Love. John Keats says, "I love you more because I believe you love me for my own sake, and for nothing else."
Percy Bysshe Shelley says, "The soul meets the soul on lovers' lips."
And finally, the one I find the most striking of them all is Lord Byron's words:
"Love will find a way through paths where wolves fear to prey."
So many thoughts for a single word.
Because of that, I too thought about it for a while; and I decided that love is the mutual deception of the body and mind, designed so that humans may reproduce and multiply.
When I delved deeper into the subject of love, I wondered: Was it also love that drove my stepfather, Baron Alistair Ravenscroft, into sorrow?
Or was it the fact that his late wife's ability to bear a child had come to an end?
My theory was a string of nonsense, for that woman had been unable to give birth—
and that was precisely why they had adopted me, the twin boys from the orphanage, and the little girl.
Lady Vivienne Ravenscroft couldn't have children.Apparently, my father Alistair's desire was quite the opposite—he wanted to be a father.The surprising part was that he neither blamed his wife nor abandoned her.Was it love, or was it habit?
In his work, in his fatherhood, and at times even as a husband, he could be considered impeccable.The moments I spent with my siblings and with him were the bright days of my life.
At the orphanage, the twins Jasper and Laurence, who were one year younger than me, and right below them, a girl, Elora. We were not siblings, yet in that sewer-smelling dormitory blended with hopelessness, we had become each other's home.
When the Baron first came, he only wanted to take Elora, but we could not leave her. Since we didn't leave her, the Baron didn't leave any of us. I'm sure that his differently beating heart saw no harm in having more than one child. Madam, however, didn't think so.
In the times when my father didn't see, she would recreate our old miserable life right before our eyes. I had read somewhere: jealousy is the soul seeing its own darkness in another's light; not a desire to possess, but the echo of a missing piece found in someone else. It said that in its lines. Somehow it was the outward reflection of the mark Lady Vivienne had left on me — especially toward Elora.
I couldn't understand her, yet I didn't hate her. A vast sequence of numbness. I tried to figure out why she was jealous, angry, prideful, prone to violence. Did we appear to her like proof of her own dysfunction? Or was it that those who could reproduce had abandoned us, and the thing she desired most had been wasted?
If your effort is someone else's dirt on their hands, is anger even possible? Honestly, I didn't know.
Articles, newspapers, novels and poems described emotion, but they did not make one feel it.
And yet one day, something made my expression shift…
On a morning when I heard that Elora had been beaten, I silently watched through the crack of the door. The tears in the girl's rage-filled eyes, and the furrowed brows of the female who saw herself superior to her.
"When the Baron arrives, you will say 'I fell from the horse.' Do you understand me?"
A lie — that day, I pitied that woman. How tragic, how shameful. The only power she had was simply being older. She was deprived of anything else she could have been superior in. Pathetic.
Years passed after our adoption. Lady Vivienne, miraculously, became pregnant. My mind burst into a carnival of theories: Could it be that the barren one was the baron? Could she have been with another man? However it had become possible, my father Alistair was exceedingly delighted.
He held balls, popped champagne, showered her with gifts. We, too, felt relieved, in truth. The lady was certain that her own biological child would be more valuable than us. Since all attention was on the baby, her violence visibly decreased.
That feeling — that little twitch in my expression — I experienced it during this time. Pride.
I treated Lady Vivienne kindly throughout the process. Guests, even nobles, would say she had a gentleman for a son, that she should be proud.
She found it strange, I was aware.
I remember another day when I brought her white willow bark tea. Her eyebrows rose with a hint of surprise. She said to me, "Why are you like this, Adrian?"
"How am I, mother?" I extended the cup.
"Don't call me mother, I'm not your mother. I'm asking why you're being kind. I'm well aware you're not stupid enough not to understand."
Though hesitating, she took the cup in her hand.
"My sibling," I said with a smiling face. "I am curious. If the child takes after your looks and my father's character, wouldn't that be sweet?"
Even if mockingly, I saw her smile at me for the first time. She brought the cup to her lips and swallowed.
"Are you saying my character is bad?"
"I'm trying to say you are beautiful, madam."
Words are deceptive, misleading. If you use them in the right place, you can topple a kingdom.
Birth approached, stretching weeks into months. Soon after, the news of Lady Vivienne Ravencroft's death was announced. Birth and death had occurred simultaneously—how strange. Blood loss had spared neither of them. Thinking back now, that woman's womb had been her trial in life.
At the funeral, while my father clung to her coffin in tears, my siblings and I watched the lady's departure from afar as the rain drizzled down. Even so, Laurence hadn't been able to hold back his tears; he had always been a bit sentimental.
At last, we were freed in the manor… whereas the baron was shackled. No matter what we did, we couldn't bring him back to his former self. Our wine cellar vanished between his two lips. Detached from reality, he yearned to see the ghost of his dead wife. In a way, he was fortunate—the gift of grief, death, had reunited him with his wife and child. In the end, it had become painfully clear that he had not chosen us.
I had been deprived of my old brotherly protectiveness, of the time and games we once shared. Those were my feelings—and now, I was without feeling.
I had assumed that my father's death would affect me the way the lady's had. As the eldest of the Ravencrofts, I became their representative. The manors, the lands, the forests, the tenant workers, the taxes collected, the wages paid—in short, everything was left to me. For the first time, I attended political sessions; due to society's pressure, I found myself entangled with politics—nothing more than a flock of sheep that held no interest for me. An endless burden weighed upon my shoulders.
On the other hand, I was ensuring that my siblings became educated, successful, and capable individuals, strictly preventing any scandals. Luckily, none of them tired me.
The exhaustion everything left within me had accumulated; I could neither overcome it nor tear it out. I was incomplete.
After a while, I left the burdensome part of my duties to Sebastian Thornwick, the butler who had also assisted my father. According to him, his grandfather had been the butler of Larkhall Manor during the war years. A seed clearly unbothered by servitude.
Despite being a man in his early fifties, I appreciated his loyalty. After my father died, it was he who guided me. Had he been incompetent, I would never have allowed him to guide me; but he was intelligent, logical, and spoke only when necessary.
I had never seen him mix his emotions with his work, and I knew I never would. That was why leaving the tasks to him was the right choice.
What remained for me were signing financial reports, making decisions on agreements, and occasionally attending meetings.
The burden I thought would lift once my responsibilities lessened continued to sit inside me. I believed that turning toward subjects that piqued my interest would ease me, that perhaps it would fill the hollow within. I tried things like dances, womans, instruments, horses… yet none of them soothed me.One night, before sleep, I closed my eyes and thought deeply about the past. When had the emptiness first been created?I suddenly sat upright.
The bloody death of Madam had filled my heart. And thus my interest in cadavers had grown.But how would I understand this?I could attend the Edinburgh Medical School—I'd heard they lectured over corpses there.Or one day, I could become a killer and learn.
While my logic tugged me between those two choices, I finally chose.I had made my decision: I needed to soothe that compulsory urge inside me.
Why would a corpse draw my attention, anyway?Because a living body is composed of a face, expressions, and personalities they believe to be their own.A dead body, however, is veins, tendons, joint angles, lines that can be cut, and organs that can be removed.That alone made it more captivating than any living person.A body without a soul is, at last, a silenced secret.
Living humans were complicated—face saying one thing, words another, soul something else entirely.The dead could not conceal that frozen expression; they revealed exactly when they died, how they died, even what they last ate, with absolute honesty.
Living humans were puzzles full of hidden things.And I did not like puzzles.
Not until October 3rd, 1855, at 10:30, when my first puzzle stood before me with all its bewildering mystery.