The Dark Volume mtccads-2

by Gordon Dahlquist

  She indicated a rough wooden stool, but before Miss Temple could respond the woman took her arm and guided her to it. Wood chips and cinders beneath her feet, Miss Temple sat—for it was cold outside of her blanket, and much warmer by the stove.

  “WHAT IS your name?” asked Miss Temple. “And where are we? I expect you know my name—undoubtedly my companions have spoken of how we came to be here. I should actually be quite curious what they said—”

  “I am Lina,” the woman said. “I will make tea.”

  The woman brusquely turned away, stepping closer to the stove and placing an iron kettle onto its flat, oily top. Keeping her back to Miss Temple, Lina crossed to a low, humble cupboard for a teapot and metal mug, and a small stoppered jar that held a dusty inch of black tea—each action making clear there was scarce hope of a lemon.

  “And where are we exactly?” asked Miss Temple, even in her weakened state not entirely pleased with having to repeat herself.

  Lina did not respond, pretending—poorly—not to have heard. Rolling her eyes, Miss Temple stood and without another word walked past the woman to the door through which Bette had disappeared. There was a sharp exhalation from Lina as Miss Temple pulled it open, but a moment later she was through, shutting it behind her and slipping a conveniently placed wooden latch. Lina yanked on the door from the other side. Miss Temple ignored her.

  BETTE—WHO Miss Temple now saw, as the girl looked up at her with shock—was, if not exactly fat, what one might in charity term healthy, with a wide, pale pink neck and heavy arms that shook the entirety of her torso when they worked. At the moment Miss Temple entered Bette had been fully occupied—not with any meal at all, but in scrubbing the blood-soaked bedding in a steaming bucket of water, crimson-tinged soap suds lathering nearly to each elbow.

  “Hello again,” said Miss Temple. “Lina is making my tea. I have been alone so long that I am quite keen for company. And whatever are you doing?”

  Bette shifted on her feet, torn between the urge to hide the blood and to curtsey to a social superior, and succeeded only in losing her balance and sitting down on the floor. The impact caused one black-booted foot to kick the tub, launching a jet of bloody foam into the air.

  The latched door rattled again. Miss Temple studied the room, of a piece with where she had slept—dark wooden beams with a wall of inset shelves, all covered with boxes and pots and jars, one half taken up with soaps and oils and the other equally occupied with fishing paraphernalia. There were two more wooden tubs the size of the one Bette presently used, and the width of the room was spread with hanging cords upon which to dry things. Miss Temple saw these were strung with more bedding, and nothing she might wear.

  “That seems a lot of blood,” said Miss Temple. “I am hopeful that it represents a happy outcome—the birth of a child?”

  Bette shook her head. Miss Temple nodded seriously.

  “I see. Someone has been injured?”

  Bette nodded.

  “Killed?”

  Bette nodded again.

  “And poor you with the horrid task of washing it out.” Miss Temple continued to ignore the rattling door behind her. She stepped to one of the other tubs, perching herself on its edge. “Do you know what happened?”

  Bette glanced past Miss Temple to the door. Miss Temple leaned closer to the girl.

  “Between ourselves.”

  Bette's hesitant answer was so hushed to be nearly inaudible.

  “It was the storm…”

  She wriggled back onto her toes and sank her hands once more into the tub, as if resuming her work would balance the impulse to gossip.

  “What storm?”

  “After you came ashore.”

  “I remember no storm,” said Miss Temple. “But perhaps I was in no state to mark it—go on.”

  “It rained for two days,” whispered the girl. “And when it was over the beaches were different, and trees had come down, and the river had flooded the forest. That was why they said—because of the forest—”

  “The blood, Bette.” Miss Temple attempted to be patient. “Blood, not forests.”

  “But they said that was why. No one had called on Jorgens since the storm, because he lived near the river, and the path was washed away. When someone thought to call they found… they found them dead. Jorgens and his wife. The door opened, dogs gone, their… their throats… and then—”

  Lina banged on the door, frightening the girl to silence. Miss Temple spun around and barked with annoyance, “I will have my tea when I am ready for it!”

  “Celeste!” cried Elöise Dujong. “You must come out at once— there is no time!”

  MISS TEMPLE dashed to the door and shoved the latch aside, just as Elöise yanked it open and took her hand. She felt a rush of pleasure at the sight of her friend and wanted nothing more than to wrap her arms around her and crush Elöise to her body, realizing in the moment how alone she had felt, and how delicate had become her fears. Instead, Elöise called to Lina that Miss Temple would need a bath at once, and then some food to take with them, for they must travel. These orders shouted—and they were shouted, Miss Temple heard with surprise, and they were orders (she had never seen Elöise so in command—but was she not a tutor or governess, and were they not prime whip hands all?)—Elöise yanked Miss Temple into her bedroom and swung the door shut with her other arm, which Miss Temple noticed for the first time was draped with clothing. She led Miss Temple to the bed and they sat together, Miss Temple's bare feet dangling above the floor, Elöise flushed and out of breath, her boots quite caked with mud.

  “As I say, my dear, there is no time—it is nearly dawn. I did not know you were awake. I am so sorry not to have been here, I can only wonder what you thought. The fever was prodigious. Abelard—the Doctor—” here Elöise blushed and dropped her eyes “—left only when he was certain the danger had passed. I have remained until you revived.”

  “The Doctor is gone?” asked Miss Temple.

  “And Cardinal Chang—there is too much to explain—you must see if any of this fits while they heat water. We really haven't time, but you must be craving a bath after so long—and there is no telling when we may find another.”

  She thrust the mass of clothing onto Miss Temple's lap and began to sort it into piles—undergarments, shifts, petticoats, a corset or two, stockings, and several actual dresses. Miss Temple watched Elöise's fingers darting about and she struggled to make sense of her news. Chang was gone? And the Doctor?

  “But where—”

  “Back to the city. My dear, so much has happened. It has been over a week—there was, my goodness, such a storm.”

  “I have been told.”

  “We are far north, in a fishing village on what is called the Iron Coast—no harbors to speak of, no trains, the only roads washed out by this tempest.”

  Miss Temple shivered to recall the terrible last minutes on the damaged airship, as it settled onto the freezing waves and began to fill—the dark rush of seawater lifting the bodies of the Prince, of Lydia, of Xonck, and of the Comte, transforming each from a person to an object. She shook the thought away.

  “But what is so pressing? Our enemies were destroyed!”

  “Try these,” said Elöise, pointing to a sorted stack of worn white underthings.

  “I'm sure they will fit well,” replied Miss Temple, already regretting the absence of her silks and suspiciously curious what had become of them, “but I do not understand the urgency.”

  “At least try the dresses,” insisted Elöise.

  “Where did you get them?” asked Miss Temple, holding up a cotton dress of a faded royal blue—simple but pretty enough in its way, and an admittedly fetching color with her hair.

  “A local woman, Mrs. Jorgens—the match in size was fortuitous.”

  “And she parted with them willingly?”

  “Please put it on, Celeste. I must see about the water. We must hurry.”

  THROUGH THE door she could hear Elöise s
peaking to Lina, and then a general buzz of preparation that she knew had nothing to do with baths and everything to do with imminent departure. She stood naked with a dead woman's dress pulled up to her waist, looking at her face and body in the tiny square of mirror. Her skin was pale as milk, a fact that seemed less a part of her than the bruises and shadows traced across it, evidence of another life, just as the ruddy thumb-smears of her lips and at the tip of each breast were signs of an interior hunger that struck her now, slipping her arms into each sleeve and shrugging the dress in place across her chest, as fully at odds with the colder creature she had per force become. She pulled it from her shoulders and then brought it up to her nose. There was no scent of its previous owner, only salt air, dust, and camphor. It must have been her finest dress, worn but three times a year and scrupulously cleaned.

  Miss Temple glanced behind her and saw, laid to the side of the pile of clothing, a tiny white shift and a cotton dress to match it, to fit a girl of five years at the very most. Elöise must have gathered them up along with the rest of Mrs. Jorgens’ things. Bette had not mentioned a child… had one been killed as well?

  Elöise knocked on the door and opened it enough to say the bath was ready. From beyond the far room, Miss Temple heard the stamping of horses.

  AS SHE crouched in the wooden tub, the water none too warm but nevertheless welcome, Miss Temple saw Elöise pass Lina several silver coins dug from one of Miss Temple's sea-battered green boots. How much money had been left in them—and how much had now been spent without her knowledge? Bette poured another bowlful of water over Miss Temple's head, interrupting her calculations, and worked the soap through her hair with thick fingers as Lina packed food into a wrapped bundle. Elöise glanced to Miss Temple and saw that she was being watched.

  “We will speak as we travel, Celeste,” she said. “But we must travel at once.”

  “Will not the Doctor or Chang expect to collect us? Will they not be confused when we are gone?”

  “They will not.”

  “Why? What are they doing? Where will we go?”

  “Excellent questions—you are yourself once more.”

  “What has happened to our enemies?”

  If Elöise replied Miss Temple did not hear it. Bette emptied another bowl over her head, and another after that, pouring slowly to wash out the suds. Miss Temple carefully stepped free of the tub as Bette dabbed at her dripping hair.

  “I suppose it is impossible that my hair be curled,” she said to Elöise.

  “The curls are quite natural to you, are they not?” Elöise carefully replied.

  “Of course they are,” snapped Miss Temple. “It does not mean they are not better when managed.”

  She raised her arms, the better for Bette to dry her, and nodded at Elöise's hands rather pointedly.

  “Where is my other boot?”

  GREEN-SHOD once more, Miss Temple stepped from the wooden house into a pallid light. The trees above were leafless and the path to their wagon—a simple affair drawn by one weathered nag—was still moist from the rains. She smelled the sea and even heard the distant waves somewhere behind the house, tracing the air like a restless rope of wind. Lina and Bette stood in the door, watching them go with, Miss Temple recognized with annoyance, expressions of relief. She turned to Elöise to remark on the fact but saw for the first time the line of men that waited on the far side of the wagon—raw, hard-faced fellows with knives at their belts and staves in their hands.

  “Are they coming with us?” she whispered to Elöise.

  “Ah, no,” Elöise replied with a tight smile. “They have come to make sure we go.”

  Miss Temple looked with more attention—perceiving women and children now peering out behind the line of men—and felt their gazes could not have been more cold had she and Elöise been diseased interlopers with the plague. She opened her mouth to speak, but stopped at the sight of a small girl with a haunted pale face, hands gripped by two grey matrons—no mother or father near her. Her view of the girl was blocked by one of the men with staves, who met Miss Temple's curiosity with a frown. The man sported a new pair of knee-high black leather riding boots, incongruous with his rough wool garments and fisherman's beard.

  Before she could point this out to Elöise, their driver—an aged man whose wrinkled face seemed crushed between an untamed beard and a close-pulled woolen cap—reached down with hard knobbed hands to lift Miss Temple aboard. A moment later Elöise stood beside her and a moment after that they groped for awkward seats on a pallet of straw as the driver snapped the reins without a word. The bitter nameless village and its silent people receded from view.

  Miss Temple frowned and hissed sharply to her companion, “I do not know what they think we have done—were they not paid?”

  Elöise glanced at the driver's back. Miss Temple huffed, quite out of patience. “What has happened, Elöise? I quite insist you say!”

  “I plan to, but you must know, these people—”

  “Yes, yes, the rising river in the forest, I have been told—”

  “Indeed—”

  “People were killed.”

  Elöise nodded, and spoke carefully. “The implication is a wolf. Or wolves, actually.”

  “Which is no reason to glower at me.” Miss Temple looked up at their driver. “How many wolves?” she asked waspishly.

  “It depends on how one reads the attacks.”

  “Well, how many attacks were there? Bette mentioned the Jorgenses. I saw her washing the bloody linen.”

  “Mr. and Mrs. Jorgens died two nights ago—or that is when they were found. Without the Doctor no one could specify when in fact they died. But before that a fisherman was found in his boat. And before that two grooms at the nearest stable.”

  Miss Temple snorted. “What sort of wolf goes in a boat?”

  Elöise did not reply, as if, the question having no answer, nothing further might be said. Miss Temple felt no such hesitation.

  “Where is the Doctor? Where is Chang?”

  “I have told you—”

  “You have told me nothing at all!”

  “They have each gone ahead of us.”

  “Why?”

  “The roads, for one—they have been ruined by the weather; and as you were so very ill, we did not know if you could travel—the last thing one wanted was to be two days out and then stranded without shelter, if another storm—”

  “That might perhaps convince me for the Doctor, but never Chang.”

  “No, indeed, Chang departed earlier.”

  “Why?”

  “Did you see that Lina put together a parcel of food? How kind of her.”

  Elöise smiled at Miss Temple, mildly but determined. Miss Temple pursed her lips, grudgingly working for a topic that might be safely overheard.

  “This storm,” she offered with patently false interest. “One gathers it was prodigious.”

  “You did well to sleep through the thing,” replied Elöise at once. “In truth we felt—for it was the very night after we'd come ashore— that all the anger of our enemies was being vented through the heavens, as if the waves were the late Comte's attempts to dash us to pieces, and the lightning bolts sent down from the dead Contessa's furious eyes.”

  Miss Temple said nothing, aware that the other woman would not have mentioned the Contessa lightly. When she finally replied, her own voice had become distressingly small.

  “The Contessa is dead, then?”

  “Of course she is,” said Elöise.

  “I did not know you'd found the body.”

  “We did not need to, Celeste. She fell from the airship into the frozen sea. You and I could barely swim in our merest underthings— that woman's dress would have taken in enough water within one minute to sink her down to hell itself.”

  “It is just that… I spoke to her on the roof of the airship—it must have been just before she leapt to the sea… her face… even then so proud, so uncaring. She haunts me still.”

&
nbsp; “She is dead, Celeste. I promise you.”

  Elöise put her arm around Miss Temple's shoulders and squeezed. Never one to anticipate affection of any kind, Miss Temple did not know what to do, and so did nothing, looking instead at her salt-cracked boots and the dirty planking. Elöise squeezed again and took her arm away, a trim smile on her lips, as if she were not entirely sure of the gesture either, but then she reconsidered and reached up to smooth the hair from Miss Temple's face.

  “I know you feel better,” she said, “but we are traveling while you would still be best in bed. Lean against my shoulder and I will tell you what I know”—her voice dropped to a whisper—“and what has taken the Cardinal and the Doctor from our sides.”

  “THE FIRST night was spent in a fisherman's hut. I do not exaggerate to say the Doctor was hard-pressed to keep you alive, while tending to Chang—for the icy sea had done nothing kindly to his lungs—and to myself, for I admit to very nearly drowning. That night the heavens erupted in a storm the likes of which I have never seen—a raging sea, the land awash, trees torn from the earth by the winds. In the morning Chang and the Doctor went for help and that afternoon, during the briefest break in the tempest, you were moved to Lina's house. You lay there for six days, quite incoherent. It was only on the fourth day that your fever finally broke and the Doctor saw fit to leave.”

  “But where was Chang?” Miss Temple burrowed more tightly into the crook of Elöise's arm and allowed her eyes to slip closed.

  “The Doctor felt it vital that, once the storm was over, we get a boat and return to the fallen airship, to collect what remained of the glass books, to find any papers that might tell of our enemies’ agents in Macklenburg, and to bring ashore what bodies we could for decent burial.”

  Miss Temple's thoughts went to Roger, imagining with dismay what her fiancé must have looked like after two days in the sea. She had seen a drowned sailor once on a beach and remembered—indeed, could never forget—his swollen and shapeless cast, as if submersion had half transformed him to a fish, with only his unseeing eyes and hanging open mouth showing protest at the horrid injustice done to his body. She imagined Roger's thin, nimble fingers, bobbing bloated and pale in the dark water, already subject to the gnawing of scavenger fish or industrious crabs. She pictured his softening face—