The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters (51 page)

He forced himself to walk down the corridor, glancing again into the compartments—perhaps there was a more hospitable place for him to sit. The other passengers certainly represented a variety—merchants and their wives, a party of students, laborers, and several better-dressed men and women that Svenson did not recognize, but could not help (for such was the world of Lacquer-Sforza, Xonck, and d’Orkancz) but view with great suspicion. What was more, it seemed that in every compartment there were couples of men and women—sometimes more than one—but never another single traveler, except possibly in one compartment, which held a single man and woman, sitting on opposite sides and apparently not speaking to each other. Svenson crushed his cigarette on the corridor floor and entered their compartment, nodding as each looked up at the sound.

Both were in the window seats of their respective row, so Doctor Svenson installed himself on the man’s side, nearest the door. Upon sitting he was at once markedly aware of his fatigue. He removed his monocle, rubbed his eyes with a forefinger and thumb, and replaced it, blinking like a dazed lizard. The man and woman were looking at him discreetly, not with the hostility of the couple in the first compartment, but rather with the mild civilized rebuke of suspicion that is natural when one’s relative solitude on public transport has been disturbed by a stranger. Svenson smiled deferentially and asked, by way of a conversational olive branch, if they were familiar with the Floodmaere line.

“Specifically,” he added, “if you might know the distance to Tarr Village, and the number of stops in between.”

“You are bound for Tarr Village?” asked the man. He was perhaps thirty and wore a crisp suit of indifferent quality, as if he were clerk to a lawyer of middling importance. His black hair was parted in the center and plastered flat to either side, the rigid grooves from his comb revealing furrows of pale flaking scalp contrasting with the flushed pink of his face. Was it hot in the compartment? Svenson did not think so. He turned to the woman, a lady of perhaps his own age, her brown hair braided into a tight bun behind her head. Her dress was simple but well-made—governess to some high-placed brats?—and she wore her age with a handsome frankness Svenson found immediately compelling. Where were his thoughts? First Corinna, then Miss Temple, the rutting dogs of Paradise, now he was ogling every woman he saw—and the Doctor chided himself for, even within that moment, examining the tightly bound swell of her bosom. And then in that same instant, he looked at the woman and felt a vague prick of recognition. Had he met her before? He cleared his throat and answered briskly.

“Indeed, though I have never been before.”

“What draws you there, Mr….?” The woman smiled politely. Svenson returned the smile with pleasure—he’d no idea where he might have seen her, perhaps in the street, perhaps even just then in the station—and opened his mouth to reply. In that very moment, when he felt it was just possible for his heavy mood to shift, his eyes took in the black leather volume she held in her lap. He glanced at the man. He had one as well, poking out from the side pocket of his coat. Was this a train of Puritans?

“Blach—Captain Blach. You will know from my accent that I am not from this land, but indeed, the Duchy of Macklenburg. You may have read of the Macklenburg Crown Prince’s engagement to Miss Lydia Vandaariff—I am attached to Prince Karl-Horst’s party.”

The man nodded in understanding—the woman did not seem to Svenson to react at all, her face maintaining its friendly cast while her mind seemed to work behind it. What could
that
mean? What might either of them know? Doctor Svenson decided to investigate. He leaned forward conspiratorially and dropped his voice.

“And what draws me are dire events…dire events in the world—I’m sure I have no need to elaborate. The cities of the world…well, they are realms of living sin. Who indeed shall be redeemed?”

“Who indeed?” echoed the woman quietly, with a certain deliberate care.

“I was traveling with a woman,” Svenson went on. “I was prevented—perhaps I should say no more about her—from meeting this lady. I believe she may have been forced to take an earlier train. In the process, I was deprived of my”—he nodded to the book in the woman’s lap—“that is, my
guide
.”

Was this too thick? Doctor Svenson felt ridiculous, but was met by the man shifting his position to face him fully, leaning forward in earnest concern.

“Prevented how? And by whom?”

This type of intrigue—play-acting and lies—was still awkward for Doctor Svenson. Even in his work for Baron von Hoern, he preferred discretion and leverage and tact over any outright dissembling. Yet, faced with the man’s open desire for more information, he had—as a doctor—enough experience with conjuring credible authority when he felt helpless and ignorant (how many doomed men had asked him if they were going to die? To how many had he lied?) to frame his immediate hesitation—trying to think of
something
—as the troubled moment of choice where he
decided
to trust them with his tale. He glanced at the corridor and then leaned forward in his turn, as if to imply that perhaps their compartment alone was safe, and spoke just above a whisper.

“You must know that several men have died, and perhaps a woman. A league has been organized, working in the shadows, led by a strange man in red, a half-blind Chinaman, deadly with a blade. The Prince was attacked at the Royal Institute, the powerful work there disrupted…the glass…do you know…have you seen…the blue glass?”

They shook their heads. Svenson’s heart sank. Had he completely misjudged them?

“You do know of Lord Tarr…that he—”

The man nodded vigorously. “Has been redeemed, yes.”

“Exactly.” Svenson nodded, more confident again—but was the man insane? “There will be a new Lord Tarr within days. The nephew. He is a friend of the Prince…a friend to us all—”

“Who prevented you from meeting your lady?” the woman asked, somewhat insistently. The nagging sense he had seen her persisted…something about the slight tilt of her head when she asked a question.

“Agents of the Chinaman,” Svenson answered, feeling an idiot even as he said the words. “We were forced to take separate coaches. I pray she is safe. These men have no decency. We were—as you well know—to travel together—as arranged…”

“To Tarr Village?” asked the man.

“Exactly.”

“Could any of these agents have boarded the train?” the woman asked.

“I do not believe so. I did not see them—I believe I was the last to board.”

“That is good at least.” She sighed with a certain small relief, but did not relax her shoulders, nor her cautious gaze.

“How should we know these agents?” asked the man.

“That is just the thing—they have no uniform, save duplicity and cunning. They have penetrated even to the Prince’s party and turned one of our number to their cause—Doctor Svenson, the Prince’s own physician!”

The man inhaled through his teeth, a disapproving hiss.

“I am telling you,” Svenson went on, “but I fear no one else should know—it may be all is fine, and I should hesitate to agitate—or, that is, make public—”

“Of course not,” she agreed.

“Not even to…?” the man began.

“Who?” asked Svenson.

The man shook his head. “No, you are right. We have been invited—we are guests, after all, guests to a
banquet
.” With this he smiled again, shaking off the Doctor’s tale of dread. His hand went to the book in his pocket and patted it absently, as if it were a sleeping puppy. “You look very tired, you know, Captain Blach,” he said kindly. “There will be time enough to find your friend. Tarr Village is at least another hour and a half away. Why not rest? We will all need our strength for the
climb
.”

Svenson wondered what he meant—the quarry? The hills? Could it mean the manor house? Svenson could not say, and he was exhausted. He needed to sleep. Was he safe with them? The woman interrupted his thoughts.

“What is your lady’s name, Captain?”

“Beg pardon?”

“Your friend. You did not say her name.”

Svenson caught a worried glance from the man to the woman, though her face remained open and friendly. Something was wrong.

“Her name?”

“You did not say what it was.”

“No, you didn’t,” confirmed the man, somewhat after the fact and a touch more insistent for it, as if he’d been caught out.

“Ah. But you see…I do not know it. I only know her clothes—a green dress with green shoes. We were to meet and travel together. Why…did you know each other’s name before this journey?”

She did not immediately answer. When the man answered for her, he knew he had guessed correctly. “We do not know each other’s names even now, Captain, as we were indeed instructed.”

“Now you really should rest,” the woman said, genuinely smiling for perhaps the first time. “I promise we will wake you.”

Within his dream, a part of Doctor Svenson’s mind was aware that he’d not had a regular stretch of sleep in at least two days, and so expected turbulent visions. This sliver of rational distance might contradict but did not alter the successive waves of vivid engagement thrust upon him. He knew the visions were fed by his feelings of loss and isolation—more than anything by his helplessness in the face of Corinna’s death and then his own chronic reticence and cowardice in life—and then all of this regret swirling together with a world of cruelly unquenched desire for other women. Was it merely that, so exhausted, even in sleep, his guard was so much lowered? Or was it, could he admit, that his feelings of guilt provoked in turn a secret pleasure in the act of dreaming with such erotic fervor in an open train compartment? What he knew was the deep warm embrace of sleep, twisting effortlessly in his mind into the embrace of pale soft arms and sweet caressing fingers. He felt as if his body were refracted in a jewel, seeing—and feeling—multiple instances of himself in hopelessly delicious circumstances…Mrs. Marchmoor stroking him under a table…Miss Poole with her tongue in his ear…his nose buried in Rosamonde’s hair, inhaling her perfume…on his hands and knees on the bed, licking each circular indentation on the luscious flesh of the bed-ridden Angelique…his hands—O shamefully!—cupping Miss Temple’s buttocks beneath her dress…his eyes closed, nursing tenderly, hungrily, at the bared breast of the brown-haired governess, who had moved to sit next to him, to ease his torment, offering herself to his lips…the incomparably soft sweet pillow of flesh…her other hand stroking his hair…whispering to him gently…shaking his shoulder.

He snapped awake. She was sitting next to him. She was shaking his arm. He sat up, painfully aware of his arousal, thankful for his greatcoat, his hair in his eyes. The man was gone.

“We are near Tarr Village, Captain,” she said, smiling. “I am sorry to wake you.”

“No, no—thank you—of course—”

“You were sleeping very soundly—I’m afraid I had to shake your arm.”

“I am sorry—”

“There is no reason to be sorry. You must have been tired.”

He noticed that the top button of her dress was now undone. He felt a smear of drool on his lip and wiped it with his sleeve. What had happened? He nodded at where the man had been.

“Your companion—”

“He has gone to the front of the train. I am about to join him, but wanted to make sure you were awake. You were…in your dream, you were speaking.”

“Was I? I do not recall—I seldom recall any dream—”

“You said ‘Corinna’.”

“Did I?”

“You did. Who is she?”

Doctor Svenson forced a puzzled frown and shook his head. “I’ve no idea. Honestly—it’s most strange.” She looked down at him, her open expression, along with the insistent pressure in his trousers, inspiring him to speak further. “You have not told me your name.”

“No.” She hesitated for just a moment. “It is Elöise.”

“You’re a governess, for the children of some Lord.”

She laughed. “Not a Lord. And not a governess either. Perhaps more a
confidante,
and for my salary a tutor, in French, Latin, music, and mathematics.”

“I see.”

“I do not begin to know how you could have guessed. Perhaps it is your military training—I know that officers must learn to read their men like books!” She smiled. “But I do not mind my pupils all the day. They have another lady for that—
she
is their proper governess, and enjoys children much more than I.”

Svenson had no reply, for the moment happy enough to look into her eyes. She smiled at him and then stood. He struggled to stand with her, but she put a hand on his shoulder to dissuade him. “I must get to the front of the train before we arrive. But perhaps we shall see each other in the Village.”

“I should like that,” he said.

“So should I. I do hope you find your lady friend.”

In that moment Doctor Svenson knew where he had seen her, and why he could not place her face, for this Elöise had worn a mask—leaning forward to whisper into the ear of Charlotte Trapping at Harschmort, the night Colonel Trapping had been killed.