The Isle of Blood (16 page)

“Well,” said the doctor, and then he said no more.

“I feel positively old now, terribly behind in my studies,” joked Thomas. He turned to Warthrop. “I never would have applied, if I had known you already had an apprentice.”

“Will Henry is not precisely my apprentice.”

“No? Then, what is he?”

“He is…” The doctor was staring down at me. In fact, all three men were staring at me. The silence was heavy. What was I exactly to Pellinore Warthrop? I squirmed in my chair.

At last the monstrumologist shrugged and turned back to Thomas. “What did you mean when you said you never would have applied?”

“Why, to apprentice under you, Dr. Warthrop.”

“It is true,” admitted von Helrung. “I am not Thomas’s first choice.”

“I don’t recall receiving your application,” said my master.

Thomas seemed crestfallen. “Which one? I sent twelve.”

“Really?” Warthrop was impressed.

“No, not really. Thirteen, actually. Twelve somehow sounded less desperate.”

To my shock the monstrumologist laughed. It happened so seldom, I thought he had gagged on a crumpet.

“And I never answered any of them?” Warthrop turned toward me with a frown, one eyebrow arching toward his hairline. “Will Henry arranges the mail for me, and I cannot recall receiving even one from you.”

“Oh. Well. Perhaps they were misplaced somehow.”

Again a weighty silence slammed down. My face grew hot. In truth I did arrange the doctor’s correspondence. And, in truth, I could not recall the name of Thomas Arkwright; I was certain I had never seen it before. But to protest would only convince my guardian of my guilt.

“So the saying is true, all is well that ends well,” put in von Helrung at last, with a consoling pat upon my shoulder. “I have a new student, and you, Pellinore, you have your…” He searched for the proper description. “Will Henry,” he finished, with an apologetic shrug.

Thomas begged to take his leave shortly thereafter. He’d only interrupted Dr. Warthrop to express his undying admiration; he knew the doctor had pressing business and he did not wish to delay him.

“What do you know of my business?” asked the monstrumologist sharply, with an accusatory glance toward von Helrung—
You
did
tell him!

“I know nothing of the present matter. Professor von Helrung has been quite annoyingly coy about it,” said Thomas, running to his mentor’s rescue. “I know it is urgent—monstrously urgent, if I may make a play on the word. The rest of it I can only guess at. You are here in New York to entrust to Professor Ainesworth a
nidus ex magnificum
, which has recently come into your possession from overseas—England, I would guess.” He shrugged apologetically. “But that is all I can guess.”

Thomas Arkwright waited for the monstrumologist’s reaction with a slightly smug expression, for he did not
guess
that he was correct; he
knew
he was.

“That is a remarkable ‘guess,’ Mr. Arkwright,” said Warthrop, glowering at von Helrung. He clearly thought he had been misled and betrayed.

“Not all that remarkable,” replied Thomas. “I know you have been to the Monstrumarium—that’s easy. The smell floats about you like a foul perfume. And I know you went straight there from the depot, for you are still in your traveling clothes, which suggests your errand was of the utmost exigency—not a moment to lose.”

“You are correct so far,” allowed my master. “But that much, as you said, is easy. What of the rest?”

“Well, you didn’t go to
get
something from the old man. The Monstrumarium has not been called Fort Adolphus for nothing. You must have
brought
something—and not just any something, but a something that could not sit even for a moment in your hotel untended, being too large a something to secure upon your person. In other words, a very special something, a something so rare and valuable you had to secure it at once, without delay.”

Clearly intrigued, the doctor nodded quickly and flicked his finger at him, a gesture he had given me innumerable times—
Go on, go on!

“So it is quite rare, this prize you brought—
extremely
rare, and that leaves but a handful of monstrumological curiosities. And out of that handful only one or two might compel a scientist of your stature to drop everything and rush straight to the Monstrumarium after a long journey by stage and rail.
Nidus egnificum
is the obvious choice and, since no
nidus
has ever been discovered in the New World, in all likelihood it came from Europe—”

“Hah!” cried the monstrumologist, holding up his hand. “The scaffold of your reasoning grows unsteady, Mr. Arkwright. Why would you assume my special something came from Europe, since the only authenticated something comes from the Lakshadweep Islands in the Indian Ocean?”

“Because I know you too well—or
of
you too well, I should say. If you knew the origin of the something, you would not be in New York. You would have sent the something to Dr. von Helrung to place in the Locked Room, and been on the first boat out.”

“Why England, though?”

“England is a guess, I will admit that. I passed on France. The French contingent of the Society has never cared much for us Yanks—less so after that unfortunate incident last fall involving Monsieur Gravois, for which, I hear, they blame you, unfairly in my opinion. The Germans would
never
trust a
nidus
to an American—even if his name is Pellinore Warthrop. The Italians—well, they
are
Italians. England was the most logical choice.”

“Extraordinary,” murmured Warthrop with an appreciative nod. “Truly extraordinary, Mr. Arkwright! And precisely right in all details; I shan’t mislead you.” He turned to von Helrung. “My congratulations,
Meister
Abram. My loss seems to be your gain.”

The Austrian monstrumologist smiled broadly. “He reminds me of another promising student from many years ago. I confess in my dotage I sometimes forget myself and call him Pellinore.”

“Oh, I hope not!” said my master with uncharacteristic humility. “I wouldn’t wish that upon anyone—or the world. One is enough!”

Thomas did not take his leave until the doctor and I departed for our hotel; I suppose he forgot in the excitement of the moment his humble desire not to delay the great man in his important scientific pursuits. The great man himself seemed to forget the pressing matters before him, utterly absorbed in a conversation that revolved entirely around him or that singular extension of himself called monstrumology.

And Arkwright appeared to be an expert on both. With alacrity he demonstrated an encyclopedic knowledge of all things Warthropian—his sickly childhood in New England; the “lost years” in the London boarding school; his tutelage under von Helrung; his early adventures in Amazonia, the Congo, and “that ill-fated expedition to Sumatra”; his invaluable contributions to the
Encyclopedia
Bestia
(more than a third of the articles were written or cowritten by Warthrop); his championing of the cause to the broader world of the natural sciences. The monstrumologist drank deep the sycophantic draft until he was positively drunk. It had taken thirty-odd years, but at last it appeared he had met someone who admired Pellinore Warthrop as much as he did.

Indeed, the atmosphere in the room was so saturated with Warthrop that I found it difficult to breathe.Von Helrung noticed my discomfort and proposed, sotto voce, a foray into the kitchen for a raid on the pantry. I gladly accepted the commission, and we charged the larder, conquering two platefuls of sweet pastries and two steaming cups of hot chocolate.

“He is very bright,” said von Helrung, meaning Thomas Arkwright. “But one can look into the sun for only a moment, and then… blindness! Frequent respites are called for, but you must know what I mean, Will. Pellinore is the same.”

I nodded slowly, avoiding his gaze. He understood at once, and said quietly and with great compassion, “It is hard, I know, to serve him. Men like Pellinore Warthrop—one must exercise the utmost caution or be subsumed by their brilliance. The fate of your father, I’m afraid. In the presence of men like Warthrop, the lesser light is consumed by the greater.”

“How does Thomas know so much about him?” I asked. In the space of a half hour, I had learned more about the monstrumologist from a stranger than I had after two years of living with him.

“From me primarily. The rest from any and all who will talk about him.”

“Well, he doesn’t know everything about him,” I said. “He didn’t know the doctor already had an apprentice.”

“Yes, that did strike me as strange. He
does
know; I told him upon our first meeting a fortnight ago. Perhaps he forgot.”

“Or he’s lying.”

“Is this wise, Will? Given the choice, should we not always choose the good motive over the bad? It probably wasn’t important to him, so he forgot.” Not important to him! I pushed my plate away; I had lost my appetite.

“No, no, eat, eat!” he said, sliding the plate back. “You are far too slight for a boy of ten.”

“I’m thirteen,” I reminded him.

“Then you are
much
too thin. A growing boy is like an army,
ja
? He travels upon his stomach! I must speak to Pellinore about it. I do not imagine he cooks very much.”

“He doesn’t cook at all. We used to have a cook,” I added, “but the doctor fired her. She boiled one of his specimens.”

It was true. A delivery had arrived at the kitchen door the night before he sacked her, and the cook, a kindly old woman named Paulina, who was nearly blind (Warthrop considered this deficiency a plus), had mistaken it for an order she had placed with Mr. Noonan the butcher. That evening we unknowingly dined upon the carcass of the rare
Hallux turpis
of Cappadocia, which Paulina had transformed into a hearty stew. The doctor fired her, of course, the moment he realized, to his horror, that he had consumed one of monstrumology’s most sought after prizes. Afterward, after he had calmed down, he acknowledged that it wasn’t a total loss to science. We had discovered that
Hallux turpis
tasted remarkably like chicken.

“I do everything for him,” I said with an uncomfortable knot of pride and resentment in my heartt="0em" wi220;All the cooking and cleaning, and the washing, and I write his letters and run the errands and keep his files, and take care of the horses, of course, and assist him in the laboratory—that too. Especially that.”

“Well! I am surprised you have time for your studies.”

“My studies, sir?”

“You do not go to school?”

“Not since I came to him.”

“Then, he tutors you, yes? He must tutor you. No?”

I shook my head. “No, I don’t think so.”

“You don’t think so!” He clucked in disapproval.

“He doesn’t sit me down with books and pencils and teach me lessons—nothing like that. But he does try to teach me things.”

“Things? What things does he try to teach you, Will? What have you learned from him?”

“I’ve learned…” What had I learned? My mind went blank. What had the monstrumologist taught me? “I’ve learned that half the world prays they will be given what they deserve, and the other half that they will not.”

“Mein Gott!”
cried my teacher’s former teacher. “I do not know whether to laugh or cry at your answer! But that is the way of truth.”

He went to the stove and returned with the pot of hot chocolate, topped off my cup, and then filled his to the brim, lowering his nose close to the mud-colored surface to breathe in the aroma; the steam painted his cheeks rosy. He looked at me through the steam, and smiled.

“I love chocolate. Don’t you?”

For the briefest of moments, I wanted to throw my arms around him and hug him tight.

“Dr. von Helrung, sir?”

“Ja?”

I lowered my voice. I did not think about it; it seemed appropriate somehow. “What is
Typhoeus magnificum
?”

His smile disappeared. He pushed his cup away and folded his hands on the tabletop. I had the sense of the space shrinking between us, until I was but a hairsbreadth from his transcendent visage.

“That is hard to say—very hard. Only his victims have seen him, and, forever mute, they keep his secrets.

“We know he lives, for we have held the
nidus
in our hands, and we’ve seen—
you
have seen, ah, too much!—the victims of his terrible venom. But his form is hidden from us. There are stories… that he stands twenty feet tall, that his teeth are mobile like a spider’s, which he uses to fashion his ungodly nest, that he swoops down from the blackest sky borne on wings ten feet across to snatch his prey, carrying them past the highest clouds to rip them apart, and the leavings fall back to earth in a rain of blood and spit, what is called the
pwdre ser
, the rot of stars.” He shuddered violently and breathed deep the soothing scent rising from his mug.

“It sounds like a dragon,” I said.

“
Ja
, that is one of his faces; he has many more, as many as there are those who have suffered his wrath. And so we call him the Faceless One and the One of a Thousand Faces.

“We are the sons of Adam. It is in our nature to turn and face the faceless, to name the nameless thing. It drives us to greatness; it brings us to ruin. I only pray Pellinore understands this. Many brave men have sought it, all have failed, and now I do not know what I fear more—that the dragon will go unseen or that Pellinore will find it.”

“Why is it so hard to find, though?” I asked.

“Perhaps it is like the devil himself—never seen, always there!” He laughed softly, breaking the somber spell. “The world is large, dear Will, and we, no matter how much we would like to pretend otherwise, we are quite small.”