their images vibrated inside his brain, as if they’d been accompanied by silent explosions of gunpowder. More confusing still was the disconnection between the chaotic tableau before him and the still position of his body – and the body of the person from whom the memory originally came, the mind from whom this card had been harvested.
But slowly the space around him cleared …
A brightly lit room … an enormous room, for the canvas it held was immense.
Another cycle swept by, his attention lost in the details of swirling paint. The back of his mind throbbed with warning. Was this Harcourt’s card after all? But no, Harcourt’s transfixion had been erotic, and such was not, despite the extreme arousal of only moments before, his present experience. No … the emotion here was fear, controlled through great force of will, a deep-rooted dread emanating from the vision before his eyes, and in the sickening realization that far too much of the painting – and thus the intentions of its maker – remained incomprehensible.
This fear was especially strange coming from the body of the Contessa, for the memory came from her mind. However much the painting set the senses ablaze, he could not deny an anxious, thrilling tremor at feeling her body as his own – the weight of her limbs, the lower pivot of gravity, the grip of her corset …
The Contessa had learnt to make glass cards herself, from consulting her book. No doubt Harcourt’s card was also infused with some incident from her own life. Why had she sacrificed her own memories? Was her desperation so great as to warrant boring these holes into her own existence? Such questions the Doctor could only sketch in the backroom of his thoughts, as the greater part of his attention was devoured by the painted spectacle.
In form, the composition resembled a genealogical chart, centring around the joining of two massive families, each branching out from the wedded pair – parents, uncles, siblings, cousins, all punctuated by children and spouses. The figures stood without strict perspective, like a medieval illuminated manuscript, as if the painting were an archaic commemoration. Svenson felt his throat catch. A wedding.
This was the Comte’s canvas, mentioned in the
That this was the work of Oskar Veilandt brought the canvas into clearer focus. The obsessively detailed background, which he had taken to be mere decoration, became a weave of letters, numbers and symbols – the alchemical formulae the Comte employed throughout his other work. The figures themselves were as vivid as Veilandt’s other paintings – cruelly rendered, faces twisted with need, hands groping for fervent satisfaction … but Svenson’s gaze could not long alight on any single figure without his head beginning to spin. He knew this was the Contessa’s experience, and that his path by definition followed hers.
Still, she had looked again and again, staring hard …
And then he knew: it was the paint; or, rather, that the Comte had inset slivers of blue glass within the paint; and sometimes more than slivers – whole tiles, like a mosaic, infused with vivid daubs of memory. The entire surface glittered with sensation, undulated like a heaving sea. The scope was astonishing. How many souls had been dredged to serve the artist’s purpose? Who could consume the lacerating whole and retain their sanity? His mind swarmed with alchemical correspondences – did each figure represent a chemical element? A heavenly body? Were they angels? Demons? He saw letters from the Hebrew alphabet, and cards from a gypsy fortune-teller. He saw anatomy – organs, bones, glands, vessels. Again the cycle played through. He felt the Contessa’s heroic determination to carve out this very record.
Eventually, Svenson was able to fix his gaze on the central couple, the ‘chemickal marriage’ itself. Both were innocent in appearance, but their voluptuous physicality betrayed a knowing hunger – there was no doubt of the union’s carnal aspect. The Bride wore a dress as thin as a veil, every detail of her body plain. One foot was bare and touched an azure pool (from which Svenson flinched, for it swam with memories), while her other wore an orange slipper with an Arab’s curled toe. One hand held a bouquet of glass flowers and the other, balanced on her open palm, a golden ring. Orange hair fell to her bare shoulders. The upper part of her face wore a half-mask upon which had been painted, without question, the exact features of the Contessa. The mouth below the mask smiled demurely, the teeth within bright blue.
The Groom wore an equally diaphanous robe – Svenson was reminded of the initiation garments of those undergoing the Process – his skin as jet black as the Bride’s was pale. One foot was buried in the earth up to the ankle, while the other was wrapped in shining steel. In his right hand he held a curved silver blade and in his left a glowing red orb the size of a newborn’s skull. His hair, as long as hers, was blue, and, like his mate, the upper portion of his face was masked – a blank mask of white feathers, save the eyes that shone through were bright ovals of glass. Svenson knew that each eye, perhaps more than anywhere else on the canvas, contained charged memories that might make sense of the whole. But the Contessa had not dared to look. The cycle of the card ended, and swept the Doctor helplessly back to its dizzied beginning.
He blinked and saw the tower chamber, the blue card safe in Cardinal Chang’s gloved hand. At Chang’s side stood Miss Temple, frowning with concern. Doctor Svenson sat up like a yanked puppet, only to find that his clothing had been completely restored. The pistol lay to his side. They stared as if he were mad.
‘What has happened?’ he asked, his voice cracking.
‘What has happened to
Svenson turned to the open arch, saw no one beyond it, then pointed vaguely at the tapestry hiding the staircase door. He saw the exasperation in Chang’s sneer, and the confusion on Miss Temple’s brow.
Cardinal Chang held up the blue card. ‘Where did you get
‘The Contessa.’ In his companions’ presence his complicity with the woman seemed utterly indefensible. ‘I met the Contessa –’
‘How could you have been such a fool to look into it?’
‘I tried to kill her – I failed – somehow we ended up fleeing from the guards –’
Miss Temple took his hand and sat next to him. ‘You must tell us everything.’ Her gaze caught the glass card in Chang’s hand. ‘And you must tell us what you saw.’
Doctor Svenson kept the tale decorous, aided by the fact that any impropriety with the Contessa lay beyond their imagination. Whenever his narrative faltered, Miss Temple or Chang would cut in with a question whose answer allowed an elision. Interwoven with their questions were details of their own struggle. Under the cover of Svenson’s gunfire they had fled deeper into the Palace. A wave of soldiers had swept each floor, but they managed to hide. When Miss Temple related this last, Svenson was sure he saw her cheeks redden.
‘Where did you conceal yourselves?’ he asked.
‘A wardrobe,’ muttered Chang. But Miss Temple, compensating for her blush, seemed determined to dismiss all mystery.
‘The trick of it being that a wardrobe
‘Quite the puzzle,’ offered the Doctor.
Her blush returned.
‘We saw nothing of Phelps or Cunsher,’ said Chang brusquely, shovelling earth on the subject of wardrobes.
‘Nor I,’ said Svenson. He described the death of Lord Pont-Joule, the Contessa’s enslavement of Princess Sophia and Mr Harcourt, and the two purloined documents.
‘And you left her alive.’ Chang’s voice was flat, as if the fact of Svenson’s action was damning enough. ‘And she spared
‘For the same reason she sent the red envelopes to Celeste’s hotel. She is not strong enough to defeat the Comte on her own – now that the Comte is Robert Vandaariff.’
‘What did she want you to do?’ asked Miss Temple.
‘I cannot say – yet the answer lies in that bit of glass. Infused with her own memories.’
‘Uncharacteristic,’ said Chang. ‘Such
Svenson nodded. ‘There is no way to explain. You must each look into that card.’
Already seated, Miss Temple took the card first. Svenson remained next to her. Though she’d displayed no
