The Chemickal Marriage

by Gordon Dahlquist

  Wordlessly, but in Trooste’s plain view, Mahmoud passed her a short knife in a leather sheath. She gripped it with a turn of her wrist, so it appeared for all the world a folded fan. Mahmoud opened the door and ducked behind.

  The light hit Trooste and Mrs Kraft and for a moment neither moved.

  ‘Lord above,’ Trooste gasped. ‘My lodgings … my writings – O heaven!’

  Trooste ran. Both Svenson and Mahmoud snatched after him, but Mrs Kraft blocked them with her arm. ‘Let him go – look!’

  Before their eyes an entire wing of the Institute stood shrouded in smoke and, licking from the billowing curtain, bright tongues of flame. Svenson shared a guilt-stricken glance with Mahmoud – how could this have come from their diversion of smoke? – but then a spatter of gunshots seized their attention. Trooste had been seen, and he shrieked as the grass around him kicked up in clumps. Hands over his head, the Professor reached the cover of an oak tree. Svenson saw sentries silhouetted above the gate – but who had given the order to fire, inside the courtyard, at a man they must recognize?

  His eyes dropped to the gate itself. The iron portcullis had come down, and bodies littered the ground under the stone archway … what struggle had forced the guards to seal the way? Were these people from the town?

  Mahmoud shook Svenson’s arm. ‘Listen!’

  He heard nothing save the shouts of the men attempting to quell the fire – a poor handful, and all from the Institute, but the blaze had grown well beyond their ability. He saw men trapped by flames, others burdened with possessions, unsure where to flee. Still more huddled in the courtyard, like Trooste, unable to move for fear of rifle fire. A few sharpshooters aimed at them, but most faced the other direction, to the street … and then Svenson heard what Mahmoud had, beyond the walls, another roar to echo the inferno – a mob outside the gate! They had attempted to storm the Institute! Had the fire spread through the district?

  A bullet chipped the brick above Svenson’s head. They had been seen at last. Svenson plunged forward, Francesca in his arms.

  ‘We will be trapped! Hurry!’

  He cut to his left, tight against the curving brick, away from the snipers. A moment later Mahmoud and Mrs Kraft were there.

  ‘I do not understand,’ she gasped, out of breath. ‘They have been ordered to keep people in as much as keep them out!’

  A portion of the burning wing collapsed in a shower of sparks. Fresh jets of flame rose through the open hole.

  ‘The Institute will burn!’ Mahmoud cried. ‘And every neighbouring building …’

  ‘We must get out,’ Mrs Kraft shouted. ‘My people – I must know they are safe.’

  A ricochet sent them further along the wall – at least one sniper had shifted for a better shot. Svenson saw Trooste dash from his refuge and into a gap in the wall. He boldly plunged after, Francesca bouncing in his arms. If anyone knew their way to a bolt-hole, it would be a conniving fellow like Trooste.

  Bullets cracked through the branches over his head, but – perhaps due to the rising smoke – nothing found its mark and he reached the gap in the wall. Trooste had vanished, but the door he’d gone through hung open. Svenson charged on, into chaos: black-robed scholars fleeing with boxes, satchels, specimen cases. Svenson glimpsed Trooste through the mob and pressed after him, against the tide.

  Mahmoud shouted over the tumult: ‘He isn’t leading us out! He wants his own papers –’

  Svenson didn’t answer. The Professor had spent a good minute cowering behind the tree, long enough to grasp the scope of the fire and the orders that had been given to the soldiers. Trooste was no fool.

  ‘Where are we?’ he shouted to Mahmoud. ‘Which direction –’

  Mahmoud pointed urgently. White smoke curled towards them from the corridor’s end. Svenson wheeled round and spied a door ajar: an office whose window had been broken out with a chair. Beyond it bobbed the figure of Trooste, racing down an alley. Once through the alley they would be free.

  ‘Mahmoud, as we did before – you first, I will help Mrs Kraft –’

  Svenson paused. They stared at Francesca. He put an ear to the child’s ashen mouth. Her breath was starkly uneven.

  ‘The medicines you purchased for Mrs Kraft will answer – willow bark, and mustard to dislodge congestion – but we must get her out of this inferno!’

  Fat flakes of ash filled the air like tainted snow. Improbably, the blaze had not yet leapt to the nearby townhouses, but their occupants had fled to the street. At the main road, Svenson and the others were swept into a jostling crowd. Any hope of locating Trooste was lost, and within seconds Mahmoud and Mrs Kraft were swallowed up behind him. Where were they? Francesca required immediate treatment, yet Svenson could not see which corners they were passing. He shifted his grip, despairing at the sickly flop of her hanging legs.

  To either side stumbled figures in silk and fur, escaping within pockets of servantry. Surges of traffic tore at each little group as the smoke flowed over the rooftops: shoving, shouts, shrubbery trampled, a lamp-post torn from its place and crashing to the cobbles. Svenson wiped his eyes on the epaulettes of his greatcoat – if only he could see.

  The people before him stopped short and Svenson piled into a wide man in his shirtsleeves. Before he could beg the fellow’s pardon someone behind cannoned into him, and again it was all he could do to remain upright.

  Trumpets. Hoof beats. Cavalry clearing the road for the fire brigade. The shirtsleeved man slapped at his neck, burnt by a cinder. The right side of the road – a single line of townhouses – was all that stood between the penned-in crowd and the growing blaze. A few water-carts would not stop its spread. In five minutes the street would be a deathtrap.

  Black-jacketed lancers blocked the road. Beyond the lancers came the water-carts. Suddenly a wave of shrieking rose from the rear of the crowd. The fire had reached the townhouses. The mob swelled into the cordon of horsemen. Svenson stumbled to one knee.

  ‘Back, damn you!’ roared a sergeant of lancers, as if his throat were boiled leather. ‘If these carts don’t pass the entire district will burn! Once they pass you can go on!’

  His voice was strong, and might have swayed the crowd if not for another eruption from the Institute. The sky bloomed to a rolling orange ball, showering the street with debris. The crowd surged without care into the horsemen. The Sergeant danced his horse away, but the troopers lacked his skill. Fearing for their lives, the lancers dipped their bloody points into the churning mob. People fell screaming – as those behind them screamed at debris and flame. A horse went down with a spastic thrashing of hooves, its rider pinned. The cordon broke and the terrified mass poured blindly through. In front of Svenson an elderly man fell and tried to rise – blood on his brow, pomaded hair flapping like a dove’s broken wing – but his leather shoes slipped on the stones and he disappeared. For an instant the crowd parted around the obstruction – those who had seen him fall did their best to step clear, but those who had not tumbled heedlessly through the opening: a last ripple and he was gone.

  Svenson ran as he never had in his life, past struggling horsemen, around an overturned water-cart, careening from the frenzy. He’d been kicked in the back, struck across the face and nearly skewered. He stood gasping with his back against a tattered sapling, upright in an otherwise trampled garden. The fire had entirely possessed the first line of houses and would certainly jump the road. Huddled shapes littered the street. Scavengers searched pockets and gathered trinkets and cutlery abandoned by the fallen and the fled.

  The stitch in his rib sent a line of pain all the way to Svenson’s jaw. He pulled Francesca tighter to his chest and did his awkward best to chafe the circulation in her limbs. Her breath came thick with congestion.

  ‘Not much longer, my dear. The green guardhouse door and then hot tea and a bath – and tobacco for me, by God.’

  The girl’s hair stuck to her brow, curled with sweat and grime. He jogged her gently, hoping for a response. She blinked
, the blue of her eyes clouded with an opaque film.

  ‘You did very well, sweetheart – just wait until we tell the Contessa –’

  A fresh chorus of trumpets. The lancers returning for more blood. He hurried in the opposite direction and, like a message from heaven, there was the signpost for Aachen Street.

  ‘Thank goodness – sweet Christ, thank goodness –’

  At a clatter of boots, Svenson stopped short. The Old Palace was untouched by the fire, but the guardhouse was smashed and the front of the brothel yawned wide. The garden was littered with debris, and as he stared, stupid with fatigue, two soldiers emerged lugging a wooden chest from Madelaine Kraft’s office. Behind came two more, driving a gang of frightened women whose attire seemed as ill placed in the open air as a powdered wig in a poor house. Bronque’s men had sacked the Old Palace as if it were their prize.

  The Doctor turned to flee – if he could find Mahmoud and Mrs Kraft, if they had not been taken – but a firm hand shoved him into the iron fence. A burly corporal smiled grimly, his musket-butt ready to smash the Doctor’s face.

  ‘For God’s sake,’ gasped Svenson. ‘I have a child –’

  ‘Hold! Hold there!’

  An officer stood across the road, where Bronque’s men formed a cordon.

  ‘His uniform, ass!’ shouted the officer. ‘That’s the Colonel’s German! Get him in the wagon – now!’

  Before Svenson could address the officer, the Corporal heaved him into a panelled goods wagon. He landed awkwardly on his side, rolling to protect the girl, and just pulled his legs free of the slamming door. A rattle of iron caused the Doctor to start. Chained to the opposite bench – bloody, bruised and brutally gagged – sat Mr Gorine.

  Svenson reached across for the gag, but paused when he noticed the horror in Gorine’s eyes. He looked down. Francesca Trapping’s head lolled in the Doctor’s arms, her stained mouth yawning in the half-light. Her face was cold. Her eyes were sightless and unblinking.

  He had no idea how long they rode, nor where their captors took them. A crippling guilt fixed Doctor Svenson to the bench and sank his mind. He wrapped Francesca in his greatcoat and fruitlessly rocked her body.

  Somewhere in the midst of it he’d managed to prise the gag from Gorine’s mouth; the chains were locked fast. In a ravaged monotone he had done his best to answer Gorine’s questions. None of it mattered. He had known she was at risk. Willow bark, for God’s sake! Francesca Trapping had been balanced on a gallows by the Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza, and he, Abelard Svenson, had kicked away the support.

  ‘She was doomed already.’ Gorine’s voice was as gentle as possible above the creaks of the wagon and the pounding hoof beats. Svenson nodded dumbly. It changed nothing. He had lost himself, quite completely. He raised his face to Gorine’s searching eyes. The man recoiled.

  ‘You’re not ill as well?’

  Svenson’s lips twitched reactively, a ghost of a smile, inappropriate, hideous. ‘The damage does not signify.’

  ‘But … your eyes, your face –’

  ‘I’m sure it is only a lack of tobacco.’

  ‘Have you gone mad?’

  Svenson heard the question as if from a distance. Gorine stared at Svenson’s hand, stroking the girl’s hair. The Doctor carefully returned it to his lap.

  ‘My apologies. Far too many tasks await before I can allow myself to expire.’

  Gorine leant as close as his chains allowed. ‘You’re sure they were not taken? Mahmoud and Mrs Kraft – you’re sure she is restored?’

  ‘O yes.’

  ‘Then where do they take us?’ Gorine vainly attempted to look out through the ventilation holes. Svenson gazed at Francesca’s shoe, sticking out from the greatcoat, marvelling at how small the foot, how fragile each toe.

  ‘It was as you surmised,’ Gorine went on. ‘For three weeks we have suffered Bronque’s trespasses – soldiers on the premises, arrivals at all hours – the Colonel and his man.’

  Gorine’s upper lip was bruised, and the swelling broke the meticulous line of his moustache. Almost like a cleft palate, Svenson thought, noting that Gorine now appeared less intelligent. What was it about disfigurement, however arbitrary the source, that led the mind to underestimate, even dismiss the victim …

  ‘That fellow never said a word, you know. We offered rooms, choice of companions. Took us up, of course, but never let slip a damned thing. No papers or club cards, not even a mark in the fellow’s clothes to show his tailor. Not one clue. Only his hands.’

  ‘When I saw him he wore gloves.’

  ‘At all times. But once I spied on them in the tunnel. This fellow’s hands are stained.’

  ‘A birthmark?’

  ‘Are birthmarks blue?’

  The wheels slowed, crunching into gravel. Gorine went stiff. ‘What will they do? I am no soldier – I cannot withstand pain!’

  Svenson shivered. The sweat of his flight from the Institute had gone cold. He worked a hand into his tunic and took out the blue card containing the Contessa’s memory of the painting. He dropped it to the floor and broke it to shards beneath his heel.

  ‘What are you doing? And what is that?’ Gorine pointed to the leather case around Svenson’s shoulder. ‘Is it valuable? We should exchange it for our lives –’

  ‘If they wanted to kill you, you would be dead. And since you’ve no idea where they are, you cannot betray your friends.’

  ‘Bronque won’t believe that!’ Gorine’s voice rose. ‘They will tie me to a rack –’

  ‘It is not as if racks abound. You are a hostage against Mahmoud and Mrs Kraft.’

  The wagon came to a stop. An idea penetrated Svenson’s gloom. ‘Wait. What did Colonel Bronque say to you, on your arrest? When he learnt we had entered the tunnel –’

  ‘He called me a whoremongering traitor, then I was kicked to the floor –’

  ‘Nothing else? They will hunt Mrs Kraft and Mahmoud and they will kill them.’

  The rattle of the lock echoed in the hollow space. Gorine shook his head. ‘It wasn’t Bronque – it was the other, and when we were outside, at the smoke –’

  ‘Saying what?’

  ‘That no man lights his own funeral pyre without reason.’

  Canvas hoods were forced over their heads. Svenson pleaded for the soldiers to take care of Francesca’s body, but they only pulled him away and bound his hands. The hood smelt of oats. After minutes of stumbling and barked shins, he was dropped onto a hard wooden chair.

  ‘Let me see him.’

  The hood was removed. Behind a table sat the gentleman he had passed in the Old Palace, Bronque’s personage. A soldier set the leather case and Svenson’s rumpled greatcoat onto the table.

  ‘Wait outside.’

  The soldier strode from the room without care. The man behind the table set to emptying the greatcoat’s pockets. Svenson had time to study him: perhaps forty years of age, dark hair oiled and centre-parted, curled moustache, pointed goatee. He was thin-limbed but stout – a trim youth’s thickening from lack of exercise, yet his dancing eyes, and the nimble movements of his gloved hands, showed a restless acuity.

  The man set Svenson’s revolver next to a crumpled handkerchief, a pencil stub, soiled banknotes, the mangled silver case. The leather case he ignored.

  ‘Do you like the room, Doctor? Formerly a library, but there was damp – is there not always damp? – and so the books are gone. Abandoned rooms take what usage they can – like people – still, I so appreciate the cork floor. So quiet, so comforting, and with varnish just the colour of honey. Why isn’t every room lined with cork? It would make a better world.’

  He arched his eyebrows, plucked as thin as an ingénue’s. The man’s face was formed of potent details – ridged hair, wire spectacles, plump little mouth – creating a too-saturated whole.

  ‘A more quiet world,’ Svenson replied hollowly.

  ‘Is that not the same?’ The man shook his head to restore a more sober expression. ‘I am
sorry – I have anticipated our meeting, and it makes me merry, though the circumstance is most grave. I am Mr Schoepfil.’

  ‘And you are acquainted with me?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘You sent Bronque to identify me, in the office.’

  ‘Just to be sure. I had to be elsewhere.’

  ‘The Customs House.’

  Schoepfil chuckled ruefully. ‘And only to discover but that you had been there too! How not, after all – how not, given our mutual studies?’

  ‘Where is Colonel Bronque?’

  Schoepfil waved a hand. ‘Inconsequential. But you! You were on Vandaariff’s dirigible! And at Parchfeldt! And the Customs House – and now the Institute! How I have waited to put questions to a man who knows!’

  ‘You could ask Robert Vandaariff.’

  ‘That gentleman remains beyond my purview.’

  ‘What is your purview, if I may ask?’

  ‘It would be such a pleasure to exchange tales, but there is no time. Would you like a cigarette?’

  Schoepfil grinned at the mangled silver case and rang a bell. The soldier re-entered the room, one hand on his sabre hilt. ‘A cigarette for Doctor Svenson. In fact, let us give the poor fellow half a dozen.’

  The trooper measured six cigarettes into Svenson’s shaking palm, then set a box of safety matches on top of the stack. He clicked his heels and was gone.

  ‘Light up – light up!’ urged Schoepfil. ‘I require a man who can think, not a trembling ruin.’ He slipped a pocket watch from his waistcoat and pursed his lips. ‘To the task. How did Robert Vandaariff arrange for the dirigible to sink into the sea? Was a confederate aboard to trigger the descent, or had the machine been sabotaged before leaving Harschmort?’

  Svenson inhaled too deeply and began to cough. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘No shyness, Captain-Surgeon. I know of the alliance between Vandaariff, Henry Xonck and the Duke of Stäelmaere. I have identified their top tier of agents and a host of underlings. Their grand plan hovers at the very point of execution … and then, in one bold stroke, Vandaariff destroys his two rivals – Henry Xonck and the Duke – and launches his minions, their duties done, off to their doom. The entire Macklenburg expedition is but a red herring! Afterwards, to protect himself, he pretends blood fever, but in secret seizes control of Xonck Armaments, the Ministries, and – as is now plain to the simplest corner bootblack – reaches for the nation itself!’