The Emperor loved her once, I said. Perhaps only her, I think.
Euphrosyne pushed at my arm. So . . . you were never with him? she asked.
I raised an eyebrow.
She gestured to the room. Half the women in this room have likely had the pleasure of watching as the imperial butler folded their gowns. She turned toward me with a bit of a swagger.
I let out a mock gasp.
Of course, she said. And the Prince Napoléon, too. She squinted at the crowd. Just to be sure.
To be sure?
We didn’t know how that was going to turn out, did we? I wanted to be sure both Bonapartes were fond of me. The first was duty to country; the second, insurance within that country.
I shook my head and laughed.
No butler ever folded the Comtesse’s dress for her, I said. If anyone had, it was the Emperor himself.
Euphrosyne’s laughter at this rang out so loudly the people below looked up.
For all I knew, she was why he never kissed any of his mistresses after her. He hadn’t saved himself for Eugénie.
If you’d told me, back when we met, that someday I’d be in this room, married, and he’d be dead in the suburbs of London, I’d have slapped you for lying to me, Euphrosyne said. Are you ready for your little concert?
I am.
It’s almost time. Another hour, I think, she said. And then we’ll prepare your hair.
Ladies, I heard then. I turned to see my novelist friend Simonet. He had a bottle of champagne with him. He blinked slowly, his pleasure at seeing me considerable. That vaguely guilty shadow hovered still in his eyes.
What is it? Euphrosyne said. Have you met my friend here? I extended my hand to him, though he seemed almost afraid of me.
I have, I said. Thank you. I gave you his novel, if you recall.
Ah! I knew there was a reason I had invited him. Is there some story here that I should know, not in the novel? Euphrosyne teased.
Nothing she would fear you knowing, he said. Le Cirque du Monde Déchu is being taken to the stage as an opera, however, and despite her recent refusal, it is still my hope she will have a change of heart and originate the role.
Ah! It is that protégé of Verdi’s, Euphrosyne said, and ran to the stairs, a conqueror’s gleam in her eye. I will introduce you.
Simonet and I looked at each other and smiled, nervous. I’d heard nothing from him since the rejection I sent, not a single note to complain, nor was he to be seen out—not in the theater, not in the balls, not at the dinners, not in the salons, not in the restaurants. Until now.
In an opera, masked balls only ever hide lovers and assassins. I’d thought only of assassins. I saw Simonet’s expression become very grave as he watched over my shoulder as Euphrosyne drew near.
Who is this? I wondered to myself. And then came that refrain, Is it you? And just this once, it was.
It was him.
The mystery composer I had been so sure did not exist was on her arm, neither young nor old, his hair dark but gone silver in a distinguished way at his brow. He had dressed in elegant white tie, his vest a pure white also, and he walked with a slight limp, using a cane.
On his lapel, like blood, the ruby rose pin sat glittering.
The reason his ghost had never appeared to me in dreams was that somehow he was alive.
Did I love him already, before I knew him?
Yes, yes I did. But I also knew him.
My dear, he has been talking of nothing but you, Euphrosyne said. Lilliet Berne, may I present Aristafeo Cadiz.
We had both passed through Death’s land and returned, then.
Too late, you’re too late came the thought as he crossed the room to me, smiling, tentative. I nearly laughed to think of it. You’ve made your miraculous return to me from the dead and you’re too late.
He was the very picture of the twinned joke of it—he there with the flower, this his own sly joke, and then all around him in the air, Fate’s joke on me.
I wanted to make you something worthy of your gift, he said. Once you had become my patron, too.
Three
MAY I HAVE this dance? he asked. He stood before me, impossible and mortal at the same time, and set his cane on the rail.
I said nothing—I could not speak—but I could not be in front of Euphrosyne and Simonet a moment longer, either, and so by way of consent, I instead offered my arm to him, and he took me down to the floor below.
At the least I wanted proof he was mortal, and I had it when he took the lead.
His clothes, under my hands, were new and well made, even expensive, and the wings of hair I remembered so well were combed close to his head with pomade, his whiskers evenly trimmed. He had come from nearby, it seemed, neither reborn from the bones I had sometimes imagined to be still on the roof of the Paris Opera nor having clawed his way through the earth from the underworld. He had made some other bargain, a more ordinary one, and had chosen to live in secret, apart from me, and so the shock I felt, and the happiness, transmuted from happiness to fear and then anger. The sight of him alive burned me as his death had before.
We danced silently at first, his hands on my hands, his face glancingly touching mine, and then he said, You must leave him and come with me, tonight if possible. He must not stop us.
I could see the tenor along the far wall, seated, speaking to someone I could not see.
I cannot, I said.
Hear me out, then. If you do not leave with me tonight and you marry our tenor friend, if this is true, then I will never speak to you again so we must speak now instead.
Speak, then, I said. Tell me everything.
The crowd swirled around us, their faces flashing by in the turns of the dance like a storm of masks. I watched them as he told me of his time away from me.
The knife wounds had taken away his playing somehow—the hands were mute. But my cries that day had been heard and saved his life. Eugène, hearing them, finally guessed Aristafeo’s identity and stopped himself before he made the killing blow.
He was not, as he’d hoped, about to murder the Prussian spy.
It’s your ring she wears, isn’t it? he’d said. When Aristafeo weakly nodded, Eugène swore and said, My friend, I’ve cut you badly. I apologize. Let me help get you to a hospital.
Aristafeo never saw him again. His attacker brought him to the temporary hospital kept in the home of the courtesan La Pa?va, who took an instant liking to him and made him her new cause. When she understood he was too badly wounded to likely play again but that he was a composer, she was moved and became one of his biggest supporters and eventually brought him to the attention of Verdi.
Verdi’s protégé, after all.
While he would never again play as he once had, he did thrive all the same, though his wounds and long convalescence had changed him. His hair had gone silver; he walked now with this limp and a stoop, the wolfish confidence changed into something else, something more forlorn, even a little ragged.
His time as a Prix de Rome winner afforded him travel after a long struggle. There, encouraged by Verdi, he collaborated on the libretto with this new friend, a French novelist he’d met who was in need of a story and who then bought the house Aristafeo once owned in the Marais after he’d told him the story of his affair with me. With the help of their powerful friends, the opera was under commission to the Imperial Court of Russia as an entertainment for the young Alexander, to be presented in honor of his birthday.
On the night of the Sénat Bal, he had waited upstairs for me and had meant it to be our grand reunion.