For that image of possible escape, that unintended echo of her own vast imagined life, so far removed … she had been surprised. She had remembered that moment, and offered him, here at the end, that much thanks.
* * *
Cardinal Chang blinked. He looked at the floor. He was on his hands and knees, bloody saliva hanging from his mouth. Colonel Aspiche loomed above him, the glass book cradled in his hands. Angelique stood with the Comte d’Orkancz, her gaze wandering with neither curiosity nor interest. The Comte nodded to the dais and Chang forced himself to turn. Near the dais the crowd parted again … for Mrs. Stearne. She entered leading by the hand a small woman in a white silk robe. Chang shook his head—he could not think—the woman in white … he knew her … he blinked again and wiped his mouth, swallowing painfully. The robe was sheer, clinging tightly to her body … her feet were bare … a mask of white feathers … hair the color of chestnuts, in sausage curls to either side of her head. With an effort Chang rose up on his knees.
He opened his mouth to speak as Mrs. Stearne reached behind her and pulled the feathered mask from Miss Temple’s face. The scars of the Process were vivid around each grey eye, and burned in a line across the bridge of her nose.
Chang tried to say her name. His mouth would not work.
Colonel Aspiche moved behind him. The force of the blow so spun the room that Chang wondered, in his last moment before darkness, whether his head had been cut off.
THREE
Provocateur
As a surgeon, Doctor Svenson knew that the body did not remember pain, only that an experience had been painful. Extreme fear however was seared into the memory like nothing else in life, and as he pulled himself, hand over agonizing hand, toward the metal gondola, the dark countryside spinning dizzily below him, the freezing winds numbing his face and fingers, the Doctor’s grasp on his own sanity was tenuous at best. He tried to think of anything but the sickening drop below his kicking boots, but he could not. The effort denied him the breath to scream or even cry out, but with each wrenching movement he whimpered with open terror. All his life he had shrunk away from heights of any kind—even climbing ladders aboard ship he willed his eyes to look straight ahead and his limbs to move, lest his mind or stomach give way to even that meager height. Despite himself he scoffed—a staccato bark of saliva—at the very notion of ladders. His only consolation, feeble in the extreme, was that the noise of the wind and the darkness of the sky had so far hidden him from anyone looking out of a window. Not that he knew for certain he had not been seen. The Doctor’s own eyes were tightly shut.
He had climbed perhaps half-way up the rope and his arms felt like burning lead. Already it seemed all he could do to hold on. He opened his eyes for the briefest glimpse, shutting them at once with a yelp at the vertigo caused by the swinging gondola. Where before he’d seen a face at the circular window there was only black glass. Had it truly been Elöise? He had been sure on the ground, but now—now he barely knew his own name. He forced himself upwards—each moment of letting one hand go to stab above him for the rope was a spike of fear in his heart, and yet he made himself do it again and again, feeling his way, his face locked in a shocking rictus of effort.
Another two feet. His mind assailed him—why not stop? Why not let go? Wasn’t this the underlying dread behind his fear of heights to begin with—the actual impulse to jump? Why else did he shrink away from balconies and windows, but for the sudden urge to hurl himself into the air? Now it would be so simple. The grassy pastures below would be as good a grave as any sea—and how many times had he contemplated that, since Corinna’s death? How many times had he grown cold looking over the iron rail of a Baltic ship, worrying—like a depressive terrier with a well-gnawed stick—the urge to throw himself over the side?
Another two feet, gritting his teeth and kicking his legs, driving himself by pure will and anger. That was a reason to live—his hatred for these people, their condescension, their assumption of privilege, their unconscionable appetite. He thought of them in the gondola, away from the freezing cold, no doubt wrapped in furs, soothed by the whispering wind and the whistling buzz of the rotors. Another foot, his arms slack as rope. He opened his hand and snatched for a new grip … kicked his boots … again … again. He forced his mind to think of anything but the drop—the dirigible—he’d never seen anything like it! Obviously full of some gas—hydrogen, he assumed—but was that all? And how was it powered? He didn’t know how it could bear the weight of the gondola much less a steam engine … could there be some other source? Something with Lorenz and the indigo clay? In the abstract Svenson might have found these questions fascinating, but now he threw himself into them with the mindless fervor of a man reciting multiplication tables to stave off an impending crise.
He opened his eyes again and looked up. He was closer than he thought, hanging some ten yards below the long iron cabin. The upper end of the rope was secured to the steel frame of the gasbag itself, just behind the cabin. The rear of the cabin had no window that he could see … but did it have a door? He closed his eyes and climbed, three agonizing feet, and looked up again. Doctor Svenson was suddenly appalled … climbing with his eyes closed he hadn’t realized … and for a moment he simply clung where he was. Below and to each side of the cabin were the rear rotors—each perhaps eight feet across—and his path on the rope led right between them. Between the wind and his own exertions, the rope swung back and forth—the blades themselves were turning so fast he couldn’t tell how wide the gap really was. The higher he got, the more any exertion might send him too far in either direction—and straight into the blades.
There was nothing he could do except drop, and the longer he delayed out of fear, the less strength was in his arms. He pulled himself up, clamping shut his eyes, and gripped the cable more firmly between his knees to steady the swinging. As he inched higher he could hear the rotors’ menacing revolutions more clearly, a relentless chopping of air. He was just beneath them. He could smell the exhaust—the same sharp tang of ozone, sulphur, and scorched rubber that had nearly made him sick in the attic of Tarr Manor—the flying vehicle was another emanation of the Cabal’s insidious science. He could sense the rotors near to him, invisibly slicing past. He extended a hand up the rope, then another, and then hauled his entire body into range, braced for the savage impact that would shear off a limb. The blades roared around him but he remained somehow unscathed. Svenson inched higher, his entire body shaking with the effort. The gondola was right in front of him—some three feet out of reach. Any attempt to nudge the rope toward it—if he didn’t catch hold—would send him straight into the rotors on the backswing. Even worse, there was nothing on the rear of the gondola to grab on to even if he risked the attempt. He looked up. The cable was attached to the metal frame by an iron bolt … it was his only option. Another two yards. His head was above the rotors. He could almost touch the bolt. He inched up another foot, gasping, his body expending itself in a way he could not comprehend. Another six inches. He reached up in agony, felt the bolt, and then above it the riveted steel strut. A spasm of fear shot through him—he was only holding to the rope with one hand and his knees. He swallowed, and fixed his grip on the strut. He was going to have to let go and pull himself up. It should be possible to wrap his legs around the strut and creep over the rotors to the top of the gondola. But he would have to let go of the rope. Suddenly—it was perhaps inevitable—his nerves got the best of him and his rope hand slipped. At once Doctor Svenson thrust both arms toward the metal strut and caught hold, his legs flailing wildly. He looked down to see the rope disappear into the right side rotor, flayed to pieces. He pulled his knees to his chest with a whimpering cry—before the rotors hacked off his feet—and kicked them over the metal bar. He looked up at the canvas gasbag just above his head. Directly below him was death—by dismemberment if not by impact. He slowly slid along the strut, painfully shifting his grip on the freezing metal around the intervening cross-pieces. His hands felt
numb—he was gripping as tightly with his forearms as his fingers.
It took him ten minutes to crawl ten feet. The gondola was directly beneath him. As gently as he could he let down his legs and felt the solid metal beneath his feet. His eyes were streaming—whether with tears or the wind, Doctor Svenson hadn’t a clue.
The gondola was a smooth metal box of blackened steel, suspended some three feet below the massive gasbag by metal struts bolted to its frame at each corner. The surface of the roof was slick from the cold and the moisture in the foggy coastal air, and Doctor Svenson was both too paralyzed with fear and too numbed by exertion to allow himself so near the edge to cling to one of these corner struts. Instead, he crouched in the center of the roof with his arms wrapped around the same metal brace he’d used to climb forward. His teeth chattered as he forced his staggered mind to examine his circumstances. The gondola was perhaps twelve feet across and forty feet in length. He could see a round hatch set into the rooftop, but going to it would require him to release his hold on the metal brace. He shut his eyes and focused on breathing, shivering despite his greatcoat and his recent exertion—or even because of it, the sweat over his body and in his clothing now viciously chilling his flesh in the bitter wind. He opened his eyes at a sudden lurch, holding on to the metal brace for his life. The dirigible was turning and Svenson felt his grip inexorably weakening as the force of the turn pulled him away. With an insane bark of laughter he saw himself—in a desperate attempt to manage his grip on a swiftly turning airship—in comparison to his lifelong anxiety at climbing ladders. He remembered just the day before—was it so recently?—emerging on his hands and knees onto the rooftop of the Macklenburg compound! If he’d only known! Svenson tightened his grip and cackled again—the rooftop! He was clinging to the very answer to the mystery of the Prince’s escape—they’d come for him with the dirigible! The rotors would be silent at a lower speed—they could have easily drifted into position and lowered men to liberate the Prince with no one being the wiser. Even the crimped cigarette butt made sense—discarded by the Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza as she watched from a gondola window. What still made no sense however, was why the Prince had been stolen without the other Cabal members—Xonck and Crabbé at the least—being aware of it. Like the death of Arthur Trapping, it lay between his enemies without explanation … if he could just unravel either mystery … he might understand it all.
The dirigible straightened out of the turn. The fog thickened around Svenson, and he moved forward on the strut, careful not to step too heavily—the last thing he wanted was for anyone below to know he was there. He shut his eyes once more and tried to ease his heaving breath to mere gasps and chattering teeth. He would not move until his arms fell off or until the dirigible found its destination, whichever happened first.
When he opened his eyes the dirigible was making another turn, less precipitous than before and—he hadn’t realized, but now saw through ragged gaps in the fog—at a lower altitude, some two hundred feet above what looked like a low fennish grassland, with scarcely a single tree in sight. Were they possibly crossing the sea? He saw lights through the gloom, first dim and winking, but as they went on emerging with a growing clarity that allowed him to sketch out the entirety of their destination—for indeed, as he studied it the dirigible continued to descend.
It was an enormous structure, but relatively low to the ground—Svenson’s guess was two or three stories—giving out an impression of massive strength. The place as a whole was shaped something like a disconnected jawbone, with the center space taken up by some sort of ornamental garden. As they soared closer he could hear a variation in the sound of the rotors—they were slowing down—as he saw more detail: the large open plaza in front, thronged with coaches and dotted with the ant-like (or as they neared, mouse-like) figures of drivers and grooms. Svenson looked to the other side and saw a pair of waving lanterns on the rooftop and behind the lanterns a group of men—no doubt waiting to wrangle the mooring ropes. They drifted closer … a hundred feet, seventy feet … Svenson was suddenly concerned about being seen, and against all his better wishes dropped down to hang on to the hatch handle, flattening his body over the roof of the gondola. The steel plate was freezing. He had one hand on the handle and the other spread out across the roof for balance, with each boot splayed toward a different corner. They sank lower. He could hear shouts from below, and then the pop of a window being opened and an answering shout from the gondola.
They were landing at Harschmort House.
Doctor Svenson shut his eyes again, now more out of dread at being discovered than at his still-precarious altitude, as all around him he heard the calls and whistles of the craft coming in to land. No one came up through the hatch—apparently the mooring cables were lowered from the front of the gondola. Perhaps once the rotors stopped the cables were re-attached to the bolt where he’d climbed. He had no idea—but it was only a matter of time before he was discovered. He forced his mind to think about his situation, and his immediate odds.
He was unarmed. He was physically spent—as well as his ankle twisted, head battered, and hands raw from the climb. There was on the rooftop a gang of assuredly burly men more than willing to take him in hand, if not fling him to the plaza below. Within the gondola lurked another handful of enemies—Crabbé, Aspiche, Lorenz, Miss Poole … and in their power, in who knew what state—or, if he was perfectly honest, with what loyalties—Elöise Dujong. Below him he heard another popping sound and then a loud metallic rattle that ended in a heavy ring of steel striking stone. He suppressed the urge to raise his head and peek. The gondola began to rock slightly as he heard voices—Crabbé calling out and then after him Miss Poole. Someone answered them from below and then the conversation grew to too many voices for him to follow—they were descending from the gondola via some lowered ladder or staircase.
“At long last,” this was Crabbé, calling to someone across the rooftop, “is everything ready?”
“A most delightful time,” Miss Poole was saying to someone else, “though not without adventure—”
“Damnable thing,” Crabbé continued. “I’ve no idea—Lorenz says he can, but that is news to me—yes, twice—the second straight through the heart—”
“Gently! Gently now!” This was Lorenz calling out. “And ice—we’re going to need a washtub full at once—yes, all of you—take hold! Quickly now, there is no time!”
Crabbé was listening as someone speaking too low for Svenson to hear briefed him on events elsewhere—could this be Bascombe?
“Yes … yes … I see …” He could picture the Deputy Minister nodding along as he muttered. “And Carfax? Baax-Saornes? Baroness Roote? Mrs. Kraft? Henry Xonck? Excellent—and what of our illustrious host?”
“The Colonel has injured his ankle, yes,” Miss Poole chuckled—was there ever a thing that woman did not find amusing?—“in battle against the dread Doctor Svenson. I am afraid the poor Doctor’s death was hard—my complexion is quite ashen at the prospect!”
Miss Poole—and joining her with a bellowing “haw haw haw” was Colonel Aspiche—erupted in laughter at her pun. In Svenson’s spent emotional state, it was something of an abstraction to realize that the object of their sport was his being burnt in an oven.
“This way—this way—yes! I do declare, Miss Poole, the ride does not seem to have suited her!”
“And yet she seemed so recently tractable, Colonel—perhaps the lady merely requires more of your kind attention.”
They were taking Elöise away—she was alive. What had they done to her? Worse, what did Miss Poole mean by “tractable”? He tormented himself with the image of Elöise on the wooden staircase, the confusion in her eyes … she had come to Tarr Manor for a reason, no matter that it was gone from her memory. Who was Svenson to say who she truly was? Then he remembered the warm press of her lips against his and had no idea what to think at all. Still Svenson’s fear at being discovered would not let him look up. The seconds crawled by
and he muttered to himself, fervently wishing the pack of them off the rooftop as quickly as possible.
Finally the voices were gone. But what of the men mooring the craft, or guarding it? Doctor Svenson heard a muffled clicking from the hatch beneath him, then felt the handle turning in his hand. He scuttled back as the handle caught the bolt. The hatch rose, and directly after it appeared the grease-smeared face of a man in coveralls. He saw Svenson and opened his mouth in surprise. Svenson drove the heel of his boot into the man’s face with all his strength, grimacing at the crunch of impact. The fellow abruptly dropped back through the open hatch, Svenson scrabbling after him. He thrust both legs through the round hole, ignoring the line of iron rungs bolted to the wall, and launched himself down onto the groaning, stunned body sitting at its feet. Svenson landed squarely on the man’s shoulders, flattening him hard against the floor with a meaty thud. He stumbled from his unmoving victim and grabbed on to the rungs for balance. Sticking out from a pocket of the man’s coveralls was an enormous, greasy wrench. Weighing it in his hand, Svenson recalled both the wrench with which he had doomed Mr. Coates at Tarr Village, and the candlestick with which he had murdered the unfortunate Starck. Had such mayhem become so necessary, so natural a tactic? Was it only the night before when the Comte had brought to mind Svenson’s guilt upon poisoning the fellow—the villain, did it matter—in Bremen? Where were those tender scruples now?