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

by Theodora Goss

  If Lucinda responded, it was so low that Mary could not hear.

  When they had followed the Count and Carmilla into the hallway, Carmilla turned to them and said, “I’m under orders. I shall see you all in about seven hours, yes?”

  “Go,” said the Count. “You have certainly done your duty. Now you must allow us to do ours. Miss Jekyll and Miss Frankenstein, perhaps you would like to sit in the music room until Mina returns? Yes, you too, Miss Hyde. And yes, you may bring Hóvirág. Farkhaskutyák are not normally affectionate toward strangers, but she seems to have taken to you.”

  Mary just nodded. At the moment, she did not much care where she went. She just wanted to sit and think about all that had happened that morning.

  The music room was also on the second floor, just past the room in which they had eaten breakfast. It contained what Mary recognized as a harpsichord—did anyone play harpsichords in this day and age? By the fireplace was a stiff, ornate sofa and several armchairs.

  “Earlier, you mentioned a theory,” said Justine to the Count, when they were all seated. “What is this theory of yours?”

  A theory? Mary did not remember him mentioning—oh yes, he had. Some sort of theory about vampires.

  The Count smiled at Justine. It was a charming smile. Mary had to remind herself that he was more than four hundred years old, because he looked—well, about Mina’s age. He was handsome in a way that seemed completely European, or at least not at all English, with those high cheekbones and dark hair that fell to his shoulders, dark eyes that seemed so much deeper than—well, than lighter eyes would have. Blue-gray eyes, for example, which were so inscrutable. You could never tell what Mr. Holmes was thinking. But the Count—Mary could see why Mina would be attracted to him. There was of course his courtesy, which seemed to belong to another era. And yet, he was a military commander who had defended the borders of Christendom. There was, in him, a sense of hidden power. Mary imagined he could be quite dangerous, if he chose.

  JUSTINE: Catherine, you’re turning the Count into a romantic hero.

  CATHERINE: I’m not turning anything. He is a romantic hero. Think about how useful that is, for a novelist! Clarence is far too sensible, Holmes is completely undemonstrative, and you keep insisting that Atlas is just a friend. Every novel needs a romantic hero of some sort, and the Count is absolutely perfect for the position. He actually goes around being passionate! I mean, he probably sneezes passionately. And he has great hair.

  JUSTINE: But he has killed people, and not only in war. He has infected men and women, we do not know how many, with vampirism. Are any of them still out there, feeding off and infecting others? He himself does not know. And it is partly his fault that Lucy died.

  CATHERINE: That makes him an even better romantic hero. They’re supposed to be dangerous. You’re supposed to believe they’ve killed people and might again. Think about Manfred or Montoni. And he regrets it, or says he does, which is also a plus. Trust me, the Astarte books would not sell nearly as well if Rick Chambers weren’t so conflicted all the time. Romantic heroes need to be passionate and conflicted and brooding.

  BEATRICE: Clarence can be quite passionate, you know.

  “Yes, my theory,” said the Count. “I know only three cases of vampirism in which the victim was not driven mad. Myself, an English nobleman named Ruthven, and my goddaughter Carmilla. I am a materialist. For a long time, I believed it must be some substance in the blood that caused us to retain our sanity, when so many had not. So I experimented—on the blood itself, and on men—even occasionally on women. Carmilla told me that you have met Magda. She was one of my warriors—it was as unusual for a woman to be a warrior in that place and time as it is now, but she was stronger than most men. She is my greatest success—yet even in her, there is mental instability. That was the most I was able to achieve, on a purely material basis. Lucy was my greatest failure. In her, the madness developed even faster than it does in ordinary cases of vampirism. After that debacle, when I returned to my castle in Transylvania, injured and demoralized, alive only because of Mina’s heroism—truly I have never known a woman with her courage—I once again read everything I could upon the subject. The literature is filled with conjecture and superstition. When I could take no more, I turned to the most recent scientific journals, and there I found what I thought might be a new avenue of inquiry. It is only recently that the mind has been studied in a scientific way, and in this discipline the English and Germans have been preeminent. I read Maudsley, Myers, Krafft-Ebing, Freud—whom I understand you met in Vienna. I would like to meet him myself, someday. I find his theories provocative, although not entirely convincing. What they showed me is that the mind affects the body much more than we previously thought. Trauma can alter and condition physical reactions. If trauma, why not the opposite? I did not have a word for what I meant, so I called it ‘eutrauma’—the good wound. Love is a eutraumatic experience.

  “I thought once again of my own transformation, of Ruthven’s, of my goddaughter’s. And I realized there was a commonality. Each of us had been cared for, in a continual, consistent way, by another. In my case, there was my friend Ahmet, a young physician in the Ottoman court who sat with me day and night during my transformation. We were enemies, or so we had been taught by the rulers to whom we owed allegiance, but he cared for me as though he were my brother. He spoke to me, read me poetry, held my hand. In Ruthven’s case, it was a Greek maiden named Ianthe, who stayed with him and fed him with her own blood. It was to avenge her death that he died fighting for Greek independence. And in Carmilla’s case, I was so afraid she would die alone, or the madness would come upon her while I was away, that I never left her side, even when I myself was about to drop from hunger and exhaustion. Those who are infected with vampirism are seldom cared for—their own families abandon them, frightened for their own lives and sanity, frightened of the superstitions that surround vampires. In Magda’s case, she was left alone for long periods of time by her companions. I told them to take care of her, but we were in the midst of a siege, and I could not care for her myself. They were frightened of her strength, and of her ferocity when she hungered. When I thought of these incidents, it occurred to me that the missing ingredient might be psychological—the consciousness of being cared for, of being loved. Therefore, one of us will sit with Lucinda at all times. We will hold her hand, speak to her, sing if necessary. I hope—I have lived too long to believe in a just or merciful God, but if one does exist—I hope to God that I am right.”

  “It is, at least, a plausible theory,” said Mina. Mary looked up. She was standing by the doorway with her hat and gloves on. “Horvath úr had telegraph forms, so I’ve entrusted my telegrams to Attila, who will take them to the office on Kerepesi út—which means more time for shopping. We’ll save Lucinda, somehow. At any rate, no matter what happens, we’ll take care of her—we won’t let her suffer the same fate as Lucy.” Her face looked grim. “But I also want to make sure we stop Van Helsing from continuing these experiments. Who knows what other victims he might find, what other young women he might convince to undergo these transfusions until he either succeeds or stops trying? Although I don’t think he’ll stop trying. Immortality is a powerful incentive.”

  “But . . . how are you planning on stopping him?” asked Mary. “You said there was a meeting of the society, and something about Lucinda—”

  “We are not powerful enough to stop him directly,” said the Count. “He must be stopped by the society itself, and for all practical purposes, that means Ayesha.” He pronounced it Aye-shah.

  “And who is this Ayesha?” asked Justine.

  “She is the president of the society,” said the Count.

  “She’s a lot more than that!” Mina took off her hat and put it on the harpsichord, then pulled off her gloves. “Ayesha is—well, she showed up about . . .” She turned to the Count. “How long ago was it?”

  “About fifteen years ago, I believe?” he said. “Forgive me, I am
not always exact as to dates and times—at my age, they do not mean the same to me as they once did. However, it was a year before the Carew murder—Miss Jekyll, I do not mean to give you pain by reminding you of the past. But she became president of the society shortly after what we called the English scandal broke out. She disbanded the English branch of the society and forbade experiments in biological transmutation without her express permission. The headquarters of the society were moved from Vienna to Budapest, in a further effort to insulate it from scandal. As for Ayesha herself . . . how can one describe her?”

  “She’s a woman,” said Mary. “That surprises me. While this is the nineties, I would not have expected men like Professor Van Helsing and Dr. Seward to accept a female president. They seem . . . well, I would not ask them for contributions to the National Society for Women’s Suffrage!”

  “Ayesha is . . . formidable,” said the Count. “She is a woman of great beauty and power. And she is the greatest alchemist that has ever joined the society. There have been only three members of the society who have learned how to transcend death. The most recent was Victor Frankenstein, who created you.” He bowed to Justine. “As we know, he was killed by the monster Adam. Before him, a medieval alchemist named Sebastian Melmoth learned how to prolong his own life. He lived for centuries, but became so tired of witnessing human suffering that eventually he committed suicide.”

  “And Ayesha?” asked Mary. “What about her?”

  “I’ve never met her,” said Mina, “so I don’t know how formidable—or beautiful—she might be. But she claims to have been a priestess of Isis in ancient Egypt. I don’t know how familiar you are with the history and religion of that region? It’s not the sort of thing I would have taught you, Mary—and anyway, a great deal more has been learned in the last few years from the latest archeological data. Isis was one of the great goddesses of Egypt, worshipped at temples throughout the land, most famously at Philae, in Nubia. She was supposed to have resurrected her husband, Osiris, from the dead—it was rumored that the priestesses of Isis had also learned the secrets of life and death, and could defeat death itself. One finds references to such powers in Strabo and Ptolomy. Well, Ayesha showed up fifteen years ago with two Englishmen—a Mr. Leo Vincey and his friend and former guardian Professor Horace Holly, who had been a member of the society since his university days. They had been captured while on an expedition in British East Africa and she had saved them, somehow or other. I don’t know why she decided to accompany them back to Europe, but once here, she joined the society. After the English scandal broke out and the president resigned—he was widely blamed for not monitoring the English situation closely enough—she decided to run for president herself. So far she’s been reelected to three consecutive terms.”

  “Ancient Egypt!” said Diana. “You mean like mummies? I read a book once about a mummy. Its tomb was cursed, and everyone who went inside it died. That was an excellent book—lots of blood and bugs!”

  “Surely that’s impossible,” said Mary. “If she was a priestess of Isis in ancient Egypt, she would be thousands of years old.” Although how impossible was it? She was, at that moment, conversing with a woman who was a hundred years old and a man who was even older, who had lived for centuries. But thousands of years? Surely no human being could live that long.

  “Dr. Faraday believes her story, and he’s not a credulous man,” said Mina. The Subcommittee on Bibliographic Citation Format takes her very seriously indeed. Evidently, she has knowledge of scientific techniques that had been lost for centuries. But as I said, I’ve never met her myself.”

  “If you saw her, you would not doubt it,” said the Count. “When she speaks of the places she has been, you feel as though you were there with her—in Egypt when the Sphinx was young, in Imperial Rome, walking among the Caesars. And her Greek is exceptionally pure, or so Arminius says. I am not a linguist.”

  “Yes, well,” said Mina skeptically. “Men can be extraordinarily credulous around a beautiful woman.”

  “But these experiments in biological transmutation—they have been performed since she became president of the society,” said Justine. “Moreau created Catherine only ten years ago. The society must have given permission for his experiments. Why would she forbid Van Helsing?”

  “Creating Beast Men on an island in the South Seas did not threaten the society,” said Mina. “But infecting men and women with vampirism in the middle of London or Vienna? That’s a different thing altogether. We know Van Helsing applied for permission before experimenting on Lucy, and was denied. He proceeded anyway. As far as we know, he never asked for permission to experiment on Lucinda. He’s breaking the rules of the society. That’s what we need to show Ayesha. But to do that, we need to show her Lucinda. We need her to see what Van Helsing’s been doing.”

  “Then why don’t we do that?” asked Mary. “If we could meet with her before the conference . . .”

  “Ah, that is the difficulty!” said the Count. “You see, when she ran for president, she did not run unopposed. She promised to control and monitor such experiments, but I—at the time, I believed they should be allowed. I ran against her, with the support of Arminius and a significant faction of the society. There were heated words, tactics used . . . I did not always act as honorably as I should have. After she won the presidency—it was close, it came down in the end to seven votes between us—I was expelled. When Van Helsing contacted me, I was in disgrace. I helped him as much to take my revenge on her, and on the Société des Alchimistes, as out of scientific interest. After Lucy’s transformation and death, I came to see how foolishly I had acted, how culpable I was. But I remain in disgrace, an outcast from the society. I am no better in her eyes than your father, Miss Jekyll.”

  “Oy! He’s my father too,” said Diana. She scratched Hóvirág behind the ears, and the wolfdog put her head on Diana’s knee.

  “So . . . what are we going to do?” asked Mary. She was confused—all this history, all these people. The most important thing was stopping Van Helsing, and then getting the society to stop these experiments altogether. If the only one who could stop them was this Ayesha, then they would have to talk to her, convince her. “How do we find Ayesha, if she won’t talk to the Count?”

  “That’s why the meeting of the society is so important,” said Mina. “This annual conference—it’s where the members present their papers, speak on panels, hold plenary sessions, that sort of thing. It’s not so different from what the Royal Academy does, when it meets. On the first day, there’s always a general meeting of the membership. Everyone attends—there will be hundreds of members from all over Europe, some from even farther away since the society is becoming increasingly international. We think there’s an excellent chance of getting in among the crowd, then presenting the entire membership with our evidence. Ayesha can’t refuse to hear us in that forum.”

  “And that’s on Monday,” said Mary. “In other words, we have two days to prepare.”

  “Two days, and we have a great deal to do,” said Mina. “But in the meantime, you all need clothes. And you haven’t seen Budapest yet. Let’s go shopping!”

  CATHERINE: That was the day we arrived in Budapest. If you had reached Budapest earlier and Mina had been able to send a telegram the day before, we wouldn’t have been so worried about you, and we might have been able to find out more about Van Helsing’s plans.

  MARY: If Carmilla had driven any faster, I don’t think we would have survived the journey!

  Half an hour later, they were walking along a broad avenue, between shops and apartment houses. It was both like and unlike walking through Vienna. The buildings were shorter and more colorful, more individual—each one seemed to have been designed by a different architect, who had his own ideas about how buildings should be decorated. Each was painted in the colors Mary remembered from the previous day: yellow, green, blue, pink, a kind of ocher. Some had classical motifs, some swirling example of l’art nouveau. Nymphs and g
argoyles peeked out from corners or under balconies. Everywhere, at the level of the street, there was bustle—carts transporting and selling wares, horses snorting and stamping, the clang of an omnibus. Old women held out bunches of lavender that you could buy for a heller, although here in Hungary it was called a fillér, Mina told them. The sidewalks were filled with pedestrians. They were dressed more brightly than in London—the summer dresses of the women were particularly attractive, in floral prints or light cotton embroidered with patterns of vines and flowers. But they did not look much like the national costumes Mary had seen when researching Austria-Hungary. In cut and color, they were closer to ordinary English clothes.

  BEATRICE: People do not wear such costumes except on feast days, usually in the countryside. City dwellers dress much the same anywhere you go—whether London, Paris, Vienna, or Budapest.

  Pigeons strutted in the streets or circled overhead. And on everything fell the sunlight, so much brighter than in London, warmer than in Vienna. Despite the events of the last few days, despite the events that were to come, it was nice to be walking down an ordinary street, among ordinary people, doing something as normal as shopping.

  “That’s the Great Market Hall,” said Mina. “To your left. We need to turn right onto Váci utca, but first—do you want to see the Danube?”

  There was general agreement that yes, they wanted to see the Danube, although Diana really, really wanted to feed the pigeons. Mina said the pigeons got enough to eat without people feeding them on the streets, thank you very much. It felt as though they were tourists, seeing the sites in this foreign city. Mary wished they had not left their Baedeker behind in Castle Karnstein.

  “Straight ahead, then,” said Mina. Straight ahead was an ornate iron bridge over the river. “That’s the Franz Joseph Bridge—Ferenc József híd, they call it here. It was finished just last year—thank goodness, because the construction in this area made traffic unbearable. Come on, from the bridge we can see the central city.” They walked to the iron railing of the bridge and looked upriver. The Danube was narrower than the Thames, but twice as busy, with ships and barges going up and down between ports in Vienna, Bratislava, Budapest, and Belgrade. Whereas the Thames was dark and choppy, the Danube was a calm, light green. It looked like a jade serpent winding its way through the city.