This central dilemma was intransigent. No matter how clear the facts and figures, he could not resign himself to using his powers, such as they were, to advocate changes that would reduce the consequence of sin.
He looked out the window into the swirling snow and prayed to God.
Oh Lord, what is the more virtuous path? What should I do? Guide me.
He saw a flash of something in the kitchen yard.
He squinted.
Through the haze of falling snow, he could faintly make out the glow of a lamp. He pressed his face to the glass, and vaguely discerned the silhouette of a queenly cape. It was Alice, dashing toward the gate leading to the garden.
Where was she going?
Something must be horribly wrong.
He put his candle in a lamp and rushed downstairs and out the nearest door, not pausing to find a coat.
Alice was nowhere in sight by the time he made it to the gate. He followed her small footprints through the gardens, past the stables, and onward, toward the old priory.
Her tracks stopped at the door to the stone building. He stepped inside and raised his lamp.
“Alice?” he called.
There was a mighty boom, like the bursting of a pipe. Then a gusty, stentorian moan.
And then the priory surged with a wave of sound so forceful he felt it vibrate through the stone floors.
Organ music.
It was not a song he recognized—it sounded improvised, a ferocious counterpoint of dramatic falls and minor lifts surging into rhapsody, like the calling of a ghost.
A chill ran down his spine. “Alice?” he called again.
The organ overpowered his voice as he walked toward the chapel. The ancient stone walls echoed with its howls. He felt like he was walking through a storm of sound.
He pulled open the chapel door. In the back, above the choir nave, the brass pipes of the organ reflected moonlight shining through a stained-glass window. Alice was bent over the manual of the organ, her tiny body even smaller set against the instrument’s mighty pipes. She moved fluidly as she played, like she and the instrument were merged into a single creature.
He moved closer, silent, transfixed by her hands moving rapidly over the keys, and the sorcery they were capable of stirring.
Chapter 14
Somehow Alice had known she would feel better here. Her body had been drawn to this place, sensing what she needed like she was a wounded animal.
She closed her eyes and gave herself over to the music, playing from touch and instinct, not caring how it sounded. She poured all of her sadness into the organ’s keys, all of her fear, her outrage at this life and its crushing disappointments. She did not know what she played, only that she must.
She played for her mother, for her father, for her sisters. She played for Elena, and the hope she’d given her, and the life she wanted so badly to return to and knew she never would. She played for Henry Evesham and his rotten brother and cruel father. She played until she was not a small, sad woman but a mighty swell of sound, larger than she could ever hope to be, so powerful she made the stone walls shake.
“Alice!”
She froze and opened her eyes.
Henry Evesham was staring at her like she was possessed.
“What… ” He looked from her hands on the manual to her eyes and back to her hands, which were still suspended over the keys, not moving.
She held herself still, braced for the words to come, like a blow. Daring him to say them and knowing that he would and prepared to riot, to scream that he was wrong. Don’t make me stop. I’ll die if you make me stop. I’ll tear my hair and beat my breast.
“That was …”
Sinful. Immodest. Immoral.
“… Astonishing,” he whispered.
He did not look on her with judgment. He looked on her with wonder.
His face flickered in the lamplight, as he moved closer, and she saw his expression was soft with uncomplicated pleasure. She felt his presence like a touch.
She was grateful she was seated, or she might swoon.
“You are a remarkable player,” he murmured. “One of the best I’ve ever heard. A natural.”
She was not a natural. She’d been taught, drilled at scales since before her earliest memory, tutored for hours a day most of her life. She could not recall a time she could not play.
She forced herself to speak. “Oh, I’m not. I’ve played since I was very small.”
He shook his head, his eyes gleaming. “You have a true gift, Alice.”
She stared at him, wordless, unable to fully believe his face held admiration rather than outrage. She was so relieved he was not rebuking her she began to shiver.
She’d not known how much she missed this. Playing the organ felt, to her, the way that Henry described prayer. To be alone with your thoughts and God.
That is what Vicar Helmsley had taken from her, with his sneering words: ’Tis a sin for a female like you to make music in the house of God. You should be ashamed.
“You must be freezing,” Henry said softly. He reached down and retrieved her cloak, which had fallen to the floor. He placed it over her shoulders and smoothed it down, rubbing warmth into her.
“Thank you,” she whispered. The simple gesture touched her. She could not remember last time she’d felt so cared for.
“Would you play me something I might know?” he asked. “Perhaps a psalm?”
At the shy enthusiasm of his request, she suddenly felt nervous. It had been so many years since she’d played for an audience. Another age. Another life.
“The organ’s out of tune,” she said. “The pipes don’t like the cold. But I shall try.”
She turned back to the manual. She played slowly at first, trying to recall in her mind’s eye the pages of Crowley’s Psalter, well-worn in her father’s workshop. She played the opening, hit a discordant tone, winced. But within a few bars her ear took over, working with the memory in her fingers and her foot. And then she found it—truly found it—and all at once the melody unfolded from her.
Henry laughed with recognition. “Psalm Twenty-Four.”
It had been a performance piece when she’d toured the countryside with her father every summer, demonstrating his barrel organs at grand houses and small churches, hoping for a sale.
Henry hummed in pleasure, then began to sing the words, his lovely tenor voice in harmony with her notes.
* * *
The earth and all that it holdeth, do to the Lord belong:
The world and all that dwell therein as well the old as young.
For it is he that above all the seas hath it founded:
And that above the fresh waters hath the same prepared.
* * *
She went up an octave, improvising on the tune. Showing off.
She felt her father, beaming at her as she delighted a crowd. She felt her mother, absently mouthing the words as she made supper while Alice practiced playing.
And for a moment, making music with Henry Evesham in an abandoned priory in a snowstorm in the midst of the unraveling of her life, she felt at peace.
Chapter 15
When the final notes of the psalm stopped echoing through the old stone walls, Alice turned around to face him. In the light of his lamp her eyes locked on his, luminous. Henry smiled at her and she smiled back and for a moment they just stood there, mute and smiling, locked in a conspiracy of joy.