With tongs Polidori carefully placed the chisels on the table to which my arm was strapped.
“Are you ready to begin?” he asked me. I found his calm confidence reassuring.
I tried to say yes, but my throat was so dry that not even a croak came from it. I simply nodded.
“Now, you will need this for the pain.” He handed me a glass filled nearly to the brim with amber liquid. I did not attempt to be brave; I downed the fiery substance in two swallows. My vision doubled, but I felt a reckless numbness sweep through me.
I think I started to laugh, quite beside myself. “Don’t watch, Henry. It won’t be pleasant.” I waved my free hand. “There is probably some book to interest you here.”
“I will stay at your side,” he said, and pulled a stool closer.
“Thank you, Henry,” I said. “You are a true friend.”
“Grip my hand if it helps the pain. As tight as you like.”
I wiggled my soon to be amputated fingers. “‘Close at hand,’” I said to Polidori. “That was what you said earlier. Was that a joke?”
“I did not realize it,” the alchemist said with a small smile.
I looked down at my fingers. I did not really believe I was about to lose them, for my mind kept veering away from the idea, refusing to let me comprehend it completely. But:
They would be gone.
Suddenly I felt a greedy animal fear keen within me. I could not be brave much longer.
“Do it!” I cried. “Do it now!”
“Young miss, if you would make sure the site is kept clean.”
Elizabeth sat down on a small stool, her back to me, and I was very grateful she blocked my view. I felt my smallest finger separated from its fellows by a large wooden peg-splayed off to one side to make it easier for my surgeon.
“I will be quick,” Polidori promised.
I felt the brief, light touch of a chisel’s edge against the place where my fifth finger met my hand. Then the instrument was lifted away.
“No, the narrower one, I think, please,” Polidori told Elizabeth.
A second cold chisel was placed against my hand, its pressure firmer and sharper this time, testing. I caught a glimpse of Polidori’s arm raised high with the mallet, and I clenched my eyes shut. What followed was a blow that seemed to travel through every bone and ligament of my body, to the very roots of my teeth.
There was no pain, not one bit-not yet.
“Please staunch the flow of blood,” I heard the alchemist tell Elizabeth, “while I proceed with the second finger.”
Dimly I felt the wooden peg separate my fourth finger from the others, felt a chisel tap once more against my flesh. I scarcely felt the blow that severed my finger forever from my body.
“It is done,” said Polidori And then came the pain, twin lightning bolts coursing through my missing fingers, my wrist, and up my arm.
I cried out. I do not know what I uttered, only that noise and curses came in a torrent from my mouth, and my body arched. I was vaguely aware of Polidori saying to Henry:
“Bring me the poker from the fire, please.”
Time was not making sense anymore, for almost immediately Henry stood there with a metal rod, three inches of its tip glowing orange, making my friend look altogether devilish. Light-headed, I managed to croak:
“What is that for?”
Huge thudding pain pulsed in my hand, in sync with my racing heartbeat. I imagined all my blood pumping out through the twin wounds, and my vision swam.
“We must cauterize the wounds, young master,” Polidori said. “To stop the bleeding and prevent infection.”
I caught sight of Henry glimpsing my hand, and saw his face lose all its color.
Swiftly Polidori took the poker. “Remove the cotton,” he told Elizabeth. She turned to me. Her face was drawn, but she gave a valiant smile. She put her hands on my shoulders, pressed her cheek against mine.
“It’s almost over,” she whispered, and then came a searing pain so overwhelming that it bundled me up inside it and tumbled me over and over into darkness.
When I regained consciousness, Elizabeth was standing over me, mopping my forehead with a cool cloth. I just stared at her, and thought her the most beautiful thing in all the wide world. If only I could be allowed to stare at her like this, I would be a happy man.
“He’s awake!” she said, and I realized Henry was standing at my other side, looking at me with concern.
“How long?” I croaked.
“Two hours,” she said, and leaned forward and kissed my forehead. “Thank God, thank God.”
Her hair fell around me, and her scent embraced me, but it wasn’t enough to ward off the pain. It came with a fury, a hot rhythmic anvil pounding.
“How’s my hand?” I asked.
“It was well done,” said Elizabeth, nodding as though to reassure herself as much as me. “Very clean and quick. And the bleeding has all but stopped.”
She stepped to one side so I could look down at my hand. Bandages bound my palm, wrapped round and round the place where my fourth and fifth fingers had once been. I wiggled my remaining three fingers, just to assure myself that they were still attached. It did not look so very odd. One would scarcely notice. But for a moment I imagined Mother’s heartbroken face when she next beheld me, and tears welled up in my eyes.
“What have I done?” I whispered. “Dear God…”
“You have done the bravest thing I’ve ever seen, my friend,” said Henry fervently.
“Indeed you have,” said Elizabeth.
I tore my gaze from my forever crippled hand and saw, across the cellar, Polidori hunched industriously over a worktable.
I tried to sit up, and a wave of queasiness crested over me.
“Slowly does it,” said Henry, taking hold of my left arm to steady me. “You lost a good deal of blood.”
“Did I?” I asked Elizabeth.
“Not so very much,” she said, and narrowed her eyes at Henry. “It looked more than it was.”
I swung my legs over the side of the table, paused to let my stomach settle, and then stood. The floor seemed a very great distance away. It took me several moments to catch my breath. Henry and Elizabeth each took an arm. I shuffled over to Polidori.
“How goes it with the elixir?”
He did not look up from his work. “Young master, you’d be better off resting comfortably. Your body has suffered quite an insult, and you might not enjoy seeing my work.”
I saw it. I heard Henry’s swallow. My two severed fingers rested on a metal tray. The skin and tissue and muscle had already been removed from one of them, leaving only the bones themselves. There was a good amount of blood and pulpy matter.
“I will not watch,” said Henry. He crossed the room and sat at Polidori’s paper-strewn desk.
Elizabeth and I remained. She pulled a stool over for me, and helped me sit upon it, for I was still very weak and shaky.
It was horrible yet strangely fascinating to watch Polidori as he picked up a short brutal-looking instrument and sawed through one of the bones. Then, with an ingeniously thin, hooked pick, he started to extract the marrow and deposit it in a small vial that rested within a larger flask filled with ice.
“It is important the marrow be kept cold,” he murmured as he worked.
“Why?” I asked.
“To prolong the life of the animating spirit that dwells within it,” he replied. “Of all human marvels, it is believed that the greatest healing properties lie within the marrow.”
It sounded most strange and wondrous to me-but not so very different from Dr. Murnau’s pronouncements on human blood, and the many cells that lived within it.
“How many doses will it yield?” I asked. “How shall we administer it to my brother?”
“It will be just one dose,” said Polidori, “and must all be taken at once, by mouth.”
