Eros Element (27 page)

Chapter Thirty-Three

Rome, 21 June 1870

Iris watched Edward set up his new aether-isolating rig. He had also acquired a new set of tuning forks and laid them in a precise row. She recalled that the first time she'd seen him work with them, she'd been annoyed with him. Now the tension around his jaw and eyes said he was still angry at her.

Radcliffe emerged from the office where he'd been working. “It appears to be some sort of astrological device,” he said. “Maybe to predict dates of certain events, but there also seems to be some sort of code underneath the instructions.”

“How can you tell?” Iris asked.

“The way the words and phrases are laid out doesn't make sense. It could be that it's very old Greek—that's what took me so long, I had to remember back to reading some of the original old texts from Hippocrates in my History of Medicine course—but there's something strange about it. But do you know when the next full moon is?”

“No.” Iris looked at Edward, who shrugged. “Why would I need to?”

“If you were practicing a mystery religion, it would be important.” The doctor reached for the device, then stopped. “Can I touch it?”

“Try to do so as little as possible.”

“Right.” He turned two of the large dials on the top, and three of the smaller ones on the face turned on their own. Iris followed his actions but couldn't figure out what, exactly, he did.

“What are you doing?”

“The first two dials are indicators of season and month. The calendar changed from Greek to Roman times, so I adjusted for that. The others show what day of the month and time the full moon will occur.”

Edward leaned over and squinted at the dials. “That's brilliant, but I can't tell what they say.”

“Again, making adjustments for calendar changes, it says the full moon will occur July 12, and the new moon will be in one week, June 28.”

“That's amazing!” Iris clapped her hands. “What else can it tell you?”

“It will require more study, but it's a fascinating device.”

“Can you teach us how to read it?”

“I could, but I think it's more important I work on breaking the code. I suspect it has something to do with the harmonies of the spheres, but that's a physics problem. Professor, perhaps you could help me with this.”

The two men bent over the device and Radcliffe's translation, and Iris stepped back. She knew she had done her part by finding the chapel, but she resented the feeling of being pushed aside.

“Doctor, was Lord Jeremy in the chapel?”

“No, Miss, I believe he's broken for lunch.”

“Good.” Iris gestured for Marie to follow her. “Let's explore now that there are no distractions.”

“Is it as you expected?” Marie asked once they were back underground.

“Mostly. A lot of things are missing, unfortunately. Perhaps vandals got in before it was filled in.” This time Iris held her own torch, and the sunlight came more directly through the shaft in the ceiling, so she got a better view of the stuccoes. She also filled in the statuary from memory from her two visions, which seemed all too accessible.

Iris glanced at Marie. Part of her couldn't believe the other woman accepted her abilities and didn't think she was some sort of freak. But now they had more in common than Iris would have thought at the start of this strange adventure.

Marie seemed to read her thoughts because she asked, “So you're going to do it, then? Marry Lord Jeremy?”

Iris gazed at a stucco relief of a butterfly-winged woman being lifted in the arms of an angel-winged man: Psyche and Eros. “You see that one?”

“Yes,” Marie said. “Lots of wings, like the painting at Monceau's house. Must've made for some interesting coupling.”

Iris's cheeks heated, but she laughed. “Are you going to take it upon yourself to educate me in such things before my wedding?”

“Well, you said your mother was dead. Someone needs to, although since you're into these old statues, you've at least seen what a man looks like under his pants.”

Marie's statement reminded Iris of the point she was going to make. “So you see those two. That's Psyche and Eros. He was a god, the son of Aphrodite, the goddess of love. She was a princess who was said to be as beautiful as Aphrodite, which made the goddess jealous.”

“Yes,” Marie said. “It's not a good idea to mess with powerful beings.”

“So she sent Eros to make Psyche fall in love with someone ugly or otherwise inappropriate, but he fell for her. He brought Psyche to his palace, and they married and coupled in the dark. She thought she was married to a monster, so she lit a lamp one night while he was sleeping and was so shocked at his beautiful appearance she spilled oil on him, woke him, and drove him away.”

“She couldn't feel he was good-looking and well-built?” Marie shook her head. “Some women are so dumb.”

“Or innocent.” Iris lifted the torch. The lovers' apparent expressions of bliss made heaviness settle in her chest. “Of course, this being a temple, they're portraying the ideal, the happy ending. I saw from my parents that's not likely to happen no matter how much either might want it to. So I'm hoping that if—when—I marry Lord Scott, I will discover something redeeming about him.”

Iris refused to look at Marie, to face the pity on the other woman's face, but she did find the weight of Marie's hand on her shoulder comforting.

“Keep that optimistic spirit, Miss. You're going to need it. But what does Eros have to do with aether and what we're looking for? And what does it have to do with the device upstairs?”

“There is no greater power than love, some would say passion. What better name for an extremely strong source of energy? As for the device, perhaps it will show Edward, I mean Professor Bailey, what he needs to add or do to isolate it. Meanwhile, I'll study the stuccoes and try to remember the statues that were here to see if I can offer some guidance.”

Heavy footsteps down the ramp heralded the arrival of Johann Bledsoe. “I'm sure Professor Bailey will appreciate your help,” he said. “But he and Radcliffe are shut up in the office, and I'm left to entertain myself, so I thought I'd come down and see what you ladies were doing.”

“Where's Mister O'Connell?” Iris asked.

“Keeping an eye on your fiancé.”

“What? Why?”

“We know he's not the most upstanding individual, and we'll try to come up with some way to keep you from having to follow through with wedding him. In the meantime, we'll make sure he doesn't try to force you to do something you're not ready for and trapping you in a situation where you have to marry him sooner rather than later.”

Suspicion rose to cloud Iris's mind. “Why are you helping me? I thought you would rather have me out of the way so I won't hurt your friend any further.”

“He's handling this better than I thought he would. He's grown a lot through all this, and he seems to realize you did what you did out of a need for survival, and you wouldn't deliberately hurt him. Whereas with Lily, she used him and didn't care at all about him.”

“Like Lord Jeremy is doing with you,” Marie added.

Iris had to look away from the torch because tears came to her eyes. “Why are you being so kind to me?”

“Because you're a kind person, more than I gave you credit for,” Bledsoe told her.

“We all feel that way,” Marie said.

“Thank you.” That was all Iris could get out before she fled up the ramp and into the daylight. Now that she had friends, she would have to give them up, for she knew Lord Jeremy wouldn't want her associating with a musician or a maid, and he certainly wouldn't allow her to socialize with Edward. Although their work would make a huge difference for many people, it seemed an unfair sacrifice.

With Radcliffe's help in translating and interpreting the markings on the ancient device, Edward thought he calculated the correct frequency to isolate the aether. The tone was much higher than he'd tried previously, and he had to have special equipment made that would transfer it to the vacuum quickly enough before dissipating through the materials. Finally he was ready to try it, and the others gathered around to watch. They did the procedure in the underground temple, which seemed appropriate. Also, the angle of the light coming through the ceiling aperture at noon was perfect for the aether isolation.

The situation reminded Edward of his teaching days, which now seemed so long ago. “I wish all my students were as invested in the results of my experiments,” he said and started the burners. “Goggles on, please.”

He tried not to look at Iris, whom he acknowledged as the originator of this exciting opportunity. At least that was the direction he moved his thoughts whenever he saw her. Thinking of her like that seemed to make the most sense rather than attaching the labels of “liar” or “desperate,” or “willing to sacrifice herself for all of them”. At least Lord Jeremy had stayed upstairs. He'd tried to argue to be included, but since he wasn't authorized by Cobb, they had reason to leave him out. Radcliffe and O'Connell technically weren't supposed to be there, but as Edward wouldn't have been able to do anything with the device without Radcliffe's help, the doctor stood with the group in front of the altar, and O'Connell stayed at the bottom of the ramp and served as a guard.

Edward went through the procedure to isolate the aether by creating a vacuum in the small glass sphere and striking the tone to make the substance appear. “And now I shall attempt to stabilize it with this higher tone.” He struck the tuning fork and held it to the copper globe. It grated his ears, and Marie actually put her hands to the sides of her head, but no one said anything. He glanced at his watch to note the time, and once the higher sound faded, counted the seconds before the aether disappeared.

“Fifteen seconds beyond the end of the tone,” he said. “That's progress, but not what I hoped for.”

“It did seem to last longer,” Iris said. “Try a different tone?”

“That's the one according to the device.” He set the tuning fork down too hard and enjoyed its plink of protest. “What are we missing?”

He mentally went through the calculations again, and Radcliffe stayed behind as the others filed up the ramp.

“There has to be something else,” Edward said once he and the doctor stood alone in the temple. “Something simple we're missing.”

Radcliffe sighed and shook his head. “You're right. There's something obvious. You work better when you and Miss McTavish are getting along. Talk to her.”

“What's the point?” Edward picked up the little tuning fork. “She lied to me, and now she's engaged to someone I have no desire to maintain an acquaintance with.”

“But she's your friend. Those are hard to come by.”

“Thanks for your advice, but I'd rather ponder the mathematics than the emotional aspects of this.”

“Even though it's the Eros Element we're trying to derive?”

“A clever name, that's all. Cupid is not to be trusted.”

Chapter Thirty-Four

Underground Temple, Rome, 27 June 1870

Several days passed with no progress. One afternoon Iris stood in the chapel and sketched the set of stuccoes over the altar when Marie came puffing down the ramp. The air stood heavy with humidity and dust over the city, so they all got short of breath moving through it except Patrick O'Connell, who grew up around a forge and so could breathe through thick air.

“Iris,” Marie said, “I've word from Cobb.” She held a letter. “I telegraphed him the result of the professor's experiments, and this came through the tubes.”

“He must have wanted us to get it quickly to pay to tube it so far. Have you read it yet?” Iris turned from the altar, and anxiety shot through her middle when she saw Marie's face. “We need to get the others.”

They all gathered at the cafe, again without Lord Jeremy, and Marie read the letter.

My dear explorers,

I am aware of the progress, or lack thereof, of the experiments to stabilize aether and therefor isolate the Eros Element. Due to a change in my own financial circumstances including costly repairs to my airship from the Clockwork Guild's attack, I am no longer able to finance this expedition as I have been. Your stipends from the trip, including my donation to Professor Bailey's department, will also be halved. Before you become angry at me, look to your companion Johann Bledsoe, whose gambling debts prompted the attack. Lest you think I am a monster, I will pay for another three days in Italy and your return passages to your respective countries including that to America for Doctor Radcliffe and Mister O'Connell, whose assistance Marie said you have found invaluable. Thank you, and I wish you godspeed.

Yours truly,

Parnaby Cobb

All eyes turned to Johann, who gazed imploringly at Iris. She shrugged—what could she do? She'd kept his secret without threat or malice. All she could do now was not harangue him like the others would and turn her mind more intently toward figuring out the problem with their now very short deadline.

“You're the reason we got attacked?” Edward asked. “I lost my best copper globe up there.”

“And my best set of clothes,” Marie said.

Johann held up his hands. “I'm sorry, especially about your injuries, Edward. But Cobb knew, or he must have known. He approached me about this expedition a week before he appeared at the University and said he knew I would be interested in a potentially lucrative opportunity.”

“But he didn't mention your gambling debts specifically.” Marie toyed with a knife, and Iris wondered if the maid was pondering sticking it in the musician.

“No, but he implied them.”

Radcliffe and O'Connell exchanged looks.

“What is it?” Iris asked, happy to divert the attention from the maestro, whose face was as red as the tomato sauce they'd come to like.

“I've met Cobb,” Radcliffe said. “At Harvard. Patrick and I were having lunch one day at a restaurant off campus when he approached us. Of course I knew who he was—everyone in Boston does. He asked if I was the talented colored physician he'd heard of who had a knack for Greek.”

“Don't let Chadwick fool you with his false modesty,” O'Connell put in. “He took highest in the class.”

“And would have gotten the tar beaten out of me for it if Patrick hadn't stepped in. But I told Cobb yes, I was. He paid for the trip to Vienna, and when we got waylaid in the north of France, he sent us a message to stay put because his airship would be landing. He had a chance for me to use my skills in Greek and medicine, and O'Connell's tinkering might help as well. He told us not to say anything about it, but to make ourselves useful so you'd want us along.”

“So why did you tell us?” Marie asked. “You were lying all along too, but it would have been easy enough for you to keep your secret.”

Radcliffe inclined his head toward Iris. “She's probably figured it all out.”

The parts of the conversation dropped into place like puzzle pieces in Iris's brain. “Cobb didn't want us to know he's the puppet master. If you look at history, savvy emperors had networks of spies unaware of each other. Remember, we're supposed to be posing as Grand Tourists. Perhaps if we seemed too cohesive a group, we would have alerted Cobb's competitors.” But she sensed Radcliffe wasn't telling them something important. She caught Marie's eye, and Marie nodded. The link between them continued to strengthen, and Iris knew Marie shared her suspicion.

“Meanwhile, what do we do?” Edward asked. “We're close—I can feel it—and perhaps if I make this discovery, I can save my department, if not my job.”

“We keep working,” Iris told him. “The stuccoes in the chapel have to have something to do with the device we found. I need to take another look at it.”

And I need to get my hands on it to see what it can tell me.

Edward's face showed his distress at his friend's betrayal, but he set his mouth in a line, and Iris admired how he refused to let it deter him from their mission.

He has definitely changed. We all have.
The memory of the first crack in his emotional armor showing at the airfield swirled around in her head along with grief—yes, more grief—at their group being broken up and the thought that her marriage to Scott would come sooner rather than later. She would try to wait until the heavy mourning period for her father was over, but she suspected Scott would find some way to force the issue. Even if she could put him off, he would be a large and annoying part of her life from this point on.

The group split up with Iris and Marie going to the rented offices, Johann disappearing, and the other men heading back to the site to see if they could see anything in the chapel that had eluded them to this point but that could help.

“What will you do?” Iris asked once they walked out of the sun and into the dim but stuffy office building. “Do you have to go back to him?”

“What concern is it of yours?” Marie asked. She turned her back on Iris and looked at the objects on the shelves in front of her.

“I'm worried about you. You know what I can do—your brooch told me some of what happened.”

Marie turned toward her. “Don't be. He's doing with me what he does with everyone else in his life. He's used me, and now he's sending me back to the theatre. He sent a separate note, that he'll pay my passage back to Paris, and he no longer needs my services.”

“Isn't that good? You'll be away from him.”

“And back with my mother, who will take every opportunity to remind me how she told me taking up with him was a bad idea. I'll have to become an actress again—it's the only profession that will suffer my ruined reputation now that I'm no longer in Cobb's employ. Well, the one I'm willing to do. At least with my training, I can fight off any man who thinks actresses are for more than acting.”

“Is that why you don't want to go back to it?”

“That and when I'm on stage, I feel like I lose part of myself, my true self, with every role. I wish I could go back to being a ladies' maid, but as much as I've traveled with Cobb, I'm too known in the big cities, as is my reputation.”

Iris knew Marie spoke truly. “I'm sorry. I wish there was some way to help.”

“Figure this thing out.” Marie gestured to the device, which sat on the table between them. “At least make it so this journey will have a good outcome for someone.”

“If we do, we'll have to hide it from Lord Jeremy and test it and patent it before Cobb finds out.”

“Go ahead and see what it has to tell you,” Marie, apparently done with talking about Cobb, said. “I'm surprised you haven't already tried to read it.”

“I wanted to figure this out with my archaeological training and knowledge. Plus, Doctor Radcliffe and Ed—Professor Bailey—have been doing well with this part of the puzzle. I feel they're close.”

“But not close enough for the time we have.”

Iris pulled off her gloves. “Right. Not nearly close enough.” She flexed her fingers. “If I'm in the trance for too long or if you sense that something is very wrong, do what you need to get me out of it.”

“You can trust me.”

And oddly, Iris knew she could. She pressed her fingertips to the wooden sides of the device, caressed the gears with her thumbs, and closed her eyes.

Images and feelings tumbled through Iris's mind. First there were Edward's and Doctor Radcliffe's excitement at working with the device, a shared joy in a good challenge that was both academic and practical. Edward's feelings at Iris's betrayal floated in, as did his sadness that she would be marrying someone else but then relief that he'd escaped the clutches of another deceitful woman. Iris pushed through those emotions—she didn't want to intrude on his privacy—and Radcliffe's strange sense of wild hope at what they would accomplish. The man remained a mystery, but she couldn't focus on that now. There was a long period of muffled noise as the city changed around the little temple and finally a glimmer of light and flurry of activity.

“Tell me why we have to haul all this gravel down here?” It was the slave girl Iris had read the statue of at the Louvre. Apparently she hadn't been sacrificed in the temple as Iris had thought, and she staggered down the ramp under the weight of a large bag.

A burly man with a similar bag slung over his shoulders replied, “Because he said what they've found is too dangerous. It's two that's required, and he needs this place hidden by the next new moon. The emperor can't get hold of this.”

Two what?
Iris asked. She didn't know how much her present self could affect the past.

“Two what?” The girl echoed Iris's thoughts.

“Two tones, high and low. They figured it out with the Astrological Calculator. When the moon is dark, there's one source of sunlight, and there's little enough interference to make it stay.”

“How do you know this?” the girl asked.

“I assisted at the last ceremony, and my Greek isn't as rusty as yours. Trust me, it's good we're covering all this up, burying it. They don't know what it's capable of, but the emperor don't care about taking it slow.”

The warning of the statue came back to Iris, how some sort of primal being would be unleashed, but the slave girl again seemed to share her thoughts, this time her skepticism.

“That's what they say, but they also believe people come back as beans. How much of this is myth and how much is true?”

“It doesn't matter. Do you think they'll let us live after we do this? The secret will die with us.”

The girl nodded, a resigned expression on her face. “I always thought it would come to this. I hope I won't come back as a bean.”

Iris recalled her first vision, which must have been the girl's death in the coliseum, and whispered, “I'm sorry for what will happen to you.” The slave looked to where Iris stood, and Iris recognized she wasn't in anyone's perspective this time, but rather watching from the altar like a ghost from the future. Or maybe there was something in the device. But objects couldn't have spirits, could they?

Either way, a tug brought her back to the present and Marie.

“Are you all right?” Marie asked. “You look like you've seen a ghost.”

“I think I might have been one. I wasn't in anyone's head this time.”

“How? You're not dead.”

Iris shivered. “I hope not.” But then she remembered she would be marrying Lord Jeremy Scott soon, and part of her felt like she might be. “Come on, we have to tell Edward and the others.”

“Wait,” Marie said. “Did you see anything else? Before you went into the past?”

It all seemed shrouded in fog now, but Iris dug through it. “Radcliffe is really invested in us figuring this out, but I can't determine why.”

Marie held up the echo-worm, which they'd found would also record voices. “I saw him and Mister O'Connell go into the hotel, and he's been watching the papers from Austria. Perhaps I should have one delivered to them and send this device in to see what they say.”

Edward stood alone in the temple and counted the number of stars at the top of the main stucco at the altar. Clues, clues, they had to find clues as to how to work the device and discover the tone that would stabilize the aether into a new element. The Eros Element. It seemed aptly named, for without the partnership of minds, they wouldn't have gotten as close as they did.

“I know what you're missing,” Iris said from the top of the ramp. She carried the device gingerly in her gloved hands and descended into the gloom to join him.

Edward stepped back. “Should you be here alone? You're affianced to another man.”

“The others are out and about, and Marie had an errand to run. I'll only be here a few moments.” Iris set the device on the altar, and it caught a ray of sunlight. It blazed gold, and Edward thought it looked like it must have when new. Like his and Iris's relationship—time had tarnished it.

“What do you mean, you know what I'm missing?” Edward walked to the device. The dials were where he and Radcliffe had left them.

“Look at all the stuccoes.” Iris gestured around them. “There are Psyche and Eros. And there's Orpheus and Euridice and Medea and Jason… They're all relationships, meetings of minds and hearts on common ground to form something greater or make a journey of transformation. Perhaps this was an initiation chamber of some sort.”

She didn't have to say it. Edward's brain took the leap. “There needs to be more than one tone. A person can't initiate himself.”

“Yes. But it has to be the perfect pair.”

“Right. Because early experiments with more than one tone proved disastrous. That's one reason we all wear goggles. It's thought that there is no such thing as a perfect combination of tones. There will always be some dissonance, and dissonance can be deadly.”