Sweet Madness

by Trisha Leaver

  “And how exactly do you know that?” I asked, worry needling me. For all we knew, Mrs. Borden was still wide awake, just as capable as Mr. Borden of walking out and catching us.

  “I looked in on her. Stood beside her bed for a solid thirty seconds. Trust me, she’s down for the night.”

  Though I was glad she’d done it, something about the image of Lizzie hovering over a sleeping Mrs. Borden was disturbing.

  “I say we give my father another fifteen minutes to settle in, then we’ll quietly make our way down the back stairs.”

  “Are you sure fifteen minutes is long enough?” I asked, continuing to second-guess my decision to help Lizzie.

  “Positive. Besides, we don’t have time to argue, nor do we want to risk waking my father with our chatter. Sometimes you just have to get things done, Bridget Sullivan.”

  I nodded, unable to miss the spark of excitement, of life brightening her dark eyes. As much as I hated the idea of spending a night I could use to rest up—or see Liam—chasing street birds, it obviously made Lizzie happy. And that was one thing she hadn’t been lately.

  We took to the back stairwell quietly, and I held my breath as we passed Andrew Borden’s door. Lizzie had slipped her boots off before she left my room, claimed that she’d be quieter, less apt to get caught, if she was barefoot. I’d kept mine on. It was horrible etiquette for any housemaid to act that casually in their place of employment, and I did not want to break yet another rule.

  I breathed a sigh of relief as the kitchen finally came into view, then nearly rammed into Lizzie’s back as she stopped dead in her tracks. She shoved the boots she was carrying into my stomach, practically pushing me back up the stairs behind her.

  “Father. I thought you were going up to bed. Is everything all right?” Lizzie’s voice was louder than usual and laced with a lethal sweetness.

  “Everything is fine,” he said. “But I would ask you the same thing, Lizzie. And why are you dressed to leave?”

  I gripped the boots to my stomach and silently eased backwards up the stairs. Mr. Borden’s footsteps were getting louder, closer. A few more paces and he’d be at the foot of the steps, and I’d be in clear sight.

  “I couldn’t sleep. I thought I’d head out to the barn and tie some new sinkers to my line.” The lie flowed effortlessly off Lizzie’s lips as she disappeared around the corner, likely hoping to draw her father’s attention away from the stairwell. “The heat and all . . . well, you know how restless it makes me.”

  Recognizing my only chance to escape the situation unnoticed, I quickly climbed the remainder of the stairs, nearly tripping up the last two in my haste to hide. I shut the door to my room and let out the breath I’d been holding. I’d been crazy to think we could get away with this. Absolutely crazy.

  Chapter 14

  I despised the giant clock Mr. Borden insisted on keeping in the parlor. Apparently, it was a family heirloom that belonged to his mother. Mrs. Borden must have known the sentimental value it held for her husband, because she checked the time herself against her watch twice a day, had even spent a small fortune to have it repaired last spring. I found it odd that Mr. Borden was so protective of it, so obsessed with an item like that when he seemed so untouched by other family memories. I’d cleaned nearly every surface of this house at one time or other, polished the silver hidden in the bottom drawer, dusted the bookshelves, and was even charged with changing over the winter linens. But never in my cleaning duties did I come across anything that had belonged to his first wife . . . to Lizzie’s mother, Sarah Morse. It was as if the woman had never existed. Every picture, her clothes, her wedding ring, even the certificate of death, were all buried away with her the day she died. The only remaining connections Lizzie had to her mother were her uncle, John Morse, and her sister Emma. And John Morse was as odd and unsettling as this house.

  But that’s not why I hated the clock. Part of it had to do with the thing being ancient, its intricate design requiring far more dusting than I had time to spend on any one piece of furniture. Or maybe it was because it chimed every hour on the hour, and the midnight chime always sounded louder, deeper than the others. That was the witching hour, and I was almost always awake. It seemed that no matter how hard I tried to get to sleep or how exhausted I was, that ancient piece of wood would jar me awake, tolling like a funeral bell.

  My bedclothes were stuck to me like glue, my entire body covered with a thin film of sweat that refused to go away. Lizzie had snuck a bit of ice in a bowl up to me shortly after our attempt at escaping the house, a treat I never would have taken myself given that the ice delivery wouldn’t come again for three days. Mr. Borden would certainly notice the chunk missing. He’d have my head in the morning for taking it, was probably already in a foul mood from catching Lizzie roaming the house so late. But Lizzie would defend me, would say it was she who took it and not me. Unfortunately, that small luxury had melted hours ago, leaving me with nothing but damp sheets, sticky skin, and a bowl of lukewarm water.

  I’d just started humming the drinking song Liam was so fond of when a loud creak pierced the silence. The moan of the wooden floor outside of my bedroom raised the hairs on the back of my neck, and I clenched the sheet tighter round my neck.

  “Hello?” I whispered into the dark, praying that the sound outside my door was my imagination and not the beginning of one of Andrew Borden’s paranoid fits where he’d fiddle with the locks while mumbling something about intruders and madmen. The locking, the pacing, the mumbling, the murmuring. I couldn’t take it tonight; I simply didn’t have it in me after all that had already gone on.

  “Who’s there?” I called out.

  Silence answered me, and I shifted in bed, trying to tell myself it was nothing. I might have succeeded had the sounds not started up again. Tiny voices this time. They were crying, softly sobbing. I bolted upright, panic welling in my chest as the cries died out and drifted silently back into the walls.

  I sat there in bed, staring into the darkness, straining to hear every sound. Nothing. The entire house, even the street outside, seemed cloaked in silence. Funny, but I would’ve given anything to hear Mr. Borden’s angry voice chastising Lizzie for waking her stepmother as she roamed the house. I would have gladly welcomed the chiming of the old clock in the parlor or the bark of a dog as it chased after one of the rats roaming the streets. But the silence, the piercing sound of nothingness, had me up and out of bed, searching out another waking soul.

  I threw open my bedroom door and took the back stairs two at a time, nearly tumbling down the last few. All the lanterns in the house were out. The kitchen, the sitting room, even the dining room were completely devoid of light. I crept along the wall, feeling my way through the house until I hit the front parlor. I pulled back the lace curtains, hoping the light of the moon would guide my footsteps, then scanned the shadows of the room for something, anything, that could have been making the noise I’d heard.

  “Lizzie?” I whispered. She often roamed the house at night, sometimes conscious, mostly not. It happened more often when Emma was away . . . when her older sister wasn’t there to block her path and guide her back to bed.

  I held my breath and waited for Lizzie to answer, expecting her to mumble out a sleepy hello. I got nothing but that same old clock ticking away and the faint scent of jasmine drifting through the air.

  Jasmine. That was Lizzie’s favorite perfume.

  “Lizzie?” I called out once more, no longer concerned that my raised voice would wake Mr. and Mrs. Borden. I’d gladly take the brunt of Mr. Borden’s anger rather than wander around this house alone. “It’s not funny. If that’s you, tell me now!”

  A soft but indisputable thump sounded from the kitchen. I gasped, resisting the urge to scream. The murmuring was clearer now, not nearly as sad and childlike as what I’d heard from my attic room, but disturbing nonetheless. With my back to the wall, I moved farther into the room, farther into the darkness. One of the shadows moved, its post
ure, its lack of grace giving her away. I knew from the hunched set of her shoulders and the inelegant gait who it was. Lizzie.

  Her back was to me, but I could see the hazy outline of her full skirts and the shape of the bun she always wore. And she was talking. To no one.

  I scanned the room as best I could, but didn’t see anybody else. I don’t know whether I was grateful for that or not. No intruder was good; Lizzie muttering to herself in the corner wasn’t.

  I stood paralyzed, unsure whether or not to race back up to my room and hide or make my presence known. If Emma were home, I’d wake her, then stand back and watch as she coaxed Lizzie up the stairs and into bed. But she’d left this afternoon without so much as a curt goodbye to her father or her stepmother.

  Emma had once warned me not to wake Lizzie when she was in the midst of one of her fits. If I happened upon Lizzie in this state, she’d instructed me to leave her be and let Lizzie snap out of it on her own. But this wasn’t like one of Lizzie’s normal spells, where she’d quietly wander around the house with unseeing eyes. This time she was engaging someone . . . something, even if only in her mind.

  “She’s not well. She’s not well. She’s not well.” The words spilled from Lizzie’s lips like a chant, muffled and barely audible. She was moving around the kitchen in slow motion, pausing only briefly when she bumped into the back of a chair.

  “Lizzie?” I asked, my voice shaking so hard I barely recognized it. “Who isn’t well? Is someone ill?”

  Lizzie didn’t respond, didn’t even act like she’d heard my question. She continued pacing the small space, her even tone, her monotonous chant, never ceasing. Her words began to slur, and if I didn’t know better, I’d think she’d gotten into the small flask of whiskey I kept hidden beneath my mattress.

  “She’s not well. She’s not well.”

  I stepped further into the kitchen and reached out to shake her. “Do you mean Mrs. Borden? Has something happened to your stepmother or your father?”

  Lizzie whirled around, her eyes settling on me. There was a wildness there, a vicious abandon I’d never seen from her before. And it was all focused on me.

  “Lizzie!” I screamed her name and shook her, hard. The last thing I wanted was to be drawn into her madness, or for whatever evil was trapped in her mind to be unleashed on me. “Lizzie, wake up. Now!”

  She shuddered once, her eyes brightening with recognition. “Bridget? What are you doing down here?”

  “Looking for you. Who were you talking to? Who is ill?”

  Lizzie shook her head, confusion marring her face. “No one has fallen ill. Why do you ask?”

  Slowly, her eyes searched the room as if trying to figure out where she was . . . who she was, and what she was doing down here in the kitchen, in the dead of night. The stool in the corner was overturned, the sugared apples I’d left in a bowl on top spread across the floor. She reached for them, her hands trembling as she put them back into the bowl and set it on the counter.

  “Did you not take care of the dishes this evening?” she asked, and I followed her line of sight to four knives laid out on the counter. They were perfectly spaced, aligned from smallest to biggest, as if whoever took them out was measuring their length.

  I picked them all up and carefully placed them back in the drawer, refusing to contemplate for one second why they had been pulled out, or rather who, had done so. The mere thought of it had me shivering in fear, a fear that would do nothing more than stir an already agitated Lizzie. “Come on. Let’s see you back to your bed,” I said and reached for her hand.

  Lizzie’s hand was cold, her fingers almost white. Blue veins shone brightly against her nearly transparent skin, snaking across the top of her icy palm before disappearing behind the cuff of her sleeve. I put a hand to my forehead, grimacing as I brought back a palm full of sweat. The temperature in the kitchen itself had to be more than eighty-five degrees; my own body was still covered in a sheen of water from the humid night air. But she was shivering and huddled into herself.

  Lizzie followed me to her own room, never speaking, never asking for or offering up any explanation. I turned my back as she stepped behind the partition and changed into her nightclothes. She reached behind her bed and tested the connecting door between hers and Mr. Borden’s room, physically relaxing when the lock held the handle in place.

  I settled her into bed and grabbed an extra blanket from the bottom drawer of the chest. It was beyond sweltering up here, but she was still shaking, the chills that held her body captive rattling her teeth. If she wasn’t better in the morning, then I’d insist on fetching Dr. Bowen, find a way to pay for it myself if Mr. Borden refused.

  “Here’s some water. Drink it. You’ll feel better in the morning.”

  She pulled herself upright and waited for me to settle the blankets up around her shoulders before meeting my eyes. “You heard them too, didn’t you?”

  I nodded. I’d heard them, but I had a sickening suspicion that Lizzie heard them louder, clearer, and more frequently than the rest of us. That the voices that birthed my nightmares were her constant companions.

  Chapter 15

  I sat on the edge of Lizzie’s bed, my eyes trained on the flickering of her lantern. The flame was weak, likely the product of Mr. Borden’s miserly ways with oil. Soon, we’d be sitting in a dark room. A darkness that, right now, I didn’t welcome.

  I hadn’t gone back to bed. The silence of the house kept me awake. I’d come back in here a few hours ago to check on Lizzie. I stayed because I hoped the presence of another living soul would ease my fears.

  “Lizzie, talk to me,” I begged. She was sitting by the window staring out into the nearly vacant street. The pale gray of her irises looked silvery in the lantern light as she turned to face me. She looked lost, defeated, and utterly dismayed. It broke my heart to see her that way, to see the outspoken, odd, and uniquely feisty Lizzie Borden I’d come to know completely lost within herself.

  “Maybe I can help,” I said, knowing full well I had nothing more to offer than a bent ear. “Please, tell me what has you so troubled.”

  “Go back to your own room, Bridget.”

  “No. Tell me what happened down there. Please.”

  “You wouldn’t believe me, and even if I thought you would, I can’t tell you anyway.” She paused and traced the pane of the window with a shaking finger. “I don’t want you to be involved.”

  Frustration bore through me. I was already involved. I’d gotten sucked in that first week of my employment, when I found Lizzie wandering around the barn at two in the morning wearing nothing but her dressing gown. Back home, Cara used to wander in just the same way. I used to tell people the night air helped with her breathing. I used the same excuse with Mrs. Borden when she caught me and Lizzie coming back in.

  I’d continued to defend Lizzie from that day forward, omitting certain information from Mr. Borden, and sometimes even downright lying about her whereabouts. Just last week, I’d found Mr. Borden’s pocket watch hidden in the cellar behind the ash bin, the same watch he’d accused me of pilfering. I gathered Lizzie had taken it from her father’s room, but I’d yet to say anything to either of them about it. I had tucked the memory in the back of my mind and left the watch where it was, hoping I could forget about it.

  “No. I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what is going on.” Being in this house every day, waiting to lose my mind, was bad enough, but for Lizzie to even suggest I wouldn’t believe her, that I wasn’t on her side, was simply intolerable. “Why were you fully dressed at two in the morning? And what did you mean by ‘she’s not well’?”

  “I’m not messing about, Bridget. Leave me be.”

  I straightened up and shook my head, irritated that she was shutting me out. “Have I yet to tell any of your secrets, Lizzie? Even one? What about the time I said I slipped, tearing your only good pair of stockings from the line as I fell, because you wanted a new pair and your father refused to give you the money,
said he wouldn’t replace them until they were beyond repair? He took the cost for the new pair out of my pay! Or what about when the barn was broken into and your father blamed you. Again. Who took the blame for that, who claimed to have accidentally left the barn door unlocked? Never once have I told them that you read their mail. You owe me, Lizzie Borden!”

  Lizzie cocked her head as if confused, then shook it off. “I know what you’ve done for me. You’ve been more of a friend than Alice. But the secrets this house hangs onto are terrible, Bridget. Worse than you can ever imagine.”

  “I can’t imagine anything much worse than you not trusting me, and that’s exactly what you’re doing.”

  I got up to return to my room, embarrassed by the tears stinging my eyes. It was true. Lizzie and I were close, had been for a long time, but something had changed in these past few days. Lizzie had changed.

  “I’ll see to your chores this morning,” I said as I quietly turned the knob on the door. “And I’ll make sure to bring your breakfast up so you don’t have to see any of us.”

  “Wait. I’m sorry. Come back and sit for a minute, will you?” Lizzie’s voice was soft, the words coming out on a sigh as if she was hoping to coax me back with a bit of information. “You know my father’s Uncle Lawdwick used to own the house next door.”

  I nodded. Mr. Borden had mentioned his uncle once at breakfast. It was one of those rare occasions when he actually spoke to me. Lawdwick was long dead, but apparently he had once owned the land next door. It’d been divided and this house built before Lizzie was born, her great-uncle Laddy, as she called him, residing in the low cottage next door until the day he died. But what any of that had to do with Lizzie shutting me out was beyond me.

  “Great-Uncle Laddy had four wives, you know, but it was his second one, Eliza, that I’m going to tell you about.”

  A chill crept into the room and scuttled up my back, and I wrapped my arms around me. I wasn’t in favor of talking ill of the dead, was sure the soul of the departed would find a way to curse me.