‘Mr Harcourt? The pains – they grieve you, yes?’
‘Beg pardon, my lord –’
‘I think they must. Speak freely.’
Harcourt shuffled back a step, aware of everyone watching. ‘Perhaps, my lord – but, given the crisis, regular sleep is impossible – much less regular meals –’
Vandaariff tapped Harcourt’s forehead with a knuckled claw. ‘There. Is it not?’
Harcourt smiled awkwardly.
‘And your eyes … have you seen your eyes, Mr Harcourt?’
‘No, sir. Should I?’
‘Take off your glove.’
Chang had not noticed the gloves: a self-important prig like Harcourt would naturally wear them. Harcourt squeezed his hands together.
‘I know already that your nails are yellow, Matthew. That the cuticles bleed, that gripping a pen gives you pain.’
‘Lord Robert –’
‘Not to worry, my boy. I also know what to do about it.’
Harcourt gushed with relief. ‘Do you?’
Vandaariff drew a handkerchief and laid it on Harcourt’s open palm. Harcourt gently plucked the handkerchief apart. When a blue glass card was revealed, Harcourt went pale, licking his lips.
‘You have met such an object before.’
‘Excuse me, my lord – it is difficult – ah – it is extremely difficult –’
‘Take it up, Matthew.’
‘I dare not – I cannot – given the current –’
‘I insist.’
Harcourt’s resistance gave way and he sank his greedy gaze into the blue card’s depths. No one spoke, and after a moment, like a dog in a dream, one of Harcourt’s legs began to shake gently, heel tapping softly on the floor.
‘The Contessa has no subtlety, no art,’ Vandaariff muttered sourly. ‘Yet she is effective, and through this fool has learnt far more than I would have liked.’ He cocked his head at Phelps. ‘But I’m afraid I interrupted your conversation, Mr Foison. Do you care to continue?’
‘Not if Your Lordship wishes otherwise.’
‘They spoke together?’
‘Nothing you did not anticipate.’
‘Too much to hope.’ Vandaariff sketched a stiff bow in Phelps’s direction. ‘I thank you, sir, and regret your discomfort.’
‘Mr Phelps,’ prompted Foison. ‘Late of the Privy Council.’
‘Mr Phelps. It is a shame to make an acquaintance under such conditions.’
‘Renew an acquaintance, you mean,’ said Chang.
Vandaariff fluttered a hand near his ear, like a fop’s handkerchief. ‘I did not hear.’
‘I said you do know Mr Phelps. He was the Duke’s deputy.’ Chang called to Phelps, hoping the man had strength. ‘How many times did you visit Harschmort? A dozen?’
‘At the very least,’ Phelps muttered, rousing himself. ‘But there were also private meetings at Stäelmaere House –’
Chang nodded. ‘Perhaps Mr Foison was away on your business, my lord, but you cannot have forgotten the man who in your own chambers negotiated the Duke of Stäelmaere’s rise to power.’
‘Indeed.’ The grey tip of Vandaariff’s tongue wet his lips. ‘I have been unwell. Even now, some … memories … they elude my grasp.’
‘How do you not recall a man you’ve met above a dozen times?’
Phelps attempted to straighten himself in the chair. ‘In the gardens of Harschmort, facing the sea – Your Lordship pointed across the water, to Macklenburg –’
‘I do apologize, Mr Phelps,’ Vandaariff cut in. ‘If I have not, in our present dealings, been mindful of this past service. We need no longer trouble you.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ Phelps looked up without comprehension as Vandaariff tugged a slim leather glove onto one hand. ‘You’re setting me free?’
‘I am.’
‘My lord?’ This was Foison. ‘Without comparing the prisoners’ accounts –’
‘A question of balance, Mr Foison.’ Vandaariff dug in the pocket of his waistcoat. ‘You are not wrong – and yet, where is the right? Look at Mr Harcourt – ready to serve. Look at Chang, compelled to obey. But poor Mr Phelps …’ Vandaariff sorted what seemed like coins in his gloved palm. ‘I believe he has done all he can.’
Vandaariff raised what Chang had taken for a coin to the light – an edged disc glowing blue.
‘My lord, with respect –’
Vandaariff jabbed the disc into Phelps’s jugular, just enough to draw blood – which immediately crusted around the cut. Chang watched a vivid line crawl in both directions from the incision, up into his skull and under Phelps’s shirt, to his heart. Phelps stiffened, but no sound escaped his mouth. Vandaariff wrenched the disc free and dropped it to the floor. He ground it to powder with his shoe.
Phelps slumped, lifeless. Vandaariff took another handkerchief from his coat and blew his nose. ‘Mr Foison, inform Mr Harcourt’s companions that they must report to Lord Axewith in his stead. He is unwell.’
‘My lord.’
Foison left the room. Chang stared at Phelps’s still-open eye.
‘You gave me no choice,’ said Vandaariff. ‘And if you mention my memory again, I will shove a glass card between your teeth and force you to chew.’
With the croak of a carrion bird, Vandaariff began to softly sing.
My love is gone beneath the ground
though I was ever true
a dearer child would ne’er be found
until I first spied you …
Foison reappeared in the doorway. ‘The coaches await, my lord.’
‘Then let us be off.’ Vandaariff patted Chang on the head. ‘Everyone’s ready.’
Six
Somnambule
Chang had been right. A dusty, uniformed man leading a bedraggled child excited no comment and scarcely a glance of pity. Too much had happened to too many people. They passed bodies on carts, weeping women, men sitting stunned in the street, soldiers doing their best to clear the crowds – and it quickly became Svenson’s task to shield the girl from the devastation. Victims reared up, roused to fury by the glass embedded in their flesh, and set to attacking whoever came within reach. After the first crazed assaults, the soldiers no longer scrupled in their response, and before their eyes had clubbed a shrieking woman to the ground with their musket-butts.
Svenson took Francesca in his arms and veered into a side street, itself a crush. The people around them did not speak – their faces, drawn, bloody, streaked with ash, made plain what they too had survived. Svenson shifted his burden and winced at the pain from his injured rib, sure he could hear the click of bone against cartilage. He mumbled soothingly and caressed Francesca’s hair, and soon enough she settled into sleep, a heavy but tractable weight.
Celeste Temple was dead. Chang was determined to kill himself. Phelps and Cunsher were taken. Doctor Svenson was alone.
Or was that true? He could make no sense – no moral sense – of the encounter in the Palace. The woman had cut Elöise’s throat … still he shuddered to recall the teasing caress of her breath.
The Contessa would be his task.
He kept on, beyond the Citadel, past the University, through the ugly brick of Lime Fields. At the corner of Aachen Street he set Francesca down and as she yawned – and his arms throbbed with relief – did his best to improve their appearance, sponging soot from their faces and brushing ash from their clothes.
Aachen Street was lined with old mansions that had been subdivided into smaller townhouses, and then – fashion and fortune shifting across the town – purchased anew and grandly recombined. In the centre of the block stood one such, with a tall iron fence that had been painted green and a guardhouse next to the gate. He had not recognized the address when Francesca had said where they must go, and it took a moment even now to interpret his sense of familiarity. It was the light – he had never seen the place during the day – but how many times had he been here to collect his Prince? The Old Palace had no sign advertising itself
, but, as an exclusive brothel catering to the city’s most powerful, he did not suppose one was required.
The man in the guard box waved them away, but Francesca called out shrilly, ‘We have come to see Mrs Madelaine Kraft.’
The guard directed his gruff answer to Svenson. ‘We are not open to visitors –’
‘Mrs Kraft,’ Francesca insisted.
‘Mrs Kraft is not here.’
‘She is so.’
‘She is not well.’
‘Mrs Kraft not being well is why we must see her. We were sent.’
Svenson saw a twitch at the front window’s curtain. Before the child could speak again, he squeezed her shoulder. Francesca turned impatiently – with her pasty complexion and protuberant eyes it was the reproachful gaze of a piglet in a butcher’s window – but Svenson held his grip for silence.
‘The fact is, sir, we have walked far, through terrible disarray, with instructions to call on Mrs Kraft. If it is a mystery to you, it is also to me. I do not know who she is.’
The guard turned back to his box. ‘Then I must say good day to you –’
Svenson spoke quickly. ‘You say she is not well, good sir, but I will hazard more than that. I will hazard she has been stricken insensible.’ The guard paused. ‘Further, I will surmise that no surgeon has been able to penetrate the cause. What is more – and if I am wrong, do drive us from your door – I say that Mrs Kraft was first taken ill during a visit to Harschmort House some two months ago – and so she remains.’
The guard’s mouth had fallen open. ‘You said you did not know her.’
‘I do not. And you have kept her condition secret, yes?’
The guard nodded warily. ‘Then how – who –’
‘Permit me to introduce myself. Captain-Surgeon Abelard Svenson –’
Francesca threatened to spoil everything with an eager, dead-toothed smile. Svenson leant forward, blocking the guard’s view. ‘As the child said, we were referred. It may be I can do nothing … yet, if I can …’
A muffled thud came from the guard box, recalling the guard to his hut like a dog on its master’s lead. Francesca squeezed Svenson’s hand. The guard hurried out and unlocked the gate.
‘Quickly,’ he muttered. ‘Nothing grows in the daylight but shadows.’
Standing in the lavish parlour holding the hand of a seven-year-old girl only complicated the Doctor’s usual reaction to such establishments: disapproval of the architecture of prostitution – its tyranny, dispassion, degradation – and jealousy at his own exclusion – for his class, his poverty – from such rarified delights. Hypocrisy made both sources of discontent sting the more, but hypocrisy in matters of the heart was to Svenson no fresh wound.
The previous night’s flowers were being replaced with fresh bouquets – orange-streaked peonies and purple lilies – by a serving girl scarcely older than Francesca. Svenson wondered if she was an apprentice to the brothel, and how soon she might expect to join the ranks of the Old Palace’s wares. The little housemaid wrapped the dead flowers in her apron and gathered the bundle to her chest, but then she saw Francesca and stopped. The children stared at one another, but Francesca’s haughty gaze held firm. The housemaid dropped her eyes to the carpet, dipped once in Svenson’s direction and scurried out.
A rustle to their left revealed an alcove for coats and hats and sticks, and a pretty young woman waxing the counter-top. Before she could ask for their coats, Svenson shook his head.
‘We are here for Mrs Kraft.’
The young woman nodded across the parlour, where another guard – despite his lack of uniform, there could be no other term – stood at a wooden rostrum. This second guard did not stir. After a lingering moment (during which, stupid from lack of sleep, Svenson could not recall if the twitching curtain had been from this level or the floor above), a thump echoed behind the rostrum, the exact sound that had come from the guard box. Svenson saw a pair of brass pipes bolted to the wall: pneumatic message tubes, allowing swift communication throughout the house. The shocking expense of such a system spoke to the brothel’s prodigious backing.
The guard fished a scrap of green paper from a leather-wrapped tube.
‘You’re to be taken to Mr Mahmoud.’
‘I’ll do it, Henry.’ The pretty coat clerk had already slipped from her alcove. ‘You’re not to leave the front, and I can be back in five minutes.’
‘Make sure it is five minutes, Alice. No roaming off.’
‘And why should I do that?’
‘Mr Gorine’s instructions –’
‘Are exactly why you need to stay in the front. Now come with me, pet.’
She looked kindly at Francesca, her expression catching only briefly at the sight of the girl’s sickly features, and led them out. Alice’s hair had been pinned, but along her nape Svenson noticed a row of dense curls. She glanced back and nearly caught his stare.
‘I’ve never been in the office myself. No one goes in the office, except Mr Gorine and Mr Mahmoud.’
‘And who are they, pray?’
‘Well, who are you, if you don’t know that?’
They passed into an oval room. Come the night, it would be filled with exquisitely painted women – and painted boys – from which a visitor might choose. Now the only occupants were two women in their shifts, playing cards on a cushion between them, with a third, distressingly young, perched on an ottoman with a box of sweets.
Alice peered at Svenson, waiting for an answer. He stammered, too struck by the contrast between the gaily painted faces and, in flat daylight, the too-pale bodies.
‘I’m sorry – I – I am no one at all.’
‘Then who is she?’ Alice winked at Francesca. Before Svenson could intervene, the child piped up, her voice disagreeably hoarse.
‘I am Francesca Trapping. I am the oldest surviving Xonck. I will inherit the entire Xonck empire because my brothers are fools.’
Svenson squeezed her hand. ‘I am sure Mrs Kraft must not be kept waiting –’
One of the card-playing women stifled a laugh. ‘Mrs Kraft?’
‘We have been sent,’ said Francesca.
The girl on the ottoman spoke around the nougat in her teeth. ‘Well, no reason to hurry on her account …’
‘And why would the likes of you see her?’ called the card-player.
‘That is a secret.’
‘A very important secret, to be kept by such a pair of beggars.’
‘We are nothing of the kind!’ Francesca cried. ‘But you’re a dirty thing. You’re a pig’s trough with a week of sloppings.’
Svenson seized the girl and marched for the far door, driving their guide before him.
‘Surviving Xonck?’ called an angry voice. ‘That one looks like pickled fish on a plate!’
Francesca squirmed in his arms. ‘Let me down.’
‘You must hold your tongue.’
Tears had broken down the child’s cheeks and her words burst out in gasps: ‘But she is dirty. Her name is Ginny – she does wicked things! She did them with your prince!’
‘My prince?’
‘I know all sorts of things. He was dreadful!’
Svenson went cold in shock and the girl wriggled free. The Comte’s book – she was a child. He went to one knee. ‘Francesca, you poor thing –’
Francesca tossed her head. ‘I am not. Stand up.’
But their guide’s face had gone pale. ‘Her name is Ginny. How did she know that?’
Svenson impulsively took Alice’s hand. ‘You can see the girl is ill. The situation is delicate – she is the heir of Henry Xonck. Both of her parents have died –’
‘Died how?’
He turned. They stood in a long, expensively papered corridor, and another party had appeared at its far end, foremost a soldier whose blue jacket was rigid with gold brocade. Alice sank into a fearful curtsy.
‘Colonel Bronque …’
The Colonel paid them no more heed than a hat stand, striding past. B
ehind Bronque came a small, stout figure with a foreign-looking goatee, wire-rim spectacles and pearl-grey gloves. His clothes were well tailored but nondescript. Svenson’s impression of familiarity was echoed by the man’s own surreptitious glance at the Doctor. The man vanished round the corner.
‘Forgive me, Alice, but have these gentlemen called upon your premises so early in the day, or do they depart after spending the night?’
‘I’m sure I don’t know, sir.’ Her words were hushed and chastened.
‘But you knew the Colonel. You must know the gentleman with him.’
‘I’m sure I couldn’t say.’
‘Of course – the first rule of trust is discretion. But if I were to ask you instead –’
She only bobbed another abject curtsy and hurried on.
Alice rapped four times upon a door sheathed in bright steel. A narrow viewing window was pulled back and then slid home just as fast. The door was opened by a muscular man with skin the colour of cherrywood. Her desire for diversion wholly extinguished, Alice dipped again and then fled down the corridor. The large hand that waved them into the room held a revolver whose oiled barrel seemed like a sixth finger.
This was quite obviously a room of business – ledgers, blotters, notebooks, strong box, and a large abacus bolted to a table. Gleaming pipes ran down from the ceiling to another station for the pneumatic system. As Svenson watched, a leather tube rocketed into the padded receiving chamber. The dark man ignored it. Svenson cleared his throat.
‘You must be Mr Mahmoud –’
‘A message came, we should expect you.’ For such a large man, his voice was delicate, as sleek as an oboe, but the words were charged. ‘And now you’re here.’ Mahmoud nodded coldly to a door on the far side of the office. ‘So. Go see for yourself.’
Svenson released Francesca and the child tore off for the inner door. But at the threshold she stopped still, face frozen with wonder.
‘O Doctor … she looks like a queen.’
He hurried to look. A woman lay on a chaise-longue, draped in silks, eyes closed, hands clasped below her bosom.
‘Stay here, Francesca – do not move.’ At the sharpness of his tone, the child obeyed.
The Chemickal Marriage Page 29