Chapter Eleven

Shirley stumbled dazedly down the hallway towards the washroom, her mind still filled with visions of the failed experiment downstairs. It kept playing over and over in her mind, like a gramophone whose needle keeps sticking on a scratch on the record. She felt the hope, joy and triumph as the piglet’s leg grew into place, only to be crushed by the horror and disappointment as it exploded in her arms over and over again.

Where do we go from here? she wondered. It took Sir Joseph years just to get to this point. How long will it take to get the Engine ready before we can experiment with a live subject again? Will we ever try again, now that we know what could happen should we fail?

The thought of not trying again scared her nearly as much as the thought of trying again. Although she had started out as a reluctant assistant to the baronet, she was now as invested in the Engine’s success as he was. The Engine was the hope of humanity, the key to curing its physical imperfections and its mental evils. Without it…

Without the Engine, more little girls will be born with eyes like mine. Without it, more women will drink themselves to death, like my mother. Without it, more men will become madmen and murderers looking for the women who poisoned them. Just like—

“Shirley! Where are you going?”

Shirley stopped and turned around to see Lucinda hurrying towards her. The younger girl came to a hard stop as she took in Shirley’s blood-spattered dress and face, a hand reaching up to her mouth as it formed an “o” of horror.

“My Lord,” she whispered. “Shirley, what happened? You look like death!”

“The experiment failed,” Shirley replied quietly, her tone numb. She could not even muster the energy to react to Lucinda’s show of sympathy, whether it be with annoyance like before or with gratitude now that they were friends.

Lucinda stood still and thought for a moment before reaching out, twirling Shirley around by the relatively unstained parts of her sleeves and directing her down the hall at breakneck speed. “Come on, let’s get you into a bath,” she said. “Before someone sees you and thinks you’re one of the Ripper’s victims.”

Shirley shivered at the comment, but Lucinda did not seem to notice.

A couple minutes later, Shirley was sitting in a chair in the washroom while Lucinda turned on the water heater attached to the porcelain, claw-footed tub. The brass device roared to life, chugging and sputtering before proceeding to spew steaming water into the tub. She made a few adjustments with the faucets, then nodded with satisfaction before going to help Shirley out of her dress.

It was then that Shirley began to feel like herself again and glanced behind her. “You don’t have to undress me,” she said as Lucinda began undoing the buttons on the back of her dress. “I’m not a child. I dress myself fine every morning.”

“This is not every morning,” Lucinda replied. “This is after whatever you do with Uncle Joseph went horribly wrong. Now let me do this for you. You do enough for me all the time.”

That silenced Shirley and she let Lucinda help her out of her dress, petticoat, corset, stockings, chemise and undergarments. With the last of her clothes on the floor, Shirley went to the sink to wash the blood and grime off her body before slipping into the bath. She sighed; after the horror in the laboratory, it felt like heaven.

“Is the water too hot?” Lucinda asked.

Shirley shook her head. “No, it’s perfect. Thank you.”

Lucinda smiled. “You’re welcome. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll find you something clean to wear.”

She gathered up Shirley’s clothes, making sure to bury her bloodstained dress in the center of the ball of petticoats and stockings, and exited the washroom. Alone, Shirley lowered herself up to her lips in the water, enjoying the heat as it seeped to the very core of her being.

She sat there a few minutes, just allowing herself to indulge and delight in the bath without thought or notion, before sitting up again and pulling a bar of soap off a tiny shelf set into the wall. As she was soaping herself, Lucinda returned with a fresh set of clothes.

“Feeling better?” she asked.

“Much better,” Shirley replied. “God, I love these baths.”

Lucinda laughed as she placed the clothes on a cabinet table and sat down in the chair Shirley had sat in not ten minutes before. “I agree, they really are delightful. Though I wonder if enjoying them too much might be bad for you. Perhaps they lead to fits or immorality.”

Shirley gave her a raised eyebrow. “What are you on about?”

Lucinda laughed. “Just something in a book my mother read once. Apparently bathing can cause insanity and immoral behavior if the water is too hot. And bathing in water that is too cold can cause hives, indigestion and fatigue in women. As well as insanity.”

The two girls stared at each other for a moment. Then they burst into laughter. “Who comes up with that stuff?” Shirley asked. “I’ve taken baths at least once a week since I turned twelve, and no matter the temperature, I never saw any of that.”

“You did?” Lucinda asked, confused. “I never knew. Did you bathe at my parents’ house?”

“I went to the public baths in London,” Shirley answered with a shake of her head. “I went in, cleaned myself up, and got a bit of time to myself too. It was quite relaxing. And even better, it only cost a penny.”

“Oh really?” Lucinda replied, keenly interested now. “I never went to them. Mother always said they were low-class and unhygienic.”

“Well, they kind of are,” Shirley mused. “Low class, I mean.” She ducked her head under the water, held it for a moment, and then rose. Spitting water out of her mouth, she continued, “But I can see why your mother would say it was unhygienic. If you used the bathing pool, you had to bathe with twenty to forty people at a time, and half of them would be children playing in the water. The only thing keeping those who just wanted a quiet bath from them was a simple rope stretched across the pool. If you paid a couple more pennies, however, you got your own stall. A never-ending stream of water falling on your head and all the privacy you could want. I usually bought a private stall for special occasions, like Christmas or my birthday.”

“Wait, I think I’ve heard of those stalls!” said Lucinda, excited. “The French call them douche baths, I think. They’re supposed to not only be really fancy, but good for you as well. I wonder why Uncle Joseph hasn’t installed them in any of the washrooms here yet.”

Shirley shrugged. Standing up, she wrapped a robe around herself and stepped out of the bath, sighing happily.

“I needed that,” she said. “Thanks for helping me, Lucinda. I feel like myself again—Lucinda?”

As Shirley was speaking, Lucinda jumped out of the chair and backed into a corner, staring across the washroom with a terror-stricken face. Eyebrow raised, Shirley followed her gaze and saw something small, dark grey bordering on black, and furry. A rat. It stood on its hind legs, fur standing on end and making a throaty, honking growl. It was a clear warning that the beast was enraged and would attack if provoked.

At once, Shirley’s instincts from growing up in dosshouses and on the streets, where the rats sometimes became big enough to hunt cats, kicked into life. In two quick bounds, she grabbed the chair Lucinda had been sitting in and, holding it up in front of her like a shield, backed into the corner with Lucinda.

“Stay behind me and don’t move a muscle!” she commanded.

All she received was a sniffle in response. She glanced behind her. Lucinda was crying. “I-I hate rats,” she said. “When I was three, there was one in the closet. It-it—!”

“I understand,” Shirley interrupted. She had had her own bad encounters with rats before and had learned long ago how to deal with them. The first thing to do, of course, was to get over your fear of the little brutes, and she had done that long ago. “But I’ll get us out of here. It’s more afraid of us than we are of it. So if we give it a route of escape and aren’t between it and anything it wants, it should—what the bloody fuck?”

In the two seconds Shirley had taken her eyes off the rodent, it had been joined by allies. Several allies. At least forty more. They stood in three long rows, hissing and baring their fangs at the two girls.

A bead of sweat ran down Shirley’s temple. Behind her, Lucinda whimpered helplessly. “W-What are we going to do?” she asked in a tiny voice.

Shirley tried to think. Screaming felt natural, but there was a chance that might set the rats off. The same problem arose with making any other noise. They could climb out the window behind them, but they were on the second floor. Could they survive a fall from that height? And Shirley was wearing a bathrobe and nothing else. If she were to end up in a compromising situation by climbing out the window—

One of the rats flung itself at them before she could finish working through her options. Lucinda let loose a high-pitched scream, while Shirley swung the chair, one of the legs slamming into the rat and sending it ricocheting into the tub with a pitiful squeak and a splash. As if waiting for this, the rest of the rats rushed forward, many of them leaping across the washroom towards them.

Lucinda screamed again, clutching Shirley’s shoulders so tightly they hurt. Shirley, meanwhile, stepped forward with the chair upraised. The only way out would be to rush through the little bastards while pushing them back with the chair, hope they did not sustain too many bites, and get out as quickly as possible.

“Shirley!” Lucinda cried.

“Don’t let go of me, whatever you do!” she shouted, quieting her own fear. Now was not the time to hesitate. Hesitation meant bites, which meant disease and probable death.

Three rats leapt at them, their mouths wide open to reveal large, yellow teeth. With a defiant scream, Shirley rushed forward and swung the chair. It connected with two of the furry little missiles, while the third glanced off it and bounced off the wall. Lucinda screamed as the rat fell dazed beside her but kept following behind Shirley as they continued forward. Several rats tried to attack from the ground in a wide semicircle, while Shirley swept the chair legs across the floor in front of her. The rats stopped and drew back a little, as if reassessing their plan of attack.

Come on, you little beasts, she thought, grinning somehow despite the situation. I may have never fought an army of you, but I know how to keep you all back. Just bloody try me.

She waited for the rats to make a move, but all they did was hiss and bare their teeth. Shirley bared hers as well. “Come on then!” she shouted. “What are you so afraid of?”

The rats leapt at them all at once, one of them landing on the sleeve of her robe. It squeaked, nearly fell off, and then found its balance before readjusting its fat, hairy body for another leap. Shirley suddenly regretted egging the little beasts on.

“Leave her alone!” Lucinda’s hand swept across Shirley’s arm from behind her shoulder, knocking the rat off and sending it flying into the wall. The moment the rat hit the wall, the lights flickered on and off with an electric buzz before plunging the washroom into darkness.

For the longest second in the history of time, all was silent. Shirley waited for the rending of flesh and the sound of screams as the other rats attacked, but nothing happened. The washroom was totally silent, save for the sound of their breathing.

And then the lights flickered on again. The rats were gone.

Shirley and Lucinda stared in astonishment. “Where did they go?” the latter asked in a trembling voice.

“I-I don’t know,” Shirley replied, eyes roving around the washroom. Not only were the rats gone, but there were also no signs they had ever been here. No scuffs or scratch marks on the tile, no lost patches of fur or droppings. Even the bathwater was clear of large, furry bodies. If someone had walked in at that moment, they would have seen nothing odd, save for the two girls huddled in the corner, one of them brandishing a chair like a weapon, and—

Dust. There was a black dust all over the tiled floor. Shirley had not noticed it before, as she had been focused on the rats, but now that she saw it, she could not unsee it. And now that she thought about it, where had she seen that dust before?

The washroom door crashed open, and Mrs. Preston and Griffin stumbled in, both shouting for an explanation for the screaming. Their sudden appearance frightened Shirley and Lucinda into screaming again, while Griffin cried out and turned towards the door as he saw that Shirley was wearing only a flimsy bathrobe. Meanwhile Mrs. Preston, seeing neither girl was in mortal danger, repeated her question of what had happened.

“Rats!” Lucinda shouted. “There were rats in here! An army of them!”

“An army of them?” Griffin repeated, still looking out at the hallway.

Shirley opened her mouth to correct Lucinda, but from behind her came a moan. Recognizing the meaning of that moan, Shirley turned around and caught Lucinda as she fainted. With Mrs. Preston’s help, she laid Lucinda on the ground while assuring her brother that his younger sister was alright.

“Was there really an army of rats in here?” Mrs. Preston asked as she placed a towel under Lucinda’s head and took her pulse.

“More like thirty or forty,” Shirley clarified, placing the chair down. “But they acted like an army. Attacked us all at once.”

“Were either of you bit?” Griffin asked, his voice vibrating with the struggle to keep control.

Shirley shook her head. “We’re fine, thank God. I fought them off and they just…left, I guess. I don’t know where they went. Lucinda knocked one off my arm, the lights went off and then they were gone.”

“She did?” When Griffin spoke again, he sounded impressed. “How about that? She’s normally terrified of the little beasts. That was brave of her.”

“Brave or not, the shock has had a bad effect on her,” Mrs. Preston advised. “You should take Miss Lucinda and leave this room immediately. Find someplace safe to recover. I’ll have Beth bring up tea momentarily. Mr. Avondale, go summon the Master and Mr. Milverton and let them know what happened. We cannot allow rats to have free reign in the Hunting Lodge!”

Griffin’s retreating footsteps echoed down the hallway, while Shirley pulled Lucinda up and carried her like an invalid out the washroom and to the latter’s bedroom, which was closest. Behind them, Shirley heard Mrs. Preston muttering about how Sir Joseph would have to approve renovations and a larger staff now that two women had been attacked by rats.

Shirley was not sure if Sir Joseph would approve anything beyond rat traps and maybe some poison if nobody had been hurt. However, Shirley had bigger concerns now. First there had been the hands coming out of the toilet bowl. Then there had been Cutbush and the maze in the library. And now an army of rats had appeared and disappeared in the space of a minute.

Griffin was right, something was very wrong at the Hunting Lodge. And if something was not done soon to alleviate the situation, Shirley did not think any of them would live for very much longer.