“Ada,” Herr de Bonne tenderly addressed her. “I’ve brought a doctor. Beloved, can you wake?”
Frau de Bonne moaned softly as I approached. “Who are you?”
“I am one who is here to help.” I addressed her husband: “How long has she been in this state?”
“Six weeks, though her illness progressed gradually. She’s already delicate of health—the cold weather does not agree with her—but she’s grown much worse. She frequently vomits. She cannot eat. She barely sips tea. She cannot stand for dizziness. I fear . . .”
And here the great poet was overtaken by sobs. Such was the state of his wife that she only sighed. It was then I noticed the subtle distention of her abdomen. My first thought was one so obvious I feared embarrassing the poet.
My examination of Frau de Bonne proceeded without incident. Herr de Bonne informed me his wife was twenty-two—just a year younger than myself. During my examination, Frau de Bonne turned to retch into a bucket. “I cannot seem to stop.” Her teeth were discolored from stomach acid, proof she’d been sick as her husband claimed.
After much apologizing, I asked her to open her wrapper, which was sewn of the finest silk I’d ever seen. She blushed from modesty, but acquiesced. Her breathing was labored, her sputum thick, which was likely due to lack of fluids. Her ribs fanned beneath her flesh. Her womb was enlarged. When I palpated it, a subtle fluttering answered.
It took me little time to realize what was ailing Frau de Bonne, which was as suspected. To quantify my findings, I asked: “When was your last cycle?”
“I can’t remember. Two, three years. I rarely experience them . . .” Again, she blushed. “My poor husband! What shall he do?”
I asked her to dress, more disturbed than I’d ever been by a patient’s condition. How strange to find evidence of life amid the threat of death!
Since there was nowhere for me to turn as Frau de Bonne dressed herself—remember, my examination took place in their sitting room—I trained my eyes toward the ceiling. To my dismay, I saw several wire cages hung along a dark beam; I hadn’t noticed them in my fear of finding Frau de Bonne close to death. Each cage was occupied by birds: sparrows, a raven, swallows, even a pair of white doves. This discovery enticed me to examine their cottage beyond the shadows. There was no way around it: their cottage was squalid. Every spare surface was covered with possessions, though there seemed no reason to it. Pottery adjoined stacks of papers and pots of ink beside forgotten mugs of tea. A piano piled with sheet music, the keys covered with dried rose petals.
Once I recovered from my shock, I noted a maid who was little more than a girl. I scolded her for not cleaning as she should. In response to my impassioned words, the birds chattered and fluttered, sending a rush of feathers from their cages. I plucked a black feather from the floor. “Anyone can see this is not a healthful environment, Herr de Bonne.”
“My wife claims the bird song soothes her spirit,” he explained. “You have yet to tell me your diagnosis, Herr Doktor. Please.”
“Your wife is not dying,” I whispered. “She is with child.”
He did not believe me at first. After I convinced him thus, he exclaimed, “I never expected such an occurrence.”
“It’s not a simple matter,” I explained, my heart breaking for him. “What I am about to say is very difficult. It is now the middle of December. From the size of your wife’s womb, the baby will come to term in about five months’ time. I must implore you to leave here as soon as the snow permits to go to a city where there are physicians who specialize in your wife’s condition. It pains me to admit this, but I do not have experience for such a delivery. Between her narrow hips and her illness, your wife is too frail to withstand the rigors of labor. By this stage of her pregnancy, her nausea should have lessened. This suggests there is something else sickening her. You must leave here as soon as the snow allows. If you remain here . . .”
What I wanted to say I could not from a strange fatalism: Your wife and child will die.
To my dismay, Herr de Bonne ignored my insinuation. “We won’t go. We can’t.”
“If it is a matter of financial considerations,” I began delicately.
“It’s not.” His tone was resolute.
“But your wife requires assistance! Is there anyone I can write regarding your situation? Someone in your family perhaps?”
The maid spoke up. “Herr de Bonne has a cousin. A Bertram Highstead who lives outside London. He has an estate. Two sons, one named Robert. Write to Highstead. He will bring them home to England.”
“Hush!” his wife scolded the maid. “This is our home now.”
The couple dismissed me. Before I departed, I gave Frau de Bonne some bicarbonate of potash to ease her nausea, and two bottles of laudanum to her husband, who’d requested it for insomnia.
And that is the main of my story and the whole of my torment, my sister. After many hours of fretfulness, I realized only you can help. Now that you are situated in London for the winter, I implore you to inquire regarding a Bertram Highstead and his family. You must inform them of their cousin’s dolorous situation.
I await your reply most anxiously—
—your loving brother Friedrich
Robert set down the book at last. To come across his name in such a manner—he didn’t know what to think. He felt as though he’d encountered an alternative version of himself. A doppelgänger. None of the letter’s content should have been a surprise—hadn’t John told him as much about Hugh and their father? Regardless, Robert was shaken. Disoriented. As if he’d traveled to countries far beyond Shropshire. Beyond time.
To settle himself in his body, Robert flexed his hands and cracked his knuckles; the reddened flesh stung, but the sensation was welcome. It reminded him he was alive in his body, not in a book. That no matter what had happened to Ada and Hugh and their baby, there was naught anyone could do to help them. Not even him. For a moment, he felt truly regretful he hadn’t been able to convince Isabelle to inter Hugh in the chapel.
And yet Robert didn’t feel fully present: when he looked at the quilt covering his lap, a dark feather lay there. It appeared to be from a raven. Though someone must have used it as a bookmark, it still seemed a sign. Of what, though?
Before Robert could decide, a sudden sound distracted him. A scratching from the corridor.
“Who’s there?”
The scratching grew louder. Closer. Sharper.
“Hullo?” His voice sounded unsteady in the darkness.
Another thump.
Before Robert could stop himself, he grabbed his trousers and tugged the door open.
A dog sat there—the same black Labrador that had greeted his arrival. His tail was tucked around his legs.
“You,” Robert whispered, setting a fire iron he didn’t recall grabbing against the wall. “Virgil, right?”
In response, Virgil sprang to his feet, panting. He barked once and circled frantically. And then Robert saw: a thin stream of urine puddled from beneath the dog’s hindquarters.
IV.
The passage to take Virgil outside was long and confusing. Once Robert pulled on his boots and overcoat, the dog led him down one corridor and into another before turning onto a third. He seemed to know the way, which was fortunate because Robert didn’t; he’d been too upset by Isabelle to take note.
Once downstairs, Virgil had trotted past the archway announcing the kitchen. Down another corridor, where a grandfather clock pointed toward two. Then, to Robert’s surprise, Virgil bounded into the corridor leading to what Mrs. Chilvers had claimed was Hugh’s study.
Robert’s steps slowed.
The dog wasn’t the only one there. Just outside the door, a slight young woman was silhouetted before a small gas lantern. A dark shawl covered her form.
“Virgil!” the young woman scolded in a hushed voice. “Bad dog!”
There was a caress of affection in her tone that made Robert like her. Who was she? The housemaid. He recalled
Owen calling her Grace.
Robert pulled back about the corner, silencing his breath. From his vantage point, he watched Grace draw a bone from her pocket. She’d expected the dog to appear.
Just as Robert was about to warn the dog needed to relieve himself, Grace looked up and down the corridor. She opened the door to Hugh’s study and entered, leaving the door open behind her. The dog followed, the bone hanging from his mouth.
Robert watched to see what would happen next.
A moment passed. Another.
The clock struck two.
They did not return.
If Hugh never lived there save for two weeks, what could the study contain? Too curious to resist, Robert tiptoed down the hall and peered inside the room. Long translucent curtains billowed out from the back of the room, where two French doors were left open to the winter night. Grace had gone outside. This he had not expected. Yes, he reasoned, it may have been nothing more than taking the dog out. But why walk through Hugh’s study instead of the kitchen, which was closer, or even the front door? Even Robert, a stranger to Weald House in every way, recognized Hugh’s study as sanctified space.
His heart hammering against his ribs, Robert slipped through Hugh’s study toward the French doors. A stiff breeze set papers to rustle as he passed. The rain must have stopped, for the moon had risen, casting an uncanny light over long tables shadowed with books, tall statues, overstuffed chairs, and a piano. Artifacts of Hugh’s life, presumably displayed to appease the pilgrims’ hunger.
The moon guided Robert toward the French doors and into the world beyond. Once outside, he found himself alone in a walled rose garden, dormant with winter he hadn’t noticed upon his arrival. Wasn’t there a beehive somewhere? He’d have to be careful. Where had Grace gone? He turned until dizzied, eyes narrowing in the dark, thorns raking his shoulders.
A muffled bark sounded to the left. Some twenty feet away, Grace’s lantern bobbed in time with her footfall. Dog and girl clamored into the woods, their forms shadowed beneath tree limbs. They were heading toward Ada’s Folly—they had to be. But why?
Robert felt possessed as he followed them at a discreet distance. He had no yearning to confront, only witness. Tree limbs snapped against his cheeks, leaves crackled beneath his step. The bitter wind made his eyes sting, his lips chatter.
Perhaps it was his agitated state, but what appeared far by carriage seemed near on foot. Sooner than he’d imagined possible, Ada’s Folly rose above the trees like something conjured from a fairy tale. The moon gilded the glass dome, glittering from the last of the rain. Viewed in the night, the chapel Hugh had built looked even more fantastical, more impossible than Robert remembered. In that moment, he forgot about Isabelle’s anger, Hugh’s corpse, and his ghost wife. Instead, he felt the presence of the divine, as he did when encountering something too wondrous to believe, like when he’d first met Sida. Hugh loved as he loved. That was enough for a man in this life. Wasn’t it?
But then Robert remembered where he was, whom he was following.
He crouched behind one of the larger oaks. Grace approached the chapel, Virgil still lolling at her side. There was a purpose to her every movement that bordered on stealth. Whatever she was doing, she’d done it many times before.
She set the lantern on the ground beside her feet. Robert leaned forward to see better. A sudden wind blew dust into his eyes, the pain sharper than thorns. He clasped a hand over his mouth to muffle an expletive.
By the time he recovered, they were gone. But he couldn’t turn back. Not yet—whatever he’d witnessed in Grace seemed to be providence. All of a sudden the burning need to look inside the chapel, to view what no living man or woman had ever seen, overtook him. To view Ada’s grave after reading that letter. Robert’s breath caught in his chest in a manner nearly sexual in its pleasure. It felt as visceral as love, as tangible as bread. Yes, this was unwise. Yes, this went against everything Isabelle Lowell decreed. Yes, it was night. Still, he couldn’t turn away.
His eyes made out an archway hidden beneath veils of ivy. The door. When he approached, he saw the lock was coated in rust and ice. A soft clucking sound drew his attention. When he bent to investigate, a blur of white darted from the ivy.
Doves. They must have been nesting in the eaves.
Once they’d cleared, Robert tried the chapel door. The iron handle was obscured by a bouquet of dying roses someone had nailed above it. As soon as he turned the handle, ice soaked through his glove.
Locked.
An odd disappointment fell upon him. He shouldn’t have hoped. But the top of the chapel was clear glass. The moon was full, now that the storm had cleared. There would be some light to look inside—not enough to set the stained glass afire in all its glory, but enough to see something.
Robert glanced around one last time. No Grace or Virgil. His hands reached for the most convenient branch (here, the thickest tendril of ivy). It was still wet from rain. His feet pushed against the ground. Launching himself up, up! toward the heavens.
Though it had been years since he’d climbed anything beyond a set of stairs, all of his days climbing trees as a boy came back to him. The ease was exhilarating. As he climbed, ivy rustled beneath his body. His muscles stretched and strained.
Once he was about ten feet from the ground, the ivy thinned, allowing him to view the lead tracery marking the stained glass windows. He let out a long Oh! as he brushed the glass, so smooth and cold. It was milk-hued, probably to set off the colors within. Though there was little to see, the knowledge that this was what the pilgrims had traveled to view rose in Robert, and he’d touched it. Pride—no, triumph—flooded his chest, granting him courage to climb farther.
Above the glass walls, a ledge of grey stone rimmed the chapel’s perimeter, marking the start of the glass dome. Breathing hard, Robert’s cold-numbed fingers curled around the ledge. How high up he was! He’d never climbed so far, not even as a boy. A strange unease twisted his stomach. For one mad moment, he imagined Grace returning with Isabelle. Hugh staring down at him from whatever world lay beyond. Ada too with her baby.
He forced his gaze up. Toward the rain-cleared sky. The moon was so large. The stars so bright. He could even see a hint of Weald House’s roof, tendrils of smoke rising from its chimney pots.
He pulled himself up those last few feet toward the top. Pressed his cheek against the edge of the glass dome. Stared down into the chapel.
Nothing.
The glass dome was thicker than he’d expected. Less fragile. Emboldened, he pulled his torso against the cold glass for a better view. It fogged from his breath, then cleared.
A long alabaster bench. A shimmer of color tracing a white marble floor. Blues, greens, reds glowing like jewels, even beneath the diffuse light of night . . .
Just as his face beamed into a smile, a crack sounded beneath his belly. The glass. It was giving way.
Terror rose in him, as tangible as the moisture seeping his skin. He saw himself on that hard marble floor, his neck angled unnaturally. His blood spattering the white stone bench. He’d breathe his last in a place where no one would ever find him—after his argument with Isabelle, he couldn’t imagine her deigning to unlock the chapel.
He scuttled from the cracked glass. Pressed his toes against the edge of the chapel eaves. He could feel the dome curving and giving, shaking, shivering like a living thing rebelling. Any moment it would shatter into thousands of pieces. He’d be deposited inside the chapel dead and bloodied. It served him right. He’d been a fool to take such a risk.
“Mr. Highstead! Is that you?”
Grace’s voice sounded far away. Panicked.
Robert inched to the edge of the chapel dome. His fingernails scraped stone. A cluster of doves rose from the ivy, their wings brushing his face. Once they cleared away, he saw the housemaid below on the ground. The dog beside her. Her arms overflowing with roses. She dropped them.
“What are you doing there?” Grace’s eyes grew wide,
her mouth a perfect O of alarm. Virgil began to bark wildly.
“I’m uncertain.” Wind hissed past his ears.
His toes slipped from the ledge. He swung his foot toward the ivy. Twined it around his ankle. Leaves scattered into the wind as the tendril broke.
“Come down now! You’ll be killed!”
“I’m trying,” he said.
He reached for the ledge. His legs dangled.
Grace screamed. The dog howled. The wind blew.
Among the Dead
Excerpted from The Lost History of Dreams by Hugh de Bonne, published 1837 by Chapman & Hall, London.
As the Poet passed through Death itself
Pale-shadowed spirits escaped from darkest graves,
Black-eyed dogs approached with fangs like knives,
All led by cruel Chronos who devours all else
Until he found Persephone, queen o’ those caves
Where no Life abides. Her sharp words drew his fear :
‘The Dead may be silent, but they have much to say
For those with ears to hear. Will you listen, Orpheus?’
*
I.
When Robert next opened his eyes, he was lying on a shabby bed surrounded by shadows. Once his sight adjusted, he saw Mrs. Chilvers leaning over him, mouth gaping and eyes wide. She was dressed for sleep, her rumpled face overtaken by a heavily laced cap. Her front tooth was more chipped than he recalled.
“You’re here with us at last, praise God! Can you sit, sir?”
“I’m uncertain,” Robert replied. Images flooded his mind as his head began to ache and his ankle sing. Glass shattering beneath his weight. Stars dazzling him. Doves fluttering. Grace’s mouth as she screamed. Virgil barking like a hound of hell . . .
He’d climbed Ada’s Folly in the middle of the night. It was the second most foolish thing he’d ever done.
Robert pulled himself up, ribs shrieking with pain. Moths beat against the dark window glass. The room he inhabited looked more akin to a mud hut than Weald House. It was so small that it scarcely contained the furniture it held. Besides the cot, there was a small table set with two crude chairs. A few books on the mantel. A shallow grate provided an anemic fire. A stiff breeze blew into the room despite the closed door and window. The scent of almonds wafted on it, too subtle to be detected by anyone but him; the embalmer must have been overly enthusiastic, anticipating Hugh’s travels.
The Lost History of Dreams Page 6