by Viola Carr
She sighed, dejected. This wedding planning business was fraught with more danger than she’d anticipated. The fuss with dresses and flowers was nothing compared to the pernicious permutations of awkwardness the idea of co-habiting might present. But if Remy had concerns, he’d say so. He was that kind of man.
Wasn’t he? What if it turned out they didn’t really know each other? They’d always been thrown together in times of crisis, investigating murders and saving lives. What if, without all that excitement, they simply had nothing to talk about?
“Molly, dear, here’s your tea.” Little Mrs. Poole bustled in from the kitchen, splashing a brimming teacup over Hippocrates, who whimpered and dived under the hall table. “Oh. Gone, has she? Disobedient child.”
Eliza took the teacup and slurped a mouthful. “For me? You shouldn’t have.”
“Tea.” Hipp shook himself, hot droplets flying. “Two hundred and twelve degrees. Danger.”
The housekeeper’s steel-gray hair bristled indignantly beneath her cap. “Have you met this friend of hers? He could be an axe murderer. Or a Roman Catholic! Talk sense into her, can’t you?”
Lizzie guffawed. Now she was hanging by her knees from the first-floor landing rail, skirts tumbling to reveal stockinged legs with lace garters. “Never kiss up to a killer, eh? Grand advice, coming from you.”
Eliza gritted her teeth. “Molly’s the most sensible girl I know,” she soothed. “Any lad she has eyes for will surely be the finest in London.”
Mrs. Poole sniffed. “Know a lot of London lads, do you?”
“I know a few. Anyway, who says she’s taken up with anyone? She could be sneaking off to a secret gathering of suffragettes, or attending a symposium on how to contribute to the war effort.”
“That’s an improvement, is it?” muttered Mrs. Poole. “What if she’s cavorting in a public house with those extreme radicals your Captain Lafayette’s forever moaning about? Running around Westminster, defacing Richard the Lionheart and taking pot-shots at members of Parliament? No loss, come to think of it.” She proffered the silver tray. “Here’s your post, Doctor. Skipping dinner again, I suppose, and wasting my nice veal roast?”
“A tray at my desk would be lovely, please. Not another word,” added Eliza sternly. “I don’t wish to hear about it. Until I actually do work myself into an early grave just like my father, and then you can be the first to say ‘I told you so.’ “ A thought struck her. “Mrs. Poole, was I ever ill? As a schoolgirl, I mean.”
“Never a day. Excepting the chicken pox, and head lice, and once or twice the Black Death, usually when you didn’t want to do your lessons. Why? Planning on self-medicating?”
“No reason. Just . . . don’t you think it’s odd?”
“Odd? You? Never.” And Mrs. Poole waddled away, unruffled.
Eliza’s smile faded. Would she be keeping Mrs. Poole and Molly on after she married? A household could sustain only so many staff. Doubtless Remy had people who deserved loyalty, too. Where would the Pooles find work?
Wearily, she climbed to her first-floor study, Hipp snuffling at her heels. Inside, the reddish firelight gleamed over bookshelves in the smells of damp straw and alchemy. Thick drapes hung, redolent with memories. Many a late evening Eliza had spent here, wrapped in her best silk and pearls, awaiting her mysterious guardian. The man behind the curtain, a velvet laugh and a shadow on the wall. Here, Hyde had first given her the warm, bitter drink that set Lizzie free.
“And a fine thing, too.” Lizzie plopped her red-skirted behind in the chair and propped her boots on the desk. “What about my cabinet, eh? All our potions and secret malarkey. What’s to become o’ that when you piss off to get married?”
“Didn’t I ask you to leave me alone?” But she knew this house wasn’t large enough for two. Remy had several far more suited to his social standing. Could she relinquish this place, with its years of history, its walls and floorboards steeped in ghostly reminiscences? Fact was, the house would no longer be hers, like it or not. Once they married, all her rights and property passed to him. Remy was a wonderful man. That didn’t make the legal inequities any less humiliating.
The mantel clock struck six. Hipp settled by the fire, muttering sleepily. “Rat . . . Rat-rat-rat . . .” She dropped the mail on her desk and switched on the electric lamp. Pop! Shadows leapt, unveiling a trestle table upon which she’d erected a crucible and a pair of gas burners. Flasks steamed, iridescent liquids hissing and silvery solids subliming. She checked the beakers, adjusted a flow valve, tapped the glass walls of a precipitating tube. These reactions were uncannily self-sustaining, seeming to make their own decisions about when to activate and when to remain stubbornly inert.
As if they were alive.
On the table, a book lay open, filled with the rambling handwriting of a madman. Evil, rapacious scribbling, chewing up the page with reams of ugly text, alchemical equations, and molecular diagrams. It recalled legends of grimoires penned by demons, tomes so terrible that if you read them, you lost your mind.
She’d filched it from the awful laboratory on Piccadilly where François Lafayette had perished. It had belonged to the devil who’d named himself Moriarty Quick. His dark alchemy had achieved something hideous yet wonderful: he’d separated one person into two entities. Pure scientific blasphemy, but it offered the hope of a miracle: a cure for Remy’s dreadful affliction. If Quick could extract a person’s soul, why not their monster?
For weeks, the book had lurked in her desk drawer, unopened. What of Quick’s appalling specimen jars, those fleshy remnants of tortured souls? Could she in good conscience use his results, gained at such terrible cost?
Yes, she’d decided. Quick’s victims would not have died in vain. She’d defeat Remy’s creature, whatever it took. Her niggling conscience seemed a small price.
In four small cages, white mice whickered, rubbing their whiskers. Each cage was carefully labeled with type of alchemical preparation administered, dosage, and time. Alongside this row of cages sat another—and inside, pale, fleshy, hairless things slobbered and oozed. Nasty, evil-tempered things she’d grown—and as they grew, their furry white twins stayed calm and serene.
She cooed softly to them, moved by pity. She didn’t like experimenting on animals any more than she liked dark alchemy. But what choice?
“Keep telling yerself that,” called Lizzie from the desk chair, where she’d helped herself to a ghostly glass of claret and a cigarette. “It’s me you really want rid of. Just you try it, missy.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Eliza waved away impossible smoke. But the thought tugged at her, a sly hand thieving her good intentions. What if Quick’s methods could “cure” Lizzie, too?
Eliza picked up a soft-bristled brush and stroked one of the hairless mouse-things. It snarled, baring sharp teeth, and its corresponding furry white mouse startled and chased its own tail. She sighed. Still inextricably connected. For the cure to work, she’d need complete severance.
She made a note in her journal, and tried the next mouse-thing. Its counterpart squeaked and dashed shivering into the corner. Same with the next.
Inexorably, the clock chimed half past six. “Hickory, dickory, dock,” sang Lizzie, swinging in the chair, “the mouse ran up the clock. The clock struck eight, and fuck me, we’re late! Hickory, dickory, dock!”
“I’m well aware of the time.” Eliza poked the brush at the last hairless blob.
Its brother mouse didn’t react.
She tried again. The furry mouse just sat there, washing its little face.
Her heart skipped. Surely it was sleepy, or had ceased to care for her proddings. Or the fleshy thing had developed a nerve problem and hadn’t felt anything.
She reached through the bars and tweaked the fleshy thing’s nose. It reared, snapping, and she snatched her hand away.
The furry mouse just pensively scratched its ear, and returned to its dinner.
A grin split Eliza’s face. “It’s working!”
“Great,” muttered Lizzie, quaffing her imaginary claret. “Squeeze me out into a fat Lizzie-shaped blob, will you? Nice. After all I’ve done for you.”
Eliza jotted eagerly in her journal. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she repeated absently, her mind racing ahead. Repeat the experiment. More mice, same dosage, controlled conditions. She’d ask Mr. Finch to supervise her methods, weigh the ingredients, check the seals on her flasks, ensure the alchemical products were exactly as before.
“Plotting against me, that’s what. Say it ain’t true.”
“Mmm.” Eliza scribbled faster, but an icy finger prodded her spine. Was it vanity to think she could cure this creature, when everything Remy had tried—potions, talismans, even witchcraft—had failed? Memories taunted her, of a crimson-haired killer whom she’d foolishly imagined could be cured of his madness. How wrong she’d been—and how costly her weakness.
But her determination firmed. Remy wasn’t Todd. Remy’s disease was real, and science must hold the answer . . .
“God rot it, you never listen to me!” Lizzie hurled her glass away, and it hit the hearth and smashed, shards glittering like jewels. “I won’t be carved up like a friggin’ Christmas ham. If you even think about boiling up that mouse-fucking hellbrew for me, I swear to God—”
“Dinner,” announced Mrs. Poole cheerfully, entering with a steaming tray.
Pop! Lizzie vanished. As if she’d never been.
Mrs. Poole arranged the tray on the desk, glancing at the broken crystal. “Clumsy fingers, eh? I’ll have Molly clean it up later.”
“Er, no. Don’t bother her. I’ll get it. Silly me.” Eliza ushered Mrs. Poole out, soothing her protests, and closed the door.
Silence.
The empty chill made her shiver. Holding her breath, she turned. “Lizzie? Are you there?”
But Lizzie didn’t appear.
Woodenly, Eliza picked up the broken crystal, sat, attended to her meal. But her appetite withered. The fine food suddenly seemed impossibly rich. Surely she couldn’t keep down a single morsel. Her skin itched, as if infected with a virulent fungus. She wanted to peel off her clothes, scratch until she bled.
Dutifully, she picked at the meal, a bite of potato, a sliver of slick warm meat. The flavors sickened her, corrupted, as if she ate with some other woman’s mouth. Lizzie’s mouth, she thought crazily. Dare she touch her face, find Lizzie squeezing out in misshapen lumps of flesh, a half-changed grotesque? Hysterical laughter escaped her, but it was her own, twisted into a mockery. Her own face under her fingers, clammy with frightened sweat.
She was losing her mind.
Ting! The clock struck again, making her jump. Only a quarter past seven. Was this night to be interminable, like Sisyphus forever rolling his rock up the same hill? She poured a shaky glass of wine, and forced herself to sip. It coated her mouth like fish oil.
Listlessly, she flicked through her mail. Advertisements for a new triple-bolted front door and an upgraded clockwork servant promised to Keep Your Home Safe from Sorcerers and No More Squeaky Joints! A flyer entitled BE VIGILANT! assured her that Spies are everywhere—even in your HOME! An account from her book-seller for a recent order, another from her dressmaker. Nothing she’d have trouble paying on time.
It was nice to have money again, she reflected dimly. Nice to know her job was secure, even if it did mean pandering to a prehistoric woman-hater like Reeve. Smiling in the face of his chauvinistic insults while she labored at yet another murdered woman’s crime scene. Standing obediently by while he ruined Harley Griffin’s career for the sake of petty jealousy. Lizzie would never stand for such abuse. She’d speak her mind and damn the consequences.
Nice. What a suffocating little word.
Next was a note, typed in black, a sprig of white jasmine tucked into the envelope.
Dr. Jekyll,
I cannot describe my pleasure at seeing you again after all these years, your charm and cleverness undiminished. I trust I haven’t alarmed you with the ardency of my desire to renew our acquaintance. Always, I have thought of you fondly, and I hope we shall be seeing more of each other before long.
Your servant,
Byron.
P.S. Should you care to call, my office at the RI will always be open.
She snorted, amused. Charm and cleverness, indeed. Still, something in Starling’s manner seemed odd. An air of superior memory. As if he knew something she didn’t.
The next was on parchment paper, penned in a confident scrawl that elicited a thrill of pleasure.
My dearest Eliza,
I’m sorry this is a letter, and not me in person, but I hope soon to be free of this place and fly back to you. Paris is grim and freezing and it hasn’t stopped raining since Friday, which renders it even more wretched than can be accounted for by the customary misery and ill cheer of Parisians in these heady days of liberty. Anyone would think the common people objected to slave ghettos and pogroms and public human sacrifices—but please, don’t be alarmed, as I am quite safe.
Except perhaps from tedium, and ghastly French coffee, upon the endurance of which my eye aches for a smile and my ear for a light-hearted witticism, which only makes me wish for you all the harder. Which is all to say that if our parting hasn’t rendered you as abjectly miserable as yours truly for every second of these past weeks—or at least for a minute or two—I shall never forgive you.
I’m finally getting to the heart of F.’s labyrinthine affairs, you’ll be relieved to hear, and I hope to settle matters soon. If the Foreign Secretary calls, you can tell him I’ve done what he asked, and could he kindly stop inundating me with his soporific missives, as I’m already more than adequately supplied with kindling by his honor at the Royal Society. Oh, and if he calls, tell him I’m busy with the Foreign Office.
Anyway, enough about my glittering career in espionage. I long to hear your news. I trust this finds you (and Hippocrates) in the best of health, neck-deep in some obligingly intriguing murder case, and as desperate to see me as I am to see you.
All my love
Remy.
P.S. I’ve something to show you on my return, by which I fully intend to render you speechless with the ludicrous depths of my devotion and your stellar luck in bewitching me. Don’t claim you weren’t fairly warned.
She smiled, touching the parchment’s edge to her lips. But dark doubts stirred. Remy had taken François’s death—the manner of it—hard. The revelation that his brother had kept so many terrible secrets had forced Remy to doubt his own judgment in everything. What did he mean, “settle matters”? What exactly had the Foreign Secretary asked for?
Remy hadn’t mentioned the recent full moon. Nor the wedding, exactly. Did that mean . . . ?
Firmly, she shook her head. It didn’t mean anything. Remy had written, and he was safe. That was reason for good cheer. Upon his return, they’d talk and she’d put her uneasiness to rest for good.
Simple.
She picked up the last letter . . . and her bones jittered at that silver seal with its singular coat of arms, the lion and the unicorn.
Dr. Jekyll:
Kindly attend on His Majesty The King tomorrow, at your earliest. Bring your medicine.
Is. Newton, Regent, &c.
The Philosopher’s swift, legible cursive somehow made even her name into a sneer. She dropped the paper, squirming at her own double-dealing. An urge gripped her to write back and refuse. Tell him I’m busy with the Foreign Office.
She’d sworn she’d have nothing to do with the immortal scientist—responsible for the once-great Royal Society’s corruption and hypocrisy, not to mention forcing her to spy on her own father. But a few weeks ago, without warning, he’d offered her the job of physician to seventeen-year-old King Edward—and she’d accepted.
She gritted her teeth, vanity bitter in her mouth. The king was a pitiable fellow, a drooling half-wit who sometimes smeared the walls with his own excrement, far from fit to deal with the conniving polit
icians and sycophants who surrounded him. Her heart had gone out to the poor child. Just a motherless boy.
But the new Regent had flattered her, too. Lauded her innovation as an alienist, though what eccentric skills she possessed were rusty, since her ill-fated tenure at Bethlem Asylum had ended so spectacularly.
And she’d fallen for it. Dared to believe her star could rise. Tending the dead was no route to medical fame. A rich, influential future awaited whichever physician was sufficiently erudite—or lucky—to cure the king.
Truth was, the Philosopher had manipulated her mercilessly. She still stood in awe of the mighty force of nature that was Isaac Newton. To defy him seemed as impossible—and as perilous—as defying gravity.
She relapsed into her chair, that awful wine swimming laps in her stomach like an eel driven mad. Her limbs ached distantly. Too hot. A fever? Or merely her awakening need for the elixir? The coals crackled, hypnotic like a demon’s laughter. Her eyelids drooped. She’d rest her eyes, just for a moment . . .
Icy water slapped her face. She choked, spluttering for air. Light dazzled, brighter than the sun. Her wrists were bound. Her wet dress glued to her body. Her head pounded. Instinctively she struggled. What was happening?
“Easy.” A male voice soothed her senses, a hand stroking her hair. “Easy, now. Get a move on, Fairfax, she’s waking up. If he sees her like this . . .”
Blinded, Eliza fought. Fairfax? A surgeon, her erstwhile mentor at Bethlem, once a friend of Henry Jekyll’s. But Fairfax was long months dead.
“Where am I?” she tried to cry. Fingers gripped her chin, holding her mouth open. Something rough and scaly forced down her throat. A tube. God help her. She gagged, cold slimy liquid spluttering. But the awful stuff kept coming, glug-glug-glug, and she retched and choked and finally swallowed . . .
A smack in the face jerked Eliza awake.
She gasped blessedly clean air. Not bound. Not tortured. No tube choking her. Still in her chair, the study clock’s final chime dying. Eight o’clock.
“Up, slug-a-bed!” cried Lizzie, eyes alight with impatience. “Eight o’clock, by God! It’s my turn!”