The Chemickal Marriage (65 page)

‘Forgive me, my lord.’ Foison’s thin voice held not an ounce of contrition. ‘It was my intention to report whenever you had time to hear. I found the book in the house of Drusus Schoepfil, in a secret room painted in the manner
of the Comte d’Orkancz.’ Foison glanced, impassively, at Svenson. ‘Mr Schoepfil is a dangerous man. As his people occupied the Harschmort train, I was forced to find my own transport, and entrance.’

Vandaariff waved away this inconvenience, along with Foison’s concern. ‘I well know of my nephew’s painted
room
, and that he has collected every artefact of the Comte he could find. Who do you think made them available? Who instructed those powerful men to promote Drusus Schoepfil as a figurehead in the first place? Though he credits his own ludicrous destiny, he remains as he ever was, an insignificant worm.’

‘You underestimate the power of his belief,’ said Doctor Svenson.

‘The man believes nothing. His heart is inert.’

Svenson had given the book to Miss Temple. Foison must have had it from her, have
seen
her. But why had he hidden that from Vandaariff? Not from any weakness or wavering of purpose – Foison had used the book to reduce Cardinal Chang to a mindless husk, after all – a fact Trooste’s examination had just confirmed. Had Foison taken the book from the Contessa instead? Was
that
the alliance? Was Miss Temple even alive?

Foison cleared his throat. ‘There was a second question, my lord?’

‘Indeed, for Doctor Svenson. You were given entry in the company of another man. A Mr
Pfaff
. Where is he now?’

‘We parted ways.’

Foison cut in, softly but insistently: ‘Pfaff is an ally of the Contessa, my lord. He collected Miss Temple from the tomb. A criminal for hire, like Chang.’

‘Are
you
in league with Rosamonde, Doctor Svenson? I should find that …
amusing
.’

‘I am not.’

‘I wondered if you had forgotten poor Mrs Dujong so very soon.’

‘Burn in hell.’

‘I have a better notion – why don’t you come join me?’

Leaving nothing to chance, six acolytes escorted the Doctor past three different locked doorways, the last edged with a band of black rubber to make an
airtight seal. Brass helmets hung on pegs, two taken by acolytes and a third given to Svenson. The door was opened and, the seal of the helmet pulling at his neck, he followed the acolytes through.

In the corners of the room stood copper braziers, each heating a bowl of orange-coloured oil, a tonic for Vandaariff’s condition, and evidently fatal for anyone else. The ceiling was honeycombed with small holes, aglow with growing light.

Vandaariff waited at a table, blackened fingers tracing the edges of a blue glass key. An acolyte with gloved hands set a gleaming book before him. Vandaariff carefully inserted the key into its binding, lengthwise from the base, and the bright glass clouded, ever so slightly. He opened the cover and ran a fingertip down the first page.

‘
Delicious
.’ He gently closed the book. ‘Time enough … time enough.’

The braziers with their oil, the glass balls with their somnolent gas, the explosions and the sharp-edged spurs – in how many other ways had Vandaariff expanded the Comte’s initial discoveries? Schoepfil was a fool to underestimate him. And where
was
Schoepfil? If Vandaariff’s men had not brought him down like Bronque, they must have sent word of his intrusion … but the fact did not appear to perturb.

At a touch the key emerged from the book and Vandaariff tucked it away. The acolyte reverently restored the book to a case holding a score of others – most only partially extant, their bindings cracked.

Vandaariff sighed. ‘It was a second Library of Alexandria. Now so much is lost, and so thoughtlessly.’

‘These are not the tragedies of Agathon. Chang deserves to live, in his own skin.’

‘Chang is forfeit.’

‘As are you. The rot in your body proclaims it –’

‘Please, we have been down this road. You are not here to lecture.’

‘Then why? To witness my friend’s place in your
collection
?’ Svenson glared angrily at the books. Both acolytes moved to block his way.

‘Doctor Svenson, you cannot hold a single thought much less two or three. I have brought you to my person through deliberate steps, knowing your preference for my death. Why? Because, plain enough for a cat to perceive,
in exchange for your aid I offer you something you desire, available nowhere else on earth.’

‘That Chang will survive, of course, and Miss Temple –’

Vandaariff shook his head. ‘No. No, they are gone. Their consumption is required.’

‘I will not be party. I will do anything in my power –’

Vandaariff rubbed the skin beneath his feathered mask and groaned with impatience. ‘Doctor, I beg you,
think
. What have you
done
today? Beyond all sane probability?’

‘Madelaine Kraft was healed. As Chang might now be –’

‘
Not
Chang!
Never
Chang! Chang has become raw goods. No, Doctor Svenson, who else? What else in the world would prick your virtue like the balloon I know all virtue to be?’

Another glass book was set on the table. Vandaariff inserted the key and, resting a fingertip lightly on the glass, turned the pages to the clouded leaf he sought. He rotated the book so that it faced the Doctor.

‘
Taste
.’

‘I won’t.’

‘You will not regret it.’

‘Damn you.’ Svenson stabbed his forefinger onto the glass.

The first impression was too sharp, like whisky on his tongue, a pungent whirl of hair and scent, of softness and weight, tenderness, doubt, carnality –

He yanked up his hand. Vandaariff fed on his reaction with an ugly leer.

‘O … do take a little more.’

Svenson swallowed. ‘How … how in all hell –’

‘You know yourself! You were
there
!’

‘Tarr Manor,’ Svenson whispered. ‘Her memories were taken. Only a few, still, she almost died –’

‘A singularly aggressive reaction – and the only reason these memories survived! Set aside for study – the actual information, once Arthur Trapping was dead, bore no interest. But
now
it bears all manner of interest – for you! And, through your inevitable compliance, for me!’

Svenson shook his head. ‘I won’t. I won’t. She is
dead
–’

An acolyte hooked an arm around the Doctor’s neck, while the other
caught his hand and pressed it, palm down, upon the glass. Svenson bucked against the contact. Yet, at its bite, he could not but drop his gaze …

… and enter the memories of Elöise Dujong, the whole of her relations with Arthur Trapping from innocent affection to shame-filled lust. The Doctor gasped at intimacies he himself had never shared, her body in gross and sweet detail – assignations, fervent, guilty, compulsive. He swam in her tears, sank in her self-recriminations, thrilled to the touch of kisses down her neck, Trapping’s fingers tracing the inner sweep of her white thigh –

Svenson blinked, in tears, the confinement of the helmet unfamiliar and strange. The acolytes had pulled him free. Vandaariff stood at the glass wall, shouting.

‘
No!
This must not occur! Stop him! Mr Foison!
Mr Foison!
’

Mahmoud held a length of copper wire and swung it like a whip at an acolyte foolish enough to have gone near. The wire slashed through the white robe and the acolyte dropped screaming. The big man took the acolyte by the scruff of the neck and hurled him down the trapdoor stairs, a sheer drop of at least thirty feet. Several acolytes lay on the floor, and who knew how many more had taken that plunge. Foison, armed with only a silver knife, had retreated behind Chang’s table with Professor Trooste.

Mahmoud reached into the sticky red fluid to raise up his mother.

‘Do not!’ cried Trooste. ‘You will kill her! The essential liquor is all that keeps them alive!’

Mahmoud hesitated, not trusting Trooste, yet not daring to risk her life. Vandaariff rapped his cane against the glass.

‘
Enough!
If you care for that woman, you will listen to me!’ He gave Svenson a haughty snort and when he spoke it was as much for the Doctor as for Mahmoud. ‘Six chambers, for the first six compounds, each reduced in turn. The seventh will infuse the final coupling. The vessel itself constitutes the eighth –
tempered
metal, the rebirth. The ordure of death will be shed like a serpent’s skin, peeled like a malignant husk,
passed on
.’

‘What in the name of all hell –’ began Mahmoud. Vandaariff rapped on the glass.

‘
I
hold that woman’s life in my grasp. The dawn has come!’

Vandaariff waved like a tragedian at the honeycombed ceiling. Each round tube glowed brightly, the shafts of light landing, Svenson saw, directly on the rostrum. Vandaariff ran dark fingers along six identical brass knobs. ‘What do you say, Professor Trooste? Iron, to start?’

‘Yes, my lord.’

‘Matthew Harcourt,’ Vandaariff intoned, ‘I initiate your sacred journey …
now
.’

‘No!’ shouted Doctor Svenson, but the acolytes held him back. Vandaariff slipped the brass cap off one knob to expose a lozenge of blue glass. The light from the ceiling fell upon it and the glass began to glow. A moment later, the wires leading to Harcourt’s tub coughed sparks into the air. Mahmoud raised a hand to shield his eyes …

Nothing else happened. No surge of energy came through the machines. Vandaariff was speechless. He slipped the brass cover on and off. More sparks, then nothing. Mahmoud roared and went for Trooste with both hands.

‘
Stop
.’

Foison knelt over Gorine’s tub, the silver knife at the floating man’s neck.

‘Down on your knees or he’s dead.’

Slowly, Mahmoud did just that. Svenson saw the heaviness in the large man’s limbs, that his body still fought the effects of the blue smoke.

‘What in heaven, Professor Trooste!’ shouted Vandaariff. ‘What has gone wrong? Examine every coupling, every cable! This cannot be allowed! Send men below! The time, sir,
the time
!’ Vandaariff turned from the window, mopping his mouth with a sleeve.

‘Already your plan fails,’ said Svenson.

‘Momentary malfunction is not failure,’ barked Vandaariff. ‘Why was that black fellow not
redeemed
?’

‘Because I saved him,’ said Svenson.

‘
Saved?
You have doomed him altogether.’

Mahmoud looked at the glass wall with a baleful hatred. Svenson spread his fingers on the glass, anything to urge patience.

‘Why preserve
me
?’ Svenson asked. ‘Why any warden at all? You offer me Elöise – but merely her shadow, a sliver of her mind –’

‘A taste of heaven is still heaven, Doctor.’

‘But
why
?’

‘Because I will be forced to trust you.’

‘And if I refuse?’

‘Then everything dies. And every person with it. The chaos in the city goes unchecked and my work will be scattered like African diamonds, treasure waiting for the worst of men to use for the worst of purposes.’

‘What is that to me?’

‘Because I see who you are. What is your answer? For Elöise?’

‘No. Never. No.’

Vandaariff gurgled with pleasure. ‘O Doctor. Such a terrible man with a lie.
Excellent
.’

By the time Svenson returned to the machines, Mahmoud’s arms had been bound behind his back, copper bands digging into his dark skin. Trooste kept well away, moving from tub to tub, adding pinches of different powders. Foison guarded Mahmoud, favouring one leg, knife held listlessly.

Svenson rubbed his neck where the helmet’s seal had pinched the skin. He nodded to the second, unoccupied medical table, and called to Vandaariff behind the glass: ‘Is that for Miss Temple or the Contessa? Or does it matter?’

‘Such cynicism – everything
matters
.’

‘We should find Pfaff,’ Foison called. ‘We should locate Drusus Schoepfil.’

‘You should let me examine your leg,’ said Svenson.

‘Thank you, no.’

‘Doctor Svenson has been tempted to save the innocent,’ called Vandaariff. ‘He has refused. He has been tempted by his own heart and refused again. He is a man of
duty
.’

Mahmoud spat at the Doctor’s feet. ‘That’s for your duty, if these two die.’

‘I’m sure Doctor Svenson’s assistance is welcome,’ Trooste muttered from Chang’s table, a pair of callipers measuring the expanded inflammation. ‘If not altogether required – earlier today, for example –’

Abruptly the curtains over the far door were torn free, pulled to the floor by a flailing acolyte. Another two reeled in, turned and flung themselves back at a figure Svenson could not see. Each man’s body was arrested in three different spots, jerking like puppets, and both dropped senseless. Hopping past them with a mincing precision, Drusus Schoepfil beamed with a cold intent.

‘Doctor Svenson – you
did
survive – well met indeed!’

Without breaking stride Schoepfil twisted his torso and slashed the air with his arm, deflecting Foison’s thrown knife so it rang against the wall like a bell. He pulled a sheaf of papers from his coat and waved them imperiously.

‘Uncle Robert, do not think to avoid me! I have searched your papers! The payments to my supposed allies! Your
new will
! I know it all!’ He hurled the papers at Chang’s unmoving form. ‘
That
man – that
criminal
– will not inherit. I will prevent it with my own two hands!’

Even with an injured leg Foison cut Schoepfil off, blocking his way to the table. Schoepfil only smirked.

‘Mr
Foison
. I apologize for not receiving you earlier when you called. I’d just had the place swept, you see, and simply couldn’t bear to admit my uncle’s trained baboon.’

Foison did not react to the insult, so Schoepfil’s arm shot out and slapped him hard across the face. Foison staggered and Schoepfil came on, swinging. Foison managed to block two blows, but a third, so fast that Svenson only heard it strike, left him weaving.