He entered the second and last car, which was more crowded, with each compartment occupied, but none by Miss Temple. He stood at the end of the corridor and sighed. It seemed a futile errand—should he get off the train? He went back to the conductor, who watched him approach with a reptilian expression of cold dislike. Svenson screwed in his monocle and smiled politely.
“Excuse me. I am taking this train to Tarr Village, and had hoped to meet an acquaintance. Is it possible they could have taken an earlier train?”
“Of course it’s possible,” the conductor spat.
“I am not clear. What I mean to ask is when was the last train, the previous train, which my acquaintance might have taken?”
“2:52,” he spat again.
“That is but ten minutes before this one.”
“I see you’re a professor of mathematics.”
Svenson smiled patiently. “So another train stopping at Tarr Village left as recently as that?”
“As I have said, yes. Was there anything else?”
Svenson ignored him, weighing his choices. It was possible, if her coach had made good time, that Miss Temple could have caught the 2:52. If that were so, then he needed to follow her on this train, with hope to catch her at the Tarr Village station. But if she hadn’t come here at all—if she were still in town—he should go to Roger Bascombe’s house, or to the Ministry, to do what he could to help Chang. The conductor watched his indecision with evident pleasure.
“Sir?”
“Yes, thank you. I shall require information about my return tomorrow—”
“Best to get that from the station master himself, I usually find.”
“The Tarr Village station master?”
“Exactly so.”
“Then that is excellent. Thank you.”
Svenson wheeled and strode down the corridor toward the second car, the conductor audibly snorting behind him. He was hardly confident in his choice, but if there was even a chance she’d come this way, he needed to follow. He could ask for her at the station—they would have to notice her—and if she had not appeared, take the next train directly back. At most it would be only a few hours’ delay. And at the worst, he would still find Chang at Stropping the next morning—if he was lucky, with Miss Temple on his arm.
He glanced into the first compartment and saw it held a man and a woman, sitting next to each other on one side. As the opposite row of seats was empty, he pulled the door open, nodded to them, and installed himself by the window. He slipped the monocle into his pocket and rubbed his eyes. He had not slept above two hours. His heavy mood was now compounded by the likely pointless nature of his journey, and a vague gloomy disapproval of the reckless danger Miss Temple had thrown herself—indeed, all of them—into without any larger plan or understanding. He wondered when their descriptions would be given to the constabulary. Was this Cabal so confident as to involve the power of the law? He scoffed—for all practical purposes they were the law…Crabbé had a regiment at his call, Blach had his troopers…Svenson could only hope that a train to the country would take him free of their immediate influence. The whistle blew and the train began to move.
It took perhaps a minute to clear the station and enter a tunnel. Once they emerged into a narrow trough of soot-stained brick buildings, Svenson availed himself of the opportunity to examine his traveling companions. The woman was young, perhaps even younger than Miss Temple, her hair the color of pale beer, stuffed under a blue silk bonnet. Her skin was white and her cheeks pink—she could have been from Macklenburg—and her slightly plump fingers held a black volume tightly in her lap. He smiled at her. Instead of returning the smile, she whipped her eyes to the man, who in turn gazed at Doctor Svenson with a glaring suspicion. He was also fair—Svenson wondered if they could be siblings—and had the antic, rawboned look of an underfed horse. His arms were long and his hands large, gripping his knees. He wore a brown striped suit and a cream-colored cravat. On the seat next to him he had placed a tall brown beaver hat. Svenson could not help noticing, as the man studied him openly, that the fellow’s complexion was poor and there were circles under his eyes—most probably from self-abuse.
As someone who was generally tolerant and at least conversationally kind, it took Doctor Svenson a moment to realize that the pair stared at him with unfeigned hatred. He glanced again at their faces and was confident that he had never before made their acquaintance…could it be merely that his presence interrupted their privacy? Perhaps the fellow had planned to propose? Or perhaps an explanation more louche…in Venice he’d once bought a battered volume of lurid stories celebrating the physical pleasures associated with different modes of transport—trains, ships, horse-carts, horseback, dirigibles—and despite his fatigue he was just recalling the particular details of a caravan of camels (something about the unique rhythm of that animal’s gait…) when the young woman across from him snapped open her book and began to read aloud.
“In the time of redeeming the righteous shall be even as lanterns in the night, for by their light will be told the faithless from the true. Look well into the hearts of those around you and traffic only with the holy, for the cities of the world are realms of living sin, and shall suffer in reclamation the scouring of the Lord. Corrupted vessels shall be smashed. The unclean house will be burned. The tainted beasts will be put to slaughter. Only the blessed, who have already opened themselves to purifying flame, shall survive. It is they who shall re-make the world a Paradise.”
She closed the book and, once more holding it tightly with both hands, looked at the Doctor with narrowed disapproving eyes. Her voice, which held all the charm of broken crockery, made it that much easier for him to now see the signs of rigid stupidity in her features, where before he had been willing to assume a neutral bovine placidity. Her companion was gripping his knees even more tightly, as if to release them would be cause for damnation. Svenson sighed—he really could not help himself—but in this mood he could not be fully answerable.
“What a gratifying homily,” he began. “Yet…when you say Paradise”—the woman’s mouth pursed with shock that he could presume to answer—
“would that refer back to the conditions of life before the Fall, when shame was unknown and the course of desire without stain? That would be exquisite. It has always seemed a cunning part of God’s wisdom that he offers to each of us who are saved the innocence and joy of beasts rutting in the road—or, who knows, in a train car. The point, of course, being the purity of experience. I thank the Lord each minute of the day. I could not agree with you more.”
He reached in his pocket for another cigarette. They did not answer, though he noted with some satisfaction their eyes had widened with discomfort. He replaced his monocle and nodded. “I do beg your pardon…” and made his way to the corridor.
Once there Svenson found a match and lit his cigarette, breathing deeply and attempting to gather his scattered mind after this ridiculous interruption. The train was racing north, the trackside lined with hovels and debris and tattered stunted trees. He could see clustered figures around cooking fires, and ragged children running, followed by excited dogs. Moments later these were gone and the train shot through a luxuriant royal park, then past a small square of white stone monuments that reminded him of France. He exhaled, blowing smoke against the glass, and noted the differences between traveling by land and by sea—the relative density and variety of spectacle one saw on the land versus the sparse nature of even the richest seascape. It was an irony, he noted, that the relative plenty of the land absolved him of thought—he was content to watch it flow by—whereas the sameness of the sea drove him inward. Life on land—though he welcomed it, in some northern sort of self-criticism—struck him as somehow lazy and distracted from the higher goals of ethical scrutiny, of philosophical contemplation that the sea enforced upon a man. The couple in the compartment—apes, really—were a perfect example of land-bound self-satisfaction. His mind drifted painfully to Corinna, and her life i
n the country—though she had read so voraciously that it seemed to him she carried an ocean in her mind—for they had spoken of this very thing…she had always promised to visit him and sail…Doctor Svenson pushed his thoughts elsewhere, to Miss Temple. He reflected that her own experience of the sea, on an island and on her passage over, must inform the part of her character he found most remarkable.
He forced himself to walk down the corridor, glancing again into the compartments—perhaps there was a more hospitable place for him to sit. The other passengers certainly represented a variety—merchants and their wives, a party of students, laborers, and several better-dressed men and women that Svenson did not recognize, but could not help (for such was the world of Lacquer-Sforza, Xonck, and d’Orkancz) but view with great suspicion. What was more, it seemed that in every compartment there were couples of men and women—sometimes more than one—but never another single traveler, except possibly in one compartment, which held a single man and woman, sitting on opposite sides and apparently not speaking to each other. Svenson crushed his cigarette on the corridor floor and entered their compartment, nodding as each looked up at the sound.
Both were in the window seats of their respective row, so Doctor Svenson installed himself on the man’s side, nearest the door. Upon sitting he was at once markedly aware of his fatigue. He removed his monocle, rubbed his eyes with a forefinger and thumb, and replaced it, blinking like a dazed lizard. The man and woman were looking at him discreetly, not with the hostility of the couple in the first compartment, but rather with the mild civilized rebuke of suspicion that is natural when one’s relative solitude on public transport has been disturbed by a stranger. Svenson smiled deferentially and asked, by way of a conversational olive branch, if they were familiar with the Floodmaere line.
“Specifically,” he added, “if you might know the distance to Tarr Village, and the number of stops in between.”
“You are bound for Tarr Village?” asked the man. He was perhaps thirty and wore a crisp suit of indifferent quality, as if he were clerk to a lawyer of middling importance. His black hair was parted in the center and plastered flat to either side, the rigid grooves from his comb revealing furrows of pale flaking scalp contrasting with the flushed pink of his face. Was it hot in the compartment? Svenson did not think so. He turned to the woman, a lady of perhaps his own age, her brown hair braided into a tight bun behind her head. Her dress was simple but well-made—governess to some high-placed brats?—and she wore her age with a handsome frankness Svenson found immediately compelling. Where were his thoughts? First Corinna, then Miss Temple, the rutting dogs of Paradise, now he was ogling every woman he saw—and the Doctor chided himself for, even within that moment, examining the tightly bound swell of her bosom. And then in that same instant, he looked at the woman and felt a vague prick of recognition. Had he met her before? He cleared his throat and answered briskly.
“Indeed, though I have never been before.”
“What draws you there, Mr….?” The woman smiled politely. Svenson returned the smile with pleasure—he’d no idea where he might have seen her, perhaps in the street, perhaps even just then in the station—and opened his mouth to reply. In that very moment, when he felt it was just possible for his heavy mood to shift, his eyes took in the black leather volume she held in her lap. He glanced at the man. He had one as well, poking out from the side pocket of his coat. Was this a train of Puritans?
“Blach—Captain Blach. You will know from my accent that I am not from this land, but indeed, the Duchy of Macklenburg. You may have read of the Macklenburg Crown Prince’s engagement to Miss Lydia Vandaariff—I am attached to Prince Karl-Horst’s party.”
The man nodded in understanding—the woman did not seem to Svenson to react at all, her face maintaining its friendly cast while her mind seemed to work behind it. What could that mean? What might either of them know? Doctor Svenson decided to investigate. He leaned forward conspiratorially and dropped his voice.
“And what draws me are dire events…dire events in the world—I’m sure I have no need to elaborate. The cities of the world…well, they are realms of living sin. Who indeed shall be redeemed?”
“Who indeed?” echoed the woman quietly, with a certain deliberate care.
“I was traveling with a woman,” Svenson went on. “I was prevented—perhaps I should say no more about her—from meeting this lady. I believe she may have been forced to take an earlier train. In the process, I was deprived of my”—he nodded to the book in the woman’s lap—“that is, my guide.”
Was this too thick? Doctor Svenson felt ridiculous, but was met by the man shifting his position to face him fully, leaning forward in earnest concern.
“Prevented how? And by whom?”
This type of intrigue—play-acting and lies—was still awkward for Doctor Svenson. Even in his work for Baron von Hoern, he preferred discretion and leverage and tact over any outright dissembling. Yet, faced with the man’s open desire for more information, he had—as a doctor—enough experience with conjuring credible authority when he felt helpless and ignorant (how many doomed men had asked him if they were going to die? To how many had he lied?) to frame his immediate hesitation—trying to think of something—as the troubled moment of choice where he decided to trust them with his tale. He glanced at the corridor and then leaned forward in his turn, as if to imply that perhaps their compartment alone was safe, and spoke just above a whisper.
“You must know that several men have died, and perhaps a woman. A league has been organized, working in the shadows, led by a strange man in red, a half-blind Chinaman, deadly with a blade. The Prince was attacked at the Royal Institute, the powerful work there disrupted…the glass…do you know…have you seen…the blue glass?”
They shook their heads. Svenson’s heart sank. Had he completely misjudged them?
“You do know of Lord Tarr…that he—”
The man nodded vigorously. “Has been redeemed, yes.”
“Exactly.” Svenson nodded, more confident again—but was the man insane? “There will be a new Lord Tarr within days. The nephew. He is a friend of the Prince…a friend to us all—”
“Who prevented you from meeting your lady?” the woman asked, somewhat insistently. The nagging sense he had seen her persisted…something about the slight tilt of her head when she asked a question.
“Agents of the Chinaman,” Svenson answered, feeling an idiot even as he said the words. “We were forced to take separate coaches. I pray she is safe. These men have no decency. We were—as you well know—to travel together—as arranged…”
“To Tarr Village?” asked the man.
“Exactly.”
“Could any of these agents have boarded the train?” the woman asked.
“I do not believe so. I did not see them—I believe I was the last to board.”
“That is good at least.” She sighed with a certain small relief, but did not relax her shoulders, nor her cautious gaze.
“How should we know these agents?” asked the man.
“That is just the thing—they have no uniform, save duplicity and cunning. They have penetrated even to the Prince’s party and turned one of our number to their cause—Doctor Svenson, the Prince’s own physician!”
The man inhaled through his teeth, a disapproving hiss.
“I am telling you,” Svenson went on, “but I fear no one else should know—it may be all is fine, and I should hesitate to agitate—or, that is, make public—”
“Of course not,” she agreed.
“Not even to…?” the man began.
“Who?” asked Svenson.
The man shook his head. “No, you are right. We have been invited—we are guests, after all, guests to a banquet.” With this he smiled again, shaking off the Doctor’s tale of dread. His hand went to the book in his pocket and patted it absently, as if it were a sleeping puppy. “You look very tired, you know, Captain Blach,” he said kindly. “There will be time enough to find y
our friend. Tarr Village is at least another hour and a half away. Why not rest? We will all need our strength for the climb.”
Svenson wondered what he meant—the quarry? The hills? Could it mean the manor house? Svenson could not say, and he was exhausted. He needed to sleep. Was he safe with them? The woman interrupted his thoughts.
“What is your lady’s name, Captain?”
“Beg pardon?”
“Your friend. You did not say her name.”
Svenson caught a worried glance from the man to the woman, though her face remained open and friendly. Something was wrong.
“Her name?”
“You did not say what it was.”
“No, you didn’t,” confirmed the man, somewhat after the fact and a touch more insistent for it, as if he’d been caught out.
“Ah. But you see…I do not know it. I only know her clothes—a green dress with green shoes. We were to meet and travel together. Why…did you know each other’s name before this journey?”
She did not immediately answer. When the man answered for her, he knew he had guessed correctly. “We do not know each other’s names even now, Captain, as we were indeed instructed.”
“Now you really should rest,” the woman said, genuinely smiling for perhaps the first time. “I promise we will wake you.”
Within his dream, a part of Doctor Svenson’s mind was aware that he’d not had a regular stretch of sleep in at least two days, and so expected turbulent visions. This sliver of rational distance might contradict but did not alter the successive waves of vivid engagement thrust upon him. He knew the visions were fed by his feelings of loss and isolation—more than anything by his helplessness in the face of Corinna’s death and then his own chronic reticence and cowardice in life—and then all of this regret swirling together with a world of cruelly unquenched desire for other women. Was it merely that, so exhausted, even in sleep, his guard was so much lowered? Or was it, could he admit, that his feelings of guilt provoked in turn a secret pleasure in the act of dreaming with such erotic fervor in an open train compartment? What he knew was the deep warm embrace of sleep, twisting effortlessly in his mind into the embrace of pale soft arms and sweet caressing fingers. He felt as if his body were refracted in a jewel, seeing—and feeling—multiple instances of himself in hopelessly delicious circumstances…Mrs. Marchmoor stroking him under a table…Miss Poole with her tongue in his ear…his nose buried in Rosamonde’s hair, inhaling her perfume…on his hands and knees on the bed, licking each circular indentation on the luscious flesh of the bed-ridden Angelique…his hands—O shamefully!—cupping Miss Temple’s buttocks beneath her dress…his eyes closed, nursing tenderly, hungrily, at the bared breast of the brown-haired governess, who had moved to sit next to him, to ease his torment, offering herself to his lips…the incomparably soft sweet pillow of flesh…her other hand stroking his hair…whispering to him gently…shaking his shoulder.
Glass Books of the Dream Eaters Page 41