The Dark Volume

by Gordon Dahlquist

  “Then perhaps you can tell me instead who made up the traveling party for the Prince's return.”

  The man had spoken too easily, as if the question meant nothing. Svenson shrugged, again exaggerating his accent.

  “Is that any secret? I am sure your own newspapers—”

  “Newspapers are trash.”

  “And yet for these simple facts—”

  “I insist that you tell me!”

  The man balled both hands together in his lap and squeezed his fists. Svenson looked away to give himself time—was the situation so unpleasant already?

  “Well… since you make such a demand… let me see… the Prince's intended bride, of course. Who else? Diplomats—your own Deputy Minister Crabbé; his assistant, Mr. Bascombe; dignitaries—the Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza, the Comte d'Orkancz, both new friends of the Prince, Mr. Francis Xonck—”

  He stopped at the subtle catch of his captor's breath. The man leaned closer, speaking low. “And, if you will indulge me…just exactly how did they travel?”

  “You will understand,” replied the Doctor, “that however strange it may seem to find a Macklenburg Naval Surgeon in this forest, it is just as odd for me to find not only a man who knows me, but one engaged on an equally mysterious journey of… commerce.”

  “Nothing mysterious at all!” snapped the man. “It is a commercial canal!”

  The man took his own moment to peer over the canvas barrier. The canal had twisted more deeply into the forest and the overhanging branches blotted out so much of the pallid light that it seemed near dusk. With the thickening trees came less wind, and Svenson saw the entirety of the crew, save the master, had taken up poles. The man sat back down on his own crate, frowning that his captive had seen fit to rise along with him.

  Svenson studied his adversary. The brown topcoat was of an excellent cloth, but cautious in its cut, just like the cravat—silk, but the inoffensive color of orange pith. The man's thinning hair had been pasted to his scalp that morning with pomade, but with the breeze now sported an insolent fringe.

  “What a strange cargo you seem to be carrying.” The Doctor waved a hand toward the front of the barge. “All wrapped up and odd-shaped, rather like different cuts of meat from a butcher's—”

  The man seized Svenson's knee. Svenson glared at the point of contact. His host removed his hand, then cleared his throat and stuck out his chin.

  “You will tell me what you know of Robert Vandaariff.”

  “I do not know anything.”

  “Did he travel with your Prince?”

  “Was there not some story of fever—that Harschmort was under quarantine?”

  The man thrust his face close to Svenson's, his lips pursed and white. “I will ask you again: if he did not travel with the Prince in secret, where is Robert Vandaariff?”

  “Could he not be in the city? Or elsewhere in the country—surely he owns many—”

  “He is nowhere!”

  “Perhaps if I knew why you need him—”

  “No, you will answer me!”

  “O come,” sighed Svenson. “You are no policeman—and nor am I. We are not fitted for interrogation. I am a foreigner in an unfamiliar country—an unfamiliar language—”

  “You speak it perfectly well,” muttered the man.

  “But I possess no subtlety. I can only be plain, Mr…. come now, your name can not be so precious…” Svenson raised his eyebrows hopefully.

  “Mr.—ah—Mr…. Fruitricks.”

  Svenson nodded, as if this were not an especially obvious fabrication.

  “Well, Mr. Fruitricks… it would seem, and I offer this out of pure scientific deductive reasoning, that you are in—as it is said amongst your people—a spot.”

  “I'm sure I am in no such thing.”

  “As you insist. And yet, even the crates we are sitting on—”

  “Crates are common on a barge.”

  “Come, sir. I am also a soldier, though I should hardly need to be to recognize so famous a seal as the one upon your seat.”

  The man looked awkwardly between his legs. The crate was stamped with a simple coat of arms in black—three running hounds, with crossed cannon barrels below.

  “Are you insolent?” the man bleated.

  “The only question that matters,” continued Svenson mildly, “is which member of the Xonck family you serve.”

  “YOU DID not say what happened to your head,” said Mr. Fruitricks sullenly.

  “I am sure I mentioned luggage.”

  “You wander in a forest without any possessions? Without hat or coat—”

  “Again, sir, all of this was left on the train.”

  “I do not believe you!”

  “What else would I be doing here?”

  Svenson gestured at the trees with exasperation. The canal had curved more deeply into the park, and when Svenson looked through a small break in the trees, there was no longer any sign of the track bed. The pain in his arm was pulsing again, the disturbing overlay of images seeping up through his thoughts like bubbles of corruption in swamp water—the cenotaph, the fossil, Elöise… Svenson felt dizzy. He nodded to the stove.

  “Would there be any more tea?”

  “There would not,” replied Mr. Fruitricks, whose mood had soured even more. He sniffed at Svenson like a thin, suspicious dog. “You seem unwell.”

  “The… ah…” The Doctor motioned vaguely toward the back of his head. “Blow… bag… hitting me—”

  “You will not vomit on my barge. It has new brass fittings.”

  “Wouldn't dream of it,” rasped Svenson, his throat tightening. He stood. The barge-master, who had approached without any warning at all, caught his shoulder and steadied him from pitching over the side. Svenson looked down at Fruitricks' crate.

  “That has been opened,” he said.

  “The Prince would not travel without you,” snarled Fruitricks, petulantly throwing his cigar into the water. “You know where he is, where they all are, what has happened! Who has attacked them? Why have I heard nothing? Why have they said nothing to the Palace?”

  The questions flew at Svenson with such speed and invective that each one caused him to blink. His tongue was thick, but he knew that the situation ought not to be beyond him. Fruitricks was exactly the sort of desperate man—officious courtiers, ambitious minions—he had spent years doggedly manipulating in the service of the Macklenburg court.

  The sky spun, as if a very large bird had silently swept past. Doctor Svenson lay on his back. He squeezed his eyes tightly, embracing the dark.

  SVENSON WOKE slowly, his entire body stiff and chilled, and attempted to lift his arm. He could not. He craned his aching head—which felt the size of a moderate sweet melon—and saw the arm had been bound to a bolt on the deck with hemp rope. His other arm was tied as well, and both legs lashed together at the ankle and the knee: he lay cruciform between two of the canvas-wrapped objects. The sky was empty and white. He closed his eyes again and did his best to concentrate. The barge was no longer moving. He heard no footstep, call, or conversation. He opened his eyes and turned to the nearest piece of cargo. From within the canvas Svenson smelled indigo clay.

  The hammer was gone from his belt. He brought his legs up and bent forward. The knot binding his knees came well within the reach of his teeth. The Doctor's naval service did not call for any particular knowledge of sailing, yet he had often found his interest piqued by older members of the crews he tended, and the earlier, vanished world those men had known. His awkward but honest attempts at friendship were often met with some practical demonstration—easier than conversation for all concerned—and in more than one instance this had involved knots and ropework. With some satisfaction, biting at the fraying hemp like a crow at a sinewy carcass, Svenson realized he knew both the knot in question—what Seaman Unger called a “Norwegian horse”—and the simplest way to pluck it apart.

  With his knees free and his legs beneath him, he could bend to reach hi
s right hand. The knot was the same—he had no high opinion of his captors' creativity—and, a few moments aside for spitting out hemp fiber, his hand was quickly free, then the second hand, and at last his ankles. Doctor Svenson crouched at a gap between the swathed pieces of cargo, working the stiffness from his wrists.

  The barge was tied at a dockside of freshly cut timber, and the road that led from the water was recently enough laid to show an even depth of gravel across its width. He saw no one on the landing. He quickly untied one of the canvas flaps, uncovering a gleaming steel foot pierced with empty bolt holes. Svenson reached into his pocket for a match, then stopped as his fingers found an empty pocket. His cigarette case, his filthy handkerchief, the matches… all missing. With a surge of rage at being plundered, the Doctor caught the canvas with both hands and pulled it away from the machinery. A brass-bound column of steel, studded like jewels in a monarch's scepter with dials and gauges, liquid-filled chambers and copper coil. Svenson attacked the tall bundle to his other side: an examination table dangling black hose, like the legs of five wasps all over-laid onto a single sickening thorax, each hose end tipped with a ring of blue glass. He recalled the strange imprints on Angelique's body. This cargo had been removed from the great cathedral chamber at Harschmort.

  THE ROAD narrowed between natural hedgerows of thick underbrush, and so the Doctor nearly missed it, rising above the trees: a dark curling plume against the white sky. Only then did he notice the rough path, simply made by a large man pushing his way through the foliage. He looked back toward the barge. Could it perhaps be a watch fire? But why would a watchman have set himself so far from the cargo? He took the time to dig out his monocle and screw it into place, and looked down the road.

  The road curved, he realized. From the barge one could not see to its farthest end. But from the curve Svenson could see both behind to the barge and ahead to a distant white-brick building. Feeling suddenly exposed—was someone watching with a telescope?—he darted off the road. At the trees he sank to a crouch, peering through the leaves of a weeping beech at a ring of stones and a smoking knot of blackened wood. The fire had been allowed to gutter out. On a blanket next to the fire pit lay a bottle, a checked handkerchief containing what looked like bread and meat, and a flat silver square… his cigarette case.

  Next to it lay the purple stone, a pencil stub, coins, his handkerchief… and something he did not recognize, reflecting light in a different way than the case. Where was the man who had taken them?

  Svenson crept carefully forward, toward the fire, and snatched up his things, hesitating at the new object, which took him utterly aback. It was a blue glass card, exactly like the one he had found in the Prince's flower vase—the first glimpse of his charge's entanglement with the Cabal. The Doctor had later found another, on the body of Arthur Trapping, but both those other cards were long lost. What was another card now doing amongst his things?

  Someone had slipped a blue glass card into his pocket without his knowing—but when? And who… for who could have such a thing? The cards were created by the Comte—enticing tokens to seduce potential adherents, each inscribed with the events of a few lurid moments … each as much a trap as a first exquisite taste of opium.

  Svenson frowned. He had not had the purple stone in his pocket either. He had given it back to Elöise on the train…

  He was an idiot—it was a message! She had tried to communicate with him! If only he had examined his pockets at the cottage! What if the blue card explained exactly what he ought to have done? What if the Contessa had forced Elöise— What if he had doubted her wrongly? What if it was not too late?

  He grazed the cool surface of the glass with one fingertip, and at once felt an icy pressure at his mind. He licked his lips—

  THE DOCTOR spun at a noise on the other side of the fire. He stuffed the card into his tunic and snatched up a piece of unburnt wood. The sound came from behind an alder tree. He advanced cautiously. A pair of legs, half-visible in the underbrush… the black-capped barge-master, the kerchief round his neck soaked with blood and already a dark locus for flies. Svenson took a clasp knife from the man's belt, snapping it open. He shifted the piece of wood into his other hand, feeling a little foolish, as if he were aping a true, battling man of action.

  Another noise, now near the fire. While Svenson had been examining the body, the killer had quite silently circled around.

  Svenson forced himself to walk—no longer caring for silence— directly toward the fire. A twig tugged insolently across his ear. Some one was there.

  On the blanket, one hand picking at the food in the checkered handkerchief, the other tucked out of sight to her side, knelt the Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza. She met his arrival with a mocking smirk.

  “Doctor Svenson. I confess, you are no one I expected in this particular wood—apart, one supposes, from symmetry—and yet having seen you approach so earnestly…”

  Her dress was of poor-quality silk, dyed deep maroon. Her black boots were smeared with mud, and above the left one he could see her white calf. She swept her hand across the blanket, as if to welcome him, indicating the exact spot where the blue card had been set, and spoke again, careful as any cobra.

  “Will you not sit? Such old acquaintances like ourselves must have so very much to talk about—we should scarcely notice if it were the end of the world.”

  Seven

  Cinders

  AS A GIRL Miss Temple had once, after insisting upon it for a steady hour, tagging along at his side as he surveyed the fields from the raised high road, been given a puff from the pipe of Mr. Groft, the overseer of her father's plantation. She had immediately become sick— realizing the puff was not likely to be repeated, the young Miss Temple had made it a mighty one—dropping to her knees as the overseer spat oaths above her, for if her father found out he would be sacked. She had stumbled back to her rooms with a splitting pain behind her eyes and a reeking taste that would not leave her mouth no matter how she scrubbed it with lemon slices. Mr. Groft indeed was sacked, but that was the following month and had involved improprieties with house girls, three of whom had been promptly sold (including a sweet fat thing, always kind but whose name Miss Temple had since forgotten), for her father's authority brooked no challenge whatsoever.

  It was some years later, preparatory to her voyage to the continent, when Miss Temple, goaded by that same iron cagework of rule, found herself in her father's study. Despite her imminent departure he had ridden to the far side of the island to inspect a new planting and was not expected to return before she sailed, simplifying everything for them both. She had wandered through the house and along the paths of the garden and the open balconies, smelling the sweet, musky fields. She knew she might never return. But in the study, sitting in her father's large leather chair—the horsehair stuffing clumped and flat and kept this way precisely because her father believed a lack of ease sharpened the mind—Miss Temple was suddenly restless, and looked to the closed study door, wondering if she ought to lock it even before she formed any sense of what she was going to do.

  One of her hands had idly traced a path, finger by finger, up the inside of her thigh. Despite a fullness of tension in her flesh, not yet demanding but palpable, she pulled her hand away, for she did not choose—since it seemed that she had wandered now pointedly to the heart of her father's domain—to so expend her desires. Instead, she opened the cedar box of cigars, wrinkling her nose. With a shocking and scandalous presumption she took one out and bit off the end, just as she had seen her father do on hundreds of occasions—and she knew, had she been male, this would have been a common occurrence, even such a thing as to bring two men together. She picked the bitter flakes from her mouth and wiped them onto the cracked leather of the chair, then leaned to the candle on the desk top. She puffed four times before the thing took fire, gagged, spat out the smoke, and puffed twice more, swallowing the smoke with a cough. Her eyes watered. After another puff she erupted with a hacking that would not stop.
The awful taste was back in her mouth. But she continued to inhale, determined, until there was an inch of tightly coiled grey ash at the end. Miss Temple wiped her lips on her sleeve, feeling dizzy.

  It was enough, her edge of restlessness blunted by disgust—with both the tobacco and her own desire. She set the smoking cigar on the metal ashtray and collected her candle, walking unsteadily from the room—uncaring whether a servant would clear it away before her father returned or if he would find the evidence of her invasion himself… a last fittingly oblique communication between them.

  THE FOULNESS of these old memories was but a childish shadow to what she had so foolishly just opened herself. Miss Temple lay on her back beyond the gardens of Harschmort, panting hard, staring up without registering the slightest detail of cloud or sky, insensible to any cries that might have echoed beyond the hedgerows, to gunshots, and to time. She reached up slowly, as if the air had become gelatinous with dread, and touched her dripping mouth. Her fingers were wet with saliva and a clotted string of black bile. With a concentrated effort she turned her head and saw, gleaming where it had fallen, the blue glass book. She swallowed, her throat raw from retching, and sank back again, feeling the stalks of tall grass poking at her hair, her will sapped, with all the sickness in her mind rising again like a flooding mire.

  Since looking into the glass book in the Contessa's rooms, Miss Temple had been determined that its insistent, delirious memories not overwhelm her, knowing such an initial surrender could easily stretch into a span of days. But Miss Temple's disapproval of a world so defined was primarily fearful, for such surrender frightened her very much. Miss Temple did not consider herself as priggish—she did not tremble at her own natural appetites—yet she knew some pleasures were different. When she imagined them inside her mind, she imagined her mind stained.

  But the second book changed all of this. It had colored Miss Temple's thoughts to the same extreme degree as the first—or recolored them, overlaying every vivid impulse ash grey. The Contessa's book had been compiled from countless lives, while the book on the grass contained the memories of a single man—but his memories had been harvested at the very moment of death, infecting each instant of his captured experience with a toxic, corrupting, nauseating dread. It was not unlike the pageants one saw carved on medieval churches— lines of people, from princesses to peasants to popes, trailing hand in hand after Death, the trappings of their lives exposed as vanity. Scenes of lust—and what scenes they were!—became disgusting charades of rotting meat, sumptuous banquets became fashioned whole from human filth, every strain of sweet, sweet music became re-strung to the coarse calling of blood-fed crows. Miss Temple had never imagined such despair, such utter hopelessness, such bottomless bankruptcy. The first book's bright empire of sensation, its unstable riot beneath her skin, had been mirrored by bitter futility, with the acrid dust that was every person's inheritance.