The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters (30 page)

She was gone—she was with them. No matter what other webs she might be spinning, Madame Lacquer-Sforza was their ally. If he could have spoken to her alone—but he had no longer any idea where or when or how that might happen. Svenson looked back at the hotel and saw that two of the Comte’s men were lounging by the main entrance. He walked steadily away, his face down, seized by the realization of just how close he had come to suicide. At the end of the block he again ducked around the corner and pressed himself against the wall. What could he possibly do? Where could he possibly go? What leverage could he acquire against such a powerful cabal? He looked up and saw across Grossmaere Avenue…was it? It was—the road he had taken so long ago with the Comte, toward the secret garden and the greenhouse. The woman. He could find her—he could take her—he could ransack the greenhouse for information—he might even lay in ambush for the Comte himself. What did he have to lose? He peered back at the hotel entrance—the men were laughing together. Svenson gauged the traffic and darted out, ducking behind one coach and then another, and was across the avenue. He looked back. No one was following. He was clear of them, and moved with a new purpose.

He tried to remember the exact route to the garden. It had been dark and the streets thick with fog, and his attention elsewhere—on the men following and on the Comte’s conversation. The streets looked so very different in the day and full of people. Still, he could find it—a turn here, along the next block, across that lane—and then around another corner. He found himself at a broad intersection, feeling as if he had mistaken part of the path, when he saw the entrance to a narrow lane across and farther down the street. Could that be it? He walked rapidly along his side of the street until he could gaze down the lane…it was different, but he thought he could see the church-like alcove where the Comte had unlocked the door. Could that be the high wall that lined the garden? Would there be men guarding it? Could he force the lock? Though the alley itself was empty of traffic, he knew all these questions would have to be answered with the crowded avenue only a stone’s throw away. Before he crossed the street toward it, he gave one last look around him to make sure he had not been followed.

Svenson froze. Behind him, through the glass double doors of what had to be another hotel, he saw a young woman sitting on a plush settee, her chestnut hair falling in sausage curls over her face, bent seriously over an open journal, scribbling notes, surrounded by books and newspapers. One of her legs was folded under her on the settee, but on the other—her dress riding up just enough to reveal her shapely calf—she wore a darling green ankle boot. Without another thought Doctor Svenson opened the door to the hotel and went in.

FOUR

Boniface

N
aturally enough, Miss Temple’s first reaction was one of annoyance. She had abandoned her rooms to avoid the mute searching gaze of her maids, silently following her about like a pair of cats, and the far more insistent presence of her Aunt Agathe. She had slept nearly all of the previous day, and when she finally opened her eyes the sky was once again dark. She had bathed and eaten in silence, then slept again. When she woke for the second time in the early morning her aunt had installed herself at the foot of the bed in an armchair dragged by the maids from another room. It had been made clear to Miss Temple the distress she had caused, starting with her unforeseen absence at afternoon tea, and then at dinner, and finally her (characteristically stubborn and reckless) refusal to appear throughout the whole of the evening, to the point that the hotel staff had been alerted—a point of no return, to put it bluntly. This notoriety within the Boniface could only have been inflamed by Miss Temple’s own bloody unexplained arrival (only minutes, Agathe insisted, after she herself had fallen asleep from the exhaustion of worry and waiting).

Agathe was the older sister of Miss Temple’s father, and had lived in the city all of her life. She had been married once to a man who died young and without money, and Agathe had spent her extended widowhood drawing meagerly upon the fortune of a distant grudging sibling. Her hair was grey and at all times tightly kept beneath a hat or wrap or kerchief, as if exposure to the air might breed disease. Her teeth were whole but discolored where her gums had pulled away, which made them appear rather long and giving the rare smiles she was able to bestow onto her niece an unwholesome predatory aspect.

Miss Temple accepted there had been cause for worry and so she had done all she could to allay the aged woman’s fear, even going so far as to answer aloud the delicately pressing question that obviously loomed unvoiced behind her aunt’s every euphemistic query—did her niece still possess her virtue? She had assured her aunt that indeed, she had returned intact, and all the more determined to remain so. She did not, however, go into any great detail about where she had been or what she had endured.

The bloody silk underthings and the filthy topcoat had been burnt in the room’s coal heater while she’d been asleep—the maids hesitantly bringing them to her aunt’s attention when they’d found them littering the floor. Miss Temple herself had refused any suggestion that she see a doctor, a refusal Aunt Agathe had accepted without protest. This acquiescence had surprised Miss Temple, but then she realized her aunt believed that the smaller the circle of knowledge, the smaller the prospect for scandal. They had managed to find a potent salve for the still-raw scoring above her left ear. She would retain a scar, but her hair, once washed and re-curled, hung down to cover it perfectly well, save for a small cherry-red flick the size of a baby’s thumbnail that extended, glistening with salve, onto the unblemished skin of her cheekbone. However, as Miss Temple sat in bed eating her breakfast, she found her aunt’s investiture in the armchair increasingly odious, watching her every bite like an animal hoping for scraps—in this case hoping for some further explanation, some crumb of surety that her position and pension were not to be obliterated by the foolish, wanton urges of a naïve girl thrown over by her ambitious cad of a sweetheart. The problem was that Agathe said nothing. Not once did she challenge Miss Temple’s actions, not once did she trumpet the young lady’s reckless irresponsibility or upbraid her for an unlikely escape, which was surely the result of some undeserved divine intervention. All of this Miss Temple could have dealt with, but the silence—the somehow
puling
silence—vexed her extremely. Once the tray had been removed she announced in a voice of unquestionable clarity that, while she again regretted any inconvenience caused, she had become involved in an adventure, she was unharmed and, far from being finished with the matter, had every intention to pursue it most keenly. Her aunt did not answer, but merely cast her disapproving gaze away from Miss Temple and toward the tidy work desk, upon which the large oiled revolver lay like some kind of loathsome stuffed reptile, a gift brought from some strange uncle’s journey to Venezuela. Her aunt looked back at Miss Temple. Miss Temple announced that she would also be needing a box of the appropriate cartridges.

Her aunt did not respond. Miss Temple took this as an opportunity to end the discussion—or non-discussion—and left the bed for her dressing room, locking the door behind her. With a sigh of frustration she balled her nightdress over her waist and squatted on the chamber pot. It was still early morning, but there was light enough to see her green boots on the floor where the maids had placed them. She winced with discomfort as she wiped herself and stood, replacing the lid. When she had taken her bath it had been dark, mere candle light. She walked to the mirror and understood why the others had stared so. On her throat, above the collar of her nightdress, were bruises—the exact purpled impressions of fingertips and a thumb. She leaned her face closer to the glass and touched them gingerly: it was a ghost of Spragg’s hand. She took a step back and pulled the nightdress over her head. She felt her breath catch, fear dancing along the length of her spine, for it was as if she looked at a different body than her own. There were so many bruises and scratches, the narrow margin of her survival was abruptly, horribly vivid. She ran her fingers over each point of discolored, tender flesh, finally cupping herself where his fingers had most cruelly marked her.

She shut her eyes and sighed heavily, unable to quite expel her unease along with her breath. It was not a feeling Miss Temple could easily tolerate. She reminded herself sternly that she had escaped. The men were dead.

Miss Temple emerged some minutes later in her dressing gown, calling for the maids, and sat at her desk. She pushed up her sleeves—making a firm point not to glance at her aunt, who was staring at her—and picked up the revolver with as much confidence as she could muster. It took her longer than she would have liked—long enough that both maids were now watching as well—but finally she was able to open the cylinder and empty the remaining shells onto the blotter. This done, she quickly wrote a list—again, in the writing taking more time than she would have liked, simply because with each item details emerged that she must make plain. When she was finished she blew on the paper to dry the ink, and turned to the maids. They were two country girls, near enough to her own age that the gaps in respective experience and education became so obvious as to be unbridgeable. To the older, who could read, she handed the folded piece of paper.

“Marie, this is a list of items I will require both from the hotel management and from shops in the city. You will present the management with items one, two, and three, and then from them receive directions as to the shops best suited to satisfy items four and five. I will give you money”—and here Miss Temple reached into the desk drawer and removed a leather notebook with a small pile of crisp banknotes tucked into it. She deliberately peeled off two—then three—notes and handed them to Marie, who bobbed her head as she took them—“and you will make the purchases. Do not forget
receipts
, so I will know exactly how much money has been spent.”

Marie nodded gravely, and with some reason, for Miss Temple was habitually watchful with her money and did not allow odd small sums to disappear where others might, or at least not without due acknowledgment of her generosity.

“The first item is a collection of newspapers, the
World,
the
Courier,
the
Herald,
for today, for yesterday, and for the day before. The second item is a map of the local railway lines. The third item is a geographical map, specifically as it relates to the coastal fen country. The fourth item, which you must find, is a box of
these
.” Here she handed Marie one of the bullets from the revolver. “The fifth item, which will most likely take the longest, for you must be extremely exacting, are three sets of undergarments—you know my sizes—in the finest silk: one in white, one in green, and one…in black.”

With the other maid, Marthe, she retreated into her dressing room to finish her hair, tighten her corset, and apply layers of powder and cream over the bruises on her throat. She emerged, in another green dress, this with a subtle sort of Italian stitchwork across the bodice, and her ankle boots, which Marthe had duly polished, just as a knock on the door brought the first wave of newspapers and maps. The room clerk explained that they had been forced to send out for some of the previous days’ editions, but that these should arrive shortly. Miss Temple gave him a coin, and as soon as he was gone placed the pile on the main dining table and began to sort through it. She did not exactly know what she was looking for, only that she was finished with the frustration of not knowing what she had stepped into. She compared the rail map with the topographical atlas, and began to meticulously plot the route from Stropping Station to Orange Canal. Her finger had progressed as far as De Conque when she became particularly aware of Marthe and Agathe staring at her. She briskly asked Marthe to make tea, and merely gazed steadily at her aunt. Far from taking the hint, Aunt Agathe installed herself in another chair and muttered that a cup of tea would suit her very well.

Miss Temple shifted in her chair, blocking her aunt’s view with her shoulder, and continued to trace the line to Orange Locks, and from there to the Orange Canal itself. She took a particular pleasure in plotting the progress from station to station, having a visual reference for each one in her memory. The rail map had no further detail about roads or villages, much less particularly great houses, so she pulled the atlas toward her and found the page with the greatest detail of the area. She marveled at the distance she had traveled, and suppressed another shiver at how isolated and in peril she had actually been. The country between the final two stations seemed uninhabited—there were no villages on the map that she could find. She knew the great house had been near the sea, for she remembered the smell of salt in the air, though she well knew that the sea breeze travels far over land as flat as the fen country, so it could have been farther than it seemed. She tried to work out a reasonable radius of possibility, given the time the coach took to reach the house from the station, and looked for any landmark whatsoever on the map. She saw an odd symbol near the canals themselves, which a quick check with the map’s legend told her signified “ruin”. How old was the map—could a house that size be so new? Miss Temple looked up at her aunt.

“What is ‘Harschmort’?”

Aunt Agathe took in a sharp breath, but said nothing. Miss Temple narrowed her eyes. Neither spoke (for in some ways at least the older lady partook of a familial stubbornness) and after a full silent minute Miss Temple slammed the atlas shut and, brusquely rising from the table, strode to her inner room. She returned, to her aunt’s great alarm, with the open revolver, reloading the bullets as she went, and making a great effort at slamming the cylinder home. Miss Temple looked up to see the two women gaping at her and sneered—did they think she was going to shoot them?—snatching up a clutch handbag and dropping the revolver into it. She wound the strap around her wrist and then proceeded to gather her pile of papers with both arms. She snapped at Marthe without the least veil over her irritation. “The
door,
Marthe.” The servant girl darted to the front door and pulled it open so Miss Temple, her arms full, was free to sail through. “I will be working where I can find
peace,
if not
cooperation
.”

Walking down the thickly carpeted corridor, and then down to the lobby, Miss Temple felt as if she were re-entering the world, and more importantly that she was confronting the events that had overtaken her. As she walked past various maids and porters, she knew that—because it was the morning shift—these were the same that had seen her blood-soaked arrival. Of course they had all spoken of it, and of course they all cast inquiring glances her way as she walked by. Miss Temple’s resolve was firm, however, and she knew if anything had changed, it was only that she needed to be even more self-reliant. She knew how fortunate she was to have her independence, and to have a disposition that cared so little for the opinions of others. Let them talk, she thought, as long as they also saw her holding her head high, and as long as she possessed the whip-hand of wealth. At the main desk she nodded at the clerk, Mr. Spanning—the very man who had opened the door upon her bloody return. Society manners were not so different than those among her father’s livestock, she knew, or his pack of hounds—and so Miss Temple held Spanning’s gaze longer than normal, until he obsequiously returned her nod.

She had installed herself on one of the wide plush settees in the empty lobby, a quick, hard glare alerting the staff that she required no assistance, spreading the papers into organized stacks. She began by going back to “Harschmort”, jotting down her observations—its status as a ruin, its location. She then turned first to the
Courier,
whose pages would be more likely to follow social affairs. She was determined to learn all she could about the gala evening—first as it was understood by the populace at large, and then, by way of any comments she might find about murdered men in the road or missing women, about its true insidious nature. She read through headlines without any immediate idea of what might be most important: scanning the large black type announcing colonial skirmishes, cunning inventions, international ballooning, society balls, works of charity, scientific expeditions, reforms in the navy, infighting amongst the Ministries—it was clear that she was going to have to
delve
. It had not been ten minutes before she sensed the shadow falling over her work and then heard—had someone come in the main doors?—the vaguely insistent clearing of a throat. She looked up, fully ready to audibly snarl if her Aunt Agathe or Marthe had presumed to follow, but Miss Temple’s eyes saw someone quite different.