The Chemickal Marriage mtccads-3

by Gordon Dahlquist

  Schoepfil looked up from his papers. ‘Are you uncomfortable, Doctor?’

  ‘He drank two mugs of beer,’ said Mr Kelling. ‘The guard confessed it.’

  ‘I do not enjoy beer,’ observed Schoepfil in a tone that made clear, in the imminent domain of Schoepfil, no one else would either. ‘A peasant’s beverage.’

  ‘Peasants also drink wine,’ said Svenson. ‘And make brandy.’

  ‘Nonsense.’ Schoepfil returned his nose to a battered notebook. ‘Stuff.’

  The coach reached Schoepfil’s home, passing through a cordon of militia. Schoepfil left the box for Kelling, who in turn heaved it into the arms of the first serving man they met. Svenson came last, and was commanded to wait in the main parlour.

  ‘Would you, or any of your people, have tobacco?’

  ‘Tobacco stains the teeth,’ replied Schoepfil. ‘Just look at yours!’

  A traditionally dressed serving man, in a grey-striped jacket and gloves, eased into his master’s range of vision.

  ‘What can it be now, Danby?’

  ‘Callers, sir. They insisted on being seen.’

  ‘Insist?’

  ‘An unusual pair of persons, Mr Schoepfil. The lady is most demanding, claiming that you need to see her. I have allowed them to wait.’

  ‘A lady and a younger man?’ asked Svenson. ‘He darker than her?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Schoepfil snapped his fingers in Danby’s face as he marched away. ‘He is not a sir. He is no one. Need, do I? We shall see. Kelling – everything for transport!’

  Servants piled up more boxes taken from an inner room. When Schoepfil reappeared, all smiles, it was with Madelaine Kraft and Mahmoud. Doctor Svenson rose. Schoepfil ignored him.

  ‘If there was but time!’ He prised the lid off a box and peered inside. ‘O yes – you will enjoy this!’

  He offered a square of parchment to Mrs Kraft. Svenson met the eyes of Mahmoud, but the dark man’s face was impassive.

  ‘A woodcut, aus dem Rheinland, only one other copy, and that owned by my uncle! From the fourth day of the narrative. Extremely rare. The Executioner.’

  Mrs Kraft nodded appreciatively, passed the page to Mahmoud. ‘And how did you come to share your uncle’s interest?’

  ‘Let us say I follow the wind,’ said Schoepfil. ‘You know Doctor Svenson, I believe? One might say you were in his debt.’

  ‘One might.’

  ‘He is my captive. If either of you makes a single gesture of aid our bargain is null. If you wish to reach Harschmort, you will submit to my management in this and all things.’

  ‘The girl died,’ Doctor Svenson told them. ‘Bronque stripped the Old Palace to its nails. Michel Gorine is their prisoner. This man, with whom you ally, has destroyed your livelihood and scattered your people to the law, or worse.’

  Schoepfil raised both hands as if to take hold of Svenson’s throat. The butler in the grey-striped jacket stopped him with a cough.

  ‘Christ alive, what is it, Danby!’

  ‘Men at the door, sir. And soldiers surrounding the house, sir. Grenadiers.’

  ‘Grenadiers, you say?’

  ‘Also members of an irregular unit, sir, in green.’

  With an exaggerated care Schoepfil tiptoed to a latticed Chinese screen and put his face to a viewing-hole. At his signal Danby answered the door. Madelaine Kraft joined Schoepfil at the screen. He made room with a scowl.

  It took a moment for Svenson to place the voice at the door: Vandaariff’s white-haired captain, whose request for Schoepfil was deflected with a lie. Then a second voice, hard and loud, Colonel Bronque …

  Svenson leant close to Mahmoud. ‘They beat him very badly. Bronque himself.’

  The door was closed and Schoepfil skipped from the screen to the shutters, watching his visitors go down the stairs.

  ‘Who was there?’ Mahmoud asked.

  ‘My uncle’s man, Foison,’ replied Schoepfil. ‘Ghastly fellow.’

  ‘And Colonel Bronque?’

  ‘O yes. Bronque slipped in that they search for you, they know. We must buy time. Danby – I’ll need a messenger, no one wheezy.’

  ‘And Cardinal Chang,’ observed Madelaine Kraft. ‘In chains.’

  Mahmoud frowned. ‘I thought Chang was dead.’

  ‘No one dies when they ought to,’ said Schoepfil, ‘uncles least of all. So that was Cardinal Chang? Provocative …’ He took the woodcut print from Mahmoud, and chuckled. ‘Yes, this will do perfectly.’

  Mr Kelling stood ready with pen and ink. Schoepfil dipped the nib and scratched a careful line across the woodcut.

  ‘What is that?’ asked Mrs Kraft.

  ‘A message, of course. And misdirection …’

  ‘What is this?’

  Mahmoud had reached into the box of papers and lifted out a leather volume that, even as he handled it, began to moult paper and ash. Schoepfil hurried to take it from his hands.

  ‘No! That is an extremely valuable grimoire! Please set it down!’

  For the briefest instant Mahmoud’s eye caught the Doctor’s, then the dark man twisted away from Schoepfil, towards the light. ‘Valuable? But so much of it has been burnt –’

  ‘Yes, yes – an accident at the Thermæ –’

  Mahmoud innocently shifted further from Schoepfil. With the stealthy ease of a cat Doctor Svenson took the pen and began to write, tiny letters, quickly made. Kelling had joined his master in retrieving the precious book, and Mrs Kraft chided her son to return it. By the time Schoepfil finally snatched up the woodcut to fold and seal, the Doctor had retreated to his seat.

  An hour later Svenson sat across a coach from Mrs Kraft. Mahmoud was beside her and Kelling next to Svenson, boxes between them and cluttering the floor. Mr Schoepfil travelled with Colonel Bronque, a wedge of soldiers clearing their way to Stropping.

  ‘Mrs Kraft, what did you learn from being healed?’

  She studied Svenson closely, and he saw with pity how every transaction of her life must be a thing of leverage and guile. He did not doubt her desire for revenge, her determination to wager all. That she was willing to risk those around her should not have surprised him – what brothel keeper does not rise on the destruction of others? – but that it would include her own son took him aback. Had he misjudged her, or the hell to which she’d been consigned?

  ‘Your hands shake, Doctor.’

  He raised one to his face and saw the thin vibration. ‘I am in the habit of consuming more tobacco than has been available. And I am tired. And …’ He met her eyes and smiled. ‘I am sad.’

  ‘Sad?’

  ‘When I ask what you have learnt, it is not as physician or confessor, but what you remember about the Comte d’Orkancz, as only that would be valuable to Mr Schoepfil. Something he did to one of your women? Or is your insight from another source – Francis Xonck? You must have known him very well –’

  ‘Do not say a thing!’ warned Mr Kelling.

  The Doctor wanted to smile, for there was no better lever against Mrs Kraft’s silence than a presumptuous underling demanding that she keep it. But either she was not so easily provoked, or Mr Kelling was too insignificant.

  At Stropping, as they waited for the soldiers to clear a path, the Doctor had the presence of mind to put money into Mahmoud’s hands and shove him to a kiosk, open to brisk business despite the hour. ‘Anything – anything he has.’

  Schoepfil glanced from where he stood with Bronque – letting the Colonel, who clearly relished the task, harangue the militia officers charged with keeping order – scowling at Mahmoud’s departure, and then, having discerned the cause, wagging a finger in Svenson’s direction. Svenson only looked away. The station echoed with every sound ten thousand desperate people could make. Whistles shrieked. Railwaymen laboured to add extra carriages to trains going in every direction.

  ‘Turkish.’ Mahmoud handed him a flat red tin. ‘All that was left.’

  ‘Bless you.’ Svenson popped the lid wi
th a thumbnail and inhaled. He plucked out a slender cigarette in coffee-coloured paper, tapped it twice on the tin and stuck it in his mouth. ‘You have no idea.’

  ‘Why do we wait?’ Mahmoud asked Mr Kelling.

  ‘Our special arrangements have been misplaced in all this nonsense. This fire.’

  Svenson met Mahmoud’s gaze over a flaming match set to the cigarette.

  ‘Damned inconvenient,’ added Kelling.

  ‘I expect it spoils Lord Vandaariff’s plans as well. He counts on our arrival as much as we do.’

  ‘Not mine,’ said Mrs Kraft.

  ‘Of course yours – unless Foison and Chang are dead. He will expect us all.’

  ‘They are dead. With all of the Colonel’s men hunting them? Men like that are common enough, and they die commonly too.’

  ‘I do not think you know Cardinal Chang.’

  ‘I assure you, I do, Doctor. And his faults. Do you know of his feeling for Angelique?’

  ‘Something of it. I was called to treat her, by the Comte.’

  Mrs Kraft shook her head. ‘Chang could have had her. Of course she was indifferent to him, as his behaviour was – almost courtly. But he could have taken her.’

  ‘That is not Chang.’

  ‘A man who indulges desire without acting to satisfy it deserves contempt. And that is Chang’s doom.’

  ‘What will be yours?’ asked Doctor Svenson.

  ‘Stop.’ Mahmoud cut in, for they had both grown sharp. ‘Where are they going?’

  The bulk of Bronque’s grenadiers jogged past, double time, a blue column returning up the grand staircase and into the night.

  ‘The other stations.’ Mr Kelling raised a knowing eyebrow. ‘To make sure.’

  ‘That means Foison and Chang still live, and we must take care.’ Mahmoud reached for the red tin and helped himself to a cigarette.

  ‘I do beg your pardon!’ Svenson fumbled for a match. ‘I did not think to offer.’

  Mahmoud leant to the light, and then exhaled. ‘People often don’t. One would think I were invisible. Or small. Or – what is the word? – property.’

  A weary conductor let them board the east-bound train, a motley group nevertheless given precedence over the waiting elite. In the third carriage Schoepfil pointed to a compartment. ‘Here, Mr Kelling! And Mrs Kraft, with your man. To Orange Locks – as we have agreed.’

  ‘We have not agreed on anything,’ replied Mrs Kraft.

  ‘Kelling has the particulars – I have considered your every wish! Do not fret, you will have the advantage of our numbers.’

  ‘What if you and I need to speak?’

  ‘We will not. I will be further up the train – quite impossible.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Now, now – I have given you sanctuary; you must give your trust. Doctor Svenson?’ Schoepfil wagged his finger. ‘With me, sir. You are required.’

  The door to the front-most carriage had been augmented with a metal plate and a substantial lock that Colonel Bronque, leaving two men posted outside, turned once he, Schoepfil and Doctor Svenson had passed through. The compartment walls and seats had been removed, the draperies replaced with more sheet metal.

  An array of machines took up the centre of the carriage – not the pipe organ of brass and steel that Svenson had seen at the Institute, but rather a modest scatter of brass canisters and tin-lined tubs, linked by copper wire and rubberized hose. Two much thicker bundles of cable ran to the far end of the car and out through holes cut in the wall.

  ‘Amazing, yes?’ Schoepfil clapped his hands. ‘You have seen it before – Margaret Hooke, Elspeth Poole, even Angelique – marvels misunderstood and too soon gone! Now you will assist us!’

  ‘Vandaariff must fall, Doctor.’ Colonel Bronque turned a chair and straddled it. ‘For the common good.’

  ‘So you can replace him?’

  Schoepfil removed his jacket and laid it on the table to avoid a crease. ‘I am his heir.’

  ‘Better us than that Italian hellcat.’ Bronque gave a sour look to Schoepfil. ‘You should not have allowed her to escape.’

  ‘I did not allow a thing. She killed two of your men, neat as a snap! Besides, you – well, decency forbids me to say more.’

  Bronque took a pull from a silver flask and exhaled. ‘It was never the time.’

  ‘You were her lover?’ blurted Doctor Svenson. ‘I thought it was Pont-Joule.’

  Schoepfil blew air through his lips. ‘The Colonel, Pont-Joule, Matthew Harcourt –’

  ‘Not Harcourt,’ Bronque cut in. ‘There she only teased.’

  ‘You see! He defends! O her hooks are in!’ Schoepfil snorted at Svenson. ‘I wonder she has not added you to their number!’

  Bronque laughed and took another drink. Svenson felt his face redden. ‘She may be beautiful, but her heart is black.’

  ‘Spoken like a man never asked,’ said Bronque. He tucked the flask away. ‘Shall we?’

  ‘I would prefer to be in motion,’ replied Schoepfil.

  ‘Why? You’ll need to rest. And I’m getting out before you.’

  ‘O very well.’ Schoepfil sniffed, almost girlishly. ‘Doctor, we take you into our confidence.’

  ‘I have not agreed to anything.’

  ‘But you will agree. Because my uncle, as my colleague says, must fall.’

  ‘You forget Chang. You forget Miss Temple.’

  ‘One cannot forget what one has never considered in the first place. The former is doomed through my uncle’s science; the latter insignificant altogether.’

  Svenson found the red tin and selected another cigarette.

  ‘My Lord, Doctor,’ sighed Schoepfil. Bronque laughed and held out a hand. Svenson offered him the box and struck a match for them both. The smoke touched his lungs like a perfume of nettles.

  ‘If you need me, your disapproval can go hang. Now take off your gloves and show me what you’ve done, then tell me how you did it, and what madness I’m to help you do next.’

  ‘Power, of course, comes from the engine. We sacrifice speed, but the duration is brief – has to be, or the same mistakes are made. No one understands the degree to which the Comte’s achievement was determined by aesthetics. Three women turned to glass.’ Schoepfil tugged at his goatee. ‘Beautiful – no doubt of it –’

  ‘An abomination,’ said Svenson.

  ‘An opinion –’

  ‘I knew the women.’

  ‘The point is that complete transformation is neither necessary nor useful.’ Schoepfil raised one bright blue hand, then rapped it hard on the table top. ‘As you can see, still flesh, still mine to command. And yet …’

  Schoepfil closed with Doctor Svenson and, showing the same preternatural speed as before, stabbed his hands in half a dozen places about the Doctor’s body, well ahead of any attempt to block him. The blows became mere touches at the last instant, but the potential damage was unpleasantly clear. Red-faced again, Svenson raised his arms and stepped away.

  ‘I have experienced your skill.’

  ‘You did not know the cause.’

  ‘But I knew there was one. You are no athlete. You have acquired only speed.’

  ‘More than that, Doctor, speed is but the scent off the dish. The advance is in the mind.’ Schoepfil grinned. ‘Everything my uncle has acquired, I have plundered – he is betrayed by his own people, who already cleave to my inheritance.’

  Svenson turned to Bronque. ‘And were you a part of this? He can’t have done it by himself.’

  ‘But I did, Doctor! One hand at a time – the left is a touch less sensitive, but one learns!’

  ‘We became partners after the fact.’ Bronque clapped his hands. ‘Drusus. There is not time. And Doctor Svenson is not our friend.’

  ‘No, he is not!’ Schoepfil returned to the jumble of machines. ‘I cannot tell you how much I wanted to throttle him at the Thermæ.’ He peered at Svenson over his spectacles. ‘The Kraft woman’s cure is a miracle. You must dedicate the same
knowledge and skill to our interests. Only then will you survive.’

  ‘And if I told you I know nothing, that I merely followed instructions?’

  Schoepfil laughed. ‘The Colonel would dangle you from this train until your head met the wheels.’

  After examining the paths through which the power flowed, how it was held and released in the different brass and glass chambers, the Doctor had to admit, and the admission frightened him, that Schoepfil was right. The Comte’s alchemical creed had driven his discoveries to extreme forms, such as Lydia Vandaariff’s pregnancy and the three glass women. With the exception of the glass books, the Comte had largely eschewed practical applications. Schoepfil’s moderation – unburdened by ideology or belief – exposed a vaster and more terrifying danger.

  ‘The speed of thought.’ Schoepfil wiggled the fingers of both hands to mimic the energy coursing through the wires. ‘The property of blue glass that touches the mind – that speaks in thought’s chemical tongue. By lengthening time of exposure and lessening its intensity, the transformational effects are diminished – and, since I do not desire to be made of glass, there is no penalty. And, at the sacrifice of discoloration, what I do acquire is sensitivity. While Mrs Marchmoor could sift the thoughts of others, I am content to sense their impulses – their energy. And then respond with all of thought’s speed.’

  ‘Imagine an army,’ said Bronque. ‘Untouchable swordsmen. Accuracy of fire.’

  ‘I do not know how much of the Comte’s lore my uncle has digested, though it seems he feeds at the same alchemical trough, that he believes. If he’s wrapped around visions of triple-souled births and exaltations of new flesh, we are halfway home!’

  ‘Do not discount his practicality,’ said Svenson. ‘The explosions in the city, the spurs.’