MARY: I can’t believe your own mother would put you in a dungeon!
ALICE: She was not a very good mother, but she was the only one I had.
MARY: Still, a dungeon! That’s almost as bad as experimenting on your daughter, as Rappaccini and Van Helsing did.
ALICE: Remember that she was the product of an experiment as well. If things had turned out differently, she might have been a member of the Athena Club.
LUCINDA: And she did her best for you at the end. That is, after all, what matters.
In the kitchen, Helen looked around. “There must be food—where does Mrs. Polgarth keep the food?”
“It’s in the pantry,” said Alice.
“She always leaves dinner on the sideboard before she goes,” said Helen apologetically. “I’ve never been down here before.”
“I have,” said Alice. “I’ll pack something for myself.”
“Yes, I think that would be best.” Helen sat down on one of the chairs and looked at Alice. “You interposed yourself between me and Tera when she threatened to kill me. Why?”
“I don’t know.” Why had she done that? Perhaps because despite everything that had happened, this was her mother. “Why did you kill Moriarty? Why are you helping Queen Tera? I don’t understand.…” There were so many things she did not understand.
Helen looked down at the table for a moment, as though lost in thought, then looked back up at Alice. “My father—Dr. Raymond. What he did to my mother drove her mad. But I was born possessing the power to perceive and manipulate energic waves, so he considered the experiment a success. I grew up in his household, cared for by servants. I saw my mother only when my nursemaid took me to visit her at the Purfleet Asylum, where she was confined on the third floor. He was one of the three asylum trustees. Lord Godalming—not Arthur Holmwood, but his father—and Professor Moriarty were the two others, at that time. Each time I came, she would be sitting on her bed, in one of those blue dresses they give the inmates—or patients, but as a child I thought the asylum was a prison because there were bars on the windows. She would look at the wall in front of her, or at the floor—never at me. I didn’t understand why she would not look at me or speak to me. I would speak to her, call her mother, tell her that I was her daughter, that I missed her. Only once in all those years did she respond. I must have been eight years old. I sat next to her on the narrow white bed and asked, ‘Mother, what do you see when you stare like that?’
“ ‘The waves,’ she said, in a voice harsh with disuse. ‘I see the waves.’ She turned to look at me. ‘Daughter, you are drowning.’ And then she screamed. She wrapped her arms around herself and screamed, turning her head from one side to the other. In her agitation, she fell on the floor and had what I believe to be an epileptic fit—there was foam on her lips. My nursemaid hurried me out of there—as we left, the attendants were running to her room with a straitjacket. The next day, my nursemaid told me that she was dead. She had died in the night, alone. After she died, my father sent me to live with a family on a farm in Wales, under the name Helen Vaughan. That was my mother’s surname—he did not want me associated with him, in case there was a scandal of any sort. In those days, I could not yet control my powers. Two children died because of visions I had produced. One was my friend Rachel, the daughter of a prosperous farmer. At first she was entranced by what I could show her, and asked me daily to conjure scenes out of her book of fairy tales. But when the visions took a dark turn, she became convinced that my powers were of the Devil. She was a pious girl, and felt that by encouraging me, she had herself participated in witchcraft. She hanged herself in her father’s barn. The other was a young boy, who claimed to have seen a satyr—half man, half goat—walking in the forest with me. He went mad with fear, and one night he ran out on the bog, where he was sucked into the mud and drowned. After that, the villagers feared and avoided me, so my father sent me to school in London. There, the other girls would not speak to me—they insisted that I had the evil eye. I did not know what to do with my life, so I did what most young women do when they wish for freedom—I married. Charles Herbert was not a bad man, but he was not a good one either. And he was a gambler who slowly, and then quickly, lost the fortune he had inherited. He discovered my abilities and made me use them to frighten men into giving him money. However, as you will discover, we cannot control how others respond to the illusions we create. Some of those men died, and the police began to investigate what they called the Paul Street Murders. I told Herbert I would not extort money for him again, that I was leaving him. He hit me—for the first time in our marriage, he used physical force instead of persuasion and the threat of abandonment. That was a stupid thing to do. Using my powers so often, I had come to understand how they worked. I had learned to control the waves. Now, I was stronger than he was. He died attempting to escape spiders that crawled up his body, spiders that stared at him with their multiple eyes, spiders walking all over him with their furred limbs. He had been terrified of arachnids all his life.
“Only after his death did I discover that I was with child—with you, Lydia. By that time, I was suspected of his murder. But the jury had no direct evidence on which to convict me: I had never touched him. After I was acquitted, I went to a charity hospital, for I had no money—Herbert had spent all I made for him. When you were born, I did not know what to do with you. I did not wish to be a mother, and had no means with which to care for an infant. They allowed me to stay in that hospital for three months, until you were weaned. Then I asked the sisters to take you to an orphanage that was associated with the hospital. I told them your name was Lydia Raymond—I did not wish to use Herbert’s name, for it was still notorious. After that—for a while, I lived as I could, making my way in the great, pitiless labyrinth that is London. Then, one night, Moriarty came to the small tenement room in which I was living. He had been looking for me ever since the trial. He was familiar with the work of the Alchemical Society, for both my father and Lord Godalming were members, although Moriarty never joined himself—he preferred organizations that he could lead. Despite his great learning, he was not a scientist. However, he had always been interested in my father’s experiments, and he said he could use my skills in his business. So I began to work for him. For a while, I posed as a Mrs. Beaumont, contacting wealthy gentlemen, making them tell me political secrets or influence pieces of legislation in ways that were advantageous to Moriarty. When I got in trouble with the police as Mrs. Beaumont, he arranged for me to become the director of the Society of St. Mary Magdalen. And there I stayed for many years, concealing my activities for Moriarty under a respectable exterior. Until one day Hyde showed up and asked me for suitable young women for a series of experiments! He knew who I was, of course, and whom I worked for. He and my father had been friends, colleagues, even collaborators. Years before, as Dr. Jekyll, he had directed his attorney, Mr. Utterson, to bring me his daughter Diana. Another child created by experimentation! Another daughter of a member of the Société des Alchimistes. She was a continual reminder of you—my own child, whom I had given up. But of course she was not you. How I loathed the little monster.”