The Chemickal Marriage (31 page)

He hurried towards the high walls of St Albericht’s, a seminary given over to the Church’s more worldly concerns: finance, property, diplomatic intrigue. Was the blast at the cathedral damaging enough to force the Archbishop to shift his residence? Chang slipped into the shadows opposite St Albericht’s and was gratified by a veritable parade of displaced churchmen.

Something about the look Fabrizi had given Chang – that presentiment of doom – sparked a reckless daring. He emerged behind two black-frocked priests escorting an elderly monsignor in red, a satin toque capping his bald head like a cherry atop a block of ham. Chang stepped hard on one priest’s ankle. The man stumbled and when the second priest turned Chang knocked him, arms a-flailing, into the gutter. Chang’s arm hooked the Monsignor’s neck and dragged him into an alley, out of sight. It took perhaps five seconds
to remove the long scarlet coat, and fewer to snatch the wallet beneath it, hanging by a strap across the old man’s chest.

He left the Monsignor slumped against the bricks. It was not often that Chang practised open thievery, but he was of the opinion that priests had no possessions themselves, only goods in common. Cardinal Chang, as common as they came, was pleased to liberate his share.

As he rushed on, Chang felt a distracting lightness. Attacking the priests might have been impulsive, but he’d never been truly at risk. No, the sharp edge to his mood was entirely due to
time
, as if death were a destination his nerves already sensed.

He had lost her. Undeserving people had died before – why was she different? Her mulish presence had destroyed his solitude, just as her ignorant ideals had exposed his complacency. The three of them on the Boniface rooftop. Without his realizing, Celeste Temple had come to embody Chang’s notion of the future. Not his
own
future so much as the possibility that
someone
might, with all the ridiculous attending symbolism, be saved.

Chang was unable to imagine a
life
beyond this fight.

When the ground began to rise, Chang ducked into a filthy alcove whose use as a privy had overtaken that for assignations. He balled up Foison’s silk coat and threw it into the corner. He tucked his glasses inside the fine red coat and did up the buttons to its high collar. He then wound the gauze around his eyes, thinly enough to still see, but so his scars peeked out. He left the alcove and continued with a slower pace, tapping his stick, until he reached the high stone steps. Almost immediately a man in an attorney’s robe offered Chang his arm. Chang accepted with a gracious murmur and they climbed together.

The ancient bones of the Marcelline Prison had been laid as an amphitheatre, built with the seats climbing naturally up the slope. The marble had long been stripped away to drape church fronts and country homes. All that remained of the original edifice was an archway carved with masks, jeering and weeping at each soul ferried through.

At the top of the steps Chang thanked the attorney and tapped his way to
the guardhouse, introducing himself as Monsignor Lucifera, legate to the Archbishop. As hoped, the warder found it impossible to look away from Chang’s bandaged eyes.

‘I was at the cathedral. Such destruction cannot, of course, deter my errand. I require a man called Pfaff. Yellow hair, with an ugly orange coat. He will have been taken by your constables at the Seventh Bridge, or near the Palace.’

The warder paused. Chang cocked his head, as if listening for the man’s compliance.

‘Ah, well, sir –’

‘I expect you require a writ.’

‘I do, sir, yes. Standard custom –’

‘I have lost all such documents, along with my assistant, Father Skoll. Father Skoll’s
arms
, you see. Left like the poor doll of a wicked child.’

‘How horrid, sir –’

‘Thus I lack your
writ
.’ Chang could sense a restless line forming behind him, and made a point to speak more lingeringly. ‘The document case was in his
hands
, you understand. Shattered altogether. One would have thought poor Skoll a porcupine for the splinters –’

‘Jesus Lord –’

‘But perhaps you can make it right. Pfaff is a negligible villain, yet important to His Lordship. Do you have him here or not?’

The warder looked helplessly at the growing queue. He pushed the log book to Chang. ‘If you would just
sign
…’

‘How can I sign if I can’t see?’ mused Chang. Without waiting for an answer he groped broadly for the warder’s pen and obligingly scrawled – ‘Lucifera’ filling half the page.

Chang made his deliberate, tapping way inside, to another warder with another book. The warder ran an ink-stained finger down the page. ‘When delivered?’

‘Last night,’ Chang replied. ‘Or early this morning.’

The warder’s face settled in a frown. ‘We’ve no such name.’

‘Perhaps he gave another.’

‘Then he could be anyone. I’ve five hundred souls in the last twelve hours alone.’

‘Where are the men arrested at the Seventh Bridge – or the Palace, or St Isobel’s? You
know
the ones I mean. Delivered by the Army.’

The warder consulted his papers. ‘Still don’t have any man named Pfaff.’

‘With a
p
.’

‘What?’

‘Surely you have those men all rounded into one or two large cells.’

‘But how will you know if he’s there? You can’t see.’

Chang rapped the tip of his stick on the tiles. ‘God can always smell a villain.’

Chang had three times been in the Marcelline, on each occasion luckily redeemed before proceedings advanced to outright torture, and it was with a shiver that he descended to the narrow tiers. Chang did not expect the guards to recognize him – the cleric’s authority granted him an automatic deference – but a sharp-eyed prisoner might call out anything. If Chang
was
recognized, he had placed himself well beyond hope.

The corridors were slick with filth. Shouts rang out as he passed each cell – pleas for intervention, protests of innocence, cries of illness. He did not respond. The passage ended at a particularly large, iron-bound door. Chang’s guide rattled his truncheon across the viewing-hole and shouted that ‘any criminal named Pfaff’ had ten seconds to make himself known. A chorus of yells came in reply. Without listening, the guard roared that the first man claiming to be Pfaff but found to be an impostor would get forty lashes. The cell went quiet.

‘Ask for
Jack
Pfaff,’ suggested Chang. He looked at the other cells along the corridor, knowing the guard’s voice would carry, and that if Pfaff were elsewhere in the Marcelline he might hear. The guard obligingly bawled it out. There was no response. Despite the increased chance of recognition, Chang had no choice.

‘Open the door. Let me in.’

‘I can’t do that, Father –’

‘Obviously the man is hiding. Will you let him make us fools?’

‘But –’

‘No one will harm me. Tell them that if they try, you will slaughter every man. All will be well – it is a matter of knowing the sinning mind.’

The cell held at least a hundred men, crowded close as in a slave ship. The guard waded in, swinging his truncheon to make room. Chang entered a ring of faces that gleamed with sweat and blood.

Pfaff was not there. These were the refugees Chang had seen in the alleys and along the river – their only sins poverty and bad luck. Most were victims of Vandaariff’s weapon, beaten into submission after the glass spurs had set them to a frenzy. Chang doubted half would live the night. He extended his stick to the rear, waving generally – since he could not see – but guiding the guard’s attention to where a vaulting arch of brick created a tiny niche.

‘Is anyone lurking in the back?’

The guard shouted for the prisoners to shift, striking the hindmost aside with a deep-rooted, casual savagery. A single man lay curled, barely stirring, his face a mask of dried blood.

‘Found one,’ muttered the guard. ‘But I don’t –’

‘At last,’ cried Chang, and turned away. ‘That is the fellow. Bring him.’

The guard following with his burden, Chang tapped his way back to the first warder.

‘The Archbishop is most deeply obliged. Will I sign your book again?’

‘No need!’ The warden made note of the prisoner’s number, then carefully tore out half the page. ‘Your warrant. I am glad to have been of service.’

Chang took the paper and nodded to the slumping man, upright only by the guard’s vicious grip. ‘I require a coach – and those shackles off. He will do no further harm.’

‘But Father –’

‘Not to worry. He’ll have confession before anything.’

As soon as the coach was in motion, Chang tore the bandage from his head and used it to wipe the blood and grime from Cunsher’s face. The cuts above the man’s eyes and the bruising around his mouth spoke to a punishing interrogation, but Chang detected no serious wound.

Chang tapped Cunsher across the jaw. Cunsher flinched and rolled away his head. With a sigh, Chang wedged his other hand under Cunsher’s topcoat and pinched the muscle running along his left shoulder, very hard. Cunsher’s eyes opened and he thrashed against the pain. Chang forced Cunsher’s gaze to his.

‘Mr Cunsher … it is Cardinal Chang. You are safe, but we have little time.’

Cunsher shuddered, and he nodded with recognition. ‘Where am I?’

‘In a coach. What happened to Phelps?’

‘I have no idea. We were taken together, but questioned apart.’

‘At the Palace?’ Cunsher nodded. ‘Then why were you sent to the Marcelline?’

‘The officials who took us were fools.’ Cunsher probed for loose teeth with his tongue. ‘Did you take such trouble to find me?’

‘I sought someone else.’

Cunsher shut his eyes. ‘That you came at all is luck enough.’

In the minutes it took the coach to reach the Circus Garden, Chang explained what had happened since they had parted, revealing the loss of Celeste Temple only in passing.

‘The Doctor goes with the child to the Contessa’s rendezvous, but I cannot guess what she has gone to such lengths to show him, save this painting.’

‘Has she not already shown you the painting?’ asked Cunsher. ‘This glass card –’

‘But the actual canvas must be the heart of whatever Vandaariff plans.’

Cunsher frowned. ‘My being sent to prison shows how low my interrogators set my worth – a foreign tongue is a useful tool to suggest one’s idiocy – but it suggests the contrary for poor Phelps.’ Cunsher pressed the gauze to his oozing cheekbone. ‘Either he remains at the Palace, or he has been given over to Vandaariff. Or – and most likely – he is dead.’

‘I am sorry.’

‘And I for you. But this is what I wanted to say. Phelps did go to the
Herald
–’

‘Did he learn the painting’s location?’

‘The salon was in Vienna.’

‘Vienna?’

‘Indeed, and the only reason the
Herald
printed the report was the rather large fire that consumed the entire city block, along with every piece of art in the salon. With regard to Veilandt’s
œuvre
, it was not seen as a loss.’ Cunsher’s puffed lip curled to a wry smile. ‘To the
empire
.’

Chang could not believe it. The painting was
gone
? What, then, was the point of the Contessa giving Svenson the glass card?

‘Do the others know?’ He shook his head, correcting himself. ‘Does Svenson?’

‘No, Mr Phelps told me as we walked to the fountain. Lord knows where the Doctor truly has been taken.’ Cunsher grimaced at his thumbnail, bruised purple, and brought it to his mouth to suck. ‘And conditions in the city?’

Chang’s reply was swallowed by an oath as the coach came to a sudden halt. He stuck his upper body out of the doorway. The street was a tangle of unmoving coaches. Trumpets clamoured ahead of them, followed by a menacing rush of drums and the crash of stamping boots. Chang ducked back inside, speaking urgently.

‘The Army holds the road – we should escape on foot, before there is violence.’ Chang leapt down, ignoring the protests of the driver, and extended a hand to Cunsher. ‘Can you walk?’

‘O yes, since I must. If we are blocked from above the Circus Garden, then this is … Moulting Lane? Just so – and if we keep to it as far as the canal –’

But Chang had already set off. The smaller man followed gamely, calling to Chang as they threaded a path through the debris.

‘The soldiers are not constables – that is, they do not think of suspects and disguises. The likes of us may escape notice.’

‘Unless they have been ordered to detain
everyone
,’ replied Chang. ‘You know full well how many of the men in your cell were innocent.’

Cunsher looked over his shoulder at another flourish from the trumpets. A gunshot cracked out, then a spatter of five more. Cunsher stumbled into a box of rotten cabbages and came to a stop. The next chorus of trumpets came laced with screams.

‘Dear God.’

Chang took Cunsher’s arm and hauled him on. ‘God is nowhere a part of it.’

The Duke’s Canal was a narrow channel of green water, so choked with bridges and scaffolding that it vanished for wide stretches, then tenaciously reappeared, like an elderly aunt determined to survive her younger relations. But the route was bereft of soldiers and, mindful of Cunsher’s weakness, Chang spared a moment for a nearby tavern. He bought them each a pint of bitter ale, and pickled eggs from a crock for Cunsher. The small man consumed his meal in silence, sipping the beer and chewing as steadily as a patient mule.

‘Were you at the cathedral?’

Chang turned to the tavern’s brick hearth, where a grizzled man in shirtsleeves sat with a serving woman. Chang nodded.

‘When will it be stopped?’ the woman asked. ‘Where is the Queen?’

‘
Queen?
’ The man rumbled. ‘Where’s the old Duke? He’s the one we need! He’d lay ’em down like mowing wheat – damned rebels.’

‘A mob went to Raaxfall,’ called the barman. ‘Burnt the place like a pyre.’

The pensioner at the hearth nodded with grim relish. ‘No more than they deserved.’

‘Were the rebels from Raaxfall?’ asked Chang.