Dark Season

by Joanna Lowell

  “I could also have you put in jail,” he said. “You’re a danger to yourself, but you’re also a danger to others. I’m soon to bring a wife into this house. I need to think of my offspring, Ella. I’ve spoken with Mr. Norton about your condition. Fits are the least of it. In advanced stages, the afflicted experience periods of delirium. Mania. A fury comes upon them. They commit unspeakable acts. Physical violence. Even murder.”

  This was too much. “So you’ll put me in prison for the murder of your unborn children?” The sound she made wasn’t a laugh. It was the result of a joyless spasm of her diaphragm. “Have you found legal precedent for such an act?”

  He considered a cufflink. It looked familiar. Were the letters GA engraved in its gold? Had he removed it from Papa’s sleeve before the coffin lid closed? He sighed. “I would explain to the authorities that you’d attacked me. Mr. Norton would testify to the possibility. But I would prefer to send you on your happy way to Zurich. I don’t want any scandal.”

  “I am sure you do not,” she said. “Have you told your betrothed that your nearest living relation suffers from a hereditary disorder? Is she a gambling woman?”

  “I haven’t,” he said, shortly. “But we both know your late mother was the carrier. The Arlington family tree is well pruned and has always produced flawless fruits. No murderesses. No imbeciles. Not even a clubbed foot. It’s enough to make me wonder if your mother was entirely … devoted … to her husband.”

  A slap in the face would have been worse. Rage choked her. She rose from her chair. She wanted to throw something at him, but the books, the lamp, the letter opener, the sealing wax, they were all Papa’s things. Even Papa’s pot of ink would be sullied if it touched him.

  “So you’ll go to Zurich?” he said, rising. “I’ve hired Mr. Norton, and a nurse and a lady’s maid, to escort you. It’s for the best, Ella.” He tried to gentle his voice. “I do want the best for you. I wish you hadn’t been born into this family. And I wish your father hadn’t brought you up with false expectations. But I do wish you well.”

  The mention of Papa had undone her. The heart she’d thought dead in her breast throbbed within her.

  The morning light was streaming through the study window, lighting up the blond whiskers that curled away from his cheeks. With the whiskers, his round face seemed a foot wide. “Arlington Manor will blossom without you. You cast a pall on your father’s life, and I won’t let you cast one on mine. God knows it’s not your fault you were born as you are.” He rounded the desk and came near her. She did not flinch away. He walked softly—the hunter in him—and she realized he was approaching to deliver the deathblow. “But you are tainted. And you will not remain under this roof. Which, lest you forget, is my roof.”

  As if she could forget. As if she would ever forget.

  But that wasn’t the right memory. Something was missing—Days? Weeks?—between Papa’s study and this bed where she found herself. What had happened? She squeezed her eyes shut, tried desperately to summon an image. Oh, yes. She’d ridden for the first time on the train. The landscape had rushed by. Green flashes, then gray and more gray.

  Let me not have a fit. That’s what she’d prayed the whole journey. For the past several years, they’d been coming less frequently. But if she had a fit on the train and the nurse and Mr. Norton attended her, undressed her, all would be lost. They would find the velvet pouch she’d sewn in her skirts, the pouch that contained a chatelaine watch, a gold necklace, a gold bracelet, two jeweled hair clips, two small silver spoons, a silver thimble, a pearl necklace and earrings, and a ring set with a tiny blue sapphire. Everything of value she’d had the good sense to hide before Alfred confiscated her possessions. His possessions, he’d called them. She needed them. They were all the security she had in the world.

  As the train approached London, her courage almost failed her. It was a mad idea, running. She would be lost and alone. She would have to sell her last remaining tokens of home for room and board, and even her cache of treasures wouldn’t last long. She would convulse on the mud of an alley, and rats would lick her cold bones. But it would be better than life as a prisoner in another country. It would be better than life in an asylum. In London, she could mingle with families, even if she couldn’t have one of her own. She would survive until Mr. Norton’s predictions came to pass and her disease progressed to the point where she felt herself going mad. Then she would throw herself into the Thames. She refused to be locked up, studied as she beat her heels on the floor and chewed through her cheeks, forced to live when she had decided she should die.

  It was sin to destroy oneself. But not to let the river swallow what God had already destroyed.

  She thrashed her head on the pillow. The knuckles pressed against her forehead again, succeeded by a cool washcloth.

  “Be still, miss. Be easy. You’re safe now.” The woman’s voice was kind. “Easy. Easy.”

  And with something like ease, Ella slipped into the shadows.

  When next she woke, it was morning. She could smell the faint odor of freshly baked bread. Birds were making a small racket. She opened her eyes. She had a blurred impression of blue and gold, which, blinking, she resolved into flocked wallpaper with a bright floral motif. She was in a well-appointed bedchamber. A wardrobe stood against one wall. A tidy fire glowed in the fireplace. An empty writing desk was positioned near the window. And in the blue damask chair a young maid, round and neat, was watching her closely.

  “You’re awake?” The maid sounded uncertain. “Shall I fetch your breakfast? And send word to Mrs. Trombly?”

  Ella nodded, unwilling to trust her voice. The maid was not inclined to linger. She almost leapt from the chair in her haste to leave the room.

  I’m awake, Ella thought, so don’t fear, little rabbit, the monster is sleeping. She couldn’t blame the maid. Not really. She must have looked frightening enough last night, contorting or, at best, rigid on the bed. “Biting and knocking”—she’d once heard her episodes so described, by maids talking in the hall. Biting and knocking. Horrible. It was a small mercy that she couldn’t see her own face when the seizures struck. Alfred had seen it. She’d had an attack one summer in the rose garden during his visit. She fell on the path right at his feet.

  You didn’t even look human. You looked like a beast.

  She ran a finger over her teeth. Mercifully, they were all there, unchipped and firmly lodged in her gums. She touched the back of her head. The birds singing outside the window could find far worse lodgings than her hair. It had been burred into impossible knots, nests upon nests of snarls. She rolled her wrists and her ankles, articulating the joints. Every muscle in her body felt strained.

  The maid was back with the tray. Tea and biscuits and hot slices of ham. The smell made Ella’s mouth water, but she knew she had to eat sparingly. Even her organs felt tender. Ella pushed herself up, arranging the pillows behind her. She was dressed in bedclothes, she noticed. Bedclothes not her own. It was hardly worth blushing about, considering.

  “Mrs. Trombly will be up to see you when you’ve finished,” said the maid as she set the tray across Ella’s lap. She hesitated by the bed. Her light eyebrows were knit and her lips pursed. Clearly, she wanted to mine Ella for information, some tidbit she could bring downstairs to share with the rest of the servants. The house must be in an uproar. It couldn’t be every night that a young woman out of her senses was carried through the front door. Well, Ella wouldn’t oblige her. She had nothing to add. She spread butter on a biscuit and took a cautious bite.

  “It’s heavenly, thank you,” she said. Her throat was raw, but her voice was strong. The maid opened her mouth then shut it again, turned swiftly, and bounded into the hall. Like a jackrabbit, she was. A lively thing. The picture of health.

  What must she think of me?

  Ella ate slowly, washing down each mouthful with tea. She tried to focus on chewing. But she couldn’t keep herself from casting back, struggling to recall the events that had
led up to her waking in this house. Every time, she reached a yawning black gulf that frightened her.

  Breathe, she told herself. Stay calm.

  She would get them back—these missing moments—she always did. When the maid returned to take her tray, she was staring at the wall. Squares of brighter blue and gold alternated with faded strips. Traces of the pictures that had been removed.

  “Are you finished, miss?” asked the maid, dubiously. Ella had managed only two biscuits. The ham lay untouched.

  Ella nodded. Then she said, “Yes, thank you.”

  Emboldened, the maid rose onto her toes. “And are you quite all right, miss?”

  “Quite all right,” echoed Ella, an answer she could see afforded little satisfaction. The maid, taking up the tray and preparing to bounce off again, nearly crashed into the woman entering the room.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Trombly,” she gasped, bobbing her head, and more precariously, the tray, before launching herself through the doorway.

  “Not at all,” murmured Mrs. Trombly, smiling at Ella. She was a short woman, with graying chestnut hair swept away from a narrow face rendered lovely by large, wide-spaced hazel eyes. She came forward and sat lightly on the blue damask chair. Ella smiled too. She resisted the urge to play with the edges of the coverlet and met Mrs. Trombly’s eyes.

  “How do you feel?” asked Mrs. Trombly. She had a pleasant, cultured voice with a timbre that struck Ella as somehow familiar. She didn’t wait for Ella to answer. This haste, and a certain breathlessness, betrayed her embarrassment. “I am Mrs. Louisa Trombly,” she said. “I want to welcome you into my house. I understand this introduction is most irregular. I took an unpardonable liberty bringing you here, but I hope you can pardon it. Your collapse was shocking. No one knew what to do. No one but Miss Seymour.”

  Ella dropped her gaze. The dizziness had returned. Her gorge was rising. Miss Seymour. The flickering lights, the cloying scent of the smoke, the shrill voices. Ella swallowed hard. The gulf into which her last hours, last days, had disappeared was filling in with sights and sounds. She rather wished it wouldn’t.

  She had convulsed in front of dozens of people. An audience had watched her writhe on the ground. Her blood ran cold as her thoughts took an even more dire turn. Surely Mrs. Trombly wasn’t the sort of woman who would want to inquire into her identity? She was clearly a gently bred lady, a lady of the ton. She might very well move in the same circles as her cousin. But few people in London even knew of her existence, and Alfred would hardly have advertised the disappearance of a blight he wouldn’t otherwise have had to mention: the one wormy apple shaken down from the Arlington tree. He probably counted her flight as a blessing. Unless he suspected she would resurface on her own, flaunting herself to damage his reputation. God knows it had occurred to her.

  No, even if he were looking for her, he would be doing it discreetly. But perhaps Mrs. Trombly was a philanthropist, a woman who relieved herself of excess conscience and income by adopting causes. Had she been waiting for just such an opportunity, a madwoman delivered into her charge that she could use to furnish some brand new hospital for degraded females? Was it for that she’d been brought here?

  Delusions. Wild, unfounded fears. Ella was too ready to see locks and keys at every turn. She should speak. She pried her eyes away from her fingers—they were plucking, she realized disgustedly, at the coverlet—and looked again at Mrs. Trombly. The woman’s lips were parted. High spots of color flamed on her cheeks. There was something she was burning to say, Ella was certain. And she was also certain that she didn’t want to hear it.

  “I thank you, Mrs. Trombly,” she said. “You shouldn’t have put yourself through any trouble on my account. I feel much better.”

  “I didn’t call for the doctor.” Mrs. Trombly studied her with concern. “Miss Seymour said sleep was what you needed. There are some salves on the bedside table. For your lips, and whatever bruising … I can call a doctor now, if you wish.”

  “No!” Ella tried to soften this exclamation. “That won’t be necessary. I feel immensely refreshed and won’t impose on your household any longer. If the maid would help me dress … ”

  Return my gown, that is, she added silently. With my whole fortune swaddled in its pleats.

  “I don’t know how to address you,” said Mrs. Trombly.

  “Reed,” said Ella, the name springing from nowhere. “Eleanor Reed. I’m lodging in Bloomsbury Square.”

  “You’re lodging in Bloomsbury Square,” repeated Mrs. Trombly. The faint question in her voice seemed to indicate not that she doubted this was Ella’s situation but that she rather doubted it ought to be.

  “I’ve only come recently to town,” said Ella. “I’m seeking a position. As a governess or schoolteacher.” She expected to see horror on Mrs. Trombly’s face. A governess or schoolteacher with fits? Who rolls on the ground like a mad dog? But the woman’s face did not change.

  “I see,” she said. Then, delicately: “You are recently widowed?”

  Of course, Mrs. Trombly had noted her gown, matte black silk trimmed with black lace.

  “No.” Ella shut her eyes briefly. “My father.”

  “I’m very sorry,” said Mrs. Trombly, and she did not press for more. She drew a breath as though collecting herself to return to the matter at hand and continued, “Miss Seymour felt you should be brought here, at once, to maximize and prolong the psychic contact. Miss Seymour explained everything.” Mrs. Trombly rose and stood by the bed. Ella wanted to shrink from her, ashamed—this woman too had seen her like that—but instead she took a deep breath. What had Miss Seymour explained?

  “I see,” she said, though she saw nothing.

  Mrs. Trombly reached out as though to brush a lock of hair from Ella’s face then dropped her hand. She stepped away from the bed with visible effort, sinking back into the chair.

  “Miss Seymour said you would be dazed today and would need a great deal of rest before you could share your experience. I do not intend to hurry you. I can’t imagine how strange, how powerful … But I am beside myself, Miss Reed, wondering. Yearning. To know what you know. What it was like. Did she … speak to you, Miss Reed?” Mrs. Trombly was on her feet again. Her hands were clutched before her. “Do you sense that this was her chamber?

  Ella had not sensed anything, but suddenly she knew. She must have known from the moment Mrs. Trombly opened her mouth. The ragged edge that crept into her voice. And now, the stark need in her eyes.

  “Phillipa,” she whispered. Mrs. Trombly was the woman who had cried out to Phillipa.

  “I miss her,” Mrs. Trombly said simply. “She died five years ago, five years as of yesterday. That’s why I went to the séance. Every year on the anniversary of her death she feels so close I imagine I can hear her footsteps on the stairs. I can hear her voice. I am not a member of any spiritualist society. I don’t know exactly what I believe.” Her wandering gaze fixed on Ella. “But last night, she came to you. I saw it. We all saw it. You were … changed. Miss Seymour says it was a strong and complete possession. You merged with her. There might be some natural sympathy between you. A reason why she chose you for her vessel and not Miss Seymour. But you are sensitive to the forces around us, Miss Seymour is certain. Have you ever worked as a medium?”

  “No.” Ella pressed her fingers hard into her cheeks.

  “Has anything like … what happened last night happened to you before?”

  “No!” Ella flinched. Then she continued, more composedly. “Of course not. And I hope it never does again.” That, at least, was true.

  “It was dangerous.” Mrs. Trombly’s eyes glittered. “It was a most dangerous connection. Miss Seymour sat with you for an hour until the worst had passed. But the first contact is always tormentous. And you aren’t trained, like Miss Seymour, to handle your gift.”

  “Gift?” The bubble in Ella’s chest threatened to burst. When it did, hysterical laughter would issue forth, a high, thin stream of it.


  “I want to hire you as a private medium.” Mrs. Trombly walked to the writing desk and opened a drawer. She lifted out a framed photograph and slid a finger gently across the glass. She looked up at Ella. “I don’t expect you to perform miracles. I just want you to remain open to her, to Phillipa. To guide her. And to tell me what you sense from her. You will live here. I trust you’ll find it closer to what you’re accustomed to than a boardinghouse.”

  She was fishing, but Ella would not rise to the bait. The less she said about herself the better. Fewer words, fewer lies.

  “You will receive wages,” continued Mrs. Trombly. “I happen to know a few families in London who employ private mediums.” She smiled, a sweet, sheepish smile. “It’s not so outlandish. Though I do feel odd about it, and I can see you do too.”

  “Pardon me, Mrs. Trombly,” said Ella hesitantly. “I am unknown to you. You have no character for me. I can give you no references. To invite me into your house seems … ” She fumbled for the right word. “Rash. I have no inclination to embark on a career as a medium—”

  “You want to be a governess,” Mrs. Trombly interrupted. “So you said. And I can promise you a position as a governess. It would be easy for me to secure you one, and I’d be only too happy to do so. After one month’s time, Miss Reed. Just one month.” Her delicate, careworn face was illuminated by those tilted, shadowed eyes. “I can’t give up hope. Even after all this time. If there is a chance, any chance at all, that I can have some message from her, a word or sign, something to let me know she’s all right … if you can help her find her way … ”

  Ella heard Miss Seymour’s voice again. She is afraid. She is one with the shadows. What had happened to Phillipa? Ella could not bring herself to ask, but the desire to know suddenly consumed her. Mrs. Trombly’s eyes were fixed on her. She was waiting. Hoping. Yearning. It was hard to meet her gaze. Ella wanted to say something so that Mrs. Trombly would stop looking at her with that naked need.