The she-wolf in the Tower

Her passion

*Rapunzel*

By the next morning at breakfast, it seems my father’s marriage has taken another turn for the worse. “Did he not come home last night, either?” I inquire, realizing Layla has been crying.

A tear rolls down Layla’s cheek, and she scrubs it away. “He only married me because I was young and presumably fertile. And now I’m not, he sees no reason to be with me.”

“That doesn’t make sense. He’d never been very fussed about a male heir; he likes my cousin Magnus.” I hand her a handkerchief.

“You’re wrong. He hates me because I haven’t had a baby.” She cries.

I shake my head, “He doesn’t hate you, Layla. He truly doesn’t.”

“And he has decided that I have been unfaithful to him with Alpha Gryphus.” She mumbles.

“Gryphus? Why on earth does Father think that? Mind you, Gryphus is very pretty, and I can see why his face would inspire jealousy.”

“I don’t care how pretty he is; I haven’t broken my wedding vows,” Layla says, her voice cracking. “All I did was allow Alpha Gryphus to take me to supper two or three times, when your father didn’t accompany me to a ball. I had no idea people were gossiping!”

“I expect Father is jealous because Gryphus is your age. How unpleasant it is to think that someone must have tattled.”

“Jonas believed that horrid gossip, without even asking me! And now he won’t… he won’t have anything to do with me, and he says that I should go to the country and direct my lover to follow me, except that I don’t have a lover!” The sentence ends with a huge sob. “He says I should be more discreet.”

I huff, “That’s absurd, and I shall tell him so.”

Layla reaches over and catches my wrist. “You mustn’t. It wouldn’t be right. You’re his daughter.”

I frown. “Who else can set him straight? It’s a consequence of our relationship. Like Hamlet, you know. My governess tried to beat that play into my head for ages. Not much stayed with me, but I remember Hamlet moaning, ‘Oh woe, that I was born to set it straight.’ Or something along those lines.”

“Jonas would be horribly offended if you mentioned it,” Layla says with a hiccup. “Besides, he won’t believe what you say, any more than he believes me.”

I get up and sit down beside her, wrapping my arms around Layla’s shoulders. “Oh, sweetheart, he’s such a fool. He loves you. I know he does.”

“No, he doesn’t. I caught him in the hall last night and he… he said he wished he had never married a goose like myself. I expect that he’s found someone else,” Layla says, her voice cracking again. “I’m sure of it, because he went out and didn’t come back home.”

After a while, when Layla has pretty much stopped crying, I say, “Just wait a moment, dearest. I’ll be right back.”

I run from the room and dart down the passage. My cello is resting in an upright stand in the spare bedchamber that I use for practice; I pick it up and carry it, walking more slowly, back to Layla’s room.

Layla is curled up in the corner of her couch, an occasional sob still shaking her.

I sit down in a straight-backed chair and adjust my skirts so that I can position the cello between my legs. This position is by far the best for my bow hand, but of course, it can be assumed only in private. Or in front of Layla, which is practically the same.

I make certain that the endpin of my cello is firmly set into the floor, and then draw my bow across the strings. After not having played in four days, the sound is like a blessing. I tune it and then begin, two eighth notes and a half note ringing in the air.

Layla asks in a choked voice, “Is that my favorite?”

“Yes. Dona Nobis Pacem.” Give Us Peace pours from my strings like the balm of Gilead, always stately, always measured, joy kept in check.

Maybe it’s the days of enforced rest, but my fingers don’t stumble once, and my bow slides across the strings at the perfect angle, the music calibrated to make the listener’s heart sing.

At the end of the hymn, I hear Layla take a deep breath. I smile at her, bend my head again, and sweep straight into the ‘Winter’ concerto of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, the piece I have been working on before becoming ill.

As I near the end of the piece, and have… to be quite honest… forgotten about Layla altogether, the door opens. When I glance up, my father stands in the doorway.

He is staring at his wife. Tumbled gold hair covers Layla’s face, but the handkerchief clutched in her hand tells its own story.

I almost feel a pulse of sympathy for my father. He is tall and broad-shouldered and handsome, though he’d hate to hear that. He likes to think of himself as a statesman, rather than an ordinary mortal.

That’s the real trouble. Logic matters to him above any sort of emotion, even though when it comes to Layla, he is often quite illogical. “That was well played,” he says, shifting his eyes to me. “Not perfectly, as the last movement is marked allegro. Your playing was not quite nimble enough.”

I look at Layla, but her only response to her husband’s voice is to curl up more tightly.

“May I request a moment with my wife?” he asks, his voice as flat as his expression. At that moment his eyes fall to my legs, one on either side of my instrument, my skirts barely covering my knees. “Daughter!”

“Father.” I move the cello forward and come to my feet, my skirts spilling back down to the floor. Then I tuck my bow under my arm and pick up the cello, turning to my stepmother. “Layla, darling, I shall be ready whenever you decide to retire to the country and commence on a life of unending debauchery.”

My father narrows his eyes, but I march past him and out the door. A half hour later, after I have requested and eaten breakfast… another breakfast, as my first had been left untouched back in Layla’s chamber… I begin work on Bach’s cello suites.

Irritation isn’t good for music. I believe that it sours the notes. I have to start over three or four times until the notes finally carry the emotion Bach wrote into the piece, rather than my own.

At some point, I stop just long enough to eat the luncheon my maid brings me. By then I am working on a cello sonata by Boccherini that is so difficult that I have to stop over and over to look at the score.

My right arm is aching by four o’clock in the afternoon, but I am suffused with a sense of deep satisfaction.

In spite of Layla’s tears, it is my favorite kind of day.