by John Kessel
On that Friday morning, Mary rose early and, on the pretext of female indisposition, went down to the inn yard where, with little fuss or notice, she climbed into the coach. She waited in some anxiety over whether Alice might come down to breakfast and find her there, but the coach departed promptly at six and within minutes was rolling down Princes Street toward the Queensferry road.
It was fifty miles to Perth, and the coach should arrive there by late that evening.
Mary’s heart was in her throat. She could imagine Alice’s distress when she found the note that Mary had left.
Alice,
I have departed Edinburgh on a matter that need not concern you. I shall not return for at least a month. Do not attempt to follow me. Here is five pounds that I trust will see you safely back to Longbourn. I am sorry to abandon you in this way. I have written to my parents absolving you of responsibility for my actions.
God keep you,
Mary Bennet
The letter that she had posted to her parents read:
Dearest Father and Mother,
I write to tell you that, having arrived safely in Edinburgh with Alice, I have since left her there. By the time you receive this, I will have traveled on to places elsewhere in Scotland.
I know that you must consider this beyond anything you might have expected of me, and a source of great concern. It is beyond anything I might have expected of myself. I can only say that, in the wake of Kitty’s death, and reflecting on certain knowledge I have obtained about the reasons for her remains being stolen, I have determined to pursue those who have done this with the hope of finding further explanation and, if God be willing, some justice for her and for our family. It may even be that, should what I surmise to be possible come to pass, I may bring home with me a greater consolation than any of us might have imagined.
Please do not dispatch anyone to retrieve me, as it is unlikely that they will be able to find me until my goal has either been attained, or I shall have failed. In either case I shall return to you, I promise. I regret that I have had to resort to deception in order to follow this course, but it was clear to me that you would never have allowed me to leave on this quest had I revealed to you its nature. I regret even more the worry that I know this will cause you, dearest parents, and the rest of our family. If anyone should inquire after me, I suggest that you tell them that I have met with friends in Scotland and that they have invited me to stay with them in their country house until Michaelmas.
I will endeavor to communicate with you from time to time. If things go as I plan, I should return home by the beginning of October.
Please do not hold Alice responsible for my behavior. She did not know any of my plans, and if she has failed to prevent my slipping away, it is only because she trusted me, and not because of any neglect on her part.
I know that this will seem foolish if not mad to you. I am not mad, and if I am foolish, it is the foolishness of a person who seeks to live an honorable life in accord with her own nature. I love you both, and I remain always,
Your daughter,
Mary
Accompanying Mary in the coach were three men. Two of them, who introduced themselves as Mr. Craig and Mr. Cromartie, were merchants headed for a meeting with distillers in Perth. They did not ask how it was that an Englishwoman came to be traveling alone in Scotland, and fell to debating each other about how much they could afford to pay per keg of the Scotch they intended to ship to London, and whether the recent end to the wars would open up new markets in the Continent.
The third man was Mr. Butterworth, who was traveling to Perth to take a position teaching history and philosophy at the Perth Academy. Mr. Butterworth had been educated at Cambridge and had studied at the university in Edinburgh.
Above them, perched on the seat behind the trunk containing the mail and in the seat behind the driver, were the guard for the Royal Mail and a husband and wife who could not afford to pay the premium to ride inside the coach.
It was perhaps nine in the evening, and the last light of a lingering sunset had faded. The expectation was that they would reach Perth in a little more than an hour. The driver had lit the coach lamps and the road lay along the winding path of the River Tay. Here, unlike on the heath they had earlier passed, trees overhung the road. The moon cast a little light through the branches.
Suddenly the coach lurched and halted. Mary was almost thrown from her seat, and above them the woman cried out. From outside came a shout, “Stand and deliver!”
They heard the crack of a rifle, and in return, two more reports. A thud on the coach roof, and past the window in the door fell the guard.
“Don’t shoot!” the driver cried.
“Climb down!” demanded the first voice.
Mr. Cromartie fumbled inside his coat, withdrew some banknotes, and in great haste stuffed them into his stocking.
The door of the coach was jerked open and a man thrust his hand, holding a pistol, into their faces. “Out, now, all of ye.” Mary cowered in the corner. Butterworth and the two others climbed out. The highwayman stuck his head in and saw Mary. “You, also.”
THIRTEEN
Once I had helped him steal Kitty Bennet’s body, it was difficult for me to remain patient. My senses were so charged it was as if my heart beat just below the surface of my skin. The sight of the poor woman’s exposed form lay imprinted on my mind. So small, so frail. I felt the stirrings of desire, and imagined a future where I might take her hand and enfold her, living and breathing, in my arms. The sweetness of this prospect threatened to overwhelm me. Yet it did not happen—every time it seemed that Victor took a step forward, there inevitably ensued a long period of inaction. Two months—two months!—he and Henry went off to some picturesque backwater to commune with poets and poseurs.
I had eavesdropped at their Matlock inn and knew that they intended to continue eventually to Perth, Scotland, to stay with some friend of Henry’s family.
I suppose that this served my purpose in one way. The coachmen I’d had to listen to for hours while spying on the inn courtyard had revealed that Edinburgh was two hundred and fifty miles from Matlock, and Perth farther still. If I were to follow Frankenstein, I must travel on foot. Those months gave me time to make my way there.
While I traveled, I had time to ponder many things. One of them was my conversation with Mary Bennet. Other than Victor, she was the one human being who had ever spoken with me in anything resembling common human intercourse. Whether through fear or anger she had trembled as she approached my table. She was clearly repulsed by my presence. It took all the bravery she could muster to look unflinching into my face. Yet she had confronted me as no one ever had and defended Victor against the truths I told her. When I contemplated this, it only increased my bitterness. She was a fool, another human being who upon seeing me quaked in unmotivated fear, a privileged, idle woman who could not see beyond the cage that society had fashioned for her.
It was not possible that a person like this could hurt me. Had I not received every sort of blow that a human being could level against another?
Then she charged me with seeking a mate only that I might have a slave to my desires. With contempt in her voice, she predicted that the companion Victor should fashion for me would reject me.
I had come all this way in the expectation that once Victor created my bride, my suffering would end. I had believed that my fate lay in the hands of Victor Frankenstein and no one else. If Mary Bennet was right, the world was more complicated than that. My happiness depended upon a yet uncreated creature over whom I would have no control.
You only seek a toy of your own, she had told me.
Was that what I sought? I desperately needed this not-yet-alive female to accept me. I had imagined that this conclusion was foregone. Would I wish her to have a choice, if that left the chance that she would deny me? Wait until you are rejected, for the most trivial of reasons, by one who ought to have been made for you.
Miss Bennet’s w
ords hovered over me like a curse. And I had fled her presence as if she had pronounced it over me.
It took me two months to reach Edinburgh. I traveled mostly at night, and found my sustenance in the fields and woods. Occasionally I would sneak into a farmyard to steal some eggs. When I saw a human, I did my best to hide. I had a few bad moments—one night when I stumbled upon a camp of Gypsies who pursued me for a mile in the woods, another when a farm boy found me sleeping in a shepherd’s shack and fled at the sight of me.
There were times as I made this slow journey that I wondered why I should even persist. Were it not for loneliness, the life of a vagabond offered its consolations. From my first moment of existence I had loved the natural world. Plants and animals. The birds singing. The patterns that the wind wrote on the rippling heads of grain in the fields. The taste of pure water. The bitter sweetness of blackberries, the earthy taste of mushrooms. All this was good, given without stint by the world, without judgment or mockery. I might live in some wood or vale for the rest of my days, feeling the sun on my face, keeping a fire to warm me in the winter.
Had I not remembered Kitty’s lovely figure, I might have stopped. In the light of it I knew that any respite nature offered me from the need of companionship would pall, only leaving me more isolated, alone, desperate for a human touch.
Once I arrived at Edinburgh, it took me a week to discover that Victor and Henry had been there and gone on the coach to Perth. Another delay came when I had to circle round the Firth of Forth to make my way north.
It was a night early in September when, on a winding road that followed the valley of the River Tay, I heard the sounds of a coach coming from behind me. I slipped into the trees and waited for it to pass.
Its lamps were lit, and I watched it approach for some distance. As it neared, I saw, in the faint moonlight, that it was a mail coach, its four horses moving at a steady but not strenuous pace. As it passed me, I saw the brightly liveried guard atop, head lolling as he slept with his rifle across his lap.
The coach was no more than twenty yards beyond me when a shout came from the woods and two men on horseback blocked the road. The driver hauled back on the reins and the coach rattled to a stop.
“Stand and deliver!” one of the horsemen called, a pistol in his hand. His partner had two pistols out. Both had pulled up their neck cloths until they obscured the lower half of their faces.
The guard came awake, raised the rifle to his shoulder, and fired.
His shot went wide of the highwaymen and both of them discharged their pistols at him. One at least hit home, for the guard tumbled off the top of the coach into the road.
“Don’t shoot!” the driver yelled.
“Climb down,” the first rider said.
Though I might easily have slipped away, I crept closer. The second of the highwaymen dismounted, came to the coach, ripped its door open, and thrust his pistoled fist inside.
The driver and the rooftop passengers climbed down, and from inside the coach came three men and a woman. The woman immediately knelt to examine the fallen guard.
“Is he breathing?” the first highwayman asked, dismounting.
The guard struggled to sit up, his left hand clamped onto his breast. The woman helped him to sit. I could hear his labored breathing.
“Here, you,” the second highwayman said to the woman, “come away.”
Reluctantly, the woman stood, staggering slightly. When light from the coach’s lamp caught her face, I saw that it was Mary Bennet.
A chill ran through me. It was as if my thought had conjured her up. As if her words to me in the taproom were indeed a curse to follow me, and the curse was her.
“This man is seriously injured,” she said. “He needs immediate medical attention.”
“A scratch,” the second man said. The smell of the gunpowder still lingered. The night was still.
“We’ll have no more heroism tonight, shall we?” the first man said. “Let’s see your purses.”
The gentlemen from within the coach surrendered their purses. The robbers opened and emptied them in turn. “Hello, now,” the first highwayman said. “You seem to be traveling light this evening, sir,” he said to one of the men. “Turn out your pockets.”
“I assure you, I have no more money.”
The robber reached into the man’s vest and pulled out a gold watch, which he studied in the light of the lamp, his gun still trained on the men. “Lovely timepiece for such an impoverished soul, i’n’it?”
The highwayman turned him around, poked his pistol square into the man’s back, and pushed him against the coach. With his other hand he felt the man’s legs. He stopped and, one-handed, plucked a wad of folded banknotes out of the man’s stocking.
“Aren’t we clever,” the second thief said. He slammed the man’s head against the coach. The passenger yelped and brought his arms up to protect himself.
“Any of the rest of you holding out?”
The other passengers emptied their pockets and purses.
“Madam,” the first said to Mary Bennet. “I’ll have your purse.”
Miss Bennet handed it to him. He shook out a few coins. “Is this all the money you have? Which of these gentlemen do you travel with, madam?”
“I travel alone.”
“A risky business for a fine lady like yourself. Where is your husband?”
“I am not married.”
“Why am I not surprised? Yet clearly well-bred, and well-dressed. And six shillings in your purse. How is this possible?”
“I am to be met in Perth by family. They are to take care of me.”
The thief shook his head sadly. “Ah, miss, if they cared for you, you would not be traveling alone. Until you see them again, we shall have to take care of you.” He grabbed her by the wrist. “The rest of you, back onto the coach. You,” he said to the passenger he had struck. “Help that guard up, and be on your way.”
“What?” Mary Bennet said. “No! Let me go! What do you want with me?”
“Let her be,” one of the passengers said.
The highwayman cuffed him with the back of his hand. The man fell to one knee. “Get in the bloody coach,” the robber said. “Get the bloody guard inside and be off with you.”
The curses hung in the silent air. Two men helped the guard, head lolling and blood glistening on his coat, into the coach, then climbed in after him. The others clambered up onto the roof, as did the driver, who took up his reins.
“Please, let me go!” Mary Bennet pleaded. “Why keep me?”
“I think, like that gentleman liar there, you carry about you more money than you admit. Take off that coat.”
The driver cast a look down on her.
“Get on with ye!” the first highwayman said, and slapped the haunch of one of the coach horses. The horse jerked forward in its traces, and the driver took his whip and applied it. The coach rattled off into the darkness.
It left behind silence, the taste of dust, and the three figures in the moonlit road. One of the men held the reins of their horses; the second said to Miss Bennet, “Off with your coat.”
“It’s cold,” she said.
The man tore Mary’s coat from her shoulders. She stumbled. He went through her pockets but, finding nothing, tossed it back at her.
“Her shoes,” the other man said. “Look in her shoes.”
“There’s nothing in my shoes.”
“Then there’s no harm removing them,” the other robber said.
“I will not.”
The man seized her arm. “Then I’ll help ye.”
Mary Bennet said, “Stop! I’ll do it.”
He released her. She bent over, removed her ankle-high half boot, and handed it to the man. From it he pulled some folded banknotes. “You little minx,” he said. “Lying to us.”
“I need that money,” she said. “You mustn’t take it.”
“Hold your tongue,” the highwayman said. He took her by the arm again. “You look
like a lonely woman. Maybe you would enjoy some conversation before we send you on your way.”
“Let me go!”
The man with the horses spoke. “Not that, Teddy.”
“Why not? She’s an ill-favored old maid, but I’m not particular.”
Mary Bennet struggled in the man’s grasp. The other highwayman stood, unwilling to help his partner.
The man pulled Miss Bennet’s wrist behind her back. He pressed his masked face close to hers. She twisted her head away. “Be still, woman! I’ll teach you to fight—”
She bit his cheek.
He knocked her to the ground and put his hand to his face. “You bloody bitch . . .”
I stepped out from the woods, took three strides, grabbed him by the collar and the seat of his pants, and flung him against a tree.
The other, still holding the horses, raised his pistol and fired. I felt a blow to my shoulder. I rushed him and knocked him into the ditch.
Their horses reared and ran off. The first highwayman struggled to his feet, hand to his ribs. Miss Bennet had her purse in hand and was seeking to pick up her boot. I scooped her into my arms and ran with her into the woods. Another shot went whizzing past us, tearing through the leaves.
“Who was that?” I heard from behind.
“The devil himself!”
“Here! The horses!” The sounds of commotion faded as I put distance between us and the road.
Miss Bennet struggled in my arms.
“Be still,” I said. “Unless you’d rather be taken by those men.”
She quieted. I carried her swiftly through the woods. She was not heavy. I felt a burning in my shoulder, but I kept on, spying a path among the trees. When the woods ran out at the edge of a field, I stopped and lowered her to the ground.
