Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

Svenson leaned over to the copper pitcher and held it up to his mouth, awkwardly drinking, splashing water on his collar and jacket. He didn’t care, any more than he cared what the maids might think—he was suddenly parched. When had he last had a drink—at the little inn at Tarr Village? It seemed half a lifetime past. He set down the pitcher and picked up another towel to wipe his face. He dropped the towel and dug his monocle from his pocket, screwing it into place.

“How is the coat?” he asked.

“Begging your pardon, Captain, but your coat is very unkempt,” replied the maid meekly. He snatched it from her hands.

“Unkempt?” he said. “It is filthy. You have at least made it recognizable as a coat, if not a presentable one—and that is quite an achievement. And you”—he turned to the other—“have turned me into a recognizable officer, if not an entirely respectable one—but that fault lies entirely with me. I thank you both.” Svenson dug into his trouser pocket and came up with two silver coins, giving one to each girl. Their eyes were wide…even suspiciously so. It was too much money—did they think he required some additional unsavory service? Doctor Svenson cleared his throat, his face reddening, for now they were smiling at him coyly. He adjusted his monocle and thrashed his way awkwardly into the greatcoat, his haughty tone giving way to an uncomfortable stammer.

“If you would be kind enough to point me in the direction taken by this M-Mrs. Stearne?”

Doctor Svenson was happily directed by the maids’ pointing fingers to a side staircase he never would have seen, reached through a bland-looking door next to a mirror. Still Svenson was unsure as to his responsibility, his best intention. He followed the path of Karl-Horst and his fiancee—yet might it not just as well lead to that of Miss Temple or Eloise? The Cabal would strive to keep the likes of Miss Temple from the sight of its guests—or “adherents” as Miss Poole might arrogantly term them—for as long as possible, as she was sure to give the impression of a prisoner under guard. As they were not on this floor or the one above, this was at least a way for him to descend unseen. But what if he found the Prince before either woman—would that end his search entirely? For an instant he imagined a successful return to Macklenburg, to that life of arid duty, idiot successfully in tow, his heart as ever in its fog of despair. Yet what of the compact he had made on the rooftop of the Boniface, with Chang and Miss Temple? How could he choose between these paths? Svenson left the maids looking after him in the hallway, their heads a-tilt like a pair of curious cats. He fought the urge to wave good-bye and strode on to the staircase.

It was smaller than the main stairs, but only as if to say the Sphinx is smaller than the Pyramids, for it was still magnificent. Every step was intricately inlaid wood of many colors, and the walls were painted with an extremely credible copy, in miniature, of the Byzantine mosaics of Justinian and Theodora at Ravenna. Svenson suppressed an appreciative whistle at the amount Robert Vandaariff must have spent to refinish this one side staircase, and then attempted without success to extrapolate from that imagined sum the cost of fitting out Harschmort Prison into Harschmort House. It was a fortune whose vastness stretched beyond the Doctor’s ability with numbers.

At the foot of the steps he had expected to see a door to the first-floor hallway, but there was none. Instead, he found an unlocked door, like a kitchen door on a spring. Was he near the kitchens? He frowned for a moment, placing himself in the house. On his previous visit, he had come in the front entrance with the Prince and spent his entire time in the left wing—around the ballroom—and then in the garden, where he’d seen Trapping’s body. He was now in unknown territory. He pushed the swinging door gently until there was enough of a gap to peek through.

It was a room of bare wooden tables and a plain stone floor. Around one table were two men and three women—two sitting, and a younger woman pouring beer from a jug into wooden cups—all five in plain, dark woolen work clothes. Between them on the table was an empty platter and a stack of wooden bowls—servants taking a late repast. Svenson threw his shoulders back and marched forward in his best impression of Major Blach, deepening his accent and worsening his diction for maximum haughtiness.

“Excuse me! I am requiring after the Prince Karl-Horst von Maasmarck—he has come this way? Or—excuse me—this way he shall be found?”

They stared at him as if he were speaking Chinese. Again Doctor Svenson assumed the natural actions of Major Blach, which was to say he screamed at them.

“The Prince! With your Miss Vandaariff—this way? One of you tells me at once!”

The poor servants shrank back in their chairs, the pleasant end of their evening meal ruined by his insistent, threatening bellow. Three of them pointed with an abject eagerness at the opposite door and one of the women actually stood, nodding with cringing deference, indicating the same door.

“That way, Sir—not these ten minutes—begging your pardon—”

“Ach, it is very kind of you I am sure—please and be back to your business!” snapped Svenson, stepping to the door before anyone thought to question who in the world he was and why a man in such a filthy, unkempt state was following the Prince in such a hurry. He could only hope that the demands of the Cabal were as oblique, and the figures just as imperious.

It was not difficult to believe.

Once through the swinging door, Svenson stopped again, reaching behind him to still its movement. He stood at one end of a wider, open drawing room—a sort of servants’ corridor with a low overhanging ceiling, designed to allow passage without it being intrusive to the room at large. Above him was a musicians’ balcony from which Svenson could hear the delicate plucking of a harp. Directly across the corridor was another swinging door, perhaps ten yards away, but the way across was fully open to the larger room. He threw himself against the small abutment of wall that hid the swinging door and listened to the raised voices of those people directly beyond it.

“They must choose, Mr. Bascombe! I cannot suspend the natural order indefinitely! As you know, beyond this immediate matter looms the Comte’s transformations, the initiations in the theatre, the many, many important guests identified for collection—to all of which my personal attention is crucial—”

“And as I have told you, Doctor Lorenz, I do not know their wishes!”

“One way or the other—it is very simple! He is made use of at once or he is given over to putrefaction and waste!”

“Yes, you have made those choices clear—”

“Not clear enough that they will act!” Lorenz began to sputter with the condescending pedantry of a seasoned academic. “You will see—at the temples, at the nails, at the lips, the discoloration—the seepage—you will no doubt, even you, discern the smell—”

“Berate me as you please, Doctor, we will wait for the Minister’s word.”

“I will berate you—”

“And I remind you that the fate of the Queen’s own brother is not for you to decide!”

“I say…what was that noise?”

This was another voice. One that Svenson felt he knew but could not place.

More importantly, it referred to the sound of his own entry through the swinging door. The others stopped their argument.

“What noise?” snapped Lorenz.

“I don’t know. But I thought I heard something.”

“Aside from the harp?” asked Bascombe.

“Yes, that lovely harp,” muttered Lorenz waspishly. “Exactly what every slaughtered Royal needs when lying in state in a leaking tub of ice—”

“No, no…from over there…” said the voice, quite clearly turning to the side of the room where Svenson stood, quite minimally concealed.

The voice of Flauss.

The Envoy was with them. He would name Svenson and that would be the end of it. Could he run back through the servants? But where after that—up the stairs?

His thoughts were broken by the sound of a large party entering from the far doors, near the others—many footsteps…or more accurately bootsteps. Lorenz called out a greeting in his flat, mocking voice.

“Excellent, how kind of you to finally arrive. You see our burden—I will require two of your fellows to collect a supply of ice, I am told there is an ice house somewhere on the premises—”