The Dark Volume mtccads-2

by Gordon Dahlquist

  HOW LONG ago had Chang been hired by Adjutant-Colonel Noland Aspiche—the very beginning of his involvement in this wretched affair—to murder his commanding officer, Arthur Trapping, Colonel of the Prince's Own 4th Dragoons? Trapping was an ambitious rake, rising by virtue of his wife's powerful brother, the arms magnate Henry Xonck. It was Xonck who had purchased Trapping's commission and then maneuvered the 4th Dragoons' assignment to Ministry service, thus inserting his brother-in-law at the center of the Cabal's activity. For Trapping, it was a chance to climb to the Cabal's upper ranks, playing them off against one another—his intentions unfortunately far outstripping his ability. Both Trapping and Henry Xonck had all been outmaneuvered by the youngest of the three Xonck siblings— Francis, as capable an adversary as Chang had ever seen. Decadent and disregarded, Francis Xonck had manipulated his brother's use of Trapping, Trapping himself, and his sister's hope that her worthless husband's rise might provide the social status her dour eldest brother denied her. Francis Xonck's plans to usurp the family empire even went so far as to involve the Trapping children's tutor—Elöise Dujong. Only a bullet from the Doctor on the sinking dirigible had finally forestalled the man's ambition.

  But before any of this, hired by Aspiche, Chang had crafted a detailed plan to penetrate the Trapping home in secret, to eliminate Colonel Trapping in his bed, if necessary. He had never employed it— Chang had instead followed the Colonel to Harschmort, the mansion of Robert Vandaariff, where his quarry had been murdered by someone else before he could act. But now… now, even though she was a marginal figure in the whole intrigue, Chang was certain Trapping's widow might possess some insight on what had transpired during the week he had been marooned in the north. With any luck a few good words about her children's missing tutor would gain him a clean bed and breakfast… once the woman got over the shock of his arrival, of course.

  His study of Arthur and Charlotte Trapping had not shown either to be an especially doting parent: at this time of night the children should be asleep in their rooms—directly behind him—and their mother in her own chamber on the third floor. The lights down below would be servants, some cleaning up that night's dinner and others preparing the meals and linens for tomorrow. Chang strode quietly to the staircase. Keeping close to the wall, he climbed three steps at a time to the next landing, pausing to crane his head around the corner. He heard nothing. To the right lay Colonel Trapping's bedchamber. To the left was that of the Colonel's new widow. A bar of yellow gaslight peeked out beneath the door. Chang took gentle hold of its ivory knob. From within he heard a muffled squeak… the opening of a drawer. Was Mrs. Trapping awake? Would her back be to the door? If he could just enter without her screaming…

  Chang turned the knob with the deliberate patience of a man stroking a woman's leg during church service, but then the bolt released with a snap that echoed down the hall. He thrust the door wide. A trim man in a long black coat wheeled in alarm from a writing table strewn with papers, his mouth open and his eyes wide—a man perhaps of Chang's age, hair combed flat, each cheek bristling with side whiskers. Chang backhanded the man savagely across the face, knocking him past the table and onto a tasseled square of Turkish carpet, where he lay still. Chang returned to the open door, listening for any alarm, heard nothing, and eased it closed.

  Charlotte Trapping was not in the room.

  The drawers of each cupboard and trunk had been pulled open, their contents put in piles, the bedding heaped on the floor, and her papers spread wide for meticulous scrutiny. The man—one of Sapp's Palace functionaries?—remained insensible. Chang picked up a letter from the table—by its signature, from Colonel Trapping—and turned it over to see if there was a date.

  He frowned, set it down, sorted through three more letters in turn, and then set them down as well, gazing around him at the room.

  It was quite large, and a mirror in size of the Master's suite at the opposite end of the hallway. Chang entered its expansive closet. The locked door inside led without question to an identical closet in Colonel Trapping's own rooms—just what one might expect between a modern husband and his wife. Chang looked at the clothing hanging about him, none of it overly fine, but there—no doubt freshly cleaned because it had been more recently worn—was a pale, demure dress he knew. He had seen it at Harschmort House, watching from afar on the night of Lydia Vandaariff's engagement celebration… the night it had all begun, not thirty minutes before the Colonel had been poisoned.

  Chang walked back to the bed and stood over the unmoving man. Everything in this room belonged to Elöise Dujong.

  Three. Apparition

  UPON waking from his first sleep after the frozen, all-night struggle to save Miss Temple from fever, Doctor Svenson felt an unaccountable lightness of heart, so unfamiliar that he wondered if he'd succumbed to fever too. He had slept in the workroom to the side of Sorge's kitchen, on a pile of linens waiting to be washed, until the fellow's wife had dragged him from sleep with her rattling pans. Svenson rubbed his face, felt his stubbled jaw, and then shook his head like a dog. He stood, plucked at his steel-grey uniform shirt—still smelling of its immersion in the sea—and rolled each sleeve to the elbow as he worked first one foot and then the other into his boots. The Doctor smeared his pale hair back and smiled. They might all die within the day, but what did it matter? They had survived so far.

  His sleep had been a few snatched hours, but after collecting a mug of milky sweet tea from Sorge's daughter, Bette, hot water to shave, and a buttered slice of black bread folded over a slab of salted cod, the Doctor threw himself back into his work, re-smearing Miss Temple's many cuts and bruises with a salve he had concocted from local herbs. The fever remained high and his options in this place were impossibly few—perhaps another mixture of herbs could be brewed into a tea. The door to Miss Temple's room opened—Bette with a new pile of towels. He had not seen Elöise. No doubt she was sleeping herself.

  They had not spoken at any length since the sinking of the airship— nor had they ever, save for those few impulsive words at Tarr Manor. And yet Elöise had kissed him—or had he kissed her? Did that matter? Did it retain any momentum in the present?

  He applied a fresh layer of damp, cool cloths to Miss Temple's body. She had worsened while he slept. He should have insisted she stay on the airship until a boat could be fetched from the village. It might not have made any difference—the airship might have gone under before any boat could arrive—but Svenson berated himself for not even considering it, for not even realizing the danger.

  HE RETURNED to the kitchen, hoping to find Elöise, but met only the concerned faces of Lina and Bette, wondering about the poor young lady. Svenson served them a practiced lie—all was improving— and excused himself to the porch, where Cardinal Chang stood at the rail with his own cup of tea. The Doctor suggested that Chang might avail himself of the salve for his own welter of cuts, but knew even before he finished describing where it was kept that the man would not. They dropped into silence, gazing at the muddied yard and the three very squat huts, one for chickens, one for drying fish, and one for nets and traps. Beyond these were the woods, mainly birch, pale bark gashed with black, branches hanging slack and dripping from the fog.

  “Have you seen Mrs. Dujong?” Svenson asked.

  “She went walking.” Chang nodded toward the trees. “Not that there is any notable destination.”

  Svenson did not reply. He found the isolated woods and the heavy sky splendid.

  “Celeste?” asked Chang.

  “Grave.” Svenson patted his pocket by instinct for the cigarettes he knew were not there. “The fever has worsened. But she is a fierce young woman, and strength of character may turn the tide.”

  “But as far as what you can do?”

  “I will continue to do it,” said Svenson.

  Chang spat over the rail. “Then it is quite impossible to say how long we are marooned here.”

  Chang glanced behind him to the door, then out again at the mudd
y forest, for all the world trapped on the porch like a tiger in a cage.

  “Perhaps I will have a walk myself,” Svenson observed mildly.

  HE HAD no particular memory of Elöise's shoes—and wondered on the fact that he'd paid them no mind—but the muddy path to the shore showed small fresh prints with a pointed rear heel he doubted came from any fisherman. The surf was a brilliant churning line dragged between the nearly black seawater and the grey sky hanging heavily above it. Perhaps fifty yards away, her feet just above the reaching waves, stood Elöise.

  She turned, saw him coming, and waved. He waved back with a smile, stepping clear of a sudden swipe of surf at his boot. Her cheeks were red with the cold, and her hands—in gloves, but thin wool— tucked under her arms. She wore a plain bonnet borrowed from Sorge's wife, but the wind had pulled strands of her hair loose and whipped them eagerly behind her head. Svenson was tempted to put his arm around her—indeed, upon seeing her his feelings were quite suddenly carnal—but instead he merely nodded, calling above the surf.

  “Very fresh, is it not?”

  She smiled and hugged her arms. “It is very cold. But a change from the sickroom.”

  He saw she held something in her hand.

  “What have you found?”

  She showed it to him—a small wet stone, the water darkening its color to plum.

  “How lovely,” he said.

  She smiled, and tucked it into the pocket of her dress.

  “Thank you for tending Miss Temple while I slept,” he said.

  “Thank Lina—you see I am here, having left well before you were awake. You did not sleep long, you must still be quite tired.”

  “Naval Surgeons are made of iron, I assure you—it is required.”

  She smiled again and turned to continue walking. He fell in step beside her, closer to the rocks, where the wind was less and they could speak without shouting.

  “Will she die?” Elöise asked.

  “I do not know.”

  “Have you told Chang?”

  Svenson nodded.

  “What did he say?”

  “Not a thing.”

  “That is ridiculous,” muttered Elöise. She shivered.

  “Are you too cold?” Svenson asked.

  She gestured vaguely with her hand at the waves.

  “I have been walking…”

  She stopped, and took a breath to start again.

  “When we spoke on the stairs at Tarr Manor, when you had saved me—so long ago, a lifetime ago—well, since we have properly survived, we have not properly spoken again…”

  Svenson smiled despite his desire to keep his feelings discreet. “There has been little time—”

  “But we must,” she insisted. “I told you that I came to Tarr Manor on the advice of Francis Xonck, the brother of Mrs. Trapping, my mistress—”

  “To find Colonel Trapping. But you did not know Xonck was part of the Cabal, and had that very morning put the Colonel's body in the river.”

  “Please. I have been attempting to order these words for some hours—”

  “But Elöise—”

  “A train full of people came to Tarr Manor, to sell secrets about their betters to the Cabal—and I went with them. I was told they might know where the Colonel—”

  “You cannot hold yourself to blame, if Mrs. Trapping authorized your journey.”

  “The point is that they collected these secrets—my secrets—into a glass book—”

  “And the experience almost killed you,” said Svenson. “You are uniquely sensitive to the blue glass—”

  “Please,” she said. “You must listen to me.”

  Svenson heard the tension in her voice and waited for her to go on.

  “What I told them,” she said, “whatever I had to offer…you must understand… I cannot remember it—”

  “Of course not. Memories taken into a book are erased from a person's brain. We saw the same with those seduced to Harschmort— their minds were drained into a book and they left idiot husks. Yet perhaps for you this is even fortunate—if these were secrets you yourself were ashamed of sharing.”

  “No—you must understand. Confusing, intimate details of my life are missing—not about my employers, but about me. I have tried to make sense of what I do remember, but the more I try the more my fears have left me wretched! Every erasure is surrounded by scraps and clues that describe a woman I don't recognize. I truly do not know who I am!”

  She was weeping—so suddenly, the Doctor did not know what to do or say—hands over her eyes. His own hands hovered before him, wanting to take her shoulders, to draw her in, but when he ought to have moved he did not and she turned away.

  “I must apologize—”

  “Not at all, you must allow me—”

  “It is unfair to you, terribly unfair—please forgive me.”

  Before he could reply, Elöise was walking back where they had come, as fast as she could, her head shaking as if she was chiding herself bitterly—whether for what she felt or for attempting to speak at all he could not tell.

  WHEN HE returned to the house, Chang seemed not to have moved, but as the Doctor climbed the wooden steps the Cardinal cleared his throat with a certain pointed speculation. Svenson looked into Chang's black lenses and felt again the extremity of the man's appearance and how narrow—like a South American bird that eats only a weevil found in the bark of a particular mangrove—his range of habitation actually was. Then Svenson considered his own condition and scoffed at the presumption of comparing Chang to a parrot. He himself might well be some sort of newt.

  He could hear Elöise inside, speaking to Lina. The Doctor paused, and then tormented himself for pausing, only to be interrupted by a call from behind him: the fisherman, Sorge, limping across from the shed, accosting Svenson with yet another request for medical expertise—this time for a family in the village whose livestock were ailing after the storm. The Doctor dredged a hearty smile from the depths of his service at the Macklenburg Palace. He glanced at Chang. Chang was staring at Sorge. Sorge pretended the scowling figure in red did not exist. The Doctor stumped down the stairs toward their host.

  AFTER THE livestock it had been the suppurated tooth of an elderly woman, and then setting the broken forearm of a fisherman injured during the storm. Svenson knew these errands established goodwill to compensate for the strangeness of their arrival, and also for the haunting figure of Cardinal Chang, whose company—the villagers made quite clear—was unanimously loathed. But the Doctor was left with little time for Elöise, and when he was free—brief moments in the kitchen or on the porch, perfectly willing for another walk to the shore—she became unaccountably busy herself.

  At their evening meal, however, they must finally be together. Lina preferred the three of them to eat apart from the family, the better to isolate the cost of their board. Svenson was more than happy to oblige. He stood over the stove, watching the kettle, having offered to make tea. Chang pushed open the door, his arms full of split wood, which he carefully stacked next to the stove. The kettle began spitting steam and Svenson lifted it up, his hand wrapped in a rag, poured it into the open pot, and placed it on a cooler part of the stove. Elöise entered from Miss Temple's room. She caught his eye and smiled quickly, then gathered an armful of dishes to set the table. Svenson replaced the top on the teapot and stepped away, rubbing his temples with a sudden grimace. Chang smirked and sat, allowing Elöise to weave around him.

  “You have my sympathies, Doctor,” Chang said.

  “Sympathies for what?” asked Elöise, setting out three metal mugs for tea.

  “His headache, of course.” Chang smiled. “The cruelties of tobacco deprivation…”

  “O that,” replied Elöise. “Hardly the best of habits.”

  “Tobacco quite sharpens the mind,” observed the Doctor mildly.

  “And yellows the teeth,” replied Elöise, equally genial.

  Lina came between them with a steaming pot of soup—her
usual steep of potatoes, fish, cream, and pickled onion. Chang had announced he could not taste it at all, by way of explaining his regular second helpings. At least the bread was fresh. Svenson wondered if Elöise ever baked bread. His cousin Corinna had. Not that she had needed to, there had always been servants—but Corinna had enjoyed the work, laughing that a country woman ought to do things with her hands. Corinna… killed by blood fever while Svenson had been at sea. He tried to remember what sorts of bread she had made—all he recalled was the flour on her hands and forearms, and her satisfied smile.

  “Sorge can get tobacco,” said Lina, speaking to no one in particular.

  “Sweet Jesus,” said Svenson, far too eagerly.

  “Fishermen chew it. But smoke also. Talk to Sorge.”

  She ran her eyes across the table to see if her obligations for their meal were met. A sharp nod to Elöise—they were—and Lina excused herself into the inner room. As soon as the door closed, Svenson held a chair for Elöise and pushed it in after she had settled herself. He took his own seat, then snapped up again to pour the tea.

  “It seems you are saved,” said Elöise, tartly.

  “By the saint of foul habits, I am sure.”

  They did not speak while the soup was served and the bread passed, each tearing off a piece with their hands.