Dark Season

by Joanna Lowell

“‘Hymn to the Night,’” the girl said and began to sing. No one joined her. She sang alone, but her voice—thin and sweet and lonely—wavered on. Ella had told Isidore that an invocation was in order. Chanting, she’d said, or a song sung in chorus. That’s what had set the mood for Miss Seymour’s eerie performance. Yet this tremulous solo in the darkness was equally powerful, more powerful even, than the vibrations that issued from many throats. One plaintive female voice rising and falling, colorless and insubstantial, almost as though the voice had traveled from another world. The hairs lifted on her arms. She didn’t stir when the girl fell silent.

  Make them wait in that blackness. Let the tension mount.

  The murderer. The hunter. She would face them for Isidore.

  If Alfred charged her, she would not seek shelter. She would bellow like a stag, yip and scream like a fox; she would meet his charge with a stampede, the ghost of every slain creature of the forest squawking and crying through her throat. She would fly at him with beating wings, with reddened claws, with antlers honed to dagger points. She could already feel it at her back as she sat up: the dark might of a thousand bodies. Love made her many, made her legion. If that meant she was impure, insane, so be it.

  She took up the candelabrum. She stepped out of the tent. She could see the shifting shapes of the seated crowd, and the twin lights of the girls’ candles as they moved to either end of the first row of chairs. Someone had lit incense. The scent, overwhelming and resinous, wafted around her. The candelabrum was heavy. The wax from the candles had begun to spill over, splashing her ungloved fingers. She bit her lip but didn’t cry out, didn’t jerk her hands away. The pain was simple. It was such a small fraction of what she felt in that moment. Pain was a part of her, but it could not dominate her. She was so much more.

  She walked back and forth, head tilted up, peering into the dark corners of the vaulted ceiling. She stopped and gave a low cry, rolling her head on her neck. Gasps from the audience. Good. She knelt and placed the candelabrum on the floor. On her knees, she swayed now, side to side, backwards and forwards, flinging open her arms. She controlled these wild movements, and the pantomimed frenzy gave her an odd feeling of mastery. She directed this fit. It was as though she were riding on lightning. She shuddered then froze.

  “She’s with us,” she said. “I feel her.”

  More gasps, more whispers, a short burst of nervous laughter from the back row.

  “She’s coming down,” she said, drawing the last word out into a wail. “She’s coming down from the shadows. She’s begging for my voice.”

  She stood, lurching, staggering toward the chairs. Women pulled their knees to the side. Men half rose. She saw in a flash Isidore’s face, gaunt, etched with misery, and Mrs. Trombly’s, bright as a star with hope and fear. Ella stumbled back and hugged herself, rocking.

  “She won’t know peace until she says what she has waited five years to say.” She opened her mouth in a wide, soundless scream. She put her hands to her neck. Her rapid movements had made the candles in the candelabrum flicker, and she shut her eyes against the unsteady light. The incense made her mouth taste like soap, made her want to gag. She fought to stay present, to stay on her feet.

  “Come to me, Phillipa,” she howled. “My throat is yours. My tongue is yours. Speak!”

  She let her head drop. Her chest was heaving. Her rasping breaths were audible in the silent room. She opened her eyes.

  Now she would wreak havoc on the Trombly family. Now she would reveal Phillipa’s secret.

  There was no other way.

  She pitched her voice higher, a reedy whisper. “I am ready to speak.” She couldn’t help but look to Isidore. He nodded once, his face terrible to behold.

  No other way. Do it.

  Her eyes slid to Mrs. Trombly. The woman was standing up, reaching out her trembling hands. The soft cry that accompanied her motion did not come from her lips. It came from Mrs. Bennington’s. The lovely woman sat on Mrs. Trombly’s other side. The candlelight scattered across her hair like rose petals. Her shoulders were shaking. Before she covered her face with her hands, Ella saw her eyes, the whites encircling the blue. Those eyes shone with terror beyond terror. The terror of the condemned on the day of judgment.

  She heard Mrs. Bennington’s voice, wistful, wrathful, in the Tenbys’ parlor.

  So few women find men who truly love them. And sometimes the ones who do don’t deserve them.

  Bennington was Phillipa’s lover. And Mrs. Bennington knew. And she thought Isidore, deceived in Phillipa, was a love-stricken cuckold.

  He loved her blindly, she’d said.

  Phillipa and Daphne. Dearest friends. Sisters.

  Phillipa had betrayed her dear friend Daphne. And Daphne had killed her for it.

  Little lights exploded in the periphery of her vision. Her skull was lifting off. She wasn’t the master of her movements any longer. She touched her face, felt her lips peeling back. A breeze blew over her. It was happening. Her arm began to move without her bidding. She had to speak now, before she couldn’t. The world was collapsing into a tunnel. She fixed her gaze on Isidore. She stared into his eyes. Midnight-blue at the end of the tunnel. Not light, per se, but darkness visible. A destination.

  Focus. Hold on. Speak.

  “Mama.” She didn’t recognize her voice. She had never addressed her own mother in life. Now she said Mama at last, for Phillipa, and for herself. “Mama, I love you.”

  Her fingers were stiffening. She clenched her hands, but her arm was writhing, still writhing. Her stomach rose higher and higher. Her head rippled.

  “Daphne!” She cried it out, because the scream was building within her. She was going to kick; she was going to fall in front of Isidore, biting, knocking. She clenched her teeth. Hold on.

  “I forgive you,” she whispered, and the tunnel closed.

  Chapter Twenty

  Ella hit the floor with a sickening thud. Isidore was kneeling beside her in an instant. He lifted her torso, cradling her head on his legs. The back of her skull banged hard against his thigh muscles, banged again and again as she shook, body clenching and relaxing.

  “Breathe,” he begged her. She gasped. Grunted. She wasn’t getting air. Her face was turning blue. He heard voices behind him, the clatter of chairs.

  “More light.”

  “Dear God.”

  “Is this another prank, Blackwood?”

  “Stand back. Give her room.”

  All at once she was breathing again. Her head and limbs stilled. He rocked her in his arms, heart nearly bursting.

  “Let me take her.” He recognized the voice, mild but brooking no argument. It was David Penn. The slender man dropped into a crouch, insinuating himself between Isidore’s body and Ella’s, fingers probing the back of her head, moving along her jawline. He tried to pull her out of Isidore’s arms.

  So what if the man was a doctor? So what if he was a goddamn saint?

  “No.” He shook his head, gathering Ella’s limp body, holding her more firmly to his chest. He could see Penn staring at him, reading his face and recalibrating some judgment.

  “Fine.” Penn spoke curtly, rising. “You carry her then. To the closest bedchamber.”

  Isidore stood. She was lighter without the soaking gown. Too light. Too fragile. He was afraid to ever let her go.

  “Sid, what’s happening?” Clement appeared at his elbow.

  “I don’t know,” he said. He’d seen this happen to a person before, during his travels. He didn’t know what it meant. But he was certain it was a medical issue, not a supernatural one. “Don’t let Daphne leave. But get everyone else the hell out of my house.”

  Once in the bedchamber, he laid Ella on top of the coverlet and sat on the edge of the bed, the mattress dipping under his weight. Her eyelids were twitching. Her blued skin had paled, and now her face looked waxen. The smudges beneath her eyes were darker than he’d ever seen them. Her lips stood out, shapely and vivid. They beckoned to him, bi
dding him believe in the fairy tale. Kiss me, and I’ll open my eyes.

  “Blackwood,” said Penn. “I can’t examine her unless you move aside.”

  Isidore looked up at him.

  “I love her,” he said hoarsely.

  Penn’s serious face registered no surprise.

  “Then for Christ’s sake,” he said. “Get out of my way.”

  Isidore stood and walked to the foot of the bed, watching Penn pull down her lower lids to peer at the balls of her eyes, part her lips to check her teeth and her tongue. He swallowed hard.

  “I made her do it,” he said. “The séance.” Penn didn’t answer. He was lifting her arms, testing their rigidity. “Even though this very thing happened to her before. I thought it must have been an act.”

  “It’s not an act.” Penn looked up. “Would you light another lamp?”

  He did so and resumed his post.

  “I know that now,” he said. “Is she … hurt? Is she going to be all right?”

  “Miss Reed has had an epileptic attack.” Penn eyed him, rising. “She didn’t tell you she suffered from epilepsy?”

  “No.” He steadied himself by leaning on the bedpost. “When it happened before, a medium identified it as spirit possession.”

  Penn smiled wryly. “I don’t think epilepsy has been considered supernatural in origin since the Renaissance. At least not amongst medical men.” His smile vanished. “It’s a neurological disorder. A disease of the brain.”

  “What causes it?” He looked at Ella, her chest moving up and down, steadily. There’s something ugly inside me. She was afraid of it, this disease that gripped her and made her fall, that surmounted all of her defenses and left her helpless. Senseless.

  Penn hesitated. “The pathology of the disease is uncertain. There are competing views. And much remains to be discovered. A friend of mine, Jackson, has been doing clinical observations of epileptics at the National Hospital. I believe his work will advance our understanding. His study of epileptic phenomena is quite interesting when considered in combination with post-mortem findings—”

  “Enough,” Isidore gasped. Clinical observations … Post-mortem findings … A red cloud was rolling in from all directions, coloring his vision, making everything look lurid, hazy and violent. He raised his fists and lurched toward Penn, convinced—irrationally, he knew—that the gentle young man was about to whip a saw from his waistcoat and use it to open a window in Ella’s skull. Penn’s eyes widened slightly, but he didn’t cower from the threat. Maybe he did remember that Isidore had once saved him from a pair of bullies at Eton. Maybe he remembered that Isidore wasn’t a bully himself. It took Isidore a moment to remember it. He stood an inch from Penn, itching to grab him by the throat and wring the answers out of him. Penn was so much slighter than him. He could snap the man in two. The red cloud parted, and he saw Penn’s face with sudden clarity: cautious, composed, the face of a man who has surprised a wild creature in the woods and wants to soothe it. That was Penn for you. Any other man would be looking for stones. Isidore blew air through his nose. He stepped back. “Are you saying she belongs in a hospital?”

  Penn frowned. “Some convulsions are caused by lesions in the cortex, others by instability in nerve tissues. There are also convulsions caused by tumors, syphilis, injuries to the cranium. Even fright or other profound excitation.” He shook his head. “In short, there are many kinds of fits. You could even say there isn’t such a thing as epilepsy, but rather, there are many epilepsies, both anatomically and physiologically speaking. Jackson circulated a paper recently that—”

  “Can it be cured?”

  “No,” said Penn. The sympathy with which he softened the word made it all the harder to hear. “As of right now, no. It cannot be cured.”

  Isidore stared at Ella. Open. Open your eyes. He tensed every ruddy fiber of his anatomically impeccable body, willing it. He took his own lip between his teeth and ground down until he tasted blood. It tasted coppery and clean, vital and hot. He’d never thought much of it before, of his possessing strong and well-formed limbs, every physical system operating in perfect coordination. He’d hated himself, certainly, damned himself for his thoughts and deeds, but he’d always felt at home inside his skin. What would it be like to feel otherwise? To feel that your very consciousness was situated in enemy territory? He understood now why Ella battled with herself, why she tried to float above her flesh.

  Her eyelids lifted. He pushed past Penn and sat again at Ella’s side, kneading her cold hands with his thumbs. “How do you feel?” Her dark eyes were dreamy, unfocused. She blinked at him without any sign of recognition in her face.

  “She doesn’t know me,” he grated. “Why doesn’t she know me?”

  Penn’s hand came down on his shoulder. “Go easy, Blackwood. People often emerge from fits in a state of mental twilight. Give her a few minutes to recover. Be prepared if she doesn’t seem like herself. Sometimes speech and memory are affected.”

  “How long does it last?” He didn’t take his eyes from Ella’s face.

  Penn gave his shoulder a friendly shake and withdrew his hand. “It’s variable,” he said and sighed. “You won’t get any satisfaction from me, I’m afraid. Not until I’ve talked with her at least. There are too many unknowns.”

  “Leave us.” Now he did glance at Penn. The man’s lips had set in a brooding line.

  “I don’t think I’ll do that,” he murmured. Isidore’s incredulity trumped his temper.

  “Is she in danger?” he asked.

  “She’s not in medical danger, no,” said Penn. All at once Isidore realized what he was implying.

  “She’s not in any moral danger, either,” he said, and Penn looked at him ruefully.

  “I don’t think that she is,” he said slowly. “I like you, Blackwood. I always have. I always thought you were better than the company you kept. But there are a hundred people milling about this house, and it’s my professional opinion that a woman’s reputation is, by and large, more fragile than her health.”

  “You see to her health, and I’ll see to her reputation.” Isidore scowled but couldn’t maintain his black look in the face of the doctor’s steady regard. Penn’s quiet air of commitment moved him. He considered every factor, and he stood by his patient, even if it meant defying his belligerent host. Admirable indeed. But it wasn’t in him to give Penn his due, to speak out in praise, not then. He was too raw. His heart was still beating too wildly. He managed, though, to compromise without snarling. “Will you wait outside the door then?”

  Penn inclined his head. “Call if you need me.”

  • • •

  He didn’t know how long he sat holding Ella’s hand, watching her eyes track listlessly here and there. When she finally spoke, her voice was lusterless, wiped clean of emotion.

  “Isidore,” she said, and relief coursed through him.

  “I’m here, my love,” he said. “Do you know where you are?”

  “Are we still in Blackwood Mansion?” She tried to sit up, and he helped her, propping another pillow behind her head.

  “Yes,” he said. “You … fell down. During the séance.”

  Her eyes shut again, but this time it wasn’t weariness that closed them. She was afraid to look at him. She knew that he knew. What did she fear she would see in his face? Contempt? Pity? He touched her cheek, stroked her hair, trying to think of what to say.

  “You had an epileptic attack,” he said at last. “That’s what Penn called it. Before, at Miss Seymour’s séance … it was the same thing?”

  She nodded, eyes still squeezed shut, and winced.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “Headache,” she muttered.

  “You don’t have to talk,” he said, and, for a time, she didn’t. She hadn’t fallen asleep though. She was gnawing on her lip, her eyes moving visibly beneath the lids. Her agitation was increasing.

  “Ella,” he began.

  “They started when I was
a child,” she whispered and heaved for air. She brought a hand up to cover her face. “I am … defective. I should have told you before you ever … ” She groaned into her palm. “Before I could pollute you.”

  “Pollute me?” He kissed her knuckles. Taking her hand in his, he lifted it away from her face and kissed her forehead and her eyelids and the tip of her nose. “This is nonsense. You can’t pollute me.”

  “I have a taint in my blood.” She was so pale, so exhausted, he wanted to silence her. Rest, he wanted to tell her. None of this matters. But it did matter. She had lived with this affliction, had been defined by it. He wouldn’t silence her. He would let her speak even if it wounded them both.

  “Papa loved me anyway.”

  “Of course he did.” He couldn’t keep himself from interrupting.

  “He took care of me.”

  He held his peace, but more of the puzzle slipped into place. Her father hadn’t been sick at all. It was she who’d been sick. It was for her sake that they had made their house a hermitage.

  “He thought I would get better, and the fits did come less frequently. Sometimes a whole year would pass … ” She licked her lips. He wished he had water to offer, or brandy. There was nothing in the bedchamber but old linens and dust. “He wouldn’t put me in an institution even though Mr. Norton explained to us … ”

  “Explained what?” His whole body was tightening.

  “The deterioration of the epileptic character,” she said, so softly he had to put his ear near her lips. “The irritated nervous system erodes the reasoning faculties. There are lapses into uncontrollable aggression. Increasingly violent behaviors.”

  “No.” He shook his head. “I don’t believe it.”

  “Base. Selfish. Wanton. Depraved.” This was her litany. The words streamed on and on. “Brutal. Duplicitous. Hysterical. Dangerous. Vile. Papa was foolish, perhaps, to keep me at home. Alfred thought so.”

  “Your cousin.”

  Her closed eyes squeezed tighter. Her hands rose, fingers hooking in the collar of her gown, twisting restlessly. “He sent me away. He said it was generous of him, to pay for me to go into a colony instead of an asylum. He said I was the blighted apple on the family tree. I had a fit in front of him when I was just a girl. He said I looked like a monster, gobbling in the dirt. That I wasn’t even human.”