With a two-handed wrench the Contessa peeled his trousers to his thighs and then with another ripped open his knitted woollen undersuit, bursting the buttons to his ribcage. She laughed at the flying buttons and then chuckled more deeply – with pleasure and, Svenson wanted to believe, appreciation – at the sight of his arousal. One gloved hand wrapped around his extended flesh, the grip of silk perfectly exquisite. The Contessa coyly bit her lip.
‘True bargains are tricky things, Doctor … would you not agree?’
‘They are the soul of civilized society.’
‘Civilization?’ Her hand resumed its measured stroke. ‘We live in the same riot as old Rome and stinking Egypt … my goodness, there it is …’ Her free hand reached to push aside his underclothes and expose the pink whorl of his scar. ‘That you did not die is a miracle.’ Her hand slid upwards, and, as she stretched, the Contessa’s full mouth came closer to her stroking. ‘But bargains, Doctor … between the likes of us, we have no need for such veneer.’
‘What would you offer, then?’
The Contessa grinned at his dry tone. ‘Well … I could give you what I gave Harcourt. The card is in my bag.’ She smeared a bead of fluid across the sensitive plumskin with the flat of her thumb and the Doctor hissed with pleasure. ‘The experience it holds is singularly transporting … if transport is what you want.’
‘And if I decline?’
‘Then perhaps I could give you the key to Oskar’s grand strategy.’
‘You know what he plans?’
‘I have always known. He is complicated, but still a man.’
As a man well in her power Svenson let this pass. ‘And in exchange I would do my best to stop him. Is that why I am alive?’
‘O Doctor Svenson,’ she cooed disapprovingly, ‘we are alive for pleasure …’
Her head dipped and the Doctor gasped with anticipation of her tongue, but instead he felt only the cool tease of her blown breath. The Contessa rose and with both hands took his greatcoat’s lapels and shoved him into her place on the divan. Bared and straining, trousers balled at the knees, with the pistol to one side and her jewelled bag to the other, he looked up at her. The Contessa gathered her dress – revealing her splendid, shapely, stockinged calves – and knelt astride him, her thighs upon his own, the mass of red silk covering his body near to the neck. His stiffness pulled against her petticoats. He gripped her waist.
‘This means nothing to you,’ he gasped.
‘What a ridiculous thing to say.’ Her voice was husky and low.
‘I remain your enemy.’
‘And I may kill you.’ She nudged her hips forward, sliding herself along his length. ‘Or make you my slave.’
‘I would rather die.’
‘As if the choice were yours.’
She drew her tongue over the gash below his eye. Svenson shifted his hips, seeking her with a blind nudge, but the Contessa edged away. His hands slid to her buttocks and pulled her closer, encountering another tangled layer of frustrating silk. The Contessa chuckled and raised her face. Too late he saw that she had reached into her bag. Before he could blink her gloved fingers had a blue glass card before his eyes, sticking Svenson as fast as an insect impaled on a board.
The Doctor’s mind traversed the entire cycle of experience inside the card but without understanding. So immersive were the colours that he lost all sense of space, and so vivid the curving lines and modelled forms that their images vibrated inside his brain, as if they’d been accompanied by silent explosions of gunpowder. More confusing still was the disconnection between the chaotic tableau before him and the still position of his body – and the body of the person from whom the memory originally came, the mind from whom this card had been harvested.
But slowly the space around him cleared …
A brightly lit room … an enormous room, for the canvas it held was immense.
Another cycle swept by, his attention lost in the details of swirling paint. The back of his mind throbbed with warning. Was this Harcourt’s card after all? But no, Harcourt’s transfixion had been erotic, and such was not, despite the extreme arousal of only moments before, his present experience. No … the emotion here was fear, controlled through great force of will, a deep-rooted dread emanating from the vision before his eyes, and in the sickening realization that far too much of the painting – and thus the intentions of its maker – remained incomprehensible.
This fear was especially strange coming from the body of the Contessa, for the memory came from her mind. However much the painting set the senses ablaze, he could not deny an anxious, thrilling tremor at feeling her body as his own – the weight of her limbs, the lower pivot of gravity, the grip of her corset …
The Contessa had learnt to make glass cards herself, from consulting her book. No doubt Harcourt’s card was also infused with some incident from her own life. Why had she sacrificed her own memories? Was her desperation so great as to warrant boring these holes into her own existence? Such questions the Doctor could only sketch in the backroom of his thoughts, as the greater part of his attention was devoured by the painted spectacle.
In form, the composition resembled a genealogical chart, centring around the joining of two massive families, each branching out from the wedded pair – parents, uncles, siblings, cousins, all punctuated by children and spouses. The figures stood without strict perspective, like a medieval illuminated manuscript, as if the painting were an archaic commemoration. Svenson felt his throat catch. A wedding.
This was the Comte’s canvas, mentioned in the Herald … what had it been called? The Chemickal Marriage …
That this was the work of Oskar Veilandt brought the canvas into clearer focus. The obsessively detailed background, which he had taken to be mere decoration, became a weave of letters, numbers and symbols – the alchemical formulae the Comte employed throughout his other work. The figures themselves were as vivid as Veilandt’s other paintings – cruelly rendered, faces twisted with need, hands groping for fervent satisfaction … but Svenson’s gaze could not long alight on any single figure without his head beginning to spin. He knew this was the Contessa’s experience, and that his path by definition followed hers.
Still, she had looked again and again, staring hard …
And then he knew: it was the paint; or, rather, that the Comte had inset slivers of blue glass within the paint; and sometimes more than slivers – whole tiles, like a mosaic, infused with vivid daubs of memory. The entire surface glittered with sensation, undulated like a heaving sea. The scope was astonishing. How many souls had been dredged to serve the artist’s purpose? Who could consume the lacerating whole and retain their sanity? His mind swarmed with alchemical correspondences – did each figure represent a chemical element? A heavenly body? Were they angels? Demons? He saw letters from the Hebrew alphabet, and cards from a gypsy fortune-teller. He saw anatomy – organs, bones, glands, vessels. Again the cycle played through. He felt the Contessa’s heroic determination to carve out this very record.
Eventually, Svenson was able to fix his gaze on the central couple, the ‘chemickal marriage’ itself. Both were innocent in appearance, but their voluptuous physicality betrayed a knowing hunger – there was no doubt of the union’s carnal aspect. The Bride wore a dress as thin as a veil, every detail of her body plain. One foot was bare and touched an azure pool (from which Svenson flinched, for it swam with memories), while her other wore an orange slipper with an Arab’s curled toe. One hand held a bouquet of glass flowers and the other, balanced on her open palm, a golden ring. Orange hair fell to her bare shoulders. The upper part of her face wore a half-mask upon which had been painted, without question, the exact features of the Contessa. The mouth below the mask smiled demurely, the teeth within bright blue.
The Groom wore an equally diaphanous robe – Svenson was reminded of the initiation garments of those undergoing the Process – his skin as jet black as the Bride’s was pale. One foot was buried in the earth up to the ankle,
while the other was wrapped in shining steel. In his right hand he held a curved silver blade and in his left a glowing red orb the size of a newborn’s skull. His hair, as long as hers, was blue, and, like his mate, the upper portion of his face was masked – a blank mask of white feathers, save the eyes that shone through were bright ovals of glass. Svenson knew that each eye, perhaps more than anywhere else on the canvas, contained charged memories that might make sense of the whole. But the Contessa had not dared to look. The cycle of the card ended, and swept the Doctor helplessly back to its dizzied beginning.
He blinked and saw the tower chamber, the blue card safe in Cardinal Chang’s gloved hand. At Chang’s side stood Miss Temple, frowning with concern. Doctor Svenson sat up like a yanked puppet, only to find that his clothing had been completely restored. The pistol lay to his side. They stared as if he were mad.
‘What has happened?’ he asked, his voice cracking.
‘What has happened to you?’ Chang replied.
Svenson turned to the open arch, saw no one beyond it, then pointed vaguely at the tapestry hiding the staircase door. He saw the exasperation in Chang’s sneer, and the confusion on Miss Temple’s brow. They had not done up his trousers. It had been the Contessa. But when? His arousal had passed – he could not suppress a downwards glance – but under what circumstances?
Cardinal Chang held up the blue card. ‘Where did you get this?’
‘The Contessa.’ In his companions’ presence his complicity with the woman seemed utterly indefensible. ‘I met the Contessa –’
‘How could you have been such a fool to look into it?’
‘I tried to kill her – I failed – somehow we ended up fleeing from the guards –’
Miss Temple took his hand and sat next to him. ‘You must tell us everything.’ Her gaze caught the glass card in Chang’s hand. ‘And you must tell us what you saw.’
Doctor Svenson kept the tale decorous, aided by the fact that any impropriety with the Contessa lay beyond their imagination. Whenever his narrative faltered, Miss Temple or Chang would cut in with a question whose answer allowed an elision. Interwoven with their questions were details of their own struggle. Under the cover of Svenson’s gunfire they had fled deeper into the Palace. A wave of soldiers had swept each floor, but they managed to hide. When Miss Temple related this last, Svenson was sure he saw her cheeks redden.
‘Where did you conceal yourselves?’ he asked.
‘A wardrobe,’ muttered Chang. But Miss Temple, compensating for her blush, seemed determined to dismiss all mystery.
‘The trick of it being that a wardrobe full of clothing does not allow two people in it, and a wardrobe without clothing does not hide them if a diligent searcher opens its door. Further, it does not do at all to heave out half the contents to strike the proper balance – a heap of clothing serving as advertisement for close scrutiny.’
‘Quite the puzzle,’ offered the Doctor.
Her blush returned.
‘We saw nothing of Phelps or Cunsher,’ said Chang brusquely, shovelling earth on the subject of wardrobes.
‘Nor I,’ said Svenson. He described the death of Lord Pont-Joule, the Contessa’s enslavement of Princess Sophia and Mr Harcourt, and the two purloined documents.
‘And you left her alive.’ Chang’s voice was flat, as if the fact of Svenson’s action was damning enough. ‘And she spared you. Why?’
‘For the same reason she sent the red envelopes to Celeste’s hotel. She is not strong enough to defeat the Comte on her own – now that the Comte is Robert Vandaariff.’
‘What did she want you to do?’ asked Miss Temple.
‘I cannot say – yet the answer lies in that bit of glass. Infused with her own memories.’
‘Uncharacteristic,’ said Chang. ‘Such harvesting is for the lower orders.’
Svenson nodded. ‘There is no way to explain. You must each look into that card.’
Already seated, Miss Temple took the card first. Svenson remained next to her. Though she’d displayed no ill-effects from viewing the glass map, he wanted to be sure that this more potent card did not provoke any. She gasped softly as the cycle completed, but he detected no sudden pallor, no chill upon her skin. Chang watched with a sour expression.
‘How long should we allow her to look?’
‘Another minute.’ Svenson spoke quietly, as if Miss Temple were asleep. ‘The level of detail is prodigious, almost impossible to comprehend.’
‘What is it? You have not said.’
‘The Comte’s great painting. The one mentioned in the cutting from the Herald.’
‘That cannot be coincidence. Did Phelps find where it is, where it had been shown?’
‘I do not know.’
‘He did not tell you?’
‘We were distracted by the crowd –’
‘But that fact is extremely important! I assume you told him about your errands. Was he hiding the information deliberately?’
‘No – yes, we did ask him, but he was not – excuse me …’ Svenson rubbed his eyes.
‘What’s wrong? Are you sick?’
‘In a manner of speaking. It is the glass card – the bodily perspective. One inhabits the Contessa herself.’
Chang took this in, then snorted with a wolfish appreciation.
‘Indeed,’ said Doctor Svenson drily. ‘One is taken aback in unexpected ways.’
Both men turned to Miss Temple. Svenson realized he was staring and cleared his throat. ‘The Contessa made a deliberate examination of that man’s masterwork – again, one assumes she had a reason.’
‘Where is the memory from? Or when? Does she tell us where to find the painting?’
Svenson shook his head. ‘The very scale places the execution in the past. The Comte simply wouldn’t have had time in these last months. What’s more, as the clipping cites Oskar Veilandt, it more likely dates to before the artist remade himself as the Comte. As to location, that would have to be someplace large.’
‘Harschmort?’
‘I have to think we would have seen it already – we have walked miles through those halls.’ Svenson was painfully aware that only one of Chang’s questions had been answered: the Contessa had spared the Doctor’s life, for her own reasons … but why had Svenson spared hers?
‘I assume she cannot hear us,’ said Chang.
‘I should not think so.’
‘You say the Contessa makes her own glass. I agree. She may have made Miss Temple’s man Pfaff as much her creature as that Princess.’
‘Does Celeste know this?’
‘She knows not to trust him. What about you?’
‘Me? I should not even recognize the fellow –’
‘No. You are continually distracted. Yes, you were injured – and certainly your losses weigh upon you –’
‘No, no – I am perfectly able –’
‘Able? You left this monstrous woman alive!’
‘And my presence of mind with a pistol kept both of you from being taken.’
‘Perhaps, but if we cannot rely upon –’
‘Perhaps? Rely?’
‘Do not become agitated –’
‘Do not presume to be my master!’
Svenson’s words were sharper than he intended, the venting of too many worries, and they echoed off the stone walls. Chang’s hands balled into fists – in the silence Svenson could hear the stretching of his leather gloves.
‘Cardinal Chang –’
‘There is no time for any of this,’ Chang announced coldly. ‘It must be half nine o’clock. Wake her up.’
Distracted by her experience, Miss Temple did not notice their anger. She insisted that Chang too must look, promising to pull the card away after two minutes. Once he was installed on the divan with the card before his livid eyes, she turned to Doctor Svenson with a shrug.
‘Five minutes will do just as well. You are right to say one cannot get one’s mind around the painting, if one can even term it that. Beastl
y thing.’
Svenson studied her face for a toxic reaction. This painting went straight to the Comte’s alchemical cosmology, to his heart.
‘One does not appreciate being stared at,’ she told him hoarsely.
‘My apologies, my dear – I am worried about you.’
‘Do not be.’
‘I’m afraid I must. Did you – well, from the Comte, did you recognize the painting?’
‘In fact I did not,’ she replied, ‘or, I did, but not in the detail I should have expected – I should have expected to lose my last meal – but it struck me like the memories of a distant summer. The awareness of being there, but no longer the knowledge.’
‘Because the memory comes through the Contessa?’
‘Possibly, though I couldn’t say why. Perhaps the Comte wasn’t himself at the time.’
‘You mean opium?’
‘I don’t mean anything. But I’m sure we will puzzle the matter out. I have a great fondness for reading maps, you know, and you must have experience with codes and ciphers – we are halfway home.’
‘It is more than that, Celeste. Think of the thirteen paintings of the Comte’s Annunciation, and the alchemical recipe they contained for physical transformation. Think of Lydia Vandaariff.’
Svenson recalled the hellish scene in the laboratory at Harschmort: the Comte in a leather apron, cradling a snouted device of polished steel, Karl-Horst von Maasmärck lolling in an armchair, stupid with brandy, and Robert Vandaariff’s daughter tied to a bed, a pool of bright blue fluid between her legs. Whether she had been impregnated by the Prince or by the Comte himself barely mattered. Sailing to her wedding in Macklenburg, oblivious to all that had been done, the young woman had grown rapidly more ill, as poisons strove to remake her issue for a madman’s dream.
Miss Temple shuddered. ‘But it cannot have worked. Lydia would not have given birth to … to any living … I mean – transformed –’
‘No,’ said Svenson. ‘I am sure she would have died. But what is death to the Comte’s – now Vandaariff’s – madness? And this new painting is more than three times the size of the Annunciation. We know it is a recipe for something. We must not delude ourselves at how terrible it may be.’