The Obsidian Chamber

21

In the subterranean vastness beneath 891 Riverside Drive, Constance Greene sat before a worktable in her small library, brow furrowed, violet eyes focused. All her attention was directed at what sat upon the worktable: an ancient Japanese vase with a simple ideogram baked into its glaze. Three sprigs from a miniature quince tree were tucked within, the flower buds shivering ever so slightly as she worked.

Over the last forty-eight hours — concerned about her own mental state — Constance had retreated into the spiritual and cerebral exercises that, she knew, would help maintain her emotional equanimity: that, and cultivating a perfect indifference to the outside world, a capacity that was at once both her pride and her defense. She had begun rising at four to meditate, contemplating the transcendental knot in a cord of gray silk that had been a gift from Tsering, an English-speaking monk of the Gsalrig Chongg monastery, where she had been taught the subtle intricacies of the Tibetan spiritual practice known as Chongg Ran. Through much training, she was able to attain stong pa nyid—the State of Pure Emptiness — within minutes, and she had maintained this trance-like meditative state for an hour each morning. This, she’d been relieved to find, had helped calm her restlessness. She no longer felt drowsy in the afternoon, nor had she woken, abruptly, in the middle of the night.

It had helped in other ways as well.

Her unseen companion, suitor, whatever — she did not know precisely what to call him — had not made his presence known in these last forty-eight hours. If it weren’t for the reality of the gifts he had left, he might have been a figment of her morbid imagination. Her meals, too, had grown simpler. While still more exotic and elegantly plated than the practical dishes normally favored by Mrs. Trask — the last had been wild chanterelle and hen of the woods raviolini — they were no longer luxurious. And neither of the last two dinners had been accompanied by wine.

She tried to give her mysterious companion as little thought as possible.

Now, more adjusted to her peculiar situation and aware of a growing reconciliation to the death of her guardian, she had turned back to one of her favorite activities: ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arrangement. It appealed to her not only for its antiquity, but also for its beauty and subtlety. The year before, in one of the alcoves in Enoch Leng’s cabinet of curiosities, she had installed a four-hundred-watt phosphor grow light and, beneath it, had been cultivating a wooden rack of miniature trees: orange, apricot, and persimmon. She preferred the shōka style, employing as it did only three branches of a plant in each arrangement, symbolizing sky, earth, and being: a Buddhist philosophy that, she felt, dovetailed with the discipline of Chongg Ran.

She preferred to work with the branches of fruit trees, not only because of their beauty and impermanence, but also because their delicacy and unusual forms made them more difficult to master. She worked patiently, with exquisite care, keeping in mind the fragile nature of the blossoms. If she was happy with the final design, she would place it in the woodcut room, perhaps in an empty niche that sat opposite the t’angka of her son…

Suddenly she paused. Somewhere, echoing from the labyrinth of stone chambers outside her private set of rooms, came the evanescent sound of harpsichord music.

She sat up in her chair. This was no dream-music she was waking from: this music was playing in the here and now — within the sub-basement, very likely coming from the old music room.

She sat listening, her fragile equanimity suddenly in turmoil, beset by a surge of emotion. The music was lyrical, heartbreaking, played with ethereal sensitivity. Constance found it astonishingly beautiful.

Leaving her arrangement unfinished, Constance pulled off her white silk gloves and rose, stiletto in one hand, flashlight in the other. She kicked off her shoes to maintain silence in the stone corridors. Swiftly making her way to the central passage, she paused at the door, listening intently. There was no sense of another presence in the sub-basement, no scent or movement of air that was unfamiliar: only the distant, echoing music. It was not Aloysius — he could not play the harpsichord. And in any case her brief hope that he was still alive, she realized, had been only a foolish dream.

She felt no real fear. This unknown person, she now felt certain, was indeed wooing her — in his own eccentric way.

She turned to the right, toward the music room, again moving as swiftly as she dared to maintain silence. As she swept on, allowing the torch to lick only briefly over the brickwork ahead of her, the music grew in volume. She passed beneath half a dozen arches and through as many large rooms, each containing a specific collection of Enoch Leng’s, until she made an abrupt left and stopped before two medieval tapestries depending from a stone lintel. The music room was just beyond.

The music stopped.

Throwing caution to the wind, she swept aside the tapestries and pointed her flashlight into the dark room, flashing the beam about, the hand holding the stiletto ready to stab at a moment’s notice.

There was nobody. The room was empty. The crimson-colored harpsichord sitting in the middle of the room stood silent and alone.

She rushed over to it, wildly flashing the beam around, probing every dark corner and doorway. But the player had vanished. She placed her hand on the stool cushion; it was still warm.

“Who’s there?” she called out. “Who was playing?”

Her voice echoed away into silence. She leaned on the instrument, her heart beating hard. The harpsichord was one of the finest instruments in the collection, once owned by Hungarian Countess Elizabeth Báthory, the sociopathic serial murderer who — according to legend — had bathed in the blood of virgins as a means to retain her youth. What stain or varnish had given the instrument its crimson hue had never been satisfactorily explained — although Constance had her own theories.

She sank down on the seat, still shining the light into the darkness. “Whoever is there, I beg you, reveal yourself.”

No response. She waited, her fingers straying over the keys. The musical collection was the most curious of Enoch Leng’s cabinets of curiosities. Leng was not interested in music for itself. Every item in this collection was here for a reason beyond the ability to produce sound: its association with violence and murder. The Stradivari violin held in a glass case on the far wall, for example, had been owned by Gabriel Antonioni, the infamous killer of 1790s Siena, who cut his victims’ throats and then serenaded them as they died. Beside it was framed the silver trumpet, scarred and dented, that had been used to marshal Richard III’s troops at the Battle of Bosworth Field — a grisly affair indeed.

Her eyes strayed to the harpsichord’s music holder. Handwritten sheet music by an unidentified composer lay open on the rack. Curious, she placed the stiletto on the raised fallboard, within easy reach, touched the keys, and played a light arpeggio.

To the best of her knowledge, this instrument hadn’t been played or serviced in many years. And yet, as her fingers glided over the keys, she found it was in perfect tune.

She turned her attention back to the music. It appeared to be a transcription of a piano concerto, adapted for solo harpsichord. At the top of the first page was a dedication, in what looked like the same hand that had notated the book of love poems: TO CONSTANCE GREENE. Only now did she realize that the handwriting looked faintly familiar.

Almost despite herself, she began to play. It took only a few measures to be certain: this was the same piece that she had woken to; the music that had disturbed her dreams; the music that had wafted so recently through the sub-basement halls. It was achingly beautiful without sentimentality. Its wistful, haunted strains reminded her of the long-forgotten piano concertos by the likes of Ignaz Brüll, Adolf von Henselt, Friedrich Kiel, and other obscure composers of the Romantic era.

Reaching the first-movement cadenza, she stopped. And then — as the sounds of the strings died away — she heard a voice echo from the antique shadows. It said one word — one word only.

“Constance.”