Chapter Text
Light. Light cutting a slit through the gap in the curtains over his wide white window, falling on satin sheets to slice across his eyes and Victor is awake then but he isn’t the only one. His creation regards him with wide, liquid infant eyes from around the crimson drapes, face muffled with bandages and pale hands gripping the bedpost with an uncertain strength.
Good God. He’s done it.
And it appears he has; the creature’s heart thuds sombrely where Victor listens to its chest, curls pressed against clammy skin broken only by cold wounds. The feverish hallucination of the previous night had been real; the storm and the water and the fear and the rising, the moment the lightning had struck the frame upon which the cold body rested, had all coalesced into the bright new thing standing in the centre of his bedroom on its new coltish legs.
‘Victor,’ it says, lips unsuited to forming the words, and Victor is so absorbed in the miracle of what he has done that he doesn’t notice the crackle of carriage wheels on the pebbled forecourt of the tower. Victor rushes to the window, uncaring of his own lack of clothing and peering down to the ground below, where all he can see is one beautiful, ornately slippered foot being helped out of the carriage by the footman. Elizabeth, and William will be with her too.
He doesn’t allow himself to feel disappointment in the frenzy of hysteria which overcomes him. He’s only just woken up, for God’s sake; he’s only just woken up and a creature which shouldn’t exist is standing over him and his little brother has come to knock on his door. He takes a moment to panic, flitting around the room from one thing to another.
The creature watches him, curious, head tilted to one side, bird-like. Victor takes a moment to throw a robe around his own shoulders and a blanket over those of the creature, in case it follows him downstairs and its nudity affects Elizabeth’s delicate sensibilities.
‘Victor,’ it says again as he flies from the room. ‘Victor; Victor.’
‘William!’ He calls his brother’s name from the stairwell, and he looks up, a raucous grin lighting up his face. He swings down the stairs towards him, taking his little brother into his arms heartily and pulling his curly head to his shoulders. It’s the first time they’ve seen one another since William returned to Edinburgh with the men, and he’s missed him so much. It’s funny how Victor never knew his brother for so much of his life, and yet he loves him so strongly.
‘And Elizabeth,’ he bows deeply before her, kissing her hand through the deep lace of her glove, making her giggle. Her gown is beautiful, malachite-green and silky in its thousand layers.
‘Where is Herr Harlander? Did he not remain here?’ William cuts in, scanning the foyer of the tower with narrowed eyes as he pulls off his own hat and gloves.
Victor takes a moment to formulate the words, tasting them in his mouth.
‘No,’ he replies. How could he illustrate it to his brother, these past bloody months? How could he explain his fear, that the spark which brought life to the creature could also set aflame whatever forbidden thing had begun to burn between him and Elizabeth’s uncle? That he knew the way he looked at him, even through the camera’s lens?
‘He left for London, for a few days,’ he decides, and it’s the truth, but only because Victor asked him to. Herr Harlander had left disgruntled and cross, irritated by Victor’s inability to fulfil his every whim and need, but Victor was staunch on this. A sinner and a violator he may be, but he’s a scientist, who wouldn’t allow Heinrich Harlander and his camera to ruin his magnum opus.
William gives him a bizarre look, and Victor’s stomach drops before he realises that his little brother is looking over his shoulder, regarding the cold, white hand which has emerged from the doorway to his bedroom. Elizabeth has seen it too; she looks up from toying with her gloves, lips parted slightly in wonder as the creature emerges from the room, robe slipping from its shoulders and anxiety apparent in each shaking movement.
‘You’ve really done it.’ William’s voice is barely tenuous.
‘Yes, well, that was what I was trying to–’
Victor’s words are cut off by the look in William’s eyes, and he sighs and nods. ‘Yes, you may.’
William smiles with the childish glee of the blond, bouncing little boy Victor had once held up in his arms to pick blossoms from the trees of the estate. He walks tentatively up the stairs towards the creature. Victor can’t help but feel a small glow of apprehensive satisfaction inside him when he sees William cast his approving eye up and down the neat lines of its body. It towers over him in height, but seems to shrink; its shoulders hunched and withdrawn as it observes the man before it.
‘Victor,’ says the creature again. Its gaze flits back and forth between Victor and William, alert and confused.
‘It speaks!’ William roars in delight, and the creature flinches back at the sound. ‘Victor, you have created something truly marvellous.’
The glow swells into a wondrous light when he turns to Elizabeth and sees her mouth stretched into a blurry smile behind her veil, eyes enchanted as she watches the creature step around her fiancé.
‘What do you think?’ He bends his head to whisper in her ear, and the smell of her perfume makes him shiver.
‘Oh, Victor,’ she sighs, the sound breathy through her fluted lips, gaze still fixated on the creature. ‘I think he’s beautiful.’
So, they take the creature with them, William nodding in uneasy assent. Victor packs up his meagre belongings, leaves the slaughterhouse of the aqueduct behind. The footmen do not question the creature bundled in cloaks and helped into the carriage meant for Victor and Herr Harlander; they’re paid enough to say nothing and think nothing.
‘One, two–’ Victor hoists the creature into the carriage, helping it balance its bare foot on the step before it stumbles heavily onto the bench. He follows it in, and the footmen shut the door behind him, wordless.
‘Victor,’ says the creature as it regards its new surroundings, running its brand-new fingers over the lines of the gilt interior panelling and the softness of the leather seats. The cloak has slipped from its shoulders, but Victor feels a sense of helplessness as he rearranges the thick wool around it. He is concerned that it might be cold, but should he? He never foresaw the success of his experiment, never foresaw what he might do with the cold body of the creature if it woke up, as this one has seemed to, without intelligence.
‘Yes, yes,’ he replies to the repeated entreaties of his name. ‘I’m here.’
The journey is long, but the carriage is comfortable, and as soon as he sees the creature rest its head on its shoulders, nodding forward in a slow sleep, Victor allows himself to rest. His sleep is short but deep, unbroken by the dreams which haunted him during the last few nights before the storm; the deep sleep of a broken fever. He wakes to the neigh of horses and the clatter of cobbles, the shouting of the footmen as they reign the carriages through the gates of William’s coach house.
When they get to Vienna it is much the same business; the servants question nothing as Victor helps the creature from the carriage and into the house. The rain lashes down, making the cobbles slippery as they stumble into a side entrance. They are aided by the cover of darkness; the glow of the paraffin lamps, flickering in the beating rain, doesn’t penetrate the hood covering its head. William takes control of his household, commanding under the thundering sound of the rain for four rooms to be made ready while he helps Elizabeth from the opposite carriage,sheltering her under his coat.
He stops his brother when they’re safely inside and away from prying eyes. ‘What will I–I mean, what should I–’
William cuts him off. ‘You can rest here, both of you. We will figure something out.’
Victor nods in assent, grateful for the solidity. Something still remains of the hysteria of the tower within him, as much as he wishes to deny it; and there’s something he still has to say.
‘William,’ he says again, looking into his brother’s eyes. ‘You must not tell Elizabeth’s uncle of any of this.’
William looks confused, like he has further questions, but Victor doesn’t know if he can explain it, how he cannot reconcile the as yet unknown purposes of cold Heinrich Harlander with the soft creature which is currently being gently towelled dry by Elizabeth. How he doesn’t want to be the one to face him, to tell him that this creature, the embodiment of everything between the two of them, has lived.
‘Fine,’ says William, brow wrinkled in confusion and attention diverted as he regards Elizabeth’s tender touch on the creature’s skin. ‘Just–we will manage it.’
And, for a time, that is how they live. The staff are informed of a guest of William, a distant cousin of their father who was injured physically and mentally in the war, and who should not be disturbed unnecessarily. He is housed in a wing with Victor, in a room neat and small with all dangerous objects removed.
Victor wakes in his room every morning, relishing the soft, thick sheets and the room warmed by the fire in the corner; no murky water drips perpetually down the walls, and no storms shake the uneven glass in single-paned windows. He passes his days in leisure, reading and writing articles on nothing significant and going outside to bathe in the freshness of the early spring air, and for a brief moment, he can convince himself he is happy.
He walks across the park every day with Elizabeth, the creature on his arm and her patrolling cautiously beside it, but soon it can walk on its own, stepping gently in the new leather boots William had the cordwainer make for its feet. It towers above them both, but its gentle presence isn’t threatening, and as they walk Elizabeth talks to it. She speaks of interesting things that have happened in her day, insects she has read about or seen or touched, and Victor laughs at her whimsical narration. The soft sunlight casts patterns on them through the first spring leaves, and the creature looks in wonder at the new catkins breaking their insectoid shells on the weeping willow, their wisp-thin fur like the hair on an infant’s head sparkling with dew.
William never comes with them on these walks. Victor watches Elizabeth teach the creature to speak, watches as she places its clumsy fingers against her swan-like neck to hear the vibrations in her throat, and he begins to understand why his brother would rather remain inside.
Victor doesn’t flatter himself that such happiness can last forever, and it doesn’t. William sits him down one day in his living room beside the fire, and they open a bottle of cognac. The thick black night rests against the windows like velvet, reflecting the warm room in the soft glass. In the next room, Elizabeth bathes the creature; they can hear her giggles through the open door.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ William begins, and Victor knows it isn’t good news by the way he deepens his voice to deliver his judgement. ‘How long do you think you are likely to stay?’
Victor gives a harsh laugh. Subtlety is one of his brother’s graces, by way of working in finance, and his choice to avoid it entirely is telling of what he thinks of his brother.
‘It depends,’ he replies. ‘On how long you are willing to put up with me, as taxing as it is for you. Your brother, who you have not known for most of your life. In this giant house, where you must suffer so for the space.’
‘No–’ His brother sighs in exasperation. ‘I don’t mean you. I mean–’ He gestures towards the open door. Elizabeth’s laughter trickles around the doorframe like a sweet silver stream, accompanied by the rough notes of the creature as it speaks its first harsh words. Water. Warm. Cold.
‘You know it cannot stay. You knew it could not stay from the start.’
Victor doesn’t look at William; he knows the entreating look he will see in his eyes. His little brother sighs, and tries again.
‘You know that Herr Harlander will return for his investment. He seeks a return on his money, and I can only ignore his letters for so long before he returns to discover what happened to his pet project himself.’
Victor finally tears his eyes from the shadows playing on the walls of the bathroom that he can see from the doorframe. He drinks another quarter-inch from his glass, savouring the acerbic warmth of the brandy as it flows down his throat.
‘It isn’t the creature he’ll come back for; it’s me,’ he replies eventually, and as he says it he knows it is true. For better or for worse, Victor has caught the eye of Heinrich Harlander, and he knows that he will not give up easily.
‘Besides,’ he continues, raising his eyebrows at William as a particularly loud laugh and a splash echoes from next door, finishing with half a shriek from Elizabeth. ‘It is hers now more than it ever will be mine. No matter whether or not you want to admit it.’
She’s persuaded Victor to let its hair grow long, promising that she’d help him wash it when it grew lank and tangled. Now she’s taken to braiding it; this morning, she weaved the first cherry blossoms into the oak-coloured coronet which drew his hair back from his brow.
William sighs, running his hand through his own curls distractedly. ‘Did you know that he was meant to raise her?’
Victor swallows his brandy quickly and interjects. ‘Who?’
‘Herr Harlander. Her mother was his sister; very beautiful, they said. She died of typhus, and her husband too, not long after Elizabeth was born, but she escaped the sickness.’
He takes a quick swallow of his drink, then continues. ‘She was sent to her uncle, her only living relative. He had no wife to speak of, no children. What was he meant to do? He could not bear to give up his life of gallivanting around Europe to care for some little girl; he refused to, so into the convent she went. And back to Europe did he.’
Victor swirls the last of the brandy in his glass. William stares into the fire, resolutely ignoring Victor’s gaze.
‘There is so much life in her,’ he murmurs. ‘Sometimes I fear I may never break the surface.’
Suddenly his gaze snaps back up, no longer pensive. ‘The fact of the matter, Victor, is that you cannot remain here. You and your creature have done enough, and I have other things to attend to than the pair of you.’
Victor laughs again, almost impressed by the backbone in his brother’s voice. ‘That is it then? Turned out to the streets by my own brother?’
‘No!’ William exclaims again. ‘In fact, there is somewhere you may go.’
Victor shrugs expectantly, gesturing widely. ‘And? Enlighten me, dear brother.’ He sloshes more brandy into his brother’s glass.
‘There is the matter of the estate in Geneva,’ his brother begins, business-like. ‘I’m sure you are aware of the state it was left in, and if it is to be in any working order for myself and Elizabeth, and our family, it requires someone to oversee it, and the creature, perhaps he could be released–’
Victor stands, knocking back his chair so it lands with a dull thump, the impact swallowed by the thick carpet beneath his feet. ‘You wish to send me to clean up your messes? You want me to be your errand boy, to run around for you? Do you want me to pick up the petals at your wedding, too, on my hands and knees after the festivities are finished?’ He pantomimes a bow, sliding his voice in performative servitude.
‘For God’s sake, Victor!’ William’s voice rises harshly, before he glances at the open door to the bathroom and hastily lowers his tone. ‘Must you always think only of yourself? I’m not trying to attack you, I’m trying to appeal to you. You’re my older brother; as the eldest, the estate is summarily yours. I’m trying to help you!’
‘Then perhaps I have no need for your charity.’ Victor sneers at him.
‘You sound like Father.’ William mumbles, and Victor can see the flush of the alcohol in his cheeks, how his fingers knock against the empty glass on the table, but it doesn’t stop anger from rising in his throat like bile.
‘What did you say,’ he hisses, bending down so his face is level with William’s slumped figure. ‘Look at me at least, you coward.’
William raises his unfocused eyes to Victor’s, matching his narrowed gaze. ‘I said,’ he says, ‘that you sound like our father. And you act like him, too.’
‘How dare you say that. How dare you. You, who never knew him!’
Victor hears his voice rising insanely, but he no longer cares. The splashing from next door ceases, and he hears Elizabeth’s tiptoed steps as she peers around the doorframe.
‘You, who he doted on while he grew old and fat!’ He knocks the glass from the table, but it doesn’t shatter; it rolls until it, too, is smothered by the ankle-thick carpet.
You, who took our mother away, is next on his fevered lips, but even he has the soul to restrain himself. He has said and done enough to hurt his brother, and with Elizabeth peeping around the door–
‘Go home, Victor,’ William mumbles, slumped over the table, the weariness of age before his years in his voice.
Victor turns and leaves.