The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein

by Kiersten White

  No. I did not really wonder. If there was any pure good in the world, anything as clear and unsullied as freshly fallen snow, it was Justine’s heart.

  “What were you thinking of?” she asked.

  “I was remembering the first time Victor left me to go to school. That was when he was thirteen, and it was just the local school in Geneva. He brought back all his books so I could study, too. And he brought back the most wickedly funny reports of his poor schoolmaster.” I could scarcely believe that was only five and a half years ago. Now Victor was nineteen, and he had not brought back anything, not even himself.

  “Oh!” I set down my spoon and abandoned my cold tea for good. “His schoolmaster! I have just thought of our next clue. In one of his earliest letters he describes two professors at length. He seemed particularly keen to work with one, though both had knowledge he hoped to gain. Surely they will be able to direct us to him!”

  I pulled out the meager collection of letters I had from Victor. Four, total, and three of those from his first month away. After that, seven months passed until the next. And after that, nothing.

  I had Henry’s letter, too, from six months previous. But there was only one, and I did not care to read it ever again. The least he could have done was give me Victor’s new address before abandoning us both. But my anger had cooled after steeping for so long, to be replaced with gnawing fear. Victor’s extended silence could be attributed to any number of his less pliable traits. After all, I had been the one to gentle him. So long in my absence was not good for him. Or for us.

  I stood, anxious for the day’s work to be done. “Let us visit some professors.”

  PROFESSOR KREMPE WAS NOT nearly so unpleasant to look at as Victor had written. But Victor was so precise, so meticulous in his pursuit of perfection in all things, that someone with features as lopsided and coloring as uneven as Professor Krempe’s would be nearly unbearable for Victor to converse with.

  If Victor could not fix it, he could not be around it. It was the fear of being unable to fix things that had driven him from Geneva. Had he found the answers he sought here?

  Professor Krempe offered as little in the way of hope as he did in physical beauty. But his voice was kind and his expression apologetic. “He asked me for more chemistry books than a dozen students could need, and wrote me feverishly intense letters filled with the most astonishing and frequently absurd questions. But that all stopped more than a year ago. Indeed, until you young ladies knocked at my door, I assumed he had left his studies and moved on.”

  My throat tightened at the thought of it. Moved on? No. Surely he was still here. He would not have gone to another city entirely without telling me. Even Henry had had the decency to tell me, if nothing else. “Do you perhaps have the address he was at when last he wrote you?”

  “I do, but I doubt it will help. There was another friend looking for him, now that I think about it. A young man, handsome, with a round, friendly face and startlingly blue eyes.”

  “Henry!” I said, too quickly and with far too much force. I blushed and smiled to cover my emotion, toying with my gloves. “Our friend Henry came to study here, as well. Do you know where else he went to look?”

  Professor Krempe shook his head with genuine remorse. “I am sorry. I had an address for Victor that your Henry had already visited and found vacant. I do not know where he went next in his search. I see so many young men. I remember Henry only because he was so friendly, and I remember Victor for his remarkable intensity.” The professor paused, scratching his pockmarked chin thoughtfully. “I think he did not like me. He seemed uncomfortable in my presence. I was keen to work with him, though.”

  “I am certain he liked you! You are one of only two professors he wrote of to me. He is simply…bright. He has an unusual mind, and it can be hard for him when talking to new people.”

  Professor Krempe nodded. “I hope he has done well, wherever he ended up. I have never seen questions such as his, and doubt I ever will again. He was on the path to either genius or lunacy.” Realizing he had gone too far—I was unable to hide the panic his words brought to the surface—he held up his hands and laughed. “I jest. My odds are on him having taken up a different line of study and simply not needing me anymore. Somewhere he is plaguing a history professor with questions about the dental-care habits of ancient Mesopotamia.”

  I held out a card, writing a smile onto my face with as much elegant determination as I had written out my information. “If you do think of anything that might help us find him, or if he happens to contact you—”

  “I will send word immediately. It was lovely to meet you, Miss Elizabeth. Miss Justine.” He paused, and his next sentence was so studied and casual I suspected he hoped I would not notice how desperate it was. “If you find him, please let him know I would like to see what he has been working on.” He smiled. “I am ever so curious about his studies.”

  “I will.” I would not. This man had done nothing to help me.

  As I turned, my eyes lingered on his walls. They were lined floor to ceiling with books. The room smelled of leather and paper and dust. I had always been jealous of Victor for leaving. Now I knew to be jealous of what he had left for.

  What I would give for the freedom to declare myself a student, to spend years in dusty rooms, in dusty tomes, learning and puzzling and asking questions of the brightest minds to be found! And to study what I chose, when I chose, with whom I chose. To think that all those years ago, I had been forced to trick Victor into doing what I would have given anything to do.

  * * *

  —

  When Madame Frankenstein had Ernest, it did not bring about the change I expected or feared. I worried she would no longer care to have me around. But the baby was another boy—her third, though the second died in infancy—and she seemed more desperate than ever that I be with Victor at all times.

  We spent the next two years throwing ourselves into whatever Victor decided we should study. I learned poems to perform for his parents, and helped care for the baby some. But, to my relief, my main responsibility remained Victor. Better to be lying on a bed of moss being a corpse for examination than bouncing a drooling toddler on my hip!

  I did too good a job of socializing Victor, though. He had taught me to read and write and learn, possessively proud of my sharp mind and keen memory. I taught him to react calmly, to smile in a believable way, to talk to others as a peer instead of an aloof critic. With me at his side, his sharp, cold edges blurred to acceptable degrees.

  The changes in him did not go unnoticed. One morning when we tumbled into the breakfast room to eat before running outside, Judge Frankenstein stopped us.

  “We are having guests today.” He said it as though handing down a guilty verdict, and watched us closely for our reactions.

  Madame Frankenstein’s hands fluttered in front of her face as she searched for an appropriate facial expression. She finally settled on excitement, though her eyes were too bright and her mouth too tight across her white teeth. “A new family,” she said. “One that does not know us from— One that does not know us.”

  Victor and I exchanged a look. I still had not asked what had happened to the other Frankenstein baby, the one who came after Victor and before Ernest. Whatever had transpired, it was awful enough that the Frankensteins had left Geneva and traveled—and therefore found me. So I did not care about that lost baby except as far as its role in my salvation.

  But it was obvious in Madame Frankenstein’s nerves that these guests had been chosen precisely because they had arrived in Geneva after the events that had driven the Frankensteins abroad. Victor’s eyebrows had already begun drawing together, but there was something wild about his stillness that warned me this would not end well.

  I grabbed his hand beneath the table, beaming at him. “Victor and I will perform a poem.”

  Whatever feral inst
inct had been surfacing in Victor’s demeanor, it was settled by the ridiculousness of my offer. “You know I do not recite poetry,” he said, shaking his head. “That is your job.”

  “Well, I will perform a poem and you can take all the credit, since I only know how to read and appreciate poetry because of your tutoring!”

  This made him laugh, but I could tell by the flush of his cheeks that he was pleased. Interacting with new people would be easier for him if he could use me as a shield. I let him do that.

  I would do anything for him.

  “It is settled, then,” Judge Frankenstein said. “Monsieur Clerval is a merchant. From common stock, but he has done uncommonly well and quickly climbed the ranks of society. He is quite wealthy now. And he has a son, Henry, who is your age.”

  I did not question that Judge Frankenstein was talking about Victor’s age. He rarely addressed me directly. He rarely even looked at me.

  Victor tensed. Unheeding, his father continued. “I have heard good reports of the new schoolmaster in town. If you can get along with Henry, perhaps you can join the school.”

  I squeezed Victor’s hand urgently. I could see him panicking again, every line in his body taut. “May we be excused? We have a lot to prepare!” I stood before waiting for permission to leave, curtseyed to make up for it, then dragged Victor from the room.

  “What are they thinking?” he shouted, pacing the length of the playroom we had yet to cede to the baby. “Inviting strangers here. As though I need them to find a friend for me. As though I care.”

  “Victor,” I said. “Think of everything you could learn at a school! We can only learn so much here on our own. We are already running out of books to study. But if you have access to more, a good teacher…” I gestured expansively. “We could get further in a month than we can in a year on our own.”

  He lowered my hands back to my sides, pushing them down from where they had encompassed a broad and open imaginary future. “You know you cannot go to school.”

  “Of course I know that, silly.” I tried to keep the sting of his words from showing. I had not actually thought of it. I was always with Victor. I had pictured us going to school together. The realization that I would not—could not—go with him rushed over my head like the lake waters closing around me. I struggled to get to the surface so I could take a breath and control how I was feeling.

  “So you want to be separated from me?” His dark eyes flashed like lightning, and I knew a tremendous thunder would follow.

  We had been inseparable for years, such that I did not know where he ended and I began. “No! Never. But I cannot go to school, which means you will have to learn enough for both of us and bring your knowledge back to me here. You will be like my own explorer, going off into the wilds to discover treasures for me. Please, Victor.” I was only eleven, but I wanted more. I had never thought of it before now, but the idea of having the freedom of a few hours each day had already sunk in deep, pulling at my lungs so I realized how suffocating my life had been.

  I wanted to go with Victor. I could not. But if Victor left, no one would need me. At least for those few precious hours. And then he would return, and bring back more things I could learn.

  All I had to do was make sure Henry and Victor got along. I beamed at Victor, already certain of my triumph.

  Victor and I greeted Henry wearing all white, our hands clasped as a united front. Henry’s smile was shy, but it hid nothing. His round face was open and utterly incapable of deception. Where Victor was cold and removed from the world, and I was as deceptive as a sour strawberry, Henry was exactly as he appeared to be: the most pleasant boy in existence. Even his blue eyes were as clear as the lake on a summer day.

  Part of me scorned him for his inability to hide his desperation to be our friend. He would have crawled on the floor and barked like a dog if we had declared that the game we wanted to play. He watched Victor with a hunger that made my teeth ache, it was so sweet. If my love of Victor was entirely selfish, Henry’s was the opposite.

  And I, accustomed to viewing other people only in terms of what they meant to me, felt my heart crack open with the gap-toothed grin that split his face when he saw our discarded chest of play clothes. “Do you have any swords?” he asked, digging through them. “We can put on a play!”

  His parents might have brought him here in hopes of securing further social advantage, and Victor’s parents might have brought him here in hopes of securing further socialization for their own troubled son. But Henry?

  Henry was here to have fun.

  “I like him,” I whispered to Victor. “He is silly. We should keep him.”

  Henry held up a length of tattered purple velvet and squinted as though imagining Victor wearing it as a cape. “Victor should be king. He has that regal quality about him. He is far handsomer than I, and looks smarter, too.”

  “And he likes you,” I whispered, nudging Victor with my elbow. He had gone silent and still as soon as I said I liked Henry. “So he is at least a little bit intelligent.”

  Victor gave me a half smile, apparently mollified. I let Henry dress me as a queen, and Victor deigned to be king. That afternoon, we put on a short play for our delighted parents. I stood between the two boys, resplendent in fake finery, ebullient with real joy.

  If I could not go to school, Victor’s going was the next best thing.

  * * *

  —

  Professor Waldman, our next stop, had a bland but perfectly symmetrical face and clothes with the precise tailoring of a man who cared about appearances. He had been far more highly regarded than Professor Krempke by Victor in his letter, but he had a similar report. After a flurry of demands on his time and his studies, he had not heard from Victor in more than a year. He did not remember whether another young man had come looking for Victor because he had neither the time nor the patience for such a thing—nor, clearly, did he have the time or the patience for two silly girls asking about a promising student who had so deeply disappointed him by disappearing.

  “Perhaps you should check the gambling dens, the tavern back rooms, or the bottom of the river,” Professor Waldman said meanly. “We seem to lose quite a lot of men to those.” He shut the door without ceremony in our faces. An ugly and tarnished brass knocker sneered at me, mocking my failure.

  I vowed that if we were not locked in that night, I would return and throw a rock through his window.

  Justine trembled, lifting a hand to her forehead and ducking so her hat would hide some of her expression. “Elizabeth, I am so sorry. We tried. I know how you have worried, but I do not think we should stay here. We have no more information to go on. If Victor—when Victor—wants to be found, he will write. You said yourself he is unpredictable and can descend into moods that last for months.”

  I shook my head, clenching my jaw. I had worked too hard, too long, to give up now. I had spent my entire life being what Victor needed.

  Now I needed him, and he would be found.

  “We know Henry found him,” Justine continued, gaining confidence as she steadily talked herself into leaving. “Perhaps they went abroad, or pursued studies elsewhere. Naturally, a gap in communication could be expected then. Letters get lost, or delayed. I am certain if we go home, something will be waiting.” She finally tipped her head back up, beaming in anticipation. “Ernest will be so relieved to have us home. He will run up with the letter! And with little William on my lap, we will laugh and laugh at the poor timing that would have saved us this whole miserable trip!”

  Justine’s imaginative theory was plausible. But her scenario held no comfort for me. I refused to believe that Victor had gone on from this city. Not yet. Victor had promised that one day we would tour the continent together. Return to Lake Como. Trek through the ominous and wild Carpathians. Explore ruins in Greece. All the places we had read about.

  And
besides, with the last letter Henry sent me, I could not imagine any scenario in which they had reconciled.

  I leaned forward and kissed her cheek. “I have one more place to look. Please?”

  She sighed, already letting go of her true desires for my sake. She wanted nothing more than to be back at the Frankensteins’ isolated manor, tucked away in the nursery with little William. And I was keeping her from it. “What if he forgets me?” she had asked on the way here, as though a five-year-old would forget the woman he knew better than his mother. The woman who had taken over entirely when his mother died. A few days in the care of the daft maid would not replace Justine.

  “Where else can we look?” she asked.

  “The place you always go when you need answers.” I grinned, taking her hand and leading her back to the street. “The library.”

  RICH DARK WOOD, POLISHED by both time and careful hands, grew from the floor to the ceiling in perfect straight lines. In place of branches, shelves. In place of leaves, books.

  Oh, the books.

  I was light-headed from breathing in as deeply as possible, trying to absorb the knowledge here by sheer force of will. I trailed my hands along a row of spines, their worn leather bindings labeled with gold because of the treasure contained inside.

  “Can I help you young ladies?” A man glared at us. His face was pinched around a pair of spectacles, having slowly grown to fit them rather than finding a pair that fit his face. His skin was as pale and stretched as the parchment he guarded.

  I wanted more time with the books. I wanted to spend the day in a quiet corner, sitting against a window, lost in words and worlds I had never been given access to.