The Dark Volume

by Gordon Dahlquist

  “I'm sure you could acquire them nearer.”

  “But not from him. Herr Karoschka—one so rarely finds a decent man of business.”

  “Rubbish.” The Contessa tapped her ash toward the fire. “The world is ankle-deep with decent men of business—it is exactly why so many are so poor. Their delusion is merely the ordure in which more hardy crops thrive.”

  Svenson nodded in the direction of the barge-master's body. “Are you always so merry after killing a man?”

  “I am this merry when I have survived. Will we speak like reasonable people or not? The food is wholesome, the bottle contains—it is the country, one condescends—a clean-tasting cider, and if you put more wood on the fire like a kindly person, it might well revive.”

  “Madame—”

  “Doctor Svenson, please. Your querulous niceties only make it more awkward to speak freely, as we must. Unless you have decided to dash out my brains after all.”

  Her tone was arch and impatient, but Svenson could see the fatigue in her face—and it surprised him. The Contessa's normal temperament was so fully armored—he naturally thought of her as a seductress or a killer, but never anything so fragile as a woman. Yet here the Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza had been reduced to cutting a man's throat for his dinner and a meager fire.

  “Where is Elöise Dujong?” he asked, his voice even.

  The Contessa burst out laughing. “Who?”

  “You were with her, madame. In her uncle's cottage—you arranged—”

  “Arranged what? And when?”

  “Do not hope to lie to me! You saw her—”

  The Contessa choked gleefully on her cigarette.

  “Madame! She directed you to Parchfeldt Park.”

  “We did not meet at all. I saw her in Karthe, I admit it—a slag-heap I have scrubbed from my memory—but she did not see me. She was skulking after some man.”

  “She was attacked by Francis Xonck.”

  “I don't suppose it was fatal?”

  “He mistook her for you.”

  The Contessa shrugged as if to say this meant nothing, but then met the Doctor's cold gaze. Her smile faded away. “And so Francis followed on the train—not reaching the freight car before I was gone. It was you that prevented him from doing so, wasn't it? That gunshot.”

  Doctor Svenson was silent. The Contessa exhaled again, wearily.

  “Being obliged in any way is hateful. Very well. I have not seen Elöise Dujong since the train yard at Karthe. Miss Temple traveled with me. I left her quite alive, free to re-enter her cocoon of respectable hotels and tractable fiancés. Now, will you please sit down?”

  HE KNEW the Contessa to be the worst of women, and yet whenever she spoke, even if he knew it to be a honey spun of nightshade, it was as if her candor was meant for him alone. He stuffed the kindling into what remained of the embers. Could she truly not have been at the cottage? The Contessa uncorked the cider, took an unhurried pull, and held out the bottle. He felt the dizzy throb at the back of his skull and drank, reflexively wiping the bottle with his sleeve—at which the Contessa chuckled. She pushed across the barge-master's dinner: a half loaf of coarse brown bread; a block of cheese, its edges scumbled with mold; and perhaps six inches of blood sausage. The Contessa raised her eyebrows with a knowing expectation. He looked at the sausage, then met her eyes again and felt his face grow warm.

  “You have the fellow's knife, I believe,” she said.

  “Ah.”

  Doctor Svenson cut sausage and cheese for them both and then returned the clasp knife to his pocket. The Contessa piled a slice of each onto a torn hank of bread and took a small, estimatory bite.

  “A bit of mustard would do well.” She shrugged. “Or caviar on ice with vodka—but what can one do?”

  They ate in silence—like Svenson, the Contessa was evidently starving. But it was enough to simply watch her chew, or her nimble fingers pluck together each mouthful, or the action of her swallowing throat—the display of the Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza as a human machine. While this brought her status in his mind as an especially splendid creature somewhat down to earth, it also—combined with the lines lack of sleep and comfort had sketched around her eyes, the dull bloody color of her unpainted lips, and the untucked strands of black hair that fell about her face—made her seem so much more a palpable woman. He sawed apart the rest of the meat and cheese and smiled as she snatched the slices away as they appeared, marveling at how effortlessly companionable she had become. Doctor Svenson caught himself staring at her hands. The pain in his head had eased, he realized, only to be replaced by a growing, embarrassing ardor. He reached for the bottle and shifted what had grown to an uncomfortable position, drank, and groped to change the subject in his own internal conversation.

  “WHAT DID you think of the glass card?” he asked. “It was taken from my pockets. Don't tell me you didn't look into it.”

  “Why should I tell you that?” She reached for the bottle, drank, and set it down. “I think she does her best to warn you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she is an idiot.”

  “You mean she wants to save my life.”

  The Contessa shrugged. “If she cared for you truly, if she had a scruple of genuine sympathy for your soul, she would have instead provided you with the experience of Arthur Trapping having his beastly way with her on the floor of his children's schoolroom. You would have felt their pleasure—it would have aroused you, but sickened you even more. No doubt your skin crawls to think of it, of them, those little chairs, the room smelling first of notebooks and chalk, but then more pungent, the air thick with her—the barnyard grunting, the secretions—my goodness, you must know each by its Latin name!”

  She stopped at once, her eyes innocently round. “If Mrs. Dujong cared for you, she would have done her level best to drive you away by whatever means might be at hand. She has instead attempted to explain… and thus sent along your own death warrant.”

  “Do you think so?”

  “Listen to yourself defend her! The only question is whether she did so knowingly or is stupid. In either case, again—really, Doctor—pah!”

  SVENSON HAD no answer. The blue card had been placed in his pocket by Elöise… but what justification could it possibly offer? How other to read the attack in her uncle's cottage save as the tipping point where she had been forced to reveal her true allegiance? But why should he trust the Contessa? He glanced once more toward the shadows where the barge-master's cooling body lay hidden.

  “Is it likely we will receive visitors from the large building down the road?”

  “That depends on whether the fellow whose dinner we eat was merely a guard to mind the barge or someone with a task, the non-doing of which will draw notice.” She reached for a last slice of cheese. “One reason to maintain the fire of course is to maintain the illusion of his continued presence.”

  “And if I had not arrived?”

  “But you did arrive, Doctor.”

  “You credit the notion of destiny, then?”

  The Contessa smiled. “I credit the need to face facts. I am not one to entertain phantasms when I can entertain the real.”

  “The objects on the blanket told you they had encountered me.”

  “Why should I care?”

  “Why indeed?”

  Doctor Svenson reached for the cider. The bottle was two-thirds gone. “And what is this building? Surely it is your object in Parchfeldt Park.”

  “To so arrantly reveal your ignorance, Doctor Svenson—it shows bad form.”

  “Rubbish yourself, madame.” Could mere cider be going to his head so quickly? “Do you think I cannot see the stiffness in your right shoulder?”

  “I assure you, I am quite well.”

  “You have taken the bottle each time with your left hand, even when I have placed it much nearer the right. If you have been injured, I should see what I can do—it will only make it easier for you to take my life when you finally decide.” />
  “Or for you to take mine directly.”

  “If that were a worry, you would not be here.”

  In a sudden afterthought to his logic, Svenson realized that he had taken a blow square to the right side of his head, from a woman directly behind him—which meant she must have used the full force of her arm, which strongly suggested his assailant had used her right arm. It could not have been the Contessa at the cottage—just as the Contessa could not have extricated Robert Vandaariff from Harschmort. But if the woman he had glimpsed next to Elöise had taken Robert Vandaariff from Harschmort, along with the Comte's paintings… at once the Doctor suddenly knew he had been knocked into the wardrobe by Trapping's wife, Charlotte.

  The Contessa glanced to the road, then back to Doctor Svenson, her violet eyes inhabited by a curious gleam. As if she had come to a wicked decision, she reached into a canvas bag behind her and came out with a bottle and a rag.

  “Such professional concern. You must give me a moment to undo my dress…”

  HE COULD see the wound would scar. At another time he would have certainly stitched the gash together, but here he soaked it with the alcohol.

  “This was not from the glass,” he said, as the Contessa flinched— not from pain, but from the cold drips that ran beneath her dress to the small of her back.

  “Not from Francis, you mean?” Her hair hung over her face to provide a clearer view of the wound. “No. I had the misfortune of passing through a window.”

  “A few inches higher and it would have cut your throat.”

  She had removed her right arm from the dress, and the purple silk bunched in a rustling diagonal, revealing the Contessa's corset and a good deal of her body—even paler for the blackness of her hair.

  “What is your opinion of my bandage?” she asked.

  “I think you did very well to tie it yourself,” he answered, reaching carefully beneath her arm to redo the knot.

  “It was not me at all,” said the Contessa, “but someone with much smaller fingers. It was a very long journey, you see, and just the two of us together.”

  For an unguarded second Svenson imagined himself trapped in a freight car with the Contessa. Sharing an open fire was difficult enough. But the woman alone with Celeste Temple… what had they spoken of, and what—what else, it did not matter… nothing mattered as long as Miss Temple had emerged alive and unscathed. If only he could believe it.

  “There you are,” said Doctor Svenson, sitting back on his knees.

  She turned to face him, testing the ease of her arm and the tightness of the bandage, but not moving to do up her dress. Doctor Svenson swallowed, his medical objectivity steadily more confounded, like distant moonlight disappearing under cloud, as he stared. He forced his gaze up to hers, expecting a twinkling mockery, but the Contessa's eyes were warm and clear.

  “If any girl could ever be dear to me, I can imagine Celeste Temple such a one, though my first impulse on seeing such a determined little beast was to snap her neck between my teeth. So to speak, you understand … and yet… perhaps it was this wound… perhaps the need to huddle together for warmth …”

  “She—she is ferocious,” the Doctor stammered. “But still innocent.”

  “I think you retain some innocence as well,” whispered the Contessa.

  The moment was as dangerous as any Doctor Svenson had ever known. Despite all perspective and sense, her violet eyes remained pools into which he could, even now, be utterly lost, and in that losing give over all loyalty, all faith, all decency to her uncaring purpose. If he leaned forward to her lips, would she kiss him? Would she laugh? He licked his lips and dipped his gaze across her body. He could no longer recall the color of Elöise's eyes.

  Doctor Svenson sprang to his feet, wiping his hands on his trousers, and at once stumbled on a stone and toppled backwards into the undergrowth, landing with a grunt as the air was knocked from his lungs. He lay gasping, the green leaves of forest ivy brushing at his face, and shoved himself onto his elbows. The Contessa had returned her arm to her dress, and was doing up the shining black buttons with her left hand.

  “Are you quite alive?” she asked.

  “My apologies.”

  “Come back to the fire,” she said. “We have little time after all, and urgent matters to discuss.”

  DOCTOR SVENSON took a cigarette from his case and lit it before he sat down, as if his habit might shield his weakness, but her expression made plain he was the least of her concerns. Grateful, if also childishly stung at his peripherality, he returned to his place across the fire.

  “Where is Cardinal Chang?”

  It was not at all what Svenson expected her to say, and he was strangely crestfallen.

  “I have no idea.”

  The Contessa was silent. Svenson exhaled and tapped his ash onto the stones.

  “If you hope Chang will aid you any more than I—”

  “Aid?” she snapped. “You are a presumptuous Teuton.”

  Her mood had sharpened, or she had stopped bothering to hide it.

  “Upon surviving the airship, madame, you must have assumed you were the only one of your Cabal—”

  “Cabal?”

  “What else does one call you and your… associates?”

  “Anything else. The word smacks of businessmen playing with corn harvests.”

  “My point,” continued the Doctor, “is that your allies must have been few—thus your enlistment of the poor boy in Karthe. He was quite badly killed, you know.”

  The Contessa's eyes were harder. “The subject is not diverting.”

  “You ask for Chang because you are alone and seek greater numbers—and since you do ask, since you do expect my help—”

  “How very dramatic,” she sneered. “Ganz tragisch.”

  Svenson's cigarette had burned nearly to his fingers. He took one last puff and dropped it into the fire. He looked the Contessa in the eye.

  “You left the train deliberately to come here, to this spot in Parchfeldt Park. While this building is of a size to be a manor house, the construction is made for industry. The location of the canal allows the swift passage of goods—and yet the road and the canal are new-made. That you are here suggests you are one of the people who has new-made it—just as it is you who have made Xonck your enemy. You met him—in the village or on the way to Karthe. You most likely stole his horse, you certainly stole his book—and yet even after recovering it he was still doing his level best to find you.”

  “Once wronged, Francis is most persistent in his rage. As you put a bullet in his chest, you might bear it in mind.”

  The Doctor ignored her mocking smile. “He has had several opportunities to take my life, yet I am here. Which means this place too is entirely related to Xonck.”

  This last did not come from any deduction about the Contessa, but from the crates of Xonck munitions on the barge with Mr. Fruitricks. Svenson was sure now that Fruitricks was an agent of Francis Xonck, who had intended all along to seize control of the Comte's machinery. And now Charlotte Trapping had the Comte's paintings along with Vandaariff Whatever she knew of the Cabal—through her brother or her husband or even, he had to admit it, Elöise—had been enough to send her on her own extreme journey. Did the woman hope to challenge Fruitricks? Or was she hoping only to survive?

  Svenson swallowed. Would he see Elöise again after all?

  “In any event,” he muttered, “you must expect Xonck here, if he still lives.”

  “I do. And you and I have been here far too long.”

  The Contessa stood, reached behind for her bag, and smiled as Svenson struggled to his feet.

  “You have caused me so much trouble, Abelard Svenson, yet as you say, you are here.” She flicked a bit of grime from his hair. “It shows something more than your decency—passion, lust, despair, one scarcely cares—but something in you uncontrolled. I find it spurs my trust.”

  “But I do not trust you at all.”

  “If you did I should
think you quite a worm,” she replied. “The fire will die on its own, and by now we will be unseen on the road. Come, it is time.”

  THEY WALKED without speaking to the gravel road, a rough carpet threading the wood to either side. With night fallen full, the building glowed even more brightly. The Contessa reached for his arm, and then her touch became a tug on his uniform sleeve. He quickly followed her off the path, crouching low and keeping silent. A thin glimmer of yellow drifted toward them from the white building: the gleam from a mostly closed lantern. Svenson had not even glimpsed it— without the Contessa he would have blundered on and been taken. Behind the lantern came a double line of figures dragging two low, flat carts. These were the bargemen going back for the final load from the canal. Once they had passed, the Contessa's lips touched his ear.

  “They will find him. We must hurry.”

  In a rustle of leaves she was back on the road and walking as quickly as the dark and her injury would allow, and Svenson broke into a rapid jog to catch up.

  “What is this place? I know they have brought the Comte's machines …”

  She ignored him. Svenson caught the Contessa's uninjured shoulder and pulled the woman to a stop, her furious glare causing him to take back his hand at once.

  “If you expect my help, you must say.” He gestured at the bright building. “You and Xonck were both to have been cavorting in Macklenburg for how long? Another month? Two? All this was set in motion without regard to your present state or his. It is either Xonck's secret plan against you all, or it is mutiny in his absence.”

  “Francis is coming—that is all that matters.”

  “Whatever of his you have—whatever his book contains—can you really want it for yourself?”

  “Really, Doctor, I want him not to kill me—whether Francis dies or we make peace, I care little. But at this moment I care least of all to be caught on the road!”

  Behind them Svenson heard a cry—distant, but telling. The barge-master had been found. The Contessa picked up her dress and quickened her pace to a run. Svenson dashed after her.