Bride of a Distant Isle

by Sandra Byrd

  A thought occurred to me. Mr. Morgan could also have acquired the crazy honey, to bend me to his will. The stone he’d given me was from Turkey, certainly acquired through those same importers.

  “That would certainly explain things,” Mrs. Strange said.

  “You cannot liberate me from here?”

  She shook her head. “I’m sorry, Miss Ashton. I do not have leave to do that. There are limits on what I may do.”

  Money again. It always bought, or denied, power.

  She bid me good night and took the lamp with her, as always. A light impression of sweet, ashy incense remained in the room as she left. Most probably from church, which is how she must know the priests.

  I did not hear Josephine cry that night, which was happy news, but the coughs up and down the corridor, which had started out as an occasional punctuation of the silence, had now grown to an insistent chorus. I found myself in the awkward, somewhat shameful position of hoping that the woman who screamed almost every night had been taken ill, temporarily, so we would not be subject to her shrieking.

  The next evening, oddly, none of my tablemates were present for the evening meal. Mrs. Strange came to help me ready for bed that night and her face soon showed concern.

  “What is it?” I slipped into my nightgown.

  “The lieutenant passed away.”

  I sat on the bed. “Oh no.”

  She nodded. “And yet, in a way . . .”

  “It’s a comfort for him.”

  “I think it is,” she said. “He no longer suffers.”

  I said nothing for a long moment. “I do not want to look forward to death as a blessing and a comfort,” I said. “I am young, and I am not insane. I want to live.”

  A long silence. What more could be said? “I shall leave a candle tonight if you promise not to share the secret, so you may read and take pleasure in that if you like.”

  “Thank you,” I answered. Mr. Poe’s melancholic musings were unlikely to bring me cheer, but perhaps they would help pass the long evening hours.

  She shut the door behind her, and in boredom I began to turn his pages. I quickly passed “Annabel Lee”; I was tempted to tear out the pages but imagined what kind of hullabaloo that would cause should the discarded pages be found. Defacing a book would no doubt be seen as another symptom of madness. There were other short selections in the volume.

  I came to his story of premature burial.

  Like many of my own countrymen, Mr. Poe shared a fear of being interred into the ground before he was fully dead. Stories had gone round my school about crypts being opened many years later only to find someone previously thought dead leaning against the doorway, outside of her coffin. Poe had, apparently, made a pact with his friends that they would ensure he was not buried alive. Friends of my own had, indeed, joined the Winchester Society for the Prevention of People Being Buried Alive. Yes, they’d told me, one could have a bell attached to a coffin, but what if no one is around to hear it being rung after it’s been interred? Yes, it was true that coffins no longer were screwed shut, but what if one did not possess the strength to push the lid open?

  I had scoffed at that, but they had not. Several had spent their few pennies to join, and one assumed that Mr. Poe would have gladly joined them. I opened his story again and read, but one phrase stuck in my mind, and I could not push beyond it.

  The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?

  I blew out the candle and lay back. A thought came to me, a wisp at first, like the smoke curling away in the dark.

  Would it be possible for me to be prematurely buried? Sent home as dead? Could I feign death as an escape, and then remain free for those necessary fourteen days? It was possible. To stay here was to die—that much was certain. Perhaps soon.

  I thought back to my discussion with Lady Somerford about the rooms in which priests had once held secret divine services. She’d told me, “There is no gain without risk, my dear, and it made rather good sport to outfox the authorities.” I’d smiled and laughed with her before affirming, “Much was risked, and everything gained.”

  Yes. It was possible.

  So much must be risked. So much might be gained.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  LATE NOVEMBER, 1851

  The next day marked nearly a month since my arrival; Mrs. Strange came to sit with me as she did each morning. I firmly shut the door behind her. “I need to take you into my confidence. Can I trust you?”

  “I’ve said that you can,” she replied. What choice did I have? There was nothing she could do to me, nothing even she could relay to Edward, that would make my situation any more precarious than it currently was. If I did not leave the asylum soon I would be permanently admitted.

  “What I’m wondering is . . . are the bodies of those dying of influenza subject to a postmortem?”

  She shook her head no. “Too many right now, and there’s the risk that those who are alive might catch it from them. Even the doctors do not want to come too close. We nurses are being asked to make judgments.”

  I nodded. “Do you recall when you said I must be careful with the sleeping preparations or I should be comatose?”

  She nodded. “Yes, of course.”

  “Could I take enough so that I would be thought to be dead, but actually just near death? Enough time to have my body sent back to Highcliffe?”

  Mrs. Strange did not answer me right away. Instead, she rested her head in her hands for a moment in a most peculiar manner. Was she praying? I hoped I had not suggested anything sinful. Finally, she spoke.

  “The dispensary here uses morphine, chloral hydrate, or Indian hemp for the treatment of mania. I could procure enough to make you appear dead for perhaps six to eight hours.”

  That would be time enough. “Would it be safe?”

  “If the right dosage was given.”

  “Otherwise?”

  She shrugged. “I would need to ascertain the exact dosage, a dosage that would keep one asleep for a few hours. The coffins used here are of poor quality, so they would allow air in.”

  Did I trust her? She could do Edward a very large service by ensuring that I took the dose required never to wake up.

  I’d seen how it happened in the infirmary. “You would examine the body; the doctor could give his signature.”

  She nodded. “Normally we hold a lock of wool under the nostrils for but a moment; your breaths would be so slow that would suffice. Lucky for you, Miss Ashton, it’s not like ages back with the Greeks. They cut the fingers off just to make certain a person was truly dead.”

  My eyes widened. The Greeks again!

  “I’d see that the coffin was sent to Highcliffe.”

  Of course, there was a real risk they’d dispose of me quickly, and I’d be buried alive before I came to!

  I calmed my breathing and tried to quell my twitching nerves by forcing myself to sit still.

  “It’s not likely any staff here would suspect. I’m not aware of it having been attempted at Medstone before, and I would know. Once you get to your Highcliffe, what will you do?” Mrs. Strange asked.

  I’d already thought this through. I’d recalled one time as children when Edward wanted to jump over a ditch to the other side, which was faced by a large stone wall. He’d had to take a running leap in order to clear the water, but had not thought how he would return with no land for a running leap on the other side. His father had one of the stable boys wade over to fetch him and Edward got a good hiding for his efforts. It taught me, observing, to think through my entire course of action.

  I’d sometimes wished, though, for Edward’s childhood daring, now safely quenched. That I had more often taken a saltus fidei, a leap of faith. Perhaps I should have with Marco. I would not brook regret over inaction here.

  “Is it true that if I am not returned to confinement within fourteen days my madness will have to be proved anew?” I
asked.

  She nodded.

  And that I could avoid, because now I understood about the honey. “I shall walk to Pennington and seek sanctuary for two weeks,” I said. “While I have the constable search for the honey, and perhaps even have them make enquiries, if necessary, from our importers.”

  “When?” she asked me. I heard Josephine stirring next door and thought what sorrow news of my death would bring her. It was entirely possible if I stayed too long that news would be real: I might die of influenza. I would find a way to send word to her, to help her in some way. I promised this to myself.

  The staff were at their busiest in the late afternoon. “In three days. It will give me long enough to feign illness and, sadly, there will by then be more truly ill for the staff to attend to. But there will still be enough daylight hours for them to send me on to Highcliffe.”

  I dressed in my sleeping gown and robe because that is what would have been most appropriate. My feet were bare but for thin cotton stockings. Nurse Strange was to meet me here at two o’clock that afternoon.

  Did I trust her? She did know the priests, who trusted her, and I them. She had been kind to me. But she had also removed my sketchbook, she was clearly in Edward’s employ, and she seemed to be just a bit eager to discuss large doses of sleeping medications.

  I had no choice. If I stayed here, I would be forcibly contained, unable to clear my mother’s name, and powerless to contact Marco, though I did not know if he would wish me to contact him. If I stayed here, I was quite likely to die young of disease.

  I closed my eyes to pray. What came to me was a remembrance of Marco sitting at the table, by my side, his face warm and full of life as he glanced across the table at the nuisance that was Nigel Morgan. Then Marco had whispered, “Alla fine andrà tutto bene se non andrà bene, non e le fine.”

  All will be well in the end; if it’s not well, then it’s not the end.

  I chose to believe that.

  Mrs. Strange knocked on the door. I let her in and closed the door behind her. I had not said good-bye to my friends because I did not want to involve them in any manner in case things went awry.

  A holy but unsettled hush filled the room. Somber. Serious. A gamble of immense magnitude.

  “I have the medication,” she said. “I will dose you properly, then call the doctor to come and do a brief test—it’s likely he will send an orderly as I am here anyway. I will request a rough-hewn coffin, and you will have sufficient air from between the cracks. The driver will take you, your things, and notice of your death with all haste to your family’s estate. Patients are being sent home quickly.”

  “The coach house,” I said. “That’s where they’ll put me. I am sure Clementine will not want my body in the house, putting them at risk.”

  “From the moment you fade into the unconscious you will not be aware of what is transpiring around you. I will protect you, though.”

  Yes, but no one would be there to protect me at the other end. No matter. My course was irrevocably determined. I could not be left to rot my way toward death here.

  I sat on the bed, and she handed a cup to me partly filled with liquid. “Do not fear,” she encouraged me, and I drank the liquid. “All will be well.” She brushed her hands lightly over my face and prayed in a language I did not understand. Then I lay back on my bed.

  For a moment, nothing happened, but then a sleepy darkness began to course throughout my body. My eyes grew heavy, and I could no longer feel my feet. I did not feel the agitation that the honey had brought on; instead I felt blanketed in peace, as if I were being ushered to the very border of heaven and I was not certain I wished to return. Soon my breathing slowed down. Slowed down. Slowed down . . . slowed down . . . slowed down. My heart kept rhythm with the breaths.

  The blackness carried me away.

  I awoke with a start. It was dark and cold. My breathing was still labored, and my jaw would not open. Had I been paralyzed? Had the medication damaged me, or was it still in effect?

  I lay in the box and reached my hands, slowly, up from my sides and touched my jaw. I tried to open my eyes, but something was on them. I reached up and plucked a coin off of each; they had been placed there so my eyes would remain closed after death. Likewise, my jaw had been wrapped with a cloth strap, to support it. I reached atop my head and undid the tie. I moved slowly because I did not know where I was, and if the coffin had been balanced upon something in a precarious manner, I did not want to tumble off.

  I blinked and took quiet, deep pulls of air through my nostrils and my mouth, to regain a clear head. The air smelt of horse dung and men’s sweat, of earth and of leather. The coach house, as I had suspected.

  The inside of my coffin had but the lightest linen lining, and my bones ached. I had been, I was sure, jostled against the knobby country roads for the hour the journey had taken and would likely be blotched with bruises. I breathed in deeply again. Incense.

  Had I been given last rites?

  I did not hear anyone moving about, so I guessed it was past the hour when the stable boys worked. I blinked repeatedly to clear the sepia haze from my eyesight. After I had steadied myself, I gently pushed on the coffin lid; it did not give easily, as Mrs. Strange had assured me it would. She’d promised it would not be nailed down, as most families wished to bury their loved ones in better coffins on the family property. Had she been wrong? Was I stuck? To be buried alive? Perhaps I was already buried in the family mausoleum.

  No. The air was not stale.

  Finally, the lid lifted a bit, and I used both hands to then push it up. Nothing. I pushed further, and all of a sudden a loud clatter could be heard. First sliding, and then a loud clank of metal hitting the ground. I sat up, and when I did I saw a man’s face looking directly back at me.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  He screamed, and I screamed in response. Our screams brought another man, who grew as white as the ghost I expected he thought I was.

  “I am not dead!” I said, and the men said nothing.

  One pointed to the chain on the ground. “I set that on top of the coffin after using it on the carriage and then when I heard some noise . . . she’s back from the dead. She knows she was done wrong and has come back to avenge herself!”

  If I had been a woman who gambled with money, and I was not, I should have bet that this was the craven man who had passed along the information about my interest in taking sacred vows from the Somerfords’ driver.

  “There was a mistake made,” I claimed. “I was not dead.” My head still whirled from the mania medication, and my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth.

  “I’ll watch her,” the young man said. “You fetch the master.”

  “I mean to go to Pennington,” I said. This had gone wrong. I had not counted upon a chain. “Perhaps you could drive me there.”

  “You’ll go nowhere without the master’s permission,” he said. “And his Lordship is long gone up north. Pennington is empty.” He still looked ill, but he was well able to contain me—my being flesh and blood and not simply spirit as he had first feared—should I now try to break away.

  Within five minutes, Edward and Watts ran into the carriage house. Edward looked as sick as his driver; Watts looked likewise.

  “Annabel?” Edward whispered. “Have you come back from the dead to hold me to account?”

  “I am certainly here to hold you to account,” I said. “But I am not dead.”

  “Undead . . .” he whispered.

  In spite of the dire situation, I wanted to roll my eyes. Had he been reading Clementine’s sensational magazines? “No, Edward. I am not dead, was never dead. I shall speak more of this to you in the drawing room, with the others present.”

  He willingly agreed, then seemed to regain some strength and sent Watts ahead of me, to clear the house, I assumed. Watts had looked at me as if I were well and truly mad. Edward took hold of my arm, and now that he, too, knew it to be flesh and not spirit he marched me angrily forward.
My feet were nearly bare on the frozen grass; the blades sliced into me. The garden statues had been covered up for the season, so it seemed to me that they, too, were blinded from seeing what transpired around them.

  I could not allow myself to cry at this setback. I had to stay ready to act, though I did not know what those actions might be.

  We did not, as I would have thought, stop in the silent drawing room.

  “Where are we going? I wish to speak to this in front of everyone!”

  Edward force-marched me straight toward the quarantine room. “You’ll not be speaking to anyone in the drawing room. You’ll be quarantined and silenced!”

  I shouted loudly, hoping someone would hear and come to assist. “There is no reason to quarantine me and you know it!” I tried to twist out of his grasp, but could not. He took my arm and twisted it behind my back, jacking it higher till I winced and had no choice but to comply. “I’ve been poisoned by honey!”

  The house was eerily silent, the tempo of life stilled like the clocks within; now all their hands were rendered immobile, too.

  I shouted as I was forced forward. “Hello? Can anyone hear me? Please, if you will, come to my aid. I’m well, I’m home, and I need assistance!” I turned to Edward. “The staff will surely hear,” I said loudly, hoping that my shouts would break that silence, that someone would actually hear me as we wound our way up through the back and to the top floor.

  “Aside from Watts and Mrs. Watts, no staff is domiciled at the house any longer,” Edward said. “We leave soon for London, for Christmas. Highcliffe has been sold. Or had you forgotten?”

  I had lost track of the days while in the asylum. And I could not have known, of course, what day they were leaving. He hurried me ever faster up the steps.

  “We thought to ask that priest at Pennington to help bury you tomorrow and then we were to leave within days.”

  “I suppose I should thank you for thinking of that,” I said. A sudden idea. I stopped, and he pushed me forward while I spoke. “Could Father Gregory be brought to me now?”