A Princess in the Age of Science: 4 / 6

By Iolanthe Portmanteaux

That evening, Georgia reported to Mrs. Vendall’s office as she did every day now, to be dosed. Mrs. Vendall looked at the boy’s flat chest, and felt her hope deflate in her own breast.

“Have you seen any… changes… in your body, dear? Have you noticed anything different? Felt anything different?”

Georgia’s alarm plainly showed in his face. “No, ma’am — no changes. Nothing at all.” He couldn’t help but wonder Did Mrs. Vendall see any changes in him? Is that why she asked?

Neither guessed that the “changes” that he feared and she desired were poles apart.

Mrs. Vendall sighed. This was the first time her concoction had failed her. By now, Georgia should not only have plunged into puberty, but very nearly emerged on the other side of it. This was the experience of every other girl Mrs. Vendall had dosed. Why hadn’t it worked on Georgia?

She turned to her side table and picked up a clean spoon. Out of habit, her hand very nearly picked up her own Female Excellerizer in its squat, brown bottle. She frowned to herself and took instead the tall, slim white bottle of Laspar’s Nostrum.

“A different medicine, ma’am?” Georgia asked.

“Yes, my dear. A little something different.”

“What do these medicines do?” Georgia inquired. “I’m not sick, am I? I don’t feel sick.”

“No, no, you’re not sick. You’re not sick at all. You can think of these as… as vitamins. As a tonic to help you grow, like the other girls.” She wiggled the cork to loosen it, then pulled it free with a soft pop! Then she hesitated. “Have you ever felt anything… moving inside you… responding to the tonic I’ve been giving you?”

“No, ma’am,” he replied, honestly. “Do you think I have worms?”

Mrs. Vendall, distracted, didn’t hear the question. She sniffed at the bottle, picking up hints of saffron and ginger along with other scents she couldn’t yet identify. She poured some into the spoon, dipped her finger in, and tasted. Oil of caraway, surely… rhubarb? The ginger, yes, she was right about that… and one strong taste: scammony, yes, that too. If she went on tasting and sniffing, Mrs. Vendall was sure she could identify all the ingredients, but of course the quantities and the preparation… those were things that only Laspar knew.

She poured a spoonful and ladled it into Georgia’s mouth. His face contorted with distaste. “Ugh! Soap? Oh, that’s nasty! Why is there soap in there?”

Soap! Of course. Marseille soap, to be specific. To Georgia she replied, “It’s a common ingredient for remedies of this type.”

Georgia was still opening and closing her lips, like a wide-mouthed frog, and rubbing his tongue against the roof of his mouth, to try to rid himself of the taste. “Ma’am… ma’am? Can we go back to the other one? This one’s awful.”

“Ah… no,” she replied. “In fact, let’s try another spoonful.”

Georgia left the office, descended the stairs, followed the hallway, and climbed the other stairs. Along the entire route his jaw and tongue were working, striving to rid himself of the dreadful taste. Had anyone seen him, they might have the impression he was practicing for a funny-face competition.

By the time he reached the bathroom to rinse his mouth, it was a lost cause. The worst of the taste had faded into his cheeks and the back of his throat. He sniffed the bar of marseille soap that sat in a dish by the sink. The odor was the same as the taste.

“Soap!” he groaned in disgust.

Both Georgia and Mrs. Vendall were ignorant of the struggle going on deep within Georgia’s body. It was an epic battle on a small scale: it was a skirmish on the cellular level. At the same time, it was a global conflict, a war being fought in every part of Georgia’s body. Mrs. Vendall was convinced that something in the child’s physiology was actively resisting the onset of puberty. She had no idea that it was the physical essence of who Georgia was: it was his masculine nature on the march, ready to dominate, intent on converting that young, ambiguous body into something harder, stronger, hairier.

At the same time, Mrs. Vendall’s concoction was more powerful than even she was able to guess. It created a feminine influence that seeped into Georgia’s hormones and gently but irresistably called the child’s body to blossom as a girl.

Her instinct to double-dose with Female Excellerizer put Georgia in a deadlock: his masculine identity lacked the power to overcome the feminine; his feminine identity lacked the warmth and energy to coax the masculine into surrender.

Laspar’s Nostrum entered as a new element in the stalemate. It was, in military terms, a flanking maneuver. While the two elemental developmental impulses were locked in a frontal, head-on, hormonal standoff, Laspar’s Nostrum seeped around the edges of the engagement and moved into territory not yet occupied by either party.

Mrs. Vendall’s concoction was ingenious: somehow she created a formula that unleashed a girl’s endocrine system, creating a flood of hormones that floated through the bloodstream to every organ of the body. The doses kept Mrs. Vendall’s foot on the glandular accelerator, and she didn’t stop until her girls were fully developed, in every sense of the word.

It was true, what she told Absalom Lapsar: the Female Excellerizer had never failed before. Georgia’s unresponsiveness bewildered and disappointed poor Mrs. Vendall.

While Mrs. Vendall’s medicine worked from the most fundamental interior elements of sexual development, Lapsar’s formula targeted the opposite end of the process: in some improbable way, it favored the appearance of secondary sexual characteristics, and left the interior, hormonal reality to play catch-up to the external reality. In particular, the Nostrum quickened the growth of the breasts and the disposition of adipose tissue, creating an overall “womanly” appearance.

After only three weeks, Mrs. Vendall consulted with Laspar a second time, this time to report that the Nostrum had no observable effect. Laspar was dumbfounded. It was the first time his product had failed to arrive at the desired result.

After listening to Mrs. Vendall’s report, and after asking a few questions to be sure she’d used the preparation correctly, Laspar told her, “Here’s what I recommend: try one more week with my Nostrum, and if you don’t see any result, then it’s time to move the battle to another level.”

“What on earth do you mean?” Mrs. Vendall asked.

“You and I both have used medical means to push the girl into puberty. Our methods were infallible to us before now. Am I correct?”

“Of course,” Mrs. Vendall agreed.

“One inescapable fact remains: something — something deep and essential — is blocking our progress. There is an obstacle in the girl herself.”

“What sort of obstacle?”

Although the two were quite alone in his workshop, Laspar involuntarily looked around him, as if to make sure no one overheard. Leaning forward, he asked her in a confidential tone, “Have you ever heard the term… psychosomatic?”

“I may have,” Mrs. Vendall replied, trying to not betray her excitement. She felt the frisson of something new; the moment of a scientific revelation.

“On the Continent, there are… investigators of the human condition and of our ethereal spirit. They have come to a solid convinction: that the mind and the spirit can affect the form and health of our bodies far more than hitherto suspected.”

A thrill ran through Mrs. Vendall’s body, and made gooseflesh of her arms. “And what is to be done, then?” she managed to ask.

Laspar opened a small drawer and retrieved a visiting card, which he set on the table and pushed toward Mrs. Vendall. She read:

Mrs. Vendall was puzzled. “He treats people with magnets?”

Laspar laughed condescendingly. “No, my dear. He uses magnetism. To be specific: animal magnetism.”

“Ah,” Mrs. Vendall said, finding her footing, “That’s something like Mesmerism, isn’t it? Does it actually work?”

Laspar looked offended and began to pull the visiting card back. She stopped his hand. “I’m sorry, Absalom. I’m not familiar with this new science.”

He nodded and let go of the card, which she quickly pocketed.

“He, like us, has a number of lotions and potions of his own invention, but primarily he uses animal magnetism to arrive at the heart of the matter. In this case, he’ll be able to divine whether your Georgia’s issue is physical or mental — and he’ll find a way to remove the obstacle. He arrived from Paris only six months ago, and he comes highly recommended.”

Bourbaki’s establishment was along Mrs. Vendall’s way home, so she ventured to knock, and found the man at home. She liked him immediately. He was congenial, charismatic, and full of both knowledge and good feeling. He spoke with an accent: not quite French, not German either, but in any case, something cultivated, something foreign.

Tentatively at first, and then more openly as she felt Bourbaki’s interest, Mrs. Vendall described Georgia’s condition and her failed treatments. Bourbaki listened attentively, without interrupting once. When Mrs. Vendall had finished talking, he told her, “I’ve no doubt that your friend Laspar has ‘hit the nail’ as you say. You will see, Mrs. Vendall, the science of magnetism will soon reveal all.”

He asked several questions about Georgia’s habits, feeding, activities, whether her sleep or her bowels were prone to disturbances, and various other inquiries of a medical type. Then he asked whether Mrs. Vendall was carrying a photograph of the girl. By chance, Mrs. Vendall happened to have a copy of the image she’d sent with the letter to Mr. Prince.

“Perhaps I can detect something of the girl’s magnetic state,” the man explained. He studied the picture closely, then cupped his hands around it.

“No,” he said after a few moments. “The only thing I can feel, all I can sense, is that this girl has a secret of some sort. There is a story in her… in her beginnings. Did she come to you as a foundling?”

Mrs. Vendall recounted the story of how she’d found the child asleep in a snowdrift. Mr. Bourbaki was enchanted. “This bodes well!” he told her. “Georgia’s beginnings are practically magical!” And he laughed. Mrs. Vendall found this non sequiter a bit odd, but in the end she laughed along as well.

Bourbaki rubbed his hands in satisfaction. “You can bring the girl tomorrow at 10 am. She may need one treatment, or a series of treatments. That remains to be seen. But have no fear… under my hands, Georgia will blossom and grow.”

His phrase under my hands struck Mrs. Vendall oddly, but she didn’t dwell on it. She had a question she meant to ask before Bourbaki showed her to his door. “Mr. Laspar told me that you also formulate remedies. Is that true?”

“Oh, yes!” the little man exclaimed brightly, as if he’d forgotten that fact himself. “Yes, I have a handful — five remedies, each with a particular application. I’m glad you mentioned them: I have one in particular that might meet Georgia’s specific case. It’s a liniment with the same aim as your Excellerizer and Mr. Laspar’s Nostrum.”

Mrs. Vendall stiffened. She wasn’t sure how to express a certain reservation, but Mr. Bourbaki understood immediately. “Have no fear, Mrs. Vendall! Have no fear! I won’t touch the girl. If I determine that the liniment will help her, she will carry the bottle home, and apply the liniment herself, in the privacy of her room. I’ll limit myself to giving her instructions.”

Reassured, Mrs. Vendall shook hands with Mr. Bourbaki, confirmed the time for Georgia’s appointment tomorrow, and left.

Mr. Bourbaki watched the woman as she walked along the sidewalk.

“Let’s hope little Georgia is as lovely as her picture promises,” he murmured to himself. “And let us hope this gorgon doesn’t guard her too closely.”