In the Claws of the Eagle Read Free Page A

smiling. Dinner was ready. With a sweep of scarves Madame Helena laid her violin in its case.
    ‘Judit, I’m starving,’ she said, and led the way into the dining room, while Izaac was picked up by Lotte, and carried off to bed.

    Voices rose and fell behind the double doors that separated the dining room from the music room. Dinner was progressing at a leisurely pace. Next door in the music room, Izaac, in pyjamas, was edging silently along, hugging the wall under the picture where he thought the girl inside it wouldn’t see him. This wasn’t a performance, it was more like a commando raid, and she had a habit of making him uneasy about his plans.
    He was also apprehensive about the Cloud Lady. Her reference to cats had disturbed him; he still had scars from the time he had given their cat a loving hug. His interest was in her violin; he wasn’t sure whether it was alive or not, so he must be careful. Uncle Rudi and Nathan both played violins, but clearly these were just toys when compared to the Cloud Lady’s instrument. It, he had decided, was the key to her performance. If he could tame it, then he would turn everyone’s head and make their legs go wobbly as his had just done.
    He could see the chair with her violin case on it, a tongue of the scarf she had wrapped around the instrument peeped from under the lid. Even the case had a special magic; it was old and scarred, the only bright thing about it was a scarlet hotel sticker on the lid with a picture of a dancing clown. He was afraid of it now, but the more he looked the more strongly it drew him, filling his vision until his feet had no alternative but to move. The case lay on a chair at chest-height to him. He reached out. The lid was unclasped; he lifted it cautiously, alert in case the violin might spring out at him. The silk was soft on his hands, but so had been the cat’s fur. He parted the folds, and there it was – the violin. The grain of its wood seemed to pulse with life. He reached out cautiously and touched the polished surface . It wasn’t cold like the marble floor in the hall; it was warm. He decided that it was probably alive. When he ran his fingers across the strings, they murmured back at him the familiar notes he heard whenever his uncles tuned up. Perhaps it liked him. He got it firmly by the neck and lifted; it was lighter than he expected, but when he tried to put it under his chin he found that his arms were too short. He looked around for the bow. The silly woman had called it a cat’s tail – nonsense – it was a sword. Uncle Rudi called his a sword and used it to duel with Izaac and the toy sword he’d been given for his birthday. There were two bows in the lid of the case; he put the violin on the floor behind him so he could pull properly. But the clip holding the bow was old and the bow came away in his hand. Izaac reeled backwards, waving it above his head for balance. For a moment his backside wavered dangerously above the violin before thumping down on the floor only inches away from it.
    Louise, observing from the confines of her picture, was in an agony of apprehension as this saga developed, but all she could do was watch. Izaac did a swash and buckle or two tosave face and then examined his prize. The hairs were floppy. He remembered that the Cloud Woman had had the same problem. He was good on technical details and he found the small mother-of-pearl nut on the end of the bow and turned it. That made it worse. He made a couple of rather angry swipes in the air and then got the direction right and the hairs tightened . Now he turned his attention to the violin. The music he was about to play was already loud in his mind. As he couldn’t manage to put the violin under his chin, he laid it on his knees with the thin end away from him and prepared to play.
    Izaac knew that the place where the music came from was where the strings were held up on a wooden little bridge. So, gripping the bow by the middle, and still