The Chemickal Marriage

‘Jesus Lord –’

‘But perhaps you can make it right. Pfaff is a negligible villain, yet important to His Lordship. Do you have him here or not?’

The warder looked helplessly at the growing queue. He pushed the log book to Chang. ‘If you would just sign …’

‘How can I sign if I can’t see?’ mused Chang. Without waiting for an answer he groped broadly for the warder’s pen and obligingly scrawled – ‘Lucifera’ filling half the page.

Chang made his deliberate, tapping way inside, to another warder with another book. The warder ran an ink-stained finger down the page. ‘When delivered?’

‘Last night,’ Chang replied. ‘Or early this morning.’

The warder’s face settled in a frown. ‘We’ve no such name.’

‘Perhaps he gave another.’

‘Then he could be anyone. I’ve five hundred souls in the last twelve hours alone.’

‘Where are the men arrested at the Seventh Bridge – or the Palace, or St Isobel’s? You know the ones I mean. Delivered by the Army.’

The warder consulted his papers. ‘Still don’t have any man named Pfaff.’

‘With a p.’

‘What?’

‘Surely you have those men all rounded into one or two large cells.’

‘But how will you know if he’s there? You can’t see.’

Chang rapped the tip of his stick on the tiles. ‘God can always smell a villain.’

Chang had three times been in the Marcelline, on each occasion luckily redeemed before proceedings advanced to outright torture, and it was with a shiver that he descended to the narrow tiers. Chang did not expect the guards to recognize him – the cleric’s authority granted him an automatic deference – but a sharp-eyed prisoner might call out anything. If Chang was recognized, he had placed himself well beyond hope.

The corridors were slick with filth. Shouts rang out as he passed each cell – pleas for intervention, protests of innocence, cries of illness. He did not respond. The passage ended at a particularly large, iron-bound door. Chang’s guide rattled his truncheon across the viewing-hole and shouted that ‘any criminal named Pfaff’ had ten seconds to make himself known. A chorus of yells came in reply. Without listening, the guard roared that the first man claiming to be Pfaff but found to be an impostor would get forty lashes. The cell went quiet.

‘Ask for Jack Pfaff,’ suggested Chang. He looked at the other cells along the corridor, knowing the guard’s voice would carry, and that if Pfaff were elsewhere in the Marcelline he might hear. The guard obligingly bawled it out. There was no response. Despite the increased chance of recognition, Chang had no choice.

‘Open the door. Let me in.’

‘I can’t do that, Father –’

‘Obviously the man is hiding. Will you let him make us fools?’

‘But –’

‘No one will harm me. Tell them that if they try, you will slaughter every man. All will be well – it is a matter of knowing the sinning mind.’

The cell held at least a hundred men, crowded close as in a slave ship. The guard waded in, swinging his truncheon to make room. Chang entered a ring of faces that gleamed with sweat and blood.

Pfaff was not there. These were the refugees Chang had seen in the alleys and along the river – their only sins poverty and bad luck. Most were victims of Vandaariff’s weapon, beaten into submission after the glass spurs had set them to a frenzy. Chang doubted half would live the night. He extended his stick to the rear, waving generally – since he could not see – but guiding the guard’s attention to where a vaulting arch of brick created a tiny niche.

‘Is anyone lurking in the back?’

The guard shouted for the prisoners to shift, striking the hindmost aside with a deep-rooted, casual savagery. A single man lay curled, barely stirring, his face a mask of dried blood.

‘Found one,’ muttered the guard. ‘But I don’t –’

‘At last,’ cried Chang, and turned away. ‘That is the fellow. Bring him.’

The guard following with his burden, Chang tapped his way back to the first warder.

‘The Archbishop is most deeply obliged. Will I sign your book again?’

‘No need!’ The warden made note of the prisoner’s number, then carefully tore out half the page. ‘Your warrant. I am glad to have been of service.’

Chang took the paper and nodded to the slumping man, upright only by the guard’s vicious grip. ‘I require a coach – and those shackles off. He will do no further harm.’

‘But Father –’

‘Not to worry. He’ll have confession before anything.’

As soon as the coach was in motion, Chang tore the bandage from his head and used it to wipe the blood and grime from Cunsher’s face. The cuts above the man’s eyes and the bruising around his mouth spoke to a punishing interrogation, but Chang detected no serious wound.

Chang tapped Cunsher across the jaw. Cunsher flinched and rolled away his head. With a sigh, Chang wedged his other hand under Cunsher’s topcoat and pinched the muscle running along his left shoulder, very hard. Cunsher’s eyes opened and he thrashed against the pain. Chang forced Cunsher’s gaze to his.

‘Mr Cunsher … it is Cardinal Chang. You are safe, but we have little time.’

Cunsher shuddered, and he nodded with recognition. ‘Where am I?’

‘In a coach. What happened to Phelps?’

‘I have no idea. We were taken together, but questioned apart.’

‘At the Palace?’ Cunsher nodded. ‘Then why were you sent to the Marcelline?’

‘The officials who took us were fools.’ Cunsher probed for loose teeth with his tongue. ‘Did you take such trouble to find me?’

‘I sought someone else.’

Cunsher shut his eyes. ‘That you came at all is luck enough.’

In the minutes it took the coach to reach the Circus Garden, Chang explained what had happened since they had parted, revealing the loss of Celeste Temple only in passing.

‘The Doctor goes with the child to the Contessa’s rendezvous, but I cannot guess what she has gone to such lengths to show him, save this painting.’

‘Has she not already shown you the painting?’ asked Cunsher. ‘This glass card –’

‘But the actual canvas must be the heart of whatever Vandaariff plans.’

Cunsher frowned. ‘My being sent to prison shows how low my interrogators set my worth – a foreign tongue is a useful tool to suggest one’s idiocy – but it suggests the contrary for poor Phelps.’ Cunsher pressed the gauze to his oozing cheekbone. ‘Either he remains at the Palace, or he has been given over to Vandaariff. Or – and most likely – he is dead.’

‘I am sorry.’

‘And I for you. But this is what I wanted to say. Phelps did go to the Herald –’

‘Did he learn the painting’s location?’

‘The salon was in Vienna.’

‘Vienna?’

‘Indeed, and the only reason the Herald printed the report was the rather large fire that consumed the entire city block, along with every piece of art in the salon. With regard to Veilandt’s ?uvre, it was not seen as a loss.’ Cunsher’s puffed lip curled to a wry smile. ‘To the empire.’

Chang could not believe it. The painting was gone? What, then, was the point of the Contessa giving Svenson the glass card?

‘Do the others know?’ He shook his head, correcting himself. ‘Does Svenson?’

‘No, Mr Phelps told me as we walked to the fountain. Lord knows where the Doctor truly has been taken.’