The Dark Volume (46 page)

It was enough, her edge of restlessness blunted by disgust—with both the tobacco and her own desire. She set the smoking cigar on the metal ashtray and collected her candle, walking unsteadily from the room—uncaring whether a servant would clear it away before her father returned or if he would find the evidence of her invasion himself… a last fittingly oblique communication between them.

THE FOULNESS of these old memories was but a childish shadow to what she had so foolishly just opened herself. Miss Temple lay on her back beyond the gardens of Harschmort, panting hard, staring up without registering the slightest detail of cloud or sky, insensible to any cries that might have echoed beyond the hedgerows, to gunshots, and to time. She reached up slowly, as if the air had become gelatinous with dread, and touched her dripping mouth. Her fingers were wet with saliva and a clotted string of black bile. With a concentrated effort she turned her head and saw, gleaming where it had fallen, the blue glass book. She swallowed, her throat raw from retching, and sank back again, feeling the stalks of tall grass poking at her hair, her will sapped, with all the sickness in her mind rising again like a flooding mire.

Since looking into the glass book in the Contessa's rooms, Miss Temple had been determined that its insistent, delirious memories not overwhelm her, knowing such an initial surrender could easily stretch into a span of days. But Miss Temple's disapproval of a world so defined was primarily fearful, for such surrender frightened her very much. Miss Temple did not consider herself as priggish—she did not tremble at her own natural appetites—yet she knew some pleasures were different. When she imagined them inside her mind, she imagined her mind stained.

But the second book changed all of this. It had colored Miss Temple's thoughts to the same extreme degree as the first—or recolored them, overlaying every vivid impulse ash grey. The Contessa's book had been compiled from countless lives, while the book on the grass contained the memories of a single man—but his memories had been harvested at the very moment of death, infecting each instant of his captured experience with a toxic, corrupting, nauseating dread. It was not unlike the pageants one saw carved on medieval churches— lines of people, from princesses to peasants to popes, trailing hand in hand after Death, the trappings of their lives exposed as vanity. Scenes of lust—and what scenes they were!—became disgusting charades of rotting meat, sumptuous banquets became fashioned whole from human filth, every strain of sweet, sweet music became re-strung to the coarse calling of blood-fed crows. Miss Temple had never imagined such despair, such utter hopelessness, such bottomless bankruptcy. The first book's bright empire of sensation, its unstable riot beneath her skin, had been mirrored by bitter futility, with the acrid dust that was every person's inheritance.

But Miss Temple understood why Francis Xonck had chosen this book to keep. How quick his thoughts must have flown just to see the possibility, to seize an empty glass book. He had preserved in its unfeeling depths—the freezing glass no doubt pressed to the dying man's face—all the alchemical knowledge of the Comte d'Orkancz.

She shoved her body onto one elbow, pursing her lips with a twinge of irritation that hinted at recovery, and looked over her shoulder at the book, whose surface had taken on a satisfied glow. Miss Temple doubted there was any person—even Xonck, even Chang—strong enough to actually immerse themselves in its contents without being utterly overwhelmed. Mrs. Marchmoor's hand had passed into it without harm… but what did that mean? The glass woman may have learned the book contained the Comte—why else would she have gone to Harschmort?—but if she had been able to absorb the actual contents of the Comte's mind, then she would have had no need for Miss Temple and no reason to seek the Comte's tools and machines. Miss Temple recalled the three glass women ransacking the minds of everyone in the Harschmort ballroom—invisibly passing everything they saw to the Comte… it only made sense that he had forbidden them to enter his
own
mind. Could that taboo extend to his mind when encased in the book? Mrs. Marchmoor had come to Harschmort to insert the book into another body—one the glass woman believed she
could
control. But that must mean she had no idea of the taint, the corruption coloring all of its contents.

And what of Francis Xonck? He had rescued the book from the sinking airship, his own body a sickening ruin, in hopes to reverse his condition. Had
he
looked into it? Miss Temple did not think so. Had not Xonck come to Harschmort—just like Mrs. Marchmoor—to find the necessary machines to open the book and thus save his life?

Again Miss Temple wondered who had set the fires, foiling them both.

SHE CURLED her legs beneath her and peeked over the wall. The actual clearing where Xonck and Mrs. Marchmoor had struggled was far beyond view, but there were no signs of anyone searching in the garden. With a fretful grimace—as if she were managing an especially wicked-looking cane spider—Miss Temple carefully scooped the glass book back into the canvas sack. Harschmort was surrounded by miles of fen country. She was alone, hungry, and her appearance would have dismayed a fishwife. Miss Temple wound the top of the sack around her palm and pushed her way through the high grass. She had no idea of cross-country escapes and pursuing soldiers, but what she knew quite well were large houses run by servants, riddled with ways to pass unseen.

Near the stone wall's end lay a collection of low sheds. She saw no one, and this was strange, for even with the family not present, routine upkeep of Harschmort's house and grounds ought to necessitate all manner of effort, and Miss Temple was confident—unless she had discovered an epidemic of shirking—that these sheds were a hive of everyday activity. Yet now they seemed to be abandoned.

She scampered quickly between the sheds to the nearest glass double doors of the house. The lock had been broken. This must be where Francis Xonck had forced his way in. Miss Temple slipped into the ballroom. She had last seen it full of the Cabal's minions, dressed in finery and wearing masks, cheering their masters off to Macklenburg. Now the great wooden floor and the line of bright windows were coated with dust from the fire. She crossed quickly and found herself in the very same ante-room where the Contessa had licked the port stains from her eyes. Miss Temple shivered, stopping where she was. The memory of the Contessa's tongue led directly to the freight car, the woman's lips on her own… and to Miss Temple's spiraling shame, she could not stop her mind from plowing on. At once those kisses bloomed like a gushing artery into a hundred more, kisses of all kinds between too many different people to separate, erupting from the Contessa's book. Miss Temple stuffed one hand in her mouth, the tips of her body ablaze, aghast at how quickly she had been so overwhelmed. On desperate impulse, she opened her reeling senses to the second book, to the bilious tang of the Comte's despair. As it collided with her pleasure, Miss Temple lurched into the cover of a decorative philodendron, where she crouched and rocked helplessly, hugging her knees.

In time, both waves ebbed away. She heard shouting in another part of the house. Miss Temple staggered up. In the corridor lay the older servant, toppled by Mrs. Marchmoor, his face still dark with blood. The voices were far away and the hallways too conducive to echo for her to place them. She crept past the fallen man to what looked like a painted wall panel and found the inset hook to pull it open, revealing a narrow maid's staircase. She climbed past two landings before leaving it to enter a thickly carpeted corridor with a low ceiling, almost as if she had boarded an especially luxurious ship—though she knew this to be an architectural remnant of Harschmort Prison. With a spark of anticipation Miss Temple padded toward Lydia Vandaariff's suite of rooms.

SHE PASSED quietly through the Lady of Harschmort's private parlor, attiring room, bedchamber, and finally to her astonishingly spacious closet. The walls were lined with hanging garments and tight-stuffed shelving—enough clothing for a regiment of ladies. Satisfied no one was there—she had feared a lingering maid—Miss Temple lifted the chair from the heiress' writing desk, and, recalling Chang's precautions at the Boniface, wedged it fast under the doorknob.

She returned to the closet, plucking at her dress—not intending any commentary on the late Mrs. Jorgens but more than sick of it, the smell of her own sweat having permeated the fabric. Miss Temple dislodged the final buttons with impatience and pulled it over her head and then balled the thing up to throw across the room.

She stopped. As she wadded the fabric… on the side of the bodice, along the seam… she stepped closer to the light and removed a scrap of parchment paper torn to a neat square and folded over. She wondered if it was from Mrs. Jorgens—a shopping list or love note— for the writing first struck her as an unschooled scrawl. But that was wrong… not so much a scrawl as its author was utterly careless of how it appeared. As she thought back to the littered ruin of the suite at the St. Royale, such an intemperate script for the Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza made perfect sense.

My Dear Celeste,

Forgive my Departure. Were I to stay I must eat you to the Bones.

Islands are Precious Domains. This is my way of saying Do Not Follow. That is your Choice now, as it was mine before you. There is no Shame in Retreat.

If you Ignore good Advice, I will see you Again. Our Business is not Finished.

RLS

Miss Temple folded the note, then unfolded it and read it again, sucking her lip at each overly dramatic capital, sensing that even in this disturbing little note (and how long had it taken the woman to find that pocket, she wondered, imagining those nimble fingers searching across her body) the Contessa's foremost goal had been to find some measure of delight. It was as if, in a mist of woodland air that anyone else would find refreshing, the Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza would locate some extra thread of scent (a flower or a rotting stag—or flowers growing
from
a stag's carcass) so the tips of her black hair might twist another curl.

Miss Temple did not consider herself an object of change—she had always been the same bundle of impulses and moods, however unpredictable these might appear to others—but now she found herself surprised, in the very midst of her anger, by the sudden memory of the Contessa's gashed shoulder, and an urge to draw her own tongue along its ragged, coppery length. The problem was not the impulse itself, but the necessary connection to another person.

Miss Temple had become very accustomed to the fact that, in her life, almost no one
liked her
. She was served, flattered, distrusted, disapproved of, coveted, envied, despised, but she had never, with the illusory exceptions of certain servants when she was a girl, enjoyed any particular friendship. The closest she had come was her fiancé, Roger Bascombe, but that had been a mere three months sparked by physical hunger (and had turned out horribly). She thought of Chang and Svenson, even Elöise… but friendship was hardly the same thing as loyalty or duty. Would the two men die for her? She had no doubt. Did they
like
her? A nut-hard part of Miss Temple's heart would not believe it—and she could have easily convinced herself the question did not matter, save for the Contessa's disorienting attentions in the freight car, no matter how mercenary those attentions undoubtedly had been.

But then, for she could not help it, Miss Temple read through the note again, this time fixing on the word “choice,” and the very intriguing phrase that followed it, “as it was mine before you”… she had never heard even one reference to the Contessa's life
before
, nor entertained the notion that there
was
a before for such a creature. Miss Temple's throat went dry to imagine what the Contessa could have possibly been like as a girl. And what choice could any girl have made to become that woman?

And how
dare
she suggest that Miss Temple herself faced anything resembling the same crossroads?

Suitably affronted to set the paper back down, Miss Temple turned her attentions elsewhere. Lydia Vandaariff's closet had a metal hip-bath and a very large Chinese jug of water. To either side of a tall mirror stood elegant tables, three-tiered like cakes and entirely cluttered with pins, ribbons, bottles, powders, paints, and perfumes. She tore off the corset and ill-fitting shift she had worn since her bath in Lina's kitchen and then, quite determined to be clean once more, sat naked on the carpet to unlace her boots.

THOUGH THE water was unheated, there was still a splendid array of sponges and soaps, and Miss Temple took the opportunity to scrub the whole of her body without any impediment of time. She must leave Harschmort eventually, but did it not make sense to wait until nightfall—a decision which, once made, allowed her
hours?
Washed and toweled at some leisure, she entered into a scrupulous investigation of Lydia's wide array of scents. While Miss Temple could not but view so many choices as emblematic of Lydia's essential lack of character, she was nevertheless curious whether her own sensible routine might be improved. Out of deliberately minded perversity, she settled upon a concoction of frangipani flowers, the Contessa's signature scent, placing a drop behind each ear, on each wrist, and then dragging one wet fingertip from the join of her collarbones down between her breasts.

Though Lydia had been taller than she, Miss Temple found several dresses that fit and one in particular that would allow her to run. This was a murky shade of violet that went quite well with both her boots (she was committed to her boots) and with her hair. That the fabric was dark meant it would not so eagerly show the dirt her actions must acquire, that it was sensible wool meant she would not be cold—practical insights that pleased Miss Temple very much.

Yet before the dress came an exacting selection of undergarments, and here, more than anywhere, the late Miss Vandaariff had not skimped. The possibilities presented to Miss Temple became quite literally overwhelming, as each new garment opened lurid implications— a veritable advent calendar of wickedness—in her mind. She was forced to pause, eyes open, cheeks flushed, and thighs tight together, until the fluttering tide had passed. With trembling fingers she selected silk replacements for her long-lost little pants and bodice, then petticoats, and a corset she put on backwards, tightened as well as she could, and then inched around until the laces were behind her. This done, Miss Temple sat at Lydia's mirror and did her steady best, availing herself freely of pins, ribbon, and a tortoiseshell comb, to strip the knots from her hair and restore the sausage curls she associated with her own accustomed presentation. She was not her maid Marthe— and had she been asked, she might well have admitted it—but she possessed some skill with her own hair (and since it had before been
such
a fright, the merest measure of success was welcome). Another half an hour slipped past before Miss Temple was at last presentable, the canvas sack exchanged for an elegant leather travel case, the glass book inside doubly wrapped within two silk pillowcases.