Vespasia was not especially fond of Wagner, but the opera, any opera at all, was a grand occasion and held a certain glamour. Since the invitation was from Mario Corena, she would have accepted it even had it been to walk down the High Street in the rain. She would not have told him so, but she suspected he might already know. Not even the hideous news that Charlotte had brought could keep her from going with him.
He called for her at seven and they rode at a very leisurely pace in the carriage he had taken for the evening. The air was mild and the streets were crowded with people, seeing and being seen on their way to parties, dinners, balls, exhibitions, excursions up and down the river.
Mario was smiling, the last of the sunlight flickering on his face through the windows as they moved. She thought that time had been kind to him. His skin was still smooth, the lines were upward, without bitterness, in spite of all that had been lost. Perhaps he had never given up hope, only changed it as one cause had died and another had been created.
She remembered the long, golden evenings in Rome as the sun went down over the ancient ruins of the city, now lost in centuries of later and lesser dreams. The air there was warmer, with no cold edge to it, heavy with the smell of heat and dust. She remembered how they had walked on the pavements that had once been the center of the world, trodden by the feet of every nation on the earth come to pay tribute.
But that had been the Imperial age. Mario had stood on one of the older, simpler bridges across the Tiber, watching the light on the water, and told her with passion raw in his voice of the old republic that had thrown out the kings, long before the years of the Caesars. That was what he loved, the simplicity and the honor with which they had begun, before ambition overtook them and power corrupted them.
With the thought of power and corruption, a chill touched her that the warmth of the evening could not ease; even the echoes of memory were not strong enough to loose its grip.
She thought of the dark alleys of Whitechapel, of women waiting alone, hearing the rumble of carriage wheels behind them, perhaps even turning to see its denser blackness outlined against the gloom, then the door opening, the sight of a face for a moment, and the pain.
She thought of poor Eddy, a pawn moved one way and then the other, his emotions used and disregarded in a world he only half heard, perhaps half understood. And she thought of his mother, deaf also, pitied and often ignored, and how she must have grieved for him, and been helpless to move even to comfort him, let alone to save him.
They were approaching Covent Garden. There was a small girl standing on the corner and holding out a bunch of wilted flowers.
Mario stopped the coach, to the anger and inconvenience of the traffic around them in both directions. He climbed out and walked over to the girl. He bought the flowers and returned with them, smiling. They were dusty, their stalks bent and petals drooping.
“A little past their best,” he said wryly. “And I gave rather too much for them.” There was laughter in his eyes, and sadness.
She took them. “How very appropriate,” she answered, smiling back, a ridiculous lump in her throat.
The carriage moved on again, amid considerable abuse.
“I’m sorry it’s Wagner,” he remarked, resettling himself into his seat. “I can never take it all with the right degree of seriousness. The men who cannot laugh at themselves frighten me even more than those who laugh at everything.”
She looked at him and knew how profoundly he meant it. There was an edge to his voice like that she remembered in the hot, dreadful days of the siege before the end. They had realized, during those nights alone, when all the work they could do was past and there was nothing else but to wait, that in the end they would not win. The Pope would return and sooner or later all the old corruptions would come back too, bland-faced, pitiless, impersonal.
But they had had a passion inside and a loyalty that gave more than it ever cost, even at the very last. The men who beat them were stronger, richer and sadder.
“They mock because they don’t understand,” she said, thinking of those who had derided their aspirations so long ago.
He was looking at her as he always had, as if there were no one else.
“Sometimes,” he agreed. “It is far worse when they do it because they
Without thinking she reached out her hand and laid it on his. His fingers closed over hers immediately, warm and strong.
“Who are you thinking of?” she asked, knowing it was not simply memory speaking, dear as that was.
He turned to her, his eyes grave. They were nearly there and it would be time to alight in a moment, join the throng gathering on the opera house steps, women in laces and silk, jewels winking in the lights, men in shirts so white they gleamed.
“Not a man, my dear, so much as a time.” He looked around them. “This cannot last, the extravagance, the inequality and the waste of it. Look at the beauty and remember it, because it is worth a great deal, and too much of it will go.” His voice was very soft. “Only a little wiser, a little more moderate, and they could have kept it all. That is the trouble-when anger bursts at last it destroys the good as well as the bad.”
Before she could press him further the carriage stopped and he alighted, handing her down before the footman could do so. They went up the steps and in through the crowds, nodding to a friend or acquaintance.
They saw Charles Voisey standing deep in conversation with James Sissons. Sissons was looking flushed, and every time Voisey hesitated he cut in.
“Poor Voisey,” Vespasia said wryly. “Do you think we are morally obliged to rescue him?”
Mario was puzzled. “Rescue him?” he asked.
“From the sugar factory man,” she said with surprise at having to explain to him. “He is the most crashing bore.”
An aching pity filled Mario’s face, a regret that filled her with longing for things which could never be, not even all those years ago in Rome, except in dream.
“You know nothing of him, my dear, not of the man beneath the awkward surface. He deserves to be judged for his heart, not his grace… or lack of it.” He took her arm and with surprising strength led her past Voisey and Sissons and the group beyond them, and up the stairs towards the box.
She saw Voisey take his seat almost opposite them, but she did not see Sissons again.
She wanted to enjoy the music, to let her mind and her heart be fully with Mario in this little space of time, but she could not rid her thoughts of what Charlotte had told her. She turned over every possibility in her mind, and the longer she did so the less could she doubt that what Lyndon Remus had been led to was hideously close to the truth, but that he was being manipulated for purposes far beyond everything he understood.
She trusted Mario’s heart. Even after all those years she did not believe he had changed so much. His dreams were woven into the threads of his soul. But she did not trust his head. He was an idealist; he saw too much of the world in broad strokes, as he wished it to be. He had refused to allow experience to dull his hope or teach him reality.
She looked at his face, still so full of passion and hope, and followed his glance across at the royal box, which was empty tonight. The Prince of Wales was probably indulging in something a trifle less serious than the deliberation of the doomed gods of Valhalla.
“Did you choose
Something in her voice caught his attention, a gravity, even a sense of time running out. There was no laughter in his eyes as he answered.
“No… but I could have,” he said softly. “It is twilight, Vespasia, for very flawed gods who wasted their opportunities, spent too much money that was not theirs to cast away, borrowed money that has not been paid
