CHAPTER FIVE
I
woke some hours later, stiff and cold.
The fire had burned down, but Mr. Stoker was once more working without his shirt, displaying his rather splendid musculature as well as his intriguing collection of tattoos.
I regarded him through the veil of my lashes for some time as he labored, stretching a piece of elephant’s skin tautly over its padded armature.
It required finesse, I realized, for at times he was brutally strong, using the sheer mass of his muscles to force the weighty hide into position; at others he was gently coaxing, his hands as deft as a musician’s.
His language altered as well, for as he sweated and shoved, he swore like any common sailor, but as he persuaded, he murmured in a seductive whisper, enticing the beast to do his bidding.
He looked younger then, less commanding, and I realized he was probably not so very many years older than myself, but something had hardened him.
Only a certain softness at the mouth as it curved in pleasure at his work spoke of any gentleness in him.
And the scars were commentary to his courage, for whatever animal he had faced seemed to have taken his eye and nearly his life.
I wanted to hear the story, but I knew better than to ask.
He did not seem inclined to confidences, and such a story must perforce be an intimate one.
So I yawned loudly, stretching my arms above my head and giving him time to resume his shirt before I sat up.
Huxley nudged my hand and I gave him more cheese, scratching him soundly behind the ears.
“He is not a lapdog, for Christ’s sake,” his master growled.
But Huxley merely rolled over onto his back and offered his belly.
I scratched him thoroughly before I rose and went to look at the elephant.
“You have managed quite a lot.
How long was I asleep?”
“Four hours, more or less.”
“Very impressive that you accomplished so much in so little time,” I told him.
“It is still a damned sight too slow,” he lamented.
He gestured towards the whole of the beast.
“The trouble is securing this section without pulling the stitches there.
The clamps are not holding as well as I would like.”
“What is your plan for moving the specimen when it is finished?”
I asked.
“Surely you don’t mean to haul it through the streets of London?
It ought to have been assembled in situ.”
He rolled his eyes heavenward.
“Yes, I did think of that.
I am not entirely devoid of intellect, no matter what you think of my
Phyllomedusa.”
He had been working the back end of the beast and walked me around to see that the entire front half was missing.
“You cannot mount an entire elephant in one go.
The skin alone weighs more than a ton.
It must be done in pieces, but no one has managed to do it properly, at least not yet.
This one is simply an experiment, a chance to refine the process before I begin in earnest.”
“For a patron?
A lord, I believe you said?”
He nodded.
“The Earl of Rosemorran, dilettante and eccentric, but richer than Croesus.
He acquired an enormous bull elephant—bones and hide—out of East Africa.
I have done other mammal mounts to his satisfaction, so he agreed to let me practice on this smaller fellow to see if I can devise a better method before touching his prize.”
“And he is paying you for this?”
I asked with a dubious glance at the elephant’s unfinished backside.
His lip curled.
“Would I do this for my own amusement?”
I glanced meaningfully at the collected specimens in the workshop.
He sighed heavily.
“These are not worth the sawdust they’re stuffed with.
They were mounted using old methods, and now they are crumbling to bits.
I acquired most for next to nothing just so I could tear them apart and assess their imperfections.
One cannot innovate new improvements without understanding old failures.”
I poked the elephant experimentally.
“And this one is proving a failure?”
“Thus far.
I wanted to mount him on his own skeleton, but that won’t serve.
It will have to be two separate displays, one of just the bones reassembled into an articulated skeleton.
The other will be a mount made to look lifelike with the skin properly stretched over a form sculpted to simulate the flesh.
The difficulty is in the sheer bloody enormity of it.”
The fact that he did not apologize for his language made me like him better.
“He must be pieced together, but I have not yet devised a method for doing so without making him look like Frankenstein’s monster.
He shall be nothing more than a grotesque if I don’t work it out.”
I noticed again the black streaks upon his arms—glue as well as soot, I realized, a hazard of his occupation.
But the hair was simply a matter of being badly groomed, for it hung past his shoulders in unfashionably long, snarled dark locks that shone with a bluish tint in the late morning light.
His beard was heavy and untrimmed, and with the eye patch and the slender gold ring glinting in his earlobe, it gave him the air of a rather impoverished pirate.
I moved past him to the section he had indicated, peering at the stitches.
“You want another pair of hands,” I said firmly.
“Tell me where to hold so I do not mar the folds of the skin.”
He hesitated, and I clucked at him impatiently.
“Mr. Stoker, I am offering you my help.
I am bored and likely to grow far more so in the coming hours.
We do not know how long the baron means us to be thrown together, and we might as well pass the time in some useful fashion.
You require extra hands.
I have them.
Now tell me where to put them.”
He looked as if he wanted to argue, but in the end he merely pointed and I held the skin taut while he worked.
“Hold it firm there,” he barked.
“Harder!
A kitten could make a better job of it.”
I tightened my grip and he grunted, the highest praise I was likely to receive, I understood.
We worked for some hours, and at length it occurred to me that I was exceedingly hungry and thirsty.
He must have sensed my flagging energy, or perhaps his own was dwindling.
He brought out a loaf of bread and a suspicious-looking ham and hacked off wedges of both with a clasp knife.
I produced a few soft apples from my carpetbag and we ate in silence.
When we had finished, he reached for a tin and withdrew a cigar, lighting it with a spill from the stove.
He drew in great lungfuls of poisonously strong tobacco smoke, blowing it out in long exhalations.
He caught my stare and gave me a mocking glance.
“Where are my manners?
Would you like a puff?”
he asked, extending the cigar.
I returned his gaze coolly.
“No, thank you.
I brought my own.”
With that, I went to my carpetbag and drew out a packet of slim cigarillos, lighting one as he had done with a twist of paper at the stove.
He stared at me in stupefaction until I blew out a perfect smoke ring, then gave a grudging laugh.
“Where did you acquire the habit?”
“Costa Rica,” I told him.
“And your cigar is inferior tobacco.”
“Good tobacco is expensive and I am a pauper,” he said lightly.
We smoked in silence, and as we did, my gaze fell to the scars that ran underneath his eye patch.
“Do not feel sorry for me,” he ordered.
The air around him fairly crackled with anger, and I regarded him coolly.
“I shouldn’t dream of feeling sorry for you.
You have two fine arms and two working legs and a strong back.
You have a brain that seems more capacious than most, and as near as I can make out, your sight is otherwise unimpaired.
What possible reason do you have to believe I would pity you?”
“You would not be the first,” he said, his expression sullen.
I gave him a grim smile.
“I am afraid you will have to try a great deal harder than that if you desire my sympathy.
I have traveled widely in the world, and I have seen men with half as many functional limbs as you and twice the courtesy.
If I pity you, it is only because you are so determined to be disagreeable.”
His only response was a sort of growl, but I was finished with the discussion.
I rose and dusted off my hands, grinding out the last of my cigarillo carefully on the sole of my boot.
“If we are to continue with the elephant, I must have an apron.
I have only one other dress in my bag and it is silk.”
With that I moved to a pile of discarded cloths, finding at last a piece long enough and clean enough to serve my purposes.
I tied it neatly about my waist and set to work again, testing the glue that rested in its pot near the stove.
“Is this warm enough?”
I inquired, lifting the spatula and watching the amber threads pull like so much spun sugar.
“It wants a bit more heat,” he said, and I noticed that his voice was marginally more cordial than it had been.
He showed me how to move the glue closer to the heat to soften it and the proper method of applying it with the various spatulas while he stitched with enormous needles, setting small, precise stitches that would have put any needlewoman to shame.
We passed a long time busily engaged in our endeavors, working steadily until there was a noise at the door and a boy bounded in.
He was a grubby child, no older than ten, but his eyes shone with intelligence and—when they lighted on me—curiosity.
“The post, Mr. S.,” he said, proffering a single slender envelope.
Mr. Stoker flicked a glance towards it and told him to throw it on the fire.
“Surely you will want to read it,” I protested.
He shrugged one heavy shoulder.
“Why should I?
I know the contents well enough to say them off by heart.
‘It is with deepest regret that we must write to inform you that your application to travel with the Royal Museum of Natural History on its forthcoming expedition to Peru has been denied.’
Shall I go on?
I know it word for word by now.
If you like, I could probably set it to music, perhaps something moody and sad for a duet of oboe and bassoon.”
He affected insouciance, but there was a bitter note underlying his tone.
“It mightn’t be this time,” I said reasonably.