THREE
‘Mother’a Mercy,’ Kettlesing said. ‘And then what happened?’
‘He told me to be ready to proceed at a moment’s notice, and then called for the maid to show me out.’
‘Mother’a Mercy.’ Kettlesing shook his head slowly.
We were in the icehouse that joined onto the back of my workshop. Kettlesing had brought me two bodies and I was busy packing them in ice. I hadn’t wanted to tell him anything about the Deverauxs, but the truth was bubbling up inside me, and I felt that I had to tell someone or I would go mad. Kettlesing was the only one who I trusted, so I ended up telling him the whole story. He had raised an eyebrow, said ‘Oh aye?’ and sat down on the slab to watch me work. I had removed the stomach and intestines from the two bodies and I could only hope that that would be enough to keep them fresh enough until they were needed.
My fingers were cramping with cold inside my gloves, but it was just the ice. I couldn’t feel the chill of the bodies themselves, not through my gloves. It was just the ice. Not the bodies.
‘Bloody aristocrats,’ Kettlesing said. He wiped his nose on his sleeve and snorted. ‘They make me want to heave. Fancy ways, fancy airs, and then they turn around and say “Oh no, we’re far too rich and far too important to let our children die in the normal way, we’re special, the normal rules don’t apply to us”. Bloody bigwigs.’
‘They’re just flesh,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘Flesh. They’re just flesh, that’s all they are. This is just like a normal client.’
‘Yeah, of course they are. You resurrect people’s children all the time. All the bloody time—’
‘It’s only raw materials. Cogs and wheels. Just different.’
‘Yeah, exactly like cogs and wheels. Cogs and wheels that were once alive, cogs and wheels with faces and fingers and families.’
‘No!’ I exclaimed. ‘It’s just... it’s not like that, it’s...’
‘What?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said miserably. ‘But it’s just flesh. They just want to keep their only child alive.’
He snorted. ‘Bloody ’ristocrats.’
‘I’m not saying I think this is a good thing!’
‘Ain’t you?’
‘No!’ I protested, stung. ‘It’s profane, what they want to do.’
‘But you’re still going ahead with it. Yes, I know, you don’t have a choice, blahdeblah and all.’ He scowled. ‘Grow some balls.’
I flushed. ‘You don’t have to be coarse.’
‘Jesus, Mary’n Joseph...’ he sighed.
I was hot now, prickling uncomfortably, but my fingers were still stiff. I bowed my head over the body and forced unnecessary chips of ice down between the arms and the sides of the ice-box. The dead girl’s skin was tinged with blue, and had started to mottle purple with livor mortis. I shuddered. The urge to slam down the lid of the box and turn away was overwhelming. It’s just flesh, I scolded myself. It’s just meat, there’s nothing left here, it’s not a person.
‘Do you need any help?’ Kettlesing asked abruptly.
I shook my head. ‘I’m almost finished.’
‘No, I mean... then. When you do it.’ I looked up at him in surprise. He folded his arms and glared at me. ‘Well? Do you?’
‘You don’t know what to do.’
‘Hell no, I’m not doing anything unholy!’ He shifted uneasily. ‘I mean, if you need anyone to light the candles or thread needles or...’
I felt a sudden rush of warm feeling toward him, sitting on the slab scowling at me. ‘I’d appreciate that, Kettlesing.’
He snorted and kicked the toe of his boot against the floor.
* * *
I saw Lenore again the next afternoon. She was even weaker than before. Her cheeks and lips were flushed unnaturally red against her chalky skin and she seemed barely strong enough to keep her eyes open. Lady Deveraux held her hand, her face almost as pale as her daughter’s. Lord Deveraux was a dark presence in the doorway.
I sat down on a chair next to the bed. ‘Hello Lenore.’
Her lips moved, but no sound came out.
‘Don’t talk, darling,’ her mother said quickly. ‘Just rest.’
I leaned forward in my chair and studied Lenore’s features. The skin was stretched tight over the harsh lines and angles of her face and under the almost translucent lids, her eyeballs seemed to have fallen back into her skull, like those of a broken doll. I rested my chin in my hands. I had planned to keep as much of the original body as I could, only changing the internal organs for healthy ones, but looking at her body, I doubted that would be possible. She was so thin; her body wouldn’t have the strength to carry on long enough by itself. The parents would probably want her face to stay the same, so keeping the whole head was probably the best option. What about the hair? Maybe that should be replaced...
‘How do you feel about horsehair?’ I asked Lady Deveraux. ‘Or would you rather she kept her own?’
Lady Deveraux’s lips went grey. She started to say something, but there was a swift movement from the doorway, and Lord Deveraux’s hand gripped my shoulder. He hauled me out onto the landing and shoved me against the wall. His eyes were like chips of coal on fire.
‘It was a simple question,’ I protested.
‘Be quiet.’ His eyes snapped black sparks. ‘Just be quiet. I want you to listen to me very carefully, Mr Frankenstein. You will not discuss your methods with my wife. You will not mention forthcoming events in front of Lenore. You will keep a civil tongue in your head at all times and you will remember that this is my daughter, not one of your foolish university experiments—’
‘Lord Deveraux—’
‘She loves white daisies and the little pink anemones that grow on the mountains in summer. She has a brown pony called Lord and every day until she was too weak she took him carrots from our own kitchen. When she was two years old, she accidentally set our bedroom on fire. She’s a little girl, Mr Frankenstein, just a little girl, she’s just—’ His voice broke. I stared at him, and he released the front of my coat and stepped back. The muscles in his face were twitching as though he had some nervous disease. He started to speak, but stopped, turned around and walked quickly away down the stairs.
I looked back into the room. Lady Deveraux hadn’t moved an inch, and the sound of Lenore’s laboured breathing was the only sound in the room, in the whole house.
Flesh, I told myself. Just flesh.
I'm very slowly making my way through and hopefully will manage to hit another chapter later this week. But for now, chapter three!