The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein

  “He insists the law will make it right. I think he is too overwhelmed by William’s death and the potential of Justine’s betrayal to commit himself to either side.”

  I was not too overwhelmed. I would stand in front of them all—judge, jury, damnable townsfolk—and force them to see that Justine was incapable of such an act. If only I had a suspect to present to them, other than my nightmare monster. I wished it were real, that I would find some evidence of it.

  What bleak and dark days, that my hope was in favor of a monster existing!

  I opened my door to find Victor with his hand raised, ready to knock. “I am ready,” I said. My head still hurt fiercely, but I could walk without losing my balance. My pale countenance would only amplify the blush of my cheeks and the blue of my eyes. I would be perfect testifying. “Take me to the trial.”

  Victor’s countenance was heavy, his eyes mournful. “It is over.”

  “Why? They cannot have made their decision already!”

  “They did not have to. Justine confessed.”

  I staggered backward. “What?”

  “Last night. She confessed to the murder. They are hanging her tomorrow.”

  “No! That cannot be. She is not guilty. I know she is not.”

  Victor nodded. My voice was rising in tone and intensity, but his remained calm and steady. “I believe you. But there is nothing we can do now.”

  “We can talk to her! Make her retract it!”

  “I already spoke to my father. The courts would not accept a retraction at this point. Once a confession is made, it is taken as irrefutable proof.”

  A sob ripped from my chest, and I threw myself into Victor’s arms. I had only pictured having to fight to get her name cleared. I had not imagined this. “I cannot lose her,” I said. “Why would she confess? I must go see her. Right now.”

  Victor went with me, helping me into the boat. The ride across the lake was miserable, increasing the pain in my head with every dip and wave. As we hurried through Geneva, I was certain each window contained the face of someone who wanted to see Justine pay for a crime she never could have committed. I wanted to throw rocks through all the glass. Tear out their window boxes of lying, bright flowers. I wanted to burn the whole city to the ground. How could they not see her innocence?

  And how could she claim guilt?

  When we finally reached her prison cell, I found her in mean condition. She wore black clothes of mourning, and her chestnut hair, always so carefully pinned, was tangled around her shoulders. She was curled on a bed of straw, her ankles and wrists manacled to long chains.

  “Justine!” I cried.

  She rose immediately, throwing herself at my feet. I dropped to my knees on the cold stone floor, pulling her to me. I stroked her hair, my fingers catching in the snarls. “Justine, why? Why did you confess?”

  “I am sorry. I knew how much it would hurt you, and I am sorriest of all for that. But I had to.”

  “Why?”

  “The confessor—he was here whenever I was not in the court, hounding me, screaming, shouting the same things my mother said. And I had no one here for me. I began, in my despair, to fear that my mother had always been right. That I was a devilish girl, that I was damned. The confessor told me that if I did not admit my crime I would be excommunicated, that hell would claim my soul forever! He told me my only hope was to be right by God. So I confessed. And it was a lie, which is the only sin I have to weigh on me. To avoid damnation, I have committed the only crime of my life. Oh, Elizabeth. Elizabeth, I am sorry.” She wept, and I held her.

  “Victor,” I said, looking up at him. “Surely the confession cannot stand.”

  He had his back turned to give us privacy. He did not turn around, but his voice was quiet. “I am sorry. There is nothing that can be done.”

  “I will fight them, then! I will do whatever it takes! I will not let them hang you. Do you hear me, Justine?”

  She calmed some and lifted her face. It was lined with tears, but her eyes were clear and lucid. “I do not fear to die. I do not want to live in a world where devils can take such perfect, beautiful innocence without punishment. I think I prefer it this way—to go on to my sweet little William so that he is not alone.”

  The absurdity of her acceptance rankled my soul. She had been so convinced of her wickedness by her cruel and depraved mother that she would let a man convince her to confess false guilt simply for the sake of some invisible soul’s well-being!

  I would lose my Justine for nothing. Would lose the one person I had tried to save in the midst of a life spent selfishly trying to make certain I stayed safe myself. The one person I loved because she made me happy, rather than because my security depended on her. And she was going to die because I had decided to help her that day in the streets of Geneva.

  “I cannot live in this world of misery,” I said, the words harsh as they ripped from my throat.

  “No!” Justine took my cheeks between her hands, the cold iron of her manacles brushing my jaw. “Dearest Elizabeth. My beloved. My only friend. Live, and be happy. Honor me that way. Remember me by having the life I dreamed of for you, the life you deserve.”

  I deserved no such thing.

  “We must go.” Victor nodded to the waiting guard.

  “No,” I growled.

  “Go.” Justine stepped away from me, smiling. A ray of light from the window beamed down and lit her from behind as the angel I had always known her to be. “I am not afraid. Please do not come tomorrow. I do not want you to see it. Promise me.”

  “I promise you that I will prevent it. I will stop this.”

  Justine trembled. “Please, this is all I ask of you. Please promise me you will not be at the scaffold.”

  “It will not come to that.” I would not say it; I could not say it. If I agreed, I was agreeing that it would happen. And that I could never do. But the hurt and need were so raw on Justine’s face that I could not deny her.

  “I promise,” I whispered.

  “Thank you. You saved me.” She smiled, and I watched her over my shoulder as the guard escorted Victor and me out. Finally we turned a corner and my angel was lost to view.

  * * *

  —

  The judge would not see me.

  * * *

  —

  Judge Frankenstein would not intervene.

  * * *

  —

  My agitation was such that, the next morning, the Frankensteins rowed across the lake with both the boats so that I could not possibly get to the city and enact some “regrettable” course of action. Victor tried to stay behind, but I shouted at him to go if he could not save her. If they could not save her, they should have to bear witness.

  * * *

  —

  I was alone.

  I wandered to the edge of the lake and collapsed to my knees. Then I lifted my face to the heavens and screamed. I screamed my rage, and my despair, and my intolerable solitude.

  Somewhere nearby, a creature answered my call. I was not alone. The other cry contained the soul-deep sense of loss I could scarcely breathe around.

  I curled into a ball around myself and wept until my senses left me.

  I LOST A WEEK to the madness of grief. I would see or speak to no one. I hated them all for being alive while Justine was dead. For being men and being unable to save her.

  William’s death was a tragedy.

  Justine’s was a travesty.

  When I finally came down from my room with enough strength to at least pretend not to hate everyone in the house, I found Ernest packing.

  “Where are you going?” I asked, though I could not actually care.

  “School in Paris. Father thinks it best I leave for a while.” His lip quivered as he struggled for bravery. He had lost so much in his young life—his mo
ther, his baby brother, and now the governess he had loved and trusted. I wished I could comfort him by insisting on her innocence once again, but would that have helped? He could either rage at the presumed betrayal by someone he trusted or despair at the betrayal of the entire world in failing to protect her in her innocence.

  It was easier to rage than to despair.

  “Where is Victor?”

  “I do not care,” Ernest snapped, tears filling his eyes. Had I been like Justine, I would have rushed to him. Taken him in my arms and comforted him as a mother.

  Had I been like Justine, would I, too, be dead?

  I drifted away to leave Ernest to find his own path through grief. I certainly could not guide him, as my own grief trailed in my wake, threatening to rise and strangle me.

  I found Victor in his bedroom. He was pacing, muttering to himself. Before he noticed me, he opened and shut and threw several books. He was agitated, his eyes rimmed in red and accented by dark circles.

  “Victor?” I said.

  He turned, jumping as though expecting attack.

  “Elizabeth.” With a deep breath, he closed his eyes and attempted to release some of the tension I could still see throughout his body. He trembled, shaking out his hands. Then he opened his eyes and really looked at me. “I am sorry.”

  We had not spoken since Justine’s execution. “I know.” And I did know. He alone remained steadfastly on my side, believing me about Justine’s innocence though he barely knew her. “Will you come with me today, to visit her grave?”

  He flinched. “There is no grave.”

  “What?”

  “I offered them money. But she died a condemned murderess. They would not bury her in hallowed ground.”

  My heart broke anew. I knew what such a thing would mean to Justine. She had lived in a constant effort to be right before God. She had even died because of it. “What did they do with the body?”

  “It was burned. They would not give me the ashes.”

  I closed my eyes and nodded, dropping this injustice into the sea of horrors already drowning me.

  “I have been thinking,” he said. Then he ran his fingers through his hair. His eyes darted constantly to his window, either looking for something outside or yearning to be there himself. “But I cannot think here, in this house. I am going for a walk through the mountains. I may be gone a day or two. Please do not worry. I hope, in the majesty of their embrace, to find some clarity.”

  I wanted him here to comfort me, but I did not know how to be comforted. So I nodded and let him pass by. He carried a leather satchel.

  He did not smell like ink and paper.

  * * *

  —

  Later that afternoon, I prowled around the exterior of the house, glaring up at it. I had offered this place to Justine as a sanctuary. It had betrayed her.

  I had betrayed her.

  A spray of violets was growing beneath Victor’s window. Justine had always loved violets. I stomped through the other plantings to get to them. Whether to tear them up or to admire them, I had not decided. But I paused when something caught my eye. Beneath Victor’s window were footprints. I slipped my own booted foot down into the depression in the mud.

  The foot was easily twice the size of mine, larger than any I had seen before. There were no impressions of shoes or boots, but neither were there toes. I would have thought something had been dropped there, but the placement was exactly as though someone had been standing beneath his window, looking in as I was now.

  They were footprints, but too large. Too large by far.

  Monstrous.

  I rushed back inside. Judge Frankenstein was wandering through the first floor. His shirttails were untucked, and his hair was sticking up on the back of his head. “Have you seen my pistol?” he asked. “I wanted to go shooting, and I cannot find it anywhere.”

  Victor. The satchel he had carried with him out of the house.

  A growing anxiety gripped me with viselike intensity. I had not imagined the monster in the woods. And Victor had seen it, too. He did not say—he could not say! But if the monster had been here…

  William.

  No wonder Victor had been so certain of Justine’s innocence! I hated and pitied him in equal measure. I had hidden my own suspicions to avoid revealing secrets. And my suspicions were of an actual man. Who could stand before a judge and jury and claim a monster murdered the child? Of course he could not speak the truth. Even knowing his genius as I did, I, too, had thought Victor mad upon seeing his notes. I had burned down a building to keep the world from judging him.

  And if I felt guilt, I could not imagine how he must have felt. Because if I was right, if there was a monster, I knew its origin. Why it had found us here. Why it had hurt us, of all the people in the world.

  Had it been following me this whole time? I remembered the thing in the chute as I burned the building. The open door. I had nearly killed it then; I was certain of it. Would to God I had been successful!

  How it had found me at the boardinghouse, I could not—

  The card! I had made cards of my address at the boardinghouse. One had fallen out on the doorway of Victor’s laboratory, and in my haste I had not picked it up. Could a beast read, when so many men could not? If it could, I had led the monster right to me.

  And then it had followed me back here.

  Victor might have created it, but I had brought it to our home. And now Victor had gone away, alone, into the mountains. With a pistol. He was trying to end this, to protect us all. But I had seen the monster. Victor was no match for it.

  I would lose my Victor, too. It was more than I could bear. I grabbed a cloak—Mary’s, another reminder of Ingolstadt and all the tragedy it had rained down upon our heads—took the sharpest knife from the kitchen, and rushed to the path that led from our home to the mountain trails.

  I did not pause to question myself. I knew I could still be wrong. Prayed for it, even. Prayed I would find Victor alone in the mountains. That my head injury was leading me to absurd and even laughable conclusions. That, in my desire for revenge, I was making a monster where only an unknown man had acted.

  I did not care. I would not risk it.

  The monster—if it existed—would never take a loved one from me again.

  * * *

  —

  It was bitingly cold in spite of the summer sun. The farther into the mountains we went, the closer we grew to the glacial plains. Huge sheets of ice covered miles, ancient and so compacted that the cracks shone deepest blue. The terrain was treacherous and slick, capable of claiming unwary hikers. Victor and I had been forbidden to venture this far when we were children.

  But we were no longer children. I was drawing near to fifteen, Victor and Henry almost seventeen. Justine, with us a month now, had turned seventeen the day before. Though she had tried to keep her birthday quiet, I would not hear of spending the whole week as we always did. After pleading with Madame Frankenstein, I received permission for a special day trip to the glaciers.

  We rose before dawn, setting out a company of four friends. Henry and Justine got along well. Though Justine was quiet and shy, Henry’s ease with happy conversation drew her out until they were laughing.

  I considered their dynamic with appraising thoughtfulness, always with an eye on the future.

  Victor walked fast and steady, as though the day trip were something to be accomplished rather than enjoyed. I laughed at him, taking his hand and skipping merrily beside him until he shook his head in exasperation. But I had managed to tease a smile from him, and his manner lightened.

  The journey through the valleys to the glaciers took all morning and into the afternoon. We stopped frequently to admire pretty cascades, to nibble some of the food we had packed, or to rest. The day was as beautiful as any I had lived. The blue of the sky, the
deeper blue of the glaciers, the sheer size of the mountains and scope of their majesty, allowed me, too, to step outside my constant worry and simply be. I truly understood for the first time the meaning of the word sublime.

  Though we were supposed to return home by evening, we lingered, everyone loath to abandon the fun and freedom of our excursion.

  It was a mistake. The light left faster than we had anticipated, and watching it go, we knew we could not navigate the treacherous glacial plain in the dark.

  “There!” Justine pointed. A dark shape slumped against the white of the plain. We crossed to it, slipping and sliding. Though we should have been worried, we could not quite manage it. I felt safe with Victor and Henry and Justine. I knew we would be fine.

  The shape turned out to be an old shack, the purpose of which we could not guess. But inside was a dusty pile of wood and a dented stove. Delighted with our stroke of luck—providence, as Justine declared it—we settled in for the night.

  None of us slept. We sat, shoulder to shoulder, our legs stretched out across the floor nearly touching the opposite wall. Justine was to my left, Victor to my right, Henry to his. I was in the middle of the three people I loved best.

  The only three people I loved at all, if I was being honest.

  The night was cold and long and still somehow the brightest and warmest I had ever spent.

  In the morning we stumbled down from the mountain, hungry and giddy with lack of sleep, laughing over our misadventure. It had been a day without fear, a day without study. A day without pretending. I would carry that day in my heart, locked up tightly where nothing else could touch it.

  * * *

  —

  As the afternoon slowly faded, I despaired of catching up to Victor on the mountain. I hated to come up here alone on such a bleak and terrifying mission. All my happy memories of the day we had spent hiking were being replaced by cold dread and seething anger.