PART FOUR
Near the Hill of Crogodale
January 6
Winterbourne is alive.
I have nowhere else to go now but back to Tarkenville, back to him. The decision was immediate, as soon as my foot left the step of MacGregor’s cottage.
After I had run a few paces, dragging Lily with me, I looked over my shoulder. There behind us stood Walton’s twisted form, silhouetted in the cottage door.
“Murder!” he cried. His rasping voice splintered the quiet of the village. “Help, murder! Doughall MacGregor’s been stabbed!”
Walton’s voice grew louder, following us where he could not. Cottagers cracked open their windows.
“What’s that?”
“Doughall dead? It can nae be!”
I pulled Lily into the shadows. Fearing she was still possessed by mania and would giggle or call out, I clapped a hand over her mouth. At once I felt her blood from Walton’s knifing.
“Listen to me,” I whispered. “Even now your uncle is turning the town against us. If we return to tell the truth, we will be seized, and then he will have you. You are hurt. I can tend to the wound only if you are quiet.” After a moment, Lily nodded. I picked her up and, carrying her, ran to the outskirts of town where the cry had not been heard.
“He would have killed me,” she said softly, her first words since the attack. There was a tremor in her voice, also anger and surprise.
“Do not talk,” I said. “Press down on the wound and try to keep it closed.”
Hurrying through the alleys, I hoped to find a horse for Lily, and instead found only chickens, pigs, and snarling dogs. In an outbuilding, I found something more necessary: a tangle of fishing nets, lines, hooks, traps, and buoy markers.
From what light there was, I could see that Lily’s wound required stitches. It began under her ear and from there ran across her cheek, nearly to her mouth. The fishing hooks were barbed and the line coarse. Eventually I found a supply of needles used to repair sails and tarpaulin. Even the smallest seemed a harpoon compared to my needs. I slipped back outside for a bucket of water, washed the needle, and threaded the gaping eye with a string pulled from the bottom of Lily’s white shirt.
“Will it leave a scar?” she asked. She rinsed her wound with the water, which only made the blood flow so freely it seeped through her fingers.
“The cut is too deep to spare time for vanity,” I said. “You are fortunate to be alive.”
She never flinched as the stitching was done and even wore a grim smile as I worked.
“See how life with you changes me, Victor,” she said, when I had finished. “Soon they shall be telling tales of the Patchwork Woman.”
Then she fainted.
I took advantage of the level ground near the shore to run as far as I could with her. For a moment I was at last her master, holding her very life in my arms. I was also master of the worm’s life. The thought aroused in me strange emotions. I hated the worm twice over—once, because it was killing Lily, even if it was she herself that denied it food; twice, because its presence, visible in her bloated stomach, reminded me of her other illness. Before I ever knew her, she was wanton. Before I ever came to Tarkenville, she was running with the hounds, waiting for whoever might pass, and now she was with child. Last month she had promised to give me back my life by giving herself to me. The promise had seemed motivated by affection or charity, perhaps even a stronger emotion. By the journey’s end it was no more than another opportunity to rut.
Poor worm! I must admit that, beneath the hate, I do at last feel pity. Its only crime is its existence. Once I was as innocent, then I took life into my hands, and squeezed and squeezed, and thus learned how to sin. What will be the worm’s fate if it lives past its mothering?
I stayed on the road till I thought a search party would be following, then cut directly across the rough land. The towns were so greatly separated that soon there were no lights at my back, and no lights ahead.
Where are my cat’s eyes now? I wondered as I tripped on rocks and stumbled across the rugged terrain’s sudden dips and rises. “Yes, I am blind. I see nothing at all.”
“A hard lesson,” Lily said, her head on my shoulder, mumbling with the stitches. “Have you really learned it?”
“I didn’t realize you’d awakened.” Nor that I had spoken aloud.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“Where do you wish to go?” I asked. “To your father?” The thought was behind all I had done since hearing he was alive.
“No, to London.” In her voice, I heard her smile. “Yes, you shall take me to London.”
She had lost the mother she thought alive and regained the father she had thought dead.
Yet she would have me take her to London.
What picture dances before her closed eyes? Whatever it is does not exist.
I will take her south to her father. The direction will appease her and perhaps, with time, she will recognize that she does not belong with me, especially while there is family waiting for her.
For now, I have hidden us near the Hill of Crogodale. It grates on me to still be so close to John o’Groat’s. The whole town must be hunting us as MacGregor’s murderers, yet a child could walk the distance here in an hour. But Lily needs to stop. Even being carried exhausted her.
In a minute I will put aside my journal and try to coax her to come under my cloak for warmth. The idea of the worm shivering within its dark cave seems too lonely a thing. But if I said the words aloud, she would laugh and think I talked about desire.
January 15
“I must return you to your father, Lily.”
Over the past days, we had been silent, though it was not the black desperation that had followed me after the Orkneys. I was silent to give all to my thoughts: I must return Lily to Winterbourne to quit my obligation; I must return myself to Winterbourne to …
I cannot think of what I will say when I find him. I think only of pushing Lily as far and as fast as she can walk, and when she can walk no longer, I will carry her again.
For her part, her silence has not been morose but genuinely thoughtful. Perhaps in these precious moments of calm she is at last becoming aware of the consequences of the past few weeks. Or perhaps it is only the cast of her mouth, twisted with its wound, that disguises her thoughts and gives her the mask of pensiveness.
It was because of this calm, this seeming awareness, that I said, “I must return you to your father.”
“I cannot return now,” she said quietly. “March, February even. Whatever shall be, shall be done by then. Though what does that matter now? The house is no longer mine and never will be. No, not Tarkenville, Victor. London.”
Let her think I will bring her to London. I was an arrow and Tarkenville my mark.
January 17
Perhaps if I had read further in Walton’s journal I would not have been seduced into sparing him at MacGregor’s cottage:
I have seen his woman. I was puzzled by her gestures and exaggerated expressions till I realized she could not speak and must act out her desires, like a dumb animal. Of course—what else would stay with him? Such harshness is the habit of madness. Another part of me, a smaller part and diminishing by each day, says, “Leave him! Would it really harm the world so much?”
When they had both left the bell tower, I crept into his lair to see what defenses he has made against me. None! In his happiness, he has lost all sense of me. I saw their poor pretense at domesticity: broken crockery against the wall, a wilted flower in a tin cup, the single pile of rags that must be their single bed. He shall not have the contentment I cannot have!
I must take them together. If I take her first, in his maddened state of being cheated he may kill me or quit Venice at once. If I kill him first, she will slip into the crowded alleys, carrying his horror within.
January 26
At last, Walton’s final entry:
I stank when I came off the herring boat at Be
rwick, for when the seas were bad at the crossing, they put me in the hold among the tiles used for ballast. I was ground against the sea-soaked wood till fish scales pressed themselves into my skin and made me silver and blue. Should I care? I was going home. I could only wonder why he had not gone home earlier.
At the dock, she had a carriage waiting for me and a letter she had given to the driver, saying how she planned a hasty wedding for the child. Her letter summoning me had been filled with dark hints. Now the need for a wedding said everything. She wrote of murder, too, and violence against Winterbourne. And all these years they thought me mad.
She will be astonished at what I must do. He must die, and then … She will not understand … She has never … Later she will see that I have always been right.
And afterward?
I cannot say.
I burned the book.
And now I go home again.
Inverness
February 1
All roads meet here, even the natural passes through the glens. At last we can leave behind the sheep tracks of the Highlands and gain the speed afforded by the Lowlands’ more heavily used thoroughfares. More speed, too, comes from the carriage I stole this night.
At dusk we had stopped at an inn outside the city. I had found little shelter of late. Rather than complain, Lily was satisfied. She hoped every extra measure of hardship would injure the worm.
Her sentiments against it kindle sympathy in me. I understand what it means to be hated simply for existing. I may have more in common with the worm besides, for what sort of child will Lily have after these long months of murderous intent? She has repeated, in a fashion, my father’s experiment of shaping life in artificial ways: by now she may carry an abomination, not unlike me. For that reason alone, I must look to the worm’s safety, which is why I had brought Lily to the inn.
We approached from the backyard and waited outside. At length a young man in a white apron swung out from the back door, whistling and stepping jauntily as if he remembered with pleasure a previous evening’s dance. He carried a bucket and was headed toward the pig sty. The open door behind him let out light and a rich oniony smell that made my mouth water. Encouraged by his cheerful manner, I stood up and pulled Lily from the shadows to stand beside me.
“Sir!” I called.
He squinted at us. “Who’s there?”
“Two travelers with not a coin between us. Could you spare some slop before you feed the pigs? And a night’s stay in your barn? We would be grateful.”
“Pig slop? You ask little enough. Come out where I can see you.”
I pushed Lily ahead of me. Her belly has grown larger daily, as if, before this, only my blindness had kept it small. The young man grunted his surprise.
“And you, sir?”
I stepped out but did not take off my hood.
“The roads carry all manner of people nowadays,” he said.
“We are not highwaymen,” I said, throwing back the bottom of my cloak to show I was unarmed. “Your guests are safe. We will stay in the barn.”
“From where do you hail? So tall and speakin’ so odd.”
“It doesn’t matter. The woman is English.”
“English tourists have coins in their purse,” he said good-naturedly. “What need does Scotland have for English beggars?”
“He is the beggar,” Lily answered.
“And you?” the man asked, inclining his head politely.
She lifted her chin.
“I am his muse.”
The young man regarded her stomach. “You amused him plenty, I see.” He laughed, then made a welcoming gesture. “Tell me, have you ever tasted haggis? It’s on its last day, and I’ll nae be servin’ it to payin’ guests. Still, I warrant it’s better than pig slop.”
There was a sudden commotion from round front.
“The coach!” he said, letting the pail drop to the ground. The swill spilled over; now neither the pigs nor I would be eating it. “It’s a bitter night. Get yourselves warmed in the barn. I’ve new chores now before I can see to your supper.” He ran back into the inn.
Lily and I waited in the barn, both of us beneath my cloak. The close air held mixed odors of horses and cats undercut by the smell of straw; Lily brought her own essence of oil and salt. Remembering the more tantalizing aroma of cooked onions, I said I hoped the young man returned soon with the haggis.
Nestled as she was against my chest, I could not see her expression, but I heard the little sound of disgust she made.
“Haggis. You would not be half so eager if you knew what it was, Victor.”
“I do not care. I am weary of slaking my thirst with snow and trying to appease my hunger with oats. Even you must desire something more,” I said. “Have you no strange cravings?”
She shook her head. “I want nothing, I feel nothing. It is a lazy little worm I carry,” she chided. “Or else clever, and it thinks it can hide from me by lying very still. I would scarcely know it’s there but for how ill and clumsy I’ve become. Why, when Cook was having her baby, you could see her apron flutter and shake as if she were hiding a litter of squirming kittens.”
“How sweet a description, especially as you would drown that litter; you said so yourself.”
Sliding my hand to the front of her belly, I marveled on the strangeness of birth: one human emerging physically from another. Certainly my creation was no stranger than that. I could almost understand Lily’s animosity.
There—a tiny ripple beneath my palm!
She laughed.
“You have nothing to fear from it, Victor.”
“And neither have you,” I said, trying to keep my voice gentle.
“I should feel no fear? A man’s words—how quickly you’re learning! The man’s part in this is all pleasure. He does not bear it, birth it, nurse it. He does not watch his life get eaten away bit by bit, year by year, till there is too little left to recognize. Oh, I have been to the tenants on my estate and what I’ve seen among the women there frightens me. I will not be made into so small a thing.”
“You are not a tenant’s wife, Lily. You would have had nursemaids and servants and governesses to assist you. You only had to birth it, then turn it over.” I spoke as if the worm were already dead. “You can do it still.”
If she had an answer, she did not have an opportunity to say it, for the barn doors were yanked open. I leapt to my feet, thinking we would be called out as MacGregor’s murderers. It was just the young man from the inn.
“I regret delayin’ your supper so long,” he said excitedly. “It wasn’t the coach. It was a private carriage with a laird!”
Through the open doors behind him I saw in the yard a carriage more elegant and ornately decorated than any other I had seen. Its outside had been varnished to a high sheen, its doors painted so realistically with landscapes of a tropical clime I wanted to warm myself by them. All around the windows the wood was carved into delicate scrollwork. The windows themselves were draped in velvet curtains, hinting of plush cushions within. Four fine chestnut mares pawed the earth and blew smoke at the ground.
I had to have it.
“What a dear little thing!” Lily exclaimed. “I have not seen such finery since Lord Bainsbridge came to visit!”
At the young man’s questioning look, I shook my head—the gesture said to ignore her—and followed Lily out. I approached the horses slowly. As though guided by my will, their nervous prancing turned the carriage back toward the road, making our escape easier.
“Were there no servants?” I asked, looking around. “What laird travels with no servants?”
“His lairdship had to leave a fancy affair in a hurry. The driver’s settlin’ his master in right now. Gave me an extra bawbee to brush the horses and feed them mash. He’ll be down to inspect my work, he says.” The young man held out the coin as proof. “Driver, indeed. Why, his uniform is better than my Sunday best, and him only—”
I covered his mouth with my great ha
nd till he was silent.
After dragging his body into the barn, I closed the door and helped Lily into the carriage.
What a sight I must have been: a great hooded giant towering above the tiny driver’s box, my cloak whipping straight out behind me as we flew down the road. Hunched forward, I cracked the whip high over the horses’ heads and urged them on, whispering, “To Tarkenville.”
February 4
I did not kill the young man from the inn. I am certain of that. I am certain I saw his chest rise and fall as I laid him down in the straw. I held him only till he was quiet. Surely that was not enough to do him harm! Still I am vexed by guilt. Why? Because I put my hands on him when I would not touch Walton? The young man was generous and good-natured. He would have fed us. Perhaps he would have given Lily a bed if one was empty.
I should have asked his name.
I know it is for Winterbourne’s sake I feel such misgivings. I am like a bride who, walking down the aisle to her beloved groom, is ashamed to catch herself leering at the guests in the pews.
Ecclesmachan
February 11
Despite the carriage, the journey has taken far longer than I had anticipated, and even now I am only as far as this small village in Linlithgowshire, home to but a few hundred souls, as they say. Lily is often ill, and I must hide the carriage along roads as isolated as those here so she can rest, undisturbed by the bumpy ride. I delay as long as I dare. When I can no longer endure waiting, I drive away, only to see Lily’s face at the carriage window as pale as a portrait in chalk, her hand knocking at the glass for me to pull over once more.
February 14
Today is Saint Valentine’s Day.
“Come, Victor,” Lily said brusquely. “Have you no love token for me? No flower you went to extraordinary lengths to find in this winter? No jewel, no lace, no sweets? Not even a verse that exposes the beating of your inhuman heart?”
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