Chapter 11 My Year As a Factory
My Year As a Factory
I admit, Holzmann, I spent more than a few hours per week in my laboratory. Can you blame me?
I nearly cried when I first mounted those creaky stairs again and found my dear old laboratory just as I’d left it.
Well, a little dustier perhaps, but that was soon remedied, and then I unpacked my equipment without delay.
After some hesitation, I left the larger electrostatic rig in its box.
I had no need of it to make my dyes, and I thought it best not to indulge my own selfish desires. I knew where that led.
I also opened the window, despite the chill, and scattered some seeds on the sill.
I kept half an eye on it as I cleaned, but only a few wrens came to peck at the feast, and a great bully of a raven.
That was all. I swallowed down my disappointment.
If Cariad still lived, he had every right to hate me.
I set straight to work making more dye. Immediately there was a problem. I had promised Pike a regular supply of the green dye, but what I had sent him away with had in truth taken months to amass. I needed more supplies. A great many more.
You will recall, Holzmann, that I get my parcels in care of the apothecary’s niece Miss Figg.
With Pike gone, I relied upon her more and more.
She was a strange, sour creature, and her prices could be exorbitant, but I had no choice but to trust her, and she had proven reliable.
She managed to find all that I needed—glassware, copper, chemical salts, and, most importantly, blood.
Pig’s blood was an important ingredient in the green dye, and at first she got me a regular supply, bottled like beer and smuggled home at the bottom of my basket.
However, I soon realized that it wasn’t enough.
In order to produce as much dye as I’d promised Pike, I’d need pig’s blood by the barrel, not the pint.
“That’s the last of it,” Miss Figg announced one day, plumping a bottle upon the counter. “Everyone’s done their slaughtering for the year.”
I stared at the little bottle in dismay. “That’s all? But I must have more.”
She shrugged. “Can’t get it. You want this or no?”
“It isn’t even full.”
Her laugh sounded like a raven’s chatter. “Wants her money’s worth, does Miss Mary. Well, have this then.” And by God, Holzmann, before I could protest, she whipped out a little silver knife, opened a cut along her palm, and squeezed the blood into the bottle.
“What are you doing?”
She’d filled the bottle. She stoppered it with her good hand, squeezing the other one tight. “You want it or no? Full price for a full bottle.”
“You’ve contaminated it.”
That laugh again. “I! Contaminated a pig? You are a flatterer, Miss Mary. Blood’s blood. One drop’s as good as another.”
“No, it isn’t,” I muttered, but I had little choice, so I paid her usual price.
And I was right. It wasn’t the same. For that batch of blood produced the truest, deepest green dye I had ever made, and ten times as much of it.
After that I relied less and less upon pig’s blood. A few drops of Miss Figg were all I needed.
It was a strange time. Joyful and torturous all at once.
I had to make the dye, but I strictly forbade myself from doing any other experimentation.
Still, I felt consumed with guilt for how much I was enjoying myself.
To make up for it I threw myself into my accomplishments the rest of the time.
The time I now spent away from the piano must not cause my playing to suffer by one false note.
I slept little, and worked much, and talked almost entirely in quotes from sermons.
Surely if I studied my Quindley’s hard enough I could offset the wickedness of sneaking off to my lab.
Of course I had another source of guilty joy. That was you, Holzmann.
I read a great many journals that year. It helped distract me from my longing to return to research of my own.
Writing you was the impulse of a moment, and when you wrote back, I could not resist. I reasoned that talking about research was a sort of weakened version of the real thing that would sate me and help me avoid temptation.
A bit like a smallpox inoculation. Miss Figg soon became my postwoman as well as my supplier.
Waiting for your letters was a sweet torment.
No one, not even Pike, had ever grasped what I was truly trying to do.
You did, and I savored it. I have here one of your letters from that time, creased with much rereading.
“It makes abundant sense, dear Sir Gregory,” you wrote, “if you will only think about it a moment, that pig’s blood is inferior to that of a woman.
You say that you are interested in the essence of life , but I submit that you are really in search of the many essences of many lives —the building blocks, as you say, which must differ in proportion.
You are wasting your time with this dye nonsense, sir.
Focus on your original questions. What are we made of?
Can it be altered? Your answers to these queries will interest many, including myself. ”
Now you know why I could not do as you asked.
And yet, I could not keep from dwelling on it.
My dreams had only grown sharper with fear and unknown longing.
The electrostatical rig, still packed in its crate, mocked me from the corner.
Do you remember how you used to tease me about alchemy?
You said that my serums reminded you of ancient ideas about bodily humors and you sent me a massive old tome of alchemical nonsense as a joke.
I am dismayed to now admit that some of its ideas improved my process significantly.
Something else did, too.
“Haven’t you got enough of my blood?” Miss Figg complained the next time I went in to her uncle’s shop.
“I only need a few drops each time.”
“Yes, and it stings each time. Come, I’ll sell you someone else’s, how about it? Lord Henry Charing’s, perhaps? Noble blood, that is.”
I blinked. “How would you get Lord Henry’s blood?”
She shrugged. “He was poorly this week. Got plenty.” And she pulled out a large glass jar. I stared into it. Its dozen or so occupants, plump and glistening, against the glass, gave no sign that they cared.
“Leeches.”
She nodded and pointed to one. “See there at the top? That one breakfasted on Lord Henry Charing this morning.”
I leaned in close, fascinated. “It’s still got his blood in its belly?”
“Course. Why d’you think it’s so fat?”
“I’ll take it,” I said. Miss Figg deftly extracted it, slit it open, and squeezed its bloody contents into a little phial for me.
Adding Sir Henry’s blood to an existing decoction of Miss Figg’s entirely ruined the batch. It came out a nasty greenish brown. I had to throw it all out. I almost did not repeat the experiment.
Then I thought of your words. Not the essence of life, but the many essences of many lives.
I asked Miss Figg for more of Sir Henry’s blood. (Luckily his gout had been troubling him a great deal.) This time I made a batch from him alone. The usual process yielded not the brilliant sour-apple green of Miss Figg, but a rich brown.
I opened a cut on my own hand. This time the dye came out as scarlet as the blood that went in.
I sent samples of the new dyes to Pike. His response was brief: “Send more.”
I no longer relied just on Miss Figg’s blood.
Now she and I began in earnest to trade in human blood.
All of Meryton’s. Whenever I could, I slipped off to their shop and bought whatever fattened leeches they had on hand, carefully noting the name of their most recent donor.
Back in my laboratory, it was the simplest thing in the world to slit the creature open and disgorge its contents into a mixing bowl.
From this I was able to obtain a wide range of colors and study a wide range of personalities.
This arrangement continues to this day. Sometimes she even slips me the leeches at home, for she comes often to tend to Mamma.
I still had attacks of conscience. As time passed, my sisters attracted suitors, but none stuck.
Our position grew ever more precarious. I considered that perhaps I ought to turn my full attention to helping my family.
But what could I do? Indeed, I reasoned, if none of us secured a good enough match, we might have to live on my dye money, paltry though it was. I kept on.
I continued to leave crumbs out on the sill, though more out of habit than hope.
One morning I mounted the stairs to hear a familiar song.
There on the sill was Cariad, hopping about and chirping like a small feathered king of seeds.
I rushed to the window and threw it open.
Cariad fluttered in and alit on my shoulder.
He rubbed his head under my jaw as though he had never left.
I am not one to seek out signs and portents, but if I did, I would take this to mean that heaven blessed my endeavors.
However, I was soon to receive evidence otherwise.