The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters (46 page)

Smythe was not listening. He was lost in thought. He looked up, his face marked by a fatigue that Chang had not previously seen. “The Palace? A nest of impotent Dukes posing around an unloved, fading hag.” Smythe shook his head. “You should go. The guard will be changing, and the Colonel may be with them—he often meets with the Deputy Minister late in the evening. They are making plans, but none of the other officers know what they are. Most, as you can imagine, are as full of arrogance as Aspiche. We should hurry—they may have been given your name. I take that your story of being ill was a fabrication?”

Chang stood with him. “Not at all. But it was the result of being poisoned—and having the dreadful manners to survive.”

Smythe allowed himself a quick smile. “What has come of the world when a man won’t obey his betters and simply die when they ask him?”

Smythe led him quickly down the stairs to the second floor, and then through several winding corridors to the balcony above the rear entrance. “It is relieved later than the front, and my men will still be here,” he explained. He studied Chang closely, glancing over his clothing and ending at his impenetrable eyes. “I fear that you are a scoundrel—or so I would normally find you—but strange times make for strange meetings. I believe you are telling the truth. If we can help each other…well, we’re that much less alone.”

Chang extended his hand. “I’m sure I
am
a scoundrel, Captain. And yet I am these people’s enemy. I am much obliged for your kindness. I hope some time to return it.” Smythe shook his hand and nodded to the gate.

“It is half-past nine. You must go.”

They walked down the stairs. On a whim, Chang whispered to him. “We are not alone, Captain. You may meet a German doctor, Svenson, of the Prince’s party. Or a young woman, Miss Celeste Temple. We are together in this—mention my name and they will trust you. I promise they are more formidable than they appear.”

They were at the gate. Captain Smythe gave him a curt nod—anything more would have been noticed by the troopers—and Chang walked out into the street.

He made his way to St. Isobel’s Square and sat at the fountain, where he could easily see anyone approaching him from any direction. The moon was a scant pale glow behind the murky clouds. The fog had risen from the river and crawled toward him across the bricks, its moist air tickling his raw throat and lungs. With a nagging dismay he wondered how badly he’d been injured. He had known consumptives, hacking their life away into bloody rags—was this the first stage of such a misery? He felt another twinge as he inhaled, as if he had glass in his lungs, cutting into the flesh with the movement of each breath. He hawked up a gob of thick fluid from his throat and spat on the paving. It seemed darker than normal, but he could not tell if it was more of the blue discharge or if it was blood.

The boxes were sent to Harschmort. Because there was more room? More privacy? Both were true, but a further thought arose to him—the canals. Harschmort was the perfect location to send the boxes away to sea…to Macklenburg. He berated himself for not studying the maps in the cupola room when he’d had the chance. He could have at least described them to Svenson—now he only had the barest sense of where they had placed a few colored pins. He sighed—a lost opportunity. He let it go.

The time he’d been insensible had spoiled his hope to find Miss Temple, for wherever she might have reasonably gone, it was doubtful she would still be there—no matter what had happened. The obvious possibility was Bascombe’s house, but he resisted it, as much as thrashing Bascombe might have pleased him, no matter what the man’s true loyalties. For the first time he questioned whether Celeste might not have the same resistance—was it possible that Bascombe hadn’t been her destination? She had left them churning with emotion, after speaking of what she had lost. If that didn’t mean Bascombe, then who could it mean? If he took her at her word—which he realized he never had—Bascombe was no longer anchored to her heart. Who else had so punctured her happiness?

Chang cursed himself for a fool and walked as quickly as he could to the St. Royale Hotel.

He ignored the front and instead went directly to the rear alley, where white-jacketed men from the night kitchen were dragging out metal bins heaped with the evening’s scraps and refuse. He strode to the nearest, gestured to the growing collection of bins and snapped at him. “Who told you to leave these here? Where is your manager?”

The man looked up at him without comprehension—clearly they
always
put the bins there—but stuttered when faced with Chang’s harsh, strange demeanor. “M-Mr. Albert?”

“Yes! Yes—where is Mr. Albert? I will need to speak to him at once!”

The man pointed inside. By this time the others were watching. Chang turned to them. “Very well. Stay here. We’ll see about this.”

He stalked inside along a service corridor, taking the first turn he could find away from the kitchen and Mr. Albert. This led him, as he had hoped, to the laundry and storage rooms. He hurried on until he found what he wanted: a uniformed porter loafing with a mug of beer. Chang stepped in—amidst mops and buckets and sponges—and shut the door behind him. The porter gulped with surprise, backing up instinctively into a clattering array of broom-handles. Chang reached out and took him by the collar, speaking quickly and low.

“Listen to me. I am in haste. I must get a message—in person, discreetly—to the rooms of the Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza. You know her?” The man nodded. “Good. Take me there now, by the rear stairs. We cannot be seen. It is to preserve the lady’s reputation—she must have my news.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a silver coin. The man saw it, nodded, and then in one movement Chang pocketed the coin and pulled the man out of the room. He’d get it once they were there.

It was on the third floor, in the rear, which made sense to a suspicious mind like Chang’s—too high to climb to or jump from, and away from the crowds on the avenue. The porter knocked on the door. There was no answer. He knocked again. There was no answer. Chang pulled him away from the door, and gave him the coin. He took out a second piece of silver. “We have not met,” he said, and flipped the coin into the porter’s hand, doubling his fee. The porter nodded, and backed away. After a few steps—Chang staring at him fiercely—he turned and ran from sight. Chang took out his ring of keys. The bolt snapped clear and he turned the knob. He was in.

The suite was everything that Celeste’s suite at the Boniface had not been—exuding the excess that defined the St. Royale, from the carpets to the crystal, the monstrously over-carved furniture, the profusion of flowers, the luxurious draperies, the painfully delicate pattern of the wallpaper, to the truly expansive size of the suite itself. Chang shut the door behind him and stood in the main parlor. The suite seemed empty of life. The gaslight had been lowered, but the dim glow was enough for him to see. He smiled wryly at another difference. Clothes—admittedly, laces and silks—were strewn haphazardly over the arms of the chairs and sofas, even on the floor. It was impossible for him to imagine such a thing under the tight scrutiny of Aunt Agathe, but here, the occupant’s decadent experience extended a casual disregard for so naïve a sense of order. He stepped to a lovingly fashioned writing desk cluttered with empty bottles and took its equally elegant wooden chair back to the front door, wedging it under the handle. He did not want to be interrupted as he searched.

He turned up the gaslight and returned to the main parlor. There were open doorways to either side and a closed door at the far end. He quickly glanced to each side—maids’ rooms and second parlor, equally strewn with clothing and in the case of the parlor, glasses and plates. He stepped to the closed door, and pushed it open. It was dark. He fumbled for the gaslight sconce and illuminated another elegant sitting room, this with a handsome pair of chaise longues and a mirror-topped tray full of bottles. Chang stopped where he stood, a twinge of dread at his heart. Under one chaise was a tumbled pair of green ankle boots.

His gaze swept the room for any other signs. The drinks tray held four glasses, some half-empty and smeared with lipstick, and there were two more glasses on the floor beneath the other chaise. High on the wall across from him was a large mirror in a heavy frame pointing to his doorway at a looming angle. Chang looked into it with distaste—he disliked seeing himself at any time—but his eye was caught by something else in the reflection—on the wall next to him, a small painting that could only have been executed by the hand of Oskar Veilandt. He reached up and took it from the wall, and flipped it over to examine the rear of the canvas. In what he assumed was the artist’s own hand, in blue paint, he read “
Annunciation Fragment,
3/13”, and then beneath it a series of symbols—like a mathematical formula incorporating Greek letters—which were in turn followed by the words,
“And so they shall be Reborn.”

He turned the canvas to the painted image and found himself astonished by its bluntly lurid nature. Perhaps it was the contrast between the image and its luxurious gold frame, the subsequent isolation—the
fragmentary
nature, its
containment
—of the subject matter that made the whole seem such a transgression, but Chang could not turn his eyes away. It was not so much pornographic—indeed it was not precisely explicit—as it was, somehow, palpably monstrous. He could not even say why, but the stark tremor of revulsion was as undeniable and as simultaneous as the stirring in his groin. This portion of the painting did not seem to be adjacent to the one they had seen in the gallery, of the woman’s—the very idea of thinking of her as “Mary” was appalling—rapturous scarred face. This section showed her naked pelvis from the side, her splendid thighs wrapped around the hips of a figure in blue who had quite obviously mounted her. On a second glance however, Chang saw the hands of the blue figure clutching the woman’s hips…the hands were blue as well, and decorated with many rings, as the wrists glittered with many bracelets of different metals—gold, silver, copper, iron—the man was not wearing a blue garment,
the blue was his skin
. Perhaps he was an angel—blasphemy enough—but the work’s unnatural quality was compounded by the perfectly realized corporeality of the bodies, the sensual immediacy of the weight of the woman’s haunches in the man’s grip, the twisting angle of their conjoinment, fixed for a moment, but directly evocative of the writhing exquisite union that would continue—in the mind of the viewer if nowhere else.

Chang swallowed and clumsily replaced the painting on its hook. He glanced at it again, mortified at his reaction, compelled and disturbed anew at the long nails at the tip of each blue finger and the tenderly rendered impressions they made in the woman’s flesh. He turned away to the chaise and collected the green boots from beneath it. They had to belong to Celeste. It was rare enough that Chang felt any obligation to another soul that to have formed such a bond—to so unlikely a person—and then find it so swiftly broken gnawed terribly at his conscience. The poignance of the empty boots—the very idea that her feet could be so small, could fit within such a space and yet enable her willful marching, was suddenly unbearable. He sighed quite bitterly, stricken with regret, and dropped them back on the chaise. The room had one door, which was ajar. He forced himself to push it with the tip of his stick. It opened silently.

This was clearly Rosamonde’s bedroom. The bed itself was massive, with high mahogany pillars at each corner and a heavy purple damask curtain drawn across each side. The floor was littered with clothing, mainly underthings, but also here and there pieces of a dress, or a jacket, or even shoes. He recognized none of them as belonging to Celeste, but knew that he wouldn’t in any case. The very idea of Celeste’s underthings forced his mind to a place it had not formerly been, which seemed somehow—now that he feared she was dead—transgressive. Perhaps it was just the residual impact of Veilandt’s painting, but Chang found his thoughts—indeed, he wondered, his heart—punctured by the idea of his hands around her slim ribcage…sliding down to her hips, hips unencumbered by a corset or petticoats, the unquestionably creamy texture of her skin. He shook his head. What was he thinking? For all he knew, he was about to part the purple curtains and find her corpse. He forced himself grimly back to the task, to the room and away from his insistent fantasies. Chang took a deliberately deep breath—his chest seizing in pain—and stepped to the bed. He pulled the curtain aside.

The bedclothes were heavy and tangled, kicked into careless heaps, but Chang could see a woman’s pale arm extending from beneath them. He looked to the pillows piled over the woman’s head and pulled the topmost away. It revealed a mass of dark brown hair. He pulled away another and saw the woman’s face, her eyes closed, her lips delicately parted, the skin around her eyes displaying the nearly vanished looping scars. It was Margaret Hooke—Mrs. Marchmoor. Chang realized that she was naked at about the same moment she opened her eyes. Her gaze flickered as she saw him above her, but her face betrayed no lapse in composure. She yawned and lazily rubbed the sleep from her left eye. She sat up, the sheets slipping to her waist before she absently pulled them up to cover herself.

“My goodness,” she said, yawning again. “What is the time?”

“It must be near eleven,” answered Chang.

“I must have slept for
hours
. That is very bad of me, I’m sure.” She looked up at him, her eyes dancing with coy pleasure. “You’re the Cardinal, aren’t you? I was told you were dead.”

Chang nodded. At least she had the manners not to sound disappointed.

“I am looking for Miss Temple,” he said. “She was here.”

“She
was
…,” answered the woman somewhat dully, her attention elsewhere. “Is there no one else you can ask?”

He resisted the impulse to slap her. “You’re alone, Margaret. Unless you’d prefer that I take you to Mrs. Kraft—I’m sure she’s worried sick over your disappearance.”