The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein

by Kiersten White

  The men shook his hand and took their leave. A fly droned lazily, the only thing enjoying the meager feast on the table. There was no air in this room, no current or breeze, despite the high ceilings and the wall lined with windows looking out onto the green of the forest. I wanted to be out there. The glass was not a protection from the elements—it was a barrier. A cage, designed to allow a view of freedom and beauty without ever touching it.

  Was the monster just outside, watching us? Did it long to be in here, exulting in its bloody revenge, while I longed to be out there?

  “You have come into your inheritance,” Judge Frankenstein said to me, taking a glass of wine and toasting us. “It was to go to you at twenty-one, or upon the occasion of your marriage.”

  I sat down at the table, overwhelmed. I should have been making my preparations for defeating the monster. I could not understand what Judge Frankenstein was saying. “Inheritance? From where?”

  “From your father, of course. The Lavenza family fortune.”

  “But—” I looked up at Victor, who raised his eyebrows to let me know he had no idea what his father meant, either. “I thought he died in prison. In truth, I thought he was a myth. I had nothing when you found me.”

  “You had your name.” Judge Frankenstein drank deeply, setting his glass down with a satisfied sigh. Then he paused, looking quizzically at me. “Do you mean to say all this time you thought we took you in without knowing anything of who you truly were? That we were foolish enough to accept the word of some filthy hag in the woods?”

  I had no answer, as that was precisely what I had thought.

  His incredulity increased. “You thought I would agree to marry my oldest son to a girl of unknown origin? A foundling child? Elizabeth. You have more sense than that.”

  I let out a strangled laugh. He was right. I did have more sense than that. That was why I had tied myself so tightly to Victor, why I had chased him down to bring him back. I knew I could not depend on the kindness of his father. I could only depend on the love and loyalty of Victor to shield me from abandonment.

  But apparently I had grossly overestimated even my low accounting of his father’s generosity. Of course he would not have kept me all these years without reason. Of course Madame Frankenstein’s dependence on my help with Victor was not justification enough.

  “Has there always been money?” My voice was meek out of long practice. If I had known—if I had been aware that at the age of twenty-one I would be secure on my own, without needing anyone else—

  What would it have changed?

  Judge Frankenstein ripped a leg off the whole roast chicken before us, tearing some of the meat away with his teeth and then wiping the grease from his mustache. “No. Only the potential for it. I have spent many years in a legal battle with the Austrians who seized your father’s estate. It was not easy to secure your inheritance, even after your father died in prison. All my trips abroad were to appeal your case in person. But this has happened just in time. I nearly had to rent out this house—imagine, me! A grasping landlord! My father already sold off much of the land, and I could barely squeeze more money from what remained. Now that you are part of the family, your husband will take charge of your finances. And you can begin to repay our years of kindness.”

  “Father,” Victor said, distaste dripping in his voice, “if it is Elizabeth’s fortune, she can discharge it however she sees fit.”

  I reached over and gripped his hand. Now Judge Frankenstein’s true reason for being so graciously joyful over my return was obvious. He did not care about me; he cared about the money my name brought.

  Victor had not known. He had never worried about my name or my origins. He had always loved me for myself. All my machinations and manipulations filled me with shame. He had been far truer to me than I had been to him. I had wanted him because he kept me safe. But he had wanted me only because I was his Elizabeth.

  I looked up with tears in my eyes. “I love you, Victor Frankenstein.”

  He brushed my cheek and then kissed the spot where he had cleared a tear. “Of course you do. And I love you, Elizabeth Frankenstein.”

  It was the first time the name had been mine. It did not feel the way I thought it would. But nothing that day had.

  Victor cleared his throat. “I do not relish the thought of spending our honeymoon here. And in a stroke of luck, we have just been given a villa on Lake Como as a wedding gift! Imagine how much space we will have. How much privacy.” Victor directed me up from the chair. “Go pack your things, my wife. We need some time away from these walls.”

  Judge Frankenstein stood, his face purpling with anger to match his wine. “We need to discuss the finances.”

  Victor shooed me with his hands. “On our wedding day, we need only consider our own future.”

  “Ungrateful boy!” his father roared.

  Victor turned to him, smiles replaced by a cold radiating so powerfully that even I shuddered, though his wrath was not directed at me. Victor slammed his fists on the table, rattling the chipped finery. His father startled, nearly tripping over the chair behind him. He sat heavily in it instead.

  I put my hand on Victor’s back, stroked his neck to calm him. Part of me wanted him to lose control, to throw one of the violent mad fits of his youth. To terrify his father even further.

  To hurt him.

  But Victor responded to my touch, taking a deep breath and stilling. “I know what you think of me,” he said to his father. “What you have always thought of me. You have never truly seen me, have never seen what I am capable of. You looked only for fault, only for weakness. The unimaginable heights of my genius, unrivaled, unrestrained, have made you nervous and petty. You would have me gentled. You would have me do nothing with my life but provide you with more money to feed your own appetites and pleasures. And you would use Elizabeth to do it.” Victor leaned forward, and Judge Frankenstein shrank back, that old fear fully resurfaced. He had gotten too used to a tame Victor. “You have no power over us, old man. And if you ever try to control me again, you will understand at last what true power is and who wields it in this family.”

  He turned away from his father, his face still a cold mask, terrible in its alien lack of emotion. I saw only a second of it before he fixed his gaze on me and my Victor was returned. “Well,” he said, “shall we go to your old home?”

  I had assumed we would be fighting the monster here, but with this new information, everything was put off balance, dizzied and confused. A trip by boat, some distance between us and this house; his father; that monster—

  “Yes,” I said, taking his hand once more. “Take me home.”

  OUR JOURNEY WAS BY boat, taking us down the Rhone toward where it connected to Lake Como. The river was swift but placid, the countryside enough to fill the breast with stirrings like religious euphoria. The green and gold of the land promised a wealth of happiness and health.

  But I could not stop my thoughts from spinning with Judge Frankenstein’s revelations and the alteration they cast on my life. Such was my agitation that the monster and its promised attack were pushed to the furthest reaches of my mind. The river carried me swiftly from my past—and back toward my past.

  If I had been in full possession of my senses, I might have delayed our return. Lake Como was not a kind place for me. I had no happy memories there. My life had been hunger and pain and suffering. I had always viewed Victor as my savior for taking me away from it.

  And now, to celebrate our official union, we were returning. Victor, at least, seemed soothed by our journey. His intense agitation and distraction dissipated. Each league no doubt filled him with relief as it put us safer from pursuit. Fish leapt from the water, keeping pace with the boat, and he laughed and pointed. But he saw that I could not mirror his ease.

  He took my hand. “You are sorrowful. If you knew what I have suffered a
nd what I may yet endure, you would endeavor to let me taste the quiet and freedom from despair that this one day, at least, permits me to enjoy.”

  I did know! I knew full well. He was the one in the dark, both about my knowledge and about the ancient childhood anxieties this trip dredged up.

  Still, I would not forget that he had never known, never cared, about my wealth. And he had stepped in to prevent his father from seizing it before I could gather my wits and explore my options for keeping it from him.

  It was not that I did not want to help the Frankensteins.

  It was that…

  No, perhaps it was that. Madame Frankenstein, with her tepid, conditional kindness, was dead. William, beautiful child, also gone. Ernest would find his own way in the world, never counting on an inheritance as a second son. And Victor was mine, regardless of his family fortunes.

  I had known so much strain growing up, constantly fearing that if I failed, I would once again be set out in the world with nothing of my own. And Judge Frankenstein, knowing otherwise, had never offered me comfort or assurance, preferring me to think myself entirely indebted to his generosity. Even this marriage, which could have been delayed until I was at least eighteen, had been presented to me as my best option, when he knew full well that at twenty-one I would have the funds to be independent.

  I closed my eyes, trying to sort through my feelings. What life would I have chosen, had I known?

  But it was an exercise in madness. I had never known. I had demanded the swift marriage myself as a trap. And now binding me to Victor were not only a life and love, but the terrible secret of his monster. I had not chosen this life, but I would stay true to those in it who had chosen me. I would stay true to Victor. I would stay true to the memory of Justine.

  I opened my eyes and smiled weakly at Victor. It was enough to assuage him, and he returned to admiring the landscape.

  “A fresh start is exactly what we need,” he said. “Here, away from the past. A new life together as we build toward what I have always promised you.” He put his arm around me and drew me close. “You can paint. I can resume studying. We will have seclusion and peace. Enough time that I can correct the failures of the past.”

  I, too, was hopeful. I had arranged the marriage for a speedy confrontation with the monster. But as we entered the waters of Lake Como, all my childhood vulnerability, fragility, and fierceness fell on my shoulders like the light misting of rain we were under. It coated everything, quickly soaking me through.

  I was not yet ready to face the monster. I would accept this respite and try to sort through who, exactly, I was as Elizabeth Frankenstein on the shore of Lake Como.

  * * *

  —

  The interior of the villa—as familiar to me as a long-ago dream—was cloaked in white cloth and dust, everything shrouded as if for burial. I wandered through it in a daze. I touched various objects in hopes of sparking some memory, some concrete connection to this life that had been restored to me.

  I felt nothing.

  Victor left me in a bedroom while he explored the rest of the villa, doubtless looking for a library. In the morning, we would go into town to find a woman to hire as cook and housekeeper until we knew what my finances were and how much help we would need.

  I wondered if any of the people I found in town would be one of my long-lost foster siblings. I would be certain to hire an old woman. I did not need to fear my family here. I was not their victim anymore; I was a married woman. I owed them no kindnesses and would deny any claims made on me.

  I stood at the window, watching the sunset break through the dissipating rain clouds for one brilliant orange farewell to my wedding day. I had planned on this day’s being one of vengeance and fire. The monster had planned the same. But I was not where I was supposed to be, and thus nothing could disrupt our wedding night.

  A new horror descended on me, though this was less a mortal terror and more a humiliating fear.

  Victor was my husband. We had shared a bed countless nights growing up. But now we were man and wife: I, at seventeen, a woman; and he…

  I dared not turn around. The bed behind me felt as though it were growing, taking up more and more of the room, lurking like the monster itself in anticipation of claiming me.

  I had wanted to wed as a means to kill a monster. All my plans had centered on spending my wedding night in a fight for my own life, and for Victor’s, as well. I had never once considered a wedding night on which we were safe and relatively free.

  I was hit with a sudden longing for a mother. Not any mother I had ever known—the horrible woman here who I sincerely hoped was dead, or useless Madame Frankenstein—but a mother like what I imagined a mother should be.

  A mother like Justine.

  A longing for my friend punched through me with physical force, and I collapsed to the floor. Escaping Geneva had not let me escape the ghosts of my past.

  I could not simply stay here, safe. Painting. Sitting at Victor’s side as he studied. We might have left Geneva, but I had not left behind my purpose. I pulled out my journal, desperately reviewing what I knew of the monster and what I had written about it.

  The words on the pages led my mind inexorably to the memory of William, lying dead. I wished I had never seen him, never branded on my memory the cold body, the closed eyes, the terrible bruises on his neck. Even now I could see them, each mark of a brutal finger written on the skin with blackest violence.

  I pictured the monster: picking him up, silencing his scream, placing its enormous hands around his—

  I set down the journal and raised my fingers to my neck. Something was wrong. I could feel the edges of my certainty fraying.

  The prints of the fingers on William’s neck were not misshapen, not massive. They were as slender as my own hands.

  Which meant that the monster had not murdered William.

  Someone else had slowly squeezed the life from the boy. Someone else had carefully taken the pendant. Someone else had found Justine and planted the pendant on her when she was asleep. Someone else had engineered the sequence of events perfectly so that—

  I let out a choked sob of horror.

  Someone else had engineered the sequence of events perfectly so that he could have Justine’s body.

  “Victor,” I whispered.

  “Yes, my love?” he answered, a dark silhouette in the doorway.

  ALL MY MANY YEARS of tailoring my emotions to fit others’ needs, of making certain I showed only what was expedient, of training myself to be someone else’s, failed me.

  I was unable to pretend.

  “Victor.” My voice trembled as the scaffolding of my life fell away to reveal a ruinous and terrible mausoleum where I had sought to build a home. “Did you kill your brother?”

  “Which one?” His question was genuine; there was no teasing in his voice. He entered the room and sat on the bench at the foot of the bed, crossing one leg over the other knee.

  I gasped out a choking laugh of shock and disbelief. “Which one?”

  He raised an eyebrow, as though I were the one being confusing. “I have two dead brothers. I suppose I did kill Robert, but it was an accident. I was just curious.”

  “Who is Robert?” My mind whirled as it tried to fill in the past with this new information.

  “My first brother. The one who died as an infant.”

  “I am not talking about that! I have never asked you about that!”

  He frowned at my shrill tone. “I know. Because you understand me.”

  I stood, buzzing and numb at the same time. I was going to fly apart. I clasped my hands tightly in front of myself to keep them from shaking. “I am talking about William. Did you kill William?”

  He said nothing, blinking several times as his eyebrows drew close together. I had always loved that expression, loved the though
ts that churned mysteriously behind it. Now I wanted to carve it from his face.

  He finally spoke, with the careful, soothing tone I had always used on him. “I was not yet back in Geneva. And Justine was found with damning evidence.”

  “I taught you how to plant blame!” I jabbed a finger toward him in accusation. “And you agreed with me that Justine was innocent! You were as convinced as I that she was not guilty! It was because you knew the identity of the murderer. All this time, I thought that you knew and could not say because no one would believe you that the monster existed. But you knew and could not say because it was you!”

  He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “You were never supposed to see the monster. I am humiliated.”

  “You are humiliated? That is your response?”

  He shook his head and turned, as though considering walking out the door. But he took a deep breath, steeling himself. “I can see that this is upsetting you. I knew it would. Why have you insisted on chasing after the things I keep hidden for your own benefit? You are my angel, Elizabeth, and I have ever endeavored to keep you ignorant of the less savory requirements of my work.”

  I staggered back, leaning against the wall lest I fall to the floor. “So you did. You murdered your child brother. And then you framed my dearest friend so that she would be killed for it.”

  His eyes flashed, and all ease left his posture. “I am your dearest friend.”

  The enormity of my culpability threatened to overwhelm me. “Did she— Did you pick her because I loved her?” A new realization stole my breath. “Did you kill Henry, too? Is that why no one has heard from him since he left for England?”

  “Henry is alive, and the world is much more wretched for his presence in it. And as for my motivations with Justine, do not be petty,” he snarled, his very denial confirming he had killed her out of jealousy. “I needed a healthy young body. My previous attempt was chaotic. I had to work with so many parts. Unsure of my technique, I made everything larger so it would be easier to see and manipulate. I used animal pieces to adapt for size and shape. I thought it would be wonderful. Something new. But it was an abomination. I could not repeat that mistake. I needed to refine the process. To perfect it. To work with a single body, or as close as I could get, instead of so many different ones.”