This Dark Endeavor

  “Yes. He is already being healed.”

  She yawned. “We should rest.”

  “Yes. We should rest.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  THE ELIXIR OF LIFE

  WHEN I WOKE, MY WINDOWS WERE ABLAZE, FOR I’D FOR-gotten to draw the curtains. I hadn’t thought I would sleep, but only wait for the dawn, when I could check on Konrad.

  I leapt out of bed. It must have been close to noon. A servant had left water in a basin, removed my soaked and bloodied clothes, and laid out a fresh set for me. I hurriedly washed and dressed, then rushed down the corridor to Konrad’s bedchamber. The door was ajar, and when I slipped inside, I saw a room bright with sunshine, fragrant with the smell of fresh flowers and linens—and Konrad sitting up in bed, smiling and chatting with Mother and Elizabeth, while eating some soup.

  At first they did not see me, and for a long moment I could only stare in delight and wonder.

  It had worked! It had not been in vain.

  “You’re better!” I cried.

  “Good morning, Victor,” my brother said.

  Elizabeth looked at me, beaming.

  “The fever is certainly gone,” said Mother. “He is still weak, but altogether much improved.”

  Any puzzlement or anger Mother might have felt to see us back at the château had clearly been obliterated by her happiness at Konrad’s recovery. I drew my right hand into my ruffled sleeve, for I was unsure how much Mother or Konrad already knew, and I didn’t want to upset anyone right now. I saw, however, that Elizabeth still wore the bandage on her cheek, so she must have made some explanation—how truthful, I didn’t know.

  I hurried to the side of Konrad’s bed and sat down. There was a hint of color in his cheeks and lips now. With my good hand I grasped his.

  “It’s so good to see you awake!” I said.

  “Nothing is more boring than an invalid,” he said. “I’m terribly sorry.”

  “Don’t be absurd,” said Elizabeth.

  “And you needn’t worry,” I added. “I’m sure you’ll never be an invalid again.”

  He looked at me curiously, and seemed about to say something, when there was a polite knock on the door and Henry poked his head in.

  “Hello. I’ve come to see how you’re feeling,” he said, smiling at the sight before him, “and I feel like a late guest at the party.”

  “Come in, Henry,” said my mother fondly. “Our Konrad seems to be on the mend.”

  “That is grand news,” Henry said, shaking his head in clear amazement.

  “You need a seat, Henry,” I said. I stood and reached with both hands for a chair near Konrad’s desk.

  “Victor!” I heard my mother gasp. “What happened?”

  How could I have forgotten so easily? Slowly I turned to face her.

  She was on her feet, striding toward me, staring at my bandaged hand. She did not need to remove the dressing to know that I was missing two fingers.

  “How did this happen?” she whispered.

  I could think of no lie to tell her, and why did I need lies, now that we’d completed our quest in triumph?

  “It was necessary,” I said.

  “What on earth do you mean?” she demanded.

  “The last ingredient of the elixir was bone marrow.”

  She said nothing, but tears spilled from her eyes, and she shook her head mutely.

  “It is only two fingers,” I added stupidly.

  She covered her face. “It is too much. Why did you do such a foolish, foolish thing, after everything your father told you?”

  “We were afraid Konrad would die,” Elizabeth told her, putting her hand on Mother’s shoulder.

  “But he’s recovered!” my mother said. “And all this was unnecessary!”

  “He recovers,” I said gently, “because we gave him the elixir last night.”

  Mother’s crying stopped, and she looked at me in horror. “When?”

  “At midnight. While everyone slept, we dripped it into his mouth.”

  “Maria did not stop you?” she demanded.

  “She was asleep with exhaustion,” I lied.

  “But it might’ve been poison!”

  “How can it be poison and make such a dramatic improvement?” I gestured at Konrad, who was listening and watching all this with wide eyes.

  “I imbibed your bone marrow?” Konrad asked.

  “It was very nearly imbibed by Polidori,” said Henry.

  Konrad sat up straighter. I looked from Henry to Elizabeth, then to Mother. I had not wanted the alchemist’s name to be mentioned so soon.

  “Julius Polidori is involved in this?” Mother said.

  “He helped us translate the recipe,” I replied.

  “He hacked off your fingers?” she shouted.

  “That was part of the recipe. I offered them willingly. But he turned scoundrel and meant to take the elixir for himself.”

  “We had quite a tussle to get it back,” said Henry. “He set his lynx on us.”

  My mother waved her hand to silence us, and sat down.

  “You must tell this story properly,” she said after a moment. “And leave nothing out.”

  Mother wasted no time writing a message to the chief magistrate of Geneva, and sent one of the grooms to deliver it. She wanted Polidori arrested at once.

  She found two lads who knew how to sail and had them return the fishing boat to its owners in the marina, and then take a message to Mr. Clerval, telling him Henry would stay with us a few more nights.

  She put three menservants on guard, one at the main gate, and two on the ramparts. She worried Polidori might wish us further harm, and wanted to keep us all within the château until he was apprehended.

  I didn’t think such drastic precautions were necessary, for Polidori didn’t know who we were, so how could he find us?

  Mother was a strong woman, and had always been vigorous, but I had never seen her move about the house with such intent. It was quite terrifying. She spoke little—as though she did not quite know what was to be done with us.

  We stayed out of her way, visiting with Konrad and keeping him company when he was not sleeping.

  A messenger came to our house at dinnertime with the news that Polidori had disappeared.

  Upon receiving my mother’s letter, the magistrate had sent a bailiff and two guards to Wollstonekraft Alley, only to find the apartment, and the laboratory beneath, consumed by flame. There was no sign of a body within the charred wreckage.

  “No doubt he’s fled the city,” Mother said.

  “He must have hired a carriage first thing in the morning and set out,” Elizabeth said.

  Mother glanced back at the letter. “They’ve already sent men on the fastest horses to see if they can overtake him.”

  “If he’s in a carriage,” I said, “they’ll catch him. The mountain roads are steep.”

  But the news made me feel ill at ease. I did not like the fact that Polidori was still free and might, if he so chose, seek us out.

  Late the next day Father returned home with Dr. Murnau. The two of them went at once to Konrad’s bedchamber, whereupon the doctor proceeded to examine my brother.

  Elizabeth and Henry and I waited in the library, paging through books without reading.

  “What will Father do when Mother tells him?” Elizabeth asked me.

  “Well, the Frankenstein dungeons may once more have inmates.”

  “Be serious, Victor.”

  “You can have the larger cell. I don’t mind.”

  This time she laughed.

  The sun was beginning to set when Father appeared in the doorway, still in his riding clothes, looking exhausted but calm.

  “Come with me,” he said to the three of us.

  We followed him to his study, where Mother sat with Dr. Murnau.

  “He’s healing, isn’t he?” I asked the doctor.

  “Tomorrow I’ll take blood for study. But it seems the crisis has certainly passed.” He lea
ned his bony frame forward in his chair. “Victor, I understand you gave him a certain elixir a few nights past. I need to know its exact ingredients.”

  “There was a rare lichen, from a tree in the Sturmwald,” I began.

  “Describe it.”

  “Pale brown, with a delicate shape like embroidery or coral. Usnea lunaria was its name,” I added, remembering suddenly.

  The doctor pursed his lips, nodded. “What else?”

  “Coelacanth oil,” I said. “And bone marrow from a human.”

  I saw his eyes stray to my hand. “I will look at your wounds shortly. Anything else?”

  “That’s all. But how Polidori prepared them, we don’t know.”

  “Is it harmful?” Father asked Dr. Murnau.

  “We’ll watch Konrad carefully for the next day or so, but he shows no signs of poisoning. Quite the opposite. These ingredients your son mentioned, they’re unusual and noisome, but it’s possible they might have had some beneficial effect. In folk medicines some lichens or fungi are often brewed as teas to combat infection or fever. As for the fish oil, many oils have been noted to have an invigorating effect on the patient, though we do not know why.”

  “And the bone marrow?” Mother asked.

  “A mystery,” said the doctor, pushing back his glasses. “Though one of my students once claimed that a crushed bone, amazingly, yielded a special concentration of vigorous blood cells. But, as to the usefulness of your elixir as a whole”—he floated his skeletal hands up into the air—“there’s no scientific proof. And there is no shortage of fabulist cures trumpeted by charlatans. I’d say you were very lucky, young Master Frankenstein, that this particular elixir was benign. I’ve seen some that have wrought very dire results indeed upon the human body.”

  Father looked at me and Elizabeth severely. “You might have killed your brother.”

  “We might also have saved his life!” I said, my temper flaring.

  Dr. Murnau licked his lips nervously. “Victor, what we’ve witnessed is a coincidence—and a dangerous one if it convinces you that this elixir has any value.”

  My heart beat in my ears. I said nothing. I didn’t need to convince him. The deed was done, and the truth was obvious to me: The elixir was real.

  “Now listen carefully,” Father said to Elizabeth, Henry, and me. “Once Polidori is caught and tried, your involvement in this shameful affair will be public knowledge. But this is more than a question of embarrassment; it is a question of your innocence.”

  “Alphonse,” said Mother, “you’re frightening them—and me.”

  “Might we be charged, then?” Elizabeth asked uneasily.

  “By the law’s definition, to practice alchemy you must profit by it, or actually administer your substances to a person,” Father said.

  “It was I who administered it to Konrad,” I said quickly, for it was true. I had dripped it upon his tongue. “If anyone’s charged, it should be me.”

  “That is not just,” said Elizabeth. “It may have been Victor’s hand that held the vial, but I stood beside him, and would have administered the elixir if he’d faltered. I am equally guilty.”

  “And I,” said Henry, his head bowed.

  “No one will ever know that Konrad took this elixir,” my father said. He looked at all of us in turn. “Dr. Murnau has already agreed to keep this in his confidence. And we must all of us keep the secret. I threw the elixir into the lake. That is what happened. I abhor a lie, but I will do it to protect my family.”

  I wondered how many other lies my father had told over the years, how many secrets he kept from us.

  “Are we agreed, then?” said Father. “Konrad never received the Elixir of Life.”

  “Agreed,” said Elizabeth and Henry.

  Father looked at me severely.

  I met his gaze. “If I am asked to testify in court, I will not lie.”

  “Victor,” Mother said, “don’t be absurd!”

  I did not flinch from my father’s stories. My own voice seemed alien to me, hard and calm. “I will not mention Elizabeth or Henry. But I will not perjure myself. I helped create that elixir with my own sweat, and flesh and blood, and I administered it to my brother. And I cured him. If I’m to be jailed for that, so be it.”

  My father’s eyebrows contracted, and he was about to speak, but then he changed his mind.

  “We will talk more of this later.” He looked at Mother. “He is overwrought. He doesn’t know what he’s saying.”

  But truly I did. My father would not make me a liar—nor would he take away my triumph.

  Before I went to my bedchamber for the night, I visited Konrad’s room and found him still awake, reading by candlelight.

  “Do you remember us giving it to you?” I asked, sitting beside his bed.

  “I remember waking and seeing you all before me, but I thought it a dream—and such a pleasant one. I felt rejuvenated somehow.”

  “Do you feel it in you, working?” I asked.

  He gave a laugh. “Am I your patient now, Victor?”

  “Not patient. Creation!” I said with a grin. “Come now, you must feel something! You have the Elixir of Life in you!” I imagined a great bubbling, a magical fermenting that released healing bodies throughout his blood to battle anything vile they encountered.

  “If you must know, I feel as weak as a kitten—but remarkably … transformed.”

  “That will be the elixir working hard, destroying the disease! It is bound to be tiring. But now you will not ever get ill again, you lucky dog.”

  “Let me see your hand properly,” he said.

  I placed it on my knee.

  His gaze settled on it. When he looked up, his eyes were wet. “Does it hurt still?”

  I shook my head. “It sometimes hurts where my fingers used to be. A kind of phantom pain.”

  He placed his perfect hand on mine. “Thank you, Victor.”

  During breakfast the next day another message arrived bearing the magistrates’ stamp. Father opened it at once and read it in silence. He sighed.

  “Polidori has completely vanished.”

  “How can that be?” exclaimed Mother. “The riders could easily have overtaken his carriage.”

  “Unless he was never in a carriage,” Father said. “Even without the use of his legs, he might be able to ride a horse of his own—take remote alpine paths and venture into France. We have no authority to pursue him there—nor would we have much luck finding him, the place is in such chaos.”

  “Might he have accomplices?” Mother asked, looking at the three of us.

  “Krake was the only accomplice we knew of,” I said. “But he might have paid people to help him, I suppose.”

  Elizabeth raised her eyebrows. “He looked so impoverished.”

  I remembered how he had talked about the myth of the lynx, the Keeper of the Secrets of the Forest, harvesting gemstones from its own urine.

  “Maybe he had money saved up,” I said.

  “Well, if he’s disappeared for good, there will be no trial,” Father said. “No one need hear of this again.”

  He looked at me pointedly as he said it.

  “As long as he’s left Geneva for good,” Mother said, “I am satisfied.”

  “He would be a fool to stay,” said Henry. “His place is burned to the ground, and he is conspicuous in his wheelchair. He’d be caught instantly.”

  My neck tingled. It was childish, but I couldn’t help wondering if the alchemist had worked some dark wonder to make himself invisible. I imagined him at night, dragging himself through the streets, his shoes and clothes scraping on the cobblestones. Dragging himself ever closer to Château Frankenstein.

  Later that day Elizabeth and I stood in the courtyard with Henry to see him off. I shook his hand and then embraced him.

  “You have a lion’s heart, as well as a poet’s,” I said.

  He shook his head with a grin, but I could tell he was pleased.

  “I was not brave c
ompared with you two,” he said. “I possess only a small courage—but it is good to know that.”

  “Nonsense,” said Elizabeth, kissing him on the cheek.

  He flushed.

  “Good-bye, Henry,” I said.

  “Good-bye,” he replied, “and do try to stay out of mischief while I am gone.”

  “Write us another play,” I said, “that we can all perform before summer is out.”

  “I will.”

  “The doctor says I will have scars,” Elizabeth said. “I never thought myself vain, but I am vain, and it upsets me more than I can say.”

  We were in the library, sunlight pouring through the windows.

  Konrad had been taking his meals in bed so far, but said he would like to get up later and join us for dinner. Dr. Murnau would remain only a day longer, and said Konrad’s progress was most encouraging.

  He’d examined my hand again this morning, and was pleased with Polidori’s chisel work. There was no sign of infection. He said he knew some very fine craftsmen who could fashion me a pair of wooden fingers to strap onto my hand.

  He’d also told Elizabeth she could remove the bandage on her cheek.

  “They will be very faint scars,” I said now, looking at them. “Whisker thin. You would have to know they were there to even notice them.”

  She laughed bitterly. “They will be clearly visible. Konrad cannot love me now.”

  I could not help laughing, and the misery in her face was quickly replaced with anger.

  “How is that amusing?”

  “Elizabeth,” I said, “Konrad would be the biggest fool in the world if he thought a few scratches could dim your beauty. There cannot be a lovelier young woman in all the republic. I would say all of Europe, but I have not seen all the young women there yet.”

  She smiled, and looked down, and the color rose in her cheeks. “Thank you, Victor, that is very sweet of you.”

  I did not understand why, but I found something compelling about those scars. The claws of a lynx had raked her cheek and left their mark. And it was a mark too of her own wild nature. She could not hide it—and the wolf in me found her all the more desirable for it. But I would not think of her in such a way anymore. I was done with coveting what was my brother’s. My resolve would be as strong as stone.