The Prince in Exile

Chapter 17

The viola sang first, soaring with the patience of a great-winged bird as it rode the wind, the sweep of its wings a rare and sublime punctuation.

Andras led her away from Gertrude, drawing her into the song, into a fall, a sinking. He led her in a dreaming dance, his force more compelling upon her than others had been, but he was no less graceful for it. She blinked and was lost for a moment, returned to a smoky darkness where last she had danced, and it seemed she had never left that night, that tent. Eyes like embers watched her, and a smile hid in the gloom.

The troubadour began to sing. The verse woke her, brought her back to herself.

"Can vei la lauzeta mover," he sang, and his voice was the wind, somehow both lifting and resting upon the strain of his viola. "De joi sas alas contra! Rai..."

Occitan, she assumed; what little French and Latin she had learned could not avail her, save guessing at the odd word. "What does it mean?" she asked of Andras, still fighting the languor of the dance. "Do you know?"

He smiled down at her as they swept around the hall. "When I see the lark," he translated, his voice low and deep, fitting in amidst the song as if just another instrument, a foundation for the rest. "Beating its wings in joy against the rays of the sun, until it forgets itself and lets itself fall, struck by the sweetness that comes to its heart..."

She listened to the gentle rumbling words, and found her eyes closing, the dream coming back upon her. Her feet were lost to her, entrusted to the song with her sight, and in warm pulsing darkness she danced on. She leaned in, felt under her hands the solidity of his chest, the slow flexing rhythm of his recitation.

"Alas! Such great envy then overwhelms me
Of all those whom I see rejoicing,
I wonder that my heart, at that moment,
Does not melt from desire.

Alas! How much I thought I knew
About love, and how little I know,
For I cannot keep myself from loving
The one from whom I will gain nothing.

She has all my heart, and my soul,
And herself and the whole world;
And when she left, nothing remained
But desire and a longing heart..."

Language fled her hearing then, as vision had fled her head and will her chest. She heard words as only notes in a melody, as empty and as full of meaning as the beating of her heart, the heart she was held against. A drum–it sounded as a single drum, struck with two hands. She was flying atop that drum, across the star-pierced sky. The world lay below her, still and flat, painted depthless atop the abyssal seas. A trick, a glamor to confound the eye–but she did not look with her eyes.

Thus did time cease to be.

A short-lived eternity. The greater darkness of her flight diminished, a base absence of light filling what had been primordial murk. Sounds were made discrete again, song split between its notes and the chatter of words spoiling the air. Touch–

Her eyes opened to find she was pressed bodily against the prince's chest, slowing to a halt as the dance ended. She pushed herself back, both embarrassed and aggrieved, though Andras watched her placidly. "I had suspected as much," he murmured as she stepped away.

"Forgive me," she cried, suddenly unbalanced, the weight of a dozen different passions pulling her at odd angles. "Perhaps the wine, or too much dancing, I–I must have–I felt faint, and–"

"There is nothing to forgive," the prince replied evenly, smoothing his tunic. "You were tired. You found your rest."

"Y-yes, well,"–she stumbled back a step–"I must now be away." She gave a prompt curtsey and stepped back again. "Thank you for the dance." She turned away from him, only to find nearly every eye in the hall upon her. Most faded to crowd, faceless watchers, but one pair remained distinct, a face Erzsebet could not ignore.