The Chemickal Marriage (22 page)

‘What are you staring at?’ Chang asked.

Svenson pointed to the mirror. ‘The other side of this wall.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Nor I. Follow me.’

The Doctor crossed to the archway. As Chang stood, his boot slid, scraping on the floor. Svenson turned to see him pick something up, and frown.

‘Some idiot’s button,’ muttered Chang, and he threw it away.

There was no other side of the wall they could reach. The corridor ended in a stack of barrels. ‘I told you,’ said Chang. ‘We are in the cellars.’

Svenson frowned. ‘She acquainted me with the Comte’s painting to provoke some action. Saying I was near the river must have been deliberate, to send me in that direction …’

‘The woman is a vampire,’ said Chang. ‘Cruelty for the sake of being cruel.’

‘Cruelty would have meant taking my life.’

‘If the Contessa was civil it must have galled her terribly,’ Miss Temple observed, ‘like playing courtesan to a bitter enemy.’

‘Wait.’ The Doctor pointed. ‘Look at the floor.’

Thin lines of grit curved across the tile from beneath the barrels, as if they had been moved. Chang reached for a barrel and Svenson helped him shift it, revealing a metal door set into the stone. Hanging from the knob by a leather loop was a notched brass tube three inches long.

‘The pneumatic vestibule,’ Svenson said. ‘And here is the key.’

Inside the panelled box, Svenson paused. ‘Do we follow the Contessa, or escape?’

‘She may have returned to the attic, to Francesca,’ said Miss Temple.

‘We don’t know that the child is there,’ Chang cautioned. ‘I say we descend to where we entered and hope it is not thronged with soldiers.’

Acknowledging this logic, Svenson thrust the key into the slot and stabbed the lowest button on the brass plate. The car vibrated with life. They descended without speaking – all three with weapons ready – but when they heard the tell-tale
clank
the car did not stop.

‘I thought we entered directly below the cellars,’ said Chang.

‘Perhaps we did not pay attention,’ said Miss Temple. ‘Perhaps it was two stops below.’

‘It wasn’t.’

‘Then there is another floor further below.’

A second
clank
and the car came to a halt. Chang pulled the iron gate open and set his shoulder against the tarnished metal door beyond it.

This was not the underpassage to Stäelmaere House. Instead, they had been delivered to another tunnel, with a tiled floor like a bath house. A single lantern, lit within the hour judging by the level of oil, had been left on the floor. Next to it, like a malicious rose, lay a third red envelope.

It was empty save for a scrap of white tissue, smeared with a scarlet imprint of the Contessa’s mouth. Svenson said nothing. Chang scowled with displeasure. Miss Temple put her nose to the tissue, and observed that it smelt of frangipani flowers. They began to walk.

‘This cannot have been simple to construct,’ said Svenson. ‘The digging must have displaced the coach traffic above us for ages –’

‘Nothing of the kind has displaced anything,’ called Chang, walking in the lead. ‘This can only be the old Norwalk.’

This meant nothing to Svenson or Miss Temple. Chang sighed. ‘The Norwalk fortifications were dismantled to lay the Seventh Bridge, and the new Customs House.’

‘I have been to the Customs House,’ said Miss Temple. ‘To learn about trade.’

‘That does you credit,’ said Svenson. ‘It is the rare heiress not simply content to spend.’

Miss Temple made a bothered face. ‘I did not want to be cheated – sugar-men are famous scoundrels. But, once I was inside, tiresome is not the half of it –’

Chang cleared his throat. They stopped talking. He went on.

‘The Norwalk formed one wall of the original Citadel. I would guess this was once a lower catacomb.’

‘But why has it been remade?’ asked Svenson. ‘New tile and fresh paint.’

Chang reached into his coat for his razor. With the handle he scratched a line in the plaster and blew the dust away. ‘Replastered these past two months.’

‘Before or after the dirigible went into the sea?’ asked Svenson.

Chang shrugged. Miss Temple held up the lantern.

‘We forget
this
. Someone lit it. We must keep on and make her tell us everything.’

A quarter-mile brought the tunnel’s end: a wooden door, and another red envelope left atop its polished handle. Chang tore it open, glanced at the paper and passed it to Svenson with a snort.

My Dear Doctor,

As a man of evident Vitality you would have found this Lair in Time, but Time is no good Friend.

The Task is beyond any single Agent.

Do not let Love blind your Eyes. Ample Time remains to settle our Account.

RLS

Miss Temple raised her eyebrows impatiently and Svenson handed the paper to her.

‘Why should she mention “love”?’ asked Chang.

‘I expect she means Elöise,’ Svenson replied, wondering if it were true, wondering – despite his surety of the woman’s heartlessness – just how the Contessa viewed their encounter. And how did
he
view it? ‘She will say anything to mitigate her guilt if she requires our aid.’

Miss Temple thrust the paper back. ‘I will not be a party to her bargains.’

‘If we find the Contessa,’ said Chang, ‘no matter where, she is to die.’

Svenson nodded his agreement. It was not that he wanted to spare the Contessa – and he did not, truly – but he saw in his companions’ resolve a wilful denial of the fact that their struggle now stretched beyond the individuals who had wronged them. And if he did keep the woman alive to defeat the Comte, would Miss Temple and Chang come to hate him just as much, at the end?

The ‘lair’ certainly looked to be inhabited by an animal. Clothes, however fine, were strewn across the floor and furniture, unwashed plates and glasses cluttered the worktops, empty bottles had rolled to each corner of the room, a straw mattress had been folded double and shoved against the wall. Despite the Contessa’s detritus, it was clear the low stone chamber had been refitted for another purpose. Metal pipes fed into squat brass boxes bolted to the wall. The chamber reeked of indigo clay.

Svenson touched the pipes to gauge their heat, then put his palm against the wall. ‘Very cold … could that be the river?’

Chang slapped his hand against the wall. ‘Of course! I’m a fool – the Seventh Bridge! The turbines!’

‘What turbines?’ asked Miss Temple. ‘You say such things as if one mentions
turbines
over breakfast –’

Chang rode over her words. ‘The supports of the bridge contain turbines – it was an idea for flushing sewage –’

‘These pipes hold
sewage
?’

‘Not at all – the plan was never implemented. But we know Crabbé and
Bascombe plotted against their allies – so of
course
they required their own version of the Comte’s workshop. The bridge’s turbines, with the force of the river, would serve up enough power to satisfy even these greedy machines.’

‘And I assume the Contessa learnt their secret from her spy, Caroline Stearne.’ Miss Temple waved the reek from her face. ‘But why has she abandoned it?’

‘That is the question,’ agreed Svenson. ‘This night she has given up her refuge at the Palace, and now a quite remarkable laboratory …’

‘There is the matter of her death warrant,’ said Miss Temple.

‘It did not appear to trouble her especially.’

‘Also, if she lit the lamp and left the envelopes to get us here,’ said Chang, ‘where did she
go
?’

They did not see any other door. Svenson searched behind the mattress and under the piles of clothing, pausing at a wooden crate. The crate was lined with felt and piled with coils of copper wire. Next to it, in a tangle of black rubber hose, lay a mask, the sort they had all seen before in the operating theatre at Harschmort.

‘As we guessed, not only was our view of the painting leached from her own mind, it seems the Contessa did the leaching herself.’

‘How can she be sure the machine selects only the memory she desires?’ asked Chang. ‘Does she not risk its draining everything?’

‘Perhaps that is determined by the glass – a small card can contain only so much.’ Svenson moved on his knees to one of the brass boxes. It was fitted with a slot in which one might insert an entire glass book, but above this was another, much smaller aperture, just wide enough for a card. ‘I agree, however, that to do this alone is insanity. How can she rouse herself to turn off the machine? We have all seen the devastating effects –’

‘Did you see them in her?’ asked Miss Temple, just a little hopefully. ‘Thinning hair? Loosened teeth?’

‘Here.’ Chang held out a tiny pair of leather gloves, dangling them to show the size. ‘The Contessa took precautions after all.’

‘They would not fit a monkey,’ said Svenson.

‘Francesca Trapping,’ said Miss Temple.

‘The sorceress’s familiar.’ Chang hoisted himself onto a worktop to sit. ‘But I still don’t see why she’s left the place, nor why she’s bothered to lure us here …’

His words trailed away. Svenson followed Chang’s gaze to a china platter, blackened and split, piled with bits of odd-shaped glass, most of them so dark Svenson had taken them for coal. But now he saw what had caught Chang’s eye: in the centre of the platter lay a round ball of glass, the size and colour of a blood orange.

‘The painting,’ Svenson said. ‘The black Groom – in his left hand …’

Chang picked up the reddish sphere and held it to the guttering lantern above them.

‘It is cracked,’ he said, and pushed up his dark glasses.

‘Chang, wait –’

Doctor Svenson reached out a warning hand, but Chang had already shut one eye and put the other to the glass.

‘Do you see anything?’ asked Miss Temple.

Chang did not answer.

‘I wonder if it is infused with a memory,’ she whispered to Svenson. ‘And what could make it
red
?’

‘Iron ore, perhaps, though I couldn’t speculate why.’ Svenson sorted through the remaining pieces on the platter – several were obviously the remnants of other spheres that had broken, but none were of the same deep shade.

‘If this
is
indigo clay … the refining is not what we have seen. I would guess each piece has been mixed with different compounds – no doubt to alter its alchemical efficacy –’

‘Doctor Svenson?’

Miss Temple stared at Chang, who remained gazing into the glass ball, as still as a stone.

Svenson swore in German and rushed to Chang’s side. He wrenched the ball from Chang’s grip. A warm vibration touched his hand, but nothing that stopped him from setting it back on the platter.

‘Is he poisoned?’ Miss Temple squeaked. ‘Save him!’

Chang’s naked eyes stared at nothing. Svenson felt his forehead and his pulse. He tapped Chang’s cheek sharply, twice. Nothing. ‘His breathing is not strained. It is not a fit … Celeste, do you have your rings – the rings of orange metal?’

She rummaged in her clutch bag and came out with a canvas pouch. The Doctor extracted a single ring and – feeling something of a fool – held it close to Chang’s eye. Chang did not react. Svenson pressed the whole pouch against Chang’s cheek.

Like a wine stain seeping through thick linen, the skin in contact flushed pink, then red, then went purple, like a deepening bruise. Miss Temple shrieked.

‘What is happening? Take it away!’

Svenson dropped the pouch. A pattern had been scorched onto Chang’s face, the colour of cherry flesh. The Doctor looked hurriedly around him.

‘The mattress! We must set him down –’

Miss Temple leapt to the mattress, dragging it close. Svenson lugged Chang off the worktop and they laid him down. Already the scorched ring had faded again to the pink of health. How had the effects reversed so quickly? Svenson seized Chang’s shoulder and belt. With a heave he rolled the man over, face down on the mattress.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Celeste, when you saw Chang’s wound, at Raaxfall, did you query your own memories of the Comte?’

She nodded, then choked in the back of her throat. ‘I found nothing.’

‘As I thought. You see, he is attempting something new. Our friend will not be another Lydia Vandaariff.’

The Doctor lifted Chang’s coat. The brief glimpse at Raaxfall had been in poor light.

‘Celeste, please look away –’

She shook her head. Svenson raised the silk shirt.

The wound lay to the right of the lumbar vertebra. The original puncture had been enlarged through what looked like at least three different surgeries,
expanding the scar to the shape and size of a child’s splayed, thumbless hand. The scar tissue was an unsettling vein-blue, with a rough, thickened surface like the hide of a starfish. But it was the flesh
around
the wound that had made them gasp in the wicked room at Raaxfall, and the Doctor winced to see it again. Like dye dropped into a milky basin, virulent streaks of red radiated from the centre, as if signifying a flowering of infection.

‘The same colour as the ring against his face,’ Miss Temple whispered.

Svenson delicately palpated the discoloured area. The flesh was cold, and beneath it his fingertips met an unnatural resistance.

‘Something has been placed inside.’

Her voice was small. ‘Will he die?’

‘If the Comte had wanted to kill him, he would be dead. We saw the other bodies –’

‘Then what has happened? Can you remove it? Why has he collapsed when he was perfectly fine?’

Svenson caught her flailing hand. ‘Clearly he was not
fine
. I cannot hope to remove it, even had I the tools. Whatever is
implanted
lies too near the spine. The slightest mistake and he is a cripple.’

‘That isn’t true!’

‘Please, Celeste – you must let me
think
–’

‘
But he will die!
’

Svenson looked helplessly around him, searching for any idea. The orange metal had always been effective in reversing the predations of the blue glass, but its application here had worsened Chang’s condition … could it be as simple as that, a matter of opposites? Svenson crawled to the china platter and pawed through the jumble of glass … was all of it so discoloured? He shouted to Miss Temple.