The Chemickal Marriage

hand shoved him into the iron fence. A burly corporal smiled grimly, his musket-butt ready to smash the Doctor’s face.

‘For God’s sake,’ gasped Svenson. ‘I have a child –’

‘Hold! Hold there!’

An officer stood across the road, where Bronque’s men formed a cordon.

‘His uniform, ass!’ shouted the officer. ‘That’s the Colonel’s German! Get him in the wagon – now!’

Before Svenson could address the officer, the Corporal heaved him into a panelled goods wagon. He landed awkwardly on his side, rolling to protect the girl, and just pulled his legs free of the slamming door. A rattle of iron caused the Doctor to start. Chained to the opposite bench – bloody, bruised and brutally gagged – sat Mr Gorine.

Svenson reached across for the gag, but paused when he noticed the horror in Gorine’s eyes. He looked down. Francesca Trapping’s head lolled in the Doctor’s arms, her stained mouth yawning in the half-light. Her face was cold. Her eyes were sightless and unblinking.

He had no idea how long they rode, nor where their captors took them. A crippling guilt fixed Doctor Svenson to the bench and sank his mind. He wrapped Francesca in his greatcoat and fruitlessly rocked her body.

Somewhere in the midst of it he’d managed to prise the gag from Gorine’s mouth; the chains were locked fast. In a ravaged monotone he had done his best to answer Gorine’s questions. None of it mattered. He had known she was at risk. Willow bark, for God’s sake! Francesca Trapping had been balanced on a gallows by the Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza, and he, Abelard Svenson, had kicked away the support.

‘She was doomed already.’ Gorine’s voice was as gentle as possible above the creaks of the wagon and the pounding hoof beats. Svenson nodded dumbly. It changed nothing. He had lost himself, quite completely. He raised his face to Gorine’s searching eyes. The man recoiled.

‘You’re not ill as well?’

Svenson’s lips twitched reactively, a ghost of a smile, inappropriate, hideous. ‘The damage does not signify.’

‘But … your eyes, your face –’

‘I’m sure it is only a lack of tobacco.’

‘Have you gone mad?’

Svenson heard the question as if from a distance. Gorine stared at Svenson’s hand, stroking the girl’s hair. The Doctor carefully returned it to his lap.

‘My apologies. Far too many tasks await before I can allow myself to expire.’

Gorine leant as close as his chains allowed. ‘You’re sure they were not taken? Mahmoud and Mrs Kraft – you’re sure she is restored?’

‘O yes.’

‘Then where do they take us?’ Gorine vainly attempted to look out through the ventilation holes. Svenson gazed at Francesca’s shoe, sticking out from the greatcoat, marvelling at how small the foot, how fragile each toe.

‘It was as you surmised,’ Gorine went on. ‘For three weeks we have suffered Bronque’s trespasses – soldiers on the premises, arrivals at all hours – the Colonel and his man.’

Gorine’s upper lip was bruised, and the swelling broke the meticulous line of his moustache. Almost like a cleft palate, Svenson thought, noting that Gorine now appeared less intelligent. What was it about disfigurement, however arbitrary the source, that led the mind to underestimate, even dismiss the victim …

‘That fellow never said a word, you know. We offered rooms, choice of companions. Took us up, of course, but never let slip a damned thing. No papers or club cards, not even a mark in the fellow’s clothes to show his tailor. Not one clue. Only his hands.’

‘When I saw him he wore gloves.’

‘At all times. But once I spied on them in the tunnel. This fellow’s hands are stained.’

‘A birthmark?’

‘Are birthmarks blue?’

The wheels slowed, crunching into gravel. Gorine went stiff. ‘What will they do? I am no soldier – I cannot withstand pain!’

Svenson shivered. The sweat of his flight from the Institute had gone cold. He worked a hand into his tunic and took out the blue card containing the Contessa’s memory of the painting. He dropped it to the floor and broke it to shards beneath his heel.

‘What are you doing? And what is that?’ Gorine pointed to the leather case around Svenson’s shoulder. ‘Is it valuable? We should exchange it for our lives –’

‘If they wanted to kill you, you would be dead. And since you’ve no idea where they are, you cannot betray your friends.’

‘Bronque won’t believe that!’ Gorine’s voice rose. ‘They will tie me to a rack –’

‘It is not as if racks abound. You are a hostage against Mahmoud and Mrs Kraft.’

The wagon came to a stop. An idea penetrated Svenson’s gloom. ‘Wait. What did Colonel Bronque say to you, on your arrest? When he learnt we had entered the tunnel –’

‘He called me a whoremongering traitor, then I was kicked to the floor –’

‘Nothing else? They will hunt Mrs Kraft and Mahmoud and they will kill them.’

The rattle of the lock echoed in the hollow space. Gorine shook his head. ‘It wasn’t Bronque – it was the other, and when we were outside, at the smoke –’

‘Saying what?’

‘That no man lights his own funeral pyre without reason.’

Canvas hoods were forced over their heads. Svenson pleaded for the soldiers to take care of Francesca’s body, but they only pulled him away and bound his hands. The hood smelt of oats. After minutes of stumbling and barked shins, he was dropped onto a hard wooden chair.

‘Let me see him.’

The hood was removed. Behind a table sat the gentleman he had passed in the Old Palace, Bronque’s personage. A soldier set the leather case and Svenson’s rumpled greatcoat onto the table.

‘Wait outside.’

The soldier strode from the room without care. The man behind the table set to emptying the greatcoat’s pockets. Svenson had time to study him: perhaps forty years of age, dark hair oiled and centre-parted, curled moustache, pointed goatee. He was thin-limbed but stout – a trim youth’s thickening from lack of exercise, yet his dancing eyes, and the nimble movements of his gloved hands, showed a restless acuity.

The man set Svenson’s revolver next to a crumpled handkerchief, a pencil stub, soiled banknotes, the mangled silver case. The leather case he ignored.

‘Do you like the room, Doctor? Formerly a library, but there was damp – is there not always damp? – and so the books are gone. Abandoned rooms take what usage they can – like people – still, I so appreciate the cork floor. So quiet, so comforting, and with varnish just the colour of honey. Why isn’t every room lined with cork? It would make a better world.’

He arched his eyebrows, plucked as thin as an ingenue’s. The man’s face was formed of potent details – ridged hair, wire spectacles, plump little mouth – creating a too-saturated whole.

‘A more quiet world,’ Svenson replied hollowly.

‘Is that not the same?’ The man shook his head to restore a more sober expression. ‘I am sorry – I have anticipated our meeting, and it makes me merry, though the circumstance is most grave. I am Mr Schoepfil.’

‘And you are acquainted with me?’

‘Of course.’

‘You sent Bronque to identify me, in the office.’

‘Just to be sure. I had to be elsewhere.’

‘The Customs House.’

Schoepfil chuckled ruefully. ‘And only to discover but that you had been there too!