The Madman’s Daughter

I pulled the pins out of my hair and raked my fingers through it, hoping for some semblance of sanity. ‘Balthazar? That beast has a name?’

‘He’s my associate. Don’t let his appearance frighten you.’

The word associate made me hesitate. Montgomery wasn’t even twenty yet, barely old enough to be anyone’s associate himself.

He sat on a footstool and rested his elbows on his knees, peering at me with that same seriousness he’d had as a boy. It struck me, with a rush of blood to my cheeks, that he had become extremely handsome. I looked away quickly, before he could see my thoughts reflected in my face.

‘I didn’t expect to find you here,’ I said.

Something like a smile played on the corner of his mouth. ‘It’s a coincidence that you were breaking into my room?’

‘No.’ My face burned. Words weren’t coming out right. My mind still couldn’t comprehend that he was actually sitting here, an arm’s length away, grown into a handsome young man. I wondered how I looked to him, and if I was much changed from the sullen little girl he used to push around the courtyard in our wheelbarrow in an effort to make her smile.

My bag rested on the dresser next to the parrot’s cage. I loosened the string and took out the folded diagram from between the Bible’s pages. I handed it to him, but he gave it only a glance, as if he didn’t even need to look at it.

‘You’ve seen that before,’ I concluded.

‘Yes.’ His features grew serious again. ‘It belongs to me. At least, it did. I acquired it from an old colleague of your father’s, but it was stolen two weeks ago with other documents. So you see why Balthazar reacted as he did. He thought you were a thief.’ He unfolded the paper and raised an eyebrow. ‘The blood spatters are new.’

My face turned red. How could I explain what had happened? I still felt the weight of the ax in my hand, remembered the frightened look on the boys’ faces. Like them, Montgomery would think I’d gone mad. He sat here in his well-tailored clothes, a servant at his call, crates of expensive items around him. The scandal obviously hadn’t brought his life crashing down. He’d changed from a servant to a gentleman, and I’d done exactly the opposite. I must look terribly pathetic to him. And the small scrap of pride I had wouldn’t let Montgomery think me lacking.

I stood. ‘I should go. This was a mistake.’

‘Wait, Juliet.’ Montgomery held my arm. For a second, his eyes flashed over my dress, my face. He swallowed. ‘Miss Moreau, I should say. I haven’t seen you in six years, and now I find you breaking into my room.’ A muscle clenched in his jaw. ‘You owe me an explanation.’

He’d been our servant, I told myself. I didn’t owe him anything. But that was a lie. Montgomery and I were bound together by our past. This was the boy who had secretly taught me biology because my father wouldn’t. Who’d told me fairy tales late at night to distract me from the screams coming from the laboratory.

I sank back down, not sure how to act around him. His blue eyes glowed in the hazy light from the window. He moved the tea tray to a side table and poured me a cup, adding two lumps of sugar, then breaking a third in half with a spoon, crushing it, and stirring it in slowly – the peculiar way I used to prepare my tea when I was a little girl. I was so oddly touched that he remembered that I didn’t tell him I’d given up sugar in my tea long ago. As I took the cup, his rough fingers grazed mine and I bit my lip. Just the brief touch sent the muscle of my heart clenching with a longing to feel that bond with him again.

My throat felt tight, but I forced out words. ‘I found the diagram and recognized it. I thought, maybe, it meant Father was here. Alive.’ Spoken, it sounded even more foolish. I braced myself for his laughter.

But he didn’t laugh. He didn’t even flinch. ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you,’ he said softly. ‘It’s only Balthazar and myself.’

I took a sip of the tea, which had grown cold, but its sweetness replaced the chloroform’s lingering tang. I wondered what Montgomery thought of me, showing up here, looking for a dead man. Father’s death had never been confirmed – just assumed. I think the world wanted him dead, or simply forgotten.

But a girl couldn’t just forget her father.

‘Do you know what happened to him?’ I asked. I wanted to ask if Montgomery believed the rumors, but the words wouldn’t come. I was frightened of what his answer might be.

He looked toward the window, foot tapping a little too fast against the table leg. He shifted in his stiff clothes, as though his body wasn’t used to them. It struck me that a wealthy medical student wouldn’t pick so uncomfortably at his starched cuffs as Montgomery was doing. I wondered how recently he had acquired his fortune.

As if sensing my thoughts, he loosened his shirt’s collar. ‘The day he disappeared, I ran away too. I was afraid I might be accused as well, because I sometimes helped him in the laboratory. I’ve heard speculation … that he died.’

The teacup shook in my hand. I felt at the point of shattering with warring emotions. I wondered if that was what Father had felt like before he went mad – shattered. The teacup rattled more, and I set it next to the blood-spattered paper. ‘What do you even want with this?’ I nudged the dotted lines that formed a split-open rabbit. I knew it was abhorrent, but my gaze kept creeping back to the black lines, obsessively tracing the graceful arcs of the body.

‘I study medicine. I’m not a servant anymore.’ His words were pointed.

‘But this? Vivisection?’ It was hard to talk about these things with him. The corset I had worn under my Sunday dress suddenly felt too tight. I pressed my hands against my sides. I thought of that rabbit, its twitching paws, its screams. Not even science could justify what those boys had done. And I knew Montgomery, deep in my marrow. He wasn’t like them. He had a strong heart. He’d never do something he knew wasn’t right.

His foot tapped faster and his gaze drifted around the room until it settled on the parrot. His throat tightened. ‘It was among a collection of documents, that’s all.’

He’d always been a terrible liar. I studied him from the corner of my eye, wondering. His gaze darted again to the parrot on the dresser, and I stood up and started toward the cage, just wanting to look closer at its iridescent feathers as some sort of distraction from everything that was happening. Montgomery’s eyes were too real, too evocative, too familiar. I didn’t know what to do with myself around him.

But as soon as I reached for the cage, Montgomery shot up, knocking over the footstool, and beat me to the dresser. His hand closed over a small silver object next to the parrot’s cage. I blinked, uncertain, surprised by his actions.

‘What is that?’ I said quietly.

His fist clamped the object like a vise. His chest and arms were tensed. He’d always been strong. Now he was powerful.

Curiosity made me bolder. My fingers drifted away from the parrot’s cage and rested a breath above Montgomery’s closed fist. I wanted to touch his hand, feel the brush of his skin against mine, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

‘Montgomery, what is that in your hand?’

His face was broken with things unsaid. ‘Miss Moreau …’ The title sounded too formal on his lips. Juliet, I wanted him to call me.

My fingers trembled slightly. ‘Please. Tell me.’

Something changed in his face then. He seemed so grown up, but it was all an act. I knew because I’d played the same role for years. But being with him tore down that facade and left me stripped, vulnerable, just like the look on his face now.

‘Don’t be angry, Miss Moreau.’ His voice was little more than a whisper. He looked away, softly, and opened his fist. The object dropped into my palm.

A pocket watch. I turned it over in my hand. Silver, with a gouge in the glass face and an inscription on the back that had all but worn away. It didn’t matter. I knew the words by heart. Thou shalt honor thy father and thy mother. Unlike my mother, who’d maintained her devoutness even after becoming a mistress, Father had a scientist’s skeptical fascination with religion. The watch had been a gift to him from his father, a bishop of the Anglican Church. Father had little use for the Ten Commandments, but the inscription was one rule he believed in and expected me to uphold.

Father had carried this watch every single day. He’d never have left it behind. Which meant either Montgomery had stolen it, or …

Montgomery folded my hands over the watch, and his hands over mine.

‘I’m sorry. He made me swear never to tell you he was alive.’

FIVE

The pocket watch, Montgomery explained, had broken. He’d been instructed to have it repaired by a clockmaker in the city and brought to my father along with the rest of the supplies.

But I didn’t care about his explanation.

‘You lied to me,’ I said.

He dipped his head, avoiding my gaze. ‘I said I’d heard speculation that he died. That’s true enough.’

‘He’s been alive this whole time and you’ve known it.’ I sank to the bed, closing my eyes. Seeing Father’s watch had brought that wall back up, reminding me that I wasn’t a child anymore. I couldn’t afford to let my guard down, not even with Montgomery.

He turned toward the window, twisting the watch chain. ‘He thought if the world assumed him dead, they’d leave him alone.’

Father was alive and had never tried to find me – the painful realization of that betrayal ripped open the last tender stitch in my heart. ‘But I’m his daughter.’

His only response was to pour me a glass of brandy and one for himself. He, as well, had returned to the act of playing adults. He sank into the desk chair. ‘I still work for him, but no longer as a servant. I’m his assistant now. He isn’t here, if you’re wondering. He refuses to come back to England. We live on a biological station, of sorts. An island.’ He swallowed the brandy and considered the empty glass. ‘It’s very far. He wanted a private place to continue his work undisturbed. I leave every eighteen months or so for supplies.’

I set my glass down, untouched. ‘And your associate? Are all his kind like him?’

‘The islanders.’ Montgomery hunched over his glass. His hair had come loose again, veiling his face. ‘They are, yes. You needn’t fear him. He’s harmless.’

As though he’d heard himself mentioned, Balthazar came in with a fresh pot of tea on a tray. He was a monster of a man, twice my size, with hands like bludgeons. He set the tray down and daintily removed the sugar bowl’s tiny lid. Montgomery thanked and dismissed him.

He prepared my tea again with my childhood sugar ritual. The steam from my cup rose like the words of an oracle, forming a haze between us. I took a sip, hoping the tea would soothe my nerves. I tried to remember him as a child. He’d been quiet, especially about what went on in the laboratory. But Mother had been, too, as had the other servants, and all of us. None of us wanted to talk about the puddles of blood on the operating-room floor or the animals that went in and never came out or the noises that woke us in the night. Father said those were the ways of science and I shouldn’t question them. Montgomery, at least, had taken good care of the animals before they went in.

I took another sip of tea. ‘How did you find my father after so many years?’

‘Find him? I never left him. The story about running away … it wasn’t exactly like that.’ He brushed the loose strands of hair behind his ear. ‘After his colleagues made their accusations, your father knew he had to flee. He thought Australia might look upon his work more favorably. He took me with him. We found an island off the coast that suited his needs. I didn’t want to leave you and your mother, but I hadn’t a choice. I was twelve years old.’

‘And you’ve been there this whole time?’ The teacup trembled in my palm.

‘There is much you don’t know,’ he said. ‘I was just a boy.’

‘Well, you aren’t a boy anymore,’ I snapped, even though I knew that wasn’t entirely true. He dressed like a man, but he was too stiff in his clothes, too uncomfortable. He was only pretending to be a gentleman, and making a fairly poor show of it. ‘You don’t have to keep working for him. You can come back to London – he can’t return or they’ll arrest him.’

Montgomery bristled, as though the idea of returning to London was like agreeing to be locked in a cage. He didn’t want to return, I realized. The city, with all its mechanization and soot and rigid society laws, had lost its hold on him.

But he said nothing. He only jerked his chin at the pocket watch and then at last said, ‘It’s not that simple. He’s been like a father to me.’

‘He’s no father!’ I curled my fingers into the armrests, suddenly angry that my father had left me behind and raised a servant boy instead. ‘Haven’t you heard? He’s a madman.’

His face tightened. ‘He’s your father, too, Miss Moreau.’

‘Would a father abandon his wife and daughter? Mother died and I heard nothing. He left no money. I’m one step away from the streets.’ The words poured out before I could stop them. They’d been buried such a long time.

‘I’m sorry.’ His throat constricted. ‘I wish the last few years had been easier for you. If I’d been here, maybe …’

Maybe Mother wouldn’t have died? Maybe I wouldn’t be living in poverty? Maybe … what? His eyes dropped to the pit of my elbow, hidden by my sleeve. I pressed my fingers against the sensitive place, protectively.

He nodded toward it, his voice lower. ‘You still give yourself the injections?’

I drew back, clutching my arm as though the skin had been stripped back leaving the veins exposed and vulnerable. Montgomery knew things about me even Lucy didn’t know. Like my illness. I rubbed my inner elbow, thinking of the glass vials in the back of my closet at the lodging house. The ones in the embossed wooden box Annie kept asking me about. They held a treatment – a pancreatic extract – I injected into my arm once a day. If I kept to a rigid schedule, I rarely showed symptoms. The few times I’d missed a dose, I’d gotten feverish and weak. My eyes would play tricks on me, hallucinate things that weren’t there. Sometimes, in the evenings, the weakness would come anyway. Just thinking about it now made a cold sweat break out across my forehead.

Father had diagnosed the condition when I was a baby. A glycogen deficiency so rare it didn’t have a name. I would have died if he hadn’t discovered the cure. Now, I’d slip into a coma if I ever missed more than a few weeks’ treatment.

I hesitated. Speaking of my illness made me feel exposed. It was just one more thing linking me to my mad father. But this – this was new. Montgomery already knew everything about my illness. It was an unfamiliar and comforting thought to know I didn’t have to hide from him.

I nodded slightly.

He leaned forward with concern. ‘And you haven’t had any symptoms?’ He reached out to take my wrist, but I jerked away. There was a limit to how much I’d share, even with Montgomery. ‘I study medicine,’ he said. ‘Please. Let me see.’

I thought of the game those medical students had made up as an excuse to touch every bone in Lucy’s body. Montgomery had given me anatomy lessons, but not like that. He would have been as uncomfortable with that lurid game as I’d been. Cautiously, I laid my white palm in the cradle of his tanned hand. He rolled up my sleeve, then brushed a finger against the sensitive skin of my inner elbow. My breath caught. I was alone in a young man’s room, letting him touch me in places he shouldn’t even see. But he wasn’t just any young man – he was Montgomery. His touch sent my mind whirling. My body was already leaning forward, drawn toward his presence uncontrollably, before my thoughts could catch up.

‘Good,’ he muttered, and I came back to the present, blushing wildly. His finger still rested against my arm, rubbing absently, burning a hole in my skin. ‘Have you had trouble getting enough of the treatment?’

I took a deep breath. ‘No. Any chemist will make it if I give them the instructions and the raw supplies. Though they look at me oddly enough.’

He nodded. ‘I’m glad. I’ve worried.’ Slowly he released my arm. I rolled the sleeve back down quickly, smoothing the cuff over my wrist.

The silence was heavy.

‘When do you depart?’ I asked quickly.

‘Soon,’ he said just as quickly, as though it couldn’t be soon enough. He sat back in his chair. ‘Day after tomorrow, maybe.’

I swallowed, trying to hide my disappointment. ‘Back to the island?’

‘Yes. Balthazar has been working to arrange our return voyage. Not many ships want to take our cargo.’

‘Cargo? The trunks and things?’

‘That’s only part of it. The rest is … well, the doctor’s supplies.’

My curiosity was piqued. Surgical tools? Specimens? But I shook the questions out of my head. I wanted my father’s truth, not his science.

‘Does he ever speak of me?’ I asked in a rush. I had to ask before he sailed away, forever.

Montgomery grinned, one second too late. ‘Yes. Of course.’

I didn’t smile back. I knew that grin, one side pulled back just slightly, jaw set harder than it should have been. Montgomery had given me that grin before, when our house cat had run away. He promised me all cats knew their way out of the city to the farms where mice grew fat as pigeons. But the cat hadn’t made it out of the city. Later I found out Father had drowned it for bringing fleas into the house.

That grin meant Montgomery was lying.

I stood so fast the teapot rattled. I pushed my chair back, looking for my bag. I realized I wasn’t ready to learn the truth. And Montgomery … I hadn’t felt such intense and confusing emotions in so many years that I didn’t know what to do but run.

‘I need to go. I was supposed to work tonight.’

He stood, surprised. ‘Stay. It’s been so long—’

‘It was good to see you,’ I said, stumbling toward the door. I’d forgotten the time. Mrs Bell had asked me to help clean the operating theater before a lecture Monday morning. She’d be furious I wasn’t there.

Balthazar poked his head out from the other room, giving me a quizzical look. The parrot pecked against the bars of its cage. ‘I’m sorry about trying to break in,’ I said.

‘Miss Moreau, please! Wait.’

I was out of the room before Montgomery could finish. I hurried down the stairs, into the dining hall, where the proprietress was mopping the floors. She looked up, but I didn’t stop until I was outside.

The streets were empty. St Paul’s church bells tolled as I made my way along Cannon Street. My head was as foggy as the night. Eight, nine, ten tolls. Ten o’clock. Blast. Mrs Bell would skin me alive. I picked up my skirts – my Sunday best, which would take too long to change out of – and ran through the back alleys to my boardinghouse. Annie gave me a quizzical look as I threw open the door and grabbed my basket of cleaning supplies, but I couldn’t waste time on an explanation.

I ran back out into the night, down the Strand toward King’s College. Mrs Bell and Mary would probably still be there, seething that I was late. I tried to ignore the other thoughts clouding my mind: My father was alive but hadn’t contacted me. Montgomery was back, and yet he’d soon return to my father, as though our roles as servant and child were reversed.

At last I made it to the entrance of the medical building and dashed up the granite steps, tugging on the front door. Locked. I set down my basket and gathered a few bits of broken stone from the street and tossed them at the high first-floor windows, praying Mary would hear me. Mrs Bell would give me an earful for being late, but it was better than not showing at all. My aim wasn’t good, especially since my bare hands were cold and trembling, but a light went on in one of the windows.

‘Thank God,’ I said, cupping my freezing nose. I picked up my basket of cleaning supplies. I’d help them finish and then scramble home to my warm bed, where I could bury my thoughts in a downy quilt. I’d find a way to get a message to Lucy about my father being alive. She’d know what to do.

The door jerked open. I hurried inside but stopped when I saw the face lit by candlelight.

‘Dr Hastings—’ I said. He closed the door, plunging us into darkness lit only by the glowing flame. When he slammed the door behind me, the sound echoed through the empty hallway.

‘Juliet. It’s quite late.’

‘I’m to help Mrs Bell,’ I stuttered, holding up my basket. His eyes were on my Sunday dress. No coat, no gloves. I must have looked suspiciously out of place on a cold night. I swallowed. ‘I’ll just go find them—’

I started down the hall, but he laid a hand on my shoulder. ‘They’ve already left. They finished not ten minutes ago.’ His fingers tightened. ‘It’s only me in the building tonight.’

My stomach clenched. ‘Then I suppose I’m not needed. I’m sorry for disturbing you.’ I twisted toward the doorway, but he blocked it.

‘You’re freezing,’ he said, clutching my bare hands. ‘What a silly girl, without a coat on a night like this. Come to my office. I have a fire going.’

‘Thank you. But I should get home.’

His parchmentlike skin grazed my palm, so unlike the strong feel of Montgomery’s touch. I tried to slip my hand away, but he didn’t let go. I jerked my arm, but his grip only tightened. He smiled. Anger and fear spread throughout my body like an infection.

‘Now, now,’ he said, with a sickening smirk. ‘What sort of mischief have you been up to, out alone late at night in your finest dress?’ He licked his lips, his eyes glowing in the candlelight. ‘You’ve been with a man, haven’t you? I can smell his cologne. It would be a shame for Mrs Bell to find out. She’d have to dismiss you, of course. King’s College has a reputation to uphold.’

The threat raised the hair on my arms. My body started to tremble with a feverish anger that seeped from my bones, tangling in my veins, urging me to lash out at him. My hand tightened on the basket handle as I fought to stay calm. ‘It’s no business of yours who I’ve been with. If it was a man, you can be sure he wasn’t a balding, dried-out old git.’

He smirked. ‘A dried-out old git, am I? You’re a pretty one, but you’ll have to cool that temper if you want to keep your job. Now come to my office and do as you’re told, and there’ll be a sixpence in it for you as well.’

A bilious mix of fear and disgust rose in my throat, but my lips felt sewn together. I had to get out of there, quickly. He was twice my weight. If I tried to run, he’d be on me in an instant.

His spindly fingers pried the basket from my hand and set it on the entry table. My thoughts beat in time with my frantic pulse, trying to devise a solution. He reached for my waist, but I stepped backward.

The thin line of his mouth tightened. ‘I’m losing patience with these games of yours. I’m going to have you tonight, and you might as well be a good girl and you’ll get something out of it.’ Wax dripped from the half-forgotten candle in his hand onto the floor. I’d have to clean that hardening wax before this night was out. My fear started to harden, too. My eyes caught the blade of the mortar scraper in the basket, and all sorts of ideas came to mind of what I’d like to do with that sharp point. I might be cleaning up splashes of his blood, too, unless he left me alone.

‘You’re a lucky girl, Juliet, that I still take an interest in you even after your father’s transgressions. Not every man would show such kindness.’

Kindness. A bitter laugh sounded in my head. The last thing Dr Hastings showed was kindness. If he only knew about Montgomery, the man he’d just accused me of having been with. Montgomery would have slammed his fist into Dr Hastings’s lump of a nose. My eyes drifted back to the basket. The mortar scraper was within reach. The palm of my hand was hungry to hold its worn handle. To do something … I might regret.