The Chemickal Marriage

him go – look!’

Before their eyes an entire wing of the Institute stood shrouded in smoke and, licking from the billowing curtain, bright tongues of flame. Svenson shared a guilt-stricken glance with Mahmoud – how could this have come from their diversion of smoke? – but then a spatter of gunshots seized their attention. Trooste had been seen, and he shrieked as the grass around him kicked up in clumps. Hands over his head, the Professor reached the cover of an oak tree. Svenson saw sentries silhouetted above the gate – but who had given the order to fire, inside the courtyard, at a man they must recognize?

His eyes dropped to the gate itself. The iron portcullis had come down, and bodies littered the ground under the stone archway … what struggle had forced the guards to seal the way? Were these people from the town?

Mahmoud shook Svenson’s arm. ‘Listen!’

He heard nothing save the shouts of the men attempting to quell the fire – a poor handful, and all from the Institute, but the blaze had grown well beyond their ability. He saw men trapped by flames, others burdened with possessions, unsure where to flee. Still more huddled in the courtyard, like Trooste, unable to move for fear of rifle fire. A few sharpshooters aimed at them, but most faced the other direction, to the street … and then Svenson heard what Mahmoud had, beyond the walls, another roar to echo the inferno – a mob outside the gate! They had attempted to storm the Institute! Had the fire spread through the district?

A bullet chipped the brick above Svenson’s head. They had been seen at last. Svenson plunged forward, Francesca in his arms.

‘We will be trapped! Hurry!’

He cut to his left, tight against the curving brick, away from the snipers. A moment later Mahmoud and Mrs Kraft were there.

‘I do not understand,’ she gasped, out of breath. ‘They have been ordered to keep people in as much as keep them out!’

A portion of the burning wing collapsed in a shower of sparks. Fresh jets of flame rose through the open hole.

‘The Institute will burn!’ Mahmoud cried. ‘And every neighbouring building …’

‘We must get out,’ Mrs Kraft shouted. ‘My people – I must know they are safe.’

A ricochet sent them further along the wall – at least one sniper had shifted for a better shot. Svenson saw Trooste dash from his refuge and into a gap in the wall. He boldly plunged after, Francesca bouncing in his arms. If anyone knew their way to a bolt-hole, it would be a conniving fellow like Trooste.

Bullets cracked through the branches over his head, but – perhaps due to the rising smoke – nothing found its mark and he reached the gap in the wall. Trooste had vanished, but the door he’d gone through hung open. Svenson charged on, into chaos: black-robed scholars fleeing with boxes, satchels, specimen cases. Svenson glimpsed Trooste through the mob and pressed after him, against the tide.

Mahmoud shouted over the tumult: ‘He isn’t leading us out! He wants his own papers –’

Svenson didn’t answer. The Professor had spent a good minute cowering behind the tree, long enough to grasp the scope of the fire and the orders that had been given to the soldiers. Trooste was no fool.

‘Where are we?’ he shouted to Mahmoud. ‘Which direction –’

Mahmoud pointed urgently. White smoke curled towards them from the corridor’s end. Svenson wheeled round and spied a door ajar: an office whose window had been broken out with a chair. Beyond it bobbed the figure of Trooste, racing down an alley. Once through the alley they would be free.

‘Mahmoud, as we did before – you first, I will help Mrs Kraft –’

Svenson paused. They stared at Francesca. He put an ear to the child’s ashen mouth. Her breath was starkly uneven.

‘The medicines you purchased for Mrs Kraft will answer – willow bark, and mustard to dislodge congestion – but we must get her out of this inferno!’

Fat flakes of ash filled the air like tainted snow. Improbably, the blaze had not yet leapt to the nearby townhouses, but their occupants had fled to the street. At the main road, Svenson and the others were swept into a jostling crowd. Any hope of locating Trooste was lost, and within seconds Mahmoud and Mrs Kraft were swallowed up behind him. Where were they? Francesca required immediate treatment, yet Svenson could not see which corners they were passing. He shifted his grip, despairing at the sickly flop of her hanging legs.

To either side stumbled figures in silk and fur, escaping within pockets of servantry. Surges of traffic tore at each little group as the smoke flowed over the rooftops: shoving, shouts, shrubbery trampled, a lamp-post torn from its place and crashing to the cobbles. Svenson wiped his eyes on the epaulettes of his greatcoat – if only he could see.

The people before him stopped short and Svenson piled into a wide man in his shirtsleeves. Before he could beg the fellow’s pardon someone behind cannoned into him, and again it was all he could do to remain upright.

Trumpets. Hoof beats. Cavalry clearing the road for the fire brigade. The shirtsleeved man slapped at his neck, burnt by a cinder. The right side of the road – a single line of townhouses – was all that stood between the penned-in crowd and the growing blaze. A few water-carts would not stop its spread. In five minutes the street would be a deathtrap.

Black-jacketed lancers blocked the road. Beyond the lancers came the water-carts. Suddenly a wave of shrieking rose from the rear of the crowd. The fire had reached the townhouses. The mob swelled into the cordon of horsemen. Svenson stumbled to one knee.

‘Back, damn you!’ roared a sergeant of lancers, as if his throat were boiled leather. ‘If these carts don’t pass the entire district will burn! Once they pass you can go on!’

His voice was strong, and might have swayed the crowd if not for another eruption from the Institute. The sky bloomed to a rolling orange ball, showering the street with debris. The crowd surged without care into the horsemen. The Sergeant danced his horse away, but the troopers lacked his skill. Fearing for their lives, the lancers dipped their bloody points into the churning mob. People fell screaming – as those behind them screamed at debris and flame. A horse went down with a spastic thrashing of hooves, its rider pinned. The cordon broke and the terrified mass poured blindly through. In front of Svenson an elderly man fell and tried to rise – blood on his brow, pomaded hair flapping like a dove’s broken wing – but his leather shoes slipped on the stones and he disappeared. For an instant the crowd parted around the obstruction – those who had seen him fall did their best to step clear, but those who had not tumbled heedlessly through the opening: a last ripple and he was gone.

Svenson ran as he never had in his life, past struggling horsemen, around an overturned water-cart, careening from the frenzy. He’d been kicked in the back, struck across the face and nearly skewered. He stood gasping with his back against a tattered sapling, upright in an otherwise trampled garden. The fire had entirely possessed the first line of houses and would certainly jump the road. Huddled shapes littered the street. Scavengers searched pockets and gathered trinkets and cutlery abandoned by the fallen and the fled.

The stitch in his rib sent a line of pain all the way to Svenson’s jaw. He pulled Francesca tighter to his chest and did his awkward best to chafe the circulation in her limbs. Her breath came thick with congestion.

‘Not much longer, my dear. The green guardhouse door and then hot tea and a bath – and tobacco for me, by God.’

The girl’s hair stuck to her brow, curled with sweat and grime. He jogged her gently, hoping for a response. She blinked, the blue of her eyes clouded with an opaque film.

‘You did very well, sweetheart – just wait until we tell the Contessa –’

A fresh chorus of trumpets. The lancers returning for more blood. He hurried in the opposite direction and, like a message from heaven, there was the signpost for Aachen Street.

‘Thank goodness – sweet Christ, thank goodness –’

At a clatter of boots, Svenson stopped short. The Old Palace was untouched by the fire, but the guardhouse was smashed and the front of the brothel yawned wide. The garden was littered with debris, and as he stared, stupid with fatigue, two soldiers emerged lugging a wooden chest from Madelaine Kraft’s office. Behind came two more, driving a gang of frightened women whose attire seemed as ill placed in the open air as a powdered wig in a poor house. Bronque’s men had sacked the Old Palace as if it were their prize.

The Doctor turned to flee – if he could find Mahmoud and Mrs Kraft, if they had not been taken – but a firm