It seemed hardly any time at all before Elizabeth exclaimed, “I have it here! Here is the story…” She read aloud hurriedly, and then jumped ahead until she came to what we sought. “Julius Polidori, of Wollstonekraft Alley…”
“It is not five minutes’ walk from here,” I said with a grin.
The alley stank of urine-and worse. The few shops had a defeated look about them, tattered awnings and grimy windows with dusty displays that probably hadn’t been changed for years.
“This must be the place, here,” said Henry. The windows were shuttered, but over the door hung a wooden sign. Flaking paint showed an apothecary’s mortar and pestle.
“It does not look promising,” said Elizabeth drily.
In the door was a small, dirty window, but it was too dark inside to make out much more than the shadows of shelves. The place looked all but abandoned, but when I turned the knob, the door swung open and a small bell clanged.
I entered with Henry and Elizabeth. “Good morning!” I called out.
Mingled with the fragrance of a hundred different herbs was dust and a powerful smell of cat. At one time the shop must have been more prosperous, for the shelves were of rich dark wood. On our left was an entire wall of drawers, each fancily labeled.
“Hello?” I called out again.
Henry drew open one drawer, and then another. “Empty,” he said. He looked all about him, wide eyed, perhaps recording every detail for some horrifying poem or play he would later concoct.
Directly before us was a long counter, behind which were shelves filled with elaborate mixing vessels. It did not look like anything had been mixed there in quite some time. In the middle of the shelves was a glass-paned door. I saw a flicker of light, and then a shadow growing larger.
Quite suddenly the door swung open and a man in a wheel-chair propelled himself into the shop. His legs were wizened, the fabric of his breeches loose and flapping. He seemed no more than fifty, and though his upper body was powerfully built, the man’s face had a gaunt and defeated look to it. His wig rested crookedly, and was many years out of fashion. But it was his eyes that most gave him the look of defeat. They contained not a spark of light or hope.
“How may I help you?” He seemed surprised when he saw us. No doubt he didn’t get many customers as well dressed as us in his shop-if he got any customers at all.
“You are Mr. Julius Polidori?” Elizabeth asked politely.
“I am, miss.”
The three of us glanced quickly at one another, for this fellow seemed so far from the picture conjured by Maria’s story.
A healer. A man of power who cured a little girl when all the wise men of Europe could not.
This man before us positively reeked of failure.
I felt an instinctive disdain rising in me. What kind of healer could this be? This broken person in a chair, with a crooked wig? His shop was a ruin. No doubt his clothing had not been laundered recently. He was laughable. I was tempted to turn and leave that very moment.
“Might there be some medicine you’re needing?” he asked.
“I think perhaps-,” I began with a sniff, but Elizabeth cut me off.
“Indeed there is,” she said, and gave me a warning look, for she knew how quickly my temper could flare. In that way, we were not so different. To Polidori she said, “But it is of an… unusual nature.”
He looked at us steadily, saying nothing.
I was still far from convinced that any good could come of this, but we were here now. I drew closer to the counter. “You are the same apothecary who cured the general’s girl, some years ago?”
He drew in a breath and released it with a rueful nod. “I am.”
“We have heard that you are a man of wide-ranging knowledge,” Elizabeth said. “A healer with remarkable powers.”
He actually laughed then, bitterly. “Is this some joke? Have you nothing better to do with your days?”
“No, sir,” said Henry. “I mean, no, this is not a joke and we are here with the greatest urgency.”
“We’re searching for the Elixir of Life,” Elizabeth said quietly.
Polidori stared at us with his dull eyes. “Good day to you, young sirs, and young lady,” he said curtly, and with a deft movement he swiveled his chair back toward the doorway.
“Please, sir, wait,” I said, striding forward, taking from my satchel a volume from the Dark Library and putting it on the counter. “I have here a work by Cornelius Agrippa.”
Polidori paused. He chuckled sadly and then turned around, barely glancing at the book.
“ Occulta Philosophia. Am I correct?”
I nodded, startled.
“Young sir, put it back into your satchel. Add two large stones, say good-bye, and throw it into the deepest part of the harbor.”
Henry looked over at me, confused. “Is that a spell of some sort?”
“That is advice, and the best I have to give,” said Polidori. “That book will only bring you grief.”
“Sir,” I said. “The physician Agrippa-”
“ Ma gician!” Polidori scoffed.
I persisted. “He writes of something called the Elixir-”
“Yes, yes, I know,” he said impatiently. “The Elixir of Life. He was hardly the first to dream up such a thing. There are many, many recipes for fantastical potions meant to cure all ills, perhaps even guarantee immortality. Such things are delusions, sir. They do not exist.”
“I am confused,” said Elizabeth. “I thought you yourself-”
“Yes,” he said. “There was a time when I too was seduced by such fancies and sought after them with great passion. I even created an elixir of my very own.”
“And you succeeded with that little girl,” I said.
Again he laughed. “She was cured,” he said. “But not by me. It was chance, or God’s divine power, a miracle! But it was not me.”
“Why do you say that, sir?” Henry asked.
Polidori frowned. “You know my name, yet you don’t know my full story? You have not come merely to torment me?”
I shook my head, wondering why Maria had withheld something. The honesty in all our surprised faces must have convinced Polidori, and the suspicion faded from his eyes. He sighed.
“After that girl recovered, my business flourished. People beat my door off its hinges, wanting the same medicine.” He waved a hand around his shop. “For a short while I was a wealthy man, welcomed into the finest homes in the city. But that elixir I gave the girl, the very same thing, was not reliable. Sometimes it made a patient well. Sometimes it had no effect at all. Sometimes it seemed to make a patient worse. Still, people craved it, even though I grew more and more reluctant to prepare it. Some months later there was a ship owner, Hans Marek, a man of some wealth and power in the city, whose wife was very ill. He came to me and demanded the elixir. I told him I was no longer making it. He offered me a great sum in gold, and foolishly I accepted. Marek took my elixir home, and his wife died shortly after taking it. He was so enraged that he wanted me hanged for witchcraft.” Polidori chuckled. “You see, when a medicine works, it is blessed science, and when it fails, it is witchcraft. I was brought before a magistrate, a fine and enlightened gentleman who dismissed the charges as barbaric and primitive. But he forbade me from making the elixir ever again, or practicing alchemy.”
“This magistrate,” Henry asked. “What was his name?”
The same question had been on my lips as well, and I waited anxiously for the answer.
“His name was Alphonse Frankenstein,” said the apothecary.
I felt a great pride in my father’s fairness, but when I saw that Elizabeth was about to reveal our connection, I quickly touched her hand. I did not think it wise for Polidori to know our identities, not yet anyway.
“I owe Frankenstein my life,” Polidori was saying, “what is left of it. But his ruling offered no satisfaction to Hans Marek. Several nights later I was dragged from my bed by a drunken mob, taken up to the city ramparts, and pushed.”
Elizabeth gasped.
