The Chemickal Marriage

Four Catacomb

It had not been her intention to act rashly. But the impulse to snatch up the red ball was a spark of clarity within the riot she had felt since Chang had been recovered. Her delight at his survival, an unexpected flood of joy, had been immediately displaced by a host of clamouring thoughts and images – and none of that turmoil touched the man himself. In the tunnels, on the train, even when Chang held her hand, the distance between them was agony. A sea of feeling lay within his heart, she knew, as she knew it held her only hope of peace – yet he remained, as ever, untouchable and withheld.

And so she had entered the red sphere. A frightening energy suffused Miss Temple’s mind, as if the glass were reacting to her – measuring … examining. This was not the brutal plunder of a blue glass book, with a victim’s mind drained whole. In the red sphere Miss Temple felt her mind being explored like a stretch of uncharted coastline. Unfortunately, the Comte’s knowledge provided no more detail beyond another glimpse of the painting, the apple in the Groom’s black hand. She was sure this examination was but a first step of its function, a preface to some larger task, like a wall being scrubbed before receiving new paint.

And then, quite suddenly, the spell was broken, its work unravelled. This was the flaw in the glass. At once the foul tide in her rose, and her mouth formed words, a last memory. The Comte had whispered in her ear … no, not to her, but to Lydia Vandaariff, as his alchemical poisons remade her body. The young woman had been terrified – that had given him pleasure – such fear had seemed appropriate …

‘I do not like her,’ said a small rasping voice. ‘I should prefer to let her die. She let Elöise die. Elöise loved me. She did nothing. The Contessa did not say she would come, or him. Just you. We ought to leave them here.’

‘You must let me work …’ muttered Doctor Svenson.

‘Why is her mouth black? Has she drunk ink? What is she trying to say?’

A damp cloth cooled Miss Temple’s face. She rolled her head to the side. The red mist dimmed. Three words congealed inside her mind.

‘Flesh of dreams,’ Miss Temple croaked. The Doctor wiped her mouth and then held her hair away as she coughed. She saw the mattress, Svenson on his knees, and, behind him, legs dangling from the worktop, an unkempt little girl. Francesca Trapping bore the bitter expression a hungry cat might bestow upon a duck too large to acknowledge its authority.

‘Where is Chang?’ Miss Temple managed.

‘Just behind you,’ said Svenson. ‘He came to his senses two hours ago – now he sleeps.’

‘Two hours? Is he safe? Is he whole?’

‘He is – we have been more worried by you.’

‘I am perfectly fine.’

‘You are not. Celeste, my lord, between Chang’s wound and your own reckless –’

‘What did he see? What did he tell you?’

‘Nothing. We did not speak. He did not want to speak. Once the danger passed –’

‘It was cracked,’ said the girl, as if this fact was proof of their collective stupidity. ‘Of course he woke up.’

Svenson helped Miss Temple to sit. ‘I will not chide you. You live, and that is all that matters.’

She looked past him. Chang lay stretched on the floor, hands folded like a statue on an old king’s sarcophagus.

‘You said something as you woke,’ said Svenson.

‘The red glass ball was nothing the Comte had made before.’ Miss Temple hiccupped wetly. ‘But “flesh of dreams” was something he said to Lydia – it came to me now for a reason.’

Svenson sighed. His face was haggard. ‘Alchemy is about equivalents – balancing one element with another, transformation through incremental change. The nearest analogy would be symbolic mathematics. The Comte of course transposes chemical compounds with living bodies. But the language operates like a code – and so a phrase like “flesh of dreams” will have an equivalent, opposite concept –’

‘The flesh of life,’ said Francesca, chewing a thumbnail with her teeth.

‘Exactly,’ said Svenson. ‘And that tells us how he thinks – that the opposite of life is not, as most would have it, death, but dream.’

Miss Temple frowned with distaste. ‘Lydia’s pregnancy. The flesh of dreams is born from the ashes of the flesh of life.’

‘For what purpose?’

‘Paradise.’

Svenson snorted. ‘And what can that word mean to that man?’

Miss Temple was aware of Francesca watching her. How many hours had she been left alone? Francesca’s arms were marked with smears of soot … or were they bruises? Miss Temple felt a pinch in her throat.

‘Is there someplace I might … spit?’

‘A chamberpot, here – and somewhere is a bit of food, and water –’ The Doctor’s voice dropped off, in sympathy, as she bent over the chamberpot and let fly.

‘There isn’t time.’ The child’s voice was a whine. ‘We were waiting for her. Now we have to go.’

Miss Temple met Francesca’s disapproving gaze and held it until the girl turned away. She waited for the girl to look back. When Francesca did so, pressing her lips together at being caught, Miss Temple stared even harder.

‘I did not let Elöise die.’

‘Celeste – the child is hardly responsible –’

‘She needs to know what is right.’

Francesca Trapping muttered to herself. ‘I know perfectly well.’

The chamberpot prompted Miss Temple to notice the fullness of her bladder. The single room offered no privacy beyond a meagre half-barrier of cupboards, behind which she would have to crouch, with Svenson only a few feet away hearing all. Instead, she picked up the chamberpot and crossed to the door. On her way, she impulsively took Francesca Trapping’s arm in hers. The child squawked in protest.

‘We will return directly,’ Miss Temple called to Svenson. ‘Girls together, don’t you know.’

Svenson opened his mouth, coughed instead, and pointed vaguely to Chang.

‘Yes – while you – right –’

Miss Temple hauled the squirming girl into the corridor. She dropped the chamberpot with a clang. ‘Will you go first or me?’

‘I will not go at all.’

Feeling she must make an example, Miss Temple resentfully hiked up her dress and sat, daring the girl to say one mocking thing. But Francesca only stared. Disliking a silence broken only by the rattle of her own urine, Miss Temple cleared her throat.

‘We have been searching for you. You should know that the Doctor was very much in love with Elöise and grieves for her particularly. As do I. We also grieve for your mother, and your father, and your uncle – yes, even him, for his death no doubt has given you pain. Your brothers are safe at home.’

‘I know how my brothers are.’

‘Have you visited them?’

The girl looked away.

‘No. Do you see? You don’t know – you have been told. What else have you trusted that woman to say?’ Miss Temple stood, rearranging her petticoats, and indicated the chamberpot. Again the girl shook her head. ‘It will be a long journey,’ said Miss Temple, annoyed that she had come to parrot every exasperating aunt or guardian she had ever known. With a shrug the girl took her place on the chamberpot, gazing sullenly at a point between her shoes.

‘The Contessa sent you to my hotel,’ said Miss Temple. ‘You did not try to go home.’

‘Why should I have done that?’

‘Because she is extremely wicked.’

‘I think you’re wicked.’

The retort flung, Francesca squirmed on her seat and said nothing. Francesca’s face was naturally pale, but now it was pinched and drawn. Had the girl been eating? Miss Temple imagined the woman flinging scraps at Francesca’s feet with an imperious sneer – but then recalled her own experience in the railway car, the Contessa breaking a pie in two, passing bites of a green apple with an insidious amity.

‘So the Contessa is your friend,’ she said.

Francesca sniffed.

‘She is very beautiful.’

‘More beautiful than you.’

‘Of course she is. She is a black-haired angel.’

Francesca looked up warily, as if ‘angel’ had a meaning she did not expect Miss Temple to know. Miss Temple put one gloved finger beneath Francesca’s chin and held her gaze.

‘I know it is frightening to be alone, and lonely to be strong. But you are heir to the Trappings, and heir to the Xoncks. You must make up your own mind.’

She stepped back and allowed the girl to stand. Francesca did so, the dress still gathered at her spindled thighs. ‘There is no water,’ she said plaintively.

‘I did without water perfectly well,’ muttered Miss Temple, but she opened her clutch bag and dug for a handkerchief. With a grunt she tore it in half, then in half again, and held the scrap to Francesca, who snatched it away and hunched to wipe.

‘A soldier does not need someone’s handkerchief,’ observed Miss Temple.

‘I am not a soldier.’

Miss Temple took the girl’s arm and steered her to the door. ‘But you are, Francesca. Whether you want to be or not.’

‘You are returned, excellent.’ Doctor Svenson rose to his feet, working both arms into his greatcoat, a lit cigarette in his mouth. Chang stood across the room. Miss Temple perceived the shift in each man’s posture at her entrance. They had been speaking of her. Her sting of resentment was then followed by an inflaming counter-notion, that they had not been speaking of her. Instead, at her entrance, they had ceased their discussion of strategies and danger, matters to which she could neither contribute nor need be troubled by.

Despite his crisis Chang seemed every bit as able as before – and far more so than anyone imprisoned for weeks ought to be. One look at Svenson showed the man’s exhaustion. That he had been unable to kill the Contessa, of all people, was proof enough. Miss Temple resolved to help him as she could, just as a colder part of her mind marked him down as unreliable.

‘How best to return?’ asked Svenson. ‘The vestibule key allows us some choice –’

‘You don’t go that way.’ Francesca marched to the cupboard doors and pulled them wide. Inside was a metal hatch. ‘You need a lantern. There are rats.’

Svenson peered down the shaft. ‘And where does that – I mean, how far down –’

‘To the bridge,’ Chang answered. ‘The turbines.’

‘Ah.’

Miss Temple called to Chang. ‘Are you fully recovered?’

Chang spread his arms with a sardonic smile. ‘As you find me.’

‘Is that all you can say?’

‘I looked into something I should not have, like a fool.’

‘What did you see?’

‘What did you see? The Doctor described your ludicrous imitation.’

‘I looked in the glass ball to provoke the Comte’s memories – to learn how to help you.’

‘And in doing so only endangered yourself.’

‘But I discovered –’

‘What we already know. Vandaariff has made glass with different metals. The red ball figures prominently in his great painting, and thus no doubt is highly charged within his personal cosmology. An alchemical apple of Eden.’

‘But you –’

‘Yes, I have a foreign object near my spine. Apparently.’

‘It could kill you!’

‘It has not yet.’

‘It was the Comte’s alchemy that killed Lydia Vandaariff.’

‘She was killed by the Contessa.’

‘But she would have died – you well know it! He only cared about the thing inside her – his blue abomination –’

‘Do you suggest I am with child?’

‘Why will you not tell me what you saw?’

Her voice had become too loud, but, instead of matching her, Chang answered softly, ‘I do not know, Celeste. Not a memory, not a place, not a person.’

‘An ingredient,’ said Svenson. ‘Neither one of you has described the experience as concerning memory – and you have both retained your minds. Logic thus suggests the red glass is not a mechanism for capture but for change. Is that right, Francesca? You did see the Contessa make the ball of red glass, didn’t you?’

‘She was very angry. The man made a mistake.’

‘Mr Sullivar,’ said Chang. ‘At the glassworks.’

‘He stoked the oven too much. The ball cracked and wouldn’t work properly.’

‘Did she make another?’ asked Svenson.

‘Didn’t need to.’ Miss Temple flinched, both at the child’s deadened teeth and at the bright gleam in her eyes.

Chang insisted on going first, with the lantern. Once down, he held the light high to guide their descent. Miss Temple bundled her dress and wriggled through the hatchway, aware that Chang’s lantern showed him her stockinged calves – and more, depending on the exact gather of her petticoats. She paused in her climb, ostensibly to make sure of her clutch bag, but in truth to indulge a tremor at prolonging her exposure. She imagined Chang’s gaze rising from her legs to her face as she reached the ground, each studying the other for a sign of intent. But her nerve failed and she finished facing the brickwork, turning only at Chang’s brusque offer to take her hand. She held it out to him and hopped to the tunnel floor. Chang called for Svenson to send the child.

The tunnel was new brick, more secret construction on the part of Harald Crabbé and Roger Bascombe. Miss Temple walked behind Chang, happy to let Svenson hold Francesca’s hand, and wondered when her fiancé, Bascombe, had last walked these halls. Had he still loved her then? Had he ever come from here to her arms, all the more thrilled at keeping his secret?

Brooding on Roger Bascombe made Miss Temple feel foolish. She shifted her attention to Chang, fighting the impulse to reach out and run a finger down his back. She started at a touch on her own shoulder. Svenson indicated a growing rumble in the walls.

‘The turbines. We are under the bridge.’

Miss Temple nodded without interest. She had imagined the sound was the river itself, flowing past in the dark, an enormous serpent dragging its scales across the earth.

The iron stairs echoed with their footfalls, and the sound launched flurries of motion above their heads.

‘Bats.’ Chang aimed the lantern at a niche of cross-braced girders. The little beasts hung in rows, wide-eared, small teeth polished white by darting tongues. Miss Temple had seen bats often, whipping across the veranda at twilight, and these did not disturb her. She enjoyed their little fox faces, and smiled to see such awkward things wheel about so fast.

Francesca stared down through the gaps in the iron staircase. Miss Temple forced herself to remember their first meeting in the corridors of Harschmort. She had tried to be kind, and when she had seen Francesca again at Parchfeldt, had there not been some sympathy between them? The child’s tangled hair made plain she’d not been cared for. But the Contessa’s habitual thoughtlessness hardly explained Francesca’s deadened teeth.

Miss Temple did not remember herself at seven years of age with any clarity. Her mother was well dead, of course, but who had been her father’s housemistress? There had been nine in turn, and Miss Temple ordered her youth through the prism of their reigns, consorts to a relentless, unfeeling king. At seven the housemistress was most likely Mrs Kallack, a harsh lady whose Alsatian husband had died of fever soon after bringing her to the tropics. Mrs Kallack’s success in the house was due to her ability to meet Miss Temple’s father with utter subservience, and then, like a two-headed idol, wreak his brutality on the rest of the household. Miss Temple had hated her, and recalled with grim satisfaction when Mrs Kallack was found dead in the fields from heatstroke. She had stood over the body with a gang of housegirls, everyone wondering what could have taken the woman so far from the great house. Mrs Kallack’s fingers were red with the clay of the sugar fields, as if she had clawed in the dirt before death, and her false front teeth had come loose in her mouth. One of the housegirls had laughed aloud, and Miss Temple – understanding for perhaps the first time the responsibilities of her station – had kicked the housegirl’s shin. Before the young woman could do anything in return – and, luckily, for if she had, it would have meant the skin off her back – her father’s overseer arrived with the wagon.

She wondered how Francesca Trapping carried the indigestible knot of her parents’ murders. Miss Temple knew she ought to take her hand – especially since Doctor Svenson had all but shut his eyes as they climbed, gripping the rail – but she did not. The child made her angry.

At the top of the staircase they found another metal door, fastened with heavy chain looped round an iron hasp. As they passed through, Chang plucked a tuft of fabric snagged on the hasp’s ragged edge: a scrap of wool the colour of an overripened peach. He showed it to Francesca.

‘I don’t suppose you’ve ever seen this before?’

She shook her head. Chang flipped the fabric to Miss Temple.

‘What is it?’ asked Svenson.

‘Ask them.’ Chang stood and walked on.

‘It belongs to Jack Pfaff,’ Miss Temple said, and then called at Chang’s receding back, ‘He was charged to investigate the glass – this only suggests he was successful. You are determined to mistrust him!’ She held up the scrap of cloth. ‘Here is welcome news! Jack Pfaff – in my employ – may even now have her at bay!’

Chang turned to face her. ‘And where would that be?’

‘How should I know? I do not even know where we are!’

‘We are on the Contessa’s errand,’ said Doctor Svenson flatly. ‘The Contessa charged Francesca to lead me to a certain place –’

‘Then why won’t she tell us where?’ asked Chang.

‘Because I would guess she doesn’t know the name. Do you, child?’ Francesca shook her head. ‘No,’ continued Svenson, ‘the only way is to get there. The Contessa is nothing if not mercurial – yet perhaps Mr Pfaff has managed to best her after all.’

‘Did you see Mr Pfaff?’ Miss Temple asked the girl. ‘What did he do?’

‘I can’t say,’ Francesca replied. ‘When he was there she put me in the cupboard.’

The brick passage echoed with a gust of cold wind. Chang crept ahead to an open arch, then waved them forward.

‘We’ve reached the bridge from the northern piling,’ he whispered.

Miss Temple clapped a hand across her mouth. ‘The entire bridge is swarming with soldiers!’

‘Not only the bridge.’ At Chang’s silent indication she saw the dockside was ringed by soldiers in torchlight. On the river lay ships moored out in the channel, and on their decks stood more men in uniform.

‘Then it has begun,’ said Svenson. ‘Harcourt authorized property seizures across the land, for the public good.’

‘Are the people taken as well?’ asked Chang. ‘Earlier this evening the riverside was thronged with the dispossessed.’

‘Perhaps they went to the square,’ suggested Svenson.

‘Not so many – every damned street was crawling.’

Whatever Chang had seen before, the cobbled riverfront was as well ordered as a military parade ground. Miss Temple picked out officers on horseback, troops mustered into line. The bridge itself bore a cordon at each end, limiting traffic – those few allowed to cross did so between uniformed escorts. Chang spoke to Francesca.

‘If we are seen by the soldiers, we will be captured, and he’ – Chang nodded to Svenson – ‘for he has made havoc in the Palace, will be shot. Which direction do we go?’

Francesca pointed to the nearer end of the bridge, back at the heart of the city.

Chang stood. ‘Doctor, if you would pass me the lantern.’

‘Will it not be seen?’

‘Indeed, but there is seen and seen, you know.’

They crept after Chang onto the bridge proper. He pointed to a railing ten feet away.

‘Go now – as quick as you can, over the side – Celeste, you first.’

Miss Temple did not like to baulk – she knew Chang had chosen her to lead only because he could not ask the height-stricken Doctor or a seven-year-old-girl – but neither did she relish hanging over the edge of such a wicked drop. Nevertheless, she ran as instructed and was rewarded by an iron ladder on the far side of the rail. She climbed down, the dizzying abyss of dark water answered by a small platform five steps below, and smiled at Chang’s cunning. A narrow catwalk extended under the bridge all the way to the river wall – to aid repairs, she assumed – which would allow them to pass unseen beneath the sentries. At a tremulous whisper from Francesca, Miss Temple rescaled the ladder and brought the girl down, then helped Svenson, whose passage was every bit as tentative. She heard the crash of breaking glass above them – and then a piercing shout.

‘Fire! Fire on the bridge!

The alarm spread in a roar through the soldiers. Chang vaulted the railing and landed beside them like a cat.

‘Go! Go!’ he hissed, and drove them on, bent low.

‘You threw the lantern!’ whispered Svenson.

‘No drawing moths without a flame, Doctor. Quiet now …’

The catwalk dead-ended at the bridge wall, high above the riverfront. The cordon lay right over their heads. The citizens demanding passage had been shouted to silence by the officer in charge.

‘A lantern, by God. Get men searching! Enough of this nonsense!’

The officer broke off, railing at someone in the crowd hoping to slip past, and his sergeants began to detail the men to search. Soldiers would appear at the ladder, and on their catwalk, and soon.

‘We appear to be trapped,’ Svenson whispered, readying his pistol.

Miss Temple hurried to the inner rail. They were no longer above the water, but this meant they faced a prodigious drop to the stone bankside. What had Chang said about the old Norwalk? That the bridge and the buildings around it had been raised on the foundation of the old fortress … she leant over the rail. A firm hand caught her shoulder.

‘What are you playing at?’ snarled Chang.

‘I am looking at the wall. It is your fortress – look for yourself.’

Chang peered over the rail, then whipped off his glasses. ‘I can’t see a damned thing.’

‘There are old windows,’ said Miss Temple. ‘Or not windows but whatsits – slitty bits of stonework, for arrows – your old fortifications –’

‘She’s right.’ Svenson had taken Chang’s place with an uncomfortable swallow. ‘But it’s yards away – we’ve no rope, we cannot reach it.’

‘Of course we can’t reach that one,’ said Miss Temple.

‘Celeste –’

‘There is a line of them. If they extend away from us, then there must also be one directly beneath our feet!’

Miss Temple began to hike up her dress, but Chang thrust her aside and quickly dropped from view, hanging by his arms. At once he came back.

‘It is no more than climbing down from a coach. Hand me the child first …’

The far end of the catwalk echoed as soldiers landed on the planking. Miss Temple and the others sank to their knees.

‘The girl!’ hissed Chang, invisible below them. Svenson lifted Francesca over the rail so her legs dangled. The child said nothing, face pinched and white, when Chang’s hands shot out and seized her waist. Miss Temple pushed Svenson to the rail and he flung himself over, knobbed fingers squeezed tight. Chang’s arms reached for the Doctor’s kicking legs.

The soldiers came nearer, playing their lanterns along the girded undercarriage of the bridge. Miss Temple slipped over in silence, sliding down until her hands were out of view, grasping the lowest edge of the catwalk. She hung in place.

Above her lantern light danced across where she’d stood. Sentries patrolled the bankside below. If even one soldier noticed the lights and looked up, she would be found. A gloved hand caught Miss Temple’s foot and another her waist, and then both hands squeezed, a sign she should let go. Soldiers stood directly above her. She opened her hands. For an instant it did not seem as if Chang could bear her weight, but then his hands were joined by the Doctor’s and she felt herself pulled through a crusted opening of stone.

‘It stinks of birds.’ Miss Temple rapped her boot against the wall, knocking away the clotted grime. The soldiers had moved on after finding the catwalk empty, and they were able to talk.

‘Better birds than vagrant beggers,’ replied Chang.

‘I would not think a soul has been here since the bridge was built.’ Svenson held Miss Temple’s beeswax stub above his head and studied the walls. Beyond the windowed crevice lay a wider passage, once used to house sentries. ‘Another corpse, architecturally speaking. Do we simply wait here for the bridge to be opened?’

‘We could wait eight years,’ said Chang. ‘They control the entire river.’

‘I wonder if Mr Pfaff escaped them,’ said Miss Temple. ‘Though who knows when he was there. Perhaps he has been captured.’

No one answered her, which Miss Temple found irksome. Francesca Trapping peeked out of the narrow window.

‘Come away from there,’ Miss Temple said.

Francesca did so, but then walked past Miss Temple to Doctor Svenson and pulled at his arm. ‘I am supposed to take you somewhere else.’

Svenson dredged up a smile. ‘Then let us see what we can find. The work here was hastily done …’

He led her further into the alcove, tapping at the wall, a mixture of old stone and new brick, until the impact of his boot echoed hollowly. He looked to Chang and Miss Temple with a raised eyebrow.

‘Perhaps it’s a colony of rats,’ offered Chang. ‘Burrowing out their home.’

Svenson held the light to the join of the floor and the oddly angled wall, then passed the candle to Francesca. He braced his hands against the wall for leverage.

‘Steel-toed boots, you know …’ He kicked and the bricks were driven in, for the mortar was honeycombed with mould. A few more kicks and he was chopping at an opening with his heel. The crusted stones tumbled into the darkness as they came loose, and soon the Doctor had cleared a gap wide enough to writhe through.

Miss Temple wrinkled her nose at the dank air rising from the hole. ‘What do you suppose is down there?’

‘Apart from rats?’ asked Chang.

‘I am not frightened of rats.’

‘Then you should go first.’

She saw he was smiling, and, though his tone annoyed her, she recognized his teasing as a kindly overture. Why did it seem impossible to have a conversation that did not leave her feeling cross?

‘Do not be absurd,’ said Doctor Svenson seriously. He dropped to his knees, extending the candle through the hole and then his head. He waved his remaining hand in the air. Chang caught it and, so braced, the Doctor crawled further. Finally Svenson squeezed Chang’s hand and Chang pulled him back into view. In the candlelight, the Doctor seemed to have emerged from some fairy portal, aged ten years, his hair floured with cobwebs and brick dust. He brushed it away with a smile.

‘If we had not seen Crabbé’s tunnel I should not have known what to make of it – but it is indeed another part of the old fortress. Utterly derelict, yet I cannot think but it will take us somewhere.’

Svenson insisted on widening the hole for the ladies, prising away what bricks he could without risking the wall’s collapse. This done, he led the way – sliding down a slope of rubble to a shallow stone trench. Soon all four of them stood beating dust from their clothes.

‘I do not see one rat anywhere,’ said Miss Temple.

‘I am glad of it,’ whispered Francesca.

Chang smiled. ‘We can only pray something larger has not eaten them.’

With a disapproving glare the Doctor led them in the direction least cluttered by debris. Miss Temple wondered who had last been in this place – some man-at-arms in polished steel? She felt she ought to have been frightened – outside the candle’s meagre glow the passage was pitch black, and the air hung heavy with rot – but her foolishness with the red glass ball seemed long ago, and their escape from the bridge had fuelled her confidence.

‘If we do reach the Customs House, I am sure I can find our way, having been inside it.’

Svenson called over Miss Temple’s head to Chang, ‘What is your guess as to the time?’

‘Near sunrise. We may meet porters, but it is unlikely any staff have arrived.’

‘The porters will not bother us,’ announced Miss Temple.

Francesca Trapping shrieked and thrust herself against the Doctor in fear. Miss Temple’s heart leapt at the child’s cry, but she could not see what had provoked it. She felt Chang at her shoulder and saw the knife in his hand.

Svenson advanced with the candle. Across their path lay a jumble of blackened shapes, bound together by twists of rotting leather.

‘Bones,’ said the Doctor simply. ‘Not old – not ancient – nor would any person be buried in a fortification’s corridor.’ Svenson studied the squalid heap. ‘I make it at least three men … but I cannot say what has killed them.’

He lifted the light towards the roof of their tunnel. ‘This has been more recently bricked in, of an age with the bridge, I would guess.’

‘Deceased labourers.’ Chang turned away and spat. ‘Their bodies hidden away.’

‘Hardly unusual,’ said Miss Temple quietly.

‘What does that mean?’ asked Chang.

‘It means people always die doing this work – making things like bridges and spires and railway stations –’

‘Or growing sugar cane.’

Miss Temple met Chang’s gaze and shrugged. ‘People walk on bones every minute of the day.’ She leant forward and gave Francesca’s arm a friendly squeeze.

They emerged into a basement corridor, startling a round-faced porter with a mop and bucket, his uniform protected by a cotton apron. His expression of surprise vanished abruptly when he saw the dust upon their clothes.

‘You were at the cathedral.’ His voice was hushed.

‘I’m afraid we lost our way,’ replied Doctor Svenson.

‘Of course you did.’ The porter’s head bobbed in sympathy, and he pointed behind him. ‘It’s back through the trading hall. But I didn’t think – they’re not letting people in, even family. Only from the hospital –’

‘I am a physician,’ said Svenson quickly.

‘O – well then. I’m told the Shipping Board is given over as well – not that there’s trading today, nor any shipping –’

The porter hesitated, as if he doubted his licence to say more. His eyes fell to Miss Temple and the girl. ‘If you don’t mind my speaking, it’s no sight for a lady, or a child. No sight for anyone. Straight from hell itself.’

‘Thank you for your kindness,’ said Miss Temple softly. The porter excused himself, fumbling for words. He hurried away, but not before Miss Temple noticed that the water in his bucket was stained red.

On her visit to the Customs House, Miss Temple had been shown the famous trading hall like a child visiting a grist mill is shown the great wheel. She had dutifully murmured amazement at the clamour around the dais, where busy clerks posted the latest figures in chalk. Her father’s agent had escorted her to the firm’s own office above the fray, hoping to shed her presence after a single cup of tea, but Miss Temple had insisted on examining every ledger, matching her resolve against that of the crisp-cuffed men forced to attend her. In the end she had affected a grudging satisfaction, aware that reticence and a scowling demeanour were her best defence against thievery. She had decided to get a recommendation from Roger for someone to study her accounts independently. No doubt that person would have been enmeshed with the Cabal, and she shuddered to think how near her holdings had come to being plundered …

But now the enormous trading hall was silent. Heatless shafts of morning light fell onto rows and rows of oblong bundles, quite unmistakably human beings, covering the entire floor. At first it seemed the trading hall had been given over as a dormitory for Chang’s dispossessed, but then she perceived their utter stillness, the shapeless huddling … there had to be hundreds … hadn’t the porter said the Shipping Board had been so consigned as well? He’d said something else … the cathedral –

Moving through the bodies were several cloaked figures, some standing, some bent low, making observations. Were they Ministry officials? Or perhaps the bereaved searching amongst the dead – only a few let in at a time, out of decency? One figure waved to the others. A lantern was shone on the corpse in question, and a satchel brought forward. The crouching man rifled the bag’s contents, but his back was to Miss Temple and she could not see his work.

The crouching figure rose and hobbled along the row of bodies – an elderly man, walking with a cane. He must be a doctor, or a savant from the Royal Society. Surely the authorities had found the glass spurs, but had they placed them as the source of the chaos?

Before Miss Temple could step forward or call out – not that she would have called out – Cardinal Chang pulled her from the archway.

‘The scale of it,’ Svenson whispered. Miss Temple assumed he meant the slaughter, but then the Doctor waved back towards the storage room in which they had emerged. ‘The bridge closed, the riverfront seized – now the Customs House shut down? And the Shipping Board? There are private warehouses that could be guarded to contain rumours, but they use this – by design. We know the explosions were deliberate – and now, just as deliberately, the city is strangled to a halt.’

‘Axewith and Vandaariff,’ said Chang. ‘This is why they met.’

‘But why?’ asked Miss Temple. ‘Even if Vandaariff wishes everything in ruins, why should the Privy Council agree to –’

‘The oldest lure of all,’ said Svenson. ‘He has given the Ministry an excuse to expand its power. Whether Axewith is a pliant fool or a knowing rogue scarcely matters. If money cannot move and the streets are filled with soldiers, who can fight him?’

Miss Temple did not understand at all. ‘But how does expanding Axewith’s power serve Vandaariff? I should think it makes it harder for any villainy to occur. As you say, soldiers on every street corner –’

‘But whose soldiers?’ Svenson asked with a vexing certainty. Miss Temple knew her mind was not strategic – the month after next might as well be Peru – but the Doctor spoke as if the world were a chess game worked out three moves in advance.

Chang eased himself between them, speaking quietly. ‘Whether this carnage justifies the soldiers or conceals their purpose, they are in place – and, especially after the gunplay in the Palace, they reduce our efforts to skulking.’

‘As being in hiding has reduced the Contessa’s,’ added the Doctor, ‘and if we are in her position, perhaps we can better understand her own intentions. Remember, she was in the Palace, but showed no interest in Vandaariff’s meeting with Axewith –’

‘All the more reason not to emulate her methods,’ replied Miss Temple.

‘That she follows a separate path does not make it wrong.’

Miss Temple huffed. ‘But all that has so exercised you – the soldiers, these writs, the Ministry – if those have nothing to do with the Contessa, then why do we speak of her? There are only the three of us – which would you have us address? Vandaariff, the Ministries or the Contessa?’

Svenson sighed. ‘We must address them all. I cannot see which holds the key.’

‘But that is impossible –’ Miss Temple stopped at a sour exclamation from Chang. ‘What?’

‘Keys. I had forgotten. The book that contains the Comte’s memories. The Contessa forged glass keys to read it safely.’

Miss Temple clenched her throat. ‘Even with a key that book is deadly.’

‘The Contessa is no fool.’ Svenson laid a gentle hand on Francesca’s shoulder. ‘She would recruit an exceptionally brave assistant to do the reading for her.’

The girl acted as if she did not hear, idly rubbing her shoe against the floor, proud of her secrets.

The cloaked figures had left the trading hall. At Chang’s insistence they clung to the edge on their own way across, creeping beneath the great chalkboards upon which the previous day’s figures were still visible. Atop the dais stood a massive clock, large enough to be seen from the floor. Its ticking echoed oddly – perhaps the machine contained a double works to prevent winding down in the midst of trading. To Miss Temple, the doubled ticking only made clear the narrowness of her luck. But for Chang’s swift action in the square, she might well have lain amongst these anonymous dead.

They were nearly to the other side when Svenson pressed Francesca’s hand into Miss Temple’s, to the dismay of both.

‘A moment. Keep going, I beg you.’

The Doctor dashed through the lanes of bodies to where the party of cloaked men had been. He knelt, lifting the covering from several corpses in turn. Svenson went still, staring down, then hurried to rejoin them.

Chang extended a hand for silence. They had reached the other side, and he cautiously peered into the column-swept portico. Miss Temple detected voices echoing from the front entrance.

She turned to ask what Svenson had seen, but the words died in her throat. From the field of corpses three figures had risen, wrapped in sheets like ghosts on the stage. Then the sheets fell away to reveal three cloaked men, positioned to block any angle of retreat. Beneath their cloaks Miss Temple glimpsed flashes of green. Soldiers from Raaxfall.

A dry chuckle drifted from the portico and from the columns emerged three more soldiers, Mr Foison and the man – the one amused – who’d hobbled with a cane.

‘Forgive my little ruse,’ called Robert Vandaariff. ‘Spirits from beyond! And yet you were fooled – of course you were, so inevitable as to be dull.’ The soldiers with Foison fanned out, blocking their way forward. Chang had a knife in each hand. Miss Temple tugged the revolver from her bag and felt her back touch that of Doctor Svenson, who faced the men behind.

‘The corpse I examined,’ Svenson whispered, ‘the transformed flesh had been removed, for study.’

‘For the future, Doctor! What convenience to find all three of you at a stroke …’ But then Vandaariff saw the girl. His voice took on an ugly tremor. ‘Sweet hell, the child. Is the Contessa dead?’

‘Don’t you want her dead?’ asked Miss Temple.

‘Eventually – O everything eventually. And how do you do, Cardinal? Counting the hours?’ But Vandaariff kept his gaze on Francesca. ‘Step away – let me see her. She is mine by rights, legally so. I am chief shareholder of Xonck Armaments and have been named guardian of all three Trapping orphans. Once their uncle Henry succumbs I will adopt them formally. Would you like that, my dear?’

The girl stood as still as a frightened rabbit. Vandaariff’s eyes glowed as he appraised her.

‘Your father – your true father – was a dear old friend. You have his eyes, and hair – now so wild …’ Vandaariff stretched out a shaking hand. ‘Come to me, Francesca. I know your sacred origins. I know your destiny. You are a princess of heaven. An angel.’

He sketched a shape in the air with stiff fingers. Francesca bit her lip. Her reply was faint, but everything the Comte d’Orkancz could have desired.

‘An angel.’

Miss Temple seized a handful of Francesca’s hair with enough force to make the girl gasp, and pressed the pistol to her skull. ‘I’ll kill her first. And then I’ll kill you.’

Francesca squirmed. A glint of metal in Foison’s hand showed a palmed throwing knife, but he did not act. The Customs House must have been full of soldiers, like the bridge. But Vandaariff did not summon them.

Keeping hold of the child’s hair, Miss Temple suddenly shifted her aim to Vandaariff. The spell was broken. Foison’s arm whipped forward. With a sharp ringing the knife was knocked wide by Chang’s own flung blade. Doctor Svenson’s revolver roared in her ear. Miss Temple squeezed the trigger of her own pistol, aiming at Vandaariff’s head, but only plucking his high collar. Before she could fire again, Chang shoved her roughly back and met the charge of Foison’s three men with a knife in one hand and his razor in the other.

She collided with Francesca, who fell, causing Miss Temple to sprawl in turn and lose the pistol. Francesca scuttled away. Miss Temple got to her knees, intending to crawl after, but instead tripped one of Foison’s soldiers – careening from Chang with a spurting wrist. She whipped the knife from her boot. As the soldier groped for her throat she slashed at his fingers. He rose before her, then arched his back with a scream. Another of Foison’s knives had buried itself in the man’s body, clearly intended for Miss Temple.

A gunshot made her turn. Doctor Svenson lay on his side, the last cloaked soldier tottering above him with a smoking revolver. Between them crouched Francesca, somehow tangled in a corpse’s cover sheet. Miss Temple flung her knife at the cloaked man’s face. It struck harmlessly on the shoulder, but caused him to spin, whipping his pistol towards her. The Doctor fired, punching a hole under the man’s clean-shaven jaw. Francesca clapped both hands over her ears. Svenson slumped back, clutching his chest.

Two more soldiers lay at Chang’s feet, a knife-hilt sticking from one’s throat. Chang flicked the blood from his razor and stepped deliberately between Foison and Miss Temple. He snatched up a cloak, twirling it around his wrist. Foison drew two more knives from his silk coat.

The two men advanced with feral precision. It was the first time Miss Temple had seen Chang treat an enemy like an equal, and it frightened her more than anything.

Vandaariff had withdrawn from the mêlée, back to the columns, and now stood waving. Behind him, at last, came the calls of soldiers. She blinked. Vandaariff was waving them away.

Because their meeting had been a surprise, she realized, an interruption. Vandaariff’s true business in the Customs House could not stand scrutiny – the soldiers would take matters in hand, clear the area, scour the premises for confederates …

What if Vandaariff had not come to the trading hall for bodies at all? Had his artist’s indulgence delayed his departure, after his true errand?

The square. The cathedral. Why not the Customs House too? Vandaariff would know when it would be released for normal work and filled with men – would know to the minute. The doubled ticking –

More voices filled the portico, the soldiers calling out at the sight of the battle. Any moment they must burst forward. Miss Temple saw her own pistol. She snatched it up.

Her shot splintered the wood of the clock case.

‘Celeste, what are you doing?’

It was Svenson. Behind her Vandaariff’s voice rose to a shriek. She marched closer, for a better shot. Her second bullet missed entirely.

An officer loudly ordered everyone to drop their weapons. Miss Temple extended her arm, imagining the clock a brown glass bottle, and fired.

Blue smoke spat out at the bullet’s impact, an instant ahead of the blast, a deafening wall of smoke and debris that choked her breath and blotted out all sight. Miss Temple was lifted off her feet and landed hard. Her last thoughts boiled with unreasoning fury. She wanted nothing more than to blind Robert Vandaariff with her own two thumbs.

She came to her senses at a blaze of agony in her left arm.

‘Pauvre petite,’ said an unpleasant voice. ‘You will regret your waking. Hold her, please … she may still be subject to the infusion.’

Firm hands clamped Miss Temple’s shoulders, and above her face loomed Mr Foison, white hair hanging down. Robert Vandaariff stood near in his shirtsleeves, an apron over his clothes. He held a pair of forceps and, as she watched, insinuated their tip into a gash running perhaps four inches along her forearm. She protested, but he only thrust deeper, beneath a crust of blue that sealed one end of the wound. With a wrench that made Miss Temple cry, Vandaariff prised up the crystallized flesh. He tore the patch free with his fingers and dropped it on a plate. Despite the pain, Miss Temple felt her thoughts clear. Vandaariff set the forceps next to a porcelain basin and washed his hands. Next to the basin she saw a lock of auburn hair, quite obviously her own.

‘Not a serious wound,’ he said. ‘Mr Foison is perfectly capable of dressing it. I have done enough for you. That you live at all, that I have not melted your soft body for candle fat …’ He sniffed and reached for a towel. ‘It goes against tradition.’

Vandaariff tucked the lock of hair into a pocket, collected his cane and hobbled to a cabinet lined with bottles – but not, she realized, bottles of liquor. He poured out an ugly mixture, like milky weak tea, swirled the glass and drank it off. ‘You were only touched the once.’ He wiped his mouth with a napkin. ‘Your luck persists.’

‘You do not have Francesca.’ Her voice quavered, for Foison had begun to wrap her arm. Her wool jacket was gone, her dress ash-blackened and tattered.

‘Why do you say that?’

‘My survival.’

‘I suppose you do not care – being so brave – that your friends were blown to rags. Only that you managed to vex me.’

Miss Temple’s body went cold. ‘I do not believe you.’

‘By all means, Miss Temple. Believe your heart.’

She gasped again as Foison knotted the bandage. He stepped away, and Miss Temple pushed herself up. She lay on a wooden work table in a strange room panelled with polished steel. Had there been time to reach Harschmort?

‘But this is your own natural advantage,’ Vandaariff went on. ‘Celeste Temple acts without the impediment of remorse. Though it was clever to realize a device had been set for tomorrow’s trading. And decent shooting to strike it.’

‘Are you always so generous when you’ve been bested?’

‘Bested? Miss Temple, the bee is but part of the hive, the single piraña one of its school. In the world of men, such multiplication of effort is accomplished by wealth. This is my advantage. And when such a device is set off by my enemies in the presence of officers of the 8th Fusiliers? At a stroke it is proved that I have nothing to do with such destruction – I was there only to search for a missing old friend, don’t you know, arranged as a favour from Lord Axewith. And the blame is laid fully upon the three individuals who have continually thwarted my plans. I could not have asked for more.’

Her throat closed against any reply. Foison coughed into his hand.

‘Indeed,’ agreed Vandaariff. ‘Off with you. But indulge my frailty – you’ve seen the animal.’

With a cold efficiency, Foison looped her limbs into leather restraints and pulled tight. Then he was gone.

The precaution was hardly necessary. Miss Temple could barely breathe. She saw Svenson clutching his chest and Chang, his back to the blast, unprepared … she looked down at her bandaged arm and wilfully clenched her fist. Pain shot up her arm and tears stung her eyes. Vandaariff was lying. She had been kept alive to be ransomed, and only Svenson and Chang would so preserve her. They had escaped with Francesca, Vandaariff’s desired prize.

Vandaariff shuffled beyond her view, making a menacing clatter of metal and glass. But, instead of the stink of chemicals or indigo clay, the room was suddenly suffused with the pleasing odour of cooked eggs and melted butter. He returned to his seat with a lacquered tray.

‘You have not eaten, I know.’ He plucked up a fresh white roll and tore it at the seam, fingers stiff as the talons of a bird. He smeared butter into the bread, then dipped a spoon into a Chinese pot and withdrew a gleaming lump of plum jam. He shook this onto the butter and cut – the shaking knife edge ringing on the plate – a wedge of soft white cheese. The finger’s-width of cheese fell off the knife, and with an exasperated grunt Vandaariff smeared it into the roll with a gnarled thumb. He wiped his hand on a napkin and sighed at the effort.

Miss Temple’s last meal had been at Raaxfall, and so poor she’d left half on her plate. She watched the tray closely. Her arm throbbed.

‘One must eat, you know, for strength.’ He swirled the eggs with a fork and raised a quivering morsel, dripping yolk. He swallowed with difficulty, as if it were a mouthful of small bones. He set down the fork and took an awkward bite of the roll. Vandaariff’s teeth were not ill favoured for an older man, but his hesitation to bear down made Miss Temple wince that one might break away. Vandaariff chewed, breath flaring his nostrils, and finally forced the bolus through. He wiped his lips and grimaced, dropping the napkin onto the tray.

‘Does it not agree?’ Miss Temple asked. ‘I would have thought you ate for pleasure. Even for art. The Comte d’Orkancz told me everything in life came down to art. Then he made me pay for his coffee. I suppose that is an art as well.’

An appreciative smile graced his lips. ‘Do you not worry for your life?’

‘I am alive to be ransomed.’

She could not tell if he laughed at her delusion or at the chance to correct it. ‘You are like a fox intent on its prey, never noticing that the forest around her is aflame.’

‘I am not. And, if I am, my prey is still you.’

‘But when you so brightly speak of ransom, you should realize that those who might reclaim you do not know to what extent you have been harmed. One bit of glass has scratched your arm – who is to say five more did not scratch your face? What if one exploded straight into your mouth and turned your tongue to stone? You could not tell them what had happened. You could never tell anyone anything.’ He poked the cane at the hem of her dress and dragged it up above the knee. ‘The trick about art, Miss Temple, is to understand how each moment is compounded into another, tempers another. You see the weakness in my body. I see the fever in yours. Does either one of us see true?’

‘I have no fever.’

Vandaariff snorted derisively. ‘I could light a match by touching the tip to your skin.’

He flipped the cane in the air and caught the opposite end, then pushed the handle – a smooth brass ball – along her calf.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Claiming my property.’ The brass ball slid up her thigh. Miss Temple squirmed.

‘You are vulgar and coarse – and no gentleman!’

‘An artist is never a gentleman. And a lady ought to be a better liar than you.’

The cane nudged the seam of her silk pants. Miss Temple shrank from its touch.

‘You are withered and old! You torment me because you cannot do anything else!’

He turned the brass ball with a delicate, teasing motion, and spoke with an airy distraction. ‘If I wanted your submission, I could put a piece of glass before your eyes. If I sought your degradation, I could summon Foison’s men to rape you through the afternoon. Do you think I would not dare?’

Miss Temple shook her head quickly. The cane pressed hard against her and she whimpered in fear. Vandaariff tugged her dress above her waist, and then her petticoats. He looked down with a musing expression, as if she were a food locker whose jumbled contents might just constitute a meal. He spread his palm against her pelvis, measuring the soft flare, then pressed down. He took her hips with both hands, hefting her body. His stiff fingers cupped her buttocks and squeezed.

‘Wide enough,’ he announced, ‘should other plans fail and you still live. I do appreciate your spark.’ He shoved her petticoats higher.

‘I beg you,’ she whispered. ‘Please –’

‘My interest is entirely contingent, I assure you.’ He caught the waist of her silk pants and pulled. The silk ripped. He pulled again, with a grunt, and they came away. ‘After Rosamonde’s book, you are not intact in any practical sense of the word. Time enough has passed to show you made no mistakes with young Bascombe. But since then, with your mind so swimming – and I know it’s swimming, Celeste – have you remained so careful? This last day with Chang … more time with the Doctor … and how many others have crossed your path at that hotel?’ His thumb stroked the curls between her legs. ‘Have you surrendered or been strong? Or have you found strength to be something else?’ He laid his palm above the hair, against her belly, as if to listen through it. ‘I prefer to think you failed – the guilt burning even as you’ve quenched your need, with one of those paid-off soldiers – yes, Mr Ropp behind you, thrusting away. I imagine you soaked in the history of the world, so many generations of mindless rut.’ His hand slid lower, his thumb dragging along her folds.

Miss Temple flexed her fist again, but Vandaariff merely took her gasp as a sign of enjoyment.

‘What do you want?’ she pleaded.

‘Your confession.’ His motions became forceful, his smile more fixed and contemptuous.

‘Confess to what?’

‘Futility.’

‘You are hurting me –’

‘Pain is nothing. Desire is nothing.’ Vandaariff’s lips had stretched with effort, tight across his teeth. ‘Trappings of useless vessels … flawed from the start …’

Miss Temple yelped. Vandaariff raised his fingers, pinching between them three reddish hairs. He flicked them away and plucked again.

‘What are you doing! Stop it!’ She cried out over her shoulder towards the door: ‘Mr Foison!’

‘All signs of age must be expunged. Age is corruption, ash, decay –’

‘Stop! Mr Foison!’

‘The alchemical Bride bears no blemish. She is without colour, holds the moon – she cannot be marked –’

His fingers sank into Miss Temple’s hair and seized hold, tugging her pubis. She raised her hips to stave off the painful wrench, whimpering –

The door opened behind her. Vandaariff turned, eyes unfocused.

‘Lord Robert?’

Vandaariff followed Foison’s gaze to Miss Temple’s exposed body and released his grip. He wiped his hand across the apron. ‘Is there word?’

‘Just now, my lord.’ Foison extended a folded page to his master. Vandaariff slid a crabbed thumb beneath the wax seal. In her shame Miss Temple did not look at Foison. She stared at Vandaariff, watching the paper tremble with his fingers.

‘We will depart at once.’

‘Yes, my lord.’

With an easy movement Foison caught the upturned hem of Miss Temple’s dress and swept it down, over her legs. Vandaariff stuffed the note into his pocket.

‘It plays out exactly to plan.’

‘Yes, my lord.’

Vandaariff awkwardly pulled the apron strap over his head. Foison slipped behind to untie the knot, draped the apron on the chair and handed Vandaariff his stick. Vandaariff brought the brass handle to his nose, sniffed, then dabbed his tongue across the ball. He gave a disapproving grimace and hobbled from the room.

As efficiently as he had bound her, Foison released the leather straps. Only after sweeping her legs together could Miss Temple meet his gaze, yet Foison was watchful and withheld. Not unlike Chang, but without Chang’s animal temper … yet that was not true – they were different animals. Where Chang was a loping cat, Mr Foison was a cold reptile.

‘Can you walk?’ he asked simply. ‘It is only to the coach.’

‘And then where?’ What she wanted was to curl into a ball.

‘Where else?’ Foison said, helping her to stand. ‘The Contessa.’

They entered a courtyard ringed by tall stone buildings. Miss Temple gazed around her.

‘The Royal Institute,’ said Foison. ‘Lord Vandaariff is a significant patron.’

‘I believe the Comte d’Orkancz conducted experiments here, with Doctor Lorenz. Did you know them?’

But Foison’s attention was taken by smoke rising in a cloud from what looked like an open cellar door, across the grassy court. Green-coated guards hovered around it with buckets of water and sand. Two black coaches waited under a massive archway. Foison hoisted Miss Temple into the first coach. She slid into place opposite Vandaariff. Foison glanced over his shoulder.

‘A moment, Lord Robert –’

‘I have no moment. Get in and order the men on.’

‘There is a small fire –’

‘Let the scholars deal with their fire.’

‘Evidently supplies of chemicals have been stored nearby – it will be a matter of minutes to shift them and then attack the blaze. Not doing so risks –’

‘Risks what?’ snapped Vandaariff.

Foison hesitated. ‘Why, the Institute itself, my lord.’

‘Fascinating.’ Vandaariff leant to the open coach door and sniffed. He sat back in his seat. ‘Let it burn. I’m done with the place.’

‘But Lord Robert –’

‘Get in, Mr Foison, and order the men on. I have no spare time. Not in this world.’

With a grim expression, Foison shouted to the men to drop their buckets and be about their orders. He swung himself next to Miss Temple and rapped on the roof to set the coach in motion. Vandaariff’s seat was piled with the day’s newspapers and, already deep in the Courier, he did not acknowledge their departure.

The other newspapers announced two more explosions, at the Circus Garden and the White Cathedral, with a death toll of at least a thousand, for each blast had provoked a violent riot. A second headline blamed the disaffected populace of Raaxfall – a man from that distant village was recognized before the Circus Garden blast destroyed him. Miss Temple guessed the man was another of Vandaariff’s prisoners, repurposed as a weapon. The Ministry had announced new measures to protect the national interest.

Vandaariff closed the newspaper. If he took any pleasure in his success, his flat interrogation of Foison did not betray it.

‘All is prepared?’

‘Yes, my lord. The second coach follows. I have instructed the driver to follow the Grossmaere, as it is lined with hussars.’

‘Your face is bruised.’

‘It is, my lord. Cardinal Chang.’

‘I find it ugly.’

‘I will strive to avoid further injury.’

Vandaariff paused, measuring possible insolence. ‘We have not discussed your failure at the Customs House. Six men, and yourself – against two men and a negligible woman. And how many of your six are of any use to me now?’

‘None, my lord. The explosion –’

‘I did not ask for excuses.’

‘No, my lord.’

‘The men are of no account. I must rely upon you.’

Vandaariff slipped a finger between the black curtains of the coach window and peered out. Miss Temple knew she should keep silent. But Vandaariff had shamed her, and as she watched him – withered neck and knobbed hands – she felt her hatred rise.

‘I saw your painting.’ Vandaariff looked up, without expression. ‘O I am sorry, I meant to say the Comte’s painting. I forget of course that the Comte d’Orkancz is dead.’

‘He is dead,’ said Vandaariff.

‘And thank goodness. What an odious, vulgar, canker-brained, preening madman. Perhaps it’s something in your manner that recalls him.’

‘Gag her mouth.’

Miss Temple laughed. ‘Don’t you even want to know which painting? Or who showed it to me? You are so very sure of yourself –’

Foison had a cloth between her teeth, but paused at a sign from Vandaariff.

‘I have quite a collection of the Comte’s works at Harschmort.’

Miss Temple spat the kerchief from her mouth and flexed her jaw.

‘Bought for Lydia’s wedding – yes, so thoughtful. Is it St Rowena and the Vikings that shows a rape on a church altar? The Viking bracing himself on the crucifix –’

‘This was the painting you mean?’

‘No, the painting I saw was not at Harschmort. It was called The Chemickal Marriage.’

The smile on Robert Vandaariff’s lips became perceptibly more stiff.

‘You cannot have seen that painting. It does not exist.’

Miss Temple smirked. ‘Perhaps you tried to buy it and were refused! Of course the composition is demented – depicting a marriage, I suppose, but of symbols. An allegory.’ She turned to Foison. ‘Allegory is for donkeys.’

‘That painting was burnt.’

‘Was it? Well, it’s odd because the Bride in question wears a mask of the Contessa’s face. Isn’t that strange? The Groom is black as coal, with a red apple in his hand, except it isn’t really an apple – more like a beating heart, and made entirely of red glass –’

Foison pulled the handkerchief tight between her lips. Vandaariff leant closer.

‘Sooner than you imagine, Celeste Temple, I will reclaim you, and service you on an altar. In that the Comte d’Orkancz had things exactly right!’

Vandaariff sank back. He shut his eyes and reached a shaking hand to Foison.

‘The bottle.’

Foison opened a satchel and removed a squat bottle of dark glass. Vandaariff drank, a thin line of milky fluid escaping down his chin. He wiped his face with a black silk handkerchief, folded it over and then mopped his brow.

Composure restored, he addressed her again. ‘I have not thanked you for the delivery of such excellent mules, Mr Ropp and Mr Jaxon. Discharged soldiers, they told me – amongst other things. Amongst every thing. And Mr Ramper as well – still, even a stricken animal can be used. You must know that from your plantation. Scrape off the meat and burn the bones for fuel. Will you be pleased to see the Contessa?’

Miss Temple made a noise in the back of her mouth.

‘Tell her anything you like.’ He reached into his coat and came out with another handkerchief, white silk this time. ‘But when you have the chance, Miss Temple – and you will, for the Contessa will underestimate you, as she always has – you would serve us all by cutting the lady’s skin … with this.’

In the opened handkerchief lay a blue glass spur. He chuckled, a guttural wheeze, and refolded the handkerchief. His crooked fingers reached across the coach and stuffed it down the bosom of her dress.

‘Created expressly for our own shared nemesis. Dig it into her arm, across her lovely neck – wherever is in reach. Then I suggest you run.’

The coach came to a halt. She heard the ring of bolts being drawn and the scrape of an iron gate. Vandaariff nodded, and Foison bound Miss Temple’s hands.

Her heart went cold. She had not truly believed it until the handkerchief had been tucked into her dress. She was being given to a woman who sought her death. Why not to Chang and Svenson? What could the Contessa offer more precious than Francesca Trapping?

Foison opened the door and leant out to unfold a metal stair-step. Miss Temple drove her bound hands against his back and sent him flying through the door. She hurled herself at Vandaariff, snarling like a dog. Her hands found his throat, the rope between them digging his wattled flesh like a garrotte. He batted weakly at her face. He gaped, eyes wide, tongue protruding … and then let out a horrible stuttering gasp. Laughter. She met his insane, encouraging nod and squeezed as hard as she could –

Foison’s strong hands wrenched Miss Temple away and hauled her out of the door. With a snarl of his own he flung her down with enough force to drive the breath from her body. Wet grass and earth were cold against her cheek. She gulped for air. Foison was tending his master. She heaved herself up – only to drop again secured in place. One of Foison’s knives – thrown from the coach – pinned her dress to the ground. Before she could yank it free her wrists were caught by a hand in a leather gauntlet. Miss Temple looked up to a semicircle of men in green uniforms.

Foison emerged from the coach and called to the driver, who started his team, turning back the way they’d come. Foison retrieved his blade.

‘Make sure of her.’

As they walked Miss Temple’s stomach rose. She shut her eyes against the bile in her throat and sucked air through her nostrils.

Something in the smell … the Comte had been here before …

She took the first statues for more green uniforms, for the stones had been overcome by moss. Soon they appeared in lines between the trees, stained by years of leaf-fall, tipped by sinking earth or knocked headless, even toppled, by falling tree limbs. A cemetery …

Miss Temple’s nausea sapped any notion of escape, and she followed Foison through the woods and down a proper row of tombs. Even here the stones were cracked and crumbled, swathed in green, the names scarcely legible, abandoned … had so many families passed out of time? She turned her attention to the statues: mournful figures, some with wings, some humbly shrouded, facing down in grief or up in supplication. In their hands were open books and closed, torches, laurels, lilies, roses, harps, keys – and on the tombs so many inscriptions, from the Bible or in Greek or Latin.

None of it touched Miss Temple, for she was too near the Comte’s estimation of such piety. To his mind, and thus persuasively to hers, such trappings of grief and hope were akin to a toddler’s scrawl.

The skin of her elbow stung from her awkward fall, and, unable to reach with her hands, she rubbed it against her stomach. She had risked everything in attacking Vandaariff, but Foison had merely pulled her away. At the Customs House, he had twice sought her life with a thrown blade. She had become a valued commodity.

Beyond a spiked iron gate stretched a dim avenue lined with vaults. The gate stood between Egyptian obelisks, but their plaster had crumbled to reveal red brick, the work of an especially unscrupulous builder.

Foison unlocked the gate. The vaults had no names across their lintels, only metal numbers nailed into the stone. At the avenue’s end was a vault with the number 8, deliberately placed sideways. Foison sorted another key, then surveyed the sky above them. Miss Temple was reminded of a snake tasting the air with its tongue.

The vault door scraped open, and from inside the tomb rose a golden light. Someone waited inside.

Foison went first. He’d no weapon ready, nor had he brought a lantern. Miss Temple came next, prodded by a fellow with a cutlass, and then the others in a line. Instead of a horrid vault lined with niches, they entered an anteroom gleaming with blue ceramic tile. The far wall was fashioned like an ancient city gate, with a crenellated top and narrow windows, all aglow.

‘The entrance to Babylon,’ said Foison, removing her gag. ‘The Ishtar Gate.’

‘Ah.’ In Miss Temple, vanished cultures met a sense of justice as to their vanishing.

‘In Ishtar’s temple is eternal life.’

A flicker of recognition came from the Comte’s memories. Miss Temple tried to place the source … was it the light? She saw no candles or lanterns – the golden light came from the other side of the blue wall.

Foison opened the gate with an elaborate key with teeth like a briar’s thorns. His men thrust Miss Temple through and slammed the gate. She cried out, naming Foison a coward and his master a degenerate toad. There was no reply. She heard the vault door close, and the cold lock turn.

The tomb was bright without the aid of a single lantern or candle. The floor was copper, polished near to a mirror. She recalled the metal on the walls of Vandaariff’s room, and the sheets of steel hanging amongst the machines at Parchfeldt. A thread of bile burnt her throat like an incision and she knew: this interior part of the tomb had been a commission to prove the Comte’s abilities – an unknown artist first brought to Vandaariff’s attention by a new and intimate adviser, the Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza …

Miss Temple held up a hand and waved, making tiny shadows. The decorated ceiling was honeycombed by dozens of shafts that rose high to the surface and drew the sunlight down, directing the beams with mirrors and colouring their glow with glass.

More grimly, however, the shafts meant Miss Temple’s earlier assumption had been wrong. No one else had entered the tomb – she had been abandoned. She looked for an edge to slice through the cord binding her wrists, but the walls and floor were smooth. The room’s only feature was a slab of white marble, carved to depict silken bedclothes pulled open across it.

Two names were carved: Clothilde Vandaariff and, in fresh-cut letters, Lydia Vandaariff. No dates or epigraphs accompanied the names – nor, in the case of Lydia, could the tomb contain a body. Miss Temple wondered if it was her fate to serve as Lydia’s proxy.

She sank down against the stone. Her forearm throbbed, and it seemed she had not slept in days. She curled on her side, yet, despite her fatigue, the solitude only gave Miss Temple’s mind more opportunity to seethe …

When they had collided with Mr Harcourt and the Palace guard, Chang had seized her hand. They did not speak as they fled, but then a reckless turn left them in a dead-end room, with no time to double back.

‘The wardrobe,’ he hissed, pushing her to it. Chang leapt to a writing desk and dragged it beneath the room’s single high window.

‘Where are you going?’

‘Get in the wardrobe!’

Chang vaulted onto the desk and opened the window. Did he think to draw pursuit away? He hauled himself through to the waist. He held a handful of papers from the desk and flung them out.

‘A trail to follow,’ he said, jumping down. ‘The ledge is wide and the roof is flat – why are you not in the damned closet?’

Chang yanked it open and propelled her into a line of hanging garments.

‘There is no room!’

The back of the wardrobe had hooks from which cloaks had been hung and Chang shoved her beneath them. Then the doors were shut and he was with her, limbs overlapping, bodies crammed together. Chang squeezed her arm, his words faint as a sigh.

‘They are here.’

Miss Temple heard nothing. She had reached to steady herself and taken hold of Chang’s belt in the dark. Chang had shifted, settling his weight, and one knee rolled forward, gently, to press between her legs. The corners of her mind began to crawl.

From outside came a scrape of floorboards – someone climbing on the desk. She tightened her grip. She wanted to lean forward and kiss his mouth. She tipped her body against the hardness of his knee. She bit her lip to keep silent.

With another shudder she heard his breath in her ear. ‘Do not be afraid …’

She almost laughed aloud. He thought she shook with fear. She squeezed his hand. It would be the simplest thing to guide it to her breast.

The door to the wardrobe opened. The hanging clothes were jostled. She went still at the chok of a blade thrust home above her head. Another thrust, near her hand – chok! – and then a third, piercing the cloak directly between them. The blade was pulled free and the wardrobe door slammed shut.

They waited, Miss Temple at the edge of her control. Chang patted her hand. She rocked her body forward in a last sensual grind before he crawled cautiously out.

‘They’ve gone.’

She pushed the cloaks away, feeling the heat in her face. He reached to extricate her. She did not meet his gaze.

Miss Temple opened her eyes. She jumped up, sure she had heard the jingle of metal.

A key scratched at the lock, slipped in, then turned. Miss Temple crept to the wall. The door swung inwards. She would kick as hard she could, jump through the door –

‘I know you are there. Do not attempt to break my head.’

It was a voice she knew. ‘Mr Pfaff?’

Jack Pfaff peered around the doorframe. ‘As ever.’

Miss Temple restrained herself from rushing to his arms, content to present her still-bound wrists. Pfaff drew a knife and smiled as the cords gave way. Miss Temple began to rub the vivid marks, but Pfaff put his own hands on hers, chafing the skin to life.

‘What have they done to you? And your poor arm!’

‘It is nothing.’ She pulled her hands away, disquieted by a lingering ache from her dream. ‘Where have you been? How did you get a key to this awful prison? Who told you I was here?’

‘First, we’ll make you safe.’ Pfaff took Miss Temple’s uninjured arm. ‘Can you walk?’

‘Do not doubt it.’ Miss Temple made a point to lift her dress with both hands, despite a stab of pain. ‘But you must answer as we go. Where have you been?’

‘Following the glass, as we agreed.’ Pfaff laid a hand against her back, yet such was her relief that she did not slap it away. ‘As for the keys to this place, I found them in the outer door, as was arranged.’

‘Arranged?’ Miss Temple spun to face him.

‘We’re not out of it yet, miss. You must trust me and play along.’

‘Play along with what?’

‘Kicking and cursing will be enough. I shall take your weight with my other hand, so it will appear that I drag you by the hair. Here we go!’

Pfaff shoved the vault door wide. One insolent hand snaked round her waist while the other seized her curls. Before she could protest, Pfaff deftly tripped her ankles, so he entered the lane dragging her behind. She did her genuine best to kick and scratch, and shrieked aloud when – having jostled him off balance – Pfaff did yank her hair so hard she feared it would rip.

He staggered through the Egyptian gate. No black-cloaked men, no green uniforms, only a single coach with a shabby fellow holding the reins.

‘There!’ Pfaff cried, speaking loudly. ‘And I’ll have no more of your nonsense!’

He shoved her in the coach. She scrambled onto her back, kicking out. He caught her foot and closed the door. The driver cracked his whip and eased his team forward. Pfaff paused … listening … then sat back with a smile.

‘I think we’ve done it –’

Her boot landed square on his kneecap. He clutched it with both hands, hissing with pain. ‘O! O – damn you to hell!’

‘If I had any weapon now you would be dead,’ she spat. ‘If you ever take such liberties again I will see your back flayed white!’

Pfaff rubbed his knee. ‘You’re an ungrateful witch. Do you know where we are? How many eyes observe our every move?’

‘I will not be trifled with.’

‘That is no answer!’

‘I am not obliged to answer. Do you remain in my employ or don’t you?’

‘I am not in the habit of accepting such abuse from anyone.’

‘But you are in the habit of flinging a woman without care like a bale of cloth?’

‘You’ve seen worse, I’m sure.’

To these hot words she said nothing, taking the moment to settle her dress. Pfaff smirked at its condition.

‘What’s he like, anyways?’

‘Who?’

‘Robert Vandaariff. I once caught a glimpse of his hat, on Race Day at the Circus. Did he mention the Contessa?’ His gaze drifted across her body. ‘Did he … mistreat you?’

‘What is that?’

She pointed to a leather notebook poking from Pfaff’s orange coat.

‘Why, do you know it?’

‘Of course I do. You were under the bridge. You took this from Minister Crabbé’s laboratory. That notebook belonged to Roger Bascombe.’

‘It did indeed. I’ll admit, Miss Temple, I only half believed your stories – but now …’ He broke off with a grin, showing his brown teeth. ‘I kept it for you. Don’t you want to peek inside?’

‘I do not.’

‘Liar.’ He tossed the notebook onto her lap, then laughed at her discomfort. ‘You act like I’ve given you a scorpion.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘Come, how else could I learn where you were, or collect you without being killed? You thought the glassworks would lead to Vandaariff, but they led to her.’

‘Why should she want me saved? She hates me.’

‘She described you to Vandaariff’s messenger as her intimate.’

‘Nonsense.’

Pfaff gave his own sceptical shrug. ‘It saved your life.’

She could not read him – did Pfaff remain her man or not? She did her best to soften her tone. ‘Do you know, Mr Pfaff, that every man you hired in my service has been killed?’

‘That’s a pity. I think Corporal Brine quite liked your maid.’

Perhaps Pfaff never felt sorry about anything. Chang’s ill-will for the man stewed inside her. Why had she ever defended him?

‘Why was I taken to the Vandaariff crypt?’

‘Because it is isolated, I suppose, and easy to observe.’

Miss Temple knew this was wrong, and berated herself for not having examined every inch of the place. But there seemed nothing to find – the Comte had so little expressed himself in its making. If the real Ishtar Gate indeed had blue tile, the Comte’s improved artistic version would have been made from coal and painted blood red.

‘Where are we going?’

‘Nowhere at all until I’m sure we aren’t followed …’

Pfaff pressed his face against the window. Miss Temple scooted to the opposite side. She did not recognize these streets.

‘Was there a second explosion today? At the Shipping Board?’

‘Explosions all over.’ Pfaff peered out, distracted. ‘Terrible stuff.’

‘The blasts are Vandaariff’s doing – to provoke unrest. Who knows what he plans next, while you waste our time. Do you?’

Pfaff closed the curtain. ‘Do I what?’

‘Know where he is!’

‘No, miss.’

‘And you smile to say it! Of all the imbecilic –’ Miss Temple’s tirade was cut short by a sharp knock against the coach. ‘What was that?’

The window near her head was shattered by a fist-sized chunk of brick. She squeaked, flinching from the flying glass. Luckily most was caught by the curtain.

‘Perhaps you’d best lie down,’ offered Pfaff.

Cries rose around the coach and Miss Temple recalled the faces on the Raaxfall dock. Their driver cracked his whip. The coach broke forward and the shouts began to fade. Pfaff slapped his hands together.

‘That should peel them off.’

At the high-pitched cry of distressed horses behind them, Miss Temple peered through the broken window. Another coach had been stopped in the road, surrounded by an angry mob. The blasts had brought the unrest of Raaxfall to the city proper – and Pfaff had exploited the discontent to strip away pursuit. Who knew how close they’d come to harm as well? If the driver had been injured, or a coach wheel snapped … she was appalled at the reckless disregard.

‘So where are we going now?’ she demanded.

Pfaff laughed aloud. ‘Where else, little mistress? Home.’

Pfaff said nothing more, and Miss Temple would not ask. Roger’s notebook lay on her lap, but she had no wish to open it until she was alone and unobserved. While it might contain useful information, she did not trust her own reactions. What if there was fawning praise for Caroline Stearne’s ankle or her opalescent skin? Opalescent was exactly the sort of word Roger would have used.

They arrived at the Hotel Boniface. She gripped the notebook tightly as she climbed down, ignoring Pfaff’s outstretched hand. She considered shouting to the footmen, but she’d no firm idea how she stood with the hotel or the law, and further scandal might allow the management finally to expel her. Instead, she advanced to the desk and asked for any messages. There were none, but her asking allowed the clerk to take in the scorch marks on her dress, and her bandaged arm.

‘You see what has overtaken me.’ Miss Temple swallowed bravely. ‘St Isobel’s Square … I cannot speak of it.’ The clerk’s suspicion turned to cooing sympathy. For the moment, at least, Miss Temple had outflanked disapproval.

‘Very good!’ Pfaff chuckled, as they climbed the staircase. But Miss Temple found she actually was unsettled – and truly unable to speak of what she had seen in the square and at the Customs House. She had no experience through which to comprehend such carnage. Her eyes began to burn. Why now, treading soft familiar carpets, should she weaken? She quickened her pace to keep ahead of Pfaff, so he would not see.

‘Are you well?’

‘My arm hurts.’ They were at the door. Pfaff cut in front and rapped three times. Miss Temple turned to dab her eyes. The door opened to Marie’s anxious face.

‘O, O mistress –’

Miss Temple pushed past – all she wanted was to be alone. ‘I will need a wash and new clothes and supper and tea – strong hot tea before anything –’

‘Mistress –’

‘I am perfectly well, I assure you. I – I –’ Miss Temple clutched Roger’s notebook and groped for words. ‘Marie – Corporal Brine –’

Pfaff easily took Marie’s shoulder. ‘Briney’s all right, Marie – he’s with the others, asked we pass along his regards – what about that tea?’

‘But – but – mistress –’

Disgracefully grateful for Pfaff’s imposition, Miss Temple pushed on as if she had not heard. Three steps brought her bedchamber and she shut the door and turned the key. She dropped Roger’s notebook on a side table … and went ice-still.

The Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza sat on Miss Temple’s bed, her cigarette holder smouldering like a stick of Chinese incense. She did not smile.

‘Once more, circumstances prevent me from taking your life.’ The Contessa savoured the catch of smoke, then spat a blue jet from the corner of her mouth. ‘You look a fright.’

Miss Temple retreated to her writing desk. Were there scissors in the drawer?

‘Is Mr Pfaff your creature?’ Her voice cracked. In shame, she forced it low. ‘I saw no scars around his eyes.’

‘Not everyone requires the Process – in point of fact almost no one does.’

‘But he – for several weeks, I employed –’

The Contessa sighed. ‘Do you still not understand? The cream of this city ached to be chosen for the Comte’s machines. Clawed each other like cats for the privilege. Slavery amongst the mighty is simple – one only has to make it fashion.’

‘Mr Pfaff is no one’s idea of cream.’

‘He is his own. Enough – you cannot look like you’ve been tumbled in a cowshed.’ Miss Temple turned to the door. ‘Do not call your maid. She has been sent away.’

‘Sent where?’

‘Downstairs for tea or to the surgeon’s with a broken jaw – I’ve no idea. We will pretty you and depart, without incident and without notice.’

‘I will not budge.’

The Contessa raised her voice to an authoritative bark. ‘Mr Pfaff!’

At once came a sharp yelp of pain from beyond the door, unmistakably from Marie. Miss Temple shot to her feet.

The Contessa spoke swiftly, with annoyance. ‘You can do nothing to help her but obey.’ She tugged the cigarette from its holder and dropped the butt to the floor, snuffing it as she stood.

‘Where are we going?’

‘Not until you change, Celeste.’ For the first time, the Contessa smiled. ‘Afterwards, everything. But first you must at least pretend to be civilized …’

The woman’s fingers pulled at the back of her dress, each touch pecking apart Miss Temple’s concentration. She had fought at the Customs House, and tried to strangle Vandaariff in his coach, but now it was all she could do to stand.

The Contessa peeled the fabric from Miss Temple’s shoulders and then the sleeves over each hand, like a magician extracting two scarves from a hat. The Contessa yanked the dress to the floor. Miss Temple obediently stepped free of the pile.

‘What happened to your arm?’

‘It was cut by flying glass. At the Customs House.’

‘And were you very brave?’ The Contessa’s hand traced its way without hurry around the circuit of Miss Temple’s hips.

‘Why are you here?’ she whined.

‘Better to ask why you are here,’ replied the Contessa.

‘This is my room.’

‘I thought it belonged to sugar and slaves.’

‘Then who owns your suite at the Royale – pulchritude?’

Miss Temple cried out as the caressing hand struck her buttock hard enough to leave a mark. The Contessa crossed to the wardrobe. Miss Temple plucked the Comte’s silk handkerchief from her corset, but she’d no time to unwrap the glass spur before the Contessa had returned. Her breath blew warm against Miss Temple’s nape.

‘You smell like a pony.’ The Contessa snatched up an amber bottle, Signora Melini’s Mielissima, and came back with a basin of water. ‘Arms up.’

Miss Temple complied. The Contessa roughly swabbed Miss Temple’s armpits with a cloth, then her bosom and neck, and last, with smaller strokes, the planes of her face. Miss Temple held still, a kitten submitting to the ministrations of its mother’s tongue. The Contessa dropped the cloth into the basin. With pursed lips she applied the perfume far more liberally than Miss Temple ever had, under her arms, at her wrists, behind her ears, and then, like a drunken signature to end a night of gambling, dragged the moistened stopper across the nooks of her collarbone. She replaced the stopper and threw the bottle carelessly onto the bed. With a sudden flicker of suspicion, the Contessa thrust a hand down Miss Temple corset, probing for anything hidden, and then swept in either direction, searching beneath each breast. Finding nothing, she pulled her hand free and then bent forward for a last sniff.

‘At least no one will take you for an unperfumed pony.’

The Contessa snatched up a dress, fluffed it wide and lifted it over Miss Temple’s head.

‘But that is a dress for mourning –’

Her words were lost in a mass of black crêpe silk. She had worn it but once, for the funeral of Roger’s cousin, at the beginning of their courtship. The sudden purchase, entirely for his sake, had pleased her immensely.

‘Arms in the sleeves. Be quick about it.’

She realized that the Contessa’s dress, which Miss Temple had taken for a dusky violet, was in fact closer to a shimmering charcoal. ‘Who has died?’

‘O who has not?’

The Contessa cinched the laces with as little regard for comfort as a farmer trussing goats. Her hands darted purposefully, flicking the skirts free of Miss Temple’s feet, batting the dress over her petticoats, and alternately tugging down the bodice and lifting her bosom. Throughout it all the silken handkerchief remained in Miss Temple’s hand, balled tight.

The Contessa stepped back with a sigh of resignation. ‘Your hair would shame a sheepdog. Have you a hat?’

‘I dislike hats. If you would allow my maid –’

‘No.’

The Contessa took Miss Temple’s curls with both hands. They stood near to one another, the Contessa fixed upon her task and Miss Temple, shorter, gazing at the other woman’s throat, inches away.

The Contessa frowned. ‘With charity, one could say you looked Swiss. But we are already late. What did you make of Oskar? Is he in health, Celeste? In his mind?’

‘We scarcely spoke. I had been injured –’

‘Yes, he must have liked that. Probably wanted to eat you whole.’

‘Why did you not kill Doctor Svenson?’

‘Beg pardon?’

The question had flown from Miss Temple’s mouth. ‘You left him alive with the glass card.’

‘Did I?’

‘Half of him wants to die, you know. Because of Elöise. Because of you.’

The Contessa met her censorious gaze and laughed outright, her pleasure the more for being taken unawares. Still smiling, she opened the door and walked out, leaving Pfaff to collect Miss Temple. He hooked her arm with his, but paused at the side table where she’d set Roger’s notebook.

‘She’ll need a bag,’ he called. ‘It will look odd not to have one.’

The Contessa snorted from the foyer – a judgement on such propriety or, more likely, Miss Temple’s taste in bags. Pfaff snatched up a handbag, deftly stuffed the notebook inside and shoved Miss Temple through the door. The Contessa rolled her eyes.

‘Jesus Lord.’

Pfaff looked hurt. ‘It matches perfectly well.’

‘Like a headache matches nausea. Perhaps it will attract sympathy.’

Marie had vanished, and, though Miss Temple considered shouting to the desk clerk for rescue, in the end she allowed herself to be swept into the street. The door to a shining coach was held by a footman in rich livery. Miss Temple climbed up first and took the instant of solitude to return the silk handkerchief to the bosom of her dress. Pfaff installed himself next to her and the Contessa opposite, flouncing her dress with a deliberate thoroughness. Though she carried a black clutch, large enough to keep her cigarette holder, it was of no size for a glass book. Once more Miss Temple wondered where the dark volume had been cached. She cleared her throat.

‘That footman’s uniform – I mean – are we truly –’

‘Celeste,’ sighed the Contessa, ‘if you can guess, must you ask?’

Pfaff only smirked and tugged at the lapels of his coat. Miss Temple could not think what the man seriously hoped to attain. That he had shifted his banner to the Contessa made Pfaff’s character more clear – one might as well protest a bee being drawn to a more splendid flower. She recalled Mr Phelps insisting, so rudely, about society’s divisions. As deluded as she saw Pfaff to be, so the Contessa saw Miss Temple – and no doubt there were circles where the Contessa appeared a garish parvenu …

The streets around them clattered with hoof beats. Their coach had attracted an escort of horsemen. Miss Temple stared at the Contessa.

‘What is it, Celeste?’

‘The Vandaariff crypt.’

‘Yes?’

‘You wanted me to see it.’

‘This insistence on confronting me with what I already know –’

Miss Temple nodded to Pfaff. ‘Does he know?’

‘Why should I care?’

Pfaff’s lips turned in a tolerant smile, as if he saw past the Contessa’s disdain. ‘I already told her – the tomb is isolated, easy to watch –’

‘How did you know I’d been taken?’ Miss Temple demanded. ‘Was it that Francesca Trapping never appeared with Doctor Svenson?’

‘If I cared for the child I should not have left her behind. She is nothing to me. No more than the Doctor.’

‘But you spared his life. And have gone to some effort to save mine.’

‘None of which, Celeste Temple, changes our understanding.’

Despite the Contessa’s tone, Miss Temple sat back and grinned, showing her small white teeth. Both Vandaariff and the Contessa had preserved her life when she ought to have been slain, each to employ her against the other. They were fools.

‘That’s a repellent little smile,’ said the Contessa. ‘Like a weasel about to suck eggs.’

‘I cannot help it,’ said Miss Temple. ‘I am excited – though you have not told me what I am to do when we arrive.’

‘Nothing at all. Remain silent.’

‘And if I don’t?’

‘I will cut your throat and spoil everything. And then what will I tell Cardinal Chang?’

The Contessa raised one eyebrow, waiting for her words to penetrate.

‘Cardinal Chang?’

‘How else do you think you were redeemed? For a chocolate cake?’

‘You gave Chang to Vandaariff?’

‘When a thing is already owned, one prefers the term “restoration” –’

‘But where was he – how did you – he would never –’

‘My goodness, we are here. Do try to honour the Cardinal’s sacrifice. Remember – respectful silence, humble grief, pliant nubility.’

The Contessa pinched Miss Temple’s cheeks to give them colour, then swatted her out onto a walkway of red gravel. The Contessa joined her, taking Miss Temple’s hand. Pfaff remained in the coach. A richly uniformed man strode towards them, cradling an enormous busby, as if he’d come from beheading a bear. He clicked his heels and nodded to the Contessa, the gesture as sharp as a hatchet stroke.

‘Milady.’

The Contessa sank into an elegant curtsy. ‘Colonel Bronque. I apologize for our delay.’

The Colonel scrutinized Miss Temple with an icy scepticism, then ushered them on with a sweep of his gold-encrusted arm.

‘If you will. Her Majesty is never one to be kept waiting.’