The Chemickal Marriage mtccads-3

by Gordon Dahlquist

  Kelling slid the case to Miss Temple’s feet. Behind her the Duchess had passed through the oval doorway, but stood watching.

  ‘Of all the idiocy,’ declared Schoepfil.

  Svenson returned his aim to the soldiers. ‘Lay your blades on the floor …’

  But the soldiers did not move. Instead, each took a careful step away from the other, and extended their sabres, measuring the distance they would need to cut Svenson down.

  ‘Well, then,’ said the Doctor. ‘That’s clear enough. Anyone who wants to leave, I would suggest it. Stray shots, you know.’

  ‘Any man who leaves is dead,’ cried Schoepfil, a smile playing again on his lips. ‘At least to my favour.’

  The Ministry men glanced at one another, but did not flee. The courtiers stood next to Nordling, who dabbed a bloody nose with his shirt-cuff. Svenson tightened his grip on the pistol. ‘Celeste, please go. Seal the door behind you.’

  ‘Come with me,’ she whispered.

  ‘Give my best wishes to Her Majesty. All of Macklenburg is at her service.’

  She had not noticed Schoepfil moving – or he simply moved too quickly – but then the wooden crate was in the air. Svenson dodged and the missile smashed into the footman who had opened the door, a hammer blow that filled the air with fluttering paper and knocked the footman flat. Miss Temple jumped through the door. The Doctor’s pistol roared, three rapid shots – cries of anger and pain – but before she could see, the second footman shoved the oval door closed and spun the wheel, sealing Miss Temple and the Duchess tight.

  The room was silent, not a trace of the mayhem outside piercing through. Miss Temple found a heavy iron candelabrum and wedged it hard into the door’s inner wheel. She turned to the Duchess, still stunned to immobility.

  ‘Is Her Majesty truly here?’

  ‘Of course not. These rooms belong to Lord Pont-Joule.’ The Duchess led her into a strange octagonal room whose every side held another of the oval doors.

  ‘They are tunnels,’ declared Miss Temple. ‘Spy tunnels to listen or watch.’

  ‘With so many passages carved over the years for so many different baths, Pont-Joule thought he might exploit the fact for Her Majesty’s safety.’

  ‘Didn’t the Contessa say Pont-Joule had been killed as well?’

  ‘Quelle coïncidence,’ the Duchess muttered drily. Both women spun to a wrench of metal at the entry door. The obstructing candelabrum held the wheel in place.

  ‘It will not be long,’ said the Duchess. ‘The Contessa was Pont-Joule’s lover. If she did not pass through any guard post, and I trust Mr Schoepfil’s intelligence –’

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ said Miss Temple, ‘but I believe it is more than that – that her audience with the Queen was at least in part an excuse to come here, to this very room.’

  ‘Why? Just to escape?’

  ‘No. I believe Lord Pont-Joule, without his knowledge, gave her a place to hide a thing she could not keep on her person.’

  ‘What thing?’

  Miss Temple set the leather case on a side table and snapped it open. The Duchess gasped at the shining blue glass book.

  ‘Good Lord … I heard whispers …’

  Miss Temple quickly shut the case. ‘I do not know where Doctor Svenson found this, nor what it might contain, but the Contessa has in her possession another book, and her attempts to use it may kill us all.’

  The door was jolted again.

  ‘Where do the tunnels go?’ asked Miss Temple.

  ‘They all go to the baths.’

  ‘No, where do they exit?’

  ‘They don’t. In one or two cases, there is an outlet elsewhere in the house –’

  ‘She needs to leave the house.’

  The Duchess nodded. ‘I know. It makes no sense. Unless …’

  An arm of the candelabrum snapped like a gunshot. The wheel lurched halfway round.

  ‘Unless what?’ demanded Miss Temple.

  The Duchess indicated a door by a daybed. ‘That way leads to the spring itself –’

  Miss Temple was already across the room. She heaved open the door to find a red envelope on the tunnel floor. She tore it open.

  ‘What does it say?’ cried the Duchess. ‘Is it from her?’

  The rest of the candelabrum broke apart and Lord Pont-Joule’s rooms echoed with the voices of men. Miss Temple leapt through, yanked the door closed and spun the wheel, leaving the hapless Duchess on the other side.

  They would not know which door she’d used, but for how long? She groped in the darkness, knowing she must hurry. Would Schoepfil strike the Duchess down? Was Doctor Svenson still alive?

  Her outstretched hand touched a wall and her feet found stairs. The blackness was leavened by a tallow stub, wedged into the rock. She stood before a hissing pool of black water, its surface seamed by blooms of effervescence. Miss Temple gasped. On the ground lay the Contessa –

  She cursed her own credulity. Heaped on the ground was the Contessa’s black dress. Miss Temple glanced back. She dropped into a squat, opened the case, pulled the star chart from the leather tube and folded it, wincing at the creases, until it fit atop the book. She took the small pouch holding Francesca’s key and wormed it into the bosom of her corset. She stopped. She dug her fingers deeper. The handkerchief with Vandaariff’s glass spur was no longer there.

  There was no time. Without care, for she would never see it again, she ripped her dress to the waist and let it drop next to the Contessa’s. A metallic scrape from the passage behind her. Had the Contessa left her petticoat? She had. Miss Temple thrust hers off and kicked free. A shaft of light in the tunnel. The door was open. She closed the case and set the red envelope onto the candle flame, where it caught and began to curl. Inside had been a single carelessly scrawled line: ‘And so they shall be redeemed.’

  Miss Temple inhaled as deeply as she could. Hugging the case to her body, she stepped into the black water and sank like a stone.

  Eight

  Fontanel

  When Vandaariff reclaimed the glass card from Matthew Harcourt, the young man dropped to his knees and, shaking like an opium eater, emptied his stomach onto the carpet. When the heaving subsided, Foison hauled the overmatched Interim Minister to his feet and marched him out. Vandaariff followed at his own slow speed, humming under his breath.

  Blood instructs us on the use of flame

  Fire’s indulgence sings the end of shame

  Chang had hoped to erode Foison’s devotion to his master, and Phelps had paid the price. He watched in silence as the green-coats cut the corpse from the chair and took it away. When they returned it was with Foison, and for him.

  His arms were bound behind his back with chain. Outside waited a large vehicle, unlike any Chang had ever seen. Sheathed in metal, the smaller front was like any rich man’s coach, but was attached to a second portion, as large as a goods wagon.

  Were the trains no longer safe?

  Two lackeys led Chang into the long rear car and looped his chain over a hook in the ceiling. The height of the hook gave Chang no choice but to stand. They pulled forward, Chang balancing like a seaman on a heaving deck. He looked to Foison, slouched on a bench against the inner wall.

  ‘The spur that killed Phelps,’ said Chang. ‘It wasn’t like the ones we found at Raaxfall. It didn’t hold rage, but something more like despair. He’d been cut with it before, under questioning, hadn’t he, just nicks to help him along? The man was ruined.’

  Foison waited, as if this required no comment.

  ‘Blue glass in the throat. It’s what killed Lydia Vandaariff. She was decapitated. Did you know that?’

  Foison gripped a metal hook for support as the coach swept round a turn. ‘Lord Robert was so informed, yes.’

  ‘By whom?’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘Only five people survived that crash. Francis Xonck is dead since. If any of the four – I include myself – had described that scene for your master, you w
ould know it. I’ll wager they have not, and yet he knows. How is that possible? Because those memories – memories of a dead man, also on that airship – have been placed inside his mind.’

  A panel slid open and through a barrier of steel mesh loomed Vandaariff’s haggard face.

  ‘Such an interesting conversation, Cardinal. One is reminded of those Greeks, groping to understand the world – everything wrong, of course, the logic of intelligent children, fumbling in their mother’s kitchen, rising on their toes in the hope of buttering bread. You observe – of course you do, you’re a hunter – but do you comprehend?’

  ‘I know you’re going to die.’

  ‘But not alone, Cardinal Chang. Do not let the news deject you.’

  Vandaariff turned from the panel, but left it open. He resumed his hoarse humming.

  Love is a severance sure as any blade

  Flesh is a table where God’s feast is laid

  The carriage took another turn and the iron shackle dug into Chang’s wrist. Foison watched him with a bone-deep readiness, and in the man’s posture Chang recognized himself: at the Old Palace, present only by sufferance, waiting for a message from Madelaine Kraft – which would be his signal to depart. His eyes were ever fixed on Angelique, shining amidst the wealthy men who might at any moment signal the house manager, Gorine, and claim her for however long desire might last. Chang watched her, but what had he ever seen? Tiny hands holding a wine glass. Smiling lips. Black eyes. Scraps of whoever she might, truly, have been.

  Even after so much time, so many lives, Chang preserved Angelique in his heart, but only – he knew – like a doll, a dream. What had all that longing served? Did his life merit survival? Had he punished wicked men? Of course. Had he done so within his own web of wickedness? Undeniably. Who spared a fowl-eating fox because it also dined on rats?

  This was rhetoric and pity. Chang looked again at Foison – at his own futile past – and glimpsed what he stood to lose now.

  She was not beautiful, not like Angelique. She was not kind. She was undoubtedly – in her heart, glass books be damned – an ignorant prude. She was a perfectly spoilt example of a class he despised. He did not honestly know if he could stand her presence for one entire sustained day. He did not know if she was alive.

  But he thought of her in his arms, wading through the freezing surf. Her courage at Parchfeldt. Guiding them from Raaxfall, the acceptance of her doom. Against every instinct and all logic, these thoughts uncoiled like the sticky wings of a butterfly. He felt the rush in his soul. It was absurd. He could choose to suppress it – that was in his power. Yet he was dying too. He did not choose. He shut his eyes and let go.

  Robert Vandaariff cleared his throat, a coach wheel crunching gravel. ‘Wither your thoughts, Cardinal Chang?’

  ‘How best to end your life.’

  ‘I think not. No, you were far away.’

  ‘What do you care?’

  ‘All flesh may be cursed, but there are degrees. There are tigers and there are sheep. And tigers – though rare – can be anywhere in life. I am no snob, Cardinal. One finds as many sheep in a palace as in a poorhouse.’

  ‘You seek to count my stripes, then? So I am remembered?’

  ‘You’d prefer to be forgotten?’

  ‘I’d prefer to set myself on fire.’

  Vandaariff scowled. ‘Posturing.’

  ‘Not every man fears oblivion.’

  ‘Not every man has tasted it.’

  ‘Will you tell me where we’re going?’ Chang asked.

  ‘Harschmort,’ said Foison. ‘You know that.’

  Foison kept his gaze on Chang and did not see his master’s disapproving look – though Chang did not suppose he needed to. The break in protocol had been deliberate.

  Through the mesh loomed a line of lanterns, blocking the road. The panel slid shut. Outside came the sound of horses, and loud calls. The carriage slowed – a military roadblock.

  ‘You were away,’ said Chang. ‘You returned after his recovery from blood fever.’

  ‘Men change. The death of his daughter –’

  ‘That man doesn’t give a damn about any daughter.’

  ‘You’re wrong.’ Foison’s voice was soft, no longer needing to speak over hoof beats and wheels. ‘I’ve seen the flowers in her bedchamber.’

  ‘He’s not the same man – the same mind.’

  ‘He’s dying. So are you.’

  ‘And you with us, you ignorant monkey.’

  Foison’s eyes went cold. ‘Unfortunate choice of word.’

  ‘Woke you up, didn’t it?’ Chang leant to the end of the shackles’ chain. ‘Our world isn’t theirs. Are you so well trained to forget it?’

  The panel slid open.

  ‘Mr Foison!’ called Vandaariff. ‘A change of plan. Disembark with your charge. And take care for his safety. We know the fellow’s delicate.’

  Chang stood in the street, a dog on Foison’s lead. In the lantern light waited at least a company of elite grenadiers. Another knot of men clustered at the door of Vandaariff’s carriage, chickens awaiting their handful of seed.

  First amongst them – Chang squinted to be sure – was the Privy Minister, Lord Axewith. Chang thought of the man’s wife, retching her guts out, another dupe led to the grave. Did Axewith even know? The Privy Minister’s face was ashen in the torchlight, like a swine given its first whiff of the slaughterhouse. Next to Axewith stood Matthew Harcourt, sickly and pale. Chang pitied neither man – idiots who had naively passed their authority to Robert Vandaariff to end their troubles. The old Robert Vandaariff might have done so, but the man in the armoured wagon had no care for anything save his own dark dreams.

  A colonel of grenadiers in full glittering dress advanced to the carriage as if he had been summoned. Axewith himself stepped aside so the Colonel might lean into the coach. Chang half wondered if he would pull his head out again or, as if in a children’s tale, the serpent in the cave would snap it off.

  Foison lifted his face skyward, sniffing the air.

  ‘A shift in the wind,’ he said, assuming Chang possessed a sense of smell. ‘Who knows where the fire will be halted?’

  ‘Is it so severe?’

  Foison flicked the chain as a sign for Chang to turn. The consultation had ended and the Colonel, bodily whole, strode towards them. He was a powerful, hawk-faced man, black hair flat against his skull.

  ‘Colonel Bronque,’ said Foison quietly. Bronque’s eyes darted across them with distaste – Foison with his dandified clothes and Asiatic cast, Chang with his cleric’s coat and scars.

  ‘Chang, is it? Lord Vandaariff says you will help us.’

  All three turned at the sound of the carriage door closing, sealing Vandaariff back in his protected box. Lord Axewith’s men – save Harcourt, who was no longer visible – positioned themselves in a circle around several large maps spread onto the cobbles.

  ‘I need to find someone,’ Bronque went on. ‘A Mrs Madelaine Kraft.’

  ‘Why?’ Chang asked.

  ‘None of your affair. Say what you know.’

  Chang smiled stiffly. ‘She’s at the Old Palace – or where her people put her. Left an imbecile. By a blue glass book.’

  ‘She was.’ The subject of blue glass gave Bronque no pause. ‘She’s been healed.’

  ‘That’s impossible.’

  ‘That is the point.’

  Bronque was serious. And that Chang, a prized possession, had been lent for the search made clear the cure had not come from Vandaariff’s hand.

  ‘The Old Palace has been ransacked,’ Bronque went on. ‘And its ashes raked. She has fled with an employee. An African. Where would he take her? Where would she flee?’

  Chang glanced at Foison. ‘Does your master have time for this? If this fire is as bad as you say –’

  ‘You’ll do what you’re told!’ Bronque bellowed at Chang, as if he were an insubordinate trooper. Without warning Cardinal Chang chopped his forehead into the Colonel’s no
se. Bronque staggered back with a cry of shock.

  The soldiers around them leapt forward, weapons ready. The Colonel straightened himself, eyes blazing with hatred, blood seeping through his fingers.

  ‘Calm, gentlemen.’ Foison pulled the chain to place Chang nearer. ‘Cardinal Chang will find this woman. But he is required – in sound condition – after the errand. At your peril, Colonel. Now I suggest you wipe your face.’

  Bronque reeled away, shouting for water.

  ‘I don’t suppose you’d undo these chains?’ Chang asked Foison. ‘If I gave my word not to escape?’

  ‘Your word means nothing.’

  Chang turned at the creak of Vandaariff’s massive carriage, pulling forward. Axewith waved his hat, an abject gesture. Chang had not expected Vandaariff to leave.

  ‘But you won’t escape,’ said Foison, ‘because you need to reach him, before the time. And without me you won’t.’

  ‘Then why this diversion?’

  Foison called to Bronque, returning with a cloth pressed to his face. ‘I have spoken to Cardinal Chang, Colonel. He will cooperate.’

  The soldier clearly wanted nothing more than to hack Chang’s head from his shoulders, but a man did not acquire so much gold brocade without learning to swallow his own desire.

  ‘Very well.’ Bronque sniffed wetly, to show he too was willing to begin anew. ‘We’ve spoken to a Michel Gorine. He described Mrs Kraft’s recovery.’

  ‘And where is Gorine now?’ Chang asked.

  ‘He knows nothing he didn’t say.’

  Chang grimaced. ‘Which probably means he said a lot of things he didn’t know.’

  ‘He had every motivation to confess.’ Bronque dabbed at his nose. ‘Under further questioning the story didn’t change. I’m not a fool. The cure was managed by Captain-Surgeon Abelard Svenson. I understand you are acquainted.’

  Mrs Kraft – that had been the Contessa’s secret errand: to attain her cure. Could every other victim be so restored? Could Robert Vandaariff himself? This changed everything.

  To Bronque, Chang only shrugged. ‘Where is Svenson now?’

  ‘Not with Mrs Kraft. They were separated in the fire. When Gorine met him, Svenson was caring for a child.’