The Chemickal Marriage

his own exclusion – for his class, his poverty – from such rarified delights. Hypocrisy made both sources of discontent sting the more, but hypocrisy in matters of the heart was to Svenson no fresh wound.
    The previous night’s flowers were being replaced with fresh bouquets – orange-streaked peonies and purple lilies – by a serving girl scarcely older than Francesca. Svenson wondered if she was an apprentice to the brothel, and how soon she might expect to join the ranks of the Old Palace’s wares. The little housemaid wrapped the dead flowers in her apron and gathered the bundle to her chest, but then she saw Francesca and stopped. The children stared at one another, but Francesca’s haughty gaze held firm. The housemaid dropped her eyes to the carpet, dipped once in Svenson’s direction and scurried out.
    A rustle to their left revealed an alcove for coats and hats and sticks, and a pretty young woman waxing the counter-top. Before she could ask for their coats, Svenson shook his head.
    ‘We are here for Mrs Kraft.’
    The young woman nodded across the parlour, where another guard – despite his lack of uniform, there could be no other term – stood at a wooden rostrum. This second guard did not stir. After a lingering moment (during which, stupid from lack of sleep, Svenson could not recall if the twitching curtain had been from this level or the floor above), a
thump
echoed behind the rostrum, the exact sound that had come from the guard box. Svenson saw a pair of brass pipes bolted to the wall: pneumatic message tubes, allowing swift communication throughout the house. The shocking expense of such a system spoke to the brothel’s prodigious backing.
    The guard fished a scrap of green paper from a leather-wrapped tube.
    ‘You’re to be taken to Mr Mahmoud.’
    ‘I’ll do it, Henry.’ The pretty coat clerk had already slipped from her alcove. ‘You’re not to leave the front, and I can be back in five minutes.’
    ‘Make sure it
is
five minutes, Alice. No roaming off.’
    ‘And why should I do that?’
    ‘Mr Gorine’s instructions –’
    ‘Are exactly why you need to stay in the front. Now come with me, pet.’
    She looked kindly at Francesca, her expression catching only briefly at the sight of the girl’s sickly features, and led them out. Alice’s hair had been pinned, but along her nape Svenson noticed a row of dense curls. She glanced back and nearly caught his stare.
    ‘I’ve never been in the office myself.
No
one goes in the office, except Mr Gorine and Mr Mahmoud.’
    ‘And who are they, pray?’
    ‘Well, who are you, if you don’t know
that
?’
    They passed into an oval room. Come the night, it would be filled with exquisitely painted women – and painted boys – from which a visitor might choose. Now the only occupants were two women in their shifts, playing cards on a cushion between them, with a third, distressingly young, perched on an ottoman with a box of sweets.
    Alice peered at Svenson, waiting for an answer. He stammered, too struck by the contrast between the gaily painted faces and, in flat daylight, the too-pale bodies.
    ‘I’m sorry – I – I am no one at all.’
    ‘Then who is
she
?’ Alice winked at Francesca. Before Svenson could intervene, the child piped up, her voice disagreeably hoarse.
    ‘I am Francesca Trapping. I am the oldest surviving
Xonck
. I will inherit the entire Xonck
empire
because my brothers are fools.’
    Svenson squeezed her hand. ‘I am sure Mrs Kraft must not be kept waiting –’
    One of the card-playing women stifled a laugh. ‘Mrs Kraft?’
    ‘We have been
sent
,’ said Francesca.
    The girl on the ottoman spoke around the nougat in her teeth. ‘Well, no reason to hurry on
her
account …’
    ‘And why would the likes of you see
her
?’ called the card-player.
    ‘That is a secret.’
    ‘A very
important
secret, to be kept by such a pair of beggars.’
    ‘We are nothing of the kind!’ Francesca cried. ‘But you’re a dirty thing. You’re a pig’s trough with a week of sloppings.’
    Svenson seized the girl and marched for the far door, driving their guide before him.
    ‘Surviving Xonck?’ called an angry voice. ‘That one looks like pickled fish on a plate!’
    Francesca squirmed in his arms. ‘Let me
down
.’
    ‘You must hold your tongue.’
    Tears had broken down the child’s cheeks and her words burst out in gasps: ‘But she
is
dirty. Her name is Ginny – she does wicked things! She did them