presents...
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Such a Lovely Place
Sextus 15, 1668: Midsummer's Day
The party had actually been nice until the sun started to go down.
Strange of course; the countess's parties were all a bit strange. This one had a Cresent theme, with drummers and whirling dancers and servers dressed like corsairs. The chief butler, overseeing the distribution of food, wine and other drinks, was costumed as a corsair captain. She'd even had the poor man's head shaved like the infamous pirate, Khered-Din. The whole courtyard was decorated with palm fronds and sandalwood screens, giving it an exotic feel.
For a few hours, everyone thought that there was a real Cresent at the party, a dark-skinned, wide-eyed man dressed in exotic clothes who was never too far from the smoking braziers called hookahs. As it happened, he was a Vodacce, although some of his handlers, who they all thought were Vodacce, really were Cresents. Domenico Bernoulli, one of the Prince's infamous sons, had provided a great many of the bottles of exotic beverage and the contents of the hookahs - surely at an extravagant price.
Achille had watched them load dried leaves into one of the hookahs and had warned her not to try any of them. She'd already decided on that, not even knowing what was in them. And, she thought, she'd stick with wine to drink. She noticed he did the same.
The guests were all young this time. There were none of the old, leering men and women that had been at the Quartus night party in Rachestisse. Well, except for the hostess, but you had to allow for that. She wasn't wearing that strange costume this time, instead embracing the Cresent theme with a long embroidered silken robe and funny little curl-toed shoes. Manon couldn't help but think that it looked like she'd been roused from her boudoir to host the party. Maybe that was the intended effect.
Many of them ended up dancing, fitting court dance steps to the foreign drum beats or copying the faux Cresent dancers. Manon had enjoyed it immensely; it was exuberant and uninhibited but not uncomfortable. Much better than the last one, she thought - although she couldn't say if she was relieved or disappointed that her Vodacce friend wasn't apparently at this one.
The sun was getting low in the sky - maybe around six in the afternoon - when the wine ran out, leaving only the strange Cresent decoctions. She'd checked very thoroughly, going all the way up to the chief butler with his poor shaved head, hoping that there was a stash of wine left somewhere. The corsair captain had regretfully informed her that there was not, although there was ice that the other drinks were being kept on. The dear man chiseled off a piece of it for her to suck on.
But most of the other guests just tried the new libations, and the party started to get much stranger.
By the time the sky was purpling with the sunset, she had decided to leave. People were acting almost literally crazy, howling or laughing or crying for no reasons that she could see. That was when she'd turned and practically run into the countess, who'd apparently noticed her wallflower.
The conversation had been brief but unsettling - less so in retrospect, though. Countess Odessa knew that lady Manon didn't come to the parties for the debauchery. It wasn't much use protesting that, with her ice chip sitting in her glass. The countess had implied that she knew Manon's real reasons, which had spooked her - but really, she hadn't said anything that proved she knew anything concrete. At the time, though, it had felt like everything was over, like the hangman's noose was already on her neck. She made some feeble excuse, not expecting to be allowed to escape. Her hands burrowed into the folds of her skirt, feeling for the slits that would let her get at her knives. How much worse could it get, after all?
But Odessa had stood aside with a shrug. "If you like. But you'll be back, so why bother to go?" She'd stared from shock, both at the sudden unexpected freedom and at the countess's casual certainty. Then she bolted.
Some of the howls in the courtyard behind her were turning to screams. She hitched up her skirts to dash faster down the arcade. There was a door into the palace proper, not far from here. She needed to get to there, away from the madness in the garden, back to her carriage and then to Uncle's house.
But not all the way back home to Basconne in La Motte. She found the door, tore through it and slammed it behind her, then leaned against it, panting. Not back to Basconne.
The long-promised blood transfer experiment was going to be held soon, and she had to be there...
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