by Sandra Byrd
“My wife has assembled a short list of suitable institutions.” Edward’s voice again.
Mrs. Strange spoke up. “Perhaps Medstone would do?”
Medstone! My mother had been committed there and had not returned. Did Edward even recall the name?
“It’s nearby, and I know the staff there quite well . . .” She let the insinuation hang. “I’ve worked there quite often. I would have quite a bit of autonomy to help manage her affairs, as it were, until matters were fully settled.”
“I will not go. I do not agree!” I shouted toward the door.
Apparently, Edward did agree with Mrs. Strange’s implication. He completely ignored me, as did they all. “Yes, that will be fine. You’ll submit your receipts at the conclusion of your duties?”
She must have nodded because I heard nothing but, shortly, she returned to check on me before going to my rooms to pack my remaining items.
I was to be committed to the insane asylum. My greatest fear was coming to pass.
“Don’t be afraid,” she said soothingly. “I will accompany you.”
I did not answer. I could not be expected to be happy that someone in Edward’s employ was to escort me cheerfully to and through the gates of hell.
My mind was still unclear. “I must lie down. Go away.”
She nodded and patted the back of my hand. “We will leave on the morrow.” After leaving me, she locked the door behind her.
A few hours later I was rested though I still felt worn, and I did not know if it was due to illness or the desperation of the situation I found myself in. I decided to call down, through the speaking tube, and have someone deliver a carafe of water or wine and some food, as I was hungry. Mrs. Watts told me she’d send someone up straightaway.
Quite soon afterward, Mrs. Strange knocked on my door. “Dinner tray,” she said, setting the tray on the small table. “Medstone may bring you unexpected peace.”
“My mother was committed to Medstone twenty years ago.”
“Yes,” she said. “I’m very well aware of that.”
I waited for her to say more on the matter, but she did not. “Would you like me to give you something to sleep? A tincture?”
“No, thank you.”
“It might help. But you should be careful not to take too much. It could make you comatose, or worse.”
Was she suggesting something morbid? “I shan’t need anything, thank you,” I said firmly.
“I shall fetch you at eight, then,” she said. “Sleep sweetly.”
Indeed.
She pulled the door shut behind her. I drank the water and ate the meal, which was beautifully plated, all my favorites. I saw Chef’s hand behind it and squeezed back tears.
My last meal at Highcliffe. I was too hungry and thirsty to forego food and drink, but I did not take tea and did not touch the honey pot. Why did I recoil at them?
My mind, clear now, could see.
More wild accusations are not going to help you. Next thing you’ll be accusing us of poisoning your food, Clementine had said.
I had never liked partnering her at cards. She could not stop herself from prematurely revealing what she held in her hand.
But poisoning me with what? Perhaps . . . perhaps the tea, the Chinese tea, was what had provoked my mind. The disturbing hallucinations were related to China. Chinese tea.
The tea? We all drank it. Of course. I was the only person in the household who took honey with her tea, and Edward had found some way to corrupt it. Well, Edward took honey as well. But he, better than anyone, would know when to use it and when not to.
Edward had been poisoning me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
MEDSTONE, A PRIVATE HOSPITAL AND LUNATIC ASYLUM
LATE OCTOBER TO EARLY NOVEMBER, 1851
I was ready early; I could not sleep and had very little to prepare. Mrs. Strange arrived to escort me to the main foyer. We stopped at the second floor for just a moment, and she allowed me a glimpse into my old rooms, my mother’s old rooms.
They were packed again; Mrs. Watts had been busy. The Chinese dragon clock, which did not provoke unsettled feelings, blessedly, remained on the mantel but had not been wound.
Time had completely stopped for me, too. What could I do? There was nowhere, and no way, to escape.
The staff lined up in the vestibule leading to the hallway and nodded or said good-bye. Some looked nervous. Perhaps they truly believed me mad. Chef hugged me like a child, which caused me to cry a little. I steadied myself to take the small box he held out to me.
“Les bon bons for the long journey,” he whispered, his voice hoarse.
Clementine and Edward were waiting by the door, without Albert, of course. They would not want to subject him to a fuss.
Clementine kissed my cheek. “Good-bye, dearest Annabel. We shall visit.”
Edward kissed both cheeks, too. “I’m sorry,” he said. “There is no other way.”
Oliver lifted my bag, and as he and I followed Mrs. Strange down the steps and toward the carriage that had been sent from the asylum, he tugged on my arm. We were of a height, and he leaned over.
“I put a pouch in your bag,” he said. “When I was collecting your things to carry down. It’s from the foreign captain. He tried to speak with you, but Mr. Everedge would not let him. He slipped it to me, and I said I would try to pass it along.”
My spirits lifted, if just a little. What could be in the pouch? A note? Evidence of something important? I dared not look now and call attention to it.
“Thank you, Oliver,” I said, keeping my voice low. “Please, if you can, let Lady Leahy or Lady Somerford know where I have been taken. Ask them to assist in any way possible, and with all haste.”
He nodded. We reached the carriage, which was not dilapidated but not exactly one of quality, either. The driver held the door for me. I refused to step up and so, with firmness, a footman took my arm and lifted me in, forcibly. Mrs. Strange was helped in and then closed and locked the door behind us.
I had never been locked in a carriage before. We were off to the lunatic asylum.
Our journey took nearly an hour through deep and isolated countryside, and then we reached Medstone.
It was an imposing building; I knew from my earlier enquiries, when trying to know something of my mother, that it was a private institution and hospital. I was grateful for that; it meant that I should not have to suffer from the sometimes squalid and rougher conditions of the public asylums. But it also meant that, in practicality, my cousin had more control over my stay here. Perhaps that was why he was willing to brook the extra expense. The changes in the Lunacy Act six years earlier mostly affected the poor and the criminally insane. The doctors at Medstone would be in his pay.
“It’s large . . .” I shivered and peered out the window. The lawns were dead brown with the season; the clouds hung low over the building that sprawled in many directions like spider legs extending from a gorged abdomen in the middle. There were no fences. There would be no place to go if someone were able to escape anyway.
“Seven hundred patients,” Mrs. Strange said. “Some worse off than others.”
“So many.” I had no idea.
“’Tis been said that one in four hundred of Her Majesty’s English subjects resides in an insane asylum.”
“Now I’m to be one of them.”
She nodded.
“They surely cannot all be mad, not that many.”
“Some are, and some are not,” Mrs. Strange said. She sat serenely, not fidgeting with her gloves as I was tempted to do.
A clutch of cottages appeared to the right of the drive.
“Where the attendants live,” she said.
We pulled up to a side door, and I felt myself begin to perspire.
We alighted from the carriage; Mrs. Strange took my arm. I did not know if it was to steady me or to keep me from bolting. We made our way up the stairs; the air was crisp and cold and smelt of wood smoke. I half expec
ted to hear howling and screaming but as we opened the door, a pleasant hum of distant conversation filtered through the halls. She spoke briefly with an attendant, and then we walked a few feet to the medical supervisor’s office.
It was clear he was expecting us. His eyes never left me; instead, they traveled, most inappropriately, up and down my person.
“Nurse Strange, how nice to see you again,” he said. “Miss Ashton, we’re delighted to be of service.”
“Thank you,” I responded. “Though I am certain it is quite unnecessary.”
He nodded. “That’s a frequently expressed sentiment. Please . . .” He motioned toward two seats across from his desk. “Have a seat. As the medical officer has already sent me his report with the correspondence package Mr. Everedge conveyed, I have but a few questions to ask you before preparing a report for the Justice of the Peace, who will finalize the decision on your stay with us.” He pulled a book from the case behind him, The Physiognomy of Mental Diseases, and stared at my face as he turned pages. Finally, he spoke again.
“When did you start to feel . . . unusual?”
“I don’t feel unusual,” I said, but then I remembered the first fit I’d had, after having taken Clementine’s sugar.
“Come now, Miss Ashton. Mistruths are hardly the way the mentally well handle difficult situations.”
“I suppose I felt a little dizzy after having taken some of my cousin’s sugar cubes with tea. I suspect they had a substance in them.”
He made notes. “Did anyone else partake of these cubes?”
“My cousin’s wife, I suppose.”
“Did she have similar symptoms?”
I shook my head.
“It’s common for our patients to feel that someone is poisoning their food. You are not alone in this concern.” He made some notes.
“Often, people are made to feel, well, unbalanced when their situation changes. I understand you had recently moved back to Highcliffe?”
“I was forced to,” I said.
“Physically?” His eyebrows raised.
“By circumstance.”
He nodded quietly. Nurse Strange rested her hand upon my arm, which was a comfort.
“Mrs. Everedge said that there was a romantic attachment that went wrong?”
“Certainly not. It would not have gone wrong without her direct intervention, in any case,” I retorted.
“She mentioned that she had chanced upon an inappropriate situation.”
“It was not like that,” I protested. “She’s only saying that because my cousin wants to steal my property.”
He sighed. Yes, I know, another common delusion among the insane.
“Her claim is false but she was believed, due to my mother being a patient here, decades ago.”
The doctor gently bobbed his head. “Mr. Everedge had written a note relaying that he felt perhaps your symptoms first began to show when you took over your mother’s rooms at Highcliffe. That memories of her may have triggered your flights and figments. Would that be correct?”
“I cannot say that is the cause of anything,” I said. I now understood why Mrs. Strange had removed the sketchbook. She thought, wrongly, that it gave further rise to my imbalance. I suspected I would not have been allowed to keep it, in any case, here.
“That is all,” he said, writing the word delusional on my chart. “You’ll have a private room, of course, and Mrs. Strange is familiar with our procedures. You could not have asked for a better nurse.” He smiled brightly at her, and she looked at her hands, modestly.
He stood, and so did we. “How long shall I expect to stay?” I asked.
“Our goal is the restoration of your health, of course,” the doctor said, his manner cold and slippery, like a just-caught fish. “But we find that fewer than one in ten of our patients ever leave. You may, like they, find it so comfortable that all desire to leave will flee, after time.”
I thought not.
He bid us good day and a woman came to deliver a packet of information to Mrs. Strange, including which room should be mine.
“It’s on a good ward,” she said. “Not too close to the infirmary, where the ill are treated. Not always successfully.”
“Do . . . do a lot of people pass on?”
Sorrow crossed her face. “I cannot lie to you. Perhaps one in five patients admitted here each year die. Young and old.”
“My mother . . .” I began.
“Consumption took her,” she said knowingly.
We passed a bench in the hallway where a woman sat, silent but straining forward, crowded on both sides by two young women in uniform who pressed into her; it looked painful. Tears rolled down the woman’s face but she did not stop them. The attendants to her side nodded at Mrs. Strange as we passed by. Once we were clear of them, I asked, “What are they doing?”
“It’s a gentler form of restraint,” she answered. “Their tight presence calms the patient, and once she is settled they will allow her freedom to move about again. They will use ties to restrain, if need be. Knowing that, the patient is more likely to comply.”
Sweat trickled down my spine, and I dabbed my hairline, under my bonnet, with a linen kerchief I’d tucked into my pocket. Soon we reached Room 204. My new home.
My forever home? I swallowed hard and turned the knob. The doors had no locks. The medical superintendent’s lewd appraisal flitted worryingly through my mind.
We entered the room, which was small, a false hearth on one wall. There was a wooden bed and a dressing table, along with a tiny wardrobe. On the dressing table was a book of prayers and a Bible.
“Might I have Catholic materials?” I asked.
The nurse nodded. “I shall ask for a priest to visit you, as most patients attend services that the chaplain holds.”
“He’s Anglican,” I said.
She nodded. “I shan’t enquire for a week or more, as we won’t want them to believe you to be tipping into religious mania.”
My eyes widened. “No, indeed.”
There were two chairs, which she said meant she could spend time with me often. “I will be with you occasionally throughout the day, but you shall also have time to yourself.”
She explained how the days would proceed. Waking early, toilette, bathing once per week, hair washing an additional day if I so desired. Meals, time spent industriously at tasks assigned, leisure, meals, and bed.
Day after day. Month after month, until I became the one in five who mercifully died.
“May I send letters?” I asked. “Or receive them?”
“They are under no requirement to pass along any mail, coming or going, except to the Lunacy Commission. I suspect your cousin has left strict instructions that there is to be no correspondence, except from him.”
I expected so.
“I’ll return this evening after your tea, before bed,” she said as she left. “Be at peace.”
Be at peace? I had been wrongly committed to an asylum!
I sat on the narrow bed, and after a time, a knock came on the door. “Miss Ashton?” I stood and opened it.
“I’m Mrs. Brown.” An older woman with a large scar across her face angled her considerable self into my room. “I’m here to go through your things.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
“Go through my things?”
“Yes. Are you deaf?” Her face was suffused with malice and I trembled with fear. “To remove anything that might be a danger.”
“To myself?”
“And to others. Sewing needles and the like.”
“I’m not allowed to do needlework?” Not that it was an activity I particularly enjoyed, but I would like to be able to mend my things if need be.
“After some months you may, if considered worthy, join with the patients who are allowed to sew.”
She looked through my few belongings; I had been allowed only one small bag and it did not take her long. She came across the pouch Marco had given me. “What is this?”
> “A gift from a friend,” I said. I hoped she would not ask me what was inside; if I said I did not know, it would surely confirm my diagnosis more securely. She opened the velvet pouch and reached in.
“An oyster shell?” She looked at me quizzically.
“Er, yes, he’s a sailor.” I was puzzled as well. An oyster shell?
She took it, opened it, and shook it. “Empty.”
I nodded, as if I expected that. But I hadn’t. What did it mean? That he’d opened himself up to our love and, in the end, found it empty?
“The shells would be sharp if broken.” She tucked it into her pocket. “Jewelry?” she asked.
“One necklace, my mother’s, which I constantly wear,” I said.
“May I see it?”
I tentatively pulled it from under my gown.
“It has a sharp end,” she said.
“It’s rather blunt,” I disagreed. I softened my voice and pled, all pride gone. “Please let me keep this. It’s all I have left.”
She hesitated and then nodded. “You’ll hear the meal bells,” she said. “Don’t dawdle.” She pulled the door shut behind her.
Why had Marco sent the empty shell? It had been so important that he’d given it to Oliver to pass along. To hurt me? I did not believe so, though he may not have been the man I hoped him to be.
Or he may have been. I would never know now, as I would not even be allowed to write to him.
I began arranging the items she’d unpacked. I’d been allowed two gowns, two pairs of shoes, some grooming items, and what was this? Oh dear!
I took Mr. Poe’s vile volume in hand. The book’s tone was dark and hopeless. The very fact that it had been a gift from Mr. Morgan made it worse.
I laughed aloud. I had escaped Mr. Morgan! I laughed again and then I began to cry. I quieted my sobs; I did not wish to be restrained between two burly women. Stifling my sobs caused me to heave, and I curled up on my bed and, eventually, cried myself to sleep.
I awoke to a knock at the door. “Miss?”