The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

again to Caroline—some vulgar jest about sisterhood and opportunities for taking the veil—but Miss Temple did not mark their conversation, so provoked were her thoughts by what she’d just beheld.…
    Miss Poole and Caroline Stearne had been wearing their white robes, and the man with them on the settee—she had seen him, she had taken that very cloak for her own!—was none other than Colonel Trapping. Miss Temple groped to make sense of it, as if she were in a hurry to open a door and could not get the right key in the hole … it had been that same night at Harschmort … and just before the Colonel’s murder, for the women had changed into their white robes but not yet undergone the Process. This meant it had been while she was creeping through the hall of mirrors and past the queer man with the boxes—only minutes before she herself had entered Trapping’s room. She had already worked out thatRoger and the Contessa were the Cabal members nearest to the Colonel at his death … could these women have killed him instead—on instructions of the Comte? If the Colonel had been in secret agreement with Lord Vandaariff … but why, she suddenly wondered, had Miss Poole chosen to share
this
memory—one that must obviously stir up questions about the murdered Colonel—with Caroline Stearne? There had been a rivalry between them in the theatre—was it merely to mock Caroline’s affections for a dead man, and what was more a dead traitor to the Cabal? In front of
everyone
?
    She was startled—was she an idiot? She must pay attention—by a hoarse cry and then the total immersion without warning into another vision: a tall wooden staircase, lit by orange torchlight under a blackened sky, a sudden rush of men, a scuttling figure in a black topcoat—Minister Crabbé!—and then the mob converging upon and raising up a kicking figure in a steel-blue greatcoat, a flash of his drawn face and ice-pale hair confirming him as Doctor Svenson an instant before, with a heaving surge, the crowd of men launched him without ceremony over the rail.
    Miss Temple looked up—just piecing together that this must be an image from the quarry at Tarr Manor—back in the ballroom again, to see a disturbance in the crowd, an undulating progress toward the center that with a lurch deposited the haggard figure of Doctor Svenson, breathless and battered, onto his hands and knees—exactly where Chang had been. Svenson looked up, his wild eyes searching for some escape but instead finding her face, the sight of which stopped him cold. Colonel Aspiche stepped forward, ripping a leather satchel from the Doctor’s grasp with one hand, and then bringing his truncheon down pitilessly with the other. It was a matter of seconds. Like Chang before him, Doctor Svenson was dragged past Miss Temple from the room.
    * * *
    Unable to watch him go without giving herself away, Miss Temple instead found her gaze rooted to the gleaming glass women. As disturbing as they were—and the sight of Miss Poole, if this unconscionably animated statue could still so be named, licking her lips with the slick, livid tip of a cerulean tongue caused Miss Temple to shiver with an unnameable dismay—it nevertheless put off the moment when she must face the Contessa’s piercing violet eyes. But then Caroline took her hand, spinning her to the raised dais where the members of the Cabal stood—the Contessa, Xonck, Crabbé, and then the Prince and Lydia Vandaariff, still in her mask and white robes, and behind this pair, like a furtive eavesdropping child, lurked the Envoy, Herr Flaüss. Against all reason Miss Temple’s eyes went straight to the Contessa, who met her glance with an implacably cold stare. It was to her great relief when it was Harald Crabbé, and not the Contessa, who stepped forward to speak.
    “Assembled
guests
… devoted
friends
… faithful
adherents
… now is the time when all our plans are ripe … hanging like fruit to be plucked. It is our present labor to
harvest
that fruit, and prevent it from falling fallow and uncared-for to the insensate
ground
. You all understand the gravity of this night—that we in truth usher in a new epoch—who could doubt it, when we see the evidence before us like angels from another age? Yet tonight all rests in the balance—the Prince and Miss Vandaariff will depart for their Macklenburg wedding … the Duke of Stäelmaere is appointed head of the Queen’s Privy Council … the most mighty figures of