As he spoke he moved past her towards what she had taken for another of the many cabinets that lined the crypt. This lay on its side, in shape and height like a sarcophagus, connected by a thicket of tubes and wires to a second, much smaller case. Beneath the glass of its lid lay not a shrivelled mummy but —
Emma was a woman of strong constitution and iron stomach, but even she knew a flutter of nausea. The thing under the glass should have been another of the beautiful simulacra: that much she could determine. But something had gone terribly wrong.
Here was the decay that she would have expected in the rest. Flesh had melted; organs had dissolved. The scaffolding of bone gleamed white beneath.
Ratisbon bent closer than she could bear to. His breath caught. He reached as if to lift or shatter the lid, but caught himself with a visible effort. With equal effort, he said steadily, “I believe we have found Sir Willoughby.”
That, Emma had not been allowing herself to think. The remains of thick dark hair and the pronounced aquilinity of the nasal structures did suggest that the body had resembled the missing man. Yet —
“Cleave a planarian in two,” she said, “and two separate worms emerge. What if —”
Ratisbon’s face as he whirled upon her was wild. For an instant she saw what he would have been had he been born in his father’s country, far from the strict confines of British manners. It was an instant only; then he recalled himself, with lowered eyes and shuttered face. But a hint of that ferocity lingered in his voice. “Madam, he had dreamed of that indeed, but between the worm and the man is a vast gulf of complexity — far wider than he was yet able to cross. No, madam; whatever befell here, this is Sir Willoughby’s body, his one and only.”
“And yet,” she said, “what was he doing, if not seeking to divide one body into two? Why would he place himself in this device? What would he hope to accomplish? Was this a tragic mishap? Or was it murder?”
“There is the question,” said Ratisbon, “is it not?”
“Had he enemies? Rivals? Secrets that certain parties would not wish to be known?”
The flicker of Ratisbon’s eyes hinted at an answer.
“Tell me,” she said.
Ratisbon shook his head. “If certain parties would destroy Sir Willoughby, they would think nothing of destroying a woman with neither connexions nor family.”
Indeed, thought Emma. They, whoever they were, if indeed they existed at all, would crush her. She lifted her chin; she looked him in the face. She smiled. “Would they even see me? I am, after all, a woman, with neither connexions nor family.”
“Madam, you cannot —”
“I have an obligation to Lady Jocasta,” Emma said.
“Surely she never intended that you venture into danger.”
“That may be,” said Emma. “Shall I inform your lady that you prevented me from discovering the cause of her brother’s death?”
Their gazes locked like swords. Emma had no intention of yielding. Nor did he, but she had the weight of Lady Jocasta’s will behind her. He had only his own.
He gave way, as he must. “In Xanadu,” he said, “you may find what you seek.”
Ratisbon had not fallen into a fit over the demise of his mistress’ brother. He was speaking literally.
The late Mr. Coleridge’s poetic fever-dreams had inspired no few impressionable souls to fits of imitative zeal. One such personage, endowed with a considerable fortune, had transformed a stately manse into a pleasure-dome that rivalled that of an Eastern prince. Ratisbon fumbled and stammered most uncharacteristically in speaking of it; had he been of English complexion, he would have been blushing scarlet.
Emma did her best to comfort him. “I spent many a happy hour visiting with the hundred wives of the Maharajah of Ranipur while my father conducted his business with their lord and husband,” she said, “and heard many a tale that would be deemed unsuitable for a young woman’s ears in England. You need have no fear of my maiden blushes. I assure you, I have none.”
The same could hardly be said of him. Her words discomfited him even more, if it were possible, but in time and with effort she extricated the truth.
Sir Willoughby’s beautiful automata, his ivory Adonises and bejewelled Helenas, had found homes and ample occupation in Xanadu. As many of them as he would make, the manse would take.
“Scions of noble houses travel up the river in punts or ply the road in fast carriages,” said Ratisbon, “and there take pleasure in the arms of the most discreet and yet concrete of dreams. Each dream is different; each eidolon, for such he calls them, is designed to fulfil the heart’s desire — whatever that desire may be. It is — was — Sir Willoughby’s great pride that no two are alike, and none has ever failed to provide satisfaction.”
He choked somewhat on that last word, but he had recovered his composure. Emma had never lost hers. “You believe that one of them might, after all, have failed of its purpose?”
“Or succeeded too well,” said Ratisbon. “If a patron had become so enamoured of the glittering beloved, and resolved that there could, and should, be no other...”
“It is a possibility,” Emma conceded. “Certainly we must investigate.”
“One does not,” Ratisbon pointed out with edged delicacy, “in such an establishment, simply knock on the front gate and demand to speak to the proprietor. Xanadu opens its secrets to no common mortal.”
“Of course it would not,” said Emma. “Will you assist me?”
“In what manner, madam?” asked Ratisbon.
The power of Lady Jocasta was indeed mighty, but Emma gave some small credit to her own strength of character. Although Ratisbon’s unhappiness was manifest, he was in all ways the perfect servant.
She acknowledged that perfection with an inclination of the head. “First,” she said, “let us leave this place, and secure it against discovery. Lady Jocasta must be told, of course, but I should like to present her with a fuller reckoning.”
“Yes, madam,” he said. His tone was colourless, his face without expression.
He would serve her purpose, or rather Lady Jocasta’s. That for the moment was all that need concern Emma.
England’s Xanadu wore the stalwart semblance of a country estate, a rambling pile of no particular distinction, surrounded by a high wall. The road from Cambridge wound towards it, walled likewise in hedges taller than a rider’s head.
The carriage that rattled between the hedges in the long light of the summer evening was dark, discreet, and drawn by a pair of sturdy blacks. Its like came down this road several times in a day, presented itself at the gate and spoke the words that granted entrance.
The gate, which seemed a structure of mortared stone and wrought iron, was in truth a mechanical. It replied to the coachman in soft, cultured tones reminiscent of Belgrave Square. “Monsieur de Ratisbon, escorting the Rani of Majipur. Welcome.”
The Rani of Majipur did not fret. Fretting was beneath her. The air inside the carriage was close and still, thick with the fragrance of patchouli and sandalwood. Her slender hennaed hands were folded in her lap amid the gold and crimson silks. She schooled her breath to come regularly and slowly.
There was still, well beneath the surface, a flutter of — apprehension? Anticipation? Excitement?
Ratisbon had assured her that her bona fides was assured, and her pretended rank and alleged wealth thoroughly vouched for through Lady Jocasta’s good offices. She would not be called out for a fraud.
In her judgement, she could trust Ratisbon. Judgement could fail; Ratisbon could be inclined to betray her, or at the least to abandon her and continue the hunt on his own. His intelligence of this place could have failed, or its ways changed, or...
Enough, she thought. She had gambled on this one perilous throw. She was to create a diversion; to provide opportunity for Ratisbon to discover what he might while the inhabitants of the house exercised themselves to please a royal guest.
That was her duty and her pleasure. She
would see it through to its end.
As the carriage rolled through the gate, she raised her chin. She was, after all, a Queen.
As nondescript as Xanadu was to the passing eye, its interior was a haven of surpassing elegance. Emma had rather expected the excess of the seraglio, but the public portions of the house were decorated with exquisite and subtle taste.
The butler who ushered her into a small yet perfectly appointed salon was human, although the maid who served her a light collation of tea and cakes was not. The automaton was of the highest quality, its movements as smooth almost as a natural creature’s, and its face was capable of some small range of movement: the lifting of the brows, the stretching of the lips into an approximation of a smile. Still it was indubitably mechanical, no more or less finely wrought than any wealthy house might boast.
Emma arranged herself on a settee of polished mahogany and emerald velvet, which set off her crimson saree admirably. The tea was milky and sweet, which was not to her taste. The cakes were exceptional; someone here had mastered the French art of pastry.
In her own persona she would have devoured the plateful, for she had been too preoccupied with preparations to dine, but the Rani of Majipur was a delicate creature. She nibbled the edge of a single madeleine and set it aside with a world-weary sigh; she took one sip of the tea and turned her face away. She folded her hands in her lap as she had in the carriage, composed her face and body in the manner of the Eastern sages, and set herself to wait.
She was motionless, but her mind and her eyes were not. She took notice of every detail of that room, the placement of each furnishing, the paintings on the walls, the carpets on the floor. Any one or all of them might conceal watchful eyes — either human or mechanical.
She gave them nothing whatsoever to observe, except stillness. The walls were thick, for she heard nothing beyond them. Within, there was only the soft, regular sigh of her breathing, and the ticking of the gilded clock on the mantel.
Half an hour passed. The maid came to remove the scarcely touched plate and the tea service. As its black-clad form vanished through the rear door, the one through which Emma had entered swung gently open.
At the first soft click of the door’s latch, she coiled within, ready to leap. If Ratisbon had been discovered — if her deception had been unmasked —
A woman glided into the room. Her features were flawless, her gait supernaturally smooth, but no automaton yet created could imitate the breath that lifted her bosom or the expression that animated her face. She was smiling, and her eyes though sharp with curiosity were brimming with human warmth.
“Your highness,” she said. “I welcome you to Xanadu. I am called Mistress Artemisia; I shall be your guide. Follow me, if you please.”
Emma sighed. She sat up languidly, trailing silks and the scent of musk. “I waited,” she said in the accent of a certain province in eastern India, “so long. Is it your custom here in this barbarous country to leave a Queen alone, all unattended? To come here in such a way — such a game; so wicked, is that your word? But now I am here, and still am forced to solitude.”
Mistress Artemisia’s glance barely flickered; her smile wavered not at all. “Ah, your highness, but is that not a singular road to ecstasy? If one suffers discomfort and even pain, the pleasure thereafter is all the stronger. To the lonely spirit, what can be sweeter than true companionship?”
“I do dream of that,” Emma said. “And yet, if that companionship is merely mechanical, how true can it be?”
Mistress Artemisia’s smile deepened; laughter woke in her eyes. “Come with me and see.”
Emma wanted nothing more than to do that. Because, for this hour, she was the Rani of Majipur, she drew her painted brows together. “Am I not the daughter of a king? Will it not come to me?”
“Does a king in your country summon his sweet companions to him? Or does he, of his grace, condescend to visit them?”
Emma smiled inwardly. This was a woman of quick wit and no little experience of royalty. Emma shrugged with a hint of pique, and rose with the air of one who is compelled to humour one’s inferiors. “Lead me, then. Show me this marvel that is whispered of where the wise and the unwise gather.”
Mistress Artemisia dipped a curtsey, and said, “Come.”
They left the room through the rear door, down a lamplit passageway and up a discreet stair. It was narrow, like a servant’s stair, but thickly carpeted. They passed in a whisper of skirts, with no sound of footsteps.
Emma was calm and keenly alert. Although there was nothing on her person that an uneducated eye might recognise as a weapon, she had her hands and her feet, the silken cords woven in her hair, the pins that secured her veil, and the veil itself with the golden pomegranates hanging heavy from its corners. She was as deadly as she had need to be.
Mistress Artemisia led her up three steep flights. Each landing was barred by a door: the first of red oak, the second of mahogany, the third and last of night-black ebony.
There was no latch or bar on that door. It opened silently before Mistress Artemisia.
The passage beyond was ivory and ebony: Ceiling of ivory crossed with beams of ebony. Walls of ivory silk brocade. A parquet of marble in a pattern of ebony and ivory.
The air was starkly clean. It smelled of winter, of new snow and cheek-numbing cold. Nonetheless it was no cooler than it should be in an English summer, though that was wintry enough by the measure of India.
Very little ever surprised Emma, but this raised her brows somewhat. The mind that had conceived this place was of a most unusual bent. It was not, she suspected, Sir Willoughby’s. His art was of a different nature, tending more towards the mechanical than the architectural.
Mistress Artemisia glided down the long hallway. Her passage was silent even yet, though Emma’s feet in silken slippers whispered on the marble floor. She turned towards none of the doors that lined the passage.
At the end was another door, again of ebony. The rest had been starkly plain. This seemed so until Emma stood in front of it. Then she saw the subtle graining of the wood, and realised that it transcribed a swirl of images.
A wood by night, faintly illumined by starlight; a hint of shapes, human and animal. In the heart of them lay a face limned more in shadow than in light.
She had little time to study it: the doors had already begun to part. She committed as much of it to memory as she could: a curve of cheek, of lips, a pair of eyes wide set and seeming to look deep into her own.
There could not be a soul in those eyes.
Terrible enough that an automaton could be ensouled. If an immortal soul could be trapped within the very walls one lived in, then nothing in the world was safe, and no soul could truly escape.
Emma shook off the chill of the thought. The door was open. Beyond lay a wide circular chamber like the chapter house of a cathedral. Its roof soared upward in Gothic splendour. Its floor like that without was parti-coloured black and white.
Here a central boss of pure white marble fanned into rays of ebony and ivory. Each ray culminated in a bay of carved stone. A canopied seat, likewise of stone, rested within.
In each seat, with the stillness of statuary, sat a figure. Here at last Emma recognised Sir Willoughby’s handiwork. She counted seven and twenty, three times three times three.
They were truly marvellously wrought. Not all partook of the Classical canons, though there were Adonises and Helens and dark-eyed witty Thaïses enough. She saw several that would hardly have looked amiss in the Rani’s palace; several more whose countenances bespoke the beauties of China and the even more distant East; Red Indians of the Americas, and full-lipped dark faces that Ratisbon would have found familiar.
All the world of human beauty seemed gathered here, male and female in equal measure — all but the last. That one, seated opposite the door, wore a face out of old Egypt. Its skin was ivory; its brows and the plaited locks of its hair were ebony, its long eyes painted dark with kohl.
; At first she took it for the likeness of a female. The fullness of the cheeks and chin, the delicate curve of its mouth, had little in them of the male. And yet — and yet...Its shoulders were wide, its hips narrow. The hands that rested on its thighs were long-fingered and elegant, but with a suggestion of manly strength.
“Ah,” said Mistress Artemisia beside Emma. “A most interesting choice.”
Emma opened her mouth to deny that she had chosen. But the words never left her lips. She was here not for pleasure but for a dark and serious purpose. In her fascination with this place, she had nearly forgotten it.
She bent her head regally. “It will do,” she said. “Does it talk? Walk? Dance? What are its uses?”
The eidolon stirred. The effect was subtly disturbing, as if a graven image had come to life. It opened eyes of ebony set in ivory, and rose with a dancer’s studied grace. “I do whatever you wish, Highness,” it said.
Even its voice hovered between genders: deep for a woman’s, light and melodious for a man’s. It was a near match for Emma’s height: tall if it was female, middling if it were male. The long robe of pale silk that covered it betrayed little that would resolve the question.
And why should it? It was a machine. It had no gender but what its maker chose to impose upon it.
Emma gathered her wits before they scattered too perilously far. She had agreed with Ratisbon to linger at least until the sun had set. That was, by the light that slanted through high louvered windows, another hour or slightly more.
In the person of the Rani of Majipur, she leaned towards the eidolon, running a long, gilded nail down its flawless ivory cheek. If that cheek had been flesh, the skin would have parted and the blood sprung forth. This, whatever it was made of, did not even show the mark.
She drew back. Her lip curled. “Pretty,” she said to Mistress Artemisia, “but false. Have you nothing more convincing?”
Mistress Artemisia waved the eidolon back to its niche. As it retreated, its features showed a subtly disturbing hint of disappointment.
The Shadow Conspiracy II Page 6