that you will grow well and strong, and travel across the sea.”
“You are very kind,” she says, looking away. “But I think not. Not I.”
“Miss Adler, do you doubt me? You do me an injustice. I have predicted it, and, as my family will tell you, my predictions are never wrong.”
“But …” She stops, puzzled by a new thought. “Mr. Alfieri, forgive me, but I fear you’ve made a mistake.”
“Never. Not with tea leaves. It cannot be done.”
“But that is your teacup. You would need to read my glass to tell my fortune, wouldn’t you? That was your own fortune you just read.”
Alfieri smiles gently and puts down the cup.
LIKE JUNO ON MOUNT OLYMPUS, Mrs. William Backhouse Astor stands at the pinnacle of New York society. From her exalted vantage point, with its commanding views, Mrs. Astor single-handedly metes out the fate of those would-be immortals who everlastingly strive for a place on the holy mount. The self-appointed arbiter of worth in her rarefied universe, Mrs. Astor admits only the most deserving to the ranks of the blessed. In all such matters her power is absolute, and her word, law.
In consequence of such toilsome efforts to organize society into a finely measured hierarchy, and to elevate it to ever new levels of distinction, Mrs. Astor’s life had been measured not in days or weeks or months, but in cotillions and balls and levées. For twenty years, newcomers worthy of a foothold on the lower rungs of the celestial ladder might have been invited to an afternoon reception, one of the lesser observances in Mrs. Astor’s ritual; only for those in the preeminent ranks of the pantheon would there have been an invitation to one of her weekly dinner parties.
But alas for New York! The goddess’s consort is two years dead. While Mr. Astor lived, Mrs. Astor’s year would begin in the autumn, when the elite, after the summer’s diaspora, were gathered once more in the city; would build momentum through the fall and early winter with patriarchs’ balls, assembly balls, family circle dancing classes, Monday nights at the opera, and a hundred exquisite suppers at Delmonico’s; would whirl past Christmas and the New Year; and would achieve its culmination at her annual ball, held on the third Monday of each January—the single most sacred occasion of the social year. Since Mr. Astor’s translation to an even higher sphere, however, his widow has ceased to entertain. For two years, no events have breathed life into the great crimson and gold ballroom in Mrs. Astor’s Fifth Avenue mansion.
Until tonight.
Tonight is a supreme occasion, in every respect worthy of bringing society’s queen out of mourning: not merely an amusement, but a portent of glories to come … a ball to welcome Maestro Mario Alfieri, primo tenore assoluto, to New York. Moreover, it is a radical departure for the fastidious Mrs. Astor, an anomaly that in itself would be enough to bring society snapping to attention. Mrs. Astor has long held that artists of any ilk—painters, authors, actors, and the like—merit no recognition unless safely dead, and that meeting them risks both needless mental fatigue and the possibility of social contamination.
But Mario Alfieri is no ordinary artist. The reigning god of Europe’s opera stages for as long as Mrs. Astor has been the reigning goddess of New York society, he is still bettering his art, going from strength to strength, and triumph to triumph. What is more, he is said to be able to trace his ancestry back, in an unbroken line, for five hundred years, a feat that dazzles in a country where four generations of known ancestry constitute an aristocracy. Lastly, and providing the absolute gilding on the lily, is the fact that he dines regularly with the Prince of Wales. Alfieri is notorious, in fact, for having certain tastes in common with His Royal Highness that cannot be mentioned in polite society, and it is widely rumored that the two have been known, on numerous occasions, to cap their dinners with visits to certain private establishments where exquisite young women use astonishing skills to gratify quite other kinds of appetites.
True or not, it makes no difference. The entire Continent lies at the tenor’s feet, and those American aristocrats who have seen and heard him during seasons in London, Paris, and Milan have, for several years, been feverishly negotiating for the honor of humbling themselves before the tenor on their own soil.
And success is theirs at last. On the nineteenth of November, a little less than six months from tonight, Maestro Alfieri will make his debut at the Metropolitan Opera House and begin his conquest of yet another continent. To have ample time to prepare for this momentous occasion, he arrived here a week ago; and the reverence in which New York holds him can best be appreciated by realizing that Mrs. Astor had arranged to call upon him—in her own person—on the very next day, bearing an invitation to tonight’s gala.
Alfieri had been reluctant to attend at first, pleading the fatigue of his travels, but Mrs. Astor had, of course, carried the day … with the result that he is here, now, looking like a prince of darkness with a familiar in mauve and purple—which is Mrs. Astor herself—appended to his arm.
Magnificently arrayed, formidable in her majesty, Mrs. Astor stands in her traditional place beneath the celebrated life-sized portrait of herself by Carolus-Duran, bidding welcome to the long line of lesser divinities as they approach. Pearls and diamonds glitter, thick as the stars of heaven, across her antique lace bodice and down her long velvet train, and crowning her black pompadour is the fabulous diamond and amethyst starburst tiara that had once belonged to the Empress Eugénie.
But for all her splendor, Mrs. Astor is eclipsed tonight. It is upon the tall and smiling man at her side that all eyes instinctively fasten. His face has long been familiar to habitués of Europe’s greatest opera houses: the wide forehead, the brilliant black eyes and heavy brows, the prominent nose, the full lower hp. Familiar, too, is the way that, in smiling, the right corner of his mouth draws up, creasing his cheek with deep lines of mirth and almost shutting his right eye … as if the warmth of his smile, so like the sunlight of his native land, causes him to squint even as it brightens everything it touches.
Mrs. Astor, standing with her hands clasped about his arm, flutters in the light of that smile like a netted moth; and if Alfieri seems amused that she forgets her imperial dignity in his presence, it is a kindly amusement—such lapses happen all the time and he is used to them by now: one German princess even forgot herself so far as to kneel to him.
“You are most kind to a stranger in a strange land,” he says to those who crowd around him as the receiving line dissolves in the heat of the evening’s excitement. “Thank you for inviting me.” His voice is soft and very light, holding no hint of any hidden glory.
“The pleasure is New York’s, we assure you, maestro,” says one matron. “We only hope that you will enjoy your stay in our city, and come to think of it as home.”
“Madame, if all of its people are like you, I cannot fail to do that.”
It seems, in fact, that this night he cannot fail at anything. At the sight of him, New York goes slightly mad, its most exalted citizens jostling each other in their haste to be at his side, and he laughs as he shakes the hands of the gentlemen, and bends over the outstretched fingers of the ladies, and says charming and appropriate things to the glowing faces of both—such as how he remembers Mrs. Dobson from that reception in Rome two years ago, and hopes her daughter’s wedding had come off as planned; and how, yes, he does recall Mr. Martindale from that small supper party after the performance of Faust last fall in Paris, and trusts that his gout is much improved; and no, he has never had the pleasure before, but surely Mrs. Pennington must be a cousin, and not a very distant one, of the delightful Comtesse de la Mercier-Trouville, for the resemblance is certainly remarkable …
And the city surrenders.
Thaddeus Chadwick watches it go down from a vantage point on the far side of the ballroom. Three broad, shallow steps lead up and into the conservatory, and he stands on the topmost of these and observes the debacle through gleaming spectacles,