Frankenstein's Monster (16 page)

If she speaks the truth, what of Margaret’s more wondrous desire to speak with me? She says she wants to judge me on my own merit and not on lies. I hope Winterbourne will be at our interview to be my ally. It is his continued acceptance I seek more than hers.

In a sudden single moment, I fear total betrayal of my plan for revenge and yet understand it as the best vengeance of all if Margaret someday writes:

“Robert, we have met your monster at last … and happily call him friend.”

The night after I had received Lily’s letter, I approached the sitting room I had entered two weeks ago. Margaret Winterbourne was already there, wringing her bony hands, then pressing them to her chest as if her heart might burst with dread. Just a few candles were lit, throwing the room into shadow. In the dim light, my scars would look less fearsome—Winterbourne had probably suggested it—but she seemed terrified of the dark itself, startling at each anxious turn of step. Although her husband’s presence would have strengthened her, she was unaccompanied. Perhaps it was a test: her willingness to be alone with me as she heard me out. I was disappointed Lily was not there, even though the letter said she would see me afterward only if she felt well.

I knocked on the glass door. Margaret jumped and held up a hand to ward me off.

“Mr. Hartmann?” With her hand still half-raised, she lowered
her head and averted her eyes to the left. She could not endure the sight of me. “Come in.”

I took one step inside, frightening her so badly that she half-fell, backing away. Her breath came in gasps, and she edged toward the door leading to the rest of the house.

I pulled up the hood and said, “I will come no closer. How is your daughter?”

Margaret’s features passed through lightning changes, none of which I could read.

“As you might expect,” she answered.

“I expect nothing and fear the worst. She said only that she was ill.”

“Did she? But where … where are my manners?” she said. She gestured toward a stout chair far from where she stood.

“I will stay here. You are discomforted by my presence.”

“I am.” Her eyes darted away from me again, but there were too many shadows to give her peace: behind the velvet settees, behind the tall embroidered panels, beneath every chair, and within every corner. The cold fireplace itself seemed a tunnel from which evil might slither.

“Perhaps we should speak at another time.”

“No! I won’t have the courage!” She steeled herself, clenching and unclenching her fists. When the steel at last entered her eyes, she said, “You have seen my brother more often than I. Y
ou!”
She did not attempt to hide her outrage. “Tell me, when you last saw my brother, did you leave him well?”

When I last saw Walton? How innocuous he appeared: his clothes shabby, his face dreamy, his eyes dazed. I might have felt pity did I not know that a second later he murdered Mirabella. Now I stood alone with his sister. My fingers burned to grab this woman’s skinny wattled neck and choke her.

“Did you leave him well?” she repeated. “I know there is … unpleasantness between you.”

“Unpleasantness?” I laughed bitterly. “He’s robbed me of ten years of life, trying to kill me, and then robbed me of even more. The last occasion I saw your brother is best left undiscussed.”

“Is it?” Her thin voice grew shrill: “What
will
you discuss? Why you stole his letters from me? How long you’ve been in Tarkenville?
Did you leave my brother well?”

I stepped forward, wondering if I should call Winterbourne to calm her. At my movement she flattened herself against the wall, her eyes struck with horror. I backed up to the veranda door.

“What of your daughter?” I asked from that distance, hoping a change in topic might distract her. “She said we might meet tonight.”

My words provoked Margaret to turn her head aside with disgust.

“You would see my daughter? Very well,” she said tightly. She tugged on the bellpull and waited. Moments later Lily appeared. She wore a loose dressing gown and was very pale, very thin. Her eyes burned with fever.

Hand extended, I walked farther into the room to greet her.

“Now! Seize him now!” Margaret shrieked.

From the veranda, from behind the screens, from the door behind Lily, rushed brutish men. Two grabbed me; several pressed clubs at my head; one carried an axe. I could have thrown them off, but Gregory Winterbourne—the man who had made me believe that
I
might be a man—tore into the room, shielded his wife and daughter, and aimed a pistol at my heart.

“There!” Lily crowed. “Did I not tell you he’d come at my word?”

“You were a guest in my house!” Winterbourne waved the gun so wildly the men who held me flinched. “You listened to my confidences!”

“And
you
spoke to me as one man to another. For that I am truly grateful.”

“ ‘As one man to another’? You’re a monster!”

“We talked of this. I am only what men have said I am.”

“You’re a
thing!”
Margaret cried out with hatred. “My brother was right. He has always been right!” She turned angrily on her husband. “You thought Robert was mad. You ridiculed him. You sneered at me for believing. You’re a fool. You’ve always been a fool. You’ve—” What she could not say strangled her.

“Lily, what does this mean?” I asked. Perhaps in her coldness she could explain to me what her father in his heat could not.

“Don’t you dare address my daughter!” Winterbourne’s passion overwhelmed him; spittle appeared at his lips as his mouth worked over words that would not come. He gestured again with the gun and said, “I was kind to you!”

“Was I not kind in return?”

Kind? Because I had not murdered him? Blood rushed to my cheeks. I remembered Biddy Josephs: she spoke the language of men, whereas I did not, so I said, “Sir, I love your daughter.”

“Love?”

He would have thrown himself at me had his men not held him back. One of them said, “Leave him for the sheriff, sir.”

“The sheriff? What’s my crime?”

“Murder.”

“That’s the least of it!” Winterbourne shook the gun at me.

Murder? Biddy Josephs had mentioned murder.

“I’ve harmed no one.”

Another of the men holding me spoke: “You beat the
stable boy so badly we had to identify him by a birthmark. It was Miss Winterbourne who found him, isn’t that right, miss? It was a terrible shock.”

“I shouldn’t have taken the dogs out,” Lily said softly. “He was out, too. I saw him leaving the stables. When I brought the dogs in to pen them … that’s when I found the body.” She sagged against Margaret’s narrow chest.

Lily and I had heard noises that night, a faint but persistent sound, like twigs and scrub rubbing against each other. She had said someone was there, but I did not believe her. Could she have heard the murderer? Had she walked in his very footsteps? It seemed that death stalked her on all sides. But—

“I wasn’t in the stables,” I said to her. “I was with you.”

“Never!” she cried, near swooning. “You were never with me!”

Margaret led her daughter out. The men tightened their circle.

The accusation in Winterbourne’s eyes scorched me with shame. How could he possibly believe that
I
was capable of murder? Laughter bubbled from my lips.

“He does not even attempt to defend himself!” Winterbourne said.

“An innocent man needs no defense.” I drew myself up and said,
“Conscious of his own purpose, such a man does not deign to manifest the wrath that righteously seethes within him.”
Into the following silence I added, “Alfieri’s ‘The Free Man.’ ”

Winterbourne hammered my face with the pistol butt.

His men pulled him off me.

“Sir, that’s too bloody to be a gentleman’s job,” one said. “Stay here while we take him to the sheriff. If you want, sir … we don’t have to reach town.”

Winterbourne hated me enough to hesitate.

“No!” I cried out.

Blows pounded my neck and shoulders. A club cut me down at the back of my knees, forcing me to the floor. While the axe kept guard, Winterbourne again beat me with his pistol.

All along, I had held back, certain I would be allowed to explain. Now, blinded by my own blood, I exploded from their hands and grabbed the axe. In my last act as a man, I yanked the head from the handle and hurled both aside lest I turn the axe on every person there.

Two of Winterbourne’s men struggled to keep him away from me. The rest attacked with a viciousness reserved for diseased vermin. Instead of subjugating me, they beat me into fury. I kicked shins, kneecaps, thighs; punched ribs and jaws. Bones snapped like castanets; I would dance to their rhythm. Seeing Winterbourne break free of his men, I scattered mine like a boy bored with his tin soldiers. I lunged. Winterbourne aimed and fired. With scalding pain, the bullet chiseled a crease into my temple.

Blackness hovered.

“Quickly, while he’s stunned!”

From behind I heard the whistle of wood. Driving back the dark, I twisted round, stopped the club on its downward swing, then charged bull-like through the circle of men. Someone had closed the windowed doors to the veranda. With a contemptuous laugh, I shielded my face, burst through the glass, and landed on the flagstones. Blood flowed heavily from my forehead and temple and now, too, from my hands, scored by glass shards.

I scrambled to my feet just as Winterbourne cried out, “The hounds!”

The first one leapt at me from the side and knocked me on my back. It snapped at my wounds and encircled my throat with its teeth. I seized its head, clapped my knees around
its rib cage, and wrenched its neck. The dog slumped to my chest. I regained my feet just as the other hounds arrived. I swung the limp body by its feet, slamming the other dogs away as they came after me again and again. The dead animal’s head battered their heads, while its dead blood mingled with mine. Soon the dogs cowered and whined at this thing that only looked like a man. I threw the hound’s body, terrifying them: years of obedience were erased in moments.

Bleeding, throbbing, reeling, I had to find shelter before I passed out. The cave was useless now. I would be too easily tracked, too easily cornered there. On buckling legs I made my way into the woods and began to cross and recross creeks and brooks and rivulets to weaken the trail and wash off my blood. My pace slowed to a stumble. Splashing my way up a large stream, I tripped, lost all strength, and collapsed. My floundering efforts to climb out of the icy water attracted the notice of a horse and rider. I waited for the pistol shot.

“Do you require help?”

A moment’s stay. I nodded, trying to recall where I had heard that voice before.

“Come out of the water. Or are you too drunk to stand?”

The Reverend Graham.

“No, I am not drunk,” I gasped. “I’ve been attacked.”

I stood halfway. Graham’s breath whistled out.

“You!” As if sharing his surprise, his horse reared. “You murdered that boy!”

Pain split my forehead, my sight darkened, and I swayed on my feet. In the distance a hound bayed. I tried to appeal to him using his religion. “I am accused falsely,” I said, “as your Jesus was.”

“That’s blasphemous.”

“Is it?”

Graham’s head dipped forward as if he were straining to see better.

“Were you really created by a man?”

I gestured, took one step, and fell back. After a long hesitation, Graham dismounted and led the horse down the embankment. The horse bucked and whinnied at my touch. Graham patted its flank and steadied it for me to mount, a giant on a child’s pony. Walking the horse out of the water, he held the very end of the reins, as if fearful of my reach. He did not know how weak I was, too feeble even to form a plan. The ache in my head drove out all thoughts, and exhaustion tried to drag me to sleep.

Right before we would leave the woods and enter the town, the reverend stopped. His thoughts were transparent: should he lead me to his church or surrender me? At last he turned toward the shadows at the rear of the parsonage.

“Thank you.”

He turned to me in openmouthed amazement. My profanity had not shocked him as much as my gratitude did. The talking dog was full of surprises.

By now we had reached a small barn, which stood on a side street; the church fronted the main avenue. He helped me down.

“I spoke with Mr. Winterbourne this afternoon,” he said.

“Winterbourne.”
The very word scratched at my ears.

“He told me that Lily was ill, that you had killed the stable boy, and that they feared you had murdered Mrs. Winterbourne’s brother as well.”

“I did not kill her brother. I did not kill the stable boy.” I could scarcely stand and had to grip the stall door for support.

Unsaddling the horse, Graham felt the animal’s trembling side.

“She’s overheated from carrying your weight. I must cool her down at once.”

Did he put his horse above me, the natural above the unnatural? I slipped to the floor, then knew nothing more.

It was not sleep that had overcome me, but my head injuries. For three days I lay unconscious. Unable to move me, Graham cared for me in the barn. What torments he must have suffered. Was I guilty or not? Could he offer the sanctuary of the church to something that may not be a man? Did sanctuary extend to the church’s outbuildings?

My criticism does him a disservice: he saved my life when I expected otherwise.

At last I awoke. I pulled off the damp cloth that covered my head, my cloak that covered my body. My first action was to check that my journal was still on my person. Graham might have searched me during those three days and read it. I think not. My words confess to such heinousness that he would have summoned Winterbourne and allowed him to kill me while I lay helpless. Did Graham grant me the dignity of privacy? Or was he simply loath to touch me?

On weak and trembling legs, I walked outside. It was late afternoon. Graham was in the church, prostrate before the altar, arms thrown outward. I cleared my throat.

“No, no,” he said, jumping up, alarmed. “You should not be in here!”