The Dark Volume Part 6

"Eloise? Where did they go?"

"She..." Mrs. Daube choked with fright, still overtaken by what she must have seen. "She-she made me help her-but then Mr. Olsteen-no!"

This last came at the realization that Miss Temple dragged her toward the gate-swinging open, another sign of Eloise's flight. Mrs. Daube moaned like a beast, dug in her heels, and fought away from Miss Temple's grip, only to topple back to her knees, dissolving into tears. Eloise had made Mrs. Daube help her how? To search through Olsteen's bags? But why tip the table and scatter the laundry? Had Olsteen caught up with them-had Eloise escaped, with him in pursuit?

Miss Temple spun to the kitchen door with a sudden chill. The kitchen lamp had blown out-the only glow the creeping firelight from the common room. Then this was blotted out by a shadow in the door, thick and impenetrable. With a cry of her own Miss Temple abandoned the sobbing innkeeper and clawed her way through the gate.

SHE HAD not gone fifteen steps before the night was split with a scream from Mrs. Daube. Miss Temple sobbed aloud and drove herself on, desperate as a hawk-sought hare. If only she could find Eloise-dear, stupid Eloise-perhaps the two together might defend themselves. Yes, Miss Temple scoffed, with their little knives. The bark of her breath fogged in the cold.

The rough dirt path ran to the rear of the other houses of Karthe village, but each was bordered by a stone fence with a heavy gate. By the time she might reach any one and raise the house with shouting, she would be captured. Her gasps were ragged and her body slick with sweat-she would get another fever, she would die, she would trip and snap her ankle like a twig. She looked to the rising hills-could she leave the path and hide in the rocks? No. Such a choice was to abandon Eloise, which Miss Temple could not-perhaps as much in pride as in care-allow herself to do.

The path abruptly dropped into a ravine split by a trickling watercourse tumbled with smooth stones. On its other side, flat on the path in the moonlight, lay the broad figure of Mr. Olsteen. Miss Temple hurdled the dribbling stream and crept near. Olsteen's throat was whole, but the pulsing stain on his once-white s.h.i.+rt betrayed a wicked puncture near his heart. His eyes caught hers and his hand slapped toward her, ineffectual and weak. It held the curved skinning knife previously carried by Eloise Dujong.

"Should have killed you both on sight," he gasped. A welling of gore spat past his lips and Olsteen's further words were wetly smothered by blood.

She heard a noise on the opposite bank. To turn was to face whoever hunted her. Fear gripped Miss Temple as fiercely as a hand around her neck. She ran on.

THE WAY abruptly forked-to the right curving back toward the town, the left winding away through a squat tumble of boulders. She paused, chest heaving, willing herself with a brutal severity to look behind her: she saw nothing. Was she a fool-imagining ghosts? No-no, she swallowed; Mrs. Daube's horrid scream still rang in her ears. She forced her tired mind to study the two paths for the slightest sign to which way Eloise might have gone, knowing she could spare but seconds. The fork to the town led over an open, flat meadow; the one to the rocks disappeared almost at once. If Eloise was frightened, she would want to hide. Miss Temple flung herself toward the blackened stones.

Not twenty steps on, a flas.h.i.+ng stripe across a moonlit boulder caught her eye-a smear of blood, a hand hurriedly wiped clean. She had chosen correctly. Eloise must be running as fast and as fearfully as she herself. Perhaps she thought Olsteen was still in pursuit-or had she seen the Contessa? Had Eloise been a witness to Franck's death? What had happened for Olsteen to attack them, Eloise and Mrs. Daube? Could Olsteen be in league with the Contessa? Could he have traveled not to the mountains but to the north, leaving his bootprints outside the Jorgenses' cabin? But why had he been warm and sound at the Flaming Star while his mistress skulked in the shadows? Yet if the man was not the Contessa's ally, why had Eloise taken his life?

The path dropped downhill across a moonlit meadow toward a copse of gnarled trees. Miss Temple's heart leapt at the sight of a woman running across the knee-high gra.s.s and into the shadowed wood. She brushed the hair from her eyes, skin damp, shambling on in an exhausted trot. Eloise was running to the train! Appalled at the evident ease with which Eloise had seen fit to abandon her (granting peril, granting fear, but still), Miss Temple imagined with disdain what feeble excuses the woman might offer Chang and Svenson to explain Miss Temple's consignment to death. In the time it took to reach the copse of woods, Miss Temple had fully restored her earlier feelings of outrage, chasing Mrs. Dujong as much as anything to fiercely box her ears.

THE TREES were dark and dense, and she made her way quickly to the other side. Below her yawned another, deeper ravine, split not by a watercourse but by the rail tracks themselves. Miss Temple stumbled to the edge, looking down, and then saw smoke rising into the air around a turn, some hundred yards away. There would be engineers, firemen, a conductor-surely enough to forestall the actions of one woman! She craned her head down the tracks and just saw Eloise vanish around the bend, too far to hear any call. Miss Temple began a hesitant shuffle down the slope. Half-way down, she was compelled by gravity to sit, scooting the rest of the way like a crab. She swatted the dirt from her dress as she jogged alongside the tar-soaked wooden ties.

Miss Temple found herself suddenly taken with another question that had slipped her mind: the smell of the blue fluid on the window-sill. It had without doubt been infused with blood... yet that made no sense. From what she had seen in the dirigible and from what she could guess from Franck's body, the blue gla.s.s acted in an instant to solidify human blood, and thus the flesh seethed with it, into gla.s.s. So how was the blood-tinged liquid on the sill, spat from the mouth of the ghostly face, still a liquid? How could the blue fluid, which utterly, utterly stank of indigo clay, be taken inside a body without hardening whatever flesh it touched? If only the Doctor were here! Perhaps this was one more reason he'd gone ahead to warn Chang. Miss Temple fought away a tentative impulse of pity for the Contessa-for the ghastly, pale face spoke to an unthinkable price paid for survival. Yet the disfigurement of so cruel a seductress could be no cause for sorrow-such ironies of justice were more aptly met with outright glee.

MISS TEMPLE saw the train. Most of the cars were open and piled high with what must be ore to be taken south for smelting. Miss Temple needed to lie down, to sleep, to bathe, and she kicked at a nearby stone with irritation. She reached the rearmost cars, hissing aloud.

"Eloise! Eloise Dujong!"

The woman must have gone on toward the engine, where she would find more protection. Miss Temple sighed-she was not in any state to meet anyone, much less unfamiliar men smothered in coal dust-and followed on.

Near the front of the train was a squat building topped with skeletal scaffolding and a metal chute-where the ore was poured into the cars-and next to it a more modest cabin whose windows gleamed with yellow light. Miss Temple padded on, cautious at an eruption of voices, trainsmen shouting to each other with sudden urgency. A gang of nine or ten burly fellows in helmets and long coats had gathered around a figure on the ground, directly beneath the loading chute. The figure writhed and moaned as some of his fellows held him down and the others ran about for bandages or water or whisky to ease his pain. She crept forward in the shadow of the train.

"Eloise?" she whispered.

The car seemed empty and, with a sudden surge of effort, Miss Temple tossed the book and the knife in before her and jumped up, catching the car's floor just above her waist. She hung for an awkward second before heaving herself inside and crawling inelegantly from view. The trainsmen still ringed their fallen fellow-someone knelt over him, tending a wound on his face. Miss Temple ducked from sight, doing her best to still her heaving breath.

She looked down at the book in her hands and on a whim let it fall open, expecting to take comfort at its opening to the same poem. But the book did not. Instead, to Miss Temple's great dismay, it fell to the next page-the reverse side of "Pomegranate." How had she not seen- the folded-over page was bent in the opposite direction-it was to mark not that poem, but the next! This poem, "Lord of Sighs," was even shorter (two meager lines!), leaving more room for Cardinal Chang to write his own words in the open s.p.a.ce: OUR ENEMIES LIVE. LEAVE THIS INN.

TRUST NO ONE. TRAVEL BY NIGHT. STAY TOGETHER.

I WILL WAIT AT NOON THE LORD'S TIME.

Outside the car a footstep turned the gravel. Miss Temple slipped farther from the door into shadow. Was it one of the trainsmen? What if the fellow locked the door? Was she prepared to remain on the train for its journey south to the city? What had happened to Eloise? What would she say to Svenson and Chang-what feeble excuses? The steps crunched closer and, curling like an unseen cobra into the chilled air of the train car, she smelled the first creeping, reeking tendrils of scorched indigo clay.

An unnaturally long shadow stretched across the open doorway, the smell becoming harsh. Miss Temple sank into a crouch behind a barrel, no longer able to see. She realized with a spark of hope that the barrels were full of fish oil, giving out a stench that would hopefully hide her own scent from her pursuer. But would they? The indigo fumes made her head swim and the sniffing came on, insistent as a bloodhound but broken by hideous swallows and spitting. The reek made Miss Temple's eyes water and her throat clench. The shadow came closer. She felt as if she must faint or cry out.

From the darkness behind her a firm hand fell hard across her mouth and soft lips pressed full against Miss Temple's ear, the words that slipped between them scarcely louder than a sigh.

"Be still, Celeste," breathed the Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza, "or it will mean the death of us both."

Two. Exile.

CARDINAL Chang took another sip from the metal mug, less from any desire for tea than a restless need to measure, again, exactly how tender his throat still was and if, upon clearing it, he found any residual taste of blood. He did not, though the rawness persisted. It had been a week since they'd come ash.o.r.e. The Doctor had done what he could to leech the ground blue gla.s.s from Chang's lungs. Indeed, he had saved his life with the foul-tasting orange liquid. Chang abruptly drank the rest of the liquid and with a tight grimace walked back down the corridor to return the mug to the three trainsmen crouched around their stove. Looking again as he went, Chang's quarry was not to be found in any of the compartments he pa.s.sed.

Chang sank back into his seat and looked out the window at the utterly uninteresting countryside. He'd spent each moment in that G.o.dforsaken village in those G.o.dforsaken woods ridiculously unable to see beyond regret and reproach. He had never realized the degree to which his heart had held Angelique at its core-it had taken her death to spell it out. The courtesan had rejected him utterly, but the only sin he could charge her with was honesty. Chang swallowed and winced. Honesty was the cruelest thing of all.

HE REMEMBERED carrying Celeste to the fisherman's hut, but the rest of that first night blurred in his memory as any catalog of endless work-building a fire, rummaging for food, and coping with the storm, the likes of which he'd never seen. The hut was all but flooded, roof torn open, tree branches cras.h.i.+ng around them, the downpour endless-and through it all, with each worsening moment, Chang had been driven farther from his companions and deeper within his own brooding soul. He did whatever was required. He carried Celeste to the cart the next morning, and from the cart into Sorge and Lina's cabin, one small bare foot slipping free of the blanket as they climbed the steps. He helped Eloise gather clothing, he went with Svenson to arrange matters with the fishermen and their hardbitten wives-until it became plain that his presence only complicated things, and so he spent even more time alone.

At one point he realized he had not spoken a word for five hours. He had carried an armload of wood to stock the stove and found himself in Celeste's spa.r.s.e room, looking down at her body on the bed. He could hear the whisper of her breath, its rasp as delicate as any lace-work. Her skin was wet, her hair darkly coiled, the bruises marking her neck and face like a language Chang alone could read. At another time it would have aroused him, but instead Cardinal Chang found himself wondering who this young woman was to have changed his life so much. He watched her chest rise and fall-the size of her rib cage, the sweet proportionality of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, abstractly curious to their softness-while at the same time keenly aware of the pain in his own chest, his tattered appearance, his poverty, his profession, and perhaps more than anything, the steady grasp with which sorrow was taking hold of his heart. That two so unsuitable people might be alone in a room together under any circ.u.mstances, much less in a tiny fis.h.i.+ng village on the Iron Coast, was not to be imagined.

Chang would finish this business as quickly as he could and dis appear into the opium den. He would remain beyond every well-intentioned effort of Doctor Svenson to find him, until those efforts ceased. He would remember them all, two more kindly anchors to weigh him down, until the end of his days-the arrival of which, in his present mood, Cardinal Chang would not resist at all.

He had been interrupted standing over the bed by Eloise, come to place a fresh cool cloth over Celeste's forehead. As soon as she leaned over to smooth the hair from Celeste's face, Chang left the room.

He had walked to the water, stalking through the sodden woods to stand at the band of sharp black rocks that bordered the sh.o.r.e. A creature of the city, Chang stared at the line of breaking waves as if he were looking at some strange undiscovered continent. The biting wind brought a grim pleasure, the roaring of the water echoed his spinning thoughts, and the expanse of sky conveyed the futility of his struggles. He wondered how he had been able to leave Angelique's shattered body, how he had gone on, fought on the airs.h.i.+p-how, in truth, he had not died with her. The answer, of course, was because she had never wanted him to.

HE SAT on the rocks and took a volume of poetry from his coat pocket, Lynch's Persephone. Yet the very first poem, "Arcadia"-an ironic account of the Princess's innocent life in the Edenic gardens of her mother-caused him to close the book. Chang stuffed it back into his coat and winced at the coldness of the wind.

He looked down at his boots and scuffed the sand. He frowned. There was something buried... something blue. Making sure he was un.o.bserved, Chang used a small, flat black stone to dig, and quickly uncovered the broken remains of a blue gla.s.s book. The pieces were of various size and jagged-if he hadn't known better, the fragments might have come from a large, brightly colored bottle. With a great deal of care he excavated a deep hole in the sand, then pushed all the gla.s.s he could find into it with his boot. He refilled the hole and covered it with stones, and continued down the sand, watching closely for any further flash of blue, but there was nothing.

INSIDE THE cabin, Eloise was speaking to Lina. Chang did not enter, turning back to the barren yard and the stark trees beyond it. The cabin felt like an over-large coffin. He thought wistfully of his city routines, longing to be standing in the cool, dusty darkness of the Library stacks. But then he sighed. It did not matter where he was- his world would still seem lost. Behind him, the door abruptly opened.

"Cardinal Chang!" called Eloise. Chang turned to her. She waited for him to speak, realized he did not intend to, then nodded with a smile. "Good morning. I was wondering if you had seen the Doctor."

"I believe he was dragooned by Sorge-something about an ailing goat."

"Ah."

"Is Miss Temple in danger?"

"She is unchanged, which, as the Doctor says, is good news. She has even been able to drink a little of the Doctor's herb tea."

"She is awake?"

"For instants only, and never herself within them, but able to take a swallow and slip back to sleep, or into dreams. She dreams constantly, I think... like clouds pa.s.sing before the moon, they cross her face... and her hands clutch so..."

"The Doctor will return as soon as possible," said Chang flatly, wondering when and for who else Eloise had ever evoked the moon and clouds. "He cannot love goat-tending."

Eloise nodded at the sand still clinging to Chang's boots. "You walked to the sea?"

"I did."

"I so love the sea," said Eloise. "It lightens my heart."

"On the Doctor's suggestion I searched again for any refuse from the airs.h.i.+p, or any corpse washed ash.o.r.e."

"I'm sure that's very wise. And what did you find?"

"That the sea does not lighten my heart at all," said Chang.

SVENSON CALLED to them from the muddy lane behind the house that ran to the village. Limping a step behind came Lina's husband, Sorge, whose conversational skills were such that Chang was certain the Doctor had shouted to them as soon as he could, to escape the torpor.

"The fellow himself," Chang observed to Eloise, smiling at Svenson's awkward waving.

"He is a very good man," replied Eloise quietly, and they said no more until the Doctor reached them. Svenson shook hands with Sorge, refusing any thanks, then waited until the fisherman stumped up the steps and into the house.

"How fares the goat?" asked Chang.

Svenson waved the question away and turned to Eloise. "Our patient?"

"Very well, I think-of course, you must see for yourself."

"At this point your observations are fully the equal of mine, but I will be in momentarily." He paused, and Chang was on the verge of excusing himself, so obviously did Svenson long to say more to Eloise. Instead, before he could, the Doctor turned to him, glanced down at his boots, then back up at his face. "Did you find anything?"

"Nothing at all," said Chang.

He was not sure why he did not mention the broken gla.s.s to Eloise-hadn't she as much right to know as Svenson? Wasn't her life as much at risk? Could it be that he did not fully trust her even now?

"Yet I am unsure if I have walked the same ground you searched before. Sorge has mentioned the power of the tides-something might have come ash.o.r.e some distance away."

A complete fabrication-the Doctor and Chang had never spoken of this at all.

"Why don't I show you?" offered Svenson. He turned to Eloise. "We shall just be two minutes."

"I will see if Lina will make tea," Eloise replied, smiling, with the exact same careful tone.

AS THEY walked to the sand Chang quickly described finding the blue gla.s.s shards. They stopped at the ring of black rocks, where Svenson lit a cigarette, hands cupped round a match. The tobacco caught, and after a deep breath and an exhaled plume of pale smoke, the Doctor waved a pale spidery hand back toward the house.

"I did not want to say in front of Mrs. Dujong, for I do not know what it means-and after your own discovery I am even less sure. Something has happened in the village."

"Something aside from sick goats?"

Svenson did not smile. "The men will not speak of it openly... I am convinced we must go with Sorge and see it for ourselves."

THE BODIES were laid out on flat squares of canvas that would, once the families were satisfied, be sewn around them for burial. Several men from the village were still there-to Chang, all alike with their drab woolen coats, bearded faces, and wrinkled hard stares-and they silently made way for the two outsiders. The Doctor knelt by each corpse. From Chang's perspective, the damage was clear enough-the throats of each groom gaped wide, the wounds nearly black with clotted blood-and so he turned his attention instead to the stable. The double wooden doors were open, the muddy yard marked by too many foot-and hoofprints to untangle. Chang could see from his clothing and plastered hair that one of the dead men had lain in the rain. Any traces of blood would have been quickly obliterated by such a storm. He looked to the village men.

"Where was the other?"

Chang followed them inside. A stall door had been cracked at the hinges, as if the groom had been driven-or thrown-against it with great force. The floor was covered with damp straw, and while there were grooves and hillocks indicating a struggle, there was no way to know who or what had made them. Several stalls were now closed with rope, their wooden slats snapped or broken. Something had stirred the horses to violence.

He turned at the approach of Svenson. The Doctor studied the straw, the stall door, and then, completing the circuit, the rest of the main stable room. He glanced once to Chang, with a deliberately blank expression, then turned to the villagers.

"It seems plain enough, I am sorry to say. Sorge has suggested a wolf, or even wolves, driven out by the storm. You see the wounds required great strength."

"And teeth?" asked Chang mildly.

"Indeed." Svenson frowned. "The narrative is unfortunately clear. The first groom hears a disturbance and opens the doors to see what it might be-from the distress demonstrated by the horses, we know the disturbance was significant. Once outside, he was attacked. The door still open, the beasts gained entry and slew the second groom, again-" Svenson gestured to the battered stall "-with notable ferocity."

The men nodded at each point the Doctor made. The horse snorted.

"Would it be possible," Svenson asked, smiling encouragingly, "to see where these fellows slept?"

Their quarters were undisturbed: two bunks, an iron stove, moth-eaten blankets, and a rack of woolen stockings set to dry. A metal box of biscuits had been knocked from its shelf, the pale contents, more than likely rife with weevils, spilled out on the straw. Chang cleared his throat and met the ever-suspicious faces of the villagers.

"Where is their privy?"

HE HAD merely wanted to be away from the piggish stabbing eyes, but once he strode down the path to the tiny wooden shed, Chang felt the effect of too much tea-drinking being the simplest way to avoid conversation with their hosts-at that morning's breakfast. The privy's door was ajar. As he pulled it open, Chang saw its upper hinge had become dislodged. He wrinkled his nose. The hole cut into the seat of sawn planking was spattered darkly around its edge. Even he could smell-burning through the standard reek of the pit beneath-the foul, acrid traces of indigo clay. He leaned forward, squinting at the stained wood... a viscous smear... stinking dark blue mucus. To either side of the hole were smaller marks... fingerprints. He pictured the position of the hands-the forward position, from the placement of each thumb. Someone had vomited their twisted blue guts out.

THEY SAID nothing more on their return, accompanied as they were by the villagers. Chang had managed to subtly direct the Doctor to the privy-forcing himself to discuss wolves with their hosts in the interval. Though he did learn that of five horses driven into the woods, two remained unaccounted for-and in the fishermen's opinion most likely eaten.

Once back at Sorge and Lina's cabin, the two men paused at the base of the steps. Chang knew why he did not want to enter, but was curious about Svenson's obvious hesitation.

"They will wonder where we have been," said Chang. "Or at least Eloise will."

Svenson looked back through the wood to the sh.o.r.e.

"Perhaps we should walk a bit," he said.

They retraced their steps to where they had spoken before, the wind having grown bitter in the intervening time. Svenson lit another cigarette with difficulty, Chang tolerantly holding his leather coat open to block the wind. Svenson straightened, exhaled, and looked over the sea, grey fatigue lining his pale face.

"The blue stains. We must a.s.sume our enemies from the airs.h.i.+p survive... in some fas.h.i.+on."

Chang said nothing-this much seemed obvious.

"Miss Temple is not free from fever," Svenson went on. "She cannot be moved. Our hosts here-their goodwill, their suspicions. I do not like to say it, but you have seen the way they stare at you."

"What has that to do with anything?" snapped Chang.

"You did not hear the villagers gabbling as soon as they got the news. They are all wondering if you had been at the stables, if you had come ash.o.r.e to kill them all-if you were in fact a living devil."

"A devil?"

"One a.s.sumes they are inspired by your coat."

"And if I am a devil, it reflects upon yourself and Mrs. Dujong-"

"Miss Temple cannot survive a disruption of place or care-she is our only concern."

"I disagree," snarled Chang. "You hazard that our enemies live. It seems obvious that, with the horses missing, they are on their way back to the city."

Svenson sighed heavily. "I do not see how it can be helped -"