A Cold Legacy

by Megan Shepherd

  How much blood could he lose and still live?

  Radcliffe cried out in anguished pain as the lightning rod went straight through him. His arms went limp, the blade falling from his fingers. At last he was silent.

  I picked up his pistol and aimed for the mercenaries who remained, but they were already fleeing the manor, disappearing into the darkness. I knew we wouldn’t ever see them again.

  I returned to Edward, close enough for his dark blood to stain my hands. I was terrified to look up, afraid that he’d be dead, and this time I’d have killed him.

  But he let out a deep sigh.

  “You’re alive,” I whispered.

  He winced, reaching for the lighting rod. I hurried to help him pull it from both Radcliffe’s body and his own. Radcliffe’s body sagged onto the mud, face in a puddle, no air coming from it.

  Dead.

  I knelt next to Edward, brushing the hair from his face. He clutched a hand to slow the seeping blood from his chest. “Nothing you can’t fix, right?” A small smile played at the corners of his mouth.

  I wrapped my arms around him, holding him tight, knowing that soon I’d have to tell him about Lucy. What place was there in the world for a man like him, so unnatural and yet so good?

  “Go to him,” Edward said, nodding toward Montgomery’s unconscious body.

  I pulled away, wiping my eyes. Edward gave me a gentle push, and I crawled across the muddy courtyard to where Montgomery lay. The color had drained from his face and arms. I pressed my fingers to his neck, praying to every god I knew that he wouldn’t be dead. He couldn’t be. Not after everything.

  Someone shuffled behind me, and I smelled wet dog. Balthazar crouched next to me. Blood seeped from a gash on his shoulder, but otherwise he seemed unhurt.

  “Is he alive, miss?”

  Beneath my fingers there was a pulse, and I closed my eyes with gratitude. I braced my arms in the mud, crying freely now.

  “Yes,” I said. “He’ll make it.”

  Balthazar patted my shoulder, and all the strength ran out of me. I hadn’t realized that, like Montgomery, my body had been pushing me beyond what was humanly possible. I slumped to the mud, barely able to keep my eyes open.

  “Balthazar, it’s still dangerous. The fire—”

  He patted my shoulder. “I’ll take care of everything, miss. Rest now. It’s over.”

  The final bit of resistance within me let go. Over. I let my eyes sink closed, and the last thing I felt was the soft rain against my eyelids.

  FORTY

  I WOKE AS MORNING broke over the moors.

  The last tendrils of smoke streaked across a mottled pink sky. I was lying beneath the open ceiling of the winter garden; though all the glass had shattered, the iron skeleton still stood. I sat up, a thick quilt draped over me, still dazed from smoke poisoning, and took in the other survivors.

  Edward had dragged one of the white metal chairs into the grass and sat with his back to me, facing the smoldering house. He rested his elbows on his knees, slightly hunched and stiff. Montgomery, still unconscious but breathing steadily, was laid out on the ground beside me on an old saddle blanket. A bark came at my side, and Sharkey nuzzled against me.

  “Good boy,” I said, scratching his ear. There was something so simple about petting a dog. Sharkey didn’t understand what the burning building meant. Sharkey didn’t know that Lucy was dead and the world had turned upside down time and time again.

  He lay on the dusty floor, rested his head in my lap.

  “I found him in the barn this morning.” Balthazar lumbered over, crouching down to scratch Sharkey’s back. “The fire didn’t spread there. He was sleeping in the straw with the goats.”

  “So all the servants are safe?”

  “Yes, miss.”

  “How’s Montgomery?”

  “Still hasn’t woken, but the rest is good for him. His body will take some time to recover.”

  I let my eyes trace over his sleeping form, remembering how he’d torn open the metal grate with his bare hands. It had wrecked his body, but maybe that was a blessing. If he’d been involved in the fight with Radcliffe, there’d be no telling if he’d be alive right now.

  “And Edward?”

  “He bled and bled,” Balthazar said. “I tried to do stitches, but these hands. . . .” He held up his giant fingers and sighed. “I haven’t the dexterity. You’ll have to do it, miss. I plugged the hole in his chest with straw, and that’s held for now. He’s like Master Hensley, I think. Not much can kill him.”

  “No. I don’t suppose so.” I drew my knees into my chest, taking a deep breath. The air was thick with the smell of smoke. A few lingering fires still crackled in the east wing; we’d probably find burning embers deep in the ruins for days. In the morning light the manor looked like a looming skeleton, all burned wood spines and ragged stone bones. A building that had stood for hundreds of years, against the attack of the Vikings, and had protected a secret that had the potential to change the world.

  Now it was nothing but ashes and stone.

  “What about Jack Serra and his troupe?” I asked.

  Balthazar scratched the back of his neck. “They’re gone, miss.”

  “What do you mean? Where did they go?”

  “I can’t say, exactly. After the fighting ended, I carried you and Montgomery here and did my best to attend to your injuries. Then I went looking for the carnival troupe but found nothing. They moved on.”

  “They can’t have just left. Jack . . . Ajax . . . he’s one of us.”

  “He isn’t one of you,” Balthazar explained patiently. “He’s like me, you know. A creation. His ways aren’t the ways of men. He isn’t one to stay for good-byes.”

  It was the first time I’d ever heard Balthazar admit to the truth of what he was. He was so lovably naïve to the ways of the world that at times I had doubted he did know what he was.

  “What about you?” I asked Balthazar. “Will you go, too?”

  His face went very serious. “No, miss. My place is with you and Montgomery, whether I’m one of you or not.”

  I envied him the certainty that hung in his voice. This man had once been a creation in my father’s laboratory, then a dog at Montgomery’s heels. Now he was so much more. A savior. A friend. I reached over and squeezed his hand. “You do belong with us.”

  The wind must have carried the sound of our voices beyond the winter garden, because Edward turned in the chair and came over to us. There was a carefulness in the way he handled himself, one hand pressed against his chest, his movements guarded and slow. I jumped up to help him ease onto a low brick wall. Behind him, the stone statue of a fox watched, unscathed by the fire.

  “Are you all right?” I asked.

  He winced as he settled on the brick wall. Carefully, he pulled away his hand from his chest, where he’d been clutching a blood-soaked cloth packed with straw. “It doesn’t hurt. That’s something, at least.”

  There was a strain to his voice; just because he had survived the metal rod didn’t meant it hadn’t damaged him. “We’ll get you to Quick and stitch you up there. There must be a carriage left that didn’t burn.” I glanced in the direction of the barn, but the space was empty now where Carlyle’s wagon usually resided.

  “I can help with that, mistress, if you don’t mind.”

  It was McKenna, making her way across the heather toward us. She wore her boots and a tartan cape and though her gray-streaked hair was a bit wild, it was clear she’d bathed and rested.

  “McKenna! You came back.”

  “Of course, little mouse. Even burned and gone, this is my home. Did you really think I could leave it for long?” She motioned behind her, to where Carlyle was hitching the mule and wagon, staring off at the ruins of his home. “We took the girls to Quick last night and settled them down. I reported the fire to the authorities—said it was caused by an errant spark in the fireplace.” Her voice trailed off as her gaze drifted to the courtyard, where the b
odies of the dead still lay, starting to bloat beneath the morning sunlight. “There’s much work to be done, eh?”

  I’d never been so thankful for someone so practical. Her tired face with the laugh-line wrinkles and the shock of white hairs mixed in with the red. Such a quiet woman, but there was strength there. I couldn’t possibly manage this place without her, Elizabeth had said. Maybe, with McKenna’s help, I could be as good a mistress to Ballentyne as Elizabeth had been.

  Carlyle came over, a deep frown on his face. He and I had never really gotten on, but he’d been there when I’d needed him, and for that I would be in his eternal debt.

  “Came to see if there was anything worth salvaging,” Carlyle said, and then nudged Montgomery’s unconscious leg with the tip of his boot. “He’ll do, for a start.”

  “Would you mind taking him back to Quick?” I asked. “We can stay at the inn for a few days until he and Edward are both recovered.”

  “Aye,” he said, and signaled to Balthazar. “Help me load ’em up in the wagon, won’t you, big fellow?” The two of them placed Montgomery gently on the saddle blanket, and Carlyle took his seat at the front and picked up the reins.

  I rested an arm over the wooden wagon bed, brushing Montgomery’s hair out of his eyes. “I’ll see you soon,” I whispered to him. “There are a few things I have to do first.”

  I gave the signal to Carlyle, who clicked to the mule, and the wagon rolled off down the muddy road. Balthazar and I watched it go. With a deep sigh, Balthazar turned toward the courtyard.

  “Lot of bodies, miss,” he grunted. “I’d best get started on the graves; the ground is frozen, so I’ll have to sink them in the bog.”

  “I’ll help you.”

  He shook his head. “You inhaled a lot of smoke, miss. You need rest as well. Edward can help; he’s strong, even now.” He lumbered off.

  I faced Ballentyne, watching the smoke rise. The roof of the southern tower had caved in, but the stone bones still stood sentry over the moors. I thought of the winding steps that led to the secrets those rooms once held: Hensley’s room with the cages of rats, and above it, the laboratory. All of it now reduced to ashes.

  Just like Lucy.

  “Parts of the house have burned before,” McKenna said, standing beside me. “When my mother was a girl, a fire started in the southern tower and took the entire wing. There’ll be demolition to do, plenty of wreckage and cleaning, but the walls have stood for hundreds of years, and look—they’re still standing. We’ll rebuild. In a few years it’ll be good as new. We can wire electric lights properly, as Elizabeth always wanted. And we can expand the servants’ rooms to bring more girls here. So many of them have nowhere else to go, you know. It’ll be grand.” She clasped her hands. I stared at the wreckage. Whatever lofty vision she saw there, I saw only ashes and smoke.

  At my silence, she wrung her hands. “Of course, you’re the mistress now. It’s entirely your decision how we rebuild. I’d be grateful to offer some advice, just because I’ve spent my whole life here. Was born in a guest room on the second floor, as a matter of fact. And my mother before me, and her father. This is my home, mistress, but it’s your estate. You let me know your plans, and I’ll see them carried out.”

  I squinted at the manor, trying to see the potential there. Elizabeth had entrusted this all to me, along with the secrets the walls held. Ballentyne had been her dream—but was it mine?

  “No,” I whispered.

  McKenna’s eyes went wide. “You don’t want to rebuild? But mistress, surely you understand—it’s useless as ruins. . . .”

  “That’s not what I meant,” I said gently. “I mean I don’t want to rebuild. Ballentyne has never been my home, not like it was Elizabeth’s, and not like it’s yours. You should rebuild it, McKenna. I’d like to give it to you. The building—what’s left of it—the land, responsibility for the staff.”

  She stared at me like I was speaking some foreign language, then shook her head emphatically. “I couldn’t. Not in a thousand years.”

  “Why not? Elizabeth told me you knew this place better than she did. She said she couldn’t run it without you.”

  “But it isn’t my inheritance,” she pressed. “My family’s always been the caretakers. The von Stein family has always owned it. It’s passed down from generation to generation. I’m not of that family. You are. You’re related by marriage.” She wrung her hands harder. My offer truly troubled her.

  “Sometimes inheritance has nothing to do with family ties. It’s about what’s best for Ballentyne, and that’s you.”

  She gaped at me. “Are you certain, miss?”

  I thought of Jack Serra, flipping his fortune-telling cards in the light of a lantern, talking to me about finding my fate. I pressed a hand against the charm around my neck. I didn’t know what my fate was now, but I knew Ballentyne wasn’t it.

  “I am.” I smiled, looking at the building. Now I was starting to see how it could thrive again, but under McKenna’s care. “But first, I need to say my good-byes.”

  FORTY-ONE

  THE RUINS WERE SURROUNDED by a deep quiet. Most of the stone walls still stood, giving the manor its iconic shape. I imagined that from a distance a traveler wouldn’t even know it was ruined. It wouldn’t be until he came closer and saw the sunlight glinting through gaps in the stone that he’d realize it was only a shell.

  Elizabeth. Hensley. Lucy. I wasn’t sure I believed in the idea of souls, but if they did exist, I was glad they had such a place to wander.

  I traced my fingers along the walls as I entered the gaping hole that had once been the thick front door. Not but a few weeks ago I was knocking on it, desperate for refuge. Had I brought about its destruction the minute I set foot here?

  No, I thought as I stepped through the foyer. The science within these halls was never meant to exist.

  The ancient tapestries had burned, revealing more entrances to the secret passageways. The passages seemed less mysterious with the light of day pouring through the roofless ceiling. I stepped inside, heedless of the soot staining my dress. The rubble shifted and a little pink nose poked out. One of Hensley’s white rats, alive and well except for a small burned patch on its tail. I knelt down.

  “Come here, little fellow.” I held out my hand as Hensley and Elizabeth used to do. But the rat shied away, sensing that I wasn’t one of its masters. I didn’t mind. I liked thinking that some of the rats had survived the fire. Life still thrived in Ballentyne, even in ruins. Something still remembered Hensley and Elizabeth.

  I followed the passageway slowly, having to climb over fallen beams and collapsed walls. McKenna had quite a task ahead of her, but I was confident she’d succeed. I liked thinking of Ballentyne as a sanctuary for girls who didn’t have anywhere else to go. When I’d been alone and on my own, I would have loved calling this place home.

  But it wasn’t my home, not really. Neither was London, which was the site of so much loss, the place where the professor had died and where scandal had befallen my family, and where Lucy’s mother waited for a daughter and a husband who would never return.

  I closed my eyes, resting my fingers on the walls. When the wind blew, I thought I could smell a little of Lucy’s perfume, and it made me miss her all the more.

  Was it fair that I survived and she didn’t?

  If Lucy hadn’t died, I imagined, she’d have lived out the rest of her life here, taking care of the girls. Her father was wrong when he said she only cared for dresses and handsome men. She’d loved the girls, and she’d loved me, and she’d loved Edward. She’d cared about us enough to sacrifice her own life for us.

  I left the passages and climbed the central staircase up to the ruins of the northern tower. The glass window of the observatory had shattered, littering the charred floor. All that was left of Elizabeth’s settee was a broken frame. I remembered her leaning in, her face a mirror to my own, telling me the story of Victor Frankenstein.

  I kicked aside some charred furni
ture until I found her metal globe of the constellations. The wooden stand had burned, and the metal was dented but mostly intact. I ran my fingers along the top portion, where Elizabeth had kept Les Étoiles gin.

  I opened the secret latch of the globe, but the bottles had shattered and melted. Ruined, like everything else. Then my fingers drifted to the bottom compartment, where she’d stored Ballentyne’s biggest secrets.

  I glanced over my shoulder, listening for the sounds of footsteps or breathing that would tell me I wasn’t alone. But all the paintings and tapestries that hid the secret passages were gone now. I could see everything, even straight to the morning sky. I was alone.

  I slid open the metal compartment, breath drawn. Ashes rained out: thick black ones that stained my fingers. They still had the shape of books until I touched them, and they broke apart into dust.

  All of Frankenstein’s legacy, the Origin Journals, had been destroyed.

  I looked at my soot-dark hands. These ashes had been ideas once; they’d given birth to my own father’s research, which had given life to Balthazar, and Edward, and even to me.

  Even days ago, such a loss might have filled me with melancholy. I knew Henri Moreau’s work was wrong, but I’d come to believe in its potential. Now that I knew he wasn’t my father, and his genius and madness didn’t flow in my veins, the journals seemed distant, like something that belonged to someone else. I let the ashes fall past my fingertips.

  I felt anything but sadness. In fact, I’d never felt so alive.

  I stood up, dusting my hands off, and left the observatory without looking back. A shattered window in the hallway gave me a glimpse of Edward and Balthazar in the courtyard, loading the mercenaries’ and horses’ bodies onto a pallet to drag out to the bog. I could still remember how close I was to death that day I nearly drowned with the sheep.

  I had escaped those frigid waters. Radcliffe and his men never would.

  I spent the rest of the morning checking the rest of the rooms, finding little to salvage save a few pieces of jewelry and coins that had survived in a lockbox in Elizabeth’s bedroom that we could use to pay for the inn in Quick and food and transportation. It wasn’t until afternoon, when Balthazar and Edward were almost finished with the last of the bodies, that I steeled my strength and went to the southern tower.