“Your father-,” Elizabeth began, but I cut her off.
“My father is a brilliant man, but he cannot know everything. You yourself said he can be wrong.”
I felt as though a door had been cut into the air before me, and I had passed through it, never to turn back. All my life I had assumed that Father knew everything. I had wanted him to know everything. It had made me feel safe. But he’d been confident the doctors would heal Konrad-and they had not.
“We must try other means,” I said. “Extreme times call for extreme measures. We must be willing to take risks if we want to save Konrad’s life.”
“You truly think it a matter of life and death?” said Elizabeth, and I felt a stab of guilt, for I could see that she had not thought of it in such terms before-or she’d avoided doing so by sheer will. She looked scared.
“All I know is that the doctors are baffled. They are worried.”
Henry looked away uneasily toward the Jura Mountains, but Elizabeth met my gaze with grave determination.
“The Church condemned those books,” she said.
“The Church condemned Galileo for saying the sun did not revolve around the Earth. They can be wrong too.”
“The place frightens me,” she said.
Henry swallowed and looked uneasily from Elizabeth to me. “Are you so sure these forbidden books hold an answer?”
“All I know is this: If I don’t at least try, I will go mad. I can’t bear it a day longer. And I need the both of you,” I said. “Your knowledge of Latin and Greek is better than mine.”
I could see Elizabeth hesitate, and then something changed in her eyes.
“When?” she said.
“Tonight.”
“Good,” she said. “Let us meet at an hour past midnight.”
Not long after the church bells of Bellerive had tolled the hour of one, the three of us met in the hallway and made our way toward the library. Henry kept glancing about with nervous, birdlike movements, peering beyond the flickering light of our candles as though expecting something to swoop down on him. Whenever he stayed at the chateau, he complained of strange rustlings at night. And despite our constant assurances, he still believed the place to be haunted.
“I sense something,” he whispered. “I’m telling you, there’s some presence up there, I think.”
“We should tell him the truth,” Elizabeth said to me with a sidelong, mischievous wink.
“Truth about what?” squeaked Henry.
I sighed. “Cousin Theodore.”
Henry’s eyes snapped to me. “You never told me about Cousin Theodore.”
I shrugged. “He died young, and this was his favorite place to play.”
“So you’ve seen him?” demanded Henry.
“Well, part of him,” I replied. “He was, well…”
“It was a dreadful accident,” said Elizabeth solemnly, and then giggled.
“You scoundrels,” said Henry, narrowing his eyes. “You know my imagination’s excitable, but go ahead, torment me.”
“I’m sorry, Henry,” said Elizabeth, squeezing his arm affectionately.
We all fell silent as we neared and passed Konrad’s room, for we did not want to disturb him, or wake Mother, who we knew was sleeping at his bedside tonight. There was scarcely a moment of the day when my brother’s illness did not inhabit my thoughts. Passing his bedroom, I imagined him sleeping in his bed, his body fighting and fighting. A great sorrow welled up in me. I was glad of the shadows, for my eyes were moist.
We were all of us in our nightclothes, swathed in robes, for nights on the lake were sometimes cold when a northern wind brought with it a glacial chill.
“Have you ever realized,” said Henry nervously to me, gazing at the flickering portraits in the grand hallway, “what a grim bunch your ancestors were? Look at that fellow there! Have you ever seen such a grimace?”
“That’s the Frankenstein smile,” whispered Elizabeth.
“And who’s this fellow here?” Henry asked, pointing.
Looking up at the oldest of all the portraits, I felt a sudden chill. “That,” I said, “is Wilhelm Frankenstein.”
“The alchemist?” Henry whispered.
I nodded, studying the oil painting. Strange that you could pass a certain thing every day of your life and never once look properly at it. In the candlelight the portrait glowed warmly. Wilhelm still looked like a young man, and he stared just past us with a small, slightly disdainful smile on his lips. He had a secret and would not share it. He wore a black doublet with a white ruffled collar, and a black cap in the Spanish style. He stood, one slim hand upon his hip, the other holding a book upon a table, one finger keeping his place within the pages…
“We should go,” Elizabeth said, tugging at my arm.
“Yes,” I murmured, pulling my eyes away.
As we entered the moonlit library, my heart gave a terrified lurch. Father sat in a leather armchair by the window, glaring at us. But no-I exhaled. It was only shadows, shaped no doubt by my guilt, for I knew I was defying him.
Elizabeth found the shelf and once more triggered the secret latch. There was a dull thunk — louder than I remembered-and the bookcase swung inward.
“Remarkable,” breathed Henry.
“Just wait,” I told him as we all slipped inside. His reaction was satisfying indeed.
“Good Lord,” he said. “You didn’t mention the steps were quite so flimsy.”
“They’re perfectly safe,” I assured him, leading the way.
At the door, as I prepared to put my hand through the hole, I felt some of my confidence abandon me.
“Do you want me to do it this time?” Elizabeth asked.
That spurred me on. “No, no,” I said, and thrust in my arm. At once the eerie hand seized me. I battled against instinctive revulsion and this time did not fight but merely pumped the hand up and down.
Our greeting done, the door opened itself.
“And in we go,” I said with a smile.
Truly the Dark Library was well named, for it seemed to suck at our candle flames, making them pucker and smoke. I felt something new, something I had not noticed during our first visit in the middle of the day. Mingled with the mildew and mustiness, there was fear, excitement-and an unshakable sense of hungry expectation.
“Let’s get to work,” I said, bringing my light to the shelves of cracked leather tomes. “We are looking for anything on the subject of healing.”
“What a place,” Henry murmured.
We cleared space on one of the dusty tables. After gathering books, we perched on stools, spreading books all around us and passing them to and fro if we needed help translating or reading a script so spidery that it was all but invisible in the half-light of our candles.
“Here is something,” said Henry, and I eagerly looked up. “It is in Occulta Philosophia. ”
“That’s the book I pulled out on our first visit!” I said to Elizabeth. “The one by Cornelius Agrippa.”
“What have you found?” she asked Henry.
His eyes skimmed over the page, and he began to read, slowly translating from the Latin. “‘From the grand scholarship of ages past, and my own modern learning, I have created a formulation… that has great power to remedy all human suffering. And not only to remedy, but to prolong life… so that he who imbibes it will avoid all deaths but those of a violent nature, and will enjoy a multitude of years such as Methuselah.’”
“Methuselah?” I said, frowning. “I do not know the fellow.”
Elizabeth sighed. “Have you never read a Bible, Victor?”
“I can’t keep all the names straight.”
“Methuselah,” Elizabeth said, “lived a very, very long time.”
“How long?”
“Nine hundred and sixty-nine years,” Henry answered, still looking at the tome before him.
“Read on,” I said impatiently.
