I remembered instead how sure-footed I’d become on the hikes up the hills, so that even when the ground was slippery and wet underneath my ill-fitting shoes, I was as steady as a goat. How Martha’s low laugh was a welcome reward for witticisms and jests, knowing how hard she was to win over. How Celia leaned against me, safe and calm for a moment, despite her frail nature and painful burns. I had found friends here, among those whom society and family alike had labeled and dismissed as madwomen. I had come here believing Phoebe needed to be freed from this place, yet I had been a better person here than I’d ever been at home, and I would never be able to pick up my small life where I’d left it. Maybe, as mad as it sounded, the asylum was the best place for me.
* * *
Everything changed. No warning, no expectation. Just change.
There was light. A sliver at first, but it grew. And then the whole huge rectangle of a door was open, blazing with light, and a tall shadow crossed it. The shadow resolved into the shape of a man.
His words reached my ears as if through deep water, but I did not ask him to repeat himself. My brain caught up, churned, and translated his watery words into what I could understand and what I needed: You can go.
“I can?” I nearly yelped with joy.
“Keep your knickers on. Back to yer ward, I mean,” said Alfie, a kind of snarl on his scarred face.
I had never liked him, but I was happy to see him, unutterably happy, so much so that I had to restrain myself from flinging my arms around his thickset body and kissing his fleshy cheek.
I didn’t want to make him repeat himself, so I was up and out of the cell in half a heartbeat. They hadn’t even sent a nurse to accompany me back to my ward and make sure I arrived there. Perhaps Alfie was supposed to, but he shirked his duty. Or perhaps they knew I’d be so grateful, so thrilled, to not be alone anymore that I would flee straight back into another cell, as long as it had companions in it. They were right. I went straight back to my cot in Terpsichore Ward, with not even a thought of turning down another hallway.
Everything was so noisy and bright. I almost couldn’t bear it. I wondered if this is how things felt to Phoebe sometimes, after her spells, like the world was simply too much to be borne. My first instinct was to run back to the quiet darkness of my rubber cell, despite what a hell it had been for me, simply because everything else was unbearable.
The door was open, and the ward was empty. I couldn’t tell the time of day, and I sat on my cot to gather my strength.
There was something different about the ward, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Things looked cleaner. Was I was simply seeing with brighter eyes, so happy to see anything outside of Darkness that I was misremembering how things had looked before?
It was all so bright, so bright.
“Smith!”
Winter’s voice slapped against my ears. I jumped.
She laughed. “Back, then? Get yourself to supper.”
I rose and followed her. Her indifference was, in its way, reassuring.
There was so much activity in the hall. Things buzzed. Everything buzzed. Everyone kept moving all over, and so accustomed to nothingness, my eyes tried to track all their movements. Women shuffled toward the tables; at the end of a bench, one woman raised an arm; a nurse crossed the hall; a lump of bread fell from the table and tumbled end over end until it struck the wall and lay still. There was always something happening somewhere. I couldn’t settle, couldn’t rest.
I sat on the end of a bench and reached out greedily for my portion. Even the terrible bread was a revelation, compared to the dry heels I’d been given recently. I had to force myself not to scarf down the entire chunk on my plate. Instead, I tore off pinches and dunked each one in the thin, watery soup. I savored each piece of soaked bread in my mouth, then chewed whatever remained to be chewed, careful to go slow. When I’d come to Goldengrove, these portions had seemed paltry, but compared to Darkness, it was a feast.
The nurses walked past us and onward, and I heard a soft voice across the table from me.
“Welcome back,” said Nora.
I looked up, and there she was. My friend. Her eyes seemed less round than usual, and it took me a moment to realize why. She was smiling.
“Thank you,” I said or tried to say. My voice was a husky rasp. It hadn’t been used. I now realized I should have exercised my voice like I exercised my body during my isolation. God willing, I would never have the occasion to use that lesson.
“Hush, just eat,” she said. “But it’s good to have you here. When someone disappears. . .we always wonder.”
The emotion cracked her voice a bit, and it was surprising to see Nora, usually the most cynical and jaded among us, feeling sentimental. I appreciated it more than I could express.
I reached out to put my hand on hers, to let her know, but a nurse came swinging up behind me and smacked my hand before I could reach her. Silently, I tucked the hand back in my lap. But once the nurse had passed by, I looked up at Nora and mouthed Thank you silently, and she smiled again, and I was happy.
It didn’t last.
From the other end of the bench, I heard Bess’s voice blare, “About time you’re back here. You know, you missed the visit.”
“Visit?”
“Give me your bread, and I’ll tell you all about it.”
“Tell me first.”
She rose with obvious annoyance, but she rose, and she seated herself next to me, folding her arms and tossing her head.
“They send the committee through every now and again. Big batch of ’em. So those of us what are on our good behavior, we’s allowed to be seen. Playing games and such. Hopscotch on the lawn. Tucking into a supper of good meat and warm bread with creamery butter. . .”
“Butter!” interrupted Nettie with glee.
Bess shot her a look and went on. “And glasses of cool milk to drink. As if we did so all the time.”
“What committee?” I asked, but I had a sinking feeling that I knew.
“Investors.”
“Which ones?”
“How should I know?” Bess sneered, her eyes on my plate.
I curled my hand around the bread in a fist, just in case she made a grab for it. “Did any of them have beards? Any young men?”
“Perhaps,” she said. “Most of ’em was old, but I think there was a young man or two. One woman, but she fainted clean away. And there wasn’t even anything bad to see! But that Damaris, you know, with the demon, she fell down in a fit, right at the woman’s feet, and Bob’s your uncle, they were both on the floor.”
“A woman?”
“Oh yes, real proper lady, with a right smart hat. She was hanging on the arm of one of the men, her husband I supposed, and none of the men liked that she was there. Heard ’em whispering she was a crusader. Even before she went down flat. Got what she should’ve, if you ask me, woman trying to stick her nose in a business that doesn’t want her. Should’ve stayed at home.”
I tried in vain to steer her back. “Did anyone call any of the young men anything? A name? Did you hear someone called Sidwell?”
“Hell if I know,” she said. “Can I have your bread now?”
I was starving, hungry as I’d never been hungry before, but I handed her the bread. She wolfed it down as if she were the one who’d been on the stark rations in Darkness.
I tipped my soup bowl up to drink every drop before she could ask for that too, wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, then pressed on. “Anything else you can tell me?”
“One man did say something when the woman fell.”
“What did he say?”
“‘Next quarter, leave her at home.’”
My blood ran cold.
Quarter had to mean a quarter year. If the investors of Goldengrove only came once a quarter to survey operations, I would not be able to wait for their next visit, three months away. I could not even wait. . . How many days had I been here? In Darkness, I had lost track.
&nbs
p; I looked over at Nora, my eyes wild. I could not see her legs from where I sat—they were under the table—but tried to indicate my question by looking downward and unfolding my fingers one at a time with a puzzled expression.
She nodded. She looked down at her legs, mouthed something, and looked back at me, holding up five fingers.
I breathed out. Five days in Darkness. That was twenty-two days since I’d left home—how could it have been so long already?—making today October 5. More than three weeks I’d been here, leaving fewer than three weeks to find Phoebe and return home if I wanted to avoid having my parents find out I’d lied about Newport from anyone but me, an outcome I still hoped wholeheartedly to avoid. Failure would also jeopardize my marriage plans, though my feelings on that front were far more mixed.
If only, if only. Had I been on the ward instead of in Darkness, I might have been able to make contact. If any of the Sidwells had been present, any of them would have been shocked to see me, pulling me from the ranks right away. Wouldn’t they? If I’d only managed to avoid Darkness, this whole adventure could have been brought to an end. I had no idea what might have come after that, good or bad, but at least I would breathe the air outside these walls again.
Yet I was where I was. And who I was. And I had not yet found Phoebe. It felt like years since my visit to the records room, but now I remembered, I had new information to act on. I was closer than I’d ever been. I needed to find the meaning of Mnemosyne, that was all. Perhaps it was impossible, but I’d done countless impossible things already to get here. What was one more?
* * *
When we returned to the ward in the evening, moving toward our cots to bed down, Martha made a beeline for me. The bruise on her cheek had faded a bit, but a new blue-black welt was rising next to her eye, and I assumed she’d been insolent again, either to the matron or someone else with permission to hit her. I wasn’t in the mood to talk, but her look was serious. I knew the easiest path was to listen to what she had to say.
“Tonight,” she said, “a group of us have a matter to discuss.”
“And?”
“Something important. I wasn’t sure whether to let you in on it, but I think you can be trusted.”
“I’m glad,” I said, though I simply burned to move on and be done with the conversation. “What are you trusting me with?”
She looked at our wardmates now streaming through the door and dropped her voice. “Revolution.”
I don’t know what I’d expected her to say, but it wasn’t that.
She edged even closer. She shucked her dress, motioning for me to do the same so we didn’t stand out. “This place, Charlotte. It’s run by fools and fiends. That awful matron is a petty tyrant. And you know what they say about tyrants.”
Everyone knew. It was what John Wilkes Booth had said. Sic semper tyrannis, “thus always to tyrants”—meaning death.
The look on my face must have startled her, as she rushed to clarify. “Not that. Not killing. If we do it right, it won’t take killing. But we need to rise up.”
“Martha, that’s insane. There is no chance of success. None.”
“How many of them are there? How many of us? It wouldn’t even be hard. We just need to plan.” The light gleamed on the darkened patches on her face, the bruised eye shining with fervor.
“I don’t think—”
“Fine,” she said, her voice colder. She yanked her nightdress into place. “Get involved or don’t. But it’s going to happen whether you cooperate or not. So I think you’d want to be on the right side here.”
“Side? What other side could I be on?”
“Think about it,” she said.
I was at a loss. “Martha.”
Nearly all our wardmates were settled in their beds, making us conspicuous, and Martha’s eyes flicked over toward her own cot. I saw her weigh whether to say something else before she left my side. She took a step away, not looking at me, but muttered quietly, under her breath.
She said, “Watch tomorrow, and you’ll see what we can do.”
Chapter Sixteen
I was burning with urgency to act, yet it was more important than ever that I be watchful, patient. I could feel the difference in my post-Darkness self. I understood now that I needed to be more like Phoebe in order to secure her release. I would be braver, more reckless. I was already trapped among madwomen, feeling every day the danger of becoming a madwoman myself. The idea of being returned to Darkness terrified me, but so did knowing that all I’d done so far would be for naught if I didn’t find Phoebe. If I feared punishment, I told myself, the best way not to get punished was not to get caught.
My first night back from Darkness, I immediately began to plot and plan. When best could I slip away? On a hike? During the first stage of soapmaking? On the way back from lunch? In the middle of the night? And what of Martha’s plans for revolution?
At dinner, I’d hidden a lump of burnt potato in the bodice of my dress, and under cover of night, I spread out my underskirt and used the black lump to draw the best map I could remember. If Mnemosyne was a place outside of Goldengrove, I had no chance of success anyhow, but if it was here, I knew I could find it. I drew in all the wards I knew of and all the halls and doors and baths and other interior spaces, and I figured out which rooms I had never seen with my own eyes. The offices on the third floor were, I saw now, higher in number than the staff here required. The superintendent and the matron both needed a room from which to conduct their business, but did anyone else? The attendants, the cook, the nurses? No. Yet there were five rooms up there, either closets or offices, and I had never seen them. I vowed to see them, and soon.
I slept fitfully at best, but every time I opened my eyes and saw the faint silhouettes of my fellow inmates slumbering nearby in the dim light of the gas jet, a welcome wave of relief swept through me, carrying me back into slumber.
Even Salt’s brusque shout to rally us—Time to hike! Move your corpses!—felt like a cheerful greeting. We rose and dressed. When I caught sight of Martha, I remembered she had promised evidence of her revolution, and I wondered what form it would take. As it turned out, I didn’t have to wonder long.
As the door to the ward was thrown open and we exited into the hall, we heard an unusual noise from the direction of Thalia Ward.
Voices.
Not just those of the nurses either. I remembered Dexter and Edmonds well, in addition to Alfie, and none of these voices matched theirs. So who was speaking so loudly, in a ward of drugged mutes?
When one of the voices idled into a scream and I recognized Dexter’s voice calling “Summons! Summons! All available!” I realized that the residents of Thalia had somehow come alive. Winter ran in the direction of the summons; Piper froze.
I saw the blond with the doll’s face and short hair sprinting toward us, bellowing a string of the foulest language I’d ever heard, even from a sailor. I understood then why she’d been given the night medicine over and over, if this was how she sounded without it. That was the explanation, I realized. Last night, they had not been drugged. Now, we saw them without chemical restraints, with no restraints at all.
Salt sprang into the blond’s path and caught her around the waist. He began to haul her back in the direction of her own ward, but we could still see her expression—pure fury—and hear her venomous shouts. Her legs flailed hard against the air. He struggled mightily to hold her. I cheered secretly for her to win.
Still in the hall, we began to break our rigid formation. Piper could not maintain order alone. She flapped her hands for a moment before saying, in a surprisingly level voice given the circumstances, “All right, back into the ward, ladies. Let’s pause our exercise for a moment while things are contained.” She added, “Okay now,” waving her palms at us as if we were seagulls to shoo off a pier, and I almost laughed at her helplessness.
Instead, I scanned the crowd for Martha. When my gaze met hers, she nodded. Yes. This was somehow her doing.
&nb
sp; The woman with no teeth was facing the wall, her palms flat upon it, and striking her head against the wall between them over and over. When she raised her head, a smear of red was visible on the wall’s surface, which disappeared when she brought her head forward again. In less pandemonium, we might have heard the awful sound of each blow; it was all too easy for me to think I heard it anyway.
Piper called again, this time with more urgency, “Ladies of Terpsichore! Back into the ward!”
But only half of my wardmates, if that, listened. Nettie turned back obediently, as did Irene, but they were exceptions. I saw Bess laugh over her shoulder as she surged directly into the crowd and broke through on the other side into emptiness. The woman with the rag bundle sank to the floor where she was, whispering and rocking, and I couldn’t see from her face whether she was overwhelmed or just terrified. While some of my wardmates shuffled and others scattered, I took my opportunity and clung along the wall, turning left instead of right, slipping around the corner beyond the range of Piper’s gaze.
When I found myself in an empty hall, I let myself feel relief and excitement. It was time at last.
I was not going back until I found my sister.
* * *
I began my search on the third floor with the five mysterious rooms. I opened the first door and froze when I saw a row of nurses’ shoulders—then relaxed when I realized these were only dresses, not people. Apparently, this was a uniform closet. And it gave me an idea.
Ducking inside the closet and closing the door behind me, working in the dark, I donned a nurse’s uniform quickly, shedding the hated coral dress for the stiffer fabric of the white, high-collared shirtwaist. There was a cap attached by a loop; I put it on and tucked my hair under it. The dress was wrinkled, but there was no helping that. I had to count on people not looking too closely. Anyone who examined me would question my identity anyway, so my only hope was to be a nurse-shaped blur. My plan would have to be adapted as I went along.
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