The Chemickal Marriage (11 page)

‘Who is Cunsher?’ Chang broke in curtly. ‘And what
men
?’

Svenson fell behind and whispered a brief and thoroughly frustrating account of their doings since they had seen him last. However gratifying it was to hear of Tackham’s death (and Chang could not help but be impressed by the Doctor’s courage), the rest of Svenson’s narrative strained any impression of sense – an alliance with Phelps, dependence on this Cunsher, and then acceptance of Miss Temple’s own ridiculous scheming.
Jack Pfaff?
And how many others – apparently dead? Arrant foolishness aimed at taking her money and abandoning her to peril when that was gone.

‘You had no idea she was pursuing such nonsense?’ he asked the Doctor.

‘She found
me
. Once I realized – well, the girl is determined.’

‘Damned little terrier.’

Svenson smiled. ‘A terrier with her teeth around a wolf’s leg, I agree. Nevertheless –’

‘We’re here again.’

‘We are. It is a comfort to have you.’

Chang shrugged, knowing he ought to return the sentiment – that it
was
good to have Svenson by his side – but the moment passed. He had scarcely spoken to the Doctor since their sojourn in the fishing village on the Iron Coast and almost laughed to remember how Svenson had been expected to tend any and all ailing goats and pigs.

‘And the Contessa?’

For a moment Svenson said nothing. ‘Only the two red envelopes. The woman has otherwise vanished, with the book and the child.’

‘Rosamonde is the most dangerous of all.’

‘So experience would indicate.’

Abruptly Chang realized that the Doctor had said nothing of the person he ought to have mentioned most of all. ‘Where is Elöise?’

The question had come without consideration of her absence, and an instant later Chang regretted it.

‘Your Rosamonde cut her throat.’ Svenson’s voice betrayed no emotion. ‘Phelps and I went back and made her grave.’

Chang shut his eyes. No words came. ‘That was good of you.’

‘We looked for you as well.’

He turned to the Doctor, but could not read his expression at all. ‘I am happy not to have obliged.’

The Doctor nodded with a wan smile, but took the moment to turn his attention to whatever Phelps was asking Miss Temple. Chang fell back a step and let the conversation end.

They crouched in the shadow of an empty barge. Ahead was the sunken gate to the river. Chang scanned the catwalks and iron towers for any watchman with a carbine.

Miss Temple pointed to a platform just visible beyond the docks. ‘That was where we entered,’ she said. It was the first time she had addressed him since the tunnels. ‘Set with a snare of glass bullets.’

‘No guards in sight,’ said Phelps. ‘Perhaps they have placed their trust in another trap.’

‘Or do they wait for another reason?’ asked Svenson. ‘The Comte’s arrival?’

‘The Comte is dead,’ replied Chang drily. ‘He told me so himself.’

Mr Phelps sneezed.

‘Are you
wet
?’ asked Chang.

Phelps nodded and then shook his head, as if an explanation was beyond him.

‘O this waiting is absurd,’ snapped Miss Temple, and she marched from cover towards the gate. Chang sprang after, hauling her back. She sputtered with indignation.

‘Do not,’ he hissed. ‘You have no idea –’

‘
I
have no idea?’

‘Stay
here
.’

Before she could vent another angry syllable he loped down the pier, bare feet slapping the planks. If he could but satisfy himself that the gate was locked …

It was nothing but luck that the first shot came an instant before the others could move, and that it missed. At the flat crack of the carbine Chang hurled himself to the side and rolled. A swarm of bullets followed – the new rapid-firing Xonck weapons he’d seen at Parchfeldt. Tar-soaked splinters flew at his eyes. He scrambled behind a windlass wrapped with heavy rope. The slugs tore into the hemp but until the snipers moved he was safe. At the barge, Miss Temple knelt with a hand over her mouth. Svenson and Phelps lay flat, none of them thinking to look where the shots had come from, much less of returning fire.

Not that they would hit a thing – their pistols would be inaccurate at this distance, and the sharpshooters too well placed. Chang looked behind him: a wall he could not climb, a locked gate he could not reach. Now that they had been seen, it was a matter of minutes before a party arrived on foot.

Above, a hemp cable rose from the windlass to a pulley, from which hung a pallet of bound barrels. A chock held the windlass in position. Chang grimaced in advance and bruised his bare foot kicking it free.

The gears flew as the rope whipped upwards, and the pallet of barrels dropped like a thunderbolt. Assuming this would draw all eyes, Chang burst forth, racing for the barge, waving for the others to run. The barrels crashed onto the wharf behind him, and quite suddenly he was lifted off his feet, the
entire dockfront shaking. He landed hard, ears ringing, smoking wood all around him, and began to crawl. Svenson pulled him up and they ran. Chang looked back to see a massive column of smoke obscuring the gate and the canal, lit from within by bolts of light, an angry stormcloud brought to ground.

‘What on
earth
?’ managed Mr Phelps, but no one had the breath to reply. They were running blindly, simply racing down any clear avenue that appeared. Then, looking left, Chang saw a flash of black.

‘A tunnel!’ he cried, and veered towards it, the others raggedly at his heels. But the tunnel was blocked by an iron grille.

‘Shoot the lock!’ cried Phelps.

‘There
is
no lock,’ snarled Chang, who nevertheless dug his fingers into the grille-work and pulled. ‘The bars are set into the cement.’

‘It is a blast tunnel,’ said Svenson, ‘for testing explosives. Pull in the centre – better yet, step away.’

Chang realized he had been pulling at the edge of the grille, trying to wrest it from the stone. But the centre of the iron mesh was blackened from who knew how many exhalations of scalding gas. Svenson raised one heavy boot and stamped hard. The bars shook and bent inward. Phelps added his foot to the Doctor’s and one corroded joint snapped clean. They kicked again and two more gave way. The Doctor fell to his knees and strained with both hands, bending the damaged metal enough to clear a hole.

‘Hurry. Celeste, you are smallest – see if you can fit!’

Miss Temple carefully inserted her head and writhed forward. The cage caught her dress but Svenson disengaged it and she was through.

‘It smells dreadful!’ she called. Chang crawled in. He knelt alongside Miss Temple, the two of them together for a moment while Svenson and Phelps each insisted the other enter first.

‘I was foolish,’ she said quietly. ‘I’m sorry.’

Chang did not know if she meant having darted forward to the gate on the dock, or their kiss in the Parchfeldt woods. He had never heard Miss Temple apologize for anything.

‘What’s done is done.’ He reached for Svenson’s flailing hand.

Where Miss Temple passed with a stoop, the men were forced to bend low. Chang called forward irritably, ‘Do you know where this takes us?’

‘No. Would you prefer we turn back?’

Mr Phelps sneezed. Svenson rummaged in his pockets, and then a wooden match flared. The tunnel, walls blackened and stubbled with chemical residue, receded far beyond the match light’s reach. Svenson took the opportunity to light a cigarette, speaking as he puffed the tip to red life.

‘The main gates will be guarded, and we are no party to force them.’ The match went to his fingertips and Svenson dropped it, the flame winking out mid-fall.

‘I should like a pair of
shoes
,’ said Chang.

‘And I should like to examine your spine,’ replied the Doctor.

‘Whilst we are being hunted in the dark, I suggest it be postponed.’

‘Perhaps we could find that man again,’ said Phelps, ‘with the white hair –’

‘His name is Foison.’

‘The thing is, I believe I have seen him before.’

‘Why didn’t you say so?’ snapped Chang.

‘I was not sure – and we have been running!’

‘
Where
did you see him?’ asked Svenson.

‘At Harschmort, it must have been – ages ago. Not that he spoke, but when one serves a man of power, as I did the Duke of Staëlmaere, one observes the minions of others.’

‘So he was Robert Vandaariff’s man?’ asked Svenson.

‘But Vandaariff’s body holds another,’ said Miss Temple. ‘Robert Vandaariff is gone.’

‘Does Mr Foison know that?’

‘Why should he care?’ asked Miss Temple, crawling on. ‘The man is a villain. I think you
should
have killed him. O there now – do you mark it – the air is warmer … is there a join with another passage?’

The Doctor lit a second match. Chang turned his eyes from the flare and noticed, above them in the cement, a perforated hatchway.

‘Here it is …’

He slipped his fingers through the mesh and lifted the hatch from its
place, then hauled himself up into darkness, where his bare feet touched cold stone. The Doctor’s match died and he lit another. Chang reached to Miss Temple.

‘And so Persephone escaped from the underworld …’

At this she pursed her lips, but took his hand with both of hers. He lifted her out, then helped Phelps. The Doctor stood in the hatchway, head and shoulders in the room, holding the match aloft. Miss Temple laughed aloud.

‘I am a goose! See here!’ From her bag she pulled a beeswax stub and gave it to Svenson to light. ‘I had forgotten!’

‘O for all love,’ muttered Phelps sullenly.

Chang shared the sentiment, but was happy enough to see where they were: a square chamber with a stone-flagged floor. At the base of each wall lay a scattering of straw, and bolted into the cement at regular intervals – almost to resemble an art salon – were long rectangles.

Doctor Svenson sniffed the air. ‘Vinegar. As if the chamber had been scoured.’

Miss Temple took the candle from him, walking closer to a wall. ‘Look at the straw,’ she said. ‘It has all come out of this burlap sacking …’

The scraps of sacking had been painted with crude faces, and within the straw lurked tattered strips of clothing.

‘Straw mannequins,’ Chang said. ‘Test targets …’ Crossing nearer, he could see the rectangles were of different materials: hammered steel, smelted iron, brass, oak, teak, maple studded with iron nails, each to test an explosive’s power. The power of a prototype explosive set off within the chamber – its gasses venting to the tunnel – could be measured against all kinds of surfaces: wood, armour, fabric, even (he imagined a row of hams hanging from hooks) flesh, all from a single blast.

‘Take care for your feet,’ said Doctor Svenson, joining them. ‘Celeste, hold your light closer to the straw.’

She knelt and Chang saw a glimmer near her boot. She gingerly pulled the straw away to reveal a gleaming chip of blue glass. Miss Temple lifted the light to the rectangle above. Its oaken planks bristled with tiny glass splinters, like a cork board stuck with pins. Higher up, still whole, perched a
small, spiked blue disc, perhaps the size of a Venetian florin. Chang bunched the silken sleeve over his fingers and tugged the disc free. The edge was sharp and the spikes as regular as a wicked, wheeled spur.

‘A projectile?’ asked Svenson. ‘Grapeshot?’

‘But why
blue
glass?’ countered Chang. ‘A broken gin bottle will cut just as well.’

‘What have you found?’ called Mr Phelps from across the room, sniffling.

‘The poor man needs a fire,’ Svenson muttered, before calling back. ‘It is blue glass, perhaps part of a weapon.’

‘Will they not be searching for us?’ Phelps replied. ‘Should we not flee?’

Miss Temple plucked the disc from Chang’s palm. Before he could protest she raised it up to her eye.

‘Celeste!’ gasped Svenson. ‘Don’t be a fool!’

Chang forcibly pulled her arm down, breaking the connection.

Her eyes were wide and her face had flushed – but with
anger
, he realized. Miss Temple thrust the glass back into Chang’s hand.

‘I saw nothing,’ she growled. ‘It is not a memory but a feeling. Deeply felt, obliterating
wrath
.’

Chang looked to the shredded straw. ‘What does rage matter when the target’s cut to ribbons?’

‘There is a
door
,’ called Mr Phelps thickly. ‘I am going
through
it.’

Svenson hurried after Phelps. Chang caught Miss Temple’s arm and turned her to him. ‘You insist on risking yourself –’

‘That is my own business.’

Her cheeks were still red from the glass, and Chang recalled the forest at Parchfeldt. She had been striking his chest in fury before lunging up to kiss him. He imagined slipping a hand through her curls right then and pulling her face to his.

‘Impatience gets a person killed,’ he said instead. ‘And trying to make up for past mistakes only muddles your thinking.’

‘
Mistakes?
’

‘What of these men you hired, or Jack Pfaff – what of Elöise – what of shooting Roger Bascombe –’

‘I should have spared him, then? And the Contessa – shall we spare her as well?’

‘Are you coming?’ called Doctor Svenson, his words edged with a finite patience.

‘You know full well what I refer to,’ muttered Chang, wishing he had not said a word.

‘An ordnance room,’ explained Svenson, indicating the high scaffolds holding kegs of powder. ‘The racks allow ventilation – and do you mark the slippers?’ A pile of grey felt slippers lay heaped just inside the doorway. ‘To cover one’s shoes, so there is no chance of a spark from a hobnail – an old habit from ships. And there, do you see?’ Svenson pointed to a portion of empty scaffolding against the wall. ‘View-holes into the blast chamber, bent like the mirrored periscopes one uses in trench-works, so no random shot can plunge through, yet still allowing the engineers to view the explosion.’

Mr Phelps had rallied, or perhaps was abashed at his show of peevishness. ‘These barrels are not yet stored away – if they are newer, might they not hold the explosive we saw at the canal?’