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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781101202999 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Penguin Group (USA) |
| Publication date: | 07/09/2001 |
| Sold by: | Penguin Group |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 400 |
| File size: | 526 KB |
| Age Range: | 14 Years |
About the Author
Elizabeth Redfern was born on October 29, 1950 in Cheshire, England and attended the University of Nottingham, where she earned a BA in English. She then earned a post graduate degree as a Chartered Librarian at Ealing College and a post-graduate certificate in teaching at the University of Derby.
Redfern trained and worked as a chartered librarian, first in London and then in Nottingham. She moved to Derbyshire with her husband, a solicitor. And after her daughter was born, Redfern re-trained as a teacher and began work as an adult education lecturer – main subject, English – with the Derbyshire County Council.
Since then, she’s been involved in various projects in nearby towns, including working with the unemployed and skills training in the workplace. She lives with her husband and her daughter, who attends a local school, in a village in the Derbyshire Peak District. In her spare time Redfern plays the violin with a local orchestra, the Chesterfield Symphony Orchestra. The Music of the Spheres is her first novel.
Read an Excerpt
The Music of the Spheres, Chapter I
Algol is the name of the winking demon star, Medusa of the skies; fair but deadly to look on, even for one who is already dying.
Ah, the bright stars of the night. Almost they obliterate the clear white pain. A thousand stars shining in the ether; but no dazzling newcomer. And so little time left, so little time...
Yet still two-faced Medusa laughs from behind the clouds, demanding homage. Homage, Medusa, or a sword, a blade sharper than death itself.
The wind stirs. Night clouds obscure the universe. A lower music now, a different kind of death.
No stars tonight, my love.
No Selene.
IT WAS PAST ELEVEN OF THE CLOCK ON A RAIN-WASHED JUNE evening when Auguste de Montpellier rose from her bed and realized that her brother, Guy, had gone from the house. Because he was not always responsible for his actions, and because he was, like her, a stranger in an alien land, she felt the beginnings of fear: a familiar fear that touched her skin with cold fingers.
"Guy," she called. "Guy."
High in their attic bedrooms, the servants slept on. Only her own voice whispered back to her mockingly from the distant passageways and sparsely furnished rooms of this big house, which stood so still, so quiet amidst the fields and woods far to the west of the slumbering city.
"Guy. Oh, Guy." Auguste ran up and down the wide staircases that twisted through the rambling mansion; though once she stopped, with a different kind of cry, because she thought she saw someone, a ghost, gazing back at her from the shadows of a forgotten room. But she realized quickly that the ghost was herself, captured by a looking-glass on the wall, her face small and pale beneath her close-cropped red hair. She stared, distracted, and saw how her silk robe was slipping from her shoulders. Pulling it more tightly across her breasts, she shivered and hurried on.
"Guy-where are you?" The servants, wakened at last by her footsteps and her cries, were starting now to stumble one by one from their attic beds, candlesticks in hands. Catching her fear like a contagion, they ran, too, hither and thither, their nightgowns fluttering, knowing that the master was not well and that at such times he needed help, like a child. But Auguste had left them far behind; for now she was up on the roof of the house, where a wide balcony lay open to the cool summer night. Here, when the skies were clear, the heavens spread out to infinity, and the stars wheeled overhead. Here, night-long, Guy would search with his telescope for the lost star he called Selene. But not tonight. Tonight the stars were obscured by rain clouds, and the precious telescopes had been dismantled and laid carefully to rest below, where the night air would not harm them.
Auguste laid her hands on the stone parapet and looked down at the old trees in the rambling garden, imagining she heard them whispering in the stirring of the breeze. When her eyes had adjusted to the darkness, she lifted her shorn head and gazed westward toward Kensington village, to the deserted palace that was shrouded in wooded parkland; then north, to the lonely fields stretching up to hilly Hampstead. And finally she looked to the east, following the winding desolation of the rough turnpike road, nighttime haunt of thieves and robbers, as it led through somber heath and furzy woodland to the Knightsbridge turnpike and thence to far-off London.
No stars tonight.
She ran back down into the house, her satin shoes pattering as she went, her silk wrap billowing behind her. She hurried to her dressing room and looked for the little lacquered box that she kept in her writing desk. She opened it and saw that her gold had gone.
She closed it and put it away, staring into nothingness.
There were footsteps in the passageway outside. She turned and saw her maid Emilie, fluttering distractedly, murmuring fragments of prayers under her breath.
"Madame," Emilie was saying, "madame, we cannot find him, and the carriage is gone."
Auguste bowed her head, in acknowledgment and despair. "Is the doctor still here?"
"No, madame. He set off for the city some time ago. He will have reached his lodgings by now..."
And then someone else was with them, standing silently in the doorway: William Carline, the Englishman, dressed, ready to go out in a long riding coat of olive green, with his hat clasped between his hands. His dark blue eyes burned with unspoken questions.
"Guy has gone to the city," whispered Auguste. "Please find him."
Carline's beautiful face expressed no emotion. For a moment he stood so still that the candlelight burnished his long fair hair as if it were spun gold. Then he bowed his head and turned to go.
Auguste waited with her hands clasped to her breast for the sound of his footsteps on the stairs. She gazed out the window into the night, until the muffled beat of his horse's hooves on the driveway had faded at last.
After that there was silence again.
ONE BY ONE THE candles in the big house were extinguished. Outside the trees whispered anew, their branches stirred by a soft breeze that bore with it a promise of more rain.
Once more Guy de Montpellier had gone to London to look for Selene, his lady of songs, and flowers, and stars. And each night he went, a woman died.
—From The Music of the Spheres by Elizabeth Redfern. (c) July 2001, Putnam Pub. Group, a division of Penguin Putnam, Inc. Used by permission.
What People are Saying About This
Intricately plotted, beautifully paced, The Music of the Spheres is an elegant historical novel rich in detail, at times Dickensian in its description of London. Elizabeth Redfern has made an exciting debut.
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Author Essay
The idea for The Music of the Spheres first formed in my mind when the Hale-Bopp comet appeared in the sky. I'd always been fascinated by stars since I was a small girl, when my father took me for walks observing the night sky.
Because I wanted to discover more about the scientists who had studied the stars in the past I read a history -- The Cambridge History of Astronomy. My interest grew rapidly when I read about the widespread belief amongst astronomers in the late 18th century that there must be an as-yet-undetected planet between Mars and Jupiter. A belief that was reinforced by an amazing numerical pattern into which the orbits of all the known planets including the then recently discovered Uranus fitted perfectly. I read further books and learned that these astronomers (who formed a group known as 'The Celestial Police' with members throughout Europe) were free to correspond with each other on this topic in the major European capitals -- even though England, Austria, Prussia, Spain and Holland were at this time locked in a desperate war with revolutionary France.
I've always been interested in this time period and was aware that in England there was a very real fear of foreign spies betraying military secrets. So I had the idea that a group of French astronomers claiming exile in London are sending vital intelligence to Paris disguised as lists of stars.
I began my research for the story four years ago. Besides studying astronomy and history of the period, I also obtained and read many books and journals on various topics including 18th century medicine, 18th century mathematics, the British government's secret intelligence work, the British navy and naval dockyards. And last, but not least, the history of the science of encryption. The Times for the year 1795 has also been a primary source of information. (Elizabeth Redfern)