Unnatural Creatures: a Novel of the Frankenstein Women by Kris Waldherr

Author:Kris Waldherr [Waldherr, Kris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9798985351217
Publisher: Muse Publications LLC

“Elizabeth? What are you doing here?” Henry exclaimed when she arrived at the door of the Clervals’ shop; he was in the process of unlocking the gate for the afternoon. A soft plunk of rain hit her forehead. Another.

She didn’t answer. Couldn’t answer. She only knew she needed him. No matter: Henry didn’t press, only led her inside once he’d opened the shop door.

“This is unexpected,” he said, running his fingers through his unruly light brown hair. “Tea?”

“No, thank you.”

She stood in the middle of the black and white tiled floor, her hands dangling with uselessness, as she took in the overstuffed shop: the books, the taxidermy owl, the printing press in the back of the long room, the displays of sextants and loupes and telescopes in their low glass cases, the bookshelves. How long had it been since she’d last visited the Clervals’ shop? A year. More. Before they’d left for Lake Como, before Ingolstadt. “I love you. I always have . . .” Suddenly she recalled Henry lying beside her in that shadowed, curtained bed in Lake Como; how empty her soul felt when she’d awakened to find him gone.

I must not think of this.

“I suspect you’re here because of Justine,” Henry said after an awkward moment. “I heard what happened.”

“They’re going to hang her! Murder her, really. I cannot bear it! On top of that Victor wants to bury her in the family tomb. He ranted that if he didn’t, her body would be buried in a mass grave where it would be desecrated by . . . by . . . oh I can’t say!”

Henry didn’t rush to comfort her as he once might have. He avoided her stare as he set a stack of books inside a locked cabinet.

Elizabeth pressed, “You can’t believe she’s guilty? You saw how kind she was to William, how devoted to my aunt.”

He finally met her eyes. “Elizabeth, I don’t know what to think. She’s been convicted.”

“She confessed a lie to win absolution from a papist priest. Nothing more.”

He gathered another pile of books. Rousseau, Milton, Wollstonecraft. He was dismissing her.

“Henry, how can you be so unfeeling? Of everyone I know, I’d thought you’d be sympathetic to her cause.”

Unlike Victor who’s mad. Victor who rants about monsters. But she couldn’t think of Victor. Not now. Her anger toward Henry felt a gift. A distraction. She welcomed it.

He set the books down, his mouth tight. “I am sympathetic. But, in retrospect, I will admit there was something about Justine I found disturbing. A watchfulness. An eagerness.”

“She was a good servant. A true friend to me.”

“But there was also the way she worshipped your aunt. The hair, the accent. It seemed . . . unnatural.”

“That’s because my aunt was kind to her. She admired her.”

“It wasn’t only that. Justine’s mother. It was peculiar she never visited Justine, that she’d hated her so much. Oh, I know Madame Moritz later tried to make amends. Still, what sort of mother does this without good cause? Perhaps there was something she knew that we didn’t.

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