The Isle of Blood (The Monstrumologist #3)(80)

We arrived around three o’clock in the afternoon on a warm, bright day in late spring, when the westering sun turned the canals into ribbons of gold and the buildings lining their eastern banks shone like jewels. The sweet serenades of the gondoliers leapt from their boats and gamboled merrily after us, along every narrow lane and back alleyway, and golden light pooled in the archways of the little shops and restaurants and the balconies framed in wrought iron overlooking the water.

Ah, Venice! You recline like a beautiful woman in her lover’s arms, bare-armed and free of care, your beating heart filled with light undefiled. I wished we could have remained nestled in your dewy bosom sixty times six hours. A boy wanders in a dry land of dust and bones, of bleached, broken rocks and the grinding of the wind in a waterless season. The lamentation of the arid earth, the anguish of the bonesbe delaydust and the broken rocks gnawed by the hot wind; this has been his home, this his inheritance… and then the boy turns round. He turns round and beholds Venice singing in golden light, and he is entranced, her loveliness all the more heartbreaking for what he has inherited.

The monstrumologist seemed to know every byway and backwater of this floating city, to be familiar with every tiny shop and sidewalk café. “I spent a summer or two here during my European period,” was how he put it. Perhaps he was reverting to his days as an aspiring poet; it sounded like something an artist might say of himself, ‘my European period.’ We ate an early dinner at a café in the Piazzetta di San Marco, near the lagoon, a welcome respite after hiking for two hours in the city with no clear—or so it seemed to me—purpose or destination in mind. The doctor ordered a caffè and settled back in his chair to enjoy the mild air, and the beautiful women, who seemed so plentiful in Venice and whose careless laughter echoed between the Libreria and the Zecca like water splashing in the fountain of the piazza.

He sipped his espresso and allowed his eye to roam dreamily over the winsome landscape, his gaze as languid as the water of the Canalasso.

“Here is the trouble with Venice,” he said. “Once you have seen it, every other place seems dull and tired by comparison, so you are always reminded of where you are not.” His eye was drawn to two comely young ladies walking arm in arm along the Molo, where the sun sparked and spat bright flashes of gold upon the blue water. “The same is true about nearly everything else Venetian.”

He stroked his new whiskers thoughtfully. “Monstrumology, too. In a different way. You’ve been with me long enough, Will Henry; you must know what I mean. Would not life seem terribly… well, boring, without it? I am not saying it has always been enjoyable or even pleasant for you, but can you imagine how mundane and interminably gray life would be if you had to give it up?”

“I have imagined it, sir.”

He looked closely at me. “And?”

“I was… I had my chance to…” I could not look at him. “I lived with Dr. von Helrung’s niece while you were gone—Mrs. Bates—and she offered to adopt me—”

“Adopt you!” He seemed astounded. “For what?”

My face felt warm. “For my own good, I think.”

He snorted, saw my wounded expression, set down his cup, and said, “And you said no.”

“My place is with you, Dr. Warthrop.”

He nodded. What did that nod mean? He agreed my place was with him? Or was he merely assenting to my decision regardless of his own opinion? He did not say, and I dared not ask.

“I was there, you know,” he said. “On the night you were born. Your mother was staying in one of the guest rooms—a matter of convenience. My convenience, I mean. I had just received a fresh specimen and required your father’s assistance in the dissection. We were in the basement when your mother went into labor two floors above us, so we did not hear her cries until we came upstairs several hours later. James rushed up, came back down again, and then dragged me to her bedside.”

I stared at him in disbelief. “I was born at Harrington Lane?”

“Yes. Your parents never told you?”

I shook my head. It wasn’t something I would have asked them. “And you delivered me?”

“Did I say that? What did I just say? I said I was dragged to your bedside by your agitated father. As I recall, your mother’s words were, ‘Do not let that man come near me!’” He chuckled. “I had the impression your mother did not like me very much.”

“She told Father your work would kill him one day.”

“Did she? Hmmm. A prescient remark, though the prediction came true in a roundabout way.” He stroked the whiskers on his chin and regarded the statue of Saint Theodore slaying the dragon atop the granite column nearby.

“Did you, Dr. Warthrop?”

“Did I what?”

“Deliver me.”

“I am not a midwife, Will Henry. Neither am I a physician. I know how to kill things, cut things up, and preserve things. How do you suppose that qualifies me to bring life into the world?” He would not look at me, though, and I found it very hard to look at him. He crossed his legs and clasped his hands over his upraised knee, the delicate fingers interlaced. Were those the first hands that had held me? Were those the eyes that first saw me and the eyes that I first saw? It was a dizzying thought for reasons I could not articulate.