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For Mary Shelley, mother of monsters
Finally, they realized they were the monsters.
MARY: Now you’re just trying to upset me.
CATHERINE: Did it work?
MARY: No, not really. I mean, I know perfectly well that we’re monsters. Even me. I didn’t want to admit that for a long time, but I can’t deny it, can I? It’s not such a bad thing, after all.
CATHERINE: I told you so.
VOLUME I
The Mesmerist
CHAPTER I
The Temple of Isis
Princess Ayesha stared down into the lotus pool. The orange fish had hidden itself under one of the floating leaves. The lotus flower rose up, yellow and conical, perfectly still in the hot summer afternoon. A dragonfly landed on it, spreading its iridescent wings. The orange fish was also iridescent, and the water shimmered in the sunlight. It was as though everything here shimmered, nothing was stable, nothing ordinary—like a mirage. Would it all disappear? Would she be left sitting on desert sand? That, she had been told by her nurse, was what happened to travelers who ventured out beyond the verdure on either side of the river, beyond the date palm orchards and barley fields.
“Come, child,” said Queen Merope. “The High Priestess is ready to see us.”
She looked up at the queen. Her mother was the most beautiful woman she had ever seen—tall, with the long neck of an ibis, and slender hands just beginning to lose the suppleness of youth. Her skin was a burnished brown—she had come from Heliopolis, and was said to be descended from the ancient kings who had ruled Egypt, long before Alexander marched across the world and installed his general, Ptolemy, as its ruler. Ayesha took after her much darker father, who came of an even older lineage. She shaded her face with one hand—the sun was just over her mother’s shoulder. She opened her mouth to ask a question.
Her mother looked down at her, eyes rimmed with kohl—it was usually impossible to guess what Queen Merope was thinking. The black wig she wore over her shaved head had small bells sewn to the end of each braided strand, and they chimed softly as she moved. “Yes,” she said. “You do have to stay here. No, there is absolutely no use in arguing.” The queen held out her hand.
Ayesha shut her mouth, took the hand held out to her, and stood up. She was not quite as tall as her mother, but soon would be. Perhaps, after all, it was for the best? If she was not accepted into the temple, her father would arrange a marriage for her. Did she want to be married? Judging by her brothers, from her mother and her father’s other wives, boys were in general a great bore. They were always boasting, or going out to hunt, or getting drunk on honey wine. So perhaps it would be best after all to serve the Goddess here at Philae? Already she liked the temple, with its massive stone walls painted in bright colors and its great stone lions that looked as though they might be friendly, however fierce. And she liked this garden, with its still pools filled with lotus flowers, the small fountains, the tamarind trees.
The priestesses were a little too solemn—none of them seemed to smile, unlike the courtiers and servants of her father’s court. The one that had come to fetch them, for example—standing several steps behind her mother. She did not look Egyptian—Assyrian, perhaps? Priestesses came from all over the world to serve at Philae. She stood very still in her white linen robe, with a cloth wound around her head—the priestesses did not wear wigs. No kohl around her eyes, no carmine on her lips, no gold rings in her ears. Being a priestess was a serious business, evidently. Would Ayesha be as solemn when she was a priestess of Isis?
Queen Merope tugged sharply at her hand, and she followed her mother through the sunlit garden, into the cool, shadowed temple complex.
“You must be on your very best behavior,” said the Queen in a low voice. “Remember that the High Priestess was once queen of all Egypt. When the old King died and his son ascended the throne—his son by his first wife—she was sent here to serve the Goddess.”
“Did they not want her in Alexandria anymore?” asked Ayesha.
The Queen gave her a swift, shrewd glance. “It is a great honor to serve Isis,” she said, but her lips curved upward, as though she did not want to smile but could not help herself. My daughter is a clever one, she seemed to be thinking. “Anyway, it’s best to get out of the way when the sons and daughters of kings quarrel. We are done with that now, I hope, and Egypt is prosperous again—it is bad to have instability on our northern border. Although the Romans—well, this is no place to talk politics. You must show such honor to the High Priestess as you would show to your father’s mother. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Mother,” said Ayesha, listening with only half her attention. She always respected Nana Amakishakhete, didn’t she? It was Netekamani, her youngest brother, who was so disrespectful, pulling on Nana’s robe, asking for sesame seed cakes. The temple of Isis was almost as large as her father’s palace. She had been told that it was inhabited only by the priestesses—worshipers were allowed in on feast days, but not ordinary days, and the inner sanctum could be entered by the priestesses alone. What was it like? Soon, she would find out.
They passed through a series of bare stone halls, the slap of their sandals echoing back at them. At the entrance to the audience chamber, the priestess who had led them opened a set of painted cypress-wood doors that were twice as tall as she was. The audience chamber was large and shadowed. Sunlight shone in through tall, narrow windows, but did not reach the central dais. To either side of that dais stood priestesses in white linen robes, perfectly still and silent. On the dais itself was a stone chair, as plain as the throne of Egypt on the head of Isis in the carvings on the temple walls. On it sat a woman almost as old as Nana Amakishakhete. She had long white hair that she wore in a single braid down one shoulder. Ayesha could not help staring at it—everyone she knew, even her mother, had short curly hair, although it was generally shaved off. Servants replaced it with colorful head cloths, the fashionable people at court with elaborate wigs, in which gold and glass beads were intertwined. This woman was lighter than even Ayesha’s mother—it was clear that she came from the north, where Egyptian blood had mixed with Greek. But she did not look quite Alexandrian—Ayesha had seen envoys from that city and wondered at their strange, pale skin, which reminded her of the slugs that ate gourd leaves in the kitchen gardens. Sitting in her lap was the largest cat Ayesha had ever seen, pure black, which stared at her with unblinking yellow eyes.
The priestess who had led them bowed before the dais, and then moved to one side.
“Thank you, Heduana,” said the High Priestess, nodding
at the priestess who had led them. “Come forward, child.”
Ayesha felt a hand on her right shoulder blade. Her mother propelled her forward until they were standing the correct ceremonial distance away from the dais, then bowed. Had Ayesha ever seen Queen Merope bow? She could not recall. She was almost too awed by the large, silent room and the small, wrinkled woman up on the stone chair to remember what she was supposed to do, but feeling once again the pressure of her mother’s hand, she knelt and bowed her head down to the floor until her forehead lay on the stone.
“You do the temple honor, bringing your daughter yourself, Queen of Meroë,” said the High Priestess. She had a foreign accent—not Greek, but close to it.
“You do Meroë honor allowing my daughter to come, Priestess of the Goddess with a Thousand Names, Bringer of Light and Abundance, Who Produces the Fruit of the Land,” said Merope. “She is not worthy, but if she should find favor in your eyes, I pray that you will accept her into the temple, to serve the Queen of Heaven.”
“Stand, child,” said the High Priestess. Ayesha lifted her head up from the stone floor. She was allowed to stand now, right? She looked up sideways at her mother, who gave her an almost imperceptible nod. She stood, awkwardly because she was feeling light-headed. For a moment the temple seemed to shimmer around her, as though it too were a mirage. Stop that, she told herself. After all, she was a princess of Meroë. She would not allow herself to be intimidated by this situation or any other.
The High Priestess stood, put the black cat on the stone chair behind her, and descended from her dais. The cat meowed in protest, but then sat like a statue of Bast with its tail curled around its legs. When the High Priestess reached out her left hand, Ayesha almost drew back in surprise and consternation. On that hand the High Priestess had seven fingers! But she had been trained well, by both her mother and Nana Amakishakhete. She did not flinch as the High Priestess lifted her chin, so that her eyes, which had been cast down in a sign of respect, looked directly into the dark eyes of the High Priestess, who considered her with as little emotion as though she were a rather interesting insect.
“Do you truly wish to serve the great Isis, with your heart and mind and spirit? Will you pledge yourself to her, leaving your father and mother, your sisters and brother, your house and your lands, giving up the ordinary life of a woman, to become one of our sisterhood, from now until the hour of your death?”
“Yes, High Priestess,” she answered as steadily as she could.
“My name is Tera, and here in this temple, my order is the word of the Goddess. You must obey me as you would her. That is the first of many things you will learn here.” The High Priestess withdrew her hand—Ayesha could feel a tingling in her chin where the High Priestess had rested her seven fingers. She turned to Queen Merope and said, “I accept your daughter into the temple as a novice. She shall go with Heduana to the dormitory where the novices sleep and learn the rituals of our order. If she serves the Goddess well for a year, she shall become a priestess at the Festival of the Inundation. You may bid her farewell. She is a daughter of Isis now, and the priestesses are her family. The tributes you have brought, which I understand are in a wagon outside the temples gates, may be brought in.”
Queen Merope bowed once again to the High Priestess, then turned to Ayesha. “Serve the Goddess well, my daughter,” she said.
Ayesha wished she could embrace her mother. She would have liked, once again, to inhale her mother’s scent—the fragrant oils in her wig, combined with the warm, human smell of her skin. But it would not be dignified in front of all these people.
Queen Merope leaned down and kissed her on the forehead, then turned and walked back out of the room, leaving her daughter behind. Ayesha watched her depart with trepidation. Did she truly want this new life? Was she ready to be a priestess of Isis? She did not know.
MARY: Why in the world are you starting with Ayesha? This is supposed to be a book about us.
CATHERINE: Our readers won’t understand what happens later if I don’t tell them about Ayesha—how she became a priestess and her time at the temple. Anyway, Egypt is very fashionable nowadays. Everyone wants Egyptian furniture, clothes, jewelry. Why not a book?
MARY: But this book isn’t about Egypt. It’s about—well, England. And us, as I said.
CATHERINE: Fine, I’ll start with us. But it’s not going to be anywhere near as exciting.
Mary Jekyll stared out the train window. She was so tired of traveling! Three days ago, she, her friend Justine Frankenstein, and her sister Diana Hyde had boarded the Orient Express in Budapest. They had disembarked at the Gare de l’Est in Paris, made their way to the Gare du Nord, and boarded another train from Paris to Calais. This train was not an express—to Mary, it seemed unbearably slow. Sometime that afternoon they would arrive in Calais and catch the ferry across the English Channel. Then yet another train from Dover to Charing Cross Station in London. And then a cab. And then—finally, finally—home. Sometimes in their travels she had missed the Jekyll residence at 11 Park Terrace terribly. Now, all the details of it came back to her: the front hall with its dark wood paneling and the mirror in which she checked to make sure that her hat was on straight, the parlor with a portrait of her mother above the mantel, the library where her father had once planned his experiments, the kitchen where Mrs. Poole presided, and her own bedroom, her very own bed, soft and cool. She would sleep in her own bed tonight.…
“You look very far away,” said Justine with a smile. Diana was asleep, sprawled on the seat beside Justine, with her head in the Giantess’s lap. At least she was not snoring!
“I was thinking about how happy I’m going to be to get home,” said Mary. “But what about you? Will you miss Europe?” After all, Justine was not English, although she had lived in England for more than a century—she had been born in Switzerland. Would she miss being able to speak French and German when they were back in London?
“I will miss it—a little,” said Justine. “Although I am in no sense a gourmande, I will miss the Austrian pastries. But I think I will miss our friends more.” Irene Norton, and her maids Hannah and Greta, in Vienna. Carmilla Karnstein and Laura Jennings in Styria. And of course Mary’s former governess Mina Murray and Count Dracula in Budapest. Without their help, the Athena Club would never have been able to rescue Lucinda Van Helsing from her father, the despicable Professor Abraham Van Helsing, who had been conducting experiments that turned his daughter into that dreadful thing—a vampire!
LUCINDA: Catherine, if you’ll forgive my interrupting, it really is not such a dreadful thing to be a vampire. I have a different diet than you do, that is all.
CATHERINE: Can’t you all just go away and let me write this book?
DIANA: Not if you’re going to get the details wrong! And you should be nicer to Lucinda. She can’t help being a blood-sucking creature of darkness.
CATHERINE: What sort of trash have you been reading now?
LUCINDA: Of darkness? But I do not require darkness.
Diana snorted in her sleep. Well, at least she was asleep! On the Orient Express, she had pestered Mary endlessly: Why did she have to wear women’s clothes? It was so much easier traveling as a boy. Justine was traveling as a boy, or rather man, so why couldn’t she? And why couldn’t they have taken one of Count Dracula’s puppies? There were plenty in the litter. And why couldn’t she have some money? Yes, all right, the last time she had stolen some of Mary’s francs to gamble with, but she had won more at Écarté. Anyway, it was so boring on the train. She would probably die of boredom.
“Because Justine is over six feet tall, and it’s too conspicuous for her to travel as a woman,” Mary had told her. “You are not over six feet tall—you’re not even five feet tall—and we need you to share a cabin with me. And because I don’t think Alpha or Omega would appreciate having one of the Count’s white wolfdogs in the house, plus Mrs. Poole would have a fit, and then where would we be?” But she had finally given Diana five franc
s, just to make her stop talking and go away. Diana had come back that evening with fifteen, won from a card game with the porters. Mary, thoroughly ashamed of her sister, had given half of it back in tips.
“I’m going to miss everyone too,” she said to Justine. “But it will be lovely to see Mrs. Poole again, and sit in our own parlor, and walk in Regent’s Park. If only I weren’t so worried about Alice and Mr. Holmes! And Dr. Watson, of course, if he is indeed missing as Mrs. Poole indicated in her telegram. Perhaps he’s simply on the case, as Mr. Holmes would say? It would be like him to go after Mr. Holmes and try to rescue him from whatever predicament he’s in. I hope Dr. Watson hasn’t actually disappeared, despite Mrs. Poole’s statement.”
“If so, would Mrs. Hudson not know his whereabouts?” asked Justine.
“Not necessarily. You know he and Mr. Holmes are—well, despite how much I like and respect them, they’re not always considerate. Sometimes they do not let anyone know where they are going, or what they are doing there.”
“Perhaps,” said Justine, seeming unconvinced. Then she added, “We’ll find them, Mary, wherever they are. We are the Athena Club, after all.” But she looked worried as well—Mary could see the small frown lines between her eyebrows.
Well, thought Mary, we have reason to be worried, the both of us! She remembered that afternoon in the basement storage room of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences—had it really only been four days ago? She, Justine, and Beatrice had been going through the files of the Alchemical Society when Catherine had rushed in, breathless, and said, “Telegram from Mrs. Poole!” The telegram had informed them that Alice, Mary’s kitchen maid, had been kidnapped. And then Frau Gottleib, who had once served in the Jekyll household as nurse to Mary’s mother, but whom they had discovered was actually a spy for the Alchemical Society, had told them that Alice was not who they had thought either. Although Alice herself did not know it, she was Lydia Raymond, daughter of the notorious Mrs. Raymond, who had been involved in the Whitechapel Murders.
The Sinister Mystery of the Mesmerizing Girl Page 1