The Chemickal Marriage

Raton Marine, she was unprepared for the surge of tenderness that filled her heart. The tavern lay in a nest of filthy streets, with the buildings to either side tipping like old drunkards. The people in the street, openly staring at the finely dressed young woman with two liveried servants, seemed to Miss Temple like humanity’s bilge, beings who could scarcely take two steps without leaving a stain. Yet in this place Cardinal Chang had been known – these ruins were his world.

Again the footman cleared his throat.

‘Wait here,’ said Miss Temple.

A scattering of men sat outside the tavern at small tables – sailors, by the look of them – and Miss Temple passed through to the door without a glance. Inside, she saw the Raton Marine had been fitted out to serve a broad clientele – tables near the windows with light enough to read, and tables in shadows even the brightest morning would not pierce. A staircase led to a balcony lined with rooms for rent, their open doors draped with an oilcloth curtain. Her nostrils flared in imagining the reek.

Perhaps five men looked up from their drinks as she entered. Miss Temple ignored them and approached the barman, who was polishing a bowlful of silver buttons with a rag, depositing each finished button with a clink into another bowl.

‘Good morning,’ said Miss Temple.

The barman did not reply, but met her eyes.

‘I have been directed here by Cardinal Chang,’ she said. ‘I require a competent man not averse to violence – in fact perhaps several – but one to start, as soon as is convenient.’

‘Cardinal Chang?’

‘Cardinal Chang is dead. If he were not, I should not be here.’

The barman looked past her shoulders at the other men, who had obviously overheard.

‘That’s hard news.’

Miss Temple shrugged. The barman’s gaze flicked at the bandage above her eye.

‘You have money, little miss?’

‘And I will not be cheated. This is for your own time and attention.’ Miss Temple set a gold coin on the polished wood. The barman did not touch it. Miss Temple set down a second coin. ‘And this is for the man you would recommend for my business, taking into account that it is Cardinal Chang’s business as well. If you knew him –’

‘I knew him.’

‘Then perhaps you will be happy to see his killer paid in kind. I assure you I am most serious. Have your candidate present this coin at the Hotel Boniface, and ask for Miss Isobel Hastings. If he knows his work, there will be more in its place.’

Miss Temple turned to the door. At one of the tables a man had stood, unshaven, with fingerless gloves.

‘How’d he get it, then? The old Cardinal?’

‘He was stabbed in the back,’ said Miss Temple coldly. ‘Good day to you all.’

Two restive days went by before the coin was returned. In that time Miss Temple’s headaches had gone, her maid had arrived (bearing a querulous letter from her aunt, thrown away unanswered), and she had begun regular practice with a newly purchased pistol.

The newspapers said nothing of the Duke of Staelmaere’s death, and thus no official appointment of a new head for the Privy Council, though the Council Deputy, a Lord Axewith, had assumed a prominence simply through his regular denials of irregularity. No word of Robert Vandaariff. No word of the Parchfeldt battle. No mention of the Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza. No one called round at the Boniface to arrest Miss Temple. It was as if the Cabal’s machinations had never taken place.

Miss Temple had taken another room on a lower floor for business dealings, ignoring the attendant overtones of impropriety. She knew that to the staff of the Hotel Boniface she had become an eccentric, tolerated as long as each breach of decorum was plastered over by cash. Miss Temple did not care. She installed herself on a sofa, the clutch bag on her lap, one hand inside the bag holding her pistol.

A footman knocked to announce a Mr Pfaff. Miss Temple studied the man who entered, and did not offer him a chair.

‘Your name is Pfaff?’

‘Jack Pfaff. Nicholas suggested I call.’

‘Nicholas?’

‘At the Rat.’

‘Ah.’

Jack Pfaff was at most a year older than Miss Temple herself (a ripe, unmarried twenty-five). His clothing had at one time been near to fashion – chequered trousers and an orange woollen coat with square buttons – as if he were a young fop fallen to poor times. Miss Temple knew from his voice that this was not the case, and that the clothes represented an impoverished man’s desire to climb.

‘You can read? Write?’

‘Both, miss, quite tolerably.’

‘What weapons do you possess – what skills?’

Pfaff reached behind his back and brought out a slim blade. His other hand slipped to an inner pocket and emerged with a set of brass rings across his fingers.

‘Those are nothing against a sabre or musket.’

‘Am I to fight soldiers, miss?’

‘I should hope not, for your sake. Are you averse to killing?’

‘The law does prohibit the practice, miss.’

‘And if a man spat in your face?’

‘O goodness, I would step away like a Christian.’ Pfaff raised his eyebrows affably. ‘Then again, most incidents of face-spitting can be laid to drink. Perhaps it would be more proper to cut a spitting man’s throat, to spite the devil inside.’

Miss Temple did not appreciate trifling. ‘Why does this Nicholas consider you fit for my employ?’

‘I am skilled in opening doors.’

‘I requested no thief.’

‘I speak broadly, miss. I am a man who finds ways.’

Miss Temple bit back a tart remark. A man like Pfaff, now unavoidable, must be met with intelligence and a smile.

‘Did you know Cardinal Chang?’

‘Everyone knew him – he cut a rare figure.’

‘You were his friend?’

‘He would on occasion allow a fellow to stand him a drink.’

‘Why would you do that?’

‘You knew him, miss – why would I not?’ Pfaff smiled evenly, watching her bag and the hand within it. ‘Perhaps you’ll enlighten me as to the present business.’

‘Sit down, Mr Pfaff. Put those things away.’

Pfaff restored the weapons to their places and stepped to an armchair, flipping out his coat-tails before settling. Miss Temple indicated the silver service on a table.

‘There is tea, if you would have some. I will explain what I require. And then you – with your doors – will suggest how best it can be done.’

Miss Temple soaked again that night in the copper tub, auburn hair dragging like dead weeds across the water. Her thoughts were stalled by fatigue, and the sorrow she strove to avoid loomed near.

She had told Mr Pfaff only enough to start his work, but his mercenary trespass of the roles formerly occupied by Chang and Svenson left Miss Temple feeling their absence. Even more troubling, close conversation with Pfaff had awakened, for the first time since leaving Parchfeldt Park, the spark of Miss Temple’s blue glass memories. It was not that Pfaff himself was attractive – on the contrary, she found him repellent, with brown teeth and coarse hair the colour of dung-muddled straw – but the longer he had remained in her physical proximity, the more she felt that dreaded bodily stirring, like a stretch of invisible limbs too long asleep.

In the copper tub, Miss Temple took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, inching herself towards the brink of