Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

“That is just the thing—they have no uniform, save duplicity and cunning. They have penetrated even to the Prince’s party and turned one of our number to their cause—Doctor Svenson, the Prince’s own physician!”

The man inhaled through his teeth, a disapproving hiss.

“I am telling you,” Svenson went on, “but I fear no one else should know—it may be all is fine, and I should hesitate to agitate—or, that is, make public—”

“Of course not,” she agreed.

“Not even to…?” the man began.

“Who?” asked Svenson.

The man shook his head. “No, you are right. We have been invited—we are guests, after all, guests to a banquet.” With this he smiled again, shaking off the Doctor’s tale of dread. His hand went to the book in his pocket and patted it absently, as if it were a sleeping puppy. “You look very tired, you know, Captain Blach,” he said kindly. “There will be time enough to find your friend. Tarr Village is at least another hour and a half away. Why not rest? We will all need our strength for the climb.”

Svenson wondered what he meant—the quarry? The hills? Could it mean the manor house? Svenson could not say, and he was exhausted. He needed to sleep. Was he safe with them? The woman interrupted his thoughts.

“What is your lady’s name, Captain?”

“Beg pardon?”

“Your friend. You did not say her name.”

Svenson caught a worried glance from the man to the woman, though her face remained open and friendly. Something was wrong.

“Her name?”

“You did not say what it was.”

“No, you didn’t,” confirmed the man, somewhat after the fact and a touch more insistent for it, as if he’d been caught out.

“Ah. But you see…I do not know it. I only know her clothes—a green dress with green shoes. We were to meet and travel together. Why…did you know each other’s name before this journey?”

She did not immediately answer. When the man answered for her, he knew he had guessed correctly. “We do not know each other’s names even now, Captain, as we were indeed instructed.”

“Now you really should rest,” the woman said, genuinely smiling for perhaps the first time. “I promise we will wake you.”

Within his dream, a part of Doctor Svenson’s mind was aware that he’d not had a regular stretch of sleep in at least two days, and so expected turbulent visions. This sliver of rational distance might contradict but did not alter the successive waves of vivid engagement thrust upon him. He knew the visions were fed by his feelings of loss and isolation—more than anything by his helplessness in the face of Corinna’s death and then his own chronic reticence and cowardice in life—and then all of this regret swirling together with a world of cruelly unquenched desire for other women. Was it merely that, so exhausted, even in sleep, his guard was so much lowered? Or was it, could he admit, that his feelings of guilt provoked in turn a secret pleasure in the act of dreaming with such erotic fervor in an open train compartment? What he knew was the deep warm embrace of sleep, twisting effortlessly in his mind into the embrace of pale soft arms and sweet caressing fingers. He felt as if his body were refracted in a jewel, seeing—and feeling—multiple instances of himself in hopelessly delicious circumstances…Mrs. Marchmoor stroking him under a table…Miss Poole with her tongue in his ear…his nose buried in Rosamonde’s hair, inhaling her perfume…on his hands and knees on the bed, licking each circular indentation on the luscious flesh of the bed- ridden Angelique…his hands—O shamefully!—cupping Miss Temple’s buttocks beneath her dress…his eyes closed, nursing tenderly, hungrily, at the bared breast of the brown-haired governess, who had moved to sit next to him, to ease his torment, offering herself to his lips…the incomparably soft sweet pillow of flesh…her other hand stroking his hair…whispering to him gently…shaking his shoulder.

He snapped awake. She was sitting next to him. She was shaking his arm. He sat up, painfully aware of his arousal, thankful for his greatcoat, his hair in his eyes. The man was gone.

“We are near Tarr Village, Captain,” she said, smiling. “I am sorry to wake you.”

“No, no—thank you—of course—”

“You were sleeping very soundly—I’m afraid I had to shake your arm.”

“I am sorry—”

“There is no reason to be sorry. You must have been tired.”

He noticed that the top button of her dress was now undone. He felt a smear of drool on his lip and wiped it with his sleeve. What had happened? He nodded at where the man had been.

“Your companion—”

“He has gone to the front of the train. I am about to join him, but wanted to make sure you were awake. You were…in your dream, you were speaking.”

“Was I? I do not recall—I seldom recall any dream—”

“You said ‘Corinna’.”

“Did I?”

“You did. Who is she?”

Doctor Svenson forced a puzzled frown and shook his head. “I’ve no idea. Honestly—it’s most strange.” She looked down at him, her open expression, along with the insistent pressure in his trousers, inspiring him to speak further. “You have not told me your name.”

“No.” She hesitated for just a moment. “It is Eloise.”

“You’re a governess, for the children of some Lord.”

She laughed. “Not a Lord. And not a governess either. Perhaps more a confidante, and for my salary a tutor, in French, Latin, music, and mathematics.”

“I see.”

“I do not begin to know how you could have guessed. Perhaps it is your military training—I know that officers must learn to read their men like books!” She smiled. “But I do not mind my pupils all the day. They have another lady for that—she is their proper governess, and enjoys children much more than I.”

Svenson had no reply, for the moment happy enough to look into her eyes. She smiled at him and then stood. He struggled to stand with her, but she put a hand on his shoulder to dissuade him. “I must get to the front of the train before we arrive. But perhaps we shall see each other in the Village.”

“I should like that,” he said.

“So should I. I do hope you find your lady friend.”

In that moment Doctor Svenson knew where he had seen her, and why he could not place her face, for this Eloise had worn a mask—leaning forward to whisper into the ear of Charlotte Trapping at Harschmort, the night Colonel Trapping had been killed.

Then she was gone, and the compartment door latched shut behind her. Svenson sat up and rubbed his face, and then, with self-conscious reproach, adjusted his trousers. He stood, shrugging his coat more comfortably onto his shoulders, the weight of the pistol in the pocket, and exhaled. He worked to reconcile the instinctive warmth he felt toward the woman with the knowledge that she had been amongst his enemies at Harschmort, and was now here on the train, unquestionably in the service of them still. He did not want to believe that Eloise was aware of the dark forces at work and yet how could it be otherwise? They all had a black book, and responded easily to his spun story…and it was she who had worked to make sure of him, asking questions…and yet…he thought of her role in his dream with simultaneous spasms of sympathy and discomfort. With another breath he pushed her from his mind entirely. Whatever the purpose of the other passengers’ pilgrimage to Tarr Village, Doctor Svenson’s only goal was to find Miss Temple before any further mischance. If the station agent had not seen her, then he would return at once—wherever she was, she would need his help.

He stepped to the window, looking out on the passing landscape of county Floodmaere: low scrubby woods clinging to worn rolling hills, with here and there between them a stretch of meadow and, breaking through like damaged teeth, crags of reddish stone. Doctor Svenson had seen such stone before, in the hills near his home, and knew it meant iron ore. He recalled the taste of it in the winter snow-melt, ruddying the water as it flowed down the valley. No wonder there was mining here. He was amused to notice the clear sky—he’d spent so many days in the clouds and fog that he could not remember when he’d last seen it so open—smiling that it must be nearing five