This Dark Endeavor

by Kenneth Oppel

  “Victor, your arm!” I looked to see the bloom of blood on my shirt.

  “A small wound, really,” I said, glad of the chance to appear brave before Elizabeth.

  “We must call for Dr. Lesage,” Mother said.

  “We won’t be able to reach him until morning,” said Father. “I will tend to it.” To Schultz, our butler, he said, “Konrad and Elizabeth will need warm baths drawn at once. Give them each a small glass of brandy. And have bed warmers between their sheets, please.”

  “Very good, Master Frankenstein,” said Schultz.

  I watched as my brother and Elizabeth were led off, as meekly as little children, to their separate baths.

  My father turned to me. “Come to my study.”

  Mother made to accompany us, but my father caught her eye and shook his head. Inside his study he sat me at the great oak desk and told me to remove my shirt. I did so, and he unwound the bandages.

  “You have been bitten,” he said calmly.

  I cleared my throat. “Yes,” I said. “It was a fish. A large one.”

  Father took a small valise from a cupboard and withdrew from it a clean white cloth, which he spread over the desk. Next he set out bundles of cotton batting, a packet of needles, and a spool of thread. I always knew that Father’s knowledge was impressive but had not known he was also capable of simple surgery.

  At the side table he filled a tumbler with brandy, and then placed it on the desk near me.

  “You may wish to fortify yourself,” he said.

  “I am fine,” I said, my mouth dry.

  “Very well. Hold out your arm.” He took a clear flask, unstoppered it, and poured a small amount of liquid directly into each of my wounds. It was worse than being bitten. The pain pierced my arm through and through, and I cried out.

  “Alcohol to disinfect,” my father said, “before we suture.” He started to thread a needle. “What possessed you to go underground?”

  “Underground?” I croaked, truly surprised.

  “I glanced inside your saddlebags,” he said, “and found a lantern and a flask of oil.”

  What a fool I’d been. I composed my answer carefully. “We’d heard tales that there was a pool beneath the earth where we might see a coelacanth.”

  “Are they not extinct?” my father asked, and inserted the needle into my flesh. I winced but kept myself from crying out.

  “No,” I grunted as the needle crisscrossed my wound. “They live … in the lake bottom and … spend their days in underground pools.”

  “And you were bitten while attempting to catch it?”

  I exhaled. “Yes, Father.”

  He made another two stitches, closing the first wound, and then tied off the threads and snipped them short with scissors.

  The room swam briefly before me. My father turned my arm so he could work on the second bite.

  “It was very foolish,” I said, hoping to distract him from his calm course of questioning. “I promise I will never enter those caves again. I am very sorry.”

  “Why did you try to catch the fish?” Father asked.

  “To catch such a rare thing—” I groaned. “We thought it would be remarkable.”

  “It seems,” said my father, “that you meant to explore these caves all along.”

  I said nothing. I could not think clearly. The pain was mounting, and my guilt with it. I wondered if Elizabeth and Konrad were undergoing a similar interrogation by my mother. At least they weren’t having their rent flesh sewn together. They should have been able to keep silent. I reached for the brandy, but my father moved it beyond my grasp.

  “Yes, it was planned all along, Father.”

  “You deliberately misled your mother and me.”

  I whimpered as the needle entered my flesh yet again. “Father, the pain is …” I reached out for the brandy, but once more he withheld it.

  “You have also visited the Dark Library again.”

  I said nothing.

  “Yes or no, Victor?”

  “Yes, I did,” I said faintly. “How did you know?”

  “Footsteps in the dust. Books shelved in different places. It’s unlike you to deceive, Victor. And I can’t help wondering if these two deceptions—your forbidden visit to the library and your expedition today—are connected in some way.”

  Why had I thought I could fool him? He was one of the cleverest men in the republic, a magistrate who judged truth from lie in his daily work.

  “Are they connected, Victor?”

  I had no more fight left. I nodded. He pushed the brandy toward me, and I greedily drained the tumbler. The burn in my throat temporarily obliterated the pain.

  Father finished the last stitch and looked up. “Now I want to know why you did these things.”

  “It was my idea from the start,” I said quickly. Even in my suffering I was eager to take full credit for the enterprise—and also to control the story. “When Konrad was ill, and none of the doctors seemed to know how to cure him, we found a recipe for an elixir of life and decided it might be his only hope. So we set about searching for the ingredients.”

  Father’s face darkened. “Did you hear nothing of what I told you in the Dark Library? You disobeyed me to pursue some childish fancy!”

  He brought his fist down on the desk and I jumped, but the violence of his gesture sparked my own anger. I was being treated like a criminal. Interrogated. Tortured.

  “You’re wrong! It wasn’t childish! The vision of the wolf. The flameless fire! I made them both, and they worked!”

  I regretted my outburst immediately. Father’s eyebrows contracted and he sat forward in his chair.

  “You have been working alchemy?” he asked with disconcerting calm.

  “Only to help us find the elixir’s ingredients.”

  “And whose miraculous recipe have you been following? Master Caligula’s? Eclecti’s?”

  “Agrippa’s,” I told him.

  He shook his head. “No. You are not being honest. That recipe cannot be made.”

  “You seem to know a lot about it,” I countered, then said, lying only a little, “We found a translation of the Magi’s Alphabet.”

  “It has been lost!”

  “We found one. Surely you cannot have read every single book in the Dark Library!”

  This was a gamble, I knew. I saw my father bristle, but then he reigned in his temper.

  “Victor, you have no idea the danger these elixirs pose. They are not proper cures!”

  “Like Dr. Murnau’s?” I blurted.

  He looked at me, silent.

  “Konrad told me,” I said. “We have no secrets. But you’re keeping one from Mother. His illness might return.”

  Father seemed weary suddenly. “There is a small chance.”

  “And next time it might kill him! How can you sit back and do nothing? How can you trust Dr. Murnau’s guesswork, and no one else’s? Why not Agrippa’s? There are accounts of its successes—”

  “Don’t be absurd,” said Father. “Dr. Murnau’s methods are informed by centuries of proper scientific learning.”

  At that moment we were interrupted as the door to the study opened, and Elizabeth and Konrad, warmly robed, were ushered in by my mother.

  “They wanted to see how you were,” Mother said to me.

  “The patient will survive,” Father said.

  Konrad was studying me, no doubt wondering how much of our adventure I’d revealed. I felt ashamed. I’d crumpled under Father’s interrogation. I’d not told him everything—but too much.

  “It seems,” Father said to our mother, “that the children have been trying to gather the ingredients for an alchemical potion. An elixir of life, no less.”

  The look of sheer surprise on Mother’s face told me that Konrad and Elizabeth had confessed very little.

  “You said you’d gotten lost exploring the caves!” she exclaimed, seeming genuinely hurt. “How long has this been going on?”

  “Since Kon
rad got ill,” Elizabeth murmured. “We wanted to cure him.”

  Mother frowned. “But why would you persist with this even after Dr. Murnau cured him?”

  From the corner of my eye I saw my father and brother exchange a glance, as if reminding each other of the secret they kept.

  “An elixir of life would be a glorious thing to have,” Konrad said smoothly. “I confess I couldn’t resist the sheer adventure of it.”

  “You must abandon this dark endeavor,” my father said firmly. “It is finished. Is that clear?”

  “Yes,” Konrad and Elizabeth said.

  “Victor, I don’t believe I heard you.”

  “Yes,” I muttered.

  “You’ve put your lives in peril. You might easily have been killed in those caves. And you should know this as well. Not only is the practice of alchemy fruitless, it is also illegal in our republic. You were unaware of this, no doubt.”

  I nodded, truly surprised. I remembered Polidori telling us he’d personally been forbidden from the alchemical arts, but I hadn’t realized it was considered a crime.

  “Some years ago,” Father went on, “we tried an alchemist who had been administering a certain miraculous elixir. People paid for it eagerly and willingly drank it. Some of them were made sicker; one died. To prevent further tragedies, the other magistrates and I decided to pass a law making it illegal to profit from, or administer, alchemical medicines.”

  “We did not know that,” murmured Elizabeth contritely.

  “I cannot have my own children daring the laws of the land,” he said.

  “No, Father,” said Konrad.

  “And while I admire the selflessness and love that inspired your actions,” said Father, “I’m very disappointed by how you’ve deceived your mother and me.”

  I looked at him coldly, and thought he was a hypocrite. Was not he being dishonest with Mother, by not telling her the truth about Konrad’s illness?

  “I’m placing you three under house arrest for the next two weeks. No riding. No boating. Your footsteps will not tread beyond the inner yard. You will receive no visitors.”

  “Not even Henry?” I cried.

  “Especially not Henry,” Father snapped. “He was one of your accomplices!”

  “He didn’t really do much,” I muttered, and Konrad could not suppress a laugh.

  “He was very good at staying behind,” said Elizabeth, biting back a smile, “on account of his acute imagination.”

  And then the three of us fell into a violent fit of giggling, despite our exhaustion—and the prospect of being imprisoned for the next two weeks.

  “We must somehow get a message to Polidori,” I said quietly.

  We had slept deep into the morning and after a late breakfast the three of us had met in the ballroom, where we could stand outside on the balcony and see the glorious summer, forbidden us for two weeks.

  “We need to make sure he got the coelacanth head from Henry—and that he knows we won’t be visiting for a fortnight.”

  I was very worried what Henry might have told the alchemist; I didn’t want Polidori to think we’d exposed him, or given up on our plan.

  Konrad exhaled. “Victor, we promised to end our adventure.”

  I looked at him in surprise. “Yes, but we were lying.”

  He glanced at Elizabeth, as though they’d already discussed this without me.

  “Perhaps ending it is for the best,” she said.

  “How is it for the best?” I demanded.

  “We might have died, Victor,” she said in astonishment.

  “Yes, I know. I was very nearly inhaled by a fish. But we can’t give up now. We have only a single ingredient left to find! Konrad, it was you who wanted to continue.”

  “I regret it now. I’m of Father’s opinion. We are chasing a mirage. There is no proof these alchemical cures work.”

  Elizabeth nodded, and I stared at her in astonishment. “You saw that book move; you smelled its blood!”

  “I don’t know what I saw or smelled anymore.”

  “Did you not say the room was bathed in red lamplight?” Konrad asked her. “That might have created the effect of—”

  “You were not there,” I reminded him pointedly. “If you had been, you would’ve felt the power of the book, and Polidori—like Elizabeth and me.”

  “I find it curious,” said Elizabeth, turning to me, “that you can’t believe in God but are more than willing to believe in alchemical wonders.”

  “The vision of the wolf. The flameless fire. They may be wonders, but they’re real. It is just science by another name.”

  Konrad sniffed. “Father doesn’t think so.”

  “Right now,” said Elizabeth, “I am extremely grateful to be alive. And I think we should put the whole matter in God’s hands.”

  Konrad gave a little nod.

  “Has she converted you, then?” I asked. “You never believed in God.”

  “She is very persuasive,” Konrad said, smiling, and Elizabeth flushed as they looked at each other fondly.

  “And he’s converted you, too,” I said to her, disguising my jealous pain with anger. “You were so brave on our adventures, and now you cowardly want to surrender.”

  She would not meet my eye. “We see things differently, Victor.”

  “Well,” I said, “I prefer to take some action. But if you wish to lie about and hope for miracles, go ahead.”

  “Victor, you have already risked your life for me,” said Konrad kindly. “I cannot imagine a greater show of brotherly love. I’ll never forget this. But I am asking you now to stop.”

  “But—,” I began, only to have him interrupt me.

  “Surely my say should count the more,” he said. “It’s my life. And I say stop. Truly, let’s leave this behind us.”

  I did not know how to reply.

  I woke the following morning to an unexpected feeling of well-being.

  When I parted the curtains, warm sunlight doused me. I opened the window to the trill of birdsong and an intoxicatingly warm breeze. The lake sparkled. It seemed the whole world was before me, and it was truly beautiful, and beckoning me to return to it. I was alive.

  I took a deep breath. These past weeks, during Konrad’s illness, my mind—awake and dreaming—had been filled with dread and cobwebs and darkness. I wanted the sun to burn them all away.

  And I could not but wonder …

  Maybe Konrad and Elizabeth were right, and it was best to abandon our dangerous and uncertain quest.

  As far as prisons went, the château was a pleasant and roomy one, but it was still a prison. The lake and meadows we’d taken for granted all our lives now seemed to beckon from the windows and balconies with excruciating intensity.

  Father was not a sadistic jailer. Though he refused to shorten our sentence (despite my best arguments), over the next five days he did try to distract us with entertaining stories about far-flung countries, and the bloody histories of famous battles that he knew Konrad and I had always craved when younger. He shared with us the news he received from abroad, where France heaved with revolution. A whole new world was being forged beyond the mountains, but within the walls of Château Frankenstein, nothing changed.

  He’d done something to the library’s secret door so it would not open. Clearly he no longer trusted our promises.

  Mother was very happy. She thought Konrad healed, and she had all her children under her roof day and night.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  KEEPER OF SECRETS

  A FEW NIGHTS LATER I WOKE FROM A DREAM SO TERRIBLE that it shimmered darkly before me, even as I sat up in bed, panting.

  Konrad was dead and laid out in his coffin, the hue of bodily corruption already on his flesh. I stood at his head, peering down at him. Behind me I could hear the weeping of my family. A huge fury stirred inside me.

  And suddenly the coffin was no longer a coffin but a laboratory table.

  Over Konrad’s body I spoke words of power, and ap
plied unguents and strange machines to his limbs, his chest, his skull.

  And then I gave a great cry, and energy erupted from within me and arced like lightning from my body to his.

  His hand twitched. His head stirred. His eyes opened and looked at me.

  I lit a candle and paced my room. Sleep was impossible after such a vision. What was its meaning? I did not believe in augury, but the dream’s urgency was hard to ignore. Would Konrad sicken and die unless … unless we took action once more? Was it within my power to save him?

  Restlessly I went to my desk and from a hidden cupboard drew out Eisenstein’s slim green volume. Father thought all alchemy nonsense, yet at least some of it worked. It had given me the vision of the wolf, and a flameless fire to escape the depths. It had helped Polidori resurrect text from a burned tome, and make Krake preternaturally intelligent.

  Why couldn’t this same well of knowledge produce an elixir of life?

  Idly I paged through the book, looking at the headings. They did not seem so unlike the natural sciences Father taught us at our lessons—

  I stopped.

  Upon the page was written “Transmutation of base metals to gold.” It was not the luster of this promise that caught my attention, but the handwriting in the book’s margins. It was distinctive and unmistakable—for it was my father’s.

  I gripped the book closer, my eyes flying over my father’s calculations, his detailed annotations on performing the procedure.

  Liar.

  The man I had admired all my life, whose every word I had trusted, was a liar. The secret he kept from Mother was one thing—a small deceit done to protect her from worry. But this was altogether different. He had barred us from the Dark Library, told us that alchemy was nothing but nonsense. And all the time he himself knew its power.

  He had turned lead into gold!

  So why had he forbidden us from making the Elixir of Life even though it might one day save the life of his own son? I didn’t understand.

  I forced myself to take a breath, and as my pulse slowed, I knew my course of action. I wouldn’t allow myself to be distracted any longer.

  Just one ingredient left.

  Just one more, and the elixir would be mine.