He seemed to hold a cloud made of fire, then set it spinning around himself. Vincent’s breath was audible now. He reached up with one hand, still swathed in glamour that rippled in response to his movement, and tugged his cravat free. His coat would soon follow, if he stayed true to form.
On one of the turns, he stopped and cocked his head to the side, looking at something in the ether. Vincent kept the glamour moving, but he looked at Jane and compressed his lips in silent warning. Jane raised her eyebrows to ask what was troubling him. He replied with a minuscule shake of his head. His face, which had begun to relax, took on the careful mask of control again. He dipped his head and took the strands he held, pushing them outward until the glamour became quite large.
The room filled with a fog formed of sunset and abandon. While Jane could not see the folds making up the glamour, she could tell when it changed from something that Vincent was directing to something that he had tied off. It still spun and seemed to be made of disorder, but she knew his work. The glamour did not continue to develop and alter as it had. Vincent was no longer holding the threads.
Bearing the concern he had displayed in mind, Jane did not ask what he was doing. She clenched her hands under the counterpane but kept her outward demeanour as passive as she could. The glamour was so large now that it overspread the room, obscuring Vincent from view. Jane waited in that tempest composed of fear.
After a few minutes, the glamour shifted minutely, as though Vincent had taken control of the threads once again. It spun twice more, then dissolved, leaving her husband standing in the middle of the room. His coat was on the floor and his shirt clung to his chest. Sweat shone on his brow. Vincent bent at the waist and rested his hands upon his knees, panting. “I am, indeed out of condition.”
“Then you clearly need to be working glamour more often.”
“Indeed.” He straightened slowly, steadying himself with a hand against the chair. For a moment his eyes were bleary with dizziness, but the spell appeared to pass quickly. “I shall join you, I think.”
Vincent removed his shirt and hung it over the back of the chair. As he walked to the washbasin, his back was to Jane, so the scars from his flogging by Napoleon’s men were clearly visible. They had faded with the passing years from an angry red to a dull grey-brown. Some had left permanent scores; others were twisted and raised in knots. Vincent poured water from the pitcher into the basin and removed the worst of the sweat from his back and face. He extinguished all but the candle by the bed before he finished dressing. The whole while his motions remained controlled. Jane was nearly ready to scream with anxiety by the time he settled into the bed next to her.
“Good night, Muse.” Vincent put his arm around her and nestled against Jane’s back. Then he wove a sphere of silence around them. The quality of sound changed so that the humming of insects outside and the rustle of the household staff about their work all vanished. Even so, when Vincent spoke next, his voice was low. “There is a coldmonger in an alcove, masked by glamour.”
Thirteen
Parasols and Packet Ships
Jane had to stop herself from rolling over to look at Vincent. If either of them had been working glamour during their time here, they would have seen the threads of both the masking glamural and the ones which cooled the room. In retrospect, the temperature difference between the great house and the exterior made it clear that there must have been a coldmonger present, but in England, coldmongers were only employed by the wealthy, so their presence was a mark of station and they were kept on display. It had not occurred to Jane that things would be different here, but engaging a coldmonger was expensive in England, since the occupation was so dangerous. Spending a man’s health was common practise here, so it could be hidden away with a glamoured fa?ade.
Jane lay on her side and forced herself to breathe calmly. Even with the sphere of silence that Vincent had woven, she felt the need to be as discreet as possible.
“I suspect that he, or one of the estate’s other coldmongers, has been present the entire time that we have been in residence. They have heard everything.”
Jane shivered in spite of the warmth of Vincent against her back. “May I ask you to reconsider leaving tomorrow?”
“You may. The only question is one of how.”
The night passed with Jane and Vincent discussing the “how” of their departure in low tones while pretending to be asleep. Sleep was far from either of them. They considered and discarded several plans as too complicated. If they had learned nothing else in Murano, it was in the importance of robust plans.
What they finally settled upon was the plan that Jane had proposed upon their arrival. They would use the Verres Obscurcis and walk to St. John’s. From there they would take the first ship to Jamaica.