The Dark Volume

by Gordon Dahlquist

  THE DOCTOR woke to brighter light and a canal streaming past the window, a shining ribbon between the rail tracks and a dense green forest beyond. Elöise still slept, rolling partially onto her side to face him, which—as he could see no bleeding on her bandage—spoke to a lack of discomfort with her incision. He sat up, the pistol still in his hand but the hand itself half-asleep, tucked into an awkward position between his torso and the seat. How long had he slept? It could not have been more than a doze, and yet, he ruefully realized, however short or long, such laxity would have given Xonck ample time to eliminate them both. But they both lived. Even if Xonck was kindly disposed toward Elöise, did it follow he would scruple to kill Svenson? It did not.

  Svenson leaned forward and cracked the knuckles of each hand as he thought. The freight car where Xonck had been interrupted, sniffing and pawing to get inside… such a man would have no interest in any set of goods from these northern towns—in ore or dried fish, in oil or furs. If he traced Francis Xonck from murder to murder, each act had been in the express interest of returning to the city, or in recovering the glass book. Could it really be as simple as that?

  The Doctor knelt next to Elöise and gently shook her arm. She opened her eyes, saw him, and then—with a speed that pierced his heart—composed her features into a cautious mask.

  “I need to know how you feel,” he said. “If you can stand, or travel.”

  “Where are we?” she asked.

  “Nearing Parchfeldt Park,” answered Svenson. “I have reason to believe it may be in our interest to leave the train when we stop there.”

  “To reach my uncle's cottage?”

  “In time perhaps,” said the Doctor. “But I must open one of the freight cars, and I would not leave you alone, in case the train continues on before I am finished. If all goes well and quickly, we may re-board. But it may be that the hidden shelter of your cottage is exactly what you need. Certainly it will aid your recovery.” He looked down at her, his eyes touching on the bandage. “And yet, if you cannot stand, all is moot—”

  “What is in this car?” asked Elöise.

  Svenson met her eyes and replied as casually as he was able. “Ah, well, it may be the Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza.”

  “I see.”

  “My thought is to reach her before Francis Xonck.”

  “Then I had best be getting ready,” said Elöise.

  HER INCISION had closed cleanly and well before Svenson would have expected, given how close she had been to death. The lasting trouble was the dizzying effect of the glass, and Doctor Svenson was dismayed to find his own head swimming as he helped her walk—just a trace, almost as if he had consumed too many cigarettes at a sitting, yet he knew that he hadn't, just as he knew the sharp taste in his throat was not tobacco, but the acrid tang of indigo clay. It moved him to still more patience and more care. When he took a moment to tighten the handkerchief he'd tied across his wrist, Elöise noticed the gesture but did not comment. He caught her glance, but as if they both knew it would be a complicated conversation—for she did not know why he had done such a thing, or having done it, what he had discovered— neither pressed the matter. Instead they found themselves at the rear platform. His hands were on the rail, his eyes focused on the passing track below. He sensed Elöise turning toward him, but did not look up.

  “It is beautiful here,” she said, just loud enough to be heard above the wheels. “I knew the park as a girl. The entire place felt like it was mine, of course, the way the whole of anything feels like yours as a child, simply because you desire it so fully. I am sure I intended to desire my husband quite as much, and for a time perhaps I did. I did love him, but then he died, and so far away, and so uselessly.”

  She laughed ruefully and plucked at the epaulette of Svenson's uniform. “And here I am standing with another soldier.”

  Svenson turned to her. “I am not—”

  “Of course not, no.” She smiled. “A Doctor is very different, and a Captain-Surgeon even more. But that is not what I meant to say. And now I no longer know what it was… I have misplaced the thread.” She sighed. “Something profound, no doubt, about how dreams retreat, about how knowing more of a thing—about oneself—invariably means more pain. And the pain of smaller dreams is, I find, especially acute.”

  Doctor Svenson knew that he ought to reply—that his reply was the exact opportunity to bare, without rancor and for the first time in his life, the merest glimpse of his own struggles—about Corinna and his squandered years, about Elöise herself, but his thoughts were swimming. What was the whole of a life anyway? What was the measure of his own against a life like Elöise's? What, after everything, through everything—what seemed like years of bitter remembrance— did one look back on, apart from love? He was taking too long, the silence stretching out between them, and he felt a new urgency to speak, to let her know that he had been happy for her words.

  But he could not find the way to begin, and then the train began to slow.

  “It seems we are stopping,” he said, and reached for the ladder.

  THE MOMENT of conversation was gone. Elöise smiled somewhat, sadly, nodding to let him know she was ready. Svenson swung a leg over the rail, waiting. The train came to a halt and he heard the relieved exhale of steam from the engine.

  Svenson dropped to the train track and stumbled onto the sloped gravel track bed, looking down to the freight car. Toward the engine a cluster of people waited to board—there would be some time at least to search. He returned to Elöise. Above them a dark figure sailed over the gap between their car and the next, landing with a heavy thud. Svenson spun, knowing he was too late even as he did so, and snapped off a shot that flew harmlessly behind Xonck's disappearing figure, the flat crack echoing loudly down the tracks. Elöise cried out in surprise and fell into the ladder, grunting with pain. Svenson caught her waist and eased her down.

  “This way,” he said, and pulled her as gently as he could, wanting to run full-out but knowing Elöise could not. At the far end of the train the porter from the caboose appeared, staring at them—had he heard the shot?

  “Where are we going?” called Elöise, as Svenson crouched down, peering past the wheels to the far side of the train.

  “She is in a freight car,” he said, “directly in the middle of the line—”

  “The Contessa?” asked Elöise.

  “Yes.”

  “That one?”

  Doctor Svenson looked to where she pointed. The door of the car had been pushed open wide enough for the woman to exit—or for Xonck to enter. Svenson swore in German beneath his breath, still pulling Elöise along. The rushes between the canal and the sloping gravel of the track were high enough to hide the water. He swept his gaze beyond the canal to the trees—though how the Contessa might have crossed the water he did not know—but saw nothing. What he could see of the car's interior lay dark and empty. The porter came toward him, waving. Back near the engine, the various figures seemed stopped. Had they heard the pistol too?

  He turned at an audible plunk of canal water. The Contessa.

  Elöise gasped aloud and pulled at his hand, and Svenson spun back to see Francis Xonck—through the underside of the carriage— on the far side of the train, having just dropped from some hidden perch. He was on hands and knees. With a rasping, hacking rale Xonck vomited a bilious stream of dark liquid onto the stones. Svenson extended the pistol, unsure of his aim through the intervening cables and wheels, and Xonck reeled to his knees, the hood falling back onto his shoulders. Elöise gasped again and her fingers dug into Svenson's hand. Xonck's face had been savaged by his ordeal—eyes rimmed red as two open wounds, lips blue, face streaked like a sweat-smeared actor's greasepaint. Doctor Svenson hesitated, and then Xonck's torso convulsed and he fell forward again, spewing another vile splashing bolt. The Doctor looked away with a wince—it was almost as if the sight conjured the smell—then saw the flash of a woman—black hair, dark dress, white hand—vanish into the trees on the
canal's opposite side.

  He pulled Elöise's hand and leapt into the rushes, the high green stalks slapping against them.

  “But—Francis—the freight car—” cried Elöise.

  “It is empty!” shouted Svenson. “Xonck is dying—the Contessa is more important!”

  Her reply was curtailed by a grunt of pain as they stumbled abruptly into the low brick barrier that lined the canal. The bricked border of the canal was slick with dead reeds, flattened and brown, dangling into the dark green water.

  “How did she cross?” asked Elöise.

  “Perhaps she swam.”

  “Never so quickly,” replied Elöise. “And not in any dress.”

  The canal was not excessively wide, perhaps ten yards, but far enough for a woman's swimming to have made some noise—simply her climbing out would have dripped and splashed enough to draw their attention, and yet they had not heard a thing. He scanned both banks in either direction, looking for any rope or ferry box that might be hauled across. Once more Elöise pulled at his arm. She pointed farther down the canal, where the current flowed. Svenson screwed in his monocle and saw it for himself—a small flat-bottomed launch. The Contessa had taken it across and then pushed it away downstream.

  “Can we catch it?” asked Elöise.

  “We have little choice, save swimming,” replied Svenson.

  Behind them the train whistle sounded its shrill and forlorn cry. They both looked back, hesitating, but reaching the train before it pulled forward, even if they had wanted to, was impossible. The iron wheels ground into motion with a shriek.

  “Let us find our way across,” Elöise said.

  AS IT happened, they did not need the little boat. Thirty yards away they found a narrow bridge of ingenious construction: it could be folded—allowing the water traffic to pass—and then laid out again as necessary to reach the other side. As the Contessa's boat drifted farther from their view, Doctor Svenson wrestled with the knots securing the planking. Once loosed, the network of pulleys and weights and cords stretched itself like some sort of wood-and-hemp mantis across the green canal, falling on the far bank with a slap.

  He took Elöise's hand, helping her climb the short rise through the rushes. They had entered the vast and isolated woods of Parchfeldt Park.

  “Do you know where we are?” he asked.

  She squeezed his hand and pulled hers free. Doctor Svenson fussed in his pocket for a handkerchief to wipe his monocle.

  “I am not sure,” said Elöise, taking a deep breath of the country air and exhaling with a smile, as if to displace the tension between them. “You see how dense the forest is. The canals are to the south—as is my uncle's cottage, but I have always come by the road. We could be within two hundred yards of the place or twenty miles… I've truly no idea.”

  “The Contessa has not run so far only to escape Xonck. If she was intent on reaching the city, that woman would have clawed his eyes out rather than leave the train. She has entered the park for a reason. Can you think what it might be?”

  “I cannot.”

  “But did she ever, when speaking to you—”

  “She never spoke to me.”

  “But did she see you… did she know you were on the train?”

  “I'm sure I've no idea!”

  Doctor Svenson was torn between shaking her hard by the shoulders and caressing her face with sympathy. He diverted both urges by re-wiping his monocle.

  “I'm afraid that will not do, my dear. Though I am an ignorant foreigner, I can at least make speculations. If it is a royal preserve, is there some royal presence—the hunting lodge of the Duke of Stäelmaere, for example? Some other estate where the Contessa might hope to find rescue?”

  “I do not know the whole park, only one small portion.”

  “But if we are near that portion—”

  “I do not know—”

  “But if we are, what other tenants, what other possibilities?”

  “There are none. The Rookery is all that remains of an estate house that burned some years ago. There are villages and wardens, but wholly unremarkable. Certainly a woman such as the Contessa might convince them to give her food—”

  “She did not leave the train to find food in a village,” said Svenson.

  “If you say so,” snapped Elöise.

  “It will not help to get angry.”

  “If I am angry it is because—because all of this—my mind and my body—”

  She was breathing quickly, her face flushed, one hand in the air and the other protectively touching the bandage below her breasts.

  “Listen to me.” The Doctor's sharp tone brought her eyes to his. “I am here—in this wood—because I am trying to recover my sense of duty. This woman we chase—the man in the train—the dead Ministry man at Karthe—”

  “Who?”

  He waved her question away. “If the Contessa escapes, other people will die—we will die. I am not thinking of myself, or of us, it is the last of my concerns—whatever I once thought, or hoped, I have put it away.”

  “Abelard—”

  “There is a hole in your mind you cannot help. That is a fact. And yet there are other facts you have not shared. Perhaps you have your reasons—but thus, you must see, comes my own dilemma. With some distress I must admit that we do not truly know each other at all. For example, I know that you met Caroline Stearne in a private room of the St. Royale Hotel, in the company of Charlotte Trapping.”

  He waited for her to respond. She did not.

  “You did not mention it,” he said.

  Elöise looked away to the trees. After another hopeless silence Svenson indicated the way before them.

  IT TOOK ten minutes of thrashing through a dew-soaked thicket of young beech trees before their way broke into a band of taller oaks, beneath whose broad canopies the ground was more bare and easy to cross. More than once Svenson caught Elöise's arm as she stumbled. After each stumble she thanked him quietly and he released her, stepping ahead and doing his best to clear the branches from her path. Aside from this they did not speak, though once the Doctor risked an observation on the majesty of the mighty oak in general and, with a nod to a darting red squirrel, how each tree functioned within the forest as a sort of miniature city, supporting inhabitants of all stations, from grubs to squirrels, from songbirds to even hawks in its heights. It would have been possible for him to continue—the relation of oak to oak being certainly comparable to the various tiny duchies that together formed a sort of German nation—yet at her silence he did not, allowing the last sentence to dissipate flatly in the empty woods.

  Beyond the oaks they met a path, wide enough for a horse and wagon, but so covered with leaves that it was clear traffic was rare.

  “You recognize nothing?” he asked.

  She shook her head, and then gestured to their left. “There is perhaps a better chance if we continue west.”

  “As you wish,” said Svenson, and they began to walk.

  They walked in an unbearable silence. Doctor Svenson tried to distract himself with the birdsong and the rustles of invisible wind. When he could stand it no more, yet upon opening his mouth found nothing to say, he indicated their leaf-strewn path.

  “Our way is as thickly padded as a Turkish carpet—I find it impossible to tell if the Contessa has preceded us.”

  Elöise turned to face him quickly. “Do you think she has?”

  “She has gone someplace.”

  “But why here?”

  “We are walking west. Is not west more toward the city?”

  “If she sought the city, she would have remained on the train— you said so yourself.”

  “I did.” Such stupidity was exactly what came of making conversation to no purpose. “Still, the park is large. We can only hope.”

  “Hope?”

  “To catch her, of course. To stop her.”

  “Of course,” nodded Elöise, with a sigh.

  “You would prefer her free?” asked S
venson, somewhat tartly.

  “I would prefer her vanished from my life.”

  Doctor Svenson could not stop himself. “And what life is that? Your master is dead, your mistress in turmoil, your enemies everywhere. And yet what life was it before, Elöise? Can you even remember what you embrace with such determination—or why?”

  “One might say the same,” she answered, her voice swift and low, “to a man whose Prince is dead, whose Prince was a fool, whose wasted efforts on an idiot's behalf have left only bitterness and shame.”

  Svenson barked with disgust, looking to the trees for any retort, but nothing came. Her words were exact as a scalpel.

  “You are of course correct—” he began, but stopped at her exasperated sigh.

  “I am an idiot whose life has been saved countless times by your precise foolishness. I have no right to say one word.”

  Before he could disagree, Elöise stopped walking. He stopped with her. She turned to look behind them.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  Elöise pointed off the path. Through the new green trees Svenson saw a grey stone wall, perhaps the height of his shoulder.

  “We have passed something,” said Elöise. “Perhaps it is a house.”

  ON THE far side of the wall they found the ruins of what might have been an abbey, the stones draped with vines, the windows empty holes through which he could see trees that had grown up inside, nurtured on the decayed beams of the ceiling. Svenson recognized several fruit trees, gnarled and unkempt, the remnants of some abbot's orchard or lady's garden, and then as they neared pointed out an even thinner line of wide step-stones that led beyond the ruin.

  “Do you know what this place is?” Svenson asked.

  Elöise shook her head. She had stopped, staring ahead into the trees. Svenson nodded to the new flagstone path.

  “Shall we not see where it goes?”

  “It is a ruin,” she said.

  “I find ruins stirring,” he replied. “Each holds its own secret tale. And besides, these stones seem quite well kept.”