Salamander (14 page)

– Countess –

She sneezed. They looked at one another for a moment and then laughed.

– We’ve confused the dust, she said.

– Do you always wear your gown to bed? he asked, not daring yet to do anything else but speak.

– You don’t know much about women’s clothing, do you?

– No.

She leaned over to the side of the bed and blew out the candle.

– I dismissed my maid early. I need you to help me with all of this.

Shyness constrained them to take things methodically:

– You have to do this every night?

– And every morning, in reverse.

– There.

When she set aside the last garment he reached for her and his fingers touched cold metal.

– Go on, she said. That comes off too. I won’t be needing it tonight.

There was no time.

In the darkness they devoured one another, fell back into themselves, spent, and came together again.

– I want to see us.

She lit a candle. They looked, dazed, at their gleaming bodies. Together they were a new world.

He blew out the candle and they lay nestled against one another in the blackness. The bed rolled through the castle, stopped, moved on again.

She told him of her childhood illness, and how she had come to wear the cage. He told her about the sister he had lost.

– How old were you when she died?

– Eleven. But I remember it all so clearly, as if it only happened yesterday.

– Perhaps everything did, she said. The past is who we are.

In the half-light before dawn he finally saw the cage, lying tenantless at the foot of the bed where he had cast it with her other clothing.

– I don’t want to put this back on you, he said. Every day …

– I’ve gotten used to it over the years. It’s part of me.

Flood’s bed approached like a comet returning in its long revolution. She told him her father was expected home today. When they embraced one last time, he said it was strange, the way they had been drawn together. As if, like the Count’s automatons, they had no choice.

– He’s been working on machines, she said, that will one day replace both him and me. We’ve been waiting for the casings to come from Meissen.

– He already treats you like a machine. I want to take you away from here. We could go to Venice. Hide there, find a ship to take us to England.

She shook her head.

– Nicholas, I …

He rose and cautiously parted the curtains. His bed was almost abreast of hers.

– If he found out, what would he do?

Without answering, she kissed him. As he made ready to leap he dug in his pocket and handed her a small T-shaped piece of metal.

– It’s a quoin key, he said. If something happens, leave it on my work table.

He was gone, leaving a faint glow of phosphorescence lingering on the sheets and on Irena’s skin. She held her hands in front of her and watched the light vanish into them.

At breakfast the Count placed a sealed letter on the table, propping it against the chocolate boat.

– I almost forgot, he said casually to Irena. The Abbé asked me to give you this.

– Thank you, Father.

The Count turned to Flood.

– I’m pleased you could join us, my friend. I so look forward to hearing what you have accomplished during my absence.

As he spoke, Irena slid the letter off the table and slipped it into her pocket.

– Ah, my dear, the Count said. I thought perhaps you might favour us with the contents. I find I already miss the Abbé’s intelligent conversation.

He smiled at Flood’s look of surprise.

– There are no secrets at this table, sir.

Irena carefully slit the letter open with her knife, unfolded the paper and read.

– Hm, said the Count, sipping his coffee. Surprisingly conventional, for a man of his talents. Although
bindings
, now, strikes me as somewhat original.
Bonds
is the more usual figure of speech, I believe.

He gave a wheezing laugh.

– It sounds, Mr. Flood, as if he’s borrowing his metaphors from your trade.

He had been aware for some time of a presence stalking the halls and galleries, someone or something that moved at the periphery of his vision, like a mirror-self glimpsed down a distant corridor, but which vanished whenever he turned to look directly at it. He felt its shadow like an invisible eclipse moving across the faces of his many clocks, causing tiny errancies in their usually flawless timekeeping.

At first he had blamed the disruption caused by the printer’s activities. The nautical creaking of the press screw, the click-clack of type slugs dropping into place in the boy’s composing stick, the flutter of sheets drying on cords, stirred by the cold draughts that found their way into the castle despite his best efforts: all these annoyances had disturbed the order of things, but he knew that this
other
presence was something more than mechanical. It was intangible, amorphous, and therefore a true threat. After his return he could not sleep, and rising in the night followed mysterious glowing handprints on walls, naked footprints on floors, tracks that swiftly faded and disappeared before he could arrive at their intended destination. He felt it in tiny, subtle shifts of mood and energy shown by his servants, the way one will be aware of an oncoming bout of influenza long before the actual symptoms occur. He saw it in the face of his daughter, who had begun to neglect her duties, an unprecedented dereliction, and was often found staring dreamily at nothing, no longer even with a book in her hands to explain these lapses from her day’s well-ordered round. At first he thought the presence of the handsome Abbé had distracted the females of the household. But now the suave Frenchman was gone and it was the awkward Englishman, he was forced to conclude, who had introduced an unknown, pernicious element into his smoothly running system, one which he was determined to track down and root out.

To that end he scrutinized everything done and everyone doing it more minutely than ever, eventually noticing that one of the bookcases seemed to be gliding with the merest suggestion of an imbalance, an infinitesimal disturbance in his grand design manifesting itself in the form of a slight wobble.

A brief search confirmed his suspicion: there was an empty
space on the lowest shelf. Missing was the seventh volume,
Helix-Longitude
, of a foreign encyclopedia that he had not consulted in many years. Only one person could be held responsible for this outrage. The Count’s hands shook.

– Irena.

He tracked down her empty bed as it rolled along its accustomed route. He emptied out the night table, stripped away the sheets, tossed aside the pillow and found a paper neatly listing women’s toiletries –
powder, pomade, scented soap, rosewater –
and their estimated cost, a list she was no doubt going to submit to him the next morning for his approval, as she did without fail every quarter. The list, belying its innocence, was tucked into a small octavo volume the Count had never seen before. Slowly, and then with increasing swiftness, he turned the pages, a tremor beginning in his hands and along the grey ridge of his chin.

– My moth, he muttered hoarsely. My little moth.

On the fourth night that Flood leapt through the red velvet curtains of Irena’s bed, he found the Count there with two of his huntsmen brandishing fowling guns.

– You neglected to consider how much I enjoy a good riddle, the Count said. He held up the book of
Desire
so that the pages faced Flood, who saw faint patches of rust on the paper and then realized it was Irena’s name, visible here and there amid the straight black pews of the sermon.

– Your recipe for secret ink, the Count said as Flood was seized and carried off, stands in need of serious modification.