“It is a lovely afternoon,” he declared gravely, as if passing judgment on the weather were part of his authority. I was glad, for the weather’s sake, that it did not meet his condemnation.
“Yes. I am taking the boys out for some fresh air and exercise while Justine rests.”
“That is good of you.” His lips pulled apart, and his mustache lifted like a curtain to reveal his teeth. His teeth, unused to the spotlight, were stained dark from years of wine and tea, though I suspected higher quantities of the former. “I will join you. It will be nice to go out together. As a family.” He weighted the last word like a gavel dropping.
Wary but cautiously pleased, I gave him my best smile. One that would be given an encore and a standing ovation, unlike his own. “That will be lovely.”
Thus, my walk took me through the woods with the three Frankensteins I had never had any use for. And…it was not awful. Judge Frankenstein was mostly silent, save to remark on the qualities of this tree, or the stately nature of that rock, or the general uselessness of that flower.
Ernest, ever aware of his father’s presence, worked hard to walk with as much decorum and maturity as he could. But even he was unable to resist the warm spell of the glorious spring day. Soon he was chasing William, eliciting shrieking giggles and demands for vigorous play.
I laughed, watching them. There was something to be said for children after all. There was a deeply restoring and restful happiness watching a creature like William discover the world. He was all curiosity and joy. There was no fear or anxiety in him. Had I ever been that way? I did not think so.
Madame Frankenstein would have been proud of how well I had done in settling their family. Ernest and William had grown up safe. Victor had been ushered past his difficulties. I had even found a replacement mother far more suited to the task of raising William and Ernest than I ever would have been.
I could take pride and satisfaction in this life. I would take pride and satisfaction in it. I was determined to. I let the bright sun and brighter laughter warm me. I would finally release all the strain and fear I had worn like a shawl.
We found a pretty meadow near where the forest gave way to our closest neighboring farm and set up the picnic. After eating, I pulled out a book, and Judge Frankenstein lay down on the ground and closed his eyes for a nap. It was a shockingly vulnerable and casual position for him to adopt.
And it was aggravating. If he had not been there, I could have done the same. But I did not have the luxury of relaxation in public. At least I had a book. I shooed the boys away, instructing them to meet us again before the sun got too low.
As afternoon dipped toward evening and I worried over what I would do to entertain William the next day, Ernest came back. He was sweating and out of breath, his face hopeful and then falling as he swept his eyes over our little picnic site.
“William is not here?” he asked.
I closed my book and stood in alarm. Judge Frankenstein, who had woken a few minutes before, also stood. “What do you mean? He was with you.”
Ernest shook his head. “We were playing hide-and-seek. It was William’s turn. I counted to fifty as he asked. I searched and searched—I looked everywhere—but I could not find him! I hoped he had come back here as a trick.”
I sighed in exasperation. If we delayed much longer, it would be dark before we returned home. Heavy clouds gathered on the horizon, promising a tremendous storm. All the brilliant grace of the day was gone. I was tired and cross and sore from sitting on the ground for so long.
“William! The game is over!” I sounded too annoyed. He would not be lured out by that. With Ernest and Judge Frankenstein at my side, I changed tactics as we fanned out through the trees and looked. “William! Oh, William! I have a pocket full of candy for the first person who finds me!”
Ernest adopted a similar ploy. Judge Frankenstein merely shouted the boy’s name, which was, I supposed, as much as we could ask from a man who had never done anything to care for his own children.
Ernest doubled back to check our picnic place again while Judge Frankenstein and I ranged in larger circles around the area William had last been seen. My voice grew hoarse, and I decided William would be forced to sit in the playroom all the next day with nothing to entertain him.
The sun was at the horizon, rain clouds quickly overtaking it all, when a howl of agony and terror came from behind me.
I ran toward the sound, pushing through clawing trees and branches that barred my path. When I broke through to the meadow that still held our abandoned picnic, I saw Ernest, kneeling on the ground with his head bowed. Before him, laid out on the blanket, was little William, fast asleep.
I did not know how he had beaten us back here and managed to fall asleep, but—
Why had Ernest made that sound?
Why had he not just called for us?
Why was William lying so still?
I stumbled forward. “He is sleeping,” I whispered to myself as a charm, willing it to be true. “He is sleeping.”
Dark bruises like a collar around his neck, his face peaceful.
I dropped to my knees beside Ernest. He collapsed into me, animal sobs wrenching from his throat. I could not cry, or move, or do anything but stare at little William. He was sleeping, and he would never wake again.
I COULD NOT SAY how I was pulled from William’s side or returned to the house. Once securely back in my room—for death is, and always has been, the occupation of men—I was left alone to my astonished grief. Ernest, only eleven but suddenly a man, and Judge Frankenstein joined the local men to search the forest for William’s murderer.
Who would have done such a thing? For what purpose?
Either the murderer had found William after he had wandered back to meet us, before we found him, and killed him there—
Or, a degree worse, if hell has degrees—
Someone choked the breath from his body and then placed him on the blanket for us to discover.
I could not cleanse from my mind his ruined neck, the ink-dark bruises that marked his parting from this world. The end, they had written in fingerprints across his unblemished skin. But why? Why murder a child? I had been in that meadow, as had Judge Frankenstein, asleep and vulnerable. Why William?
My hand drifted to my throat, and dread sank its terrible claws into my soul.
The necklace.
The child had been wearing a necklace of gold that I, in my impatience to distract and quiet him, had given him.
I would have pretended to question whether it was motivation enough for someone to kill a child, but I knew better. My caregiver on Lake Como certainly would have murdered me if there were any profit to be had in it. I had no doubt. And somewhere out in those woods was someone equally callous, equally uncaring of the value of a life when compared to the value of a bit of gold.
I tasted acid at the back of my throat. I knew exactly such a person. I had stabbed his wrist with my hatpin.
All the times I had felt watched since returning here rushed back as I ran from the sitting room and out to our barn. Two men stood guard, dripping water from the pouring rain. They tried to bar me entrance, but I pushed them aside and ran in.
Judge Frankenstein turned, along with the constable and several men I did not know. They shifted to block my view of William’s carefully laid out body. As if I had not already seen it. As if I would ever be able to unsee it.
“I have murdered him!” I cried, the guilt of it a millstone around my neck. This child, whose life I never cared enough about, but whose care had been given to me by his dying mother—he would have been better had he never met me.
“What is the meaning of this, Elizabeth?” Judge Frankenstein said, catching me by the shoulders and shaking me. “You were with me the entire time.”
I wished I could slap him. “A necklace! William wore a
necklace. A gold locket that opened to reveal a portrait of his mother. I let him wear it. It is my fault.”
The men turned and, as respectfully as they could, searched the tiny body. “It is not here,” one said.
The constable nodded grimly. “I will send word for them to look where his body was found to make certain it did not fall off. And we will alert every merchant in the area to be watchful for someone trying to sell it.”
Judge Frankenstein led me from the barn and back to the house.
“You cannot blame yourself,” he said, his voice hollow and without any force.
“I can.” I did not care about disagreeing with him. I could not tell him the full truth, though the weight of my guilt threatened to drag me beneath the sodden ground. Because I was certain it had been the charnel house devil. Somehow, he had followed me here. Motivated by greed or revenge, he had murdered that innocent child and taken the gold lure.
But I could not say! I was sealed in most damnable silence! If I gave them a description of the man, I would have to say why I thought it was him. Judge Frankenstein did not know about my trip to Ingolstadt. But I would admit it, if that was all the trouble I would bring down on my own head.
It was Victor I worried about. Always. Because if I led them to the vile charnel house man, they would discover why I had met him. They would follow the connection to Victor. And all my work to protect his reputation would be undone. His madness revealed. His own brilliant future aborted as cruelly as William’s young life. And, if he was committed to an asylum, my future aborted, as well.
I could only pray they found the man and killed him before he could talk.
Judge Frankenstein interrupted my thoughts. “You did not murder the boy.”
“I might as well have hung a target around his neck. You know the greed of men.”
He sighed, hanging his head. I had never thought him an old man, but his years dragged him down and showed in every movement as though the night had robbed him of twenty years of his life. He escorted me to my room, then patted my hand. “I will write to Victor. You need not recount the horror to him. Get dry and try to sleep.”
He shuffled away. He tried to close my door quietly, but it hung askew. The wood scraped and groaned against the frame until finally it shut.
And then I realized my punishment was only beginning. Because I had not yet told Justine that her William—her precious charge, whom she loved more than his own mother had—was gone. I could not bear the thought, but the idea that she should find out that she had slept peacefully when her William had been taken away was too awful. She had to be told.
Scarcely able to catch my breath, I went to the servants’ wing of the house. There was no answer when I knocked on her door. I eased it open to find her bed made and unslept in. But it was night now, and raining. Where was she?
It was selfish of me, but I was relieved. I had tried to do the right thing. Let her have one last night of peace, one last night of happiness. I stumbled back to the other wing and passed up my room in favor of Victor’s. I crawled into his bed, the welcome oblivion of sleep claiming me from the new horrors of my waking life.
* * *
—
I lay, unable to move. One eye was closed, pressed against the dirt. The other rolled wildly, but all it could see was sky between brilliant red leaves. I made a strange, high, keening cry that I could not form into words. I could not speak, could not move, could not see anything other than the uncaring sky and the dying leaves.
Then there was another noise.
A tearing, ripping sound. The horrible grating of metal against something unyielding. A sawing sound in fits and starts, in time with the heavy breathing of some other creature. And then the wet slop of things sliding out and hitting the ground.
That was when I realized:
The noises were coming from me.
Still I could not move, could not scream, could not do anything other than lie frozen, listening to my own dissection.
I would wake up, bathed in cold sweat, my heart racing but my voice silent. I was too afraid to open my mouth, too terrified I would only be able to produce the same dying cry as the deer.
On those nights, I would pad down the hall and slip into Victor’s room. He would shift sleepily to the side, holding out an arm and letting me nestle into him. I would feel my stomach, run my hands down my ribs. I was still alive. I was fine. Victor was there, and he would protect me.
When I slept at his side, I never had nightmares.
* * *
—
The sun was nearly at its zenith when I was jarred back to consciousness. I clamped my mouth shut over the strange cry I had been making.
I felt my stomach, desperately ran my hands over my ribs.
I was fine.
I was fine.
I tried to still my breathing, but then the previous day’s events crashed down, transitioning the dread and terror of my nightmare into the dread and terror of my reality.
Bleary-eyed and numb with grief, I made my way down to the dining room. I still wore my dress from the day before, my stockings somehow lost in Victor’s bed. I had never before entered the dining room barefoot. The floor was cold and hard beneath my feet, gritty with dust and dirt that needed to be swept.
Judge Frankenstein sat at the table, his meal untouched in front of him and his head in his hands. I took my place across from him.
He looked up in surprise. “Elizabeth.”
“Do you know where Justine is?” I could barely stand to be in here at all. Not when I needed to finish my most horrible task. “I have not told her yet. I have to tell her. She was not in her room last night.”
He frowned. The maid came in to see if I wanted food. I could not imagine wanting anything for my body, ever again.
“Check Justine’s room,” Judge Frankenstein ordered. “See if she has returned.”
The maid curtseyed and left. I wanted to ask Judge Frankenstein if there had been any news. If they had found the charnel house man. But I was certain if anything had happened, he would have mentioned it by now. He would not have been sitting alone at this table.
“Damned girl has been listening to everything,” he said, frowning at the door the maid left through. “I should dismiss her. Who knows what tales she will take back to town. Meanwhile, my boy—my baby—” His shoulders shook, and he dropped his face back into his hands.
Though I had long considered him my foe, I saw now only a man who had lost too much over his years. He had already buried the baby born between Victor and Ernest, and his own wife. Now he would have to add to the family plot, when doubtless he had expected his would be the next stone marker.
“Judge Frankenstein, I—”
“Call me Uncle.” He lifted his face and wiped his eyes. “Please. I have so little left. My hopes are all on you now.”
“Uncle,” I said, the word strange and false on my tongue, “May I—”
“My God!” The maid ran back in, breathing fast, her eyes wide with some twisted combination of panic and elation. “Merciful God in heaven, I have discovered the murderer!”
Judge Frankenstein frowned, but when she did not back down, he stood and followed her out of the room. I trailed them, my own heart racing. Had the charnel house man returned for more prizes? When she stopped outside Justine’s room, though, I froze in panic and dread. Had he murdered Justine? Was he in there with her now?
“Here,” the maid said, rushing inside. Justine, her hems covered with mud and her coat still on, was sprawled across the bed. I wilted with relief, but also with confusion at her state and why the maid had brought us here. I felt her forehead. She had a mild fever, and her hair was damp.
“Look!” the maid pointed in triumph.
Next to Justine on the bed was the glittering gold accusation of guilt.
My necklace.
* * *
—
“How can you believe this? It is absurd!” I was holding Justine’s arm, engaged in a tug-of-war with the constable. He kept his eyes on the floor.
“Please, Mademoiselle, she needs to be taken in.”
Justine was crying. “I do not understand. Elizabeth, what is happening? What are they saying about my William?”
“You killed my brother!” Ernest was backed up against the far wall, staring in horror and hatred at the woman who loved him best in the whole world. “You killed him!” He collapsed into sniffling sobs. “Why would you do that?”
Justine tried to stumble to him, swaying and nearly falling. The constable used her shift in balance to pull her away from me. Another official I did not know jumped between us.
“She did no such thing!” I shouted, trying to push past the man.
While I was blocked, the constable rushed Justine down the hall. “She cannot account for her whereabouts,” he said.
“She is not well! She cannot even stand!” I twisted free and darted after them. “This is absurd! She loved him!”
“William,” Justine sobbed, losing her strength and falling to the floor. Her arm was wrenched where the constable had not released his grip. Another officer—where were all these men coming from? Where had they been when William was in danger? Why were there seemingly dozens now, as though Justine were a threat?—grabbed Justine’s other arm, and they continued to drag her away.
Someone grabbed my arm, and I turned with my other hand raised, ready to strike.
It was Ernest. I stayed my blow. He was still crying, and I saw a resemblance to Victor in his enraged visage. “She stole the necklace! That is evidence!”
“That is not evidence, you stupid child.” I flinched at the hurt that managed to break through on his face. I dropped to my knees and looked up at him. He was a child, but somehow I felt that if he believed in Justine, it would be proof of her innocence. And I knew how badly it would hurt her to hear that Ernest had believed this false and terrible accusation. “She knows I would have given it to her if she had so much as asked! She had no reason to steal it! She lives here. She could have taken anything at any time.”