The Chemickal Marriage (67 page)

For the first part of their journey, Miss Temple’s attention was fixed on the half-moon of light preceding the tip of the skiff, watching for dangers of all sorts. Large patches of the ceiling had fallen in, and from those spots dangled
ropes of black moss. The banks were smooth rock save for the very occasional appearance of another landing. Miss Temple peered at these relics as closely as the light allowed. Sometimes the Contessa would announce their location, ‘the Citadel’ or ‘the Observatory’; but other times, and Miss Temple was convinced it was because she did not know, a landing passed without comment. Soon they flew on in silence and, at last, Miss Temple’s wilful concentration was undermined.

The act had been obscene and unnatural, with regard to Church teachings (which she dismissed) but also to Miss Temple’s understanding of loyalty, of virtue. Of course she had known
those
sorts of girls – everyone knew them – but in her own person the urge had been absent, or at least unconsidered. That had changed dramatically upon the invasion of her mind by the blue glass book. If a memory held a man’s relish of a woman, then Miss Temple’s experience of it quite
naturally
located that pleasure, that appreciation, in her own body. And many of the memories
were
perverse: women with women, men with men, and more, in such a profusion of incident that her body, if not her moral mind, was taught at last only ripe possibility. And so Miss Temple decided that, while she did not
approve
of the Contessa, or her tongue, it was plain enough that one tongue was much like another. Given that she could not, with her present knowledge and appetite, abjure tongues whole, whether it be a man’s or a woman’s seemed to make no matter at all.

But loyalty was something else again, and here her thought snagged. The Contessa was her enemy – it was as complete a fact as might exist on earth. How could even the highest claim of expedience justify such …
abasement
? Wasn’t it abasement? Wasn’t it compromise? Betrayal? It was – she
knew
it was – and yet she had done it! And in another circumstance of degrading need she would do it again! Miss Temple gripped the pole with both hands, hating the woman behind her, but loathing herself even more. In the coach, the Comte d’Orkancz had seized her throat – she was unable to resist … on the landing the Contessa’s hands had but cupped her thighs to bring her near.

Did it matter that it was her desire instead of theirs? Miss Temple scoffed at the hopeful phrasing – as if the teeming contents of the glass book were
hers
.
Her
desire was long gone – with bitterness she recalled the filthy words of Mr Groft, her father’s overseer – like piss in a stream.

And that was that. With nothing to be done, Miss Temple’s practical mind shoved the issue aside. She could not help what had happened, nor – for with the abating of need came clarity of mind (probably the Contessa’s exact intention) – did she regret it. And, besides, she was wrong: it would
not
happen again. Soon – and soon enough – either she or the Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza would be dead.

They travelled without significant conversation aside from an observation that Miss Temple could move less clumsily or move not at all. Miss Temple pushed away the wet strands of moss, which seemed to dip nearer as they went.

‘The water has risen,’ said the Contessa, both by explanation and by complaint.

‘What if we run out of room?’ asked Miss Temple. ‘What if Pont-Joule built another stop-hole further on, to keep people out?’

‘He did not.’

‘Have you been here?’

‘No one has been here.’

‘Then you don’t know.’

‘Be quiet. O stinking hell –’

The Contessa ducked as they plunged through an especially sodden curtain of moss that swept the towel from Miss Temple’s head. She squealed with disgust, forcing her body flat. But then they were through and the skiff slowed into a lazy spin, the channel opening to a deeper pool. The ceiling rose, vaulted, the crusted tiles in different colours, a mosaic.

‘We have reached St Porte.’

Miss Temple followed the Contessa’s gaze to an entirely different sort of landing. Where the others had been simple brick, this was carved white stone, with a wall of once-elegant glass-fronted doors, opaque with filth.

‘What was in St Porte?’ she asked.

‘A woman who was not the Queen.’

Miss Temple considered this. The Contessa, in unacknowledged curiosity,
had turned the tiller to slow their way. No one, not even the disrespectful young, had ever found the doors, for each heavy pane remained quite whole.

‘Who was she? Who was he?’

‘A king with a fat foreign wife.’

‘But what happened?’ Miss Temple looked back as the current carried them away.

‘She died. The King did not return.’

‘I suppose he couldn’t,’ said Miss Temple.

‘Of course he couldn’t,’ said the Contessa. ‘She died of
plague
. The rest of the place – above the ground – was razed flat.’

After St Porte the landings became few and far between, the last but a stand of rotten pilings. The Contessa changed the candle, which had sunk low.

‘That is the final station before Harschmort, though we’ve still far to go. Harschmort was placed well away for a reason.’

‘What will we find there?’ Miss Temple asked. ‘What sort of welcome?’

‘How should I know?’ The Contessa tossed the old stub in the water with a
plonk
.

‘It is your expedition.’

‘The train was impossible, and our situation at Bathings precluded a coach.’

‘That is a lie. You had this route planned.’

‘I have many plans. But, as I had not seen the channel landing at St Porte, I have not seen the one at Harschmort either – because of Oskar’s construction, his great
chamber
. The foundation of the place was walled off, even as he exploited the channel itself for power.’

Miss Temple frowned. ‘But that chamber was destroyed by explosives. Chang said so.’

‘Yes, I know.’

‘What if there
is
no landing?’ The Contessa did not reply. Miss Temple turned to look at her. ‘I am hungry.’

‘You should have eaten before.’

‘Did you bring food or not?’ Miss Temple reached for the hamper.

‘
Celeste
.’

‘If you try to stop me it will tip the skiff.’ Without waiting for a reply she flipped back the wicker lid. Inside were three squat bottles sealed with cork and a layer of black wax. Miss Temple plucked up the nearest and held it to the light.

‘Damn you to hell, Celeste Temple, put that
down
.’

‘Tell me what’s in it or I’ll throw it overboard.’

‘You would not. You would not be so
stupid
– O damn you. It is a liquid you have seen before, derived from something called bloodstone. It is orange, and in most instances
very
harmful.’

‘In all three bottles?’

‘All three, you little pig.’

Miss Temple leant into the hamper. The open space inside showed a glimpse of blue beneath the bottles. The glass book the Contessa had taken from Parchfeldt. The book that held the corrupted essence of the Comte d’Orkancz. Miss Temple replaced the bottle.

‘I am
not
a pig. But I would have thrown it.’

‘Of course you would have.’

‘As long as we know each other,’ said Miss Temple.

The rest of their journey passed in silence, Miss Temple brooding again, bitter that, with the exception of some sofa-bound groping with Roger Bascombe, which she dismissed, and a single misguided kiss at Parchfeldt, her body’s charms had been sampled only by the worst of people. Kings and mistresses were nonsense, she knew full well. Most people made horrid marriages, mismatches of beauty and temper that only provoked a person to imagine the couple conjoined, as one hearing of an accident imagined the wounds. Was it so strange that her legitimate affection – if any such thing existed, and this was, the more she thought, the exact matter for doubt – had settled on a man such as Chang, suspect and unpresentable in every way?

She glanced back. Earlier, when the Contessa had stepped into her shift, a new scar, on her thigh, had come into view, a knife-cut by Miss Temple’s own hand from their fight at Parchfeldt. She remembered the other scar across the Contessa’s shoulder, from a train window in Karthe. No doubt there were more – no doubt there were scars
within
– and she wondered at
the woman’s continuing beauty. How long would it last? Would some rash plan finally be met with disfigurement or death? She thought of Chang’s face – did not the Contessa deserve the same? Did not Miss Temple herself?

How – and, honestly, why – could the woman so
persist
?

‘You said before we’d swim again,’ she called. ‘Does that mean you’ve lied and you
do
know where we’ll go?’

‘Eyes ahead, Celeste. We ought to be near.’

‘How do you
know
?’

‘Eyes
ahead
, Celeste. I cannot see past you.’

Miss Temple turned, pleased to have pricked another nerve, then sat up straight.

‘
Celeste!
You cannot just
move
–’

‘Do you hear the water? Listen! The sound has changed.’

The channel had gone glassy calm, but, as their circle of light reached out, Miss Temple detected a shadow, an oddly shaped depression pointing
down
. She frantically waved her arm. ‘To the left, quickly!’

The Contessa pulled on the tiller and the skiff shot to the side, but not before the stern crossed into the glassy oval. Their motion was checked. They were being pulled.

‘It’s sucking the water down!’ cried Miss Temple. ‘Like the drain in a tub!’

‘The pole, Celeste! Use the damned pole!’

Miss Temple plunged the pole into the water to try to push them away but found no bottom to push against.

‘The
landing
!’

The Contessa strained on the tiller as the skiff spun stern-first towards the sink-hole in the centre of the pool. For it
was
a pool, Miss Temple now saw, flowing underground instead of further on. She stabbed at a piling with the hooked end of the pole – she had not actually believed the thick hook was for fish – and it caught fast, then she squealed as the weight of the skiff nearly tore it from her gasp.

‘Hold on! Just a moment …
there
!’

The skiff swung to the landing wall. The Contessa looped a rope around a rusted stanchion and tied it off.

‘You can let go.’

Miss Temple sat back and shook her fingers. ‘How do you know about boats?’

‘I am a Venetian.’

‘And I’m from an island. Ladies don’t sail boats.’

‘Then
ladies
should be careful getting out, because if they fall in they’ll get sucked down into the gears.’

Miss Temple again bore the hamper while the Contessa kept the leather case and the candle-box from the skiff. Harschmort’s platform was littered with broken masonry.

‘It does not seem as if Robert Vandaariff knew about this landing at all.’

‘No,’ agreed the Contessa. ‘Perhaps it wasn’t on the plans …’

‘How can something
built
not be on the
plans
?’

‘Celeste, how do you even eat breakfast?’

Miss Temple followed her to a door that had once been formidable, ironbound planks four inches thick. Now the wood was eaten by worms and hung by a single hinge. The Contessa lifted her dress and kicked with the flat of her foot, turning her head at the dust blown up when the thing fell in. She let the cloud settle and stepped over the mess.

‘Why did you say we had to swim?’ asked Miss Temple.

‘Because we may. Or I may.’

‘Why not me?’

‘Perhaps you.’

‘Perhaps I’ll go my very own way.’

‘Perhaps that is my intention.’

‘Your intentions can go hang,’ replied Miss Temple. ‘This leads nowhere.’

The ceiling had collapsed, blocking the passage with debris. The Contessa set the candle-box on the leather case and bent for a tumbled stone. She lifted it with a grimace and heaved it behind them.

‘Put down that hamper and help.’

‘You cannot be in earnest.’

The Contessa raised a second stone. ‘If you do not help me I will club out your brains.’

Miss Temple snatched up the light and climbed the pile, dislodging bricks
and gravel where she stepped. At the top, she poked an arm between two beams and then wormed her head to follow. Threads of dust traced the air around her.

‘Celeste, you are just making more work.’

‘There is a way.’

‘You cannot fit.
I
cannot fit.’

‘You’re wrong. Come see.’

The Contessa gamely scrambled up, holding her dress with one hand and groping with the other until she could reach a beam to steady herself – an action that launched another spray of brick dust. She spat it from her mouth.

‘Look!’

Miss Temple raised the light. Perhaps ten feet above, the darkness opened to black space.

‘But where does it lead? We could be trapped in a hole.’

‘We
are
trapped in a hole.’ Miss Temple handed the candle-box to the Contessa. ‘Keep it steady. I will do my best not to bury you as I go …’

It was just like climbing a monkey-puzzle tree, not that she had done that for a decade, but Miss Temple’s limbs remembered how to wriggle from one branch to another. Only one of the beams gave way, a heart-stopping moment when – in the midst of a cascade of pebbles and dust and, from below, Italian profanity – the light went out. Miss Temple clung to where she was in the dark, waiting for all the debris to settle.

‘
Goffo scrofa!
’

‘Are you all right?’

A snap of a match and the light returned, to show the Contessa covered in dust, black hair like an old-fashioned powdered wig. ‘
Climb
.’

The distance was not far, and once she had a solid brace for her feet Miss Temple raised her head to the edge of a floor. ‘Half a moment … shut your eyes …’

She pounded the broken lip with a fist, breaking away weakened brick until she was sure that what remained would take her weight. Then Miss Temple writhed up over the edge. The air was warm and dank. She could not see, but the sounds around her – water and machines – echoed from a distance.