“What do you mean?” Grace asked.

“Gage was a kind, well-mannered man before the tamping iron passed through his brain. After his recovery he was rude, ill-tempered, and vulgar with women. The man who struck that tamping iron was not the same man who left the doctor’s office healed. The injury to his brain had altered his personality.”

“Altered,” Grace echoed, thinking of the shrieking men who had passed by her cell hours before, only to leave this room tame as lap kittens. “And so you’ve done something similar, haven’t you? But in reverse. You’ve found a way to . . . to . . .” Her gaze slipped to the apple corer, and her stomach rolled.

“Don’t leap to conclusions yet, though I see Falsteed was right in calling you clever. It’s not a simple chore, and I’m sure you’ve noted by the size of my valise that I’m not driving thirteen-pound tamping irons into people’s skulls.”

“I’d imagine not,” Grace said, but her eyes were still on the apple corer.

He followed them and picked up the tool. “What I did was combine the knowledge of what we learned from Phineas Gage with the common practice of trepanning. As I said before, Gage was lucky in that his wound was an open one, allowing his brain to swell. Most patients with injured brains don’t know they’re in danger until it’s too late. A kick from a horse or a fall from a ladder may jar them, but they don’t realize that their brain is swelling inside their skull, pressing against the bone and cutting off blood flow.

“It’s long been a common practice to cut a hole in the skull of such a patient, allowing the brain to swell as it needs, then closing the wound. Different doctors use all manner of different things to pack the wound with, but I prefer lint soaked in—”

“Oil of roses,” Grace interrupted again, rolling her fingers together, still coated in the residue from the table. “And the eggs?”

“I’m guessing you’ve never had to wash your own breakfast plate. If you had you’d be well aware that a dried egg is almost impossible to remove from anything it’s adhered to. I’ve not found its equal for closing up wounds that shouldn’t be stitched.”

“So you . . .”

“It’s quite simple,” Thornhollow said, advancing on her again. “I make two triangular incisions on the forehead—here and here.” He tapped her sharply on the temples right at her hairline. “Cut through the dura to the skull.” He increased the pressure on her temples from both sides, his fingers digging into her scalp.

Grace stiffened. “And then?”

“And then”—Thornhollow released the left side of her skull to reach for his bag, producing a blade and a circular tool—“I cut to the bone on both sides of the temple and punch through the skull with a trephine, which leaves a neat little circle in the bone. The apple corer is to destroy the frontal lobe of the brain. This is where you live. Every gesture, every skill you’ve perfected and experience you’ve had is wiped clean, like my breakfast plate once I managed to get the damn egg off of it.”

“And memories?” Grace asked, refusing to smile at his joke. “What of them?”

“Gone, I suppose,” he said, his eyes no longer jesting. “I don’t know for sure. Most of them lose the capacity for speech and can’t say. For all we know they’re living in their own private hell that I delivered them into.”

“They’re not,” Grace said swiftly. “Their eyes tell the story. They’re calm and contented.”

“But”—Thornhollow raised a finger in warning—“I would never claim they are happy. I think they lose the ability to feel anything. I’ve only been experimenting with this for a short while, but the asylum administrators thank me for it. They believe I’m doing them a favor by turning violent patients into timid lambs. But in truth I do it for the afflicted, to ease their suffering and the weariness of the world they’ve been born into, where we have yet to understand or truly help them.”

He fell silent, his eyes on his hands, now balled in his lap. Grace watched without speaking, willing him to come to the same conclusion she had hours before.

“This is what you ask of me, then?” He raised his eyes to hers. “You want me to cut into you, tear away your skin and your brain, and leave you a desolate, incoherent mess that feels no more?”

“Yes,” she said, the one word heavy in her throat as a tear slid down her cheek. “Yes, I would have that.”

The lantern flickered, sending his face into shadow and back into stark illumination for a moment. “I don’t need to ask why,” he finally said. “You’re an attractive girl, obviously well-bred by your speech and mannerisms. The poor excuse of a rag that you wear can’t hide where you used to carry a child. Any society family would have a sharp eye on an attractive daughter your age, and you wouldn’t have the freedom to pursue any males you find yourself drawn to and so . . .” He paused, watching her closely. “I assume that in order for you to become with child it would have been at the hands of someone with the freedom to roam the halls of your own home.”

Grace dropped her gaze. His fingers went under her chin and drew her eyes back to his own. “And so,” he continued, “once your condition was discovered there was no acceptable way to explain it other than to disappear you for a while, am I right?”

“I’m on my European tour at the moment,” Grace said. “Due to return in a few months.”

Thornhollow nodded and then glanced about the room. “You should register a complaint about the lodgings.”

A bubble rose up in Grace’s throat, erupting in the form of a laugh, and she clasped her hand down on her mouth in astonishment. Thornhollow smiled.

“That’s the game, then?” he continued. “You return home, undoubtedly back into the nest of the viper himself?”

Grace nodded, all laughter gone.

“We can’t have that.”

She reached for him, and it was his turn to flinch. “This is why I ask for it, Doctor. I cannot go back. If you change me permanently, I won’t be wanted at home. They can say what they like about my fate, I’ll live and die here, happily unaware of the present, and all traces of the past taken from me.”

“As well as your propensity for thought,” he argued. “Grace, so few people in this world have any skills worth speaking of. You’ve learned that beauty can work against you, and your build is so slight you’ll never be able to defend yourself. Your brain is your strength, your quickness of wit the one thing that will deliver you from the damnable life of the dull.”

She yanked her hands from his, balling them into fists at her temples as she realized he was refusing her. “No,” she cried. “Doctor, it is my weakness. I see everything; I notice all and I remember—the beautiful and the horrific alike I can recall as easily as a daguerreotype that can’t be unseen. It will be the death of me, this remembering.”

“No, Grace,” Thornhollow said, pulling her hand away from her face. “Utterly to the contrary, this curse of seeing will do you well.”

“You won’t do it, then?” she asked, hot tears streaming down her cheeks. “You won’t cut me?”

“No,” he said. “There’s a much better use for you.”

TWELVE

“She’ll go with me,” Thornhollow said, casting the words into the darkness of Falsteed’s cell. “You were right in your estimation of her quickness, and I can use her in my new endeavors. She’ll be safe, far away from the brute who did this to her. Not to mention Heedson.”

“He’ll never let me go,” Grace said at the mention of the director’s name. “My father is paying him well to keep me here and for his silence as to my condition.”

“In your current state, no, he wouldn’t let you go,” Thornhollow said. “But you came across the solution yourself. Your family’s story about your absence being due to a long holiday won’t hold up if you come home scarred.”