Pride and Prometheus

by John Kessel

  She did not fool herself into thinking that her current misbehavior would make any difference. Perhaps Bingley or Darcy had been dispatched to find her. Within an hour or two she would return to Pemberley, where her mother would scold her for giving them an anxious evening, and Lizzy would caution her about the risk to her reputation. Lydia might even ask her, not believing it possible, if she had an assignation with some man. The loss of Kitty would overshadow Mary’s indiscretion, pitiful as it had been. Soon all would be as before, except Mary would be alive and Kitty dead. But even that would fade. The shadow of Kitty’s death and her body’s mysterious disappearance would hang over the family for some time, but nothing of significance would change.

  As she lingered over her glass, she looked up and noticed, in the now empty taproom, a man sitting at the table farthest from the lamps. A huge man, he wore a greatcoat despite the warm weather, with a large hat shadowing his face. On the table in front of him were a tankard and a few coppers. Mary rose, left the parlor, and crossed toward him.

  He looked up, and the faint light from the ceiling lamp caught his watery eyes, sunken beneath heavy brows. There was something wrong with his face. She thought to run. Instead she asked, “May I sit with you?”

  “You may sit where you wish.” The voice was deep, but swallowed, unable to project. It was almost a whisper.

  Trembling only slightly, she sat. In the gloom his wrists and hands, resting on the table, stuck out past the ragged sleeves of his coat. His skin was yellowish, and the fingernails livid white. He did not move. “You have some business with me?”

  “I have the most appalling business.” Mary tried to look him in the eyes, but her gaze kept slipping. “I want to know why you defiled my sister’s grave, why you have stolen her body, and what you have done with her.”

  “Better you should ask Victor. Did he not explain it to you?”

  “Mr. Frankenstein explained who—what—you are. He did not know what had become of my sister.”

  The dark lips twitched in a sardonic smile. “Poor Victor. He has got things all topsy-turvy. Victor does not know what I am. He is incapable of knowing, no matter the labors I have undertaken to school him. But he does know what became, and is to become, of your sister.” The Creature tucked his thick black hair behind his ear, a sudden unconscious gesture that made him seem completely human for the first time. He pulled the hat farther forward to hide his face.

  “So tell me.”

  “Which answer do you want? Who I am, or what happened to your sister?”

  “First, tell me what happened to—to Kitty.”

  “Victor and I broke into the vault and stole her away. He took the utmost care not to damage her. He washed her fair body in diluted carbolic acid, and replaced her blood with a chemical admixture of his own devising. Folded up, she fit neatly within a cedar trunk sealed with pitch, and is at present being shipped to Scotland. You witnessed her departure from this courtyard an hour ago.”

  Mary’s senses rebelled. She covered her face with her hands. The Creature sat silent. Finally, without raising her head, she managed, “Victor warned me that you are a liar. Why should I believe you?”

  “You have no reason to believe me.”

  “You took her!”

  “Though I would not have scrupled to do so, I did not. Miss Bennet, I do not deny I have an interest in this matter. Victor did as I have told you at my bidding.”

  “At your bidding? Why?”

  “Your sister—or not so much your sister, as her remains—is to become my wife.”

  “Your wife! This is insupportable! Monstrous!”

  “Monstrous.” Suddenly, with preternatural quickness, his hand flashed out and grabbed Mary’s wrist.

  Mary thought to call for help, but the taproom was empty and she had driven the innkeeper away. Yet the Creature’s grip was not harsh. His hand was warm, instinct with life. “Look at me,” he said. With his other hand he pushed back his hat.

  She took a deep breath. She looked.

  His noble forehead, high cheekbones, strong chin, and wide-set eyes might have made him handsome, despite his yellowish skin, were he a portrait of a man rather than a living thing. His pale eyes looked blind. He seemed like nothing so much as one of the wax effigies she had seen in London, come to life. Motionless he was tolerable, a statue, but when his lips or eyes moved, every fiber of her screamed that this thing was a sham, an animated corpse, a hideous parody of a human being.

  The content of his expression made it worse. Every twitch of eyebrow or lip revealed an extraordinary panoply of emotions, transitory as the flickering of a candle, but burning so intensely that she wanted to avert her eyes. This was a creature who had never learned to associate with civilized company, who had been thrust into adulthood with the passions of a wounded boy. Fear, self-disgust, anger. Desire.

  The force of longing and rage in that face made her shrink. “Let me go,” she whispered.

  He let go her wrist. With bitter satisfaction, he said, “You see. If what I demand is insupportable, that is only because your kind has done nothing to support me. Once, I falsely hoped to meet with beings who, pardoning my outward form, would love me for the excellent qualities which I was capable of bringing forth. I was wrong. I am more alone than a starving man on a deserted isle, for he at least knows that others of his kind exist. I have no brother, sister, parents. I have only Victor, who, like so many fathers, recoiled from me the moment I first drew breath. I would obliterate him, were he not my only hope to find a companion. And so, I have commanded him from your sister to fashion my bride, or he and all he loves will die at my hand.”

  “I cannot believe he would commit this abomination.”

  “He has no choice. He is my slave.”

  “His conscience could not support it, even at the cost of his life.”

  “You give him too much credit. You all do. I have not seen him act other than according to impulse for the last three years. That is all I see in any of you.”

  Mary drew back, trying to make some sense of this horror. Kitty, to be brought back to life, only to be given to this fiend? But would it be Kitty, or another agitated, hungry thing like this?

  She still retained some scraps of skepticism. The Creature’s manner did not bespeak the isolation that he claimed. “I am astonished at your grasp of language,” Mary said. “You could not know so much without teachers.”

  “Oh, I have had many teachers.” The Creature’s mutter was rueful. “You might say that, since first my eyes opened, mankind has been all my study. Still, I have much yet to learn. There are certain words whose meaning has never been proved to me by experience. For example: ‘happy.’ Victor is to make me happy. Do you think he can do it?”

  Mary thought of Frankenstein. Could he satisfy this creature? “I do not think it is in the power of any other person to make one happy.”

  “You jest with me. Every creature has its mate, save me. I have none.”

  She recoiled at his self-pity. “You put too much upon having a mate.”

  “Why? You know nothing of what I have endured.”

  “You think that having a female of your own kind will ensure that she will accept you?” Mary laughed. “Wait until you are rejected, for the most trivial of reasons, by one who ought to have been made for you.”

  Dismay crossed the Creature’s face. “That shall not happen.”

  “It happens more often than not.”

  “The female that Victor creates shall find no other mate but me.”

  “Better you should worry if you are accepted: then you may truly begin to learn.”

  “Learn what?”

  “You will learn to ask a new question: Which is worse, to be alone, or to be wretchedly mismatched?” Like Lydia and Wickham, Mary thought, like Collins and poor Charlotte. Like her parents.

  The Creature’s face spasmed with conflicting emotions. His voice gained volume. “Do not sport with me. I am not your toy.”

  “No.
You only seek a toy of your own.”

  The Creature was not, apparently, accustomed to mockery. “Will you torment me as well?” He lurched upward, awkwardly, so suddenly that he upended the table. The tankard of ale skidded across and spilled on Mary, and she fell back.

  At that moment the innkeeper entered the barroom with two other men. They saw the tableau and rushed forward. “Here! Let her be!” the innkeeper shouted.

  One of the others grabbed the Creature by the arm. With a roar the thing flung him aside like an old coat. The men stared in horror at his face. The Creature’s eyes met Mary’s, and he whirled and with inhuman speed dashed out the inn-yard door.

  The men gathered themselves together. The one whom the Creature had thrown aside grimaced, favoring his right arm. The innkeeper helped Mary to her feet. “Are you all right, ma’am?”

  Mary felt dizzy. Was she all right? What did that mean?

  “I believe so,” she said.

  The innkeeper set her overturned chair back on its legs, and Mary sat.

  “Lord,” the wincing man said, “I think ’e’s broken my arm.”

  “Who was that?” the third asked.

  “I dunno,” said the innkeeper, “but I don’t favor seeing ’im again.”

  “I wish I’d never seen ’im,” said the man with the broken arm. “My wife’s going to make me sleep outside when she finds out about this. We’ll be livin’ on the parish before I’m back to work.”

  The door opened and out of the night stepped Darcy and Bingley. They surveyed the poorly lit room and the four figures there.

  “Mary,” said Darcy, rushing forward. “Thank the Lord.” His voice betrayed both surprise and relief.

  Bingley was at her side. “What happened to you?”

  Mary’s mind was still spinning, struggling with the things the monster had told her. The notion that Kitty’s body had been stolen in order to create a bride for that abominable creature was an impossibility so out of keeping with the world of Bingley and Darcy and their concerns that she could hardly speak.

  Bingley asked the men what had happened and got their version of the story. Based on what Mr. Poole had told them, Darcy and Bingley had been in Lambton looking for Mary most of the day. Only when they had exhausted that possibility had they considered that she might have come to Matlock instead. Mary asked if Darcy might help the poor man who had been injured trying to help her, and Darcy spoke with him and the innkeeper for a moment before they took her outside. They arranged to leave Darcy’s horse in the inn’s stable. Bingley would ride on ahead back to Pemberley to report that Mary was safe, while Darcy drove Mary in the gig.

  It was full night now. They drove in silence for some time. Darcy had lit the lamps on the gig, but they threw very little light and he was intent on the dark road. Mary could sense anger just beneath his gentlemanly surface, so very properly controlled. Darcy was a civilized man, a man who had enjoyed every advantage of education, of breeding, of loving care, of prosperity, and of social authority. He would never strike a woman who said something that upset him. He would never upend a table in a tavern. But she knew by their names and reputations men of his class who did these things and worse. Perhaps the Creature’s turning to violence when frustrated might not be sufficient proof that he was so inhuman.

  It was not until they had turned off the public road and were well along on the way to Pemberley that Darcy spoke.

  “Sister, you will pardon me if I express astonishment at your behavior.” His voice was calm, but Mary could tell he spoke from deep emotion. “I do not know who the brute was who assaulted you, but the very fact that you should find yourself in such a situation is almost beyond belief. We are all familiar with your mother’s dramatic performances, but I tell you that at this very moment back at Pemberley she is legitimately ill, thinking that she has lost two daughters in the same week. Whatever did you think you were doing?”

  “I needed to speak with Victor Frankenstein.”

  “And I find you intoxicated, reeking of ale, in a tavern with some monstrous stranger? What business did you have with Mr. Frankenstein that could not have been dealt with by civilized means?”

  “It was about Kitty. I thought he might know something of what happened to her.”

  “How should he know anything?”

  “He did not know anything. Then I came to the inn and ate supper. I stayed longer than I intended. I drank three glasses of port. I was thinking about Kitty, and how I will never see her again.”

  They had reached the rise in the road and the break in the forest that opened upon the prospect of Pemberley House. Between them and the house ran the Derwent, the sound of whose waters reached them even here. The great stone mansion lay extraordinarily peaceful under the waning moon. All the many windows were dark, save for the two that belonged to the upstairs salon, where someone still stirred. To the left stood stone outbuildings and the stables, and behind the house, farther up the hill, the white ornamental wall that framed the garden that Darcy’s father had built.

  “And how is it,” Darcy asked, “that your melancholy dinner in the tavern turned into an assault by some stranger?”

  “The person I encountered there did not intend to assault me.”

  “I am not sure that I trust your testimony. Who is he? Where is he from? What is his name?”

  Mary looked across the slope toward the house. To its right, in a little grove above the riverside, the family mausoleum gleamed in the moonlight.

  “I do not believe he has a name,” said Mary.

  ELEVEN

  On hearing of the death of Catherine Bennet, I felt at first a great sadness over the sudden loss of a person I had only so recently met, and of course sympathy for her sister and family. My second, less admirable reaction, was gratitude toward the Providence—or the workings of the devil—that presented me another chance to obtain a female body. Under the pressure of necessity I found in myself resources of strength and purpose that I had not imagined I possessed. I was not so sanguine about the guile it likewise revealed. How vigorously I could act despite my soul’s rebellion against the criminality of my actions. The day after I heard the sad news, I searched out a deserted stone barn on the road to Lambton, where I secreted the materials I would need should I manage to acquire Kitty’s body. As dusk fell that June evening I evaded Henry at the inn, rented a horse, and rode out to the Darcy estate.

  It was little more than a week after I had failed to steal the body of Nancy Brown when, under a moon whose light threatened to expose me, I tied my horse within the verge of the woodlands and crept upon the Pemberley mausoleum. It stood a hundred yards down the slope from the mansion, amid a grove of elms. The structure was in the style of a Greek temple, of white granite, four fluted Doric columns holding up an architrave into which the name DARCY was incised. Below a barred window the iron door displayed a bas-relief of the Darcy arms.

  I narrowed the beam of my lantern so that its light might not attract the attention of anyone in the house. It was difficult for me to assault the lock while striving not to make noise, and under those circumstances it was proof against anything that I brought to bear upon it. I was at the point of despair when around the corner of the mausoleum stepped the Creature.

  “It seems you need my help again,” he said.

  This time I did not argue. “It seems I do.”

  “I am at your service,” he said, giving a little mock bow.

  The thing drew from beneath its greatcoat a pry bar. He set the thin edge of it into the crack between the door’s lock and the masonry frame, and leaned into it. Had I not seen the muscles of his neck straining, I might have imagined he was hardly engaged, but in fact he was exerting superhuman force. I saw the iron of the lock compress, and the stone of the frame crumble. He deftly released the pressure he was exerting at just the correct moment to keep the door from being flung open. He placed the pry bar silently at his feet, seized a bar in the window, and pulled it open. The door’s hinges squea
led. From the kennels far away came the barking of dogs.

  We froze in the shadows until the barking ceased. I watched the big house and its outbuildings for signs that anyone had taken alarm, but when no light appeared, I returned to the opened mausoleum. The Creature was already inside with the lantern. He stared at a fresh marble plaque on the wall:

  CATHERINE MARIE BENNET

  1785–1815

  The mortar with which the plaque had been set into the wall was yet soft, and it was a simple matter to pull it down to reveal the coffin, still smelling of flowers. The Creature withdrew it from its chamber and we opened it to expose Kitty’s body. In the lantern light the pale ivory of her dress was hardly distinguishable from the color of her skin. Dark curls haloed her drawn, powdered face.

  “How did you expect to move her body from here?”

  “I’ll get my horse from the woods and lay her across the saddle.”

  The Creature slid his arms beneath her and lifted her out of the coffin. “I will carry her.” His voice was quiet.

  I led him from the mausoleum, across the turf of the well-kept lawn to the woods. I retrieved my horse, and the monster followed me all the way to the Lambton road. Neither of us spoke. The Creature did not struggle under the burden of Kitty’s body, but followed me at a steady pace until we reached the barn.

  “Lay her there,” I said, gesturing toward a pallet of straw that I had prepared. As he leaned to set her down, in the light of my lamp I saw that his eyes glistened. He laid her down as gently as a mother setting her child in its cradle.

  “You needn’t remain,” I said to him.

  “Do your work,” he said.

  I removed Kitty’s clothing. Her pale body gleamed, and from it came the faint odor of decay. Her skin was unmarked save for a wound in the right forearm where the provincial doctor must have tried bleeding her. I massaged the body to loosen its joints and promote the draining of its blood. I made an incision in her jugular vein and her femoral artery and drained what blood I could. Using a rubber bladder, I forced a chemical fluid I had prepared through her body. I washed her skin down with a solution of weak carbolic acid.