She had to smile. Bruno, with his one track mind, was every cat's favorite person. Right now he was carefully running a comb through the long fur of the household's catriarch. He'd been doing it for the last half hour, and it didn't look like Queenie was going to tire of his ministrations any time soon. Bruno didn't seem to care that his bullying brothers were dead, but she was glad they'd received their comeuppance. There was still the third man, but Dina was sure the police were doing everything they could to catch him.

Cadence: A Continuation of the Euterpe Stories

Grantville

March 1635

The doorbell rang. Elizabeth Jordan looked up from the sink where she was peeling carrots. "One of you get that," she called out.

She heard Leah's feet go running across the floor. For a small girl, she had such a heavy tread that her steps were unmistakable.

The door squeaked on its hinges, and she heard seven-year-old Leah squeal, "Mr. Giacomo!"

Elizabeth's heart first jumped, then sank. Memories unreeled themselves in her mind.

August, 1633

Elizabeth had been sight-reading two of Erik Satie's Tres Gymnopedies at the piano in the high school auditorium. The music had demanded the sound and touch of the grand. And as usual, she had been so focused on the music that she hadn't heard the door at the rear of the auditorium, nor the steps down the aisles. Consequently, the applause that sounded when she finished the second piece took her by surprise, and she almost gave herself whiplash when her head whipped around to see who was clapping.

It was Victor Saluzzo, the high school principal, and two men dressed in down-timer clothing of a style she hadn't seen before.

"Gentlemen, may I introduce you to Mrs. Elizabeth Jordan, our music teacher?" Victor had said.

That was her introduction to Girolamo Zenti and Giacomo Carissimi. Zenti was obviously a man's man; bold, strutting a little, and with sufficient charm and charisma to woo the Venus de Milo, missing arms and all. But Carissimi had intrigued her. In both appearance and manner, he had reminded her of Douglas Drake, the Ohio farm boy who had been in most of her college classes; quiet, tongue-tied most of the time, and usually shy, though he had a baritone voice to die for. He had stared at her in every class they were in, and whenever she looked at him, he would blush and look away. But he wasn't creepy; just somehow oddly sweet.

Doug never managed to ask her for a date before she started going with Fred. From time to time, she regretted that.

Somehow, even at the very moment their eyes first met, this Carissimi fellow had the same effect on her that Doug had had.

That was where it began.

March 1635

"Mom," nine-year-old Daniel appeared in the doorway to the kitchen, "it's Mr. Carissimi."

Fall 1633

Before long, Elizabeth had found herself acting as Giacomo's mentor and teacher in the arts of music as the twentieth century had known them. She was amazed at him. He was like a musical sponge. It didn't seem to matter to him, if it had something to do with music, he wanted to know it. Music theory, music history, form and analysis; lives of composers, it didn't matter. Even the concentrated notes that Marla Linder had made available from her sessions with her band of German musicians didn't slow him down.

But his greatest passion was for the piano, the single instrument that came back from the future that the down-timers would be most affected by. Giacomo certainly was. He would spend hours every day working on it, playing scales and etudes, building technique and muscle memory.

Then, at some point, he started improvising. And that was where she was caught.

March 1635

Elizabeth very gently laid the carrot and the peeler down on the cabinet by the sink, rinsed her hands off under the faucet, and dried them carefully. She placed the dish towel back on the rack, then stood facing the window over the sink.

Fall 1633

The library resources and her own college textbooks had given Elizabeth a sketch of Carissimi's life in the future that would never be. And it was impressive. She resolved in her own heart that his biography in this new future would be even more impressive. Yeah, she had to admit to herself, that perhaps this second chance at Doug Drake meant something to her. In any event, she began to spend more and more time with Giacomo, pushing him harder and harder, giving him more and more to learn and less time to learn it. He had become her challenge.

March 1635

"Mom?"

She took a deep breath, then turned and followed Daniel toward the front door.

Fall 1633

And so the time passed. Elizabeth didn't neglect her family or her children. But every so often her husband Fred, the deputy sheriff who had become the West VirginiaCounty's expert liaison with outside the Ring of Fire law enforcement organizations, would ask her why she was spending so much extra time at the school.

And sometimes he would ask her what she was thinking about when she was staring off into space.

She never told him much about Carissimi, only that he was a down-time music teacher who needed to learn about the up-time music. She didn't think he would understand.

When Fred started spending more and more time out of town, it was actually a bit of relief.

March 1635

Giacomo looked up at her from where he knelt talking to Leah. That was one of the things Leah adored about him, that he would always put himself on her level to talk to her.

October/November 1633

And then the commission came for Giacomo to write the music commemorating the death of Hans Richter. She was bound and determined that this would be the first great piece credited to his name after the Ring of Fire.

Zenti came to her, and said that Giacomo was having trouble focusing on the music he was trying to write, because of the piano workshop next door. "Bring him here," she told him. "Fred is out of town for a week."

So Giacomo moved into her house that night. The kids were there, but Fred wasn't. And she didn't care.

The next two days were like heaven to Elizabeth, working with a talent of Giacomo's level. He was a man on fire, and she caught fire from him. Her passion for this work, this Lament for a Fallen Eagle, was the equal of his. As he described the arc and flow of it, she grasped it intuitively. And God, the music that he dictated to her!

At the end, Giacomo held a wonder, a joy, in his hands. And she had helped him create it.

March 1635

"Giacomo," she said, hands behind her back. Nothing more.

December 1633

The performance of the lament had been beautiful. Giacomo had wanted Elizabeth to sing the solo at first, but she had convinced him to ask Marla Linder instead. Elizabeth could have sung the solo, and sung it well. Part of her really wanted to do exactly that, but. Marla's voice was better than hers, and what mattered was giving Giacomo the best performance he could get. And at the performance, Marla had justified Elizabeth's belief in her.