cobb turned his head.
“I did not think that I was someone you wanted to know any longer,” said Arthur.
“I am angry,” Cobb admitted. “After the performance, I wanted to slit your throat. All those years I blamed myself for her death, for why she lost the will to live. And to think that you might have helped her-“
“I tried,” said Arthur. “That was what I was trying to do in the beginning. And then I couldn’t give it up. I was finally worth something.”
“I don’t know if anything would have saved her,” Cobb said finally. “But I didn’t support her. Maybe if I’d supported her composing things would have gone differently.” Arthur saw that Cobb was rubbing a small glinting object between his thumb and forefinger, staring at it as if it were an indecipherable letter.
Arthur didn’t know how to respond.
“I suppose we should thank Eames for making me come out with the truth, then,” Arthur smiled weakly.
“Why Eames?” Cobb frowned.
“Eames read my diaries,” Arthur said. “He broke into my cabinet and read my diaries. And in them I confessed my sin. I considered burning it after I wrote it down, but I didn’t feel I deserved to forget. And I drew a picture of her-I had so many dreams about her, and so many things reminded me all the time. So I have reason to believe that he hired the woman to torment me so that I’d be reminded of my guilt.”
Cobb looked down at his knees and shook his head. From what Arthur could see of his face from that angle, he looked nearly amused. “My God, you’re paranoid. Eames had nothing to do with it.”
“What?” Arthur asked.
“I know that Eames had nothing to do with it. Because I hired her.”
Arthur was so taken aback that words would not form.
“I saw her at a tavern one day, and she looked so much like Mal it was as if--it was as if she were still alive. I could convince myself for a moment that I had not missed my chance to be a better husband. So I paid her a little money to come and sit at rehearsals, and to be near me at parties. To help me pretend.” Cobb’s eyes were glassy with unshed tears. “I think you ought to forgive Eames, Arthur. He has a great deal of affection for you, despite the sadness you’ve caused him.”
Arthur draped his arms over the back of a chair and hung his head. “Surely it’s just pity.”
“I had her wear this,” Cobb said softly, uncurling his hand to reveal the shining object fully. “I had the woman who was pretending to be my wife wear the ring belonging to my real wife.”
“I-I’m sorry,” Arthur stammered, unsure of the proper response. He could hear Anton bellowing “SHUT YOUR BLOODY MOUTH!” to someone or something upstairs.
“What I am saying,” Cobb continued, “is that we have both done terrible, selfish things. We will probably continue to do terrible, selfish things all our lives. It’s the natural condition of humankind. I thought I could allow myself to try to live in ignorance of my failures for a time. But that night, when you confessed, I realized the hollowness of what I was trying to do. She was gone. Anyone else could only be a pale imitation. And leaving all of this behind will not change your past either. You do have friends here, Arthur.”
“I’m leaving tomorrow,” Arthur said stiffly.
“Stay for the wedding at least.” Arthur could tell from Cobb’s tone that he would brook no dissent.
Arthur laughed bitterly. “Surely they all think I am a liar and a fraud. I passed Yusuf in the street the other day. He did not acknowledge me. I have been laughed at and hissed at in public. Someone had a talking parrot delivered here that said ‘I’m a parrot too! But I’m honest!’ It’s still upstairs.”
Cobb smiled. “You are a liar and a fraud. But they’ll get over it soon enough. And Eames-I don’t believe he pities you. He treasures your friendship and your regard. He loves you.”
“I don’t-“
“Perhaps you’re right,” Cobb murmured. “Perhaps you’re not worthy. But whether or not you are worthy, it is not for you to disallow someone from loving you.” Arthur noticed that Cobb had slid the delicate filigreed ring onto the ringfinger that wore its twin and was twisting it around the finger’s first joint. “That is not your decision to make.”
§
And so it was that Arthur, in his second-finest jacket, attended Yusuf and Ariadne’s wedding on a clear November day. Though they’d been scheduled to marry in August, they’d postponed the wedding these few months, though neither Yusuf nor Ariadne had been straightforward in telling Arthur why.
A modest number of guests filled the pews. One of the front benches was occupied by Ariadne’s brothers and their wives, her parents being long dead and her sisters accompanying her in the bridal party. Yusuf’s widowed father, a middle-class bookbinder from Wagenheim, sat tapping his thumbs together on the opposite bench. Cobb was in attendance--minus the ghost of his wife, Arthur was pleased to note-and Arthur took his seat next to Cobb’s daughter, Philippa, who had grown taller and less blonde since Arthur had last seen her. Arthur took her hand in greeting. She had long fingers, he noticed. A pianist’s fingers. It would not do to have her learn on a piano that sounded as if its notes were struggling feebly to shout through fathoms of heavy water.
Yusuf, at the altar before the priest, seemed uncertain where he should be looking, so he craned his neck and stared up at the ceiling. He glanced at the door once or twice, but just as quickly glanced away, as if afraid too much expectation would bring about disappointment. Or perhaps he felt that not being disappointed would be almost as frightening-hoped for, longed for, yes, but still terrifying, still sending through the body that tremulous feeling that seeing the object of one’s desires might actually literally destroy one, body and mind.
Arthur could understand that sentiment.
Arthur was not surprised to see Eames playing a sprightly toccata on the organ, dressed in a hyacinth-purple frock coat, looking unusually somber from behind at least. Arthur was surprised, however, to see a full choir clad in gold and white standing as still as humanly possible, like lanterns poked at by the lightest breeze. Choirs did not usually sing at the weddings of the middle and lower classes. They were reserved for the gentry and the nobility, the sorts of people for whom symphonies were named.
He did not have the opportunity to dwell on this mystery for long. The doors split and Ariadne entered, shadowed by attendants of various ages and sizes, unmarried girls all. Two he recognized as her sisters; they shared the same slight build and features that translated well to portraiture. Ariadne’s eyes were wide in the flickering bronze candlelight. She looked nervous, one hand moving up and down on her diaphragm to remind her to breathe. Arthur thought she looked lovely, her cheeks rouged and her hair done up in ringlets. Her dress, too, was splendid, cream with subtle mint-green needlework scrolls running down the sides of the skirt which, as per the latest style, was as wide as the average kitchen door. As Arthur remembered, Ariadne had never been much for needlework (she much preferred to paint). He wondered who had helped her.
As she began her walk toward the altar, Eames lifted his hands from the organ for a moment, and she stopped in her tracks, as if the music were animating her. He touched his hands to the keys once more, creating dense, growling chords, practically the diametrical opposite of the hopscotching piece he’d been playing before. Again she began to glide forward. After four bars, the choir added their voices to the strident welter:
I am a sinner and my soul is a roving shadow of hell.
I have tried to fold myself back into darkness
But darkness spat me back onto the earth.
And now a window opens like the wings of a hawk.
I shrink from its fearsome light,
But its cleanness strikes with unerring claws
That have lifted so many lowly creatures toward the sun
And I have not the speed or cunning
To run from you who have opened love before me.
At first Arthur did not recognize the words. They sounded deeply, unnervingly familiar, but he could not place them. Then they found a place in his mind. He remembered them.
He remembered writing them.
Nearly two years ago, late December, brown ink in a burgundy notebook. They had just buried Mal, and no sooner was her casket lowered into the ground and the first shovels of dirt spooned into the lightless black earth-door than the snow had begun to fall, her grave erased by a gentle floury softness. When Arthur had walked by the churchyard he could almost allow himself to forget, pretend that no one was buried there but the long-dead and nameless. And that night he and Robert had made love in a clean, warm room. And Arthur, sitting awake, watching the whale-oil flames reveal the relaxed tenderness on his lover’s sleeping face, had nearly, nearly persuaded himself that he could love and be loved without feeling like an impostor whose love meant less than a scrap of moldy bread.
The snow melted.
Arthur’s mind was absent throughout the brief ceremony, the priest admonishing Yusuf and Ariadne to give each other mutual society, help, and comfort, both in prosperity and in adversity. He was glad for them, but his embarrassment at hearing those words of his, which were never meant to be spoken aloud, surrounded his gladness in a noxious fog. That was all he could bring himself to feel. Embarrassed. He felt he had vomited the contents of his heart before a crowd once again; the difference this time was that he had not been prepared, and that he had not felt a need to confess these particular secrets.
It didn’t matter that the music was darkly magnificent and entirely new for Eames, whose tone had until now usually contained a note of nimble mockery. It didn’t matter that the words locked into the music as if they were warp and weft of a single fine sheet of linen.
It didn’t matter-or it barely mattered-that Eames had elevated Arthur’s words, words to which Arthur had barely given a second glance, to the level of art.
It was not until Eames began to play the recessional that Arthur realized he had not been paying attention as the couple exchanged vows. Arthur tried to drown out the words the choir was singing as he followed the bride and groom and their companions out of the church. Through the spaces between the people he caught glimpses of the newly wedded couple arm in arm. Their faces shone with happiness. As per tradition, some of the young men in the groom’s party tried to steal the bride away, but Ariadne elbowed them--from the looks on their faces it seemed to genuinely hurt--and clung more tightly to her husband.
“Did you know about this? What Eames was planning to do?” he asked Cobb, who carried his two-year-old son, James, on his hip and led Phillippa by the hand.
“I didn’t,” Cobb responded casually. Arthur knew he was lying.
“And you thought it would be a good idea to allow him to go ahead with it.”
Cobb looked Arthur in the eye as daylight hit them. “It was a piece of such brilliance, Arthur, that frankly I didn’t care where it had come from. He could’ve gotten the words and music from killing the Emperor’s stallions and draining their blood and I wouldn’t have cared.”
Arthur glared at him incredulously. “Ever the bloody opportunist.”
Cobb covered James’s ear with his free hand. “You watch your language around my children.”
Arthur stepped into his carriage, where Anton awaited him, and they followed the line of carriages heading to the reception at Cobb’s home.
When they arrived, Arthur was surprised and pleased to find that someone had given the place a thorough scrubbing. It no longer smelled of dust and mold, and Arthur’s nose did not immediately twitch in a prelude to a sneeze the instant he and Anton walked in the door.
Arthur tried to keep his distance from the others. He offered his congratulations to Yusuf and Ariadne, shook his hand and kissed her cheek, and tried not to make it obvious that he was looking toward the door. Looking for Eames. He usually tried to refrain from drinking, but he found that filling and refilling his cup with rum was the only thing that made the noise and the embarrassment and the loneliness and the weight bearable. Soon the room began to look blurry and refracted, a view through cut crystal, and he was glad of it, though Anton put his hand on Arthur’s shoulder, whispering, Sir, don’t you think you’ve had enough? At least for now? He tried to take a step forward but lost his balance and wobbled forward into Anton, who held him up by the elbows and whispered You’re alright. You’re alright.
Just then he looked over Anton’s shoulder and watched a flash of hyacinth purple wend its way through the crowd. He heard Eames’s accented voice thanking people for their praise and congratulations. Arthur grabbed Anton’s shoulders and positioned him so as to obscure himself from Eames’ line of sight.
“Are you all right, sir?” Anton asked, glancing behind him in the direction where Eames was smiling and kneeling to inspect the embroidery on Ariadne’s skirt.
“I think I need some fresh air,” Arthur uttered weakly. Anton his elbow, and Arthur grabbed it, letting Anton support most of his stubborn drunk weight. They stumbled together through the crowd, Anton uttering apologies, Herr Hahnemann is not well, I am sorry, and Arthur trying not to meet the disappointed and pitying eyes. He was sure he knew what they were thinking: a thief and a drunkard, what use is he to any decent folk?
Anton led Arthur down the winding iron staircase to the back courtyard.
“I am supposed to be a model of excellent behavior,” Arthur lamented, looking up at the wan light from the balcony and scrubbing his tight, itchy face with the palms of his hands.
“Everyone has lapses now and then,” Anton soothed as he placed a steady hand on Arthur’s upper back. “You must forgive yourself.”
“Forgive myself?” Arthur cried. “Anton, if you had any idea what I’d done-surely you’ve heard-“
“I have heard nothing,” Anton replied. “If anyone has tried to tell me anything, I have refused to hear it, because I know that you are a good man.”
Arthur shook his head slowly, but had to stop himself because it was whipping up his nausea. “I am not a good man, Anton,” he muttered. “I didn’t want to tell you what I did, but I can’t stop now. Too drunk.”
“I am sure it is not as bad-“
Arthur interrupted him. “I took credit for a symphony I did not write. Even after its rightful author wanted me to set the record straight. I refused. Every appointment I had was because of that symphony, Anton. I could not have afforded the home I lived in, or the clothes I wear, or the food I eat without it. Anything. I am a thief.”
Anton only stared at Arthur dumbfounded.
“Well?”
“I am surprised at you, sir,” Anton said at last, eyes downcast. “I have to say I expected better of you.”
“You always thought I could do no wrong,” Arthur said sadly. “Since we were children. And I let you think that of me, I encouraged it, because it made me feel like I was perfect. So every time I stole or lied, I blamed someone else, so that you wouldn’t think any less of me.”
“Oh, Arthur,” whispered Anton sadly. Arthur placed his hands on Anton’s shoulders.
“Look at me, Anton,” Arthur urged. “Please tell me you forgive me.”
“I forgive you,” Anton said weakly.
“You don’t really.” Arthur bit his trembling lip to keep his restraint, and Anton reached up to touch his cheek. Arthur leaned into the soft touch, and without thinking, he pressed his lips onto Anton’s. His mouth slid messily over Anton’s for what felt like a long time, though the motion was all Arthur’s; Anton remained still, holding Arthur in place with a sober hand on his upper arm. At last Arthur drew back, wiped his mouth, and tried to balance himself on his shaky legs.
“I’m sorry. I should not have done that,” Arthur apologized. Anton rubbed Arthur’s shoulder placatingly and looked up.
“I think someone’s watching,” Anton announced. “Should we go back upstairs?”
“I’d rather leave,” said Arthur. He knew they’d have to go back through the house anyway.
They ascended the staircase; their observer was gone by the time they got to the balcony. Inside the girls were dancing in a circle and young men were trying to break the circle to grab them. It was an old Marchian wedding tradition. Eames usually loved games, but there was no sign of him, and Arthur thought-the first comforting thought of the night-that Eames had left the celebration, or was upstairs. Somewhere out of the way, where Arthur would not have to meet his eye.
Anton took Arthur’s overcoat off of the coat rack and draped it over Arthur’s shoulders; they went out together into the damp raw cold of the night.
“Wait,” said a voice from behind Arthur.
That voice.
Arthur turned around as slowly as possible.
“You can’t run from me forever.”
“I can. The world is getting larger every day,” Arthur said coldly and began to walk, though more slowly, toward his carriage.
“What have I done this time?” Eames demanded as he strode towards him. “You know I had no ill intent in opening that cabinet. Until last week I didn’t even know that that was why you sent me from your home that day. It was just a bloody cabinet full of papers. I stole nothing.”
“You stole nothing?” Arthur laughed. “You’ve got such an incredible sense of entitlement, Eames. It’s unbelievable. You think everything is for your amusement. You stole things no one was ever meant to see.”
“And look what I did with them! Arthur, if it weren’t for me all of that would still be locked away, and no one would know what you were capable of.”
“They were mine to hide away,” Arthur said sullenly. “You had no right. At least you could have asked.”
“I’m asking now,” Eames said. “Work with me. You don’t even have to like me. But the Duke of Pfefferburg has commissioned an opera from me, and I cannot write it with anyone but you.”
Arthur glanced back at Anton, who watched them with worried curiosity surrounded by the light of his lantern. Then he looked back at Eames. Eames who was neat and sober and sad-looking tonight, yet who was, Arthur reminded himself harshly, the same impulsive, selfish, wicked-tongued man he’d always been and probably always would be.
“I don’t enjoy getting people angry with me,” Eames declared. “Not always. But I can’t keep my mouth shut or my fingers still sometimes.”
Arthur took a step toward Eames. “I will try to work with you,” he said resignedly.
The gleam of Eames’s grin cut through the darkness. “I will try my best not to be jealous of your lover. I know that what we did, it wasn’t what you wanted, and I can’t claim you as my own.”
“Eames, that’s not-“ Arthur rushed to correct him but found himself unable to say the words. “And you’ll have to promise me that you’ll be able to restrain yourself. I don’t want to have to tie your hands or anything like that.”
Eames straightened his shoulders and cocked his head. “For you, I will be on my best behavior.”
§
April, 1799
“So when Girolamo first meets the sorcerer, who do you think should speak first?” Arthur pondered aloud.
“I leave that decision in your immensely capable hands,” Eames answered.
For seven months now they had been working on their opera, The Descent of Girolamo. Its libretto was taken from the story Arthur had told Eames when he lay in bed in a fog of pain and laudanum. The morning after Yusuf and Ariadne’s wedding, and quite early in the morning at that, Eames had arrived on Arthur’s doorstep waving a crinkled piece of paper which he shoved into Arthur’s hands. When Arthur examined it, he found that it was, almost word for word, the story as Arthur had told it. I never forgot it, Eames swore.
Then why didn’t you write the opera yourself, tell everyone that the story was yours? No one would believe me if I claimed authorship anyway.
Because, Eames had said softly. I am not that kind of thief. I’m sorry-I didn’t mean it that way-I meant that I could never deny you the glory that belongs to you.
“I meant to congratulate you on your vow of chastity.” Eames, straddling the piano bench, jabbed the needle into the piece of brown moire in his hands. He’d been working for hours at attaching a span of fringed lace to it, and Arthur had tried not to watch his hands conducting the thread through the garment in quick, skillful sweeps, hypnotic as it was to watch.
“My vow of-what?” Arthur asked, confused. He tapped the soft end of a quill against his lower lip, wondering how best to end one of the inkblob-studded metrical lines on the page beneath him.
“The other day. When Yusuf asked you about your romantic prospects, you told him you’d taken a vow of chastity. Is that true?” Eames asked.
Arthur felt his cheeks redden. “I told him that because my romantic life is none of his business,” he fairly snapped.
“And, by extension, none of mine. Fair enough,” Eames said breezily, then returned his attention to the needle’s rhythmic rise and fall.
“While we’re on the subject, how is your Annette?” Arthur asked, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible.
“Nonexistent,” said Eames.
“What? You mean you’re no longer together?” questioned Arthur.
“No.” Eames smiled. “Meaning that she doesn’t exist. I wanted to see how you’d react to the news that I had a lover, so I-well, I made her up.”
Arthur shoved the paper and his lap desk aside and rose to his feet to stand over Eames angrily.
“For six months you led me to believe that you’ve got a lover, that it’s serious, that you feel nothing for me anymore? Did you really expect that I’d throw a jealous fit? I was willing to accept that you’d bloody well moved on.” Arthur shoved Eames lightly, causing Eames to jab the needle into his own thigh.
“I didn’t think you cared about me,” Eames said bluntly. “Not the way I care about you. Perhaps you wanted to fuck me, and maybe you felt some sort of responsibility towards me, like a wayward child who needs to be looked after. But whenever I tried to show you how I felt about you, you looked so cold, so distant.”
“I risked my life for you,” Arthur hissed.
“I know. It’s one of the reasons why I love you.” Eames gazed earnestly up into Arthur’s eyes. “And I am grateful to you for that. You know I am.”
“So what, do you want sighing and fainting and passionate declarations?” Arthur spit the words out.
“Nothing of the sort. But still, bringing a criminal to justice isn’t exactly much of a cure for an empty bed or a lonely heart.” Eames’s tone was glum.
Arthur nearly snarled. “But you’re alive.”
Arthur seized Eames by his lapels and pulled him in, and ground his lips against Eames’s lips furiously, then sucked hard enough on Eames’s bottom lip that he could imagine a dark bruise rising on it. Eventually Arthur gave into Eames’s attempt to apply a gentler touch, and he lessened some of the kiss’s punishing pressure. Arthur kissed a truce into Eames’s vulnerable open mouth, kissed his sorrow and confusion and crushing loneliness into the softest gentlest part of Eames’s body, willing him, begging him to understand.
Eames drew back, touching his knuckle to Arthur’s cheek as a signal that he didn’t mean the pause as a rejection. “You do love me.”
Arthur nodded and swallowed back a swarm of denials and aversions. “I do.” He lifted Eames’s palm to his lips and kissed it softly. “I have. For what feels like a very long time.”
Eames wrapped his hand around Arthur’s. “Let me make love to you.”
They undressed in the quiet bedchamber, sliding off wigs, working open cravats, pulling off each item of clothing-frock coat, waistcoat, trousers, stockings, undergarments --with increasing urgency. Unless they needed to bend to take off a distant garment, they kissed long and steadily all the while, as if it were a non-negotiable state of their being and undressing. When they’d finally shed all their garments Eames guided Arthur down onto the bed face-down, soft palm and rough fingertips splayed between his shoulderblades; the hand traveled down Arthur’s spine in smooth arousing strokes. Eames petted Arthur till his vision went hazy and he was grinding his hips into the bedclothes, his lips parted to allow harsh, heavy breaths to pass. Wet lips massaged Arthur’s back, sucked red marks into his skin. After what felt like an eternity of thrusting his arse up towards Eames’s cock, of telling Eames what he wanted and needed, Arthur felt Eames’s hands part his arse, felt a fingertip-deliciously calloused-brush against his hole.
“Fuck me,” Arthur breathed, half his face smashed into a cushion. He knew his cheek would be embossed with the lines from the fabric for some time afterward, and he didn’t care. “I need it. There’s oil in the bedside table drawer.”
Eames left another lingering kiss on the nape of his neck before reaching over to get the tiny bottle. Arthur didn’t look up; he wanted to hear Eames unscrew the cap, wanted to hear the soft glug of oil onto Eames’s hands, to anticipate the first cold slippery touch without knowing exactly when. Before Eames worked Arthur’s hole open he ran his oiled hands over Arthur’s buttocks, up and down, and kneaded them. Then he began the slide of a finger into Arthur. The pace was glacial, and Arthur needed more now; he canted his hips, pushed them upwards to take in more of Eames’s finger. Eames took the hint, and began to move his finger around in gentle ever-wider circles, patiently, patiently stretching the tight opening.
“Another finger,” Arthur demanded, and Eames obliged. Arthur reveled in the new fullness, and when Eames began to scissor him he felt a delicious pressure against his inner center of pleasure, and he wanted the thick head of Eames’s cock to press against that place inside him. He reached backwards for Eames’s wrist, stilling the motion of Eames’s fingers, and put voice to those desires.
Arthur heard Eames slicking up again. It was only seconds before he felt the tip of Eames’s cock against him. Arthur was stretched wide open and everything was in place ready for Eames to just sink in, but he didn’t. He rested his cock at the top of Arthur’s cleft, rubbing it against the very lowest part of his lower back.
“You know, you’ve got some lovely dimples here,” Eames said, touching the aforementioned dimples on Arthur’s lower back with a finger. He moved his cock away and slid back, and he pressed his mouth to the two indented places his fingers had just touched. “Maybe I’ll just come here instead.”
“Eames,” Arthur groaned.
“Alright, alright. But you have to promise me that someday I can.” Eames lined his body up parallel to Arthur’s again so that he was practically lying on top of him, his forehead touching Arthur’s shoulder. He arched back like a cat to line up once more, using one hand to brace himself on the bed and the other to part Arthur’s buttocks for entry.
“Right now I will promise you anything,” Arthur said, though it was getting hard to speak. “I need you inside me.”
Eames slid into him. The further in he slid, the more Arthur could feel Eames’s body weighing him down. At the moment he wanted nothing more than to bear Eames’s entire weight and be fucked into place. The position kept their lovemaking slow. When Arthur reached down to touch his cock and lifted his hips off the bed, thrusting Eames’s cock a little deeper inside him, Eames pushed Arthur back down by the small of his back.
“Not so fast, love,” Eames whispered, and kissed the edge of Arthur’s ear.
Arthur’s cock was trapped beneath him, and he could feel the sticky clear liquid seeping onto his skin. Every time Eames’s cock slid as deep as it could go, every time Eames angled his hips to fit inside Arthur fully and smoothly, the dizzy swell in Arthur’s stomach spread a little more ruthlessly. At last he wriggled his hand beneath their shared weight and squeezed his cock, choked it tight as Eames kept rubbing him deep and slow and the pleasure mounted and then, then, when he thought the bottled-up pressure would implode and possibly kill him, he finally came all over his fingers and bedclothes.
Eames sat up without warning, knelt between Arthur’s legs and pulled him up by his hips so that Arthur was on all fours. He began driving into him fast, faster, and Arthur knew by the speed and desperation of his movements and by his grunting that Eames was about to come inside him.
After Eames did come, he rolled onto his side and pulled Arthur close to him. Arthur shied away.
“I’m just going to go clean myself off,” he said apologetically. “Just-while all of this is still new.” He hoped that would suffice for explanation.
After he had gone behind the screen and used the washbasin to clean himself out, he came back to the bed with a damp towel and sponged off Eames’s sticky cock. He flung the towel to the floor and arranged himself Eames on his back, Arthur on his stomach, their shoulders just overlapping. Eames’s hand crept across Arthur’s waist and held him there, urging him nearer. Finally Arthur relented and draped his body over Eames’s chest. Arthur’s fingers tripped up the smooth underside of the arm Eames had flung on the pillow over his head.
“In case you need to have it notarized, I love you,” Arthur mumbled into Eames’s collarbone. Eames’s hand played in Arthur’s short dark curls, spiraled a lock around his finger and let it unfurl lazily against Arthur’s cheek.
“Mmmm. Thank you,”
“Thank you?” Arthur laughed.
“Why not?” Eames asked, kissing the top of Arthur’s head.
§
“What are you talking about, Arthur? I’d make a wonderful manservant.” Eames smoothed the fabric of the jacket over Arthur’s shoulders and tugged it down over his hips until it fell just right. “I do all the important things well. I dress you, and undress you, and relieve your tension in all the best ways…”
“Yes,” Arthur admitted while looking down and admiring the elegant lines of the rich brown jacket trimmed with Albionorian lace. “You do all of those things well. You also tend to lie in bed until two in the afternoon and demand that I give you sponge baths even though you aren’t even remotely ill.”
Eames shrugged. “One must sometimes put up with unpleasant things for the sake of good service. Though if what usually happens afterward is any indication I don’t think you find it all that unpleasant to bathe me. I’m still sore from last time.” He took a step back, unable to tear his eyes from his own admittedly impressive handiwork. There were still times Arthur felt pangs of envy, that Eames had been aware of his true gifts all his life, that he had known how to blend them seamlessly and fill each role required of him without effort. Not without pain, though, Eames had told him once. I have had to live with the feeling that no one but my sister has ever truly liked me except as a precocious performing monkey.
“Beautiful,” Eames said, kneeling at Arthur’s side and fingering the jacket’s hem. “The jacket, partly, but mostly you.” He moved around to Arthur’s front, raised himself up on his knees, and fit his mouth over the soft bulge in Arthur’s trousers.
“You can’t make me come in my pants an hour before the performance,” Arthur said, though not without regret.
“Then take your pants off,” Eames said, still mouthing over Arthur’s fast-hardening cock. “I still owe you for the way you licked my arse out this morning. Dear God.”
“I take back what I said about you being good at dressing me,” Arthur groaned as Eames slid his trousers down and pumped his now-naked cock. “You’re incredibly inefficient. For every item of clothing that goes on, two seem to come off.”
“Hush,” said Eames, and his mouth enveloped Arthur’s cock.
Time constraints notwithstanding, coming in Eames’s mouth was preferable to Arthur coming in his trousers, and both were far preferable to not coming at all. Arthur bit his fingers as he came to keep from crying out too loudly, although he knew that stifling his pleasure was just a formality--his servants knew what he and Eames were to each other.
Eames used his tongue to clean Arthur up, followed by the silk handkerchief Arthur reluctantly allowed him to extract from the pocket of the brown frock coat. He then allowed Eames to undo the buttons of his coat and waistcoat--proving his point about Eames’s dubious dressing skills exactly--and let Eames nuzzle at his belly for awhile before the crystal-encased clock on the piano struck struck the half hour and Arthur was forced to push Eames’s head away, though Eames protested sourly.
“You can have this at any other time,” Arthur soothed, tilting Eames’s chin up. “But now you have to get dressed.”
While Eames dressed, Arthur sat in the parlor and poured them each a glass of Eames’s favorite whisky, distilled in a village near his childhood home. He’d never quite gotten used to the oaky, sweetish taste, but he poured it down his gullet for Eames’s sake, because for Eames it was good luck and celebration and comfort and nostalgia. When Eames emerged from the bedchamber, wearing the oxblood jacket Arthur had bought for him-ornate brass buttons and fashionably wide cuffs-Arthur handed him a glass.
“Lovely,” Arthur said, admitting what he often thought and often could not say. “Partly the jacket, but mostly you.”
They toasted to the success of The Descent of Girolamo and drank their glasses down. Arthur leaned over and kissed Eames’s whisky-stung lips.
“It’s a good thing you’ve already had your first brush with scandal,” Eames murmured into Arthur’s cheek. “This opera is not going to sit too well with polite society, you know.”
“I have so little to lose in popular opinion anyway.” Arthur laughed. “I’m not concerned.”
There was a knock on the door just as Arthur dove in to kiss Eames again.
“Come in,” Arthur called.
“Herr Hahnemann, Herr Eames, your carriage is waiting,” Anton announced. “Congratulations to you both, gentlemen,” he offered as they passed, and Eames clapped Anton on the shoulder. They heard sobbing from down the corridor, and Christina approached, holding a balled-up handkerchief to her eyes.
“For once, I’m the one crying and not him,” Christina said through her tears, indicating Anton with her elbow.
“I have cried twice in my life,” Anton replied. Christina choked on a laugh.
“Well?” Eames plucked Arthur’s hat from the wall and placed it atop Arthur’s head, then offered Arthur his elbow. “Our public disgrace awaits.”
“If someday I left Marchia for somewhere else, another country,” Arthur said softly as they’re walking down the stairs, “do you think you might consider coming along?”
Eames’s silence worried Arthur until he ran a comforting hand across Arthur’s back and laughed. “My dear fellow, of course I would. I would follow you to the ends of the earth whether you wanted me there or not. But you’ll never leave Marchia for good.”
Arthur raised an eyebrow. “I won’t? How do you know this?”
“The biscuits. You like the biscuits here far too much.”
Arthur smiled in spite of himself. “I’m sure there are quality biscuits elsewhere.”
“Come home with me,” Eames whispered as they ducked their heads and slid into the carriage, Anton sliding in after them. The carriage jostled about as the horses began trotting.
“Home? Down the street?” Arthur was confused.
“I haven’t been back to Albionoria in a year and a half,” Eames said. “I hadn’t wanted to go back. But there are things I want to show you. I’m from Olcan City. The noisiest, filthiest, most dangerous place in the world. Communal graves ten people deep and fantastic organ meats, though the latter I hope has nothing to do with the former.”
“Sounds like a wonderful place,” said Arthur, unconsciously stroking the intricate lace on his coat.
Eames snuck a wry look at him. “It will be.”
§
The last strains of the overture died away and the curtain rose to reveal Girolamo, as played by Yusuf, alone in a city square. Behind him appeared to be a maze of slick streets writhing with mist as he sang out his sadness and ire at his lack of a soul. Then a figure in a black cloak emerged from the darkness. In his rumbling bass he seduced Girolamo into taking the glass jar he held in his gloved hands: the Jar of Souls. Girolamo tried to resist, but his greed won out, and he ran into the night, singing of his certain damnation as the screech of the violins pursued him like harpies.
The next part of the opera was almost comical. Girolamo tried to cajole a fellow student, a boy who had a soul like a golden bell, into breathing into a jar. He told the boy that the jar contained the larva of a golden fly which could be awakened only by a human’s breath. When the boy marveled at his own soul, which did indeed take the appearance of a golden fly, he asked if he could keep it, but Girolamo refused, and when Girolamo returned to his own room, he swallowed the fly and the boy’s soul became his.
But soon one soul was not enough. Whenever Girolamo met a man with a gift for oratory, or a talent for seducing women, he would tell him the story of the golden fly. There was a scene where hundreds of souls fought for dominance within Girolamo’s body, and Arthur didn’t know how he managed it, but Yusuf played dozens of characters within the span of a minute, adopting and discarding each face and voice and posture as though he were shuffling through a deck of cards.
And when Girolamo met Simonetta, his love, his demeanor was so bright, so boyish, so determined to begin anew, that one could truly believe that he meant to destroy the Jar of Souls. But it would not be smashed, and when he tried to send it down the river it was returned to him on his wedding night by a Mysterious Gondolier who, accompanied by mandolin, sang a cryptic lullabyish refrain about the difference between the things we own and the things that truly belong to us.
And after the jubilant Wedding March and the joyous duet where the young couple narrated the decorating of their new home, Girolamo’s real troubles began.
One night, as he sat to play the piano, he heard an unearthly voice from the adjoining room. It was Simonetta, singing along as she pounded her fist into a bowl of bread dough. He tried to sing along with her, and here Yusuf quite convincingly sang as if he couldn’t sing. His voice, compared to the clarion beauty of hers, was dull and flat, like a donkey straining to overtake a racehorse. The following morning he watched her sleep, agonizing over his jealousy of her effortless charm, her wit, her beauty. When she awoke, he asked her to breathe into the glass jar.
She was suspicious. His efforts to convince her echoed, musically and lyrically, the voice of the black-robed magician who seduced him into taking the jar of souls. At last he grasped her by the shoulders and she, frightened, relented.
After she had breathed her soul into the jar, she was as passive as a doll. When Girolamo tried to speak to her, she answered in single syllables, and she lounged on the couch and stared straight ahead at nothing. Girolamo began to despair. He took to the streets at night, searching down every alley for the man in the black robes. At last he found him and begged him to allow Girolamo to give Simonetta her soul back. The magician agreed that he would give Simonetta a soul if he, Girolamo, would bring the girl to his lair the following day.
Girolamo did so. The magician put them to sleep with a magic draught, and when they woke up she was once again bright and charming. Uncannily so. She sang an aria shimmeringly seductive, overwhelming in the sheer technical skill required; it was as if she were three singers in one. And so captivated was the magician that he seized her at once, and they both disappeared in a clap of thunder, leaving Girolamo broken and bewildered.
Sick and bedraggled, Girolamo staggered through the city until he to the river, where he sang of drowning himself. Just before he cast himself into the swollen waters, the Mysterious Gondolier pulled up beside him and offered to ferry him to the underworld for the price of a song. Along the way they sang a mournful duet, slow as the sweeping of the oars that pulled them along.
After the Mysterious Gondolier dropped him at the gates, unable to accompany him further, Girolamo wandered through the underworld, battling temptations of increasing magnitude: personifications of money, sex, power, revenge. At last, while he walked through a dense forest on weary and failing legs, he heard the voice of his beloved echoing through the trees, and he followed it to find her trapped inside a cave, lamenting her abduction and her betrayal by the man she loved. He began to unchain her, to beg her forgiveness, when the wicked magician returned from the hunt with his arms full of human bones.
The magician began to fling spells at Girolamo, and he fell to his knees, crying out for mercy from God. His pleas were to no avail. The magician sang out his triumph, thrilling at the thought of possessing Girolamo’s soul. Without your heart distracted by this foolish mortal, Simonetta, the magician crowed, you and I can rule the underworld as gods; all of mankind will be our carrion feast. Prying Girolamo’s mouth open with his hands, he recited the incantation to draw Girolamo’s soul out of his body.
Sweetly, Simonetta asked the magician to unchain her so that she could spit on Girolamo’s corpse and then kiss her rightful lover. The magician, gloating, with wide sweeps of his cape, obliged. The young woman knelt over Girolamo’s body and spit into his open mouth.
No sooner did she do this than Girolamo’s body began to come back to life.
The magician, in a rage, began to strike at the walls of the cave, while Girolamo, dazed, his face full of wonder, asked how it was that the magician had taken his soul, yet Simonetta had given it back to him. Simonetta replied fervently that she had always believed that when one person loves another, they carry a piece of their soul, not for use, but for safekeeping.
And where was your soul inside me when I stole yours? Girolamo asked her.
You did not have it. Because you did not love me yet.
They escaped as the cave collapsed. The way through the woods is perilous, he warned her, and grasped her hand.
But we will keep each other strong, she insisted.
We will keep each other strong, he agreed, and the orchestra provided the exclamation mark as the curtain fell.
From his box Arthur peered down into the audience. They were still and silent as if sleeping.
They hate it, he thought. As I expected. He looked down, but all he could see was the top of Eames’s head; Eames, too, was facing the audience expectantly.
The sound of a single, slow clap--the Emperor, probably--resonated through the concert hall and began to pick up speed. It was followed by another, and then another, and the sounds of applause multiplied exponentially. Then the cheering began. The audience rose from their seats, clapping thunderously, shouting barely intelligible words of praise.
But Arthur could see only Eames as Eames looked up at him with a wide grin on his face. He winked, mouthed some words Arthur couldn’t quite read, then bowed deeply in the direction of Arthur’s box.
Arthur thought how absurd the smile on his own face must look, and he was grateful for the relative safety the box afforded. But he was certain that Eames knew everything in his mind at that moment.
The audience was looking in his direction, he realized, and as he made his own slightly embarrassed bows he thought about what the first thing he’d say to Eames would be when they were alone at last, after they’d been congratulated and celebrated and hugged and blushed at and coughed upon by everyone who was anyone in the city. Perhaps he’d say It’s true. All of mankind is our carrion feast. Or Looks like you were wrong about our public disgrace. And you always said I was the pessimist between us.
But no. None of that.
He had something better in mind.