The Doll Factory

by Elizabeth Macneal

  ‘Write me the letter,’ he says, once he has set her upright and removed her gag, and he is agitated, his fists white. But he is here, and that is something. It must have been over a day since he last came. Her throat is dry from thirst, her stomach barks for food. Her tongue sits heavy in her mouth.

  She thinks, Silas’s hand on my clavicle . . .

  She thinks, The rats which squabble on the floor . . .

  She thinks, Escape. Escape. Escape. If I escape, I will find Louis and believe him when he says he loves me, and embrace Rose and pay for an education for Albie . . .

  Silas holds out a paper and quill. ‘All I need you to do is write to him. If only you weren’t so disobedient!’

  She tries to speak, but her thirst makes her croak. ‘I – will do it.’

  ‘What?’ His eyes snap on her, in surprise and disbelief.

  ‘I will pen your – your blasted letter.’

  ‘Iris, dearest. Don’t use such foul language.’

  And she grits her teeth. ‘I will do it, but only if you loosen my bindings and bring me food and water.’

  He pauses for a moment, and she can tell by his sneer that he’s considering teasing her. But he sighs and does as she asks, presenting her with the metal dish. She will not look at him as she laps at the cloudy liquid – and she feels a sudden hatred for Louis. Where is he? Why hasn’t he come?

  When he unloops her right arm from the restraints, his clammy palm brushing hers, she cries out. She rotates the wrist, the joint clicking.

  He gives her a pen, but when she tries to write, her hand will not grip it. She sighs, and then in a burst of temper hurls it across the room.

  ‘Shhh, shhh,’ he soothes her, picking it up again. ‘Is my patience not boundless? Take your time.’

  And he recites the words that she must write, the lies that must spill from the nib.

  When she is finished, he snatches the paper from her.

  She hopes the reference to Guigemar will be enough. She only ever calls him Guigemar as a jest, so he will be startled by it, puzzled. From there, she hopes, he will understand that it is a signal to him that she is trapped, that, like the Queen in his painting, he must rescue her. It is her only chance, a gamble. But what if he believes the letter, believes she no longer wants to hear from him?

  Iris coughs, and her chest smarts. This damp room, with its dripping ceiling and dank walls – how she longs to escape, to free her limbs, to run – to see daylight and the green expanse of Hyde Park.

  ‘D-ear . . .’ Silas reads, and then he stops. He peers closer. He raps the paper, creasing it in front of her face. Iris flinches.

  ‘What is this?’ he demands. ‘Gu-Gug-e-mar?’

  ‘It’s what I call him. I never call him Louis. If I wrote “Louis” he would know it wasn’t me.’

  ‘You’re lying.’

  ‘I’m not,’ she insists. ‘I’m not. I call him that – Guigemar. It’s my name for him—’

  ‘You’re lying,’ he says again, and he is shouting now. He crumples the letter. ‘You’re a liar. You’re a little liar. You’re nothing but a filthy beast, an animal. I just wanted to love you and I’ve tried—’

  ‘I’m an animal? Me?’ Iris screams, her temper matching his. ‘I’m not the monster who locked me up here, who tricked me—’

  ‘You wanted me to.’

  ‘Wanted you to? You’re a deluded – a deluded devil of a man! I hate you. I hate you with every ounce of my being, every last breath in my body. You’re pathetic. It’s little wonder you have no companions, that you’re all alone—’

  ‘Silence!’ he shouts.

  ‘It’s why your mother loathed you. She saw what a wicked, ugly soul you had.’ The words flow out of her, unstoppable, a black tide of vitriol that she has bottled for the last – how long? Week? Fortnight? A mere few days? And where is Louis? Why doesn’t he come?

  ‘Silence!’ he bellows again, and she sees him scrabbling in his pocket, and she knows what is coming next – the rag. She does not want it, but still the words pour – she knows she should be quiet, because she fears him too, but her temper is up.

  ‘I won’t love you, never. I’ll do nothing but hate you – hate you even more than your mother did!’ She hawks, turns over a lump of phlegm, arcs her neck, and spits in his face, relishing the sight of it sliding down his cheek.

  After that, he rocks the chair, knocks her to the ground, and his hands are on her throat. She tries to splutter, to cry out, to moan, but she can’t. The only sound she makes is that of a choking cat.

  Glass Eyes

  It has been two days since Silas visited Iris. He awoke as if from a reverie – his fingers on her throat, the chk-chk-chk as she reached for air – and he stumbled back. He pulled her chair upright, her broken rasp for breath a rebuke in his ears. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ he muttered, ‘but you shouldn’t have – you shouldn’t have angered me.’ She retched then, and he mopped the yellow string of vomit with such tenderness. ‘There, there, see how I care for you,’ he said, and replaced the gag, and faltered from her, up the rungs of the ladder. Her eyes were wild and bloodshot, flitting from side to side. And her whimper! He crammed her letter into the dresser drawer, determined not to see it again.

  Silas has not forgotten her look and the sound she made. It has been enough to keep him away from her for two days. Besides, he has been busy: scanning the newspapers each morning, trying to scout out Albie, and preparing the mouse. It is what he is working on now, stuffing the crown with cotton, matching up the black beads to the eye sockets, nudging the cloth into the corners of its limbs.

  The work calms him. Before long, the mouse starts to fill out, to resemble itself when he pulled it from the trap.

  He tries not to worry about Bluebell. There have been no more enquiries, no articles in the newspaper. After all, they have no evidence except the crazed suspicions of a hysteric. The Madame must have had something meaty to dangle over that peeler – perhaps he was one of the Dolphin’s less salubrious regulars – to overcome the clear scepticism which he betrayed in a single glance. The constable can’t have been serious in his questioning. If they really suspected Silas, they would have ransacked his shop, dragged him off to the cells.

  Silas holds his concentration, twisting the wire down into the tail. He’s sure he won’t hear anything more about Bluebell. But what would have happened if the constable wasn’t satisfied with his story about the trapped kitten? What if he pushed in, saw the knife behind Silas’s back, and found her in the cellar? Silas has been so careful to cover his tracks, to sweep behind him for footsteps, but it only takes a foolish lapse like that, a prying voice at the door, for everything to be ruined. And won’t Louis return soon and find Iris missing?

  He mops his brow and positions the mouse upright. It is not his finest work, but he tries to stitch the incision closed. His hands will not do as he commands, and he jabs at the fur, digging too far, his needlework ragged and uneven. He sighs. What is happening to him? Usually each piece is an improvement on the one before.

  In order to mollify the souring turn of his mind, to reassure himself that he is being too critical of his own abilities, he hurries upstairs, to where the mice are laid out on the shelves. He counts them: thirteen. A baker’s dozen. He picks up the creature he made most recently, brown fur with the pink feather. He examines the stitching, admires its neat zigzags. How finely made it was! And the first mouse he ever stuffed – smaller than the others, holding a plate with the patch of ginger pelt glued to its scalp. That was made at the beginning when he was inexpert, and her body bags a little, her head overfilled and the fur stretched.

  Perhaps his new mouse is not as badly made as he thought. He returns to his desk and picks it up – but it is all wrong. The wire has not reached to the ends of the paws, and the stuffing is unevenly dispersed. The trip upstairs has done little to calm him.

  You liar, devil of a man, Starey Silas, lopsided gait – all these people have mocked him, hated him,
bullied him – he slams his fist on to the table, yanks back his chair and resolves to visit her.

  Currant Bun

  Hands on her collarbone, breath on her neck – Louis? Silas? Or merely her imagination? Louis rises before her, a desperate mirage – his hair curling at the nape, his smile. He tells her that Guinevere has built a palace for her, and he leads her through the house to a yawning bright studio, each wall made up of thousands of panes of glass, a raised dais for her models to sprawl on – but then the floor falls away and she finds herself in black dankness, and Louis’s face shifts into Silas’s – she begs him to come back, not to leave her, but it is too late. There is a hand pawing at her clavicle, and it is the marble hand from the British Museum, with its grasping stone fingers—

  ‘Louis,’ she croaks. ‘My darling – my darling.’ And then, ‘Water.’ The glass is wet against her lips. She drinks and drinks. It spills down her front, chilling her. There is a currant bun too, shiny with sugar glaze, which Silas balls into smaller pieces and feeds to her.

  ‘More,’ she says, even though her stomach seizes, because she doesn’t know how long he will leave her next time. What if he stops coming, and leaves her to starve? What if he is detained somewhere, or killed? Nobody would know about her trapped here. ‘More.’

  Another bun, eaten greedily.

  ‘I was so lonely before you came,’ Silas says, and her head thunders.

  ‘Please let me go,’ she says. She has lost count of how many times she has said these words. ‘Please let me go. I won’t tell anyone about you – I’ll pretend I went away.’

  ‘Liar,’ he says, but his voice is not unkind.

  ‘Please,’ she begs, and the tears drip off her nose and chin. ‘Please, Silas. I’m a girl, a person like you, not a specimen, not an animal – please.’

  ‘I wanted you to be my friend,’ he says. ‘I wanted it so much, and you ignored me.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she says, through her sobs and her rattling cough. Her body feels damp with fever. She must keep him close to her, make sure he visits her again soon with food and water. ‘You’re my friend. You are, aren’t you?’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘I’m telling the truth,’ she presses, and then, ‘Will you ever let me go? Will you?’

  Silence.

  ‘I’d visit you – I’d still be your friend – we could go and see the Exhibition together.’

  ‘But you didn’t before.’

  ‘I know you now! I know you – if you’d only let me go, you’d see how I wanted to be your friend, how I meant it, how . . .’ On she prattles, her words echoing each other, repeating, ever repeating, friend, friend, friend, and he sits there, clasping hold of himself with his arms.

  ‘Tell me about yourself,’ he says.

  ‘I’ll tell you next time,’ she says. Please let there be a next time. ‘If you bring me a hot pie and some milk and beef tea—’

  Her words are cut short by the wheeze of a bell in the corner of the room. Silas leaps to his feet.

  Iris starts to scream, but her throat croaks and the sound is scratchy, far from the clear shrieks from a few days ago. Before she can gulp for more air, he has the handkerchief with the strange liquid on it and he holds it to her face.

  She rears and rams him with her head, trying to shake free, to raise her voice over the piece of fabric braced over her nose and mouth.

  The bell rings again, and she struggles and struggles.

  Stay awake, Iris, she tells herself. Do not let the world fade. This is another chance – another glimmer. Do not let the world fade – the roar of crowds at Queen Victoria’s marriage – the horsehair mattress – the boy under the cart and his sister’s distress – a dab of colour on the canvas – a brush poised, needle-fine – the iris Rose brought – the niche below Louis’s shoulder, carved out for her head to rest on – Louis Louis Louis Louis—

  Bell Pull

  The ringing of the bell startled Silas from his reverie. He believed Iris for a moment, trusted that she truly wanted to be his friend, was his friend, and he genuinely toyed with the idea of releasing her. He could, after all. He could bask in the knowledge of his own generosity and her gratitude to him. In time, she could comfort him by bringing him food, sitting with him while he worked on his specimens. He could open the shop again – because it is not long until the landlord will demand the overdue rent, and then what will happen?

  But when her screams filled the cellar, he knew that she was dissembling. If he released her, she would call the constable, and everything would unravel.

  He stares at her for a moment, head rolled forward. The bell peals again, more insistent, and the knocking is unremitting. If it is Madame and the peeler back again, and they burst in before he has a chance to leave Iris, they will see the trapdoor open – his hands slide on the rungs in his impatience to climb into the shop. He hauls the cabinet over the cellar entrance, hastens to unbolt the main door. It can only be Madame. Nobody else is this persistent.

  ‘What is it?’ Silas demands.

  But it isn’t Madame on the threshold.

  It is that bastard, Louis. Rose stands next to him, as ugly as a purple-skinned sow.

  Silas flinches, readying himself for the punch, for the end.

  But the man does not hurl him to one side, does not barrel into the shop and run down to Iris. Silas grips the door frame. That means that Louis cannot know – if he did, wouldn’t he have the constable with him, or at least a gang of his friends, determined to take the law into their own hands? Silas must act as normally as he can, avoid chasing him away or rousing any form of suspicion. He tries to distort his mouth into a smile, but he merely grimaces, baring his teeth in a slight snarl.

  ‘Can I – be of service?’ Silas asks. His voice is unsteady, the forced joviality grating. How long does he have until Iris revives from the chloroform? Five minutes? If Louis hears her struggle, he won’t be appeased by the kitten story – his heart flits, a canary knocking against the walls of its cage. ‘Are you here for another specimen? Another dove, perhaps, or a cat?’

  He thinks his guilt must be written all over his face.

  ‘Where is Iris?’ Louis demands, and Rose narrows her good eye at him.

  Silas cringes, but he reminds himself that they know nothing. Their suspicions have no foundation.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ Silas says.

  ‘Is she here?’ Louis demands. ‘Do you have her?’

  ‘She told Louis you seized her wrist,’ Rose says, over him. ‘And you came to her lodgings, and now she’s left without a trace. Where is she?’

  She’s left. Not she’s been snatched or she’s disappeared. Silas treasures this hint of their true belief, but still, he can scarcely breathe. ‘Oh, she’s inside, of course – having tea,’ he says, through the treacle of his fear. He barks a false laugh.

  Louis looks one way, then another. He runs a hand through his curls, and Silas wishes he had his poniard with him, could press Louis against the wall and hammer each breath out of him. What a fool, what a pup!

  ‘You’re very welcome to step inside,’ Silas says, ‘though heaven knows what you’re expecting to find.’

  He glances behind him, sees his knife on the dresser where he left it.

  Louis peers into the gloom, as if afraid that crossing the threshold will be the beginning of a descent to lunacy. Silas expects him to refuse, but instead Louis says, ‘Well, if you wouldn’t object,’ and Louis and Rose shove past him.

  ‘Go on – why don’t you search the bureau drawers for her too?’ Silas says, subduing the panic which grips him. ‘Come out, dearest!’

  He slips the knife into his pocket.

  Louis says nothing, just peers around the exhibits and then – the indignity of it – starts to climb the stairs to Silas’s chamber.

  ‘I must insist that this quite oversteps . . .’ but Louis ignores him. The pocked wench scowls, and he finds himself mesmerized by a crater on her cheek, wondering whe
ther her skin would still retain that dimpled quality if it were pulled free of her skull and spread flat.

  ‘What can you mean, that she’s left?’ Silas asks, and a thought occurs to him. He turns his back to Rose, and rifles through a drawer, tears a slip of paper and puts it in his pocket.

  ‘Gone,’ Louis says. ‘No note, no word, nothing.’ Silas is relieved to see him downstairs again, an expression of sheepish unease on his face.

  ‘You didn’t find her hiding under my bed?’

  ‘It isn’t at all amusing,’ Rose snaps. ‘My sister is missing and we will find her. It isn’t regular.’

  ‘Damned right it isn’t amusing,’ Louis says, and his face is even paler than usual. ‘If you think you can make light of it, when you – when Albie warned me about you – and Iris – you attacked her, unsettled her. And then mere weeks after you accosted her, I return from Edinburgh to find she has vanished entirely – it is most out of character.’

  Silas recalls the averted kiss, the final stamp of hostility as Louis’s cab creaked along the straw-strewn road.

  ‘Can there have been any cause for it? A quarrel, perhaps?’

  ‘That is beside the point,’ Louis says, but Silas reads the wavering in his voice. ‘And Albie – he said you were watching her.’

  ‘Albie?’ Silas asks, and he plucks at a strand of hair. Albie the loose end, the imp – it would take just a breath from the boy to betray him, for it all to be ruined, and could Albie have confided what he knows to Louis, risked his sister?

  ‘Albie was killed,’ Louis says, quite flatly.

  ‘Killed?’ Silas repeats.

  ‘By a cart. His sister came to me. I’ve employed her as my housemaid, and she told me all about Albie’s loathing of you.’

  That vile urchin – an outright traitor when Silas showed him nothing but kindness! He mustn’t dwell on it: instead, he must concentrate on evicting them from his shop. He must enact his plan, sketchy though it is. And if it doesn’t work or Iris wakes . . . He runs his finger along the edge of the blade, feeling the slice against his thumb. He will conquer by surprise, slit that man from gizzard to groin, and cut Rose’s throat in an instant.