“Not Rahel,” I said. “She is blond. And I rather doubt all of this would be quite to her taste.”
“You asked if Will Percy had hurt Rahel,” said Valentin. He barely opened his clenched jaw to say it. “You thought he might have. And yet you mean to make such a sacrifice for him? To give up your reason, as you believe you will?”
“I asked, and you told me he hasn’t hurt her,” I said. “You declined to say more. Should I turn on my dearest friend because the man who abducted us both seems to hate him for no good reason?”
“Your dearest friend.” His words dripped with contempt. “Is that what he is to you?”
“Not only my dearest friend.” I thought back to the day when he first came to the chateau. He had bowed to my mother but smiled past her, right at me, thinking about how he would like to make me laugh. “My only friend.”
“Your only friend?” repeated Valentin. “What about the other one? Dominic?”
“Dominic is my friend,” I agreed. “But I met him only four days ago. So you might call him the exception that proves the rule.”
I picked up the beads on the vanity and rolled them on my palm. I felt Valentin’s eyes on me and wished he would leave.
“You’ve had a lonely life,” he said.
I looked up at him in surprise. The contempt was gone from his voice. He sounded softer, thoughtful. Like he had actually considered, for a moment, what it might have been like to be me.
I hadn’t meant to invite pity. I never meant to do that.
“I suppose so, before Will came,” I said. “All my friends had been dead hundreds of years.”
Valentin’s expression tilted in confusion.
“My friends,” I explained. “Paracelsus, Ortolanus, Jean de Meung, Jābir ibn Hayyān.”
“Alchemists,” he said, his confusion clearing. “You’re an odd girl, Theosebeia.”
“I should be more like this one, I suppose?” I asked, holding up the dark-haired girl’s beads and gazing around her room. If Burggraf Ludwig kept a house in London, perhaps it was so that his children could attend the social season. Rahel did not seem the type for balls, but she must have a sister. A younger one, as Rahel was the older.
“You should have had more than one friend,” said Valentin. It sounded more like an accusation now than sympathy. He was stiffening already, withdrawing his pity. Good.
“Like she did?” I asked. “This girl has plenty of friends, doesn’t she? And time to spend with them. Balls and dances and whatever it is fashionable girls do.”
I searched Valentin’s face, but it had turned to stone and gave nothing away.
“You might find it hard to believe, Herr Wolff, but I don’t envy her. I might have been lonely growing up, but I was never bored. I had purpose. Can this girl say the same? Did anyone ever teach her to be more than an ornament?” I asked. “Did they give her a chance to use her mind?”
“What about your mind?” he asked through a very still jaw. “You prize it so much, yet you will give it up for him?”
“Tell me what happened, if you want me to hate him,” I said. “Tell me whose room this is. Tell me why you hate that I am sitting in her chair.”
Slowly, and with effort, Valentin peeled his fingers from his palms. He released his breath in a long, silent stream. He loosened his shoulders and jaw. He let go of something and said nothing.
“Good night, Miss Hope.”
He closed the door behind him, and the key turned the lock.
How convenient. Someone had evidently found it necessary to lock this door from the outside in the past. I added another stroke to the picture of the black-haired girl I was forming in my mind.
12
The next day I rose, ill-rested and sore of head. I looked at my dirty robe à la polonaise, lying crumpled on the floor, and concluded that I could not face the day in it. I decided to test Valentin’s assertion that the black-haired girl’s clothes wouldn’t fit. I took out each of the gowns and laid them on the gilded brocade bedspread. The petal pink was too girlish, I decided, and another was clearly a ballgown, and much too elaborate for daily wear. The most practical option was a sprigged, egg-blue muslin. I tried it without my stays, and couldn’t close the thing. With a sigh, I laced myself into my undergarments and forced the dress closed over them. I was taller than the girl it was meant for, but without the hip pads, the dress fell to a respectable length. I tightened the ribbons that drew the neck closed and examined myself in the mirror. I stretched my arms forward, and though it was tight I could move well enough.
I would have chosen a more dignified dress to meet my fate in, if there had been one. This was a dress for a young girl going for a walk in the park on a suitor’s arm, or to a picnic on a fine spring day. It looked wrong on my nervous, taut frame. It didn’t suit my wan face or my heavily shadowed eyes.
I considered taking it off and suffering the future in my own, sullied dress. There was only a little blood on the hem. Perhaps I could wash it out in the basin.
But it was too late. There was a knock at the door, and I answered it still in the robin’s-egg muslin. Valentin started to say good morning, then saw what I wore, and his voice failed him.
“Good morning,” I replied. I no longer wanted to change. The stricken look on Valentin’s face was worth a little incongruity. “Do you have the supplies I asked for?”
Valentin opened his mouth but didn’t use it. He nodded. Even that seemed to cost him something.
“Good. And where would you have me work? I will need somewhere with a good space and a fireplace of suitable size.”
Valentin turned his head away. He stared resolutely at the wall as he answered.
“The library.”
I raised my eyebrows, but Valentin did not see. No adept would have suggested a library. Between the smells, smokes, and occasional explosions, books were not safe in an alchemist’s workroom. But these were Burggraf Ludwig’s books, and therefore I felt no particular desire to protect them.
“I’m ready,” I said. “Lead the way.”
Valentin did not take my arm and walked farther from me than he had before. We climbed the stairs and I saw that the room where they held Dominic was still guarded, this time by the large, florid German.
“Guten Morgen,” I said to him. Valentin held the library door open expectantly, but I ignored him and continued in German. “How is the prisoner today?”
“Well enough, I think,” said the German, with a hesitant look at Valentin.
“His fever? Is it worse?” I asked.
“Nein. Better. He ate quite a breakfast.”
Better. I scarcely dared to believe him. I turned to Valentin. “What did your surgeon say?” I demanded. “Did he see him?”
“Yesterday,” grunted Valentin. “The surgeon said he could do nothing.”
“If he is better, I need to know,” I said.
Valentin continued to stand, holding the door, pretending not to have heard what I said.
“I have agreed to make the Stone for you, and lose my reason so that your Burggraf can have what he did not make and did not deserve, and you can have your reward, whatever that is.”
Valentin looked at me sharply, and I made a note of the raw feeling in his eyes at the mention of his reward. I continued with more confidence.
“But before I do this, I will see my friend. And I will have assurances from you of his well-being.”
“Which friend?”
“Both.” I met his eyes in challenge. He was the first to look away.
Valentin nodded at the big man, who opened the door to Dominic’s room. It wasn’t locked, I noticed. There must have been a limit to the rooms that were equipped to serve as prison cells.
The room was some sort of servants’ quarters, not as large or prettily decorated as the others in the house that I had seen. Dominic sat on the floor, back against the wall, hands chained to each other through a pipe that stood out from the floorboards. He looked up at me as I came in, an
d to my surprise, he smiled. I went to him and knelt by his side.
“I don’t know for certain,” he said to me. “But I think the fever broke.”
I felt his forehead with the back of my hand. He wasn’t hot. He wasn’t sweating as he had been before. There was no scent of sulfur on his breath. The heavy weight of my dread lightened. The fever had broken.
“What about your mind? Do you still feel…”
“I feel like myself. I didn’t, last night. There were moments…” He shuddered. “But this morning I woke up myself. I must not have gone far enough into it. Whatever it was. I haven’t heard the voice all morning.”
I sat back and gazed at him with relief.
“Although I admit I still feel a bit like hurting that friend of yours,” he said. “But I don’t think that’s anything to do with the Alchemist’s Curse.”
“Not you, too,” I sighed. “Poor Will certainly has a knack for making enemies.”
“You aren’t going to do it,” said Dominic. His chains clinked against each other as he leaned toward me. “Tell me you’re not going to make the Stone. Whatever they threaten us with. I’m not afraid to die, not now.”
“You don’t mean that,” I said. “Everyone is afraid to die.”
“Maybe I am. But I can face it. I’ve confessed.”
I stared at the manacles on his wrists. They were tight, and I could see red marks where they had rubbed the skin raw. I thought about lying to him. But I waited too long.
“Thea, no!” His clear eyes widened. “Whatever they do to Will or me, or even you, none of it is worse than the curse! It was like … it was like hell, Thea. It was torment. There were other souls there. Like the souls of the damned.”
I stared. “Like hell? But … surely you don’t mean…”
“I mean it, Thea!” he exclaimed. “There were other minds there, other victims. It couldn’t truly have been hell, but it was as bad as I could imagine. I only felt the edge of it, but that’s enough to know I’d face anything else first!”
I jumped to my feet. My heart felt as if it were punching a hole in my chest. I had to get out. I couldn’t listen to more, or my courage would fail.
“He’ll cure me,” I said from the doorway without turning around. “With the Stone. When I’ve made it. You know I don’t really have a choice. They have you, they have Will. They have all the means they need to force me.”
“Don’t do this for me,” cried Dominic to my turned back. “Do you hear me, Thea? I don’t want it. Don’t do this for me!”
“I won’t, then,” I said. “Not for you.”
I shut the door before he could reply. I turned to Valentin, still waiting in the hallway.
“When I have done as your Graf requires, I want you to take Dominic to Germany. He will need to be kept from the attention of the law here. And he will need money for training. He wants to be a medical doctor.”
“You ask a great deal,” said Valentin.
“Not at all,” I said. “I will give your Graf unlimited wealth and immortal life. In return I ask only a few paltry favors.”
And paltry favors they were; my mind, Will’s life, Dominic’s freedom restored. Small things indeed, when set against the value of the Philosopher’s Stone.
Valentin grunted again. He seemed more prone to it this morning than he had yesterday.
“If it is not merely a fantasy, what you promise,” he said.
“If it is, the deal is off.” I was out of patience. “But I tell you, I’ve seen it. It is no fantasy.”
Even now the thought of the deep red mass, hardening into the stone in the ovum, stirred something like lust in me. Despite the cost, a part of me wanted nothing else but to make it, and only hoped that I would not lose my mind before I could see it done.
“You have seen it,” repeated Valentin. “But have you seen it do what you say? Have you seen it turn all metals into gold, heal all ills?”
All I had seen it do was smash against the wall, but I couldn’t dwell on that. It would work. Everything I had ever done pointed to it. The same book promised it that warned of the Alchemist’s Curse. And I had certainly seen the curse. Why would something so dreadful guard the Stone if it wasn’t all that the writings said it was? No, the Philosopher’s Stone was real. It had to be.
I pushed past Valentin, making sure to brush his arm with the fabric of my dress, and went into the library. I gathered my tools, arranged my metals, stoked the fire. I uncovered the White Elixir and found it unharmed.
It was time to get to work.
I kept my mind on the tasks in front of me. Carefully heating the Elixir, preparing the gold tincture and the antimony sulfate. Even with my heart stuttering and my body pulsating with anxiety, I ground and mixed the metals with the steady hand my mother always envied. I knew she envied it because she never mentioned it, neither to praise nor disparage, except indirectly. The thought of her reedy, resonant voice pushed away the image of the mad thing she had become.
Thea. This anger of yours is growing tiresome.
It was my mother’s voice, so vivid I looked over my shoulder to see if she was behind me. She wasn’t.
It is weakness to dwell so on the faults of others. And you cannot afford to be weak, my darling.
I stood and spun around, more for something to do than from a hope of seeing her. She wasn’t there. All I saw was Valentin, sitting in the corner, his eyes trained on me.
“Miss Hope,” he said. “Is something wrong?”
“Did you hear someone?” I asked him.
Valentin shook his head slowly.
Why would I speak to him? my mother asked. And what did I just tell you about showing weakness?
I turned back to my work and tried to calm myself. Whatever this was, whatever it meant, I did not have attention to spare for it now.
There was a knock at the door. I turned and stared at it in alarm until Valentin rose to respond. He had heard that, then.
A German stood outside, the tall, dark-haired one. The torturer.
“What is it, Martin?” Valentin asked.
“The Fräulein wants to see her,” said Martin in German.
Valentin nodded. “I’ll take her at once.”
“No.” A slight smile crossed Martin’s face. “I am to take her.”
Valentin stared impassively at Martin.
“Miss Hope,” he called, without looking at me.
I approached slowly. I would not have liked the idea of going to see Rahel, in any case, but I liked it less for the malicious smile on Martin’s face and the wary look on Valentin’s. I stopped at the doorway.
“Why does she want to see me?” I asked. “Didn’t she say what she wished last night?”
“It seems not,” said Martin.
I glanced up at Valentin. His expression was stony, but he gave me a slight nod.
“Keep the heat even,” I said to him. And then to Martin, “I will have to be back before the hour is out to complete the next step.”
“I doubt the Fräulein will have use for more than an hour of your company,” said Martin, his wolfish smile curling into a definite leer.
I stepped through the doorway. Martin started to follow, but Valentin seized his upper arm and leaned close.
“If any harm comes to her,” he said in a low voice. “You will answer to me.”
Martin pulled back, but Valentin did not let go.
“I answer to Fräulein Rahel,” Martin said.
“I will be clear,” said Valentin. “In this, you will answer to me.”
They exchanged a long, unfriendly look before Martin turned away, and Valentin released his arm.
Valentin watched from the doorway as we walked down the hallway, and it wasn’t until we had passed the wide, open stairway and crossed out from his sight that Martin took my arm. I tried to shake him off, but his grip tightened.
“Our captain likes you,” he hissed in German.
“I doubt it,” I replied. “More likely he simply
dislikes you.”
Martin stopped abruptly, released my arm, and slapped me across the face.
I staggered back, my mind shocked to a blinding white. I put a hand to my face. It felt hot, and then began to sting.
“There,” said Martin. “Not so clever now, are you? Valentin never did know how to handle a mouthy woman.”
I turned back to him, slowly, desperately wishing for a mouthy retort. But all I could do was stare, eyes wide. My cheek was tingling now, and the pain was growing. I had a sudden and alarming urge to cry.
“Valentin will punish you for this,” I said. My voice sounded very far away, but at least it did not tremble.
Martin laughed. “You think Valentin will care about a little smack?”
“He said you’re not to harm me.”
“He did.” Martin stepped close to me. I tried to back away, but he seized my arm again and pulled me toward him. His smile had something worse behind it than mere mockery. “But you are more innocent than you look if you think that was the harm he meant.”
I stared at him in horror. His words were like another slap to the face, shocking me back into silence. I couldn’t miss his meaning. I swallowed hard, and lowered my hand from my face with effort.
Martin smiled again but made no further threat, apparently satisfied that he had put me in my place. He pulled me after him, down a corridor emitting faint piano music. He knocked at an ornately paneled door. The music stopped, and Rahel’s voice invited us in.
The door opened on a spacious and lavishly decorated parlor. Floor-to-ceiling high windows draped in heavy burgundy curtains let in all the sooty light London had to give. A thick Persian rug spread across the marble-tiled floor, and an emerald-green velvet sofa stood diagonally across it. Rahel lay on the sofa, a book in her hands, facing the piano, where Berit had just stopped playing. She watched as Martin conveyed me into the room and pushed me into a plush chair across from her. If she objected to his handling of me, or noticed the redness on my cheek, she did not say so. She merely sat upright, swinging her silk-clad legs over the side of the sofa and laying her book open on its spine in her lap.
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