Eros Element Page 17

  “Would the mademoiselle prefer tea?” the Marquis asked. “Or perhaps an Italian coffee with steamed milk?”

  “Tea would be wonderful,” Iris said. If nothing else, she would always have tea. She selected the type she wanted from a list, and soon she had a fragrant cup steeping in front of her and a pain au chocolat on a plate beside it.

  “And now that you have your tea,” the Marquis said, “tell us why you are interested in Classical and Renaissance art. The Maestro said it had something to do with your research? Or your father’s?”

  Iris looked at Johann, who shrugged as if to say, “You’re the one accustomed to lying.”

  She smiled at the Marquis and picked up her tea cup. “I’m looking into elemental symbolism in Classical art and how it was portrayed in the Renaissance.”

  Monsieur Anctil, the Renaissance curator, nodded so hard Iris thought his glasses would fly off. He had little tufts of curly graying dark hair over his ears and a mustache she found ridiculous. “Yes, yes,” he said. “Especially in the Renaissance, in the paintings of the Greek gods. The marquis has a particularly nice Eros and Psyche.”

  Iris kept the smile on her face even though her dimples hurt by now. “I would love to see it,” she said and hoped she didn’t accidentally tip them off to the search for the Eros Element.

  The maitre d’ appeared with a message for Bledsoe. The two men conversed in whispers, but Iris was close enough to hear.

  “I can’t talk to him right now,” Bledsoe said.

  “He was very insistent, Monsieur. Said he would cause a scene if you did not meet with him.”

  “Very well.” He stood and threw his napkin on the table. “Excuse me, gentlemen. Some urgent business from home is calling me away for a few moments.”

  “Anything I can help with?” the Marquis asked and shifted his weight as though to rise. Bledsoe put a hand on his shoulder.

  “Not this time, my friend, but thank you. I’ll only be a minute.” He followed the maitre d’ out of the restaurant. Iris turned to the remaining three and took off her gloves to eat her croissant. She made as to move the fork Bledsoe had been holding away from the edge of the table and read it. It produced an all-too-familiar bitter sensation in the back of her mouth—lying and fear of being caught. He was hiding something from her and the rest of them.

  A sip of tea cleared the taste but not the residual headache, which piled on top of the one she already had. “I apologize,” she said, “but I’m not feeling very well. Is there a, er, water closet for women here?”

  A waiter showed her the way, and she lucked out—the room had a ventilation window, and it gave her a limited view of the wall of another building, which meant it opened onto an alley. She climbed onto the counter beside the sink and was rewarded by hearing voices.

  “—can’t pay you more than this,” Bledsoe was saying. “It’s all I’ve been able to gather.”

  “That’ll barely cover my travel to chase you down for what you owe, Guv’nor,” another man said. His accent said lower London. “Our beasties told us you’re on Cobb’s payroll. You should have access to more than that.”

  Iris stood on her tiptoes and strained to hear the men’s voices over the clatter of the kitchen across the hall from the toilettes and the pounding of her own heart—so the Maestro had been lying to them all along.

  “I’m trying not to be obvious about it, a skill you apparently lack,” Bledsoe said. “We won’t be paid until the end of the mission, which you are jeopardizing. Was it necessary to pull me away from an important business breakfast? And how did you learn I was to be here?”

  “We have our sources. We’re watching you, Maestro. I know you like your cards, but your companions wouldn’t appreciate you gambling with their lives, especially that brunette. She looks like she’d snap you in two. And the Irishman likely has a temper to go with his red hair. Can’t trust those brutes.”

  “I’ll get your money to you. Leave me alone and let me work.”

  “You’ve had your warning. Cobb won’t appreciate knowing the Blooming Senator’s attack was our little message to you. Keep us informed as to your progress.”

  He did put us in danger! Iris sucked in the corners of her mouth so she wouldn’t break into a vindictive smile that would tip him off when she came back to the table. She crawled off the counter, took care of business, and walked back to the table, where the Marquis stood and talked to Johann and the other two men ate what looked like piles of cooked eggs.

  “I’m afraid I must excuse myself,” the Marquis said with a bow when she joined them. “I am finalizing my travel plans with my agents here in the city and have much to do. I will send my coach for you this evening for the gala. It will be good to hear you play again, Maestro.”

  “I’m looking forward to it,” Johann said. “You and your guests are always such a sophisticated audience, the pleasure is mine.”

  They said their goodbyes, and Iris took her seat at the table and nibbled at her pain au chocolat.

  “My daughter likes to dip her pain in her cafe,” Monsieur Anctil said and put something that looked like cherry jam on his croissant. “Perhaps it would work as well with thé?”

  “I’m willing to try.” Iris broke off a piece and gave its corner a quick soak in her tea. It left a residue on the top, and although she enjoyed the buttery flavor the hot liquid brought out, it didn’t work otherwise. “I fear it might work better with coffee,” she said.

  “Ah, leave her be, Anctil,” Monsieur Firmin, the curator of the Classics collections, told him. “She is a young woman, not a child, and she is kind to humor you. Besides, you know you should not be eating the preserves. They will worsen your diabetes.” The wrinkles along his mouth and between his eyes told Iris his customary expression was one of disapproval, and indeed, she felt that to be the case with her. His irritable demeanor caused her to feel more comfortable since that was the typical expression her tutors had given her. She knew how to handle dour and exasperated.

  The genial Monsieur Anctil, on the other hand, helped himself to another spoonful. Now he made her uneasy. No one could be that friendly, and she didn’t appreciate being compared to his daughter, whom she pictured as a true child. Even Patrick O’Connell had a certain edge to him she knew not to test, and she wondered what Anctil’s seed of darkness was. Every person had one, she was coming to find.

  Breakfast finished, she and Bledsoe followed the two curators across the courtyard and into a small passage well-hidden behind the wall and shrubbery. Now she watched the musician and noticed how he maintained his genial conversation but examined each person they passed. Iris listened to what the men said but also for the quiet whirring of the little clockwork spy devices. Now she knew the Clockwork Guild pursued Bledsoe, she needed to be extra careful about what she said and did around him. There was no telling where the little beasties hid.

  They entered the Louvre through a back door unlocked by Monsieur Firmin. “You will start with me, Mademoiselle. As I recall, you are most interested in the Archaic through Hellenistic periods?”

  “Yes, that is correct,” Iris said.

  “I’ll leave you to your pottery-gazing,” Bledsoe said. “You have the practice room with the piano and violin, right, Firmin?”

  Anctil stepped up. “Bien sur! The orchestra is not rehearsing this morning, so it is all yours. It will be an honor to hear you practice even if we do not get the pleasure of tonight’s performance.”

  “Yes,” Firmin said. “I am glad you will be visiting the Marquis before he heads to his estate on the coast for the summer, Mademoiselle. He has a fine collection of kouros statues you will find quite fascinating. I have been hinting he should donate them to the museum, but alas, he is quite attached to them. He told me he couldn’t stand the thought of possible damage during transport between the Monceau suburb and here.”

  “I’m looking forwar
d to it,” Iris said. “Now tell me about your collection.” She glanced over her shoulder at Bledsoe and Anctil, and she caught the Renaissance curator giving her a curious look as they walked in the opposite direction. Something about it made her fingertips tingle to read something of his.

  Firmin led her into a large room where statues peered out at her from alcoves and pottery shards and reassembled pieces lay arranged on tables.

  “Where would you like to begin?” he asked.

  A movement at the corner of her vision startled Iris. She looked to her left and expected to see their shadows moving along the wall, but no, one of the statues lifted its hand.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Musée du Louvre, 13 June 1870

  It’s a shadow, a mere trick of the light.

  Iris tried not to appear to be one of those vapid, jumpy, “Oh, I think it’s waving at me,” females like the girls at Madame Cornwall’s School for Young Ladies, where they’d had one—just one—trip to the London Museum of Art. Her stupid classmates, having been stirred up by an admittedly handsome street preacher at the Huntington Station, were convinced the remnants of pagan times were in some way imbued with Satan’s spells and therefore out to get the Christian misses. The curator had rushed them through the tour as a result of the girls’ silliness, and Iris, being the last out due to trying to get a final lingering glance at an Egyptian sarcophagus, heard him say to the docent before closing the door behind them, “Good grief, they’re raising them stupid up north!” She’d fumed the whole way home and begged her parents to allow her to go to a real school, or at least to the boys’ academy down the road. Of course her mother had refused, although her father later told her he thought she belonged more with the boys, anyway, in terms of interest and intellect. At least the preacher who’d started the trouble had been “encouraged” to move on.

  But no, the arm of the statue moved at the elbow and raised its hand as if to greet her. Iris simultaneously had the compulsion to look away and the desire to watch it in case it decided to move other parts and come after her. Monsieur Firmin gestured to various objects and droned on, but Iris couldn’t concentrate on his words. She noticed he had stopped talking.

  “Miss McTavish, you barely seem to be listening. Is something wrong? You do realize I’m taking time from my busy schedule to show you my collection.”

  His condescending tone, so similar to that of the London Museum curator, snapped Iris out of her fear.

  “I apologize, Monsieur, but I was distracted by your statue’s apparent familiarity with me. It hasn’t stopped waving since we arrived.”

  “Oh!” He walked over to it. “It does this sometimes. She was once part of the Magna Graecia Automaton, and certain footsteps, often one light and one heavy, set her off.” He stilled the statue’s hand and gestured for Iris to come closer. “See? She has a hinge at the elbow and clever counterbalancing. Writings from that period tell us that when it was complete, the automaton had a twenty-minute cycle with several statues performing different movements.”

  Iris studied the statue and moved the arm herself. Certain aspects of the statue told Iris it was made too late to be part of the automaton, but it was designed to appear so.

  Someone wanted this young woman to be remembered, but it was a risk.

  The girl seemed to stare through her, her slight smile like that of a woman with sad but precious memories. The expression looked odd on such a young face. Iris decided to play along with Firmin’s assumptions.

  “What do you know of this statue other than that she was part of the Magna? And where are the other parts?”

  “I don’t have good answers for you, I fear. Legend has it that the automaton series was dismantled and brought to Rome, but a curse soon resulted in its being destroyed except for a few pieces deemed not to be threatening such as this young lady here.”

  “A curse,” Iris murmured. “By whom?”

  “You have heard of the Pythagoreans, yes?”

  Iris shrugged to cover her interest. “Yes, the theorem every geometry student has to learn.”

  “The cult had a dark side. Rumor has it they killed the poor man who discovered there was no rational way to derive the square root of two. After the massacre at Metapontum, they went underground, where according to legend, some of them went mad and turned to occult and secret arts.”

  “There is a price to pay for magic, after all.” Iris’s fingertips itched. She wanted to read the statue of the young woman, but she couldn’t take her gloves off in front of Monsieur Firmin without appearing wanton or forward. “Well,” she said, “as you said, you are busy. Do you mind if I wander around in here on my own while you do what you need to do? You could come back in a half hour to take me to the main gallery.”

  Firmin cut his eyes to the right and left. Iris knew she guessed correctly—he didn’t see the point in babysitting an English miss. “I will return in thirty minutes. Don’t touch anything.”

  She clasped her hands in front of her and nodded with the most serious expression she could muster over her delight. As soon as his footsteps faded from the gallery, Iris stripped off her gloves and wiggled her fingers. A chorus of sensations washed over her with objects begging to be touched and read.

  I have a small amount of time. What’s the most important?

  “Definitely you, my dear,” she said to the statue in front of her. She reached for the marble girl’s hand but stopped. Firmin touched that part of her, and Iris wanted older impressions. She caressed the maiden’s cheek and saw a flash of a real girl with her features and dark curly hair, a tear coming from each eye. The roar of a crowd, a human scream, and an animal’s howl pressed in on Iris’s ears. Terror radiated from the girl, and Iris had to step back and clutch her lower back, where pain stabbed through her after the vision subsided. Now she was horrified…and more curious.

  “What happened to you?” she whispered. She placed a hand on the girl’s shoulder and noted the stone felt warmer. Iris hadn’t touched the statue there yet, so the increase in temperature couldn’t have come from her own body heat. Now the floor shifted beneath her, and her feet stood on cold stone. Iris followed someone’s gaze up the side of a temple to a high window. The sensation that accompanied this vision was the crushing sense of despair at the thought of an impossible to escape situation.

  Iris tried to make note of the delicate stuccoes, mostly of couples. Psyche and Eros. The words came to her mind, The price of love is deception.

  Now a chill came over Iris, and she blinked to see the white walls and soulless eyes of the statues in the Classics Gallery at the Louvre. Her walking boots pinched her feet, but she preferred them to shackles, and she bent to rub one ankle. She followed the compulsion to move to the other side of the room from the girl, but the suspicion that she’d gotten into something way over her head followed her.

  Approaching footsteps made her pull on her gloves over trembling fingers, and a glance at the clock told her that the half hour had passed. This most of all perturbed her—where had the time gone? Where had she gone? Her visions had always been of someone, not vividly from their viewpoint since that one where she’d gotten caught up in her mother’s puerile fantasy.

  “Ah, there you are, Mademoiselle!” It was the genial Monsieur Anctil. “Allons-y. I have much to show you in the Renaissance wing.”

  Edward gazed out the window, the now completely dismantled clockwork butterfly in front of him. He thought he’d isolated all the different parts, but for some reason, he couldn’t figure out how to get it back together. Actually, he knew the reason. He was an aetherist, not a tinkerer. If he was going to be stuck in this hotel room and acting according to his usual routine, he could at least have the chance to run some experiments to see whether anything changed being this much closer to the Equator. Part of him mourned the equipment he lost in the airship crash, particularly the beloved copper sphere he’d sacrificed
to defending himself and Iris against the Clockwork Guildsman.

  Iris… He supposed she was at the Louvre by now with Johann exploring the treasures there.

  A knock on the door startled him before he could follow that line of thought any further.

  “Come in,” he called. He glanced at the clock—Oh, right, time for midmorning tea.

  The Irishman Patrick O’Connell entered carrying a tea tray. “The chef said he wasn’t going to waste his good butter on scones, so he sent croissants up instead.” He looked around for a place to set the tray. “Where do you want this?”

  “Oh, you might as well put it here.” Edward swept the remains of the clockwork to one side of the table. “I’m stuck as to what to do with this anyway.”

  O’Connell set the tea service in front of him. “Looks like you got it apart without breaking anything. Now what do you want to do with it?”

  Edward gestured for the other man to join him. “I can ring for more tea if you’re thirsty.”

  “I’m fine.” He remained standing. “Not sure if I’m supposed to stay. Chadwick said you’re to be left alone between the hours of eight and eleven except for bringing your tea.”

  Edward shifted to ease the tightness in his chest that started that morning during his conversation with Johann. He wondered if it might be his lungs—wasn’t the doctor concerned about something he heard in them?

  “Well, I’m stuck, and sometimes I’ll go to my colleagues to see if they can make suggestions to move me along.” Or to see if they need me to make suggestions, but close enough.

  O’Connell sat, and Edward reached for the handle for the tube that would relay his wishes down to the kitchen. “I can’t drink alone.”

  “Aye, I appreciate that, Professor.”

  Edward wondered if he’d accidentally referenced the Irish tendency to drink too much alcohol and scrambled to change the subject so O’Connell wouldn’t leave. “Oh, please call me Edward. You see, I’m hoping you’ll act as a colleague and help me to understand these clockwork devices better. I’m sure I can use them somehow in my research.”