‘Run!’ shouted Chang, seizing Miss Temple’s arm. ‘Run!’
The door was flung wide and an axelike blade shot through, nearly severing Cunsher’s arm. The others fled, but Svenson raised the revolver with an unfamiliar coolness and fired into the mass of men. The two in front sprawled, but a guard behind came on, his long weapon aimed at Svenson’s chest. A third bullet and this man toppled into the guards behind him.
The fire drew their pursuers, and Svenson retreated up the stairs, hopping like a hare as a halberd stabbed through the railing. He fired again, splintering the rail, and scrambled upwards. His companions had vanished. His boot slipped on the carpet. The last of the halberdsmen charged up the staircase. Svenson deliberately squeezed the trigger. The man flew back in a windmill of limbs. No one took his place.
At the top of the staircase Svenson dropped into cover, just ahead of a hail of bullets tearing at the wall – halberds finally succeeded by modern weaponry. Svenson charged back to Stäelmaere House, racing for the pneumatic vestibule.
It had been called to another floor. He pelted down the corridor to the little door by the window. To go down would only deliver him to his enemies. Svenson took the staircase leading up. The door was unlocked. He tumbled through, shut it behind him and – blessedly – found a key sticking out of the hole. He turned it, heard the sweet sound of a bolt going home and let out a deep, heaving sigh of relief.
His coolness of mind was gone. Svenson’s fingers were shaking. He looked down the attic hall, its angled ceiling echoing the rooftop. Twenty yards away, in a flaming silk dress, stood the Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza.
At once the Doctor raised the revolver, aiming for her heart. The hammer snapped on an empty chamber. He squeezed again – nothing. The Contessa stumbled back, lifting her dress with both hands. A rush of hatred enflamed the Doctor’s body and he ran at her, already tasting the satisfaction of cracking the pistol-butt upon her head.
She ran but he was faster, seizing a fistful of her dress. He pulled hard and she spun towards him, eyes blazing, swinging a small, jewel-encrusted handbag. Svenson swore at the stinging impact and launched a roundhouse blow with the pistol-butt that struck her shoulder. The Contessa overbalanced on her heels and fell. Doctor Svenson stood over her, ignoring the blood on his face, and snapped open the cylinder of the revolver. With a flick of his wrist he dumped the spent shells onto the carpet and groped in his pocket for more.
The Contessa dug in her handbag and pulled out a fist wrapped with an iron band from which protruded a vicious sharp steel spike. Svenson retreated two quick steps and slotted another cartridge into place. She struggled to her feet, weighing whether to attack him or to flee. He did not care – he would quite happily shoot her in the back. He slammed the cylinder home, having loaded three shells – more than enough – and extended the weapon.
‘If you kill me now you are a fool, Abelard Svenson.’ She spoke quickly but without desperation, a statement of fact. ‘Without my knowledge you will fail.’
Behind them, the staircase door flew open and two uniformed guards tumbled into the corridor. Svenson spun round and fired twice, the shots roaring in the cramped confines. The Contessa bolted and he dashed after her. At the end of the corridor stood a narrow door. Svenson fired his last bullet and the panel near her head split wide. She slammed it shut but before she could turn the lock he crashed through. She slashed at his throat but the blow went wide. Svenson tackled her to the floor.
‘You idiot!’ she snarled. ‘You idiot!’ She kicked with both legs, but her dress had caught them up. He dropped the revolver and pinned the spike-hand down. Her other clawed at his face – more scratches, more blood – but he caught that too and slammed it to the carpet. He lay atop her, both of them panting, inches away from one another.
With a shock his gaze found her pale throat, strung with garnets, and then her bosom, heaving with exertion. He lay between her legs. His groin pressed to hers. He met her gaze and swallowed, stupefied.
‘The door! The door!’
She stabbed her mouth at his nose, teeth flashing, and nearly snapped it off. Svenson rolled back with a cry and the Contessa flew to her knees. But instead of running she leapt for the door and turned the bolt. Had the guards followed? Had he shot them? He did not even care. He fumbled for the pistol. The Contessa faced him with malice and disdain, hair in disarray, breathing hard. The knob was worked roughly from the other side.
She brushed past, but his weakness had broken the spell of hate and he did not attempt to bring her down. Svenson stumbled after the woman he was sworn to kill.
The Contessa obviously knew the Palace. Within seconds, her twisting path had shaken their pursuers. Svenson kept close but never within range of her spike. At last, with an angry snort, she dropped the pretence of ambushing him, and, with this tacit suspension of hostility, they moved still more swiftly. Her movements remained sure – he remembered the woman navigating the forest of Parchfeldt with the same wolf’s confidence – and he held himself ready for when she must finally turn and attack. But the Contessa pressed on, glancing only to make certain he followed.
The apartments they passed through were unused, the tattered blue wallpaper familiar from before. Soon they trespassed into occupied (and lemon-papered) rooms, picking past the detritus of the court’s poorest relations. More than anything, Doctor Svenson noticed the papers – bundles of correspondence testament to the endless pleading for place and favour that made up life at court. How many days had Svenson stood at the side of Baron von Hoern, as the great man dismissed such petitions as if he brushed tobacco ash off his sleeve.
Had the others been taken? Though Doctor Svenson so often found reason to question his own courage – altitude, women, an especially haughty clerk – he knew his quick work with the pistol had saved their lives. Still, he felt no satisfaction. Other men might perform marvels, but if Svenson possessed a talent, its employment carried no mystery, and was no matter for praise. Stopping the soldiers had been his task, and was scarcely more than a postponement, after all.
They reached an apartment whose wallpaper in the gloomy gaslight suggested a more bilious discharge than Phelps’s sunny yolk. Here the Contessa – finally, decisively – turned to face him. He closed the door they had come through. She indicated an empty chair.
Instead of sitting, Doctor Svenson reached into his pocket for more shells and began to reload. The Contessa watched him carefully, then opened her jewelled purse and dropped the spike inside. She snapped the purse shut, ignoring the clicking work of his fingers, and crossed to a small sideboard cluttered with bottles. She pulled the cork from one and poured ruby port into a glass. Svenson closed the recharged cylinder. The Contessa sipped her port.
‘You’d have a score of men upon you before my body strikes the floor. We are well inside the Palace.’
‘Just above the Marble Gallery, I should guess.’
‘Honestly, Doctor, you have pursued me this distance –’
Svenson extended the pistol. ‘To hear you talk. Do so, madam, or be damned.’
Why did he not pull the trigger? This woman had murdered Elöise.
He watched her breathe. Her complexion had reclaimed its lustre, her violet eyes were as sharp as ever, and yet … he thought of his own weeks of healing … had the Contessa changed since the disaster at Parchfeldt? He knew her body bore new scars – a wound on her shoulder, another at her thigh. However, just as her wit and grace complemented rather than contradicted a savage heart, Svenson saw her beauty enhanced by these injuries – and wondered at the emotional wounds that had come with each, that lingered within …
His eyes dropped to her bosom. He hurriedly raised his gaze, only to meet a contemptuous flip of a smile.
‘You are not all grief, then.’
Svenson felt his face redden. He shifted the pistol to his left hand and reached for his silver case. ‘Whose apartment is this?’
‘As long as we are quiet, we will be safe.’
> He returned the pistol to his right and aimed it at her heart.
‘You will answer me, madam.’
‘My goodness. Well – we are above the Marble Gallery, as you said, in the rooms of Sophia, Princess of Strackenz. Do you know her?’
‘Not personally.’
‘No? One assumes the German aristocracy to be its own small-minded village, fed by petty rivalry, drunken duels and spouse-breach. Your late master, Karl-Horst von Maasmärck, was especially keen on the latter, with whoever he could entice for two minutes into a closet.’
‘Sophia of Strackenz has been exiled these many years.’
‘Poor thing. Now that I think of it, arranging for your prince to encounter Sophia would have made for an exquisite wager – he had no end of reckless appetite, and she is an outright hag. Would you be so very kind, while we are waiting?’
He had set a cigarette between his lips. She snapped open her jewelled bag and removed a black lacquered holder. He extended the silver case and the Contessa made her selection, fitting the black-papered tube into the nib.
‘You have resupplied yourself with your Russians.’
‘You have managed a new dress.’
‘Many, many of them – nothing says beggar like fine clothes twice-worn.’ She lit her cigarette and exhaled. ‘How strong these are.’
‘Why Strackenz? She has no sway at court.’ Svenson puffed his cigarette to light, then answered his own question. ‘And that is the idea itself. Protection from the unloved Sophia provides sanctuary without exposure.’ He studied the sparsely furnished room. ‘And where are these many, many dresses? Does that explain your presence in the attic of Stäelmaere House – garment storage?’
She sneered through blown smoke. ‘And what explains your presence? That Oskar comes to the Palace to save the nation? Did you hope to shoot him down?’
‘It seemed worth the attempt.’
‘Peh.’
‘Is it coincidence to find you here too, just when Lord Vandaariff has arrived?’
Svenson had taken several steps as he spoke, and he realized she was watching him closely, as if he were near an open flame. He stepped decisively to the high-canopied bed.
‘Doctor Svenson –’
Svenson extended the pistol and carefully flipped up the pillows. Underneath lurked a blue glass book, like a cobra at the bottom of a basket.
‘Poor Sophia,’ he said. ‘Does she sink her mind in its depths every night – living glories she’d never know on her own? Does she even bother to eat and bathe?’
The Contessa laughed. ‘She was fat to begin with, and never fond of a wash.’
‘She will die.’
‘Not while I need her.’
Doctor Svenson brought the pistol-butt down with a crack onto the book, starring the thick cover and punching a gritty hole in the centre.
‘Hell’s damnation!’ snarled the Contessa.
Svenson struck the book again, cracking the cover into shards and splitting the layers below. The Contessa spat with fury.
‘Doctor! The Princess is an empty-headed, greedy – she is despised – O the waste!’
A final blow broke the book to pieces, like the battered carcass of a horseshoe crab. Svenson wiped the pistol on the bedlinen.
‘You have no idea –’
‘But I do – and besides, you have another.’
‘I do not!’
‘You have the volume tainted by the Comte’s own mind. This isn’t it – the Princess would be driven mad. This was a book of allurement, a honeyed trap filled with pleasures. With any luck it is the last. And, now we come to the topic, you do not look ill – which means you’ve found a way to consult the Comte’s corrupted book without harm. Where is it?’
‘Safely stowed.’
‘Where is Francesca Trapping?’ the Doctor demanded. ‘In an attic room with your clothes racks?’ He gestured to the shattered book. ‘Is she enslaved? Have you flooded her mind with wickedness as well?’
‘As well.’ The Contessa laughed. ‘As well as Celeste Temple? Tell me, does she tremble? Does she drool? Can you smell her like a barnyard mare?’
Svenson raised the pistol.
‘Doctor, if you act the fool we will be taken. They search from room to room – they are not all idiots – we are only safe here a few minutes more.’ She reached to what he realized was a second door, painted to appear flush with the wall. ‘If I intended to betray you, Doctor, I would not have brought you here.’ She put her head to the panel, listening. ‘Indeed, it did occur to me, while you strove to take my life, that our meeting might well serve us both.’
‘How?’
‘What do you think Oskar will demand, for his money and guns?’
‘Whatever it is,’ said Svenson, ‘Axewith will give it to him.’
‘What Oskar wants, Lord Axewith does not have.’
She smiled, allowing Svenson to guess what things – or persons – she meant. From outside came the chime of a silver bell.
‘Exactly on time.’ The Contessa ground her cigarette on the tabletop. ‘If you would just tuck the gun behind your back?’
She sailed into a lush corridor ablaze with light. Standing not ten yards away were three men in stiff black topcoats: a pair of Ministry officials and a grey-bearded figure with a blue sash.
‘My dear Lord Pont-Joule, what a relief it is to see your face!’ the Contessa cried. ‘The rumours one hears are frightful! Is Her Majesty safe? Has there truly been violence?’
The blue-sashed lord bowed kindly, but his deep voice rumbled with disapproval. ‘Who is the man behind you, madam? Sir – what uniform is that? Whom do you serve? How are you here? Is that blood on your face?’
‘It is Abelard Svenson!’ The Contessa’s voice dropped to a whisper. ‘Captain-Surgeon of the Macklenburg Navy. Surely you know him – he is a fugitive!’
Svenson whipped the pistol from behind his back. The Contessa gave a yelp and leapt to the side of Pont-Joule, who stammered angrily, even as the Ministry men – evidently unarmed – advanced towards the Doctor with earnest, awkward stances copied from boxing matches.
‘Now, sir!’ cried Pont-Joule. ‘That will not do – you must surrender! You cannot escape! You will not harm the lady –’
His next words were lost in a gurgling choke, his stiff white collar dark with spurting blood. Pont-Joule’s aides turned in time for the first to take the Contessa’s spike into his throat. The second stood in shock, covering his mouth with one hand. The Contessa came for him, but before she could land her blow Svenson struck the man behind the ear. The man arched his back and fell. Without a pause the Contessa knelt down, hiked her dress out of the way and opened his throat with a stroke of her hand.
‘Are you a savage?’ cried Svenson. ‘Dear God –’
‘He has seen us both,’ she answered flatly. A bead of red had caught her cheek. With a grimace of irritation the Contessa wiped it off with a fingertip, and then impatiently stuck the finger in her mouth. She stepped carefully past the spreading pools and called to Svenson, white-faced, rooted to the spot. ‘Pont-Joule is the Queen’s Master of Comportment.’
‘Comportment?’
‘Etiquette and safety – if we are past him, we are past the cordon of soldiers, who will now be posted at every exit. But our way should be clear – come.’
‘Then we cannot escape?’
‘O Doctor, for shame! When the cradle waits unguarded at our feet?’
Svenson hurried after her into what could only have been the Marble Gallery – a gaudily elegant chamber draped with crystal. Their footsteps echoed across the chequered parquet floor. They were alone.
‘Is it not a lovely room?’ the Contessa called, her voice echoing. She spun like a girl, arms outstretched, laughing. Svenson came doggedly after, glancing at the wide chair on a dais that must have once held the Queen. Two more were set near it for Axewith and Vandaariff. Tables were still laden for tea, with plates of thickly iced pink petits fours. The Contessa sn
atched one up, took a bite with a satisfied growl, then dropped the rest onto the floor, walking on.
In the sickroom of his heart, Doctor Svenson condemned these three new murders … but again found himself shrugging off the guilt. The Contessa paused at the double doors, her composed features studying his face. He could imagine how she had seized every chance to flirt with poor Pont-Joule over these past weeks, just to make possible so deft a slaughter. The wall panels framing the door were set with mirrors, but the man reflected there bore scant resemblance to the officer he had once been. This figure was unshaven and hollow-eyed. Even his hair seemed to signal with its lack of colour the weight of withering experience.
It had not been fear that kept him from shooting her in the bedchamber. He knew it was better for anyone who remained in the Doctor’s affections that he had been the one to collide with the Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza. Phelps or Cunsher would have hesitated and been slain. Miss Temple and Chang would have shown no quarter, killed her or been killed in turn. But their principles were founded on hope, and his reflection showed a man cut free. Svenson admitted expediency. Alone amongst his comrades, he might sacrifice himself – might make such an alliance, murder innocents, sink to unanticipated depths – and so spare them all.
‘What a stricken face,’ observed the Contessa. ‘I tell you we are on the verge of a most profitable collaboration –’
Svenson seized her wrist and pinned her spike-hand against the door. She stared at him, eyes questioning and fierce, but his face was calm – indeed he felt altogether absent from his own body as it moved. Her left fist was ready to swing the jewelled bag. He deliberately shoved the pistol into his belt.
He caressed the soft curve of her jaw. She did not move.
His hand slipped lower, trailing the soft pulse in her throat with a fingertip, and then with a deliberate slowness slid his outspread palm over her bare collarbone, her bosom, and down her torso, feeling the silk and whalebone, until he reached her thin, cinched waist and the exaggerated sweep of her hips. Still the Contessa said nothing. Svenson sensed the span of her body between his fingers. He moved higher and squeezed again, feeling her ribs beneath the corset.
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