Madness

by Sorcha MacMurrough

  Their housekeeper Mrs. Darnell was a motherly type, but rigidly moral, and would never permit the least hint of impropriety. She sat in a corner with some darning as they conversed, and took meals with them. At the clinic, they were always in company with one colleague or another.

  In truth Gabrielle had never looked at Antony as a beau, and never would. He was handsome and decent, but had never stirred in her any feelings other than tender regard and esteem.

  She knew she ought to go see how Clarissa was managing back at the clinic, but the truth was that she was glad to be home. She was so tired, she decided to forgo a bath in favour of a lie down.

  Only several hours later when Antony was feeling calm did he sit her down in his snug parlour and break the news to her.

  “I’m sorry, Gabrielle. I can’t allow you to try to help Simon. By all accounts he is a most vicious and dangerous felon.”

  “Why? What did he do?”

  Antony shook his head. “I’m sorry, Gabrielle.”

  “Damn it, Antony, tell me!”

  “I really don’t think-”

  She made an impatient gesture with one hand. “I don’t care what you think! I want the truth! How bad can it be? I’m a big girl now. I know the way the world works. What’s the worst thing he could have done?”

  He sighed, then said, “Raped and killed a woman, and murdered her children as well.”

  She felt her heart give a sudden lurch, and was sure it had stopped. Her eyes widened, but she immediately shook her head. “No, I don’t believe it! He saved Lucinda and me from certain rape. As for killing children—”

  “I’ve read through all the documents, the court deposition. The fact that he even confessed. He made no secret of his crime. Expressed no remorse.”

  “If all of that is true, then why is he in Bedlam?” she asked angrily. “Why not hang or transport him?”

  Antony shrugged. “Apparently he has a rich and powerful family who were able to convince everyone that he was certifiable, so he escaped the gallows. It wasn’t the first time he had been given to violent excess with women, and, well, young girls. Very young girls, in fact." He looked as though he would be ill.

  "No, I refuse to believe it."

  "I'm telling you, I saw the file with my own eyes. I've never felt so, so polluted in my life as I did reading it."

  She leaned forward in her chair intently to argue, "There must be some mistake—"

  Antony shook his head. "I've seen enough of Alistair and Philip's legal docments to know the real thing when I see it. I’m sorry, Gabrielle. I know you wanted to help him, restore him to the bosom of his loving family, but they don’t want the viper. All I can say is you need to stay away from him if your paths ever cross again.

  “And I know I’m supposed to practice Christian forgiveness, but if either one of us ever get the chance to overdose him again, we should take it. Put the animal out of his misery.”

  “Don’t you dare say that!” she shouted furiously. “You may well be a doctor, but you’re not God. And he saved both of us! Saved all our lives.”

  “The better to roger you both himself!” he fired back.

  She was so furious her palms itched to slap her cousin’s narrow face. “No, I don’t believe that for a second.”

  “How can you be so naïve?”

  “How can you be so sure every word of what you’re saying is true?” she returned furiously.

  “Because it’s in the record, and the records don’t lie. There’s even a signed confession with his mark on it.”

  “His mark?” she repeated blankly.

  “Aye, his mark, plain as day.” He swished an ‘X’ in the air.

  She shook her head. “For Heaven’s sake, Antony! He’s an educated man who speaks at least two languages, and you’re trying to tell me that he never signed his own name? Simon? Simon what? What’s his full name?”

  Antony shook his head. “What does it matter? He signed the confession outlining all those heinous crimes and more.”

  “It does matter," she persisted, feeling as though she were fighting for the most inportant thing in her life, though she could not have said why.

  "What’s his name, where does he come from? Where did the crime supposedly take place? Don't you dare expect me to just accept your so called facts meekly after everything I've seen and heard with my own eyes. He's not a killer. Not a rapist. What you're saying is impossible. So what's his surname and who is his family?”

  “I don’t know," he admitted, his brows knitting. "I can’t recall.”

  “For Heaven’s sake! You tell me to forget I ever met the man because he's the most vile degenerate and killer, and yet you don’t know even the most basic particulars about his life? Or even his real name?”

  “Everyone assured me that he was dangerous--” he said lamely.

  Gabrielle glared at him. “I’ll bet they did. They’ve put him in there to drug him, to get him-”

  “There you go again with the mysterious ‘they’ responsible for all of this,” Antony said angrily. “You sound as delusional as he does. He’s a rapist and killer. You’re my cousin, and under my protection. You're under my roof as my relative and in my clinic as my secretary and assistant. But if you persist in this course of folly to try to help this man, I swear I shall send you down to Randall in Somerset and you can work for Blake there.”

  “And what of my sister? I’m not going to leave her!” Gabrielle insisted, her blue-green eyes blazing.

  Antony's lips thinned. “If you conduct yourself properly, you won’t have to. I know you’re a kind little thing, believe me. I’m sure if you could help everyone in the world you would. You’ve got a heart like a lion. But this man can’t be saved. He doesn’t deserve to be.”

  She raised her chin mutinously. “I don't know what you could have read in that spurious report that would cause you to be so, so narrow minded and unforgiving. We run a clinic for harlots, for Heaven's sake."

  He said in clipped tones, "Prostitution is one thing, murder quite another."

  "In any event, it's not up to us to judge. You tell me you've seen the legal documents and he's had due process of law. They didn't give him a capital sentence, did they?"

  "No, but—"

  She rose to pace in front of the hearth in the snug burgundy and navy blue parlor. "And no government in the world has the right to drug or torture anyone no matter what they've done. Think how much he's suffered as an opium addict before you start judging him and think he should be put down like an unwanted stray dog."

  Antony had the grace to look ashamed at that.

  She paused in her pacing and folded her arms across her chest. "And Jonathan Deveril would tell you that God didn’t save us because we deserved it, he saved us in His infinite mercy. Please, Antony, Simon be so much better in no time, once he’s without the opiates.”

  “The opiates are probably the only thing that stopped him from swiving you senseless. They deaden desire and generally numb the body.”

  She shook her head, and clamped her hands over her ears as if to try to block out Antony's insistence. “I don’t believe you. Why, he was more of a gentleman than any of my brother’s cronies, or Lucinda’s husband!”

  Antony looked appalled. “Gabrielle, please, I’m begging you. This man has infected your mind. You need to come back to the clinic with me and forget you ever met him.”

  “But I gave my word that I would help him, and you've said nothing thus far to make me change my mind.”

  “You can still keep your word then, but don't get personally involved. You send him baskets of food if you like, clothes, but as far as any chance for him to get near you or your sister again--”

  She put one hand on her cocked hip. “Don’t try to placate me. We both know about his guards. And if I dare try to help him, not only will he not get the help, I might be making it that much worse for him by showing an interest in him. I don't believe a word of the lies in that report. If he’s really mad or a
criminal, why is he being treated like a prisoner with guards watching his every move? Why is he being kept alive, but drugged? It makes no sense. You have the run of the asylum, Antony. You can find out—”

  “I’m sorry. It’s too dangerous. I will not have you mixed up—”

  "Ah, so you do admit there is more to this than meets the eye."

  He glared at her. "I never said—"

  Their gazes met and locked, and she refused to give way. "You didn't have to. And as for not getting mixed up, I'm sorry, but I already am. Simon saved all three of us. We owe him. And I have every intention of paying my debts whether you get in my way or not.”

  Chapter Nine

  Gabrielle had argued bitterly with her cousin Antony over helping the inmate known only as Simon, and though she was sure she was right, she was sorry for the quarrel as soon as they had both retreated to their respective parts of the house to be alone.

  The promise to the handsome stranger had been rashly made, she knew, and this was confirmed the very next day as she set about trying to accomplish her goal.

  Her first problem was that she couldn’t even find Simon in Bedlam, as hard as she looked.

  Her second difficulty was that in truth she didn’t really know what to think. The seeds of doubt about her estwhile rescuer had already begun to creep in, just as Simon had predicted they would.

  Could what her cousin Antony had told her about him really be true? That he was a rapist and killer of women and children? Was he so cunning that he had warned her that she would abandon him just to lure her in even more closely into his web of evil?

  Much as she tried to tell herself to listen to her heart, the insidious voice of fear nagged at her continually. Perhaps Antony was right. Maybe it was best to just leave things as they were...

  But then she would recall the agony Simon had been in, the despair, the way he was struggling so hard against his addiction. How he looked, so gaunt and haggard, the scars on his back…. Then a new surge of determination would shoot through her, urging her that time was of the essence for him, and she had to do the right thing to help the poor struggling inmate no matter what the cost.

  The question was, how to help him? She wrote down everything she could recall about what they had discussed, and sought answers from her colleagues at the clinic.

  She learned as much as she could about opium addiction, even daring to ask Antony’s friend Eswara Jerome, one of the Rakehell wives and a healer from India.

  Eswara had taught Gabrielle things about healing with the hands using pressure points from the body, and many different herbal remedies.

  She was certainly very familiar with opium addiction, for it was a common enough problem in the Far East, where the opium poppy was cultivated. It was used widely for pain in Europe now too, and as Eswara pointed out, often the most innocent people, even small children, could become addicted through ignorance.

  She gave Gabrielle a list of things she could try to help ease the so-called withdrawal symptoms, and told her to come visit the next time she was in Somerset.

  She also told her that if she was interested she could even help on some of her rounds, and she would teach her more about women’s medicine.

  Gabrielle had thanked her profusely, and gave her an impulsive hug.

  The exotically lovely older woman with golden eyes that reminded Gabrielle of Simon's, gave her a fond smile said, “Follow your heart, that’s my advice.”

  She stared at her. “But I never said this was a matter of the heart—”

  Eswara's dark brows drew downwards slightly. “Didn’t you? So sorry, my mistake.” She gave a knowing smile, and left for the day.

  The next afternoon, Gabrielle got a stroke of luck as to Simon's whereabouts at last. The cell that Lucinda had been put in after her near-rape in the common ward was badly damaged in a winter storm. The snowfall had been so heavy recently, with no sign of a thaw, that part of the roof collapsed under the weight.

  Even though she had been placed on the second floor, the falling masonry had damaged everything above and below. The authorities had had no choice but to move the patients to more habitable cells while they effected repairs.

  At first Gabrielle had tried to ignore the incessant recitations of poetry coming from the chamber next door, uttered in a singsong as the person evidently drifted in and out of consciousness.

  For a moment she thought she recognised the voice, but Simon’s tone had not been so harsh. But then he had not been shouting himself hoarse, and vomiting so violently that his throat burned when she first met hm.

  It was only after a week of listening that she had realised it was indeed him. The vast array of poems she had heard was astonishing. She wondered at him being permitted so many books in his cell.

  One day she had gone over to the wall when he had stopped suddenly, and she had heard a thump.

  Then she had known he was having one of his fits, and had been desperate to see if he was all right. But the guard outside his door had been indifferent, and had refused to let her in to investigate the matter further.

  "But I heard—"

  "It makes no odds, Miss," he said with a shake of his head. "Orders is orders."

  Her heart had lurched in her chest at the sight of him comfortless and alone on the floor when the guard, Spence, had finally grudgingly permitted her to look in the hatch. Seeing him prostrate on the ground trembling was almost more than she could bear.

  "I can't believe you're just going to leave him like that."

  He shrugged one shoulder.

  "It's inhuman!"

  "He's an animal!"

  "No matter what anyone says he's done, no one deserves to be kept like that. It's filthy, and the vermin—"

  "As soon as my shift is over, the second man can stand guard and I'll go in and scoop him up off the floor so the rats won’t nibble at him. Fair enough?"

  She was sure she was about to be ill.

  "Stand guard against what? He's sick! He's not going to escape. He can barely breathe!" she protested, as the gurgling sound echoed around the corridor.

  "Orders is orders. No one in or out without the password," Spence maintained.

  "I'll stand guard then, and you go—"

  He shook his head. "I can see you're a kind soul, Miss, but best to move along now. Really." His expression was kind enough, but the edge to his tone made her back off.

  "Very well, then, if you won't trust me, I'll find someone in authority here to come help you both."

  She hurried to the main office, told her tale, and the ferret-faced gentleman seemed to believe she was only concerned for a fellow Christian, rather than anyone taking a personal interest in Simon.

  As she returned to Lucinda's room she managed to snatch a look in the peephole again while Spence was speaking to one of the orderlies who was walking past. She watched as they unlocked the door and Spence went inside.

  "Come on, you wanker, get yer arse up off the floor," Spence growled. She heard a kick, a low grunt, then a louder one as Spence heaved him onto his cot. It gave with an alarming metallic shriek and groan, and another grunt from Simon, but he said nothing, merely gurgle.

  "Turn him on his side in case he vomits, so he won't choke."

  "Bugger the devil," was Spence's reply.

  "Whoever is keeping him here and paying the bills evidently wants him alive. He's mad, not a criminal here to be punished," she said in her most reasonable tone.

  The orderly surprised her by saying, "Aye, do it." Then he added, "Nothing worse than the paperwork involved with a corpse here, you mark my words."

  Gabrielle's cheeks flushed with anger, and she longed to go to Simon, put her arms around him, comfort the poor man in some way. No one deserved to be treated like this, no matter what they had supposedly done.

  But Antony was so sure he was a fiend ....

  Spence did as he was told, and then came storming out of the cell and locked the door with a clang.

  "There, done now
. So you can get off to your Quaker soup kitchen or wherever it is you've come from, Miss, and leave us to get on with our business."

  She did as she was told immediately, not daring to linger lest she arouse any further suspicion than she had already.

  She finished tending to her sister, who was still quiet and unresponsive, then hurried back to the clinic. Oliver was just getting off duty when she arrived, so she pulled him over to one side and explained in a few brief sentences all that had happened since she and Simon had first met. She omitted only the more intimate parts of the tale, though she could feel a betraying blush heat her cheeks as she spoke.