The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters (93 page)

The woman blinked like a rock lizard. Miss Temple took hold of her jaw.

“Do you
understand
?”

The woman nodded. “I’m sorry…they…” Her hand fluttered in a vague and indefinite gesture. “I cannot think…”

Miss Temple snorted and then, still gripping her jaw, sorted the woman’s hair from her face with brisk darts of her fingers, tucking away the wisps like a bird stabbing together its nest. She was older than Miss Temple—in her presently haggard condition it was unfair to guess by how many years—and as she allowed herself to be held and groomed, there emerged in her features a delicate
wholeness
with which Miss Temple grudgingly found a certain reluctant sympathy.

“Not thinking is perfectly all right.” Miss Temple smiled, only a little tightly. “I can think for the pair of us—in point of fact I should prefer it. I cannot however
walk
for the pair of us. If we are to live—to
live,
Miss Dujong—you must be able to move.”

“Elöise,” she whispered.

“I beg your pardon?”

“My name is Elöise.”

“Excellent. That will make everything much easier.”

Miss Temple did not even risk opening the far door, for she knew the corridor beyond would be full of servants and soldiers—though why they did not come at the fire through this room she had no idea. Could the prohibition against entering such a secret room—one that so obviously loomed in the Cabal’s deepest designs—carry over in the staff to even this time of crisis? She turned back to Elöise, who was still on her knees, holding in her arms a savaged garment—no doubt the dress she had arrived in.

“They have destroyed it,” Miss Temple told her, crossing past to the open cabinets. “It is their way. I suggest you turn your head…”

“Are you changing clothes?” asked Elöise, doing her best to stand.

Miss Temple pushed aside the open cabinet doors and saw the wicked mirror behind. She looked about her and found a wooden stool.

“O no,” she replied, “I am breaking glass.”

Miss Temple shut her eyes at the impact and flinched away, but all the same the destruction was enormously satisfying. With each blow she thought of another enemy—Spragg, Farquhar, the Contessa, Miss Poole—and at every jolting of her arms her face glowed the more with healthy pleasure. Once the hole was made, but not yet wide enough to pass through, she looked back at Miss Dujong with a conspiratorial grin.

“There is a secret room,” she whispered, and at Miss Dujong’s hesitant nod wheeled round to swing again. It was the sort of activity that could easily have occupied another thirty minutes of her time, chipping away at this part and at that, knocking free each hanging shard. As it was, Miss Temple called herself to business, dropped the stool, and carefully stepped back to Elöise’s tattered dress. Between them they spread it across their path to absorb at least what fallen glass it could, and made their way through the mirror. Once in, Miss Temple gathered the dress and, balling it in her hands, threw it back across the room. She looked a last time at the inner door, her worry grown at the Doctor’s non-arrival, and reached for the cabinet doors on either side, pulling them to conceal the open mirror. She turned to Elöise, who clutched the poor man’s coat close to her body.

“He will find us,” Miss Temple told her. “Why don’t you take my arm?”

They did not speak as they padded along the dim carpeted passageway, their pale, smoke-smeared faces and their silken robes made red in the lurid gaslight. Miss Temple wanted to put as much distance as she could between themselves and the fire, and only then address escape and disguise…and yet at each turn she looked back and listened, hoping for some sign of the Doctor. Could he have effected their rescue only to sacrifice himself—and what was more, maroon her with a companion she neither knew nor had reason to trust? She felt the weight of Elöise on her arm and heard again his urgent words to go, go at once…and hurried forward.

Their narrow path came to a crossroads. To the left it went on, the dead-end wall ahead of them was fitted with a ladder rising into a darkened shaft, while to the right was a heavy red curtain. Miss Temple cautiously reached out with one finger and edged the curtain aside. It was another observation chamber, looking into a rather large, empty parlor. If she truly wanted to evade pursuit, the last thing she needed to do was leave a second broken mirror in her trail. She stepped back from the curtain. Elöise could not climb the ladder. They kept walking to the left.

“How do you feel?” Miss Temple asked, putting as much hearty confidence as she could into a stealthy whisper.

“Palpably better,” answered Elöise. “Thank you for helping me.”

“Not at all,” said Miss Temple. “You know the Doctor. We are old comrades.”

“Comrades?” Miss Dujong looked at her, and Miss Temple saw disbelief in the woman’s eyes—her size, her strength, the foolish robes—and felt a fresh spike of annoyance.

“Indeed.” She nodded. “It would perhaps be better if you understood that the Doctor, myself, and a man named Cardinal Chang have joined forces against a Cabal of sinister figures with sinister intent. I do not know which of these you know—the Comte d’Orkancz, the Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza, Francis
Xonck
”—this name offered rather pointedly with a rise of Miss Temple’s eyebrows—“Harald Crabbé, the Deputy Foreign Minister, and Lord Robert Vandaariff. There are many lesser villains in their party—Mrs. Marchmoor, Miss Poole—whom I believe you know—Caroline Stearne, Roger Bascombe, far too many Germans—it’s all quite difficult to summarize, of course, but there is apparently something about the Prince of Macklenburg and there is a
great
deal to do with a queer blue glass that can be made into books, books that hold—or consume—actual memories, actual experiences—it’s really quite extraordinary—”

“Yes, I have seen them,” whispered Elöise.

“You have?” Miss Temple’s voice was tinged with disappointment, for she found herself suddenly eager to describe her own astonishing experience to someone else.

“They exposed each of us to such a book—”

“Who ‘they’?” asked Miss Temple.

“Miss Poole, and Doctor…Doctor Lorenz.” Elöise swallowed. “Some of the women could not bear it…they were killed.”

“Because they would not look?”

“No, no—because they did look. Killed by the book itself.”

“
Killed?
By looking in the books?”

“I do believe it.”

“I was not killed.”

“Perhaps you are very strong,” answered Elöise.

Miss Temple sniffed. She rarely discredited flattery, even when she knew the point of the moment lay elsewhere (as when Roger had praised her delicacy and humor at the same time that his hand around her waist sought to wander exploratively southward), but Miss Temple
had
pulled herself from the book, by her own power—an achievement even the forever condescending Contessa had remarked upon. The idea that the opposite was possible—that she could have been swallowed utterly, that she could have
perished
—sent a brittle shiver down her back. It would have been absolutely effortless, true—the contents of the book had been so seductive. But she had not perished—and what was more, Miss Temple felt fully confident that should she look into another of these books its hold would be even weaker, for as she had pulled free once, she would know she could do so again. She turned back to Elöise, still unconvinced of the woman’s true character.

“But you must be strong as well, of course, as a person our enemies sought to add to their ranks—just as you were brought to Tarr Manor to begin with. For this is why we wear these robes, you know—to initiate our minds into their insidious mysteries, a Process to bend our wills to their own.”

She stopped and looked down at herself, plucking at the robes with both hands.

“At the same time, though I would not call it
practical,
the feel of silk against one’s body is nevertheless…
well
…so…”

Elöise smiled, or at least made the attempt, but Miss Temple saw the woman’s lower lip hesitantly quiver.

“It is just…you see, I do not
remember
…I know I went to Tarr Manor for a reason, but for my life I cannot call it to mind!”

“It is best we keep on our way,” Miss Temple said, glancing to see if the quivering lip had been followed by tears, and breathing with relief that it had not. “And you can tell me what you do remember of Tarr Manor. Miss Poole mentioned Francis Xonck, and of course Colonel Trapping—”

“I am tutor to the Colonel’s children,” said Elöise, “and known to Mr. Xonck—indeed, he has been most attentive ever since the Colonel disappeared.” She sighed. “You see, I am a confidante of Mr. Xonck’s sister, the Colonel’s wife—I was even present here, at Harschmort House, the night the Colonel disappeared—”

“You were?” asked Miss Temple, a bit abruptly.

“I have asked myself if I inadvertently witnessed some clue, or overheard some secret—anything to entice Mr. Xonck to curiosity, or that he might use against his siblings, or even to conceal his own part in the Colonel’s death—”

“Is it possible you knew who had killed him or why?” asked Miss Temple.

“I have no idea!” cried Elöise.

“But if those memories are gone, then it follows they must have been worth taking,” observed Miss Temple.

“Yes, but because I learned something I should not have? Or because I was—there is no other word—seduced to even take part?”

Elöise stopped, her hand over her mouth, tears gleaming in each eye. The woman’s despair struck Miss Temple as real, and she knew as well as anyone—after her experience of the book—how temptation might sway the sternest soul. If she could not remember what she’d done, if she was here stricken with regret, did the truth of it really matter? Miss Temple had no idea—no more than she might parse the relative state of her own bodily innocence. For the first time she allowed a gentle nudge of pity to enter her voice.

“But they did not enlist you,” she said. “Miss Poole told the Comte and Caroline that you were quite a nuisance.”

Elöise exhaled heavily and shrugged Miss Temple’s words away. “The Doctor rescued me from an attic, and then was taken. I followed, with his gun, and tried to rescue him in turn. In the process—I’m sorry, it is difficult to speak of it—I shot a man. I shot him dead.”

“But that is excellent, I’m sure,” replied Miss Temple. “I have not shot anyone, but I have killed one man outright and another by way of a cooperative coach wheel.” Elöise did not reply, so Miss Temple helpfully went on. “I actually spoke of it—well, as much as one speaks of anything—with Cardinal Chang, who you must understand is a man of few words—indeed, a man of
mystery
—the very first time I laid eyes upon him I knew it was so—granted, this was because he was wearing all red in a train car in the very early morning holding a razor and reading poetry—and wearing dark spectacles, for he has suffered injury to his eyes—and though I did not know him I did remark him, in my mind, and when I saw him again—when we became comrades with the Doctor—I knew who he was at once. The Doctor said something about him—about Chang—just now, I mean to say, in the theatre—I didn’t make sense of any of it for that abominable shouting and the smoke and the fire—and do you know, it is a queer thing, but I have noticed it, how at times the extremity of, well,
information,
assaulting one of our senses overwhelms another. For example, the
smell
and the
sight
of the smoke and flames absolutely inhibited my ability to
hear
. It is exactly the sort of thing I find fascinating to think on.”

They walked for a moment before Miss Temple recalled the original drift of her thought.

“But—
yes
—the reason I spoke to Cardinal Chang—well, you see, I must explain that Cardinal Chang is a
dangerous
man, a very deadly fellow—who has probably killed a man more often than I have purchased shoes—and I spoke to him about the men I had killed, and—well, honestly it was very difficult to talk about, and what he ended up telling me was exactly how someone like myself ought to use a pistol—which was to grind the barrel as tightly into the body of your target as you can. Do you see my point? He was telling me what to
do
as a way of helping me sort out how to
feel
. Because at the time, I had no idea how to talk of anything. Yet these things that have happened—they tell us what kind of world we are in, and what sort of actions we must be prepared to take. If you had not shot this fellow, would either yourself or the Doctor be still alive? And without the Doctor to take me off that table, would I?”

Elöise did not answer. Miss Temple saw her wrestling with her doubts and knew from experience that to overcome those doubts and accept what had occurred was to become a significantly less innocent person.

“But this was the Duke of Stäelmaere,” Elöise whispered. “It is assassination. You do not understand—I will assuredly hang!”