Gordon Dahlquist

by Volume Two The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

  The Comte d’Orkancz had led them all—Miss Temple, Miss Vandaariff, Mrs. Stearne, and the two soldiers—up the darkened rampway into the theatre. It was as desolate of good feeling as Miss Temple had remembered and her gaze fell upon the empty table with its dangling straps and the stack of wooden boxes beneath it, some pried open, spilling sheets of orange felt, with a dread that nearly buckled her knees. The Comte’s iron hand had kept hold of Miss Temple’s shoulder and he looked behind to confirm they had all arrived before he passed her off with a nod to Mrs. Stearne, who stepped forward between the two white-robed women, taking a hand from each and squeezing. Despite her deeply rooted anger, Miss Temple found herself squeezing back, for she was finally very frightened, though she prevented herself from actually glancing at the woman. The Comte set his monstrous brass helmet onto one of the table’s rust-stained cotton pads (or was that dried blood?) and crossed to the giant blackboard. With swift broad strokes he inscribed the words in bold capital letters: “AND SO SHALL BE REBORN.” The writing struck Miss Temple as strangely familiar, as if she recognized it from some place other than this same blackboard on her previous visit. She bit her lip, for the matter seemed somehow important, but she could not call up the memory. The Comte dropped the chalk into the tray and turned to face them.

  “Miss Vandaariff shall be first,” he announced, his voice again sounding crafted of rough minerals, “for she must take her place in the celebration, and to do so must be sufficiently recovered from her initiation. I promise you, my dear, it is but the first of many pleasures on your card for this gala evening.”

  Miss Vandaariff swallowed and did her best to smile. Where a few moments ago her spirits had been gay, the combination of the room and the Comte’s dark manner had obviously rekindled her worry. Miss Temple thought they would have kindled worry in the iron statue of a saint.

  “I did not know this room was here,” Lydia Vandaariff said, her voice quite small. “Of course there are so many rooms, and my father … my father … is most occupied—”

  “I’m sure he did not think you’d an interest in science, Lydia.” Mrs. Stearne smiled. “Surely there are storerooms and workrooms you’ve never seen as well!”

  “I suppose there must be.” Miss Vandaariff nodded. She looked out beyond the lights to the empty gallery, hiccuped unpleasantly and covered her mouth with one hand. “But will there be people watching?”

  “Of course,” said the Comte. “You are an example. You have been such all your life, my dear, in the service of your father. Tonight you serve as one for our work and for your future husband, but most importantly, Miss Vandaariff, for your self. Do you understand me?”

  She shook her head meekly that she did not.

  “Then this is still more advantageous,” he rasped, “for I do assure you … you will.”

  The Comte reached under his leather apron and removed a silver pocket watch on a chain. He narrowed his eyes and tucked the timepiece away.

  “Mrs. Stearne, will you stand away with Miss Vandaariff?”

  Miss Temple took a breath for courage as Caroline released her hand and ushered Lydia to the table. The Comte looked past them to nod at the two Macklenburg soldiers.

  Before Miss Temple could move the men shot forward and held her fast, raising her up so she stood on the very tips of her toes. The Comte removed his leather gauntlets, tossing them one after the other into the upturned brass helmet. His voice was as deliberate and menacing as the steady strop of a barber’s razor.

  “As for you, Miss Temple, you will wait until Miss Vandaariff has undergone her trial. You will watch her, and this sight will increase your fear, for you have utterly, utterly lost your very self in this business. Your self will belong to me. And worse than this, and I tell you now so you may contemplate it fully, this gift, of your autonomy to my keeping, will be made willingly, happily … gratefully … by you. You will look back with whatever memories you keep at the willful gestures of these last days and they will seem the poor antics of a child—or not even, the actions of a disobedient lap-dog. You will be ashamed. Trust this, Miss Temple, you will be reborn in this room, contrite and wise … or not at all.”

  He stared at her. Miss Temple did not—could not—reply.

  The Comte snorted, then reached for the pocket watch again and frowned, stuffing it back behind the apron.

  “There was a disturbance in the outer hallway—” Mrs. Stearne began.

  “I am aware of it,” rumbled the Comte. “Nevertheless, this … lateness—the prospective adherents are sure to be waiting already. I begin to think it was a mistake not to send you—”

  He turned at the sound of an opening door from the opposite rampway and strode to it.

  “Have you an inkling of the time, Madame?” he roared into the darkness, and marched back to the table, crouching amidst the boxes beneath it. Behind him, stepping up from the darkened rampway, was the figure of a short curvaceous young woman with curling dark brown hair, a round face, and an eager smile. She wore a mask of peacock feathers and a shimmering pale dress the color of thin honey, sporting a silver fringe around her bosom and her sleeves. Her arms were bare, and in her hands she carried several dull, capped metal flasks. Miss Temple was sure she had seen her before—it was an evening for nagging suspicions—and then it came to her: this was Miss Poole, the third woman in the coach to Harschmort, initiated to the Process that night.

  “My goodness, Monsieur le Comte,” Miss Poole said brightly. “I am perfectly aware of it, and yet I assure you there was no helping the delay. Our business became dangerously protracted—”

  She stopped speaking as she saw Miss Temple.

  “Who is this?” she asked.

  “Celeste Temple—I believe you have met,” snapped the Comte. “Protracted how?”

  “I shall tell you later.” Miss Poole let her gaze drift to Miss Temple, indicating none too subtly the reason she preferred not to speak openly of her delay, then turned to wave girlishly at Mrs. Stearne. “Suffice it to say that I simply had to change my dress—that orange dust, don’t you know—though before you rail at me, it took no more time than Doctor Lorenz took to prepare your precious clay.”

  Here she handed the flasks to the Comte and once again danced away from the man toward Miss Vandaariff, lighting up with another beaming smile.

  “Lydia!” she squeaked, and took the heiress by the hands as Mrs. Stearne looked on with what to Miss Temple seemed a watchful, veiling smile.

  “O Elspeth!” cried Miss Vandaariff. “I came to see you at the hotel—”

  “I know you did, my dear, and I am sorry, but I was called away to the country—”

  “But I felt so ill—”

  “Poor darling! Margaret was there, was she not?”

  Miss Vandaariff nodded silently and then sniffed, as if to say that she did not prefer to be soothed by Margaret, as Miss Poole was well aware.

  “Actually, Miss Temple was there first,” observed Mrs. Stearne rather coolly. “She and Lydia had quite some time to converse before Mrs. Marchmoor was able to intervene.”

  * * *

  Miss Poole did not reply, but looked over to Miss Temple, weighing her as an adversary. Returning this condescending gaze, Miss Temple remembered the petty struggle in the coach—for it was Miss Poole’s eyes she had poked—and knew that humiliation would remain, despite the Process, in the woman’s mind like a whip mark turned to scar. For the rest of it, Miss Poole had just that sort of willfully merry temperament Miss Temple found plain galling to be around, as if one were to consume a full pound of sweet butter at a sitting. Both Mrs. Marchmoor (haughty and dramatic) and Mrs. Stearne (thoughtful and reserved) appeared to be informed by injuries in their lives, where Miss Poole’s insistence on gaiety seemed rather a shrill denial. And to Miss Temple’s mind all the more repellent, for if she posed as Lydia’s true friend, it was only to better ply their awful philtre.

  “Yes, Lydia and I got on quite well,” Miss Temple said. “I have taught her
how to poke the eyes of foolish ladies attempting to rise beyond themselves.”

  Miss Poole’s smile became fixed on her face. She glanced back at the Comte—still occupied with the boxes and flasks and lengths of copper wire—and then called to Mrs. Stearne, loud enough for all to hear.

  “You did miss so much of interest at Mr. Bascombe’s estate—or should I say Lord Tarr? Part of our delay involved the capture and execution of the Prince’s physician, Doctor—O what is his name?—a strange fellow, now quite dead, I’m afraid. The other part was one of our subjects; her reaction to the collection was averse but not fatal, and she ended up causing, as I say, rather an important problem—though Doctor Lorenz is confident it may be remedied …”

  She glanced back to the Comte. He had stopped his work and listened, his face impassive. Miss Poole pretended not to notice and spoke again to Mrs. Stearne, a sly smile gracing the corners of her plump mouth.

  “The funny thing, Caroline—and I thought you would be particularly interested—is that this Elöise Dujong—is tutor to the children of Arthur and Charlotte Trapping.”

  “I see,” said Caroline, carefully, as if she did not know what Miss Poole intended with this comment. “And what happened to this woman?”

  Miss Poole gestured to the darkened rampway behind her. “Why, she is just in the outer room. It was Mr. Crabbé’s suggestion that such spirited defiance be put to use, and so I have brought her here to be initiated.”

  Miss Temple saw she was now looking at the Comte, pleased to be giving him information he did not have.

  “The woman was intimate with the Trappings?” he asked.

  “And thus of course the Xoncks,” Miss Poole said. “It was through Francis that she was seduced to Tarr Manor.”

  “Did she reveal anything? About the Colonel’s death, or—or about—” With an uncharacteristic reticence, the Comte nodded toward Lydia.

  “Not that I am aware—though of course it was the Deputy Minister who interrogated her last.”

  “Where is Mr. Crabbé?” he asked.

  “Actually, it is Doctor Lorenz you should be seeking first, Monsieur le Comte, for the damage the woman has done—if you will remember who else was attending our business at Tarr Manor—is such that the Doctor would very much appreciate your consultation.”

  “Would he?” snarled the Comte.

  “Most urgently.” She smiled. “If only there were two of you, Monsieur, for your expertise is required on so many fronts! I do promise that I will do my best to ferret out any clues from this lady—for indeed it seems that a good many people might have wished the Colonel dead.”

  “Why do you say that, Elspeth?” asked Caroline.

  Miss Poole kept her gaze on the Comte as she replied. “I only echo the Deputy Minister. As someone in between so many parties, the Colonel was well-placed to divine … secrets.”

  “But all here are in allegiance,” said Caroline.

  “And yet the Colonel is dead.” Miss Poole turned to Lydia, who listened to their talk with a confused half-smile. “And when it is a matter of secrets … who can say what we don’t know?”

  The Comte abruptly snatched up his helmet and gloves. This caused him to step closer to Miss Poole—who quite despite herself took a small step backwards.

  “You will initiate Miss Vandaariff first,” he growled, “and then Miss Temple. Then, if there is time—and only if there is time—you will initiate this third woman. Your higher purpose here is to inform those in attendance of our work, not to initiate per se.”

  “But the Deputy Minister—” began Miss Poole.

  “His wishes are not your concern. Mrs. Stearne, you will come with me.”

  “Monsieur?”

  It was quite clear that Mrs. Stearne had thought to remain in the theatre.

  “There are more important tasks,” he hissed, and turned as two men in leather aprons and helmets came in dragging a slumped woman between them.

  “Miss Poole, you will address our spectators, but do not presume to operate the machinery.” He called up to the dark upper reaches of the gallery. “Open the doors!”

  He wheeled and was at the rampway in two strides and was gone.

  Mrs. Stearne looked once at Miss Temple and then to Lydia, her expression tinged with concern, and then met the smiling face of Miss Poole whose dashing figure had just—in her own opinion at least—somehow turned Mrs. Stearne, in her plain severe dark dress, from her place.

  “I’m sure we shall speak later,” said Miss Poole.

  “Indeed,” replied Mrs. Stearne, and she swept after the Comte.

  When she was gone Miss Poole flicked her hand at the Comte’s two men. Above them all the door had opened and people were flowing into the gallery, whispering at the sight below them on the stage.

  “Let us get dear Lydia on the table. Gentlemen?”

  Throughout Miss Vandaariff’s savage ordeal the two soldiers from Macklenburg held Miss Temple quite firmly between them. Miss Poole had stuffed a plug of cotton wadding into Miss Temple’s mouth, preventing her from making a sound. Try as she might to shift the foul mass with her tongue, her efforts only served to dislodge moistened clots at the back of her mouth that she then worried she might swallow and choke upon. She wondered if this Dujong woman had been with Doctor Svenson at the end. At the thought of the poor kind man Miss Temple blinked away a tear, doing her best not to weep, for with a sniffling nose she’d have no way to breathe. The Doctor … dying at Tarr Manor. She did not understand it—Roger had been on the train to Harschmort, he was not at Tarr Manor. What was the point of anyone going there? She thought back to the blue glass card, where Roger and the Deputy Minister had been speaking in the carriage … she had assumed Tarr Manor was merely the prize with which Roger had been seduced. Was it possible it was the other way around—that the need for Tarr Manor necessitated their possession of Roger?

  But then another nagging thought came to Miss Temple—the last seconds of that card’s experience—metal-banded door and the high chamber … the broad-shouldered man leaning over the table, on the table a woman … that very card had come from Colonel Trapping. The man at the table was the Comte. And the woman … Miss Temple could not say.

  These thoughts were driven from her head by Lydia’s muffled screams, the shrieking machinery, and the truly unbearable smell. Miss Poole stood below the table, describing each step of the Process to her audience as if it were a sumptuous meal—every moment of her smiling enthusiasm belied by the girl’s arching back and clutching fingers, her red face and grunts of animal pain. To Miss Temple’s lasting disgust, the spectators whispered and applauded at every key moment, treating the entire affair like a circus exhibition. Did they have any idea who lay in sweating torment before them—a beauty to rival any Royal, the darling of the social press, heiress to an empire? All they saw was a woman writhing, and another woman telling them how fine a thing it was. It seemed to her that this was Lydia Vandaariff’s whole existence in a nutshell.

  Once it was over however, Miss Temple chided herself bitterly. She did not think she actually could have broken from the two soldiers, but she was certain that this period of sparking, ghastly chaos was the only time she might have had a chance. Instead, as soon as the Comte’s men unstrapped Lydia and eased her limp form from the table—the unctuous Miss Poole whispering eagerly into the shattered girl’s ear—the soldiers stepped forward and hefted Miss Temple into her place. She kicked her legs but these were immediately caught and held firmly down. In a matter of helpless seconds she was on her back, the cotton pads beneath her hot and damp from Lydia’s sweat, the belts cinched close across her waist, neck, and bosom and each limb tightly bound. The table was angled so those in the gallery could see the whole of her body, but Miss Temple could only see the glare of the hot paraffin lamps and an indistinct mass of shadowed faces—as uncaring to her condition as those waiting with empty plates are to the frightened beast beneath the knife.

  She stared at Lydia as the tott
ering young woman—sweat-sheened face, hair damp against the back of her neck, eyes dull and mouth slack—was briskly examined by Miss Poole. With a tremor Miss Temple thought of the defiant course of her short life—itself a litany of governesses and aunts, rivals and suitors, Bascombes and Pooles and Marchmoors … she would now join them, edges stripped away, her velocity set to their destinations, her determination yoked like an ox to work in someone else’s field.

  And what had she wanted instead? Miss Temple was not without insight and she saw how genuinely free the Process had made both Marchmoor and Poole, and—she did not frankly doubt it—how Lydia Vandaariff would now find her will of steel. Even Roger—her breath huffed around the gag with a plangent whine as his visage crossed her inner eye—she knew had been formerly restrained by a decency rooted in fear and timid desire. It did not make them wise—she had only to recall the way Roger could not reconcile her present deeds with the fiancée he had known—but it made them fierce. Miss Temple choked again as the cotton wadding nudged the slick softness at the back of her throat. She was already fierce. She required none of this nonsense, and if she’d carried a man’s strength and her father’s horsewhip these villains would as one be on their knees.

  But in addition Miss Temple realized—barely listening to Miss Poole’s disquisition—that so much of this struggle came down to dreams. Mrs. Marchmoor had been released from the brothel, Mrs. Stearne from fallow widowhood, and Miss Poole from a girlish hope to marry the best man within reach … which was all to say that of course she understood. What they did not understand—what no one understood, from her raging father to her aunt to Roger to the Comte and the Contessa with their wicked violations—was the particular character of her own desires, her own sunbaked, moist-aired, salt-tinged dreams. In her mind she saw the sinister Annunciation fragments of Oskar Veilandt, the expression of astonished sensation on Mary’s face and the gleaming blue hands with their cobalt nails pressing into her giving flesh … and yet she knew her own desire, however inflamed at the rawness of that physical transaction, was in truth elsewhere configured … her colors—the pigments of her need—existed before an artist’s interposition—crumbled, primal minerals and untreated salts, feathers and bones, shells oozing purple ink, damp on a table top and still reeking of the sea.