Godspeed Page 16

  “Do you?” I asked, now wringing my own hands as well. “Are you certain you truly love him?”

  “Only more with each passing day,” she confessed. “He is so gentle, so brilliant. We speak sometimes, of books, of the great poets and storytellers. I wasn't always so limited with my sight, you know. I could read, as recently as one year since.

  “Then my remaining sight soured, and turned the world first to a hideous shade of yellow; sickly, jaundiced, before taking me quickly hence into darkness. I did not think I would ever see the light of the sun again.”

  I wondered now, as I listened to her mourn what had turned out to be a temporary loss, if I ever would feel the sun myself again.

  “Then the doctor took me under his care, at the pleading of my second-cousin, Schuyler, who had come to learn of my situation through a favorite great-aunt.”

  “The one with which you now live?”

  “Yes, Aunt Casilda. She insisted that Schuyler must know someone, somewhere that could help me, among all of the famous physicians that buy art from the store. Some travel great distances at least once a year to purchase here. It was only after swearing her to secrecy that he was willing to introduce me to Doctor Godspeed.”

  “There is such secrecy surrounding the doctor.” I had wondered just why but been unable to ask the question. Of course I knew there was great danger in the work that he did, because of the laws against experimentation on living human subjects. These laws were created for a reason, I knew, but I couldn't fathom why anyone would ever imagine that Quinn could ever do anyone intentional harm.

  “There have been those, especially in recent years, who have exploited this new dawn of technological advancement for their own gain. Those who would victimize and exploit those most in need of help. Some believe…” Her voice faded, and she did not continue.

  “Some believe what?”

  “That Quinn Godspeed was one of those men.”

  I inhaled sharply, and she reached out and grasped hold of my shoulders. “I am sorry, Else, I should not have said so much. Forgive me.”

  “What do you mean by it?”

  “I really shouldn't say any more. I'm sorry, I—”

  “Please, Marielle,” I now grasped at her arms with hands that had gone ice cold. “I need to know. You've seen what has happened to me here… no, you have not, have you?” I shook my head at my own ignorance. Of course, if she could not make out Penn's fine features, she did not know anything more of the device strung up around my neck than anyone had dared to tell her. “This is the work of the hands of Doctor Godspeed.”

  I took hold of one of her hands, and I felt her recoil. “I'm not going to hurt you, I promise. I just want you to know why it is exactly that I need so much to understand.” I uncurled her tightening fingers and brought them level with my heart.

  Her face contorted in horror as she first felt the metal of the ornately fashioned pendant, to all outward appearances a heart-shaped, antique locket. She felt the slight humming through the wires though I was careful to draw her hand away before the next, larger pulse, which I had learned to time the fixed increments between with great accuracy by this point.

  “What are you?”

  “I was a girl, much like you. Not much older, in fact. Then, as you know, I fell ill, and through a series of events, I ended up in the laboratory of Doctor Godspeed. He took me into his care, and before I really knew what had happened, this was the length he went to, in order to prolong my life.” I whispered the last words, still trying to fathom their true meaning. Death seemed such an odd and intangible thing, something that happens to someone but that cannot be described to anyone else. I felt that the girl I had been died on the street before Schuyler Algernon had ever taken me into his arms and rescued me from it. I awoke another person, and yet another still after Quinn had physically rewired the workings of my soul.

  “I have often asked myself why he was willing to go to such lengths and risk so much for my sake. So please, if you know something of his past, something that might help me to reconcile this in my mind.” I shook her once. Not with violence; still, I was certain that my desperation bled through. “Please, tell me what you know.”

  She hesitated still, but then a light dawned over her features, and she came to a conclusion that I hoped not everyone else in the house already had. “You love him, don't you?”

  “What?” I drew back. I laughed, but the laugh was thin and hollow and she knew far better than to believe it. “What are you talking about?”

  “I see Penn with my heart, and you,” she said with a nod, more convinced of her assertion with each word she uttered, “you feel Doctor Godspeed's, beating with your own. You are the work that is literally dearest to his heart.”

  Tears spilled from my eyes and burned a trail down my cheeks. She could not see them, but she reached out and brushed her fingertips along my face now, wiping them away. “It's all right, dear Elsewhere, I will tell you what I know. But not here, and not now. We've been gone from the sitting room too long, questions will be asked if we delay any longer.”

  She yanked me back into the room by the arm. I felt as though my brain and my heart still kept residence in the hall, along with the great many secrets that haunted this house.

  * * *

  This night's schedule had Schuyler and Penn working on inventory in the shop. With Jib missing, and the doctor hidden away working, only Marielle, Lilibet, and I remained in the red room.

  Lilibet rocked as usual, and the clicking of Marielle's knitting needles clacked on in a dizzying noise that harmonized with the ceaseless, unnatural rhythm of my heart.

  “You had questions that I was not able to answer before,” Marielle began, turning her head in the direction of my quickening breaths. I was nervous — terrified actually — to learn the truth about Quinn; but then again, I was certain that there could be nothing about him that would make me love him any less. It was simply impossible at this point, and I wondered for an instant if he'd found a way to wire feelings of such boundless love directly into the workings of the machinery that kept me alive.

  “Are you certain that it's wise to…”

  “Lilibet hears all but says nothing. She is wiser than people think. It is safe.”

  “What…” I wanted to ask but I didn't wish to offend her. Still, it seemed that Marielle needed to talk about this before she was going to be willing or able to speak of anything else.

  “My sister was a normal, healthy child, until just before the age of two. She was beginning to speak. She was greatly interested in all around her. Then, one day she just started to disappear. One piece at a time.” Her eyes clouded over with the memory.

  I looked over at Lilibet, so deeply lost in her own thoughts, seemingly inhabiting a world that existed only within the confines of her own mind, unless, of course Jib was playing the piano, or when she'd had the modified typewriter. I hoped Quinn would return it to her soon.

  “Her name is truly unusual, is it a family name?” I asked, trying to bring any sort of light I could to darker thoughts from Marielle's history.

  “It's all we have of her to hold on to,” she answered. “When she was small, before she stopped speaking, she could not say her given name, Elizabeth. She called herself Lilibet, and so, the family did too. I remember how…” Her eyes filled and tears rained down now.“…she used to smile, when she would hear Father calling her name.”

  “Where are your parents?”

  “My parents are living out of the country now.” She clenched her hands together and she looked away. “They sent us to live with Aunt Casilda under the guise of getting us ‘treatment’.” She spoke now through jaws, tightly shut. “I do not deceive myself into thinking that they are ever coming back to get us.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I know my parents too well,” Marielle concluded. “They would rather sip cocktails and speak of trivialities than raise children with actual needs.” She shook her head. “My mother is a so
cialite, Elsewhere, and my father is a businessman. Blind and mute children do not make good conversational topics at polite dinner parties.”

  “Most things of importance are not considered good conversational topics at polite dinner parties,” I replied, knowing fully of what I spoke. I'd witnessed enough of those parties firsthand while living as a servant in the house of my former employers — and heard about even more of them in hushed whispers between my parents when I was barely old enough to understand what they were saying.

  “Before I tell you what you've asked me to tell you…” Marielle turned her body toward me; even though she could not make out my features, I was certain she was taking stock of my intentions. “Are you certain that you really want to know?”

  “No,” I answered truthfully, “but I must know.”

  “Very well.” She sighed and set her knitting aside. “I must warn you that I only have fragments of information. Bits and pieces of a puzzle that grows increasingly more difficult to solve. I do not know if anyone will ever know the entire truth of the history of Doctor Quinn Godspeed, but I will tell you what I know. Or I should say, what Penn and I have pieced together in the time we've been in association with the doctor and Schuyler Algernon.”

  “Thank you.”

  She drew in a deep breath, and as she thought now of the words she was about to speak, the color drained away from her face and she appeared to become only a shadow, a ghostly apparition of the girl that I knew her to be.

  “The doctor and Schuyler have known each other since boyhood. The doctor never had much family, and so was taken into Schuyler's and in some fashion, sort of adopted.”

  This was not news to me. “Yes, that much I do know. Go on.”

  “Well, this is the mystery we have not been able to solve. It seems that after Schuyler's mother died but before his father did, there was some sort of falling out between their family and Doctor Godspeed. But there is more to it than just a minor disagreement between friends.

  “Doctor Godspeed actually left the country, and from all the evidence that Penn has been able to find in his research…” She paused.

  “Go on!” I urged, a little too eagerly.

  “I don't know. Perhaps it's best if I stop.”

  “Please, Marielle.” I was not above begging if that was what it took. Any small piece of information she may have might be the thing that finally made him make sense.

  “Well, when Penn came here, he was actually seeking to find the great Doctor Quinn Godspeed. He came to the last known location, based upon a newspaper clipping that his father had saved, telling of a doctor working ‘miracles’ on those no one else could help. He was told that Doctor Godspeed was dead by his own hand.”

  “Yes, I know that too, but why?”

  “Despondent, over a loss of some kind.” She drew in a long breath and then continued. “He and Schuyler Algernon apparently mended fences somehow, and the doctor began to work with him, repairing watches and clocks, just as his father had. But he was known by the name Jonah Godspeed. Supposedly a long-lost twin brother that Quinn never spoke of. When he goes out in public, outside the walls of this house, that is still the name that he is known by.”

  “But if he was a doctor, why did he stop practicing medicine? Why the false story of the suicide?”

  “That, we have not been able to ascertain,” Marielle replied, with marked irritation. “We think that Jib's family knows more of the story, but if they do, they either haven't told him or he's not willing to tell us. The one time I ever saw Jib angry,” she shuddered at the memory now, “was one night when Penn pushed him too far in asking for answers. Jib told Penn that if he was able-bodied he'd have regretted ever asking the question.” She took up her knitting again and the needles clicked together once more. “Penn has never spoken of it to Jib again.”

  I nodded, trying to take in all that I had just heard and reconcile it with what I already knew. I never left the house, and so was not exposed to anyone that would question me if I spoke of Quinn, though I remembered now, once in a fevered haze I had heard Schuyler warning Quinn that they must tell me I was not to speak of him to anyone.

  Quinn's response had made no sense to me before, but now it gave me pause. “Who would believe her?”

  CHAPTER 23

  I FOUND MYSELF WITH MORE QUESTIONS than answers after my discussions with Marielle and Penn. The mystery gnawed at me night and day, even as my love for Quinn continued to deepen.

  I watched him go through his paces, saw how he tended to all in his charge, and I refused to believe that there could be anything so dark or deeply disturbing in his past that I could love him one whit less.

  Now I only wanted to know what that history contained, so that I might find a way to help ease his burden, if I could. He had sacrificed much and risked everything to care for all of us, especially me, and I wanted nothing more than to help bear the weight of his own pain.

  He seemed, however, entirely determined to keep that pain under lock and key. There were times I wondered how a human could tolerate such emotional distress, but then I didn't believe that he was completely human and thought that explained a lot of the mysteries about him.

  Perhaps he really was much more ghostly creature than man of flesh and blood.

  There were, after all, times I would have sworn he appeared out of thin air, moving from one room to another in the house without use of the standard doors or even the windows or balconies as points of access.

  This night, the doctor had been called to visit Jib. The hour was late. Schuyler and Penn slept as I paced my room, alight with nervous energy. I adjusted the curtains, tidied up all the trinkets on the vanity, fluffed and fluffed again the pillows on my bed.

  I stoked the fire and examined the mantle for dust, but found Schuyler's meticulous nature shone through again; there was not a speck upon it.

  As my inspection of the space continued, I found that a painting on the wall, the one I had admired so in the shop and which had mysteriously appeared in my room the following evening, was hanging slightly askew. Instinctively I straightened it, and to my surprise I discovered that the panel in the wall behind it was actually hollow, and with the right leverage and very little actual strength it could be moved aside.

  I grabbed a candle and lit it, shining it into an open space the panel had exposed. Its light revealed a very narrow door, and an even narrower staircase.

  I almost expected the steps to give beneath my weight when I tried the first one, but found them to be solid as any thick wood floor in the house, and as I tread them they made no sound.

  Just a flight below my room I found another door, and I considered my intentions carefully as to whether or not I should open it. I came to the conclusion very quickly that I was only doing this because I desired to help Quinn, and that reason gave me the boldness to continue that no other could.

  I promised myself that if it were locked I would not search for a key, but turn away and continue down the steps to see where they ended up at the last. If the handle turned, however …

  The handle turned.

  A rising swell of panic washed over me. What if it was Schuyler's room and he was sleeping inside? Or Penn's? How would I explain where I was and what I was doing? I could hardly claim sleepwalking. Even if I had not been turned into a nocturnal creature by the doctor, I had never shown tendencies toward it before and the tale would be utterly unbelievable.

  I finally pushed my fear aside; after all, I was doing this for Quinn. If I got caught I would tell exactly what I had been doing: I would tell the truth.

  The door creaked as I opened it; a menacing sound, and one I realized I had heard before. When I had questioned Schuyler as to its origin he had simply replied that the floors were old, and prone to complain.

  My solitary candle was too dim to afford me much sight here, so I sought out the mantle and found several more in holders upon it.

  They were brand new, wicks untouched, and with them burning I soon h
ad a much better view of the room in which I stood.

  It was Quinn's room.

  It did not take long for me to deduce this, as one of his waistcoats was tossed over the remarkably plain chair in the corner. The room was cold, and from the look of the hearth no fire had been lit in it for some time.

  The wardrobe door had been left half open, and one of his shirts was hanging upon it. Cautious not to get my candle too near the fabric I held it up closer, and examined identical pairs of pants and shirts, black and white respectively, all lined up in perfect rows inside.

  Schuyler again, I thought.

  I had never, not once in my life, been tempted to steal before this moment; but by the heavens I swear, how I wanted to take with me just one of his pure white shirts so I could sleep with it folded up and hidden beneath my pillow.

  I turned around and moved toward a single bed, made so precisely and with such crisp linen that it looked as if it had never been slept in before. I could not resist the urge to pick up the pillow to see if it contained any hint of the barely detectable cologne he always wore, as his coat had the time I'd worn it. To my disappointment, I found not a trace to indicate it had ever touched his skin.

  No, this room was not where Quinn Godspeed lived. This room was a closet for his clothing. His laboratory… that was where he lived.

  One by one I extinguished the candles upon the mantle, and after a moment of silence to breathe in this place, with great reverence I closed the door.

  I continued on and found the narrow staircase led only one place more; directly down into that hidden laboratory where he had turned me from merely human into something much more contrived.

  I began to wonder, given there were hidden stairways and entire rooms unknown to all but just the few who needed to know of them, if there was more to that laboratory than I had previously seen.

  Now that I found myself alone in it at last, I began to take note of the placement of every picture, every piece of furniture, and every mechanical component present.