The Dark Volume Part 40

"Without help? You have the servants of a Pharaoh."

"But they must not see me! They would rebel! They would break my body!"

"Why is that?"

"Because they are all as ambitious as I once was!"

"Once?"

"You cannot begin to understand what has been done to me!"

"What has been done? What you desired!"

"But so much has changed... I was not to be alone..."

"Everyone's alone, Margaret."

"No, not everyone." Her voice had gone disturbingly still. "Some are fortunate enough to carry their loved ones with them always ..."

CHANG SENSED the pressure of her thought entering his palm like a key into a lock-hole, and before he could react the same vision of Angelique that had over-borne him in the garden swallowed his awareness again. Chang shook his head but it was too late. When he saw the room once more, Colonel Aspiche had been pulled away, his body positioned to shield her. Chang stood utterly open to a bullet from Phelps, who extended the revolver with an arm of stone. How had she done it?

"All you can tell me?" Mrs. Marchmoor mocked him. "Will you begin-or will Mr. Phelps shoot your leg?"

"I should prefer he didn't."

"How do you know of Leveret? Where is he now? I need the machines! I need the power!"

"You need a book too, I believe. Xonck's book."

"She has it. And she is already mine! I have been inside her mind, your proud little island rat-and left my stain upon it. Will it disgust you when her hair falls out-or her teeth? Will the stench of her decay revolt you more than I do?"

The gla.s.s woman's laughter came in brittle snaps. Chang felt the heat on his face, wanting to break her graceful neck. Mrs. Marchmoor leaned even closer and hissed again.

"How is it you were able to resist me?"

"I find you vulgar, Margaret," he replied. "Why should a little gla.s.s change that?"

In answer, Mrs. Marchmoor poured all her energy into his palm- could there still be gla.s.s in the wound? Once more Chang was drowned in Angelique's incomparably sweet memory... once more, with a near-nauseating pang of loss, he dredged his mind free.

He looked up, breathing hard. Why was he not dead? Aspiche had returned his saber to its scabbard. Chang wiped his mouth on the back of his glove.

"Madame," began Phelps, "we should not allow him to-"

"He wants nothing more than all our deaths," Aspiche croaked. "He is our enemy."

She did not reply. Chang looked into Mrs. Marchmoor's expressionless eyes. He took a step backwards.

"Where would you go now, Cardinal Chang?" she hissed.

"There's nowhere he can go," said Phelps.

"Do not believe it. Cardinal Chang is resourceful." He felt her loathing, her open hatred, her clear memory of his every insult. "He may even escape from Harschmort House alive. Who can say when we will encounter him again... each party having accomplished so much in the meantime?"

AS HE cut through Harschmort's maze, he met not a single servant or soldier. Had the gla.s.s woman cleared his path of any possible obstacles?

Mrs. Marchmoor would find Miss Temple. For Celeste to survive, Chang needed to deliver someone of equal value. He had been released to find Charlotte Trapping. Was their understanding so naked?

As he walked Chang brought his injured palm up to his mouth and tore off the bandage with his teeth. He stepped into a small mirrored alcove and took out the razor. He opened his hand wide, stretching the skin, and dipped the square corner of the razor into wound, pressing delicately until blood was flowing over his fingers. The metal touched something hard... Chang shifted the blade and braced himself against the insistent, pulsing memory of Angelique. He gouged the last splinter of gla.s.s free, winking and wet on the flat blade... the final shred of Angelique. Chang flicked the blade at the mirror, spattering it red, the blue fragment sent who knew where. He'd have no further shackling.

He kept walking until he finally reached what seemed like an acre of black-and-white tile, the entryway to Harschmort, a crossroads usually thronged with servants and guests, now empty. He made his exit without incident, trotting down the wide stone steps, certain he was being observed. In the courtyard were at least five coaches laid in a line, but their drivers stood cl.u.s.tered together, watching him descend.

No one had cleared the hallways for Francis Xonck, yet Chang was sure the man had escaped. In the Library, Chang relied on the archivists to limit his own effort and spare his eyes-could he not use Xonck the same way? Xonck's first priority would be to locate his book and thus Miss Temple. This ought to have meant following her path through the garden, slavering after his prize like a pig after truffles ... but Aspiche's dragoons were combing the land between the gardens and the sh.o.r.eline, from the farmlands to the ca.n.a.l-and the Colonel, odious but not incompetent, would have sent patrols to the train stations at both Orange Ca.n.a.l and Orange Locks. Yet they had not found her. Nor had they found Xonck. What did he know that his pursuers did not? Chang returned the impa.s.sive gazes of the gathered coachmen, and strode toward them.

THE COACHMEN were wary of someone-by his clothes at least-so obviously of a lower rung. But once he stood with them, their caution was punctured by both discomfort at Chang's scars and a curious compulsion, for his questions were so specific and a.s.sured that only afterward did the more careful amongst them realize they had answered the strange figure as if he were a policeman. Having learned where each coach had come from, and with whom, Chang asked if any had returned to the station. He was told they had not, nor had anyone approached them to do so. The men waited for another question. Chang cleared his throat.

"It will be obvious that I am being observed from the house-do not look at the windows, you will see no one-and were any one of you to go so far as drive me to the train station, another would be immediately drafted to follow in pursuit. I thus apologize for not being able to employ you. I would be much obliged if you might point me in the direction of the ca.n.a.ls."

In saying this to men he knew would be interrogated, Chang was simply attempting to save time. He knew the way perfectly well-and while the ca.n.a.ls were a reasonable, even clever destination for a man seeking escape from Harschmort, Xonck would avoid them, for the ca.n.a.ls would be thick with dragoons. Since Xonck had also avoided the coachmen, that left Cardinal Chang with a single place to pick up his trail-the Harschmort stables.

He jogged toward the outbuildings, but then deliberately overshot them, so anyone watching would a.s.sume he had pa.s.sed the stables. At the next row of sheds he darted to the right and broke into a dead run to get around the far wall, where he paused, waiting. Soon enough a rumble of bootsteps on the gravel reached his ears and then faded in the distance. Chang hurried back, slipping the razor from his coat.

He need not have bothered. The stable door swung ajar, and a black-coated groom lay facedown in a heap of straw not two yards away. Beyond the groom gaped an open stall, no horse within. The boards at Chang's feet were sticky. Chang scuffed new straw into the goo and saw its vivid blue color. He sighed. Horses were not, to Chang, any source of comfort or pleasure. A rustle caused him to turn-a second groom in the doorway, obviously on the verge of shouting for help.

"Be quiet!" Chang snarled. "Who has done this to your fellow?"

The confused groom looked at the fallen man and then back to Chang. "But-I-you-"

"If it had been me, I would not be here. There was a horse there, yes? He has taken it!"

The groom nodded dumbly.

"A saddle! Another mount! Your friend will revive," Chang said firmly. "I must catch his a.s.sailant-it is the only hope we have! As fast as you can or we are finished!"

As the groom leapt to his task, Chang risked a glance outside. No one had come back to search. He picked up the fallen man from the straw and turned him over. White flecks from Xonck's plaster fist dotted the raw skin along the jaw. Chang slapped the young man lightly and stepped away, letting him grope to awareness on his own.

Minutes later a saddled mare was brought forward for his approval. Chang nodded gravely-what did he know of horses?-and did his best to mount the thing on the proper side on the first attempt. This done and Chang's feet having found the stirrups, the groom guided the horse through the door and pointed to the only path Xonck could have taken-then slapped the mare's flank. Fast as a rifle shot the animal leapt forward. Chang squeezed with his knees to keep his seat, expecting at every moment to break his head like a melon.

Within minutes, the cobbles of Harschmort gave way to a gra.s.sy path. At the end of the immediate estate grounds the gra.s.sy path forked, the left side clearly turning toward the rail station at Orange Ca.n.a.l. He pulled the horse to a halt and awkwardly-for he did not trust himself to dismount and remount with any success-paced the mare along each path of the fork. If Xonck had gone to the station, he had gone back to the city. But without the machines Xonck needed to survive, the city was just a place to die. It took Chang another three minutes, glancing over his own shoulder for pursuing dragoons, to find a smear of blue on the bright gra.s.s, like the excrement of some especially exotic African bird, on the fork going north. Chang wheeled the horse and dug in his heels.

He bounced past meadows dotted with the gnarled survivors of abandoned apple orchards, testament to the unpredictable flooding of the fenland. He thought back to the confrontation with the gla.s.s woman and her mocking description, "resourceful"... he was smart enough to realize that whatever hopes she had that he might deliver Charlotte Trapping would keep Miss Temple alive. Was it possible that Miss Temple had escaped? She had been in the garden-no doubt he'd been blinded to her presence by his fit. With the damage to Mrs. Marchmoor and the rush to shoot Xonck and himself, the search might have been delayed some five or even ten minutes. How much ground could she have made with such a start-against the determination of organized soldiers? Chang gripped the reins more tightly. She would stick out against the dunes and fen gra.s.s like a fox on a croquet lawn.

HE KEPT riding. Mrs. Marchmoor-two weeks before, a wh.o.r.e named Margaret Hooke-had somehow become his keenest enemy. She was vulnerable, to be sure, and hot-tempered, but she was learning. She had taken personal control of the Ministries. She had launched Tackham on his search. And she was willing to sacrifice anyone. It would be insane to underestimate her-insane to come within a hundred yards of the woman without a coatful of orange rings. Woman? Margaret Hooke had been a woman. This was a creature, the abhorrent residue of one man's diseased imagination. Who knew when she might become unstoppable altogether?

This thought p.r.i.c.ked his memory... something else the gla.s.s woman had said, that she "needed the machines... needed the power..." He had taken it to mean power in the broadest sense- domination over an invisible octopus of minions. But what if Mrs. Marchmoor had been speaking literally? The Comte's laboratory held paintings, chemicals, papers, the man's knowledge. But the cathedral chamber had contained not only the machines, but also the power to run them, through Harschmort's fantastic network of ducts and furnaces and boilers. Whoever had taken those ma.s.sive machines would find them useless without an equal source of power.

At once Cardinal Chang knew where Xonck was riding, and where he was bound to follow. The clue had been before him from the moment he'd seen the striations of sh.e.l.l-blast. The explosives had been courtesy of Alfred Leveret-the same man who had over-seen the refitted factory near Parchfeldt Park, a factory specifically remade to house all the Comte's machines... machines no doubt already arrived on the newly made ca.n.a.l and set into position.

THE MEADOWS lasted another three miles and Chang began to worry about the horse, knowing nothing of their care, and so eased the animal's pace. He pa.s.sed a stand of birch trees, planted as an estate boundary, but all of the surrounding lands had been gobbled up by Vandaariff's agents to ensure his privacy. Beyond the birches was a proper road, and on that road an inn. Chang pulled up and walked the horse to a trough of water. He was debating whether to slide from the saddle himself when a boy ran out from the inn with a mug of beer and a wadded cloth. He handed the mug to Chang and began at once to rub the horse with the cloth. Feeling he had been given a role to play-and since it only required drinking beer-Chang drank deeply, suddenly aware of how thirsty he was. He returned the empty mug, feeling one could enjoy country life after all, and dug in his coat for a coin, asking the boy in an idle tone where the road might take him. One direction looped back toward the Orange Ca.n.a.l station, and the other led all the way to the lonely coastal fortifications at Maxim-Leduc. He wondered aloud that the inn must not see many travelers, and the boy shook his head, accepting the tarnished old florin-he'd seen no other rider stop all day. Chang flicked his heels and nearly lost his perch as the mare shot forward, appalled at the figure he made, but far too occupied with staying aboard the animal to care.

HE CLATTERED across a small wooden bridge, children fishing down in the reeds to either side, thinking to inquire about Xonck but not wanting to again wrestle with a horse that had no inclination to stop. The road topped a gentle hill. At its crest Chang stood in the stirrups and saw, miles ahead, what must be Parchfeldt's thick green canopy. Then the road dropped down into an even denser wood, and Chang felt the air grow colder.

With a determined tug, Chang reined the mare until she walked, slow enough to study each side of the path as they went. If Xonck knew he was being followed, this was the best location so far for an ambush. Chang tried to remember what else he knew of Parchfeldt, from the maps and the newspapers, and from whatever Eloise had told them about her uncle's cottage-Eloise...the woman had slipped from Chang's thoughts!

Where was she now? He had not, frankly, expected to see her again-any more than a hundred others who had crossed his path on one unsavory matter or another: the widow Cogsall, the old ship's clerk, the bas.e.m.e.nt-dwelling apothecary, or that Russian cook... or was she Hungarian? He remained haunted by her arm-the inch-long scar, from a stove. The ragged diffusion of his memory was echoed in the colors of the forest, trees in such number and variety to make him think he had never truly seen one in life before. But the vivid density of the wood only drove Chang's thoughts deeper. He pulled his collar up against the chill. Moisture leached into the earth here, giving off a cold that touched his very bones. In nature's eyes, human desire seemed a brief-lived thing, no more notable than the blind hopes of a fox for its cubs or a lark for the contents of each fragile egg.

THE ROAD was barred by a low wrought-iron gate, beyond which lay a wooden landing and the brick-lined ca.n.a.l. Chang listened in vain for any voices or recognizable sounds, then gripped tight to the saddle and swung himself to the ground. He patted the mare's neck as he had seen other hors.e.m.e.n do, and walked her to the gate.

The gate's clasp was sticky-he could imagine Xonck wiping his mouth on a sleeve, the slick fluid brushed onto the metal-but there was no lock. Chang looped the mare's reins around the gatepost to examine the situation unenc.u.mbered: there was no bridge, nor any tow-path to a bridge farther down. Chang peered into the black swirling water, seeing his own reflection with distaste. There was no further sign of Xonck, nor of Xonck's horse, which meant the beast had not been abandoned. Had they swum across? The drop from the facement to the water was perhaps two feet-easy enough to leap into, but to climb out again? Chang glanced back at the mare, contentedly watching him with her placid brown eyes, and shuddered. He pushed up his gla.s.ses and squinted at the far bank. Was it possible? Xonck was a gentleman, and could ride even a crazed horse to its limit.

Directly opposite the wooden landing was another just like it, and a continuing path. Chang dropped to a crouch. Beneath the other landing was some sort of ironwork, hanging down... after a moment of feeling especially dim he craned his head below his own landing and found a cast-iron lever. Chang pulled it and jerked back as the bridge speared forward across the black ca.n.a.l, slamming into the far couplings with enough force to skewer a wild boar. He stood and studied it with dislike: the bridge was but a yard in width and did not look to hold a man, much less a horse. Yet on the center plank, smeared by retraction and extension, gleamed another patch of blue.

The mare crossed as blithely as it had borne his ignorance. It took Chang three attempts to regain the saddle, but she stood patiently through them all.

THE NARROW path wound uphill through trees, to meet a more proper country road covered with leaves. Chang did his best to place the direction of the road by the fading light, and orient that direction with reference to the factory-or where he, without having paid special attention to the map, conjectured it being. He clapped his heels, spurring the mare to a trot. He would only discover if he'd made a mistake in the brief time before the light was gone. He needed to hurry.

The path veered deeper into the woods and he began to pa.s.s ruins-broken boundary fences, road markers, the remnants of walls-all echoing the gnawing discomfort of his body. The path skirted a tumbled gatehouse, but Chang could detect no sign of the manor it once had guarded. He detected no sign of Xonck either, and so rode on, still hoping to reach De Groot's factory. And who would he find there? And what did Chang expect to do? Destroy the machines? See to it that Xonck's illness consumed him? That the Comte's legacy disappeared? Chang felt a fresh spark of irritation that he was so very out of his element, while the Doctor and Eloise might be-who knew, perhaps not two stone's throws away-settling in with cups of tea before a warm fire, the woman blinking shyly as Svenson did his level, failing best not to stare at the single b.u.t.ton undone at the top of her black dress. Chang clutched tightly at the mare's mane and snarled, nearly slipping again.

When he looked up, something caught the corner of his eye. Stopping the horse, he pushed his dark gla.s.ses down his nose, for the curling plume of white smoke blended so cleanly into the color of the dying sky that he could not at first be sure if it was fire or cloud. Chang clumsily slid from the saddle and walked the mare off the road. He looped the reins over a low branch, saw with satisfaction that there was thick gra.s.s around the tree for the horse to eat, and then rolled his eyes at his own solicitousness.

THE GROUND fell steeply toward a trickling watercourse, edged on either bank by a trough of rich black mud. Chang slid down through a moist layer of last year's leaves-doing his best to avoid snapping twigs or low-hanging branches-along the tight, muddy valley to where the smoke seemed to rise. He had a.s.sumed it was a campfire- woodsmen or hunters-but was surprised to meet the crumbled remnants of an outlying wall, netted with vines that seemed intent on pulling the stones back to the torpid earth. Over the wall lay an abandoned garden, thick with high-grown weeds. Beyond the garden stood the roofless frame of a redbrick house, the windows empty... yet out of its still-standing chimney rose the white plume.

Crossing the tangled garden in silence was impossible, so Chang crept around the wall, sinking to his ankles in the black mire. The watercourse fed an unkempt pool lined with stonework and once fitted with a mill wheel, now toppled half-rotted to one side. The pool's surface was thick with green sc.u.m, like the spittle of toads, and the air above it beset by hovering insects. On the bank near the ruined house lay a small flagged yard. The stones would allow a silent approach.

Chang studied the back of the house: two windows with a doorway leading out between them. One window had been covered with planking, and the other draped with oilcloth. He looked up at the smoking chimney-most likely it was a refuge for gypsies, or a rough lodge for hunters... had it not been for the lack of any sign of another horse, he would have thought it a perfect refuge for Xonck. Chang advanced to the oilcloth-covered window and listened.

The last thing he expected was the sound of a woman in tears.

There, there..." It was the voice of a man, hesitant and low. "There, there..."

"I am fine, thank you," the woman whispered. "Do sit down."

A sc.r.a.pe of a chair and then silence. Chang reached for the oilcloth, pausing as he heard footsteps.

"A cup of tea," announced a clipped new voice. Another woman. Chang could hear the fatigue and impatience beneath her simple words. "One for each of you."

"Thank you," said the man, and at once he whimpered.

"It is hot," the second woman snapped. "Take it by the handle! It is lemon verbena." The woman sighed bitterly after a sip of her own. "Too weak."

"It will do perfectly well," said the first woman. Chang felt a spark on the back of his neck. He knew her. Why was she crying? And who was the man?

"I'm sure it will have to," responded the other, tartly. "I am not used to making tea at all, of course-still less in such a pot, on such a fire. Any more than I am used to any of what has happened to my former existence! Though what has truly changed after all? Am I not still a shuttlec.o.c.k batted back and forth by the more powerful?"

To this opinion the other two had no answer.

"I do not mean to compare my losses to yours," the woman went on. "Whatever your losses might be, I'm sure I do not fully comprehend them-who comprehends anyone?-but from what you have told me and what I have in the meantime guessed-I am not wholly without deductive powers-I do not know why you find yourself still so distraught. Indeed, Eloise, it is most difficult to bear."

"I am sorry."

"It has been some time. No matter what you say about memory and forgetting, all of which you take so seriously-of course a measure of seriousness does credit to a person, but not an excess-yet here we are, flown from what seemed a perfectly fine cottage, because of you. It is nearly dark-I suppose we shall sleep here! I myself am enduring all manner of outright tiresome privations."

"Of course you are."

"I am. And yet you are the one in tears! They are pernicious!"

Eloise did not answer. It was obvious to Chang that the other woman was as terrified as she was arrogant.

"And who was he again? That fellow?"

"Doctor Svenson," replied Eloise softly.

"O yes, the Prince's man. Lord above-"

"He has saved my life repeatedly."

"So you intimated. Or," the woman added dryly, "so you remember..."

"He saved my life from Francis."

"Why would Francis hurt you?"

"Charlotte-"

"Why would Francis hurt any one of us? What nonsense!"

"Charlotte." Eloise sighed with some forbearance. "Charlotte, that is not true."

To Chang's astonishment, Charlotte Trapping laughed.

"Ah, well, there you have me." She chuckled quite merrily. "Per haps I fathom one or two elements after all!"

"Charlotte-"

"Stop blubbering! Your dear friend-of, goodness, ten days?-is still alive. And left behind he will remain so, and there's an end to him. What did you want instead, Eloise? A romance to sweep you away? After all you've done?"

"What I've done for you-"

"You say that-so often that I nearly believe you. Do you believe her?"

This last was to the man.

"She is very pretty," he answered gently. Charlotte Trapping huffed.

"Pretty! What girl isn't pretty? I was perfectly pretty, and look what happened! Come now, Eloise, did you really expect-and from a German-"

"He is very decent."

"Decent!" Mrs. Trapping crowed. "A word to describe a churchman! Eloise, a woman cannot put her hope in a man she pities!"