The Dark Volume

message. The teeth were sharp and—to the Doctor's dismay—bright orange. Like a Roman statue, the eyes bore no iris or pupil, and were as entirely blue as the skin around them, only more liquid, giving the unpleasant impression that were he to touch a finger to its surface, it might penetrate full length into the eye. He lifted the painting, flipping it over to study the bright inscriptions on the back. Despite there being the odd legible word—“incept” … “marrowes” … “contigular” —Svenson could perceive no larger meaning, bristling as it was with symbols, some no doubt unique to the Comte alone. The Doctor shivered to recall the slick blue discharge as it coated Lydia Vandaariff's quivering chin, and set the painting back onto the pile.

Eloise was no longer there.

SVENSON WAS through the doorway in two strides. She stood across the main room, having clearly just taken a peek through its far curtained door. He spoke in the barest whisper.

“I did not see you leave.” He nodded to the curtain. “Did you see anything?”

“Perhaps we should go,” Eloise whispered back.

She was trembling. Had she seen something? Or had he lost track of her frailty in his pursuit of the Contessa?

“We cannot. She must have come here. The footprint.”

He pushed aside the curtain for himself, revealing a dark unlit corridor lined with high, ebony cupboards. At the far end was a second curtain, sketched out by the light beneath. He crept down the passage, resisting the urge to open the cupboards—there was plenty of time for that later—and a creak from the floorboards told him Eloise had followed. He held up his pistol hand for silence as his other reached for the curtain and twitched it aside: iron- frame bed, seaman's trunk at its foot, another tall cupboard, writing desk with a bevel-edged mirror above.

Svenson crossed to a small door, left open to a rear garden. Beyond its threshold lay another smeared footprint, and another trail of step-stones leading deeper into the woods.

“She has escaped,” he called to Eloise. “She cannot have stayed long. Why did she not simply go around?”

“Perhaps she wanted food,” said Eloise, still in a whisper.

“More likely a weapon.” The Doctor stepped back into the bedroom. “If only the occupants might provide some sense of where we are, and where she might be going—hopefully they have not come to harm—”

He paused at a muted scuffle from within the bedroom's tall wardrobe. Svenson yanked it open and shoved the pistol into the face of the man who crouched there, gazing up without concern—indeed without any expression whatsoever. His clothes gave off the distinct reek of a fire. It was Robert Vandaariff.

The blow caught Doctor Svenson square across the side of his head and sent him straight into the wardrobe, where, aside from a mixture of camphor and smoke, his last sensation was of a doubled shadow in the room behind him…a second woman standing next to Eloise.

WHATEVER CAMPHOR had been laid in the wardrobe only evidenced a struggle lost, for as the Doctor woke, stifling the simultaneous urges to groan aloud and to be sick, he looked down to see his tunic covered with the detritus of moths—spent cocoons, corpses, dusty webbing. He batted at it, realizing as he did so that his arms were free, and that he was no longer in the wardrobe. He had been laid on the bed, a thick towel set beneath his bleeding head. He explored the wound with his fingers—a mild enough cut, though extremely sensitive—and discerned that no bones had been staved in, though he was certainly suffering some degree of concussion. Vandaariff was no longer in the wardrobe. The revolver was nowhere in sight. Nor was Eloise.

He sat up and felt a dizzying rush. He patiently allowed the rush to subside, then swung his legs over the bed. On the desk lay a piece of paper. It had not been there before. He picked it up, squinted, and took a moment to insert his monocle. A woman's writing… “Forgive me.” He folded the paper absently into quarters and then folded it again, smoothing each edge as his mind sought some sensible purchase on his emotions. He stuffed the folded bolt of paper into his pocket and took out his silver case. The Doctor lit a cigarette and smoked it through, leaning so his thighs were braced against the desk, tapping the ash into a dish half full of pins, and gazing into the beveled glass. His face, as leeched of pride as a thrice-whipped dog, did nothing to jog his heart into some response—anger, scorn, even despair.

He weaved through the dark passageway of cupboards into the main room and from there to the kitchen. The paintings had been taken as well. Svenson found an earthen crock of cool water, bathed his head, mopped it with another towel—the spotting of blood gave way soon enough—and then took a long drink. His thoughts were chessmen made of lead, impossible to push into motion. He had saved her life on the train—for what? So she could refrain from taking his, an even trade.

He lit another cigarette, knowing it might cause him to vomit, and dropped the match on the table, hoping vaguely it would leave a mark. There was a clock on the mantel, but it had not been wound. The cigarette burned to ash in his fingers.

He was not dead, though he was not sure his mortification—how many times must he fail at the same hurdle?—was preferable to oblivion. Dull-minded but grimly determined, he returned to the bedroom and sorted through the papers in the writing desk, finding a ribbon-wrapped bundle in a wooden slot. Svenson recognized the same hand that had written “Forgive me,” and opened the letter, dated two years previously and addressed to Augustus Sparck… “Dear Uncle…” Svenson dropped the letter back onto the desk, feeling stupid. Her uncle's cottage after all. Of course it was—and she had allowed him to play-act each step of protecting her, pistol in hand, knowing at every instant what the end must be.

The room was too close. He walked out the still-open door into the garden, blinking, the sounds of birds in the tree branches above him.

DOCTOR SVENSON patted his pockets for a handkerchief and winced at the pain in his left arm. He had forgotten stabbing himself with the glass, and now felt a flicker of sensation throughout his body, a twitching ribbon infused with the revolting amalgamation of visions—the cenotaph, the glade, the fossilized creature… but there was something else, something apart from these, like the strain of a sweet violin within a chorus of martial brass. He had not fully appreciated it in the train car… an exquisite sensuous redolence of Eloise's own body, momentary memories of being her. This was from the new glass, created from her own blood. The memories were almost too much to bear, but he could not resist them. He sat down on a wooden stool, his head in his hands, eyes shut.

The first tableau had been a parlor: Colonel Arthur Trapping, miserable, powerless—and Eloise—overhearing a bitter disagreement in another room… a man and a woman. Svenson recognized neither voice—which meant, he realized, that the man in the quarrel was not Francis Xonck. Could it be his brother, Henry? And could the woman be Charlotte Trapping? Trapping wore his uniform… could it be about the transfer of the Dragoons to the Palace? Or was it something simpler—the payment of his debts? But then why was Eloise present?

The second was a grove of trees. Francis Xonck knelt with the three Trapping children, Eloise's charges. He chatted with them, the wry playful uncle, but then looked up at Eloise… and his expression changed. At first Svenson assumed it to be conspiratorial, but by concentrating, steeping himself in Eloise's memory, he felt something else… a lick of fear, as if Eloise had been caught out. But what could Xonck have known? Or was it the other way around? Had she learned one of his secrets—and now he knew it?

The third image was the most disturbing: Eloise and Charlotte Trapping with Caroline Stearne, the Contessa's particular minion, in a private room at the St. Royale. Svenson knew no more than that: the two women holding hands, Charlotte Trapping's obvious fear… but he'd no idea if the two women knew Mrs. Stearne—knew her connection to the Cabal—or were meeting her for the first time, or what the interview was about, or… Svenson frowned. Just as the image faded from his mind, Mrs. Stearne had been turning toward them… something, yes… in her hand, just catching the lamplight… a blue glass card.

SVENSON SAT back on the stool, blinking up at the sky, these three glimpses rendering palpable how little he knew of Eloise's life. He felt intolerably alone. He lurched to his feet. How had the Contessa known of this cottage? When had Eloise told her—in Karthe? Or before? With a chill in his heart he realized Miss Temple was even more likely to be dead. Yet… he thought back to the cottage of Sorge and Lina and he was sure—he was sure—that Eloise's affection, her devotion to tending Miss Temple had been real. But he had been sure of so many things.

The wardrobe! He had forgotten all about Robert Vandaariff. What was he doing