The Chemickal Marriage

‘What does that mean?’ Pfaff balanced on the last stone, waiting for him to open the door and make room. Svenson did not.

‘It means the river. Where is the Contessa, Mr Pfaff?’

‘How should I know?’

‘Of course you know.’

‘Open that door.’ Pfaff filled his hands with a slim knife and a brass-knuckle guard.

Svenson nodded across the black water to the stairs. ‘You should go back. The soldiers will not harm you if you do.’

Pfaff spat in the water. So answered, Svenson opened the door and stepped into a scene of his own hell.

Copper wire had been strung around the room on hooks, well away from the floor, which was awash with filthy water like a slaughterhouse with blood. Around a medical table stood a dozen figures in white robes. A large man lay strapped to the table, his face obscured by a black rubber mask that bristled with tubes and wires, his skin the colour of cherrywood.

A robed acolyte knelt to insert a bolt of blue glass into a brass box-stand, one of several strung together. Another acolyte fitted wire inside a wooden box lined with orange felt. Each discarded box cluttering the corners of the room meant another convert, and the faces looking up at their entrance, eyes peering through red livid rings, lacked any expression save cold will.

‘Get away from him,’ called Svenson.

‘We will not,’ replied an acolyte at the head of the table, gripping a brass handle.

‘I am named Warden of this ritual, by your master. This one is not to be reborn.’

‘How do we know you speak the truth?’ asked the man with the handle. His hood hung loose around his shoulders and Svenson glimpsed a grenadier uniform: one of Bronque’s adjutants, captured and already made Vandaariff’s slave.

‘Do you presume?’ Svenson replied haughtily, but felt his ignorance. Nowhere did he recall any warden. What was he intended to do? ‘Where is the Executioner?’ he demanded. ‘Where is the Virgo Lucifera? Where is the Bride?’

The adjutant of grenadiers only shook his head.

‘Then find them!’ shouted Svenson. ‘How else can we continue? Hurry!’

He stabbed a finger at the exit – a curtain, he saw – and the acolytes retreated, bowing and bobbing … all except the adjutant, who remained, still ready to throw the switch. Svenson approached, looking stern.

‘Why do you delay?’

The adjutant swallowed, fighting some inner command. ‘I … I have surrendered my will, in order to be free … my desires have been redeemed …’ His mouth groped for words. ‘The – the –’

‘Where is Colonel Bronque?’ Svenson asked gently.

The adjutant shook his head.

‘Where is Mrs Kraft?’

‘Consumed. Consumed. Every last soul shall be –’

Pfaff’s brass-bound fist shot into the adjutant’s jaw. Svenson leapt for the handle as the man toppled, luckily, backwards.

‘Good Lord! If he had fallen the other way –’

‘Is he dead?’ asked Pfaff, looking down at Mahmoud.

‘He is not. Untie him, wake him – we must know what happened.’ Svenson prised the mask from Mahmoud’s face, wincing at the clinging layer of gelatin, smeared to conduct the electrical charge. Instead of helping, Pfaff crossed to the curtain.

‘Where are you going?’

‘Why did they listen to you?’

‘Because obviously Vandaariff left instructions –’

‘And you made a bargain,’ Pfaff sneered.

Svenson pulled at the restraints. ‘Everyone has made bargains. While Vandaariff holds Miss Temple or Chang, he is convinced he can command my aid – and so names me Warden to put me near him, where I can defend him against Schoepfil … or you.’

‘That’s what I thought.’ Pfaff ducked through the curtain and was gone.

No doubt because of his size, more of the blue glass balls had been employed against Mahmoud to bring him down, and Svenson could not rouse him. The large man was too much to carry. Svenson could only leave him where he was.

Outside the curtain waited a second, wider moat, churning and black. On the opposite side rose another flight of iron steps. The wall behind the staircase bore a line of square embrasures, one of which had its metal grille bent aside. Pulses of water – translucent and clean – slopped over the embrasure’s lip and into the pool.

Svenson carefully negotiated another set of hidden stones. No wet prints from Pfaff climbed the steps – had he bent aside the grille? Svenson was tempted to follow, but reasoned that the sooner he reached Vandaariff the better. The stairs rose to an open trapdoor. He climbed through and gazed about in wonder. If Schoepfil’s makeshift arrangement in the railway carriage had been a pencil sketch of Vandaariff’s prowess, here was a full work executed in oil: more machines with more wires, more hoses, and two large medical tables in the centre. Around the tables, instead of paltry footbaths, hulked five massive coffin-shaped tubs, with space for a sixth. Each tub perched atop a brass-legged dais, like giant, gleaming scarabs. At the beetle’s mouth lurked an ugly crucible chamber, each primed with a bolt of blue glass.

The walls were painted in the style of Oskar Veilandt, though Svenson felt the execution differed … another artist, or the same artist with an older and unsteady set of hands? Much of it echoed the massive painting from Vienna … but as much again had been changed, reimagined. Had Vandaariff’s practical knowledge deepened? Or had his desires changed? Or had a scrap of the old financier’s practical mind remained to assert itself?

Doctor Svenson cupped his hands around his mouth and called: ‘Robert Vandaariff! Oskar Veilandt! I am here!’

‘So you are, my Warden. Welcome.’

Framed in a small archway, Robert Vandaariff stood wearing a white robe, with a half-mask of white feathers over his haggard face. One blackened hand lay on a squat rostrum that sprouted a mix of knobs and handles. A second archway was at Vandaariff’s back, through which Svenson glimpsed a fountain swirling orange and blue. From the reflections Svenson perceived that Vandaariff was sealed away by protective walls of glass. Vandaariff turned a knob on the rostrum and a door closed, blocking off the fountain room.

Svenson wondered if he could use one of the smaller machines to smash the glass. ‘I am not yours. If you do not surrender I will do my best to sabotage every piece of equipment you have.’

Vandaariff shook his head. ‘But, Doctor, surrender is exactly what I intend!’

‘Then enough of this nonsense. Too many people are in danger, and your fortune –’ He checked himself. ‘Robert Vandaariff’s fortune – cannot be passed to dangerous fools.’

‘We agree again. It is a shame we have not taken tea.’

‘It is a shame I have not shot you through the heart.’

‘Don’t play-act a man you are not. Do you imagine I have not divined your nature?’

‘And what is that?’

‘Enough words. See those souls you – you alone – protect.’

With a sudden chill, Svenson turned to the line of tubs.

‘Protect or sacrifice, dear Doctor, whichever you choose.’

The acolytes Svenson had driven from below – and that many more again – returned to the room hauling a sixth porcelain tub with its brass undercarriage. Black hoses were attached and dark fluid poured inside.

The sixth tub contained Madelaine Kraft, her honey-coloured skin covered with painted symbols, as senseless as she’d been in the Old Palace. Now she floated naked in a rust-red fluid.

An acolyte approached the glass wall with a bow. ‘All is ready, my lord.’

Svenson gaped at Professor Trooste’s red-scarred face. ‘Dear God.’

‘Very well!’ Vandaariff did not hide his pleasure at Svenson’s dismay.