A Cold Legacy

by Megan Shepherd

  The rats kept crawling over one another, their little pink noses sniffing our strange smells, but Elizabeth paid them no heed. “Victor ran away, terrified by what he’d done. He thought the creature would die of exposure, but like Hensley, it didn’t feel heat or cold. It needed food, but not much. It had the strength to break through locked doors. It lived, and it went out into the world. Eventually Victor left to hunt it down. Neither of them was heard from again.”

  “And this is the science you want to teach me?”

  “Only the daughter of Henri Moreau could understand how important it is.”

  “I’m also the daughter of Evelyn Chastain, and she’d faint at the very mention of Frankenstein’s monster. Why are you so certain I take after Father, and not her?”

  She raised an eyebrow. I thought she might speak, but instead she took an apron off a hook near the door and handed it to me.

  “Put that on, and we shall see which parent you take after most. Consider this your first lesson: Always wear an apron you don’t mind getting dirty. Very dirty.”

  THIRTEEN

  “YOU ASKED ME ABOUT Valentina’s hands,” Elizabeth said as she led me up the rest of the steps to the locked door at the top. “She came to us two years ago nearly dead from blood loss. She’d traveled a long way, following a rumor among itinerant performers that I could restore missing limbs. She’d lost her hands in a wood-chopping accident and brought them with her in a wicker basket, but I couldn’t use them. They’d been too badly damaged. I threw them out to the foxes.”

  “Where did you find her current hands?” I asked, following her up the stairs.

  “There’s a monastery outside of Quick. They have a graveyard that serves the entire region. It’s where I get most of my raw supplies.”

  Raw supplies? I thought. More like body parts.

  “The death rate this far north is abysmally high,” she continued. “I had the corpses of three girls her same age to choose from. One was very recent, died in childbirth; it made the transplant easier. I would have liked to find a corpse more her natural coloration, but there aren’t many Romany in these parts. She didn’t mind. She was so thankful to have the use of her hands again that she dedicated her life to Ballentyne. I can hardly recall how we managed before she arrived. She’s teaching the girls astronomy and philosophy in addition to needlepoint. They might be milkmaids by trade, but that doesn’t mean they can’t also be well educated.”

  My head spun with questions. Did the monks know Elizabeth took the bodies, or did she grave rob them late at night? She probably sent Carlyle to do the dirty work, except now he was getting on in age. Maybe that was why she’d been so kind to Balthazar, wanting him to fill Igor’s role as her laboratory assistant.

  I followed her up the tower with nervous steps. Each stair took me closer to secrets I’d wished to know ever since I was a little girl peering through the keyhole of Father’s laboratory. Elizabeth slid her key in the lock but paused.

  “Once we go in here, Juliet, there’s no going back. I’ll ask you one more time. Are you certain you wish to learn all of this?”

  I pressed a hand against Jack Serra’s water charm beneath my dress, reminding myself that I had to learn my demons before deciding to follow them or not. Technically, I was also staying true to my promise to Montgomery; I wasn’t following my father’s footsteps. I was only standing in the door and peering down that path to see where it led.

  A tremor of excitement ran through me. “Yes.”

  She opened the door. My greedy eyes took in everything at once: the roundness of the tower walls, which gave the feeling of a giant stone womb; wooden shelves and cupboards; books and papers stacked in piles that were tidy but didn’t have my father’s rigid adherence to order. In fact, nothing about the room brought to mind my father’s cold and sterile laboratory. This space had the touch of a woman, from the apron hanging on a peg to a kettle and cup of tea that must have long since gone cold. There was even a little painting on the wall, done with childish inaccuracy, signed by Hensley. The only thing at all similar was the operating table in the middle: the same leather manacles, the same sawdust underneath to draw the blood, now fresh and unsullied.

  She lit a lantern. “What’s going through your mind?”

  The room was warm, with the windows shuttered against the winter wind. Cozy almost, not unlike my attic apartment in London. I had the urge to wrap a threadbare quilt around my shoulders and curl up in my old rocking chair by the fire.

  “It feels more comfortable than I’d expected.”

  “Good.”

  She closed the door behind me and locked it, then returned to the table, where she carefully laid out the body of Hensley’s white rat. My eyes scanned its tiny feet, the ropelike naked tail. Its fur was matted around its neck in a very revealing way.

  “Hensley means to be protective, but he doesn’t know his own strength. Instead of throwing this one out for the foxes, I thought it might prove . . . educational.”

  Her eyes darted to the metal pole coming down from the spired roof, and I realized it was the reverse end of a lightning rod. It connected to wires designed to hook onto a cadaver’s body.

  “We’re going to reanimate it?” I couldn’t keep the thrill from my voice.

  She laid out the rat, gathering several vials and surgical tools from the various cabinets around the room. “No,” she said, flicking her eyes toward me. “I’m going to reanimate it. You’re going to observe and not touch anything. It isn’t a complicated procedure, but it’s a dangerous one, even with a subject so small. Now fetch that clamp, will you?”

  I handed her the metal clamp, and she used it to secure several metal wires to the end of the lightning rod, then attached them to sections of the rat. Next, she inserted a syringe of murky liquid into its heart. I took in every detail with wide eyes. It wasn’t unlike my own plan for awakening the water-tank creatures: the principle difference being, of course, that those creatures had been alive in a state of stasis, and this rat was quite dead.

  Anticipation rushed up my throat, and I had to bite the inside of my cheek. I was going to watch the impossible happen. Death, defeated.

  “But it isn’t raining anymore,” I said. “There won’t be any lightning.”

  “The windmill provides enough power to reanimate small creatures,” she said. “Rats, rabbits, birds. When I reattach a human’s limb, it also requires a small jolt of electricity to stimulate the dormant nerves. I’ve performed such minor procedures dozens of times. The lightning rod . . . well, there’s only one time when we would need that much power all at once.”

  I dropped my voice. “For a body, you mean. An entire human.”

  “Yes. The rod hasn’t been used since the professor brought Hensley back to life thirty-five years ago.”

  I watched as she finished connecting the wires. After years of studying science out of books, I itched to do the work myself. I had to clasp my hands together.

  She glanced up at me. “You might wish to cover your ears. They scream when they come back to life. Even the rats.”

  I didn’t move. I couldn’t. My every muscle was riveted to that little dead body on the table. Elizabeth went to the wall, where a lever and dial were attached to the electrical wiring from the windmill outside. “I warned you,” she said.

  She flipped the lever.

  The entire room hummed in a soft vibration, like crackling in the air before lightning strikes. I could feel electricity in the wires and in the metal inlay of the table. For a few breathless moments, nothing happened. I didn’t take my eyes from the rat. Such white fur, motionless now. Such black eyes, dulled with death.

  Would it be very different with a human subject? Humans shared the same basic neurological systems with animals, after all. The same major nerves and synapses. It was how my father had been able to twist animals into creatures that walked and talked.

  A spark snapped, and I jerked. Sweat broke out on my forehead as though Father was peerin
g over my shoulder.

  Elizabeth adjusted the dial, and electricity popped again on the wires connected to the rat. Movement caught my eye—just a flinch. If I’d blinked, I would have missed it. But there was no mistaking what I had seen. There—it came again. The rat’s little paw, curling with the pulses of electricity. Suddenly I wasn’t in the tower at all. I was back in King’s College with Lucy, watching students vivisecting an unanesthetized rabbit. Its back leg had twitched just like the rat’s. Only back then my body had shaken with rage, not thrill. Those boys had been torturing that rabbit, ending its life slowly and painfully. Now, before my very eyes, Elizabeth was doing the exact opposite. Bringing a creature back to life. Righting its wrongful death. If there was pain involved—well, what was pain, in the face of new life?

  Its body was warming, twitching back to life as the electrical currents jolted the heart. Elizabeth cranked the dial once more and the entire rat convulsed.

  Its scream was far too human for something so small. I flinched but didn’t cover my ears. I wanted to hear that scream. I liked it. It was the scream of life fighting back into the world, the scream of the impossible finding a voice, the scream of death’s last stand before being banished back into the shadows.

  Elizabeth lowered the lever, and the crackling in the air faded. She came to the table, where we watched the rat twitching back to life. Gently, she removed the wires and withdrew the needle from the creature’s heart. A tiny drop of crimson marred the rat’s perfect white fur.

  Blood.

  Or rather, life.

  The rat suddenly scrambled to its stomach, eyes blinking, nose twitching, both panic and lethargy present in its jerky movements. I reached out to touch the soft fur. Beneath my fingers I could feel its heart fluttering out of control, the warm blood flowing through stiff capillaries. We could give Hensley back the rat and he’d never know the difference. Or maybe I’d ask Elizabeth if I could keep it as a pet. A reminder of the awe-inspiring possibilities of science and a promise to myself that I would be bringing such creatures back to life—not like those medical students.

  I pressed my hand over Jack Serra’s charm. He had told me to know my demons, and now I did, in the form of a white rat with a twitching pink nose. I knew reanimation was possible. The science behind the procedure was sophisticated, its execution simple. With time and research, I felt confident I could replicate it. Lucy’s plan to bring Edward back didn’t seem so mad anymore. In fact, it was starting to feel heartless not to do it.

  Just as the Beast had said, science was in my blood. For all of my mother’s goodness, my father’s love of science pulsed harder in my veins. In London I’d feared I’d crossed that line and become too much like him. Now, looking at the rat, I knew. The Beast was right, just as Jack Serra was right. The river always flowed downhill. There was no point in trying to escape from the inevitable.

  Elizabeth gently took the rat from me and placed it in a glass tank along with a cotton ball that smelled of alcohol and something bitter. Anesthesia. She closed the lid on the tank, and it hit me.

  “Chloroform?” I said. “That will kill it!”

  “I know,” she said calmly.

  “But you just brought it back to life.”

  “To teach you.” Her hand remained firmly on the lid. “I did this procedure for you, not the rat. Let this be your second lesson tonight. Nothing comes back from the dead unchanged. You’ve seen the effect it has had on Hensley. This rat would have been stronger than other rats, its behavior unpredictable. If I’d returned it to the cage with the others, it might have killed them all without even meaning to.”

  I shook my head. This information was unwelcome. We could cure Edward of the Beast, but would there be other, more dangerous, side effects?

  “You don’t know that. I could have kept it on its own in a cage and fed it myself.”

  Her cold eyes didn’t waver, and more doubt sank into me.

  “We don’t do this to make pets,” she said. “We don’t do it to bring those we love back. There are rules, Juliet. A code. Until you promise to me that you would never use this science for anything other than the rules, you will only watch me do it. When I’m certain your ethics are above reproach, then I’ll let you be the one to pull the lever.”

  I swallowed, watching the rat twitch inside the glass cage once, twice, and then stop. I closed my eyes.

  “You’re right. I’m sorry. I promise.”

  I wasn’t sure if it was a lie or not. I wasn’t sure of anything anymore.

  I took off the apron and walked down the tower’s spiral stairs in a daze. I needed fresh air and time to think. I went outside into the dark night and walked the gardens beneath a moonless sky. At night, everything took on a different appearance. I had explored Ballentyne’s gardens in the daylight and found them to be an overgrown tangle of vines, but now the shapes loomed like ghosts.

  If Edward died, bringing him back was possible—but at what risk?

  The Beast had claimed to love me at the same time his claws had dug into my shoulder deeply enough to draw blood. A deranged, twisted obsession. Would it be any different after the procedure? A terrible image flickered in my mind of Edward, brought back from the dead, hugging Lucy with such unnatural strength that he suffocated her just as Hensley did with his beloved rats.

  While my wandering feet took me through the gardens back toward Ballentyne, I noticed a light blazing on the front steps, moving back and forth. It was McKenna, dressed in a man’s sweater, holding a torch and pacing from one end to the other. She must have realized I’d slipped out of the house and was looking for me.

  I hurried back toward the house.

  “McKenna,” I said, breathing hard as I climbed the steps. “I’m sorry I wandered off. It was selfish of me.”

  To my surprise, her worry didn’t fade. She barely glanced at me.

  “Wandered off? Hush, little mouse. You’d hardly be the first. Half of my girls here spend hours wandering the grounds.” Her voice was soft, but her eyes were troubled as they scanned the moors, her fingers working anxiously.

  I pulled my sweater closer. “Who are you looking for, then?”

  “It’s Valentina. She was supposed to wake me at midnight; we do the week’s baking in the wee hours of Saturday mornings. But she didn’t. There’s no sign of her, not since yesterday. Her bedroom door is locked and she has the only key.”

  “Why would she run off?”

  McKenna sighed with worry. “The mistress trusts Valentina, but if you ask me, there’s always been something off about that girl. Don’t get me wrong; she cares about this place. But there’s a darkness in her she’s never been able to shake. I worry that darkness has come to haunt her.”

  A shiver ran through me, and McKenna hugged her arms as well.

  “Perhaps it’s come to haunt all of us,” she whispered.

  FOURTEEN

  WE WAITED ALL DAY for Valentina to reappear, but there was no sign of her. By the following night even Elizabeth was worried enough to stop our Perpetual Anatomy lessons until she was found. The entire household mounted a search for her. I took the south garden, afraid to venture anywhere near the bogs.

  “Valentina!” I called, but there was no answer.

  After another hour, nearly frozen to death, I stomped back to the stairs, where McKenna and Elizabeth kept watch. McKenna handed me a cup of hot cider.

  “Any news of her?” I asked.

  McKenna shook her head, lips stitched together in worry. “No, though Moira admitted she heard Valentina crying a few nights ago when she found out you’d been named heir, Miss Moreau. None of us have ever seen Valentina cry, not once.”

  “You think she ran off because of me?” My stomach twisted with guilt. Did Valentina truly care that much about the manor? Perhaps when we found her, we could put aside our differences and come to an understanding. She could be my advisor, like McKenna was to Elizabeth. I’d own the manor, but she’d be the heart of it.

  McKenna
hugged her arms tightly. “Don’t blame yourself, little mouse. Let’s just hope she turns up soon.”

  The front door creaked open slowly, and a little face with mismatched eyes peered out. Hensley. He caught sight of Elizabeth and slipped his hand in hers. A white rat perched on his shoulder, nose sniffing the cold air. I exchanged a glance with Elizabeth.

  “Can’t you sleep, darling?” Elizabeth asked.

  “I want Lily to read me a story.”

  “Lily’s busy right now, my dear. All the girls are. Someone’s gone missing and everyone’s out searching. You’ll have to wait for a story, I’m afraid.”

  He looked up at her with that one white eye, then out to the moors. “Who went missing, Mother?”

  “Valentina.”

  He knit his face together in confusion. “She isn’t missing.”

  Elizabeth frowned. “What do you mean?”

  He huffed, petting the rat extra hard. “I don’t want to talk about her. I want a story!”

  Elizabeth and McKenna exchanged a worried look, and I knelt down to face him. “Hensley, I shall read you a story if you like, but first tell us what happened to Valentina.”

  “She went away. I saw her packing.”

  “But her room is locked. How did you see?”

  He gave an exasperated sigh. “I saw it from the narrow rooms.”

  Elizabeth let out a small sound of surprise, then turned to me. “That’s what he calls the passageways. But there aren’t any passageways in the servants’ wing, are there, McKenna?”

  The old housekeeper ran a wrinkled hand through her hair, trying to think. “I can’t rightly say, mistress. The passages were mapped in 1772, but the papers are so old and damaged they’re practically useless. If there are any passages there, they can’t be but a few feet high, with that sloping attic. I daresay Hensley or one of the little girls are the only ones who could fit through them.”

  “And you, Juliet,” Elizabeth said, seizing me on the arm. “You can bend like a reed. You take the passageways and see if you can unlock the door from within. We’ll wait outside her bedroom in the hallway. Hensley, can you show Miss Juliet where you saw Valentina go? And then she’ll read you a story, my darling.”