Prelude to Eternity. Brian Stableford
had worked, after a fashion—he had, at least, avoided serious scarring—but the Mesmerist had pronounced him a difficult subject and recommended that he stick to Paracelsian therapies in future. He did not fall into a trance now, but he was annoyed by the fact that the poles, working in collaboration with their fellow symbol of the triumphs of modern technology, the Sir Richard Trevithick, seemed to be exerting a more tangible force on his resistant consciousness than the doctor had. Eventually, he had to redirect his gaze into the carriage again, settling it briefly on Signor Monticarlo because he feared catching the eye of the smiling Carmela.
Signor Monticarlo, who had been twiddling his moustache absent-mindedly, shifted uncomfortably when Michael looked directly at him, and attempted to join in with Hope and Escott’s debate, albeit rather tentatively. He offered the polite suggestion that art often flourished under tyranny, offering the Italian city states of the Renaissance as his primary examples. This opinion was hotly denied by both Hope and Escott, who both lamented what the Roman Empire had done to the intellectual legacy of the democratic Athenians, and proclaimed that the genius of men like John Milton and Jonathan Swift could never have thrived in England under a monarchy, in which political situation both men would undoubtedly have been summarily dispatched to the gallows.
In the meantime, Carmela Monticarlo continued smiling—particularly, it seemed to Michael, at him, to whose presence she seemed to have warmed, gradually but considerably, if only because the two mature Englishmen seemed so disagreeable.
In an attempt to calm things down, and also to deflect Carmela’s attention, Michael asked Signor Monticarlo what he intended to play during the recital arranged for the following night.
“Because I am compelled to set aside my usual program,” the violinist said, picking his words carefully, “I shall try something new—something no one has ever attempted before. Have you, by any chance, heard of my compatriot, Niccolò Paganini?”
“I’ve heard the name,” Michael admitted.
“I can’t understand why he’s so famous,” Lady Phythian put in, obligingly. “I heard him play once, but I didn’t like it at all. The scales and arpeggios were far too rapid, and his violin was out of tune. He’s overrated, in my opinion.”
If the dowager expected this dismissal to delight Signor Monticarlo, she was mistaken. “Paganini is a genius,” the violinist stated, flatly. “I cannot match him. He has extraordinarily long fingers, so he can play notes that no one else can. I cannot hope to emulate him, but I share his interest in scordatura, and I shall try to make a more modest demonstration of its virtues.”
“Scordatura involves unorthodox tunings of the violin,” supplied Hope, ever eager to show off his erudition.
“Si,” said Signor Monticarlo, curtly, evidently no more delighted to be interrupted while telling his story than Lady Phythian had been while telling hers. “Paganini’s Capriccio in A minor, which no one else can play, is based on one of the Rosary Sonatas of the Bohemian composer Heinrich von Biber. There are fifteen in all, each one employing a different tuning of the violin. Five celebrate the joyful mysteries, five the sorrowful mysteries, and a further six pieces—five sonatas and a passacaglia—celebrate the glorious mysteries. Paganini’s A-minor capriccio is based on von Biber’s A-minor sonata, celebrating The Coronation of the Virgin Mary as the Queen of Heaven.”
“And that’s what you’re going to play tomorrow?” Escott asked.
“No,” said the violinist. “What I shall play tomorrow, along with a solo violin piece by Bach, is two pieces by Pietro Locatelli, whose capricci enigmati were also inspired by von Biber’s sonatas, and are intermediate between them and Paganini’s capricci. They were published in 1730, but shunned by musicians of the day and forgotten until Paganini revived them, prior to composing his own adaptations. One I shall play as published, the other in a fashion that has never been heard before.”
“You mean that it’s your own variation?” Hope enquired.
“In a manner of speaking. I think that Locatelli might have been playing a game or a trick in the published version, adding an extra enigma to his caprice—or there might conceivably have been a misprint. I shall alter the scordatura—the tuning of violin, as Mr. Hope says—in the way that ought, in my opinion, to have been specified, but was not. I believe that I might be first to play the piece in public as it was really intended to be played. It is possible that even Locatelli never played it in public himself, given the great unpopularity of the sequence in his own day. It is risky, I know, but Carmela cannot play, and Paganini has made capricci popular again, so I feel that I must risk it now, or never. It is something that I have wanted to do for a long time. I hope you will all be tolerant of my whim.” He looked anxiously at Lady Phythian as he pronounced the last sentence, but he had lost her attention long before and she was staring out of the window again, watching the wilds of Cambridgeshire go by.
“That’s fascinating,” Michael said, generously. “I shall look forward to it greatly.”
“Thank you,” the violinist said, with more relief than genuine gratitude—but Carmela Monticarlo smiled at him again, more dazzlingly than before, and Michael blushed deeply, somewhat to James Escott’s amusement and Quentin Hope’s ironic delight.
Almost as soon as Signor Monticarlo, having ridden his hobby-horse to exhaustion, had fallen silent again, Hope and Escott resumed their contest. Having killed off the topic of progress for the time being, they launched into a debate about mazes and labyrinths. Hope generously took time out to explain to Michael that a labyrinth, technically speaking, was a “unicursal” design in which there were no branches, so that anyone walking a labyrinth was bound to end up at the center, albeit by a tortuously roundabout route, while a maze was “multicursal”, thus creating the possibility that someone who kept taking wrong turnings might get lost indefinitely.
“One has to bear in mind, of course,” Hope added, “that the Labyrinth—the one that Dedalus allegedly built in Crete for King Minos, was actually a multicursal maze, not a labyrinth in the stricter sense of the term. The Greeks mislabeled it, although they knew perfectly well what the difference was, as Plato makes clear in the Euthydemus, where Socrates likens logic to a labyrinth, in which the conclusion is always certain even though it seems to be the result of a roundabout process.”
“Except, of course,” Escott was quick to put in—as Hope must have known that he would—“that Dedalus didn’t build the Labyrinth for Minos at all. In fact, he built it for Ariadne. The Greek myth of Theseus misrepresents the situation horribly, but that’s of late origin. Homer makes it perfectly clear in the Iliad, when he describes Achilles’ shield, which bore the design of the Labyrinth, and states in so many words that the Labyrinth was constructed for Ariadne. If that were not enough, when Hope and I were exploring the ruins of Knossos we found inscriptions to the same effect, which identified Ariadne explicitly as the Mistress of the Labyrinth.”
“Leading us to conclude,” Hope put in, “that Minos’ daughter Ariadne—like yourself, Lady Phythian—was named after a more prestigious figure, presumably a goddess. Minos’ daughter was probably a priestess as well as a princess, whose duties included dancing the Labyrinth, according to a prescribed ritual.”
“Which would imply that Dedalus was a priest rather than an engineer,” Escott said, taking up the thread again. “Just as the fact that Achilles’ shield bore a Labyrinth design proves that the Cretan Labyrinth—and ancient mazes in general—were magical in purpose, intended as protective devices. Unfortunately the Cretan Labyrinth seems to have failed in its purpose, since the entire Minoan civilization was destroyed in an enormous catastrophe.”
“Actually, it proves no such thing,” Hope objected, “since Achilles was naturally invulnerable—save for his heel—and had no need of protective magic in his shield. And although Minos’ daughter was, by virtue of her sex, the person who had to perform the maze ritual intended to evoke her namesake, the Mistress of the Labyrinth, it was undoubtedly Minos who commissioned his high priest, Dedalus, to construct the Labyrinth.”
“Where did the Minotaur fit in?” Michael asked, innocently.