European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman (The Extraordinary Adventures of the Athena Club Book 2)

by Theodora Goss

  “Well, I guess it will have to be me again,” said Diana, holding her hand out for the knife.

  Mary looked at her incredulously. “After all the time you’ve spent complaining about Lucinda’s need for blood, now you’re volunteering?”

  “I said it was disgusting,” said Diana. “I didn’t say I wouldn’t do it. Hand me the knife already.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Mary. “Does it have to be human blood? Lucinda, do you need the blood of a human being, or any blood?”

  Lucinda just looked at Mary from her position under the Virgin. “Blood is life,” she said. “Blood is a rose among the briars. For a hundred years she slept, until the prince came to bite her awake.”

  “I don’t think she’s capable of giving you a coherent answer,” said Justine.

  “Then we’ll just have to experiment,” said Mary. “I saw a chicken coop near the stable. . . .”

  Just then, the innkeeper’s wife knocked on the door. “Abendessen, meine Damen und mein Herr,” she said. On a tray she had brought sausages, sauerkraut, and some sort of dumpling.

  “Knödel!” Diana said in dismay. “You can torture me if you want to, but I’m not eating Knödel.”

  “Shut up!” said Mary under her breath, hitting Diana on the shoulder—only to have Diana turn around and hit her back. How could she have forgotten that Diana always hit back?

  MARY: I didn’t forget. I just didn’t want her to be rude in front of the proprietress.

  DIANA: You could put me in the deepest, darkest dungeon and torture me for a thousand years, and I still would not eat Knödel.

  MARY: You really are tiresome, you know that?

  “Danke, gute Frau,” said Justin Frank, tipping her. And then he said something that sounded like “Hähnchen.” The innkeeper’s wife responded in rapid German. “I’ll be back in a minute,” said Justin to the rest of them. He followed her out the door.

  Ten minutes later, he was back with a large wooden bowl. Mary and Diana were already sitting at the table, eating their dinner—the Knödel was not as bad as Diana had described, and Mary wondered what all the fuss had been about. It was bland, but filling.

  “What is that?” asked Mary.

  “A hen,” replied Justine. “I had to break its neck.” She held the bowl so they could see it—or at least, a mass of feathers. It was obvious how much killing the hen had pained her. “I explained to the woman—Frau Lundhoff—that my sister had anemia, and she told me that an aunt of hers had suffered from the same malady. Here—” She held out the bowl to Lucinda. “Frau Lundhoff made a cut on the breast.”

  Lucinda took the bowl and stared down at the hen. Then, she turned away from them and lifted the bird—it was still beautifully feathered, and dangled from her hand. She lowered her head. A moment later, Mary could hear the most dreadful sound, a sort of sucking and slurping that turned her stomach. She regretted having eaten half a Knödel.

  DIANA: See? I told you. Never eat the Knödel.

  When Lucinda turned to them again, with the chicken back in its bowl, her face was smeared with blood. “Hell is empty, and all the devils are here,” she said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Diana.

  “I believe it’s Shakespeare,” said Justine. “I shall help her wash.”

  “No, you eat,” said Mary. “I’ll wash Lucinda’s face. And then we’d better get to bed. We need to start early tomorrow.”

  She washed the blood off Lucinda’s face with water from the pitcher. It was no longer pale—now, Lucinda Van Helsing looked like a very pretty girl. You might have met her at a party in Amsterdam, dancing and talking about beaux. But as she looked up while Mary wiped her mouth and cheeks with a towel, Mary noticed that her eyes were unfocused, as though she were looking far away. And when Mary had helped her into her nightgown and tucked her into bed, while Justine brought the dishes back downstairs and Diana made her own ablutions, Lucinda said only, “I stood on the shore of the river, and the river took me. The river took us all. I pray that the good Lord will save us from drowning. Amen.”

  The next morning, Lucinda could no longer speak English. She looked better, brighter, happier—physically, she seemed to be in a better state. But her mind . . .

  “I fear she is going mad,” said Justine to Mary, after disposing of yet another dead, bloodless chicken. Mr. Justin Frank was once again dressed for traveling.

  Mary was ready as well. She had cleaned Lucinda’s face and made sure the girl looked decent, rather than a bloody mess. Diana was still pulling on her boots. “Hurry up!” said Mary. “Frau Lundhoff says the coach is waiting.”

  One more long day in the coach, getting out only when Herr Ferenc stopped to rest the horses and give them water. Then, they could get down, walk around, relieve themselves in the dignity of a nearby bush.

  MARY: Catherine! Is it necessary to include such a detail?

  CATHERINE: Do you expect our readers to believe that we had no bodily needs or functions for entire days at a time?

  MARY: No, but such things are simply—unstated. They go without saying.

  CATHERINE: It’s very fashionable now to include realistic details, no matter how unpleasant or improper. Look at the French writers. Look at Émile Zola.

  MARY: We are not French.

  Mary was starting to feel like the servant girl in the fairy tale who is rolled down the hillside in a barrel, except in this case the barrel never stopped rolling. The steady but uneven motion of the coach put her into a sort of stupor. She mostly stared out at the countryside. Diana either slept or complained about the condition of the road, how hungry she was even though she ate more than Mary and Justine combined, how bored she was—so bored that she might throw herself out of the vehicle, just for something to do. Justine tried to read a book Irene Norton had lent her—the spine said Also Sprach Zarathustra—but finally she said, “I can’t seem to concentrate at all, and I have to admit that modern philosophy sometimes seems to me a sort of poetic nonsense.” After that, she played cards with Diana to keep her quiet. Lucinda, once again seated next to Mary, made the occasional comment in Dutch, or what Mary assumed was Dutch. She seemed entirely in a world of her own. Mary wondered if she even knew that she was in a coach traveling across the Austro-Hungarian countryside.

  Had they been right to come and rescue her? To leave everything they knew behind when summoned by a telegram from the governess she had not seen in more than a decade and a letter from a girl she had never met, making a claim most people would have found unbelievable? Diana had fallen asleep again, thank goodness. Lucinda seemed to be asleep as well, slumped in the seat with a blanket wrapped around her. Justine was staring out the window, a German phrase book lying open on her lap. She had once again been complaining about the deficiencies of her German.

  “We are doing the right thing, aren’t we?” Mary asked.

  Justine looked at her, startled. “Of course we are. Do you doubt it? One can usually tell the right thing to do, because it is difficult. And—look at her.” She nodded toward Lucinda, curled into the corner, her face half-hidden by hair. She looked like a child taking its afternoon nap. “You would never have forgiven yourself if we had not responded to Miss Murray’s telegram.”

  Mary smiled. One could always count on Justine to put things clearly. Lucinda had needed rescuing, so they had rescued her. This girl who drank blood was no different than Beatrice or Catherine, created by members of the Alchemical Society—and the men who had made her this way must be stopped. Despite the danger and discomfort . . . and Diana’s snoring, which had just started up again. How did Diana manage to sound like a steam engine?

  By the time they arrived at yet another inn, just as the sun was setting, Mary never wanted to ride in a coach again as long as she lived. Cabs and trains for her, thank you very much—or her trusty bicycle back in London!

  This inn was markedly inferior to the one from the night before. Mary, Diana, and Lucinda shared one large bed, Mary between
the two girls since Diana refused to sleep “next to that leech.” Justine slept on the floor, wrapped in a blanket. Here there were no chickens, but Justine was able to purchase a piglet that squealed and wriggled in her arms. She asked them all to leave the room. Ten minutes later, when she told them to come back in, the piglet was dead and Justine was even paler than usual.

  While Lucinda went off into a corner for her feast of blood—she did not like anyone to see her eating—Mary put one hand on Justine’s arm. “I’m so sorry. You don’t even eat meat.”

  “I would not willingly kill any creature,” said Justine sadly. “But at least he felt no pain.”

  “Well, he was a pig,” said Mary. “He would probably have ended up as sausages. I’m sorry.” A tear trickled down Justine’s cheek. “That sounds callous, but my point is that he would have come to the same end. And it is a question of Lucinda’s life.”

  Justine just nodded.

  The inn on the third night had been even more rural—a set of rooms over what was obviously the local tavern. That night, Lucinda feasted on the blood of another hen, and the rest of them shook their heads over a watery potato soup accompanied by slices of brown bread spread with lard. The supplies from Frau Schmidt’s basket had run out. They paid for more bread and a large salami to take with them—overpaid, Mary thought. But what else were they going to do? They had to eat.

  Now here they were, on the fourth day, and something was not right. They were driving into darkness and fog. The lanterns on either side of the coach seemed to illuminate very little. If Justine was right and they were not headed to Budapest—well then, where were they?

  “We’re going to stop somewhere for the night,” Mary said to Justine. “Once we do, ask where we are—if we’ve no longer on course for some reason, we can find our own way to Budapest. We have money, we have a Baedeker. If necessary, we can commandeer the coach and horses. And if it comes to a fight, you’re stronger than Herr Ferenc or Dénes, and I have my pistol. I don’t suppose you know how to drive a coach? It’s not the sort of thing Justine Moritz would have learned.”

  Justine shook her head. It was getting so dark that Mary could barely see. Thank goodness Diana and Lucinda were still asleep, although Diana was starting to turn her head and mutter in her dreams, which was a sign that she would be waking up soon.

  “Well, I don’t know either, but we’ll figure out something. We always do.” How Mary wished she had Irene Norton there to advise her! Irene would know how to proceed. But Irene was back in Vienna, with Greta and Hannah and a room full of weapons, all of which would have been useful right about now.

  What would Irene do in this situation? Well, there was at least one thing Mary could do, before it got so dark that she could not see at all. In the last of the fading light, she took out her revolver and loaded all the chambers, then put it back into her waist bag. Logically, it weighed exactly the same as before, but now she found the weight of it reassuring.

  “We are slowing down,” said Justine. It was almost dark—the lanterns cast little light inside the coach, and Mary could barely see her. They had not been going very fast anyway, at a stolid walk—Mary had been thinking that the horses must be tired. But they were indeed slowing down. She could feel that they were climbing a slight incline—perhaps they would be there, wherever there was, soon?

  “Are we there yet? I’m hungry.” Diana was rubbing her eyes. Lucinda still seemed to be sleeping in her corner.

  Abruptly, the coach came to a stop. Mary looked out the window, but it was dark and a fog had risen—in the dim light of the lanterns, it seemed to swirl around them.

  “I guess so,” said Mary. “I can see a light—it must be the innkeeper coming to meet us. Come on. Wherever we are, I’m sure there’s food inside. I just want to get out of this vehicle. I ache—well, everywhere at once!”

  She opened the door and stepped down, then looked up, startled. This was not an inn—or if it was, it was not like any inn she had ever seen. Above her rose great stone walls, topped with battlements—she could see their teeth against the sky, which was turning from violet to indigo. There were small windows high up with peaked arches, and a round tower—this was a castle of some sort. It was half in ruins—another tower had partly tumbled down, and jutted into the sky like a broken bone. Where in the world were they? She looked around, startled and frightened. Dénes was climbing down from the driver’s seat, although Herr Ferenc still held the reigns.

  The innkeeper—or whoever held the light—was approaching. He held up his lantern. “Hello, Mary,” he said, in a harsh, rasping voice.

  By the light of the lantern, she could see his face—sharp, devious, never to be trusted, but also somehow attractive. This must be some trick of her tired mind. It could not possibly be . . .

  “We’ve been expecting you all day,” he said. “I’m—pleased to see you again, my dear.”

  For the first time in her life, Mary thought she might faint. How was this possible? How could he be here? She took a deep breath, reached into her waist bag, and took out her pistol, then pointed it straight at him.

  “Hello, Father,” she said. She had not meant to call him that—it had simply come out. “Mr. Hyde,” she corrected herself. This was not her father, and never would be.

  DIANA: But he is, you know.

  MARY: Being a father is more than a matter of biological reproduction.

  “Dad!” Diana had just stepped down from the coach. She still looked sleepy. “What the hell! Where are we, and what are you doing here? And why didn’t you let me know where you were? You could have sent me a letter, a note, anything. But did you think of that? No, of course not. What kind of father are you, anyway? A damn lousy one, that’s what.”

  “Shut up, Diana,” said Mary. “This isn’t the time.” She turned back to Hyde, still covering him with her pistol. “Where are we? I’m guessing not in Budapest.”

  “No, and I think you’d better hand me that firearm, my dear,” said Hyde. “It is mine, after all.”

  “There’s no way I’m giving—”

  “Mary, I think you had better. Look behind you.” That was Justine’s voice—she must have gotten down on the other side.

  Mary turned—Herr Ferenc, still on the driver’s seat, was pointing a rifle at her.

  “Your friend is wise, Fräulein,” he said in clear enough English, but with a foreign accent. Well, so much for speaking only Hungarian!

  And there, just behind Justine, was Dénes—with another rifle. Damn! She saw it all at once: they had been deceived. Either Hermann’s friend had deceived them, or Hermann himself. But how had Hyde known where they were? How had he arranged it? And where were they now?

  BEATRICE: It was certainly not Hermann. He is such a sweet man, and Frau Hermann is so kind. They have the nicest baby. . . . We met them last summer when we were in Vienna, visiting Irene.

  CATHERINE: I suspect all sorts of criminals have very nice babies too.

  BEATRICE: Cat, you’re not seriously suggesting—

  CATHERINE: No, I don’t actually think Hermann was the guilty party. I just don’t think one’s ability to reproduce says anything about one’s moral character.

  “Now give me the gun,” said Hyde, holding out his hand and stepping closer to her. “Come on, Mary. I have no intention of harming you—or Diana either.”

  “You kidnapped us,” said Mary accusingly. With reluctance, she handed him the revolver, not bothering to turn the grip toward him so that he had to take it by the barrel.

  “I prefer the word diverted,” he said. “You may continue your trip once I have gotten what I need from you—well, one of you, that is. But first, I hope we can spend some time together. As a family, let us say.”

  “I’m not staying in this pile,” said Diana. “No way, nohow.”

  Hyde smiled his crooked smile. “I’m afraid you have no choice, for the time being. It was not originally my intention to bring you here—but now that you are here, I am of course very
pleased to see you, daughter. You are always welcome to stay with me as long as you wish.”

  Diana made a rude gesture.

  “Ah, Miss Van Helsing!” he said. “Here at last is the guest we’ve been waiting for.”

  Lucinda stepped down from the coach, slowly, hesitantly.

  Hyde put the revolver into his pocket and stepped forward, extending his hand. Mary stepped aside. What in the world was all this about? Lucinda, apparently—but why?

  Lucinda came forward, stumbling a little. Clearly, she was still half asleep, or in some sort of trance. She took his hand, then looked over her shoulder at Mary and said, “We have arrived in hell.”

  “That’s as may be,” said Hyde. He seemed taken aback. “But you must be hungry, and we have dinner waiting for you—even for you, Miss Van Helsing. We have arranged for your particular pabulum, and I think you will find our preparations most satisfactory. I suggest that you all follow us inside. Although our primary aim in bringing you here was to secure Miss Van Helsing, I’m pleased to see all of you again, including you, Miss Frankenstein. If you will follow me, I shall tell you where you are, and how you came to be here—unless you prefer to stay out in the dark? It can be cold at night at this altitude. I recommend the comfort of our fire, and perhaps some brandy. The Hungarians make very fine brandy, much stronger than we have in England, and perfect for a night like this.”

  Diana followed, but Mary hung back for a moment—she was reluctant to follow Hyde anywhere, particularly into a ruined castle that looked as though it had come out of a romance by Mrs. Radcliffe or Sir Walter Scott, and anyway she wanted to wait for Justine.

  “Where do you think we are?” she asked when Justine had drawn up beside her.

  “I wish now that I had paid more attention,” said Justine. “I have been trying to think of where on the map I saw mountains. I seem to remember that there were mountains to the south of Vienna—they reminded me of the Alps. If we have come south, then we are certainly off course.”