The Chemickal Marriage

Miss Temple’s voice was small. ‘That this changes nothing.’

‘Precisamente.’ The Contessa took a corner of the blanket to wipe her face. ‘Get dressed and help with my corset. I’m damned if I’ll meet Robert Vandaariff without proper underpinnings.’

In the end, the Contessa’s clothing was too large, even the undergarments, and Miss Temple took back her own. She had carefully hidden the glass key upon disrobing, but still hoped she might find the silk-wrapped spur, that it might have slipped lower into her shift. She searched as unobtrusively as she could. Nothing.

‘Is something wrong?’

‘No.’ Miss Temple saw the leather case now lay near the Contessa’s foot.

‘Mine,’ the Contessa said. ‘Fair exchange.’

There being no dress to fit her, Miss Temple tied the Contessa’s cotton robe over her corset and shift, and walked in cork slippers with her hair in a towel. The Contessa wore a dark dress and simple shoes, her combed damp hair hanging past her shoulders. She held the leather case in one hand and the candle in the other. A small hamper was Miss Temple’s to carry, contents unknown. A short tunnel took them back to the embankment and a trim, narrow craft, not unlike the skiff Miss Temple had taken from the Raaxfall dock.

‘In the front,’ said the Contessa. ‘Try not to tip in and drown.’

The hamper went first and then Miss Temple, scrambling to the foremost thwart. The Contessa hitched her dress about her waist and settled in the rear of the skiff, stowed the leather case under her seat, and came up with a small box of glass and metal. She lit the candle inside it and wedged the box into a stand, then reached behind her for the tiller.

‘There is a pole, Celeste, beneath your feet. We should not run into the bank, but, if we do, you will use it to push off. I will steer. If you think to use that pole on me you may discard the idea now, for it will not reach. Are you ready?’

Miss Temple extracted the pole, which was indeed not very long, and turned to face forward. The Contessa cut the rope tethering them to the landing with a knife. While the weapon was no surprise, it was nevertheless bracing to see. The current caught the skiff and they shot into the dark.

For the first part of their journey, Miss Temple’s attention was fixed on the half-moon of light preceding the tip of the skiff, watching for dangers of all sorts. Large patches of the ceiling had fallen in, and from those spots dangled ropes of black moss. The banks were smooth rock save for the very occasional appearance of another landing. Miss Temple peered at these relics as closely as the light allowed. Sometimes the Contessa would announce their location, ‘the Citadel’ or ‘the Observatory’; but other times, and Miss Temple was convinced it was because she did not know, a landing passed without comment. Soon they flew on in silence and, at last, Miss Temple’s wilful concentration was undermined.

The act had been obscene and unnatural, with regard to Church teachings (which she dismissed) but also to Miss Temple’s understanding of loyalty, of virtue. Of course she had known those sorts of girls – everyone knew them – but in her own person the urge had been absent, or at least unconsidered. That had changed dramatically upon the invasion of her mind by the blue glass book. If a memory held a man’s relish of a woman, then Miss Temple’s experience of it quite naturally located that pleasure, that appreciation, in her own body. And many of the memories were perverse: women with women, men with men, and more, in such a profusion of incident that her body, if not her moral mind, was taught at last only ripe possibility. And so Miss Temple decided that, while she did not approve of the Contessa, or her tongue, it was plain enough that one tongue was much like another. Given that she could not, with her present knowledge and appetite, abjure tongues whole, whether it be a man’s or a woman’s seemed to make no matter at all.

But loyalty was something else again, and here her thought snagged. The Contessa was her enemy – it was as complete a fact as might exist on earth. How could even the highest claim of expedience justify such … abasement? Wasn’t it abasement? Wasn’t it compromise? Betrayal? It was – she knew it was – and yet she had done it! And in another circumstance of degrading need she would do it again! Miss Temple gripped the pole with both hands, hating the woman behind her, but loathing herself even more. In the coach, the Comte d’Orkancz had seized her throat – she was unable to resist … on the landing the Contessa’s hands had but cupped her thighs to bring her near.

Did it matter that it was her desire instead of theirs? Miss Temple scoffed at the hopeful phrasing – as if the teeming contents of the glass book were hers. Her desire was long gone – with bitterness she recalled the filthy words of Mr Groft, her father’s overseer – like piss in a stream.

And that was that. With nothing to be done, Miss Temple’s practical mind shoved the issue aside. She could not help what had happened, nor – for with the abating of need came clarity of mind (probably the Contessa’s exact intention) – did she regret it. And, besides, she was wrong: it would not happen again. Soon – and soon enough – either she or the Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza would be dead.

They travelled without significant conversation aside from an observation that Miss Temple could move less clumsily or move not at all. Miss Temple pushed away the wet strands of moss, which seemed to dip nearer as they went.

‘The water has risen,’ said the Contessa, both by explanation and by complaint.

‘What if we run out of room?’ asked Miss Temple. ‘What if Pont-Joule built another stop-hole further on, to keep people out?’

‘He did not.’

‘Have you been here?’

‘No one has been here.’

‘Then you don’t know.’

‘Be quiet. O stinking hell –’

The Contessa ducked as they plunged through an especially sodden curtain of moss that swept the towel from Miss Temple’s head. She squealed with disgust, forcing her body flat. But then they were through and the skiff slowed into a lazy spin, the channel opening to a deeper pool. The ceiling rose, vaulted, the crusted tiles in different colours, a mosaic.

‘We have reached St Porte.’

Miss Temple followed the Contessa’s gaze to an entirely different sort of landing. Where the others had been simple brick, this was carved white stone, with a wall of once-elegant glass-fronted doors, opaque with filth.

‘What was in St Porte?’ she asked.

‘A woman who was not the Queen.’

Miss Temple considered this. The Contessa, in unacknowledged curiosity, had turned the tiller to slow their way. No one, not even the disrespectful young, had ever found the doors, for each heavy pane remained quite whole.

‘Who was she? Who was he?’

‘A king with a fat foreign wife.’

‘But what happened?’ Miss Temple looked back as the current carried them away.

‘She died. The King did not return.’

‘I suppose he couldn’t,’ said Miss Temple.

‘Of course he couldn’t,’ said the Contessa. ‘She died of plague. The rest of the place – above the ground – was razed flat.’

After St Porte the landings became few and far between, the last but a stand of rotten pilings. The Contessa changed the candle, which had sunk low.

‘That is the final station before Harschmort, though we’ve still far to go. Harschmort was placed well away for a reason.’

‘What will we find there?’ Miss Temple asked. ‘What sort of welcome?’

‘How should I know?’ The Contessa tossed the old stub in the water with a plonk.

‘It is your expedition.’

‘The train was impossible, and our situation at Bathings precluded a coach.’

‘That is a lie. You had this route planned.’