Three doors and we enter the last and we’re inside, locked in soundproofed quiet.
I’m shaking. I see my hands through a blur as if they’re apart from me. I try to clench to stop it. I rest them on my knees, but that’s useless as the tremor is in my legs too. It seems to be in my whole body.
Lucien sits a foot away with his head bowed. He has wrapped his arms around himself. His hands are tight to his upper arms and they’re kneading, punishing the flesh. I get up and go to him, try to pull his hands clear, but he pushes me away, doesn’t look up.
Sonja is silent.
‘Martha?’ she asks. I nod.
‘What happened?’ And I tell her.
Lucien looks up then. His eyes are wild and strange in a way I can’t remember seeing them. ‘It was my fault,’ he says. ‘I made it happen. I cannot believe I was so fucking stupid.’ He pronounces every syllable mercilessly clear. ‘I carried that thing the whole way from London. I brought it with me into the Citadel.’
Sonja stands up and walks to him, sits down. She puts her hand on his shoulder.
‘What will they do to her?’ I ask. I can’t rid myself of the picture of Lucien’s eyes in the tunnel as he realised his mistake. The anger at himself.
Lucien doesn’t answer, but Sonja looks up at me steadily. The first time I think she has done so.
‘Nothing,’ she says. ‘I mean, they’ll question her, of course. See what she knows. But, remember, the magisters didn’t know the ring was my mother’s. They won’t be able to connect it to Lucien.’
‘And the guildmedal?’ I ask.
Sonja is silent for a beat. ‘Martha will buy us time. She’s lived on her wits for a long while. She’ll think of some explanation.’
‘They won’t harm her?’
Her look takes on a hint of disdain again. ‘Of course not,’ she says. ‘The Order practises mercy.’
When I have gathered myself enough to look around, I see that we are in a small room. At the far end is a window. The floor is woven matting, and the walls are soundproofed. But not with the ornate white tiles I have seen elsewhere. Here the tiling is dark brown wood and there are cracks in parts of it, though the silence is intact. There’s a washbasin at one wall and a recess to the right for a narrow single bed. On the left-hand side, there’s an internal door covered in the same soundproofed material.
True to its name, it is a cell. A room meant for nothing but to hold a person and an instrument. A place for seclusion and meditation. For stripping away everything but music.
Lucien has looked up again. He’s listening intent to the room. Then he rises and goes over to a precise spot on the right-hand side. He feels with his hands and then he laughs. There’s not much humour in it, but it’s a laugh and I’m thankful.
‘Look. Here!’ he says to me, and I go to him.
Carved into the wood where he points are a cluster of notes.
‘It’s my name. It’s the cell where I domiciled as a novice.’ He looks over at Sonja and she nods, almost shy.
‘That’s what made me think of it,’ she says. ‘I realised that you would have left by the tunnels. And the same tunnels will take us to the campanile, to the instrument’s tower.’
I go to look out of the window. We’re just barely above the ground level and the clear, thick para looks out over a long slope of grass not much above eye level. The block we are in forms one side of an eight-sided, watching shape. The lawn rises gently. In the middle is a cobbled square. And in the centre, the hub around which everything gathers, is the structure that houses the Carillon.
I turn away. Lucien is sitting again.
‘How did you get in here?’ he asks. ‘Why isn’t it in use?’
‘This row was decommissioned after your death. It was too old, they said, and the new block was nearing completion. But I really think that they were scared of the infection.’ She smiles. ‘It was a waste, as the practice console in this room is in perfect condition. I had a key made after your death,’ she says. ‘It wasn’t hard to do.’
‘Why did you need the key?’
Sonja stands straight beside the soundproofed wall. She is talking only to Lucien now.
‘Do you know, I used to feel so sorry for you. Because however clear you could hear it, you’d never see the gardens. The way they plant them so the textures and colours of the flowers and trees all speak together. Nobody else would probably ever admit that to you. “Blind of eye is true of ear” and mothers pray for children with milky eyes, after all. But I was always glad that I could see.’ She pauses, leans back a little.
‘They ignored me. Not just the magisters in the Orkestrum, but Mother and Father when we were growing up. I didn’t blame you for it. It wasn’t your fault, and you were special, of course. Destined for great things.’ She pauses, the hesitation of somebody not accustomed to sharing thought. ‘As long as there was you and me, I didn’t care much about them.
‘After you died, they continued to ignore me. It suited me by then, though. They ignored me, so I ignored them. The less attention anyone paid me, the more time I had.’
‘For what?’
A slight halt from Sonja. She is letting him in on something very private.
‘For practice.’
‘What do you mean? Why practise here, away from everything? Why not in the Orkestrum?’
She looks hard at him and I see a glint of pride. She does not answer his question straight away.
‘I wasn’t born with your gift. But I knew that I wanted it. And I had something you never had, brother.’
‘What?’ says Lucien.
‘Perseverance. I know how to work. I’m not afraid of my lack of gift. I wasn’t called to be a novice. When I got over that, it struck me. What was there to stop me teaching myself what they would learn?’ She straightens her shoulders.
Lucien nods. ‘You mean you followed their training? Meditation? Composition?’
‘Yes. And the instruments. I taught myself the viol and the bass. Then brass. I learnt the trompet and the slip horn. I wake two hours before the Orkestrum for meditation. It’s hard.’
She closes her eyes. She is thinking how useless words are to explain what the endeavour makes her feel. But it’s plainly visible. She is lit from within. A dread certainty and humility shines along her cheekbones. Along with a fear that something, someone will take it from her.
Lucien nods again, not smiling, not saying anything.
She stands and walks to the door in the opposite wall, opens it and goes through and lights a lantern. Lucien and I follow behind. It is another soundproofed chamber twice as large as the outer room. On the left and right sides of the wall, hung by turned wooden pegs, are instruments. A heavy maple cello. A lute. A bass viol leaning roundbellied in the corner. The military lines of brass trompet and slip horn shine up high above the strings. There is a transverse flute of silver. A clarionet neat in black and gold.
Taking up the whole front wall is a huge klavier. At least, it looks to me at first like a klavier. But instead of a single keyboard, it has seven, one on top of each other, ranked in terraces. On either side of these are neat rows of wooden pegs with rounded handles that jut out of the instrument’s flat sides. Beneath the piano stool are pedals, dozens of them, and then another keyboard at foot level, made of slim, long levers of light and dark wood.
Sonja walks toward it. She takes a cloth from a pocket and polishes the keyboards. She does it with pride and deference. I know that she is watching Lucien, waiting for his reaction. Her movements have changed again. The precision has lost its sharpness and returned as grace. It’s too bright for Lucien to see, I realise, and I am unsure how much detail he is able to hear.