Angels of Music (6 page)

Christine and Trilby argued over the map, feeding Irene instructions at each turn. The horses knew their way already, which Irene didn’t find all that comforting.

The Angels of Music tore through the streets of Paris.

A
T MIDNIGHT, THREE
happy couples were escorted by creaking wooden soldiers from the ballroom of the barge into a smaller, equally well-appointed chamber where the company was far more select. Here, music was provided by intricate automata whose instruments were parts of their bodies. The orchestra had been constructed by skilled Venetian craftsmen a century earlier.

A stiff-backed, golden-faced toy conductor – a marvellous engine in itself, clad in a gold swallow-tail coat with jewel-studded epaulettes – precisely ticked off the seconds with a baton.

The Count, the Baron and the Duke each escorted a tiny dancer. Barbée, Cyndée and Annette en Lambeaux had entirely captivated their newfound fiancés with artificial charms, augmented by certain drugs administered through tiny scratches from sharp glass fingernails. Nothing was left to chance.

Each couple joined the dance, moving elegantly to the automata’s tinkling. The other couples on the floor would have been familiar to Erik’s agents, for their documents had been examined. Here was the Grand Marshal Gérard, the Duke of Omnium, the Chevalier del Gardo, Monsieur le Juge Cordier, Mr Thatcher of New York, Cardinal Tosca and all the other ‘husbands’, partnered with – and, in some cases, propped up by – deceptively fragile, hard-eyed wives. Indeed, a careful observer would have noticed these men were led around the floor by their painted dolls, in an advanced state of befuddlement verging on somnambulism.

At length, the dance concluded, and the couples stood in neat rows as if for inspection, male heads hung, female faces turned up. A trap slid open and a podium raised, upon which stood the masked Joséphine Balsamo, swathed in pure white furs, from arctic wolves and polar bears. She presented a savage, commanding aspect – like the chieftain of a marauding tribe clad in the skins of fallen enemies.

‘Tonight, at last, our company is complete,’ she announced. ‘The men in this room can claim between them to control the world. Every sphere of human activity is represented – politics, finance, arms, faith, letters, industry, science. Beside you are your perfect wives, so demure, so devoted. You are theirs, entirely. Through them, you are mine entirely. You serve the Cause of Cagliostro. I have played a long game. You all had to be in place. Nothing in this world cannot be decided among the men in this room. Wars can be arranged. Fortunes shifted. Governments changed. On my whim, I could choose what people will say, think, eat, hum in the bath. This has been my goal for more years than I care to remember. My sole regret is that, at this moment, I am essentially talking to myself, for you, the wives, are but my instruments, unliving tools who express only my will. And you, the husbands, are sleeping, dreaming what I have deemed you will dream, dancing at the end of strings I control. Shall I feel lonely? Is this game
solitaire
? Earlier tonight, it was revealed to me that forces – pathetic, perhaps, set beside this company but not to be despised – were set against me, against
us
. Agents have been dealt with. But there may be others. Believe me, I am glad of this. For we must test our strength. We must seek out the other players of this Great Game and destroy them utterly.’

China palms clapped together in approval.

Beneath her moon-mask, the Countess smiled on her creatures.

F
ROM THE
P
ONT
du Carrousel, Christine, Trilby and Irene watched as carriages ferried away the Countess’s lesser guests. Thus was the chorus dispensed with, ejected from the ball – only members of the exclusive Marriage Club remained on the barge with the Countess and her minions.

‘Is that an unwound turban floating by the bilges?’ asked Trilby.

Irene had not had time to explain fully the fate of the Persian.

Christine gasped and clutched her throat, apprehending at once that something dreadful had transpired.

Irene drew six-shooters from her leather hip-holsters, and thumb-cocked the hammers.

‘Come on, Angels,’ she drawled, ‘a gal’s gotta do what a gal’s gotta do!’

T
HE TRIO ADVANCED
through the barge’s ballroom, stepping tactfully over drunks and suicides, avoiding staff clearing away the debris, posing briefly among giant toys when it seemed they might be noticed. They came to a locked door. Irene put away her guns and picked the lock. The party was continuing, inside, in more select fashion. Christine, Trilby and Irene crept in, and sat at the back without attracting attention.

The Marriage Club was in session.

All around, on the polished wood floor, sat tiny artificial brides, cradling husbands like babies, whispering musically into their ears, caressing them intimately, giving tender orders.

The automated orchestra played a lullaby. The toy conductor swivelled on his podium, seeming to stare at the interlopers – then turned back to his musical machines.

The Countess sat on a throne, weighed down by white furs.

Irene drew a bead on the Countess’s forehead and fired.

A bullet spanged against the red mask, cracking the face of the moon – but the Countess did not flinch. None of the husbands reacted to the shot, but all the wives looked up at once, glass eyes fixed malevolently on the newcomers.

Irene sighted with her other Colt, aiming for the spot where the Countess ought to have a heart. Knowing it wouldn’t be any use, she fired again. A black smoking patch appeared on the Countess’s furs.

‘It’s just another doll,’ said Trilby.

They looked around the room, wary. So many automata, so many painted eyes.

Christine had drawn a sword, which she held up like an expert ready for attack.

In concert, the wives got to their feet, letting husbands fall or roll where they might. One or two of the men groaned, scratched their heads and tried to stand – then sprawled again.

There were at least thirty mannequins, clockwork-and-porcelain-and-wax sisters, costumed in high fashion finery. As they moved, clicks and whirrs suggested their interior workings.

‘I’ll wager they do more than dance,’ said Christine.

‘I’d not take that sucker bet,’ said Irene.

The Countess’s throne revolved. The puppet Countess’s broken head fell unnaturally. On the turntable dais were two identical thrones, back to back. The Countess had been hiding behind a mannequin in her own image. She wore a fresh mask, a rainbow-winged butterfly of silk over steel, and a suit of scarlet, lightweight armour decorated with Chinese dragon motifs. Quantities of loose dark hair fell over her shoulders and down her back.

Irene fired at once, but the Countess – with supernatural swiftness – bent one way and then the other, avoiding the bullets which smashed into her throne or the wall behind her. She struck elegant poses as Irene missed with several more shots.

In the end, in frustration, she pitched the guns at the Countess as if shying horseshoes. With mailed gauntlets, the Countess knocked them out of the air, and they skittered uselessly across the floor.

The pack of brides took a march-step towards the three girls.

‘You escaped the wax,’ said the Countess. ‘Well done. I could use ladies like you in my service.’

Irene knew that was not going to work. And so did the Countess. She shrugged, rattling the shoulder-pieces of her armour.

‘What do you think you look like, dearie?’ asked Trilby.

‘Red Jeanne, evil twin of the Maid of Orléans?’ suggested Christine.

The Countess seemed to consider the idea.

‘She dyes her hair,’ said Irene. ‘You can always tell.’

The Countess made angry, spike-knuckled fists.

‘What say we do this fair and square?’ said Trilby. ‘Just you and us. One to three. Not bad odds for a supposed immortal.’

‘That’s just how it will be,’ said the Countess. ‘I don’t count these puppets as people.’

Christine, Trilby and Irene were backed against the wall. Only Christine had a usable weapon. She extended her sword-point.

One of the wives stepped out of formation and walked up to Christine. The sword dimpled against her chest, then slid through her torso. She stepped calmly up to Christine’s face, blade emerging from her back, sword-hilt against her copper-wire ribs. She angled her head from side to side, looking into Christine’s face – then reversed her walk, like a music box wound backwards, wrenching the sword from Christine’s grip.

The orchestra still played, but the tinkling tune was running out, as if the music box were winding down. The conductor’s baton slowed.

The Countess made a gesture, and there was a whooshing sound.

The wives’ fingernails extended by an inch, razor-edges glinting.

‘This is probably where we get cut to ribbons,’ Irene told her colleagues.

Trilby and Christine held hands. Irene took a fighting stance. In the Bowery, while casing a joint for a crack she soon thought better of, she’d taken an afternoon of boxing lessons from Owney Geoghegan, the bare-knuckle champion. He had shown her some very useful tricks for facing stronger opponents with a longer reach than hers. Before she went under, she’d break a few toys.

The music stopped. The baton was still.

‘Goodbye, Angels,’ said the Countess.

Then the automaton conductor twisted, suddenly loose-limbed, on his podium, baton falling from gloved fingers. A curtain tore away from the complex works underneath the clockwork musicians and the original conductor could be seen – faceless, broken and stowed away under the bandstand. Several barrels were wired into the workings of the grand Venetian device, marked ‘gunpowder’.

The girls just had time to realise who had taken the place of the mechanical music master.

The golden face-plate was lifted from a horror of a mouth.

The girls’ hearts leaped. The Countess whirled, enraged but still confident of victory. The mannequins attacked.

Clawnails passed Irene’s face, and she took hold of cold, unliving wrists. An implacable mask of beauty loomed close to her, chin dropped to show rows of sharp ceramic teeth. These dolls were designed for murder as much as marriage.

Erik – for it was he! – raised a tube to his mouth. It was about the size of a piccolo, but with fewer holes. He sounded three distinct notes, shrill and dissonant, unknown to music or nature. Irene had heard them once before this evening, and again her teeth were set on edge.

Christine and Trilby reacted at once to the signal. Their eyes became fixed, almost as glassy as the mannequins’. Ignoring aches and bruises, they cartwheeled into the fray, arms and legs scything through the cadre of wives, fetching off dolls’ heads and limbs, spilling clockwork innards and horse-hair stuffing.

Irene, whose head hurt from the shrilling, concentrated on wrestling the contraption which was trying to shred her. She battered its wax-and-china face with her forehead, and tried to break its wrists.

Erik had his temporary mask back in place. He threw a lever, and the clockwork orchestra began to play Tartini’s ‘Devil’s Trill’ – but with strange lapses and lacunae, filled by the crackling of electrical arcs.

The Countess looked at Erik, mask to mask.

From the podium, Erik picked up a box, which trailed wires deep into the orchestra’s innards and the barrels of explosive. Surmounting the box was a metal switch in the form of a grasshopper.

Christine danced, whirling swords taken from a toy soldier’s wooden fist and a sleeping senior officer’s scabbard, cutting through mannequins. She fought like an eight-armed Hindu goddess with a scimitar in each hand. She heard music, and the music directed her actions. Lady Galatea, Duchess of Omnium, hurled herself at Christine, foot-long porcupine spines sticking out of her chest and back, arms wide for a deadly, skewering hug. Christine stepped under the embrace and used her swords like scissors, snipping the Duchess in half at the waist.

Trilby fought less elegantly, with feet and fists, delivering
savate
kicks and powerful fist-blows. She wrenched the arms off Madame Venus de l’Isle del Gardo, and whirled them about, raking their claws across the toys. Madame del Gardo hopped comically from side to side, off balance, trailing wires from her shoulders, twitching and sparking, lubricational fluids spurting from ruptured rubber tubes like yellow blood. The armless doll, momentarily the image of a more famous Venus, collided with a toy soldier, and its head flew apart in a puff of flame, burning wig shooting across the room, metal and china shrapnel ripping through the soldier. With Venus’s arms, Trilby battered away several more of the wives.

It was a dazzling performance. Within moments, the floor was strewn with spasming, broken things. Springs and cogs scattered underfoot. Pools of yellow liquid formed, and electrical sparks set light to them. Flames ran quickly, spreading from doll to doll, melting wax prettiness away from metal skulls, crumpling lacework and human hair wiggery in instants, taking hold on torn and oily dresses. Some of the husbands sat up, awake, patting at scorching patches on their evening clothes, yelping in pain at the rude disturbance to their dreams.

Irene still wrestled with her single opponent, Madame Gérard, née Francis-Pierre.

Trilby stepped up, and wrenched off Poupée’s head. Her body went limp.

Irene looked at Trilby, holding the head up like Perseus with Medusa. Its eyes still rolled and it tried several sweet smiles before its internal mechanisms wound down and the lids fell shut.

The last of the wives had fallen back to the throne, to protect the Countess, who was trying to make herself heard above the racket. The orchestra broke down, and the Tartini shut off. The wives were assembling themselves into a many-legged war machine, directed by the Countess.

The trio stood before the throne. Trilby and Christine opened their mouths and ululated, a high, clear, pure, penetrating sound that rose. Irene clapped her hands over her ears, but couldn’t completely shut out the sound.