European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman

by Theodora Goss

  “Ágnes, do you speak any German?” asked Justine. “Sprechen Sie Deutsch?”

  “Ein bisschen,” said Ágnes. She sounded frightened, and very shy. Well might she be frightened, after that episode! Mary could not stop thinking about it. Her own father—well, not her father—cutting this girl’s arm so Lucinda could feed! She glanced at Lucinda, who was simply standing there, staring blankly at nothing at all, still singing some sort of song under her breath. Diana, on the other hand . . .

  “Look at this!” Diana was kneeling on a large four-poster bed with moth-eaten hangings that looked as though it had come straight out of the middle ages. She started bouncing up and down. “Best bed ever!”

  Mary noticed with relief that their trunk and bags, even Frau Schmidt’s hamper, were stacked against the wall. At least they would have their things again!

  Aside from the bed, there was not much furniture in the room. A long, narrow table against one wall, on which were set a basin and mismatched pitcher. A chair that looked more like a throne, with an embroidered cushion on the seat, by the fireplace. Both were of dark wood and looked positively medieval, as though they had stood there since the castle had been built.

  MARY: Renaissance, not medieval. Most of the castle was built during the sixteenth century, although I believe its foundations date from the fourteenth.

  CATHERINE: And our readers will care why?

  MARY: You may not care for accuracy, but I do—and Carmilla will, when she reads this book.

  CATHERINE: If I ever get the damn thing written, with all these interruptions!

  Over the fireplace hung the portrait of a woman, young and rather attractive, with dark hair and eyes. She was dressed in a medieval—or rather Renaissance—style, in a red velvet dress with puffed sleeves and the sort of unattractive headdress women wore in those times, elaborately embroidered in gold thread. Around her neck was a gold cross set with rubies and pearls. The painting itself was stiff and awkward, the perspective off, but her face contained so much personality, was so vital, that it seemed as though she were alive.

  DIANA: Ha! I see what you did there.

  Wait, was Justine speaking to her? Mary looked away from the portrait, reluctantly because it had captured her interest. No, Justine was conversing with Ágnes in German. Mary could tell that Ágnes’s German was not much better than Justine’s. Both of them spoke haltingly, Justine filling in with a few words in English that Ágnes did not seem to understand any better than her German.

  “Why don’t you lie down?” said Mary to Lucinda. “You must be exhausted.” Lucinda gave her a blank stare, but followed Mary readily enough when she took hold of Lucinda’s wrist and led her to the bed. “For goodness’ sake, stop bouncing!” she said to Diana. “Can’t you sit still for a moment?”

  “I sat still all day in that bloody coach,” said Diana. “Is there anything left in the basket? I’m still hungry.”

  “You would be. Go look for yourself. I have other things to worry about than your appetite!”

  When Lucinda was lying on the bed, staring up at the canopy, and Diana was searching through Frau Schmidt’s hamper, Mary walked back to the fireplace, where Justine was still talking to the maid. As she approached, Justine turned to her.

  “Ágnes says there is another room prepared for us as well,” she said. “But I think we had better stay together. The three of you should fit in that bed, and I will put some blankets on the floor. Ágnes”—she turned to the maid—“can you bring us more blankets? Teppiche—I mean, Decken Und Kissen—some pillows.” Turning back to Mary, she said, “Ágnes tells me she was instructed to lock us in for the night. I would rather be locked in together than apart.”

  “I agree,” said Mary. “Did you ask her where we are?”

  “Styria, as we guessed, and a long way from Budapest.” Well, as Justine has guessed! Mary could take no credit for guessing anything of the sort. “This is, or was, the castle of the Karnstein family. That”—Justine pointed at the portrait above the mantelpiece—“was the last of them, Countess Mircalla Karnstein. You can see her name engraved on the frame. Ágnes says she was a terrible woman—she used to bathe in the blood of virgins to preserve her beauty. If my German is correct, but I’m not certain it is, she says the Karnsteins were a family of vampires that preyed on the people of this country, long ago.”

  “Vampires!” said Diana. “Do you mean like Varney the Vampire; or, The Feast of Blood?” She had found something or other to eat—ah, some of the bread Mary had purchased that morning, at the inn where they had slept the night before. That seemed so long ago! There should still be part of a loaf—Mary had forgotten about it entirely. Diana took a bite of the piece she was holding in her hand, which she had evidently torn off, then walked over to them and stood looking at the portrait with considerable respect.

  MARY: Honestly, Diana, you read the worst trash.

  DIANA: It’s no worse than Catherine’s books. Ow, you bit me! That was completely unnecessary!

  CATHERINE: Just like your remark was completely unnecessary, and also untrue. Varney is a melodramatic penny dreadful. What I write is experimental modern fiction.

  DIANA: I bet you have rabies.

  “There are no vampires such as those described in your serials, Diana,” said Justine. “The term ‘vampire’ is merely a metaphor. Ágnes is describing a time when aristocrats lived on the labor of their serfs, as a vampire is said to live on blood. No doubt the Karnsteins were cruel masters, as was common under the feudal system. The superstition has likely persisted because of medical conditions such as Lucinda’s, which I take to be an extreme form of anemia, created or perpetuated by Professor Van Helsing for some reason we do not yet understand. The important thing is that we are very far away from anywhere. The closest city is Gratz, but we have no way to get there and no one here will help us. The only servants in this castle are Herr Ferenc, his two sons Dénes and János, and Ágnes. I asked her why she allowed herself to be fed on in that way. Evidently, Mr. Hyde is seeking some sort of cure for a companion of his who also lives in this castle, but as a complete recluse. Ágnes has not seen him—only János is allowed in that room. Ágnes’s mother is very ill. Hyde has promised that if he can cure his sick friend, he will cure her mother as well. He has told her that Lucinda’s blood is powerful medicine. So you see, none of that family will help us.”

  “Well, I think we should continue this discussion at another time,” said Mary. How much English did Ágnes understand? She did not know, but suspected that anything Ágnes overheard would be repeated to her father—or rather, Hyde. “Thank you, Ágnes,” she said, turning to the maid. She took a gold krone out of her waist bag and handed it to her. Such gestures were never amiss when one was in a tight spot.

  “Köszönöm . . . danke,” said Ágnes, curtseying. “I bring Wasser und Seife.”

  When she had gone, Diana said, “Doesn’t matter if she locks the door. I can unlock it, easy peasy.”

  “I think Hyde is well aware of that,” Mary replied. “It’s probably the first thing he would expect us to do. He didn’t even take away your lockpick tools, did he?”

  Diana shook her head and patted her pocket, where she had presumably put them. She still has her knife, too, Mary thought bitterly. The only thing he’s taken away is my pistol . . . . His pistol, really, but after having abandoned her fourteen years ago, he scarcely had a right to reclaim it!

  “Anyway, there’s no point to us stumbling around the castle in the dark. Justine, can you get the Baedeker? We can at least find out more or less where we are on the map. And then I think we had better get some sleep. We’ll be no good at all tomorrow if we’re exhausted. We need to figure out what this is about, and more importantly, how we can get away from here!”

  After Ágnes had brought up hot water for the pitcher and pointed out the chamber pot under the bed, they put on their nightclothes—Mary and Justine helping Lucinda, who seemed almost comatose. Mary tucked her and then Diana into the
large bed—there would be plenty of room for her. “Scratch my back,” said Diana—a thoroughly annoying request! But in a few minutes she was snoring, and Lucinda seemed to be asleep as well, so Mary could go back to the fireplace, where Justine was sitting on a pile of blankets and pillows spread out to form a sort of mattress. Mary sat down on one corner. It would not be a comfortable bed for Justine, but at least she would not be kicked by Diana in the middle of the night.

  “I found Gratz,” said Justine. She opened their small red Baedeker and unfolded the large map at the front of the book. “From what Ágnes told me, I believe we are somewhere here.” She pointed to a place between the word Gratz and a red line that looked like the Hungarian border. It was nowhere close to Budapest. “We have come very far out of our way.”

  “Damn.” Mary could not think of anything else to say. She stared into the dying fire, which sent shadows racing all over the stone walls and made the portrait of Mircalla Karnstein above them look sepulchral. Finally, she asked, “Do you think Lucinda’s blood could have some sort of healing properties?”

  Justine pulled one of the blankets around her shoulders. “That may be what Professor Van Helsing was trying to do with his experiments. We know blood is necessary to life. As long as we are alive it circulates throughout the body, as William Harvey showed. There is something in blood that heals—look how wounds close and skin repairs itself, so only a scar remains. Perhaps Van Helsing succeeded in making Lucinda’s blood unusually powerful—we saw how those men watching the asylum healed from fatal wounds, and Irene believed they were his followers. I was surprised that your own wound healed so quickly, after Lucinda drank your blood. That could be the aim of his experiments—some sort of accelerated healing.”

  “There’s more to it than that,” said Mary. “Those men were also extraordinarily strong.” She stared into the fire. How tired she was! Tomorrow . . . well, tomorrow she would have to confront her father. Hyde. She did not want to think about it.

  “In the book Irene gave me, Zarathustra by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, there is a mention of an Übermensch, an over-man or higher man. Perhaps that is what Van Helsing is trying to create? It is, in a sense, what all these modern alchemists have been trying to create—Rappaccini, Moreau, even your father. Frankenstein simply wanted to conquer death. They seem to want more, to make man not only immortal, but godlike.”

  Mary looked at Justine. Her face was pale and calm in the firelight, but Mary could see the marks of strain, the lines of tiredness under her eyes.

  “At this point, I wouldn’t put anything past them,” she said, wearily. “You know, I think this is the most trouble we’ve been in so far. I have no idea how we’re going to get out of it.”

  Justine did not answer. Perhaps there was no answer—they would simply have to see what tomorrow brought.

  Somewhere in the depths of the castle, she heard a cry, faint and far away. It sounded like some sort of animal. Perhaps a dog howling?

  “I’m glad you’re here,” said Mary, putting her hand on Justine’s arm. “I mean, I’m sorry we’re stuck, especially in a place this dismal, and I feel a sense of responsibility because after all, Hyde is my father—sort of. But if we’re going to be stuck, I’m glad you’re stuck with me. If you know what I mean.”

  “I too am glad,” said Justine. “You and the others—you have taught me the value of friendship, even—or especially—in difficult circumstances.”

  Would they get out of those circumstances? Mary stared into the fire, which was burning down to the embers. Tomorrow, they would have to find out.

  CHAPTER XVII

  A Castle in Styria

  Mary woke with a start. She had been dreaming that she was back in the coach, driving over a particularly rocky road, shaken side to side.

  “Wake up!” A freckled face hung over hers, like a pale moon with small brown spots. An obnoxious moon. Then Diana drew back and shook her again by the shoulders.

  “What. Are. You. Doing.” Mary shoved at her sister, ineffectually. “Get off. Are you actually sitting on me?”

  “I had to wake you up!” said Diana. “Listen.”

  And there it was, the cry she had heard last night, but not as faint as it had been. This morning it was louder, and closer. It sounded like . . . she did not know what. An elephant being tortured? She had heard an elephant once, when she had gone to the zoo with her nursemaid—Mrs. Poole, when she was still just Honoria—as a child. Or maybe it sounded like a lion, but a lion with a toothache. There was a note of anguish in the cry.

  Suddenly, the door of the room was flung open. It banged against the stone wall.

  “I need more of Miss Van Helsing’s blood.” There was Hyde, standing in the doorway, wearing a white laboratory coat and holding the hypodermic in one hand.

  “No!” said Justine. Mary rolled onto her elbow so she could see better, although it was difficult with Diana still sitting on top of her. What was going on? Justine had evidently just woken up as well, because she was still dressed in her nightshirt, sitting among the blankets on the floor. Now she stood up, although her feet were still tangled in the bedding.

  “You will get nothing more, from Lucinda or any of us, until you explain why you brought us here.” Justine sounded angry, defiant, and a little befuddled from sleep. “Why do you need Lucinda’s blood? What are you hoping to accomplish?”

  Where was Lucinda, anyway? “Seriously, get off,” she hissed at Diana, and this time Diana moved, thank goodness. Mary turned back around—Lucinda was still sleeping next her. Sleeping deeply, it seemed—but her breathing was shallower and more labored than Mary would have liked.

  “My dear Miss Frankenstein, I don’t owe you or anyone else an explanation.” Hyde pulled Mary’s—his—pistol out of his pocket and pointed it at Justine. “János!”

  Ágnes’s youngest brother, who must have been waiting out in the hallway, came running into the room. “Igen, Doktor?” He was wearing a cotton smock. It reminded Mary of what Hyde had worn about the house, when he had pretended to be Jekyll’s apprentice.

  “I want you to draw Miss Van Helsing’s blood, exactly the way I showed you.” He handed the hypodermic to János. “Move away from the bed, please,” he said to Mary and Diana.

  “No!” said Diana. “If he comes near Lucinda”—she pointed at János, who was looking alarmed and confused—“I’ll bite his ears off! And scratch his eyes out!”

  Hyde did not respond. He merely pointed the pistol downward. A moment later, Justine jumped. A bullet had ricocheted off the floor, next to her bare feet.

  “Oh, you just think you’re the king of the castle, don’t you?” said Diana. “You’re nothing but a—”

  “Shut up,” said Mary. “He’s perfectly capable of shooting Justine. Come on.” She pulled Diana off and away from the bed, toward Justine so the three of them stood together. Not the safest place in the room, but she wanted to present a united front.

  Cringing and still looking at them suspiciously, János approached the bed. He pushed up one of Lucinda’s sleeves, then extracted enough blood to fill the syringe again. How much blood could Lucinda lose? Surely not much more.

  “You’re going to kill her,” said Mary. “Why? What is all this for?”

  “I assure you, it’s for a purpose of the greatest importance, far more important than any individual life,” said Hyde. “If you would like to hear more, I’ll explain it to you. I’ll even show you . . . well, perhaps. But right now I have important work to do, and you probably want your breakfast. Come, János.”

  What sort of work? But Hyde and his assistant were already out the door, which shut with a bang behind them.

  Justine rushed over to the bed. Mary could hear her speaking to Lucinda in English, then German, then French. Lucinda just lay there. Finally, Justine shook her by the shoulders.

  “No response at all,” she said. “What in the world are we to do?”

  “She’s not dead, is she?” asked Dia
na.

  Justine put her hand against Lucinda’s neck. “No. Her breathing is regular, and her pulse is steady, although slow.” She raised one of Lucinda’s eyelids, but again there was no response. “She is simply in a very deep sleep.”

  Mary signed. “As much as I hate to say it, I think we had better do as he—you know, Hyde—says and get dressed, then go down to breakfast. Of course he would offer us breakfast after almost shooting you! That’s just like him. But we need to find out what’s going on, and we won’t find it up here, will we?”

  No one had come to light the fire or refill the pitcher with hot water, so Mary and Justine washed their faces in the cold water left from last night—Diana refused to wash her face at all. And then they dressed themselves in the chilly room, turning their backs to give one another privacy. Diana grumbled again about having to wear girls’ clothes, but Mary was so used to her complaints that she simply ignored them. Anyway, there were more important things to think about.

  Mary would never have remembered the way—she stood for a moment in the hall, looking one way and then the other, trying to remember how they had come up—but Diana pushed past her and said, “Follow me. I know where to go. I always know where to go.”

  Luckily, Diana’s sense of direction was almost as good as Catherine’s.

  DIANA: Almost? Are you serious? My sense of direction is as good as yours. Or better!

  CATHERINE: There’s no way your sense of direction is as good as mine.

  DIANA: Oh yeah? Fine, we’ll get Charlie to take us somewhere in the East End—Whitechapel, or Stepney, or the docks—we won’t know where! We’ll be blindfolded the whole way, and he’ll drop us off in one of the alleys. At night! Whoever gets back to the Athena Club first wins.

  CATHERINE: You’re on. I’ll pay for the cab.

  MARY: Why are you fighting about this in the middle of a chapter?