And then several things happened at once. Ben jumped to his feet and took a step back, startling the room. He was staring at Uncle Tully’s boat, which now bore some kind of mechanism with a spinning wheel in its middle. The boat was balancing perfectly, impossibly, on the point of its keel, falling neither right nor left on the carpet. Uncle Tully clapped his hands.
“Isn’t that just so?” he shouted. “Isn’t it right? For eighteen, and just as before. All just as it was before….”
The door to the corridor burst open, and Mary Brown ran in, her hair wild and chest heaving so that she could hardly speak. She closed the door as quietly as possible behind her and leaned on it.
“Men!” she shouted in a whisper. “Downstairs! Two of them, Miss, wanting Mr. Tully. And one of them’s the magistrate!”
It took ten heartbeats for my mind to sort out what Mary had said. The magistrate. Uncle Tully. Aunt Alice. Letters, unread, burning to ash in the fireplace. The time of reckoning was not in some distant future. It was now. I got to my feet, still sweating, keeping one hand on the settee for support.
“I told them I wasn’t knowing any Mr. Tulman and took off running but they followed,” Mary panted. “And I think they heard me coming up the stone steps. If they did, they’ll be finding their way in a lamb’s shake —”
“Lane!” cried Mrs. Jefferies, but he had already moved to my uncle’s side. Uncle Tully was shrinking against the wall, clutching his coat at the sight of Mary, while Ben stood with his hands at his sides, still transfixed, apparently, by the balancing boat.
“Come on, Mr. Tully,” Lane was saying. “Playtime is over now….”
“No!” Uncle Tully protested, now thoroughly panicked. “No, NO! It’s isn’t time, it isn’t …”
“Lane!” Mrs. Jefferies pleaded. “Please …” Then she spun desperately about. “Where’s Davy gone? Where …”
I hurried across the room and knelt before my uncle, Lane scooting over to make room for me. “Uncle, look at me.” I waited until the blue eyes were able to fasten on my face. “That is Mary Brown over there. I told you about her once, do you remember? She likes toys very much. Don’t you, Mary?”
Mary blinked like an owl at Uncle Tully, then nodded enthusiastically. I waited for my uncle’s eyes to come back to me. “Take your boat into Marianna’s room and show it to Mary. Wait for me there.”
Uncle Tully’s bright eyes were solemn. “I should wait?”
“Yes, Uncle.”
“I think they’re coming, Miss!” Mary hissed, her ear to the door, and my uncle’s gaze darted fearfully to Mary.
“Should I do what the girl tells me?”
“Yes.” That was an unexpected boon.
“Is this when the men come? Should I go to the tunnel if the girl tells me?”
I stared back into his serious face. “Yes, Uncle. But go to Marianna’s room first. Do you understand?” My uncle nodded, picked up the boat, its wheel still spinning, and took Mary’s arm as docilely as if he had done so all his life. They hurried away together through the connecting door, my uncle’s coattails flapping.
“She got him ready,” I heard Mrs. Jefferies whispering, “Great God above, Miss Marianna got him ready….”
Yes, Grandmother, I thought, closing my eyes. You got him ready so long ago because you knew it was inevitable. I hope you can forgive me for what I must do now. Thunder rumbled, shaking the silent room. I hoped they could all forgive me, someday, for what I was about to do. I opened my eyes and tried to stand up, but had to grab the back of a chair to keep from falling. For a moment, the roses on the floor had gone out of focus. I felt sick. Lane took a step toward me, and then a male voice, a stranger’s voice said the word light right outside the door. I straightened my back, still holding on to the chair, neck and forehead damp with the effort. The hinges creaked, and the library door opened.
Two men stood in the hallway looking in at us, their top hats and greatcoats speckled with rain. One was tall and clean shaven, the other much shorter and with the wiriest, bushiest blond beard I had ever seen. The tall one took off his hat.
“You’ll pardon us, I’m sure,” he said, “but no one answered the door, and we’ve had the most extraordinary time finding a servant.”
No one spoke for a moment, and then Ben Aldridge stepped forward with his genial expression.
“Come in, gentlemen. We are very glad to welcome you. And do accept our apologies for your trouble. I am Mr. Aldridge. Have a seat by the fire.”
“No, thank you, sir,” said the man with the bushy beard. His voice was clipped, sharp. “My name is Lockwood. I’m a magistrate of this county, and this is Mr. Thomas Purdue, attorney-at-law. Take us to Mr. Frederick Tulman immediately, please. We’ve business that cannot be delayed.”
An uneasy silence permeated the room. Mr. Lockwood turned his beard from face to face, studying each of us in turn, while the tall man, Mr. Purdue, eyed the proliferation of flowers. “Are we … interrupting something?” Mr. Purdue asked eventually.
“Come now,” said Mr. Lockwood, ignoring the question. “We’ve traveled a long way through moor and storm, and I for one intend to do what we came for. We’ve a charge of lunacy to deal with here.” His shrewd gaze moved to the food table, where Bertram was now perched, head down, finishing off my cucumbers. That is exactly how they will look at my uncle, I thought, like a specimen in a glass, an exhibit at the zoo. It made me angry.
“If you would take us to Mr. Tulman, please,” said Mr. Purdue, his tone more apologetic, “we shall have the business over with as little trouble as may be.”
“And who has levied such a complaint, sir?” I said a little too loudly. The eyes above the blond beard moved to me, and now I was the specimen. I had a vague notion that something about me was odd, something about no corset and a chandelier, but my mind would not grasp it.
“That information is confidential at this time, Miss,” Mr. Purdue was saying. “The charges in this case are brought with the utmost regret, and only for the safety of the patient, of course. The party placing this charge has been promised complete anonymity.”
“Oh, come now,” Mr. Lockwood said again. “Look at the lot of them, Thomas. Like a den of thieves. Every soul in this room knows what we’ve come for. Why else did that slip of a girl take off like a jackrabbit? So, let’s get on with it, shall we? We’ve been outrageously delayed, and if we don’t leave in half an hour there will be no one awake to unlock the gates at Dr. Whitby’s. At this rate the …”
Mr. Purdue responded to this, and then Mrs. Jefferies began babbling nonsense while the magistrate’s beard moved up and down, and up and down, words blending together in a meaningless chorus. But I wasn’t listening. I was clutching the back of the chair as if I would break it off, not just angry now, but shaking with it, consumed with rage. Alice Tulman lacked the courage to even use her own name. And these men had obviously already made up their minds, or she had made it up for them. Because my uncle had a different way of thinking, a view of the world they did not understand, and money that others wished to spend. For this they would lock him in a cell without even a proper examination. Lock him up like specimen.
And then, all at once, with none of my ordering or logic or even a moment of real consideration, I knew that none of that was going to happen. I didn’t care if I lived out the rest of my life on a street corner, or picking rope in a workhouse, or died in a hedgerow. Aunt Alice’s greed would for once go unsatisfied. Next year, next month, even tomorrow would have to come as it would, but that magistrate was not going to lay the first finger on my uncle. My voice rose over the hubbub.
“Excuse me, gentlemen, but I’m afraid you have made some sort of a mistake. There is no one in this house in need of your services. We have no lunatics here.”
The noise died, and no one spoke, though I did see Mrs. Jefferies’s mouth drop from the corner of my eye. I clutched harder at the back of the chair, driving splinters beneath my nails.
“Perhaps yo
u have come to the wrong address? And if you are late, then please, do not let us delay you for a moment. Can I have someone show you the way out?”
I was still shaking, burning with fury, and I felt rather than knew that Lane now stood behind me. I stared back at the men across the room, and Mr. Purdue’s face, very slightly, seemed to change its shape.
Mr. Lockwood removed his eyes from me and turned to Ben, whom he had evidently decided was in charge of this outlandish affair. “Sir, if you could kindly tell us where Mr. Tulman is, I would be —”
“Frederick Tulman is a respectable gentleman,” I said very clearly, so they could understand. “In fact, some say he is on the verge of a peerage.”
“That’s right,” said Mrs. Jefferies.
“No doubt it will come through in a year or two, but in the meantime …”
“Katharine.” The voice came low from behind me, and my thoughts faltered at the sound of it. “Katharine, stand up straight….”
“… but … in the meantime, Mr. Tulman is just as sane as I am, no matter what my … no matter what Aunt Alice might have … might say about it….”
“Are you, by any chance, Miss Katharine Tulman, young lady?” said Mr. Lockwood. I blinked at him. “Hmph,” he said, “I thought you might be.” He sighed and turned to Ben. “There’s no use playing the gallant, Mr. Aldridge. If Mr. Tulman is here, let’s see him at once and have this business over with. We’ve a very competent doctor waiting in —”
“But she told you,” said Mrs. Jefferies, “there ain’t a thing wrong with Mr. Tully … Mr. Tulman.”
“Uncle … Mr. Tulman isn’t at home,” I said slowly. My head was spinning, and I was so hot, I could hardly breathe. “Mr. Tulman … went on a trip, a very long trip….” An arm snaked around my middle, and I felt a body against my back, the only solid thing in the room.
“There seems to be some sort of confusion here …” Mr. Purdue was saying.
“I’m not confused about anything, young man,” replied Mrs. Jefferies. “How about you?”
I could feel the nightmares creeping on the edge of my mind, and my fingers were burning; they were on fire. I was sweating with the pain of it. I clung to the arm around my middle.
“We want to see Mr. Tulman about a charge of lunacy …”
“Stand up,” the voice was whispering in my ear. “My God, Katharine, stand up….”
“… not for himself, of course. The charge of lunacy is …”
The fire was on my legs now, too, crawling upward with pricking feet.
“… against his niece, Katharine Tulman.”
Lunacy. Against his niece, Katharine Tulman. I remembered now. Katharine Tulman saw things that weren’t there. The arm tightened around me.
“Good heavens, John,” said Mr. Purdue, “she’s raving now….”
“She’s drunk,” said the low voice. I tried to brush away the fire. It hurt, like bugs, little stinging bugs….
“She’s raving, I say.”
Hands were trying to hold on to mine, but I had to get the bugs away, to brush them off. They were hurting me, crawling up my neck, making my breath come short.
“There now,” said Mr. Lockwood. He was very close. “Let me have her, son, so she can be kept from harm….”
“No!” I yelled, though I could hardly breathe. “Let me … make them … stop….”
I opened my mouth again, but there was no more air. I reached out an arm, and then an earthquake began in my own body. I shook, violently, overpowering the restraining arm, and I hit the floor hard, my teeth clacking together beyond any control. I tasted blood, and heard my name, and voices, and somebody shouting, “Doctor!”
Then a man yelled, “Look at the animal!”
My eyes flew open and through the shuddering world I saw Bertram on the table among the sweetmeats and the tarts. His legs dragged oddly behind him, his mouth white and frothing, as if he’d been eating cream. A pistol appeared from Mr. Lockwood’s jacket, leveled, and a brief flame spurted from its end, etching the air long before I heard the explosion of the shot. And when the sound did come, it came from very far away. I closed my eyes, and felt myself sink into a pit.
I was trapped in a box, weighed down so I could not move or see or hear, only think, and even my thoughts were vague and disordered. The weight pressed on my chest, there was no air, though there was pain in my very center, both burning and sharp, and I could do nothing against it, not even groan or curl up my knees. I could only know that it was, and endure. When the silent hurting became more than could be borne, the heavy box around me flipped and was turned back again by forces that were not my own. I thought maybe I was vomiting, but that, too, was beyond my control. And my pain ebbed, the weight in my chest eased, and there was quiet, a deep, tired quiet, where nothing existed but darkness, myself, and my box. I lay still inside it.
After a time I heard things, noises creeping to me: the squeak of a floorboard, a door latch, water in a glass. I heard the rough sound of Mrs. Brown, and the answering voice of a man I did not know. And I heard my name, many times, said low and soft to my ear. My breath came deep and content, and very slowly, I slipped away.
When I woke, Marianna’s room was full of gray daylight, the kind that only comes from an afternoon soaked in heavy cloud. There were one or two candles lit against the dim, but the rest of the room was in gloom. I studied this for a few moments, then the pink fabric canopy draped far over my head. When I had examined it thoroughly, I moved my gaze again and discovered Mary, her round eyes red-rimmed.
“What happened?” I asked, but I was weaker than I realized. Mary frowned and scooted forward, leaning close. I tried to speak louder. “What happened to me?”
“You had a fit, Miss,” she whispered, “in the library, while the magistrate and the solicitor was here. They would’ve been taking you away right then, only you fell on the floor and shook so, and then the rabbit had a fit, too. Then you went still and we thought you was dead, but he poured black stuff in you and made you puke and … you was lying there so still….” She took my hand and patted it. “We’ve sent to Milton, but the rain is so bad the doctor ain’t come yet.”
I tried to piece together Mary’s story with the incoherent pictures that I thought were memories, but I was so tired. I shut my eyes.
“Don’t go to sleep again, Miss! Can’t you speak a bit more? Can you take some water?”
Mary’s distress made me instantly guilty. I opened my eyes again and with much effort asked, “Who is ‘he’?”
“What, Miss?” Her freckles were screwed up in concentration as she strained to listen.
“You said he made me … made me …” I was hoping she would understand, because the words were almost all I could manage.
“Oh!” Mary’s face brightened with understanding. “Him is him, Miss,” she said confusingly.
I sighed, and went to sleep.
When I woke again the windows were dark, there was fire and candle, and I realized that it must have been raining before only because the sound was now gone from the room. Mary’s mother sat asleep in my chair, mouth hanging open unceremoniously as she snored, but other than that and the hearth crackle, the room was very quiet. Experimentally I moved my arms, relieved to feel a little life in me, sat up, waited for my head to clear, and swung my feet over the edge of the mattress. I padded unsteadily to the bathing room, noting that I was still in my grandmother’s dress, now thoroughly crumpled, shut the door, and when I returned Lane was in the shadows, sitting on the far edge of Marianna’s bed.
I did not wait to notice whether Mrs. Brown was still asleep or to think of more proper clothing. I was not sure how much longer I could stay on my feet. I climbed into the bed in the blue silk and snuggled down beneath the portion of the coverlet that Lane was not pinning down with his weight.
“How do you feel?” he said.
“A little tired,” I whispered. I was exhausted.
We stayed that way for several minutes, Mrs. Brown
snoring, Lane utterly still, me settled deep into the pillows. But it was my body that was weary, not my mind. My mind was adding and subtracting, trying to order a set of jumbled events into a logical row. Lane. Party. Marrying Ben and saving my uncle. Magistrate, a man with a twisting face, fire in my insides, and flame from a pistol. Pain and then stillness. Words in my ear, and, I think, a hand in mine. How I wished I knew what had been real.
“Am I ill?” I asked finally.
“You were poisoned,” Lane replied.
I frowned, trying to understand this idea.
“Mr. Cooper agrees,” he continued. “But we’re waiting for Dr. Metcalfe from Milton. And we’ve sent for Mr. Babcock. The rain has swollen the river, and some of the moor road is washed out. But it’s stopped now.”
I nodded, though I wasn’t sure he could see that in the flickering dark and with the blankets pulled up to my chin. I thought of what Mary had said. “Did you make me …” I struggled for a more genteel word. “… make me get rid of it?”
“I gave you ipecac and made you vomit.”
“What sort of poison was it?”
“Mr. Cooper doesn’t know.”
“But how did I … Where was it?”
“Bertram ate the cucumbers, and he got sick, too.”
I remembered the world shaking, and the explosive sound that had been so long in coming to my ears. “Did someone shoot Bertram?”
“Yes. Mr. Lockwood thought he was rabid.”
I closed my eyes. “Where is Davy?”
“Aunt Bit can’t find him.”
“Does she know where to look?”
“Yes, I told her.”
The Dark Unwinding Page 19