Without waiting for Gwendolyn’s reply, the white-haired woman leaned over and began playing the piano. It was only then that I realized she wasn’t standing behind the piano—she was sitting. She must have been well-nigh eight feet tall!
A beautiful melody filled the room. Gwendolyn clenched her fist and raised it over the piano. Her whole body exuded anger and frustration. But the melody was too much. After a moment, her fist opened, her hand fell to her side. Slowly, the tension eased out of her shoulders. By the end, she was even humming along to the tune.
The giant woman finished the melody with a flourish.
“There! Isn’t it just grand? It’s from the Big Banjo’s new opera. He’s here, you know? He came two weeks ago, in order to put the finishing touches on the opera. It’s called I Ladro. Such a dramatic libretto! It’s about a highwayman who wins the love of the beautiful wife of an old miser while he’s robbing them. Then, after the old man and his young wife get thrown in prison, the highwayman rescues them and then—”
“Hildegard!”
The old woman sighed with exasperation. “Gwendolyn, you are such a monomaniac. Very well, then. I suppose we’ll have to discuss this Rap Sheet business first, or I won’t get any peace. But when we’re done, you must promise me to read the libretto. So dramatic! Everyone’s dead at the end, of course. After the old miser slays the highwayman with his cane in a duel, his wife commits suicide and he—”
“Hildegard!”
“—dies of heartbreak after repenting his lifelong obsession—”
“Hildegard!”
“—with money. There, I got it out! All right, dear, I’ll tell you all about the Rap Sheet. But first, who is this very handsome young man standing behind you?”
I hadn’t realized she’d noticed me. The old woman—Hildegard, apparently—had never looked in my direction once. Gwendolyn turned. Her face was set in its hawk look. But for just that one moment, when she first looked at me, a trace of softness came into her face.
“Oh,” said Hildegard. “I see.”
Gwendolyn turned back. “See what?” she demanded.
Hildegard’s only reply was a smile and a quick flurry of notes on the piano. Not a tune, really, just a sudden air of joy and happiness. Gwendolyn’s face reddened a bit.
The third woman in the room suddenly stood up and came over to me, her hands outstretched.
“Welcome! Welcome! I am Madame Kutumoff.”
I took her hands in mine and bowed.
“Enchanted, Madame. I am Benvenuti Sfondrati-Piccolomini.”
“Which branch?” asked Madame Kutumoff.
I began to explain where my immediate family line fit on the complex hereditary tree of the Sfondrati-Piccolomini clan, but before I got very far into it she began nodding her head.
“Yes, yes, I know it. Two of your uncles—Ludovigo and Rodrigo, if memory serves me correctly—served with my husband some years ago.” Still holding my hands, she looked at Gwendolyn and then back at me.
“I predict you will have an adventurous life,” said Madame Kutumoff.
Hildegard laughed. Never, in all my life, had I heard more melodious laughter.
Gwendolyn spoke. “If you two gossips are through chortling over my love life, can we get on with the business at hand?” But she was smiling.
“Very well, dear.” Hildegard placed her hands on top of the piano, fingers interlaced. “Last night—right at the stroke of midnight on Halloween—I had a vision, you see.”
“Where was this?”
Hildegard frowned with puzzlement. “My vision? It was in my head, of course.”
“No, no. Where were you—when you had this vision?”
Hildegard was still frowning. “Why, let me see. I believe I was sitting in that chair over there—the one against the wall. We were all here, discussing the Big Banjo’s latest—”
Gwendolyn threw up her hands with frustration. “Hildegard! What were you doing here? The last time I saw you was at the Abbey, when you told me you were being watched too closely to leave and you needed me to take your message to Zulkeh in Goimr. So what are you doing on the loose?”
“But that was then. This is now. The past and the present are different, Gwendolyn. That’s the one truth you can always be sure of. I keep trying to explain that to the Old Geister, but He’s just so set in His ways. I’m afraid all that omnipotent nonsense has quite gone to His head. Why, do you know that in His latest tablet He claims—”