The Chemickal Marriage

coach,’ observed Chang.
    ‘The allowance from Lord Vandaariff is small.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Schoepfil is Lady Vandaariff’s nephew, no tie of blood.’ Foison slipped a knife from his silk coat. ‘Drusus Schoepfil is a parasite, his every gesture an imitation, of as little merit as a parrot’s speech.’
    ‘But if he has allied with more powerful –’
    ‘
Allied
.’ Foison spat the word. ‘At a word from Lord Vandaariff each man would sprawl on his belly and beg.’
    Foison wedged the knife in the lock, but Chang caught his arm. Foison twisted quickly and Chang released his grip, raising an open palm.
    ‘Before we go in. The Royal Thermæ. You said the old stories might be true. What stories?’
    ‘You’re the native. I’m the monkey.’
    ‘Don’t be an ass. The Contessa and Miss Temple – where would they be?’
    ‘With your old Queen, rotting in a pool.’
    The discussion of Schoepfil had pricked Foison’s loyalty back to prominence. Chang stepped back. The lock was as cheaply made as the rest of the house.
    Having done his share of housebreaking, Chang was accustomed to inferring the character of a man from his furnishings, but the home of Drusus Schoepfil was as devoid of attachment as a hotel parlour. Foison lit a brace of candlesticks and passed one to Chang, who brought his to a mantelpiece topped with a line of identical Chinese jars, glazed with pagodas and bamboo. Likewise a case of silver showed no family pieces, only a tea service of middling value and cutlery purchased by lot.
    The house was silent. Chang crossed to the foyer, smiling grimly at a view-hole behind a screen. Bronque’s words – ‘the woman and the black man were seen’ – were spoken as a threat, but had been a warning from one ally to another, placing the decision of what to do next in Schoepfil’s hands. Svenson must have watched from the window, but Chang discovered no sign of the Doctor’s presence.
    Deeper in the house they found a padlocked door. Foison passed his candlestick to Chang and drew a knife for each hand. The first kick rocked the bolts holding the padlock. The second sheared them from the frame.
    ‘Worse than I’d feared,’ Foison said quietly.
    If the rest of the house adopted polite decor without feeling for use – for
life
– this inner room had been dedicated to another more strident imitation. Every inch of the wall was covered with alchemical scrawls, layered to create different shapes – flowers, bodies, planets –
almost
like one of theComte’s canvases. But Chang had been to Harschmort, to Parchfeldt, and Schoepfil’s room only made clear the actual
art
of the Comte’s vision. This was the work of a schoolboy set to copy … markings of paint without passion, nothing insidious or disturbing or mad …
    As Chang peered at an open mouth, the curving lips formed by an arching line of tiny glyphs, he thought of his conversation with Father Locarno, and
The Chemickal Marriage.
An alchemical narrative was less a story than a recipe: sequence, ingredients, actions. For the Comte, the art, the
grace
was all important – but was that, alchemically speaking,
necessary
? Granting any of this nonsense in the first place, did Schoepfil’s vulgarity of vision make any difference if he had successfully captured the formula? With a growing chill, Chang wondered if Vandaariff’s parasite nephew was unexpectedly dangerous?
    ‘Schoepfil means to inherit more than his uncle’s wealth,’ he said. ‘Alliances be damned, here is your enemy. You say he is no intimate of his uncle’s. What of his uncle’s associates – Francis Xonck or Harald Crabbé?’
    ‘I have been gone these months. Not that I am aware.’
    The words were an admission of neglect, and Chang sensed Foison’s mind working, the urge to make up lost ground.
    ‘What of Colonel Arthur Trapping?’
    ‘A wholly negligible person.’
    ‘Whose daughter’s death was worth your sending a messenger.’
    ‘I had standing orders –’
    ‘And why was that?’
    Foison’s eyes loomed even blacker beyond the flickering candle. ‘The approach of death is taken differently by each man. The actions of the powerful are naturally more … grandiose.’
    ‘People are being sacrificed on its altar. That child. Lydia.’ Chang rapped his stick against a lewdly painted rose. ‘The girl had scarcely seven years.’
    ‘Seven or seventy.’ Foison walked from the ruined little room. ‘Death is inevitable.’
    They retraced their steps