The Chemickal Marriage

‘And the Contessa?’

For a moment Svenson said nothing. ‘Only the two red envelopes. The woman has otherwise vanished, with the book and the child.’

‘Rosamonde is the most dangerous of all.’

‘So experience would indicate.’

Abruptly Chang realized that the Doctor had said nothing of the person he ought to have mentioned most of all. ‘Where is Eloise?’

The question had come without consideration of her absence, and an instant later Chang regretted it.

‘Your Rosamonde cut her throat.’ Svenson’s voice betrayed no emotion. ‘Phelps and I went back and made her grave.’

Chang shut his eyes. No words came. ‘That was good of you.’

‘We looked for you as well.’

He turned to the Doctor, but could not read his expression at all. ‘I am happy not to have obliged.’

The Doctor nodded with a wan smile, but took the moment to turn his attention to whatever Phelps was asking Miss Temple. Chang fell back a step and let the conversation end.

They crouched in the shadow of an empty barge. Ahead was the sunken gate to the river. Chang scanned the catwalks and iron towers for any watchman with a carbine.

Miss Temple pointed to a platform just visible beyond the docks. ‘That was where we entered,’ she said. It was the first time she had addressed him since the tunnels. ‘Set with a snare of glass bullets.’

‘No guards in sight,’ said Phelps. ‘Perhaps they have placed their trust in another trap.’

‘Or do they wait for another reason?’ asked Svenson. ‘The Comte’s arrival?’

‘The Comte is dead,’ replied Chang drily. ‘He told me so himself.’

Mr Phelps sneezed.

‘Are you wet?’ asked Chang.

Phelps nodded and then shook his head, as if an explanation was beyond him.

‘O this waiting is absurd,’ snapped Miss Temple, and she marched from cover towards the gate. Chang sprang after, hauling her back. She sputtered with indignation.

‘Do not,’ he hissed. ‘You have no idea –’

‘I have no idea?’

‘Stay here.’

Before she could vent another angry syllable he loped down the pier, bare feet slapping the planks. If he could but satisfy himself that the gate was locked …

It was nothing but luck that the first shot came an instant before the others could move, and that it missed. At the flat crack of the carbine Chang hurled himself to the side and rolled. A swarm of bullets followed – the new rapid-firing Xonck weapons he’d seen at Parchfeldt. Tar-soaked splinters flew at his eyes. He scrambled behind a windlass wrapped with heavy rope. The slugs tore into the hemp but until the snipers moved he was safe. At the barge, Miss Temple knelt with a hand over her mouth. Svenson and Phelps lay flat, none of them thinking to look where the shots had come from, much less of returning fire.

Not that they would hit a thing – their pistols would be inaccurate at this distance, and the sharpshooters too well placed. Chang looked behind him: a wall he could not climb, a locked gate he could not reach. Now that they had been seen, it was a matter of minutes before a party arrived on foot.

Above, a hemp cable rose from the windlass to a pulley, from which hung a pallet of bound barrels. A chock held the windlass in position. Chang grimaced in advance and bruised his bare foot kicking it free.

The gears flew as the rope whipped upwards, and the pallet of barrels dropped like a thunderbolt. Assuming this would draw all eyes, Chang burst forth, racing for the barge, waving for the others to run. The barrels crashed onto the wharf behind him, and quite suddenly he was lifted off his feet, the entire dockfront shaking. He landed hard, ears ringing, smoking wood all around him, and began to crawl. Svenson pulled him up and they ran. Chang looked back to see a massive column of smoke obscuring the gate and the canal, lit from within by bolts of light, an angry stormcloud brought to ground.

‘What on earth?’ managed Mr Phelps, but no one had the breath to reply. They were running blindly, simply racing down any clear avenue that appeared. Then, looking left, Chang saw a flash of black.

‘A tunnel!’ he cried, and veered towards it, the others raggedly at his heels. But the tunnel was blocked by an iron grille.

‘Shoot the lock!’ cried Phelps.

‘There is no lock,’ snarled Chang, who nevertheless dug his fingers into the grille- work and pulled. ‘The bars are set into the cement.’

‘It is a blast tunnel,’ said Svenson, ‘for testing explosives. Pull in the centre – better yet, step away.’

Chang realized he had been pulling at the edge of the grille, trying to wrest it from the stone. But the centre of the iron mesh was blackened from who knew how many exhalations of scalding gas. Svenson raised one heavy boot and stamped hard. The bars shook and bent inward. Phelps added his foot to the Doctor’s and one corroded joint snapped clean. They kicked again and two more gave way. The Doctor fell to his knees and strained with both hands, bending the damaged metal enough to clear a hole.

‘Hurry. Celeste, you are smallest – see if you can fit!’

Miss Temple carefully inserted her head and writhed forward. The cage caught her dress but Svenson disengaged it and she was through.

‘It smells dreadful!’ she called. Chang crawled in. He knelt alongside Miss Temple, the two of them together for a moment while Svenson and Phelps each insisted the other enter first.

‘I was foolish,’ she said quietly. ‘I’m sorry.’

Chang did not know if she meant having darted forward to the gate on the dock, or their kiss in the Parchfeldt woods. He had never heard Miss Temple apologize for anything.

‘What’s done is done.’ He reached for Svenson’s flailing hand.

Where Miss Temple passed with a stoop, the men were forced to bend low. Chang called forward irritably, ‘Do you know where this takes us?’

‘No. Would you prefer we turn back?’

Mr Phelps sneezed. Svenson rummaged in his pockets, and then a wooden match flared. The tunnel, walls blackened and stubbled with chemical residue, receded far beyond the match light’s reach. Svenson took the opportunity to light a cigarette, speaking as he puffed the tip to red life.

‘The main gates will be guarded, and we are no party to force them.’ The match went to his fingertips and Svenson dropped it, the flame winking out mid-fall.

‘I should like a pair of shoes,’ said Chang.

‘And I should like to examine your spine,’ replied the Doctor.

‘Whilst we are being hunted in the dark, I suggest it be postponed.’

‘Perhaps we could find that man again,’ said Phelps, ‘with the white hair –’

‘His name is Foison.’

‘The thing is, I believe I have seen him before.’

‘Why didn’t you say so?’ snapped Chang.

‘I was not sure – and we have been running!’

‘Where did you see him?’ asked Svenson.

‘At Harschmort, it must have been – ages ago. Not that he spoke, but when one serves a man of power, as I did the Duke of Staelmaere, one observes the minions of others.’

‘So he was Robert Vandaariff’s man?’ asked Svenson.

‘But Vandaariff’s body holds another,’ said Miss Temple. ‘Robert Vandaariff is gone.’

‘Does Mr Foison know that?’

‘Why should he care?’ asked Miss Temple, crawling on. ‘The man is a villain. I think you should have killed him. O there now – do you mark it – the air is warmer … is there a join with another passage?’

The Doctor lit a second match. Chang turned his eyes from the flare and noticed, above them in the cement, a perforated hatchway.