The Chemickal Marriage (20 page)

Svenson read the second document twice, then extended both pages to the Contessa. She nodded without interest to the divan next to her and he dropped them on it, stepping nearer. The second page was the Contessa’s death warrant, signed by Matthew Harcourt.

‘I thought he was your creature.’

‘Serpent’s teeth, Doctor – we all have felt them.’

‘I am surprised you did not end his life.’

‘You do not know what the glass has shown him.’ She suddenly chuckled. ‘And the perfection of his people returning to find him
thus
– it is a small compensation.’

‘His career will be ruined?’

‘His career is nothing to me – but his heart, his dreams? Those have been spoilt
forever
.’

Svenson collected his case and lit a smoke of his own. He nodded to the folded paper. ‘What will you do?’

‘That changes nothing. It has not gone out. And if it had – well, you are a fugitive yourself. If caught, your head will be pickled and sent back to Macklenburg in a cask, evidence of this government’s friendship.’

‘And what of you?’

‘Being a woman, as befits an honourable nation, I will be treated far worse.’

She looked up at him, and then to the archway.

‘What is it about an open door that so fires a body for mischief? As simply joyful as a sweet breeze or the embrace of hot water – do you not agree? About open doors, I mean, about their
spark
.’

The Contessa ground her cigarette into the divan and hooked a foot behind the Doctor’s knee, pulling until he stood between her legs. She parted his greatcoat with both hands, eyes fixed somewhere near his belt buckle.

‘That is an intrusive, large pistol in your belt. Do you mind?’

Before Svenson could reply she had eased the weapon from its place, sliding the long barrel clear, and dropped it atop her papers. He looked into the crease of her white breasts. Perfume rose from her hair. He ought to take hold of her soft neck and squeeze. This woman had killed Elöise. No greater good, no compromise could justify –

The Contessa laid one hand – still in its thin silk glove – flat upon the Doctor’s groin, her palm conforming to the stiffening shape beneath. He gasped. She did not look up. Her other hand caressed the outside of his leg. He looked wildly about and saw the jewelled bag, pushed away, the spike inside. Her fingers closed about his length. She dragged along the fabric with her thumbnail. He quickly gripped her hand with his.

‘You –
ah
– you mentioned a bargain …’

‘I did … and you never answered me about open doors.’

‘Your point seemed indisputable.’

‘What a charming thing to say – I appreciate being indisputable … most ardently …’

She pulled away his hand, taking the cigarette from his fingers. She inhaled once, then flicked it into a corner. As she exhaled, the Contessa unbuckled the Doctor’s belt with three sure, unhurried movements. Her fingers returned for a single delicious slow stroke, and then, with the same easy efficiency, set to unbuttoning his trouser-front. Unable to contain himself, Svenson reached down and gently sank his fingers under the Contessa’s bodice and corset. For the first time she met his eyes. She smiled, warmly – to his shame the whole of his heart leapt – and shifted her posture to give his hand more room to grope. His fingers went deeper, until the tips curled beneath the curve of her breast, the edge of his hand dragging against the soft stud of her nipple. His other hand smoothed the hair from her eyes with a tenderness at odds with his desire.

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.