The passageway turned to the right and opened up into another cavern. Elizabeth called out excitedly, “An ibex, look! When did ibexes last live in Geneva?”
“Is that a bear?” Henry said.
“Must be,” I remarked, “though I’ve never seen one so big. Look at it there, compared to the bull! What a monster!”
A short tunnel led out from this cavern into a series of narrow vaulted galleries. We walked through them, sometimes awed into silence, other times excitedly calling out the new animals we saw in this underground bestiary. One gallery was filled with brown stags. In another knelt a strange horse with a horn growing from its forehead. Crouching beneath it was some kind of tiger, ready to pounce and kill, with two great teeth curving from its upper jaw. And beside the tiger was something I’d not seen before now.
“A handprint,” I said. It was red, made with paint-or perhaps blood.
“Is it like a signature, do you think?” Elizabeth said. “An artist taking credit for his work?”
Instinctively I went and placed my spread fingers against it. The print dwarfed my own hand.
“They were bigger than us,” I said.
Klaus was looking ill at ease, his eyes straying into the darkness, as though half expecting someone or something to emerge.
“There are more here,” said Henry, swinging his lantern to a stretch of wall where there were numerous handprints, of all different sizes.
“‘This is us,’” Elizabeth murmured.
I looked at her strangely. “What do you mean?”
“The handprints-it’s like a way of saying, ‘Here we are. This is us.’ Maybe it showed how many people lived in their family, or clan, or whatever it was. A family portrait.”
“Why didn’t they just draw pictures of themselves?” Henry asked. “They were obviously excellent artists. Doesn’t it seem strange they wouldn’t have done any people?”
“It does indeed,” said Father, “especially when they had language, too.”
“Language?” I looked at him, startled. “How do you know that?”
Eagerly he waved me closer with his hand and showed me, in the flicker of his lantern, a long string of curious geometric markings.
“Surely these are words of some kind,” he said, “though in an alphabet I’ve never seen.”
I had seen some strange scribblings in alchemical tomes, but these were altogether more primitive.
“They’re nothing like Egyptian hieroglyphs,” I murmured.
“No,” said Father, “and yet the longer I look at them, the more variety I see.”
“You’re right,” I said. “There seems an infinite number of ways they’ve arranged the lines and dots.”
He placed a hand upon my shoulder, gave me a squeeze and a smile. It felt good to be together like this, talking and sleuthing. I hadn’t felt this close to him for a long time, and in the coldness of the cave, I felt the warmth of his large hand all the more.
“Passage branches up ahead,” Klaus said.
“Then we must stop here,” Father said. “We’re not equipped for a proper exploration, and I won’t risk getting lost.”
“Do you think Wilhelm Frankenstein knew about the caves?” I asked.
“Most probably. He would’ve discovered them when he laid the chateau’s foundations. And no doubt it was he who built the false well to conceal them.”
“But why would he keep them hidden?” Elizabeth wondered. “They’re so wonderful.”
“He was a mysterious and secretive man,” my father said. “I don’t think we’ll ever know the extent of it, or what happened to him.” He regarded us more sternly now. “You’re not to go exploring alone. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” I said, and I truly meant it. Despite the caves’ appeal, my thoughts were fixed on different matters.
“Good,” Father said. “The last time you went caving, you nearly perished. Your mother could not endure any more trauma at the moment.”
“You won’t seal all this up, will you?” I asked.
He looked at me carefully a moment, as if trying to gauge my trustworthiness. “I mean to send word to a historian acquaintance of mine at the university. He’ll be most interested to see all this, and I’m sure he’ll have a better idea of its origins than we do.”
“Where’s Mother?” I asked at lunch, for I was eager to tell her about the caves.
“She won’t be joining us,” my father said.
“Is she unwell?” Elizabeth asked with concern.
I watched Father, waiting for his answer.
“No, she’s not ill, just tired.” But his leonine head seemed to sag upon his broad shoulders. How had I not noticed until now? “During the past weeks, since the funeral, she’s been very strong for all of us, but now she needs her rest.” He tried to smile reassuringly. “You’re not to worry. It’s not uncommon after a great sadness. All she needs is time, and she’ll be up and about again.”
The food set out before us suddenly lost its appeal. I felt ashamed of myself. Elizabeth had been right when she’d said I was blind to any but my own suffering. I wondered if my mother’s frantic pace had been her way of escaping grief-but grief was the swifter, and had overtaken her in the end. And I wondered if there were some way I could vanquish her grief. What if it were in my power?
“Perhaps, sir,” Henry began awkwardly, “this is not the best time for me to stay.”
Father shook his head. “No, no, Henry. You’re like family to us, and we’ll miss you sorely when you go on your trip. Until then, stay. Your presence brings light into our house.”
“That’s very generous,” said Henry, looking uneasy, and I wondered if he, like me, was thinking of what we planned to do tonight, in darkness.
After the church bells in Bellerive struck one, first Henry and then Elizabeth joined me in my bedchamber, fully clothed like myself.
By the light of a single candle, I took from the locked drawer in my desk the spirit clock and the green flask of elixir.
“Are you ready?” I said.
Elizabeth was staring at the green flask, chewing on her lower lip. I thought she might be shivering.
“Have you chosen a talisman?” I asked her.
From her wrist she carefully pulled a bracelet made of tightly coiled hair. “It’s from my mother. After she died, my father cut some and had this fashioned for me. It’s one of the only things of hers I have.”
I knew this was a common enough practice, making keepsakes out of the departed’s hair, but I still found something rather ghoulish about it.
Henry cleared his throat. “I would just, at this point, like to make one final-probably doomed-plea for reason. I urge you not to do this.”
“Thank you for that, Henry,” I said. I looked at Elizabeth. “You don’t have to do this.”
“I’m not afraid,” she said, “if that’s what you think.”
“I never think you’re afraid,” I told her. “You’re the bravest person I know. But I also know you think this is a-”
“What I think is that we’ll both hallucinate and prove this is all nonsense. And that will put a stop to it. But if you’re right, well… then I’ll be proved right as well.”
“How’s that?” I asked, confused.
“If there’s a world beyond our own, a life after death, that means there’s also a God.”
“Does one have to follow upon the other?” I asked.
“You two, please,” said Henry, “not another riveting theological debate right now.”
“So that’s the only reason you’re coming?” I said mockingly. “To make a believer of me?”
She couldn’t help smiling. “To save your miserable little soul, that’s right.”
“Nothing to do with Konrad whatsoever?” I inquired. “Just pass me the elixir.”
