The Dark Volume

by Gordon Dahlquist

  He stepped forward and she followed without answer. Ruins of any kind, but most particularly those overcome by nature, spoke to Svenson's heart deeply—and he glanced at Elöise with an encouraging smile. She did her best to smile in return, and he reached to take her hand, which she allowed with a defeated look that left him wishing he could, without even sharper embarrassment, let it go again.

  The path of stones wound to a wooden gate, set with an iron latch.

  The square flagstone below the gate showed a fading wet mark… a small footprint… a woman's boot… or a man's that had evaporated to a smaller size. Svenson slipped the pistol into his hand. He motioned that Elöise should keep behind him and reached for the iron latch.

  BEYOND THE gate, the flagstone walk threaded a pair of well-tended flower beds (pruned rosebushes to the left and new budding tulips— red and yellow—to the right) and ended at a low stone house with a thatched roof whose edges hung far enough to cast the walls of the house, its two rounded windows, and its wooden door into shadow. The green turf that lined the walkway was wet with dew, the stones ahead marked with more footprints. The air was silent save for the birds.

  “Do you know this place?” he whispered.

  Again Elöise shook her head. Svenson crept to the nearest print, crouching down to study it. This was unquestionably left by a woman's boot, for even a young man's would not show such a pointed toe. He pointed toward the rosebushes, where a small spade had been set against a stake. Elöise pulled it from the ground and somewhat uncertainly shifted it in her hands to find the proper grip for swinging.

  They had been standing in the garden too long, and with a nod to Elöise the Doctor advanced quickly to the doorway, darting to one side and indicating that she should stand opposite—which at least hid them from the windows. She hefted the shovel gamely, but he saw she was entirely without confidence. For all he knew, her wound had reopened and was bleeding. He must capture the Contessa by himself. The less any situation asked of Elöise, the better.

  He reached for the iron latch. The door swung wide without a squeak onto a room exuding both intimate care (the hearth dotted with porcelain keepsakes, the furniture waxed and gleaming, and the plaster walls covered with framed engravings) and abandonment, for the flowers on the table had died and the flagstones beneath Svenson's feet showed streaks of dust the wind had blown beneath the door. The Doctor entered carefully and crossed to the hearth. The grate was empty and cold.

  He turned to Elöise, standing stiffly in the door with her shovel, and motioned her inside. The Doctor led the way into a humble kitchen. No one was there, nor were there signs of recent occupation, but his eye caught a shapeless pile covered with cloth, stuffed behind the butcher's block. He pulled back the cloth. Heaped beneath, without the sensitive regard their maker might have demanded, lay the Annunciation canvases of Oskar Veilandt, Comte d'Orkancz, last seen, face to the wall, in the laboratory at Harschmort House.

  He looked up to see Elöise's gaze fixed on the topmost painting— one Svenson had not seen before, showing the haloed face of the angel. The awful man's brushwork really was exquisite—the flesh of the ecstatic woman seemed as real as that of Elöise across the room, and the blue surface of the menacing angel shone like glass itself. The angel's mouth was open, almost in mid-bite, or perhaps this was only the hissing exhortation of its message. The teeth were sharp and—to the Doctor's dismay—bright orange. Like a Roman statue, the eyes bore no iris or pupil, and were as entirely blue as the skin around them, only more liquid, giving the unpleasant impression that were he to touch a finger to its surface, it might penetrate full length into the eye. He lifted the painting, flipping it over to study the bright inscriptions on the back. Despite there being the odd legible word—“incept” … “marrowes” … “contigular” —Svenson could perceive no larger meaning, bristling as it was with symbols, some no doubt unique to the Comte alone. The Doctor shivered to recall the slick blue discharge as it coated Lydia Vandaariff's quivering chin, and set the painting back onto the pile.

  Elöise was no longer there.

  SVENSON WAS through the doorway in two strides. She stood across the main room, having clearly just taken a peek through its far curtained door. He spoke in the barest whisper.

  “I did not see you leave.” He nodded to the curtain. “Did you see anything?”

  “Perhaps we should go,” Elöise whispered back.

  She was trembling. Had she seen something? Or had he lost track of her frailty in his pursuit of the Contessa?

  “We cannot. She must have come here. The footprint.”

  He pushed aside the curtain for himself, revealing a dark unlit corridor lined with high, ebony cupboards. At the far end was a second curtain, sketched out by the light beneath. He crept down the passage, resisting the urge to open the cupboards—there was plenty of time for that later—and a creak from the floorboards told him Elöise had followed. He held up his pistol hand for silence as his other reached for the curtain and twitched it aside: iron-frame bed, seaman's trunk at its foot, another tall cupboard, writing desk with a bevel-edged mirror above.

  Svenson crossed to a small door, left open to a rear garden. Beyond its threshold lay another smeared footprint, and another trail of step-stones leading deeper into the woods.

  “She has escaped,” he called to Elöise. “She cannot have stayed long. Why did she not simply go around?”

  “Perhaps she wanted food,” said Elöise, still in a whisper.

  “More likely a weapon.” The Doctor stepped back into the bedroom. “If only the occupants might provide some sense of where we are, and where she might be going—hopefully they have not come to harm—”

  He paused at a muted scuffle from within the bedroom's tall wardrobe. Svenson yanked it open and shoved the pistol into the face of the man who crouched there, gazing up without concern—indeed without any expression whatsoever. His clothes gave off the distinct reek of a fire. It was Robert Vandaariff.

  The blow caught Doctor Svenson square across the side of his head and sent him straight into the wardrobe, where, aside from a mixture of camphor and smoke, his last sensation was of a doubled shadow in the room behind him…a second woman standing next to Elöise.

  WHATEVER CAMPHOR had been laid in the wardrobe only evidenced a struggle lost, for as the Doctor woke, stifling the simultaneous urges to groan aloud and to be sick, he looked down to see his tunic covered with the detritus of moths—spent cocoons, corpses, dusty webbing. He batted at it, realizing as he did so that his arms were free, and that he was no longer in the wardrobe. He had been laid on the bed, a thick towel set beneath his bleeding head. He explored the wound with his fingers—a mild enough cut, though extremely sensitive—and discerned that no bones had been staved in, though he was certainly suffering some degree of concussion. Vandaariff was no longer in the wardrobe. The revolver was nowhere in sight. Nor was Elöise.

  He sat up and felt a dizzying rush. He patiently allowed the rush to subside, then swung his legs over the bed. On the desk lay a piece of paper. It had not been there before. He picked it up, squinted, and took a moment to insert his monocle. A woman's writing… “Forgive me.” He folded the paper absently into quarters and then folded it again, smoothing each edge as his mind sought some sensible purchase on his emotions. He stuffed the folded bolt of paper into his pocket and took out his silver case. The Doctor lit a cigarette and smoked it through, leaning so his thighs were braced against the desk, tapping the ash into a dish half full of pins, and gazing into the beveled glass. His face, as leeched of pride as a thrice-whipped dog, did nothing to jog his heart into some response—anger, scorn, even despair.

  He weaved through the dark passageway of cupboards into the main room and from there to the kitchen. The paintings had been taken as well. Svenson found an earthen crock of cool water, bathed his head, mopped it with another towel—the spotting of blood gave way soon enough—and then took a long drink. His thoughts were chessmen made of lead, impossible
to push into motion. He had saved her life on the train—for what? So she could refrain from taking his, an even trade.

  He lit another cigarette, knowing it might cause him to vomit, and dropped the match on the table, hoping vaguely it would leave a mark. There was a clock on the mantel, but it had not been wound. The cigarette burned to ash in his fingers.

  He was not dead, though he was not sure his mortification—how many times must he fail at the same hurdle?—was preferable to oblivion. Dull-minded but grimly determined, he returned to the bedroom and sorted through the papers in the writing desk, finding a ribbon-wrapped bundle in a wooden slot. Svenson recognized the same hand that had written “Forgive me,” and opened the letter, dated two years previously and addressed to Augustus Sparck… “Dear Uncle…” Svenson dropped the letter back onto the desk, feeling stupid. Her uncle's cottage after all. Of course it was—and she had allowed him to play-act each step of protecting her, pistol in hand, knowing at every instant what the end must be.

  The room was too close. He walked out the still-open door into the garden, blinking, the sounds of birds in the tree branches above him.

  DOCTOR SVENSON patted his pockets for a handkerchief and winced at the pain in his left arm. He had forgotten stabbing himself with the glass, and now felt a flicker of sensation throughout his body, a twitching ribbon infused with the revolting amalgamation of visions—the cenotaph, the glade, the fossilized creature… but there was something else, something apart from these, like the strain of a sweet violin within a chorus of martial brass. He had not fully appreciated it in the train car… an exquisite sensuous redolence of Elöise's own body, momentary memories of being her. This was from the new glass, created from her own blood. The memories were almost too much to bear, but he could not resist them. He sat down on a wooden stool, his head in his hands, eyes shut.

  The first tableau had been a parlor: Colonel Arthur Trapping, miserable, powerless—and Elöise—overhearing a bitter disagreement in another room… a man and a woman. Svenson recognized neither voice—which meant, he realized, that the man in the quarrel was not Francis Xonck. Could it be his brother, Henry? And could the woman be Charlotte Trapping? Trapping wore his uniform… could it be about the transfer of the Dragoons to the Palace? Or was it something simpler—the payment of his debts? But then why was Elöise present?

  The second was a grove of trees. Francis Xonck knelt with the three Trapping children, Elöise's charges. He chatted with them, the wry playful uncle, but then looked up at Elöise… and his expression changed. At first Svenson assumed it to be conspiratorial, but by concentrating, steeping himself in Elöise's memory, he felt something else… a lick of fear, as if Elöise had been caught out. But what could Xonck have known? Or was it the other way around? Had she learned one of his secrets—and now he knew it?

  The third image was the most disturbing: Elöise and Charlotte Trapping with Caroline Stearne, the Contessa's particular minion, in a private room at the St. Royale. Svenson knew no more than that: the two women holding hands, Charlotte Trapping's obvious fear… but he'd no idea if the two women knew Mrs. Stearne—knew her connection to the Cabal—or were meeting her for the first time, or what the interview was about, or… Svenson frowned. Just as the image faded from his mind, Mrs. Stearne had been turning toward them… something, yes… in her hand, just catching the lamplight… a blue glass card.

  SVENSON SAT back on the stool, blinking up at the sky, these three glimpses rendering palpable how little he knew of Elöise's life. He felt intolerably alone. He lurched to his feet. How had the Contessa known of this cottage? When had Elöise told her—in Karthe? Or before? With a chill in his heart he realized Miss Temple was even more likely to be dead. Yet… he thought back to the cottage of Sorge and Lina and he was sure—he was sure—that Elöise's affection, her devotion to tending Miss Temple had been real. But he had been sure of so many things.

  The wardrobe! He had forgotten all about Robert Vandaariff. What was he doing here, of all people? How had he traveled from Harschmort to Parchfeldt? It could not have been on his own power, but who else could have managed it—and then what had happened to them? And how could the Contessa have sent word so far in advance to arrange this as a destination?

  He retreated into the cottage and, paying closer attention, searched fruitlessly for any clue as to where the women had gone. Did he even want to follow them? Did he want to risk a night freezing to death in a strange forest? With a bitter determination he rummaged through the drawers of the writing desk until he found one fitted with a secret inner niche, which was locked. The Doctor popped the lock with a penknife and collected the small amount of money, mainly gold coins, that had been hidden away. From there he stalked to the kitchen and pulled open the various drawers and cupboards in search of some useful weapon. At last he found a heavy hammer—tenderizing meat? killing fowl?—he could swing with one hand. He stuck the handle through his belt, took another drink of water, and went out the front door, following the flagstone path back to the leaf-covered track he had walked with Elöise.

  Once there, it was with a sudden urgency that the Doctor began to retrace his steps to the canal. He assumed the women had taken the opposite direction. Perhaps succumbing to cowardice, perhaps to common sense, Svenson fixed his thoughts on Chang waiting at Stropping. He would return to the city.

  AS ALWAYS, it seemed to take less time to return than to arrive, and soon, despite the Doctor's still-thrashing thoughts, he found himself at the dark canal's edge. It was not quite the same spot where he had crossed—he could not find the little bridge—but as he looked in its direction he saw this might not matter. Sailing toward him was a low barge, wide enough that even he could hop easily aboard, cross its deck, and just as simply step off onto the far bank. The man waved in a cautious manner—perhaps taken aback by the Doctor's sudden emergence from the wood—and glanced over his shoulder. He whistled, sharp and shrill like an angry jay, and then returned his gaze to Svenson, who was doing his best to smile pleasantly.

  “May I use your craft to cross?” he called, pointing to the far bank.

  Three other men emerged around a line of large awkward shapes stretched with canvas and lashed to the deck, like a battery of field cannon—and as the bow swept past, the Doctor saw the long deck was covered with this strange, shrouded cargo. One of the three men, more burly and immediately daunting, stretched a hand to Svenson, who caught the man's forearm and leapt aboard. The man clapped Svenson soundly on the back, and with a general conspiratorial grinning all three walked him to the other side and hovered, waiting for a clear spot where the Doctor could easily leap away.

  “Belay that, there!”

  An older bargeman in a black peaked cap had shouted from the stern. But instead of saying anything further he lowered his head, deferring to a slim, tall man wrapped in a brown topcoat, face pensive, holding a thin cigar some inches from his mouth.

  “What is that uniform?” this second man called out.

  Svenson paused, then brushed his tunic before the men around him noticed his hesitation.

  “The Duchy of Macklenburg!” he shouted back, thickening his accent deliberately. “I would not expect you to know it.”

  “On the contrary,” announced the man in a flat voice, the cigar still hovering. “Perhaps you will do me the service of conversation.”

  Svenson looked longingly at the far bank, but the muscular bargeman had gracefully interposed his body between the Doctor and the shore.

  THE BARGE had nothing so formal as a cabin, but there was a wheel and beyond it a depression in the deck where more canvas had been stretched to shield a small stove. Svenson was directed not unkindly to a wooden crate where he might sit. The man in the black cap, the barge-master, placed a clay mug of tea in the Doctor's hands and then left the two gentlemen alone. The man in the coat sat on a crate of his own and deliberately smoothed his side whiskers with both hands.

  Svenson gestured vaguely toward the train tracks, by now inv
isible beyond the trees.

  “You may wonder, if you know Macklenburg, at how far you find me from it. The fact is, this morning I was on a train, but it stopped— some difficulty with valves—and I took it upon myself to explore these lovely woods.” Svenson waved his hand vaguely. “North country— mining has always been an interest, as I hail from our own hills, where there are many minerals. And of course the lives of fishermen. You will see from my buttons that I am of the Macklenburg Navy. One cannot keep a sailor too long from the sea! But I really ought to return, as the train must continue soon—I have no timepiece, you see, and would very much hate to miss it.”

  “You are Karl-Horst von Maasmärck's Doctor,” said the man.

  “Goodness,” Svenson laughed, “you speak as if you had studied the roster of the Prince's whole party!”

  “And where is your Prince now?”

  “In Macklenburg, of course,” said Svenson. “Where else could he be? Unless you know more than I do.”

  The man narrowed his eyes. The Doctor allowed himself to become visibly exasperated.

  “If there has been other news, I beg you do not trifle with me—”

  He made to rise, hoping more than anything to get a current sense of where the other bargemen stood, but the man in the topcoat pulled him back onto the crate.

  “Do not distress yourself,” the man hissed.

  “If you will excuse me! My train—”

  “Forget your damnable train!” barked the man, but the force of his words was mixed with peevish displeasure, as if he resented the necessity of their entire conversation, and even his own presence on this barge to begin with.

  “Will you constrain me?”

  “What happened to your head?” the man demanded. “There is blood!”

  “There were difficulties with the train, as I told you—a sudden stop, falling luggage—”