The Chemickal Marriage

Cunsher emerged after Phelps, holding his soft hat in place as he crawled. Chang took Miss Temple’s hand, proud of how well she had managed. Despite her outburst on the train, this was the same Celeste Temple who’d kept her wits on the airship.

‘This way. There is a climb.’

The side exit to Helliott Street from the railway tracks had always felt like Chang’s private possession, discovered on a pillaged Royal Engineering survey years before and employed sparingly. But now, mounting the metal staircase, his boots scuffed into newspapers, wadded fabric and even empty bottles. Miss Temple pulled her hand free to cover her nose and mouth.

‘Are you not choked? The stench is horrid!’

Chang’s own sense of smell scarcely existed, but as he squinted above them he perceived a huddled shape blocking the way. He climbed and gingerly extended a toe to the pile of rags. It was a man: small, old, and dead for at least a week.

‘Step carefully,’ he called behind, and then to Miss Temple, ‘I should not let your dress drag.’

Two more corpses cluttered the top of the stairs, propped against the iron door like sacks of grain – women, one gashed across her forehead. The wound had suppurated, and bloomed in death like slashed upholstery. The second woman’s face was wrapped in a shawl save for the hanging mouth, showing a line of stumped brown teeth. Chang heaved at the bolt, then kicked the door open. The two bodies toppled into the cold light of Helliott Street. Chang stepped over them onto the cobbles, but as always Helliott Street was abandoned. Cunsher helped him shove the door closed again, sealing the corpses back into their tomb. Chang wiped his hands on Foison’s coat and wondered what had happened to his city in so short a time.

‘At the end of this street is the Regent’s Star,’ he explained, ‘as nasty a crossroads as this city holds. Any of its foul lanes will offer rooms to hide …’ Miss Temple had been scraping something from her boot, but now looked up to meet his gaze. ‘Unless anyone has another suggestion.’

‘As a matter of fact, I do,’ she replied. ‘I did not think – or rather thought I could find our enemies only by their own clues – in any event, I am a goose for not perceiving the significance of my dressmaker, Monsieur Massee. As you may imagine, a woman known to have money is besieged like Constantinople: she must submit to this fashion, that fabric, this fringe, or, if you please, a perfectly unnecessary toque. And so used am I to this beseechment, even from dear Monsieur Massee, that I did not mark a suggestion some days ago to avail myself of an elegant bolt of fabric sworn to have arrived straight from Milan. Indeed, I rejected the offer out of hand – crimson silk is not only beastly expensive, but also unseemly for anyone not in an Italian opera. And yet I thought only of myself, not of who would buy that rarest, exquisite silk, in that colour, demanding a specific complexion and temperament.’

She raised her eyebrows expectantly, waiting.

‘You think the Contessa desires new dresses?’ asked Phelps. ‘Now?’

‘All her things are lost at the St Royale. It was an entire bolt of cloth. A woman of fashion wanting any of it would buy all of it, to prevent anyone else from duplicating her prize. We need only find who did buy the fabric, and where it was delivered.’

‘So you do not literally know where she is?’ ventured Svenson.

Miss Temple rolled her eyes. ‘Monsieur Massee’s salon is directly down the Grossmaere. Shall we?’

‘Of course not,’ broke in Mr Phelps. ‘Look at us! We cannot dream to enter such an emporium – and you yourself could only do so by presuming upon a very established familiarity. Miss Temple, you have been immersed in a canal. You offer to expose yourself gravely for our benefit, but whatever information you hope to acquire will be more dearly bought, if not rendered beyond price, if such bedraggled men as we come with you –’

‘Do you think I care for such exposure? I am more than willing to pay for what I ask.’

‘Society is not only a matter of money,’ said Phelps.

‘Of course it is!’

‘For all your pride,’ Phelps answered harshly, ‘Roger Bascombe was not a titled prince. Despite the advantages some wealth may have afforded you, Miss Temple, real status is something you have not glimpsed.’

Miss Temple scowled. ‘I have never found disdain for money to be a compelling force.’

‘Who stands with you now, Celeste?’ asked Svenson quietly. ‘Are we swayed by your banknotes?’

Miss Temple threw up her hands. ‘That is not the same at all!’

‘You will be seen,’ insisted Phelps. ‘When all of this is over, if you do expect to retain any place in society –’

‘I have no place!’ Miss Temple shouted. ‘I am a New World savage! And I expect this present business to end my life!’

She turned on her heel down the narrow canyon of Helliott Street. The four men avoided each other’s gaze, watching her small form diminish.

‘Deftly managed all round,’ muttered Svenson.

‘But the idea,’ protested Phelps, ‘that a ridiculous bolt of fabric –’

‘Hiding is not about concealment,’ said Chang, ‘but revelation. A fugitive is given away just like an animal – by instincts that aren’t, or can’t be, denied. A badger spreads its scent. The Contessa has her finery.’

‘I should look in the home of some sympathetic great lady,’ agreed Cunsher, ‘where the signs you mention may be laid to another’s appetite.’

‘But she has the child,’ said Svenson. ‘Francesca Trapping would be a burden.’

Chang shook his head. ‘For all we know, the girl is chained in a wardrobe, licking glue from hatboxes to stay alive.’

Phelps wrinkled his nose. ‘Cardinal Chang –’

‘Licking hatboxes if she’s lucky.’ Chang stepped to Svenson and slapped the dust from his coat. ‘Doctor, since your uniform suggests some respectability, will you run after Miss Temple so she does not launch on any additional journeys alone? Phelps, I would suggest you visit the offices of the Herald and locate the full text of this clipping about the Comte’s salon. Mr Cunsher, perhaps you might discover whether any further red envelopes have arrived at the Hotel Boniface. As we near the end of business hours, I recommend speed. Let us meet in two hours at some public place. St Isobel’s statue?’

He turned sharply to leave, but Svenson called behind him, ‘What of you? What will you do?’

‘Find a fresh pair of stockings!’ Chang shouted back. Under his breath, he muttered, ‘And wrap them tight around Jack Pfaff’s neck.’

Ten minutes took Chang to the river. The streets were filled with huddled figures – men passing bottles, children watching his passage with large eyes, women with hopes as cold and distant as a star. He assumed these were foreign dregs, washed into the city without language or a trade, but from snatches of conversation – and cries for money he ignored – he realized they were displaced citizens, refugees in their own city. Chang increased his pace. He had no wish for any entanglement, nor for the constables these unfortunates would inevitably attract.

To his right lay a fat Dutch sloop, painted the warm yellow of a ripened pear. The craft was anchored well out in the river, and on its deck stood armed men. He had seen such caution before, with especially valuable cargo, but the sloop was not alone. In fear of pillage, the entire river was choked with vessels keeping a night-time distance from the bank.

The building on the corner of his own street remained derelict and Chang entered through an empty window. He drew one of Foison’s knives, but advanced without incident to the roof. He picked his way across four buildings, and dropped in silence to a fifth, landing in a crouch. The windows around him glowed with candles and lamps, but no sign of habitation came from his own open casement. Chang gave the window a shove, waited, then eased himself in. No one. The floor by the window was caked with feathers and white-streaked filth.

Few objects caught Cardinal Chang’s sentiment, and most of those – his red leather coat, his stick, his books – he had already sacrificed. Within his genuine regret for their loss, he nevertheless detected a vein of relief … the more of his past that disappeared, the less he felt its cold constraint.

He lit a candle and, scraping the crust from the sill, pushed the window shut. He quickly stripped off Foison’s