The Chemickal Marriage

Roman bones had been overlaid with stucco flowers and birds, the brick archways enamelled with tile. Attendants crossed between pools bearing trays of refreshment and piles of thick Turkish towels.
    A splash recalled Svenson’s attention to the pool before his eyes. Along its far edge floated a line of women, rosy with heat, hair wrapped in turbans, bathing costumes of thin muslin plastered to their flesh. Svenson stared, dull-hearted, at bare throats and shoulders, at bosoms winking above the lapping pool. One lady raised a dripping arm, a signal. More splashes, beyond his view, and a new woman, grey-haired and fat, swam to the centre of the pool. She bobbed her head.
    ‘The ladies you sent for …’
    Svenson could not see whom she addressed – they were beneath the tiny window – but he stifled a gasp as another figure glided forward. A muslin bathing costume clung to her torso, and her bare limbs shimmered. The grey-haired woman made an introduction.
    ‘Rosamonde, Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza, Your Majesty. An
Italian
gentlewoman.’
    The Contessa shyly blinked her violet eyes. With her black hair wrapped away, she appeared disturbingly unadorned, almost innocent.
    ‘I am much honoured by Your Majesty’s attention,’ she murmured, nodding to the space directly beneath Svenson’s panel.
    Svenson spun to Schoepfil, but the man eagerly nodded him back to the window. A second figure floated into view. Svenson could not breathe.
    ‘And the Contessa’s companion …’ The speaker paused to suggest her disapproval. ‘A Miss Celestial Temple.’
    The scar above her ear peeped from the turban and fresh abrasions dotted her cheeks … but it was her. She was alive.
    Alive and with the Contessa, and somehow here, at an unimaginable audience with the Queen herself. Schoepfil rocked with satisfaction, like a schoolboy.
    ‘For God’s sake,’ Svenson whispered, ‘who
are
you?’
    Schoepfil shifted to better press his mouth to Doctor Svenson’s ear.
    ‘Who else could I be, Doctor? I am Robert Vandaariff’s heir!’

Seven
Thermæ
    Following Colonel Bronque down a corridor of silver mirrors, Miss Temple was so taken with excitement at their destination as to forget the Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza walking beside her, until that woman reached out to flick Miss Temple’s arm. Miss Temple snapped her mouth shut, abashed to find it had been open. The Contessa’s expression had changed as well. Deference cloaked her animal confidence. Glancing back, Colonel Bronque appraised the women with a gaze that promised nothing.
    They reached a bright room where well-dressed men and women gathered, palpably expectant. Bronque did not pause. Twice more their uniformed Virgil ignored similar weigh-points of privilege, delivering them at last to a strange oval door, made of metal and opened by a wheel at its centre instead of a knob. The wheel was spun by a footman and they descended to a shabby landing. Here waited a single man, whose broad face seemed a size too large for the wiry hair that gripped his skull. He consulted a pocket watch. Colonel Bronque came to a military stop and clicked his heels.
    ‘My Lord Axewith.’
    ‘Ah. Bronque.’
    The Colonel waited. The Privy Minister, marooned, only sighed.
    ‘My lord?’
    Bronque followed the Minister’s wary glance at the women, whose attention was dutifully turned – Miss Temple taking the Contessa’s lead – to the peeling paint.
    ‘I do not
require
Her Majesty’s seal, Bronque, but Lord Vandaariff is
insistent
. Of course he is correct. Measures of
historic
consequence ought to be enacted by the monarch. But it leaves me waiting until I am a wiltedstick.’ Axewith – whose lantern jaw and spatulate nose suggested the face of a stranded turtle – tugged at his collar. ‘And just when so many other pressing matters are … well …
pressing
.’
    Bronque nodded to the satchel under Axewith’s arm. ‘May I wait in your stead, my lord, while you attend to business in a more congenial place?’
    ‘Damned kind of you.’ Axewith sighed sadly. ‘But Reasons of State, I’m afraid.
Reasons of State
. And I cannot disappoint Lord Vandaariff …’
    Another flick on the arm brought Miss Temple’s attention to the arrival of an elegantly dressed older woman, of an age and grudging mutter with Miss Temple’s Aunt Agathe. She addressed the Contessa without a word of greeting.
    ‘You will remain silent unless spoken to. At a signal from the Duchess of Cogstead, who will