Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

Temple groped at her green bag, but needed one hand to hold up her dress to run and could not successfully open it with the other. If she was a cursing sort of girl she would have been cursing then, for the obvious urgency with which her companions treated the situation had caught her unawares. They were at the street. Svenson took hold of her arm as they walked rapidly away from the Boniface. Chang loped a pace or two behind, his eyes searching for enemies. There were no cries, no shots. They reached the next street and Svenson wheeled her around the corner. They pressed themselves against the wall and waited for Chang to follow a moment later. He shrugged, and the three of them continued away as quickly as they could. It seemed incredible to be free so easily, and Miss Temple could not help but smile at their success.

Before either of the men could set a path, Miss Temple picked up her pace so that they would be forced to follow her. They rounded the corner into the next broad avenue—Regent’s Gate—where ahead of them, Miss Temple spotted a familiar awning. She steered them toward it. She’d had an idea.

“Where are you going?” asked Chang, brusquely.

“We must strategize,” answered Miss Temple. “We cannot do it in the street. We cannot do it in a cafe—the three of us would be much talked of—”

“Perhaps a private room—” suggested Svenson.

“Then we would be even more talked of,” interrupted Miss Temple. “But there is a place where no one will comment on our strange little band.”

“What place?” asked Chang with suspicion.

She smiled at her cleverness. “It is an art gallery.”

The artist presently exhibited was a Mr. Veilandt—a painter from somewhere near Vienna—whose work Roger had taken her to see as a way of showing favor to a visiting group of Austrian bankers. Miss Temple had been alone among the party to pay the art itself any attention—in her case, a negative interest, for she found the paintings unsettling and presumptuous. Everyone else had ignored them in favor of drinking schnapps and discussing markets and tariffs, as Roger had assured her they would. Reasoning that the gallery would not mind another such visit of ill-attention, she pulled Svenson and Chang into the outer lobby to speak to the attending gallery agent. She explained in a low tone that she had been part of the Austrian party and here brought a representative of the Macklenburg court, in search of wedding presents for his Prince—a figure of taste—surely the man had heard of the impending match? He nodded importantly that he had. The man’s gaze drifted to Chang and Miss Temple noted with some tact that her second companion was also an artist, much impressed with Mr. Veilandt’s reputation as a provocateur. The agent nodded in sympathy and ushered them into the main viewing room, delicately slipping a brochure with printed prices and titles into the hands of Doctor Svenson.

The paintings were as she remembered them: large, lurid oils depicting in an almost obscenely deliberate manner incidents of doubt and temptation from the lives of saints, each chosen for its thoroughly unwholesome spectacle. Indeed, without the establishing context within each composition of the single figure with a halo, the collection of canvases created a pure pageant of decadence. While Miss Temple perceived how the artist used the veil of the sacred to indulge his taste for the depraved, she was not sure whether, on a level deeper than cynical cleverness, the paintings were not more truthful than was ever intended. Indeed, when she had first seen them, among the throng of self-important financiers, her dismay had been not with the profligate and blasphemous carnality but, on the contrary, the precarious isolation, the barely persuasive presence, of virtue. Miss Temple led her companions down the length of the gallery, away from the agent.

“Good Lord,” whispered Doctor Svenson. He peered at the small card to the side of a largely orange canvas whose figures seemed to slither from the surface fully fleshed into the air around them. “St. Rowena and the Viking Raiders,” he read, and turned up to the face that could perhaps charitably be said to be glowing with religious fervor. “Good Lord.”

Chang was silent, but equally transfixed, his expression unreadable behind the smoked-glass lenses. Miss Temple spoke in a low tone, so as not to attract the agent.

“So…now that we may speak without concern…”

“The Blissful Fortitude of St. Jasper,” read the Doctor, glancing up at a canvas on the other wall. “Are those pig snouts?”

She cleared her throat. They turned to her, slightly abashed.

“Good Lord, Miss Temple,” said Svenson, “these paintings do not take you aback?”

“In fact they do, yet I have already seen them. I had thought, since we have already shared the blue cards, we could weather their challenge.”

“Yes—yes, I see,” said Svenson, at once even more obviously awkward. “The gallery is certainly empty. And convenient.”

Chang did not offer any opinion on the place or the paintings of Mr. Veilandt, but merely smiled—once more rather wolfishly, it seemed.

“My own idea…,” began Miss Temple. “You did look at the glass cards, Cardinal?”

“I did.” The man was positively leering.

“Well, in the one with Roger Bascombe—and myself—” She stopped and frowned, gathering her thoughts— there were too many at wing inside her brain. “What I am trying to decide is where we ought to next direct our efforts, and most importantly whether it is best for us to remain together or if the work is more effectively accomplished in different directions.”

“You mentioned the card?” prompted Chang.

“Because it showed the country house of Roger’s uncle, Lord Tarr, and some kind of quarry—”

“Wait, wait,” Svenson broke in. “Francis Xonck, speaking of Bascombe’s inheritance…he referred to a substance called ‘indigo clay’—have you heard of it?”

She shook her head. Chang shrugged.

“Neither had I,” continued Svenson. “But he suggested that Bascombe would soon be the owner of a large deposit of the same. It has to be the quarry, which has to be on his uncle’s land.”

“His land,” corrected Chang.

Svenson nodded. “And my thought is that it may be vital to making their glass!”

“Thus why Tarr was killed,” said Chang. “And why Bascombe was chosen. They seduce him to their cause, and then this indigo clay is under their control.”

Miss Temple saw the ease of it—a few words from Crabbe about the usefulness of a title to an ambitious man, the flattering company of a woman like the Contessa or even—she sighed with disappointment—Mrs. Marchmoor and cigars and brandy with a flattering rake like Francis Xonck. She wondered if Roger had any real idea of the value of this indigo clay, or if his allegiance was being purchased as cheaply as that of an Indian savage, with these people’s equivalent of beads and feathers. Then she remembered that he too had borne the purple scars. Did he even retain his own unfettered mind, or had this Process transmuted him into their slave?

“He is a pawn after all…,” she whispered.

“I’d wager every preening member of this cabal sees every other as a pawn.” Chang chuckled. “I would not single out poor Bascombe.”

“No,” said Miss Temple. “I’m sure you’re correct. I’m sure he’s only like them all.”

She shrugged away the glimmer of sympathy. “But the question remains—should we direct our efforts to Tarr Manor?”

“There is another possibility,” said Doctor Svenson. “I’ve been distracted. Not three minutes from here is the walled garden where the Comte d’Orkancz brought me to look at the injured woman—it was my destination when I saw you in the window.”

“What woman?” asked Chang.

Svenson exhaled heavily and shook his head. “Another unfortunate caught up in the Comte’s experiments, and another mystery. She bore all the features of drowning in frozen water, though the damage had apparently been inflicted by some machine—I assume it has to do with the glass, or the boxes—I could not say if she survived the night. But the location—a greenhouse, to keep her warm—must be a stronghold of the Comte, and it is very near. He sought me to treat her—”

“Sought you?” asked Miss Temple.