The Isle of Blood (17 page)

“Will Henry, you’re quiet tonight—even for you,” observed my master in the cab ride back to the Plaza.

“I’m sorry, sir.”

“Sorry for what?”

“For being quiet.”

“It wasn’t a criticism, Will Henry. It was merely an observation.”

“I’m tired, I suppose.”

“That is not something one supposes. Are you tired or are you not?”

“I am tired.”

“Then, say so.”

“I just said so.”

“You don’t strike me as tired. More like angry.” He turned away. His angular profile flitted in and out of shadow as we rattled down the granite street. The fresh snowdrifts glittered diamond-bright in the glow of the arc lights lining Fifth Avenue.

“It’s Mr. Arkwright, isn’t it?” he asked. On those infrequent moments when the monstrumologist decided to take actual note of my existence, he missed very little.

“Dr. Warthrop, he lied to you.”

“What do you mean?” He turned from the window. Light and shadow warred upon the landscape of his face.

“He knew you had an apprentice. Dr. von Helrung told him.”

“Well, he must have forgotten.”

“And he never applied to you. I would have seen the letters.”

“Perhaps you did.”

The implication that I was lying could not have hurt more than if he had physically struck me.

ot making an accusation,” he went on. “I just don’t know why Mr. Arkwright would lie about it. To me, more striking than his mental acuity—which is truly extraordinary—is his sincerity. Truly a remarkable young man, Will Henry. He will make a fine addition to our ranks one day. There is very little of import that escapes his notice.”

“He forgot you already had an apprentice,” I pointed out, not without a note of triumph.

“As I said,
of import
—” He stopped himself and took a deep breath. “Anyway, I’m surprised to hear you use the word ‘apprentice.’ I was under the impression you detested monstrumology.”

“I don’t detest it.”

“So you love it?”

“I know how important it is to you, Dr. Warthrop, so I…”

“Ah, I see. It is not monstrumology you love, then.” He considered the white world outside the cab. The wheels crunched in the newly fallen snow. The snap of our driver’s whip was muffled in the hard wind coming over the East River.

“Oh, Will Henry,” he cried softly. “I should never have taken you in. It was not what either of us desired. I should have known little good would come of it.”

“Don’t say that, sir. Please don’t say that.” I reached over to touch his arm with my wounded hand, and then withdrew. I did not think he would approve of my touching him.

“Oh, no,” he said. “It is an unfortunate habit of mine to say things that probably shouldn’t be said. Little good can come of this, Will Henry; I have known it for quite some time. What I do will kill me one day, and you will be abandoned again. Or worse, what I love will kill—”

His gaze fell to my left hand, and then he continued. “I am a philosopher in the natural sciences. Matters of the heart I leave to the poets, but it has occurred to me, as a failed poet myself, that the cruelest aspect of love is its inviolable integrity. We do not
choose
to love—or I should say, we cannot choose
not
to love. Do you understand?”

He leaned very close to me, and my world became the dark fire burning in his eyes. I was overcome with dizziness, as if I teetered on the very edge of a lightless abyss.

“I shall put it this way,” he said. “If we monstrumologists were serious at all about our vocation, we would give up the study of biological aberrations to concentrate on the most terrifying monster of all.”

In my dream I am standing before the Locked Room in the Monstrumarium with Adolphus Ainesworth, and he is fumbling with his keys.

The doctor said you’d want to see this
.

But I’m not allowed
.

The doctor said
.

He unlocks the door, and I follow him inside.

Now, let’s see… Where did I put it? Ah, yes. Here it is!

He’s pulling a container the size of a shoe box from its niche, setting it upon a table.

Go on, open it! He wanted you to see
.

My fingers are trembling. The lid doesn’t want to come off. Is the box quivering, or is it my hand?

I can’t open it
.

There is something in the box. It is alive. It vibrates against my fingers.

Thickheaded boy! You can’t open it because you’re asleep!
You want to know what’s in the box, you have to wake up. Wake up, Will Henry, wake up!

I did as he commanded, breaking the surface between my dream and the dark room with a startled cry, my heart racing in panic; for a moment I could not remember where I was—could not remember
who
I was… until a voice beside the bed reminded me.

“Will Henry.”

“Dr. Warthrop?”

“You were dreaming, I think.”

“Yes… I was.”

The light in the hall was on; it was the only light. It streamed across the floor and up the wall beside the bed. The monstrumologist stood on the side opposite the light.

“What was your dream?” he asked.

I shook my head. “I—I don’t remember.”

“‘Between the sleeping and the waking, it is there.… Between the rising and resting, it is there.… It is always there.’”

There was the bar of light on the floor and the column of light on the wall, but the bar and the column bled their substance into the room; I could see his face dimly, but I could not read his eyes.

“Is that from a poem?” I asked.

“From a very anemic attempt at one, yes.”

“You wrote it, didn’t you?”

His hand rose, fell. “How is your hand?”

“It doesn’t hurt.”

“Will Henry,” he gently chided.

“Sometimes it throbs a little.”

“You must hold it above your heart.”

I tried it. “Yes, sir. It does help. Thank you.”

“Do you still feel it? As if the finger were still there?”

“Sometimes.”

“I had no choice.”

“I know.”

“The risk was… unacceptable.”

He sat on the edge of the bed. More light upon his face, nothing more illuminated. Why had he been standing in the dark, watching me?

“You do not know this, of course. But afterward I took the rope, and I was going to tie you up—only as a precaution…”

I opened my mouth to say,
I know. I saw you
. But he held up his finger to stop me.

“I couldn’t do it. It was the wise thing to do, but I couldn’t do it.”

He looked away; he would not look at me.

“But I was very tired. I had not slept in… how long? I didn’t know. I was afraid I would fall asleep and you might… slip away. So I tied the other end of the rope to my arm. I bound you to me, Will Henry. As a precaution; it seemed the prudent thing to do.”

He was flexing his long fingers, curling them into fists, uncurling them. Fist. Open hand. Fist. Open hand.

“But it wasn’t. It was absolutely the worst thing to do. Perhaps the stupidest thing I have ever done. For if you did slip away, you would have dragged me into the abyss with you.”

Fist. Open hand. Fist.

“I may not have the poet’s gift for words, Will Henry, but I do have his love of irony. Until that night our roles had been reversed. Until that night it had not been me who’d been bound and by virtue of those bindings been in danger of being dragged into the abyss.”

He reached down and slowly unwound the wrappings on my wounded hand. My skin tingled; the air seemed very cold against the exposed flesh.

“Make a fist,” he said.

I complied, though my fingers were very stiff; the muscles along the back of my hand seemed to groan in protest.

“Here.” He picked up his teacup from the table beside the bed. “Take the cup. Drink.”

My hand was shaking; a drop plopped upon the covers as I brought the cup, shaking, to my lips.

“Good.”

He took the cup with his right hand and held out his left.

“Take my hand.”

I pressed my palm into his. My whole body was trembling now. This man whose every nuance I could instinctively read had become a cipher.

The doctor said you’d want to see this
.

“Squeeze. Squeeze my hand, Will Henry. Harder. As hard as you can.”

He smiled. He seemed pleased.

“There. Do you see?” Holding my hand tight. “Part of it’s gone, but it’s still your hand.”

The monstrumologist released me and stood up, and my fingers ached from his grip.

“Go back to sleep, Will Henry. You need your rest.”

“So do you, sir.”

“It is not your place to worry about me.”

He strode to the doorway, into the bar of light, and his shadow stretched across the floor and climbed up the wall. I lay back and closed my eyes. Two breaths, three, four, and then slowly opened them again, but not very much, just enough to peek.

He had not moved from the doorway. He had not left me. Not yet.

My hand throbbed; his hold had been strong. I felt a maddening itch where my index finger should have been. I flexed my thumb into empty space to scratch it.

Warthrop had booked out passage for the next morning on the SS
City of New York
, the swiftest ship in the Inman Line. As first-class passengers we could expect to endure the most trying of passages—subsisting in a private suite comprising a bedroom and separate sitting room, decorated in the most gaudy of Victorian excesses, with hot and cold running water and electric lighting; forced to take our evening meals at tables shabbily draped in crisp white linen and decorated with crystal vases laden with fresh flowers every evening, under the great glass dome of the first-class dining saloon; trapped for hours in the walnut-paneled library with its eight hundred volumes; or being constantly pestered by the obsessively attentive staff and crew, white-jacketed and always, according to the doctor, at your elbow, ever eager to deliver the most mundane of services.

“Think of it, Will Henry,” he had said in our rooms at the Plaza, before bidding me a good night for the first time, before I’d dreamed of the Locked Room and the box, before his shadow had hung on the wall.

“It took our forebears more than two months to cross the Atlantic, two months of deprivation and disease, scurvy, dysentery, dehydration. It shall take us less than a week, in regal splendor. The world is shrinking, Will Henry, and by no miracle, unless we alter our definition of what makes a miracle.”

His eyes had been misty, his tone wistful. “The world grows smaller, and little by little the light of our lamps chases away the shadows. All shall be illuminated one day, and we will wake with a new question: ‘Yes,
this
, but now…
what
?’” He laughed softly. “Perhaps we should turn back and go home.”

“Sir?”

“It will be a seminal moment in the history of science, Will Henry, the finding of the
magnificum
, and not without some ancillary benefit to me personally. If I succeed, it will bring nothing short of immortality—well, the only concept of immortality that I am prepared to accept. But if I do succeed, the space between us and the ineffable will shrink a little more. It is what we strive for as scientists, and what we dread as human beings. There is something in us that longs for the indescribable, the unattainable, the thing that cannot be seen.”

And then he fell silent.