Magnificat: 3/??
Title: Magnificat
Author: lalalive23
Pairing: Belldom
Rating: G
Warnings: A truckload of sass
Summary: AU. 1600's Cremona Italy. When Matt, a master violin maker and player, is offered a large sum of money to create a violin for the son of a Count, his life is changed in the most extraordinary of ways.
Feedback: I LIVE FOR THE APPLAUSE, APPLAUSE, APPLAUSE
Disclaimer: I don't own Muse. This never happened. Cremona and a lot of the history discussed is legit. I'm taking historical events and people and running away with them.
Note: Oh look! Another update! I found this chapter difficult to write, not because of emotions or feels but, because NaNo is exhausting and my life has been super busy this week and it's really hard to sit yourself down and just...write. I think over the last few days, I've only been managing 800 words in one go. Today I made myself sit down and shit out extra words so that I can have padding for the weekend. Real talk: these characters are already deviating from what I had outlined and that is scary as hell. The end of this chapter is very different from what I had outlined, so it's getting real interesting in Haus of Kitty, yall. Cheers to amusedinred for being an amazing beta and cheerleader. She tediously finds all my typos from word sprints and gently tells me to fix them. Bless <3 And thanks to everyone reading and commenting! Wow, some of the best comments I've ever had are about this story and that makes me feel so many feelings, I can't even explain. That you guys are enjoying this makes NaNo so much easier and fun. You all are wonderful. Enjoy!
Previous Chapters
As a child, Matthew had grown fond of walking the long paths and winding streets that sprawled through the city, learning the secrets behind ivy covered walls and brown clay houses. He’d learned its secrets, used the brief moments of solitude to not only discover the town, and its history, but the inner workings of his mind as he moved gradually from adolescence into adulthood. On his journey home, he thought that maybe he would be given some great epiphany, that a passing scent of deep grape or the scent of the horses in the stables would carry with it a grand design for Dominic’s violin - that maybe, built into the rock and the stones of the paths he walked, there would be phantom footprints of Dominic’s own youth that Matthew could trace and engrave into the wood of his latest commission. It seemed that the further he walked, the more distance he put between him and the Count’s son, the more he seemed to fully comprehend the depth of the command and soon found himself buried under the weight of responsibility and confusion.
How pompous such a request could be, how self-important must one be to have a man who’d barely known him for more than ten minutes make him into a violin. It only proved that he had been right all along, that Dominic would never allow himself to experience the intimacy that came with the instrument, that his definition of the word itself was skewed and he chose to bury himself in the silk skirts of women rather than the language of true expression. As he stomped his way across a long bridge over a small stream just outside the city’s edge, he tried to imagine the boy holding one of his prized creations, his strong arm awkward with such a delicate thing extending from his shoulder like a displaced limb. The violin was an extension of the soul, a cord that extended outward and into the universe that bore a map to every human connection that could be created. Every sound resonated with human affect, every caress of the bow passing over the instrument like a hand to a lover. This was how musicians spoke, loved; copulated until their bodies were spent and exhausted, aching for water, an inhalation of tobacco, or sleep that would last for days. This was how men went to war, screaming angry tones on thick strings and heaving battle cries in the dark through the agony of torn horse hairs. Would Dominic ever be able to express himself so freely? Would he ever learn to love something else as much, perhaps more, than himself and treat its body as an object of idolatry?
He hated to admit that there was something behind Dominic’s eyes, the whispers of a challenge and a willingness to rebel to the judgements of men, perhaps even God. There was an unusual curiosity that had buried itself beneath his skin, swimming in his bored tone and empty threats to Matthew that seemed to beg him to play. Dominic was in desperate need of a playmate and he was determined to have such a thing in his violin.
And it was only when he had found himself at the door to his shop, the sun holding itself high in the sky, doing nothing to warm the autumn chill, that Matthew realized there was a difference to be found in the concepts of knowing and seeing. As he placed his parchment and tape on a table close to the entrance, he watched his pupils busy themselves and mulled over Dominic’s exact words, his exact command to make the violin as he saw him. And then, somewhere wrapped around a dead corner of his heart, a small thrill of adrenaline released itself at the thought of assuming agency over the work. It placed the responsibility in his hands, the measure and scale of the choices, and put him at once on a pedestal and at an impasse. The choices were his to make, though they would be scrutinized by men who could blame him for his misjudgement. The art was his to design, but the functionality of its use relied on the measures of the man who took no part in its creation. How brilliantly and utterly annoying the boy had been.
With the distinction embedded in his mind, the task itself took on an entirely new form: what were the mechanics of pretentious malcontent and how best could they be built into an instrument made solely for grace and wonder? Every other experience he’d had with luthiery had been the art of crafting the man and his desires into the violin, a clear demand to make their personal messiah the instrument that would put itself to work for the man holding it. The men had considered their personal tastes and experiences with music, their size, their build, their fury or their joy; he had built instruments to weather the storm of life with men who would change while their instrument would become at once a ghost of nostalgia and a phantom limb come back to life. Building a violin was more than building an instrument, it was building a man through preconceived desires, and the desires were never his.
Bringing himself to sit at his desk, he leaned over a blank sheet of vellum and sat silently, pencil poised above the sheet to commence his notes, drafts, and sketches. When no great idea came, when the shock of action from mind to fingers never came, the questions of Dominic’s intent and choice began to flood his synapses. How greatly ignorant the boy had been, to assume that greatness was only in the aesthetics of a violin and not its construction, free to be physically perfect while its functionality for its user suffered beyond reason. How ignorant he had been, to assume that Matthew would leave his knowledge of the instrument, and the average man, entirely separate from the work. A soft tingle of defiance began to coax out of its sudden hibernation, and was overjoyed at the plethora of ways he could paint layers of insult behind an invisible curtain onto, and into, the violin.
He would string it tight, with thick gut strings to leave the margin for error to a minimum. If Dominic were to be gifted a fine tutor, a tutor worthy of the money his father was spending on such a ridiculous plight, then he had to assume the boy’s tutor would be exhausted with his continual necessity to show him how to float the bow. He imagined, with brief images that skirted behind his eyes, the ways his tutor would press his fingers to the bridge of his nose and regain his patience to explain when pressure was meant to be added and when it mattered most to fall into quiet tugs of the bow across the strings. And maybe, if the tutor was a brilliant man, a man well trained in the art of arguing and well versed in the language of apathetic pupils, he would coax the rigid posture out of Dominic’s spine and show him how capable of magic the sway of his body truly had the potential to be. Matthew could only pray that these things would be true, and, imagining a man so unlucky to train a cause as lost as Dominic, he decided he would save the man most of his trouble by making it nearly impossible for Dominic to place the bow at the incorrect spot on the strings.
So many beginning students remained blithely unaware of the string’s natural sweet spot, the place where the sound would echo through the room and the audience’s heart, leaving scars of emotional fragility in their wake. They play their instruments, barely registering the infinite number of ways their playing could improve just by running the bow along the center of their string, the same way a singer would hit the center of their notes with their vocal cords. A careless bow arm meant the bow would slide in random, uncontrolled patterns across the violin, and the world of musical opportunity would forever remain lost. In minimizing the room for error in Dominic’s playing, he would be hailed as a master of luthiery, while laughing coyly to himself that the had expected Dominic’s failure and privately acknowledged the likelihood of his incapability. It would be his private joke and also one of his greatest achievements.
Gliding pencil over parchment, he drafted a slight alteration to the bridge of the instrument, widening it just slightly to make the rumble of the strings match the weight of his voice. To be a master violinist meant the player had to have a profound grasp on when the execution of pressure was required in the finest increment. He’d seen it countless times, a violin falling into the hands of a student who drags the bow along the strings of the instrument as though he were digging his own grave, scattering rosin like dust of a cemetery. And just as often as he’d seen the aggressive pull of ineptitude, he’d seen the fearful twitch of the unconfident arm that made the instrument sound like the chattering teeth of Satan himself in one’s mind; the terrified motion of men more afraid of themselves than the fear of failure. To widen the bridge would make it more apt to suit thicker strings, gutstrings that would be pulled down into the soundholes and lifted back out with a growl of the instrument that made aggression seem romantic and decrescendos become transcendent. The instrument would be its own monster and he was creating the myth.
And even then, after the rush of coy humour and exquisite innovation, Matthew still had no idea how to impose what he had seen of the boy onto wood. It started with the likening of wood to a man, finding the proper wood that would not only embody him, reflect him with keen accuracy, but would build him as a mystery. Varnish would be simple, the selection of a golden brown rather than his usual red sienna.
Leaning back in his chair, Matthew shut his eyes with his palms resting face up on the table. He’d left himself vulnerable and open to imagery, begging the vision to wind itself around his imagination and burn its way through his skin onto paper. As a child, perhaps no more than eleven, he had stumbled into the shop late one evening to find his father in a similar position, head tipped far back with his jaw slack. At first Matthew had assumed the man had fallen asleep, but in the quiet he could hear his father’s uneven breathing, see the rapid movement of his eyes behind his eyelids in the setting summer sun and realized that he were planning his violins as though he were receiving visions from God’s very tongue. Only when he turned twenty did Matthew adopt the process, truly able to understand how the opening of one’s self to the silence of the world allowed the faintest concepts to crawl from the dark recesses of the mind. Out of the void and into reality, dreams would tumble from wish into want into possession.
He forced himself to remember every detail of Dominic, every line and shadow that had crossed his features. The images started hollow, blurry and unfocused, fogged by their brief moments together and Matthew’s fervent indifference. The details of the room came first, the vibrant wallpaper and the maple floorboards, paintings of oil on canvas of men and women with regal necklines and jewelry befitting a monarch. Fabric wrapped itself around his memory of Dominic, a loose purple doublet that he had refused to tie, perhaps to vex his father in the most subtle of ways. His neck was free of a collar, free from the proverbial noose of society, with skin like porcelain that gleamed in the sun. How odd that he’d worn tarnished black breeches, loose on his waist and legs as though he were bringing a new form to the galligaskin, how odd that his body betrayed his will.
And if the boy was so capable of deception, of tricking his father and the men around him while somehow managing to keep his wit, then it seemed only natural that a snake wound itself from Matthew’s mind. It slithered with a hiss, similar to the way the boy had lingered on his pronunciation of the letter ’s,’ and came to rest in the ebony fingerboard. He was deceptive, challenging, and tempting. Yes, temptation suited him better than any other man he had ever met, his way with women and words and wit making him the viper of Cremona’s Eden.
He was blinded by possibility, his senses overwhelmed with thought and choice. Eyes snapping open, he immediately set himself to work, drafting and planning because it suddenly seemed so easy. The boy was everything! He was not the callousness of his father, but a boy in need of a game, in need of a challenge. Somehow, perhaps with the skill of a man who had been practicing since infancy, he had layered his words with multiple meanings, leaving Matthew to decipher the truth he had implied. He was bored, not with Matthew, but with his father’s control over his life. By declaring he could have Matthew arrested, he had subtly tested Matthew for a reaction - it was his method of deciphering Matthew’s humour. A gaming man would only game with those who rose to the occasion. And credit, his question of credit, went not to the instrument but to Matthew’s skill.
And so he would not simply paint Dominic’s face onto the back of the wood, he would create potential, the existence of human potential, with a single instrument. As he listened to the sound of graphite etching itself into form he had never felt more like God, and did not even blush at his internal blasphemy.
~~~~~~~~
Carving the back of a violin always felt like he were sculpting romance out of his fingers, as though he were making love to the wood with a force that bent it into shape as he brought it to life with a sigh and a drip of sweat. Such a strange feeling, that playing and making the instrument were so similar. The push of his arm with his carving knife in hand made the blades of his shoulders ache as he whittled the wood away, mirroring the way the pull of his bow across the finished product could make his spine burn. Scraps of wood fell gently to his feet as he bent over the desk, brow furrowed as he pushed caverns into the shape he had cut from a thick plank of Willow.
The muscles in his hands took over the process, knowing exactly the right amount of pressure to give each cut and allowing his mind to bring his focus to the rings in the wood. Everything about his work and its final product was drenched in history, regardless of humanity’s awareness of such a truth. Rings in the wood told of the trees age, and he could count the years back in its lines and its shade. Often, visions of years long past would haunt his mind as he broke the barriers of time with his knife, ripping them away and apart with a single stroke. What men had touched the tree he was turning into an instrument? Had the wood itself already been carved, perhaps by lovers or soldiers or hunters? What a life the tree had, what a life it would have again in the hands of a musician that told its story. And maybe, if he were lucky and the fruits of his blood were equally as talented, his name would live on in the luthiery world, and the instruments he had made would be seen as icons of an era. He was making a life that was meant to be handled, a tool of expression that was meant to outlive its master.
History came to his hands, soaked in a withered timeline and waiting to be molded into the armor of its future.
A knock filtered its way through his reverie, breaking his focus and his rhythm with a grunted falter. Wiping his brow with his wrist, he leaned back and growled.
‘How am I meant to get work done in private if this room is never private,’ he hissed, turning to look at his intruder.
Niccolò stood with his head bowed, lip between his teeth. He said nothing as Matthew acknowledged him with a glare.
‘Well?’ Matthew said, hand flailing in the air only to flop at his side with a slap.
‘Maestro, there is a man here to see you. He seems noble.’
Nodding, Matthew walked through the room and down the hall, begrudgingly following the boy as he scampered quickly back to his desk. He quietly berated himself for snapping at the boy, though the truth was that he was famous for his quick temper. It was not, as many assumed, that he disliked people and was an inherently angry man. No, so often passion was mistaken for rage when the truth was that he merely disliked distractions. Those who encountered the anger were at the wrong end of his displeasure, and would never be able to conclude that his temper was merely projection of an aggressive need to work.
Entering the main room of the shop, his feet became unable to move at the sight of Dominic standing so casually in its center idly turning an unvarnished violin in his hand. It was so unusual to see him staring at something with a bright spark behind his eyes. The boy’s lips were parted as though he were whispering to the instrument and it took a shake of Matthew’s head for him to realize that the words were more likely criticisms than words of affection.
Taking a few steps forward, Matthew cleared his throat.
‘Can I help you?’ he asked, bowing slightly at the bow.
‘This is a rather pretty thing,’ Dominic replied, not looking at Matthew. In profile, he appeared as a Roman conqueror, neck elongated to a point of pain and sharp features cutting the light with the shadows they cast. ‘Did you make this?’
‘No,’ Matthew said, flatly. ‘That is the work of Luca Marchitelli. Unfortunately, he is not here today as he is in Turin acquiring more supplies. I will relay your compliments.’
‘Perhaps my father has chosen the wrong luthier. I find myself attracted to this and its…simplicity.’ Indeed, his eyes roamed over the instrument as though he were surveying a piece of land or a beautiful woman he wanted to claim once the night had fallen.
And if the words had fallen from another man’s mouth, either a musician or a beggar, Matthew would have taken offense. The aftermath of Dominic’s declaration left him without any emotion rather than a mild sense of sarcasm.
‘If that is how you wish to be seen, I assure you I have no qualms about making a simpleton for an instrument.’
He turned to meet Matthew’s gaze, fixing him with a look that was neither offended nor explicitly humored. There was no judgement, no quizzical complexity, no arrogance to be found in his face, just the eyes of a man learning to read the person before him.
‘You fascinate me,’ he said after a long moment of silence.
It was such an unexpected thing for him to say, the words taking on a bewitching effect as they fell from his tongue. Only then, as Matthew absorbed the phrase and gave the layers a texture through his own presumptions and imagination, did he become so viciously aware of the eyes of his pupils on his backs, watching the encounter with transfixed eyes and a fresh sense of wonder.
‘That is why,’ Dominic continued, ‘I have come to ask you a favor.’
Matthew narrowed his eyes. ‘If this is about your instrument, signore, -‘
‘In a way, it is,’ Dominic said, cutting Matthew off. He set the violin he had been holding back onto the rack above Luca’s desk and picked up a bow as he continued to speak. ‘I imagine you are busy with its construction.’
‘Yes, I am. I’d be closer to completion if you hadn’t-‘
‘And that is why I should feel guilty for coming to you with a second request. I am, after all, a Catholic man.’ Dominic continued his speech with a confidence that many men would spend lifetimes learning to acquire, and he held it within his slim frame as though he were a steel cage. ‘But I would like for you to teach me how to play the thing you are building me.’
Thoughts and arguments that had been swimming through Matthew’s brain disintegrated in an instant as he processed Dominic’s words. They held a numbing sort of meaning, a venom that silenced his autonomous opinion and left him only to experience the rapid beating of his heart. A flush that crept into his cheeks was the first thing he felt, followed by an intense wave of anxiety that brought moisture to his palms and made him wipe his hands down his leather coveralls.
It was not that it was a sin, not that it was even a secret, that he played the violin. Many of his apprentices had heard him playing during late nights and early mornings, his mother had heard him in his bedroom, playing with an aggression reserved only for the betrayal of God when his father had passed. It was a personal and private experience, his time with the violin. He played for love and sadness and hatred and all the emotions the Bible taught men to stifle because they made them betray the path of holiness. His affair with the instrument was one sided and entirely too passionate to try and pass on to a boy that simply sought casual amusement. Yes, Dominic did indeed have the potential and the capacity to be an interesting man, but he was neither extraordinary nor romantic, and Matthew would not expose himself, skin himself alive and leave his heart on the table, just for Dominic’s infantile pleasure.
‘I am a luthier, not a music teacher. Your father most likely has someone in mind already. I promise you he will be more than capable.’ The words fell from his tongue with the sternness one would give to their ill-behaved child.
‘If you fail to teach me, perhaps my father will finally see how ludicrous his desire for me to learn an instrument truly is.’
‘I think you need the discipline,’ Matthew said, honestly. He would fight this to the very end, even if it was in Dominic’s foyer and he had to fail under the pretense he could not play just so the Count would dismiss him.
‘Then why not be the one to give it to me?’ Dominic asked, running his fingers up the length of the bow.
‘How do you know I can even play?’
Dominic sighed. ‘You are a man of pride, signore,’ he said, turning his attention back to Matthew. ‘You would never build something without knowing all the ways it can be used. My father might not have drawn such a conclusion, but I demand that you separate your associations of me from your perceptions of my father. Drill it into your head that I am not him.’
Matthew glared at him. ‘What if I say no?’
‘What if I spend my life unable to play the instrument you’ve made me? Or worse, what if I never touch it after my errors become clear?’ Dominic replied with a shrug.
‘What if I declare you impossible to teach?’
‘What if I declare your instrument impossible to play?’
‘You won’t back down from this, will you?’
‘No,’ Dominic said, smiling wide to reveal his straight teeth. ‘I want you to teach me.’
‘For what reasons?’ Matthew asked, voice rasping and his teeth grit.
‘I’ve already told you. You fascinate me.’
Dominic’s tone of voice implied that the conversation, the argument, was finished.
Author: lalalive23
Pairing: Belldom
Rating: G
Warnings: A truckload of sass
Summary: AU. 1600's Cremona Italy. When Matt, a master violin maker and player, is offered a large sum of money to create a violin for the son of a Count, his life is changed in the most extraordinary of ways.
Feedback: I LIVE FOR THE APPLAUSE, APPLAUSE, APPLAUSE
Disclaimer: I don't own Muse. This never happened. Cremona and a lot of the history discussed is legit. I'm taking historical events and people and running away with them.
Note: Oh look! Another update! I found this chapter difficult to write, not because of emotions or feels but, because NaNo is exhausting and my life has been super busy this week and it's really hard to sit yourself down and just...write. I think over the last few days, I've only been managing 800 words in one go. Today I made myself sit down and shit out extra words so that I can have padding for the weekend. Real talk: these characters are already deviating from what I had outlined and that is scary as hell. The end of this chapter is very different from what I had outlined, so it's getting real interesting in Haus of Kitty, yall. Cheers to amusedinred for being an amazing beta and cheerleader. She tediously finds all my typos from word sprints and gently tells me to fix them. Bless <3 And thanks to everyone reading and commenting! Wow, some of the best comments I've ever had are about this story and that makes me feel so many feelings, I can't even explain. That you guys are enjoying this makes NaNo so much easier and fun. You all are wonderful. Enjoy!
Previous Chapters
As a child, Matthew had grown fond of walking the long paths and winding streets that sprawled through the city, learning the secrets behind ivy covered walls and brown clay houses. He’d learned its secrets, used the brief moments of solitude to not only discover the town, and its history, but the inner workings of his mind as he moved gradually from adolescence into adulthood. On his journey home, he thought that maybe he would be given some great epiphany, that a passing scent of deep grape or the scent of the horses in the stables would carry with it a grand design for Dominic’s violin - that maybe, built into the rock and the stones of the paths he walked, there would be phantom footprints of Dominic’s own youth that Matthew could trace and engrave into the wood of his latest commission. It seemed that the further he walked, the more distance he put between him and the Count’s son, the more he seemed to fully comprehend the depth of the command and soon found himself buried under the weight of responsibility and confusion.
How pompous such a request could be, how self-important must one be to have a man who’d barely known him for more than ten minutes make him into a violin. It only proved that he had been right all along, that Dominic would never allow himself to experience the intimacy that came with the instrument, that his definition of the word itself was skewed and he chose to bury himself in the silk skirts of women rather than the language of true expression. As he stomped his way across a long bridge over a small stream just outside the city’s edge, he tried to imagine the boy holding one of his prized creations, his strong arm awkward with such a delicate thing extending from his shoulder like a displaced limb. The violin was an extension of the soul, a cord that extended outward and into the universe that bore a map to every human connection that could be created. Every sound resonated with human affect, every caress of the bow passing over the instrument like a hand to a lover. This was how musicians spoke, loved; copulated until their bodies were spent and exhausted, aching for water, an inhalation of tobacco, or sleep that would last for days. This was how men went to war, screaming angry tones on thick strings and heaving battle cries in the dark through the agony of torn horse hairs. Would Dominic ever be able to express himself so freely? Would he ever learn to love something else as much, perhaps more, than himself and treat its body as an object of idolatry?
He hated to admit that there was something behind Dominic’s eyes, the whispers of a challenge and a willingness to rebel to the judgements of men, perhaps even God. There was an unusual curiosity that had buried itself beneath his skin, swimming in his bored tone and empty threats to Matthew that seemed to beg him to play. Dominic was in desperate need of a playmate and he was determined to have such a thing in his violin.
And it was only when he had found himself at the door to his shop, the sun holding itself high in the sky, doing nothing to warm the autumn chill, that Matthew realized there was a difference to be found in the concepts of knowing and seeing. As he placed his parchment and tape on a table close to the entrance, he watched his pupils busy themselves and mulled over Dominic’s exact words, his exact command to make the violin as he saw him. And then, somewhere wrapped around a dead corner of his heart, a small thrill of adrenaline released itself at the thought of assuming agency over the work. It placed the responsibility in his hands, the measure and scale of the choices, and put him at once on a pedestal and at an impasse. The choices were his to make, though they would be scrutinized by men who could blame him for his misjudgement. The art was his to design, but the functionality of its use relied on the measures of the man who took no part in its creation. How brilliantly and utterly annoying the boy had been.
With the distinction embedded in his mind, the task itself took on an entirely new form: what were the mechanics of pretentious malcontent and how best could they be built into an instrument made solely for grace and wonder? Every other experience he’d had with luthiery had been the art of crafting the man and his desires into the violin, a clear demand to make their personal messiah the instrument that would put itself to work for the man holding it. The men had considered their personal tastes and experiences with music, their size, their build, their fury or their joy; he had built instruments to weather the storm of life with men who would change while their instrument would become at once a ghost of nostalgia and a phantom limb come back to life. Building a violin was more than building an instrument, it was building a man through preconceived desires, and the desires were never his.
Bringing himself to sit at his desk, he leaned over a blank sheet of vellum and sat silently, pencil poised above the sheet to commence his notes, drafts, and sketches. When no great idea came, when the shock of action from mind to fingers never came, the questions of Dominic’s intent and choice began to flood his synapses. How greatly ignorant the boy had been, to assume that greatness was only in the aesthetics of a violin and not its construction, free to be physically perfect while its functionality for its user suffered beyond reason. How ignorant he had been, to assume that Matthew would leave his knowledge of the instrument, and the average man, entirely separate from the work. A soft tingle of defiance began to coax out of its sudden hibernation, and was overjoyed at the plethora of ways he could paint layers of insult behind an invisible curtain onto, and into, the violin.
He would string it tight, with thick gut strings to leave the margin for error to a minimum. If Dominic were to be gifted a fine tutor, a tutor worthy of the money his father was spending on such a ridiculous plight, then he had to assume the boy’s tutor would be exhausted with his continual necessity to show him how to float the bow. He imagined, with brief images that skirted behind his eyes, the ways his tutor would press his fingers to the bridge of his nose and regain his patience to explain when pressure was meant to be added and when it mattered most to fall into quiet tugs of the bow across the strings. And maybe, if the tutor was a brilliant man, a man well trained in the art of arguing and well versed in the language of apathetic pupils, he would coax the rigid posture out of Dominic’s spine and show him how capable of magic the sway of his body truly had the potential to be. Matthew could only pray that these things would be true, and, imagining a man so unlucky to train a cause as lost as Dominic, he decided he would save the man most of his trouble by making it nearly impossible for Dominic to place the bow at the incorrect spot on the strings.
So many beginning students remained blithely unaware of the string’s natural sweet spot, the place where the sound would echo through the room and the audience’s heart, leaving scars of emotional fragility in their wake. They play their instruments, barely registering the infinite number of ways their playing could improve just by running the bow along the center of their string, the same way a singer would hit the center of their notes with their vocal cords. A careless bow arm meant the bow would slide in random, uncontrolled patterns across the violin, and the world of musical opportunity would forever remain lost. In minimizing the room for error in Dominic’s playing, he would be hailed as a master of luthiery, while laughing coyly to himself that the had expected Dominic’s failure and privately acknowledged the likelihood of his incapability. It would be his private joke and also one of his greatest achievements.
Gliding pencil over parchment, he drafted a slight alteration to the bridge of the instrument, widening it just slightly to make the rumble of the strings match the weight of his voice. To be a master violinist meant the player had to have a profound grasp on when the execution of pressure was required in the finest increment. He’d seen it countless times, a violin falling into the hands of a student who drags the bow along the strings of the instrument as though he were digging his own grave, scattering rosin like dust of a cemetery. And just as often as he’d seen the aggressive pull of ineptitude, he’d seen the fearful twitch of the unconfident arm that made the instrument sound like the chattering teeth of Satan himself in one’s mind; the terrified motion of men more afraid of themselves than the fear of failure. To widen the bridge would make it more apt to suit thicker strings, gutstrings that would be pulled down into the soundholes and lifted back out with a growl of the instrument that made aggression seem romantic and decrescendos become transcendent. The instrument would be its own monster and he was creating the myth.
And even then, after the rush of coy humour and exquisite innovation, Matthew still had no idea how to impose what he had seen of the boy onto wood. It started with the likening of wood to a man, finding the proper wood that would not only embody him, reflect him with keen accuracy, but would build him as a mystery. Varnish would be simple, the selection of a golden brown rather than his usual red sienna.
Leaning back in his chair, Matthew shut his eyes with his palms resting face up on the table. He’d left himself vulnerable and open to imagery, begging the vision to wind itself around his imagination and burn its way through his skin onto paper. As a child, perhaps no more than eleven, he had stumbled into the shop late one evening to find his father in a similar position, head tipped far back with his jaw slack. At first Matthew had assumed the man had fallen asleep, but in the quiet he could hear his father’s uneven breathing, see the rapid movement of his eyes behind his eyelids in the setting summer sun and realized that he were planning his violins as though he were receiving visions from God’s very tongue. Only when he turned twenty did Matthew adopt the process, truly able to understand how the opening of one’s self to the silence of the world allowed the faintest concepts to crawl from the dark recesses of the mind. Out of the void and into reality, dreams would tumble from wish into want into possession.
He forced himself to remember every detail of Dominic, every line and shadow that had crossed his features. The images started hollow, blurry and unfocused, fogged by their brief moments together and Matthew’s fervent indifference. The details of the room came first, the vibrant wallpaper and the maple floorboards, paintings of oil on canvas of men and women with regal necklines and jewelry befitting a monarch. Fabric wrapped itself around his memory of Dominic, a loose purple doublet that he had refused to tie, perhaps to vex his father in the most subtle of ways. His neck was free of a collar, free from the proverbial noose of society, with skin like porcelain that gleamed in the sun. How odd that he’d worn tarnished black breeches, loose on his waist and legs as though he were bringing a new form to the galligaskin, how odd that his body betrayed his will.
And if the boy was so capable of deception, of tricking his father and the men around him while somehow managing to keep his wit, then it seemed only natural that a snake wound itself from Matthew’s mind. It slithered with a hiss, similar to the way the boy had lingered on his pronunciation of the letter ’s,’ and came to rest in the ebony fingerboard. He was deceptive, challenging, and tempting. Yes, temptation suited him better than any other man he had ever met, his way with women and words and wit making him the viper of Cremona’s Eden.
He was blinded by possibility, his senses overwhelmed with thought and choice. Eyes snapping open, he immediately set himself to work, drafting and planning because it suddenly seemed so easy. The boy was everything! He was not the callousness of his father, but a boy in need of a game, in need of a challenge. Somehow, perhaps with the skill of a man who had been practicing since infancy, he had layered his words with multiple meanings, leaving Matthew to decipher the truth he had implied. He was bored, not with Matthew, but with his father’s control over his life. By declaring he could have Matthew arrested, he had subtly tested Matthew for a reaction - it was his method of deciphering Matthew’s humour. A gaming man would only game with those who rose to the occasion. And credit, his question of credit, went not to the instrument but to Matthew’s skill.
And so he would not simply paint Dominic’s face onto the back of the wood, he would create potential, the existence of human potential, with a single instrument. As he listened to the sound of graphite etching itself into form he had never felt more like God, and did not even blush at his internal blasphemy.
~~~~~~~~
Carving the back of a violin always felt like he were sculpting romance out of his fingers, as though he were making love to the wood with a force that bent it into shape as he brought it to life with a sigh and a drip of sweat. Such a strange feeling, that playing and making the instrument were so similar. The push of his arm with his carving knife in hand made the blades of his shoulders ache as he whittled the wood away, mirroring the way the pull of his bow across the finished product could make his spine burn. Scraps of wood fell gently to his feet as he bent over the desk, brow furrowed as he pushed caverns into the shape he had cut from a thick plank of Willow.
The muscles in his hands took over the process, knowing exactly the right amount of pressure to give each cut and allowing his mind to bring his focus to the rings in the wood. Everything about his work and its final product was drenched in history, regardless of humanity’s awareness of such a truth. Rings in the wood told of the trees age, and he could count the years back in its lines and its shade. Often, visions of years long past would haunt his mind as he broke the barriers of time with his knife, ripping them away and apart with a single stroke. What men had touched the tree he was turning into an instrument? Had the wood itself already been carved, perhaps by lovers or soldiers or hunters? What a life the tree had, what a life it would have again in the hands of a musician that told its story. And maybe, if he were lucky and the fruits of his blood were equally as talented, his name would live on in the luthiery world, and the instruments he had made would be seen as icons of an era. He was making a life that was meant to be handled, a tool of expression that was meant to outlive its master.
History came to his hands, soaked in a withered timeline and waiting to be molded into the armor of its future.
A knock filtered its way through his reverie, breaking his focus and his rhythm with a grunted falter. Wiping his brow with his wrist, he leaned back and growled.
‘How am I meant to get work done in private if this room is never private,’ he hissed, turning to look at his intruder.
Niccolò stood with his head bowed, lip between his teeth. He said nothing as Matthew acknowledged him with a glare.
‘Well?’ Matthew said, hand flailing in the air only to flop at his side with a slap.
‘Maestro, there is a man here to see you. He seems noble.’
Nodding, Matthew walked through the room and down the hall, begrudgingly following the boy as he scampered quickly back to his desk. He quietly berated himself for snapping at the boy, though the truth was that he was famous for his quick temper. It was not, as many assumed, that he disliked people and was an inherently angry man. No, so often passion was mistaken for rage when the truth was that he merely disliked distractions. Those who encountered the anger were at the wrong end of his displeasure, and would never be able to conclude that his temper was merely projection of an aggressive need to work.
Entering the main room of the shop, his feet became unable to move at the sight of Dominic standing so casually in its center idly turning an unvarnished violin in his hand. It was so unusual to see him staring at something with a bright spark behind his eyes. The boy’s lips were parted as though he were whispering to the instrument and it took a shake of Matthew’s head for him to realize that the words were more likely criticisms than words of affection.
Taking a few steps forward, Matthew cleared his throat.
‘Can I help you?’ he asked, bowing slightly at the bow.
‘This is a rather pretty thing,’ Dominic replied, not looking at Matthew. In profile, he appeared as a Roman conqueror, neck elongated to a point of pain and sharp features cutting the light with the shadows they cast. ‘Did you make this?’
‘No,’ Matthew said, flatly. ‘That is the work of Luca Marchitelli. Unfortunately, he is not here today as he is in Turin acquiring more supplies. I will relay your compliments.’
‘Perhaps my father has chosen the wrong luthier. I find myself attracted to this and its…simplicity.’ Indeed, his eyes roamed over the instrument as though he were surveying a piece of land or a beautiful woman he wanted to claim once the night had fallen.
And if the words had fallen from another man’s mouth, either a musician or a beggar, Matthew would have taken offense. The aftermath of Dominic’s declaration left him without any emotion rather than a mild sense of sarcasm.
‘If that is how you wish to be seen, I assure you I have no qualms about making a simpleton for an instrument.’
He turned to meet Matthew’s gaze, fixing him with a look that was neither offended nor explicitly humored. There was no judgement, no quizzical complexity, no arrogance to be found in his face, just the eyes of a man learning to read the person before him.
‘You fascinate me,’ he said after a long moment of silence.
It was such an unexpected thing for him to say, the words taking on a bewitching effect as they fell from his tongue. Only then, as Matthew absorbed the phrase and gave the layers a texture through his own presumptions and imagination, did he become so viciously aware of the eyes of his pupils on his backs, watching the encounter with transfixed eyes and a fresh sense of wonder.
‘That is why,’ Dominic continued, ‘I have come to ask you a favor.’
Matthew narrowed his eyes. ‘If this is about your instrument, signore, -‘
‘In a way, it is,’ Dominic said, cutting Matthew off. He set the violin he had been holding back onto the rack above Luca’s desk and picked up a bow as he continued to speak. ‘I imagine you are busy with its construction.’
‘Yes, I am. I’d be closer to completion if you hadn’t-‘
‘And that is why I should feel guilty for coming to you with a second request. I am, after all, a Catholic man.’ Dominic continued his speech with a confidence that many men would spend lifetimes learning to acquire, and he held it within his slim frame as though he were a steel cage. ‘But I would like for you to teach me how to play the thing you are building me.’
Thoughts and arguments that had been swimming through Matthew’s brain disintegrated in an instant as he processed Dominic’s words. They held a numbing sort of meaning, a venom that silenced his autonomous opinion and left him only to experience the rapid beating of his heart. A flush that crept into his cheeks was the first thing he felt, followed by an intense wave of anxiety that brought moisture to his palms and made him wipe his hands down his leather coveralls.
It was not that it was a sin, not that it was even a secret, that he played the violin. Many of his apprentices had heard him playing during late nights and early mornings, his mother had heard him in his bedroom, playing with an aggression reserved only for the betrayal of God when his father had passed. It was a personal and private experience, his time with the violin. He played for love and sadness and hatred and all the emotions the Bible taught men to stifle because they made them betray the path of holiness. His affair with the instrument was one sided and entirely too passionate to try and pass on to a boy that simply sought casual amusement. Yes, Dominic did indeed have the potential and the capacity to be an interesting man, but he was neither extraordinary nor romantic, and Matthew would not expose himself, skin himself alive and leave his heart on the table, just for Dominic’s infantile pleasure.
‘I am a luthier, not a music teacher. Your father most likely has someone in mind already. I promise you he will be more than capable.’ The words fell from his tongue with the sternness one would give to their ill-behaved child.
‘If you fail to teach me, perhaps my father will finally see how ludicrous his desire for me to learn an instrument truly is.’
‘I think you need the discipline,’ Matthew said, honestly. He would fight this to the very end, even if it was in Dominic’s foyer and he had to fail under the pretense he could not play just so the Count would dismiss him.
‘Then why not be the one to give it to me?’ Dominic asked, running his fingers up the length of the bow.
‘How do you know I can even play?’
Dominic sighed. ‘You are a man of pride, signore,’ he said, turning his attention back to Matthew. ‘You would never build something without knowing all the ways it can be used. My father might not have drawn such a conclusion, but I demand that you separate your associations of me from your perceptions of my father. Drill it into your head that I am not him.’
Matthew glared at him. ‘What if I say no?’
‘What if I spend my life unable to play the instrument you’ve made me? Or worse, what if I never touch it after my errors become clear?’ Dominic replied with a shrug.
‘What if I declare you impossible to teach?’
‘What if I declare your instrument impossible to play?’
‘You won’t back down from this, will you?’
‘No,’ Dominic said, smiling wide to reveal his straight teeth. ‘I want you to teach me.’
‘For what reasons?’ Matthew asked, voice rasping and his teeth grit.
‘I’ve already told you. You fascinate me.’
Dominic’s tone of voice implied that the conversation, the argument, was finished.