ascended the grand staircase. Percival paused at the edge of the room to catch his breath—the slightest effort drained his strength.
His mother’s rooms were always filled with flowers and servants and gossip, as if she were a countess holding a nightly salon, but Percival found the gathering under way to be even more elaborate than he had expected, with fifty or more guests. A cantilevered ceiling rose above the party, the skylights’ usual brightness dimmed by a cap of snow. The walls of the upper floor were lined with paintings his family had acquired over the course of five hundred years, most of which the Grigoris had chosen from museums and collectors for their private enjoyment. The majority of the paintings were masterworks, and all were original—they had provided expert copies of the paintings to be circulated through the world at large, taking the originals for themselves. Their art required meticulous care, everything from climate control to a team of professional cleaners, but the collection was well worth the trouble. There were a number of Dutch masters, a few from the Renaissance, and a smattering of nineteenth-century engravings. An entire wall at the center of the sitting room held the famous Hieronymus Bosch triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights, a wonderfully gruesome depiction of paradise and hell. Percival had grown up studying its grotesqueries, the large central panel depicting life on earth providing him with early instruction on the ways of humanity. He found it particularly fascinating that Bosch’s depiction of hell contained gruesome musical instruments, lutes and drums in various stages of dissection. A perfect copy of the painting hung at the Museo del Prado in Madrid, a reproduction Percival’s father had personally commissioned.
Gripping the ivory head of his cane, Percival made his way through the crowd. He usually put up with such debauchery but felt now—in his current condition—that it would be difficult to make it across the room. He nodded to the father of a former schoolmate—a member of his family’s circle for many centuries—standing at a remove from the crowd, his immaculate white wings on display. Percival smiled slightly at a model he had once taken to dinner, a lovely creature with pellucid blue eyes who came from an established Swiss family. She was far too young for her wings to have emerged, and so there was no way to glean the full extent of her breeding, but Percival knew her family to be old and influential. Before his illness had struck, his mother had tried to convince him to marry the girl. One day she would be a powerful member of their community.
Percival could tolerate their friends from old families—it was to his benefit to do so—but he found their new acquaintances, a collection of nouveau riche money managers, media moguls, and other hangers-on who had insinuated themselves into his mother’s good graces, to be loathsome. They were not like the Grigoris, of course, but most were close enough to be sympathetic to the delicate balance of deference and discretion the Grigori family required. They tended to gather at his mother’s side, inundating her with compliments and flattering her sense of noblesse oblige, ensuring that they would be invited to the Grigori apartment the next afternoon.
If it were up to Percival, their lives would be kept private, but his mother could not endure being alone. He suspected that she surrounded herself with amusement to stave off the terrible truth that their kind had lost their place in the order of things. Their family had formed alliances generations before and depended upon a network of friendships and relations to maintain their position and prosperity. In the Old World, they were deeply, inextricably connected to their family’s history. In New York, they had to re-create it everywhere they went.
Otterley, his younger sister, stood by the window, a dim light falling over her. Otterley was of average
His mother’s rooms were always filled with flowers and servants and gossip, as if she were a countess holding a nightly salon, but Percival found the gathering under way to be even more elaborate than he had expected, with fifty or more guests. A cantilevered ceiling rose above the party, the skylights’ usual brightness dimmed by a cap of snow. The walls of the upper floor were lined with paintings his family had acquired over the course of five hundred years, most of which the Grigoris had chosen from museums and collectors for their private enjoyment. The majority of the paintings were masterworks, and all were original—they had provided expert copies of the paintings to be circulated through the world at large, taking the originals for themselves. Their art required meticulous care, everything from climate control to a team of professional cleaners, but the collection was well worth the trouble. There were a number of Dutch masters, a few from the Renaissance, and a smattering of nineteenth-century engravings. An entire wall at the center of the sitting room held the famous Hieronymus Bosch triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights, a wonderfully gruesome depiction of paradise and hell. Percival had grown up studying its grotesqueries, the large central panel depicting life on earth providing him with early instruction on the ways of humanity. He found it particularly fascinating that Bosch’s depiction of hell contained gruesome musical instruments, lutes and drums in various stages of dissection. A perfect copy of the painting hung at the Museo del Prado in Madrid, a reproduction Percival’s father had personally commissioned.
Gripping the ivory head of his cane, Percival made his way through the crowd. He usually put up with such debauchery but felt now—in his current condition—that it would be difficult to make it across the room. He nodded to the father of a former schoolmate—a member of his family’s circle for many centuries—standing at a remove from the crowd, his immaculate white wings on display. Percival smiled slightly at a model he had once taken to dinner, a lovely creature with pellucid blue eyes who came from an established Swiss family. She was far too young for her wings to have emerged, and so there was no way to glean the full extent of her breeding, but Percival knew her family to be old and influential. Before his illness had struck, his mother had tried to convince him to marry the girl. One day she would be a powerful member of their community.
Percival could tolerate their friends from old families—it was to his benefit to do so—but he found their new acquaintances, a collection of nouveau riche money managers, media moguls, and other hangers-on who had insinuated themselves into his mother’s good graces, to be loathsome. They were not like the Grigoris, of course, but most were close enough to be sympathetic to the delicate balance of deference and discretion the Grigori family required. They tended to gather at his mother’s side, inundating her with compliments and flattering her sense of noblesse oblige, ensuring that they would be invited to the Grigori apartment the next afternoon.
If it were up to Percival, their lives would be kept private, but his mother could not endure being alone. He suspected that she surrounded herself with amusement to stave off the terrible truth that their kind had lost their place in the order of things. Their family had formed alliances generations before and depended upon a network of friendships and relations to maintain their position and prosperity. In the Old World, they were deeply, inextricably connected to their family’s history. In New York, they had to re-create it everywhere they went.
Otterley, his younger sister, stood by the window, a dim light falling over her. Otterley was of average
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