Chapter 17 The Affair of the Netherfield Piano #2
I looked at the smoldering piano. The fire was out now, doused by a light rain, and I drew close enough to examine it properly.
The bench was on its side, its lid flipped open, and sheet music had blown over the lawn.
However, there was one piece of music rolled up and shoved into the body of the instrument.
Out-of-tune strings twanged and wailed as I reached inside and pulled out the half-burnt scroll.
It looked as though someone had used it as kindling.
I unrolled it. It was the aria I had butchered so badly the night before.
That settled it for me, with the feeling of a cold stone sinking into my chest. When Pike came to me the next day, panicked, to say he’d no memory of the previous night but had woken up smelling of smoke, it only confirmed what I already knew.
That is when I first wrote you, Holzmann, begging for your help.
I nearly despaired when I did not hear from you.
Over the next few weeks Pike grew rapidly worse.
Sometimes I had to hurry him out of a gathering when I saw his face beginning to go pale and his eyes feral.
As it grew worse, the gentle side of Pike waned even when he was at his best. I tried to get him to take more chroma serum, but he would not drink it nor keep an appointment to get more.
“I am not convinced your concoction had anything to do with my recovery,” he said. “I can master this on my own.”
There were more problems around Meryton.
Some seemed connected with Pike’s interests—fires on the properties of those who had slighted him when he was poor or who had laughed at me—while others were so random I could not be sure he was at fault.
He himself had only the dimmest flashes of memory of the events and could neither confirm nor deny his involvement.
The one bright side in all this was that the Bingley sisters left Meryton for good, joining Mr. and Mrs. Bingley in town. Good riddance.
Yet what could I do? I could barely find time to speak to him at all. I rarely saw him in public. When I did, his temper was short, his eyes wild. He could not seem to maintain the facade of the suave young gentleman for more than a few minutes.
I needed time to speak to him, as privately as possible. I decided to do something truly unprecedented: give a party.
Not just any party. One that had never been heard of in Meryton: a Venus party.
My father owned a small but good telescope, and occasionally he took it out on the lawn to look at the moon’s craters. I realized that we were near a time of unusual visibility for the planet Venus, and I begged him for days to let me invite a few young Merytonians to see it.
“On no account are a bunch of ignorant young dunces to get their grubby paws on my telescope,” he said. “They’d likely break it.”
“They won’t. Even if they did, you would hardly notice. It has been gathering dust in your library these eighteen months. Please, I shall only invite a few friends.”
“Wasn’t aware you had any friends,” he grumbled. I did not have to fake the scowl of hurt that flashed across my face at that, and he looked a little ashamed. “Oh, Mary, come now. Oh, bother.” He heaved a heavy sigh. “How many guests?”
My mother, while utterly uninterested in astronomy, joined in on my side, as I knew she would at the first utterance of the word party .
And so, a little after midnight, my parents and I met half a dozen young people and we set off to the top of a hill behind our property. Among the guests was Mr. Pike.
There was a walk of half a mile or so, and I managed to take Pike’s arm and hang back a little.
It was not difficult—at least two other couples were trying to do the same.
Soon the whole party was strung out in a loose line of bobbing lanterns.
Even taking into account the dim starlight, Pike’s face looked pale. His arm gripped mine too tightly.
“I’ve more chroma serum for you,” I murmured. My heart was pounding in my throat. How long before Pike’s infirmity became obvious even in the dark?
“Don’t need it.” His voice was gravelly. Each word seemed jerked out of him unwillingly.
“I am quite sure you do. That fire last night at my uncle’s house—”
“That wasn’t me.”
“Wasn’t it?”
He just growled wordlessly. “Haven’t you done enough damage? Shan’t muck about with your nasty draughts.”
“Oh, yes, you shall. Pike. ”
“Why should I?”
“Do you want to be a monster?”
“Better a free monster than a man chained.”
“ What? Chains? It was my work, I’ll remind you, that allowed you to regain your faculties and become yourself again.”
“Myself,” he snorted.
“Pike, you claimed to be devoted to me.”
He made a sound that might be a laugh and gripped my arm even harder. “That does not make me a slave to your girlish whims.”
“My girlish—!”
“Mary dear,” Mamma called from up ahead, “come and help your father arrange the telescope.”
“I don’t need help, Mrs. Bennet. If you would just stop dropping the screws!”
I was out of time. I pulled Pike to the side of the path.
“Listen to me,” I said through gritted teeth.
“What do you think will happen? You’re getting worse.
You know you are. Soon you will revert to the animalistic state you were in before I dosed you.
You’ll be caught, one of these nights, and then what?
They’ll hunt you down. Everything you’ve worked for—gone. ”
Pike drew up short. His eyes searched mine in the dim light.
Then he held out his hand.
With a sigh of relief, I dug out the stoppered phial and pressed it in his hand. He uncorked it, lifted it toward me in a toast, and drank it down. “Your health, Miss Bennet,” he said.
I let out a breath in a whoosh. “All of our healths, really.” He took my arm, gentler this time, and we went back up the hill. “What do you want, then? I said you could name your price.”
“So you did,” he said, with a pat of his gloved fingers. “And so I will.”
I felt his body relax as we reached the summit. Within a few minutes Pike was laughing and joking with the others, helping my father to adjust the telescope with just the right note of deference.
After that I believed for almost two months that I could keep matters well controlled.
As long as I dosed Pike twice a week, before his symptoms could recur, he remained presentable.
His personality wavered somewhat, depending on what blend of serum I had available.
I spent so much money on supplies that Miss Figg was seen wearing the second most expensive bonnet in the shop, but it was worth it.
This is when I wrote you most of the preceding narrative. I hoped I could conclude it on a note of triumph. This was not to be.
I have been worried, for some time now, that the serums were growing less effective.
Pike tells me that the black and scarlet serums last the longest, but the others, especially the cyan, so useful in keeping him calm, wear off more and more quickly.
A shame, for it is my impression that the scarlet and black leave him somewhat more aggressive, though he denies this.
And then, this week, the worst happened.
May God forgive me for the mistakes that have led this far.
Ever since Pike stopped courting Abigail Charing, all the Charings have snubbed him.
They cut him dead in the street and glare at him at balls.
Two nights ago I saw Lord William Charing pull Pike aside at a party.
He was saying something in Pike’s ear through gritted teeth.
I was just able to catch “breach of promise suit.” Abigail was watching from across the room, her sweet, pretty face set in lines of bitter triumph.
The next morning, the ghastly news raced all over town.
Miss Abigail Charing had been found floating face down in the river.
An accident, people said uneasily. Suicide, some whispered.
But there was a stranger rumor. Abigail’s tracks leading to the river were widely spaced, as if she’d been fleeing something. Fleeing for her life.
I don’t know for certain that it was him.
The man I have known since his resurrection is such a tangle of contradictions that I could not possibly be sure.
But Pike has not been seen in public since her death.
I will not lie to myself; the creature I made is very likely responsible for this.
Her death is on my head, and I am left with no choice.
Holzmann, if you get this letter, know that I did my best to stop him for good.
Pray for me. Remember me. And, if necessary, avenge me.