This Dark Endeavour (with Bonus Material) (10 page)

“I trust him,” said Elizabeth. “Polidori. He will advise us well.”

We were all surprised when we heard St. Peter’s bells toll two o’clock, for we’d lost all track of time inside the laboratory. Down the cobbled streets of the city we ran, toward our house, to meet Father.

After dinner I went to visit Konrad, but he was already asleep, our unfinished game of chess still on the bedside table. With a sigh, I sat down and looked at the board. Yesterday he’d actually dozed off, it had taken me so long to figure out my move.

I examined the position of his pieces carefully, and almost at once understood his stratagem. It was very good. He would have me in three moves if I wasn’t careful.

I made the move for him, then turned the board around to take my own turn.

Hunched over in the chair, I played against myself—and I knew Konrad so well it was very much like playing him properly—but suddenly the sadness of it struck me hard, and I realized how desperately I missed him, and how badly I wanted him to get out of that bed for good.

“We had a rather exciting day,” I whispered to his sleeping face.

I’d been longing to tell him since we got home from Geneva, but I knew it was best kept secret. Now, though, I could at least utter the words.

“I’ve got a great plan to gather the ingredients for the Elixir of Life, and once we’re done, you’ll be able to drink it.”

He shifted in his sleep, turned his head away, as though doubting me.

“I promise,” I said, kissing him on the forehead. “If no one else can make you better, I will.”

That night I woke suddenly with the dreadful sensation that someone was in my room.

Cautiously I peered through my bed curtains to see my chamber bathed in moonlight. Elizabeth stood before the window in her nightgown, gazing out over the lake.

“Elizabeth,” I said softly. “What’s the matter? Is it Konrad?”

At once I worried she’d come to bring me some terrible news, but she did not turn. She had not heard me at all.

In the moonlight her face was ghostly pale, her brow furrowed. She seemed to be holding something in her arms, and kept looking down at it anxiously.

“Elizabeth?”

No response. She was awake, yet asleep.

It was not the first time. When Elizabeth first came to our house as a small child, she sleepwalked. My parents would find her in the hallways, looking about her in confusion, or staring intently at some invisible view. Father said her mind was temporarily disordered by the great changes in her life, and even in sleep it would not let her rest, and would make her walk the house in the early hours of morning, trying to puzzle things out. In time it would pass, he said.

Once, in those first few months, I awoke with a start, to find her body pressed against mine. Her thin arms encircled me tightly. She was shaking. I dared not wake her, for Father had said you must never wake someone who was sleepwalking. So I just lay very still. Gradually she stopped trembling, her breathing calmed, and we both fell asleep. In the morning she was most indignant to find herself in someone else’s bed, and woke me with a punch in the shoulder, before flouncing out of my room.

But that was many years ago, when we were little more than seven.

We were sixteen now, and I was almost afraid to approach her, for she seemed to emanate an eerie power. She was herself, and not herself, and it was like having a stranger in the room. I felt I ought to guide her gently back to her own bedchamber,
if possible. Father had said the best thing to do with someone sleepwalking was to talk to them very calmly and matter-of-factly.

“Elizabeth,” I said. “This way.”

When she turned to me, her face was stricken with anxiety. In her arms she cradled an old doll. I shivered, for her gaze seemed to look right through me, to someone just behind me.

“The baby’s not dead,” she said fiercely.

“No,” I said.

“She’s just cold.”

“Yes,” I said.

“She needs warming.” So urgent and penetrating was her gaze that for a moment I looked back at the doll, just to make sure it wasn’t real. “That’s all. Just a little warmth and she’ll be fine.”

“You are warming her right now,” I said soothingly. There was something so childlike and beseeching in her look that I felt my heart ache. “She will be wonderfully warm and happy soon.”

She looked down at the doll, kneading it with her hands. “Yes,” she said.

“You see,” I said. “The baby’s fine. I’m sure she just needs a good sleep. I’ll show you the way.”

I started walking toward my door, and checked to make sure she was following. I quickly lit a candle and made my way down the hallway to her bedchamber. The door was ajar. We went inside. I pointed at her bed, the sheets in a tangle.

“Here we are,” I said. “You and baby can rest here.”

“The bed will be warm,” she said.

“Of course.”

I tried to smooth the sheets for her, but she lay down on them before I could finish, still clutching the baby. It was a good thing it wasn’t a real baby, for Elizabeth was lying on top of its head and torso. Her eyes were already closed and she was properly asleep. I found a blanket in her armoire and gently laid it over her. I watched her for a moment, then left the bedchamber.

At breakfast, Elizabeth said not a word about her sleepwalking. She remembered nothing, and I was not about to remind her.

The lynx gave a luxuriant yawn, revealing wickedly sharp teeth. He hopped off his master’s lap and padded toward me.

T
he famous Dr. Murnau from Ingolstadt arrived at the chateau the following day.

I’d expected someone dignified and grey-haired who would emanate knowledge and quiet confidence. But this fellow was surprisingly young; he couldn’t have been more than thirty—and he looked like he needed a doctor himself. I don’t think I’d ever seen anyone so thin and pale. His fingers were positively skeletal. Behind his dusty spectacles, his watery eyes appeared permanently startled.

He was to stay with us at least a week, and Father had given him one of the turret rooms with an adjoining parlour to use as his surgery and laboratory. As his carriage was unloaded after breakfast, I counted no fewer than six trunks, no doubt filled with all sorts of chemicals and apparatus.

Father said Dr. Murnau had lectured at the finest universities and was widely thought the best, and most progressive, healer in Europe. If anyone could devise a cure for Konrad, it would be him.

He spent a full hour examining my brother, and the whole
time Elizabeth and I paced the hallway outside—when we didn’t have our ears pressed to the door.

When the doctor finally emerged, he actually gave a little jump of surprise when he saw us.

“So. What is your diagnosis, Doctor?” I asked.

“Oh, I’m afraid I don’t have one yet,” he said in a nasal voice.

I blinked in confusion and disappointment, for he had seemed so wise. The other doctors had needed no more than twenty minutes to make their decisions.

“I’ll have to conduct many other examinations,” he said with a nervous smile. “After lunch I’ll bleed him. Now if you’ll excuse—”

“He’s already been bled,” I said, thinking of the useless Dr. Bartonne.

“Yes, so I understand,” replied Dr. Murnau.

“It did no good,” Elizabeth added. “Only weakened him further.”

Dr. Murnau nodded so vigorously that his glasses slipped down his nose a bit and he pushed them back with a bony finger. “Don’t worry. Listen, I know there are many doctors who put great store in bleeding, but I’m not one of them. It’s completely useless. You might as well—I don’t know—chant druidic incantations.” He gave a strange little titter of laugher. “But when I said I’d bleed your brother, I only meant I’m going to take some of his blood—to study.”

“Study?” Elizabeth said with a frown.

“Exactly.” He licked his lips. “Just a small quantity, mind you. Now, there’s some reading I really must do.”

And with an awkward bow he left us alone in the hallway.

“What do you make of him?” I asked Elizabeth.

“Apart from the fact he’s clearly insane?” she said.

“What can he learn from Konrad’s blood?” I said. “Except that he needs it in his body to live!”

“There is something ghoulish about it.”

“He’s like a vampyre,” I said.

When I’d first heard about Dr. Murnau, I’d felt hopeful—and more than a bit foolish. This man had spent years of his life studying, practising his discipline. And here was I, with books of alchemy, seeking out a legendary elixir of life.

But now that I knew of his outlandish plans—to study blood!—they seemed even more fantastical than any tome of ancient spells.

The next day we would return to Mr. Polidori, to see what success he’d had translating the Alphabet of the Magi.

“I have made progress,” Polidori said, ushering us into his musty parlour.

“That is excellent news!” said Elizabeth.

Once more the three of us had come into the city with Father, and secretly made our way to Wollstonekraft Alley. Polidori had greeted us eagerly.

“So you were able to translate the alphabet?” I asked.

“It is a devious thing,” he replied, leading us to a table covered with books and parchments. “Not all the alphabet could be recovered. And it is no simple matter of substituting a letter of our own alphabet for each arcane symbol. No, no. It is an ever-changing cipher, you see, and every twenty-six letters, the meaning of the symbols alters completely.”

“Good Lord,” exclaimed Henry, “then how can you discern the meaning of the next characters?”

The alchemist wagged a finger. “The clues, you see, are implanted in the previous transcription, and from there you must riddle out the rest. As you might imagine, this is time-consuming. And even when one has a small triumph, what is produced is an archaic form of Latin that necessitates a further translation—”

“But you have made progress,” I prompted.

“Oh, indeed. I have translated the preface.”

“Just the preface?” I said, and felt myself sag in disappointment. Why would he waste time with the preface? I never read prefaces. Skip the preface and move on to the meat of the thing!

Curled near the hearth, Krake the lynx gave a low purr and stared at me, as though chiding me for my impatience.

“In the preface,” said Polidori, “there is important information. Agrippa tells us there are three ingredients.”

“Three is not so many,” said Elizabeth, sounding encouraged.

“And,” said Polidori, smiling at us, “just last night I discovered the first of them.”

“You have the first ingredient!” I cried in delight. “That truly is excellent news. Well done, sir! Do you have it here?”

“Unfortunately I do not, young master.”

“Do you need us to purchase it elsewhere?” Elizabeth asked helpfully.

“There is no apothecary that will sell this,” said Polidori. “Come, and I will show you.”

On the table a great volume lay open. “Here it is. Look,” he said, pointing to a coloured engraving.

“It is a fungus, or lichen, of some sort,” I said.

“Very good,” said Polidori. “A lichen.
Usnea lunaria.
”

“It is beautiful,” said Elizabeth.

The engraving had been rendered with painstaking detail. The lichen was a brownish-grey, its complicated filaments delicate as lacework. I stared at the image a long time, trying to memorize its shape, colour, and texture.

“It has healing properties, then?” Henry said.

“It is a toxin,” Polidori replied simply.

“A toxin?” Elizabeth said in alarm. “You mean a poison?”

“Yes, but a poison to destroy other poisons,” Polidori said. And then he must have seen the uncertain look on my face, for he added, “Healing is a complicated business. To heal, sometimes we must harm the body, but hope that the overall effect is beneficial.”

“It is true,” Henry said to me. “I remember your father saying arsenic was sometimes administered as a curative.”

“The dose is critical,” Polidori said. “And Agrippa is very specific about it. Let me worry about that. Right now our first task is to procure the lichen.”

“Where does it grow?” Elizabeth asked.

“It is a tree lichen,” said Polidori. “I once collected it myself, but”—he waved a hand at his withered legs—”that is no longer possible.”

“Where do we find it?” I asked.

“We are most fortunate. It can be found not half a day’s ride from here. Throughout the year it migrates across the trunks of the tree to follow the moon. Not surprisingly, it grows at the summit of only the tallest trees.”

“The tallest trees are in the Sturmwald,” I said.

I knew the forest well, since it rose from the steep hills behind our chateau in Bellerive. The trees that tended to thrive there were strong, for in winter they were racked by terrible winds. Some had reached great heights, and were said to have been growing since before the time of Christ.

“I have here a map,” said Polidori, producing a piece of paper so many times folded that it was almost in tatters. “I kept it, you see, in case I ever had need of the lichen again. You will see here some landmarks to help you on your way. On the actual tree where I found the lichen, I cut a blaze in the bark, but there is no guarantee it will still be seen. It was many years ago, before I lost the use of my legs.”