The Chemickal Marriage

and it was only Whorrel’s touch on his shoulder that broke the spell. Chang shook his head, marvelling at the Contessa’s raw practicality. The harvested memories of an opium eater were every bit as addictive as the drug itself, only more portable and easily hidden – so simply insinuated into the life of this respectable lady and in constant contact with her skin. His eyes caught the shattered plate of glass on the floor and he shuddered to think what extremities it had contained to deepen Lady Axewith’s dependency.

He dropped the necklace on the floor and stamped on the stones, smashing each one to dust. Whorrel struggled to stop him and Chang shoved the man against the wall.

‘The necklace is poison,’ Chang said hoarsely. ‘Search her things for the blue glass. Destroy it all. Do not touch it, do not look into it, or it will be you rotting to pieces.’

‘But what … what of Lady Axewith?’

‘Destroy the glass. Find a doctor. Perhaps she can be saved.’

Chang strode out and down the stairs, Whorrel’s plaintive cry echoing above him. ‘Perhaps? Perhaps?’

Chang walked wordlessly past the Lieutenant at the gate. Around the first corner he broke into a run for the front of St Amelia’s. Cunsher dodged through traffic to join him, and in a few broken, huffing sentences Chang explained what had occurred.

‘She was just there,’ said Chang. ‘I’m sure she saw me enter.’

‘Constanza Street,’ gasped Cunsher. ‘Or such would be my guess.’

Constanza Street was blocked by another picquet of horsemen. Cunsher skirted behind the crowd waiting to cross. Chang had no idea where Cunsher was going, but followed – Cunsher was like a startled mouse that always managed to find a hole, no matter the circumstances of its discovery.

‘The soldiers will block her progress as much as ours.’ Cunsher’s mutter was only half audible. ‘So, what does the lady do? The further from Axewith House she appears, the better, thus – ha – she will exit from the rear –’

‘And to the opera!’ Chang groaned. ‘Its cab stand is three streets away!’

They burst across the avenue in a desperate rush, dodging into the first narrow alley they found. Chang’s longer stride took him past Cunsher at the first turn. The alley’s end showed a narrow slice of the opera’s stone facade. Cunsher careened into a side street, but Chang sped on, straight for a line of black coaches. The foremost coach, drawn by a pair of mottled grey horses, was just pulling away.

He raced after it, shouting at pedestrians to clear his path. The grey team had entered the wide roundabout in front of the opera, beyond which it would vanish into the city. Chang bowled into the roundabout, dodging horses and curses equally, and leapt to the island at its eye, a vast fountain. Funded by colonial interests, the fountain celebrated the splendours of Asia, Africa and America with three goddesses, each atop heaps of indigenous plenty – deities, beasts and native peoples all spouting water from their mouths with an equal lack of dignity. Chang hurried round the circle, pacing the coach – hidden now behind two tribeswomen riding a tiger – and readied himself to dash back into the road.

Quite suddenly the coach pulled short and the driver stood, slashing his whip at something on the coach’s far side. Seizing his chance, Chang crossed the distance and leapt onto the door, reaching through the unglazed window. At the impact, the Contessa spun from the window opposite and swore aloud. She hacked at his fingers with her spike, but Chang thrust his stick through the doorway. The tip struck the Contessa like a fist and drove her back to the corner of her seat. Chang swept himself in, kicking the spike from her hand. Before she could find it Chang had his stick apart and the dagger poised.

The coach had stopped. Through the far window Chang caught a glimpse of a small figure in brown, just beyond the driver’s whip. Cunsher had anticipated correctly, once again. In his hands were cobblestones, to throw. The mortified driver called to the Contessa – was she in danger? Should he shout for the soldiers?

The dagger touching her breast, Chang caught the swinging door and pulled it shut.

‘Drive on!’ the Contessa shouted, her eyes never shifting from Chang’s. ‘And if anyone else gets in your way, run them down!’

‘You will forgive me,’ he said, and snatched up her spike, half expecting the Contessa to attack him in the instant his attention was split. She did not move. He felt the weight of the custom-made weapon, recalled its impact near his spine. Chang threw it out of the window.

‘Well, the highwayman in full daylight. Will you cut my throat now, or after my ravishment?’

Chang settled in the opposite seat. They both knew that had his object been her life, she would be dead.

‘Who was your confederate, the gnome with the moustache? If I’d a pistol I would have shot him dead. And not a word of protest would have been raised – just as no one cares when a lady’s coach has been waylaid.’ She cocked her head. ‘How is your back?’

‘I run and jump like a stallion.’

‘The spine is damnably narrow – in the dark, one’s aim goes awry. I don’t suppose you would remove your spectacles?’

‘Why should I?’

‘So I can see what he’s done, of course. You’d be surprised how much one can tell – the eyes, the tongue, the pulse – I do not venture to bodily discharge in a moving coach. Oskar would have made a fine physician, you know, within his particular realm.’

‘His realm is monstrous.’

‘Ambition is always monstrous. You should have seen him in Paris – the house in the Marais, the stench – and that was just his painting!’

Chang slid the dagger back into his stick. The Contessa tensed herself as he reached deliberately to her and pressed a gloved finger on the exact spot, just below her sternum, where his stick had struck home.

‘Do not doubt me, Rosamonde.’

‘Why would I do that?’ She dropped her eyes. ‘That is tender.’

Chang was suddenly aware how simple it would be to turn his threat to a caress. She would not have stopped him. The woman’s appetite was as flagrant as a peacock’s feathers and as private as – well, as any woman’s inner mind. She laid a hand on his wrist.

‘I had words with Doctor Svenson –’

‘Release my arm or I will hurt you.’

The Contessa restored the hand to her lap. ‘Must you be so unpleasant – so stupid?’

‘I am stupid enough to have you in my power.’

The Contessa sighed with exasperation. ‘You carry the past like a convict carries chains. What has happened means nothing, Cardinal. Time may change every atom of our minds. Whose youth has not held a quaking fool, distraught, disgraced – a razor’s edge from taking their own life? And for causes that, if one can call them to mind after even four months, are no more worth dying for than last year’s fashions are worth ten pfennigs to the pound.’

‘You speak to excuse yourself.’

‘If you will take my life at the end of things, Cardinal, then you will, or I will take yours, or both our skulls will serve as Lord Vandaariff’s finger-bowls. But until then – please.’

The Contessa laid a hand across her brow – her left hand, he noticed, remembering the gash across her right shoulder. Did she still favour it?

‘I do congratulate you on the costume,’ she said. ‘The irony sings.’

Chang nodded towards the driver. ‘Where were you going?’

‘Does it matter? I’m sure you have your own plans for everything.’ The Contessa shook her head and smiled. ‘Now I am the sour cloud. Did you know Doctor Svenson nearly shot me dead? I trust his not being here means the child has finally spurred him to business. I do not recommend the use of children, in all truth. They whine, they forget, they are hungry – and the tears! Good God, every way you turn there is snivelling –’

‘Where were you going?’

She glared at him, her cheeks touched with colour, then laughed – still a lovely sound, for all that the merriment was forced.

‘Where we can, Cardinal. Every thoroughfare between the Circus Garden and the