The Chemickal Marriage mtccads-3

by Gordon Dahlquist

  ‘Yes,’ said the woman with tight satin sleeves. ‘If we are to quiver in fear, should we not know by whom we have been warned?’

  ‘Is it the Archbishop?’

  ‘Is it the Ministries?’

  ‘Robert Vandaariff?’

  Lady Axewith shook her head. ‘Those parties would never send such an agent.’

  ‘Then who?’ cried the woman with tangerine hair. ‘Is he one of these rebels after all?’

  She was on her feet and tugging on a hanging bell-pull. Chang met the prim satisfaction in her eyes, and spoke calmly.

  ‘You take great pride in yourselves – and, no doubt, as an organ of intelligence, none can match you in the city. So, with respect, I tell you this. The explosive devices detonated across this city were packed with spurs formed of blue glass. These glass spurs were produced in quantities at the Xonck works at Raaxfall, a fortress – I assure you – your supposed rebels have never penetrated. The authorities know this. They have told no one. I leave you to your own conclusions.’

  By the time he rose from his bow, the butler stood waiting in the open doorway.

  At the end of the corridor, Chang bent his head to the butler’s ear. The butler’s silence transmitted disapproval, but he nevertheless led Chang to a tiny anteroom. Inside was a modern commode, and, above it, for ventilation and a touch of light, a transom-window. Chang stood on the seat. The window was hinged and he hauled his body through, finding handholds in the crevices of brick. He flicked the window shut with his foot. Any search would first be on the ground …

  Chang crouched in an upstairs corridor, listening. Even if he had guessed correctly, there was little time. Voices rose from the foyer, women requesting their coaches. Chang hurried along the hall, opening doors – a bedchamber, a closet, another commode – and finally found one that was locked. His hand on the knob, he heard footsteps behind it, but then the sounds faded, rising upwards … a stairwell. Chang waited a count of ten, then forced the bolt. The sharp crack brought no cry of alarm. Was he already too late?

  Two flights up Chang saw the butler knocking on a door.

  ‘My lady? It is Whorrel. Answer me, please – are you well?’

  Whorrel turned at Chang’s approach, but Chang overrode any protest. ‘Don’t you have a key?’

  ‘It is the lady’s own retreat – the cupola room –’

  Chang pounded with his fist. No response. ‘How long has she been from your sight?’

  ‘But how did you – the soldiers were instructed –’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘I cannot say! Only minutes –’

  Whorrel sputtered as Chang once more forced an entrance. Again, the jarring snap was met with silence. Chang pushed inside and saw why.

  Lady Axewith lay on the carpet, staring at a pane of swirling blue – a single page detached from a glass book. Her mouth was open and saliva dripped onto the glass. The nails on Lady Axewith’s bare hand were ragged and yellowed, as if each fingertip had begun to rot. Unmasked, her lips were scabbed, gums blazing, nostrils crusted with a pink discharge.

  Whorrel rushed for his mistress, but Chang caught his arm.

  ‘What is wrong with her?’ asked Whorrel.

  ‘Pull her away. Now.’

  The butler tried to raise his mistress to a sitting position, but she fought to stay near the glass. Chang drove his foot into the plate, snapping it to pieces. Lady Axewith wheezed in protest. He heard the clutch in her throat and stepped clear as she spattered vomit, first onto the broken shards and then, tumbling into Whorrel’s arms, over the front of her own dress. Her eyes rolled in her head and her hands clutched at the air.

  ‘Sweet Christ! Is it a fit?’ Whorrel looked helplessly at Chang. ‘Is it catching?’

  ‘No.’

  The window behind the writing desk was open. Atop the desk sat a box lantern, wick alight, next to a pile of coloured glass squares. The squares fitted across the lantern’s aperture, tinting the light: a signal lamp, and it could even be used during the day, if the receiver possessed a telescope. Chang scanned the nearby rooftops, then – cursing his dullness of mind – set to searching the desk.

  ‘I cannot allow any trespass!’ cried Whorrel. ‘Lady Axewith’s private papers –’

  But Chang had already found a small brass spyglass. He squinted into the eyepiece, easing the sections back and forth to find his focus. Foreshortened gables and eaves slanted up and down like theatrical scenery of painted waves. He wiped his eye on his sleeve and peered again. An uncurtained upper window … a desk, a table … and another lantern.

  ‘What shall I do? Shall I call a doctor?’

  The butler had dragged his mistress clear and wiped her face and front. Her eyelids fluttered. The silver necklace of blue stones gleamed below her throat. Chang wrenched it free, snapping the clasp. Lady Axewith screamed. Whorrel reached for the necklace, but Chang held it at arm’s length, as if the man were a child after a sweet. He raised the necklace to the light, peering into a blue stone. His body met its delirious contents like a lover, and it was only Whorrel’s touch on his shoulder that broke the spell. Chang shook his head, marvelling at the Contessa’s raw practicality. The harvested memories of an opium eater were every bit as addictive as the drug itself, only more portable and easily hidden – so simply insinuated into the life of this respectable lady and in constant contact with her skin. His eyes caught the shattered plate of glass on the floor and he shuddered to think what extremities it had contained to deepen Lady Axewith’s dependency.

  He dropped the necklace on the floor and stamped on the stones, smashing each one to dust. Whorrel struggled to stop him and Chang shoved the man against the wall.

  ‘The necklace is poison,’ Chang said hoarsely. ‘Search her things for the blue glass. Destroy it all. Do not touch it, do not look into it, or it will be you rotting to pieces.’

  ‘But what … what of Lady Axewith?’

  ‘Destroy the glass. Find a doctor. Perhaps she can be saved.’

  Chang strode out and down the stairs, Whorrel’s plaintive cry echoing above him. ‘Perhaps? Perhaps?’

  Chang walked wordlessly past the Lieutenant at the gate. Around the first corner he broke into a run for the front of St Amelia’s. Cunsher dodged through traffic to join him, and in a few broken, huffing sentences Chang explained what had occurred.

  ‘She was just there,’ said Chang. ‘I’m sure she saw me enter.’

  ‘Constanza Street,’ gasped Cunsher. ‘Or such would be my guess.’

  Constanza Street was blocked by another picquet of horsemen. Cunsher skirted behind the crowd waiting to cross. Chang had no idea where Cunsher was going, but followed – Cunsher was like a startled mouse that always managed to find a hole, no matter the circumstances of its discovery.

  ‘The soldiers will block her progress as much as ours.’ Cunsher’s mutter was only half audible. ‘So, what does the lady do? The further from Axewith House she appears, the better, thus – ha – she will exit from the rear –’

  ‘And to the opera!’ Chang groaned. ‘Its cab stand is three streets away!’

  They burst across the avenue in a desperate rush, dodging into the first narrow alley they found. Chang’s longer stride took him past Cunsher at the first turn. The alley’s end showed a narrow slice of the opera’s stone façade. Cunsher careened into a side street, but Chang sped on, straight for a line of black coaches. The foremost coach, drawn by a pair of mottled grey horses, was just pulling away.

  He raced after it, shouting at pedestrians to clear his path. The grey team had entered the wide roundabout in front of the opera, beyond which it would vanish into the city. Chang bowled into the roundabout, dodging horses and curses equally, and leapt to the island at its eye, a vast fountain. Funded by colonial interests, the fountain celebrated the splendours of Asia, Africa and America with three goddesses, each atop heaps of indigenous plenty – deities, beasts and native peoples all spouting water from their mouths with an equal lack of digni
ty. Chang hurried round the circle, pacing the coach – hidden now behind two tribeswomen riding a tiger – and readied himself to dash back into the road.

  Quite suddenly the coach pulled short and the driver stood, slashing his whip at something on the coach’s far side. Seizing his chance, Chang crossed the distance and leapt onto the door, reaching through the unglazed window. At the impact, the Contessa spun from the window opposite and swore aloud. She hacked at his fingers with her spike, but Chang thrust his stick through the doorway. The tip struck the Contessa like a fist and drove her back to the corner of her seat. Chang swept himself in, kicking the spike from her hand. Before she could find it Chang had his stick apart and the dagger poised.

  The coach had stopped. Through the far window Chang caught a glimpse of a small figure in brown, just beyond the driver’s whip. Cunsher had anticipated correctly, once again. In his hands were cobblestones, to throw. The mortified driver called to the Contessa – was she in danger? Should he shout for the soldiers?

  The dagger touching her breast, Chang caught the swinging door and pulled it shut.

  ‘Drive on!’ the Contessa shouted, her eyes never shifting from Chang’s. ‘And if anyone else gets in your way, run them down!’

  ‘You will forgive me,’ he said, and snatched up her spike, half expecting the Contessa to attack him in the instant his attention was split. She did not move. He felt the weight of the custom-made weapon, recalled its impact near his spine. Chang threw it out of the window.

  ‘Well, the highwayman in full daylight. Will you cut my throat now, or after my ravishment?’

  Chang settled in the opposite seat. They both knew that had his object been her life, she would be dead.

  ‘Who was your confederate, the gnome with the moustache? If I’d a pistol I would have shot him dead. And not a word of protest would have been raised – just as no one cares when a lady’s coach has been waylaid.’ She cocked her head. ‘How is your back?’

  ‘I run and jump like a stallion.’

  ‘The spine is damnably narrow – in the dark, one’s aim goes awry. I don’t suppose you would remove your spectacles?’

  ‘Why should I?’

  ‘So I can see what he’s done, of course. You’d be surprised how much one can tell – the eyes, the tongue, the pulse – I do not venture to bodily discharge in a moving coach. Oskar would have made a fine physician, you know, within his particular realm.’

  ‘His realm is monstrous.’

  ‘Ambition is always monstrous. You should have seen him in Paris – the house in the Marais, the stench – and that was just his painting!’

  Chang slid the dagger back into his stick. The Contessa tensed herself as he reached deliberately to her and pressed a gloved finger on the exact spot, just below her sternum, where his stick had struck home.

  ‘Do not doubt me, Rosamonde.’

  ‘Why would I do that?’ She dropped her eyes. ‘That is tender.’

  Chang was suddenly aware how simple it would be to turn his threat to a caress. She would not have stopped him. The woman’s appetite was as flagrant as a peacock’s feathers and as private as – well, as any woman’s inner mind. She laid a hand on his wrist.

  ‘I had words with Doctor Svenson –’

  ‘Release my arm or I will hurt you.’

  The Contessa restored the hand to her lap. ‘Must you be so unpleasant – so stupid?’

  ‘I am stupid enough to have you in my power.’

  The Contessa sighed with exasperation. ‘You carry the past like a convict carries chains. What has happened means nothing, Cardinal. Time may change every atom of our minds. Whose youth has not held a quaking fool, distraught, disgraced – a razor’s edge from taking their own life? And for causes that, if one can call them to mind after even four months, are no more worth dying for than last year’s fashions are worth ten pfennigs to the pound.’

  ‘You speak to excuse yourself.’

  ‘If you will take my life at the end of things, Cardinal, then you will, or I will take yours, or both our skulls will serve as Lord Vandaariff’s finger-bowls. But until then – please.’

  The Contessa laid a hand across her brow – her left hand, he noticed, remembering the gash across her right shoulder. Did she still favour it?

  ‘I do congratulate you on the costume,’ she said. ‘The irony sings.’

  Chang nodded towards the driver. ‘Where were you going?’

  ‘Does it matter? I’m sure you have your own plans for everything.’ The Contessa shook her head and smiled. ‘Now I am the sour cloud. Did you know Doctor Svenson nearly shot me dead? I trust his not being here means the child has finally spurred him to business. I do not recommend the use of children, in all truth. They whine, they forget, they are hungry – and the tears! Good God, every way you turn there is snivelling –’

  ‘Where were you going?’

  She glared at him, her cheeks touched with colour, then laughed – still a lovely sound, for all that the merriment was forced.

  ‘Where we can, Cardinal. Every thoroughfare between the Circus Garden and the river is blocked and Stropping Station is its own armed camp. Thus’ – she arched an eyebrow – ‘the mighty Robert Vandaariff takes the city in his all-powerful fist.’

  Chang nodded to the window. ‘But our present path takes us straight to the Circus Garden.’

  ‘I am aware of it, yet I think we have a few minutes to extend this fascinating talk.’

  ‘You speak of Vandaariff’s fist. According to Doctor Svenson, these explosions apparently elude your concern.’

  ‘On the contrary, I am inspired to avoid large gatherings.’

  ‘Is that why you quit the Palace?’

  ‘The Palace is in actuality as dreary as a beehive – the buzzing of drones –’

  ‘Enough. On every front where Vandaariff has extended himself, you have only ceded ground. The explosions, his control of Axewith, martial law, property seizures – you have opposed none of it.’

  ‘How could I? Have you?’

  ‘I have tried.’

  ‘With what result, apart from Celeste Temple being blown to rags?’ The Contessa reached for a small clutch bag at her side. Chang caught her hand and she disdainfully opened the bag to reveal a flat lacquered case and her cigarette holder.

  ‘How did you know that?’ he asked tightly.

  ‘How do you think? From the wife of a deputy minister who heard it directly from Vandaariff himself – what else is that gaggle of harpies good for? I am at least informed.’ The Contessa wedged a white cigarette into her holder. She set a match to the tip, shut her eyes as she inhaled, and then let the smoke out through her nose. ‘Sweet Christ.’

  Her momentary surrender to pleasure – or, if not pleasure, relief – brought the taste of opium back to Chang’s mind. How simple it would have been to preserve just one of Lady Axewith’s jewels. The Contessa waved the smoke from her face.

  ‘Oskar was never like the rest of us. He truly is an artist, with the calling’s every dreadful quality. He seeks no sensation for itself, but only to further his work.’

  ‘But Oskar Veilandt is not Robert Vandaariff. You saw what happened at Parchfeldt – if you have tasted that book, you know what he’s become. Whatever may have guided his intentions before –’

  ‘I disagree – or, yes, he has changed his destination, but not the path. Not his style.’

  ‘You cannot pretend this chaos is what the Comte d’Orkancz would have done.’

  ‘Of course not, but neither does he care about it now.’

  ‘I have seen him care for nothing else!’

  ‘You are wrong. He stretches the canvas and sets his paints in order. He has not begun.’

  ‘But the city –’

  ‘The city can burn.’

  ‘But Axewith –’

  ‘Every lord and every minister can burn as well – to Oskar they are mindless ants.’

  ‘But how can you stand apart –’

  ‘For
the moment, I am trying to survive.’

  Chang snorted with disbelief. ‘The day you are content with mere scrabbling –’

  ‘Don’t be a damned fool!’ hissed the Contessa. ‘That day has dawned. Ask the corpse of Celeste Temple if it hasn’t.’

  At the Contessa’s instruction, the coach left them in a trim French-styled square of gravel paths and flowers. Chang helped the Contessa to the cobbles, scanning the park for any sign of Vandaariff’s agents. The Contessa thrust coins into the driver’s hand, whispering in the man’s ear. Before Chang could overhear she had broken off, walking along the square.

  ‘This way, Cardinal, if you insist on coming.’

  Many of the large houses bore brass plaques, some announcing a nation’s diplomatic mission, in other cases an especially exclusive practice in medicine or the law. That the streets were empty seemed a strangely opposite reaction to the city’s turmoil. Were these enclaves so protected? The Contessa paused at a narrow alley next to the Moldovar Legation. She took his hand, turning so as not to drag her dress against the wall, and held a finger to her lips for silence. He had assumed their destination to be the embassy, but instead it was the mansion next door, a servant’s entrance, he would have said, though the alley was too narrow to allow deliveries. The Contessa rapped lightly, then looked past Chang’s shoulder.

  ‘Is that man watching us from the street?’

  He turned, like an idiot, and then it was too late. He felt the edge against his neck – a blue glass card snapped raggedly along its length.

  ‘I have not been entirely honest,’ the Contessa confessed.

  The wooden door opened, to Chang’s utter disgust.

  ‘Well, look who it is!’

  Jack Pfaff gave the Contessa an adoring smile.

  Pfaff relieved Chang of his stick and led them in. The ground floor of the house had been converted to the needs of a consulting physician, with examination rooms, surgery and a private study, where the proprietor awaited them.

  ‘Doctor Piersohn, Cardinal Chang. We have little time – Cardinal, if you would remove your clothes.’ The Contessa nodded to Pfaff, who pulled apart Chang’s stick. She rummaged in her bag and set to fitting a cigarette to her holder. Chang had not moved.