‘What answer?’ Chang gazed coldly at Piersohn, who stood behind his desk. The Doctor was short and barrel-chested. His protuberant eyes were ringed with the faintest excrescence of dried plum: the fading scars of the Process. Piersohn’s thick hair matched the surgical coat he wore over a patterned waistcoat, and shone with pomade. His hands were chapped like a laundress’s. Chang wondered what sort of practice Piersohn actually pursued.
‘To Robert Vandaariff, of course,’ replied the Contessa. ‘He has offered an exchange, and I must decide how best to prepare the one sent.’
‘Prepare for what?’
‘For God’s sake – will you take off your coat at least? I promise you I have seen a man in his shirtsleeves and will not faint.’
Chang began to undo the red silk buttons of the cleric’s coat. He glanced at Pfaff, measuring the distance between them. The Doctor, behind the desk, could be discounted, and the Contessa had made the mistake of sitting down. The dagger cane would be an unfamiliar weapon to Pfaff, and, once Chang’s coat was off – their request put his best weapon straight in hand – it would be a moment’s work to whip it across Pfaff’s eyes and step past the blade. Two swift blows and Pfaff would be down. Chang did not even need to recover the dagger. He could snatch up an end table and dash out the Contessa’s brains.
He slipped off the scarlet coat and took casual hold of the collar. ‘If you hope to exchange me, may I ask what you will receive in trade?’
The Contessa blew smoke at the ceiling. ‘Not what, but whom. I was not strictly forthcoming during our ride. Celeste Temple lives. Vandaariff has her, and offers her to me, in hopes that I will hand over Francesca Trapping. However, my intuition says he would be even more delighted to get you.’
Chang blinked behind his dark spectacles.
‘That is a lie, to make me cooperate.’
‘It is not.’
‘Why should I trust you, of all people on earth?’
‘Because our interests are one. Besides, Cardinal, can you afford not to believe me? Will you fail her yet again?’
The Contessa’s face might have been made of porcelain for all he could penetrate her thoughts. He knew she viewed his compliance with contempt.
‘Where do you gain in this? Celeste Temple is your enemy.’
‘She remains useful – providing Oskar has not too much despoiled her, of course – another reason time is of the essence. Because I will not deliver Francesca Trapping –’
‘As you’ve given her to Doctor Svenson.’
‘I have done nothing of the kind. She is quite easily recovered.’
‘You underestimate him.’
‘The question is whether I have underestimated you. If you do not choose with speed, I must refuse his offer, and Miss Temple will surely die.’
‘What would you have done had I not found you?’
‘Something else. But once you did appear, I was able to oblige everyone. Our driver has carried word to Vandaariff.’
‘Then take me to him and be done with it.’
‘I said I was obliging, not that I was stupid. Take off your shirt.’
She tapped her ash into a dish of liquorice sweets. ‘Near the base of the spine, Doctor. Any adaptation will be there.’
Chang draped his coat over a chair and set his spectacles atop it. He hauled his black shirt over his head, restored the spectacles and laid the shirt next to the coat. Piersohn had come around the desk, pulling behind him a standing tray of shining implements.
‘So many scars.’ The Contessa studied Chang’s bare torso. ‘Like one of Oskar’s paintings. Sigils, he calls them – as if some ancient, lost god has scratched its name on your flesh. Isn’t that a charming thought, Cardinal, fit for poetry?’
‘Fit for a graveyard,’ said Pfaff. He aimed the stick at a line along Chang’s ribcage. ‘How’d you get that one?’
‘Do you mind, sir?’ snapped Piersohn, waving the stick away.
Pfaff only lifted it out of reach and then, as soon as the Doctor’s attention returned to his tools, darted it forward, tapping Chang’s scar. Chang snatched at the haft, but Pfaff, laughing, was too quick.
‘Please, Jack,’ the Contessa called genially. ‘The time.’
Pfaff grinned, his point made, and gave the Doctor room.
‘If you would turn, and place your hands there.’ The Doctor indicated a leather-topped table. Chang did as he was asked, leaning forward.
‘Christ in heaven!’ blurted Pfaff. ‘Is it plague?’
‘Be quiet, Jack!’ hissed the Contessa.
Chang felt the rough tips of Piersohn’s fingers palpate the perimeter of his wound.
‘The original puncture just missed the spine on one side and the kidney on the other – a shallow wound, and lucky, as the blade pulled upwards –’
‘Yes,’ the Contessa said impatiently. ‘But what has been done? That colour.’
Piersohn pressed against the object Vandaariff had placed in Chang’s body. Chang clenched his jaw, not at pain, for he felt none, but at a queasy discomfort. Each time Piersohn touched the wound, Chang sensed more clearly the piece of glass inside him. Piersohn reached to feel Chang’s forehead.
‘The inflammation,’ the Contessa asked, ‘is it sepsis or an effect of the stone?’
‘As far as I can determine, the discoloration is inert, almost a kind of stain.’ Doctor Piersohn resumed his pressure on Chang’s back. ‘Is this painful?’
‘No.’
The Contessa leant over the arm of her chair so she could see Chang’s face. ‘Did he say anything? You must tell me, Cardinal, even if you took it for nonsense –’
Chang stared at the table. He could feel the heat in his face and sweat under each eye. ‘He told me I could cut his throat in three days.’
‘What?’
‘Just that. As if it were a joke.’
‘When?’ The Contessa shot to her feet. ‘When did he say this?’
‘Three days ago. Today is the day. Believe me, I am perfectly willing to take him up on his offer –’ Chang turned at the rattle of Piersohn taking something from his tray. ‘If that man draws a drop of blood I will break his neck.’
The Contessa whispered in Piersohn’s ear, ‘Pray do not mind. He is deranged.’
‘That seems all the more reason to mind, madam.’
‘Is drawing blood strictly necessary?’
‘All manner of tests depend upon it.’
‘Derangement, Doctor, mere derangement –’
‘But what threads bind him to reason? Without knowing the programme of his new master –’
‘I have no master!’ shouted Chang.
The Contessa nodded to one of the squat bottles. ‘Very well, Doctor. Do what you can.’
The Doctor doused a ball of cotton wool from the bottle, staining it a pale orange. ‘Now, let us see. If the inflammation recedes –’
‘It won’t,’ said Chang quickly. Piersohn paused, the cotton suspended inches from Chang’s lower back. ‘Doctor Svenson attempted a similar procedure, with the same orange mineral, with drastic results.’
‘Doctor Svenson?’ asked Piersohn. ‘Who is he? Did he even know how to apply –’
The Contessa grasped the Doctor’s arm. ‘Drastic how, Cardinal?’
‘I was not in a position to take notes,’ replied Chang. ‘The inflammation deepened and spread. He also applied blue glass, with an equally dismal effect – a congestion in the lungs –’
‘An imbecile could have foreseen that,’ sniffed Piersohn.
‘Shouldn’t you cut him open?’ asked Pfaff. ‘If we want to see what it is, that’s the simplest way.’
‘Why don’t I open up your head?’ Chang growled.
‘Hush. I have an idea of my own.’ Chang felt the Contessa’s slim fingers on his spine and tensed himself. ‘Try the iron.’
Piersohn dunked another cotton ball from a second bottle. Chang inhaled sharply as it touched his wound, icy cold. He could not hear them speak for a hissi
ng in each ear. He arched his back and broke the contact.
‘A palpable reaction,’ muttered Piersohn, ‘but it fades already. Perhaps if we try the metals in sequence –’
‘What in hell are you doing?’ demanded Chang. It was as if he had returned to the table at Raaxfall.
‘Isolating the alchemical compound, of course.’
Chang flinched again. The taste of ash curled his tongue.
‘Why, look at that. Do keep going, Doctor …’
Chang shut his eyes, wanting to pull away, to thrash Pfaff to a pulp, to kick Piersohn across the room, but he did not move, knuckles whitening as he squeezed the table. Celeste Temple was alive. If he was not exchanged, there was no telling what Vandaariff would do.
The next application sent sparks across his vision. The one after that was like he’d been pricked with a hundred needles. The one following – against every bit of reason – sparked a vivid scent. Chang had lacked the ability to smell for more than ten years, but now he shook his head at the searing aroma of cordite. The next set off a fire in his loins and for the instant of contact he felt like a bull in rut, snorting air through each nostril with the shock of it. Then the cotton ball was removed and he gasped with relief, barely noting the Doctor’s procedural murmur.
‘And last of all, quicksilver …’
Each of the other applications had brought a sudden, specific reaction, but this last swallowed Chang’s senses as wholly as if his head had been forced into cold water. His bearings were lost in a swirl of visions from the Comte’s painting. His hands were black … his foot sank into the fertile earth of a new-tilled field … he was naked … he wore a swirling robe … he held a sword bright as the sun… and all around him faces, in the air like hanging lamps, people he knew – laughing, begging, bloodied – and then before him knelt the Contessa – blue teeth, one hand groping his thigh, and in the other, offered up, vivid red, visceral, oozing –
He was gasping, his face pressed into the leather table top. What had happened? What had been done to him?
‘It is the worst result,’ the Contessa was saying. ‘All tempered into one.’
‘That is impossible,’ replied Piersohn. ‘Whatever his intention, the chemical facts –’
‘A moment, Doctor.’ Chang felt her touch. ‘Are you with us, Cardinal Chang?’
‘Can you remove it?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
Chang pushed himself to his feet, and called harshly to Piersohn, ‘Can you remove it without killing me?’
Piersohn shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, whatever has been implanted, enough time has passed that the seeding –’
‘Seeding?’ Chang kicked the standing tray, crashing it back into the Doctor’s desk.
‘That is the Comte’s own term,’ protested Piersohn.
‘For what?’ shouted Chang. ‘What has he done?’
Piersohn glanced warily at the Contessa. ‘He made many notes – untested theories … a procedure for the assimilation of glass within a body.’
‘To make me his servant.’ Chang pulled his shirt over his head.
‘But are you, Cardinal?’ The Contessa waited for Chang to restore his dark spectacles. ‘Are you his creature?’
‘No more than I am yours.’
‘Exactly. But Oskar is arrogant. He will believe his magic has worked. Do you see? If you are convincing, his hopes will blind him.’
Had Vandaariff’s plan worked? What if the implanted glass was just another sort of timed device, ticking its way towards detonation? The third day was not finished. Chang thrust his arms through the cleric’s coat and began on the buttons. ‘And Celeste Temple will be freed?’
‘She will.’
‘And she is whole? Undamaged?’
‘As far as I know.’
Chang looked at Pfaff, who wore a pale expression of unease. The stick had been restored to one piece, and Chang snatched it away. He turned to the Contessa. ‘As soon as she arrives, you will deliver her to Doctor Svenson.’
‘As you wish. And once you are with Robert Vandaariff, you know what to do.’
‘Cave in his skull.’
‘With the first brick that comes to hand.’
The Contessa led Chang and Pfaff back to the arid garden square. The streets remained empty, though in the distance Chang thought the sky had darkened.
‘Is that smoke?’
The Contessa shrugged. ‘Off you go, Jack. Find me when you have finished.’
‘Finished what?’ asked Chang.
‘None of your damned business, old fellow.’ Pfaff took the Contessa’s hand, bending to kiss it. Chang could have kicked Pfaff’s head like a ball, but took the moment to glance around him … the shrubbery of the park, brick gateposts, the shadow of an ornamental column …
Pfaff straightened, lifting the Contessa’s hand to his mouth for another kiss, then turned on his heel, his orange coat-tails swinging dramatically. Chang stooped and took a stone from the gravel walkway.
‘What are you doing?’ asked the Contessa. ‘We must –’
Pfaff had gone twenty paces when Chang threw the stone, perhaps the size of a pigeon’s egg, striking square between the man’s shoulder blades. Pfaff cried out, arching his back, and wheeled round, whipping a blade from beneath his coat, his face flushed red.
‘God damn you, Chang! Damn you to hell!’
Cardinal Chang swept off an imaginary hat and waved with foppish deference. Pfaff snorted with rage and stamped across the square.
Chang straightened with a sigh. He only hoped he’d guessed correctly, and that his signal had been seen.
‘I would ask if you are always such a child,’ observed the Contessa, ‘if I did not already have the answer. A child and a bully.’
‘I would not say you are in any position to judge.’
‘On the contrary, I am expert in each field.’ The Contessa smiled broadly. ‘That is why I find you so diverting – as much as any dancing, collared bear.’
‘Even when your man takes the brunt?’
‘Tish! Mr Pfaff is his own, or at least intends to be – his skills extend only so far, of course, a fledgling peeping from the nest.’
‘He kisses your hand.’
‘A hand is easily washed.’ Chang frowned his disapproval and she laughed again. ‘O I forget myself – it is not every day I stroll with Monsignor Virtue, beside whom I am the very Whore of Babylon. Dear Cardinal, do you want to kiss my hand instead?’
He took hold of her arm. She tensed, watching, mouth just open, daring him to act, though whether in violence or passion he had no idea – did the woman even distinguish?
‘Such a shame …’ she whispered.
They stood in broad daylight at the edge of the square, yet he could no more step clear than if they were trapped in the crush of a ballroom. Chang’s voice was tight. ‘Since when did you care for shame?’
Her words remained hushed. ‘Afterwards … after you kill Vandaariff … after Miss Temple is redeemed … we must once more seek each other’s life. It seems a terrible waste … two such well-matched creatures …’
‘I am no creature, madam.’
Her eyes traced his jugular. ‘And that is why I shall win.’
They walked beneath a canopy of trees on streets bereft of traffic. The Contessa’s eyes became restless and distracted, scanning the fine house-fronts but seeing none of them.
‘Have you ever been on a ship, Cardinal Chang? On the sea?’
‘No. Have you?’
‘Of course. I’m not a peasant.’
‘I beg your pardon.’
‘But I have never sailed any distance – for weeks.’
‘Does that matter, aside from outlasting seasickness?’
‘Have you not wanted to visit Africa? China? To feel the Indian sun on your face?’
‘No.’
She sighed. ‘Neither have I.’
‘I fail to see the problem.’
‘Did you ever hear Francis Xonck sp
eak of Brasil?’
‘Once, which was enough.’
‘All Francis ever sought was excess.’
‘Are you any different?’
‘I never had to seek,’ she replied tartly.
‘Is this about Miss Temple?’ Chang asked. ‘You mention the Indies –’
‘She is from the Indies. To her, we are the Dreamland – if more vaguely apprehended. But her obvious dissatisfaction here makes my point. One avoids Africa, Cardinal, because Africa will unfailingly disappoint. New horizons are always seen through one’s old set of eyes.’
‘But you are a traveller. When were you last in Venice? Or wherever you called home?’
‘I am home every minute of the day.’
Chang bit off his reply. For the first time in his experience, the Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza was behaving like a conventionally galling woman.
‘You are frightened,’ he said.
‘Of Oskar Veilandt? Cardinal, I am tired. And hungry.’ The tone underscoring this last made perfectly clear that the Contessa was not talking of her dinner. ‘Why, are you afraid?’
‘Not for myself.’
‘Pah. You are exactly as noble as a cart-horse.’ She plucked the shoulder of Chang’s scarlet coat. ‘Did you actually murder a priest?’
‘I did not need to.’
‘Are you willing to murder Oskar?’
‘Of course.’
‘And if he promises to save your life?’
‘I would not believe him. My life is forfeit – and along with me, how many others? The city? The nation?’
‘When I am dead, Cardinal, cities and nations can go hang.’
Chang saw she was smiling and immediately became wary. ‘Have we arrived?’
‘Near enough … we are certainly observed.’
Chang saw only the same well-tended streets. ‘Observed by whom?’
‘To answer that is the reason I am here. I was not asked to accompany you – merely to deliver you to their hands.’
‘If you had simply sent me off, I might not have cooperated.’
‘If you were going to abandon Miss Temple, you would have done so earlier, when you could have pummelled Jack Pfaff raw. No, apart from the splendour of your company, I have come to see who else does Oskar’s bidding.’
‘And is this the house of someone you know?’
The Chemickal Marriage Page 27