European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman (The Extraordinary Adventures of the Athena Club Book 2)

by Theodora Goss

  When they were completely out of sight of the schloss, Carmilla slowed down just a little. Mary was grateful. She felt sick from the motion and noise. She looked over at Justine, who seemed pale but resolute.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “If in the future everyone travels in motorcars,” said Justine, “I would prefer not to live that long.”

  MARY: But you probably will, you know. Among all of us, you’re actually the most likely to live that long.

  JUSTINE: I would rather not think about that.

  Since most of my readers have never ridden in a motorcar, or perhaps even seen one, I should describe how it felt to Mary and Justine to ride in one through the Styrian countryside.

  DIANA: Hey, what about me?

  CATHERINE: I imagine to you, it was just one glorious rush. You like that sort of thing! If anyone ever builds a genuine flying machine, you’ll be the first to go up.

  DIANA: Damn right, I would! Wouldn’t it be glorious to fly through the air like a bird?

  JUSTINE: Or Icarus.

  Riding in a motorcar is nothing at all like riding in a carriage, or even a charabanc. Instead of the clop-clop of horses’ hooves, there is the steady roar of the motor. You are moving so fast that you cannot examine the countryside at your leisure: forests, fields, lakes all flash by you, as they do when you’re in a train. But in a train, you can stand up and walk along the corridor, have a conversation with your companions. None of that is possible in a motorcar. And the motion is more like a carriage than a train. By the end of several hours, Mary felt so tumbled about that she did not know if she would be able to walk when the vehicle stopped. Her buttocks were aching.

  MARY: Could you please keep my anatomy out of your book? I don’t know why you insist on referring to the baser aspects of life.

  CATHERINE: Because it’s funny? Particularly when it’s you. . . . Oh, all right, I’ll take it out before publication, I promise. You will stride through the book buttockless, like one of the angels.

  DIANA: If angels don’t have buttocks, what do they sit on?

  CATHERINE: Their faith in God?

  MARY: That doesn’t even begin to make sense. Plus, I’m pretty sure it’s blasphemous.

  They stopped around noon in a meadow and had lunch out of a basket under the watchful eyes of several cows. Carmilla fed Lucinda again with her own blood. Mary looked away—although she had fed Lucinda herself, she found the sight disturbing, particularly since it produced no change in Lucinda’s condition. She remained comatose, and slumped against Mary when she got back into the motorcar.

  They were out of the forest now, motoring through farmland and sometimes even villages, where their passage would be met with cries and consternation, mothers snatching their children out of the way and startled chickens fluttering to the side of the road. Once, Mary caught a glimpse of an old woman in a kerchief crossing herself. She sympathized with the impulse. No matter how much Carmilla slowed down as they neared a village, the passage of a motorcar must have looked, to these farmers and their wives, like the advent of some mythological beast—a squat black dragon, a metallic ogre.

  They broke down once, and Carmilla spent an hour repairing something underneath. Diana handed her various tools, while the rest of them sat by the side of the road eating whatever was left in the basket and swatting away midges. Mary saved some rolls and the end of a salami for Diana, knowing there would be complaints otherwise. It was mid-afternoon, and hot. She worried about Lucinda, who was still lying in the motorcar, wrapped in a blanket, but when she went to check Lucinda’s temperature, her skin was as cool as though she’d been sitting in an icebox. Laura and Justine were talking Austro-Hungarian politics, which was as boring, she thought, as British politics. But she was glad to hear Justine talking—she had been so quiet during the drive, and Mary worried that their conversation last night had made her uncomfortable or perhaps even angry, although when did Justine ever get angry? But she and Laura seemed to be having a very pleasant discussion about something or other that had happened in the last century, probably a war of some sort. Mary was tired and numb from riding in the motorcar for hours at a time, so she just stared at the fields around them and the distant mountains. Finally Carmilla emerged from beneath the motorcar, covered with dust. There was a streak of black oil across her left cheek, but the engine was running again.

  Even with the delay, by nightfall they were in the suburbs of a large city. Cottages surrounded by small gardens turned into apartment houses with shops on the street level. They did not look like the gray buildings of London, or even the brighter ones of Vienna, but were painted in various colors—pale yellow, sage green, a sort of burnt sienna, sky blue.

  “How beautiful!” said Justine. They had slowed down enough so she could peer out the window and examine the buildings closely—indeed, they were at that moment stopped behind a cart. How strange it was to be in city traffic again! Noisy, odiferous—yet Mary realized that she had missed it. She was a city girl, after all. As they drove along a broad avenue, the street lamps were being lit, pedestrians were bustling along—men from offices or factories, no doubt, and women from working in shops or private houses, going home to prepare dinner, too sophisticated to take much notice of a motorcar, although they got some curious looks. Home! She missed London and 11 Park Terrace. What were Catherine, Beatrice, Alice, and Mrs. Poole doing now? Probably sitting down to their dinners. She glanced at her wristwatch and mentally subtracted an hour for Greenwich time. Yes, safe at home, eating their dinners in the dining room—or drinking weed tea, in Beatrice’s case. Thank goodness they were all together and safe, not here in a foreign country where she could not even read the street signs, with Lucinda Van Helsing sleeping on her shoulder! She was about to say so to Justine, but the Giantess had also dozed off. Ah well.

  CATHERINE: Of course, we were on the train traveling to Vienna, so our situation wasn’t so different from yours!

  BEATRICE: Except that we had not been kidnapped.

  CATHERINE: Well, yes. It is always better not to be kidnapped. So advantage to us, I guess.

  Just as Mary looked back out the window, the motorcar turned into a narrow street between a leafy park and a row of ornate buildings. At one of them, Carmilla stopped and sat idling. Mary had grown so used to the motion of the motorcar that the cessation of motion startled her. Laura climbed down and rang a bell beside the large carriage door, then climbed back in. A few minutes later, the door swung open. Carmilla turned into the arched entrance and drove through the passageway into an inner courtyard at the center of the building. There, she parked the motorcar to one side.

  “We’re here,” she said. “Come on, let’s go find Mina.”

  But when Mary got out of the motorcar, on legs that felt like rubber so that she thought she might fall at any moment, Mina was there. Mina, looking just as she had seven years ago when Mary had last seen her, except perhaps a little more tired. Looking just as kind and sensible, holding her arms out and giving Mary a hug as well as much-needed support when she felt as though her legs might buckle, saying, “Oh, my dear, I’m so glad you’re here safe and sound! And my, how you’ve grown!”

  CHAPTER XX

  Morning in Budapest

  The Orient Express traveled through the night toward Budapest.

  Catherine looked at her watch. They would be there in a couple of hours. She had to admit that she was tired—she had not allowed herself to shut her eyes at all, and although she was naturally nocturnal, the lack of sleep was starting to affect even her. Every hour, like clockwork, she had gotten up to walk along the train corridor. Once, she had nodded to the conductor as he passed, and he had said something in French that sounded very respectful. She had reminded herself that he was saying it not to the Puma Woman, but to Sister Catherine, distinguished by her nun’s habit and the rosary in her left pocket. In her right pocket was the pistol Irene had given her. Its weight was reassuring, although really she could defend herself pe
rfectly well, thank you. She was a puma, after all. But now it was time to walk along the corridor again, to make sure she would not be affected by Beatrice’s poison. She wasn’t going to make the same mistake as Clarence!

  Beatrice was sleeping in the corner by the window, wrapped in a blanket. Well, let her sleep. In a couple of hours they would be in Budapest, and they would have to figure out how to get to the address Mina Murray had sent them. Catherine assumed there would be cabs in Budapest, just as there were in London and Paris and Vienna. It was a civilized city, wasn’t it? They should be able to show the address to the cabbie, who would take them to the right place. Even if he didn’t understand English, he would understand that.

  But as she stood up and stretched, Beatrice turned her head and opened her eyes. She mumbled, as though still half asleep, which she probably was, “Mmmm, everything all right?”

  “Yes, everything’s fine. I’m just going to walk around for a little while. Although . . .” There was one thing that had been bothering her. “I’m a little worried that we didn’t see Seward or Prendick on the platform. I hope Van Helsing’s housekeeper was right about the tickets? They could have gotten on before or after we arrived, and anyway the platform was so busy that even if we got on at the same time, we could have missed them.”

  “We’ll probably see them on the platform in Budapest,” said Beatrice, but her eyes were already closing again. She shifted her shoulders, as though trying to get more comfortable on the stiff seat. “We’ll make certain to watch for them. And make certain they do not see us. . . .”

  All right, time to walk in the fresh air of the corridor. Catherine wished that, as she could not get any sleep, she could at least have a cup of coffee, but the dining car would not be open until after they had disembarked. As the next best thing, she stepped into the small lavatory and splashed cold water on her face. She was startled by her reflection in the lavatory mirror. With her hair pulled back and her face surrounded by a white coif under the black veil, she did not look like herself at all. Well, that was a good thing, under the circumstances.

  She made her way along the corridor toward the dining car. The train was dark—the moon had already set, and there were no lights under the cabin doors. Everyone seemed to be sleeping. No, that was not quite correct—from the door of one cabin, right at the end of the car, a sliver of light shone into the corridor. She strolled that way, slowly because when she reached the end of the car, she would simply have to turn around and walk back again. Someone was certainly awake—she could smell the sweet, heavy odor of a pipe.

  As she approached the sliver of light, she heard a voice. At least someone else on that train other than herself was awake. Or several someones, because she heard another voice reply. Suddenly, she was completely alert, as she would have been if, in the middle of the night in the Andes, one of the mountain deer had wandered by her den. Yes, Van Helsing’s housekeeper had been right—he was on this train, in the cabin with the light under the door. At least, that was Seward’s voice, and he was saying something. She tried to make it out, but it was difficult to hear over the noise of the train—just then, the whistle drowned it out entirely. When that horrible screeching had stopped—she rubbed her sensitive puma ears through the rough cloth of her veil—she pulled back the coif wrapped around her head to expose one ear, then put it right next to the door. Now she could hear more clearly.

  “I think we should go directly to Professor Vámbéry’s apartment,” said Seward. “We can drop off our luggage, have breakfast, and then proceed to this abbey he described. In his letter, he told you that he’d assembled a small army. Well, I for one would like to inspect our troops. It’s not that I distrust Vámbéry—I’m not saying that, exactly. But I like to see things for myself, as you know, Van Helsing. And then, we can arrange to meet with those members he identified as most likely to join us. Tomorrow will be soon enough for that.”

  “But should we not look for Lucinda?” asked Prendick. “You said whoever took her from the asylum might have transported her to Budapest. What if her symptoms have gotten worse? You told us yourself that you confined her so she could have constant care. You have not seen her for several weeks. Should we not at least attempt to determine where she is? And how will you convince your—well, your faction—without her?”

  They don’t have Lucinda! Catherine pressed her ear against the door, straining to hear. If they didn’t have Lucinda, they might not have Mary, Justine, and Diana either. But then where could Mary and the others possible be?

  “I know where she is,” said Van Helsing. “Or where she must be. The men I had watching her could give me little information on who had abducted her—most of them have sunk irretrievably into madness. Only one remains capable of speech. When I asked who had attacked him, he repeated a single phrase—‘Frau mit einer Pistole.’ A woman with a pistol.”

  “Mrs. Harker, no doubt,” said Seward. “That damned interfering—”

  “Exactly,” said Van Helsing. “If she has taken my daughter to Budapest, as I believe, she will no doubt have sought the protection of the Count. In his home base, he is too powerful for us to challenge, at least until we have the might of the society at our backs. Then, we will drive him out of Budapest. Let him return to his ancestral castle in the Carpathians. He can do us no harm there.”

  “Although I grant you that it will be more difficult without Miss Van Helsing,” said Seward. “She would have served as a visible demonstration that the experiment is, if not a complete success, at least worth pursuing. If she is with the Count, as you believe, could Vámbéry not negotiate—”

  “I do not think so,” said Van Helsing. “He knows that Vámbéry is working with us, and he will do nothing to aid us in our endeavors. No, we cannot expect help in that quarter. Light a match, will you, Seward? My pipe, it has gone out.”

  So Van Helsing did not have Lucinda, and he did not know that Mary, Justine, and Diana had been involved in rescuing her. Who in the world is Mrs. Harker? Catherine wondered. Another member of the Alchemical Society? That was the logical explanation. If Mary and the others had disappeared on the way to Budapest and Van Helsing knew nothing about it, the Alchemical Society must be responsible.

  “Well then, we shall simply have to convince them, as we convinced Raymond in London.” That was Seward again. She was beginning to hate his voice. It was so self-assured, so smug, as though Dr. John Seward never questioned his own judgment. “The society must allow us a free hand in our experiments—no more stifling research at the whim of our esteemed Madam President. The important thing is to bring the motion to a vote as quickly as possible at the general meeting. And if we are voted down, that’s when we bring in reinforcements.”

  “I would rather accomplish our goals peacefully if possible,” said Van Helsing. “Of course if it is not possible—”

  “But the important thing is to accomplish them,” said Seward. “It’s the result, not the method, that counts.”

  “Even if the method results in death and destruction?” Ah, that was Prendick’s voice. She had in the past accused him of cowardice, but she had to acknowledge that there was some value in being an essentially peaceful man. At least he was not planning a bloodbath! And he cared what became of Lucinda.

  “If the vote goes against us, we can’t answer for the consequences,” said Seward, in his smug, self-satisfied way. She would have liked to scratch his eyes out.

  “Mr. Prendick, surely you’re not losing your resolve?” asked Van Helsing. “Our research will bring incalculable benefits to mankind. That is worth any price, to an objective mind. You should have learned that from Moreau. When he and I were young men—ah, that was a time! Before the Antivivisection League sapped the life out of science in England. He had the right attitude—increase of knowledge is worth any price. What is an individual life beside the vast sum of knowledge? Think of how much was lost when the forces of barbarism ransacked Rome. Consider, friend Edward, how slowly we have rediscovered what
we lost, as though building the library of Alexandria again, brick by brick. And how much, in this century and the one to come, we may add to it! Biological transmutation opens up vast realms of possibility. We may learn more than we ever dreamed of the plasticity of life! And what stands in our way? One woman who says ‘No.’ And who is she, gentlemen, to say to us, ‘You shall not’? She may once have been Queen of Kôr, but here she is only one among the members of the Société des Alchimistes. Yes, she is our president, but I do not think she will be for long. I believe the members of the Société are ready to be convinced.”

  “I certainly hope you’re right,” said Seward. “But if not, I want us to be ready. Buck up, Prendick. You didn’t used to be so squeamish. What happened to the Edward Prendick who worked with Moreau?”

  “You’re confusing me with Montgomery,” said Prendick. “Saying that I worked with Moreau mischaracterizes—well, there’s no point in arguing. The both of you have your idols, to which you bow down. The pursuit of knowledge for Van Helsing, and for you, Seward, the quest for power. I was not born a humble man, but circumstances have humbled me—I have no idols anymore. If you will excuse me, gentlemen, I would like to get some air.”

  But that meant . . .

  Catherine had time only to move halfway down the corridor and adjust her coif and veil to provide as much coverage as possible before Prendick came out of the cabin and shut the door behind him. She pulled the rosary out of her pocket, stood very still, and pretended to pray. How did one pray, anyway? One put one’s hands together and recited . . . something. She tried to remember the Lord’s Prayer as she had heard it when she used to attend church with Sir Geoffrey and Lady Tibbett, but the only thing that would come to her was the insane litany she had learned on Moreau’s island: His is the hand that makes, his is the hand that wounds, his is the hand that heals. Moreau’s had been the hand that had unmade her, and then made her again in another image. His is the lightning-flash, his is the deep salt sea. Damn Moreau to hell, forever and ever, amen.