This Dark Endeavor

CHAPTER FOUR

The next morning, as Konrad slumbered, Henry, Elizabeth, and I traveled to Geneva with Father in the carriage. Father had business to attend to at the Palais de Justice, and the three of us had convinced him that we should spend the day studying the history of our great republic by exploring its oldest buildings and monuments: Saint Peter’s, the Magdalen Church, the town hall. It was to be part of our schooling. Father, of course, was delighted at our keenness, and happy, too, to see us temporarily removed from the chateau and all its gloom.

As we approached Geneva along the south lake road, I admired the high ramparts that surrounded the city in the shape of a protective star. There were only five gated entrances, locked every night at ten o’clock, and the portcullises were not raised until five in the morning. The guards were under the strictest instructions never to deviate from this schedule, even if ordered by the magistrates themselves. Our city had seen many wars and sieges, and these current times, my father often said, were uncertain ones.

We stabled the horses and carriage at our city house, for we kept a small staff there even in the summer when we were mostly at the chateau. Father bade us farewell, and we agreed to meet at two in the afternoon for the drive home.

“To the town hall, then,” I said after Father had disappeared from view. We had discussed our strategy the night before, and we agreed that the town hall seemed the most sensible place to begin our search. The land registry office would have records of all the city’s property owners.

But when we asked the fussy town hall clerk to check, he found no entry for a Polidori.

“All this tells us is that he doesn’t own property,” I said outside in the square.

“He may well take rented rooms,” said Elizabeth.

“As a great many do,” added Henry.

Our next step was to ask at the various apothecary shops. If this fellow was as famous as Maria had said, others would have heard of him. But several young apprentices just shook their heads and claimed no knowledge of him.

An older fellow looked at us gravely over the top of his spectacles and said, “I have not heard that foul name mentioned in many years. I know nothing of his whereabouts, nor care to know.”

Our search had started near the center of the city, but slowly we were moving away from the elegant flowered fountains and airy public squares. The cobbled streets narrowed. There were fewer gentlemen about, and more sailors and laborers and women dressed in coarser fashion. I didn’t like the looks a couple of wharf hands gave us as we passed in the lanes.

I was beginning to despair, for we had asked now at some half dozen establishments, and no one had been able to tell us anything helpful about Julius Polidori.

“We are idiots,” said Henry suddenly.

I turned to see him looking into a greasy window where a row of typesetters sat hunched over tables, their blackened fingers plucking individual letters from trays.

“The Geneva Gazette,” said Henry. “This story of Maria’s-surely it would have been written up.”

“It must have been,” said Elizabeth eagerly. “The child of a general! Of course it would have been the talk of the town. Victor, did Maria give you an exact date?”

“She said it was the year of my birth, that it was winter.”

“Now we must hope that the newspaper keeps a proper archive,” said Henry.

I was not hopeful when we entered the offices, for the place was in a chaos of activity and noise and ink. At first it seemed no one would have a second to spare for us, but Elizabeth picked out the kindliest-looking young gentleman she could find. She walked to him and very prettily told him we had been set a historical assignment by our tutor, and would it be possible to look at some past issues of the newspaper.

It was quite remarkable, how helpful the fellow was. He gave us all candles and escorted us down to a cellar, and then my heart truly sank, for I saw tower after tower of newspaper, stacked to the very ceiling.

“It is like a city of paper,” I murmured to Elizabeth.

“Will it be difficult to find the period we seek?” she asked the young fellow.

“Not at all, miss, not at all.” He promptly led us to a particular tower, thrust his hand into it, and, like a magician, pulled out a wad of old newspapers.

“I believe these will suit you,” he said, beaming at Elizabeth. Elizabeth beamed back.

“Thank you so much, sir. You’ve been so kind.”

“If you need any further assistance, I shall be upstairs,” he said. He gave his name, bowed, and disappeared.

“He could not have been more helpful had he been on puppet strings,” Henry said in amazement.

Elizabeth blushed modestly. We each took several papers and in the light of our candles searched through them.

It seemed hardly any time at all before Elizabeth exclaimed, “I have it here! Here is the story…” She read aloud hurriedly, and then jumped ahead until she came to what we sought. “Julius Polidori, of Wollstonekraft Alley…”

“It is not five minutes’ walk from here,” I said with a grin.

The alley stank of urine-and worse. The few shops had a defeated look about them, tattered awnings and grimy windows with dusty displays that probably hadn’t been changed for years.

“This must be the place, here,” said Henry. The windows were shuttered, but over the door hung a wooden sign. Flaking paint showed an apothecary’s mortar and pestle.

“It does not look promising,” said Elizabeth drily.

In the door was a small, dirty window, but it was too dark inside to make out much more than the shadows of shelves. The place looked all but abandoned, but when I turned the knob, the door swung open and a small bell clanged.

I entered with Henry and Elizabeth. “Good morning!” I called out.

Mingled with the fragrance of a hundred different herbs was dust and a powerful smell of cat. At one time the shop must have been more prosperous, for the shelves were of rich dark wood. On our left was an entire wall of drawers, each fancily labeled.

“Hello?” I called out again.

Henry drew open one drawer, and then another. “Empty,” he said. He looked all about him, wide eyed, perhaps recording every detail for some horrifying poem or play he would later concoct.

Directly before us was a long counter, behind which were shelves filled with elaborate mixing vessels. It did not look like anything had been mixed there in quite some time. In the middle of the shelves was a glass-paned door. I saw a flicker of light, and then a shadow growing larger.

Quite suddenly the door swung open and a man in a wheel-chair propelled himself into the shop. His legs were wizened, the fabric of his breeches loose and flapping. He seemed no more than fifty, and though his upper body was powerfully built, the man’s face had a gaunt and defeated look to it. His wig rested crookedly, and was many years out of fashion. But it was his eyes that most gave him the look of defeat. They contained not a spark of light or hope.

“How may I help you?” He seemed surprised when he saw us. No doubt he didn’t get many customers as well dressed as us in his shop-if he got any customers at all.

“You are Mr. Julius Polidori?” Elizabeth asked politely.

“I am, miss.”

The three of us glanced quickly at one another, for this fellow seemed so far from the picture conjured by Maria’s story.

A healer. A man of power who cured a little girl when all the wise men of Europe could not.

This man before us positively reeked of failure.

I felt an instinctive disdain rising in me. What kind of healer could this be? This broken person in a chair, with a crooked wig? His shop was a ruin. No doubt his clothing had not been laundered recently. He was laughable. I was tempted to turn and leave that very moment.

“Might there be some medicine you’re needing?” he asked.

“I think perhaps-,” I began with a sniff, but Elizabeth cut me off.

“Indeed there is,” she said, and gave me a warning look, for she knew how quickly my temper could flare. In that way, we were not so different. To Polidori she said, “But it is of an… unusual nature.”

He looked at us steadily, saying nothing.

I was still far from convinced that any good could come of this, but we were here now. I drew closer to the counter. “You are the same apothecary who cured the general’s girl, some years ago?”

He drew in a breath and released it with a rueful nod. “I am.”

“We have heard that you are a man of wide-ranging knowledge,” Elizabeth said. “A healer with remarkable powers.”

He actually laughed then, bitterly. “Is this some joke? Have you nothing better to do with your days?”

“No, sir,” said Henry. “I mean, no, this is not a joke and we are here with the greatest urgency.”

“We’re searching for the Elixir of Life,” Elizabeth said quietly.

Polidori stared at us with his dull eyes. “Good day to you, young sirs, and young lady,” he said curtly, and with a deft movement he swiveled his chair back toward the doorway.

“Please, sir, wait,” I said, striding forward, taking from my satchel a volume from the Dark Library and putting it on the counter. “I have here a work by Cornelius Agrippa.”

Polidori paused. He chuckled sadly and then turned around, barely glancing at the book.

“ Occulta Philosophia. Am I correct?”

I nodded, startled.

“Young sir, put it back into your satchel. Add two large stones, say good-bye, and throw it into the deepest part of the harbor.”

Henry looked over at me, confused. “Is that a spell of some sort?”

“That is advice, and the best I have to give,” said Polidori. “That book will only bring you grief.”

“Sir,” I said. “The physician Agrippa-”

“ Ma gician!” Polidori scoffed.

I persisted. “He writes of something called the Elixir-”

“Yes, yes, I know,” he said impatiently. “The Elixir of Life. He was hardly the first to dream up such a thing. There are many, many recipes for fantastical potions meant to cure all ills, perhaps even guarantee immortality. Such things are delusions, sir. They do not exist.”

“I am confused,” said Elizabeth. “I thought you yourself-”

“Yes,” he said. “There was a time when I too was seduced by such fancies and sought after them with great passion. I even created an elixir of my very own.”

“And you succeeded with that little girl,” I said.

Again he laughed. “She was cured,” he said. “But not by me. It was chance, or God’s divine power, a miracle! But it was not me.”

“Why do you say that, sir?” Henry asked.

Polidori frowned. “You know my name, yet you don’t know my full story? You have not come merely to torment me?”

I shook my head, wondering why Maria had withheld something. The honesty in all our surprised faces must have convinced Polidori, and the suspicion faded from his eyes. He sighed.

“After that girl recovered, my business flourished. People beat my door off its hinges, wanting the same medicine.” He waved a hand around his shop. “For a short while I was a wealthy man, welcomed into the finest homes in the city. But that elixir I gave the girl, the very same thing, was not reliable. Sometimes it made a patient well. Sometimes it had no effect at all. Sometimes it seemed to make a patient worse. Still, people craved it, even though I grew more and more reluctant to prepare it. Some months later there was a ship owner, Hans Marek, a man of some wealth and power in the city, whose wife was very ill. He came to me and demanded the elixir. I told him I was no longer making it. He offered me a great sum in gold, and foolishly I accepted. Marek took my elixir home, and his wife died shortly after taking it. He was so enraged that he wanted me hanged for witchcraft.” Polidori chuckled. “You see, when a medicine works, it is blessed science, and when it fails, it is witchcraft. I was brought before a magistrate, a fine and enlightened gentleman who dismissed the charges as barbaric and primitive. But he forbade me from making the elixir ever again, or practicing alchemy.”

“This magistrate,” Henry asked. “What was his name?”

The same question had been on my lips as well, and I waited anxiously for the answer.

“His name was Alphonse Frankenstein,” said the apothecary.

I felt a great pride in my father’s fairness, but when I saw that Elizabeth was about to reveal our connection, I quickly touched her hand. I did not think it wise for Polidori to know our identities, not yet anyway.

“I owe Frankenstein my life,” Polidori was saying, “what is left of it. But his ruling offered no satisfaction to Hans Marek. Several nights later I was dragged from my bed by a drunken mob, taken up to the city ramparts, and pushed.”

Elizabeth gasped.

“Clearly I survived the fall,” he said. “A small miracle in itself. But I was paralyzed from the waist down.” He patted at his legs. “I have virtually no business now, but I have been frugal with my savings and so am able to carry on, as you see. Now, you have listened to a long and weighty tale, and if it has any moral, it is this: Rid yourself of that book before it brings you ill luck. Good day to you.”

Once more he began to turn his wheelchair away.

“It is my brother-,” I began, but my voice broke.

Polidori sighed. “I am very sorry to hear it,” he said sadly. “It is always the way. I have seen it many, many times. When a loved one falls desperately ill, and all else fails, any risk is worth the taking.”

“Yes,” said Elizabeth.

Polidori shook his gaunt head. “The last time I took pity on such a patient, it cost the patient her life, and me nearly mine.”

“We have money-,” I said.

But Polidori raised his hand wearily. “I cannot. I will not. And if I may give you a further piece of advice, give up your search altogether. Agrippa’s recipe has never been replicated. Why? Because it is written in a strange and complex-”

“The Alphabet of the Magi,” I said. “We know.”

“Very good,” he said. “But did you also know that it has no translation? It is unreadable.”

“What about Paracelsus?” Elizabeth demanded. “ The Archidoxes of Magic?”

Polidori looked startled, impressed even. “Every edition is gone, burned,” he said with a trace of wistfulness. “Extinct! And even if it weren’t-”

From my satchel I took the volume of Paracelsus and placed it carefully before him on the counter.

In silence he stared at it with a curious expression I couldn’t quite fathom. Then it came to me. It was the way a cat beholds its prey just before the pounce. His gray eyes lifted slowly to mine.

“Where did you find this?” he asked softly.

“That is my secret.” I was afraid if he knew too much about us, he might guess my parentage and refuse to help us further. “Will you assist us?”

“Your parents, young sir, do they know of this visit?” he asked.

“No.”

Polidori glanced out to the street, as if afraid someone might be watching. He looked at all three of us, reluctant once more, but then his gaze fell back on the Paracelsus.

“Come,” he said. “Bring these books of yours into my parlor. Let us have a look at them.”

He led us into the dim room behind the counter. It too was lined with shelves, but these held books instead of vials and tins. The faded Oriental carpet was rutted with wheelchair tracks. Two armchairs and a threadbare sofa were arranged around a small hearth. There was a table that had not been entirely cleared of its last meal. He lived humbly indeed.

We were not five paces into the room when something leapt at Polidori from the shadows.

Elizabeth and I both gave a cry of surprise, and Henry shrieked outright. Polidori swiveled round in his chair to face us, and we all stared at the extraordinary creature curled up on his lap.

“That,” said Henry, his voice more highly pitched than usual, “is a very large cat!”

It was a magnificent-looking creature. Its body was lithe and long, short tailed. Its tawny coat was marked with dark spots. Beneath its neck was a ruff of white and black striped fur that looked rather like a bow tie. And from the tips of the creature’s tall triangular ears rose tufts of stiff black hair.

I looked at Elizabeth, and she returned my curious gaze.

“It isn’t by any chance,” she began uncertainly, “a-”

“A lynx, yes,” said Polidori with a smile, clearly enjoying our surprise.

“Ah,” said Henry a bit weakly.

Many wild animals inhabited the forests around our lake: bears and wolves, chamois and lynx, who could live almost at the height of the highest Alps.

“I did not know they could be trained as… pets,” I confessed.

Polidori raised an eyebrow, as if questioning my use of words. “He is quite tame. He came to me as a mere kitten and is as amiable as any house cat. Aren’t you, Krake?”

Polidori’s fingers vigorously kneaded the fur between Krake’s ears, and the lynx gave a luxuriant yawn, revealing wickedly sharp teeth. He hopped off his master’s lap and padded toward me. He gave me a sniff, and then rubbed against my legs with such force that he nearly knocked me off balance.

“He likes you, Victor,” said Henry.

“And I like Krake,” I said with forced joviality, hesitantly patting the creature on the head. He looked up at me with a green-eyed gaze that was just a touch unsettling, it was so intent. Then, to my relief, the lynx jumped back up onto Polidori’s lap.

Polidori invited us to sit down, then extended his hand. “May I?”

I passed him the volume of Paracelsus, and he took it gently. Silently he inspected the spine and binding before even opening the cover. For a long time he gazed at the portrait of the author, and then proceeded more deeply into the book’s burned pages, his careful fingers breaking off scarcely a fragment of ash.

When he came to the page that bore the beginnings of the Alphabet of the Magi, he stopped. I realized I’d been holding my breath, and exhaled noisily. Krake turned and looked at me severely.

“It is unreadable,” I said.

“We had hoped,” said Elizabeth quietly, “that you might know of some other book that holds a translation.”

Polidori shook his head. “There is none, I can assure you. But this…” He prodded delicately at the fused pages. “I think there may be some hope for this.”

“You do?” said Henry, his voice echoing the delight and surprise I felt.

“Perhaps,” he said. “I have some experience in restoring texts that have been… damaged, shall we say. Let us go to my workshop.”

I expected him to lead us back to the storefront, but he wheeled his chair in the opposite direction, through another doorway and along a short corridor. I glimpsed a tiny kitchen and, down a second short passage, a bedchamber and a small water closet, which released a faint but unpleasant whiff of sewage.

At the end of the corridor was a narrow doorway, scarcely wide enough to admit Polidori’s wheelchair. He went through first, and right away swiveled his chair around to face us. By the light of his candle I could see that he was inside a room that was really nothing but a large cupboard.

“I think we will all fit,” he said. “Come inside.”

“This is your workshop?” I asked, confused.

“This is the way to the workshop,” he said. “It is a kind of dumbwaiter. I call it an elevator. I had it constructed after my accident.”

“How ingenious,” said Elizabeth, stepping into the compartment.

“Is it… structurally sound?” Henry asked uncertainly.

“I have used it for more than a decade.”

“And it will bear all our weight?”

“Yes, young sir, it will.”

I entered the elevator, followed by Henry, and the three of us crowded around the wheelchair. The floor groaned ominously beneath my feet.

“Krake, I fear you will have to wait upstairs,” Polidori told his lynx.

Without hesitation the cat leapt from the man’s lap and sat down beyond the portal, licking his paws meditatively.

Twin doors hung at the entrance, one on either side, and Polidori pulled these snugly shut, enclosing us in the conveyance.

“From the hallway, it looks like a dead end,” he said. He passed me his candle. “If you would hold this, please.” With both hands he grasped one of the ropes that dangled from the ceiling of the elevator.

“A simple system of pulleys,” said Polidori, and as he tugged, the elevator gave a downward jerk.

Polidori’s strength must have been considerable to lower the weight of all four of us. As we descended, a dank smell wafted up to us. I glanced at Elizabeth and saw her eyes, dancing and lively in the candlelight.

“This descends to the cellar, does it?” Henry inquired, looking quite pale.

“A cellar beneath the cellar,” Polidori said. “I had it dug specially after my accident. This elevator is the only way to reach it.”

We dropped slowly past the timbers of the floor, and then a stone foundation, then brick, and rougher stone still, until the wall finally gave way.

A cellar opened before us, and soon the elevator came to a halt. Polidori rolled himself out. With his flame he lit more candles. The cellar seemed as big as all his upstairs rooms combined. I noticed that, unlike in his storefront, all the shelves had been built at a level that allowed Polidori to reach them from his wheelchair. I caught sight of worktables and more flasks and jars and apparatus than I had ever before seen.

Polidori must have guessed my thoughts, for he said, “Any work I do, I prefer to do down here, rather than upstairs. After being accused of witchcraft and threatened with hanging, one becomes more cautious. Now, let us go over here.”

He led us to a long narrow table on which rested several trays that might have been made of tin or zinc.

“Young sir,” he said to me, pointing, “could you please fetch those three green jars. And you, sir,” he said to Henry, “gather the candles and bring them to the table.”

His voice and manner had become suddenly more authoritative, and we hurried to do as he bid us. Over each candle he placed a special lantern of red glass. The cellar was suddenly bathed in a lurid red glow.

Carefully he opened the green jars one at a time, pouring a measure into a flask and then into one of the metal trays before him. When he was done, there was a shallow film of liquid at the bottom of the tray, red in the lantern light. It might easily have been blood.

“We will need this later,” Polidori said, pushing the tray to the back of the table. From a drawer he took a thick cloth wallet and opened it beside the volume of Paracelsus. Arranged within the wallet was a startling array of instruments that, at first glance, looked like those of a surgeon. There were all manner of tweezers and forceps, and minute scalpels. I glanced at Henry and saw him shiver.

“You would all like to assist, I assume,” Polidori stated. To Henry he said, “You shall be timekeeper. There is a clock there, and you must watch seconds when I ask later.” To Elizabeth and me he said, “I trust you will be able to help me in the surgery.”

“Surgery?” said Elizabeth in surprise.

“Of course,” said Polidori. “This is as precise as any medical procedure.”

He proceeded to name all the instruments for us, and then took a diffuser filled with some liquid and misted the book with it. He then turned to me. “If you might hold the specimen steady, please, we will begin. The Gutenburg scalpel, there.”

Promptly Elizabeth handed it to him, and he set to work.

Several months before, Father had taken us to the dissecting room of the celebrated physician Dr. Bullman. In the sloped theater, filled to the ceiling with eager anatomy students, we’d watched as Bullman had opened up the corpse of a newly hanged convict. We saw its heart and lungs, the spleen and stomach. Henry had had to leave. But Konrad and I-and Elizabeth, too-had stayed to the very end. It was dreadful and fascinating both, to see the body’s innermost secrets laid open.

I felt exactly the same enthrallment as Polidori’s hands hovered over the tome, and then cut. Perhaps it was the noxious smell of the chemicals in the tray, or the mustiness of the room, but I thought the book flinched and exhaled.

Polidori’s goal was to separate the burned, fused pages, and it was a delicate task. He used a bewildering array of instruments to tease apart the sickly parchments. Sometimes it went well. Sometimes a tiny piece tore loose, and Polidori muttered an oath.

The heat in the room grew more intense, as if a great furnace burned nearby. Sweat slithered into my eyes, and I blinked to clear my vision. My gaze never wavered from Polidori’s steady hands and the tips of his instruments. And for a moment the book seemed not a book at all but a living body, and instead of paper, I glimpsed pulsing viscera and blood and organs. I blinked again, not trusting my vision. But-and this was most strange and repulsive-the book seemed to emanate the smell of a slaughterhouse, of entrails and offal.

Wondering if it was just the wanderings of my mind, I looked to Elizabeth, and saw her nostrils wrinkle, and she steadied herself with a hand, but her gaze did not flinch as she watched this strange surgery upon Paracelsus’s tome.

“I have done as much as I can,” Polidori said finally, and with one sure stroke he slit from the book’s binding the pages he’d been working on. With padded tweezers he grasped them and held them above the tray of liquid.

“Young sir,” he said to Henry, “set the clock for sixty seconds. Be precise, now!”

Henry reached for the ornate timepiece and turned back the slender hand, holding it in place.

“Release it… now!” cried Polidori, and immersed the charred pieces of paper into the bloody liquid, swishing them gently back and forth. At first they stuck together, but within moments they floated apart.

“They are free!” Elizabeth cried in excitement.

Polidori arranged the charred pages side by side in the tray. “Time is critical now.”

“What does this liquid do?” I asked.

“Brings back what was lost. A second too long, though, and we will lose it all forever.”

We stared, riveted, at the tray. Twenty seconds, thirty… Nothing was happening. In the red light the blackened paper hovered in the liquid, as unreadable as ever. Forty seconds…

“Look!” breathed Elizabeth.

Something was happening. Within the darkness of the pages appeared faint scratchings-completely illegible, but something.

“It comes…,” said Polidori in a hoarse voice. “It comes…”

“Fifty seconds,” said Henry.

On all the pages the scratchings grew thicker, released shoots like strange seedlings growing with freakish speed. I recognized the bizarre characters from the Alphabet of the Magi, and then some familiar letters beneath them: the translations!

“Fifty-five seconds,” said Henry.

“We must have more time!” said Elizabeth, for parts of the pages were still unreadable.

“We dare not,” snapped Polidori, readying his tweezers. “Look!”

The edges of the pages were beginning to curl and dissolve, as if in acid. And the parts of the text that had once been plain to see were starting to blur dangerously.

The clock chimed, and instantly Polidori drew the pages out and placed them flat on a special drying rack.

“This will have to do,” he said.

“Is there enough, though?” I asked, squinting in the lurid half-light.

“It is a good start,” he said. “A beginning. Return in two days, and I will tell you what I have found.”

I took my purse from my pocket and tried to offer him money, but he shook his head. “Let us wait for that, young sir. This may all come to naught. Let us wait.”

“That is very kind of you, sir,” said Elizabeth. “Thank you.”

For the first time Polidori smiled, as though genuinely surprised at these gentle words. He looked at me.

“I hope your brother improves,” he said, “and makes all this toil needless.”

We left Polidori’s shop, each of us silent. I felt I’d witnessed something incredible, something dangerous, even. The alleyway and streets appeared strange to my eyes. All the people and horses and carriages and bustle had nothing to do with me. My eyes were still focused on the pages of Paracelsus’s tome, the ancient words swimming into view after long centuries of oblivion.

“It’s like we’ve brought something back to life,” Elizabeth murmured.

I looked at her, startled. “Yes. That is just how I feel. There was something about that volume. It seemed no mere book.”

“It lived,” said Elizabeth simply.

“Indeed it did!” I exclaimed. “I felt it move in my hands, like a patient writhing.”

“Was there not the smell of blood?” she said.

“Is it possible it was our fevered emotions tricking us?” said Henry. “That we all imagined such phantasmagorical things because we wanted to see them?”

“You are very sensible, Henry,” said Elizabeth tartly, “for someone whose pen makes such flights of passion.”

“Yet they are inventions only,” Henry persisted. “Not reality. If we truly believe that book moved, we are believing in magic.” He lowered his voice. “Witchery.”

“There is no such thing,” I said. “Just things we do not yet understand. Father would say the same.”

“Your father would condemn what we’ve done,” said Henry.

I swallowed. “He will not know.”

“Are we fools?” said Henry nervously. “Deceiving your father is one thing, but even if Polidori can translate the recipe, is the elixir something that should be made?”

“If it is Konrad’s only chance at life, yes,” I said. “And damn the consequences!”

“Polidori himself said that there were no end of magical elixirs-and their effect could be dangerous,” Henry persisted.

I said nothing.

“I trust him,” said Elizabeth. “Polidori. He will advise us well.”

We were all surprised when we heard Saint Peter’s bells toll two o’clock, for we’d lost all track of time inside the laboratory. Down the cobbled streets of the city we ran, toward our house, to meet Father.

After dinner I went to visit Konrad, but he was already asleep, our unfinished game of chess still on the bedside table. With a sigh I sat down and looked at the board. Yesterday he’d actually dozed off, it had taken me so long to figure out my move. I examined the position of his pieces carefully, and almost at once understood his stratagem. It was very good. He would have me in three moves if I wasn’t careful.

I made the move for him, then turned the board round to take my own turn.

Hunched over in the chair, I played against myself-and I knew Konrad so well it was very much like playing him prop-erly-but suddenly the sadness of it struck me hard, and I realized how desperately I missed him, and how badly I wanted him to get out of that bed for good.

“We had a rather exciting day,” I whispered to his sleeping face.

I’d been longing to tell him since we got home from Geneva, but I knew it was best kept secret. Now, though, I could at least utter the words.

“I’ve got a great plan to gather the ingredients to the Elixir of Life, and once we’re done, you’ll be able to drink it.”

He shifted in his sleep, turned his head away, as though doubting me.

“I promise,” I said, kissing him on the forehead. “If no one else can make you better, I will.”

That night I woke suddenly with the dreadful sensation that someone was in my room.

Cautiously I peered through my bed curtains to see my chamber bathed in moonlight. Elizabeth stood before the window in her nightgown, gazing out over the lake.

“Elizabeth,” I said softly. “What’s the matter? Is it Konrad?”

At once I worried she’d come to bring me some terrible news, but she did not turn. She had not heard me at all.

In the moonlight her face was ghostly pale, her brow furrowed. She seemed to be holding something in her arms, and kept looking down at it anxiously.

“Elizabeth?”

No response. She was awake, yet asleep.

It was not the first time. When Elizabeth first came to our house as a small child, she sleepwalked. My parents would find her in the hallways, looking about her in confusion, or staring intently at some invisible view. Father said her mind was temporarily disordered by the great changes in her life and, even in sleep, it would not let her rest, and would make her walk the house in the early hours of morning, trying to puzzle things out. In time it would pass, he said.

Once, in those first few months, I awoke with a start, to find her body pressed against mine. Her thin arms encircled me tightly. She was shaking. I dared not wake her, for Father had said you must never wake someone who was sleepwalking. So I just lay very still. Gradually she stopped trembling, her breathing calmed, and we both fell asleep. In the morning she was most indignant to find herself in someone else’s bed, and woke me with a punch in the shoulder, before flouncing out of my room.

But that was many years ago, when we were little more than seven.

We were sixteen now, and I was almost afraid to approach her, for she seemed to emanate an eerie power. She was herself, and not herself, and it was like having a stranger in the room. I felt I ought to guide her gently back to her own bedchamber, if possible. Father had said the best thing to do with someone sleepwalking was to talk to them very calmly and matter-offactly.

“Elizabeth,” I said. “This way.”

When she turned to me, her face was stricken with anxiety. In her arms she cradled an old doll. I shivered, for her gaze seemed to look right through me, to someone just behind me.

“The baby’s not dead,” she said fiercely.

“No,” I said.

“She’s just cold.”

“Yes,” I said.

“She needs warming.” So urgent and penetrating was her gaze that for a moment I looked back at the doll, just to make sure it wasn’t real. “That’s all. Just a little warmth and she’ll be fine.”

“You are warming her right now,” I said soothingly. There was something so childlike and beseeching in her look that I felt my heart ache. “She will be wonderfully warm and happy soon.”

She looked down at the doll, kneading it with her hands. “Yes,” she said.

“You see,” I said. “The baby’s fine. I’m sure she just needs a good sleep. I’ll show you the way.”

I started walking toward my door, and checked to make sure she was following. I quickly lit a candle and made my way down the hallway to her bedchamber. The door was ajar. We went inside. I pointed at her bed, the sheets in a tangle.

“Here we are,” I said. “You and baby can rest here.”

“The bed will be warm,” she said.

“Of course.” I tried to smooth the sheets for her, but she lay down on them before I could finish, still clutching the baby. It was a good thing it wasn’t a real baby, for Elizabeth was lying on top of its head and torso. Her eyes were already closed and she was properly asleep. I found a blanket in her armoire and gently laid it over her. I looked at her for a moment, then left the bedchamber.

At breakfast Elizabeth said not a word about her sleepwalking. She remembered nothing, and I was not about to remind her.