THE HOUSE OF MADMEN AND DREAMERS
carnival festivities in Vienna grew to a fever pitch in the week leading up to Ash Wednesday. Back home, we had celebrated Fasching the old way, with players and townsfolk donning monstrous masks to drive away the spirits of winter. Here, there seemed to be a ball or concert or three every evening, a riotous swirl of color and costume, shouts of Ahoi! and Schelle schelle! sounding late into the night. These were not the spirits of winter to be driven away until the following year; they were the idols of excess and extravagance to be purged before Lent.
On Shrove Tuesday, the night of our benefactor’s ball, François hired us a coach to drive us to the Count’s home. Procházka House was not a Stadthaus in the city proper, but a manor on the outskirts, where haphazard human habitation gave way to tame, cultivated wilderness. It would have taken no great effort to walk the mile or so to the house, but François told me that these things were not done. Sometimes living in Vienna felt as though I were dropped in the midst of a game where everyone but me knew the pieces, the moves, and the rules.
“Oh, I do hope we look respectable,” Käthe said, fretting with her handkerchief as we drove past rolling lawns and stately homes.
Unlike the other parties hosted throughout Vienna’s fifth season, Count Procházka’s soiree required that we be attired only in black and white. An odd constraint that Käthe had initially balked at, but quickly rose to the challenge. She had dressed François and Josef in matching yet opposite costumes as Night and Day, with François in white and gold, my brother in black and silver. Sober woolen coats, brocade waistcoats with gold and silver thread, and well-tailored breeches were paired with knee-high leather boots, simple but striking. Their masks were simple silk dominos—Josef’s patterned with stars, François’s with a golden sunburst.
“Magnifique,” François assured her. “Très belle, mademoiselle.”
“You are a genius,” I added.
We glanced expectantly at Josef, but he was determinedly looking out the carriage window. Sparks of irritation ignited my blood. Käthe had worked her fingers to chafed calluses and her eyes to watery wrinkles to stitch us all new apparel in time for the ball, so the least we could do was congratulate her on her hard work.
“We look amazing,” I repeated, as if I could make up for our brother’s rudeness.
And we did look amazing. Käthe and I were dressed as an angel and demon, but to my surprise, my sister had chosen to be the devil. She looked majestic in her gown of black velvet, her golden curls draped with black silk and lace, cleverly twisted together and pinned to resemble horns growing from her head. She had rouged her lips a bright red, and her blue eyes looked imperious from behind her black mask. For a moment, the image of moldering gowns on dress forms rose up in my mind, a polished bronze mirror reflecting an endless line of faded Goblin Queens. I swallowed.
The dress my sister had made for me was nearly innocent in its simplicity. Yards and yards of fine white muslin had made a floating, ethereal gown, while Käthe had somehow fashioned a brocade cape into the shape of folded angel wings, which grew from my shoulder blades and cascaded to the floor. She had braided gold into a crown about my head for a halo, and I carried a lyre to complete the picture. The four of us stared at each other through our dominos, our faces made strange and unfamiliar by our masks.
Tonight would be our formal introduction to Viennese high society. The invitations we all carried marked us as Count Procházka’s peers, and to say we were all a little nervous was to understate our anxiety. Käthe and I had had no real exposure to the well-heeled members of town; we were innkeeper’s daughters. Our only exposure to money was whatever coin we had managed to keep in our coffers. François had grown up among the wealthy, but he, too, had never been one of them. The color of his skin forever marked him as an outsider to the noble class, even if he had learned their manners and ways.
I looked to Josef, but he was ignoring us. He betrayed little, his expression schooled to careful indifference. It was a greater mask than the one perched upon his face, and I hated how he never took it off, not anymore.
Käthe gasped. “Look!” she said breathlessly, pointing out the window. “Procházka House!”
We all leaned outside for a better look as we pulled up the drive. Past the ivy-wound wrought-iron gates was an old manor built of gray stone, dark wood, and diamond-paned glass. It had the look of an abbey, or a castle, tall pointed arches forming the peaks and gables of its roofs. A fountain played in the courtyard, where a fish-tailed woman sat and played with water flowing from the rocks. It did not resemble any of the great houses or palaces we had passed on our way here; it looked far older, built in a different century, a different world.
A footman opened the carriage door for us as we pulled in front of the entryway. He was rather small for a footman, and there was something of a shriveled and disheveled look about him. His wig was mussed and askew, bits of white hair flying away into a puff of cloud about his head. He was old, much older than any of the other footmen I had seen around town.
“Thank you,” I said as he helped me down.
The footman returned my smile, and I tried not to recoil. His teeth were yellowed and sharp, and in the flickering torchlight, his sallow skin seemed tinged with green. “Welcome to Procházka House, Fräulein,” he said. “Home of madmen and dreamers. I hope you enjoy your stay with us.” He pulled a flower from seemingly nowhere and presented it to me with a flourish. “I think you will.”
I took the flower from his crabbed fingers. It was a common poppy. “Thank you,” I said shakily.
“Wear it,” he said. “For faith.”
Faith? It seemed an odd reason, but I tucked the bloom behind my ear to humor him. I noticed then that a few of the guests arriving for the ball were wearing scarlet flowers pinned to their lapels and gowns, bright spots of crimson blooming like splashes of blood against their black-and-white costumes. The footman bowed and I hurried to follow the rest of my family to the house, eager to extricate myself from the situation.
Madmen and dreamers. I stood in line with Käthe, Josef, François, and the other guests waiting to be received by the hosts. Behind our masks, we were all anonymous, but the press of partygoers clad in only black and white heightened the sense of surreality. It was not a parade of fantastic monsters or beautiful creatures. We were all scraps of light and darkness, and standing among them in the fading twilight made me feel as though we would all disappear at any moment.
Your patron is said to be rather eccentric, and prone to . . . strange proclivities.
Dread clenched my stomach with icy fingers. We were nearly at the door.
“Ready?” Käthe asked, squeezing my hand. The blue of her eyes was intense amidst the sea of black and white. Her nervousness was edged with excitement, while mine was limned with fear. I tried to draw strength from my sister’s gaiety, her sunshine humor, relying on them to burn away my shadows of doubt.
I smiled and returned her squeeze. I handed our invitations to the footman at the door and stepped inside, crossing the threshold from twilight into darkness. Something gritty was ground underfoot, and it was only when I glanced at my shoes that I noticed the small, white, crystalline grains.
Salt.
* * *
I didn’t know what I was expecting. Gargoyles leering at me from cramped corners, perhaps, or derelict and decrepit furniture, the glamor of decay laid over rooms and caverns as vast as the Underground. Instead, we were greeted by an enormous marble entryway, the inside of Procházka House more like the great halls and galleries of Schönbrunn Palace and other fashionable Viennese residences. The interior was so at odds with its gothic exterior that I wondered if we had entered the wrong house by mistake.
A grand staircase led up to a second floor, the ballroom doors thrown open. Beneath the curve of the stairs, a tunnel disappeared into shadow. Above us, I could hear the faint strains of a minuet above the susurrus of a crowd, the muffled shuffling of footsteps treading the boards. At the top of the staircase, a stone crest was mounted, showing the expanded arms of the Procházka family. A poppy was embraced by vines at the center of a quartered shield, the top left filled with a burg atop a hill, the bottom right with a melusine on a rock, her fishtail trailing in the waters of a lake, very much like the fountain outside. Above the shield, carved into marble, was their motto: HOSTIS VENIT FLORES DISCEDUNT.
A servant came by and made to collect our things as we waited with the other guests to enter the ballroom upstairs. We relinquished our cloaks and heavier garments, but Josef shook his head, holding his violin case closer to him like a child. Or a shield. I had brought my folio of music and my brother his instrument in case we were called upon to perform for the Count.
“Don’t you want to dance?” Käthe asked.
“No,” Josef said petulantly. “I do not want to dance.”
“We’re here as his guests, Josef, not his hired musicians.” She rolled her eyes. “Try and enjoy yourself, will you?”
Our brother gave an exasperated sigh and stalked off, disappearing into the crowd. François and I exchanged glances. He closed his eyes and gave a slight shake of his head. I grimaced. It was going to be a long night and we hadn’t even entered the ballroom.
We were crowded in on all sides by partygoers. The uncomfortable proximity of so many anonymous strangers was beginning to get the better of me and I flinched and twitched at the slightest touch like a skittish thing. The last time I had attended a ball, I had been surrounded by goblins and changelings, but these black-and-white-clad guests were no less frightening. In many ways, Vienna was a place far stranger and more dangerous than the Underground. I broke out into a sweat, despite the gooseflesh pimpling my skin.
“Mademoiselle?” I turned to see François offering me his arm. A corner of his lips quirked up in a sympathetic smile, and I accepted his arm with a smile of my own. He did not flinch when I tightened my grip as we entered the ballroom, my palms slick with nervousness. I was grateful for his steadiness, for the room was beginning to rock and sway like a boat upon the waves.
There was the slightest pause in the constant hum of conversation, a breath, a beat, when we entered. A myriad eyes turned their gazes upon us, and an icy-hot sensation prickled over my skin. So many faces, so many people, so many expectations. I began shaking, dropping François’s arm and trying my best to fade into the shadows. It was only then that I noticed that the guests weren’t staring at me; they were staring at François. The darkness of his skin against the stark white of his costume. The contrast of my arm upon his. Whispers rippled in our wake as we made our way across the ballroom. Guilt crawled up from my stomach, and I felt as though I were going to be sick.
“Oh, François,” Käthe said, loud enough to be clearly heard by all those in attendance. “I do hope you reserve a dance for me.”
The murmurs stopped. Käthe smiled, her sunshine curls twisted into devil horns gleaming a burnished gold in the candlelight. She was the most beautiful girl in the room, and her beauty cast a halo as much as the glow of flame about her head. Her hand was held out to François, a queen of the night extending an alliance to a prince of the sun.
He did not flinch or falter. Bowing deeply, he took her hand. “I would be honored, mademoiselle.”
The two of them beamed at each other, their grins grimaces in disguise, teeth bared at the room at large. Käthe and François both glanced sidelong at me, concern and a question writ upon their brows. I nodded at them both, and they swept onto the floor, joining the other couples in a lively quadrille. Black and white skirts swirled over black and white marble tiles arranged in a checkered pattern, and I retreated to the edges of the room, dizzy with nervous lightheadedness. I needed a drink. I needed air.
I left the dance floor, looking for a place to gather and compose myself. I wandered from room to room in the eccentric and fantastic house of my mysterious benefactor, but everywhere I stepped and everywhere I went was another person, another crowd, another stranger. Banquet tables were laden with food and ice sculptures carved into fantastic shapes—winged beings and horned creatures melting into water. At the center of a room was an automaton, a silver swan that “swam” in a silver stream teeming with fish. It moved its neck and caught one of the fish jumping from the water to the delighted gasps of its audience. The swan did not move with the herky-jerky motion of other automata I had seen displayed in great houses throughout the city, and its incredible, lifelike movements reminded me a little of Constanze’s stories of goblin-made wonders. Magical armor, exquisite metalwork and artistry, jewels possessed of a blessing or a curse, wars had been fought, blood had been shed, and an incalculable amount of money had been spent for the privilege of owning a single one of these treasures. I wondered how much this silver swan cost.
The oddities did not end there. This unexpected house was full of such unexpected trinkets. In one corner, a pair of silver hands pouring an endless stream of champagne into an endless flute. In another, a pair of whimsical bronze sculptures without form or meaning . . . until one passed them just so and realized the emptiness between them created a screaming face. I threaded my way in and out of these rooms, past bright young things and respectable elders resting their feet and working their lips, looking for peace, looking for calm.
But there was none to be had. Gossip and speculation filled the space like the buzz of insect wings, rising along with smoke from candles and powder from wigs. The scent of sweat and perfume lay heavy on the air, coating the back of my throat with a warm, moist slickness. Heat rose in waves from damp necks and heaving bosoms, the musty musk of human flesh, close and choking. I thought I caught a glimpse of black, beetle-carapace eyes and twig-like fingers out of the corner of my eye, but it was only the shiny jet buttons of a man’s waistcoat and the spidery embroidery of a woman’s bodice. The sick feeling rose up again, stronger than ever.
“Looking for someone, child?” said a rich, melodious voice.
I turned to find a tall woman dressed as a winter spirit. She was dressed in all white, her gown cunningly worked with beads to mimic the glitter of falling snow. She carried a spindle in one hand and wore the withered mask of an old woman, which sat strangely atop her long, swanlike neck. The only thing marring this vision in white and silver was the scarlet poppy pinned to her bodice, a drop of blood in the snow.
“N-no,” I stammered. “I mean yes, I mean, no, I think my brother might have—” My words tumbled over themselves before I could catch them, spilling out ahead of my racing mind. The sounds of the house seemed garbled, muffled, the music from the other room warped and twisted beyond recognition, as though heard underwater. My vision wavered and narrowed, tunneling down so that near seemed far and far seemed near.
“Here.” The woman flagged down a passing server and took two glasses filled with a rich, ruby red wine. “Have a drink, my dear. It will calm your nerves.” She handed me the drink.
Through the haze of my whirling thoughts, I remembered that I wasn’t much for spirits or wine of any kind anymore. I couldn’t help but remember the last time I had been at a ball such as this, the last time I had drunk from a goblet handed to me by a mysterious stranger. The same uncertainty, the same precarious feeling of unbalance between unease and excitement overcame me, but out of politeness, I accepted the drink. I gingerly took a sip, trying not to grimace at the unexpected flowery aftertaste. To my surprise, the drink did soothe me, the liquor a balm to my raw and exposed nerves.
“Thank you,” I said, dribbling a bit. I sheepishly wiped at my mouth. “Beg pardon, ma’am.”
The woman laughed. “It is an acquired taste.” Her eyes through the mask were a pale grass green, startlingly vivid in this color-starved room. “Is this your first ball here?”
I gave a self-conscious laugh. “Is it so very obvious?”
She only gave me an enigmatic smile in response. “And how are you enjoying yourself, my dear?”
“A little overwhelmed,” I admitted. “I was looking for a place to catch my breath. Get some air.”
The winter woman smoothed a stray bit of hair behind my ear and my hand flew up to catch the wilting poppy still tucked there. It was an uncomfortably intimate gesture from someone I did not know, and the queasy feeling arose again. Glancing about the room, I noticed that all those in attendance—save François, Käthe, and Josef—wore a scarlet bloom pinned to their costumes.
“Are you sure? It’s quite chilly outside,” she said. “I can escort you to one of the private rooms upstairs if you need a moment to yourself.”
“Oh no, I couldn’t possibly,” I said, my cheeks flushing. “I—I think I’m overheated. Perhaps a walk outside will do me some good.”
Those extraordinary green eyes regarded me thoughtfully. “The Count and Countess have a hedge maze in their gardens if you would like to wander.”
“Oh yes, please,” I said.
She nodded. “Follow me.”
I handed my goblet to a waiting server before turning to follow the woman in white through the rooms and corridors to the gardens. She walked with a limp, a clubbed foot peeking out from behind the hem of her skirts as we made our way outside. I knew exactly what her costume was meant to portray. Frau Perchta of the swan-foot, the Christmas spirit who made sure we had spun our allotted amount of flax the previous year. But Christmas was long past and we were nearly to spring with the start of the Lenten season tomorrow. An odd choice.
We arrived at a set of glass doors in an empty room that led onto a terrace. “The gardens need tending,” she said, a bit apologetically. “They’ve grown a bit unruly. Unsightly.”
“I’m not afraid of ugliness,” I said. “I rather enjoy a little bit of wildness.”
Those green eyes studied my face, as though searching for an answer to a question she had not yet asked. “Yes,” she said, placing a hand upon my cheek. “There is the air of the uncanny about you.”
I coughed, opening the door and stepping out onto the terrace to further avoid her touch.
“Don’t tarry too long, Elisabeth,” she warned. “The night is long, and it is not yet spring.”
Elisabeth. The hairs rose all along my arms. “How did you know—”
But the woman was already gone, the doors closed behind her. A shining, unbroken line of white lined the terrace, gleaming faintly in the moonlight. I swallowed hard, then stepped over the salt and into the darkness beyond.