When Beatrice entered, Clarence rose and moved toward her. Gracefully, she reached out her gloved hand. Looking disappointed, he shook it, letting it go reluctantly. Catherine introduced Mary, who had never met the performers of Lorenzo’s circus.
“Very pleased to meet you all,” she said, sinking into an armchair. Coffee, that was what she wanted. It had been a long day.
“Beatrice, can I talk to you?” asked Clarence in a low voice.
“Of course,” said Beatrice, with what she hoped was a friendly smile. “I am always happy to talk.”
He frowned. “I mean alone.”
She looked at him a moment, then said, “In the hallway?”
“All right.” He followed her into the hall, with its battered suits of armor and grim portraits. Beatrice stood by one of the windows, where sunlight filtered through threadbare brocade curtains. She felt uneasy and unhappy. She had spent most of that afternoon with Mary in the basement of the Academy of Sciences, trying to determine which files would be necessary for their research. In an old issue of the Journal de Société des Alchimistes, published in English, French, and German, she had found an article by a Dr. Giacomo Rappaccini in which he had described how to make a laboratory rat immune to poisons through repeated exposure to certain vegetable alkaloids. At the time of publication, he had been only twenty-four years old.
“Bea, I’m just going to say what I need to say.” Clarence looked down at her, affectionately but also apprehensively. “I care about you very much—more than that. I’m falling in love with you. You’re a beautiful, intelligent, compassionate—”
“Poisonous.”
“—woman. Well, yes, that too.”
“And that is everything. There is no way that I know of to make myself less toxic. I have been to doctors all over Europe. None of them have found a cure for me. This morning I read a paper by my father—in it he detailed the procedure he would later use to make me poisonous to others. The poison is so inextricably part of me that eliminating it would require my death.” Beatrice looked out the window at the courtyard—it was just beginning to rain. Then she said, as directly as she could, because it was necessary, “You will never be able to kiss me or hold me for more than a few seconds. There will never be any intimacy between us. It does not matter how we feel. There can never be anything more between us than friendship.”
“How we feel,” he said, pointedly. “So you feel it too.”
She would not lie to him. “Yes, and that is what makes this more painful than I can say. Please do not make it any more painful for me, Clarence.”
“Honey, if you love me, that means anything’s possible. Didn’t Giovanni get used to your poison after a while? Maybe I can slowly acclimate myself to it—you know, over time.”
She stared up at him in astonishment. “But you would become poisonous, as I am! You would no longer be able to touch other human beings, to spend time with them as you do now.”
He reached out and stroked her hair, but only briefly—it too carried her toxicity. “If we can be together, I’m willing to pay that price.”
She looked at him with an expression of horror. Here was the story of Giovanni, playing itself out over again. “That is not your choice to make, or not your choice alone. If you were ever to regret it, if a day came when you no longer loved me and wished you could rejoin humanity—do not shake your head, you do not know what the future holds—you would blame me. And then we would become each other’s torment. I will not allow you to make that choice, nor will I allow you to impose it on me. I offer you my friendship. I cannot offer you more.”
He looked down at her as though trying to evaluate how serious she was. Evidently, she looked serious enough, because he said, “All right. I accept your friendship, of course. We’ll always have that, no matter what happens. But I’m not giving up—there’s got to be some sort of solution. If Edison can invent the electric light bulb, we can find some way to be together.”
She shook her head, but she had to smile at his willingness to hope. Americans were so optimistic! Alas, after all the doctors she had consulted, the medicines she had tried, she knew better than to think there might be a cure for her condition. Clarence would be convinced of that in time.
MARY: America does not have a monopoly on optimism.
CATHERINE: You certainly can’t call the English optimistic. You’re such a gloomy lot.
BEATRICE: It is the rain. The constant rain, drenching the flowers in the park.
JUSTINE: Also, the lack of mountains. If England had a proper mountain, like Mont-Blanc near Lake Geneva . . .
MARY: You are all being ridiculous.
“Beatrice!” It was Mina, standing by the door of the dining room. “Can you tell everyone that dinner is ready?”
“Of course,” said Beatrice, with relief. She was glad to have an excuse to end this conversation with Clarence. However much she cared for him, she would not allow her affections to cloud her judgment. Not this time.
When she entered the music room, she found Mary talking about their meeting with Ayesha. “I don’t know whether to believe her about these energic waves,” Mary was saying. “But their effect is real enough. I mean, she really did electrocute those vampires.”
“Alice really can make herself disappear,” said Catherine. “At least, she can make other people believe she disappeared, which is more or less the same thing.”
“It sounds like we need her in Lorenzo’s,” said Zora. “The Vanishing Girl! Is she there? Is she not there? You decide! She would be a sensation.”
How lovely it was to have them all together—the Athena Club and the circus performers! Cut off from others as she was, Beatrice felt the pleasures of company and camaraderie even more keenly than the others would have. “Come into the dining room,” she said, “Mina says dinner is ready.”
Talking and laughing, they all followed her down the hall to find a feast prepared for them. Tureens and platters filled with chicken paprikas, one soup that seemed to be fish, another that was probably cauliflower, small dumplings that looked nothing like Knödel, cucumber salad, potatoes with parsley, stuffed eggs . . .
“Mrs. Horvath has outdone herself,” said Mina. “I told her not to bother with courses. Our tastes are not so refined that we need service à la Russe, I think. Come, sit. There’s room for everyone.”
The table was already raucous by the time Carmilla came in, with Laura and Lucinda following arm-in-arm, although of the three of them, only Laura ate. Carmilla and Lucinda were served, discreetly, glasses of something red that was not wine. Finally, in the middle of dinner, they were joined by the Count himself, who took the empty seat at the head of the table.
Mary looked around at them all. The circus performers were describing their acts to Laura, who paid rapt attention. Carmilla, Lucinda, and Justine were discussing travel plans. Diana was whispering to Attila, who was serving as footman—no doubt about some new mischief. The Count was holding Mina’s hand.
The Athena Club had not achieved everything it had set out to on this journey, but it had achieved a great deal—Lucinda was safe, Professor Van Helsing was in the custody of the Alchemical Society, and Beatrice might eventually persuade Ayesha to stop these experiments altogether. That afternoon, she and Beatrice had spent considerable time in the archives, identifying the files they wanted to examine with more care. She was looking forward to a quiet week in the basement of the Academy of Sciences, where the files were kept.
Mina rose. “My dear friends, both old and new—I am very happy to see you all here. First, I have something for the members of the Athena Club. When I had the seals of the Alchemical Society replicated, I also ordered these.” Out of a bag beside her dinner plate, she took several small objects that clinked against one another. What were they? Mary could not tell. Mina handed them to the diners sitting next to her. “Could you please pass these down to Mary, Diana, Catherine, Beatrice, and Justine? I hear Lucinda will also be joining the Athena Club, so I shall order one for he
r as well.”
When one of the small objects made its way to Mary, she realized that it was a silver watch fob, slightly smaller than the fob she had found in the hand of Molly Keane so long ago, which had turned out to be the seal of the Alchemical Society. It was decidedly more elegant than the seal of the S.A., in the style Beatrice called l’art nouveau, with a ring where it could be hung from a watch chain, or any sort of chain the wearer preferred. It too was a seal—it was set with a carnelian, on which was carved the image of a wide-eyed owl, with an olive branch on one side and the letters on the other.
“It is the owl of Athena,” said Justine. “This symbol was stamped on the currency of Athens for a thousand years. Mina, how did you decide—”
“I thought you might like a seal of your own,” said Mina, smiling. “Now you can send your own secret letters. That is, if this gift is acceptable to the Athena Club? Madam President, I do not wish to impose.” She turned to Mary and bowed.
Mary looked down at the seal, then around the table. They were all staring at her as though expecting something. Well, of course they were—she was the president of the Athena Club. When Catherine, Beatrice, Justine, and Diana had elected her, she had been filled with trepidation. It was gratifying, in a way, that they had chosen her as their leader—but trying to lead the Athena Club was going to be like trying to herd a flock of London sparrows! However, now that it was done and decided, she would have to rise to her role and the occasion.
So she rose. “Mina—Miss Murray, on behalf of the Athena Club, I would like to thank you for this very generous gift. Henceforward, we shall adopt the owl of Athena as our symbol—I didn’t know she had an owl, but this really is splendid, and he looks very wise, doesn’t he? I would also like to thank Miss Jennings, Countess Karnstein, and Count Dracula for their hospitality. Without your help, we could never have accomplished as much as we have these last few weeks. The Athena Club thanks you, and hopes that you will all”—she looked around the table—“come visit us in London.”
She sat back down, feeling a little flushed. There—she had done the best she could. She hoped that she had represented the club adequately.
First Catherine clapped, and then the entire table burst into applause, with several cries of “Brava, Mary!” and “Hear, hear!” If Mary was the sort of person who blushed, she would have blushed now. Instead, she looked around at all the diners gathered around that table, smiling or grinning, filled with a delicious feast—the Cat Woman, the Zulu Prince, the Dog Boy, the Giantess, the Poisonous Girl, several vampires . . . She felt gratified to be part of such a strange, wonderful gathering.
CATHERINE: Of monsters.
MARY: Well, metaphorically, perhaps.
CATHERINE: If you insist.
CHAPTER XXVIII
The Mesmerizing Girl
Working in the archives of the Alchemical Society was considerably more tedious than Mary had imagined, although Beatrice seemed to find it interesting, and Justine perused dusty old documents with quiet persistence. Dr. Jekyll had written a lot of papers. They were in a theoretical, scientific language that Mary had difficulty understanding—all about good and evil, and Swedenborg, and a man named Louis Vivet. At one point, going to use an upstairs lavatory, she ran into Heinrich Waldman on his way down.
“Hello, Miss Frank!” he said. “Miss Jekyll, of course I mean . . .” He grinned and bowed, a bit clumsily because he was standing on two different steps. “I am here presenting a paper on the nervous system, particularly the nervous diseases of women. Perhaps afterward, I can take you to lunch? There is a very good café nearby, on Arany János utca.”
“I don’t think so,” said Mary. “My nervous system is in very good order, thank you.” Why had she ever thought he was handsome? He had a weak chin. And his blue eyes were watery.
DIANA: I’m glad you finally got over creepy Heinrich.
MARY: I was never not over him. I mean, I was never as enamored of him as your statement seems to imply.
JUSTINE: Forgive me, Mary, but you were, in fact, both flattered and gratified by his attention. If he had not turned out to be a spy for the Alchemical Society—
MARY: None of you ever tease me in this way about Mr. Holmes!
JUSTINE: We like and respect Mr. Holmes. He is far superior to M. Waldman.
DIANA: Also, yes we do.
By the end of the week, Mary was thoroughly sick of sitting in the basement of the Academy of Sciences, sorting through old journals and file boxes. Justine and Beatrice had spent every day in the archives with her. Catherine had spent all her time with the circus, preparing for their first show. That evening, she and Beatrice would be performing as La Femme Panthère and La Belle Toxique. The rest of them were invited to sit in the front row. Diana had been busy alternately pestering Attila to take her down to the dogs, or Mina to take her out for ice cream (or cake, or pogácsa, or lángos, or any of the other treats that Budapest has to offer).
The day before, Laura and Carmilla had left for Styria in the motorcar, taking Lucinda with them. Carmilla had promised they would all visit at some point, when Lucinda was stronger—Laura was particularly excited at the prospect of seeing England at last. Count Dracula’s house seemed quieter without them—until Diana had decided to bring all the puppies upstairs, and their mother had very properly objected to such an unorthodox procedure! It is not, in general, a good idea to separate one of the great white wolfdogs of Count Dracula from her progeny.
That afternoon, Mary was sorting through the Frankenstein documents. She, Justine, and Beatrice were trying to establish exactly when Victor Frankenstein had been recruited as a member of the Société des Alchimistes. They were going, systematically, through any material relating to their parentage—after the Frankenstein material, they would start on Moreau. The basement room where they worked was lit by two small windows that gave adequate, but not excessive, light. In the middle of the room was a large table, almost exactly like the one in the library two floors above. Scattered across it were file boxes they had already looked through, ready to be returned to their places on the shelves, as well as notebooks in which they were taking notes, pencils, and India-rubber erasers—for Frau Gottleib would not allow them to use pens around those old documents. Mary could not help being startled every time the former Nurse Adams spoke in a German accent.
“Ach, you are going to break my back, you girls!” said Frau Gottleib. She put her hands on her back and leaned one way and then another, trying to stretch, then picked up one of the boxes to be replaced. Mary thought she might need to stretch as well, or perhaps walk around for a while—she had been sitting at that table for hours! The room was so quiet, with just the sound of rustling papers, the occasional comment from Beatrice or Justine when they found something worth noting. Afternoon sunlight fell on dust motes floating in the air. She was just about to stand up when Catherine burst in. At least, it felt like bursting—suddenly, the quiet basement room was all Catherine and noise.
“Telegram!” she gasped. Evidently, she had been running very hard. She put her hand to her side.
“What in the world?” said Mary. “Slow down—you’re going to give yourself a cramp.”
“Telegram from Mrs. Poole! I got back from the circus and this was waiting—” Catherine looked down at the telegram in her hand. Between gasps for air, she read, “ ‘Alice kidnapped Archibald inconsolable Holmes still missing now Watson too send help.’ ”
Mary heard a loud bang.
She looked around, startled. Frau Gottleib was staring at her with an expression of horror. The box she had been carrying lay at her feet, its files half spilled out. “Alice kidnapped!” she said. “You must return to London at once!”
“Well, of course we’ll go back,” said Mary. “Who in the world would kidnap Alice? It must be some sort of mistake. But why are you so concerned, Frau Gottleib? I mean, when you were Nurse Adams, you barely knew Alice except as the scullery maid.”
Frau Gottleib sat down on
one of the uncomfortable wooden chairs that surrounded the table. “Her name is not Alice. Yes, that is the name she was given at the orphanage, the name she believed to be hers. But when I arranged for her to come to your household, I knew who she truly was—Lydia Raymond, the daughter of Helen Raymond, who was brought into being by a Dr. Raymond in one of the most dangerous experiments ever conducted by a member of the Société des Alchimistes. It harnessed the energic powers of the Earth itself—ah, Ayesha could tell you the details better than I can. But those powers flowed with unprecedented force through one person: Helen Raymond, who left a trail of death and destruction in her wake. It was not only because of Jekyll’s experiments and Carew’s death that Ayesha ordered the English branch disbanded—she did not want Dr. Raymond to find the child or resume his experiments.”
“Wait, what? What do you mean, you arranged for Alice to come to my household?” said Mary. “It was Mrs. Poole who hired her.”
“Dr. Raymond!” said Catherine. “He was the chairman of the English branch until it was disbanded. He was going to be chairman again if Seward and Van Helsing had taken over the Alchemical Society.”
“The director of the Society of St. Mary Magdalen was a Mrs. Raymond,” said Justine. “It was she who arranged for those poor girls to be murdered by Adam and Mr. Hyde. Is that merely a coincidence?”
“I do not believe in coincidence,” said Frau Gottleib grimly. “It was I who suggested to Mrs. Poole that she hire a scullery maid, I who arranged for the orphanage to send Lydia—called Alice—to your household. There, at least, I could keep an eye on her. If she has inherited her mother’s ability to manipulate the energic powers of the Earth, she is a very dangerous girl.”
“Alice? Dangerous? How could Alice possible be dangerous?” asked Mary, incredulously.
“Well, with her mesmeric powers—,” said Catherine.
“Have those begun to manifest themselves?” asked Frau Gottleib. She did not seem surprised. “Then she is both a danger to others and in danger herself, for others may try to use her to their own ends.”
European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman (The Extraordinary Adventures of the Athena Club Book 2) Page 65