The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter

by Theodora Goss

  But in a few minutes, Diana reappeared, climbing out the window and letting herself back down the drainpipe. At the bottom, she gathered her discarded clothes.

  “What did you think you were doing!” said Mary, when she rejoined them. Diana sat on the muddy stones, pulling on her stockings and shoes.

  “You wouldn’t have let me go up, but I knew I could,” said Diana. “I used to climb out of my window at the Magdalen Society all the time. I went inside and picked her lock. When Professor Petronius and the landlady go to bed, she’s going to try to get out. The dog is the landlady’s—she takes it down with her and locks it in the kitchen when she’s asleep. I told her we would be waiting in the park.”

  They walked back to Searle Street and then across to Lincoln’s Inn Fields. There, they waited, sitting on one of the park benches, watching the light in the ground-floor window. Eventually, it went out, but there was still no Beatrice.

  “How long do we have to wait?” asked Diana. “I’m bored.”

  “As long as it takes,” said Mary. “She may not be able to get out tonight, in which case we’ll have to come back. I hope she can find the front door key!”

  “It can’t be far from the door, in case of fire,” said Watson. “I’m more concerned that Professor Petronius will find her searching for it and guard her even more closely in the future.”

  They waited for what seemed like hours—once, Mary looked at her wristwatch, but she could not see its face in the darkness. At last the front door opened and a cloaked figure emerged. It was Beatrice. Although there was a hood drawn over her hair, Mary could see her face in the light of the nearby street lamp. She closed the door carefully behind her, then hurried down the steps and toward the park.

  As she reached the darkness under the trees, she looked around frantically.

  “Here!” said Mary, keeping her voice low. Beatrice was so close, only a few feet away from the bench.

  Beatrice started. “Oh, I’m so glad to see you!” she said. “Let us go quickly. Professor Petronius was snoring when I left, and I believe that woman is asleep as well. But her room is near the kitchen, so I could not see or hear. I do not want either of them to realize I am missing!”

  “Well, someone’s awake,” said Diana. “Look at the light.” And Diana was right: when they looked back at the house, they could see that the fanlight, formerly dim, was now glowing. Someone had turned up the gas. Had Beatrice’s absence been noticed? If not, it might be at any moment. And then they heard the dog bark.

  “Run!” said Mary. “Follow the path on the right!” She turned and started running down the path that curved around the park, with the hedge on her right and tall trees to her left. It seemed safer than the long, straight path that led to the gazebo, and would take them to the corner near the Royal College of Surgeons. There, she remembered, was another street leading back—she was almost sure—to High Holborn. That was their escape. She turned back to make sure the others were following—Diana darted past her, and she could see Watson trying to help Beatrice, who waved him off, making certain even as she ran that he did not touch her. Mary turned to catch up with Diana. They ran through the shadows, their boots landing with dull thuds on the dirt path. Then, the Royal College of Surgeons loomed up on their left. To their right was the opening in the gate and the road Mary had noticed that morning. They were almost there, almost at the street that led to their escape, and still there was no pursuit.

  Suddenly, they heard a sound that struck a chill into all their hearts.

  DIANA: Not mine.

  MARY: I don’t believe that for a minute.

  It was the dog, barking and growling in the open air. It had been let out, and was making straight for them across the grass, under the trees. They could see it as a vague black shape in the darkness, but mostly they could hear it, drawing closer.

  “I hate to shoot a dog,” said Watson. “But in this case, I have no choice.”

  “No!” said Beatrice. “A pistol shot will merely draw more attention to us. Fidelis knows me. Let me handle him.”

  “Madam, I think that would be unwise,” said Watson. But Beatrice had already turned back. She was holding her hands out to the large black dog, who approached her warily, with barks, but refrained from attacking.

  “Fidelis, sweet Fidelis,” she said, coaxingly. “Come to me, sweetheart. Who gave you gingerbread yesterday?”

  Evidently, Fidelis remembered the gingerbread. He stopped barking and drew nearer. Beatrice put her hand on his head, then leaned down and breathed on him, long and steadily over his entire face. The black dog sat, then lay down as though tired, and twitched for a moment. And then he was still.

  Beatrice looked up at them, and even in the darkness Mary could see that her face was wet with tears. “I did not mean to . . . Oh, he has made me too poisonous! I meant only to render Fidelis unconscious for a while.”

  “Madam, that was a most impressive demonstration,” said Watson.

  “This isn’t the time for compliments,” said Mary. Could Watson not see how upset Beatrice was? And what did she mean—who had made her too poisonous? But this was no time to inquire. “To the right and up the street! We need to lose ourselves in the crowd.”

  They ran up the street, emerging on King’s Way, then merged with the crowd as best they could, heading toward Piccadilly Circus. Although it was late—Mary checked her watch again and found that it was after midnight—the roads were still choked with carts and wagons. On the sidewalks, beggars asked for pence and fancily dressed women greeted potential customers. Which was all the better for them—there was less of a chance they would be seen in the London traffic.

  At Piccadilly Circus, they caught a hackney carriage. “You must lower the windows,” said Beatrice. “Cover your mouths with handkerchiefs, and do not breathe too deeply. Forgive me, I would change my nature if I could. I shall always be what I am—a danger to others. But my toxicity will lessen with time. Professor Petronius insisted that I ingest poison every day, to make certain I would kill his specimens as effectively and dramatically as possible. Tonight, I am sorry to say, it has ensured our escape. Under ordinary circumstances, I could not have killed Fidelis so quickly. Would that he had survived! He was a good creature, and did only as his master bade him.”

  “How terrible!” said Mary. She and Watson pulled down the windows, none too soon because she was beginning to feel light-headed. Luckily she had an extra handkerchief for Diana, who had of course forgotten hers. “Why did you stay with him if he treated you so badly?”

  “I was told the college would find a way to make me—ordinary, not mortal to my kind. I hoped it was true, but came to realize that his sole motive was profit. The college was benefitting from his fees—there was no incentive to cure my condition.”

  Beatrice looked out the window, taking in the sights and sounds of London at night: the rows of gas lamps, the continual life of the city, cabs and carts and gentlemen’s broughams moving through the streets even at this late hour. “It’s magnificent!” she said. “I’ve seen so little of London since I’ve been here. Before arriving, I spent several weeks in Paris, hoping the French physicians, so famous for their art, could find a cure for me, but to no avail. I had already been to Milan and Vienna. So I came to the largest city in the world, hoping that here, if nowhere else, I could be cured. By the time I arrived, I had no money left, and Professor Petronius offered me a way to at least keep body and soul together. At first he wanted to put me in a freak show and tour through the countryside, but displaying me as a scientific oddity proved more lucrative. So here I am, still with no way to sustain myself, and no cure for my condition. Ah, sometimes I wish that I had died in Padua!”

  “Don’t say that,” said Mary. “You’re among friends now. We’ll help you as best we can.” But how could she help the Poisonous Girl? A perfume seemed to emanate from Beatrice, like the scent of an exotic flower. That’s the poison, she thought. She put her head out the window to gulp mouthfuls of
London air, with its miasma of coal dust, manure, and the general doings of six million inhabitants. Still, it was preferable to Beatrice’s sweet toxicity. They were almost at Marylebone, she noticed with relief. Soon, they would be home. And then what?

  The house was dark when Mary let them all in, but almost immediately Mrs. Poole came bustling up from the kitchen. “I’ve been waiting up, watching for you!” she said. “This must be the Italian lady. You’re most welcome here, miss.”

  “Thank you,” said Beatrice. “And I apologize for any trouble I have caused, or am about to cause. It is most kind of you to welcome me into this beautiful home.”

  MRS. POOLE: Now that’s manners, that is. If you had been so polite, Miss Diana, you would have gotten a different reception.

  “Oh, stuff it,” said Diana. “The question is, where is she going to sleep? I don’t want her anywhere near me! I just about threw up in the carriage.”

  “I must sleep far away from any of you,” said Beatrice. “What is the most distant part of the house?”

  “My father’s laboratory,” said Mary. “It’s across the courtyard. Mrs. Poole, can you make up a bed for Beatrice in there, for the night?”

  “She could sleep on the sofa in his office,” said Mrs. Poole. “Dr. Jekyll often slept there when conducting his experiments. I’ll bring up a pillow and some blankets. I finished cleaning and airing it out today, so at least it won’t be dusty for you, miss.”

  Before bidding them good night, Watson said to Mary, “You will be careful, won’t you? Miss Rappaccini is a lovely woman—I have seldom seen anyone more beautiful—but I do not want her to make you and your sister ill. If the responsibility becomes too much, Holmes and I will find other accommodations for her.”

  “That’s very kind of you,” said Mary. “Let us see how the night goes. I’ll know better in the morning what is to be done.”

  After making sure the other girls were both taken care of, and before going to bed herself, Mary remembered to give Mrs. Poole half the money she had taken out of the bank that morning. Half a pound would keep them in groceries for a while.

  But when she was lying in bed, she could not sleep. Diana was snoring in the nursery, and no doubt Beatrice was bedded down in her father’s office, on the other side of the courtyard. She stared into the darkness, feeling a sickness that had nothing to do with Beatrice’s poison. What was this secret society that seemed to have its members everywhere? What experiments were those members conducting? If she included the most recent murder, five girls had been killed and parts of their bodies removed. Why? She had a sense of something wrong in the order of things, some evil. She remembered having felt it once before—yes, when she was a child. That night, when she had seen the face of Edward Hyde.

  When she finally fell asleep, she had dreams she did not wish to remember the next morning—of women with their heads or arms or legs missing, stumbling or dragging themselves through the streets of London, calling if they had mouths, gesturing if they had hands. But she could not hear what they were calling, or understand what, if anything, they were trying to tell her.

  CHAPTER X

  Beatrice’s Story

  The next morning they gathered for breakfast in the morning room, which had a table just large enough to seat four. It was the room where Mary’s mother had done accounts, before she had become too ill to manage the household. Afterward, Mary had taken over. Each morning, she would sit at her mother’s desk, going over the books, making sure the bills were paid, her mother taken care of. It was strange to sit in that room now, across the table from Diana. Beatrice perched on a chair by the window, which was open at the bottom. Through the window, Mary could see the bleak courtyard.

  Diana could not keep from yawning. She would have to be taught to put her hand in front of her mouth. Beatrice looked pale, but seemed composed. She said she had spent a perfectly comfortable night on the sofa in the office.

  Breakfast was buttered toast, poached eggs, and good, strong tea—for Mary and Diana. “I went marketing this morning with the money you gave me,” Mrs. Poole had told Mary. “Fresh from the country, those eggs are! Look at the yolks. I paid Mr. Byles, so he can’t give me any more of his nasty looks. There will be cakes for tea if that devil of an oven cooperates. I was at a loss for what to give Miss Rappaccini, though I asked her last night what she would like for breakfast. ‘Water in which organic matter has been steeped, please,’ she tells me, as nice as you please. ‘And what might that be, miss?’ I asked her. Well, I’ve done my best, but it’s a queer diet, and no mistake.”

  Beatrice warmed her hands around a steaming mug. It was all she would take for breakfast. “I have no need of food, you see. Only the nutrients themselves, and sunlight. It will take several days for the strong poisons to leave my system. The dandelion greens I picked in the courtyard will help with the detoxification process. Until then, we will need to be particularly careful. Do not touch me, and I will try to keep away from you as much as I can. Once the strong poisons are out, I will be toxic, but not to such a degree. My breath will be able to kill only the smallest living beings: insects, birds, mice, and voles. After spending some time in a closed room with me, you will begin to feel faint, but I will not be lethal unless we are in close contact. Still, my touch will burn, as though you had touched a strong alkaloid.”

  “You seem to know a great deal about yourself,” said Mary.

  “It is through sad experience,” said Beatrice. “If only I knew how to cure myself! Although my father taught me many things, he could not teach me that. He did not know himself. I asked him . . . at one time I even begged him to cure me. But he told me that as far as he knew, the condition was irreversible. He said I should be proud of my nature, which made me unique among womankind.”

  “Why don’t you tell us about it?” asked Mary.

  CATHERINE: Yes, you do need to write the section about yourself. You all promised that you would write your own stories.

  BEATRICE: But my English is not so good. You know the whole story, Cat. Why can you not write it? You are the writer among us. You would make it, you know, lively. Truly, I cannot write it.

  CATHERINE: Well, you have to. I have a deadline for Astarte and the Idol of Gold, and I won’t get the advance until I turn it in. At least write the first draft. Your English is perfectly fine, and anyway I’ll make everything sound right in revision. Come on, I’ll ask Mrs. Poole to make you some of that disgusting weed tea you like so much.

  BEATRICE: It’s quite good, you know. Very refreshing.

  DIANA: I’ve tried it. I had to spit it out. It tasted like warm piss.

  CATHERINE: As though you would know! Come on, Beatrice. Here’s the pen. Sit down, like a good poisonous plant, and start writing. I’ll fix it all later.

  “I never knew my mother,” said Beatrice. “She was the daughter of a poor man, a farmer in the hills around Padua, and much younger than my father. I believe he married her principally because of her youth and beauty—his goal was to have a daughter, to have me. A son would have been less useful to him. He would have raised a son as his apprentice, to continue his scientific studies. But a daughter could be both an apprentice and a subject for his experiments.

  “My father was a physician, the greatest in Padua, perhaps in Italy. Patients would come from all over the country to be healed by the famous Dr. Rappaccini.

  “On her father’s farm, my mother had been used to tending a garden. She tended my father’s garden, and I have often wondered if she was weakened by constant contact with his pharmacopeia, the poisonous plants he grew and from which he made his medicines. For as he often told me, poison is in the dose, and a poison in the human body can be cured only by a poison from the external world. Digitalis, the active ingredient of the common foxglove, kills a healthy man, but cures one who is sick in his heart. As she tended his poisonous plants, I grew in her belly, absorbing their poisons. I believe they affected me even in the womb. While they weakened her, I was so imbued by
their essence that they made me strong and healthy. On the day I was born, she died—giving birth to me. Already weakened, she could not bear the rigors of childbirth. She was a farmer’s daughter, and I—was a monster. I hold myself responsible for her death.”

  “You must not think that way,” said Mary.

  “Why?” asked Diana. “She’s probably right, you know. I’m not saying it’s her fault, but her mother died giving birth to her. Facts is facts.”

  “My father did not hire a wet-nurse,” continued Beatrice. “I suckled at certain plants that nourished me as a nurse would have. As a child, I thought my father and I were the only beings in the world, and our garden walls were the limits of that world. There was a woman who lived in the house next to ours, a Signora Lisabetta. One of her windows overlooked our garden, and I sometimes saw her peering over our wall, but having seen her only from the torso up, I did not regard her as a person, and assumed she was an angel who sometimes looked down on me. For years, I played happily with my sisters, the flowers, and was sad that I could not play with the butterflies, crickets, or worms. But they died when I came too close.

  “Eventually, I learned the world was much larger than I had realized, that there were people in it like me, yet not like me. My father did not keep my nature a secret. He explained to me that I was poisonous to others of my kind. He told me with no hesitation or shame—nay, he gloried in it! I was the perfect woman, he told me—more beautiful and stronger than ordinary women. I would entice men, but they could never touch me. I did not question his actions or motives—he was my father, and I believed he loved me. Indeed, I helped him with his experiments, and he told me all about the work of the Société des Alchimistes. He hoped that one day I would become a member. Both as a scientist, and as living evidence of his theories of transmutation.”

  “Transmutation!” said Mary, leaning forward. “That’s what your father’s letter mentioned. Experiments in transmutation. Wait just a minute!” She had left the portfolio in her mother’s desk. It occurred to her for the first time that she should have locked the desk drawer. She would have to find the key. Now she stood and went over to the desk, pulled the portfolio out of the drawer, put it on the table, and took out all the documents. There was the letter from Italy. She read it to Beatrice. “ ‘Transmutation, not natural selection, is the agent of evolution. . . . I am pleased to report that my Beatrice is flourishing. . . . Our colleague Moreau was right to conjecture that the female brain would be more malleable and responsive to our experiments.’ What are these experiments in transmutation? What does it all mean? Do you know?”