The Chemickal Marriage (29 page)

At once came a sharp yelp of pain from beyond the door, unmistakably from Marie. Miss Temple shot to her feet.

The Contessa spoke swiftly, with annoyance. ‘You can do nothing to help her but
obey
.’ She tugged the cigarette from its holder and dropped the butt to the floor, snuffing it as she stood.

‘Where are we going?’

‘Not until you change, Celeste.’ For the first time, the Contessa smiled. ‘Afterwards, everything. But first you must at least
pretend
to be civilized …’

The woman’s fingers pulled at the back of her dress, each touch pecking apart Miss Temple’s concentration. She had fought at the Customs House, and tried to strangle Vandaariff in his coach, but now it was all she could do to stand.

The Contessa peeled the fabric from Miss Temple’s shoulders and then the sleeves over each hand, like a magician extracting two scarves from a hat. The Contessa yanked the dress to the floor. Miss Temple obediently stepped free of the pile.

‘What happened to your arm?’

‘It was cut by flying glass. At the Customs House.’

‘And were you
very
brave?’ The Contessa’s hand traced its way without hurry around the circuit of Miss Temple’s hips.

‘Why are you here?’ she whined.

‘Better to ask why
you
are here,’ replied the Contessa.

‘This is my room.’

‘I thought it belonged to sugar and slaves.’

‘Then who owns your suite at the Royale – pulchritude?’

Miss Temple cried out as the caressing hand struck her buttock hard enough to leave a mark. The Contessa crossed to the wardrobe. Miss Temple plucked the Comte’s silk handkerchief from her corset, but she’d no time to unwrap the glass spur before the Contessa had returned. Her breath blew warm against Miss Temple’s nape.

‘You smell like a
pony
.’ The Contessa snatched up an amber bottle, Signora Melini’s
Mielissima
, and came back with a basin of water. ‘Arms
up
.’

Miss Temple complied. The Contessa roughly swabbed Miss Temple’s armpits with a cloth, then her bosom and neck, and last, with smaller strokes,
the planes of her face. Miss Temple held still, a kitten submitting to the ministrations of its mother’s tongue. The Contessa dropped the cloth into the basin. With pursed lips she applied the perfume far more liberally than Miss Temple ever had, under her arms, at her wrists, behind her ears, and then, like a drunken signature to end a night of gambling, dragged the moistened stopper across the nooks of her collarbone. She replaced the stopper and threw the bottle carelessly onto the bed. With a sudden flicker of suspicion, the Contessa thrust a hand down Miss Temple corset, probing for anything hidden, and then swept in either direction, searching beneath each breast. Finding nothing, she pulled her hand free and then bent forward for a last sniff.

‘At least no one will take you for an
unperfumed
pony.’

The Contessa snatched up a dress, fluffed it wide and lifted it over Miss Temple’s head.

‘But that is a dress for mourning –’

Her words were lost in a mass of black crêpe silk. She had worn it but once, for the funeral of Roger’s cousin, at the beginning of their courtship. The sudden purchase, entirely for his sake, had pleased her immensely.

‘Arms in the sleeves. Be quick about it.’

She realized that the Contessa’s dress, which Miss Temple had taken for a dusky violet, was in fact closer to a shimmering charcoal. ‘Who has died?’

‘O who has not?’

The Contessa cinched the laces with as little regard for comfort as a farmer trussing goats. Her hands darted purposefully, flicking the skirts free of Miss Temple’s feet, batting the dress over her petticoats, and alternately tugging down the bodice and lifting her bosom. Throughout it all the silken handkerchief remained in Miss Temple’s hand, balled tight.

The Contessa stepped back with a sigh of resignation. ‘Your hair would shame a sheepdog. Have you a hat?’

‘I dislike hats. If you would allow my maid –’

‘No.’

The Contessa took Miss Temple’s curls with both hands. They stood near to one another, the Contessa fixed upon her task and Miss Temple, shorter, gazing at the other woman’s throat, inches away.

The Contessa frowned. ‘With charity, one could say you looked Swiss. But we are already late. What did you make of Oskar? Is he in
health
, Celeste? In his
mind
?’

‘We scarcely spoke. I had been injured –’

‘Yes, he must have liked that. Probably wanted to eat you whole.’

‘Why did you not kill Doctor Svenson?’

‘Beg pardon?’

The question had flown from Miss Temple’s mouth. ‘You left him alive with the glass card.’

‘Did I?’

‘Half of him wants to die, you know. Because of Elöise. Because of you.’

The Contessa met her censorious gaze and laughed outright, her pleasure the more for being taken unawares. Still smiling, she opened the door and walked out, leaving Pfaff to collect Miss Temple. He hooked her arm with his, but paused at the side table where she’d set Roger’s notebook.

‘She’ll need a bag,’ he called. ‘It will look odd not to have one.’

The Contessa snorted from the foyer – a judgement on such propriety or, more likely, Miss Temple’s taste in bags. Pfaff snatched up a handbag, deftly stuffed the notebook inside and shoved Miss Temple through the door. The Contessa rolled her eyes.

‘Jesus Lord.’

Pfaff looked hurt. ‘It matches perfectly well.’

‘Like a headache matches nausea. Perhaps it will attract sympathy.’

Marie had vanished, and, though Miss Temple considered shouting to the desk clerk for rescue, in the end she allowed herself to be swept into the street. The door to a shining coach was held by a footman in rich livery. Miss Temple climbed up first and took the instant of solitude to return the silk handkerchief to the bosom of her dress. Pfaff installed himself next to her and the Contessa opposite, flouncing her dress with a deliberate thoroughness. Though she carried a black clutch, large enough to keep her cigarette holder, it was of no size for a glass book. Once more Miss Temple wondered where the dark volume had been cached. She cleared her throat.

‘That footman’s uniform – I mean – are we truly –’

‘Celeste,’ sighed the Contessa, ‘if you can guess, must you
ask
?’

Pfaff only smirked and tugged at the lapels of his coat. Miss Temple could not think what the man seriously hoped to attain. That he had shifted his banner to the Contessa made Pfaff’s character more clear – one might as well protest a bee being drawn to a more splendid flower. She recalled Mr Phelps insisting, so rudely, about society’s divisions. As deluded as she saw Pfaff to be, so the Contessa saw Miss Temple – and no doubt there were circles where the Contessa appeared a garish
parvenu
…

The streets around them clattered with hoof beats. Their coach had attracted an escort of horsemen. Miss Temple stared at the Contessa.

‘What
is
it, Celeste?’

‘The Vandaariff crypt.’

‘Yes?’

‘You wanted me to see it.’

‘This
insistence
on confronting me with what I already know –’

Miss Temple nodded to Pfaff. ‘Does
he
know?’

‘Why should I care?’

Pfaff’s lips turned in a tolerant smile, as if he saw past the Contessa’s disdain. ‘I already told her – the tomb is isolated, easy to watch –’

‘How did you know I’d been taken?’ Miss Temple demanded. ‘Was it that Francesca Trapping never appeared with Doctor Svenson?’

‘If I cared for the child I should not have left her behind. She is nothing to me. No more than the Doctor.’

‘But you spared his life. And have gone to some effort to save mine.’

‘None of which, Celeste Temple, changes our
understanding
.’

Despite the Contessa’s tone, Miss Temple sat back and grinned, showing her small white teeth. Both Vandaariff and the Contessa had preserved her life when she ought to have been slain, each to employ her against the other. They were fools.

‘That’s a repellent little smile,’ said the Contessa. ‘Like a weasel about to suck eggs.’

‘I cannot help it,’ said Miss Temple. ‘I am excited – though you have not told me what I am to do when we arrive.’

‘Nothing at all. Remain silent.’

‘And if I don’t?’

‘I will cut your throat and spoil everything. And
then
what will I tell Cardinal Chang?’

The Contessa raised one eyebrow, waiting for her words to penetrate.

‘Cardinal Chang?’

‘How else do you think you were redeemed? For a chocolate cake?’

‘You gave Chang to Vandaariff?’

‘When a thing is already owned, one prefers the term “restoration” –’

‘But where was he – how did you – he would never –’

‘My goodness, we are here. Do try to honour the Cardinal’s sacrifice. Remember – respectful silence, humble grief, pliant nubility.’

The Contessa pinched Miss Temple’s cheeks to give them colour, then swatted her out onto a walkway of red gravel. The Contessa joined her, taking Miss Temple’s hand. Pfaff remained in the coach. A richly uniformed man strode towards them, cradling an enormous busby, as if he’d come from beheading a bear. He clicked his heels and nodded to the Contessa, the gesture as sharp as a hatchet stroke.

‘Milady.’

The Contessa sank into an elegant curtsy. ‘Colonel Bronque. I apologize for our delay.’

The Colonel scrutinized Miss Temple with an icy scepticism, then ushered them on with a sweep of his gold-encrusted arm.

‘If you will. Her Majesty is never one to be kept waiting.’

Chang ignored the gunshots. It was up to Svenson to deal with the men behind them. The slightest break in concentration and Foison would have Chang’s life: he could no more heed the commotion around him than a surgeon marked a patient’s screams.

The razor was open in Chang’s right hand. In his left he held a black cloak, long enough to tangle a blade and which, accurately thrown, could baffle Foison’s vision. Foison matched him with two knives, balanced to throw, made for thrust, heavy enough to snap the razor clean. Instead of broad strokes to keep Chang back, Foison would favour point: one blade to entangle Chang’s defence, then the other for the kill. Chang’s options were more limited. The razor might spill quantities of blood, but to incapacitate a man like Foison the edge must reach his throat. Nothing less would prevent the second knife from stabbing home.

An observer would have sworn that neither man moved, but to Chang it was a flurry of threats and counters signalled in subtle shifts of weight, flexing fingers, pauses of breath. Skill ran second to what advantage could be seized from circumstance: a blade, a chair or a shove down a staircase, Chang hardly cared, and expected the exact lack of courtesy in return. He was no fop to entertain the notion of a
duel
.

Fast as a bullet, Foison moved, a high thrust at Chang’s face. Chang whipped the cloak in the air, hoping to catch the knife-tip –

Both men were blown off their feet in the roar of flame and debris, and the whistle of flying glass.

Chang rose and pushed off the cloak that had caught the debris of the blast. Not two yards away, Foison groped for his knives in the smoke. Chang’s
swinging fist caught him below the eye, and then a merciless kick dropped Foison flat.

Chang’s ears rang. The soldiers’ shadows already danced in the portico. Any moment the trading hall would be swarmed. A writhing movement at his feet – the kicking legs of Francesca Trapping, her body shielded by the arms and greatcoat of Doctor Svenson. Chang pulled the girl to her feet and raised Svenson by the collar, unsure if the man was alive. The Doctor’s hand slapped at Chang’s arm and Svenson erupted into a coughing fit, dust caking his face and hair.

Chang did not see Celeste Temple.

All around lay corpses whose white coverings had been blown away by the explosion. With the dust and smoke and so many women and children amongst them, it was impossible to isolate one small body with auburn hair. The fact entered his brain like a bullet. Body. The dead were everywhere. Nothing else moved.

He had failed her. Without further hesitation, Chang sprinted to the nearest archway, the girl beneath one arm and Doctor Svenson hauled along by force.

He kicked out a window, heaved his squirming burdens through, then compelled them the length of the alley to a low brick hut. He knew exactly where they were.

The girl was in tears.

Chang snatched two lanterns, set them alight and crossed to a greasy stone staircase, leading down. He held one out, impatiently, for the Doctor.

‘Hold hands, the way is slick.’ Chang’s voice was hoarse. They kept the wall on their left and the dark, stinking stream to the right, until they reached a place where the steps were relatively clean, and at Chang’s gesture the others sat.

‘We are in the sewers. We may travel unseen.’ Svenson said nothing. The girl shuddered. Chang held the lantern to her face. ‘Are you hurt? Can you hear me – your ears?’

Francesca nodded, then shook her head – yes to hearing, no, she was
unharmed. Chang looked to Svenson, whose face was still streaked by white dust, and nearly dropped the lantern.

‘Good Lord, why did you not speak!’

The bullet hole was singed into the front of Svenson’s greatcoat, directly above his heart. Chang tore open the coat … but there was no blood. For all their running, Svenson’s front ought to have been soaked. With a wince the Doctor extracted his mangled cigarette case, a lead pistol slug flattened into the now misshapen lid. Svenson turned it over so they could all see the opposite side – bulging from the bullet’s impact, but never punched through. He worked a handkerchief gingerly under his tunic, pressed it tight against his ribs and then pulled it out to look: a blot of blood the size of a pressed tea rose.

‘The rib is cracked – I felt it running – but I am alive when I ought not to be.’

Chang stood. Francesca Trapping’s eyes gazed fearfully up to his. Behind him in the dark, the trickle of sewage. He felt the smoke in his lungs, heard its abrasion when he spoke.