The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter

by Theodora Goss

  Although I did not know it, I had made my way down to Cornwall, in the south of England. There, one night, I was showing my strength in a town square when a man staggered out of a tavern and challenged me. He was drunk and wanted to wrestle, to show that he was stronger than me. What was I, after all? A woman, and no woman was stronger than a man. I understood this, in part—I was learning English from my encounters with Englishmen, although all of them seemed to speak in different accents—and what I later realized was Welsh, I could not understand at all. I thought for a time that I had wandered into another country. . . .

  This man was challenging me, it was clear, and I waved my hand to signal that no, I would not wrestle with him. “Non, non,” I said, clearly I thought. But his companions came out of the tavern and surrounded me. Then, he lunged. . . .

  I had meant to step aside, to let him stumble past. But as he came, all I could see was Adam, coming toward me, hands outstretched. He was not Adam, not a monster, only a man—so I reached toward him, grasped him by the throat, and snapped his neck. He crumpled as his companions looked on, dumbfounded, not certain what had happened. There was an opening in the circle they made. I turned and ran through it, leaving my sign and hat behind on the pavement. I ran and ran, knowing what would happen now, what human justice was. Had I not been hanged once? I had no wish to be tried again for murder, although I deserved it, for I had killed a man. This time, I was guilty.

  CATHERINE: Although you know perfectly well it was in self-defense.

  JUSTINE: But this is my story, as I know and feel it. In my heart, I knew myself to be a murderer.

  That night, I longed to die.

  I was afraid to surrender myself to the justice of man, but wished that the justice of God would strike me down. I ran through the night, following roads headed I knew not where, away from the town where I had committed such a heinous crime. Overhead, clouds alternately concealed and revealed the sliver of a moon, which threw the shadows of trees across my path like bars.

  DIANA: Oh please! Cut the symbolism already.

  Like prison bars! At last the roads dwindled down to mere paths, and then I was stumbling across fields, with the stubble of mown hay scratching my bare legs above my shoes. It grew darker—clouds covered the moon, so I could no longer rely on it to give me a sense of direction. The fields gave way to rockier ground on which I was in danger of twisting my ankles. I scarcely noticed when the rain began, at first a few drops I brushed off my hair, and then as though the heavens had opened up, a deluge. I stood in a field and looked up at the sky, water streaming down my shoulders and over my arms, soaking my clothes. Then and there, I prayed God would strike me down with a bolt of His lightning. Surely that was in His power, and surely I deserved to die.

  But He did not strike me down.

  There was nothing to do but trudge on through the darkness, not knowing where I was going. And so I trudged.

  I did not see the wall—I simply walked into it. Then along it, feeling my way, my hands on the cold, slick stones. At last I felt something—the wood of a door. There was a handle, which turned under my hand. And then I was inside, my shoes squelching on the floor. I took them off and walked carefully, feeling my way. Where was I? A barn of some sort?

  There was something soft under my feet—and then something hard against my knee, something I had walked into with a thump. I cried out in pain, and the cry echoed, as though I were in a large space. A barn then, I was certain. I felt around me—there was a sort of pallet, covered with cloth. I could do no more. Without light, I would only wander aimlessly. Whoever discovered me here in the morning might take me to prison—I was so tired and wet that I no longer cared. I clutched at the pallet and fell upon it, sobbing with exhaustion. And then I believe I lost consciousness, overwrought with the fears and horrors of that night.

  The next morning, I woke and looked around me with astonishment. Sunlight streamed through the windows. I was in a large room, as magnificent as any in the Frankensteins’ house. The floor was covered with a carpet in dim, rich colors. On the walls were paintings of men and women in the garb of previous centuries, and shelves upon shelves of books—hundreds of books. Sunlight glinted off the gold titles on their spines. The pallet on which I had fallen the night before was a sofa, upholstered in velvet, and what I had bruised my knee on was a low table with designs inlaid in ivory and exotic woods. It was the library of a wealthy family—Justine Moritz knew that. But everywhere, there was a sense of neglect. The carpet was moth-eaten. The books and furniture were covered with dust. The curtains that hung at the windows had faded, and there were cobwebs in the corners of the room. The barn I thought I had stumbled into was a grand house—magnificent, but utterly deserted.

  I wandered through that house in astonishment, my bare feet cold on the floors. Everywhere it was the same—dust and decay. I did not know, until much later, that the house was the seat of an aristocratic family. When the old earl died, his son had inherited the property, but had so indebted himself that he could no longer afford to live there or keep it up. Neither could he sell, for the property was entailed. The house, its contents, and the surrounding estate could not be sold, but passed automatically to the next heir. The son had gone off to farm in Africa, and his son after him stayed there, never returning to England. So the house was left to the moths and spiders.

  And to me.

  I had nowhere to go, no one in the world to whom I belonged, for I did not consider myself bound to Adam. That morning, I found a broom and swept away the cobwebs from the moldings and chandeliers. I took the rugs outside and beat them until you could see their colors again, like jewels. I wiped the tables and chairs with a soft cloth, and promised them I would find beeswax, so they would shine as they had before. I washed the windows with white vinegar from the butler’s pantry. Finally, I dusted the books, as Justine Moritz would have done. Remember that I had been a maid. What I had known best in the world, before my father taught me philosophy and literature, was cleaning. I knew how to launder fine linen, polish silver, keep a great house. My brain might have forgotten, but my hands remembered. I found myself a room, one of the maid’s rooms, for I did not wish to be presumptuous. When I was done cleaning, I washed my clothes and myself in a tub I filled from a well behind the house. It was a relief to be truly clean for the first time in weeks.

  But I was hungry, and there was no food. Whatever had been left in the house had been eaten long ago, probably by mice, for I found their droppings. So I went outside. Through the second-floor windows, I had seen a walled garden beyond the hedges that surrounded the house. I discovered it was a kitchen garden, large although neglected. It had once provided produce for the entire household, and I could still see vegetables among the weeds. Beyond it was an orchard, also walled to protect the fruit trees from the sea winds. I could not tell what kinds of fruit grew there, for I did not know how to distinguish apples and pears and quinces, but Justine Moritz remembered they would someday be good to eat. Slowly, I began to discover that there would be enough food for me: now there were asparagus and lettuce, later there would be cabbage and cauliflower and courgettes. If I tended the garden now, there would be a full harvest in autumn, and for winter I could store the cabbages that were already developing.

  The house stood on a high cliff above the shore, but there was a path down to the rocks. There, I found mussels and snails, which I already knew I could eat. Later, I would find a way to fish—I had seen men do it with nets, and there must be a net somewhere in that house. I stood on the rocky shore, eating the green sprouts of asparagus and broccoli that I had brought with me to assuage my hunger. Yes, I could live here. I had food and water, a bed for the night. I had that library of neglected books. What more did I need?

  I was completely alone, except for the mice and the owls that nested in the attic, whom I did not disturb. It was my own Eden, and I was its Eve. I thought it was paradise.

  I will not tell you the story of those years, for there is no
story to tell. Season after season, I planted my garden, fished from the sea with what had once been a tennis net, and read the books in the library. It had been the library of an educated man, so I read the philosophers and great poets. I taught myself English and Latin, and also a little Greek. In what had been a lady’s chamber, I found pencils and paints, and amused myself by sketching and painting until my supplies ran out. Sometimes I found a honeycomb and stole part of it from the bees. Their stings could not wound me. I always felt like a thief, but what sweetness! Once, a stray cat came, and her progeny lived with me for the rest of my time there, keeping down the population of mice.

  I rarely left the environs of the house. Although I did not realize it, the estate surrounding that house was extensive, and no one had reason to trespass on it but poachers after hare. Sometimes I saw and disabled their traps. I thought, surely someone will come? A caretaker, if no one else? I kept a bag packed, ready to flee should I need to. But no one ever came. I lived simply and happily enough, although I missed my father and my kind, the companionship of another with whom I could converse. I had everything I needed but a friend.

  I did not realize that a legend had grown about the Cornish Giantess, who roamed that stretch of shore. I suppose I had been seen searching for food among the rocks. That is how Catherine found me.

  One day, it was in late summer I think, for the gourds were hanging heavy on their vines, I looked up and there, sitting on the garden wall, was a woman. She was bare-headed and barefoot, in a simple linen dress, with a straw hat on the wall next to her. She had strange yellow eyes, and she sat looking at me as though she had been there a long time.

  It had been so long since I had seen another of my kind that I stepped back and shrieked. It sounded like the call of a bird—one of the falcons that sometimes circled overhead. How long was it since I had last spoken?

  “Do not be afraid,” she said in English. She pulled down the collar of her dress, which was unbuttoned at the top. “Look. I, too, am made. I, too, am a monster. Monstrum sum.”

  CATHERINE: I wasn’t even sure if she would understand me. What if she spoke only French or German? But I thought she would understand the scars. As to who she was, that was a guess on my part. I was traveling with the Circus of Marvels and Delights through Cornwall. One day, a man said to Lorenzo, “You should get the Cornish Giantess, you should. Make a fortune!” He told the story of a giantess who had lived by the seashore for a hundred years. Lorenzo thought it was only a story—after all, it was a hundred years old. But I began to wonder. Moreau had talked about Frankenstein’s experiment. Victor Frankenstein had gone to England, specifically to England, to create a female monster. But he had never completed his task. Afraid that his male and female monsters would reproduce, he had disassembled her and thrown her body parts into the sea. That’s what I knew from Mrs. Shelley’s account.

  MARY: Which is a pack of lies.

  CATHERINE: Yes, I began to suspect it was inaccurate when I heard of the Cornish Giantess. But why did she lie, Mary?

  MARY: To protect Frankenstein. To protect the Société des Alchimistes.

  CATHERINE: I don’t think so. What I think is . . .

  JUSTINE: Please, can we finish my story?

  I had no food to offer this Cat Woman, who had guessed my identity and sought me out. At that time I ate only vegetables and what I could scavenge from the sea, which I did not even cook for fear of attracting attention to myself. But she said she was not interested in eating. She was interested in listening.

  “And so you’ve lived here ever since,” she said to me after I had told her my story, such as it was.

  “Yes,” I said. My throat ached from talking so much.

  “Alone, all this time.”

  “Yes, but it does not seem so long. I have books, I have my garden . . .”

  “Justine, you’ve been living in this house for almost a hundred years.”

  It startled me, that so much time had passed. I had no clock, no calendar. I had not kept track of the passage of time. I did not age, and evidently I could not die. I knew many winters had come and gone, but . . .

  “I did not know,” I said, feeling for the first time a sense of desolation. Everything Justine Moritz had known was gone.

  “You can’t stay here forever,” she said. “For one thing, the world is changing. The nineteenth century is coming to an end. Although you don’t feel it here yet, the towns are growing larger and there are more people in them. Soon, they will be everywhere, even here. And this house has been sold. I heard people at the sideshow talking about it. The current heir is a woman, raised in Africa and rich from a coffee plantation. She sued to break the entail and won. People don’t like entails much, anymore. The land will be developed—it will become a grand hotel, surrounded by seaside cottages. There is a mania now for going to the seaside, I can’t imagine why. For another, you can’t live alone your entire existence. That’s not right. It’s not . . . no one should have to live alone for so long. And I happen to need a friend. And the circus does not have a giantess.”

  That is how I left my place of refuge and solitude. I joined the Circus of Marvels and Delights. And the rest . . . you know.

  CHAPTER XX

  The Athena Club

  When Justine finished her story, the room was silent, except of course for the sound of Diana chewing the last piece of Justine’s toast. Damn that girl, Mary thought—really, her language was deteriorating with Diana around. She would have to make sure that Justine got a proper breakfast.

  Finally, Holmes said, “And no one came to the house, not for a hundred years? That seems . . . unusual. I’ve heard stories of such entails and the difficulties they cause, particularly when a case goes to chancery. But surely there would have been a caretaker of some sort.”

  “Truly, there wasn’t,” said Justine. “Well, there was a boy, once. It was when I had been there—half a century, perhaps? He came to find the giantess. The people on that coast were poor farmers—they had no interest in whether the legend was true. It was enough for them that their fathers and grandfathers had spoken of a giantess—they repeated the stories they had been told. They were simply trying to survive. But that boy—he was different. He wanted to know for himself. I say boy, but he was already half a man, seventeen or eighteen perhaps. He was already more mature than men twice his age.”

  Holmes looked puzzled. “Was he connected with the estate in any way?”

  “Not as far as I know. He said he was from up the coast, and had come to a local village during his school vacation. He was the sort of boy who collects seashells, who digs up bones and shards of pottery. He was inquisitive, and particularly interested in the geology of that area. I showed him the library and told him that he could read whatever he liked. He would visit once or twice a week. He helped me to practice English, and we even talked a little in Latin. We became . . . friends. Then one day he told me that he could not come anymore. His landlady had become suspicious about his long walks, and he did not want to put me in danger. So he stopped coming. He promised that he would never tell anyone about me.”

  “Did he ever ask you about yourself, who you were and how you were made?” asked Holmes. He sounded—skeptical. Suspicious.

  “I do not remember him asking, but I told him . . .” Justine leaned forward as though suddenly struck by the thought. “I told him about the Société des Alchimistes.”

  “Could he have been a member of the society?” asked Holmes.

  “I do not know. But he was so young—surely not?”

  “Frankenstein was young when he created Adam,” said Catherine. “But you know who he was—you told me his name, remember? William something.”

  “Yes, William Pengelly. I called him Will, and sometimes, when I was particularly pleased with him, Guillaume. My one friend in all that time, other than the cats of course . . .”

  “Miss Frankenstein!” said Holmes, clearly astonished. “William Pengelly, the geologist? Pengelly, who
excavated Kents Cavern and proved the Earth could not possibly be six thousand years old, as Bishop Ussher had suggested?”

  “You know him, then?” said Justine. “Oh, perhaps I could speak with him again! How I would like that.” She smiled a pale, wan smile, as though remembering their friendship with pleasure.

  “Speak with him! No, he died several years ago, an old man. I did not know him myself, but he was well-known to anyone with an interest in science and the inductive method of reasoning. He was a respected member of the Royal Society. He could not possibly have had anything to do with the Société des Alchimistes. And yet, there must have been a reason for him to be there. It could not have been a coincidence. Just as one part of this case begins to make sense, it becomes more inscrutable.”

  “Then you don’t believe he was simply my friend?” said Justine, looking as sad as Mary had ever seen her.

  “Of course he was your friend,” said Catherine. “I have to admit, this is starting to sound—well, clearly he wasn’t just a village boy. But that doesn’t mean he wasn’t your friend, Justine.”

  “My brother Mycroft has contacts in the Royal Society. Perhaps they can tell us more about this Pengelly,” said Holmes. “It seems clear that we have solved one mystery: we know who committed the Whitechapel Murders, and why. Now we must solve the mystery of the Société des Alchimistes. What is it? Who are its members? Is it still carrying on its illicit activities, particularly in England? But I promised Lestrade that I would return as soon as I could—I left him with very little information, just enough to charge Hyde with the murder of Molly Keane.” He stood, looking both worried and impatient. “Miss Jekyll, if you’ll excuse me, I will go trouble Mrs. Hudson for a meal of some sort and another coat, since Miss Moreau is still wearing mine, then take a cab back to Scotland Yard. I have a lot to tell Lestrade, and I’m not sure how much of it he will credit! He’s not the sort to believe in hundred-year-old giants or Beast Men. He will likely dismiss it all as a fairy tale and look for the most ordinary explanation—that Adam was a madman, and the more improbable parts of the story are simply figments of my imagination. From long association, I know how he thinks, you see. Then I must send a message to Lord Avebury, who will not be getting his menagerie back, although who knows, the orangutan may head home, if he indeed escaped the fire.”