“I have done as much as I can,” Polidori said finally, and with one sure stroke he slit from the book’s binding the pages he’d been working on. With padded tweezers he grasped them and held them above the tray of liquid.
“Young sir,” he said to Henry, “set the clock for sixty seconds. Be precise, now!”
Henry reached for the ornate timepiece and turned back the slender hand, holding it in place.
“Release it … now!” cried Polidori, and immersed the charred pieces of paper into the bloody liquid, swishing them gently back and forth. At first they stuck together, but within moments they floated apart.
“They are free!” Elizabeth cried in excitement.
Polidori arranged the charred pages side by side in the tray. “Time is critical now.”
“What does this liquid do?” I asked.
“Brings back what was lost. A second too long, though, and we will lose it all forever.”
We stared, riveted, at the tray. Twenty seconds, thirty … Nothing was happening. In the red light the blackened paper hovered in the liquid, as unreadable as ever. Forty seconds …
“Look!” breathed Elizabeth.
Something was happening. Within the darkness of the pages appeared faint scratchings—completely illegible, but something.
“It comes … ,” said Polidori in a hoarse voice. “It comes …”
“Fifty seconds,” said Henry.
On all the pages the scratchings grew thicker, released shoots like strange seedlings growing with freakish speed. I recognized the bizarre characters from the Alphabet of the Magi, and then some familiar letters beneath them: the translations!
“Fifty-five seconds,” said Henry.
“We must have more time!” said Elizabeth, for parts of the pages were still unreadable.
“We dare not,” snapped Polidori, readying his tweezers. “Look!”
The edges of the pages were beginning to curl and dissolve, as if in acid. And the parts of the text that had once been plain to see were starting to blur dangerously.
The clock chimed, and instantly Polidori drew the pages out and placed them flat on a special drying rack.
“This will have to do,” he said.
“Is there enough, though?” I asked, squinting in the lurid half-light.
“It is a good start,” he said. “A beginning. Return in two days, and I will tell you what I have found.”
I took my purse from my pocket and tried to offer him money, but he shook his head. “Let us wait for that, young sir. This may all come to naught. Let us wait.”
“That is very kind of you, sir,” said Elizabeth. “Thank you.”
For the first time Polidori smiled, as though genuinely surprised at these gentle words. He looked at me.
“I hope your brother improves,” he said, “and makes all this toil needless.”
We left Polidori’s shop, each of us silent. I felt I’d witnessed something incredible, something dangerous, even. The alleyway and streets appeared strange to my eyes. All the people and horses and carriages and bustle had nothing to do with me. My eyes were still focused on the pages of Paracelsus’s tome, the ancient words swimming into view after long centuries of oblivion.
“It’s like we’ve brought something back to life,” Elizabeth murmured.
I looked at her, startled. “Yes. That is just how I feel. There was something about that volume. It seemed no mere book.”
“It lived,” said Elizabeth simply.
“Indeed it did!” I exclaimed. “I felt it move in my hands, like a patient writhing.”
“Was there not the smell of blood?” she said.
“Is it possible it was our fevered emotions tricking us?” said Henry. “That we all imagined such phantasmagorical things because we wanted to see them?”
“You are very sensible, Henry,” said Elizabeth tartly, “for someone whose pen makes such flights of passion.”
“Yet they are inventions only,” Henry persisted. “Not reality. If we truly believe that book moved, we are believing in magic.” He lowered his voice. “Witchery.”
“There is no such thing,” I said. “Just things we do not yet understand. Father would say the same.”
“Your father would condemn what we’ve done,” said Henry.
I swallowed. “He will not know.”
“Are we fools?” said Henry nervously. “Deceiving your father is one thing, but even if Polidori can translate the recipe, is the elixir something that should be made?”
“If it is Konrad’s only chance at life, yes,” I said. “And damn the consequences!”
“Polidori himself said that there were no end of magical elixirs—and their effect could be dangerous,” Henry persisted.
I said nothing.
“I trust him,” said Elizabeth. “Polidori. He will advise us well.”
We were all surprised when we heard Saint Peter’s bells toll two o’clock, for we’d lost all track of time inside the laboratory. Down the cobbled streets of the city we ran, toward our house, to meet Father.
After dinner I went to visit Konrad, but he was already asleep, our unfinished game of chess still on the bedside table. With a sigh I sat down and looked at the board. Yesterday he’d actually dozed off, it had taken me so long to figure out my move. I examined the position of his pieces carefully, and almost at once understood his stratagem. It was very good. He would have me in three moves if I wasn’t careful.
I made the move for him, then turned the board round to take my own turn.
Hunched over in the chair, I played against myself—and I knew Konrad so well it was very much like playing him prop-erly—but suddenly the sadness of it struck me hard, and I realized how desperately I missed him, and how badly I wanted him to get out of that bed for good.
“We had a rather exciting day,” I whispered to his sleeping face.
I’d been longing to tell him since we got home from Geneva, but I knew it was best kept secret. Now, though, I could at least utter the words.
“I’ve got a great plan to gather the ingredients to the Elixir of Life, and once we’re done, you’ll be able to drink it.”
He shifted in his sleep, turned his head away, as though doubting me.
“I promise,” I said, kissing him on the forehead. “If no one else can make you better, I will.”
That night I woke suddenly with the dreadful sensation that someone was in my room.
Cautiously I peered through my bed curtains to see my chamber bathed in moonlight. Elizabeth stood before the window in her nightgown, gazing out over the lake.
“Elizabeth,” I said softly. “What’s the matter? Is it Konrad?”
At once I worried she’d come to bring me some terrible news, but she did not turn. She had not heard me at all.
In the moonlight her face was ghostly pale, her brow furrowed. She seemed to be holding something in her arms, and kept looking down at it anxiously.
“Elizabeth?”
No response. She was awake, yet asleep.
It was not the first time. When Elizabeth first came to our house as a small child, she sleepwalked. My parents would find her in the hallways, looking about her in confusion, or staring intently at some invisible view. Father said her mind was temporarily disordered by the great changes in her life and, even in sleep, it would not let her rest, and would make her walk the house in the early hours of morning, trying to puzzle things out. In time it would pass, he said.
Once, in those first few months, I awoke with a start, to find her body pressed against mine. Her thin arms encircled me tightly. She was shaking. I dared not wake her, for Father had said you must never wake someone who was sleepwalking. So I just lay very still. Gradually she stopped trembling, her breathing calmed, and we both fell asleep. In the morning she was most indignant to find herself in someone else’s bed, and woke me with a punch in the shoulder, before flouncing out of my room.
But that was many years ago, when we were little more than sev
en.
We were sixteen now, and I was almost afraid to approach her, for she seemed to emanate an eerie power. She was herself, and not herself, and it was like having a stranger in the room. I felt I ought to guide her gently back to her own bedchamber, if possible. Father had said the best thing to do with someone sleepwalking was to talk to them very calmly and matter-offactly.
“Elizabeth,” I said. “This way.”
When she turned to me, her face was stricken with anxiety. In her arms she cradled an old doll. I shivered, for her gaze seemed to look right through me, to someone just behind me.
“The baby’s not dead,” she said fiercely.
“No,” I said.
“She’s just cold.”
“Yes,” I said.
“She needs warming.” So urgent and penetrating was her gaze that for a moment I looked back at the doll, just to make sure it wasn’t real. “That’s all. Just a little warmth and she’ll be fine.”
“You are warming her right now,” I said soothingly. There was something so childlike and beseeching in her look that I felt my heart ache. “She will be wonderfully warm and happy soon.”
She looked down at the doll, kneading it with her hands. “Yes,” she said.
“You see,” I said. “The baby’s fine. I’m sure she just needs a good sleep. I’ll show you the way.”
I started walking toward my door, and checked to make sure she was following. I quickly lit a candle and made my way down the hallway to her bedchamber. The door was ajar. We went inside. I pointed at her bed, the sheets in a tangle.
“Here we are,” I said. “You and baby can rest here.”
“The bed will be warm,” she said.
“Of course.” I tried to smooth the sheets for her, but she lay down on them before I could finish, still clutching the baby. It was a good thing it wasn’t a real baby, for Elizabeth was lying on top of its head and torso. Her eyes were already closed and she was properly asleep. I found a blanket in her armoire and gently laid it over her. I looked at her for a moment, then left the bedchamber.
At breakfast Elizabeth said not a word about her sleepwalking. She remembered nothing, and I was not about to remind her.
CHAPTER FIVE
DR. MURNAU
THE FAMOUS DR. MURNAU FROM INGOLSTADT arrived at the château the following day.
I’d expected someone dignified and gray-haired who would emanate knowledge and quiet confidence. But this fellow was surprisingly young—he couldn’t have been more than thirty—and he looked like he needed a doctor himself. I don’t think I’d ever seen anyone so thin and pale. His fingers were positively skeletal. Behind his dusty spectacles his watery eyes appeared permanently startled.
He was to stay with us at least a week, and Father had given him one of the turret rooms, with an adjoining parlor to use as his surgery and laboratory. As his carriage was unloaded after breakfast, I counted no fewer than six trunks, no doubt filled with all sorts of chemicals and apparatus.
Father said Dr. Murnau had lectured at the finest universities and was widely thought the best, and most progressive, healer in Europe. If anyone could devise a cure for Konrad, it would be him.
He spent a full hour examining my brother, and the whole time Elizabeth and I paced the hallway outside—when we didn’t have our ears pressed to the door. When the doctor finally emerged, he actually gave a little jump of surprise when he saw us.
“So. What is your diagnosis, Doctor?” I asked.
“Oh, I’m afraid I don’t have one yet,” he said in a nasal voice.
I blinked in surprise and disappointment, for the other doctors had needed no more than twenty minutes to make their decisions.
“I’ll have to conduct many other examinations,” he said with a nervous smile. “After lunch I’ll bleed him. Now, if you’ll excuse—”
“He’s already been bled,” I said, thinking of the useless Dr. Bartonne.
“Yes, so I understand,” replied Dr. Murnau.
“It did no good,” Elizabeth added. “Only weakened him further.”
Dr. Murnau nodded so vigorously that his glasses slipped down his nose a bit, and he pushed them back with a bony finger. “Don’t worry. Listen, I know there are many doctors who put great store in bleeding, but I’m not one of them. It’s completely useless. You might as well—I don’t know—chant druidic incantations.” He gave a strange little titter of laughter. “But when I said I’d bleed your brother, I only meant I’m going to take some of his blood—to study.”
“Study?” Elizabeth said with a frown.
“Exactly.” He licked his lips. “Just a small quantity, mind you. Now, there’s some reading I really must do.”
And with an awkward bow he left us alone in the hallway.
“What do you make of him?” I asked Elizabeth.
“Apart from the fact he’s clearly insane?” she said.
“What can he learn from Konrad’s blood?” I wondered. “Except that he needs it in his body to live!”
“There is something ghoulish about it.”
“He’s like a vampire,” I said.
When I’d first heard about Dr. Murnau, I’d felt hopeful—and more than a bit foolish. This man had spent years of his life studying, practicing his discipline. And here I was, with books of alchemy, seeking out a legendary elixir of life.
But now that I knew of his outlandish plans—to study blood!—they seemed even more fantastical than any tome of ancient spells.
The next day we would return to Mr. Polidori, to see what success he’d had translating the Alphabet of the Magi.
“I have made progress,” Polidori said, ushering us into his musty parlor.
“That is excellent news!” said Elizabeth.
Once more the three of us had come into the city with Father and secretly made our way to Wollstonekraft Alley. Polidori had greeted us eagerly.
“So you were able to translate the alphabet?” I asked.
“It is a devious thing,” he replied, leading us to a table covered with books and parchments. “Not all the alphabet could be recovered. And it is no simple matter of substituting a letter of our own alphabet for each arcane symbol. No, no. It’s an ever-changing cipher, you see, and every twenty-six letters, the meaning of the symbols alters completely.”
“Good Lord,” exclaimed Henry, “then how can you discern the meaning of the next characters?”
The alchemist wagged a finger. “The clues, you see, are implanted in the previous transcription, and from there you must riddle out the rest. As you might imagine, this is time-consuming. And even when one has a small triumph, what is produced is an archaic form of Latin that necessitates a further translation—”
“But you have made progress,” I prompted.
“Oh, indeed. I have translated the preface.”
“Just the preface?” I said, and felt myself sag in disappointment. Why would he waste time with the preface? I never read prefaces. Skip the preface and move on to the meat of the thing! Curled near the hearth, Krake the lynx gave a low purr and stared at me, as though chiding me for my impatience.
“In the preface,” said Polidori, “there is important information. Agrippa tells us there are three ingredients.”
“Three is not so many,” said Elizabeth, sounding encouraged.
“And,” said Polidori, smiling at us, “just last night I discovered the first of them.”
“You have the first ingredient!” I cried in delight. “That truly is excellent news. Well done, sir! Do you have it here?”
“Unfortunately I do not, young master.”
“Do you need us to purchase it elsewhere?” Elizabeth asked helpfully.
“There is no apothecary that will sell this,” said Polidori. “Come, and I will show you.”
On the table a great volume lay open. “Here it is. Look,” he said, pointing to a colored engraving.
“It is a fungus, or lichen, of some sort,” I said.
“Very good,” s
aid Polidori. “A lichen. Usnea lunaria.”
“It is beautiful,” said Elizabeth.
The engraving had been rendered with painstaking detail. The lichen was a brownish-gray, its complicated filaments as delicate as lacework. I stared at the image a long time, trying to memorize its shape, color, and texture.
“It has healing properties, then?” Henry said.
“It is a toxin,” Polidori replied simply.
“A toxin?” Elizabeth said in alarm. “You mean a poison?”
“Yes, but a poison to destroy other poisons,” Polidori said. And then he must have seen the uncertain look on my face, for he added, “Healing is a complicated business. To heal, sometimes we must harm the body, but hope that the overall effect is beneficial.”
“It is true,” Henry said to me. “I remember your father saying arsenic was sometimes administered as a curative.”
“The dose is critical,” Polidori said. “And Agrippa is very specific about it. Let me worry about that. Right now our first task is to procure the lichen.”
“Where does it grow?” Elizabeth asked.
“It is a tree lichen,” said Polidori. “I once collected it myself, but”—he waved a hand at his withered legs—“that is no longer possible.”
“Where do we find it?” I asked.
“We are most fortunate. It can be found not half a day’s ride from here. Throughout the year it migrates across the trunks of the tree to follow the moon. Not surprisingly, it grows at the summit of only the tallest trees.”
“The tallest trees are in the Sturmwald,” I said.
I knew the forest well, since it rose from the steep hills behind our château in Bellerive. The trees that tended to thrive there were strong, for in winter they were racked by terrible winds. Some had reached great heights, and were said to have been growing since before the time of Christ.
“I have here a map,” said Polidori, producing a piece of paper so many times folded that it was almost in tatters. “I kept it, you see, in case I ever had need of the lichen again. You will see here some landmarks to help you on your way. On the actual tree where I found the lichen, I cut a blaze in the bark, but there is no guarantee it will still be seen. It was many years ago, before I lost the use of my legs.”
This Dark Endeavor Page 8