by May Woodward
A woman could be seen pacing there. Her mane of black hair and white nightgown streamed behind her in the wind. In one hand she waved a flambeau. She let out a lupine howl and appeared about to apply the torch to something flammable.
‘Good God, man, don’t just stand there! Do something!’ Brandon cried.
Dr Warburton scowled up at the spectacular figure.
‘That’s Cora. She only plays her ridiculous Mrs Rochester joke when someone she fancies is due to visit. She must have heard you were coming, My Lord. Take it as a compliment!’
In her room, Clemence took up notepaper, ink and pen.
“Fifteenth of March, 1862. To my dear husband Philoctetes, Third Duke of Ardenne.”
The first of many pauses; her eyes moved to the framed lithograph of his profile which stood on her desk. She only wrote as often as she did because he was good for disgorging vitriol to. Quite an emetic, indeed.
How could she despise Philo? Philo was not the shadowy genius manipulating the shutters and light beams which made the wonder of the magic lantern show. Philoctetes, God rot him, was as much a victim of Amathia’s machinations – he’d been pressured to marry where he did not wish.
Little in Clemence’s life was certain anymore. Maybe she was to spend the rest of her days within these walls. Or maybe the Russians would invade and free her and all the other inmates. But one thing was sure, definite, ultimate, absolute, unchanging as leaf-fall in autumn – she hated her sister-in-law.
“It is a lovely spring day and I am sad that I am indoors,” she wrote.
Ah, yes, cheerless indeed. She gazed around a boudoir brooding under yellowy dimness. The drape was covering the casement, although it was broad daylight. She had not been outside for over three years. Even looking on the hospital grounds from the safe side of the glass gave her collywobbles. But now she peeled back the curtain and managed a peek.
High in the ivy of the building’s east wing, her window overlooked Dwellan’s parkland. Sunlight sliced through the branches of the elms and limes which stood sentinel at the boundary. Shy rabbits bounded from the spinney onto the bank of the lawn, and back into the shadows. A fan formation of birds was crossing the Quantocks and summit of Will’s Neck.
“How well you looked when I saw you most recently, Philo dear. I trust you enjoyed your stay in Marienbad? The mountain air favours you. I so look forward to your next visit.”
In fact, that was true. Anything to break the monotony of her days. But when had her husband last called? The month just gone? No – she recalled staff and inmates had been dragging a pine tree into the entrance hall; Philo had slipped in the scuffled snow which had come in too and grumbled about it. Must have been December, then.
‘I’m afraid we have Prince Albert to blame for this inconvenience,’ she had told him. ‘Since he started bringing in a tree at Windsor and decorating it for the festive season, all of fashionable society feels the need to ape this German custom. “Stuff and nonsense, this new fuss over Christmas!” my Uncle George used to say. In his day, they bothered with May Day and Michaelmas and that’s all.’
“Have you been much to court, dear husband? I fear it must be quite sepulchral with the Queen weltering in her great grief over Prince Albert’s death. Gone are the splendid balls we knew, I suppose? I long to hear more of the world. You bring me tidings, Philo.”
Clemence laid down her pen. She propped her chin in one hand. She peeped around the curtain again.
The carriage-sweep leading to the road was full of twists and turns, in and out of the wood. That was how they built asylum driveways – to hide the horrid buildings from those on the outside. Actually, Clemence had heard a kind of euphemism for the occupants of an asylum just coming into use: round the bend.
“I must rely on the newspapers for the latest from the world outside. How pleased I am that Italy is to be a united nation at long last, having finally thrown off the Austrian and Bonapartist yoke. I recall the patriot, Signor Garibaldi, visiting London. Ladies took to wearing Garibaldi blousons – it was quite de rigeur that year.”
Dwellan was not going to hold her forever, oh, no! Out of here soon she would be. Only a locked cell and the queer, diaphanous barrier of fresh air stopped her.
But it was odd all the same, she thought, that here in Dwellan House’s micro-universe warfare did not intrude. Nations did not rise and empires crumble.
“The world’s upheavals pass our tranquil nook by,’ Clemence went on in her letter. “It is quite pleasant to sit with my Aunt Cassandra and the women in the sewing-room, the travails of humankind shut out.”
Aunt Cassie. Clemence smiled to herself. Her father’s strange sister had been here for almost twenty years. Cassandra lived in a dream-dimension of fairies and magic. Used to walk the mere bank at all hours, and claimed she’d visited Jenny Greenteeth’s lair. Believed the dairymaids were plotting to kill her – one of the cows in the dairy herd was sending her messages, so Cassandra said. Prophesied that an elf-prince was coming from the sea to destroy the Somerlees.
Cassie wouldn’t ever leave Dwellan House. Nor would she wish to. She’d been here so long it was her home now.
Clemence had been a little girl when they’d put Cassie away. But Clemence loved her aunt and had visited often. How bizarre to now be sharing her incarceration.
“I don’t think they told Cassandra that I’m a patient like her,” Clemence wrote. “My poor auntie believes I’m here as her companion! It will be hard on her when they release me.
“Actually, I shall miss quite a few of my friends here. I love the women I talk to in the sewing-room. I tell Betty what it was like nursing soldiers in the Crimea, and Betty tells me what it’s like being the Czarina! Oh, and there was one chap who used to say that word ‘f**k’ in every sentence and swore he could not help it. But Dwellan was short of beds, and the last I heard he was made Ambassador to Belgium.
“Please give my love to Dickon and Mathy when you see them next,” she added. The nib gouged deep in the notepaper.
Little could she remember of what had happened three years ago.
She knew she had survived the cholera, which had claimed her beloved brother and sister. While she had lain enfeebled in her sickbed, she and Philoctetes Consett had been married by special licence. She was the Duchess of Ardenne.
Sometime soon after – God knew how long; she had been too befuddled – they had brought her to Dwellan House. A sick woman who needed to be cared for. Who might be a danger to herself and others if not kept behind a locked door. Amathia had even seen to it that Aunt Lysithea was kept away from the asylum and was allowed contact only through correspondence which was vetted first by the superintendent of Dwellan.
And all, Clemence assumed, for the late Juncker von Schwangli’s money coffers. Philoctetes was her husband. She had been certified insane. So, her possessions became his. Worse must have been done for lesser fortunes than hers.
And what part in all this had her brother played? He was Amathia’s lord and master. He could have done something to thwart her… couldn’t he? Yet he hadn’t… ‘I’m sorry, Clemmie. It’s for the best, dearest one…’ he had told her, once, sometime. You toad, Dickon. Under your wife’s thumb. And you’re making me hate you as much as I do her…
Clemence drew back the curtain a little further. A few cool sunbeams stole into the attic room.
A team of labourers and male patients was tramping out to the fields for the spring sowing. Two were leading a heavy horse pulling a spike harrow. In the threshing yard, four old-timers were weaving ash stakes and hazel wands into hurdles.
Asylum grounds, tended by professionals and inmates alike, rivalled those of any country house. But there was one conspicuous difference: the gardens were without water features of any sort; Dwellan’s needs were met from its water-tower whose pinnacle Clemence could see pointing above the trees. No ornamental lake, re
servoir, stream, bridge – nothing except a drinking-fountain or two. Nowhere a patient might be drawn to drown himself.
Behind her, a key was heard grinding in the lock. In bustled a wardress. The woman wore a black gown and white cap. A bunch of jangling keys hung from her girdle. After her followed the superintendent, Dr Warburton.
‘Good day to you, Your Grace. And what a fine day it is indeed!’
Was Clemence’s cold bath due, maybe? Warburton usually did come in person on such errands to the duchess when he didn’t bother with most of Dwellan’s inmates. He was a social-climbing yokel. And looked like a prosperous country gentleman. Well, in a way, so he was: must make a profit from the boarding of patients from wealthy families.
‘Good afternoon, doctor, Sarah,’ said Clemence. ‘I have just seen some of my fellows heading into the fields. How content they all looked! I even heard one singing.’
‘Ah! Well, you know, Your Grace, we want only what is best for our patients,’ Warburton said. ‘No-one is here to be punished for their sorry affliction. See the charming gardens, pretty gatehouse, fine trees, peacocks and sheep wandering the grounds? All designed, you see, to induce healing of the soul!’
‘Yes… except that few of your patients actually get better, do they, Dr Warburton? My aunt has been here since she was forty years old. She must now be almost sixty.’
‘Miss Cassandra was fifty-six last birthday, in fact. Sadly, ailments of the mind are difficult to cure! We can humanely treat the symptoms, but not the underlying causes. And so, Your Grace, how are we feeling today?’
‘The same, doctor. A little fatigued perhaps. I am composing a letter to His Grace. I hope I can advise him of the date of my release?’ She looked up with a bright smile.
‘I will check once I return to my office,’ said the doctor with a reassuring nod. She knew what that meant – her warders hadn’t set a date. But Clemence would hound them until they did. She was no longer the feeble-wit they had brought here three years ago. She was getting out – preferably by legitimate means.
‘I come on other business however, Your Grace,’ Warburton continued, ‘though no less welcome, I trust. You have a visitor. Lord Fanshawe, no less, is waiting in the parlour.’
‘Fanny!’
‘He is a friend of you and Sir Richard, I believe?’
‘Yes! He was with us in the Crimea.’
‘Splendid! Then I’ll leave you with Sarah. Let’s make you presentable, hey?’
Left alone with the wardress who began to dress her hair, Clemence stared at her dim reflection in the toilet-table mirror. Lord, how the passing seasons were encroaching. When had those silvery strands crept into her hair? She was only twenty-five. Had illness ravaged more than her mind? How sick had she really been? It was, what, seven years since the war ended?
‘I am well again, aren’t I, Sarah?’
‘Better each day, Your Grace,’ said the woman as she went to the clothes-press. ‘So, let’s see you in your prettiest frock for your handsome visitor.’
‘He’s a family friend! And happily wed. As am I!’
Heaven knew what secrets she might have broadcast, though, during the height of her raving. Maybe the whole of Somerset knew her feelings for Brandon Fanshawe.
Three whole years of her life, the time she had spent here, were beclouded. Minutes stretched to days. Months shrunk to fleeting moments.
Had that really been her… tearing sheets and screaming? Dr Warburton leering over her. He had looked like a snarling ogre with slobbering fangs, stooped back and claws which pawed at her. Well, he was no oil painting anyway… but why had she been so afraid of him? And a harpy-woman in the uniform of a wardress, who was holding Clemence down on the bed as she thrashed to get away?
What was that tiny room they’d shut her in… pink walls, soft as swansdown to the touch, but without windows – just a grill which the harpy’s face sometimes glared through?
And the visions and sounds in her mind and head? Screams of dying horses… the precipice of Saupon Hill veering down, down, into the pit of Hell… Lord Lucan with demon’s horns grinning up at her… Captain Nolan – a devil jigging through the lava fields towards the River Styx at the head of the valley… and then her fiancé and her lost brother… two dead hussars soothing her brow…
How could it have seemed real? Yet it had, back then. Sebastopol had never fallen, not in her mind.
Clemence fingered her butterfly brooch, turning it over and over and over.
‘You’re not well, sweetheart. You need to go where you can be looked after…’
Maybe Richard hadn’t been wrong. How uneasy that thought made her.
But it was over now, yes, the war was finished – and soon she would be free.
‘Lord Fanshawe. How good of you to call! Polly…’ She turned to the young maidservant who had escorted her to the visitors’ parlour. ‘Please bring tea for His Lordship and me.’
When the girl had gone, Brandon turned from looking at the framed landscape hanging over the fireplace, crossed the room, and clasped Clemence’s outstretched hand.
‘Clemence, my dear.’ Brandon raised the hand to his lips. ‘How are you?’
‘Well enough to wonder why I am still here,’ she replied.
The two sat in the fireside chairs, facing each other.
‘How are you, Fanny?’
‘Oh, never anything wrong with me! I’m in the rudest of health as always.’
‘How is Phyllis? Such a beautiful woman.’
‘Oh, ravishing still,’ Brandon said. ‘Though sadly we have not yet been blessed with a family.’
‘I am sure God will grant your wish in good time,’ she said with her most gracious smile.
Could it be… he was not happy in his marriage? She kept her eyes on the man sitting opposite, searching for anything which might be a sign all was not rosy with him.
Lord – she seized on any morsel and made a starveling’s feast of it. The last occasion Brandon had visited, he had mentioned his dislike of the Turkey carpet which Phyllis had chosen for their dressing-room. Clemence had danced to her chamber in the eaves that same evening, glad that all must not be well at Woodmancote. And didn’t that mean she must still be mad – more unbalanced than old Jack who had dug up the flowerbeds one night last year and built his version of the Malakoff on Dwellan’s lawn, convinced that the Russians were coming?
‘Speaking of expectations,’ said Brandon, ‘Dickon and Mathy have another blessing due in the autumn, you know.’
‘Oh, I had not heard! But then, it must have been before Christmas that my brother last visited.’
‘You know how awkward it is for him…’
‘Oh, don’t make excuses for him, Fanny! He is ruled by his wife, and she is the one who put me here.’
‘Clemence, my dear… you weren’t very well, you must realise that…’
‘I’m getting out, though, Brandon… soon I’ll be out.’
Clemence rose and went to the window overlooking the parkland. The chestnut boughs were sprouting buds. Cream and yellow daffodils spread across the lawn, rippling in the soft breeze as if an invisible hand had wafted through them. There had been a time when she could not even peep through the glass. Now, at least, she was risking a glimpse or two.
‘I cannot remember the last time I went out of doors,’ she muttered.
‘Why? Why does the outside frighten you so?’
‘I don’t know!’ she said. ‘But when I step out, all the world is spinning – closing in as if to smother me, and I cannot breathe…’
‘Maybe the air is toxic, then, after all.’ Brandon sat back and rested one boot on his other knee.
‘But now…’ Clemence brightened, ‘I want to get out there in the hills again, truly I do! Tomorrow, perhaps, or next week…’
‘Well, that’s progress.’ Br
andon propped an elbow on the chair wing, chin cupped in hand, and gazed at her. ‘I’m staying at Eardingstowe for a few days,’ he told her. ‘I managed to coax Caroline out of the nursery. Took her for a sail on the mere.’
‘Gosh, Caroline must be almost four now! She won’t remember me!’
‘Dickon and Amathia cannot tell her where her Aunt Clemmie has gone, of course…’
‘If they don’t let me out of here soon, Fanny, I’ll climb down the ivy and escape!’
‘I truly believe you would, Clemence.’
A warder could be seen leading a male patient across the lawn towards the fence which shut off the asylum’s fields. Clemence heard chanted lyrics which went something like ‘Enjoy yourself! Enjoy yourself! Life is cheery, and our drink is beery!’ The patient tapped the warder on the shoulder: ‘Don’t ’ee get soused on the cider this early, Mr Pennyways, else it’ll be the jacket for you, my friend.’
‘If you stay a little longer, Brandon,’ Clemence said with a smile, ‘you’ll see the one who insists he’s Nelson. He strolls around on the terrace, sweeping the view with a telescope. He’s a skinny, little fellow with only one eye and one arm.’
‘They’ve not ill-treated you, have they, Clemence?’ Brandon said.
‘With my brother the chair of the magistrates’ bench which renews Dwellan’s licence? I doubt it,’ she said.
Yet she frowned. Being locked alone in that strange room. Something vile she was forced to drink. Fastened into something so tight that she could not move arms, legs, or speak? A straightjacket, God forbid. Were these memories… or just fantasies?
‘You know,’ Brandon said in a low voice, ‘Richard suspects the narcotics they give you are hallucinogenic.’
Hmm… now there was a ghastly thought. Were there patients here being fed hallucinogens? So that Warburton could keep them and their fee-paying relatives within his cosy demesne? Would be a nice little earner for him indeed, and none to gainsay him.