The Chemickal Marriage Read online

  ‘The rope, miss.’ Brine returned his attention to the pier.

  Miss Temple tore at the knot linking the skiff to the pilings. Another rock struck the water, and then three more. Phelps’s pistol cracked out as Doctor Svenson dropped into the skiff, the entire craft tipping as his weight came home.

  A cry came from above, and Mr Phelps’s black hat struck the water, floating like an upturned funereal basket. The man himself lurched into view, blood pouring from his cheek, and stepped into the air. He plunged into the river and came up gasping. Mr Brine extended an oar to his flailing hands, and Svenson snapped off six deliberate shots above them, emptying his revolver, but keeping the mob back from the edge long enough for Brine to gather Phelps and push off.

  Brine stroked at the oars to propel them away from the teeming mass that lined the dock. The stones came in a hail, but, barring two that bounced dangerously off the wood, they were only splashed. Phelps slumped between the thwarts, water streaming from his clothes, a handkerchief held against his face. The natives of Raaxfall hooted at their ungainly retreat as if they’d chased a gang of armoured Spaniards off a palm-strewn strand. Phelps shrugged off Svenson’s attempt to see the wound and took up an oar, pulling with Brine. The Doctor shifted to the tiller and when enough distance had been gained turned the small skiff east.

  No challenge came from the Xonck docks as they neared, fully visible in the afternoon light. The main canal into the works was blocked with a gate of rusted metal bars, like a portcullis sunk into the water. They bobbed before it, unable to see into the shadows beyond. At Svenson’s nod the other men pulled to the nearest floating dock. Miss Temple scrambled out with the rope. She looped it around an iron cleat and held it tight until the Doctor could tie a proper knot.

  ‘Here we are,’ sighed Mr Phelps. ‘Though I confess it seems a wasted journey.’ He peered at the lifeless canal.

  ‘How is your face?’ Miss Temple did not feel responsible for what had happened at the pier, but nevertheless appreciated Mr Phelps’s bravery.

  ‘It will do,’ he replied, dabbing with the handkerchief. ‘Stoned by an old woman – can you believe it?’

  ‘Can all that truly be a response to no work?’ Svenson had opened the cylinder of his revolver, and from a pocket he retrieved a fistful of brass.

  ‘No work in the city anywhere,’ offered Mr Brine.

  Svenson nodded, slotting in the new shells. ‘But when exactly did the Xonck works close?’

  ‘After we returned, some three weeks now.’ Phelps patted his coat and looked behind them. ‘My weapon is in the river.’

  ‘It cannot be helped,’ said Svenson. ‘But before this recent stoppage, did not the people of Raaxfall enjoy near total employment? The marriage between a crocodile and the birds that pick its teeth?’

  ‘You can imagine the wages Henry Xonck would pay – they will have no savings to last out one bare week, let alone three.’

  The Doctor sighed. ‘You are right, of course … yet I cannot credit poverty with such an unprovoked attack. On strangers, no less – on a woman!’

  ‘Why should you think it unprovoked?’ asked Miss Temple. The three men turned to her in silence. At once she flushed. ‘Do not be absurd. I did nothing but stand in the air!’

  ‘Then what do you imply?’ asked Phelps.

  ‘I do not know – but perhaps there is more to their discontent than we understand.’

  ‘Perhaps. And perhaps this same mob tore your Mr Ramper to pieces in the street.’

  They climbed rusted stairs and met another wall of iron bars. The Xonck works were a honeycomb of huts and roads, bristling with towers and catwalks. It was divided by earthen redoubts and moats of sickly green liquid and caged blast tunnels, the earth around each entrance black as coal.

  ‘The lock is on the other side,’ Svenson said, slapping a wide metal plate. ‘Nothing to pick or even to shoot open. We need a field gun.’

  ‘There must be someone within,’ observed Phelps.

  ‘No one especially mindful,’ said Miss Temple. ‘We are veritable tradesmen at the door.’

  ‘We might climb,’ offered Mr Brine, pointing up. The fence was ten feet high, topped with sharp spikes.

  ‘Surely not,’ said Phelps.

  Miss Temple went onto her toes to peer through the bars. ‘Do you see that barge?’

  Svenson screwed his monocle in place. ‘What about it?’

  ‘Was it not at the Parchfeldt Canal?’ she asked. ‘I recognize the rings of red paint around the mast.’

  ‘Perhaps it came from Parchfeldt with the machines.’

  Miss Temple turned to Phelps. ‘From the river here, could one reach the Orange Canal – and Harschmort?’

  Phelps nodded. His hair was plastered to his skull, and Miss Temple saw that the man was shivering. ‘But if they have gone to so much trouble, where is everyone? What is more, if the people of Raaxfall are so exercised against the factory, what has stopped them from storming it? Not their own reticence, I am sure, yet – no, no! What is this?’

  His last words were petulantly addressed to Mr Brine, who had nimbly clambered halfway up the fence.

  ‘Mr Brine,’ Miss Temple called. ‘There are spikes.’

  ‘Not to worry, miss.’ Brine gathered himself just beneath the spikes, curling his legs, then recklessly sprung over them, slamming into the other side of the fence with a clang. Miss Temple gasped, for a spike had gouged through his sleeve.

  ‘Not to worry,’ he repeated, and lifted the arm free. Brine landed with a solid thump on the other side.

  ‘Well done!’ cried Miss Temple.

  ‘Is there a lock?’ called Svenson. ‘Can you –’

  Before Mr Brine could reply, he was surrounded by a dozen sudden lines of jetting smoke, each lancing towards him with a serpentine hiss. Brine staggered, eyes wide with shock, then toppled off the platform and out of sight.

  Miss Temple had the sense not to scream, and instead found that she – like both men – had dropped to her knees.

  ‘What happened?’ she whispered. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Is he killed?’ asked Phelps.

  She quite quickly began to climb, fitting her feet like a ladder.

  ‘Good God!’ cried Phelps.

  Both men reached for her legs but Miss Temple kicked at their hands.

  ‘He will die if I do not help him.’

  ‘He is dead already!’ called Phelps.

  ‘Celeste,’ whispered Svenson. She was too high to pull down without causing her harm. ‘It is a trap. Think – you render Brine’s sacrifice without purpose –’

  ‘But we cannot go back!’ she hissed.

  ‘Celeste –’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You are being stubborn.’

  The fence seemed higher from the top than it had from below. Brine’s strategy to reach the other side would not work for her – she’d not the strength, nor would her dress clear. She grasped the base of two spikes and called down.

  ‘You must support my foot.’

  ‘We will not,’ answered Phelps.

  ‘It is the simplest thing – one of you climb beneath and let me rest a foot on your shoulder – and then I will step over as if the spikes were daisies.’

  ‘Celeste –’

  ‘Or I shall fling myself like a savage.’

  She felt the fence shake and then Svenson was below her, gritting his teeth.

  ‘I will shut my eyes,’ he said, then looked up directly beneath her legs and began to stammer. ‘For the height, you see – the height –’

  ‘The danger is on the other side,’ called Phelps. ‘You will set off the trap!’

  ‘A moment,’ she said to Svenson. ‘Let me gather my dress …’

  Somehow his shyness gave her a confidence she had not had. She raised one knee and slowly settled it on the other side, digging her toes between the bars. The line of spikes ran straight between her legs, but she did not hurry, shifting her grip and gathering the dress to sw
ing her second leg.

  The small platform behind the gate floated in a sea of dark space. The only way off it was a ramp – Brine had clearly missed it in his fall – descending into shadow.

  ‘The shooting smoke,’ said Svenson. ‘It may have been bullets, or darts … can you see where they came from?’

  Miss Temple eased her body lower. The metal plate that covered the platform … it sparkled.

  ‘There is glass …’

  To either side of the gate stood tall, thin posts, each with a vertical line of dark holes, as if they were bird houses, all facing the platform and anyone trying to break in. Miss Temple measured the distance to the ground and the width of the metal plate. She gathered her nerve, quivering like a cat. She flung herself towards the darkness.

  ‘Celeste!’

  She landed on the ramp and rolled, scrabbling with her hands to stop herself sailing off the edge. She rose with a sudden urgency and scuttled to the top of the ramp.

  ‘Celeste – that was incredibly foolish –’

  ‘Be quiet! You must either climb over after me or hide.’

  ‘Is there no lock?’ asked Phelps.

  ‘I cannot reach it without being killed – the metal plate, when one treads upon it, the trap is sprung – you will see for yourself. You must leap past it. The task is nothing, a girl has done it before you. But you must hurry – someone is coming from below!’

  Phelps reached her first – spraggling and damp at Miss Temple’s feet. He motioned Svenson on with both hands. The Doctor had cleared the spikes with only a minor catch on his greatcoat, but clung uncertainly.

  ‘I do dislike high places,’ he muttered.

  Beams of light stabbed up at them. Svenson jumped, clearing the metal plate by an inch, and lurched into their arms. Miss Temple put two fingers over his mouth. A voice rose in the darkness, harsh with amusement.

  ‘Look at this one! Right in the chops. You lot see if he’s alone …’

  Their only exit was the ramp, exactly where a gang of men was approaching behind a raised lantern. Miss Temple took hold of her companions, pulling them down.

  ‘Lie flat – do not move,’ she whispered. ‘Follow when you can!’

  She pressed her green bag into Phelps’s hand and then started down at a trot. She reached a landing and turned into bright lantern light.

  ‘Where is Mr Brine!’ she cried shrilly. ‘What has happened? Is he alive?’

  The man with the lantern caught her arm with a grip like steel, the light near enough to burn her face.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he snarled. ‘How did you pass the gate?’

  ‘I am Miss Isobel Hastings,’ she whined. ‘What has happened to Mr Brine?’

  ‘He’s had a bit of a fall.’ The man wore an unbuttoned green tunic, the uniform of the Xonck militia. The others with him were similarly dressed – all sloppy and unshaven.

  ‘My goodness,’ cried Miss Temple. ‘There are five of you, all come to rescue me!’

  ‘Rescue?’ scoffed the leader. ‘Take her arms.’

  Miss Temple cried out as she was seized, doing her best to shove forward. ‘I am looking for my – my fiancé – his name is Ramper. He came here, for his work – Mr Brine told me – I paid him to help me –’

  ‘No one comes here, Isobel Hastings.’

  ‘He did! Ned Ramper – a great strapping fellow! What have you done with him?’

  The leader looked past Miss Temple, and made to aim the lantern at the ramp above. She kicked his shin.

  ‘Where is he, I say – I insist that you answer –’

  The man’s backhand struck her face like a whip, and she only kept her feet for being held. The leader marched down the ramp and barked for the others to follow. She could not place her steps. After the first few yards they simply dragged her.

  She was dropped to the floor in a cold room fitted with gas lamps.

  ‘That one on the table.’

  Men crossed in front of her and carried the deadweight of Mr Brine to a table of stained planks. Brine’s eyes were shut and his jaw was mottled and crusted with blue, like a French cheese from a cave.

  ‘And the sweetmeat on the throne.’

  Miss Temple rose to her knees. ‘I can seat myself –’

  The men exchanged a laugh and shoved her into a high-backed seat, made from welded iron pipes and bolted to the floor. A chain was cinched below her breasts and another pulled across her throat. Behind her came the creak of a door.

  ‘Who did you find, Benton?’

  The voice was thin, as unhurried as swirling smoke. The lantern man – Benton – immediately dipped his head and backed away, ceding any claim.

  ‘Miss Isobel Hastings, sir. Says Ned Ramper’s her fiancé. Came with this great lump to find him.’

  ‘Can she speak?’

  ‘Course she can! I wouldn’t – not without your order –’

  ‘No.’

  Miss Temple sensed the thin-voiced man behind her, though the chain stopped her from turning. ‘Tell me, Isobel. If you will forgive the impropriety.’ A finger insinuated itself into a curl of her hair and gave a gentle tug. ‘Who is your friend on the table?’

  ‘Mr Brine. Corporal Brine. He is a friend of Ned Ramper.’

  ‘And he led you here? Did you pay him money?’

  Miss Temple nodded dumbly.

  ‘Benton?’

  ‘Six silver shillings in his pocket, sir. No one touched it.’

  ‘Does six shillings pay a man to die, I wonder? Would it be enough for you, Benton?’

  ‘Way things are now, sir … I’d call it a decent wage.’

  ‘And who paid Ned Ramper, Isobel?’

  ‘Is that important?’

  He pulled her hair sharply enough to make her wince.

  ‘Leave what’s important to me.’

  ‘A woman. She lives in a hotel. I don’t like her.’

  ‘What hotel?’

  ‘Ned would not tell me. He thought I would follow him.’

  She felt his breath in her ear. ‘But you did follow him, didn’t you, Isobel? What hotel?’

  ‘She lives at the … the St Royale.’

  Benton glanced suddenly at the man behind her, but when Miss Temple’s captor spoke his voice betrayed no care.

  ‘Did you see this woman yourself?’

  Miss Temple nodded again, sniffing. ‘She had b-black hair, and a red dress –’

  ‘And this fellow here – Brine – she’d hired him as well?’

  Miss Temple nodded vigorously. Her captor called softly to Benton.

  ‘Empty his pockets. Show me.’

  Benton leapt to the table. Miss Temple quickly counted – there had been five on the ramp … here she saw Benton and three more, digging at Brine’s clothing like vultures. The fifth man must have gone to collect their master. Was he standing guard at the door behind her? The hand tugged at her hair.

  ‘And what of your pockets? Have you no purse or bag?’

  ‘I lost it, climbing over the gate. When Mr Brine fell, I was so frightened –’

  ‘Not so frightened that you died.’ He called behind him. ‘See if it’s there.’

  Footsteps signalled the fifth man running for the ramp. Miss Temple’s blood froze. If he discovered Svenson and Phelps –

  ‘He had this.’ Benton held the clipping from the Herald. ‘ “-grettable Canvases from Paris”. Don’t know what “-grettable” is, not speaking French.’

  The paper was snatched from his hand as Miss Temple’s captor stepped forward. She glimpsed only a shining black coat before he was off without a word.

  Benton watched him go, his posture lapsing back into feral comfort. He turned to Miss Temple with a satisfied smile.

  ‘Maybe I should search your pockets too … every little pocket you possess.’

  A footfall in the darkness did not shift his hungry gaze. ‘Find her bag, then?’ Benton drawled.

  ‘Step away from the woman.’

  Doctor Svenson st
rode into the light, the long Navy revolver in his hand. Benton swore aloud and reached in his tunic. The pistol roared in the echoing room like a cannon and Benton flew back, shirt-front spraying gore. Another shot shattered the leg of a man near the table. Two more, rapidly snapped from Miss Temple’s smaller weapon, drilled the back of a fellow dashing for the door. Mr Phelps came forward with Svenson, their guns extended towards the fourth man, his hands in the air.

  ‘Down on the floor,’ growled the Doctor. The man hurried to comply, and Mr Phelps bound his limbs. Doctor Svenson looked to the open door, then to Miss Temple.

  ‘Are you hurt?’

  Miss Temple shook her head. Her voice was hoarse.

  ‘Is he – is Mr Brine –’

  ‘A moment, Celeste …’

  Svenson knelt over the man with the shattered leg, then stood and tucked the gun away, stepping clear of the blood.

  ‘It is the artery,’ he muttered. ‘I meant to wound …’

  Even as he spoke the heavy breathing fell to silence. Had it been even one minute? The Doctor crossed to the table, saying nothing. Miss Temple cleared her throat to get his attention. She nodded at Benton.

  ‘The key to these chains is in his waistcoat.’

  Phelps returned Miss Temple’s revolver, with her bag, and helped himself to the unlamented Benton’s.

  ‘They will have heard our shots.’

  ‘They may assume their own men did the shooting,’ replied Svenson. He turned to Miss Temple. ‘We heard some of your interrogation.’

  Phelps frowned. ‘Their leader’s voice – I’m sure I ought to place it, but the circumstances escape me.’

  ‘Whoever he is,’ said Svenson, ‘they have taken Mr Ramper – and who knows what he told them.’

  ‘It cannot have been much.’ Miss Temple straightened her jacket. ‘Not if they believed the Contessa to have hired him. But I must look at Mr Brine.’

  Svenson stood with her. ‘His neck was broken in the fall. It is perhaps –’

  ‘A blessing,’ she said. ‘I know.’