CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Marie

MARIE HAD BEEN working for the two days to finish the final stage of the process and now her workshop resembled an anatomy dissection room. Each limb was now complete, ready to be sliced open for the insertion of the mechanics with Philidor’s assistance. The wax had shrunk as it cooled, so the plaster mould, when again prised open, came apart easily in Marie’s hands.

And the final piece revealed. A wax head.

Her new invention was also finished: a mechanism to sit in Elanor’s chest, with wires linked to the central cam so that when wound up the creature’s chest would rise and fall as if breathing. Philidor considered himself the expert at building mechanisms, and Marie was satisfied when he begrudgingly expressed his approval. She made it clear, however, that it was her idea, her design and her device; he was not permitted to see the drawings. They had then spent two days together assembling and joining the respective parts and now the figure stood whole before her.

Now Marie could begin in earnest to create Elanor’s likeness. She detached Elanor’s head, then with a long fine needle, she began to insert each hair at the root into the scalp – this took more time than any other part of the process, weeks actually. This was interspersed with the application of the oil-based paint for the skin, layered precisely to obtain a realistic tone and texture. It was now that Marie felt her connection to Elanor pull the strongest.

It was as if a part of Marie’s own soul had been mixed in the metal bucket with the wax, then heated, cooled and poured into the mould to set. Something of Marie had transferred into Elanor in the same way Elanor had sprung from Marie’s imagination and been embodied by her hands working wax.

At last, at the conclusion of three weeks working on Elanor’s head, with a final touch of her pig bristle brush, Elanor was finished. Marie had pushed herself beyond her usual capabilities to effect this, being possessed with an almost unnatural fever of strength and energy that seemed to never dissipate but only grow stronger the closer she came to finishing. During this time she had seldom seen Philidor, left to his own he had only remarked in passing that he was working on some new ideas for a future show. She had not permitted him entrance to her workshop and she knew in consequence that his stifled impatience and curiosity must be straining his temper. Regington’s letters had also revealed his temper straining, she needed to see him soon if the liaison was to continue. And it must.

But this day, Marie had informed the valet and Philidor that she would not be attending supper. To Philidor she had also added that Elanor would be ready to unveil the following morning. She had failed to mention she would be spending the night in her workshop with Elanor, as was her tradition with all of her newly completed waxworks.

All she had left to do was to clothe Elanor, and she would accomplish that in the morning – for her trap to succeed that night, it would be better for Elanor to remain unclothed. Elanor was not as aesthetically beautiful as Antoinette in her regalia as queen. But the girl possessed an indefinable quality. Perhaps it was because she could breathe; perhaps because of the finer Parisian materials from which she was built, or the stability of the temperatures that had allowed the wax to set, or their increased expertise in building this second automaton. Or was it that her likeness in every particular was somehow discernible on another level of human awareness?

The room felt increasingly claustrophobic. Though the sun had long since set, Marie was sweating in a manner she hadn’t experienced before down here. The air was too hot, and she found it hard to get enough – the atmosphere was suffocating, really. Yet Elanor seemed to be breathing easily, the device completing the illusion that she had been brought to life.

And then Marie smelt something. Not a scent but a stench that had snuck in under her door to catch her unawares. The thickness of it constricted her throat. She attempted to swallow. The smell became a taste, and her mouth filled with saliva. She reached for her handkerchief, excreted the saliva into its folds, and scrunched it up to put back into her corset. Then she saw it was drenched in blood. Blood that ran across the back of her hand in rivulets to snake down her wrist.

She gasped and dropped the handkerchief onto the floor, where it fell upon a pile of bones crawling with grave worms. The stench was inside her now, living and thrashing, filling her being. She started coughing. Raised her hand to her mouth. Smeared the blood inadvertently across her chin. She felt its wetness. Smelt the metal tang of it.

No, stop. Swallow. Blink once, hard, be ready. There is no stench. Another breath. Look closer. Those bones were really logs; the grave worms were just splinters. And when she picked up her handkerchief, she saw there was no blood aside from on the usual corner. She touched her face again; her fingers came away clean. But the crescendo in visions, the return of her fancies, were portents that foretold bad luck.

Steadying herself, she put the handkerchief back into her corset and returned to studying Elanor. The girl’s brunette hair fell below her shoulders and was left unadorned, according to the instructions from Cavendish. Marie took another deep breath and looked into Elanor’s eyes, a beautiful green. Elanor’s hair was parted in the middle; her forehead, like the rest of her face, was clouded with freckles that had been painstaking to apply. Still, Marie was satisfied with the finished product, in particular the pattern over the rounded nose that dipped slightly at the bridge. Elanor’s lips were the deep red he had ordered. And her teeth were faultless. Everything was according to his specifications.

Elanor’s clothes lay over the arm of the chair: a plain green dress with a scoop neck and three-quarter sleeves, drawn in at the waist above a full skirt puckered at the seam, with the chemise and drawers beneath. She would look beautiful in it, so different to Antoinette, who seemed embarrassingly plain without all the embellishments of colour, jewels, gowns and hair adornments.

Elanor was a different sort of beauty: unrefined yet more pure because of the lack of artifice. Naked, her white skin glimmering in the lamplight, she looked for all intents and purposes like a young bride about to share her bed with her husband for the first time. She was infused with the vitality of youth. This girl would easily hitch up her skirts and run through the fields, splash water on her face from the stream and sit beneath the oak barefoot. An independent life that would have been denied to her as a real woman. This girl, if she were really alive, would be a servant, soon beaten into obedience, literally or not, by the men around her who determined the place of every woman in society.

Or would she have fought against it? Marie pulled back Elanor’s hair and leant closer to those eyes. Yes, perhaps she would have. Elanor’s will was strong, like the enchanter’s nightshade. She would not bend to the demands of a man, but explore, seek adventure. But Marie was no closer to understanding who she was, in actuality. Who could she have been had she lived? Marie had not brought the subject up again with Harriet. A delicate matter such as this needed time to build further on the trust already established.

Marie had decided though, that the locked cavern room was a shrine to the real Elanor, visited by a devoted admirer, who could be none other than the duke. Whether he had kept the real Elanor there prisoner she did know but was this his plan for her creature? Restrained in the dark, on the damp bed? She told herself it was of no consequence – for all the creature’s potential, she was not actually alive and she had been made specifically on commission for the exclusive use of her owner who had paid handsomely for her. Marie had to remember that. But then what about the flowers, the smell, the shifting portrait – was Elanor’s presence still at Welbeck, and was it trying to tell her something? Perhaps Harriet was right, and Elanor was showing Marie favour while asking for her help to solve her disappearance. Her creation, the wax automaton Elanor was intangibly connected to the real Elanor, Marie now intuitively realised this. And she couldn’t, even though she knew she should, just turn away from the mystery of her disappearance.

Marie sat down in the corner of her workshop and studied her hands. The skin was thinner on top than once it had been, the blue veins pushed up and crisscrossed all over. Age was catching up to her. How much time did she have left? How she envied her creations, whom she had captured like she was a boy stabbing pins through butterflies. She had seized each creation at or in a specific moment – paralysed them, even – so they would remain forever fixed in the public’s collective mind as she chose them to be.

This girl in front of her was the same: poised on the brink of her womanhood, a life ahead of her, her sensuality and sexuality at their peak like those of a freshly plucked rose.

Footsteps approached from down the main tunnel. Instinct overtook Marie – she doused her lamp and stepped back into the shadows, the natural rock formation providing plenty of craggy corners for her to mould into.

Was the duke coming to check on the progress of his work in solitude and darkness?

Unlikely.

The valet, then?

He would not risk his position for curiosity.

So perhaps the fox was coming into the trap that she’d set.

The footsteps approached her door. The handle gave a squeak, then she saw Philidor in the flickering light of a lamp turned down low.

It seemed he couldn’t help himself. She heard his quick intake of breath at seeing Elanor naked. His fingers stumbled to close the door, and he held the lamp aloft, surely seeing nothing but the object of his desire.

As always, the effects of the figure’s human size and colouring, combined with the light of flames that brought life and movement, infused the creature with an otherworldly quality. As if Elanor were on the threshold of speaking if so inclined; if the moon was just so, the clock struck midnight, the incense lit and the spell cast. And now she breathed.

Philidor should have been immune to the mischief that light and shadows play, as well as the power of suggestion. But it seemed his defences were thrown asunder once he beheld the breathing girl before him. He paced around Elanor, as he had once Antoinette. He reached out to touch her cheek, to run down her neck, her breasts, stop over her lungs to feel the motion of her breath, then sweep around to clasp her hips from behind as he pressed himself against her.

Marie considered Philidor’s attraction to this girl. He styled himself as a gallant for the aristocracy – if she believed his tales. Perhaps, at heart, he was nothing but a village boy at play. His eyes glittered as he leant into the space between the nape of Elanor’s neck and shoulder and delicately kissed it. He paused. ‘You have bewitched me, my dear,’ he breathed. Marie smiled but the next moment trembled; she would allow him to touch Elanor, but she would reveal her presence before she allowed her creature to be ultimately defiled by him.

He grasped Elanor by her hips, closed his eyes and began rocking. Elanor did not protest. He let his right hand drop from her hip and slide down over her buttocks before he stopped. He must have registered the first opening. A hesitation. His fingers pressed further in and up. A gasp of surprise. He had found it then. He withdrew his hand then grabbed her by the hips again, gave one more thrust, and, with a sigh, released his grip and stepped away. He picked up his lamp and circled to stand before Elanor, studying her body while his right hand travelled up to his mouth and back again. He gave a small bow to her glassy eyes then departed.

Marie exhaled. She realised she’d been breathing sharp and shallow as the scene had unfolded. Twice now she had watched Philidor sneak in to despoil her work with his base instincts. She had warned him after the first time not to touch her creations, and he had not listened. If he had undressed and taken full advantage of Elanor’s capabilities, Marie would have intervened. This little test irrevocably revealed just how duplicitous he was. She had allowed him to want Elanor, to be tempted but have a chance at turning away. He had failed – to listen to her, to respect her and to respect her creation. His desire was strong but not yet satisfied by the act she was certain he would inflict upon Elanor given enough time and favourable circumstances.

He had just demonstrated his vulnerability. Marie would be able to use it somehow.

She relit her lamp, locked the door, picked up a cloth and began cleaning Elanor’s skin. Philidor’s sweaty fingerprints would be all over her, and that was not the way for Elanor to spend her first night upon the earth.

The Latin name of the enchanter’s nightshade, Circaea lutetiana, was derived from the Greek myth of a sorceress who had turned the men around her into animals. The similarity of what was transpiring here, with Elanor, struck Marie. The duke, fuelled by passion, had somehow destroyed her and now mourned her like a dog; Philidor, the fox on heat, sniffed around her ready to vent his lust.

She was resolved. Marie would ensure this incarnation of Elanor would never become a victim. She was not to be exploited, soiled and misused. Not by Philidor. Not by the duke. Not by anyone.