The Monster's Wife(24)

19


The jaunt from Quoy to the big house did nothing to calm her. She marched through the fields, pushing her feet into corn stubble, unmoved by the silvery green of new leaves and the melancholy calls of loons. She even stepped on a worm without feeling the familiar pinch of guilt. Wrapped in a dishcloth, clutched to her chest was Orpheus, his body stiffening. The time for clues and bodies under sheets and hands hidden in coops had passed. She was going to show Frankenstein the fruits of his sin and tell him what she thought.

She flung the kitchen door open and strode past May. All the way upstairs, past the red walls with their macabre faces and the prison corridor of birds, May followed, her voice imploring. Oona didn’t hear a word of what she said. Her ears were those of a hound that’s sighted a hare. When May tried to block her way into the music room, Oona walked round her.

In the gloom of his curtained laboratory, Frankenstein sat at his desk. Compassed round by candles, his face was strangely lit. When Oona charged in, he didn’t look up. His eyes were fixed on a picture of a naked woman in a book lying open on the escritoire. His right hand scratched a quill over the page of his journal.

She walked across the messy rug and set her bundle down in the middle of his papers. “Your crimes have come to light. The dead frogs, the hand of the girl were wicked acts indeed. To add to which, you have wreaked havoc on my Granny’s cottage and done this!” She pulled open the cloth.

The doctor looked down bemusedly. Before him lay Orpheus, ruffled belly facing the ceiling, feet splayed, head lolling near his neck, the golden eye already glazed.

“I have done this?”

May bustled up, red-cheeked. “I’m so sorry, Sir. I tried to stop her.”

He put down his quill, splattering ink on the papers beneath, on the thighs of the dead woman lying prone and open-eyed in his book. He pinched the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes. “Do not discompose yourself, May. I fancy I understand the reason. The child believes I am responsible for the death of her livestock. I may investigate nature, Oona, but pray don’t imagine that I do not value life.” He stood and brushed the bird’s feathers gently with his fingertips.

“Don’t.” Oona pushed his hand away from Orpheus.

“Oona,” said May, “I can’t credit this. Come away now!”

Oona turned, more aware than usual of how she towered over her friend. “Stop your mouth, May. I only wish to shield you, from this...this... necromancer. Dead girls in shrouds. Frogs coming to life. You do not know him for what he is.”

May’s colour faded to a sick white. “Dead girls. Have you run mad? I wish I had never admitted you here.”

“I saw her wrapped in that winding-sheet.” Oona pointed to the long table.

But the place where the body had lain was bare now, the dark wood gleaming as if nothing had ever rested upon it.

“She was laid out like a body at a wake, I swear it! I found her hand upon the shore and I put it in the chicken coop and now it’s...”

She looked from one to the other with the dizzying sense that they thought she was mad. The room blurred. May was speaking and Oona could see her lips moving, but she couldn’t hear what she was saying. The doctor opened his mouth. It was crammed with white knives, gnashing, no sound, just the rush of the burn. His face danced with coloured spots. Their red fire shot out of his mouth and through her chest, up her arm. She couldn’t breath because something was crushing her. Dark magic.

Necromancy broke her. She fell under the weight of it. The world above opened and closed - a clamshell, a nostril, a sea snail’s shy-breathing door, its black hatch underwater spewing silver bubbles soundlessly.





20


Sun spilled yellow through the windows’ fishnet, swam slowly over the pink coverlet. Embroidered with green leaves and white star flowers that mysteriously bloomed alongside pouting fruits, it looked as if it had been a deep red once and the colour had faded. It must have been soaped and slapped on rocks and sun-dried so many times that the once scarlet had bleached to a prudish blush. It was an old lady coverlet, a veteran. A kernel of oatmeal was stuck to the sheet peeking out from underneath. Oona wanted to reach out and chip it away with her thumbnail, but when she tried to move, her arm ached and her chest burned.

“You must please stay still.” A calm voice with a foreign lilt.

Her heart bucked. She tried to turn her head but a bolt of pain shot through her neck. “Please.” Her voice was a croak.

Frankenstein rested his hand on hers and she was too weak to flinch away. “You have suffered an attack. Your heart, I believe, was the culprit. Your friend says you have had many such episodes. Is this true?”

Unable to speak, Oona nodded.

“This was the worst she has witnessed.” His lips were a grave line.

Oona didn’t want to look at him. Although it took all the energy she had, she turned her head and stared at the green ovals patterning the wall. The sun shifted over them, painting slanted squares that moved constantly, illuminating one green patch before leaving it in shadow.

“It sounds like a progressive disease, a hereditary one perhaps. Did one of your parents suffer from a similar affliction?”

Instead of answering, she watched the light fall on the polished dresser, the beveled mirror and spotless ewer. How horrible it was to be weak, when she wanted to leap up and run from here as Lazarus leapt up still clad in his grave cloth.