A storm was brewing inside Stephen, if Meg didn’t miss her guess. She ought to soothe him, but just now she couldn’t think how.
Dr. Gilbert’s eyebrows pulled together. “I must insist. The mayor has mandated the vaccine to prevent an epidemic of smallpox. Such crowded, unsanitary conditions create an environment that breeds disease.”
“I am familiar with crowded, unsanitary conditions,” Stephen ground out. “I know full well how environment breeds disease. Ever heard of a place called Andersonville?”
Understanding softened the doctor’s features. But before he could form a reply, a loud voice called out.
“Stephen Townsend? I’m looking for Stephen Townsend. Anybody seen him?” Two police officers stood in the church doorway. A pit expanded inside Meg’s stomach.
Stephen wheeled around to address them. “Who wants to know?”
“That’s him,” someone in the line cried. “That’s Stephen Townsend right there.”
Both policemen marched toward them, faces implacable. Sylvie stood and helped Meg do the same. She swayed, the heat of the alcohol rushing to her head.
“What’s this about?” She hated that her voice sounded weak.
They ignored her. The tall officer identified himself as McNab and the more robust officer as O’Hara. “Stephen Townsend, formerly of 133 Randolph Street?”
Stephen felt for the gun he’d lost. Sweat glistened on his face and neck. “So you’ve come for me at last. In a church, no less. I plead sanctuary.”
“You’re under arrest for the murder of Hiram Sloane.”
Shock ripped through Meg. Sylvie clutched her about the waist.
“What?” Stephen shouted. “That’s a lie! You’ve got the wrong man.”
“And yet you seemed to know we would come for you. Interesting, you didn’t seem much surprised.”
Meg was going to be sick. Policemen now stood at every door, barring any escape. “What evidence do you have?” she asked.
“Hold him.” Officer O’Hara drew handcuffs from his pocket.
Stephen lunged away, but there were too many people blocking his path. McNab struck his knee with a club.
“Stop!” If Meg’s hands were not wrapped, she would claw at these men to make them stop. Meanwhile, Sylvie said nothing.
Her father was doubled over, coughing, unable to run away. In a heartbeat, his wrists were yanked behind him and cuffed.
“Don’t do this! I demand to know what evidence you have to make such a ridiculous charge!” Meg tried to clench her fists, then gasped at the wave of pain that followed.
Stephen twisted violently against his captors and was rewarded with a blow to his temple that felled him to his knees.
“Stop! Stop, I beg you!” Meg cried.
Dr. Gilbert finally intervened. “Officers, you have your man in custody. Can’t you show his daughters the courtesy of explaining why?”
O’Hara looked at Meg, his gaze directly on her level. “An eyewitness told us he saw Stephen Townsend kill Sloane in a rage the night of the fire, October 8.”
“No, no,” Meg said. “They were friends.”
“Yeah, about that,” McNab said, standing over her father. “We spoke to the deceased’s nephew, Jasper Davenport. He says, and the household staff confirmed, that during a meal you all shared on Sunday, October 1, Townsend had some kind of outburst. Isn’t that true?”
Meg’s throat felt lined with fleece.
“Furthermore, the articles in the Tribune say this man became unhinged in Andersonville.”
“That’s not right.” Anger eclipsed the pain in Meg’s hands and clarified her thoughts. “The article by Nathaniel Pierce said absolutely nothing about him becoming unhinged. The letter to the editor that followed was hearsay and libel, nothing more.” She looked to Sylvie for help. “Don’t you have anything to say?”
But Sylvie’s countenance was as pale and lined as a ledger sheet. “What can I possibly say that will make this better?” she hissed. “If I could offer some defense on his behalf, don’t you think I would?”
One of the men waiting for his vaccination stood and pointed. “I saw him the night of the fire. He was hiding under his cart, and when I approached it, he came out and held his gun in my face. He called me a Rebel and threatened to shoot.”
“Because you were about to steal my cart!” Stephen roared, then winced, tilting his head. “What has the world come to if a man can’t even protect his own property from thieving Rebels?” Sweat poured from his temples. His shirt collar grew dark and damp. Even the children had stopped playing to gawk.
“Someone will take that witness’s statement shortly. What do you think, doctor?” O’Hara asked. “Is this a clear case of another veteran who’s lost his marbles? It wouldn’t be the first time we locked one up for being a danger to society.”
Unsteadiness washed over Meg. She wanted to protest, to shout that her father was no threat. But he’d just admitted to aiming a gun at one of the men in this room. There was something wrong with him, something mysterious and perpetual, something she hadn’t been able to fix with love and time and willpower.
Dr. Gilbert twisted one end of his mustache. “It is my observation among my patients at the Soldiers’ Home that veterans who were also prisoners of war suffer the greater percentage of mental breakdowns. They have trouble trusting people. Does that amount to lunacy? Not always. But their suspicions interfere with their relationships and daily life, as they are convinced someone is out to get them.”
“And I was right.” Stephen blinked excessively. “I was right.”
“Many of these veterans are fearful and verbally combative,” Dr. Gilbert continued, “but not all are prone to physical violence.”
“This one is.” O’Hara pulled from his pocket a Colt revolver with the handle burned off.
“That’s mine!” Stephen cried, and Meg’s knees threatened to give way. “Look at the side, it says SJT. Stephen James Townsend. I must have dropped it. I don’t remember.”
“Another common trait in this type of patient,” Dr. Gilbert added. “They can experience or create a traumatic episode—as though a blinding fury overtakes their being—and then genuinely not have any recollection of it.”
“Well, lucky for us, someone else remembered it.” O’Hara tucked the evidence back in his pocket. “You didn’t drop it, you buried it. Another witness told us where to find it.”
“Wait, stop.” Meg’s thoughts whirled to keep up. “That can’t be right. We buried our valuables, and they were saved from the fire. But that gun is warped, the handle burned away. It couldn’t have been buried. Your so-called witnesses can’t be believed.”
“The witness clarified that your father did not bury it well.” O’Hara smirked. “He was in a hurry to get rid of it and made a shallow hole with his hands. When the fire came, it wasn’t enough to protect it. When we found it, it was buried in ashes at the location the witness told us.”
“I tell you I have no recollection of doing that,” Stephen insisted. “But if I’d wanted to get rid of the gun, I’d have thrown it to the flames or into the river, and we’d never have seen it again.”
He was right. This was wrong.
“Enough chatting.” McNab hauled Stephen to his feet. “We have more criminals to arrest, looters to catch, and convicts to find, since the jail was opened the other night.” Shaking his head, he made a scuffing sound against his teeth.
With O’Hara gripping Stephen’s other arm, the officers marched him out of the church.
“Where will you take him?” Sylvie called after them.
McNab paused, angling to look over his shoulder. “Where do we take all the criminally insane?”
“No.” All hostility fled Stephen’s voice, replaced by breathless terror. “Not there. Don’t lock me up in that place. I swear I didn’t kill Hiram Sloane.”
Instinctively, Meg started after them, but Dr. Gilbert and Sylvie held her back.
“Stop, Meg.” Tears cou
rsed down Sylvie’s cheeks. “There’s nothing we can do. It’s over.”
“It isn’t.” And yet Meg’s voice sounded as hollow as those empty words, for this moment was weighted with a finality like death. There had been a ripping in her soul the day Ruth was laid to rest, a searing knowledge that she’d never see her mother again, that the relationship of mother and child had been cruelly severed. There had also been guilt, for if Meg had known Ruth intended to climb to the roof in a storm, she would have stopped her. While she still ached over the loss, there was some comfort in the fact that Ruth was at peace now in heaven, a place free of tears, sickness, and sorrow.
How broad the chasm between heaven and earth. Stephen was not headed to a grave, but just as he’d lost part of himself in the war, he would be whittled down even further in the asylum.
Had this been inevitable? Was there ever a time after Stephen came home, some unseen crossroads, where they could have taken a different path that would have led anywhere but the asylum? Perhaps early treatment could have prevented all of this confusion and heartache. Guilt wrapped around Meg and squeezed until she struggled to draw breath.
Bracing herself, she waited for Sylvie to say she’d known it would come to this, that Meg had been mulishly blind and deaf to the signs. Sylvie could cut her to pieces with blame. By some measure of grace, she didn’t.
“All the news Father received of old friends and their ends,” Sylvie whispered, still holding Meg’s arm. “Do you think he knew it foreshadowed the course his life would take?” Her voice broke.
Meg looked at her sister’s reddened nose and tear-stained cheeks and grasped for an answer that would not crush them both. Some paths turn around, she wanted to say. He could still come back to us. The ache in her left hand pulsed in rhythm with the jerks of her heart. Her right hand hung dead and absent. Wounds can yet heal in both body and soul.
But all she could do was weep.
Chapter Nine
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 12, 1871
Pain sliced through Stephen’s bound wrists as two attendants dragged him by the elbows through an iron door and into a whitewashed room no bigger than seven by eight feet. His head still throbbed from where he’d been struck.
“I don’t belong here,” he growled. “I’m not insane.”
“Judge says you are, and we generally trust his verdict over the patient’s,” the attendant named Linden said. “Now, settle in to your new accommodations. Rest. A doctor will see you soon.”
When the other attendant, Slattery, released the bindings from Stephen’s wrists, it took all his mental and physical strength not to lunge for the door. It was blocked by these burly men in white uniforms, and he knew from experience that they wouldn’t hesitate to restrain him—by another blow if necessary—if he gave them reason. Besides, even if he did break past them, he wouldn’t be able to escape. Every stairwell had a locked door, and the Cook County Insane Asylum was miles outside the city. He’d be caught and dragged back in no time.
“That’s it.” Linden smiled. “There’s no point in fighting, 283.”
Stephen’s gaze shot to Linden’s, heartbeat ratcheting. His breath sawed in and out. Had he spoken aloud? He covered his face with one hand and was startled by the smooth feel of skin beneath his palm. They must have dosed him with something to make him compliant, for they’d shaved his beard and hair as soon as they took his clothing and gave him a laundry number instead. 283. That was what they called him now, a number. As if searching for his missing beard, his hand tapered off his chin and stroked the air beneath it.
If he wasn’t mad upon arrival, he would be in due course.
The door closed and locked. Alone, he looked up at the small square window at the top of his door and saw nothing but the bare wall of the corridor on the other side. It was white, like everything else here. But not the pure white of wind-driven snow. It was the white of painted tombs.
There was no doorknob or handle on the inside of the door. One window let in a patch of sunlight, but even that was fractured by steel rods barring the glass. A cot cowered against one wall, a chamber pot beneath it. A courtesy, he guessed, in case he wasn’t escorted to the bathroom at the end of the ward in time.
A cot and a pot. That was all.
Stephen sank onto the thin mattress, feeling every spring beneath him. He clasped his knees but could not stop their quaking. The stiff asylum-issued garments itched. Behind him, someone pounded on the other side of the wall. Sweat slicked his skin, and his shirt clung to his sunken chest.
Summoning the soldier he once was, he shot to his feet and marched a few paces in the room before about-facing and marching again. “This can’t be happening,” he said to himself, his voice changed by the terror within. “Not now, not after everything I endured.”
It was only a matter of time, a voice whispered to him. And it is precisely because of what you endured.
He chewed on this as he tracked a circuit in the cell. Enough of his friends from Andersonville had suffered a similar fate for him to realize this was no coincidence. “But is this the fate I must accept until the end of my days? Or is it a fate I can fight my way free of?”
Instantly, a vision burst upon his imagination of Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come pointing to a grave. “Are these the shadows of the things that Will be, or are they shadows of the things that May be, only?”
Stephen shook his head. He didn’t want to quote A Christmas Carol or give any space in his mind to fiction. He may have been a bookseller once, but that was a different life, one so charmed it might have been a fairy tale.
This place was no mere fancy, however. Neither was the unraveling he felt within himself. He needed to think.
“Why am I here? What reason did the judge have to deem me a lunatic? Feeding stray dogs is not so odd, nor is pacing my roof at night to guard my home.”
Coward. You know the reason.
“I do not.”
You do.
The knocking on the wall had not stopped. Stephen grasped again at a phantom beard until his fist came to rest over his frantic heart. “No. No. No.” His denial matched the rhythm of his neighbor’s wordless protest.
You murdered Hiram Sloane in a fit of insanity.
“I am not insane!” he roared.
The pounding stopped. So did the voice inside his head.
Spent, he dropped onto the cot, head spinning from the force of his shouting. He rocked back and forth to lull the beast inside.
So you murdered him aware of what you were doing.
He gasped at the brazen thought. “I’m not a murderer,” he whispered. “I murdered no one.”
Liar. How many women in the South are widows or fatherless or childless because of the Rebel lives you took?
“That was different.” Stephen licked his lips. “That was war. Both sides kill their enemies in war.”
And let us not forget the Union soldiers you killed in cold blood in Andersonville.
Stephen groaned and curled onto his side. “I had to do it. They weren’t behaving like soldiers anymore. Those boys were preying on the weak. We had to inflict some justice. We had to make them stop before they killed any more sick and vulnerable prisoners, their own fellow Yankees.”
There, now. You admit to killing both enemies and comrades. You have blood all over your hands. What makes you think that none of it could be Hiram’s?
Stephen splayed his fingers. For a moment he saw red there and felt warmth trickling from his fingertips to his wrists. He blinked, then pinched the inside of his arm until the delusion disappeared. “I don’t remember seeing Hiram the night of the fire, let alone killing him.”
One of your friends hurt his own wife. He was a good man, like you, but after the war he saw ghosts where there were none and enemies in place of those who loved him. Can you honestly say you’ve not done the same? Perhaps during the fire?
Stephen’s pulse pounded painfully, but he forced himself to revisit October 8. It was the night he
failed to help his daughters when they needed him the most. This was a fact he considered with a detachment that kept him above the riptide of guilt and regret. His daughters’ disappointment in him was not what landed him in the asylum. It was not the issue that needed solving in order for him to be free. He’d noticed how they looked at him. Somehow he’d gone from being their protector to being their biggest burden. Were they pleased now that he was out of their way?
He stepped around those thoughts as one sidestepped a puddle in the street, and moved on to what happened on his way to the train depot.
He’d been in danger. All those people, all the yelling, all the people yelling at him. He had used his gun to protect himself. It was his right, especially in the face of such lawlessness. Yes, he remembered that now—people were looting and stealing, and some were drinking away their cares as if it were the last night on earth. A man needed to defend himself against such rogues. How else but with a gun? It was the only thing some scoundrels understood.
Carefully, he scanned the faces of the people he saw that night. Hiram wasn’t there.
Rebels were, however, along with their own weapons. They had artillery. They were firing at him, trying to kill him, even though the war was done. At least, that was what it had felt like, and that was what he’d believed at the time. Whatever the explanation for those explosions, he’d taken cover, and he’d aimed his gun. That much, he saw clearly.
But beyond that, deep shadows hid recollections spanning a few hours, he guessed, of that dreadful night. All the concentration he could summon would not illuminate it.
The pounding on the other side of the wall resumed, an echo to his thudding heartbeat. Hiram had grated on him lately, but he was never a threat. The bonds of their friendship had grown looser, but why would he kill an elderly man? Why had Hiram not been safe in his bed on Prairie Avenue when the fire broke out north of his neighborhood?
More written words sprang to mind, and these he clung to: “‘Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just.’” He recited the Scripture to beat the darkness from his soul. He’d been a man of God once, had even enrolled in seminary before deciding the pastorate was not for him. “‘Whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely . . . if there be any praise, think on these things.’” He would not dwell in those shadowy places of his past.
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