The Chemickal Marriage

her account …’

‘And why would the likes of you see her?’ called the card-player.

‘That is a secret.’

‘A very important secret, to be kept by such a pair of beggars.’

‘We are nothing of the kind!’ Francesca cried. ‘But you’re a dirty thing. You’re a pig’s trough with a week of sloppings.’

Svenson seized the girl and marched for the far door, driving their guide before him.

‘Surviving Xonck?’ called an angry voice. ‘That one looks like pickled fish on a plate!’

Francesca squirmed in his arms. ‘Let me down.’

‘You must hold your tongue.’

Tears had broken down the child’s cheeks and her words burst out in gasps: ‘But she is dirty. Her name is Ginny – she does wicked things! She did them with your prince!’

‘My prince?’

‘I know all sorts of things. He was dreadful!’

Svenson went cold in shock and the girl wriggled free. The Comte’s book – she was a child. He went to one knee. ‘Francesca, you poor thing –’

Francesca tossed her head. ‘I am not. Stand up.’

But their guide’s face had gone pale. ‘Her name is Ginny. How did she know that?’

Svenson impulsively took Alice’s hand. ‘You can see the girl is ill. The situation is delicate – she is the heir of Henry Xonck. Both of her parents have died –’

‘Died how?’

He turned. They stood in a long, expensively papered corridor, and another party had appeared at its far end, foremost a soldier whose blue jacket was rigid with gold brocade. Alice sank into a fearful curtsy.

‘Colonel Bronque …’

The Colonel paid them no more heed than a hat stand, striding past. Behind Bronque came a small, stout figure with a foreign-looking goatee, wire-rim spectacles and pearl-grey gloves. His clothes were well tailored but nondescript. Svenson’s impression of familiarity was echoed by the man’s own surreptitious glance at the Doctor. The man vanished round the corner.

‘Forgive me, Alice, but have these gentlemen called upon your premises so early in the day, or do they depart after spending the night?’

‘I’m sure I don’t know, sir.’ Her words were hushed and chastened.

‘But you knew the Colonel. You must know the gentleman with him.’

‘I’m sure I couldn’t say.’

‘Of course – the first rule of trust is discretion. But if I were to ask you instead –’

She only bobbed another abject curtsy and hurried on.

Alice rapped four times upon a door sheathed in bright steel. A narrow viewing window was pulled back and then slid home just as fast. The door was opened by a muscular man with skin the colour of cherrywood. Her desire for diversion wholly extinguished, Alice dipped again and then fled down the corridor. The large hand that waved them into the room held a revolver whose oiled barrel seemed like a sixth finger.

This was quite obviously a room of business – ledgers, blotters, notebooks, strong box, and a large abacus bolted to a table. Gleaming pipes ran down from the ceiling to another station for the pneumatic system. As Svenson watched, a leather tube rocketed into the padded receiving chamber. The dark man ignored it. Svenson cleared his throat.

‘You must be Mr Mahmoud –’

‘A message came, we should expect you.’ For such a large man, his voice was delicate, as sleek as an oboe, but the words were charged. ‘And now you’re here.’ Mahmoud nodded coldly to a door on the far side of the office. ‘So. Go see for yourself.’

Svenson released Francesca and the child tore off for the inner door. But at the threshold she stopped still, face frozen with wonder.

‘O Doctor … she looks like a queen.’

He hurried to look. A woman lay on a chaise-longue, draped in silks, eyes closed, hands clasped below her bosom.

‘Stay here, Francesca – do not move.’ At the sharpness of his tone, the child obeyed.

Careful and thorough, the Doctor took the woman’s pulse at the wrist and throat, peeled back both eyelids, opened her mouth, examined her nails, her teeth, and even, remembering the glass sickness, took an exploratory tug at her hair. Svenson’s dispassionate eye put her age at forty-five. Her golden skin seemed sallow, but he did not suppose she’d seen the sun in two months. Was she from India? An Arab? He looked around the inner room, at the Moorish daybed and enormous desk, now cluttered with the detritus of a sickroom. This too was a place of work. Madelaine Kraft was no ordinary woman. The Old Palace was hers.

He saw no mystery as to why such a woman had been a target of the Cabal. A brothel-keeper possessed the means to blackmail thousands of rich and influential men – capturing Mrs Kraft’s memory delivered them to the Cabal in a stroke. But why had the Contessa gone to such trouble to send Svenson to Madelaine Kraft now?

‘Francesca, what else did the Contessa say? Surely there was some clue, some advice?’ He peered behind the desk. ‘Did she forward some parcel of supplies to help us?’

‘There is no parcel.’

‘Child, there must be. Her own experiments with glass –’

‘There is me.’ The girl wore a prideful smirk that turned his stomach. Before he could reply, an explosion of voices came from the outer room.

‘They are strangers! What will the Colonel say?’

‘What do I care?’ This was Mahmoud.

‘Damn you, we agreed –’

‘You agreed –’

A sharp-nosed man with a moustache and long, oiled hair stormed in, his eyes leaping about to make sure nothing had been taken. Mahmoud waited in the doorway. The intruder tugged on his white shell jacket and then, glaring at the Doctor and the child, set to cracking his knuckles, one finger at a time.

‘You are Mr Gorine?’ Svenson offered. ‘I am Abelard Svenson, Captain-Surgeon of the Macklenburg Navy, attached to the service of Crown Prince Karl-Horst von Maasmarck –’

Gorine pulled viciously on his thumb until it popped. ‘And you will cure her? Is that what we are to believe? Macklenburg?’ Gorine stabbed Svenson’s chest with a finger. ‘We have had enough of Macklenburg at the Old Palace!’

‘If you refer to the Prince –’

Gorine slapped Svenson across the face. The blow was not hard – he did not think Gorine had much experience with slapping – but it stung. ‘I refer, Captain-Surgeon, to two women abducted from this house, to seven more who wake screaming from unnatural dreams, to the collapse of our business, and lastly – yes – to Mrs Kraft. All because your worthless Prince came through our door!’

‘If it is any solace, the Prince of Macklenburg is dead.’

‘Why should that bring me solace? Does that bring back our women?’

‘Michel –’ But at Mahmoud’s interjection, Gorine only gave the rest of his complaint directly to the dark man’s face.

‘Does that end the tyranny of our occupation – unable to come and go without leave from a gold-jacketed, stone-hearted –’

Doctor Svenson coughed into one hand. ‘If your two women are Margaret Hooke and Angelique, I must inform you both are dead as well.’