The Chemickal Marriage

by Gordon Dahlquist

  Miss Temple groped lower, into a pocket of cold, then wriggled through an opening well wide enough for her body. Her lungs were painfully tight. She kicked up into a faster current. Now that she wanted air the seconds grew unbearable.

  She broke the surface with a gasp, still in the dark, and immediately swallowed a mouthful of water. She choked and almost lost hold of the leather case. Her loud breath echoed. A current carried along. Miss Temple swam to the side, and eventually her hand struck not rock but slippery brick.

  She floated there, easing her breath, then felt her way along the bank. She’d begun to shiver. Her hands found a protrusion in the brick – it took her a moment to realize it was a ladder of inset rungs. Miss Temple climbed onto a dank but dry landing, but did not stand.

  She turned to the sound of creaking wood. The formless dark took shape with the glimmer of a candle, well away but coming near, an oval face just glimpsed beyond its glow.

  ‘At last, and what a fright you look. Hurry up.’

  ‘The problem, of course, is that we may need to swim again.’

  Miss Temple shivered under a heavy wool blanket, too chilled for her nakedness to cause disruption. Her teeth chattered and her bare knees pressed cold against her breasts. The Contessa, hair wrapped in a towel, wore a white robe and cork slippers, all purloined from the baths. She poured brandy into a teacup and passed it across.

  ‘Drink. Slowly.’

  Miss Temple took small, burning sips, hating the taste but grateful for the warming glow.

  ‘Now, will anyone follow?’

  Miss Temple shook her head. The Contessa glared, this not being enough of an answer, and so Miss Temple provided a brief account of Mr Schoepfil’s assault on propriety and her own escape. At the end her cup was empty and she held it out for more. The Contessa poured for them both, tucking the robe about her knees. Behind the Contessa, in an untidy pile, lay several open hampers. Miss Temple’s arrival had interrupted smoked oysters in sauce and the Contessa restored the jar to her lap. She dipped a finger in the sauce, frowned at the taste, dribbled some brandy into the jar and resumed her meal.

  ‘You should eat. The passage will take hours.’

  Miss Temple sniffed. ‘What passage?’

  ‘Channel between royal premises,’ replied the Contessa, chewing. ‘Enabling duplicity and outright crime. In a spasm of conscience the way was bricked up – those habits being impure. An astute adviser of this present queen made it his business to uncover the legend – in secret, opening the passage enough for one or two very sodden individuals, an expedience. And I made it my business to uncover him.’

  ‘Lord Pont-Joule.’

  ‘Would you like an oyster? They aren’t very good.’

  Miss Temple shook her head and the Contessa tossed the jar at the far wall. She frowned at the nearest hamper. ‘Cheese?’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  The Contessa brought a white-moulded toque to her nose. ‘It’s very ripe.’

  ‘Where does the channel lead?’

  ‘Well, that was the value of Pont-Joule. An older man, desire and capacity so rarely in twain, but philosophic and not sour. A life dedicated to nothing of course – to that moulting cow – but he saw the wind’s way. Can you?’

  ‘Royal premises,’ said Miss Temple with a sniff.

  ‘O who is a good pup?’ The Contessa broke the cheese with her hands and took an exploratory nibble. She raised her eyebrows with approval and then filled her mouth.

  ‘I expect they sent people to prison in secret,’ muttered Miss Temple, for the Contessa was no longer entirely listening. ‘Sent them all the way to Harschmort, underground.’

  Once the brandy had done its work, however, Miss Temple’s old troubles returned. The Contessa had wiped her fingers on the robe and gone to another hamper, this filled with clothing, her squatting hips an unwelcome gust across the embers of Miss Temple’s desire. She looked away, down at the brick.

  ‘Perhaps I will eat after all,’ she managed. The Contessa waved vaguely.

  ‘It is for you or the rats. Or, with that straggling hair, you as the largest rat …’

  Miss Temple forced herself to swallow a water biscuit and a lump of cheese, taken from where the Contessa had not chewed. Though it stuck in her throat, she reached in the hamper for more. But, as she reached, the Contessa flung an armful of various garments and the blanket was knocked from her shoulders. Miss Temple turned, covering herself with her hands. The Contessa laughed.

  ‘I had not planned for two, much less two of such differing sizes. With a corset to wrench it all in, you may be presentable. Probably not.’

  ‘I will wear my own things,’ said Miss Temple, pulling the blanket up.

  ‘A mere corset and shift? You will freeze. They will hear your teeth from St Porte.’

  ‘I do not care.’

  The Contessa dropped her robe and stepped into a pale silk shift. She pulled it over her hips, smiled, and then, as Miss Temple could not but look, slipped one arm and then the other through. The Contessa paused.

  ‘Celeste, I believe you are biting your lip.’

  Miss Temple only swallowed, wet hair in dark ringlets on her nape. ‘You know what has become of me.’

  ‘But do I know it well enough?’ The Contessa did the last button and tugged the shift against her breasts, as if for comfort, but primarily to drag the silk across her nipples, knowing that Miss Temple could not look away.

  ‘You are very cruel.’

  ‘Not only cruel. What would you like?’

  Miss Temple rocked on her heels. ‘That’s a horrible question.’

  ‘Only if you have a horrible answer.’

  ‘You amuse yourself. You will kill me.’

  ‘I thought you were going to kill me.’

  ‘I am,’ whined Miss Temple.

  ‘Stand up, Celeste.’

  ‘I won’t. I can’t.’

  The Contessa came forward and caught the hands Miss Temple raised to put her off. Miss Temple was lifted and the blanket fell away, her pale skin tight with the cold. The Contessa looked at her. Miss Temple trembled.

  ‘I am ashamed,’ she whispered. ‘I am not myself.’

  ‘Few people are.’

  ‘But you –’

  ‘We are not talking about me.’

  Miss Temple persisted. She forced out the words. ‘But I – I am not kind. I am not pretty. I want things. I want people. I –’ She shook her head. ‘I am so hungry … so angry.’

  The Contessa set a hand on Miss Temple’s breast, squeezing it with the dispassion of a farmer judging ham. ‘You are not ugly. Besides, that matters very little.’ The hand took in the soft pinch of Miss Temple’s waist and the turn of her hips. ‘The person who isn’t angry is a stone. And the person without desire is in the grave.’ Miss Temple squirmed, for the Contessa’s hand had dipped between her legs. An extended finger pushed without warning past hair and skin to wetness and slipped in. Miss Temple gasped.

  The Contessa looked her in the eye. ‘We have done this before. Do you remember?’ Miss Temple nodded. The Contessa eased her hand into motion. ‘In the coach, with Oskar. To shame you. To derange your little heart. Did it work?’

  Miss Temple shook her head. The motion was already luscious.

  ‘No. That was my mistake. But what did you learn?’

  ‘That I am my own,’ whimpered Miss Temple.

  ‘O that’s a lie, isn’t it?’

  Miss Temple did not speak. The Contessa gave her hand a twist and employed a thumb.

  ‘I said that’s a lie, isn’t it, Celeste? You admitted as much just now, this close to tears … because you want a world that isn’t yours … because your pleasure is unbounded … because in your heart you are the biggest whore in all Europe.’

  Another turn of her hand stopped Miss Temple’s objection.

  ‘Or is that wrong? Are you not? Or are you? What other word would you use?’

  ‘Why – O – why are you –’

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nbsp; ‘Because someone has to die, Celeste. It won’t be me. For this – your demons? Banish shame. Accept desire. Most men deserve the whip. You are what you are now.’ The Contessa dropped to her knees. She met Miss Temple’s eyes. ‘Yes?’

  Miss Temple could not move. Sure as the strike of a snake, the Contessa’s tongue shot home. Miss Temple cried out. She writhed, but the Contessa held her hips fast and the crest was already imminent, a swelling of unbearable sweetness. Her fingers found the Contessa’s head and pulled it close.

  Miss Temple had tumbled panting onto the blanket. The Contessa gave her a cold-eyed smirk. ‘And what do you know now?’

  Miss Temple’s voice was small. ‘That this changes nothing.’

  ‘Precisamente.’ The Contessa took a corner of the blanket to wipe her face. ‘Get dressed and help with my corset. I’m damned if I’ll meet Robert Vandaariff without proper underpinnings.’

  In the end, the Contessa’s clothing was too large, even the undergarments, and Miss Temple took back her own. She had carefully hidden the glass key upon disrobing, but still hoped she might find the silk-wrapped spur, that it might have slipped lower into her shift. She searched as unobtrusively as she could. Nothing.

  ‘Is something wrong?’

  ‘No.’ Miss Temple saw the leather case now lay near the Contessa’s foot.

  ‘Mine,’ the Contessa said. ‘Fair exchange.’

  There being no dress to fit her, Miss Temple tied the Contessa’s cotton robe over her corset and shift, and walked in cork slippers with her hair in a towel. The Contessa wore a dark dress and simple shoes, her combed damp hair hanging past her shoulders. She held the leather case in one hand and the candle in the other. A small hamper was Miss Temple’s to carry, contents unknown. A short tunnel took them back to the embankment and a trim, narrow craft, not unlike the skiff Miss Temple had taken from the Raaxfall dock.

  ‘In the front,’ said the Contessa. ‘Try not to tip in and drown.’

  The hamper went first and then Miss Temple, scrambling to the foremost thwart. The Contessa hitched her dress about her waist and settled in the rear of the skiff, stowed the leather case under her seat, and came up with a small box of glass and metal. She lit the candle inside it and wedged the box into a stand, then reached behind her for the tiller.

  ‘There is a pole, Celeste, beneath your feet. We should not run into the bank, but, if we do, you will use it to push off. I will steer. If you think to use that pole on me you may discard the idea now, for it will not reach. Are you ready?’

  Miss Temple extracted the pole, which was indeed not very long, and turned to face forward. The Contessa cut the rope tethering them to the landing with a knife. While the weapon was no surprise, it was nevertheless bracing to see. The current caught the skiff and they shot into the dark.

  For the first part of their journey, Miss Temple’s attention was fixed on the half-moon of light preceding the tip of the skiff, watching for dangers of all sorts. Large patches of the ceiling had fallen in, and from those spots dangled ropes of black moss. The banks were smooth rock save for the very occasional appearance of another landing. Miss Temple peered at these relics as closely as the light allowed. Sometimes the Contessa would announce their location, ‘the Citadel’ or ‘the Observatory’; but other times, and Miss Temple was convinced it was because she did not know, a landing passed without comment. Soon they flew on in silence and, at last, Miss Temple’s wilful concentration was undermined.

  The act had been obscene and unnatural, with regard to Church teachings (which she dismissed) but also to Miss Temple’s understanding of loyalty, of virtue. Of course she had known those sorts of girls – everyone knew them – but in her own person the urge had been absent, or at least unconsidered. That had changed dramatically upon the invasion of her mind by the blue glass book. If a memory held a man’s relish of a woman, then Miss Temple’s experience of it quite naturally located that pleasure, that appreciation, in her own body. And many of the memories were perverse: women with women, men with men, and more, in such a profusion of incident that her body, if not her moral mind, was taught at last only ripe possibility. And so Miss Temple decided that, while she did not approve of the Contessa, or her tongue, it was plain enough that one tongue was much like another. Given that she could not, with her present knowledge and appetite, abjure tongues whole, whether it be a man’s or a woman’s seemed to make no matter at all.

  But loyalty was something else again, and here her thought snagged. The Contessa was her enemy – it was as complete a fact as might exist on earth. How could even the highest claim of expedience justify such … abasement? Wasn’t it abasement? Wasn’t it compromise? Betrayal? It was – she knew it was – and yet she had done it! And in another circumstance of degrading need she would do it again! Miss Temple gripped the pole with both hands, hating the woman behind her, but loathing herself even more. In the coach, the Comte d’Orkancz had seized her throat – she was unable to resist … on the landing the Contessa’s hands had but cupped her thighs to bring her near.

  Did it matter that it was her desire instead of theirs? Miss Temple scoffed at the hopeful phrasing – as if the teeming contents of the glass book were hers. Her desire was long gone – with bitterness she recalled the filthy words of Mr Groft, her father’s overseer – like piss in a stream.

  And that was that. With nothing to be done, Miss Temple’s practical mind shoved the issue aside. She could not help what had happened, nor – for with the abating of need came clarity of mind (probably the Contessa’s exact intention) – did she regret it. And, besides, she was wrong: it would not happen again. Soon – and soon enough – either she or the Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza would be dead.

  They travelled without significant conversation aside from an observation that Miss Temple could move less clumsily or move not at all. Miss Temple pushed away the wet strands of moss, which seemed to dip nearer as they went.

  ‘The water has risen,’ said the Contessa, both by explanation and by complaint.

  ‘What if we run out of room?’ asked Miss Temple. ‘What if Pont-Joule built another stop-hole further on, to keep people out?’

  ‘He did not.’

  ‘Have you been here?’

  ‘No one has been here.’

  ‘Then you don’t know.’

  ‘Be quiet. O stinking hell –’

  The Contessa ducked as they plunged through an especially sodden curtain of moss that swept the towel from Miss Temple’s head. She squealed with disgust, forcing her body flat. But then they were through and the skiff slowed into a lazy spin, the channel opening to a deeper pool. The ceiling rose, vaulted, the crusted tiles in different colours, a mosaic.

  ‘We have reached St Porte.’

  Miss Temple followed the Contessa’s gaze to an entirely different sort of landing. Where the others had been simple brick, this was carved white stone, with a wall of once-elegant glass-fronted doors, opaque with filth.

  ‘What was in St Porte?’ she asked.

  ‘A woman who was not the Queen.’

  Miss Temple considered this. The Contessa, in unacknowledged curiosity, had turned the tiller to slow their way. No one, not even the disrespectful young, had ever found the doors, for each heavy pane remained quite whole.

  ‘Who was she? Who was he?’

  ‘A king with a fat foreign wife.’

  ‘But what happened?’ Miss Temple looked back as the current carried them away.

  ‘She died. The King did not return.’

  ‘I suppose he couldn’t,’ said Miss Temple.

  ‘Of course he couldn’t,’ said the Contessa. ‘She died of plague. The rest of the place – above the ground – was razed flat.’

  After St Porte the landings became few and far between, the last but a stand of rotten pilings. The Contessa changed the candle, which had sunk low.

  ‘That is the final station before Harschmort, though we’ve still far to go. Harschmort was placed well away for a reason.’


  ‘What will we find there?’ Miss Temple asked. ‘What sort of welcome?’

  ‘How should I know?’ The Contessa tossed the old stub in the water with a plonk.

  ‘It is your expedition.’

  ‘The train was impossible, and our situation at Bathings precluded a coach.’

  ‘That is a lie. You had this route planned.’

  ‘I have many plans. But, as I had not seen the channel landing at St Porte, I have not seen the one at Harschmort either – because of Oskar’s construction, his great chamber. The foundation of the place was walled off, even as he exploited the channel itself for power.’

  Miss Temple frowned. ‘But that chamber was destroyed by explosives. Chang said so.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘What if there is no landing?’ The Contessa did not reply. Miss Temple turned to look at her. ‘I am hungry.’

  ‘You should have eaten before.’

  ‘Did you bring food or not?’ Miss Temple reached for the hamper.

  ‘Celeste.’

  ‘If you try to stop me it will tip the skiff.’ Without waiting for a reply she flipped back the wicker lid. Inside were three squat bottles sealed with cork and a layer of black wax. Miss Temple plucked up the nearest and held it to the light.

  ‘Damn you to hell, Celeste Temple, put that down.’

  ‘Tell me what’s in it or I’ll throw it overboard.’

  ‘You would not. You would not be so stupid – O damn you. It is a liquid you have seen before, derived from something called bloodstone. It is orange, and in most instances very harmful.’

  ‘In all three bottles?’

  ‘All three, you little pig.’

  Miss Temple leant into the hamper. The open space inside showed a glimpse of blue beneath the bottles. The glass book the Contessa had taken from Parchfeldt. The book that held the corrupted essence of the Comte d’Orkancz. Miss Temple replaced the bottle.

  ‘I am not a pig. But I would have thrown it.’

  ‘Of course you would have.’

  ‘As long as we know each other,’ said Miss Temple.

  The rest of their journey passed in silence, Miss Temple brooding again, bitter that, with the exception of some sofa-bound groping with Roger Bascombe, which she dismissed, and a single misguided kiss at Parchfeldt, her body’s charms had been sampled only by the worst of people. Kings and mistresses were nonsense, she knew full well. Most people made horrid marriages, mismatches of beauty and temper that only provoked a person to imagine the couple conjoined, as one hearing of an accident imagined the wounds. Was it so strange that her legitimate affection – if any such thing existed, and this was, the more she thought, the exact matter for doubt – had settled on a man such as Chang, suspect and unpresentable in every way?