Her Majesty's Necromancer (The Ministry of Curiosities #2)(39)

One day, he would hopefully trust me enough to take care of myself alone at night in the streets, but for now it was enough that he accepted that I could do so in broad daylight with lots of people milling about.

He probably wouldn't have let me go if he had known someone had followed me the other day, however.





CHAPTER 9


Lincoln was out all night and hadn't returned by the time I left the house in the morning. I paused as I passed through the Lichfield gate, looked left and right, then continued on when I saw no one about. I caught an omnibus into the city, then another over the bridge. I felt terribly conspicuous in my new cloak, among the women wearing practical woolen ones, but by the time I alighted in The Borough, I no longer cared. Indeed, I felt rather grand and important. A gentleman even gave up his seat for me and another doffed his hat.

Although I kept alert, I was quite sure I hadn't been followed when I arrived in Bermondsey. The orphanage was small compared to those I'd visited in the north of the city, and unhappy faces peered down at me from second floor windows. They must think me a well-to-do lady in my cloak, and I regretted wearing it again. I wasn't a lady; I was just like them. Or I had been once, as a baby, and then again at thirteen when Anselm Holloway had thrown me out of his home. While I'd chosen to live on the street instead of taking myself to an orphanage or workhouse, I'd been friendless in the city too.

I pulled the edges of the cloak together and knocked. Thinking of past choices was never a good idea. From now on, I wanted to only look to the future.

After shouting at the elderly administrator with poor hearing, I was able to cross the Bermondsey orphanage off my list. Thanks to his excellent memory, he hadn't needed to check his records. No one by the name of Holloway had adopted a little girl eighteen years ago, nor had anyone been asking the same question in recent days.

I visited another two orphanages on the south side of London and received the same answers. Only the Brixton one had received a letter asking about my adoption. As with Mr. Hogan from the Kentish Town orphanage, the administrator couldn't recall the address he'd sent a reply to and he hadn't kept a copy of the letter. He'd claimed it had been written on plain paper bearing no monogram, and the signature had been illegible. Another dead end.

I caught a train back to the city and was about to search for an omnibus heading toward Highgate when I had another idea. I knew my father's name was Frankenstein, so perhaps my mother had listed it on my birth record. I enquired at the post office in St. Martin's Le Grand and learned that the General Register Office was only a short distance away on the Strand. It was located in the North Wing of Somerset House, an imposing building that was more like a palace with an air of stuffy authority about it. I waited for my turn to be called to a desk where a snowy-haired man with a pointed beard peered over his spectacles at me.

He asked me to write down my name and Frankenstein's on a form then passed the form on to a younger man. The poor fellow was already laden with forms and documents, and I was afraid that even one more might see the lot toppling.

"Wait a moment," I called out to him as he went to walk on.

He blinked at me then at the snowy haired man. "What is it?" asked the older man at the desk in a bored monotone. "We're very busy."

"I'd like to make an enquiry about one more birth." I smiled my sweetest smile at them both. The younger man moved closer and returned my smile. The older one grunted, but he handed me a blank form to complete. I entered Lincoln's name in the space left for the baby's name section before I lost my nerve. I handed it directly to the assistant and laid a hand on his wrist. "Thank you so much, sir. I appreciate you waiting for me."

"It could take a little while," said the older fellow.

"Oh."

"Yours are at the top, miss," said the younger man. He winked at me and headed off.

I sat with several other people who were also waiting and instantly regretted my hasty decision to inquire after Lincoln's birth. It had been made on a whim, and not one I felt proud of now that I'd had time to think about it. He would hate me going behind his back again. I hated myself. I resolved not to look at the response.

I had to wait only half an hour before the young assistant came looking for me. He smiled and fiddled with his tie, but I had no inclination for flirting.

"What did you learn?" I asked.

He spread out his hands in front of him. They were empty. "Nothing, I'm afraid. There are no births registered under the name of Frankenstein."

I smiled through my disappointment, but it felt forced, and he seemed to know it too. His own smile slipped. "I'm not interested in the other matter anymore," I told him as I rose. "Whatever you learned you may keep to yourself."

His face brightened. "That's a relief because I learned nothing anyway. There were no babies named Lincoln Fitzroy born in the last fifty years."

I left the registry office and walked along the Strand in a daze. It wasn't the lack of information on my own birth that confused me, since I suspected my mother was trying to keep Frankenstein from me and, as such, wouldn't have recorded his name on the birth entry. But not finding a record of Lincoln was a little more surprising. I'd assumed his parents were poor and couldn't keep him. If that were the case, there should still be a record of him.

I dismissed any further questions I had on the matter. I was glad to have learned nothing useful from my thoughtlessness. The sickening sensation I'd felt in my gut ever since sending the fellow off with the inquiry began to ease.