The Isle of Blood (27 page)

I started into the hall. He called me back.

“You are a slave,” he said. “Or you must think you are, not to be asking for your pay. Here,” he added gruffly, shoving two crumpled dollar bills across the desk.

“Professor Ainesworth—”

“Take it! Don’t be a fool when it comes to money, Will Henry. Be a fool about everything else—religion, politics, love—but never be a fool about money. That bit of wisdom is your bonus for your long
minutes
of heavy toil!”

“Thank you, Professor Ainesworth.”

“Shut up. Go. Wait. Why the devil are you going again?”

“To save the doctor.”

“Save him from what?”

“Whatever he needs saving from. I’m his apprentice.”

As I packed my things that evening, Lilly approached me with her request. Oh, very well, I shall admit it: It wasn’t a request.

“I am going with you.”

I did not choose the answer von Helrung had given me. I was tired and anxious, my nerves were shot, and the last thing I wanted was a row.

“Your mother won’t let you.”

“Mother says she won’t let
you
.”

“The difference is that she isn’t my mother.”

“She’s already been to Uncle, you know. I’ve never seen her so angry. I thought her head might burst—literally burst and roll off her shoulders. I’m very curious to see what happens.”

“I don’t think her head will burst.”

“No, I meant with you. I’ve never known her not to get her way.”

She flopped onto the bed and watched me shove clothing into my little bag. Her frank stare unnerved me. It always did.

“How did you find him?” she asked.

“Another monstrumologist found him.”

“How?”

“I—I am not sure.”

She laughed—spring rain upon the dry earth. “I don’t know why you lie, William James Henry. You’re very bad at it.”

“The doctor says lying is the worst kind of buffoonery.”

“Then, you are the worst kind of buffoon.”

I laughed. It brought me up short. I could not remember the last time I had laughed. It felt good to laugh. And good to see her eyes and smell the jasmine in her hair. I had the impulse to kiss her. I’d never experienced that particular urge before, and the feeling was not unlike standing on the edge of an abyss of an entirely different sort. This was no knot in my chest unwinding; this was the air itself, the whole atmosphere, expanding at speeds unimaginable. I didn’t know quite what to do about it all—except perhaps to kiss her, but actually kissing Lilly Bates entailed… well,
kissing
her.

“Will you miss me?” she asked.

“I will try.”

She found my answer to be extraordinarily witty. She rolled onto her back and howled with laughter. I blushed, not knowing whether to be flattered or offended.

“Oh!” she cried, sitting up and digging into her purse. “I nearly forgot! Here, I have something for you.”

It was her photograph. Her smile was slightly unnatural, I thought, though I liked her hair. It had been styled into corkscrew ringlets, which more than made up for the smile.

“Well, what do you think? It’s for luck, and for when you get lonely. You’ve never told me, but I think you are lonely a great deal of the time.”

I might have argued; bickering was our normal mode of discourse. But I was leaving, and she had just given me her photograph, and a moment before I’d thought of kissing her, so I thanked her for the present and went on with my packing—that is, rearranging what was already packed. Sometimes, when Lilly was around me, I felt like an actor who did not know what to do with his hands.

“Write me,” she said.

“What?”

“A letter, a postcard, a telegram… write to me while you’re away.”

“All right,” I said.

“Liar.”

“I promise, Lilly. I will write to you.”

“Write me a poem.”

“A poem?”

“Well, it doesn’t have to be a poem, I suppose.”

“That’s good.”

“Why is that good? You don’t want to write a poem?” She was pouting.

“I’ve just never written one. The doctor has. The doctor was a poet before he became a monstrumologist. I bet you didn’t know that.”

“I bet you didn’t know I did know that. I’ve even read some of his poems.”

“Now #82 the liar. The doctor said he burned them all.”

Being caught in a lie did not faze Lillian Bates. She simply moved on, remorseless. “Why did he do that?”

“He said they weren’t very good.”

“Oh, that’s nonsense.” She was laughing again. “If one burned every bad poem that’s been written, the smoke would blot out the sun for a week.”

She watched as I tugged my hat from the top shelf of the closet. Watched as I turned it in my hands. Watched my face as I ran my finger over the stitching on the inside band: W.J.H.

“What is it?” she asked.

“It’s my hat.”

“Well, I can see it’s a hat! It looks too small for you.”

“No,” I said. I stuffed the hat into my bag. It had been his first—no, his
only
—gift to me. I was determined never to misplace it.

“It fits,” I said.

I had the dream that night—my last night in New York and the last night I would have it.

The Locked Room. Adolphus fumbling with his keys.

The doctor said you’d want to see this
.

The box on the table and the lid that won’t come off.

I can’t open it
.

The box trembles. It mimics the beat of my heart. What is in the box?

Thickheaded boy! You know what it is. You’ve always known what’s in the box. It isn’t what’s
inside
he wanted you to see: It’s the
box!

I pick it up. The box trembles in my hand. It beats in time with my heart. I’d been wrong; it was not the doctor’s. It belonged to me.

I was not down for breakfast promptly at six the next morning. Mrs. Bates came up to check on me; I heard her hurrying up the stairs, and then the bedroom door burst open and she stood gasping in the doorway. I noticed she was holding an envelope.

“William! Oh, thank God. I thought you had left.”

“I wouldn’t leave without saying good-bye, Mrs. Bates. That wouldn’t be proper.”

She beamed. “No! No, it most certainly would not. And here you are, and here is your bag with all your things, and I suppose you have not changed your mind?”

I told her that I had not. An awkward silence came between us.

“Well,” I said finally, and cleared my throat. “I’d better go.”

“You must say good-bye to Mr. Bates,” she instructed me. “And thank him for all he’s done.”

“Yes, ma’am8221;

“And, forgive me, William, but really, you must think I’ve gone mad if you think you’re leaving this house with your hair looking like that.”

She found the comb beside the washbasin and ran it through my hair several times. She did not seem pleased with the outcome.

“Do you have a hat?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

I dug into my bag for the hat with my initials. I heard what sounded like the soft cry of a wounded animal and looked over at her.

“William, I must apologize,” she said. “I do not have a bon voyage present for you, but, I will say in my defense, I had hardly any notice that you were leaving. It was literally
sprung
on me at the last moment.”

“You don’t need to give me anything, Mrs. Bates.”

“It is… customary, William.”

She sat on the bed. I remained standing beside my little bag, turning the hat in my hands. She was tapping the envelope upon her lap.

“Unless you would consider this a gift,” she said, nodding to the envelope.

“What is it?”

“It is a letter of acceptance to Exeter Academy, one of the most prestigious preparatory schools in the country, William. Mr. Bates is an alumnus; he arranged it for you.”

“Arranged what?”

“Your acceptance! For the fall term.”

I shook my head; I didn’t understand. The hat turned; the envelope tapped.

“Stay with us,” she said. And then, as if she were correcting herself, “Stay with me. I know it may be too soon to call you ‘son,’ but if you stay, I promise I will love you as my son. I will protect you; I will keep you safe; I will let no harm come to you.”

I sat beside her. My hat in my hands, the envelope in her lap, and the absent man between us.

“My place is with the doctor.”

“Your place! William, your place is wherever the good Lord decides it is. Have you thought of that? In life there are the silly gifts we give one another and there are the
real
gifts, the gifts beyond all temporal value. It is no accident of circumstance that you’ve come to me. It is the will of God. I believe that. I believe that with all my heart.”

“If it’s God’s will,” I said, “wouldn’t he make sure I
couldn’t
leave?”

“You’re forgetting his greatest gift, William. That gift does not imprison; it frees. I could refuse to let you go. I could hire a lawyer, report the matter to the police. I could truss you up like a turkey and lock you in this room, but I will not. I will not force you to stay. I am asking you to stay. If you like, William, I will fall on my knees and beg you.”

Mrs. Bates began to cry. She cried like she did everything else, with great dignity; there was a stateliness about her tears, a grandness that transcended the mundane—
operatic
, I would call them, and I mean that in the best sense of the word.

I looked down at the hat. A
silly
gift, she had called it. Perhaps it was silly compared to the ultimate gift. What gift would not be? And perhaps
I
was silly to feel any attachment to it or to the man who had given it to me.
Little good can come of this, Will Henry
. I looked at the spot where my finger should have been. That was nothing, the smallest of losses. In the warm kitchen a woman bakes her little boy an apple pie. A man lies upon the floor, spreads his arms, and transforms himself into a ship of a thousand sails.

And in the arena are two identical doors
…

She reached out and laid her hand upon my cheek. She knew. She never doubted, in the spot where doubt matters, which door I would choose.

“And?”

Jacob Torrance filled the majority of his time during the six-day crossing with three things: carousing, philandering, and poker—in that order, with the occasional argument with Dr. von Helrung thrown in to break up the monotony. I suppose he slept a bit as well, but he did not share my state-room. I bunked with the old Austrian monstrumologist, who, I quickly discovered, shed most of his dignity when he put on his nightshirt (he was quite bandy-legged and a little potbellied), though that is true of almost everyone.

I missed one or two of their opening skirmishes. Hardly had Lady Liberty slipped beneath the horizon than I came down with a horrible case of mal de mer, the bane of land-lubbers, forcing me to become more intimately acquainted with a toilet than any person ought to be. Von Helrung put me to bed, gave me some salt crackers, and suggested, very seriously, that the best cure for seasickness was dancing.

“No, it’s olives,” countered Torrance. “Or gingerroot. You should gnaw on a root, Mr. Henry.”

“On every voyage my wife would suffer the same as Will,” von Helrung returned. “We would go dancing, and all would be fine.”

“So you would like to take Will dancing?”

“It makes more sense for him to dance than to gnaw on a root.”

“Maybe he should do both—gnaw on a root while he danced.”

“I’d rather not dance or eat,” I croaked. “Ever again.”

On the second day I was feeling a little better—well enough to try out my sea legs, anyway, and left the stateroom to explore the liner. After an hour of wandering the labyrinthine corridors and miles of decks, I discovered von Helrung and Torrance on the upper promenade, sitting in rocking chairs, the ever-present tumbler of Scotch by Torrance’s elbow. He had an annoying habit of smoothing his perfectly trimmed mustache after every sip.

“… not consistent. Not consistent at all, Jacob,” von Helrung was scolding his former student as I approached. So engrossed were they in the debate that my presence at first went unnoticed.