The Chemickal Marriage

Svenson sighed hopelessly. ‘My dear –’

‘If they were followed, we must leave,’ muttered Cunsher. He spoke with an accent Miss Temple could not place.

‘We were not followed,’ Brine protested gruffly.

‘Cunsher has been our eyes,’ said Phelps.

Miss Temple sniffed. ‘He went to Parchfeldt.’

‘And he has watched your hotel. Your movements have been observed by our enemies. And your fellows –’

‘Have been taken,’ said Miss Temple. ‘When they went to Harschmort, I know.’

‘Celeste,’ Svenson’s voice was too gentle, ‘you have been very brave –’

Miss Temple resisted the urge to fling the cocoa in his face. ‘Chang is dead. Eloise is dead. You tell me I am watched, that my efforts have been undermined. If I could find you, are your efforts any better? I should not be surprised if the Contessa herself has taken the house next door just to laugh at your useless sneakery.’

No one spoke. Miss Temple saw doubt on Cunsher’s face, and disdain on Phelps’s. Mr Brine looked at the floor. Doctor Svenson reached towards her, gently pulled away the mug and set it on the floor. Then he took Miss Temple’s hands in his own, the fingers long and cold.

‘I say you are brave, Celeste, because you are – far braver than I. Despair gives a hero’s strength to anyone. To be a heroine in life is altogether different.’

Miss Temple grudgingly tossed one shoulder. Doctor Svenson looked to the others.

‘And I expect she is correct. We should depart at once.’

They walked single file through the houses behind Albermap Crescent, Phelps in the lead, then the Doctor and Miss Temple, Mr Brine at the rear. Mr Cunsher had stayed to feed all evidence of their inhabitation to the stove. He would join them further on.

‘Why can we not simply return to the Boniface?’ asked Miss Temple.

‘Because I do not care to deliver myself into my enemy’s hand,’ Phelps whispered without turning. He waved them through a battered wrought-iron gate. ‘Keep low … do not speak … with any luck no one will see …’

Beyond the gate lay shuttered houses, riven walkways choked with weeds and an open common. Through the darkness Miss Temple perceived a host of canvas tents and winking lanterns, and snatches of talk in other tongues. Svenson took her hand. She wondered if she ought to take Mr Brine’s, so no one would be lost, but did not. A dog barked near one of the tents, and a chorus of yaps rose all around. The party broke into a run, outpacing the human calls that followed the dogs, challenges sent out to passing ghosts.

Their way ended at a high stone wall. Phelps began patting at it like a blind man. Miss Temple looked back. The dog had again provoked the chorus of its fellows.

‘I expect that’s Mr Cunsher,’ whispered Brine.

‘Who is Mr Cunsher?’ Miss Temple asked.

‘A man known to the Ministry,’ said Svenson. ‘You would call him a spy.’

‘But not from here.’

‘No more than you or I, which recommends him, this city being a snakepit … ’

Miss Temple realized the Doctor had quietly drawn the Naval revolver.

‘At last … at last,’ muttered Phelps, and she heard the turn of a key. ‘Quickly, inside and up the stairs.’

‘A relic of an older time.’ Phelps’s whisper rebounded off a brick ceiling. He tamped the lamp wick to a lower flame and slid a fluted glass over it. ‘A portion of ancient city wall – a tower left to secure river traffic, and then left again as a useful hole for stuffing things and people one’s government ought not to have. I learnt of it from the late Colonel Aspiche, who stumbled across it as a subaltern. Once assigned to Palace duties, he sought out the key … a key which I took it upon myself to, ah, take.’

‘Colonel Aspiche was horrid,’ said Miss Temple.

Phelps sighed. ‘I am sure you must have found him so – as you must find me. Ambition has made apes of better men, and far worse.’

‘How do you feel?’ asked Miss Temple, not interested in another apology. ‘The sickness from the blue glass – has it passed? Are its effects reversed?’

‘In the main, though not without cost – I do not think I shall ever sleep the night through without some dream of her staining my mind. If Doctor Svenson owes his life to my efforts, I owe my sanity to his.’

Svenson smiled tightly, snapping open his silver case for a cigarette. ‘You ask what I have done these weeks, Celeste, apart from tending my own wounds. Do you still have the orange metal rings? Cardinal Chang stuffed a quantity into my pocket – I assume he did the same to you.’

Miss Temple flushed at the memory of Chang’s fingers thrusting into the bosom of her dress, for it had become a fixture of her intimate relief. Svenson hesitated at her silence, but then went on. ‘The qualities of this orange mineral counter those of the blue glass; thus the rings enabled each of us to resist the powers of Mrs Marchmoor. You will remember the liquid we used to cure Chang’s wounds in the airship. I was able to distil a kind of tincture from my supply of rings. Crude, to be sure, yet it minimized the poison in Mr Phelps. With time and proper tools I could do more – if I knew what the alloy was, I could do more still.’

He knelt and studied her face. ‘The glass woman rummaged in your thoughts too. At the factory, you appeared nearly consumptive …’

She turned from his gaze. ‘I have made a point since to eat fresh fruit.’

Svenson smiled, and it seemed he might touch her cheek, but instead he stood. His unshaven beard was darker than his hair and gave a masculine cast to his sharp chin that she had not previously discerned. Indeed, standing above her in his boots and rough clothing, the Doctor exuded an altogether disturbing maleness.

He was staring at her. Of course he was – he quite naturally wanted to know everything – but Miss Temple found herself unable to speak. Her cheeks burnt. How could she tell him about Chang? How could she speak about her secret needs? How could she explain the derangement she risked from even his kind hand?

The silence was broken by Mr Brine offering a match for Svenson’s unlit cigarette. Mr Phelps shifted the conversation to food, removing from a satchel several meat pies and a green bottle of sweet wine.

Over the meal, Mr Phelps related their own experiences since the Parchfeldt wood. They had joined a ragged party of fleeing men – minions of Mrs Marchmoor who did not question their presence – finally reaching St Porte and a surgeon for Svenson’s wounds. Two days by dray-cart had seen them to the city and the refuge of Rawsbarthe’s home, where the Doctor fell into a fever. Phelps had risked returning to the Foreign Ministry only once, to find his offices ransacked and abandoned – indeed, like the offices of all senior staff.

‘Who is in charge?’ asked Miss Temple.

‘The Foreign Minister, Lord Mazeby, still lives, but has ever battled dementia – thus Deputy Minister Crabbe’s untoward authority. Junior attaches, such as my own aide, Mr Harcourt, have been promoted, but true policy must lie with the Privy Council, or the Crown. The Queen is old, however, and the Duke who ruled the Privy Council dead. A non-entity like Lord Axewith may take his place, but what does that serve? The entire government, and industry as well –’

Miss Temple interrupted to suggest he speak to what she did not know already.

In the ensuing pause Doctor Svenson cleared his throat and more fully described Cunsher as an agent provocateur, personally loyal to Phelps, who had employed his services abroad. At this, Phelps resumed the tale: while he had seen to the Doctor’s recovery – and then the Doctor to his own – Mr Cunsher had set to investigating their enemies. A recitation of Cunsher’s discoveries was again interrupted by Miss Temple – she knew about the St Royale, and the factory, and the Institute, and –

‘But you were unaware of your own danger!’ barked Phelps. ‘Villains watching your hotel and attacking the men in your employ!’

‘Whose villains?’ asked Miss Temple. ‘From the Contessa, or Vandaariff?’

‘We suspect the latter,’ said Svenson. ‘Not even Cunsher can get near Harschmort. It is a rearmed camp. The Cabal spread a story of blood fever to justify Vandaariff’s confinement at their hands, and one would expect at least an announcement of recovery, to allow him back into public life – but none has come.’