The Dark Volume Part 2

Suddenly she was inhabiting a man's body, with such wonderful strength in her arms, and in her deliciously thrusting hips... then it was the rushing thrill of another girl's greedy tongue between her legs... her hands caught the girl's head and raised her up, a smiling kiss and she tasted herself... one after another the visions flowed together-Miss Temple's face flushed as red as if her fever had returned-until another kiss, another liquid tongue, became-she realized quite abruptly with horror-the Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza dragging her tongue across Miss Temple's eye with a knowing, angry, sensuous sneer. Miss Temple gasped aloud. That incident had really taken place, in Harschmort House. What did it mean that Miss Temple's true memories could be entwined so seamlessly with what she remembered from the book, as if such distinction was a boundary for the weak, or no real boundary at all? If she could not keep her own life apart from what she had consumed from the lives of others, how could she retain who she was? She sat up at once.

"Celeste?" asked Eloise. "Are you all right? Are you too cold?"

"I am fine," said Miss Temple. She dabbed a pearling of sweat from her upper lip. "Perhaps there is something to eat?"

LINA HAD packed cold mutton, hard cheese, and some loaves of country bread. Miss Temple unhappily chewed a mouthful of meat while gazing about her. The woods had continued to deepen.

"Where exactly are we?" she asked Eloise.

"Heading south. Beyond that I cannot say-past the forest there are apparently hills. On the other side of them we may have hope of a train."

"The road seems perfectly fine," Miss Temple observed.

"It does."

Miss Temple watched Eloise closely until the woman met her gaze. Miss Temple made a point of speaking loudly.

"This forest... is this where the people were killed?"

"I've no idea," said Eloise.

"I would think it must be."

"It is entirely possible."

"Did you not go there?"

"Of course not, Celeste. The clothing was brought to me-Lina knew what we needed."

"So no one has seen the Jorgenses' cabin?"

"Of course people have seen it-the villagers who found them-"

"But that is not the same at all," cried Miss Temple. She called to the driver in her firmest voice. "Sir, we will require you to take us to the cabin of Mr. and Mrs. Jorgens. It is most urgent."

The man pulled his horse to a stop and turned. He glanced once at Miss Temple but then settled on Eloise as the person in charge. Miss Temple sighed and spoke in the most patient tone she could muster.

"It is necessary we visit the cabin of Mr. and Mrs. Jorgens. As you can see, I am wearing the poor woman's dress. It is inc.u.mbent upon me-for religious reasons, you understand-to pay my respects to her memory. If I do not, it is impossible that I shall sleep soundly ever again."

The man looked again at Eloise. Then he turned and snapped the reins.

Miss Temple took another bite of mutton, for she was extremely hungry still.

IT WAS perhaps twenty more minutes until he stopped the cart and pointed to their left. Through the trees Miss Temple saw a winding path washed away in more than one spot, like a penciled line incompletely marred by the jagged pa.s.s of a gum eraser. She scrambled from the cart without a.s.sistance and then gave a hand to Eloise, whose expression was far from her own excitement.

"We will not be long," Eloise called to their driver. "It is just...just along that path?"

He nodded-Miss Temple wondered if the man possessed a tongue-and pointed. Miss Temple took her companion's hand and pulled her away.

The washed-out sections were moist and required careful steps to avoid thick mud, but in minutes they were out of sight of the cart, no matter how Eloise kept glancing back.

"He will not leave us," Miss Temple finally said.

"I'm glad you think so," answered Eloise.

"Of course he won't. He has not been fully paid."

"But he has."

"You think he has, but he surely plans to charge us that much more again once we are stranded with him in the hills."

"How do you know that?"

"Because I am used to people wanting money-it is the dullest of things. But now we can speak-and look, Eloise, there it is!"

THE CABIN was small, and nestled comfortably between the trees on one side and a lush meadow. All around them Miss Temple could see the flotsam left from the flooding rain and its recession. The air was tinged with a certain whiff of corruption, of river mud churned and spread like a stinking condiment amidst the gra.s.ses and the trees.

"I'm sure I don't know what you hope to find," said Eloise.

"I do not either," replied Miss Temple, "but I do know I have never seen a wolf in a boat. And now we can speak freely-I mean, honestly, wolves!"

"I do not know what you would like me to say."

Miss Temple snorted. "Eloise, are our enemies dead or not?"

"I have told you. I believe they are dead."

"Then who has done this killing?"

"I do not know. The Doctor and Chang-"

"Where are they? Truthfully now, why did they leave?"

"I have been truthful, Celeste."

Miss Temple stared at her. Eloise said nothing. Miss Temple wavered between dismay, mistrust, and condescension. As this last came most easily to her nature, she allowed herself an inner sneer.

"Still, as we are here, it seems perfectly irresponsible not to investigate."

Eloise pursed her lips together, and then gestured about them at the ground.

"You see the many bootprints-the village people collecting the bodies. There is no hope of finding the sign of an animal's paw, nor of disproving any such signs were here."

"I agree completely," said Miss Temple, but then she stopped, c.o.c.king her head. To the side of the cabin steps, pressed into the soft earth was the print of a horse's shoe-as if the horse had been tethered near the door. Miss Temple leaned closer, but found no more. What she did find, on the steps themselves, was one muddy bootprint followed by a thin trailing line.

"What is that?" she asked Eloise.

Eloise frowned. "It is a horseman's spur."

FOR ALL her bravado, Miss Temple found herself taking a deep breath when she opened the cabin door-slowly and with as little sound as possible, and wishing she'd some kind of weapon. The interior was as simple as the outside promised-one room with a cold stove, a table and workbench, and a bed-plain and small, yet large enough to hold a marriage. Beyond the bed was an achingly little cot, and beyond this Miss Temple saw the trunk where her dress had undoubtedly been kept. She felt Eloise behind her, and the two stepped fully into the room, amidst the trappings of dead lives.

"I'm sure the others have... have cleaned," said Eloise, her voice dropping to a whisper.

Miss Temple turned back to the door, to the hinges and the handle.

"Do you see scratch marks? Or anything that would suggest a forceful entry?"

Eloise shook her head. "Perhaps Mr. Jorgens opened the door himself upon hearing a noise-they apparently had dogs, if there was barking-"

"They were killed in bed-I saw the bedding, quite covered in blood."

"But that could be only one of them-when the other had opened the door, allowing the animal inside."

Miss Temple nodded. "Then perhaps there are signs of violence in the door's vicinity..."

"Celeste," began Eloise, but then stopped, sighed, and started to look as well.

But there was nothing-no scratches, no blood, no sign at all. Miss Temple crossed to the bed-at least someone had been killed there.

"Can you search the stove, in case anything untoward has been burned?"

"Such as what?"

"I'm sure I do not know, Eloise, but I speak from experience. When the Doctor, Cardinal Chang, and I searched the workroom of the Comte d'Orkancz-we knew the Comte had been keeping a woman there who had been injured by contact with the blue gla.s.s-I located a remnant of the woman's dress, which proved a helpful clue."

Eloise took all this in with a tolerant sigh and set to clanging about with a poker. Miss Temple pulled back the bed's patchwork quilt. The mattress below was marked with rust-brown stains, soaked through the absent sheets. The marks were heaviest near one end of the bed- the head, she a.s.sumed-but spread across its width in a series of lines and whorls.

"There is nothing here but ash," muttered Eloise, setting down the poker and wiping her hands with a grimace.

"I believe both husband and wife were in the bed," said Miss Temple. "If the Doctor were here he might confirm it-but the stains suggest two occupants. Of course, we have no idea where the bodies were found."

"With their throats torn out," said Eloise, "the blood would be prodigious."

"Where was the child?"

"What child?"

"There is her cot," said Miss Temple. "Surely you would have been told..."

Eloise sighed. "After a certain point it was simpler not to mix with the villagers at all. Perhaps there is an orphan. Lina never said."

"But was she here?" asked Miss Temple. "Did she see it?"

"Of course she wasn't," said Eloise. "Any wolf would have killed a child as well."

Miss Temple did not reply. She stepped past the bed to the small cabin's only window. It was latched, but she could see, fine as the tip of a needle drawn across the worn wood, a tiny scratch. Something sharp had been driven between the frame and the pane. Miss Temple slipped the latch and pulled the window open, only to have it stick half-way.

"The wood has warped," said Eloise, pointing to an imperfection in the upper frame.

Miss Temple leaned forward and looked out the window to the ground, some five feet below. Who could say what climbing or jumping might be possible? She was about to shove it closed when her eye caught something flicked by the wind. At first it seemed a shred of cobweb, but when she reached out to take it she saw it was a hair. She plucked it from the splinter where it had snagged. A very black hair, and some two feet long.

IF THERE was anything else to find in the cabin, it escaped them. Retracing their steps across the moist forest floor, Miss Temple glanced at Eloise, who walked ahead. The one black hair was wound in a loop and stuffed into the pocket of her dress-Miss Temple's dress had no pockets (not that she normally sought pockets, it was why one carried a bag, or walked with servants). Eloise's hand persisted in absently plucking at it as they went, as if her mind wrestled with the truth behind their discovery.

Miss Temple took the moment to study Eloise-for she had not before in all their time together taken any particular time to examine the woman, involved as they had been with fires and killings and airships. The tutor's brown hair was piled sensibly behind her head and held in place with small black pins. To her sudden surprise Miss Temple noticed within Eloise's hair one thin strand of grey-and then upon searching, two or three more. Exactly how old was she? To Miss Temple the very idea of a grey hair was outlandish, but she accepted that time did grind all before it (if not in equal measure) and became curious about how such a thing felt. Such projection of interest, if not sympathy, drew Miss Temple's eyes down Eloise's body, where she found herself satisfied by the woman's practical carriage, her slim but st.u.r.dy shoulders, and her ability to walk without whinging over muddy and rough terrain. Of course, she knew Eloise had been married, and that married life expanded a woman's experience in a way that left Miss Temple morally ambivalent. On the one hand, experience tended to improve a person by removing illusions-and at the least giving them more to speak of at the table-but on the other, there was so often in married women a certain vein of mitigation, of knowledge that served to reduce rather than expand their thoughts. She suddenly wondered if Eloise had children. Had she ever had children? Had they possibly died?

With a sudden urge, for she had no vocabulary to express the deep unsettled thoughts behind such questions, Miss Temple stepped up her pace and took Eloise's restless hand in hers.

"We must be careful," she said, looking down at her boots and away from the surprise on her companion's face. "Never having been acquainted with the late Mrs. Jorgens, it is strictly possible the hair is hers..."

Eloise nodded. Miss Temple took a breath and went on. "But I have a memory, upon the airship, that the Contessa carried... well, a vicious sort of spike upon one hand-and you see, it is how they have described the wolves, the woman's throat torn out"-Miss Temple's voice went hoa.r.s.e, to her great frustration-"with such slashes. I simply cannot forget poor Caroline Stearne's forlorn face above the wound... any more than I could forget the Contessa's smile."

Eloise squeezed Miss Temple's hand. "There is our cart, Celeste. You were correct, our man has waited."

Miss Temple looked back to the cabin. "We are fools," she said. "I am sure we might have availed ourselves of some weapons from the house."

"Not to worry," whispered Eloise. For the first time Miss Temple noticed the tight bundle in the woman's other hand. "I have borrowed a pair of Mr. Jorgens' knives."

IT WAS another hour before the trees began to thin and one more after that before the land changed to brown and tangled meadows, full of stones and rising gently to a line of hills whose rocky tops looked as if they had been blackened by a flame.

Through some of this Miss Temple had managed to sleep, and she woke, blinking, surprised by the flat open light around her, now that the trees had gone. The cart had stopped, and she saw their driver walking into the gra.s.s to relieve himself.

"Do you know where we will rest tonight?" she asked Eloise, who had used the man's absence to unroll the cloth she'd removed from the cabin.

"I was told it is an inn," she replied. "A mining town within the hills."

She looked up to see Miss Temple's attention on the knives. One was three inches long and perhaps one fat inch across, razor sharp on one side and dull on the other, with the blade curving quite as much as a Turk's scimitar.

"Might it be for skinning?" offered Miss Temple.

The other knife was slightly longer, stabbing to a needle-sharp point, with a heavier blade than its length would seem to warrant.

"I would hazard this one serves to strip meat from a bone," answered Eloise. "Mr. Jorgens may have been a hunter."

"I have no pockets," Miss Temple announced crisply, and reached for the longer, straighter blade. "But this will easily slip in my boot." She glanced once at their returning driver, then settled the weapon neatly alongside her right instep.

Eloise palmed the other and balled up the cloth as the cart shifted, their driver swinging himself into his seat. He peered at them with the sour expression of a man unjustly burdened, spat a brackish jet of tobacco juice, and snapped the reins.

FEELING AFTER another rest nearly her peremptory, impatient self, Miss Temple nevertheless did not speak of the matters most pressing to her mind. Instead, she plied her companion with the polite questions there had never been time to ask before-where her people were from, her preferred blend of tea, favorite fruit and color of sealing wax. This led naturally enough to Eloise describing her life as tutor to the Trapping children. She spoke not at all of the Trappings themselves, or the two Xonck brothers (Mrs. Trapping's powerful siblings-the older, Henry, as mighty and distant as the younger, Francis, was cunning and wicked), as if Eloise's position in life had no relation whatsoever to the adventures that had swept her up like a rising tide in the past weeks, nor to any urgent questions that might still face them.

A lady of property, Miss Temple had been well trained for conversation about family and social ritual (for amongst her social peers, such talk was a currency vital as gold coin), and so she nodded and smiled in turn as Eloise described in suffocating detail the parkland cottage of her uncle, with its stone wall lined with yellow rosebushes that had been tended by her mother as a girl. Yet it was ultimately of no use, for Miss Temple's tender mind, like a mill trembling with the motion of turbines and wheels, simply contended with too many forces to permit distraction.

Eloise had just confessed her love for the opera, despite the difficulty of securing tickets, and was offering an account of a particular favorite from some seasons ago, Les Jardins Glace, an apparently wandering adventure from the mountains of deepest China. Upon reaching a point of pause where Miss Temple might inquire politely about the music or the scenery, Eloise instead found the young woman's grey eyes fixed on the scrub-filled meadows around them.

"Celeste?" Eloise ventured, after the silence had taken full root.

Miss Temple looked at her and flicked up the corners of her mouth in a smile.

"I am sorry," she said. "I had a thought."