The Dark Volume (43 page)

He took Elöise's hand, helping her climb the short rise through the rushes. They had entered the vast and isolated woods of Parchfeldt Park.

“Do you know where we are?” he asked.

She squeezed his hand and pulled hers free. Doctor Svenson fussed in his pocket for a handkerchief to wipe his monocle.

“I am not sure,” said Elöise, taking a deep breath of the country air and exhaling with a smile, as if to displace the tension between them. “You see how dense the forest is. The canals are to the south—as is my uncle's cottage, but I have always come by the road. We could be within two hundred yards of the place or twenty miles… I've truly no idea.”

“The Contessa has not run so far only to escape Xonck. If she was intent on reaching the city, that woman would have clawed his eyes out rather than leave the train. She has entered the park for a reason. Can you think what it might be?”

“I cannot.”

“But did she ever, when speaking to you—”

“She
never
spoke to me.”

“But did she see you… did she know you were on the train?”

“I'm sure I've no idea!”

Doctor Svenson was torn between shaking her hard by the shoulders and caressing her face with sympathy. He diverted both urges by re-wiping his monocle.

“I'm afraid that will not do, my dear. Though I am an ignorant foreigner, I can at least make speculations. If it is a royal preserve, is there some royal presence—the hunting lodge of the Duke of Stäelmaere, for example? Some other estate where the Contessa might hope to find rescue?”

“I do not know the whole park, only one small portion.”

“But if we are near that portion—”

“I do not know—”

“But if we
are
, what other tenants, what other possibilities?”

“There are none. The Rookery is all that remains of an estate house that burned some years ago. There are villages and wardens, but wholly unremarkable. Certainly a woman such as the Contessa might convince them to give her food—”

“She did not leave the train to find food in a village,” said Svenson.

“If you say so,” snapped Elöise.

“It will not help to get angry.”

“If I am angry it is because—because all of this—my mind and my body—”

She was breathing quickly, her face flushed, one hand in the air and the other protectively touching the bandage below her breasts.

“Listen to me.” The Doctor's sharp tone brought her eyes to his. “I am here—in this wood—because I am trying to recover my sense of duty. This woman we chase—the man in the train—the dead Ministry man at Karthe—”

“Who?”

He waved her question away. “If the Contessa escapes, other people will die—
we
will die. I am not thinking of myself, or of
us
, it is the last of my concerns—whatever I once thought, or hoped, I have put it away.”

“Abelard—”

“There is a hole in your mind you cannot help. That is a fact. And yet there are other facts you have not shared. Perhaps you have your reasons—but thus, you must see, comes my own dilemma. With some distress I must admit that we do not truly know each other at all. For example, I know that you met Caroline Stearne in a private room of the St. Royale Hotel, in the company of Charlotte Trapping.”

He waited for her to respond. She did not.

“You did not mention it,” he said.

Elöise looked away to the trees. After another hopeless silence Svenson indicated the way before them.

IT TOOK ten minutes of thrashing through a dew-soaked thicket of young beech trees before their way broke into a band of taller oaks, beneath whose broad canopies the ground was more bare and easy to cross. More than once Svenson caught Elöise's arm as she stumbled. After each stumble she thanked him quietly and he released her, stepping ahead and doing his best to clear the branches from her path. Aside from this they did not speak, though once the Doctor risked an observation on the majesty of the mighty oak in general and, with a nod to a darting red squirrel, how each tree functioned within the forest as a sort of miniature city, supporting inhabitants of all stations, from grubs to squirrels, from songbirds to even hawks in its heights. It would have been possible for him to continue—the relation of oak to oak being certainly comparable to the various tiny duchies that together formed a sort of German nation—yet at her silence he did not, allowing the last sentence to dissipate flatly in the empty woods.

Beyond the oaks they met a path, wide enough for a horse and wagon, but so covered with leaves that it was clear traffic was rare.

“You recognize nothing?” he asked.

She shook her head, and then gestured to their left. “There is perhaps a better chance if we continue west.”

“As you wish,” said Svenson, and they began to walk.

They walked in an unbearable silence. Doctor Svenson tried to distract himself with the birdsong and the rustles of invisible wind. When he could stand it no more, yet upon opening his mouth found nothing to say, he indicated their leaf-strewn path.

“Our way is as thickly padded as a Turkish carpet—I find it impossible to tell if the Contessa has preceded us.”

Elöise turned to face him quickly. “Do you think she has?”

“She has gone
someplace.”

“But why here?”

“We are walking west. Is not west more toward the city?”

“If she sought the city, she would have remained on the train— you said so yourself.”

“I did.” Such stupidity was exactly what came of making conversation to no purpose. “Still, the park is large. We can only hope.”

“Hope?”

“To catch her, of course. To stop her.”

“Of course,” nodded Elöise, with a sigh.

“You would prefer her free?” asked Svenson, somewhat tartly.

“I would prefer her vanished from my life.”

Doctor Svenson could not stop himself. “And what life is that? Your master is dead, your mistress in turmoil, your enemies everywhere. And yet what life was it
before
, Elöise? Can you even remember what you embrace with such determination—or why?”

“One might say the same,” she answered, her voice swift and low, “to a man whose Prince is dead, whose Prince was a fool, whose wasted efforts on an idiot's behalf have left only bitterness and shame.”

Svenson barked with disgust, looking to the trees for any retort, but nothing came. Her words were exact as a scalpel.

“You are of course correct—” he began, but stopped at her exasperated sigh.

“I am an idiot whose life has been saved countless times by your precise foolishness. I have no right to say one word.”

Before he could disagree, Elöise stopped walking. He stopped with her. She turned to look behind them.

“What is it?” he asked.

Elöise pointed off the path. Through the new green trees Svenson saw a grey stone wall, perhaps the height of his shoulder.

“We have passed something,” said Elöise. “Perhaps it is a house.”

ON THE far side of the wall they found the ruins of what might have been an abbey, the stones draped with vines, the windows empty holes through which he could see trees that had grown up inside, nurtured on the decayed beams of the ceiling. Svenson recognized several fruit trees, gnarled and unkempt, the remnants of some abbot's orchard or lady's garden, and then as they neared pointed out an even thinner line of wide step-stones that led beyond the ruin.

“Do you know what this place is?” Svenson asked.

Elöise shook her head. She had stopped, staring ahead into the trees. Svenson nodded to the new flagstone path.

“Shall we not see where it goes?”

“It is a ruin,” she said.

“I find ruins stirring,” he replied. “Each holds its own secret tale. And besides, these stones seem quite well kept.”

He stepped forward and she followed without answer. Ruins of any kind, but most particularly those overcome by nature, spoke to Svenson's heart deeply—and he glanced at Elöise with an encouraging smile. She did her best to smile in return, and he reached to take her hand, which she allowed with a defeated look that left him wishing he could, without even sharper embarrassment, let it go again.

The path of stones wound to a wooden gate, set with an iron latch.

The square flagstone below the gate showed a fading wet mark… a small footprint… a woman's boot… or a man's that had evaporated to a smaller size. Svenson slipped the pistol into his hand. He motioned that Elöise should keep behind him and reached for the iron latch.

BEYOND THE gate, the flagstone walk threaded a pair of well-tended flower beds (pruned rosebushes to the left and new budding tulips— red and yellow—to the right) and ended at a low stone house with a thatched roof whose edges hung far enough to cast the walls of the house, its two rounded windows, and its wooden door into shadow. The green turf that lined the walkway was wet with dew, the stones ahead marked with more footprints. The air was silent save for the birds.

“Do you know this place?” he whispered.

Again Elöise shook her head. Svenson crept to the nearest print, crouching down to study it. This was unquestionably left by a woman's boot, for even a young man's would not show such a pointed toe. He pointed toward the rosebushes, where a small spade had been set against a stake. Elöise pulled it from the ground and somewhat uncertainly shifted it in her hands to find the proper grip for swinging.

They had been standing in the garden too long, and with a nod to Elöise the Doctor advanced quickly to the doorway, darting to one side and indicating that she should stand opposite—which at least hid them from the windows. She hefted the shovel gamely, but he saw she was entirely without confidence. For all he knew, her wound had reopened and was bleeding. He must capture the Contessa by himself. The less any situation asked of Elöise, the better.

He reached for the iron latch. The door swung wide without a squeak onto a room exuding both intimate care (the hearth dotted with porcelain keepsakes, the furniture waxed and gleaming, and the plaster walls covered with framed engravings) and abandonment, for the flowers on the table had died and the flagstones beneath Svenson's feet showed streaks of dust the wind had blown beneath the door. The Doctor entered carefully and crossed to the hearth. The grate was empty and cold.

He turned to Elöise, standing stiffly in the door with her shovel, and motioned her inside. The Doctor led the way into a humble kitchen. No one was there, nor were there signs of recent occupation, but his eye caught a shapeless pile covered with cloth, stuffed behind the butcher's block. He pulled back the cloth. Heaped beneath, without the sensitive regard their maker might have demanded, lay the
Annunciation
canvases of Oskar Veilandt, Comte d'Orkancz, last seen, face to the wall, in the laboratory at Harschmort House.

He looked up to see Elöise's gaze fixed on the topmost painting— one Svenson had not seen before, showing the haloed face of the angel. The awful man's brushwork really was exquisite—the flesh of the ecstatic woman seemed as real as that of Elöise across the room, and the blue surface of the menacing angel shone like glass itself. The angel's mouth was open, almost in mid-bite, or perhaps this was only the hissing exhortation of its message. The teeth were sharp and—to the Doctor's dismay—bright orange. Like a Roman statue, the eyes bore no iris or pupil, and were as entirely blue as the skin around them, only more liquid, giving the unpleasant impression that were he to touch a finger to its surface, it might penetrate full length into the eye. He lifted the painting, flipping it over to study the bright inscriptions on the back. Despite there being the odd legible word—“incept” … “marrowes” … “contigular” —Svenson could perceive no larger meaning, bristling as it was with symbols, some no doubt unique to the Comte alone. The Doctor shivered to recall the slick blue discharge as it coated Lydia Vandaariff's quivering chin, and set the painting back onto the pile.

Elöise was no longer there.

SVENSON WAS through the doorway in two strides. She stood across the main room, having clearly just taken a peek through its far curtained door. He spoke in the barest whisper.

“I did not see you leave.” He nodded to the curtain. “Did you see anything?”

“Perhaps we should go,” Elöise whispered back.

She was trembling. Had she seen something? Or had he lost track of her frailty in his pursuit of the Contessa?

“We cannot. She must have come here. The footprint.”

He pushed aside the curtain for himself, revealing a dark unlit corridor lined with high, ebony cupboards. At the far end was a second curtain, sketched out by the light beneath. He crept down the passage, resisting the urge to open the cupboards—there was plenty of time for that later—and a creak from the floorboards told him Elöise had followed. He held up his pistol hand for silence as his other reached for the curtain and twitched it aside: iron-frame bed, seaman's trunk at its foot, another tall cupboard, writing desk with a bevel-edged mirror above.

Svenson crossed to a small door, left open to a rear garden. Beyond its threshold lay another smeared footprint, and another trail of step-stones leading deeper into the woods.

“She has escaped,” he called to Elöise. “She cannot have stayed long. Why did she not simply go around?”

“Perhaps she wanted food,” said Elöise, still in a whisper.

“More likely a weapon.” The Doctor stepped back into the bedroom. “If only the occupants might provide some sense of where we are, and where she might be
going
—hopefully they have not come to harm—”

He paused at a muted scuffle from within the bedroom's tall wardrobe. Svenson yanked it open and shoved the pistol into the face of the man who crouched there, gazing up without concern—indeed without any expression whatsoever. His clothes gave off the distinct reek of a fire. It was Robert Vandaariff.

The blow caught Doctor Svenson square across the side of his head and sent him straight into the wardrobe, where, aside from a mixture of camphor and smoke, his last sensation was of a doubled shadow in the room behind him…a second woman standing next to Elöise.