At the evening meal, Mathieu met up with Michael MacBride. Neither of them had been granted places on the Captain’s narrow table, being too far down the status hierarchy of the Pendark’s brief passenger list, but neither of them took the slur to heart. “It won’t be too uncomfortable in the crew quarters, I hope?” Michael said to the Irishman.
“No, sir. I’ve slept in a hammock many a time, and a good percentage of the crew is Irish. Former canal-diggers and railway laborers, mostly. Navvies to the navy, in a manner of speaking. We have tales to swap—we’ll get along just fine. How’s the girl?
“Seasick—but getting better, in more ways than one.”
“I’m glad. Mam’zelle de Valcoeur’s been telling me what kinds of duties I might have at her château. Sounds like easy work, although I can’t really judge. Lots of vines, apparently, and no potatoes. Looking after horses, too—I can do that. The girls are very pretty, she says, but she’s told me to beware of her little maid. Breaks hearts, she says—but I can stand that, and the little darling’s promised to help me learn French. All in all, the Château de Valcoeur sounds like one step from paradise to me, but we’ll see.”
“Mademoiselle de Valcoeur gave me an explanation of sorts of what they expect of me, but it was short on detail. They’ll have plenty of time to fill the picture in before we get to Bordeaux. Will you go ashore in Cherbourg?”
“Have to. Philippe needs me to carry stuff. Got to get clean clothes for you and the girl, apparently, and other necessities. There wasn’t time in London, with doing everything in such a hurry, and there won’t be another chance until Bordeaux. I’ll get some sleep before we dock, though. It’s no trouble. Will you be you staying with your patient?”
“Yes. I’m sorry for the way things worked out, Michael. This must be a terrible wrench for you.”
MacBride shrugged. “Could have been a lot worse,” he said. “It’s Mrs. Driscoll and Sean’s boys I feel sorry for. It’s hard for widows, when you have a landlord like Templeforth, even when he isn’t bearing a grudge. Should I have left him to burn, do you think, sir?”
Mathieu considered the question for a moment, and then said: “No. You did the right thing. And he’s not really a monster. I don’t think he’ll persecute the widow and children of a man he’s shot in a fit of rage. I don’t say that he’ll be generous, but he’s surely not completely malevolent.”
MacBride seemed to weigh the question up, and then said: “Sean knew him way back when, and thought it was worth coming to see him. He thought we had a chance of making him see sense, if we could only talk to him face to face, so he can’t be all bad. I hope you’re right, sir—and I want to thank you for looking out for me. You didn’t have to do that, and you seem to have helped me land on my feet. If you ever have need of me out there, you can rely on me.”
“Thank you. We met in rather unfortunate circumstances, but I hope we can be friends.” MacBride was looking at him oddly. “What’s the matter?” he asked.
“Nothing, sir. I was just trying to imagine an English doctor saying that he wanted to be friends with an Irish peasant. Couldn’t manage it—but they say the French are gentlemen, and real men as well. Might be true.”
“I was born and raised in a small coastal town. We passed for solid bourgeois there, but when I went to Paris to study, the natives thought I was a peasant through and through. As a doctor, I’ve mostly dealt with poor folk—if I hadn’t worked at the Institut, I certainly wouldn’t have been able to live on my fees. I feel a world apart from old aristocrats like the Valcoeurs, no matter how many Revolutions we’ve had since eighty-nine.”
“Ours is still to come, alas,” said MacBride. “I hope I might live to see it, though, and if it arrives while I’m in France, I’ll be on the boat home, working my passage if I have to. I guess I’m a week-kneed rebel, though, else I’d be headed there now.”
“I’m a weak-kneed Anarchist myself,” said Mathieu. “Come the day…but until then, I have quieter battles to fight, and I wish they had fewer casualties.”
“You’ll look after Caroline, though, come what may?”
“Yes, I will—come what may. Speaking of which, I’d better take her some food and a little liquor, to help her sleep. With luck, tomorrow she’ll be as right as rain…and perhaps looking much prettier.” He stood up, and offered his hand to be shaken.
The Irishman took it. “Good luck, sir,” he said, softly, and watched him draw away.
Mathieu nodded politely to his new employers, who were at the captain’s table, before he made his way to the galley.
Caroline sat up on her bunk when he came in.
“Can you eat?” he asked. “I’ve got soup, and soft bread, candied fruit and some sherry.”
She nodded her head, albeit with determination rather than eagerness, but once he had set the tray down, she seemed to warm to the task. She ate most of the food he’d brought, and drank all of the liquor. Afterwards, he took the tray away, and the bucket, but he brought the bucket back once it had been washed out, assuming that they would need it even if she didn’t bring back the food she had just eaten. Fortunately, she showed no sign of doing so.
“Is it dark outside now?” she said him.
“Yes,” he told her. “It’s been dark for some time. It’s getting late.”
“It’s funny not being able to tell. I thought ship’s cabins had portholes”
“Some do—but the better passengers always get the choice of those.”
“But you’re a doctor—or is it me that’s bringing you down?”
“No. I’m a French doctor, and this is an English ship.”
She seemed slightly puzzled, although she could hardly have lived eighteen years in London without hearing vulgar abuse heaped on the French. Obviously, she had assumed that the antipathy ought not to extend to physicians.
“I was on the same table as MacBride,” he told her. “He seems happy enough. Isabelle’s going to teach him to speak French, apparently.”
“So she said. I asked her if she’d teach me, but she just laughed and said she’d leave that to you. You have a better accent, she said.”
“It’s kind of her to say so. Most Parisians think it’s barbaric.”
“Really? Mine’s considered awful in Mayfair, but a bit stuck-up in Stepney. Sometimes, you can’t win. But I’m not sure she really meant your accent. She’s a sly one. Will you teach me to speak French?”
“Yes, of course. You’ll have to be fluent, if you’re going to be my secretary.”
“Right—I hadn’t thought of that. I’m a slow learner, though—you might get impatient.”
“I’m a doctor; I don’t get impatient. Quite the contrary, in fact.”
It took her a second or two, but then she smiled broadly—not at the weak joke, but at the fact that he’d made it. “What’s French for doctor?” she asked.
“Docteur.”
“Oh. Is it all as easy as that?”
“Malheureusment, non.”
“Come again?”
“Unfortunately, no.”
She looked at him quizzically, for a moment or two, and then said: “Oh, I get it. Renewing the prescription, right?”
“What prescription?”
“Talking to me like a human being. You’re being a doctor, Docteur.”
He laughed. “No,” he said. “I’m being a human being.” Then he paused for thought, and said: “But not quite the way I was before. The weight is lifting. You did that—you and MacBride. I feel that I’ve been forgiven—as if I’d been to confession for the first time in years…which I have, in a way. Oh, by the way…”
He took a small shaving mirror out of his pocket and handed it to her. He lifted up the lantern whose candle was lighting the cabin, while she inspected her face for some time. She seemed disappointed.
“I look awful,” she said.
“Just a little pale. Comes of being sick all day. You seem a lot better now, though. A good constitution—some people are seasick for days on end.”
She looked at him quizzically again, not sure whether he was deliberately misunderstanding what she meant.
“It is better,” he assured her. “Give it time. Tomorrow, with luck, you’ll see a real difference.”
“It’s all right,” she said, shaking her head. “It doesn’t seem to matter as much now as it did before. Being pretty’s not everything…even has its downside. But Isabelle says the girls in Valcoeur are pretty. I don’t want…but then, it doesn’t really matter, does it? There are worse things than being plain.”
“Yes there are—but I’ll do my best to help you to be pretty again. Philippe has tricks of his own, apparently. If he and I put our heads together, we might make the breakthrough I’ve been hoping for.”
She looked into the mirror again. “But if you don’t…,” she began.
“You’ll still be my secretary.”
She studied him, carefully, for some time, as if trying to summon up courage to say something.
In the end, she said: “You’re my doctor, right?”
“Of course.”
“Can I ask you for another prescription, then?”
“I though we were already talking like human beings.”
“We are. I mean, another prescription.”
“What do you need?” he asked, warily.
“Oh, not that. What I’d like, if you wouldn’t mind, is for you to put your arms around me and hold me for a little while. Not for long. You can screw me if you want, obviously, but that’s not what I’m asking for. What I’d like is just to be held for a little while. Just held. It’s a stupid narrow bunk, I know, and it won’t be very comfortable for you, but if you could do that for me, I think it would make me feel a lot better. A lot better.”
“I can do that,” Mathieu said. “For as long as you like.”
The bunks were very narrow, but Caroline was thin and Mathieu not unduly robust, and it was possible to lie together, both fully dressed, with her back to his breast and his arms folded around her body protectively. She seemed perfectly content with that.
After a while, thinking that she had fallen asleep, Mathieu detached himself gently, maneuvered his body over hers, blew out the candle in the lantern, and then eased himself into the top bunk.
He had only been there for a few minutes, however, when she climbed up and assumed the same position beside him. She didn’t say a word. When he put his arms around her, though, he could feel her heart beating in her chest, with anxious rapidity.
Mathieu did not protest. Her presence did not seem burdensome, and in fact, he felt that he might be receiving as much comfort from her presence as she was from his.
Eventually, her heartbeat slowed down, and assumed a steady, unhurried rhythm.
Exhausted as he was, it did not take long for him to fall asleep.
* * * *
He was woken up by an ear-splitting scream. He would have sat bolt upright if he could, but the space between the upper bunk and the low ceiling did not permit that, and because the room was now illuminated by an oil-lamp held aloft, he was able to see the ceiling in time to avoid smashing his head into it.
He remained in an awkward slanting position, peering over Caroline’s head. He felt her body pressing into his urgently, as if trying to fuse with it. Her head was below the plank that provided the bunk with a side of sorts, as if she were trying to burrow far enough into the meager mattress, in order to be unable to see what she had beheld so horribly.
Mathieu did not have to ask what had frightened her. As he blinked in order to adjust his eyes to the light, the reason became all too obvious.
Standing in the narrow cabin, holding the oil-lamp above his head, and staring him in the face, was a creature more reminiscent of a beast than a human being, but whose naked face Mathieu had not the slightest difficulty in recognizing as that of Sir Julian Templeforth.
“I apologize for coming in so unceremoniously,” said Sir Julian, speaking with a slight lisp but articulating his words more clearly than he had immediately after the transformation, “but the door wasn’t locked, and I wanted to be quiet. I’m sorry that I frightened the girl, but it is partly your fault, is it not, that I’m such a hideous sight?”
Mathieu tried to speak, but barely managed to formulate the word: “How…?”
“Child’s play,” said Sir Julian negligently, “although the chase proved somewhat frustrating. I didn’t have a chance to tell you the evening before last, that I had asked Reilly to follow you when you left my house the night before, in order to make sure that the man in the park wasn’t on your trail. Imagine my surprise when he told me about your visit to the hotel in Rockley Road. A morning visit and a small bribe told me the name and place or origin of the people you had visited, and I went to consult a royalist refugee from Bordeaux in their regard. He wasn’t able to tell me much, but he did mention that the Valcoeur family had long had a reputation for secret magical practices, of a sanguinary nature, and that the family of the present Marquise had a similar reputation—which seemed significant, in view of the fact that they had come all the way to England in search of you, and that you had somehow forgotten to mention when you saw me that they had contacted you.
“Unfortunately, by the time I had recovered consciousness after banging my head in your house the following evening, time had moved on considerably, and I felt very weak, presumably as an after-effect of the fit I had when I nearly collapsed in your laboratory. Cormack and I then had to deal with some awkward questions from a horribly bourgeois police inspector from Scotland Yard. By the time Cormack was able to ferry me to Rockley Road, you had left the hotel. It didn’t take long to discover where the cab had taken you and the name and itinerary of the ship on which you had booked passage, but it had just sailed when we reached the dock. We headed for Victoria at full tilt and caught a train to the south coast, after telegraphing ahead to charter a fast yacht. I slept through the train journey, but that, a steak and a bottle of wine at least gave me the energy to press on.
“I calculated that we could reach Cherbourg well ahead of the rust-bucket in which you were traveling, and so it proved. I have, alas, been relegated to a hammock in the crew quarters, there being no cabin available, but Cormack and I have both seen service in India, so that will be scant inconvenience, and another day at sea will help me get a little more of my strength back. You really shouldn’t have run away, Doctor, abandoning your patient when he needed you most, but what’s done is done. Now, though, I need to ask you a favor.”
Mathieu was still completely lost in astonishment, but he managed to focus his mind sufficiently to ask: “What did you tell the police?”
Sir Julian might have grimaced, but it was difficult to tell. “The truth, I fear. What else could I do?”
“The truth?” Mathieu stammered.
The hideous eyes wrinkled slightly. “Did you really think that I would lay a false accusation against someone else? Considering that you have known me for a long time, now, you really don’t know me at all, do you? I told the police that I had shot three men in self defense, after they had threatened my life and yours. I kept your role to a minimum, obviously, but I had no alternative but to tell them what threats had been made against me, and carried out. I fear that you might have a more difficult time than me, if the police ever get round to questioning you—and the fact that you ran away will hardly count in your favor. But as I say, what’s done is done, and we simply have to move forward.”
Caroline stirred in Mathieu’s arms, but did not raise her head.
“This girl is under my protection,” Mathieu said. “If you or your butler try to harm her…”
Sir Julian might have seemed startled and offended, but it was still impossible to read his bestial features with any degree of accuracy.
“Harm her?” he objected. “Nothing is further from my mind. As for Cormack, I don’t believe that he has ever done anything in her regard that you have not done yourself—although I can see that the two of you have become better acquainted in the interim.”
Mathieu felt a flush of fury. “That’s correct,” he snapped. “And as I say, any insult offered to her is offered to me, and will be considered as such.”
“Of course,” said Sir Julian “But there really is no need for either of you to be anxious—and no reason for Mr. MacBride to worry, either. He might be an unruly tenant, but he helped Cormack pull me out of a burning building, and I owe him a great debt for that. I can hardly blame him for thinking the worst of me, I suppose, in the circumstances, but again, I’m disappointed in you.”
“I watched you shoot three people!” Mathieu protested. “And whatever you told the police, it was not in self defense!”
“I believe that you’d find, in the unlikely event that the matter ever came to court, that it was,” said Sir Julian, his lisping voice still scrupulously level. “But at the risk of becomingly tediously repetitive, what’s done is done. I’m not here to justify myself, but merely to ask you for the favor I mentioned.”
“What favor?”
“I’d like you to introduce me to the Valcoeurs this morning, once they go up on deck, and I’d like you to argue, forcefully, that whatever they want you to do for them, your first duty is to me, as a patient in dire need. I have no wish to impede their projects, of course, but I do want to be treated in parallel. I would like you to make that necessity clear to your new associates, as you are surely honor bound to do.”
Mathieu felt utterly trapped by the strength of the argument, and knew that it must be obvious.
“I’m delighted to see, by the way,” Sir Julian added, “that I have every reason to be confident, and that your work is progressing well in spite of the unplanned interruptions.” His eyes drilled into Mathieu’s, evidently curious to see his reaction.
Mathieu felt strangely guilty about disappointing him, but he had no idea what the baronet might mean.
Sir Julian nodded, as if an unasked question had been answered. “Let me assure you once again, Dr. Galmier,” he said, “that I have no hostile intentions toward anyone aboard this ship. I’m truly sorry for my unprepossessing appearance, which I shall keep carefully hidden from now on, but I thought that I really ought to appear before you in such a way that you can judge the effect of your handiwork, and the magnitude of the task before you. There really is no need for you or the young lady to be frightened, but I’ll leave you now, since my presence appears to be distressing her. You know where to find me when you’ve had a chance to warn the Valcoeurs of my presence and are ready to make the formal introduction. Again, I’m sorry for disturbing you.”
And he left, taking the oil-lamp with him and closing the cabin door behind him.
Caroline turned over, and threw her arms around his neck. “Thank you,” she said. Although it was now pitch dark, he knew that she was weeping, because he could feel the tears on her cheeks.
“I didn’t do anything,” muttered Mathieu, gruffly. “You heard him—he has no intention of hurting either of us.”
The young woman eased herself over the plank at the edge of the bunk and let herself down to the floor. “So he says,” she said. “But ugly or handsome, men like him can’t be trusted. He needs you now, but if ever he thinks he doesn’t, or that you can’t help him…he’ll do you a bad turn, and me too.”
“Can you find the lantern?” Mathieu asked.
“Found it,” she said, “but the candle inside is just a puddle of congealed wax. Might be light outside—shall we take a look?”
“Give me a minute to collect myself,” Mathieu said. “That was quite a shock…and it complicates the situation considerably…although he is right. He’s my patient, and I can’t abandon him, all the more so as I’m responsible for his condition.”
As he spoke, Mathieu eased his way gingerly to the floor of the cabin. Before he could suggest going up on deck in order to discover what time it was, however, there was a knock on the door.
He groped for the handle and found it. When he opened the door, light came in; it was only pale candlelight, not as bright as Sir Julian Templeforth’s lamp, but it was very welcome. Again he blinked, in order to help his eyes adjust, but he heard a sharp intake of breath before he managed it.
The man standing in the doorway was Michael MacBride, who was balancing a candle-tray, more than a trifle awkwardly, on his head, while he held a bulky parcel trapped under his left arm and his right hand was clutching a bucket whose contents were emitting water vapor.
The sight was a trifle comical, and the farcical effect was enhanced by the expression of amazement on the Irishman’s face. He set the bucket down on the cabin floor, threw the parcel on the lower bunk, snatched the precariously balanced candle from his cranium, and uttered a faint wordless exclamation.
Only then did Mathieu realize what he was looking at, and why he was so startled. He realized, too, what Sir Julian Templeforth had meant by his cryptic congratulations.
When the candle had gone out the previous evening and Caroline Deangate had lain down in the bottom bunk, she had been almost as plain as a young woman of her age could be without any particular deformation. She was no longer plain. In fact, she had not only recovered her former good looks, but actually seemed more beautiful than Mathieu remember her. He was certain that his memory was clear, and that, pretty as she had been then, Caroline had not been as strikingly beautiful as she was now. Her dark hair was unkempt and unwashed, but had nevertheless recovered a certain natural gloss. Her face was very pale, but not in the least pasty, and there was no slackness in the flesh of the cheeks and chin. Her complexion was silky, her nose and mouth perfectly formed and her eyes a marvelous shade of royal blue, with a gaze that was positively magnetic.
I shouldn’t be surprised, Mathieu told himself. I’ve seen Sir Julian’s looks improve dramatically half a dozen times, sometimes overnight. Nevertheless, he was surprised. Sir Julian’s transformations had been far more modest in scope, although the one of which he was now in need would be even more drastic, if it proved to be possible.
“What is it?” asked Caroline, frightened. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Mathieu hastened to assure her. “It’s just that the treatment has worked—better than I expected, in fact.…”
“I can’t find the mirror!” she complained, looking round.
“There’s one in the parcel,” MacBride was quick to say, “along with clean clothes for you both and various other toilet accessories—including soap. Sorry about the bucket, but on a ship you have to make do. At least there’s no shortage of hot water on a steamer.…” He suddenly cut himself off. “But there’s bad news, sir.”
“I know,” said Mathieu. “Sir Julian’s already been here.”
“Ah,” said MacBride. “He assures me that he means none of us any harm…but to be honest, sir, I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw that lumpen butler of his.”
“In all fairness,” Mathieu observed, “if he really did admit to the police that he shot your friends and Tom Deangate, then he has no reason to want to harm any of us, and every interest in facilitating the progress of my work.”
“Aye,” said MacBride, dubiously. “Maybe.”
Caroline had unwrapped the parcel and was rummaging through its contents. She pulled out a small toilet bag, and extracted both a bar of soap and a small hand mirror similar to the one that Mathieu had brought her. She snatched the candle-tray from McBride’s hand in order to illuminate her face and inspect it.
She uttered a tremendous sigh of relief. Then her gaze took on a slight hint of suspicion. “But that’s not what I looked like before,” she said. “I could be a different person…another different person.”
“It’s really you,” Mathieu assured her, “And I’m delighted to see it.” But how long will it last? he couldn’t help thinking,.
He saw Caroline wipe away some residual tears—but he was surprised to see that her face was still troubled. The initial surge of relief having passed, she was obviously being assailed now by different anxieties.”
“Well, sir,” said MacBride. “I’d better leave you to clean yourselves up a little while the water’s still hot. I hope the clothes fit. Doubtless I’ll see you on deck later.”
“Doubtless,” said Mathieu, still watching Caroline.
When the door was closed, she immediately began to strip off her clothes, before grabbing the soap again, and a soft sponge. She was stark naked in a matter of seconds.
“I can leave…” Mathieu began.
“Don’t!” she said sharply. Then, confusedly, she said: “I don’t want you to leave me alone. I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right,” he said, and carefully turned his back while she completed her ablutions. Then she handed the soap and sponge to Mathieu, dried herself off with a towel that had also been in the parcel, and started sorting through the clothes that McBride had brought.
“Your turn,” she said, absent-mindedly.
Mathieu stripped down to his underwear.
Caroline looked at him curiously. “It’s nothing I haven’t seen before,” she remarked. “But here—I’ll turn my back like you did.”
Mathieu thought he must be blushing from the roots of his hair to his toes, but she did indeed keep her back studiously turned while he washed himself thoroughly, dried himself, and located some clean underwear in the untidy pile on the bunk.
While he finished dressing, feeling a great deal better now that he was clean and wearing clean linen, Caroline studied herself in the mirror, carefully angling the candle.
“Thank you,” she said, again, when he had finished.
“Thank your brother,” Mathieu murmured. “He forced me to do it. I didn’t even think it would work.”
“But it was your…what did you call it? An agent?”
“I thought of it as alchemical gold,” Mathieu admitted, “but apparently that’s wrong. In alchemical jargon, according to Myrtille de Valcoeur, it’s the azoth—and they’ve known about it for centuries. They just didn’t have the filter.”
“Gold,” she murmured. “I prefer that. It won’t last, though—that’s what you told Tom, isn’t it?”
“I really don’t know,” Mathieu told her. He went on, reluctantly: “But if Sir Julian’s experience is a reliable guide…it might not?” He saw a fearful expression cross her face. “No,” he was quick to add. “What happened to him won’t happen to you. It’s just that the effect might fade gradually…unless I can find a way of stabilizing it. The Valcoeurs think they might be able to help with that, but…”
“But…?”
“They’re modern-day alchemists. It’s not a science that has ever produced much, especially in its mystical aspects. Myrtille’s blathering about the soul of blood doesn’t fill we with confidence. But still, if they can give me a place to work, and time…”
“And a supply of whores,” she added, bluntly.
“They say that won’t be necessary. They say they have a supply of willing donors.”
“I was a willing donor,” Caroline observed, quietly.
“You were tricked, and abused…and for my part in that, I truly am sorry. It’s unforgivable, I know, but…”
“It’s not,” she countered, pensively. “And I’m not saying that because I’m pretty again. I forgave you…some time ago.”
“That’s kind of you,” he said, “but I really don’t deserve it. Even if I can stabilize it…well. I can’t undo what I’ve done.”
She stood up abruptly. “I need some air,” she said. “I don’t feel queasy any more. But…”
“But…?”
“You might think I’m a terrible coward,” she said, “but I really don’t want to be left on my own. I don’t want to be a nuisance, but…please don’t leave me alone.”
“I won’t,” he promised.