A/N: Thank you to everyone who reviewed as usual! I'm incredibly appreciative. :) Thanks also as ever to OrangeShipper to putting up with my flailing over S02 spoilers and how they affect CP since she's the only person I can talk to about them (they do... kind of... not really... maybe...) and going through the chapter and telling me when my sentences don't make sense.
The nominations for the Highclere Awards were published this week and I'm thrilled that CP is up for the categories of Alternative Universe, Mary, Violet, Gwen, Epic, Work in Progress, Writing Technique and Plot. Woohoo! Please go vote if you think it deserves to win any of these categories! :-) Link is on my profile.
Talking about links on my profile (did you see how seamlessly I segued from one unrelated topic to another...), you really are going to want to watch the video of the Act One Finale of Tosca when you reach a certain point in this chapter. I think it's very difficult without hearing the music for yourself to appreciate just how overpowering and emotional this scene is. I first came across the opera in December when my choir did the Act One Finale in a concert and I was immediately grabbed by its melodrama and dangerous passion. Acts 2 and 3 of the opera contain many more heart-rending and devastating moments but even having seen the whole thing on DVD (sadly not live yet) this passage remains for me the most chilling. So, like many things in this story, this scene has personal resonance to me and is actually one of the first I planned for the story.
In case you're tempted to stop reading here and miss out the rest of the chapter (very much hope not...) do keep going, because I have a very special readers' competition to tell you about at the end!
Chapter Ten: The Red Curtain
Impossible as it may be to believe, not very much of note happened in Florence. The hotel Lady Grantham and Mary stayed in was pleasant and comfortable and had views over the River Arno and the day after they left Venice they were joined there by Mrs. and Miss Bowen. The weather moreover was particularly pleasant for September.
The dowager countess was soon reunited with her school friend Lady Eastwick and the Crawleys went out to the Eastwicks' villa in the countryside for dinner. Mary was pleased and a little bit surprised to discover the Eastwicks to be unpretentious, kind people who thrived in their little Anglophone community in Italy, having chosen to remove themselves from the severity of court life in England. After all, as Lady Eastwick herself said, there was always an alternative if you were minded to find one. The friendship between her grandmother and Lady Eastwick seemed to be one of opposites but was no less to be valued for that. The plan was to return to the Eastwicks' villa for an extended stay after seeing the sights of the cities and to remain there for as much of the winter as they chose. Having met them, Mary felt much less opposed to this schem than she previously was.
Lady Grantham spent a good deal of time with her friend and so Mary was often left to accompany the Bowens or even go out to explore the city alone with only Gwen for company. She enjoyed this freedom and, looking back, considered Florence one of the high points of the whole trip. Hettie Bowen was a good natured girl and, if she was inclined to look up to Mary more than she deserved, well, Mary liked to lead, so it was an arrangement that suited them both.
After ten days or so of discovering the treasures of Florence and the surrounding area – for Pisa, Siena and Lucca had all been visited as day trips – the party removed to Rome. By this point the Crawleys and Bowens had joined forces for good, or at least until the former returned to Tuscany, at which point Mrs. Bowen planned either to take Hettie onwards to Greece or to make their way to England. All in all it was a convenient arrangement, for it meant that neither of the two pairs were completely reliant on their own company and the little arguments that must necessarily have arisen from spending so much time together so intensively were avoided or diffused. It was a happy development for Gwen as well. She was more of an age with Miss Bowen than Mary was and the two younger girls became, if not friends, then at least friendly. They had little enough in common save their age and their shared experience of being together in Italy, but Miss Bowen was not particular about the class of her friends, and Gwen was glad enough of companionship. It must be admitted, however, that Mrs. Bowen preferred to speak of "her daughter's friend, Lady Mary Crawley, eldest daughter of the Earl of Grantham, you know" than "her daughter's friend, Miss Dawson, a lady's maid" when she wrote to her sisters in England about the acquaintances she had made abroad.
Mary was looking forward to Rome, however. In fact, despite her occasional frustration at spending so much of her time explaining the most simple principles of history, literature or art to Miss Bowen, she was enjoying herself immensely, her bout of homesickness in Venice having been mercifully brief. A companion who was more on her own intellectual level would have been preferable but she knew better than to dwell on that particular wish, and Hettie seemed to have the useful knack of transferring her attentions to Gwen just at those moments when Mary most felt the urge to be cutting or patronising, leaving her alone to manage her frustrations as best she could. Mary did not mind this solitude; she even relished it. To wander quite alone through a gallery, if only for ten minutes, with nothing but her own thoughts and her own ideas for company, this was pleasant, this was what she had always longed for. It was a shame, it was true, that there was nobody she could share her feelings with and sometimes in the evening she would pick up her pen to write a long and detailed letter to Sybil but then she would sigh and put it down again. She did not really want to write to Sybil, not these things anyway, and pouring out her soul on paper did not come naturally to her.
There were so many things to recommend Rome above any of the other places they had visited. Mary did not consider herself to be particularly well read in the classics, but she greatly admired Ovid's Metamorphoses, that often subversive retelling of traditional myths, and she had read The Aeneid. To know that she was in the very city where Ovid and Virgil had lived and been inspired, to tread the same stones as them, to breathe the same air, were things that appealed to Mary's romantic imagination. In addition to this, was not Rome the heart of religion, of art, of government and had not the city been the setting for great novels as diverse as Middlemarch and The Portrait of a Lady? There was the Vatican with the Sistine Chapel and the great church of St. Peter's, the forum, the Villa Borghese, the many galleries and museums to explore and discover in addition to sentimental wandering.
Before all this could be seen, however, they were going to the opera on their first night in the city. It had been Lady Eastwick's idea, raised one evening while they enjoyed an aperitif on the balcony of the villa, the sun setting in a red glow over the poplar trees and golden, autumnal fields of Tuscany.
"You must go to the opera in Rome!" she had said. "My dears, you cannot come to Italy and not hear Italian opera performed in its proper ambience!"
She told them, moreover, that there was currently a revival of Puccini's Tosca in the same theatre where it had had its Roman premier just over ten years previously, the Teatro Costanzi.
"A modern opera," sighed the dowager countess. "I am not fond of modern music: it is too discordant and there are no proper arias."
"Really, Granny!" Mary laughed. "What was the last opera you heard that was more recent than Donizetti?"
She had to think about it. Finally, "We saw Rigoletto in London, I remember. But that had tunes in it!"
Mary smiled in remembrance. "Yes, including that famous one about the fickleness of women. Very catchy indeed! Papa was humming it for weeks afterwards."
Her grandmother sniffed. "Until you read the libretto. A most improper song!"
"No doubt that is why it was sung by the villain! I enjoyed it anyway."
"Then you will no doubt enjoy Tosca, Lady Mary," assured Lady Eastwick. "Indeed, it has a great number of excellent arias and is only discordant when the evil baron is on stage."
"An evil baron?" retorted Mary playfully. "How irresistible!"
With Mary so keen on the opera, Violet was forced to give in and allow Lady Eastwick to procure tickets for them. She capitulated rather easily which led Mary to suspect that she was less adverse to an evening of evil, singing barons and high melodrama than she cared to admit.
Hettie was very excited too. "The only opera I've seen is The Merry Widow and I'm not sure they are very similar!"
"I expect you are right," Mary agreed, her lips twitching, as the four ladies descended from their taxis outside the theatre, their nerves in varying states of tatters. She had enjoyed the speedy journey through the busy streets of Rome, looking out of the window with fascination as the driver manoeuvred the car down narrow alleyways, cutting corners and over taking other slower vehicles and scraping close by carriages. Her heart had pounded and her eyes sparkled as she had clutched the hand grip, experiencing a thrill of speed and danger similar to what she felt when out hunting. It need hardly be said that her excitement was not shared by the rest of the party.
"Goodness," said her grandmother, "I shall be far too terrified about the prospect of the return journey to concentrate on the opera."
"I declare it is worse than New York!" said Mrs. Bowen with a nod of agreement.
Mary slipped her arm through her grandmother's. She was in a rare moment of charity with the world, though such moments were becoming more and more frequent as her trip progressed. The drive had energised her and she was happy to be in Rome and surrounded by high society again. "Come, Granny, in that case you will hardly mind if the opera is terribly modern and not to your taste."
She sniffed. "I do not think there is any danger of my being that distracted!"
They entered the atrium of the theatre arm in arm, with the Bowens just behind them. Mary immediately unfurled her fan, glad of her red dress, her feathers, the warm glow of the candles on the golden edges of the many mirrors, and the chatter of aristocratic voices. Opera and high culture were the same everywhere and she slipped into the familiar world with relief.
Lady Eastwick had procured them a box only a few along from the central one, so it was mostly forward facing with a good view of the stage. Once seated, Hettie craned her neck round to see if any of the royal family were in attendance that night but was disappointed. "I've always wanted to see a real prince!" she complained to Mary in an aside.
Thanks to their unexpectedly rapid journey from their hotel to the theatre, the party had arrived in good time before the beginning of the opera and had plenty of leisure to observe the arrival of the orchestral musicians to the pit, and the nobility of Rome into their boxes through their opera glasses. Eventually the audience began to quieten down, the lights dimmed and the conductor walked on to polite applause. The curtain rose on a massive stage set of a catholic church and from the first immense, ominous brass chords of the opening number and the appearance of the fugitive Angelotti on stage it became quite clear to Mary's delight and her grandmother and Miss Bowen's disappointment that they had left the world of romantic comedy far behind.
The music and drama was utterly gripping from the beginning. Mary enjoyed opera though she had not seen very much of it so far but generally she was distracted sooner or later and took to observing the other people present or even murmuring to her companions in her box. There was no need to resort to gossip about the headdresses on display this time. When once she had turned towards the stage at the beginning she could not look away for the rest of the act. The music had a great power and drew her into the story of diva Tosca's and the painter Cavaradossi's clearly doomed love affair. The nobility of the poor painter and the baseless jealousy of the singer demanded captured her sympathy.
The very things that Lady Grantham disapproved of, the lack of formal structure to the opera and the raw, passionate nature of the music, were the opera's greatest appeal, at least to Mary. She found herself drawn into the imaginative world of Napoleonic Rome and offered little resistance to the alluring fantasy of it. She had, after all, always been only too good at seeing her own world in terms of heightened heroism and drama.
Moreover her already excited nerves were stimulated to an even greater degree when the love duets of Tosca and Cavaradossi were interrupted by the firing of the castle cannon and the arrival on the scene of the villainous Scarpia at last with a reprise of the opening chords. The actor playing the villain took charge of the stage instantly with the force of his presence and commanding voice. First he cowed his attendants, then he turned the force of his magnetism on the object of his base desires, Tosca herself. Mary had an English translation of the libretto in her hand and she was able to shiver in complete comprehension of his meaning as, in a strange combination of Iago and Angelo, he aroused the singer's jealousy in an attempt to gain her love for himself.
It was not, however, until the finale of the first act that Mary was really overcome. Tosca left the stage, leaving Scarpia alone to develop his villainous plans. The music began to build up to its climax as Scarpia revelled in a sadistic eroticism, made even more appalling by the church setting and the entrance of the chorus in a religious found herself clutching at the soft red velvet on the rail of her box, her lips parted and her eyes wide as she was enveloped by the combined power of the music and words filling every part of her soul.
My will takes aim now at a double target,
Nor is the rebel's head the bigger prize…
Ah, to see the flame of those imperious eyes
Grow faint and languid with passion...
For him, the rope,
And for her, my arms…
So sang the baron, standing right in the middle of the stage, his cruel, dark face in shadow, his voice filling every corner of the theatre, the air ringing with the sound of his growing, unconquerable passion. Mary's heart began to beat faster in sympathy with the tenor of the drama unfolding before her. As the choir cut off Scarpia with their unbelievably loud Te Deum, he was for a moment forced back before throwing out his climactic line with a final burst of energy: "Tosca, mi fai dimenticare Iddio!". Tosca, you make me forget God!
It was too hot, too oppressive. There was a buzzing in Mary's ears and she felt almost faint, trembling with tension. She had been far too excited earlier and too conscious of her own agreeable situation at appearing in Roman society to make any attempt to watch the work with detachment and to rein in her sensibility. The music awakened sensations in her that had been forcibly dampened for a very long time and she could not bear it.
Muttering an excuse about needing air, she left her seat as the final chords of the act came crashing down and were drowned out by applause. She pushed blindly out of the box and into the corridor. Everywhere was red and gold from the embroidery on her dress to the rich decorations and wall hangings and gilding of the corridor. There were no windows. She became assailed by a sudden sense of claustrophobia. Clasping her hand to her mouth and experiencing a panic that seemed to come out of nowhere, she fled round the corridor in search of a stairwell or rest room or some other more open space and in the process almost bumped into someone strolling the other direction.
A pair of strong hands in white evening gloves clasped her arms and steadied her. Still trembling, Mary raised her eyes to find herself being supported by a very dapper, olive complexioned Italian gentleman at least a head shorter than herself. He was well and neatly dressed and had a small, perfectly symmetrical black goatee.
"Calmi, signorina, calmi!" he exhorted her, still holding onto her.
Mary stared at him in consternation. In that moment she could no more speak Italian than she could have swum the English channel.
"Lei è amalata," he continued in a concerned tone when she did not reply. "Posso offrirsi un aiuto in qualsiasi modo?"
Recovering slightly, she shook her head faintly and stepped back. "Please, sir... Will you release me?"
He did so immediately, dropping his hands. "A thousand pardons, signorina," he replied in fluent though accented English.
"Thank you," acknowledged Mary, her eyes darting to his and then away again, as she rubbed her bare arms where his hands had been a moment previously. "Excuse me."
"But you are unwell," he insisted. "I cannot consent to leaving you. May I not acquire for you a glass of wine?"
"I am not unwell, but thank you."
Her heightened colour and obvious nervous tension, however, gave a lie to her words and, still refraining from touching her again, he somehow managed to manoeuvre her towards the bar situated on that floor. Before she knew what she was doing, she was sitting in a plush, red, velvet armchair in the corner of the bar and her rescuer was pressing a large glass of deep, burgundy wine into her hands.
"I must demand that you drink it, signorina," he said, sitting down next to her, and there was very little Mary could do but obey him.
He watched her sip slowly at the wine and eventually smiled encouragingly a little, displaying teeth that only gleamed the whiter in contrast to his Mediterranean complexion. "I regret that it is not very good wine. The theatre lacks much in that respect however I hope it makes you more comfortable."
Annoyingly, he was right. Mary was beginning to feel much calmer and the wine was helping. She was now more able to take stock of her situation and she looked more clearly on her new companion and returned his smile with a small one of her own.
"You are very kind, signore, and I apologise for the state you found me in!" She lowered her wine glass and laughed her earlier panic away, inviting him with her eyes to share the joke. He was not precisely handsome but despite his diminutive stature, even for an Italian, he possessed a kind of magnetism that attracted and inspired respect. Moreover, his manner and dress proclaimed him to be wealthy and socially confident, and Mary could see no harm in being pleasant to him.
"Your apologies are quite needless, signorina. I am only happy to have been of assistance to you."
She sipped some more of the wine and he continued to observe her until she grew rather uncomfortable under the weight of his stare and turned to him with an overly bright smile and asked if he was enjoying the opera, despite the fact that this was the last thing she wished to think about.
He nodded slowly. "Very much, I thank you. It is a particular favourite of mine."
"It is the first time I have seen it," replied Mary after a brief hesitation.
"I see. It is exciting, is it not so?"
She glanced up and met his eyes and felt in that second that he understood everything about her reaction. It was unnerving and she looked back down into her glass before saying with a quick, false smile of acknowledgement, "Oh yes!"
"I hope you are not scared by passion and murder, signorina," he continued, "or you will find the second two acts a great trial!"
Mary forced another laugh. "If I were, I probably should avoid opera altogether, don't you think, and possibly the great dramatists as well?"
He laughed with her. "Indeed. Your Shakespeare would be quite insupportable, and the classical plays out of the question. You would have to watch only Mozart and Commedia dell'Arte!"
"Even Mozart does not escape tragedy. I think nothing does, for even the greatest comedy must contain serious trials from which the characters can be delivered."
"Bene detto, signorina." He smiled at her with more appreciation and she felt herself blush. "Alas for you, Puccini is not writing a comedy!"
She had only time to frown her agreement before they were joined by her grandmother and the Bowens.
"Wherever did you go, Mary?" chastised the dowager countess. "You simply ran out of our box before the curtain had even fallen. I have never seen such behaviour."
"Are you quite well?" cried Hettie almost at the same time. "It was awfully stirring, wasn't it? I declare I almost fainted at the end!" She had never looked so full of health.
Then all three of them noticed the stranger and a silence fell which Mary did not break by replying to the asinine questions. He immediately stood up though not before all the attention had fallen on him. "Signore, signorine, I have been very remiss with my compliments. I crave your pardon for monopolizing your charming companion and must take my leave. I do not want to intrude on your party."
This was, as he probably knew perfectly well, very unsatisfactory.
"Who is he? Have we been introduced?" asked Violet directly to her granddaughter.
Mary looked between them momentarily at a loss and embarrassed, for he had not introduced himself. Again, the gentleman himself came to her rescue.
"A thousand pardons, signorina." He executed a swift bow. "Massimiliano, il conte Sciarpa."
The dowager thawed somewhat at the discovery of his rank and the Bowens looked suitably impressed, even as Mary immediately met his glance with a questioning look of her own. "Sciarpa?"
"My title is unfortunate in the context in which we meet, but we cannot help the names we are given any more than the rank into which we are born, signorina."
Lady Grantham was unimpressed with this irrelevant seeming dialogue and pursed her lips. "You have been speaking to my granddaughter, Lady Mary Crawley, Count. You may call me Lady Grantham, and these are Mrs. and Miss Bowen from New York."
"Duchessa, it is a pleasure," he said with instant civility and bowed again over her hand before addressing the Bowens with equal courtesy. Hettie at least seemed almost overcome by having her hand kissed by a genuine Italian aristocrat.
Mary watched the performance with some amusement. There was something very stylized about his behaviour, something about it that was far more controlled than the way she had seen other Italians act. It was not mocking exactly but there was something about it that appeared to subvert the very politeness he was displaying. It was intriguing.
However, there was no further opportunity for conversation for the bell was now ringing to signify the end of the interval. Count Sciarpa took Mary's hand and kissed it before hoping that she would enjoy the rest of the opera though there was a look in his eyes as he spoke that suggested he knew this might well be unlikely. Finally he very properly requested permission from Lady Grantham to call upon them the following morning at their hotel, which permission was granted. Then he executed another swift bow and left them.
"Well!" began the dowager. "I suppose he is an improvement on the dissolutes you have picked up so far in Italy, Mary."
"He was very handsome!" sighed Hettie, shooting Mary an admiring and slightly envious glance, before quickly adding for the benefit of her mother, "For a foreigner!"
"He has a title," replied Mary cooly, ignoring Hettie's comment, "so I imagine that must make him an automatic improvement in your opinion."
"I'd hardly encourage him to call on you if he did not have one. Italians are very well in their place but you must move only in the best circles, my dear."
She did not add if you want to make a successful marriage but she did not need to, for Mary understood her very well. She returned to their box walking a little ahead of the others, a sour taste in her mouth and the excitement she had felt earlier considerably diminished. She felt perfectly drained from all the emotion she had felt so far this evening and she was content to sit quietly back in her seat and wait for the second act in silence.
Forewarned by the count of what was to come, she hardened her emotional defences in preparation and was consequently able to watch both acts with very little outward expression of emotion. Even Tosca's defiant, passionate stabbing of the villainous Scarpia at the very moment of his seduction of her ("Behold the kiss of Tosca!") and her low cry of "Die! Die! Die!" failed to produce more in her than a single shudder and a momentary squeezing shut of her eyes. Later in the third act, as Cavaradossi sang his famous aria "E lucevan le stelle" telling how only on the point of death had he realised the beauty of the world and the importance of love over everything else, despite the rustling of handkerchiefs and sniffs around the rest of the house, Mary's eyes alone remained dry.
A/N: Next chapter: The ever increasing party at Rome explore the past while Matthew and Robert look to the future.
I hope you will be inspired to review this chapter not just because it would make me very happy but because I am holding a special competition! You, I couldn't help noticing that this is Chapter Ten and I am not many reviews off 100 for this story. It would massively thrill me to get a nice, round 100 reviews for 10 chapters. What's it in for you? Well, if I do get 100 reviews before I post Chapter 11, then I shall pick the name of one of the reviewers of Chapter 10 and write them a personalised fanfic! Yes, you heard that right: a fanfic written just for you about the ship of your choice on a prompt of your choice! Is this possible? I need 19 reviews to reach 100, about double the number I tend to get for a chapter. Well, there are 29 people who have added this story to alerts and they are generally not the same people review. If only two thirds of the people who are reading review then I shall be fine! And of course, if you haven't reviewed previous chapters you can cheat and review them as well! (No reviewing the same chapter twice anonymously though. :P)
Rules of Competition
- I will write a one-shot fanfic for one person who reviews this chapter in my own time if the total number of reviews on this site reaches 100 before I post the next chapter.
- The story will be rated between K and T and can be about any of the ships portrayed in CP (i.e. M/M, S/B, M/S, S/G). Non shippy fics are fine.
- The prompt must be no longer than one sentence - a prompt to kick start an idea, not a blow by blow account of a story! The prompt can be related to anything in S01 or spoilers for S02, past, future or can be AU (Downton High, Patrick didn't die, whatever). If the prompt is related to the CP universe then it cannot be speculative of future chapters (but past AU/missing scenes are fine).
- If you review anonymously I need some way of contacting you - a LJ username is fine.
- The story will be published publicly.
Remember, if you don't review then you don't stand a chance of getting your own personalised story or indeed of anybody getting a story at! Got it? :-)
And now I'm going to go away and contemplate my future career in selling my soul to advertising companies...