I sighed and stood, heading for the main door back into the manor’s hallway. I was done with secrets and passageways, at least for tonight. I had a wedding to think about.
“Good night, Balthazar,” I said, and closed the door behind me. Thunder shook the windows outside the hallway, and I pushed the curtain back. Lightning crashed.
Looks like another storm is setting in, McKenna had said.
Lightning—we needed it in order to bring a human body back to life. There was no telling when another storm would come, or how much longer Edward’s body would stay preserved down there in the cellar.
Whatever Montgomery was hiding, was it worse than what I was hiding from him?
I went to Lucy’s door and knocked quietly. “If we’re going to bring Edward back,” I told her, “it has to be tonight.”
ONCE THE STAFF HAD gone to bed, we crept downstairs. The basement was flooded from all the rain. Water seeped in from the stone walls, filling the low-lit hallways with the sound of dripping and the smell of damp. Luckily the chapel was built on slightly higher ground, so the stone floor—and the bodies—remained dry.
Lucy made a face and lifted her skirts, checking each step carefully. Inside the chapel, we set down the lantern and looked at the dozen bodies. Lucy pulled the sheet back from Edward’s face.
“Do you think he’ll remember what it was like to be dead?” There was a ring of excitement in her voice that I hadn’t heard in weeks.
“I suppose we will have a good many questions to ask him, when he wakes. Now, if we’re going to cut out Edward’s diseased posterior lobe, we have to hurry. I’m getting married tomorrow, after all. We’ll need a replacement brain from one of these bodies. The cadaver should be in good condition. Male and around his age, if possible.”
Lucy drew back another sheet and grimaced. “What about this one?”
I glanced at the corpse of a young man who seemed healthy enough—present condition excluded, of course—with gangly long arms and legs that draped off the end of the bench.
“Goodness, he must be seven feet tall. But he looks healthy enough. Help me carry him.”
Lucy took the lantern in one hand and picked up the man’s feet with the other, while I wrapped my arms under his shoulders. The body had a distinct odor—a sterile coldness not so different from the damp stone walls. A trace of soap from his shirt lingered and reminded me that he had been a person with hopes and dreams that had ended far too young.
Lucy grunted as she lifted the man’s feet. “Is he filled with bricks?” she muttered.
“Bodies feel heavier when they’re stiff.”
She let his feet fall back to the bench. “I’m not going to ask how you know that. What do we do? We can’t possibly carry him on our own.”
I pulled a bone saw from my satchel and held it up to the glinting light. “We only need his head.”
“Juliet, no!”
I gave her a hard look as I knelt by the man’s chest, steadying the bone saw on his neck. “It isn’t going to kill him again,” I muttered, and threw my weight behind the saw.
It was grisly work, but at least his body was frozen, so there was little blood. Lucy fetched a pumpkin from McKenna’s pantry to place under the sheet so no one would notice a headless body anytime soon.
I stowed the head in my satchel, taking extra care not to damage the top of the spinal column. Lucy shivered and wrapped her arms across her chest as she turned to Edward’s body.
“What about Edward? We can’t very well cut him into pieces to carry up to the laboratory.”
I clenched my jaw. If we were going to bring him back, it had to be tonight, while there was ample lightning. We needed someone’s help, but I didn’t dare go to Montgomery or Carlyle, and the female servants weren’t any stronger than Lucy or I.
At last, I let out a frustrated groan, knowing I only had one choice.
“Wait here,” I muttered, hating myself for what I was about to do. “I’ll be back in a moment.”
I hurried up the stairs into the main section of the house, staying close to the walls where the floorboards squeaked less. I knocked gently on the same door I had so recently left from.
Balthazar opened it, dressed now in his striped blue pajamas, with Sharkey wagging his tail at his heels.
I couldn’t bring myself to look into his eyes. I whispered, “You said you felt compelled to obey Elizabeth, because she was the law. Does that extend to me as well, as the doctor’s daughter?”
“Oh, yes, miss,” he answered. “I’ve always striven to obey your law as well.”
I took a deep breath, hating myself even more. Balthazar deserved more respect than I was about to give him, and yet I was desperate. “Then come with me. I need your help with something. I fear you aren’t going to like it, and I’m sorry for making you do it. Regardless, you must keep it secret from everyone, even Montgomery.”
His face fell, and it nearly broke my heart. Father had been cruel, but I never had been. Not until that moment.
“I’m sorry, Balthazar,” I whispered. “But you really must come with me. It’s time for you to fill the role of Igor Zagoskin.”
TWENTY-SEVEN