February 18
I must return to the Continent. I am too much of a foreigner in England, as if my accent were the final insult beyond my face. This morning I head south. Eventually I will cut west to Liverpool, which should be an unexpected port from which to leave the country, in case Winterbourne sends a party after me. Perhaps, too, Walton will follow me in the end rather than stop for Lily. My thoughts are far ahead of me, though, as I am still in the farthest reaches of Northumberland and have far to travel.
February 19
The door to the inn stood open to the night, letting out light and laughter, pipe smoke and cooking smells—a drunken song, perhaps, if I waited long enough. I was not hungry and could light my own fire if I wished, as bright as any that burned within, yet I did not leave. I did not want to be made to leave.
Presently a man staggered to the threshold. He paused, patted his side pocket repeatedly, and stepped down into the road with a precariously unsteady gait. Holding on to the side of the inn, he walked unseeingly toward me. I did not have to consider what to do, for he suddenly tripped. When he sank into the muddy road, he lifted his head once, then lay still. I swiftly dragged him round to where the shadows were darkest and emptied the pocket he had so considerately pointed out. Then I propped his sleeping body against the wall and walked through the open doorway.
Silence hitched over the room in starts as group after group became aware of me, and faces lifted their attention from bowls of stew or tankards of ale. Standing at my full height—no, standing tall—I surveyed the crowd with contempt, then strode to the fire, roughly shoving aside any who did not give way. At the bench closest to the hearth sat a man drawn up to a table, wolfing down a plate of sausages with no mind to what was happening. I grabbed him by the scruff of his collar, dropped him onto the floor, and sat in his place. Tossing coins onto the table, I threw back my hood, stared down the room, and dared comment.
At the clink of money, a serving girl rushed up. Her ready, thoughtless smile turned to a yelp when she saw my face. I caught her wrist and held her.
“What will you have, sir?” Her voice squeaked with nervousness.
“What’s your name?” I asked, annoyed by the fear that drained her face of color except for its paint.
“Merry Osborn.”
“A good choice. What are you offering? Something to make your customers merry?”
“Just supper, sir.” A panicky giggle escaped her lips. “Stew’s fresh today and there’s meat pies left from yesterday. We most always got sausages, too.”
“Two meat pies, Merry, and bread.”
“Ale or wine?”
“Neither, something hot.”
She bobbed me a curtsy. When she returned with the food and a mug of mulled cider, her hand shook collecting her coppers from the tabletop.
By the time I finished eating, the room had still not resumed the noisy aspect that had drawn me in from the street. Sullenly I shifted my seat toward the hearth. From behind my back came whispers.
“It’s him, I tell you. Who else could it be?”
“Ask him then.”
“No, you. You’re the one what heard the rider.”
“I say it’s not him, and you do.”
“He’ll like as not murder the first man as what bothers him,” said Merry Osborn.
“You then, you ask him,” came the response. “He wouldn’t murder a lady.”
“No, but what about her?” said with laughter.
I turned my head slightly, and the voices hushed.
“I will ask him,” said the girl, and she marched up to me with the pretense of clearing my plate. With a single glowering glance I warned her off so thoroughly she tripped and fell backward. Her tray of dishes clattered to the floor; she followed with a thud, landing on her bottom, skirts hiked over her knees. A glance from me muffled the room’s laughter.
I reached out and helped the girl to her feet. Though the rider they spoke of obviously had been sent by Walton, I should at least determine in which direction he had gone.
“What is it they’ve been saying behind my back?” I asked, pulling the girl close.
At first Merry flinched at my touch, then she gained courage at the sight of the coin I held out to her.
“There was a man here on horseback. Ridin’ like the devil lookin’ for you.”
“Which road did he take?”
“I don’t know. He left a message for you in case you came here afterward.”
A message? This was unexpected. I asked her what the rider said. She closed her eyes and screwed up her face in concentration. “I’m to tell you that the woman says to go to Dunfield.” That was a town close by to the north. “The woman will wait for you there.”
“A woman?” I sat up straight. “Was her name Lily?”
“Aye, I knew there was a flower in’t!” the girl said happily. “Lily says for you to go to Dunfield. She would have you there when her time comes and if you are not, you’ll be sorry for it. The rider says he was to go up and down the post road with the message.”
“Lily,” I said with disgust. I tossed the coin to the girl, then another, and asked for a tankard of ale. I leaned back into the bench and faced the fire.
She must have escaped Winterbourne and come after me alone. Why? To see what power she could still exert over me?
“I told you it was him,” a man whispered from behind. “And now a toast, laddies. Our friend here proves there’s a woman for each of us, so there’s hope for me yet!”
“Gorm, he’s got money at least, if not a face or temper,” said Merry.
The girl sidled up close and set the ale by my elbow.
“Yes?” I asked when she did not leave.
“Are you goin’ to her?” She was braver now.
“What business is it of yours?”
“I’m curious, is all. It’s such an expense sendin’ a man out on horseback.”
The girl’s point troubled me: Lily did nothing without calculation, so what did her message signify? The only ones threatened by her childbirth were herself and the worm.
“It will not survive being born,” she had said, referring to how small the worm was. “If it does, it most assuredly won’t survive its first few moments of mothering.”
I allowed myself to feel nothing. What was the worm, after all? Just a nameless, faceless thing, an insect larvae, white and wet and overgrown.
Monstrous.
No! I had protected the worm while I could. Let Winterbourne protect it now.
Another copper, another tankard. Soon I would be needing Sister María Tomás’s ministrations. María Tomás … I saw her plump red face before me but could not read its expression. The image made me quit the inn.
Outside, carried faintly on a thin breeze, came the wail of a crying infant. Cursing, I continued south.
February 20
In the early afternoon a man on horseback raced toward me from the south. Alone on the road, I had left my hood down, enjoying the feel of the sun on my face, which meant more to me than mere warmth. Habit made me grab the cloth to pull it up. The thought made me resentful. Would men steal even the sun from me?
The distance between us narrowing, I imagined the rider staring hard at my face even from far away. I stepped off the road to let him pass, but he reined in the animal so sharply it reared and kicked.
“It’s you!” he declared. Though tall and lanky, he was little older than a boy, and he gave me a boy’s wide smile, so pleased that he never once frowned at the look of me. “I’ve gone through four horses searchin’ for you!” Jumping down, he reached inside his pocket.
“I have a message,” he said.
“I know what it is,” I answered curtly, walking away. “So does everyone else in the county”—including Walton. Had Lily forgotten how his blade bit into her cheek? Once she fixed on an idea, reason played no part in her actions.
“No, no, this is for you alone.” He waved a letter sealed with wax. “I got paid for sa
yin’ you was to go to Dunfield as the woman’s time was come—though to my eyes,” he said, dropping his voice to share this confidence, “she didn’t look nearly big ’nough to be ready. I’m the oldest of twelve, so I’ve seen ready. Anyway that was my message and that’s what I was paid to say. I get paid more for deliverin’ this.”
He pressed the letter upon me. When I would rip it up unread, he grabbed my wrist.
“If you read it,” he said hopefully, “she’ll double my pay.”
I reached into my pocket.
“My coin is as good as hers.”
“At least read it.” He brushed back his thin hair, stringy with sweat, then dried his fingers on his trousers.
“Are your instructions to wait till I do?”
He nodded.
“Go back and say you did. She will pay you, not knowing if you did or not.”
He gaped at me. “I said I would deliver it, and I said I would wait till you had read it.”
“To meet an honest man so late in life,” I bemoaned. For the boy’s sake I broke the seal. I thought I would merely pretend to scan the contents, but the short message captured my eyes.
“First I will birth it. Then I will name it Victor. Last I will suffocate it.”
I crumpled the note and squeezed tightly, wishing it were Lily’s neck.
Dunfield
February 22
I continued south for several hours before thoughts of the worm slowed my pace, stopped it, then at last forced me to turn round. Unwillingly I began the journey north. Toward noon of the next day I met the rider again on the road. He did not seem surprised I had changed my course and said that the woman now wanted to know the hour of my arrival. Cursing Lily for anticipating me, I said I thought I should be in Dunfield around sunset.
“She said she’ll wait in the old mill at the far edge of town.” The boy shook his head and laughed. “What you’re to do there I don’t know. My pa always got drunk when the time come. Anyway, that’s what I was to say and I’ve said it. After I give her your answer, it’s back to the farm.” He sighed, his adventure over. “Good thing it wasn’t plantin’ time or Pa would never have let me go.”
The boy rode off, presumably to tell Lily when I would be at her side.
So short a distance now. But what would I do in Dunfield? And why did I go?
As the day cooled down, I dragged out each step till I came to the signs at a crossroads. The way to Dunfield lay along a road that hooked away from the main thoroughfare. I followed this smaller road and, by the time the sun set, could see buildings through the trees ahead. At this point I slipped into the woods and walked parallel to the road, reluctant to show myself too openly. Too many people had heard the message summoning me here; for my own safety, I should not have come.
Enough past the town so that it was no longer visible from it stood an old mill. I eyed its dark, vacant windows and half-open doors overgrown by last summer’s weeds, shriveled by the winter to straw. Most of the waterwheel had rotted through, leaving the bare skeleton of its iron fixings. The waterwheel hung over a dry streambed, which explained why the great millstones had ground to a stop. Spiders would be the only workers there tonight, spinning webs from every corner, and mice the only customers, gathering up the last bits of grain.
Discarded millstones, their grooves worn too smooth to be of use grinding, had been set into the earth to make a path around the building. Still others lay propped against one another in a haphazard pile. There I sat, even after darkness had completely fallen and a single light flared in one of the windows. I told myself I was ensuring that no one had followed me and that this was not a trap laid by Walton. But long after I was certain I was alone, I remained outside. If I had thoughts, I do not remember them. I simply waited.
After a few hours had passed, I crept closer, circling the mill. In the back I found the answer to the question of how Lily had come here from Tarkenville: the elegant painted carriage I had stolen had been drawn up to a side door. Its beautiful horses were still hitched. I was surprised to see all four—that Lily had not beaten them mercilessly the way she had beaten the animals when we first left Tarkenville.
The horses snorted and shied when they saw me but did not panic.
Entering the mill from the side opposite to where I had seen the light, I let my eyes, my cat’s eyes, become accustomed to the dark. I walked through the grinding room, storerooms, a smithy, an office. The building was as deserted as it appeared. Light flickered from beneath a door.
I pushed it open. This room had held cast-off tools: a bent scythe with a broken handle, a near-toothless rake, snapped barrel hoops, slivered pieces of wood, rotted sacking.
I opened the door to its widest. Only then did I see Lily on the floor next to a lantern. Head tilted, arms limp at her sides, legs splayed, she looked like a rag doll propped against the wall. Trousers and boots tossed off, she was naked from the waist down but for her stockinged feet.
A gasp whistled through my teeth.
She opened her eyes. “Sunset was hours ago,” she said. “I did not think you were coming.” Beneath her jacket, the farmer’s shirt that she still wore was long enough that its hem dipped down between her parted legs and covered her sex. The bottom edge of the shirt was marked by a large fresh stain, and I asked: “Is it your time?”
“I have made it my time. Oh, Victor, you left me too long alone!” She lifted her hand; in it she clasped a rusted metal file. “Look what I found.”
She tilted the file till the moisture on its tip caught and held the light.
“I’d have carved it out long ago. I find I am a coward even now and could make but the barest prick. Perhaps what I was wanting all along, though, was your eyes on me.”
She drew up her legs as if she would once more thrust the file between them.
I did not move. I could not move.
With a half-strangled scream, she threw the file across the room and covered her face with her palms.
“What have I done?” she cried.
“No more than you promised to do in the letter.”
“The letter.” Her anguish was brief. “I wrote the letter while in Tarkenville right after you left. Later I regretted giving it to the boy.”
“Yet you acted on it.”
“You said you’d be here by sunset,” she said, half beggingly.
How many hours had I waited outside while she had waited in here alone, thinking I would not come? How close had I come to leaving even then?
“We must go into town,” I said, picking up her clothes. “Someone will help you.”
“No, not here, not in Dunfield. He will know to look for us in Dunfield.”
I did not have to ask whom she meant.
“Why be afraid?” I said cruelly. “He would only finish your work for you.”
“Think of me then,” she whispered. “Think of yourself.” Her voice became urgent. “Now that you are here, we must leave at once! We must put this place far behind us.”
Her eyes shone, their feverish glitter unhealthy against her pale face.
“How far should I take you?” I asked, recognizing her old craftiness.
“To London, Victor.” Her hand flew up to the barrette. “You must take me to London.”
She fell into a grinning silence. I dressed her, tearing the sleeves off my shirt to stuff into her trousers as a bandage. When I had finished, she curled into a corner and fell asleep. I was not certain whether to move her and so have written this while I wait to see how her condition fares.
The lantern burns too low for me to continue this entry. I must try to rouse her or else carry her sleeping to the carriage. I think it best that we be far from Dunfield before daylight.
February 24
I drive as a man possessed. I stopped in the first town after Dunfield. Lily refused to leave the carriage, clawing at my face when I reached in. In the next town, I beseeched an elderly woman to help her. When she opened the door to the carriage, Lily kicked he
r full in the chest and knocked her to the ground.
The pounding of the horses’ hooves sets the pace for my thoughts. Traveling round in a groove, my mind circles in on itself. Not even my journal enables it to break free.
Why did I go back to her? Why did I not grab the file from her when she would have stabbed herself? And if I care as little for the worm as she does, if I care as little for Lily herself, why did I bring her with me?
And so I drive.
I would not stop though she pounded on the window, cried out that she was ill, and cursed me vilely. When I at last pulled over, she was scarcely out of the carriage before I accused her of the most wanton callousness.
She pushed me aside and bent double; she had not lied about being sick. Still I felt no pity.
“All your life you have had every good thing heaped upon you,” I said. “How can you have come so close to killing and feel nothing?”
She straightened up and pressed her fists into the small of her back.
“What do you feel, Victor, when you kill? As little as you claim I must? Perhaps exhilaration comes only the first time.”
The easy baiting in her words chilled me.
“The first time?”
“The first time one kills,” she said, smiling. “Mine was the stable boy. Surely you remember the crime of which you were accused. It was the night I told you about the worm, though you did not understand my words. I told you someone was spying on us.”
“A boy. So you bludgeoned him till he could be recognized only by a birthmark. For what?”
“He would have blackmailed me!” Lily said. “My marriage was being arranged, my land was being increased. I could not be seen with you in so compromising a way. The boy could have done me much harm if he had talked.
“And besides,” she added, “isn’t it what everyone wonders, what everyone asks the young soldier when he returns from war: ‘How is it to kill someone?’ It is a man’s power, to take a life. Not this,” she said, striking her stomach sharply. “Any bitch in heat can do this without thought.”
Frankenstein's Monster Page 26
