Frankenstein's Monster (21 page)

Lily said nothing. Under her stony eyes, the girl dropped her gaze. She stood before us without moving, fingers knotted in her apron. Her expectation was obvious and full of hurt.

“Would you like to sing for us now?” I asked.

Cassie sighed gratefully, but before she could open her mouth, from the house came a loud crash and a louder caterwaul, followed by a thin whimper.

“I cannot stop being a mum to blink!” she said, running out.

There were cries, more screams, a slap—abrupt silence that yielded to sobbing. I did not know if it was Cassie who wept or the child, as both their faces were wet when she returned. On one hip she held the child we had seen before, now squirming and blubbering; on the other hip, a squalling infant whose cheeks and neck bore inflamed boils ready for lancing. There was also a rapidly forming bump on the infant’s forehead.

Ignoring both children, the girl strode determinedly to the center of the little room and began to sing.

She should have had a voice as sweet as her nature, making her presence in this town like a rose growing in a dung heap; alas, she did not. Her voice reminded me of a drunken barmaid’s I might hear at night passing an inn. The older child
twisted and kicked as she sang, begging to be let down. When Cassie ignored him, he struck her hard across the mouth.

The girl’s lips trembled, then she burst into a fit of weeping and ran out.

“What ugly mewling brats,” Lily said, her beautiful face drawn into disgust. “They should have been drowned at birth, the way you’d drown a litter of kittens.”

She leaned against a wall and shut her eyes.

Late that night, a staggering step and mumbled curses warned me that Harry had at last returned. I prepared to leave. His angry words were followed by blows and crying, a sound I had heard too often these past hours. I put my finger to my lips to silence Lily and quietly walked outside.

The substance of Harry’s argument was that his dinner had not been kept waiting for him.

“It would have dried to paste,” Cassie said between hiccuppy sobs. “Let me cook you a meal right now. It won’t take a minute.”

“It’ll still taste like paste,” Harry growled. “Where is it? I’ll eat it all the same.”

“I—I gave it to a stray dog. I knew you wouldn’t have wanted it and the dog was so hungry—”

“You gave my dinner to a dog? Damn you! Every time I turn my back you find another way to steal me blind!”

I made a scratching noise just below the window.

“There’s the cur now, still hungry after your cooking, I’ll wager. I’ll show it what it will get here from now on!”

The shutters were thrown wide. Through them emerged a large hand clutching a boot, then a muscular arm, then a bearded face that turned this way and that. Harry Burke was tall and thick with a mean swaggering expression and downturned lips. Before he could spy me, I grabbed him by the throat and yanked him out of the window so forcefully
he broke a shutter coming through. Loose thatch spilled over both of us as I slammed him against the wall repeatedly until he howled. I did not fear alarming the neighbors; they were accustomed to violence from this house. I grabbed the boot and, using its heel like a hammer, struck him full in the face and broke his nose. He gurgled a bloody plea.

From my right a mouse squeaked. I backed up, Harry still in my grip, and saw Cassie framed by the open window, her hands pressed to her mouth. Her forehead bore a fresh lump to match her infant’s.

I pulled back my fist and held the pose, an archer taking careful aim, till Harry’s eyes gaped. Then I shattered his jaw with a blow. Broken teeth flew out, his eyes rolled back to white, and he lost consciousness. Tossing his body aside, I smiled at the blood where his teeth had scraped along my knuckles. Then I thought, was it for
this
feeling rather than Cassie’s protection that I had struck him?

Harry would blame her for this, too, I realized, if only because she had seen it happen.

From behind me Lily rushed up.

“Come with us,” she said, grabbing Cassie’s hands through the window. “This very moment. Do not stop to think.”

Cassie looked back over her shoulder deeper into the cottage.

“The children,” she whispered.

“Leave them! They are a millstone waiting to crush you. You can come with us, but you must leave now and you must come alone!”

A single tear slid down Cassie’s cheek, all the sorrow she had left.

“Come,” Lily urged her again. “You cannot think on it. The doing is always easier than the thinking.”

The girl shook her head.

“Then you must tell Harry we were thieves,” Lily said. “Say there were five of us, so that he will not have his mighty pride offended by being overcome by just one. Turn his pockets inside out, take his purse, and ransack your house for hiding places. But do not spend a halfpenny of whatever you find or he will know. Even if you wait for months, he will know! Bury the money where no one—
no one
—can see you do it. Where no one can ever find it. Save it for when you run away, which you must. If you have a third child, you will never escape. And never, for a moment, let him think a stranger was trying to save you.”

The girl nodded, the understanding between them shockingly immediate.

I ran back to the woods, slowing only after I had stepped within the shadow of trees. Later I felt Lily’s touch on my shoulder, letting me know she had returned.

Confused beyond reason, I did not ask how it was that she in her callousness had done more good than I in my attempt at compassion.

“What’s wrong?” I had asked Lily earlier at noon.

“The worm,” she whispered.

She had scarcely touched her food. I thought at first it was our journey that stole her appetite. Exhaustion, too, played its part, as we had walked since morning, the second horse having also fallen lame from her abuse. At noon she gazed longingly at each mouthful I ate, while her own hand shook when she tried to bring to her lips the bread I had saved from yesterday. Her eyes filled with tears, and she dashed the morsel to the ground.

“The illness is still with you?” I asked.

She pulled her lips into a thin smile. “Did you think you had destroyed that along with everything else of mine? Would that you had.” Her grin grew more dreadful. “It is eating me alive.”

“We’re close to the border,” I said. “I had meant to bypass Drexham before we cross to Scotland. But I see that I’m wrong. Drexham is a city. There should be doctors in Drexham better than the one you had in Tarkenville.”

“Doctors …” A strange light came into her face. Was it hope at last? “You’re right, Victor. All I saw was the one, and who’s to say he was capable? Drexham is a city. It will have many doctors.” The light faded. “But I have no money for his fee.”

“You could pay with your barrette,” I said. “If it is very valuable, pry loose just one of the stones.”

Lily’s thin hand closed over the hair clasp, a last remembrance of her wedding. She darted me a look of hatred.

“You cling to your whore’s necklace. Give it here and I’ll pay with that, since it seems to have such value.”

More sharp words sat on her tongue, but she did not say them. At last she shook her head and pressed her hands to her stomach, wincing.

It was dusk when Drexham appeared on the horizon, and night when we entered the city. We stayed close to its outer edge, as if the more easily to escape. Neighborhoods worsened, buildings sagged, alleys tightened. There was debris everywhere, from rotting garbage to such broken furniture as Mirabella had once salvaged for us.

Four poorly clad roughs slid from the darkness and blocked our path.

“You put yourself in more danger than you know,” I said, having no wish to fight.

“Did you hear that, Jack?” one of them said to a thin,
weasel-faced man. “He’s a bleedin’ gentleman, givin’ the four o’ us the opportunity to run from the one o’ him.”

Jack signaled to them to circle us.

Lily pointed to a nearby crate. “I’m tired. May I sit while I watch?”

Her request surprised him into a laugh and he nodded. As she sat down, the shepherd’s blanket she had been wearing as a shawl fell aside.

“Eddie, look at the white dress!” Jack said to the runt of the group, and then to me: “I know who you are. There’s money on your head.” He pointed to Lily’s barrette. “And
that
is not paste.” I could hear his greed coagulate into thought.

The four of them rushed me at once.

A few easy blows drove off two of the men, but Jack enjoyed the fight, and Eddie possessed annoying tenacity. They took my own restrained swipes as a game, insulting me playfully as they tugged on my cloak until I turned and swung at empty air.

“What is wrong, Victor?” Lily taunted. “You fight as if you’re blindfolded.”

My next blow landed sharply, and she applauded.

Jack jumped me from behind and dragged my hood away. Eddie backed up in wonder.

“No wonder he’s got to steal his women.” Eddie shuddered. “It makes me crawlylike even to think about it.” With a grin, he said to Lily, “We’re doin’ you a tremendous service, miss.” He picked up a loose board from the debris and swung it like a bat to test its heft.

“Have a go at him, Eddie.” Jack bowed with a great flourish, then withdrew to Lily’s side, familiarly slipping his arm around her shoulders.

These men were gnats and did not know how easily they might be squashed.

Eddie swung and poked and prodded with the board. I moved as quickly as he, yet only to block his blows. I pushed him away again and again till luck allowed him to slam the board against my ear. The breath whistled from my lips. I snatched the board away as from a naughty child and shoved him down with my palm flat on his chest.

Jack was less careless and much faster. He leapt in and out beyond my reach, peppering my body with a dozen differently aimed blows till he thought he had found a weakness in my lower torso and hammered at the point. Each blow stoked my temper.

“Victor, I shall lose my honor to them at this rate,” Lily said, feigning a yawn.

Eddie joined in the attack but complained, “The trouble is, he’s so tall. From where we stand, he’s all body and no head.”

“Still you have bested me,” I said, gritting my teeth against the struggle to strike back. I clutched my side dramatically. “I will piss blood for a week.”

“ ‘Bested you’?” Jack repeated in a simpering voice. “There’s no reward for ‘bestin’ you.’ You are dead already, only you don’t know it.”

“Yes, he does,” Lily said, with such mirth that I turned. Eddie grabbed the board again and raked it along my face. I knocked him down so hard he lay senseless in a puddle.

“What was it that spurred you just then?” she asked, jumping up. “The memory of what you are? Then think on it once more, for the last ruffian will not give up. And if my laughter is not enough, look at the brute and see our little songbird’s Harry. Imagine his heavy hand against her pimply face. Think on that and on what else Harry is doing to her this night for what you did to him the last.”

Sharp pain in my lower back so coincided with her words I thought they had cut me. Fire flashed up my spine and down
my leg and made my foot jerk. I reached around. Jack’s hand was beneath mine, gripping a knife handle.

Lily gasped.

“Victor!” she said in a hushed voice.

The rage locked up inside me rushed out through the open wound, faster than blood and just as mortal—rage at this thief who stupidly sought out his own death; at Harry Burke, who, though as cruel as I, could live as a man; at Lily, who spoke such tormenting words of truth; at myself, who had felt dark enjoyment last night at the feel of bones being crushed—so much rage I trembled. The blood within me boiled to a dance that shook each limb.

I grabbed Jack’s wrist, jerked him so viciously his arm popped from its socket, and held him, dangling, his body supported now not by a joint but by tender muscle and skin that threatened to rip beneath the weight. He lifted his weasel face to the night sky and screamed. Around him decaying walls echoed both his agony and my answering laugh.

“It is enough,” Lily said firmly.

I looked down. She had come to stand beside me, an act far braver than she could ever imagine.

Like a savage inarticulate beast, I shook the body to indicate I was not done with it, causing Jack to howl again.

“It is enough,” Lily repeated, very softly, touching my hand.

What should she care, I thought, about my actions or their consequences? Defiantly I snapped Jack upward again. His scream wound down to a whimper that so annoyed me I at last swung him by the arm against the nearest building. His face striking the brick at last silenced him.

“Come with me, Victor. He will bother us no more.”

“Come with … you?” I said, trying to let the overflow of anger spill out through my panting breath. Blood beat in my ears, and my limbs throbbed. “Did you not goad me to act?”

“To do what was necessary to keep our freedom.”

Was this freedom?

Lily reached up and touched my chest.

“You are hurt, and the knife still sticks from your back. But he stabbed you through the cloak. Perhaps it is not deep.”

I reached round for the blade’s handle.

“Let me,” she said. “You must sit first. You’re too tall for me to pull it out straight. Sit there, where I was before.”

I would have made tinder of the crates had I sat. I used the sturdiest as support and knelt, sucking in my breath with the effort. Lily leaned her shoulder against my spine for leverage. The knife burned as much going out as going in and I had to steel myself against turning on her.

She unfastened my cloak, let it drop, gently pulled up my shirt to examine me.

“He stabbed you just above the hip, too close to the side to do the damage he intended. Either that, or all your insides are in the wrong place. Perhaps tonight you’re fortunate to be a monster.”

Reaching beneath her dress, she ripped cloth from one of her undergarments, wadded it up, and pressed it tightly against the wound to staunch the bleeding. Then she guided my hand to where hers had been and told me to keep it pressed there. When I twisted round with the movement, again my breath whistled through my teeth. She ripped the rest of the undergarment into strips that she tied round my waist to secure the bandage.