Rosin on the Satin Ribbons

Why would a prima ballerina who supposedly fainted dead away at the sight of Tenor Pálffy's shattered ribs be executing immaculate battements against a deck beam less than an hour later? I pressed my back against the damp oak bulkhead of the lower gun-deck passageway, clutching my brass shears inside my apron pocket while the iron ramrod sleeve pressed against my ribs inside my bodice pocket. I needed to see Mademoiselle Mariska Bánhegyi's feet before she took it into her head to throw her soiled dancing slippers out a gun port.

The lower gun deck smelled of salt damp, sulfur soot, and five gallons of lavender water splashed over thirty theatrical temperaments. At the far end of the narrow corridor, two of Hollósy’s armed mariners leaned on their muskets, yawning with the sullen resignation of men assigned to guard hysterical actors. Between their post and a stowed spare spar, Mariska had established a private dancing studio.

She wore her rehearsal muslin, a short bell-shaped skirt layered over stiff petticoats, her pale arms extended along an overhead knee-brace as though the sweating privateer hull were the gilded mirror hall of the Vienna Opera. Up she went on the box-toes of her green satin slippers, down into a deep plié, her face a mask of porcelain serenity. The heavy scent of Damascus rosewater drifted down the drafty passage, so cloying it could strip the varnish off a violoncello.

"The physician recommended bed rest, Mademoiselle Bánhegyi," I said, stepping into the yellow circle of lantern light. "Usually, a tragic collapse involves pillows and smelling salts, not sixty consecutive grand battements."

Mariska did not miss a beat. She completed her extension, toe pointing toward the deckhead, before lowering her heel with the whisper of silk against salt-crusted timber. She turned to face me, wide hazel eyes luminous, one delicate hand rising to flutter at her collarbone.

"Borbála, darling," she breathed, her voice a flute of manufactured fragility. "My tendons contract when my nerves are frayed. If I sit idle while poor Ignác's ghost wanders the rigging, my calves will seize before we reach port. A dancer’s instrument is far more fragile than a soprano's lungs."

"Your instrument seems durable enough to haul naval iron," I said, leaning against the timber rib opposite her. "Especially for someone who claimed she never left her quick-change screen between the overture and the final cadence of Act Two."

Her lashes fluttered. "I was praying behind my velvet curtain. In darkness. Weeping for the company's misfortunes."

"With your slippers on?"

"Naturally. A dancer never unties her ribbons during a performance."

"Then let us examine the ribbons," I said, drawing my tailor's shears from my pocket. The heavy brass loops caught the lantern flame with a dull, heavy glint.

Mariska’s smile held firm, but her left eyebrow gave a tiny, involuntary twitch. "Wardrobe business? At a time like this? Mister Hollósy’s sandglass is running, Borbála. That barbarian gave us two days before he dumps us on a reef. Shouldn't you be badgering Gizella? Everyone heard her screech at Ignác during the dress rehearsal."

"Gizella couldn't push an iron grape down a blunderbuss if her life depended on it," I said, taking two deliberate steps toward her. "Her wrists have the tensile strength of wet pastry. I tested them fifteen minutes ago. You, on the other hand, spend six hours a day lifting forty-pound sandbags to strengthen your arches."

"Physical grace is not a crime, darling."

"No, but stealing French steatite chalk from my wicker sewing kit certainly is." I reached into my bodice pocket and pulled out the iron ramrod guide wrapped in the green satin ribbon scrap I had dredged from the timber cradle under the center trapdoor. I held it out on my open palm. "Recognize the dye lot? Emerald green silk, double-faced, woven in Lyon. I cut fifty yards of it last month to trim your swan costume."

Mariska’s gaze dropped to the scrap. Her breathing hitched, just once, before settling back into theatrical rhythm. "Half the girls in the corps wear green ribbons. And anyone might lose a scrap near the stage."

"Except this scrap smells of Damascus rosewater," I countered. "Unless the ship’s gunner has developed an expensive taste in Parisian toilet water, you are the only soul aboard who douses herself in this particular bouquet. And there is something else."

I dropped to one knee before she could pull her hem away. With the blunt point of my shears, I caught the instep of her left satin slipper, lifting her foot three inches off the oak floorboards.

"Borbála, let go! Have you lost your mind?" Her voice dropped an octave, shedding its angelic fluting.

"Hold still, or I'll snip your ankle ribbons and you can dance barefoot on Hollósy’s holystoned deck," I muttered, tilting her sole to the lantern light.

The leather sole was stained dark with machine tallow, but the real prize clung to the cross-tied green ribbons around her ankle. Ground into the satin weave was a cake of bright cobalt residue: blue stage rosin, the gritty substance the dancers rubbed on their heels to keep from slipping during fast turns. But mixed directly into that blue crust were powdery white streaks of soft, greasy soapstone.

"French steatite," I murmured, scraping a shaving onto the flat blade of my shears with my thumbnail. "The very same chalk rubbed onto the blunderbuss flint cock to disguise the iron shavings. And right beneath it, the blue rosin you keep in the wooden box beside your mirror."

Mariska tried to jerk her foot back, but my grip on her slipper held fast.

"You didn't stay behind your screen during Act Two," I said softly, looking up into her rigid face. "Zsófia heard the scraping beneath the trapdoor during Gizella’s high cadence. Exactly forty bars. Two minutes of music, just long enough to slide under the stage, slip the blunderbuss barrel into the oak knee-brace, and use the frigate’s timber framing as a lever to force an iron ball down the fouled bore. You used this iron guide to keep the rod straight so it wouldn't bend under your weight."

Mariska stared down at me. The innocent maiden vanished entirely. The corners of her mouth drew tight, thinning into an expression sharp enough to cut cordage.

"You have no proof I touched that ridiculous gun," she whispered, her voice cold and level. "A torn ribbon and some chalk dust? Hollósy is a naval brute. He wouldn't know steatite from hardtack."

"Hollósy may be a brute, but he understands mechanical force," I replied, standing up to face her eye to eye. "He knows a four-ounce iron slug doesn't seat itself inside a fouled barrel by prayer. And he knows someone stole Gizella's pearl-handled embroidery scissors to slit the powder cartridge."

Mariska's eyes narrowed. "Gizella is a bloated cow who ruined my tempo in Act One. She deserved worse than a stolen pair of scissors."

"So you admit you were in her cabin?"

"I admit nothing." Mariska took a slow breath, smoothing the skirts of her rehearsal muslin with sudden, unnerving composure. She reached behind her back, her fingers slipping into a hidden slit in her petticoat pocket. When her hand emerged, it held a small packet wrapped in waxed parchment.

She peeled back the corner, revealing four yards of exquisite, ivory-tinted Venetian needlelace, fine as spider silk, bordered with delicate silver filigree.

"Do you know what this is worth in Trieste, Borbála?" she murmured, holding it between her manicured thumbs. Her voice regained a silky, conspiratorial hum. "Thirty Venetian ducats a yard. Real Burano lace, smuggled out of the lagoon before the blockade tightened. It was meant for my bridal gown in Act Four, but you appreciate fine thread far better than any singer. Take it. Re-trim your best bodice. Tell Hollósy the grease fire in the fly-loft was started by Csaplár’s clumsy apprentices."

I looked at the lace. The needlework was breathtaking, the tension of the linen knots flawless. A master artisan had spent six months ruining her eyesight by candlelight to produce that border.

"It's magnificent," I said.

"It is yours," Mariska whispered, leaning closer, her eyes gleaming with triumphant relief. "And when we reach port, there is a trunk of Genoa velvet in my cabin. I can share."

"There is only one flaw in your proposal, Mademoiselle," I said, opening my shears with an audible click of polished steel.

Before she could step backward, I caught the padded hem of her rehearsal petticoat with my left hand and drove the shears through the heavy linen facing.

Snip.

The heavy tailoring blades sheared through the hem with a dry, ripping crack. Mariska gasped, recoiling against the bulkhead as a cascade of fine white powder and blue rosin crystals spilled out from between the canvas linings, dusting her satin slippers like newly fallen snow. Tucked deep into the quilted hem, wrapped in a scrap of oily rag, lay a pair of gleaming pearl-handled Parisian embroidery scissors.

Mariska’s face drained of color.

"A costume cutter knows every stitch in her wardrobe, Mariska," I said, catching the stolen scissors as they fell. "And you used an uneven cross-stitch to sew that pocket shut."