Scarlet Widow Read online

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  About The Scarlet Widow

  About Graham Masterton

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  About The Scarlet Widow series

  About the Katie Maguire series

  Table of Contents

  www.headofzeus.com

  For Kinga Kaczanów

  who loves science

  with love

  Contents

  Cover

  Welcome Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

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  About The Scarlet Widow

  Reviews

  About Graham Masterton

  About The Scarlet Widow series

  About the Katie Maguire Series

  An Invitation from the Publisher

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Early on Easter morning, after a long and painful labour, Beatrice gave birth to a baby girl. When she heard her crying, she felt as if she had rolled away the stone and miraculously come back to life.

  ‘She’s beautiful,’ said Goody Rust, holding her up for Beatrice to see her. ‘Dark hair, just like yours. But she has her father’s eyes, don’t you think?’

  ‘Be careful to cut the cord short,’ put in Goody Kettle. ‘We don’t want her to grow up a strumpet!’

  Beatrice sat up a little, her curls damp with perspiration and her mouth dry. The early-morning sunshine blurred her vision, so that the crowd of friends and neighbours in her bedchamber seemed like an ever-shifting shadow-theatre. Seven of them had sat around her all through the night, feeding her with groaning cakes and beer and comforting her when the pain had been at its worst. Now they were chattering and laughing and passing the baby around from hand to hand.

  Goody Rust sat down on the bed next to Beatrice and plumped up her pillows for her. ‘I’m certain that her life will be a happy one,’ she said, gently. ‘You know what they say, that the tears of grief always water the garden of happiness.’

  ‘I’ve wrapped up the afterbirth for you,’ said Goody Greene. ‘I’ll take it down to the kitchen so that Mary can dry it for you.’

  Beatrice smiled and said, ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Here, lie back,’ said Goody Rust. ‘I’ll clean off all that hog’s grease for you, and then you can get some sleep.’

  ‘Let me just hold her before you do,’ said Beatrice. The baby was passed to Goody Rust and Goody Rust laid her in her arms.

  The baby’s eyes were closed now, although Beatrice could see her eyes darting from side to side underneath her eyelids as if she were already dreaming. She touched the tip of her nose with her fingertip and whispered, ‘Who are you, my little one?’

  One

  On Christmas morning, on their way back from church, they came across a cherub kneeling in a doorway.

  She wore a halo of knobbly ice on her head and on her back a thin frost-rimed blanket had given her white folded wings. Her milky blue eyes were open and her lips were slightly parted as if she were about to start singing.

  Beatrice’s father stood looking at her for a long moment, then he reached out and gently touched her shoulder.

  ‘Frozen solid,’ he said. ‘You carry on home, Bea. I’ll go back and fetch the verger.’

  Beatrice hesitated, with the snow falling silently on to her bonnet and cape. She had seen dead children in the street before, but here in this alley that they had taken as a short cut home, this girl made her feel much sadder than most. It was Christmas Day, and the church bells were pealing, and she could hear people laughing and singing as they made their way along Giltspur Street, back to their homes and their firesides and their families.

  Not only that, the girl was so pretty, although she was very pale and emaciated, and Beatrice could imagine what a happy life she might have had ahead of her.

  ‘Go on, Bea,’ her father told her. ‘There’s nothing more anybody can do for her now, except pray.’

  Two

  That afternoon, over their roasted beef dinner, her father said, ‘I wonder if it would ever be possible to preserve your loved ones when they pass away, exactly as they were when they were alive?’

  ‘What on earth do you mean, Clement?’ asked Beatrice’s mother, spooning out turnips on to his plate.

  ‘I mean, like that poor little girl that Bea and I came across this morning. She was only frozen, of course, so her remains won’t last for long. But supposing you could petrify people or turn them into wood? Then you could keep them with you always.’

  ‘Oh, Clement, what an idea! I couldn’t have a wooden statue of my mother sitting at the table with us! It would give me a fit!’

  He smiled and shrugged and said, ‘Yes... yes, you’re probably right. But one could do it with a pet, perhaps. A cat, or a dog. Then your child could play with it ad infinitum.’

  Beatrice put down her spoon.

  ‘What’s the matter, Bea?’ her mother asked her. ‘Aren’t you hungry?’

  ‘I can’t stop thinking about that girl,’ said Beatrice. ‘If only somebody had given her something to eat and a fire to keep her warm.’

  ‘Bea, you shouldn’t upset yourself. She’s in heaven now, and Jesus will be taking care of her.’

  Beatrice said nothing. She didn’t want to contradict her mother. But although she was only twelve years old, and she had never been brought up to think any differently, she couldn’t help wondering if heaven were really real, or if it were just a story that was made up to make us feel better about people we had lost. Perhaps when you froze to death you felt cold for ever after.

  Three

  ‘Come here, Bea,’ said her father, appearing in the kitchen doorway, with the sun behind him. ‘I have something wonderful to show you!’

  ‘Oh, please, Clement!’ her mother protested. ‘Her breakfast is ready!’

  ‘This won’t take long,’ said her father. His eyes were lit up and he was smiling, the way he always did when one of his experiments worked out well.

  ‘That’s what you said when you made that so-called volcano,’ her mother retorted. ‘“This won’t take long!” and the poor girl came back two hours later reeking of sulphur as if she had been to hell and back!’

  She coughed, as if the very memory of it irritated her throat.

  ‘Only five minutes this time,’ said her father. ‘I swear it, on my dear mother’s life.’

  ‘Clement, you know very well that you detested your mother, and in any event she passed away years ago.’

  But Beatrice settled the argument by pushing back her chair and going across the kitchen to take her father’s hand. ‘What is it, papa? Have you made that lightning?’

  ‘
No, no, Bea. I haven’t quite managed to make that lightning yet. I will, I believe, but this is different! Come and see for yourself.’

  Beatrice looked at her mother pleadingly, and after a moment she waved her hand at her and said, ‘Go on, then! But only five minutes because your porridge will grow cold!’

  Beatrice and her father went out through the scullery and crossed the small high-walled herb garden hand in hand. The garden was planted in neat triangles with absinthe and fennel and lavender and rosemary and sweet cicely. It was a summer morning, already warm, and the fragrance of the plants was so strong that it made Beatrice sneeze.

  ‘Bless you!’ said her father. Then, looking down at her and smiling, he said again, much more quietly, ‘Bless you.’

  He ushered her into the whitewashed outbuilding at the back of the house. This was where he ground up all the herbs and spices for his customers, and prepared his medicinal mixtures, and where he worked on what he called his ‘mysteries’. It was cool and dark in there because the windows were very small and grimy. Three of the walls were lined with shelves, and every shelf was crowded with flasks and apothecary bottles filled with pink and green and amber liquids, as well as china spice jars labelled ginger, galingol, saffron, pepper, cloves, cinnamon and nutmeg. There was a strong smell in here, too, but unlike the aromatic smell in the herb garden, it was pungent and musky. It always put Beatrice in mind of far-off places where men wore turbans and women wore veils, and everybody flew around on carpets like in the Arabian Nights.

  ‘You will not believe this, Bea, when you see it,’ said her father, guiding her over to the workbench at the end of the room. The surface of the bench was cluttered with pots and pans and candle-holders and all kinds of strangely shaped glass retorts. Right in front was a canoe-shaped copper container, rather like a fish kettle, which was half filled with viscous yellow oil.

  Beside this container, Beatrice’s father had spread out a brown cotton cloth, although it was humped up in the middle and there was plainly something hidden underneath it.

  ‘You remember at Christmas, when we found that poor frozen girl in Bellman’s Alley, and I spoke to you of turning animals into wood, so that a real animal could become a toy?’

  Beatrice nodded, her eyes wide. She said nothing, because whatever her father did always surprised her. He had once magnified a drop of water and shone its image on to the wall to show her all the microscopic living creatures that swarmed inside it. Another time, he had made sparks fly from his fingertips, as if he were a wizard. He could make liquids change from green to purple and then back again, and iron filings crawl across a sheet of paper like spiders, and he could snuff out lighted candles without even touching them. He had even made a dead frog jump off his workbench and on to the floor.

  He took hold of one corner of the cloth. ‘What you are about to see, Bea, is a scientific marvel that man has sought for centuries to achieve! Even the greatest alchemists of ancient Egypt were unable to fathom how this could be done!’

  Beatrice couldn’t help laughing. Her father was normally very sober and undemonstrative, and when it came to talking to his customers his face was unfailingly grave. He was good-looking, in a slightly foxy way, with prematurely grey hair brushed straight back from his forehead and a neatly trimmed moustache and beard. He usually dressed very formally, but this morning he was in his shirt-sleeves, without even a collar.

  ‘I give you – the Wooden Rat!’ he exclaimed, and whipped the cloth away.

  Standing on the bench, staring at Beatrice with beady black eyes, was a large brindled rat. Beatrice squealed and jumped back, holding her apron up to her face. She was terrified of rats. Only two weeks ago, when visiting her friend Lucy in Cock Lane, they had heard screaming from her baby brother Rufus. They had rushed into his nursery to find out what was wrong and discovered that a huge grey rat had climbed into his crib and was biting at his face.

  ‘Don’t be frightened, Bea!’ said her father. ‘This fellow can do you no harm at all!’ With that, he picked up the rat and knocked it against the side of the workbench. It was completely rigid, and it made a tapping sound as if it were carved out of solid mahogany.

  Beatrice still stayed well back, frowning. ‘Is it real?’ she asked. ‘It has fur, and whiskers, and real teeth!’

  ‘It is quite real, my darling! I trapped it myself in the water butt in the garden!’

  ‘So what did you do to it? How did you make it all woody like that?’

  ‘Aha! First of all, I put it to sleep by placing it inside a glass flagon and extracting all the air, so that it could no longer breathe. Then, when it had expired, I gently simmered its body for two days in this linseed oil. After that, I removed it from the oil, and drained it, and washed it, and allowed it to cool, and here it is, completely harmless, a plaything instead of a pest!’

  ‘It’s horrible,’ said Beatrice. ‘I wouldn’t want to play with it!’

  ‘Very well, yes, I can understand that, Bea, it’s a rat. I chose it for my first experiment because it was vermin. But one could equally turn kittens or puppies or baby rabbits into wooden toys and they would be far more charming.’

  ‘No, they wouldn’t! How can you say that? Kittens and puppies and baby rabbits? That would be so cruel!’

  Her father looked taken aback. ‘One would only use unwanted animals, Bea, and strays. What would happen to them otherwise? Either they would starve or they would be tied in a sack and thrown into the river. At least the animals chosen for this treatment would pass away painlessly, and after they had passed away they would continue to bring pleasure and amusement to any child who owned them, for years to come.

  ‘Here,’ said her father, holding out the rat. ‘Feel it, stroke it. It won’t bite you.’

  Beatrice reluctantly prodded the rat with her fingertip. It felt completely hard and its fur was sharp and bristly, like a scrubbing-brush.

  ‘It’s horrible,’ she insisted.

  ‘Well, yes, that’s as may be. It’s a rat, after all. But it’s a rat that looks exactly as it did when it was alive – exactly – and that’s another use for this treatment. Taxidermy.’

  Beatrice shook her head to show her father that she didn’t know what ‘taxidermy’ was. She was only twelve, after all.

  ‘Taxidermy is when you stuff dead animals and mount them, so that people can put them on display. You know, like stags’ heads, and parrots, and fish in glass cases.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Beatrice. ‘There’s that stuffed greyhound, isn’t there, outside Shephard’s Coffee House? That always used to frighten me. I used to think it might suddenly come alive and chase after me.’

  Her father smiled. ‘Yes, but wouldn’t you agree that it’s a very queer-looking greyhound indeed? All lopsided, with a crooked tail, and a very silly grin. That’s because it takes tremendous skill and anatomical knowledge to restore a dead animal’s natural shape and features, and very few taxidermists have the ability to do that.

  ‘This way, however,’ he said, and held up his solidified rat, ‘this way, any creature will look exactly as it did when it was living and breathing.’

  He paused, and then he said, ‘Perhaps one day one might be able to do the same with people. You know, if you had lost a loved one...’

  ‘Papa,’ Beatrice admonished him.

  ‘No, of course,’ said her father. ‘It was just a thought.’ He turned the solidified rat this way and that, then set it down on his workbench. ‘You really don’t like this, then? I thought perhaps you might.’

  Beatrice emphatically shook her head.

  ‘Well, you’re much more like your mother than me,’ her father told her. He put his arm around her shoulders and kissed the top of her hair. ‘Your mother wouldn’t hurt a bottle-bee.’

  They went back outside, into the herb garden, and her father locked the outbuilding door behind him. As they walked back towards the kitchen door, they heard her mother coughing again, more persistently this time. When they went inside, they fo
und her leaning over the sink and wiping her mouth with a handkerchief.

  ‘Nancy, that cough sounds worse,’ said Clement.

  She pumped water into the sink to wash away the spit that she had coughed up. ‘I’m all right, Clement. It’s this summer cold, that’s all. You know how weak my chest is. Are you ready for your breakfast, Bea? What did papa have to show you?’

  ‘It was a rat turned into wood. It was ugh.’

  ‘A real rat?’

  Beatrice sat down at the kitchen table and her mother brought her over a bowl of porridge.

  ‘Bea didn’t care for it much,’ said her father. ‘But I’m trying to find a way for people to preserve living creatures exactly as they are, forever.’

  ‘Is that possible?’ asked Nancy. ‘I didn’t think that anything could last forever.’

  Clement stayed in the doorway, watching her, without saying anything. Beatrice glanced up at him as she ate her porridge and she couldn’t understand why he looked so concerned.

  After a few moments he said, ‘I had better finish dressing, my dear, and open up the shop. I will have customers beating at the door before I know it.’

  ‘I’ll make you some tea,’ said Nancy, and coughed, and then coughed some more.

  *

  Beatrice was woken up in the early hours of the morning by her mother’s coughing. Through her bedroom wall she heard her father talking to her, and the creaking of their bed, and then she saw a light outside her room as he went downstairs. She heard the pump squeaking in the kitchen as he drew her some water.

  She climbed out of bed and cautiously opened her door and went across the landing to her parents’ chamber. Her mother was sitting up in bed, propped up by pillows. She looked deathly white and was pressing a handkerchief to her mouth. She was obviously about to say something, but then she started coughing again. Beatrice came around the bed and stood patiently next to her until she had stopped.

  ‘Don’t come too close to me, Bea,’ said her mother, wiping her mouth. ‘I don’t want you to catch whatever it is that ails me.’

  Even though her mother had scrunched up her handkerchief into her fist, Beatrice couldn’t help noticing that it was spotted with pink.