Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

“He did not!”

“I am surprised.”

“He in fact threatened me—that I should submit to you, being so defeated—”

Mrs. Marchmoor shook her head with impatience. “But that is the same. Listen, you may wave your pistol but you will not stop me—for I am no longer of such a foolish mind to be so occupied with grievance—from asking again that you recognize the inevitable and join our work for the future. It is a better life, of freedom and action and satisfied desire. You will submit, Miss Temple—I can promise you it is the case.”

Miss Temple had nothing to say. She gestured with the revolver. “Get up.”

If Mrs. Marchmoor had convinced her of one thing, it was that the private room was too exposed. It had served her purpose to pursue her inquiries but was truly no place to linger—unless she was willing to risk the law. With the revolver and the card both in her bag, she drove the women before her—Mrs. Marchmoor cooperating with a tolerant smile, Miss Vandaariff, still masked, making furtive glances that revealed her flushed face and glassy eyes—up the great staircase and along to the Contessa Lacquer-Sforza’s rooms. Mrs. Marchmoor had answered the inquiring look of the desk clerk with a saucy wave and without any further scrutiny they passed into the luxurious interior of the St. Royale.

The rooms were on the third floor, which they reached by a second only slightly less grand staircase, the rods and banisters all polished brass, that continued the curve of the main stair up from the lobby. Miss Temple realized that the winding staircases echoed the red and gold carved ribbons around the hotel’s supporting pillars, and found herself gratified by the depth of thought put into the building—that one could expend such effort, and that she had been clever enough to note it. Miss Vandaariff glanced back at her again, now with a more anxious expression—almost as if some idea had occurred to her as well.

“Yes?” asked Miss Temple.

“It is nothing.”

Mrs. Marchmoor turned to her as they walked. “Say what you are thinking, Lydia.”

Miss Temple marveled at the woman’s control over the heiress. If Mrs. Marchmoor still bore the scars of the Process, she could only have been an intimate of the Cabal for a short time, before which she was in the brothel. But Lydia Vandaariff deferred to her as to a long-time governess. Miss Temple found it entirely unnatural.

“I am merely worried about the Comte. I do not want him to come.”

“But he may come, Lydia,” replied Mrs. Marchmoor. “You do well know it.”

“I do not like him.”

“Do you like me?”

“No. No, I don’t,” she muttered peevishly.

“Of course not. And yet we are able to get along perfectly well.” Mrs. Marchmoor threw a smug smile back to Miss Temple, and indicated a branching hallway. “It is this way.”

The Contessa was not in the suite. Mrs. Marchmoor had opened it with her key, and ushered them inside. Miss Temple had removed her revolver in the hallway, once they were off the staircase and out of view, and she followed them carefully, her eyes darting about in fear of possible ambush. She stepped on a shoe in the foyer and stumbled. A shoe? Where were the maids? It was a very good question, for the Contessa’s rooms were a ruin. No matter where Miss Temple cast her gaze it fell across uncollected plates and glasses, bottles and ashtrays, and ladies’ garments of all kinds, from dresses and shoes to the most intimate of items, petticoats, stockings, and corsets—draped over a divan in the main receiving room!

“Sit down,” Mrs. Marchmoor told the others, and they did, next to each other on the divan. Miss Temple looked around her and listened. She heard no sound from any other room, though the gaslight lamps were lit and glowing.

“The Contessa is not here,” Mrs. Marchmoor informed her.

“Has the place been pillaged in her absence?” Miss Temple meant it as a serious question, but Mrs. Marchmoor only laughed.

“The Lady is not one for particular order, it is true!”

“Does she not have servants?”

“She prefers that they occupy themselves with other tasks.”

“But what of the smell? The smoke—the drink—the plates—does she desire rats?”

Mrs. Marchmoor shrugged, smiling. Miss Temple scuffed at a corset on the carpet near her foot.

“I’m afraid that is mine,” whispered Mrs. Marchmoor, with a chuckle.

“Why would you remove your corset in the front parlor of a noble lady?” Miss Temple asked, little short of appalled, but already wondering at the answer, the possibilities disorientingly lurid. She looked away from Mrs. Marchmoor to compose her face and saw herself in the large mirror above her on the wall, a determined figure in green, her chestnut curls, pulled to the back and each side of her head, a darker shade in the warm gaslight, and all around her the tattered litter of decadent riot. But behind her head in the reflection, a flash of vivid blue caught her eye and she turned to see a framed canvas that could only be the work of Oskar Veilandt.

“Another Annunciation…” she whispered aloud.

“It is,” whispered Mrs. Marchmoor in reply, her voice hesitant and cautious behind her. Hearing it, Miss Temple had the feeling of being watched carefully, like a bird stalked by a slow-moving cat. “You’ve seen it elsewhere?”

“I have.”

“Which fragment? What did it portray?”

She did not want to answer, to acknowledge the woman’s interrogation, but the power of the image drove her to speak. “Her head…”

“Of course—at Mr. Shanck’s exhibition. The head is beautiful…such a heavenly expression of peace and pleasure lives in her face—would you not say? And here…see how the fingers hold into her hips…you see, in the artist’s interpretation, how she has been mounted by the Angel…”

Behind them, Miss Vandaariff whimpered. Miss Temple wanted to turn to her but could not shift her gaze from the near-seething image. Instead, she walked slowly to it…the brushstrokes immaculate and smooth, as if the surface more porcelain than pigment and canvas. The flesh was exquisitely rendered, though the fragment itself—so out of context of the whole, with neither face seen, just their hips and the two blue hands—struck her as at once compelling and somehow dreadful to imagine. She wrenched her eyes away. Both women watched her. Miss Temple forced her voice to a normal tone, away from the sinister intimacy of the painting.

“It is an allegory,” she announced. “It tells the story of your intrigue. The Angel stands for your work with the blue glass, the lady for all those you would work upon. It is the Annunciation, for you believe that the birth—what your plans conceive—will—will—”

“Redeem us all,” finished Mrs. Marchmoor.

“I’ve never seen such blasphemy!” Miss Temple announced with confidence.

“You have not seen the rest of the painting,” said Miss Vandaariff.

“Hush, Lydia.”

Miss Vandaariff did not answer, but then suddenly placed both hands over her abdomen and groaned with what seemed to be sincere discomfort…then doubled over and groaned again, rocking back and forth, a rising note of fear in her moaning, as if this feeling were something she knew.

“Miss Vandaariff?” cried Miss Temple. “What is wrong?”

“She will be fine,” said Mrs. Marchmoor mildly, her hand reaching up to gently pat the stricken woman’s rocking back. “Did you perchance drink any of the port?” she asked Miss Temple.

“No.”

“I did note a second glass…”

“A taste to wet my lips, nothing more—”

“That was very prudent.”

“What was in it?” Miss Temple asked.

Miss Vandaariff groaned again, and Mrs. Marchmoor leaned forward to take her arm. “Come, Lydia, you must come with me—you will feel better—”

Miss Vandaariff groaned more pitifully still.