Karen Essex

by Karen Essex

  I knew that superstitious women in Ireland still called upon the old goddesses.

  “I heard others tell the stories of her power and her magic. Áine can turn herself into whatever form she would like to take—a mare, a dog, a wolf, or a bird. She can help a woman to get with child or make a bad crop grow strong. She is irresistible to men, and has her way with kings and gods alike. If she desires a man, she will turn herself into an animal of prey to make him chase after her, and the hunter soon finds himself in her lair. She mates and bears children, but she tires of men and she abandons them. She once bit off the ear of a king when he tried to overpower her and left him lying in his blood. You can hear her discarded lovers howling in the woods after she has had them and disappeared.”

  At this, Vivienne cackled, and I thought of Jonathan, wandering the fields of Styria after his affair. I supposed that these old tales were metaphors for what happened when men succumbed to lust.

  “Áine’s followers imitated her ways, and it was whispered that she gifted some of them with her powers, so I sought to join their circle. Midsummer’s eve is her holiest day, the day of the year when the veil that separates the two worlds is thinnest. I slipped out of my bedroom window at the eleventh hour and met my sisters in the woods. They had already lit a fire, and we decorated our hair with roses and began to chant her name, Áine, Áine, Áine. The moon was as pregnant a one as I had ever seen, and the light of it illuminated our young faces. Our skin was shimmering like we were creatures of heaven as we danced around the fire, and our voices sounded like a choir of angels. It is no small wonder we attracted them to us.”

  Vivienne’s eyes radiated with a peculiar light as she spoke. I did not want to interrupt this reverie, which, as with the old whaler, brought the poor aged thing so much pleasure in the telling. “Now remember, the Sidhe can take whatever form suits them, and if they fancy you, they will turn themselves into whatever will seduce you. On that eve, they came to us as men. It was the most remarkable thing. We heard winds rupture upon winds as they broke through the veil. The atmosphere cracked open, letting through beams of light, brighter than the sun. The thunderous noise died down, and we heard their music, tinkling silver bells and celestial harps. Then we saw them riding out of the light, skin shining with the electrical fires of the Great Cosmos.

  “So here they were, a small army of them, some marching, some on horse, straight from heaven—tall, stately, magical creatures with luminous hair of gold. They bore the features of mortal men, only more beautiful, more radiant. Some of the sisters passed out cold on the ground, while others screamed as the Sidhe warriors swept alongside them and carried them off on their horses. In spite of all the chaos around us, he and I locked eyes as he rode toward me on his steed, with his flowing hair and red cape and his enormous dog bigger than a wolf at his side.”

  “What color was his dog?” I asked, ever more drawn into her tale.

  “Silver!” she said. “And feral!”

  I had to wonder if I had been in the company of one of these creatures at Whitby Abbey.

  “Soon he whisked me upon the back of his horse, and he took me to his kingdom. It was just a leap to the other side of the veil, child. I am telling you, no sooner had the horse jumped a fence than we were in a place not of this earth.”

  “You were in the fairy kingdom?” I asked. “But where is it?”

  “It is right here,” Vivienne replied, opening her arms out to encompass the space around us. “It exists alongside us, though we cannot see it. If you are ever lying in your bed late at night when all the lights are extinguished, just reach up into the darkness, and a creature from the other side of the veil will take your hand. The Sidhe can break the veil wherever they desire. For mortals, there are access points everywhere. I have seen them, hidden at the bottom of lakes, where so many have drowned trying to find them, or buried deep inside mountain caves.”

  “Tell me about your captor, Vivienne,” I said. As she told her story, it became as vivid in my mind as if I had lived it myself.

  “Oh, he was tall and grand, a warrior from an ancient military aristocracy. His mother was a fairy who had mated with a human warrior centuries ago. I loved him and wanted to stay with him forever.”

  “Even after he kidnapped you and took you away from your home?”

  “I had called him forth by the ritual. I went to him willingly, and, even if I had not, he was not to be resisted. Even if it had cost me my life, I would have been happy to sacrifice it.”

  I wondered what it was that had actually cost Vivienne her sanity. Had she gone mad and then began to fabricate that the fairy prince had kidnapped her? Or had she invented the story, and her growing belief in it had turned her mad?

  “What was it that enthralled you so?” I asked.

  “They drive mortals mad with pleasure, out of our minds with ecstasy,” she said with an asp hiss. “Sometimes, they kill us! Not because they wish to, but because their bodies are fire and electricity, and mortals cannot tolerate it! The Sidhe love all that we love—feasting, fighting, warring, making love, music, and they love to seduce us into these pursuits. Humans go among them and return with their toes danced off, with their bodies drained of their very blood, with their minds a blank. The fairies do love us, but too often we cannot survive their intensity. When we die, they send their banshees to mourn our passing. Their cries fill the vault of heaven and shake the earth!”

  “But you did survive,” I said.

  Leaning ever closer to me and looking around the room, Vivienne whispered, “I had a baby by him, a girl, I think, but I do not know what became of her.”

  I waited for her to elaborate, wondering if the insane were subject to Kate’s method of letting information flow from the discomfort of silence. Vivienne went blank, as if something had wiped clean her mind. Her eyes rolled to the corners like lazy green marbles.

  “Vivienne!” The sound of my voice snapped back her attention. “Please finish your story. Why did they take your baby?”

  She began to play with her long hair, gathering it to one side and twisting it into a white swirl that hung down her shoulder. She looked like an elderly mermaid, if ever there was such a creature. “I offended the goddess. I was beautiful, and she was jealous. She told my lover to forsake me and she stole my baby away!”

  She was quiet for a moment, but something begin to seethe inside her. She raised her arms and began scratching at the air in front of her. “He is right here, right here with me but he won’t show himself. His world is all around us, I tell you. It is invisible to our eyes and silent to our ears, but it is right here!”

  She looked at me with great desperation, and then grabbed my arms. “You can bring him to me! You must call to him and tell him where I am!” She let me go and paddled at the air, each stroke of her old arms more violent. I stood up, moving away from her. I did not think she could hurt me, but the sight of her was so pitiful. “I know you are here!” She screamed loudly, beating at the thin air with her hands.

  Hurried footsteps came toward us. The two hall supervisors rushed in, each taking one of Vivienne’s arms. She flailed, trying to get out of their grip. “I want my baby!” she yelled. “What have they done with my baby?”

  “You had better leave now, madam,” Mrs. Kranz said to me. Her voice was firm. “Shut the door and wait outside.”

  Vivienne’s shawl had fallen off and I could see the old spotted flesh of her arms hanging off the bone. Her head was thrown back and she stared at the ceiling, limp in the arms of the two women, a trickle of tears sliding from the corner of each eye. “Good-bye Vivienne,” I said timidly.

  Her head snapped forward and she looked straight at me, fixing her eerie green stare upon me. “They will come for you and they will know you by your eyes.”

  Chapter Twelve

  19 October 1890

  The next day, afraid that my encounter with Vivienne had upset me, John Seward called me to his office. I did not want to see him, but I did not know
how I could refuse.

  When I walked into the room, his eyes swiftly grazed my body, nibbling at every little detail, and then met mine with his signature look of concern. I told him everything that had happened with Vivienne, which he listened to with great focus and patience. “What I do not understand, Mina, is why the experience was so upsetting to you.”

  I had not said that it was upsetting, but apparently it was obvious in my demeanor and my voice. “I am a doctor, Mina, a doctor and a friend. Surely you know that you can tell me anything.”

  Seduced by the care in his voice, I found myself telling him bits of my own history—that when I was a child, I spoke to invisible people, to animals, and sometimes heard voices, and that my behavior had upset my parents.

  “I still have strange dreams, John, dreams that I am an animal of sorts, and these dreams make me get out of bed and wander in my sleep. After these episodes, I sometimes imagine things, lingering images from my dreams. Sometimes I think I am being followed. It worries me. After Vivienne’s outburst, I started to wonder if I was glimpsing myself at her age.”

  He listened very carefully to what I had to say. Then he smiled at me as if I were a child confessing some petty crime that her father found endearing. “Dear, impressionable Mina, I did warn you that visiting the patients would be upsetting.”

  “I only wanted to help,” I lied. I could not confess that my true motive had been to discover more about Lucy’s death.

  “The very idea that you might have anything in common with Vivienne! Let me set your mind at ease. Vivienne is what is known as an erotopath, a sexually preoccupied woman who becomes obsessed with one man, in this case, the lover who she recast in her imagination as the fairy prince.” He grinned at me, waiting for me to smile back. “The erotopath generally becomes an annoying menace to the man, and he rejects her. The rejection drives the woman to nymphomania, which is a disorder in women who have abnormal sexual desires. It is a serious type of uterine hysteria. Do you see how drastically different that is from your innocent childhood fantasies and your dreams?”

  I nodded, unable to admit that some of my dreams were not so innocent.

  “Vivienne’s family committed her because she had been randomly seducing men, causing them no end of shame, and eventually she had a child out of wedlock. To exonerate herself, she insisted that the father was a supernatural being.”

  “You must admit, she spins a good yarn,” I said.

  “The typical hysteric develops elaborate, far-fetched romantic histories for herself. Vivienne is not even her real name. Her name is Winifred,” he said. He opened a tall cabinet, lifting a file and glancing at it. “Winifred Collins. Born 1818.” He showed me the name and date before returning the file to the cabinet. “She identifies herself with Vivienne, the mythical sorceress who enchanted the sorcerer Merlin.” Seward smiled wistfully. “A tale to interest a boy once enthralled by Arthurian legend but not much for a head doctor to go on.”

  “Poor old dear,” I said.

  “Vivienne is fortunate. Her family set up a trust for her care. Many girls like her are thrown out with their babies and have to earn a living on the streets.”

  “I am sorry to have disturbed a patient,” I said. “That was not my intent.”

  “It was not your fault. The nymphomaniac loves to give vent to passion. I once saw a girl let rats eat her fingers, thinking that her lover was covering them with kisses. Some girls hurt themselves, lacerating their bodies and claiming they don’t feel a thing. It’s a sort of penance for what they have done.”

  “Penance?”

  “Why, yes, they feel tremendous guilt over their promiscuity. Not all women are as noble and as good as you, Mina.”

  Crimson color spread across his cheeks. His eyes softened and his brisk professionalism disappeared, wiped away by something else, something tender. I knew that in that moment of vulnerability, I could extract the information I sought.

  “John.” I said his name softly, as if it were itself a question that must be answered. “We must talk about Lucy.”

  For what seemed an interminable amount of time, Seward said nothing, but studied my face. Though I remembered Kate’s advice, I still felt compelled to explain myself. “I received a letter from her, written after I had left Whitby. She was excited about her engagement. Not six weeks later she was dead.”

  He sat in his chair and cupped his forehead in his hands, shaking his head back and forth as if the memory anguished him. This time, I let silence reign. Finally, he spoke. “There is no polite way to phrase it. Lucy suffered from erotomania—her obsession with Morris Quince. Quince’s rejection drove her to hysteria, after which she could not be convinced of Arthur’s love for her. Once she got it into her head that he had married her for her fortune, she had a complete breakdown. At the very the end, she was not so different from poor Vivienne.”

  “It’s hard to believe that of our Lucy,” I said. Yet I had seen the tendencies when I was in Whitby. Loving Morris Quince had made her seem mad and act as a madwoman acts; I had told her so myself.

  “Lucy had all the causes that make females prone to hysteria: preoccupation with romance, high spirits, irregular menstruation, a delicate mother. She was also capricious and had abnormally strong sexual desires.” He gestured toward his bookcases. “The symptoms are well documented.”

  “But hysteria is surely not fatal,” I said. “Vivienne must be upward of seventy years of age.”

  “Lucy starved herself to death,” he said. “Believe me, we tried every treatment. We tried to feed her through the tubes, but she regurgitated. We tried the water cure, which generally settles even the most extreme hysteric, but it only made Lucy worse. When she was on the brink of death, Dr. Von Helsinger even tried to give her blood transfusions to strengthen her.”

  “I must admit that when I apply your explanation of the disease to some of her behavior, she did fit the pattern.” I was trying to make sense of it all and I wanted him to keep talking.

  “Mina, I do believe you have the mind of a doctor.” He beamed at me, and I hated myself for always needing to be the teacher’s pet. Encouraged by my assimilation of his subject, he continued: “Consider how snugly Lucy fit the mold of the hysteric. Do you know what is their most ubiquitous symptom? They are cunning, the shrewdest liars known to man. Lucy carried on her affair with Morris by lying profusely to everyone, even you, her dearest friend.”

  “It is all true,” I said. Hadn’t she always been that way? The little girl who could fib her way out of every situation?

  “I thought that the transfusions would regulate the menstrual cycle, which might have cured her. I am so sorry I couldn’t save her.” Seward’s eyes welled with tears. His face turned red, and he blinked, releasing a huge teardrop. “This is very unprofessional, Mina. I do apologize.”

  “Nonsense, John. We all loved her.”

  We sat for a long time in silence. Obedient to Kate’s instruction, I did not speak, though the indescribable look of longing on his face disturbed me. “I thought I loved Lucy,” he said. He walked around the desk and pulled a chair up next to me. “I thought that the fleeting attraction I had for Lucy might be love until I met a woman of such depth and beauty as to overwhelm me, mind and senses.”

  I waited, hoping against hope that he would reveal the name of someone with whom I was not acquainted.

  “Have you not heard the deafening pounding of my heart when you are near? Please come to me, Mina, be with me. Your husband is an adulterer. The marriage remains unconsummated and is therefore not yet a legitimate marriage.” He spoke quietly but firmly in contrast to his ardor of moments ago. “Moreover, you married him under duress.”

  “Did Jonathan tell you all this?”

  “No, but Dr. Von Helsinger and I consult with each other about our patients.”

  Humiliation flushed and burned my face and neck. I wanted to contradict him, to prove him wrong, to produce some evidence of Jonathan’s love for me. “My husband has be
en ill since our wedding. I brought him here so that you could help him. Doctor, have you forgotten your purpose?”

  “Yes!” He threw his hands in the air. He pushed his chair aside, falling to his knees and grabbing a fistful of my skirt. “Yes, I have forgotten it. My love for you has wiped everything else out of my mind.” He rested his head on my thigh, his hot cheek making its impression through my skirt. “I just want to stay here forever.”

  “Well, you mustn’t,” I said. “Please control yourself!”

  He sighed, lifting himself up and sitting on the desk so that he was looking down at me. He straightened his shirt. “I know that what I am doing is outrageous, but I cannot apologize. Jonathan will never be the sort of husband you deserve.”

  “Is this what you and Dr. Von Helsinger have concluded?”

  “No, but we have discussed the matter. Von Helsinger wants me to listen to his notes on the case, but I have not yet had the opportunity.” He gestured toward the cylinders on a shelf next to the phonograph, neatly lined up and labeled.

  “No man is perfect. I am trying to forgive him. Jonathan was not in his right mind when he was seduced in Styria.”

  “Do not be naïve. Men always like to imagine that they are helpless when in the thrall of a beautiful lover.”

  I lowered my head.

  “I have upset you, when my fondest wish is for your happiness,” he said. “No one will blame you for forsaking a man who has already forsaken you. I, on the other hand, would treasure you until one of us breathes the last.”

  I was so shaken that I thought it better to be silent.

  “You are not running from me in horror, which I regard as a hopeful sign,” he said. He took my hand again. “Come to me any time of day or night. I will inform the staff that we are working together, and that you are to have complete access to me. We will empty our minds to each other, and I will soon convince you that we are meant to be together.”

  I knew that I should chastise him for insulting a married woman, but here were more questions to be answered, and I believed that those answers could be found inside Seward’s office. “You have stunned me, John,” I said. “I must go collect myself.” And I left the room.