The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

curtains, and across the floor was strewn more clothing—but these objects, large and small, seemed to float in a room where the walls were far away and, like the floor, dark with shadow like the surface of a black, dead-placid pool, the discarded garments floating like clumps of leaves. She pulled aside the bed curtains. With a primitive immediacy Miss Temple’s nostrils flared…a delicate scent the Contessa’s body had left in the bedclothes. Part of it was frangipani perfume, but underneath that flowered sweetness lay something else, steeped gently between the sheets, close to the odor of freshly baked bread, of rosemary, of salted meat, even of lime. The scent rose to Miss Temple and brought to her mind the human quality of the woman, that however fearsome or composed she was a creature of appetite and frailties after all…and Miss Temple had penetrated her lair.
    She breathed in again and licked her lips.

    Miss Temple quickly wondered if, in such ruinous disorder, the Contessa might have hidden anything of value, some journal or plan or artifact that might explain the Cabal’s secret aims. Behind, the complaining groans of Miss Vandaariff persisted. What
had
been done to the woman—it was practically as if she was giving birth! Anxiety gnawed at Miss Temple anew, and she felt a glow of perspiration rise upon her brow and between her shoulder blades. Her truest adversaries—the Contessa and the Comte d’Orkancz—must eventually arrive at these rooms. Was she prepared to meet them? She had brazened out her tea with the Comte well enough, but was much less satisfied by her extended interaction with the two ladies, by any estimation less formidable opponents (if opponent was even the proper word for the distressingly unmoored Miss Vandaariff). Somehow a confrontation that ought to have been taut, antagonistic, and thrilling had become mysterious, distracted, sensual, and lax. Miss Temple resolved to find what she could and leave as quickly as possible.
    She first swept her hand beneath the voluminous feather pillows at the head of the bed. Nothing. This was to be expected—a quick lift of the mattress and a look under the bed frame revealed the same result—and it was only with the smallest increase of hope that Miss Temple marched to the Contessa’s armoire in search of the drawer containing her intimates. A foolish sort of woman might hide things there, with an idea that somehow the personal nature of the drawer’s contents would ward off inquiry. Ever an enemy to the inquisitive, Miss Temple knew the opposite was true—that such silks and stays and hose and whalebone inspired a feral curiosity in almost anyone—who
wouldn’t
want to paw through them?—and so the idea of stashing, for example, a tender diary in such a place was tantamount to leaving it in the foyer like a newspaper or, still worse, on the servants’ dining table at mealtime. As she expected, no such items of worth were to be found amongst the Contessa’s undergarments—though she perhaps dallied a moment running her fingers through the quantities of silk and may have also, with a furtive blush, pressed a luscious delicacy or two to her nose—and she shut the drawer. The best hiding places were the most banal—cunningly in plain sight, or cluttered amongst, say, one’s jumbled shoes. But she found nothing save a truly astonishing and expensive range of footwear. Miss Temple turned—did she have time to ransack the entire armoire? Was Miss Vandaariff still groaning?—looking for some ostensibly clever hiding place she could
see
. What she saw was discarded clothing everywhere…and Miss Temple smiled. There to the side of the armoire, against the dark wall in shadow, was a pile of blouses and shawls that struck her as quite deliberately set aside from any possible foot traffic. She knelt before it and rapidly sorted apart the layers. In no time at all, its glow nested in a yellow Italian damask wrap like an infant in straw, she had uncovered a large book crafted entirely of blue glass.

    It was the size of a middling volume from an encyclopedia—“N” or “F”, perhaps—over a foot in height and slightly under that in width, and perhaps three inches thick. The cover was heavy, as if the glass-maker had emulated the embossed Tuscan leather Miss Temple had seen in the market near St. Isobel’s, and opaque, for even though it seemed as if she ought to have been able to see clearly into it, the layers were in fact quite