Dark Season

by Joanna Lowell

  “No, Ella. No.” He wanted to go back in time and wash away those hateful words. He could hear in her dull singsong how familiar this story was to her, how often she’d repeated it to herself.

  “I don’t want to be locked up,” she whispered. “I ran from the train station as soon as Mr. Norton turned his back. Even if I am degenerate, I don’t want to live like a caged animal. I’d rather die.”

  With that, she began to cry, ugly, stormy sobs that contorted her face and wracked her body. He held her until she was spent; it wasn’t long. The fit had drained her strength and left her little energy even for tears.

  “I want to die,” she said, pulling away, lowering herself back to the pillows. Her eyes were still closed. “I want to die before I go mad.”

  He felt colder than he had when he’d crawled from the Thames.

  “You won’t go mad,” he said, but how could he be certain? He knew nothing about the epileptic character, about the progression of neurological disease. His assurance was empty. It wasn’t the one he could give.

  “I love you,” he said. “We can face this together. Look at me, Ella.”

  Her lashes swept back, and she looked at him for the briefest moment, her luminous eyes glancing away immediately, skittish. He could have cried aloud at the shame he saw lurking in their depths.

  “I saw you on the floor,” he said, making his voice brutal. “I saw you shake and kick. I saw your face turn blue. I touched your body, and it was rigid. Your limbs were jerking without your control. Your eyes were only half-closed. There was spittle on your lips. I saw it. I watched the fit happen. I saw the whole bloody thing. Look at me. Look at me.”

  She looked at him, and he held her gaze.

  “It wasn’t a monster I saw,” he said. “It was you. Ella. My Ella. Not beautiful, not ugly, both. Everything I ever wanted.” He smiled raggedly. “Everything I thought I would never have.”

  She was staring at him now, breathing rapidly.

  “I’m not going to get better,” she said. “You can’t believe that I am. Papa believed it, and every time I had a fit I felt that I was failing him. You can’t have hope. There is no hope.”

  “I can live without hope,” he said. “I just can’t live without you.”

  This time when he pulled her against his chest, she wrapped her arms around his neck. She held him so tight he thought he might choke, and he took the air noisily into his burning throat, not caring if his lungs burst, if he spiraled into darkness in her arms. He detached himself reluctantly.

  “You should rest,” he said. Her lower lip bore the impress of her teeth, little dents and torn skin. Tears still hung in her lashes.

  “Mr. Bennington was Phillipa’s lover,” she whispered. “We assumed it was her lover who killed her, but it wasn’t.”

  “It was her lover’s jealous wife,” he said. He should have seen it earlier, all of it. Somehow Ella had seen it. She’d seen it in time to spare Phillipa and her family a final humiliation.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked. He hadn’t allowed himself to think of what he was going to do until this moment. Nor had he allowed himself to think of what Ella had murmured before the convulsion took her.

  “You said Phillipa forgave her.” He searched in his own heart for forgiveness and found none. He wanted Bennington strung up by his toes and whipped until the muscles dropped off his bones. He wanted Daphne fed to the wolves. “Why?” he asked.

  “I felt it.” She raised her shoulders in a small, wondering shrug. “I didn’t think about it. I felt the words come out of my mouth.” She wouldn’t go so far as to claim she had made contact with the spirit world, but she believed it. He saw the mistiness in her eyes and the delicacy with which she now touched her throat, as though it were the site of a miracle.

  She believed Phillipa had spoken through her.

  “You didn’t know her,” he said bluntly. “She would not forgive.”

  “Maybe death changed her.” Ella dropped her hand from her throat. “I don’t mean that facetiously. Maybe things look different from the other side.”

  “Adultery? Murder?” He shook his head. “If they do, they shouldn’t.”

  She took his hand, and he felt the shock of her cool fingers. “Be careful, Isidore.” She stroked his skin. There was something ancient in her voice, a wisdom that was far older than she. Wisdom and woe—they came into the world together.

  “When you deal with them, be careful. Not for their sakes, but for yours.” Her face was wan, her voice fading, but her eyes glowed.

  “You know what happens to things that do not bend,” she said.

  • • •

  He opened the door, planning to ask Penn to send for a warming pan, but saw that the doctor had anticipated this and half a dozen other necessities. Two maids stood at his side with stone hot-water bottles, a basin and compresses, a tea tray, and brandy. The women entered the room at once. Penn paused to look at him questioningly.

  “She’s lucid,” he said. “But tired. Penn … Thank you.”

  Penn made a dismissive gesture. “St. Aubyn came looking for you,” he said.

  “I have to find him,” said Isidore. He furrowed his brow. How to begin? Deterioration. Madness. Where did her ideas come from? What was fact and what was fiction? Was there a course they could navigate between false hope and fatalism?

  “Penn … ”

  “We’ll talk,” said Penn, touching his arm. “After I’ve spoken with her, we three will talk.”

  • • •

  Clement had done an adequate job dispersing the guests, or else the unsettling conclusion of the séance combined with the want of refreshments had sped them on their way. Only a few people lingered, drifting in small groups through the halls. Maybe they couldn’t find their way out. It was terribly dark.

  “Have the gaslights turned back on,” Isidore said to Brinkley, who was still stationed outside the dining room. He passed into the room. Louisa was standing in front of the rows of empty chairs, standing in the spot where Ella had fallen. The candelabrum flickered on the floor by her feet. She was looking down into the flames but raised her head when he entered. He didn’t know what to tell her. About Ella. About Phillipa. About Daphne. He let her speak first.

  “How is she?” she asked as he walked toward her.

  “Recovering,” he said. Gaslights flared as Brinkley set the servants to work. The rug tent looked silly again: a three-dimensional carpet collage of Rococo foliage, acorn and peony medallions, and Gothic diaper. In the darkness, the shadowy hulk had looked sepulchral enough.

  “Mr. Penn went with you.” Louisa exhaled. “It’s good that he did. I should have had a doctor see to her the first time. She is sick, isn’t she? The poor girl.”

  He made a noncommittal gesture. He scorned to hide Ella’s sickness. Let anyone who so much as looked askance at her answer to him. But she felt differently, and he wouldn’t speak of what caused her so much shame. Not until he’d made that shame go away.

  “And yet … ” Louisa’s eyes seemed illuminated from within. She looked younger. She looked almost as she used to look chasing the rabbits from the kitchen garden at Trombly House. She looked happy. “That doesn’t explain what happened. Before she fell down.” Louisa broke off, overcome. “When she said Mama,” she continued, voice low. “I heard Phillipa. It was she. She wanted to tell me she loved me. To tell me goodbye. You heard her too.”

  It would be kind to nod. Ella had told him there could never be too much kindness.

  He nodded and was rewarded with Louisa’s smile, radiant as the sunlight after a winter’s worth of rain. And maybe he wasn’t lying. Maybe he had heard her, a different Phillipa, changed by death, speaking of love and forgiveness through the lips of the woman he was going to marry. Blessing him.

  “She’s not in shadow anymore.” Still smiling, Louisa reached out her hands. He took them.

  “I think she can leave us now. I whispered to her that she should.” Her smile didn�
�t falter, but her eyes brimmed. “It’s all right, my sweet child,” she said, gazing up around the room at the dim arches of the ceiling that the light could not reach. “You can go.”

  They stood, hand in hand, he and this woman he had never called mother himself but who had been a mother to him. The peace she had found was worth bending for. He wouldn’t imperil it. He squeezed her hands and released them.

  “I’ll call on you soon,” he said.

  “Miss Reed will continue on tonight at Blackwood Mansion?” Louisa’s voice was bland.

  “Yes,” he said. She will be with me. This night. Every night.

  “And then,” he said, “as soon as she feels better, I mean to take her to Castle Blackwood.”

  Louisa tore her gaze from the ceiling and looked into his eyes, searching, he knew, for the terrified little boy who had marched home to those towers like a damned soul returning to the depths of hell. She didn’t see him, that terrified boy whose anguished face used to break her heart. He knew because she brushed his cheek with her finger, and her eyes grew even brighter.

  “That’s good, Isidore,” she said. “It’s time.”

  He found Clement pacing outside the third-floor sitting room. He stopped instantly, face tense, and folded his arms across his chest.

  “She’s in there,” he said. “She hasn’t said a word to me. I’m afraid something’s come loose in her head. She’s just staring. I waved my hand in front of her face, and she didn’t even blink.” A muscle in his jaw flexed. “Sid, you don’t think that Daphne … ”

  “You read Blake now.” He looked away from Clement to study the heavy oaken door. What if he could turn a key, shut her up in that room, and walk away, never looking back? What if he could avoid this confrontation? He didn’t trust himself.

  “Blake?” Clement unfolded his arms, cracking his knuckles. He was vibrating with suppressed emotion.

  Isidore quoted softly, “Cruelty has a Human Heart. And Jealousy a Human Face.” He paused with his hand on the doorknob. “Where’s Bennington?”

  “Gone. Slipped out. I didn’t see him.” Clement leaned his shoulder on the door. “Tell me what you know. You owe it to me, Sid.”

  He withdrew his hand and stepped back. Clement straightened, and they stood toe to toe, looking into each other’s eyes. There was nothing abstract, nothing placid in Clement’s green gaze. He was prepared for the worst. His fine-boned face looked hard. The set of his jaw was merciless. These five years had blooded the white knight. Isidore knew that if he asked Clement to help him cut Bennington’s heart out he would do it. He didn’t want to ask. He wanted to end it.

  “I owe it to you,” he said. “Believe me, I know that. For now, though, I ask you … stay on this side of the door.”

  • • •

  A few hours ago, Ella had sat in the very chair Daphne now occupied. Isidore crossed the room and stood in front of the fireplace, looking at her. Her face was swollen, tear-tracked. Her round blue eyes, reduced to slits, stared dully into space. Suddenly, kindness deserted him. In this house, with the Blackwood wolves watching, he could not bend. He knew it like he knew his name. He would crush the life from her body. He reached out to seize her throat, slowly, with the calmness of a man enacting the inevitable, and she shrank back in the chair, her sobs choking her so that she could not scream.

  If she did scream, would Clement charge in to save her? He thought not.

  “Please,” she whimpered. “I’m afraid to die.” Her fists were pressed to her mouth, arms guarding her torso. “Even if she forgives me, God does not.”

  That almost amused him. The idea that Phillipa might be more magnanimous than God. He could imagine Phillipa’s perverse laughter. The shadows seemed to move in his peripheral vision, rippling, like a girl’s unbound black hair. He pried Daphne’s hands from her face and forced them to her lap. He held her wrists with one hand and, with the other hand, gripped her throat, forcing her head back. She gasped and jerked against him. He leaned close to her, pushing with his weight. She smelled floral, a meadow’s worth of French scent drenching her. She rattled. Her tongue protruded. His hand was wet; her tears had run down her face and dripped from her chin, dripped over him. He could feel her pulse against his hand, faster than a rabbit’s. Yes, he would kill this soft, small creature. He would twist the head from the body. He pushed, and the Blackwood wolves pushed with him, a savage pack, and her pain and her panic as she squirmed and choked in his grasp made him feel something like pleasure. She should suffer as he had suffered, as all things must suffer.

  You know what happens to things that do not bend.

  He heard Ella’s voice. And all at once, he broke. He threw himself back from Daphne, and he wept with his forehead pressed to the thin carpet. He could hear her gurgling, sucking in air, and his own hoarse sobs mingled with the sounds of her life flowing back into her. He rose to his knees, dashing at his face with fists that glistened with both their tears. She didn’t shrink from him. She fell from the chair and huddled before him, hugging his legs, shaking, and he dropped his hands to her back, bewildered, the tears coming faster and faster. He had never wept. Not once that he could remember. This flood—it was a kind of deliverance.

  “I love him,” she moaned. “She knew it. She didn’t care.”

  “So you broke her skull.” His head throbbed, the pain so intense he wondered if the moisture on his face was blood, if blood was pouring from his eyes, from his nose.

  “She was going to run away with him.” Daphne lifted her face, all the prettiness distorted, the dimple a gouge in the heavy cheek. Once upon a time they were friends, all of them, laughing, dancing, drinking, lying, cheating, playing at hero and villain by turns. Phillipa wasn’t blameless in this. They’d all been so young, so stupid, so brutal in their appetites. “I followed her to the balcony. I was going to try to talk to her, but there was a candlestick on the table, and as soon as I had it in my hands … ”

  He knew. The rage took over.

  He had almost killed Daphne. He lifted his hands and looked at them, fingers spread. They trembled.

  “Sid.” Daphne clung to his shirt, her face against his shoulder. “Sid, I am cursed.”

  He made no move to comfort her. But he didn’t push her away.

  “She was pregnant,” he said, and he felt her body jolt. Her fingers dug into him, but he didn’t flinch.

  “With his child?” She flailed at him, struck his chest, but he was motionless, a rock. “Oh God,” she said. “Oh God, oh God.”

  She crept backwards, until she hit the chair. She leaned against it, hands pressed to her middle. Then she doubled over, trying to close the emptiness inside her.

  “Tell him,” he said and stood. “Tell him everything.”

  He would leave them to their hell.

  He’d nearly remained there with them. But he stumbled from the room, from that realm of infernal desolation, still weeping, but free.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Ella slept through the night without waking. Isidore kept vigil at the bedside through the long hours. Every now and then he touched his cheek, surprised that the tears still flowed. He wondered if they would ever stop. By dawn they’d slowed, and when the scent of ham reached him from the kitchen, they stopped completely. His mouth watered instead. A hopeful sign.

  Mrs. Potts brought the breakfast tray into the bedchamber without so much as a sniff. He had righted himself in her eyes. The other night, she had recognized the emotion in his face for what it was. But he hadn’t done right yet. Ella had not agreed to be his wife. Now he was going to have to get another man to convince her. In other circumstances, he thought it would rather have wounded his pride.

  Penn heard her out, sitting on a chair by the bed, his slender legs crossed, chin propped on his hand. Isidore tried not to pace, finally installing himself at the foot of the bed so he could see both Ella and the doctor.

  “Degeneracy is a theory,” said Penn slowly, weighing his words. “It may hold true in
some cases that the irritability of the nervous system increases over time. But it’s not certain. Sometimes fits cease completely.”

  “Because the symptoms have become masked,” Ella whispered. “And the disease finds other outlets.” She was sitting up in bed, toying with the coverlet.

  “Such as?” Penn raised his eyebrows.

  “Murder,” said Ella with an oblique glance at Isidore.

  Much to Isidore’s chagrin, Penn nodded gravely.

  “Some crimes are committed by people in maniacal and delirious states. Those crimes might be considered epileptic manifestations.” Penn paused. Isidore looked daggers in his direction, but he was oblivious, musing.

  “Moments of inspiration might also be considered epileptic manifestations. The convulsive shock that attends the creative experience.” He smiled. “Murder isn’t the likeliest outcome. You might just as well compose a symphony.”

  “But the taint in my blood … ” Ella began, and at this, Penn’s face darkened.

  “There’s nothing wrong with your blood. Occasionally gray matter discharges rapidly in your brain. That’s what causes the attacks. Bromide of potassium has proven remarkably effective in suppressing fits. Your doctor never gave you bromide as a remedy?”

  “He gave me tincture of henbane,” said Ella softly. For the first time, Penn looked startled.

  “He bled you as well, I imagine,” he murmured. Ella didn’t deny it, and Penn gave a slight grimace, almost tsking his disapproval.

  “Mr. Norton was our family physician,” said Ella sharply. “He attended all of us. He still cares for half the county. My father had great faith in him.”

  “He said you were destined for violence and depravity because your bad blood made an irremediable stain on your character,” Isidore broke in. “Penn, tell her the man’s an absolute quack.”

  Penn only said, mildly, “He may be a competent physician in certain areas. However, I must say, Miss Reed, many of his ideas are outdated.”