The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein

Did he know I had seen his notes? Was that why he had suggested that the product of my injured mind had been inspired by an image?

Or was there some other reason he was being evasive? “When you were sick, when I found you,” I said, hesitant, as I sorted through what I wanted to reveal and what I wanted to hold back, “you said ‘It worked.’ Your experiment worked. What was it?”

Victor’s face briefly contorted in rage. I flinched and he turned his back, picking up a book and then setting it down. When he finally spoke, his voice was so measured and calm I could hear every hour I had spent teaching him to control himself. “It does not matter. Whatever I said, I was out of my mind. Nothing I did in Ingolstadt was successful.”

I did not want to push. I did not want to risk one of his fits when he was so newly restored to me. But I could not let this stand, not when Justine was threatened. “Are you certain? Sometimes when you have your fevers, you forget things. Things that happen just before you fall ill. Things that happen before you are confined to your bed. Is it possible that—”

Victor set the book down with a sigh. “I want you to rest. I believe you that Justine is innocent. I will investigate this and haunt the courts until they free her. Her trial began this morning. Now that you are awake, I will return to it.”

“This morning!” I pushed up, but my head swam. I could not stand, as the room swayed around me. Victor gently but firmly guided me back down to the bed.

“You are in no state to attend. You could injure yourself further.”

“But I must testify on her behalf.”

He sat at the desk and pulled out a quill, dipping it in my inkwell. “Tell me what you wish to say, and I will present it as character evidence.”

It would be better if I were there in person. I could picture exactly how I would look testifying: My golden hair like a halo around my head. I would wear white. I would cry and smile at exactly the right times. No one would be able to doubt me.

But if I went as I was now, I would look crazed. Victor was right. I could not help her in this state.

So I poured out my heart for the letter. Justine was the kindest friend, the truest person. She had loved William as her own child from the moment she met him. Never had a governess cared so much about her charges or taken such delight in nurturing them. After the death of Madame Frankenstein, Justine had stepped into her place and provided William with the most compassionate surrogate imaginable.

“Oh, Victor,” I said, sadness competing with pain. “We have not even spoken of William yet. I am so sorry.”

He finished the letter and then carefully blotted the quill and set it down. “I am sorry he is dead. It is a waste, losing him so young. But it feels more like something that happened to someone else. I barely knew him.” He turned, searching my face for either my response or a clue to how his own should be shaped. “Is that wrong?”

I had guided him so much in how to react to things, how to shape his expressions, how to be sympathetic. But I had nothing to offer him now. “There is no wrong way to feel after something so violent and terrible,” I said. Of course Justine had been insensible. It was overwhelming, and so strong and big a feeling that it felt…unreal, in a way.

“Death touches us all in different ways,” I said finally. I closed my eyes, my head already aching so badly that I longed to fall back asleep. Victor was probably right. Perhaps a combination of the storm, my upset, a

nd the blow to my head had lifted Victor’s gruesome drawing out of my memory and placed it, in terrifying size, in my mind. I had, after all, been plagued by nightmares my whole life.

Though I had never before seen those nightmares while awake.

“Death is never allowed to touch you.” Victor traced his fingers along the spill of my hair across the pillow, and then walked from the room.

* * *

—

Most nights, when the children around me had fallen asleep, all scabbed knees and biting teeth and freezing feet, I slipped out of the hovel and crept to the banks of Lake Como.

I had made myself a burrow there, in a depression beneath the overhanging roots of a massive tree. When I climbed inside and curled into a ball, no one could find me. No one ever tried to, of course. If I had stayed there and never come out, my passing from the world would have gone unnoticed.

Some nights, when even my child’s heart knew that what I had been asked to endure was too much, I would stand on the edge of the lake, lift my face to the stars, and scream.

Nothing ever called back. Even among the creeping things of the lake’s night, I was alone.

Until Victor.

* * *

—

The next morning I awoke early, ready to go to the trial. Victor had returned with a mixed report. The evidence remained circumstantial, but public opinion was against Justine. Testimony of her mother’s violent madness had been offered. It provided a family history that painted Justine in a bad light, competing with my character witness.

“What is your father’s opinion?” I had asked Victor.