The Dark Volume (42 page)

The first was a thick black slab of stone, carved with characters Svenson did not know (and the person whose memory this was did not know either), at once overlaid, from another mind, with a harsher carving on paler, softer stone, a creature from some primitive time, with a bulbous head and too many arms—and then overlaid again with a fossilized stretch of an enormously large cephalopod, with suction cups wide as a grown man's eye… and then strangest of all came a sound, a chanting he understood was a wicked, wicked
prayer
. Each element bled sharply into the next, colliding in nauseous diagonals, as if the scattered bits of memory had been sliced with a scissors and reshuffled at random, or hammered together like a ball of wire and nails. Even as he winced, Svenson knew the strange carved language was located on a different stone altogether, that the music had not been heard on a deserted rocky shore at all, but in the close confines of a thickly carpeted drawing room, that—

Just as the entire head-splitting and meaningless sequence was about to be repeated in his mind, Svenson sensed another strain in the mixture—a different,
palpable
quality altogether…
female
… though the woman's presence was the merest impression, a whisper in his ear, his senses cleaved to those of
her
body—her own inhabitation. And finally, like ghosts taking shape from the fog on a fearful heath, Doctor Svenson isolated three successive instants, clear as whip cracks, three tableaux so sharp in a maelstrom of lesser visions they might have been etched by lightning…

A uniformed man in a side chair waiting, head in hands, as a woman's voice rose in anger on the opposite side of a door—the man looked up, his eyes red—Arthur Trapping…

Francis Xonck within a grove of trees, kneeling to whisper to three children gathered around him…

Holding the hand of a nervous, determined Charlotte Trapping, a servant opening a door to reveal another woman waiting at the far end of a table, her dark hair tied simply with a black ribbon—Caroline Stearne, and in her hand—

DOCTOR SVENSON opened his eyes. The frost in his arm had reached his shoulder, the arm gone numb. He flung the sliver of glass away and with a grimace worked the thumb of his right hand beneath the button of congealed flesh that surrounded the puncture. With a wrench that hurt far more than he was prepared to withstand, the lump of crystallized flesh came free. The Doctor stabbed his handkerchief into the wound and then tightly held it there, biting the inside of his cheek at the pain. He shut his eyes and rocked back and forth in his seat. Already the cold was ebbing away in his arm, and he could flex his fingers. He let out a long and rueful sigh. He had taken a terrible risk.

He looked up and found Elöise staring at him.

“What have you done?” she whispered.

“I had a small idea,” Svenson replied with a tight smile. “It has come to nothing.”

“Abelard—”

“Hush, now. I promise you, there is no harm.”

She watched him closely, hesitating on the edge of difficult questions. It was evident to them both he had not told the truth.

Yet as he watched Elöise settle back to sleep, Doctor Svenson knew he should have confronted her. The final three tableaux were memories from Elöise herself, transmitted through the congealed residue of her own blood. Were these memories she herself recalled, and had hidden from him—or had they been hidden from her as well, buried like a hidden seam of silver in the fibers of her body? It was another fundamental question about how the blue glass worked. Elöise was missing pieces of her mind, given over to a glass book…but what if memories taken into a book disappeared only from the forebrain, from a person's ready memory, but not necessarily altogether? Did that mean the minds of men like Robert Vandaariff or Henry Xonck might be reclaimed?

And if those experiences
could
be restored… what sort of person would Elöise be? Did she even know herself?

THE DOCTOR woke to brighter light and a canal streaming past the window, a shining ribbon between the rail tracks and a dense green forest beyond. Elöise still slept, rolling partially onto her side to face him, which—as he could see no bleeding on her bandage—spoke to a lack of discomfort with her incision. He sat up, the pistol still in his hand but the hand itself half-asleep, tucked into an awkward position between his torso and the seat. How long had he slept? It could not have been more than a doze, and yet, he ruefully realized, however short or long, such laxity would have given Xonck ample time to eliminate them both. But they both lived. Even if Xonck was kindly disposed toward Elöise, did it follow he would scruple to kill Svenson? It did not.

Svenson leaned forward and cracked the knuckles of each hand as he thought. The freight car where Xonck had been interrupted, sniffing and pawing to get inside… such a man would have no interest in any set of
goods
from these northern towns—in ore or dried fish, in oil or furs. If he traced Francis Xonck from murder to murder, each act had been in the express interest of returning to the city, or in recovering the glass book. Could it really be as simple as that?

The Doctor knelt next to Elöise and gently shook her arm. She opened her eyes, saw him, and then—with a speed that pierced his heart—composed her features into a cautious mask.

“I need to know how you feel,” he said. “If you can stand, or travel.”

“Where are we?” she asked.

“Nearing Parchfeldt Park,” answered Svenson. “I have reason to believe it may be in our interest to leave the train when we stop there.”

“To reach my uncle's cottage?”

“In time perhaps,” said the Doctor. “But I must open one of the freight cars, and I would not leave you alone, in case the train continues on before I am finished. If all goes well and quickly, we may re-board. But it may be that the hidden shelter of your cottage is exactly what you need. Certainly it will aid your recovery.” He looked down at her, his eyes touching on the bandage. “And yet, if you cannot stand, all is moot—”

“What is in this car?” asked Elöise.

Svenson met her eyes and replied as casually as he was able. “Ah, well, it may be the Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza.”

“I see.”

“My thought is to reach her before Francis Xonck.”

“Then I had best be getting ready,” said Elöise.

HER INCISION had closed cleanly and well before Svenson would have expected, given how close she had been to death. The lasting trouble was the dizzying effect of the glass, and Doctor Svenson was dismayed to find his own head swimming as he helped her walk—just a trace, almost as if he had consumed too many cigarettes at a sitting, yet he knew that he hadn't, just as he knew the sharp taste in his throat was not tobacco, but the acrid tang of indigo clay. It moved him to still more patience and more care. When he took a moment to tighten the handkerchief he'd tied across his wrist, Elöise noticed the gesture but did not comment. He caught her glance, but as if they both knew it would be a complicated conversation—for she did not know why he had done such a thing, or having done it, what he had discovered— neither pressed the matter. Instead they found themselves at the rear platform. His hands were on the rail, his eyes focused on the passing track below. He sensed Elöise turning toward him, but did not look up.

“It is beautiful here,” she said, just loud enough to be heard above the wheels. “I knew the park as a girl. The entire place felt like it was mine, of course, the way the whole of anything feels like yours as a child, simply because you desire it so fully. I am sure I intended to desire my husband quite as much, and for a time perhaps I did. I did love him, but then he died, and so far away, and so uselessly.”

She laughed ruefully and plucked at the epaulette of Svenson's uniform. “And here I am standing with another soldier.”

Svenson turned to her. “I am not—”

“Of course not, no.” She smiled. “A Doctor is very different, and a Captain-Surgeon even more. But that is not what I meant to say. And now I no longer know what it was… I have misplaced the thread.” She sighed. “Something
profound
, no doubt, about how dreams retreat, about how knowing more of a thing—about oneself—invariably means more pain. And the pain of smaller dreams is, I find, especially acute.”

Doctor Svenson knew that he ought to reply—that his reply was the exact opportunity to bare, without rancor and for the first time in his life, the merest glimpse of his own struggles—about Corinna and his squandered years, about Elöise herself, but his thoughts were swimming. What was the whole of a life anyway? What was the measure of his own against a life like Elöise's? What, after everything, through everything—what seemed like years of bitter remembrance— did one look back
on
, apart from love? He was taking too long, the silence stretching out between them, and he felt a new urgency to speak, to let her know that he had been happy for her words.

But he could not find the way to begin, and then the train began to slow.

“It seems we are stopping,” he said, and reached for the ladder.

THE MOMENT of conversation was gone. Elöise smiled somewhat, sadly, nodding to let him know she was ready. Svenson swung a leg over the rail, waiting. The train came to a halt and he heard the relieved exhale of steam from the engine.

Svenson dropped to the train track and stumbled onto the sloped gravel track bed, looking down to the freight car. Toward the engine a cluster of people waited to board—there would be some time at least to search. He returned to Elöise. Above them a dark figure sailed over the gap between their car and the next, landing with a heavy
thud
. Svenson spun, knowing he was too late even as he did so, and snapped off a shot that flew harmlessly behind Xonck's disappearing figure, the flat crack echoing loudly down the tracks. Elöise cried out in surprise and fell into the ladder, grunting with pain. Svenson caught her waist and eased her down.

“This way,” he said, and pulled her as gently as he could, wanting to run full-out but knowing Elöise could not. At the far end of the train the porter from the caboose appeared, staring at them—had he heard the shot?

“Where are we going?” called Elöise, as Svenson crouched down, peering past the wheels to the far side of the train.

“She is in a freight car,” he said, “directly in the middle of the line—”

“The Contessa?” asked Elöise.

“Yes.”

“That one?”

Doctor Svenson looked to where she pointed. The door of the car had been pushed open wide enough for the woman to exit—or for Xonck to enter. Svenson swore in German beneath his breath, still pulling Elöise along. The rushes between the canal and the sloping gravel of the track were high enough to hide the water. He swept his gaze beyond the canal to the trees—though how the Contessa might have crossed the water he did not know—but saw nothing. What he could see of the car's interior lay dark and empty. The porter came toward him, waving. Back near the engine, the various figures seemed stopped. Had they heard the pistol too?

He turned at an audible
plunk
of canal water. The Contessa.

Elöise gasped aloud and pulled at his hand, and Svenson spun back to see Francis Xonck—through the underside of the carriage— on the far side of the train, having just dropped from some hidden perch. He was on hands and knees. With a rasping, hacking rale Xonck vomited a bilious stream of dark liquid onto the stones. Svenson extended the pistol, unsure of his aim through the intervening cables and wheels, and Xonck reeled to his knees, the hood falling back onto his shoulders. Elöise gasped again and her fingers dug into Svenson's hand. Xonck's face had been savaged by his ordeal—eyes rimmed red as two open wounds, lips blue, face streaked like a sweat-smeared actor's greasepaint. Doctor Svenson hesitated, and then Xonck's torso convulsed and he fell forward again, spewing another vile splashing bolt. The Doctor looked away with a wince—it was almost as if the sight conjured the smell—then saw the flash of a woman—black hair, dark dress, white hand—vanish into the trees on the canal's opposite side.

He pulled Elöise's hand and leapt into the rushes, the high green stalks slapping against them.

“But—Francis—the freight car—” cried Elöise.

“It is empty!” shouted Svenson. “Xonck is dying—the Contessa is more important!”

Her reply was curtailed by a grunt of pain as they stumbled abruptly into the low brick barrier that lined the canal. The bricked border of the canal was slick with dead reeds, flattened and brown, dangling into the dark green water.

“How did she cross?” asked Elöise.

“Perhaps she swam.”

“Never so quickly,” replied Elöise. “And not in any dress.”

The canal was not excessively wide, perhaps ten yards, but far enough for a woman's swimming to have made some noise—simply her climbing out would have dripped and splashed enough to draw their attention, and yet they had not heard a thing. He scanned both banks in either direction, looking for any rope or ferry box that might be hauled across. Once more Elöise pulled at his arm. She pointed farther down the canal, where the current flowed. Svenson screwed in his monocle and saw it for himself—a small flat-bottomed launch. The Contessa had taken it across and then pushed it away downstream.

“Can we catch it?” asked Elöise.

“We have little choice, save swimming,” replied Svenson.

Behind them the train whistle sounded its shrill and forlorn cry. They both looked back, hesitating, but reaching the train before it pulled forward, even if they had wanted to, was impossible. The iron wheels ground into motion with a shriek.

“Let us find our way across,” Elöise said.

AS IT happened, they did not need the little boat. Thirty yards away they found a narrow bridge of ingenious construction: it could be folded—allowing the water traffic to pass—and then laid out again as necessary to reach the other side. As the Contessa's boat drifted farther from their view, Doctor Svenson wrestled with the knots securing the planking. Once loosed, the network of pulleys and weights and cords stretched itself like some sort of wood-and-hemp mantis across the green canal, falling on the far bank with a
slap
.