Next, I flung the iron bar across the room as far as it would go. I finally recognized it—the leg of a cot, somehow detached. It landed by the far wall with an enormous clatter and slid to a halt. Nora gave no sign she even knew it was gone. She simply continued beating the fallen Veronica with her fists. I heard the sickening thump every time a blow landed, flesh on flesh, both underlaid with hard bone. The nurse lay still, unmoving, offering no resistance. I prayed she wasn’t dead, but I had no way of knowing.
Instead, I poured all my strength into prying Nora off her prey as she howled, “That’ll show you! Whore! Cherry! Twat!” and I choked back my confusion and disappointment, even as two attendants finally arrived and began to pull the three of us apart like taffy.
* * *
My hand ached relentlessly. Bruises blossomed over my arms like daisies in a field. No one cared, of course. The attendants had seen little of the actual attack, so if blame was to be determined, an investigation was necessary. And, of course, there would be blame.
When I was yanked without ceremony from my bed before the morning shift, I didn’t have to wonder where I was being taken. I knew.
I didn’t drag my feet as the attendants hauled me upstairs, but neither did I take a single step ahead of them. I didn’t want them to realize I knew the way. It seemed like years, not days, since I had been Nurse White, but regardless, I needed to pretend my life was as separate from hers as a stranger’s.
They delivered me, as I’d known they would, to the matron’s office, which had been the superintendent’s office only a week before. The door to the sleeping chamber was firmly closed. I could no longer smell the paint that had rendered my sister’s mural white and blank and featureless, but I knew it was there, only feet away. Here was where the superintendent had told me of John Sidwell’s dreams, where he had mourned his own weakness, where he had praised my sister for bringing him the sky. There had been hope in this room not so long ago. Now, there was none.
“Miss Smith,” the matron said, her tone sharp and metallic. Her office suited her: cold, brutish, all edges. Even the portraits of the previous asylum heads looked somehow more threatening, more disapproving, behind her head. Whatever the superintendent’s weaknesses had been, and they had been many, his office had felt comfortable, welcoming. It occurred to me to wonder what would happen to him now that he had been dismissed. Sadness washed over me in a wave. I tried to fight past it.
I answered her. “Yes.”
“Do not speak unless I ask you a direct question. Did I ask you a direct question?”
“No.”
“Did Nora Pixley attack you?”
“She didn’t mean to.”
“Fancy that, a madwoman with terrible aim,” she said dryly and shot a look at Gus, who stood by the door with his arms crossed. He didn’t look back at her. I had a sense that he felt vaguely uncomfortable, though I couldn’t have said for sure why. In any case, the matron hadn’t asked me a question, so I remained silent until she did.
“What did Nurse Bell do to incite Mrs. Pixley’s wrath?”
“Nothing that I know of.”
“Nothing? You believe she was attacked for no reason?”
Telling the complete truth was out of the question; telling even part of it seemed unwise. I finally decided on, “Nurse Bell did nothing to anger the patient.”
“Of course she didn’t! What a thing to say.”
“Is she all right?” I asked.
“Again, Miss Smith, I need to impress upon you that your role in this investigation is not to ask questions.”
Earlier in my stay at the asylum, I would have stared down at my shoes, abashed by her criticism. Now, I glared at her openly. She might beat me for disobedience, I realized, and my stomach lurched. But I heard Martha’s voice. On the day she’d arrived, when the matron had warned her she could be beaten, she’d said, Doesn’t matter much. Been beaten before. If she could be brave, so could I.
“What was your role in this altercation?”
I raised my chin and said, “I only tried to keep the two of them apart, once the. . .altercation began.”
“Nonsense. Why would you risk your own health to protect someone you had no reason to protect?”
“A fellow human being, you mean to say?” I asked.
I saw her face tense, then her arm, all the way up her shoulder into her neck. She was deciding whether to hit me, and how hard, and where. I had become far too aware of what that looked like, these past weeks. I watched her dangling fingers, half expecting, half dreading she would reach for her keys, anticipating their cool metal against the yielding flesh of my cheek. I braced myself.
But she only said, “Answers, Miss Smith, not questions.”
I didn’t take the bait and remained silent.
“And you did not assist Nora Pixley in any way?”
“No.”
“You were not complicit?”
“No.”
“I am not completely certain I should trust you.”
Again, I refused to rise to the bait.
She went on, “And I think you’ve proved you have nothing useful to say. Perhaps you’ll enjoy a day on the benches to help calm your mind. That’ll remind you how much better things are when you keep your mouth shut and your hands to yourself.”
I knew a day on the benches would be torture, but I also knew speaking up again would only make it a week. Instead of glaring at the matron, I shifted my glare to Gus. He looked away. I found a satisfaction in that, however fleeting.
* * *
So as the morning began, there was no work for me, only the benches. The remaining nurse from Thalia—it was Edmonds who’d been kept—ordered me into the line with my former wardmates. I trembled as we entered the room, turned, sat, surrendered. It felt different without the dulling, dark feeling of the night medicine but no better.
After an hour, I still feared I’d be driven insane by the relentlessly flowering, flowing images that assaulted me whether my eyes were open or closed. Ugly flora grew in the fertile earth of my imagination.
Veronica Bell was dead. She was alive but catatonic, spittle on her chin. She was alive and nearly unharmed, her eyes bright with fury, but forever poisoned against asylum work. I saw her running from the asylum as if the devil himself pursued her, her hair tumbled down and streaming behind her. I saw her standing in my parents’ parlor with fists clenched, whispering angry lies or, even worse, angry truths. I couldn’t know yet her true fate, but every possibility sprang up in my mind, pressing its weight against me as the long-remembered ache of sitting on the benches crept into my haunches again.
Then, I saw our little band of inmates attempt escape a hundred times and fail every one of the hundred. I was sprinting for freedom across the green lawn when Gus grabbed me by the collar and flung me into a wall, my head thumping wetly against the stone, my body crumpling. Phoebe refused to leave, and I hoisted her in my arms as she struggled, begging her to be quiet even after the attendants descended on us and smothered her screams with their heavy, merciless hands. Martha and Nora ran along the roof’s edge, but Nora tripped and went down hard on her knees, a look of utter panic on her face, and then she grabbed Martha, who slipped with her and missed her wild grab for the gutter, her bare feet the last thing I saw as their bodies both disappeared from view, their screams growing faint.
I felt gentle fingers, real ones, on the back of my hand, and turned my head to look.
The doll-faced blond with the short hair was sitting next to me. She didn’t turn or speak, staring straight ahead, but nodded at the nurse’s back, telling me to pay attention to where she was. I let my gaze fall. The mute’s soft hand rested atop my bruised one. She felt like the only thing keeping me tethered to the earth, so I held on. My mind quieted then. When the images returned, they were less terrifying, only foreboding shadows, murky and dark. I made it through the remaining hours that way, grateful.
There was no lunch, only coppery tea, which we drank stan
ding. Dinner was a single potato for each of us, dry to the core and cold to the touch.
When I rejoined my ward that night, Martha swiftly informed me of two things. Nora had been dragged off to Darkness—someone had seen it happen, though Martha didn’t say who—and no one had any idea how long she’d be in there. And poor Veronica Bell, thank goodness, had survived the attack. Unfortunately, the extent of her injuries and whether she would ever return to work at Goldengrove were both mysteries. The iron cot leg had connected with the side of her head—I’d heard the sickening thump—though there had been no blood. At least she was alive. That was a mercy. But there was only a snowball’s chance she would carry my message to Henry, given what Nora had shouted right before striking her brutal blow.
Hold her, she’d said. As if I were an accomplice. As if my role were to keep the nurse still, in harm’s way instead of out of it. It made me sick. Nora had been my savior all this time, and now it seemed she would also be my destroyer.
I worried for her in Darkness too. The ecstatic jealousy that had infected her since Veronica’s arrival could only fester in isolation, when she had nothing to think about but how wronged she was by the imaginary affair, nothing to do but feed her hatred. I worried for her so much. Even if she’d ruined my only chance to get a message to Henry, she had done so much for me. My ill will was all mixed up with gratitude and affection and a near-sisterly feeling. She was a danger and a dervish, but she was also, as she’d always been, my Rose Red.
The night after I returned from the benches, I searched Nora’s belongings. I didn’t care if anyone saw or heard me—they probably did—but it wouldn’t matter to anyone but me if I found what I was looking for.
Her key was exactly where I hoped I wouldn’t find it, secreted in the edge of an extra pillowcase tucked under the mattress beneath her cot. That meant she didn’t have it in her possession, and there was no way for her to escape the India-rubber confines of Darkness. She would be in Darkness as long as the matron wanted her to be. Perhaps Dr. Concord would use his influence to get her freed more quickly, but somehow, I doubted it. It was one thing for everyone to know the rumor of his affair with a patient, but if there were cold, hard facts to be confronted, that would be another thing entirely. And we knew already that the matron wouldn’t hesitate to use people’s secrets against them if she could reap the benefit. I’d lay a sizable wager that the good doctor would keep silent.
I crawled back into my cot and lay awake. Rest was beyond my reach even when I tried to force myself into a reverie. I didn’t have the terrible thoughts I’d had on the benches, but whatever good memories I reached for were not there. It felt as if a brick wall lay between my present and my past.
All the next day, I was dazed, dizzy, nearly useless from lack of sleep. I narrowly escaped three or four accidents in the soapmaking operation that could easily have scarred me for life: flames someone had failed to extinguish licking at my shoe, charring the heel; reaching thoughtlessly for a paddle that had fallen into lye, snatching my fingers back only at the last possible moment; a tilting shelf where a screw had come loose unloading its burden of heavy, hot bars right in front of me, in the place where I would have been standing just a moment later. I was reminded so clearly that the only reason I was alive at all now was because of the times my sister had saved my life. The lake, the horse, the berries, the cliff. Now, it was up to me to save her. I thought I’d figured out how to do it. But today, I had no idea.
Between the lack of sleep and the accidents, I was worked into a lather of anxiety, painfully aware my time was running out. I heard the drumbeat in my blood. Three days. Three days. Three days.
That was the state I was in when Martha slid in next to me at the dinner table, covered my hand with her hand, and whispered softly, “It’s time.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
As tired as I was, I felt a thrill of energy soaring through me when Martha spoke. I knew she wouldn’t waste my time with histrionics. She must mean a chance for escape was imminent. I had despaired that I couldn’t see a way for us to make good on our plans. But maybe Martha could. I turned away from today’s potato—the smallest and greenest yet, studded with sprouting eyes all over—and listened. If Martha’s idea was sound and we somehow managed to escape these walls, I was certain no potato would ever pass my lips again.
She leaned back so I could see Celia on her other side, turned toward us, vigilant. I watched the burned woman nervously stroke the shadow of her wedding ring, the welded circle of flesh she would never lose. It reminded me of the stakes of what we were doing. We all had our secrets. We all needed our freedom.
Softly, Martha said, “There’s a bad storm coming. Heading up from the south. Thunder. Lightning. Expected in the next day.”
“So?” I asked.
“So we’ll be working.”
I mumbled, “Nothing new there.”
Leaning closer to my ear, she whispered, “This’ll be a different kind of work.”
Celia was nodding already, but I was lost. My sleep-deprived brain, still reeling, slogged forward like a wagon in a marsh. Martha saw the confusion on my face and anticipated my question.
“She’s renting us out. To a vineyard up the road, owned by Germans, which doesn’t have enough labor to bring in the harvest. If the storm gets to the grapes, they’ll be wrecked. Hundreds of dollars—thousands, even—lost. So the man came to her with a request and an offer of money, and of course, she took it. Practically slobbered. We’re all going to help.”
“All of us? Clio, even? Euterpe?”
“All of us,” she said firmly.
“Tomorrow?”
“Tonight.”
On a normal night, we would have been only two hours from lying down to sleep, oil lamps extinguished and gas turned all the way down, bolt slid home. Clearly, this night would be anything but normal.
Martha went on. “She stopped Piper as we were headed back from the hall, gave her instructions. I heard it from the bitch’s own lips. Even mad hands are better than none. No one’s to know about it until it’s time to go.”
“Which is when?”
“After the sun goes down. It’s best for the grapes if they marshal us in the cool of the night.”
So we had two hours to prepare, if that. I had to sneak out to see Phoebe and let her know I would find her, somehow, in the darkness of the vineyard. She knew we were hoping to run, but she didn’t know when or how, and she certainly didn’t know tonight was the night.
There was only one thing I had to do first, even if Martha wouldn’t approve of it. We were missing one of our band, and even though I was furious at her, I could not let go of what she’d done for me. I had promised to take her with us when we ran. I would not break my promise.
They took us back to the ward to ready ourselves for bed, but Piper left us before we were even all dressed, probably to prepare. She locked us in, but locks were the least of my obstacles.
As soon as I heard the click as she left, I rose from my cot and ran my fingers under Nora’s. I fetched up her key, quickly tucking it inside my undergarments. I’d lost my own key when Gus turned me in to the matron after catching me in the records room, but this was hers. I had to offer it to her before anything else. I wasn’t worried about getting back into Terpsichore. I would deal with that later.
Feet bare, I strode toward the locked door with the key in my right hand but quickly realized I was not the only one moving in the still room, and before I knew it, someone was at my side, close enough that I could feel her breath. It was Martha, heading toward the door with me.
“Let’s go,” she whispered.
Struggling to find the words, I said, “I’m just telling Phoebe. Doesn’t take two of us.”
“I know that, fool,” she said. “I have other plans.”
“Plans?”
We were at the door then, and her hand shot down to grab my wrist, lifting it toward the lock. Her whisper was hot on my ear. “Just unlock it before yo
u get us pinched.”
What could I do? She was right. Every word we spoke was noise at a time when our only weapon was silence.
Even given that, I couldn’t help saying one more thing, and it came out of my mouth as a question. “But we’ll stick to the plan?”
“Yes. See you in the wagon.”
I bent my head and locked the door behind us. She was gone before I even heard it click.
* * *
The doors of the Darkness cells were blank and cool. I slid open each small window in turn until I saw the back of Nora’s head, her thick, dark hair tangled. I left the window open so we’d have a sliver of light, remembering how hungry I’d been for light in this place. Then I slipped inside the door, closing it behind me.
She rose at the sound, fists clenched, and I said in a rush, “It’s me, Nora. Don’t.”
She blinked and shrank as her eyes adjusted to the light, but once she figured out who I was, she didn’t even look surprised. Her hands uncurled and fell to her sides.
“I brought your key,” I said.
“Thank you.”
I held it in her direction, but she didn’t take it. The moments were long. I felt my heart drumming in the silence and the stillness. I could not read her face, looming pale in the dark.
I went on. “We’re running. Tonight. And you need to come with us.”
She reached out for the key, and I handed it to her with no hesitation. She towered over me, whether or not she meant to, and in that moment, I worried what she might do.
But as she took the key with one hand, she lifted the front of her skirt with the other. Deliberately, she bent forward and scratched her calf with it, putting a mark in a blank spot, white as milk, next to a fresh red scratch. I winced from the pain more than she did, even as a fine crimson line of blood rose against the pale backdrop of her flesh.
“I’m going to keep counting,” she said and handed the key back to me. Even from her brief contact with it, it was warm from her skin.
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