Salamander Read online

  They heard a muffled shout and saw, on the far side of a lower gallery, Turini the carpenter with his arms around Darka, the contortionist. She was trying to squirm free, her face flushed with delight.

  – My father’s dream, Irena said, is a completely self-regulating mechanism, like the spheres of the planets. He sees the castle, long after he and I are dead, without a living soul in it. Walls and floors and furniture making their transits in silence. Forever.

  Flood argued that nothing in this world lasts forever. Metal rusts. Gears wear down. Wooden beams warp, rot, get gnawed by insects. And people never leave anything alone. They will always pry, and interfere, and try to improve, correct, or tear down what is supposedly finished and perfect. That was why printing was so difficult. The press was a nearly flawless invention, almost capable of working on its own, but it produced as much opposition and interference as it did pages.

  She asked him why, if he believed that, he persisted in printing.

  – My father liked to say that by multiplying the number of books in the world we multiply the number of readers. And with each new reader the ranks of the book-burners thin out a little more.

  – Is that why you’re here? she asked him. To escape the book-burners?

  – I’m here because of a letter, he said. I wanted to find out who had written it.

  She slowly turned away, cradling the salamander in her hands. He sat for a while after she had left, astounded at himself, and then craned his neck over the balustrade. He caught sight of her now and then as she made her way in a meandering spiral down into the depths of the castle.

  He turned back to his drawings, took up his pen, and traced the curve of her movements.

  A spiral.

  He scribbled a set of numbers, took up his rule, and drew a rectangle. Inside the empty frame he inscribed a single character:

  He thought back to his father’s lessons. Are you listening, Nicholas? The golden section. A proportion based on a ratio in which the lesser value is to the greater as the greater is to the sum. It can also be found in nature …

  In the spiral of a seashell, for instance, which is itself only a fragment of a greater spiral of increase. An infinite one.

  Yes, Father. I remember now. Thank you.

  Having the entire library filed in her head, Irena knew she had never seen this little volume with Desire gold-tooled on the spine. It had to be a creation of Flood’s, even though she had warned him not to place anything on the shelves without her father’s permission. Perhaps he had thought to conceal his indiscretion by tucking it away here.

  That night she took the book to bed with her and by candlelight skimmed through the sermon it contained.

  … these Earthly Promptings that come like thieves in the night and rob us of sweet Tranquillity and Reason.… Intimations in the Flesh of the Soul’s one right Desire, for Communion with the Radiance of Eternal Truth….

  After several pages of this she shut the book, set it on the night table, and blew out the candles, disappointed. He had hidden the book where he did, she was sure, to let her know it was a message. But not the message she had expected. Was he warning both of them not to go any further?

  She became aware of a faint illumination against her eyelids, and staring into the darkness saw a pale green glow along the book’s fore-edge. She sat up and opened the book again. In the spaces between the lines of the sermon, repeated on page after page in unbroken cursive pica, she read her own name.

  She was in bliss and torment at the same time. Unable to gather her thoughts, her first impulse was to hide this confession that lit up the curtains of her bed. As she reached down to tuck it under her mattress, the book slipped out of her hand and hit the floor with a terrible bang. Irena climbed from her bed, letting it trundle on without her while she crept back along the passage. The incriminating volume lay splayed open, bathing the walls and ceiling with its spectral glow.

  Stooping quickly she picked up the book, wrapped it in her arms, and started off after her bed. Her mind and her feet were not pursuing the same course, and after a while she discovered she had managed to accomplish the unprecedented and lose her way. She stood still, listening, her bare feet chilled by the icy stone of the floor. Something was approaching, and soon she saw that it was her father’s bed. He was not there, she knew, but still she backed slowly against the wall, holding her breath and hugging Flood’s book tightly to her breast as the bed rumbled past and slowly vanished.

  The next morning she kept Desire with her, concealed in the folds of her gown, breathless at the thought that she was leaving an unaccounted empty space on one of the shelves, a flaw in her father’s system. Whenever she could steal an unobserved moment during her daily rounds, she opened the book and turned its pages, mouthing the bituminous phrases of the sermon with secret delight.

  At the end of the day she returned the book to its place on the shelf, having decided upon her fate. Taking a ring of keys from her apron pocket, she unlocked a trapdoor in a remote passageway. Glancing around quickly to make sure she was unobserved, she climbed down a ladder into the dank underneath of the castle and in an instant was swallowed up by steam and darkness.

  In the evening she brought the printer coffee on a silver tray. As she passed Ludwig at his post beside the press she tickled his jutting porcelain chin. Djinn was dozing on a settee, wrapped in Flood’s threadbare bombazine coat. He stirred as she went by and mumbled words in one of his half-remembered languages.

  Irena set the tray on the work table at Flood’s elbow. Beside the coffee decanter lay the small octavo volume of Desire.

  Flood stared at the book without daring to look up into Irena’s eyes.

  – When the clock tells a quarter past three tonight, she finally managed to whisper, my bed will pass yours.

  She turned and went back the way she had come. Flood sat, frozen, then reached out and put his hand on the cover of the book.

  That night, as the striking of the great clock reverberated through the draughty halls of the castle, Flood, in shirt and breeches, leaped barefoot, like a pirate boarding a galley, from his moving bed to Irena’s. He found her sitting at the head with her arms around her knees, eyes glittering. She was still dressed in her blue silk gown, but her long russet hair had been released from its pins and lace and spilled about her shoulders.

  Just as he was about to move towards her, he stopped. Her face was contorting, her eyes squeezing shut, her mouth dropping open — Was she about to weep, or scream … ?

  – Countess –

  She sneezed. They looked at one another for a moment and then laughed.

  – We’ve confused the dust, she said.

  – Do you always wear your gown to bed? he asked, not daring yet to do anything else but speak.

  – You don’t know much about women’s clothing, do you?

  – No.

  She leaned over to the side of the bed and blew out the candle.

  – I dismissed my maid early. I need you to help me with all of this.

  Shyness constrained them to take things methodically:

  Laced modesty piece in the French style.

  Damask stomacher stitched with silk rosettes.

  Back-lacing jacket bodice.

  Apron of printed Indian cotton.

  Overskirt of cream silk embroidered with gold thread.

  Watered-satin petticoat.

  Quilted camlet under-petticoats (2).

  – You have to do this every night?

  – And every morning, in reverse.

  Whalebone birdcage-style hoop.

  Persian stays (also stiffened with whalebone).

  Double-stitched pocket-ribband with perfume sachet.

  Linen chemise á l’Angloise.

  – There.

  When she set aside the last garment he reached for her and his fingers touched cold metal.

  – Go on, she said. That comes off too. I won’t be needing it tonight.

  There was no time.

>   In the darkness they devoured one another, fell back into themselves, spent, and came together again.

  – I want to see us.

  She lit a candle. They looked, dazed, at their gleaming bodies. Together they were a new world.

  He blew out the candle and they lay nestled against one another in the blackness. The bed rolled through the castle, stopped, moved on again.

  She told him of her childhood illness, and how she had come to wear the cage. He told her about the sister he had lost.

  – How old were you when she died?

  – Eleven. But I remember it all so clearly, as if it only happened yesterday.

  – Perhaps everything did, she said. The past is who we are.

  In the half-light before dawn he finally saw the cage, lying tenantless at the foot of the bed where he had cast it with her other clothing.

  – I don’t want to put this back on you, he said. Every day …

  – I’ve gotten used to it over the years. It’s part of me.

  Flood’s bed approached like a comet returning in its long revolution. She told him her father was expected home today. When they embraced one last time, he said it was strange, the way they had been drawn together. As if, like the Count’s automatons, they had no choice.

  – He’s been working on machines, she said, that will one day replace both him and me. We’ve been waiting for the casings to come from Meissen.

  – He already treats you like a machine. I want to take you away from here. We could go to Venice. Hide there, find a ship to take us to England.

  She shook her head.

  – Nicholas, I …

  He rose and cautiously parted the curtains. His bed was almost abreast of hers.

  – If he found out, what would he do?

  Without answering, she kissed him. As he made ready to leap he dug in his pocket and handed her a small T-shaped piece of metal.

  – It’s a quoin key, he said. If something happens, leave it on my work table.

  He was gone, leaving a faint glow of phosphorescence lingering on the sheets and on Irena’s skin. She held her hands in front of her and watched the light vanish into them.

  At breakfast the Count placed a sealed letter on the table, propping it against the chocolate boat.

  – I almost forgot, he said casually to Irena. The Abbé asked me to give you this.

  – Thank you, Father.

  The Count turned to Flood.

  – I’m pleased you could join us, my friend. I so look forward to hearing what you have accomplished during my absence.

  As he spoke, Irena slid the letter off the table and slipped it into her pocket.

  – Ah, my dear, the Count said. I thought perhaps you might favour us with the contents. I find I already miss the Abbé’s intelligent conversation.

  He smiled at Flood’s look of surprise.

  – There are no secrets at this table, sir.

  Irena carefully slit the letter open with her knife, unfolded the paper and read.

  Countess,

  Your kindness will always remain impressed upon my soul I fear that pen and ink cannot express how attached you have become to my heart, as if with unbreakable bindings. I will always treasure the memory of our too-brief acquaintance, and I thank you for the undeserved respect and consideration you showed me from first to last. Believe me when I say that I hope someday to have the opportunity to repay it.

  Yours with all due respect and esteem,

  Saint-Foix

  – Hm, said the Count, sipping his coffee. Surprisingly conventional, for a man of his talents. Although bindings, now, strikes me as somewhat original. Bonds is the more usual figure of speech, I believe.

  He gave a wheezing laugh.

  – It sounds, Mr. Flood, as if he’s borrowing his metaphors from your trade.

  He had been aware for some time of a presence stalking the halls and galleries, someone or something that moved at the periphery of his vision, like a mirror-self glimpsed down a distant corridor, but which vanished whenever he turned to look directly at it. He felt its shadow like an invisible eclipse moving across the faces of his many clocks, causing tiny errancies in their usually flawless timekeeping.

  At first he had blamed the disruption caused by the printer’s activities. The nautical creaking of the press screw, the click-clack of type slugs dropping into place in the boy’s composing stick, the flutter of sheets drying on cords, stirred by the cold draughts that found their way into the castle despite his best efforts: all these annoyances had disturbed the order of things, but he knew that this other presence was something more than mechanical. It was intangible, amorphous, and therefore a true threat. After his return he could not sleep, and rising in the night followed mysterious glowing handprints on walls, naked footprints on floors, tracks that swiftly faded and disappeared before he could arrive at their intended destination. He felt it in tiny, subtle shifts of mood and energy shown by his servants, the way one will be aware of an oncoming bout of influenza long before the actual symptoms occur. He saw it in the face of his daughter, who had begun to neglect her duties, an unprecedented dereliction, and was often found staring dreamily at nothing, no longer even with a book in her hands to explain these lapses from her day’s well-ordered round. At first he thought the presence of the handsome Abbé had distracted the females of the household. But now the suave Frenchman was gone and it was the awkward Englishman, he was forced to conclude, who had introduced an unknown, pernicious element into his smoothly running system, one which he was determined to track down and root out.

  To that end he scrutinized everything done and everyone doing it more minutely than ever, eventually noticing that one of the bookcases seemed to be gliding with the merest suggestion of an imbalance, an infinitesimal disturbance in his grand design manifesting itself in the form of a slight wobble.

  A brief search confirmed his suspicion: there was an empty space on the lowest shelf. Missing was the seventh volume, Helix-Longitude, of a foreign encyclopedia that he had not consulted in many years. Only one person could be held responsible for this outrage. The Count’s hands shook.

  – Irena.

  He tracked down her empty bed as it rolled along its accustomed route. He emptied out the night table, stripped away the sheets, tossed aside the pillow and found a paper neatly listing women’s toiletries – powder, pomade, scented soap, rosewater – and their estimated cost, a list she was no doubt going to submit to him the next morning for his approval, as she did without fail every quarter. The list, belying its innocence, was tucked into a small octavo volume the Count had never seen before. Slowly, and then with increasing swiftness, he turned the pages, a tremor beginning in his hands and along the grey ridge of his chin.

  – My moth, he muttered hoarsely. My little moth.

  On the fourth night that Flood leapt through the red velvet curtains of Irena’s bed, he found the Count there with two of his huntsmen brandishing fowling guns.

  – You neglected to consider how much I enjoy a good riddle, the Count said. He held up the book of Desire so that the pages faced Flood, who saw faint patches of rust on the paper and then realized it was Irena’s name, visible here and there amid the straight black pews of the sermon.

  – Your recipe for secret ink, the Count said as Flood was seized and carried off, stands in need of serious modification.

  He was taken down into the clockworks, to a stone chamber with a huge toothed gear for a roof. Pungent steam rose from a grate in the floor.

  There was a straw pallet against one wall and above it a narrow embrasure that let in a weak, nacreous light. He could hear water trickling somewhere. Once every hour the gear overhead creaked to life and with a dull clunk ratcheted around one tooth, splattering oily water into the cell.

  The Count came to inspect the new arrangements, sliding open the door’s spyhole to have a look at his prisoner.

  – You can’t do this, Flood said when he saw the old man’s eyes fastened on him. I
am not one of your subjects.

  – If you were to consult the most recent surveyor’s maps, the Count said, you would find that this castle does not exist. And now, neither do you.

  Flood sank onto the straw pallet.

  – At least let me have my press. I can still work on your book.

  – I’ve changed my mind concerning that, I’m afraid. Books need readers, and when I am dead, there will be no one here to do any reading.

  – Where is the Countess?

  – Oh, I’ve brought her to see you, the Count said, stepping away from the spyhole. Since the two of you will never meet again, I thought it only fair that you should have the chance to say your goodbyes.

  There was a rustle of silk and Irena’s face appeared. She gazed into the cell, expressionless.

  – Countess, Flood whispered, unable to move.

  – She was not for you, the Count’s voice said.

  His long thin fingers spidered up to Irena’s temples, sank in like talons. With a click her face came away in his hands. All that remained were her eyes, two naked orbs in a hive of twitching, buzzing machinery.

  The panel slid shut.

  He howled. Pounded the door, scraped at the walls until his fingers bled. Wept himself into exhausted sleep.

  After a murky expanse of time he heard a sound overhead and a basket on a rope came down through the gear housing with his meal: a heel of loaf, a stone bottle of water, half of a stale meat pie. He left everything where it was and did the same when the basket came down the next day. The day after that, the basket failed to appear. When it finally descended again three days later he snatched at its contents greedily and from then on ate every last crumb.

  He set himself to ignore the sound of the gear before it drove him mad, until he realized that the mental effort needed would lead even more quickly to the same result.

  He tormented himself with questions he could not answer. What did the Count mean by showing him that clockwork parody of her? Was she dead? Or had that thing been her all along? No. Another of his riddles. An insidious joke. She had to be alive. She was the only thing in this prison that was.