I THREW MY ARM out, blocking Justine and Mary from entering Victor’s building. “It could be dangerous. Stay here.”
The scent of old blood was strong here, too. There was something else, though. Something rotten. I gagged, putting my hand over my nose and mouth.
The entry—if it could be called such—was filled with scattered and torn pages of books. Mary’s eyes lingered there. Mine were fixed on the door ahead of us. A ladder traversed the wall to a trapdoor that led to the upper story. A door to our side listed open to reveal a dirty washroom. The only illumination was the rain-dampened daylight lingering at the door with us, as unwilling to enter as we were.
“If it might be dangerous, we should stick together.” Mary leaned down to look at the pages on the floor.
I crouched low and picked up the exterior of the book that had been so violently destroyed. I knew this book. It was the alchemical philosophy Victor had lost himself in during our holiday at the baths. And I knew Victor. I was not worried for Mary and Justine’s safety.
I was worried for his.
“What is that?” I pointed outside. “Has the man climbed out of the river already? He needs help!” Justine and Mary rushed out the door.
I slammed and locked it.
“Stay here,” I told Henry. He was not suited to whatever would need to be done. Because I knew that scream—it had been little Ernest. Whom we had left downstairs alone with Victor while the nursemaid was asleep and the adults traveled to town. We were trapped by rain and boredom in this holiday cottage. I had gone upstairs with Henry out of perverse curiosity. Out of a desire for something exciting to happen.
Selfish, stupid.
Henry’s hands tightened in their embrace. “But—”
I shoved Henry away, ran out the door, and locked it from the outside. I practically threw myself down the stairs, burst into the sitting room, and took in the scene in one wide-eyed glance.
Ernest, howling in animal shock, holding his arm. It had been cut almost to the bone and was dripping blood onto the floor. A puddle had already formed.
Victor, sitting on his chair, staring white-faced and wide-eyed at his brother.
The knife, on the floor between them.
Victor looked up at me, his jaw clenched and his fists trembling.
I knew only two things for certain:
One, I had to help Ernest so he did not bleed to death.
And two, I had to find some way that this would not be blamed on Victor.
Because if it was blamed on Victor, maybe he would be sent away. Certainly I would be. What use would the Frankensteins have for me if I could not control Victor?
I would protect all three of us.
I grabbed my shawl and wrapped it around Ernest’s arm as tightly as I could. The knife was a problem. I picked it up and forced the nearest window open, pushing the knife out into the rain and mud, where all traces of its crime would be quickly erased.
I needed a culprit. No one would believe Victor was innocent no matter what he said. They were all prejudiced against him. If only I had been down here, where I should have been! I could have been a witness. Henry, too.
Ernest had stopped howling, but his breath was quick and fast like an injured animal’s. His nursemaid had not even woken from her laudanum-aided sleep.
His nursemaid.
I darted from the study and into the back of the house, behind the kitchen, where her quarters were. The room was dim and too warm, and she snored lightly from her bed.
I picked up her bag of sewing supplies and retreated.
Back in the study, neither of the Frankenstein boys had moved. I pulled out the nursemaid’s sharp scissors. I dipped the blades into the pool of blood on the floor, then dropped them nearby. Victor watched in silence.
My shawl was growing heavy and dark with blood around Ernest’s arm. “The wound needs to be closed,” Victor said, finally breaking out of his stupor.
“Cleaned first. Get the kettle.” I reached into the nursemaid’s sewing bag and found a tiny needle and the thinnest thread I could.
Ernest looked up at me. I was so angry with him for being stupid enough to threaten everything. “I will fix this,” I said, pushing his hair back from his sweat-soaked forehead. “No more crying.”
He nodded, silent.
“You should not have cut yourself.” I stroked his cheek and pulled him close. “That was naughty to play with the scissors and cut yourself.”
He whimpered, nuzzling his head against my shoulder.
Victor returned with the kettle. I held out Ernest’s arm, careful not to pour the water where it would wash the scissors clean. He cried out again, but he was exhausted from fear and shock and quickly quieted. The only sound was Henry’s pounding on the locked door above us.
“Hold the skin together.” I frowned in concentration, mirroring Victor’s standard expression. It was just sewing, after all, and I had done plenty of that at Madame Frankenstein’s side. Victor aided, watching closely. I sewed the wound shut as neatly as I could manage. My work was as good as any surgeon’s. I never had much artistic flair for needlework, but apparently I was good with skin.
Closed, the cut only seeped blood, making me hope that Ernest would suffer no long-term ill effects. I rushed back upstairs to the hall linen closet, ignoring Henry’s shouts, and pulled out a clean towel. I ripped it into strips—wishing I could use those stupid scissors—brought them downstairs, and bound Ernest’s arm tightly.
Then I curled up in the armchair with him snuggled into my lap.
Victor stood in the center of the room, watching us. “I should learn to sew,” he said. “When we get home, you can teach me.”
“Get Henry out of his room and tell him that Ernest got into the nursemaid’s sewing bag and cut himself. Tell him I was so busy helping that I forgot to let him out.”
“Why did you lock him in, in the first place?” Victor asked, puzzled.
“Because I did not know what was happening.” I gave him a look heavy with meaning. “And I needed to protect you.”
Victor looked impassively at the floor, where the blood was congealing around the scissors. “I can tell you what happened. I—”
“We know what happened. It was the nursemaid’s fault for leaving out her sewing supplies. She is stupid and lazy and still sleeping. She will be punished and relieved of her duties. Ernest will be fine.” I paused to be sure Victor understood that this was our story, no matter what. “And we are fortunate that she is stupid and lazy and convenient, and nothing like this will happen again. Will it?”
Victor looked more thoughtful than sheepish. He nodded curtly, then turned to go get Henry. By the time the Frankensteins and Henry’s parents returned, Ernest was sleeping warm and silent in my arms. Victor was reading the same volume that had obsessed him the entire trip, and Henry was fretting and pacing.
“Little Ernest got into the nursemaid’s sewing supplies and cut his arm horribly!” Henry was filled with melodrama as he threw himself at his mother for a comforting embrace. “Elizabeth and Victor stopped the bleeding by sewing his wound shut!”
Madame Frankenstein rushed into the room, ripping the boy from my arms and waking him. He immediately began crying and fussing again—she was always disturbing him like that, with no sense of how to handle him—and she called for the coachman to take them to a doctor.
Judge Frankenstein quietly surveyed the room: The blackened puddle of blood. The scissors so artfully placed. The nursemaid still absent. And Victor reading.
There was a narrowing of the eyes, a cloud of suspicion in his terrible judge’s face. I kept my head lifted, my face clear of any guilt. But he did not look at me. He looked only at Victor. “Is this true?”
Victor did not glance up from his book. “Elizabeth did a marvelous job with the stitches. If she were not a girl, she would have a bright future as a surgeon, I think.”
His father ripped the book out of Victor’s hands with an explosively violent gesture. “This is garbage,” he said, sneering at the book and tossing it on the floor. “Surely you can do better things with your mind. And surely you can afford to give this current crisis more of your attention.”
Victor looked up at his father looming over him, something going vacant behind his eyes. I rushed to his side. “Come, Victor,” I said. “I have blood on my hands. Help me wash them while your father sorts out the situation with the nursemaid.”
“Thank you for your quick thinking and action,” Judge Frankenstein said. “You saved my son.”
I could not tell which son he spoke of, and I suspected I was not intended to. Victor stood, picking his book up off the floor, and followed me upstairs. I made him read aloud to me to calm himself as I washed the afternoon from my skin.
That night, when I snuck into his room, unable to sleep, I found him still reading. “I like this book very much,” he said. “The ideas are fascinating. Did you know you can turn lead into gold? And that there are elixirs that can extend and even restore life?”
I hmmed as I crawled into bed next to him.
“Elizabeth,” he said. “You never asked me what actually happened this afternoon.”
“It is fixed now. It does not matter and I do not care. Read me some more of your book,” I said, closing my eyes and falling asleep.
Justine and Mary pounded on the door just as Henry had those years ago on holiday.
I would demand that Victor take me on holiday after this.
Bracing myself, I shuffled through the dark entry of Victor’s residence and pushed the inner door open. The smell here was not so bad. Stale and sour, but not noxious. Windows along the back of the building were filmed over so that I could barely see. Above me, water dripped incessantly against the ceiling—probably on the upper-story floor from the two windows on the roof left open.
Once my eyes adjusted to the dimness, I made out a long room. A table with two chairs was pushed against a wall, stacked with papers and dirty dishes. A sink had been artlessly installed; a bucket beneath caught excess water. There was a stove next to me, but it was unlit, the room frigid with undertones of creeping river-damp.
In the opposite corner, a cot was piled high with a jumble of blankets, and—
A hand, trailing off the side.
I closed my eyes.
I counted ten steady breaths as I removed my gloves and tucked them into my purse. And then I walked across the floor, knelt by the bed, and took the wrist between my fingers.
“Thank you,” I whispered fervently. I had been wrong: I did have it in me to pray after all. The wrist was warm—burning, in fact. I pulled back the mess of quilts to reveal Victor sprawled on his stomach, his dark curls wild, his forehead hot and dry. He was probably dehydrated. I had no way of knowing how long he had been in this fevered state. At his worst, one of his fevers had lasted more than a fortnight. And with no one here to care for him!
I cursed Henry with more fervor than I had prayed with. He had abandoned both of us—me to long-term peril, and Victor to immediate risk. He knew how Victor was! He knew that Victor was not to be left alone. How selfish of him to leave because his feelings were hurt. How privileged of him to be able to value his own feelings over the safety of others because he himself had never known what it was to be afraid.
“Victor,” I said, but he did not even stir. I stroked his cheek. And then I pinched his arm. Hard. Harder.
No response.
Satisfied that Mary and Justine would find nothing too alarming, I ran back to the door and unlocked it. Justine was crying, and Mary was livid.
“What do you mean, locking us out?” she demanded.
I inclined my head meaningfully toward Justine. “I could not bear to expose you two to anything horrific. Neither of you has the responsibility to Victor that I do.”
Justine looked up at me, her face as pale as death. “Is he—”
“He is dangerously sick with a fever. We will need a doctor. And we should move him to a more healthful location. I am certain this building contributed to his state.”
“I can go and fetch a doctor. I know one.” Mary regarded me with no small amount of distrust. “Should I take Justine with me?”
“She can stay and help if she wants.”
Justine’s eyes widened as she looked in at the dark hallway leading to the darker room.
Mary and I traded a look of understanding, and I spoke again. “Actually, yes. I think it would be best if Justine went with you. She can inform the doctor of Victor’s history of fevers.”
Justine nodded, the relief washing across her face. “Yes. Yes, I will do that. And I can hire a carriage, too. We cannot ask Mary to pay for anything.”
“Very smart! What would I do without you?” I beamed at her to let her know she was handling this all quite well. I dug a few banknotes out of my purse, my last remaining address cards falling onto the wet steps beneath us. I did not bother to pick them up; the ink would run and stain the silk lining of my bag.
“We will hurry,” Mary said.
I waved at them until they turned toward the bridge. Then I shut the door and locked it once more, not wanting unexpected visitors. I checked on Victor again; he had not moved. His breathing was shallow but steady and unlabored. I drew down the blankets farther. He was wearing breeches and a shirt, as though he had collapsed in the midst of working. He even had shoes on, scuffed and unshined.
I sat next to his head, looking down at him. He was thinner, paler. Judging by the length of his sleeves, he had grown, too. And not purchased new clothes for his changed frame. I wet a cloth that did not smell moldy, then put it over his forehead and sighed. “Look what happens when you are alone. Look how much you need me.”
He stirred, eyes fluttering open but wild and unseeing. “Do not—” he croaked.
“Do not what?” I leaned close to his face.
“Henry. Oh, Henry. Do not tell Elizabeth.”
He was delirious, then. He thought I was Henry, and he did not want Henry to tell me something. He had shifted on the bed, revealing a metal object beneath himself. I eased it free. It was a key, perhaps to the front door. I slipped it into my purse.
“Of course,” I said. “It will be our secret. What should I not tell her, though?”
“It worked.” He closed his eyes, shoulders shaking. I could not say for certain, but I thought he was weeping. I had never seen him cry. Not even when his mother died. Not even when he thought I was going to die. Victor did not cry; he raged. Or, worse, he did not react at all. What could make him cry? “It worked. And it was terrible.”
He settled back into unconsciousness. The only noise was the insistent tap of water dripping on the ceiling, like the knocking of a stranger demanding to be let in.
I looked up. What had worked?
Leaving Victor, I went back to the entry and pondered the ladder. I put out a hand to touch the rough wood. My fingers trembled, then curled in on themselves, away from the rung. I had always considered myself brave. There were not many things that made me squeamish or that I was afraid to face. But my flesh recoiled at the thought of climbing up that ladder. It knew why before my mind fully processed it.
Then I realized:
The smell.
There was nothing down here to account for that lingering scent of old blood and rotting meat. Which meant it could only be coming from whatever was above this ladder.
And I had to discover it before anyone else did.