Cadaver & Queen

by Alisa Kwitney

  “Wake up, Will,” Victor was saying. “You have to wake up.”

  “Will!” Byram shoved Victor aside and cradled Will’s head. “What have you done to him?” Then he looked up and saw Victor clearly for the first time. “Dear God. It’s you.”

  Victor looked haunted as he said, “He saved me—pulled me out of there. When I came to, he was lying here.”

  “Oh, God, Will.” Byram’s dark head was bent over his friend and his shoulders began shaking.

  Just a few hours ago, we were in the common room, joking around, Lizzie thought. It felt like decades had passed since then.

  Will coughed and opened his eyes. “Nick.” It took Lizzie a moment to realize he meant Byram. She’d never heard him called by his first name.

  Byram’s face lit up with an expression she had never seen before. “Damn, but you frightened me.”

  Just then, there was an explosion. This time, it was the School of Medicine’s roof that collapsed. The crowd of villagers gave a roar of approval, some of the men raising their pitchforks and axes. Then someone shot off a rifle, and Grimbald stepped forward.

  “Cease this nonsense this moment.” He pulled back the blanket from the body in his arms. “Or would you also burn your queen?”

  It took a moment for the crowd to recognize the short, stout old woman in a black head veil and high-necked black gown. There was a murmur from the crowd and then a shout.

  “He’s killed her!”

  “They’ve murdered the queen!”

  Grimbald bent down and whispered something in the queen’s ear, and her eyes opened.

  A burly, bald man wearing a laborer’s neckerchief sank to his knees. “She’s alive,” he gasped, sinking to his knees.

  “She’s alive!”

  The phrase was repeated as the crowd began to kneel.

  “The queen!”

  “Speak to us!”

  “Hush!”

  “Quiet!”

  “She’s going to speak!”

  Lizzie looked at Grimbald, then at the small, portly figure in his arms. The high lace collar of her gown did a fine job of concealing the electrodes at her neck, but if you knew to look for them, they were there.

  “The people wish you to speak, Your Majesty,” said Grimbald.

  The queen blinked, and then said, in a quavering voice, “Incendiary remarks architecture.”

  The crowd murmured.

  “What was that?”

  “Something ’bout incidents.”

  “Did that make any sense to you?”

  Whatever these people were like as individuals, right now they were a mob, edgy and alert to any possibility of threat. Just like a flock of birds or a herd of deer, it would take only a small nudge to propel them all into a new and dangerous direction.

  Lizzie looked at Grimbald, and she knew that everything hinged on what she did next. She could denounce him, and the school. True, she might lose her best chance at working in the field of medicine which interested her the most. Justine would likely remain an invalid for the rest of her life. As for Victor...she did not know what would happen to him if the mob learned the truth. Yet if she spoke out, the guilty would be punished and no more innocents would be sacrificed in the name of science. All Lizzie had to do was reveal the queen for what she was: a malfunctioning Bio-Mechanical.

  Or she could make a different choice.

  She stepped forward. “The queen said to cease these incendiary actions. Her Majesty is not well, and has come here for treatment.” Her voice rang out, too loud, too female, too American.

  For a moment, no one spoke. Then there was an excited buzz of voices from the crowd, but the tone was one of wonder, not agitation.

  Grimbald nodded at her. “Well done, Lavenza.”

  “The bluestocking crumpet gavottes colonial,” said the Bio-Mechanical Queen Victoria.

  The burly bald man stepped forward. “What does Her Majesty say now?”

  “She says you must help to put out the flames,” said Lizzie. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Victor, shouldering his way through the crowd to get to her. “You must help the wounded.”

  The queen fixed her with a beady look. “Expedite wanton impertinence,” she said, sounding more than a little peevish.

  “Indeed, she will, Your Majesty,” said Grimbald, with a small, approving smile. “In fact, she already has.” Queen Victoria seemed mollified by this, and now the buckets of water were making their way to the blaze.

  It wasn’t going to be enough to save most of the buildings. As she looked around, hoping to see some big horses pulling a firewagon, she noticed Moulsdale for the first time, huddled under a blanket and cradling a flask of whiskey. “It’s all gone,” he said in a broken voice. When he raised his chin, there were tear tracks running through the soot on his round face.

  “Not all of it, Ambrose,” said Shiercliffe, reaching her hand out for the flask. She tossed back a long swallow, then wiped her hand on the back of her sleeve before handing back the flask. “We can rebuild. We can start over.”

  “I can help,” Lizzie said, an idea forming so quickly she wasn’t entirely sure what she was about to say next.

  “You?” Moulsdale sat up straighter under his blanket, gathering something of his old dignity. “What help could you possibly provide?”

  “Professor Makepiece is gone.” She felt no emotion as she said it, but Moulsdale clearly did—he sagged again, as if her very words were deflating him. “You’ll need someone who knows engineering, and I... I’m my father’s daughter.”

  “You’re not suggesting we make you head of the engineering school?” Shiercliffe’s voice was sharp with sarcasm. Even with her lace veil torn and her face streaked with soot, she managed to look forbidding.

  But Lizzie was not intimidated. “No,” she said, still feeling the same, strange sense of battlefield calm. “I know I still have a lot to learn. But I can help out until you find a replacement.”

  “She’s right, you know,” Grimbald said, his face showing the strain of carrying the Queen in his arms. “There. Down you go.” With a grunt of pain, he settled her beside Moulsdale. The Bio-Mechanical monarch regarded the head of medicine with some suspicion.

  “You,” she said to Moulsdale. “You are familiar with the old saying, ‘He who constipates is costly’?”

  “I am afraid not, Your Majesty.”

  “Imbecile. Do not disturb us for at least an hour.” She took a deep breath and closed her eyes.

  Moulsdale turned to Grimbald. “You really think we ought to trust her in Makepiece’s lab?”

  “Yes.” Grimbald glanced at Lizzie and added, “I underestimated her before. And she’s right—we need her skills.”

  Lizzie smiled at Grimbald, startled but pleased at the compliment. “I will do anything I can to help the school,” she said, as much to Grimbald as to Moulsdale, “but there’s something I want in return.”

  Shiercliffe and Moulsdale made nearly identical sounds of outrage, but Grimbald held up his hand. “Name it.”

  “I want Victor reinstated as a student in the school of surgery.”

  Grimbald frowned. “Miss Lavenza, I don’t see how a Bio-Mechanical—even an unusually high-functioning specimen—can possibly be capable of attending our university.”

  “You want to see how it’s possible?” Lizzie asked, meeting his eyes with a hard stare. She let Grimbald’s cape slip off her right shoulder, revealing the bandage on that arm. “Victor operated on me last night—I was shot, and he stopped the bleeding and saved my life. He is fully capable of becoming a surgeon, Professor. Either he comes back as a student, or neither of us does.”

  Grimbald examined Victor’s work, nodding slowly. Then his gaze drifted to a point behind Lizzie, and a small, unexpected smile lifted the ends of his mustache. “I believe there’s someon
e waiting to speak with you.”

  Lizzie turned.

  “Elizabeth.” Victor was staring at her as if he couldn’t believe his eyes. “You’re all right.” His face was darkened with ash and soot, and a bandage, stained with red, was wrapped around his dark hair. In the flickering light, he might have been a pirate straight out of a penny dreadful tale.

  Striding toward her, he said, “I thought—I feared—” He closed his eyes for a moment. “But you’re all right?”

  She nodded. “Justine helped me.”

  “There’s a streak of white in your hair.” He touched her right temple.

  “Never mind that, how is your head?” Her hand hovered over the bandage.

  “A bit dented, but not broken. How did you escape from Makepiece?”

  “He died,” she said. “It was his heart.”

  Victor grew very still. “Before he could change you?”

  “Yes. I’m fine, really,” Lizzie said reassuringly. “Aside from the gunshot, of course. What about you? How did you get out in time?”

  Victor’s smile was wry. “Jack seems to have a talent for getting out of scrapes.” His hand reached up to cup her jaw, his fingertips cool against her flushed skin, and then, in front of all the world, he kissed her. It was a kiss fueled as much by grief as by passion. Yet her arms went around his neck, clinging to him. He tasted of ash and salt, and then just of himself.

  “Elizabeth,” he said, pulling away. His thumb brushed something from her cheek—dirt or tears, perhaps both. “I am so sorry.” He kissed her again, a quick, fierce press of his mouth to hers.

  With a rush of embarrassment, Lizzie realized that she had just been kissing Victor in full view of Grimbald and the other heads of school. She glanced back and was relieved to see them deep in their own discussion. “I suppose we’d better go and see who needs help,” she said.

  “All right.” He stroked the side of her cheek with his thumb and then strode away, moving among the wounded before kneeling beside a medical student whose hands had been blackened by the fire. She stared after him for a moment, hit by a wave of fatigue that made her eyes lose focus. A sharp cry startled her back into alertness.

  “This one’s alive,” shouted Aggie. “I need a doctor!” Lizzie looked around to see which doctor she was calling, and then realized: she’s talking to me. Stepping carefully in her bare feet over the jagged pieces of fallen masonry and broken glass, she made her way to Aggie’s patient. There were bits of paper everywhere—letters and class notes, some of them still floating almost magically as they burned into ash. This must be what a battlefield looks like, she thought.

  “I can’t stop the bleeding,” said Aggie, and suddenly Lizzie realized the patient was Sabina Hillier.

  “Where’s it coming from?”

  “Not sure... Wait. Let’s get her skirts up.” Aggie lifted Sabina’s skirt, revealing the puncture wound high on her right calf. A tip of white bone was protruding from the young woman’s stockinged leg, and even though the blood wasn’t gushing out, it was bleeding steadily.

  “All right, we need to apply a tourniquet.” Lizzie looked around, trying to think of what to use. “How quickly can you get one of your corset laces loose?”

  “This is faster.” Aggie ripped a strip from her petticoat and started to tie the fabric just under the girl’s knee.

  “Not there,” said Lizzie. “Tie it above the knee, instead. There’s only one bone in the upper leg, so it will be easier to tighten it there.”

  Aggie started over, and Lizzie found a stick to help tighten the tourniquet. As they worked together, something cold and wet fell on her hand—rain, she thought at first, but then she looked up and realized it was snow, the first of the season. By the time they were done and she could look up again, a thin powder of white was coating the ground. “Aggie.” She reached out and brushed a flake from her friend’s hair. “Look. It’s snowing.” Her breath was misting in the cold morning air.

  “Now there’s a bit of luck.”

  Lizzie looked back at the school. There wasn’t much left of the upper floors of the main building, but the Gothic arches of the medieval abbey were still standing, and even though the sun was hidden by the clouds, the pale sky was now brighter than the dying embers of the fire.

  When she turned back to her patient, she found that two medical students were carrying Sabina away on a stretcher. Aggie was moving away, too, a knowing smile on her face, and it was the smile that made Lizzie look back to find Victor, kneeling beside her. The bandage around his head was streaked with dirt now, and should be changed soon, and a purple bruise was forming under his left eye, but he looked surprisingly happy.

  “Look who made it out in one piece,” he said, and Lizzie saw that Makepiece’s black cat was nuzzling her cheek against Victor’s thigh and purring.

  “I wonder how many lives she has left,” said Lizzie, running her hand over the cat’s fur, which was dusty but remarkably unsinged.

  “I don’t know, but I suspect that Aldini’s probably going to outlive us all.” He stood up, holding out his right hand to Lizzie. There were cuts and scrapes on his palm, and a second-degree burn mark on his wrist was already beginning to blister.

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” she said.

  He grasped her hand, pulling her up beside him. “That’s supposed to be my line.”

  She was looking down at their entwined fingers when he placed his left hand over them, the metal cool against her skin.

  “Aren’t we a pair,” he said.

  She nodded, lost for words. Yesterday, she had been a medical student and a scientist. She had no idea what the future held for her now.

  She knew one thing, though: whatever else she was, she was not alone.

  EPILOGUE

  Lizzie and Victor stood by the rail as the Sea Swallow steamed toward London, watching as the city’s wharves and warehouses came into view. It was an unseasonably mild day for January, with no sign of the dense, malodorous yellow-gray fogs that Lizzie had read about in the papers.

  “Look, that’s St. Paul’s Cathedral,” said a well-dressed woman to her young child, lifting the girl so she could see the famous dome. A boy in a flat-brimmed cap was sitting perched on the rail itself, waving at the enormous ocean liner that was just ahead of them. It all looked a bit precarious; besides the big steamship and their own boat, there were other, smaller vessels all crowding into the same narrow stretch of river.

  Victor smiled down at her. “You’re frowning. Are you wishing we’d taken the train in with the others?”

  “Oh, not at all.” Lizzie tilted her head back to look him in the eye. Unlike most of the other men, he was formally dressed in a top hat and long coat, the high, starched collar hiding the electrodes at his neck. “This is so much nicer.”

  “I must admit, I thought this might be a little less...crowded.” They both looked out at the water, and found they were eye level with the lower decks of the larger ship. As the distance closed, they could see the name of the boat—the Lucania—and third-class passengers waving, from men in flat-brimmed caps to women in kerchiefs, with throngs of children running and weaving among the adults.

  Suddenly, the boat’s whistle blared, making Lizzie jump.

  “You all right?”

  She glanced back at Victor. “I keep thinking we’re going to ram into each other.”

  “I think the captains know what they’re doing. Tell me, is that the sort of ship that brought you over from New York?”

  She nodded. “The Oceanic was a little bigger, if you can believe that.”

  “Hang on, we’re coming up to Tower Bridge.” He looked at her. “Trust me?”

  “Of course. Why do you ask?”

  “Because I want to do this.” Putting his gloved hands on her waist, he lifted her with easy strength and settled her on the railing. In the la
te-afternoon light, the towers glowed a reddish gold.

  “All right,” she said, glancing nervously at the other passengers, “that was lovely. You can let me down now.” Victor’s hands were still at her waist, and he was standing so close behind her that she could feel the warmth of his body all along her back.

  “Why, am I hurting your arm?”

  “No, that’s healing up nicely.”

  “Then stop wiggling. You want to see the bridge open, don’t you? I thought that was the whole point of going by boat.”

  “Not the whole point.”

  “No,” Victor agreed with a smile. “There were other considerations.”

  “I was a bit surprised that you agreed to this, you know. I thought you would write back telling me, no, what are you thinking, consider your reputation if we travel without Aggie and the others as chaperones...”

  Victor looked away, frowning. “That’s what I should have said.”

  “Stop that! After everything we’ve been through, I can’t believe you’re still going to act as though I’m some sort of princess and you’re a hideous leper.”

  “I might as well be.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. You are Victor Frankenstein, Ingold’s top student in the School of Surgery, and I’ll punch anyone who says different.”

  “You might have to punch my father, then. And possibly my mother, as well.”

  “Why? Weren’t they thrilled to have you back?” After the fire, Lizzie made a deal with Moulsdale and Grimbald: come up with a way to reinstate Victor as a student, and she would keep silent about the queen’s condition. Victor’s parents were informed that he had been in a coma, and not dead as they had originally been told. The uncomfortable question of whose body had been interred in the family crypt was not discussed, although Victor himself had his suspicions. In any event, Victor’s unexpected recovery on the night of the fire was deemed a medical miracle, no doubt because miracles were not meant to be explained.

  “I wouldn’t say that my parents were thrilled, no. They seemed...quite pleased at first, but my mother never stopped frowning when she looked at me. She said there was something different about me now. My father was more direct. He asked if they used any of that Bio-Mechanical flimflammery on me.”