The Shadow Conspiracy II

by Phyllis Irene Radford

  Mistress Artemisia ignored it. “How do you wish to be convinced, your highness?”

  “I wish...” said Emma. She pursed her lips. “I wish to see a thing that I have not seen before. Something more than pretty. Something divine. Have you such a thing here?”

  Mistress Artemisia’s brow arched. “Many have professed to find that very thing in this chamber.”

  “It is very pleasant,” Emma said. “Your courtesans are prettily made; almost as much so as those of the Sublime Porte. Yet I had been assured that in Xanadu is something more.”

  Mistress Artemisia did not respond at once. Emma suppressed the urge to hold her breath. She had cast in the dark, thinking only to purchase time for Ratisbon’s enquiries.

  It seemed that she had struck a mark, though what exactly that was, she could not yet tell. Mistress Artemisia’s expression yielded nothing. She studied Emma with care, as if with eyes alone she could pierce the paint and the veils to the spirit within.

  If she had had such a gift, she would have called down the wrath of Xanadu upon the impostor. At length she said, “What you ask for comes at a price.”

  “Indeed?” said Emma with evident lack of interest. “Does not everything?”

  “I do not speak of gold,” Mistress Artemisia said. “You ask for something more. We require the same. Something above the ordinary. A thing that not every patron will possess, or if he possesses it, be willing to relinquish.”

  “What is that, then?” Emma asked. She exercised herself to betray neither apprehension nor great interest.

  “Give me your hand, your highness,” Mistress Artemisia said.

  Emma’s suspicions were up and quivering. She fixed Mistress Artemisia with her haughtiest stare. The Rani of Majipur would most certainly not submit to the will of a common and casteless mortal.

  “Your highness,” Mistress Artemisia said with studied patience, “if I am to do as you ask, I must receive this in return.”

  Emma weighed the choices swiftly, while cultivating an expression of utmost annoyance and high-bred pique. At worst she would be unmasked and cast out. At best? She would discover a secret that, if Ratisbon had known, he had not seen fit to reveal.

  Emma raised her hand without visible enthusiasm, barely troubling to extend it. Mistress Artemisia grasped it with surprising strength.

  Emma recoiled from a sharp, pricking pain, but the strong white fingers held her fast. A bead of blood swelled on the outraged fingertip. Mistress Artemisia captured it in a pipette and secreted it among her garments.

  “How dare you —” Emma began.

  “Your highness,” Mistress Artemisia said a fraction too sweetly, “we take this drop of your living essence as a surety — and a promise. You will share this secret with no one not apprised of it, nor speak of it to anyone outside these walls. Will you so swear?”

  “What will you do with my blood?” Emma enquired icily.

  “We will keep it safe,” said Mistress Artemisia.

  “By whose measure of safety?”

  “This is Xanadu,” Mistress Artemisia said, “where crowned heads may rest assured that no word of their presence here shall ever be spoken. They have sworn as I ask you to do, and we keep their essence in our vaults, for our protection and for theirs.”

  “Name one,” said Emma.

  “You know that I cannot.”

  Emma tossed her head so that the discs of gold sewn in the hem of her veil chimed softly, like flattened bells. “Very well, then. I shall keep your secret.” For exactly as long as it serves my purpose, she added in her mind.

  She stiffened slightly under the keen edge of Mistress Artemisia’s glance. But it passed on. Mistress Artemisia released her hand. The wound had closed already, though the finger stung with disconcerting persistence.

  Mistress Artemisia turned in silence and glided from the chamber. Emma followed, nursing that tiny yet nagging pain. It was meant for a reminder; it might serve also, in its way, as a threat.

  Xanadu’s secret resided in the most ancient portion of the house, in the remains of a Roman villa. Time and later builders had altered its walls and imposed a roof, but the original shape was yet discernible: the rectangular atrium and the rooms surrounding it.

  Where the pool must once have been, was a pavement, brought perhaps from elsewhere. It too was Roman: a mosaic of strikingly brilliant colours, depicting dread Pluto on his throne among the shades of the Underworld, and Proserpina with her pomegranate, and the Earth above them white with winter as the goddess’ mother mourned her loss. Emma hesitated to set foot upon it, for she had never seen a pavement so fine, but Mistress Artemisia glided forth without a pause. Emma steeled herself to follow.

  Past the image of the dark god on his throne lay a door. The chamber to which it led ran the length of the atrium’s far side.

  There sat Pluto in the subtly inhuman flesh, with his Queen beside him, crowned with gold. Their crowns were set with dark jewels that glinted in the light of lamps — for there were no electric lights in this antechamber of Tartarus.

  Their faces were pale and stern and still. Hers was pure classic beauty, almost characterless in its perfection. His...

  That Grecian profile, those lowered brows, that full and faintly sullen mouth — for all its beauty, it lacked the purity of Classical statuary. This was modelled after a living face.

  It teased her with familiarity. She had seen it once, or one like it. But where, or whose it had been, she could not recall.

  That was rare enough to be aggravating. She took care to commit each line to memory. She would discover his name, oh yes, and know why his likeness had been set in this place.

  Mistress Artemisia bowed before the eidola. As she turned, her face was solemn; she said, “These are the triumph of the master’s art. Before I speak further of what they are and what you may expect, I must exact from you a promise.”

  “Of perpetual silence?” Emma asked, replete with royal boredom.

  “That you swore before you entered Xanadu,” said Mistress Artemisia. “For this, more will be asked of you. What it is, and when it will be asked, I cannot tell you. Only that, at a time of our need or choosing, we will require payment.”

  “My life? My kingdom? My soul?”

  Perhaps Mistress Artemisia’s glance flickered. Perhaps it did not. “Your kingdom remains your own.”

  “My life or soul, then,” said Emma. She was remarkably unafraid. This was a precipice, and she stood on the edge of it. She could leap, or she could flee.

  She should withdraw. Ratisbon had had two hours and more to investigate. She could easily consume another hour in extricating herself from this predicament.

  Here was mystery within mystery. She could not bear to leave it unsolved.

  “I will swear your oath,” she said.

  Her breath came quick. She made no effort to hide it. Even the jaded Rani would rouse for this, the alluring unknown.

  Mistress Artemisia bent her head, though whether to Emma’s bravery or her folly was difficult to tell. She approached the wall behind the eidola and touched a hidden spring. With a soft click, the wall slid aside.

  Within was a glittering maze of gears and wires and tubes. It was somewhat like the Catalogue in the Book View Café, but much more finely wrought. In the centre gleamed an equally familiar shape: a cabinet of mahogany and glass.

  Emma had seen its very image in Sir Willoughby’s hidden laboratory. This was empty, its lid raised on hinges of brass. Its interior was thickly padded with crimson leather.

  Now Emma had to force herself to breathe at all. “What,” she managed to ask, “does this signify?”

  “A great thing,” Mistress Artemisia replied, “and a wondrous thing, and a thing that few others in this world have conceived of. Would you be immortal, your highness? If only for an hour or a day?”

  “Is that not a contradiction?”

  “Here you may escape the flesh,” said Mistress Artemisia, “and dwell in the purity of met
al and glass, and be free of mortal frailty. There” — her elegant white hand stretched towards the automata on their thrones — ”are the vehicles of your liberation. Or you may choose another: any that sits in the tower, that also has been granted this capability.”

  “Transfer of souls,” Emma said. She nearly forgot to speak in the Rani’s accent. Even with the lilt of India, her voice was flat. “But...not permanent?”

  “The limit,” said Mistress Artemisia, “is three days. So long and no longer may the body be preserved apart from its soul.”

  Emma’s eyes widened slightly. Was this, then, what had befallen Sir Willoughby Smythe?

  Too late she mastered herself. Mistress Artemisia fixed her with a penetrating stare. “You are not unfamiliar with these mysteries.”

  “No,” said Emma.

  “Where —” Mistress Artemisia restrained herself. “You in your travels, of course, would have seen marvels of which we in England can scarcely conceive. Yet this, I think, is somewhat of a novelty even to you?”

  “Somewhat,” Emma conceded. “The ability to return — that is a new thing. Is it invariable? Has it ever failed?”

  “Never,” said Mistress Artemisia. Emma detected no sign of falsehood, no hesitation.

  So might Sir Willoughby have been, until he failed — or was caused to fail.

  Mistress Artemisia rested her hand on the rim of the sarcophagus. “Here your body will rest, preserved in every semblance of life, while your self, your soul, takes pleasure in its freedom.”

  “And there is your price,” Emma said. “If I break my promise, I lose my living body.”

  “None of our patrons has yet done so,” said Mistress Artemisia.

  Emma drew breath to refuse, or at the least to delay her fate. Before she could speak, an automaton appeared at Mistress Artemisia’s side.

  It was, after those that Emma had seen, exceptionally ordinary and unassuming: a mechanical servant, rather tall, rather narrow, with a pale leather mask of a face, and glassy blue eyes. It was not ill made of its kind, but where those others but for their beauty could have passed for living flesh, this was incontestably a machine.

  It spoke in Mistress Artemisia’s ear, too low for Emma to catch the words. She did catch their urgency, and Mistress Artemisia’s slight change of expression.

  Emma braced herself. If the guardians of Xanadu had discovered Ratisbon, then she too was betrayed.

  Mistress Artemisia turned back to Emma, but there was nothing in her face or demeanour to suggest that the impostor had been unmasked. “I cry your pardon, your highness,” she said, “but I am called away, and I cannot refuse. In my place I offer this servant, who has been instilled with every essence of the secret knowledge. All that I could have done, it also may do. I leave you in excellent hands.”

  “Inhuman hands,” Emma said.

  “Hands unmarred by human weakness. I might err. This automaton will not.”

  Emma was in no way reassured. As she moved to say so, the servant moved also, brushing her living hand with cool leather over steel. Its eye caught hers.

  Her mind emptied of words. Here was a soul, a living consciousness, laid bare for her to see.

  But not, she took note even in her shock, for Mistress Artemisia. Its head was turned somewhat away.

  Mistress Artemisia nodded briskly, oblivious to the communication that passed before her face. “May you take pleasure in your journey, your highness,” she said.

  Even as she spoke, she had begun to withdraw. As the last words fell into silence, she was gone. Emma stood alone with the automaton.

  “What —” she began.

  “Later,” the servant said. “There’s not much time. Come.”

  Its voice was completely different than it had been before Mistress Artemisia: quick, light, sharp. Its accent was educated, the intonation that of Oxford, with a suggestion beneath it of Belgrave Square.

  Emma gripped its — his — arm. “Sir Willoughby?”

  He nodded jerkily. “Go now. Explanations later.”

  Emma held her ground. “Ratisbon?”

  “Waiting for us. But not for long. Please, will you come?”

  Emma let go his arm. Even as she took the first step, he sprang into motion. He strode out past the Lord and Lady of the Underworld, pausing only to touch the mechanism that restored the wall to itself.

  The automaton set a pace that Emma could, with some effort, match. His gait was long, loping, a little ungainly, but it covered a great deal of ground.

  From the back he was not obviously a mechanical. In cap and gown, in dim light, he could easily have passed for his living self.

  He led her swiftly through the garden, keeping to the hedges and the thickets. A tumult was rising behind them, voices both human and otherwise, and the barking of dogs. Emma was not a woman for prayer, but she dared hope that Ratisbon had escaped the hunt.

  It was quiet here, the air warm and still. No stars shone, nor any moon.

  Her guide was surefooted in the dark. Emma followed as closely as she might, making her way by feel and by instinct. Faintly through the din behind, she heard the sound of the river, water lapping grassy banks and the rustle of reeds.

  A shadow awaited them: a flat-bottomed punt with a figure standing in it, darker than the darkness. By the gleam of his eyes, Emma knew him. “Ratisbon!”

  She barely breathed the name, but her relief was strong and deep. “Madam,” he said. And in a completely different tone: “Sir.”

  “Best be going,” Sir Willoughby said. In that light or lack thereof, his voice sounded remarkably human.

  Ratisbon handed Emma into the punt even as Sir Willoughby clambered in behind. As Emma settled on the hard wooden rail of the seat, Lady Jocasta’s servant dug the pole into the bank. The craft lurched out into the current.

  Lights swarmed and swirled farther upstream, around the walls of Xanadu. “What did you do?” Emma asked, not caring which of them chose to respond.

  It was Sir Willoughby who answered, “I set a command on the servants. All in the same instant, they ceased whatever they were doing, marched in formation through the house, and proceeded to dismantle the outer wall.”

  “Ah,” said Emma, both amused and impressed. “It seems they are still about it.”

  “And so they shall be,” said Sir Willoughby, “until the sun rises or their masters manage to remove the codices. Which is not as easy as it might have been. I welded many of the ports shut.”

  “You were always an evil genius,” Ratisbon said under his breath; but if Emma could hear, then certainly Sir Willoughby must.

  “Evil perhaps,” he said, “but genius? Fool rather, and ten times fool.”

  There was genuine pain in the words, though the voice was soft and calm.

  “It was an accident, then,” Emma said.

  “Oh, quite intentional, I assure you, Miss Rigby,” said the automaton that contained Sir Willoughby’s soul. “In my pride and vaunting folly I dreamed of immortality. I created a form of perfect beauty; I transferred my essence into it. I left my earthly remains behind, taking little care for their preservation. I had, after all, succeeded. I ruled triumphant. I had no further need of mortal flesh.”

  Here on the river, in the warm and murmuring night, Emma considered the uses of delicacy. They were, she concluded, few. “It seems that you miscalculated,” she said.

  “I did indeed,” said Sir Willoughby. “The eidolon was grown as a flower is, nurtured in the most secret of gardens. Like a flower, once taken from the earth, it withered. It began to age — fully a decade in a night, then more swiftly with the coming of day.

  “I wasted too long in disbelief and then in horror. When at last I gathered my wits, it was too late. My mortal flesh was dead and rotting. The flesh that in my hubris I had made was nearly so.” He paused. An automaton had no need to breathe, but the man’s spirit trapped within it was overcome.

  “You left your laboratory,” Emma said while he struggled with
in himself, “and returned to Xanadu. Yes?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I nearly failed. With every furlong I travelled, the shell of my soul crumbled further. In the last moments, as I gave myself up to the inevitable, my allies transferred my essence into this sturdy if undistinguished receptacle.”

  “Not one of your Adonises?” Emma asked.

  “Those are pretty toys,” said Sir Willoughby, “designed to please for an hour or a day. They’re not built for much use. I couldn’t live in one for long before I had to transfer again, and so again — and with every transfer lose a little more of myself in the moment of nothingness between.

  “And so,” Sir Willoughby said, “I inhabit ordinary leather and steel, with a heart of turning gears.”

  They drifted down the river, riding the current in silence. Emma had much to reflect on: of science and secrets; of accidents and tragedies and an oath that she had sworn under another name than her own.

  Then at last, as Sir Willoughby’s words repeated themselves in her mind, she remembered where she had seen the face of Pluto’s eidolon. A portrait in Lady Ada’s house. A likeness of her father, the great and infamous poet, the notorious Lord Byron.

  The first light of dawn cast a pale sheen over the furnishings of the private salon at the Rose and Crown in Cambridge. Emma had come to it in relief so powerful that it weakened her knees. Here under lock and key were her own garments, and a couch on which she hoped to rest while Ratisbon prepared Lady Jocasta’s carriage for the return to London.

  She might hope, but reality was a cold and merciless thing. A visitor awaited, sitting as upright and still as one of her own eidola.

  Mistress Artemisia regarded Emma with a cool and dispassionate eye. “Good morning,” she said, “your highness.”

  She spoke the title with a faint and yet distinct suggestion of irony.

  Emma inclined her head. “Mistress Artemisia. To what do I owe the honour?”

  “I believe you know, Miss — Ridley, is it?”