by May Woodward
She was passing a curtain which draped a small alcove.
A hand touched her shoulder.
TWENTY
Ah, oh my dear God…
Her keys fell to the tiles with the loudest clatter in the universe. She clutched her thumping heart.
Not a hand… just had seemed so in her shock. Instead, a small woolly paw.
With trembling fingers, she stroked her discoverer who was behind the curtain, sitting on the sill at shoulder height.
‘Sorry, puss, I have nothing for you. No treats. But if you don’t give me away, you varmint, I promise I’ll send you a whole swordfish from Lake Geneva!’
She stood still and listened. No footsteps were scuttling in the direction of the rattling din. One of the inmates in the passage behind had started shouting, though – thank God. The disturber of the peace should draw away any attention.
Now for that last humungous foe – outdoors.
Holy Heaven, footsteps… coming this way…
The door of the reception room swung open. Forth came a maid bearing a brush and pan. Clemence slipped into the shadow cast by the nearby potted fern.
Not, though, before the girl had caught sight of the other woman. The newcomer halted in surprise.
‘Miss Cummings?’ she said. ‘What’s ‘ee doin’ ‘ere so late of an evening?’
Clemence didn’t know all the staff who worked here; but this one’s name she knew… thank Heavens.
‘Trouble on the first floor, Mabel, thas what,’ Clemence said in Sarah’s Somerset speech. ‘Attempted ‘anging! ‘Ad to stay with the old girl, didn’t I! But it don’t concern ‘ee, my girl, so you be on your way now. And goodnight to ‘ee.’
‘Night, Miss Cummings.’
The maid went, in the direction of the noisy wall banger.
Just go now, while your heart’s still a-thump. Don’t think about it. Just go. Think of puss sticking his claws in your backside.
She took up the keys. Fumbled and fumbled. Not that one. That was for the first-floor landing. And this fat silver one she’d already ruled out – had seen Sarah use it to open her own door; must be the master-key for the cells.
That one. Don’t recognise that one. Go in, key, go in. You do fit, you do.
The key slotted in… and clicked a revolution. Please stop shaking, hands. Or I’ll not get the key out again.
The hall clock ticked twenty times or more in the period it took to prise the door ajar. Clemence peered around the barrier. The forecourt veered away into darkness beyond the light shed by the porch lamp.
From between the clouds, a monstrous moon radiated beams which were painful to her eye. Like a phalanx pelting out lethal javelins left, right, above, below. The vast and spectacular outside loomed and trembled.
If she closed her eyes and took a deep breath… the worst would be over.
Clemence was round the first two twists in the drive before she paused, hands on knees, taking jagged breaths. When her breathing slowed, she raised her head.
The great ivy-clad frontage of Dwellan House was behind her. Ah, the rain. Nothing but a drizzle, in truth. But how long since she’d last felt rainfall on her face?
The moon was now playing grandma’s footsteps behind the rack of shower clouds. But it was keeping its cold distance. Not jigging across the heavens or zooming down on her. No seismic upheaval shook the earth below. She was outside, out of doors… free.
Clemence gave a low cry of pleasure. She turned around on the spot. Yes, it was she who was in control. Not the whirligig universe which had always stopped her when she’d tried to go out of doors before.
She looked up at the building. She worked out which her window must be… never seen it from outside, of course – one of the dormers in the roof. The glow from the lamp was as she’d left it. Sarah must be sleeping soundly where she’d left her.
Three other windows had light behind them. The hour was between ten and eleven. Those patients with lights on must be sitting up, reading. Might glance out at any moment and wonder what Sarah Cummings was doing – loitering in the drive, getting soaked like a gormless mommet.
Yes, the rain. Some sort of covering had not occurred in the flash decision to go ahead with her flight. Clemence didn’t possess any kind of outdoor wear, for obvious reasons. Did Sarah have a coat or cloak in a closet back in the house? Perhaps the last of the keys gave access.
But Clemence hadn’t time. She must put as much distance between herself and Dwellan before her absence was discovered. Chances were that wouldn’t be before breakfast. Sarah lived alone – no-one to report her missing. Still, if there really were an attempted topping, or someone else chose this same evening to be on their way, the night warders might inspect the cells.
Clemence cleared the remaining asylum buildings – outhouses where the last of the patient accommodation was found. Once she’d rounded the bend and entered the copse, the final lit window vanished behind her.
On the further side of the trees, the gatehouse stood in darkness. Sam Ruby the gatekeeper went off duty when the main doors of the hospital were sealed for the night.
Already Clemence was shivering. She might have dismissed as luxuries a coat and preferably umbrella too. But all her aunt’s carefully-laid plans would come to naught if Clemence took the pneumonia before she reached Taunton.
This last key… might it be worth just a try? The gatekeeper might have something she could use, such as a coat…
The key fit, and the little door let her in. Now why would Sarah need a key to this outhouse? Might she and Sam Ruby have been keeping trysts here? Time for that mystery later.
It also occurred in that moment that with the fat silver master-key in her possession, she could have freed the whole kit and caboodle. Somerset would have been overrun with self-proclaimed Kings of the Netherworld by morning. Moreover, the chaos and confusion would have speeded her own departure undetected. Too late now.
By the intermittent shine of her new ally in the sky, Clemence explored the gatekeeper’s small kingdom. The silver shimmers fell on a mahogany bureau. Clemence pulled open a few drawers. She made out some tools, a paper file of some kind, and in the bottom drawer three bottles of cider. Well, well. If her escape failed and she was bustled back to face a spell in the punishment block, at least she now had scope for blackmail.
A second room lay beyond a further door. Clemence went through. A tallboy stood against the far wall. She dragged it open.
There hung a black or navy sinfonia. Clemence ran her fingers over the waterproof silk. She put the coat on over her damp vestments. The garment was masculine and could shelter another person beside herself in its generous folds. But right then it was the loveliest coat in the world.
Once out of the gate and in the lane, Clemence picked up pace. She stumbled over ruts, unseen in the dark, which pitted the track.
Only a minute away from Dwellan House, she stopped at a stile. She set a steadying hand on the damp wood. Her heart was pounding again. And that gave her pause.
The cholera had weakened the vessels of her organ. She’d been warned not to excite or exhaust herself. Likely she had done both, many times, in Dwellan – rebelling against the straightjacket and isolation cell.
But she had not been ill since the cholera. So, did she have something to thank Dwellan for? Had rest, convalescence and wholesome food restored bodily well being whatever it had not done for her sanity?
When her flutters settled, she went on her way.
A wagon trundled up from behind. The driver leaned down to the walking woman.
‘I can take ‘ee as far as Cothelstone, maidy – ’
She peered up at the carter’s kindly, moonlit face. No – decline she must. What if he recognised her uniform, and knew Dwellan and its staff?
Where would she sleep? In a barn, she supposed. Wrong time of year
for a convenient hayrick. She’d not get all the way to Taunton without at least a few hours’ repose. She had no money for a room in an inn; in any case, an innkeeper might be a wee suspicious of a female tramp, wearing a man’s coat, whose trajectory of travel led alarmingly back Dwellan House-way. No, must find a barn or shepherd’s hut.
Clemence spied through the trees the lights of a homestead or farm. She set her feet that way. Please let there be a lonesome outhouse of some kind. One bark of a hostile dog, however, sent her back to the lane.
The moon had gone entirely now. The rain was growing heavier.
Curses. Slime squelched as her foot sank in a puddle. Clemence hobbled to the hedgerow to drain her footwear.
Voices and a girl’s laughter came floating her way from around the hedge. She peeped into the field which lay beyond. She could make out the shape of a great tree. From there came the human sounds. A pair walking-out during an April shower? A smile came to Clemence’s lips, only to freeze there.
She was twenty-five and had never known a sweetheart’s embrace.
Now she might never – bound to Philoctetes Consett as she was, who had married her for her money. She could not see him again anyway; he’d send her back to the nuthouse. The lowliest of her brother’s tenants possessed something she did not… love. And was it not worth more than all Eardingstowe? This country cottar and his sweetheart canoodling as they sheltered beneath the boughs were richer than the duchess.
Her mind went back to the battlefield, and the wounded Cossack. At the time, his injuries had been all that troubled her. But the image pricked her now of peeling back his coatee, her fingertips brushing the bare flesh and downy hair not far from the lacings of his trousers, and the skeletal and muscular contours of the abdomen.
Clemence struggled into her wet shoe.
She picked her way around the slime pool and tramped onward.
Lights clustered in the dip around the next bend. A hamlet was approaching.
Out of the dimness, the shape of a church spire took form. Also, the brighter lights of a tavern. As she drew nearer the drinking-hole, she could hear a tune piped on accordion and flute. The Barley Mow read the swinging, creaking signboard.
Clemence kept to the further side of the road, out of range of the beams of light which reached from the interior. She followed the small hurdle fence of the first homestead in the village. Had she heard the clink of a horse’s bridle?
She peered into the blackness ahead.
A horse and wagon stood in the shadows. There was no sign of any human aboard. Closer she crept. On the side of the dray she discerned a legend: Timothy Maybold, Maltster. The horse was a heavy draught animal with shaggy hooves. Clemence rubbed his forelock.
‘Where’s your master, then? Taking the waters in The Barley Mow before heading home to a no-doubt long-suffering spouse?’
Clemence stepped back to survey the cart. The malt merchant must have deposited his wares for the day. The rear was empty of all but a few piles of sacking and discarded rope.
Who would suffer if Clemence took the dray? The maltster might have to walk home tonight. But if she abandoned the vehicle in town, it would surely make its way back to him when he reported the loss. It had his name on it. So, he’d not lose his livelihood, would he?
By all that was sacred… what had she done? Where would she go? What could she do… alone out in the terrifying universe? Lizzy was her only friend… But she was a continent away. Fanny… if only she could go to Brandon… No, he was with Dickon and Mathy. There was no-one, no-one, anywhere, who was on Clemmie’s side.
Taunton Vale spread before her below the brow. Spectral spires and roofs jutted from the low-lying daybreak mist. Clemence thought of the masts of the dead ships sticking up from the surface in Sebastopol harbour.
Why not just slink back to Dwellan House? There she’d be looked after for the rest of her days. They were kind enough, if you did as you were told.
It wasn’t yet fully dawn. The earliest pinkish rays of morning were streaking the sky, bird song just starting to be heard. She had left the tradesman’s wagon, horse munching away, by the wayside and meant to go the final half a mile into the township on foot.
What if they had already found her gone at Dwellan? And were scouring the land around about? Full well she knew what befell recaptured escapees… God, don’t think of it.
Ahead, crossing her way, glinted the River Tone. Within Taunton, the bells of St Mary Magdalene’s church could be heard chiming the hour of five. She could see the castle; last time she had been there was for the Lord Sheriff’s Ball four years ago… or was it five? She’d come to the shire town in her finery with Richard and Amathia as a member of one of Somerset’s leading families.
She gazed around at the grassy banks, snowdrops and wood anemones growing there. The gentle breeze felt as if it might knock her down. It was so strange.
She was right to fear the outdoors. So many predators waiting to do you harm. On all sides. She could feel them… eyes watching from the hedgerows… She might not be reeling, the world spinning around her, great hands clasping her throat and pressing, pressing, pressing… but right she was to be afraid. So right. Please let me back indoors, away from the poisonous air…
But she couldn’t return. She knew what they would do to her if she did. And did she want to in her heart…?
The Roman Ram’s Horn Bridge came within sight – entrance to Taunton. The skin of Clemence’s feet was sore by now. The soles of her indoor shoes must be wearing away. But she broke into an almost-trot.
She sat upon the riverbank. The reflection she could see in the water showed a woman who’d not slept – bruising eye sockets; strands of sweaty hair coming loose from the topknot she’d fastened under her wardress’s cap.
Could she take a few hours’ sleep in the parkland which surrounded the church? No – cannot risk being taken up by the constabulary for vagrancy after she’d come this far. Just wait until the shops and bank opened. Only a few more hours. Just a few hours more to wait.
Clemence listened to the sounds of the community coming to life. Hooves on cobbles. Clink of a blacksmith’s hammer on anvil. Earliest calls of a milkmaid in the street behind the closest houses.
The bells struck seven. Minutes seemed stretched to hours. She was counting. Willing the hour to reach eight, and then nine.
‘Is all fair with ‘ee, maidy?’
Clemence had been staring into the drifting water. She jumped. The words came from right behind her.
‘I was wonderin’ if you might be lost, maidy?’
The burly, grizzled figure wore an apron and carried a basket over his arm. He was the muffin man who she’d heard calling his wares around the streets for the last half hour.
‘I’m not lost, sir… only waiting for someone,’ Clemence said. Calling a tradesman ‘sir’ indeed; if only Amathia were here to hear it.
‘You look as if you’ve had a rough night, maidy. Here! Let me give ‘ee a morsel of my bakery’s finest. And no need for payin’. ‘Tis only what the Good Lord would have me do.’ The man handed her a crusty roll of soft bread.
In Hammet Street she found the tiny bank. Only half an hour to go now before it would open. She paced the thoroughfare from St Mary Magdalen’s to castle and back with a fresh spring in her aching step.
On her third trip up and down the street, she paused outside a rather dingy premise a few doors from Laine and Potterton’s. Three globes hung above the shop’s entrance. Not surprising she’d never noticed it when she’d been in town before. What in blazes would a Somerlee want with a jerry shop?
Just as the rays of the sun were furling above the crenellated battlements of the castle – a thought struck her. She must do something about her clothes. Back at Dwellan, her flight would be discovered around about now. That servant she’d bumped into would be remembering a woman she’d erro
neously believed to be Sarah – wearing a wardress’s uniform.
Clemence plucked up the hem of her skirt and took a good look at it. Not much soiling despite the night’s adventure. A few mud splashes, and a small rip from when she’d clambered into the maltster’s wagon.
In London since the Great Exhibition, there were warehouses where you could buy readymade clothes and all accessories under one roof. But a country town had not caught up. In Taunton, you must still visit the draper first for the material, then the mantuamaker to have the frock made up, milliner and parasol shop separately. She could afford these once she drew funds from Mr Laine and Mr Potterton. And there were many shops which Clemence had never patronised – where she’d not be recognised.
But they’d take a week to make up any dress she ordered. She needed to shed the asylum gear now.
Her eyes went back to the premise with the globes above the door. Yes, whatever ghastly raiment Mr Peabody the Pawnbroker could furnish her with would be haute couture as far as Clemence was concerned.
Oh, why won’t those minute hands on the church clock turn a little faster?
She paced once more as far as the gates of the church.
The town centre was coming alive now. A flock of geese was honking its way towards the market, drover following. Three elderly women passed Clemence on their way to matins at the church. She was attracting the odd glance or two – stalking the street the way she was.
‘Hoy! You! Stop where you are!’
Clemence’s heartbeat sped into overdrive. The shout had come from behind her. Warily, she turned around.
A policeman was there – some thirty paces away.
‘Don’t move!’ the constable bellowed. ‘I want a word with ‘ee!’
A jeweller and his lad, pulling down their awning ready for opening time, stopped what they were doing, and looked. The churchgoers turned Clemence’s way, too.
Clemence stood frozen to the spot.
The policeman broke into a run, truncheon raised.