‘We are here to see the lunatic Susan Chance,’ I said, trusting in my red-masked appearance and imperious manner to get what I wanted.
‘Not you as well,’ muttered the thin red-faced one.
‘Who else wished to see her?’
‘Mrs Hawkins.’ The women laughed. ‘She didn’t get far. Went down that passage an’ came straight back again. Didn’t like the look o’ the place, I imagine.’
‘Dr Christie said no one were to see Susan Chance,’ said the bigger of the two, who had not taken her eyes off my face.
‘Stand up when you address me,’ I snapped. ‘Both of you.’
The women hauled themselves to their feet, their expressions mutinous. But I had met their like before – had I not worked all my life at St Saviour’s? I could see straight away what manner of woman I was dealing with: fat, lazy, drunken and cruel, their best friend the gin bottle, their worst enemies the mop, the bucket and the scrubbing brush. Both of them were relics from a miserable past when lunatics had been lashed into spinning chairs and hosed down with freezing water. They would treat their charges with, at best, indifference, and at worst a cruel and wanton vindictiveness. I jangled my keys. ‘Don’t just stand there,’ I said. ‘Can’t you see we’re in a hurry? We wish to see Susan Chance.’
‘Sez who?’
‘Dr Hawkins,’ I said.
‘Dr Hawkins ain’t got no authority here,’ said the fat one. ‘It’s only Dr Rutherford what had that, an’ since ‘e’s dead it’s bin Dr Christie. Told us so, ‘e did. Straight.’
‘Dr Hawkins is medical superintendent,’ I said. ‘He has authority everywhere at Angel Meadow.’
The women looked at one another and smirked. ‘He don’t never come here,’ said the fat one. ‘He’s not been here since before ‘e went away. It’s Dr Rutherford and Dr Christie what comes these days—’
‘Take us to Susan Chance,’ I repeated. At the sound of my raised voice, a terrible caterwauling started up behind me.
‘You’ve upset ‘em now,’ the red-faced one said. She grinned at me, exposing broken teeth. ‘They’ll need to be punished.’
I lost my patience. On the wall beside the fire a leather strap hung down, like a long brown tongue. I sprang forward and seized it. ‘Is this what you use?’
‘It is, sir.’
‘May I try it?’ I snatched the strap from its hook and leaped across the room towards them. The least drunken and most insolent lurched away from me, falling heavily back into her chair. An empty gin bottle rolled out from under her skirts.
‘Jem,’ said Will from the door. But my mind was whirling: might these cruel, drunken harpies one day govern me with the strap too? Why had the criminal wards degenerated into violence and brutality the moment Dr Hawkins had gone abroad? I heard Will say my name again, but still I ignored him. I raised my hand over my head. Should this woman not feel the same stinging pain she inflicted upon the miserable wretches locked away behind those dark forgotten doors?
‘Jem,’ said Will again. His voice was soft in my ear now, his hands gentle upon my arm. ‘Stop this. This is not who you are.’
I felt the tears running down my face. The leather strap was sticky in my hand as I dashed it into the fire.
‘We are here to see Susan Chance,’ said Will. His voice was loud, where mine had been piercing. ‘Did you not hear what Mr Flockhart said? Tell us where she is!’
‘It’s number twenty-nine. On the second floor.’
‘Give me the keys,’ said Will.
By now we were as desperate to get out of the place as they were to see us leave. The noise and heat in so enclosed a space, the stink of sweat, dirt and exhaled gin fumes was making my head hurt. Will ushered me into the corridor and slammed the door behind us. Judging correctly that the longest and stickiest of the keys might be the one to fit the lock, he locked the women into their own malodorous parlour.
The whole building was now in uproar. The air was close, rank with the breath of screaming lunatics, and my skin felt clammy, as though the noise and sorrow were somehow tangible, like dirty hands wiped upon me. From behind one door came a rhythmic thumping, as if from a head beating against a padded wall; from behind another I could hear a high-pitched wailing sound, a third muffled an incoherent bellowing voice, urgent and vexed. The door of each cell bore a small shutter at its centre. Did I dare look inside? I did not.
‘Twenty-nine,’ said Will. His eyes were wide and he looked about fearfully. ‘This way.’ A lantern hung from a rusty hook on the wall, its glow dirty and yellowish from the stump of tallow candle that flickered inside. Will took hold of the thing, seized my hand and plunged forward into the gloom.
We passed door after door, only the sounds that came from behind them – screams, groans, a plangent silence – distinguishing one from another. I could not help but think of what Dr Stiven had said: if one was not mad on entering the criminal wards at Angel Meadow, one would become so before long. And yet I did not feel mad – I felt excited, my senses sharpened and keen. Perhaps it was because I belonged here, I thought. Was not madness my destiny? Was it not in my blood and bones? I heard a curious laughing sound, and felt Will’s hand on my arm.
‘Jem!’ He was looking at me strangely, his lantern held high so that he might see my face. ‘Stop that!’ he said. ‘Stop that now!’ The shadows loomed around us, swallowing my laughter. ‘We must get on,’ he said. ‘We must do what we came to do and then leave this place. It’s not good for you to be here. It’s not good for anyone.’
At last, we found door number twenty-nine. I took a deep breath, and slid open the hatch to peer inside. A draught of foul air gusted into my face. The room beyond was no more than six feet by four, the window in the back wall a small aperture set too high to afford a view. It was criss-crossed with double bars as thick as two fingers. Something moved upon the floor. I heard the rustle of straw and saw a dim shape crouched in one corner; a small human form, pale as a ghost in the shadows. A white face stared up at me out of a tangle of black hair, the lips moving in a low, furious mutter. She had lost a tooth, and the face above the stained yellow canvas of her strait jacket was mottled with dirt and bruises, so that for a moment I hardly recognised her. I unlocked the door and stepped inside. ‘Susan—’
She fell silent then, her pinched face a mask of wariness. She began rocking back and forth, shaking her head like a dog attacked by flies. All at once she started rubbing it against the cell wall with a frenzied and repetitive motion. I reached forward to stop her. Beneath my hand I could feel her hair crawling with lice. ‘Susan,’ I said gently. ‘It’s Jem. Jem Flockhart.’
‘You!’ she said without looking at me. ‘You’re no different to all the others, no matter what you say.’
‘Dr Stiven is worried about you. I am worried. You are accused of the most monstrous crimes—’
‘Jem,’ said Will, setting down the lantern. ‘Can you do nothing for her? Such bruises!’
I opened my satchel. ‘There’s some arnica in here somewhere,’ I said. My hands were shaking, my breathing shallow. I felt as though the walls of Susan’s cell were closing in on me.
Will took the satchel from me. ‘This?’
I nodded.
He smeared some of the balm on a pad of gauze and bent to touch it to Susan’s face. ‘If you would allow me, Miss Chance,’ he said gently.
Susan looked up at him warily. ‘You’re Mr Quartermain.’ She tried to smile, her gaze, for a moment, quite sane. Then she said, ‘Don’t you have any flowers for me? From your garden?’
Will hesitated, the balm still in his hand. ‘Why, yes I do,’ he said. He put the gauze down on the pot of salve, and slipped his hand into his pocket. In that dark and stinking dungeon what he drew out glowed like a handful of jewels. Susan Chance gasped, and leaned forward.
I knew Will was a countryman, that he had been brought up far to the west of the city, and had come to London only a few years earlier. I knew he missed the fields and open spaces of t
he village where he had grown up, and for him I had planted the everlasting flower, Helichrysum bracteatum. Its oil acts as a stimulant to the liver, gallbladder and spleen, and can be used as an expectorant, and so it is welcome to a place in my garden. But it was their brightly coloured flowers that Will adored – a vivid sunshine yellow, rich purple or violet, glowing scarlet. They flowered from summer to mid-autumn, and for him I had planted them in masses beside the camomile lawn. I had never seen him pick them, and I wondered how long he had carried that secret pocketful. Perhaps he always kept some there – there was no other flower that could survive such a location – so that he might look at them when times were dark, and innocence and beauty dim and distant things.
For a moment I thought Susan was going to smile, but she didn’t.
‘Shall I put them in your hair, Miss Chance?’
She nodded, her expression pleased. And so I sat in silence, while Will laced his flowers through Susan Chance’s tangled locks.
After that, she let him dab at her face with the salve. ‘I didn’t do anything,’ she said. ‘But I know who it was.’ Her voice was a whisper. ‘That’s why I’m here. I’m here because I know. I saw.’
‘Who?’ he said. He stroked her forehead. ‘Who did you see?’
‘Both of them. I didn’t do the things they said I did. I didn’t touch Dr Rutherford.’
‘But you knew him?’
‘I knew him for a brutal and cold-hearted beast.’ She glanced up at Will from beneath her garlands, but there was something half-hearted in her look, and her gaze slid away. ‘I’m glad he’s dead,’ she said. ‘But I didn’t kill him. You have someone else to thank for that.’
‘But you were in Dr Rutherford’s room that evening?’
‘I stole Dr Stiven’s keys. It was easy enough. I knew they were the keys to the asylum.’
‘But why?’ Will paused in his ministrations. ‘Why did you go to see Rutherford?’
‘I wanted to . . . to know that I could get to him if I wished. Could I stand over him as he slept and hold a knife to his throat? Could I kill him if I chose? But I didn’t. I couldn’t.’
‘Why not? After what he did to you. The way he treated your mother. What stopped you?’
Her expression became scornful. ‘I cannot tell you,’ she said. ‘I will not talk to men.’ She jerked away from him then, her eyes searching the shadows in the corners of the room for silent listeners. Suddenly she caught sight of the still-open grille in the cell door and her face assumed a look of complete terror. ‘They listen at that little door,’ she said. ‘I see it open, slowly, in the night. I see eyes staring at me, eyes in the door. They are the eyes of an angel, pale and fringed with silver, but there are no angels in here.’ She turned to look at me, but it was clearly an effort to do so and a moment later she was staring at the open grille once more. ‘You saw what they did to Dr Rutherford,’ she whispered.
‘So he was already dead,’ said Will. ‘When you went to his rooms he was already dead.’
‘Not you.’ She spat onto the floor. ‘I won’t speak to men!’
‘Then speak to me,’ I said. ‘I am neither man, nor woman.’ The riddle appeared to please her, and her agitation subsided. ‘You saw his corpse. The way it looked, cut and stitched—’
‘It’s a warning,’ she said. ‘A punishment. And so I tell you now that I saw no one, I heard nothing, and I will say not a word.’ Her face was as white as bone, her eyes ringed by shadows, her hair straggling rats’ tails about her face. ‘Bodkin Bess will come!’
‘You’re not in the Rents now, Susan,’ I said gently.
‘Dr Rutherford wasn’t in the Rents either, but they still found him.’ She laughed. High-pitched and wild, it echoed about the cell, joining with the howls and cries from outside. When she spoke her voice was a curious sing-song.
‘My stitched up eyes will never see,
My sewn mouth cannot speak of thee,
Cut both my ears to ‘scape the fee
Of one last jig on Tyburn’s Tree.’
‘Who did you see?’ I seized her by the shoulder. ‘Susan, who was it?’
‘Don’t you understand?’ she screamed. ‘You mustn’t ask. I cannot tell.’
They were the same words Edward Eden had used. You mustn’t ask. I cannot tell. Surely Edward. Eden, with his cosseted life within his father’s drapery emporium knew nothing of the Rents? From outside the cell I could hear footsteps advancing, the sound of raised voices and keys rattling in locks. Our time with Susan was done, but what had we learned that might help? Nothing at all – other than the fact that the girl was out of her wits with fear. And then the door opened and there was Dr Christie. Behind him in the shadows I saw the hunched and shambling figure of Pole, and the tall silhouette of Mrs Lunge.
‘Oh!’ Susan fell back, her mad gaze fixed upon the three figures standing before us, the flowers in her hair tumbling into the straw. ‘Even my thoughts are not safe. But I can get you out! Out! Out! Out! Out!’ with each cry she banged her head against the wall with such violence that I could do nothing to restrain her. She fell silent and slid, unmoving, to the ground.
I gathered her into my arms. How small and thin she was. I could feel her skinny limbs and narrow shoulders beneath the thick canvas of her strait jacket. Which of them had she been referring to? Which of them had she wanted out of her head? Had she seen one of them that night as she wandered the asylum? I looked from Pole, to Dr Christie to Mrs Lunge and I could not tell.
‘What are you doing in here, Mr Flockhart? Mr Quartermain?’ Dr Christie’s voice was low and quiet. Behind him, behind Pole and Mrs Lunge, I could hear doors opening and closing, the sound of muted screams and stifled yells; I could hear gurgling and sobbing.
‘We wished to talk to Miss Chance,’ said Will.
‘You have no right,’ said Dr Christie. ‘Susan Chance has been judged to be insane by four medical men – myself, Dr Mothersole, Dr Hawkins and Dr Stiven. She is awaiting trial for murder. She is guilty, of that there can be no doubt.’
‘There is plenty of doubt, sir.’ I laid Susan down gently. ‘Two of your colleagues have been murdered. The answers lie in this asylum.’
‘The answers lie in this room,’ he snapped. ‘They lie with Susan Chance.’
I looked down at the small figure crumpled in the straw. ‘How the mighty medical profession quails before this formidable woman,’ I said.
‘How dare you speak to me with such contempt,’ cried Dr Christie. ‘You treat my attendants disrespectfully; you cause uproar amongst the most fractious, disobedient and violent members of our asylum community; you enter the cell of one of our criminal lunatics. I can think of nothing you have done that is not disruptive, impertinent, discourteous and meddlesome. I will not ask you to leave, sir, I will tell you to do so. And if you will not, then you leave me no choice but to have you removed.’ He turned his head. ‘Pole!’ Pole shambled forward, his coat flapping about this legs like folds of damp flesh.
‘There’s no need for your henchman, Dr Christie,’ said Will, stepping forward. ‘We can manage well enough.’
Dr Christie pushed him aside. ‘You have even less reason to be here, Quartermain. You are interfering in matters you know nothing about. Stick to your drawing board, sir, and stay at home. But you,’ he stepped up to me, his face so close that only I could hear him. ‘Who are you that you come and go as you please? You have no jurisdiction here. You are not at St Saviour’s now and I do not recognise you or your authority.’ I saw his nostrils flare, almost as though he were scenting me. Then he said, ‘There is something about you, Mr Flockhart, that I do not trust. Something that is not right. I have always drought it, and Dr Rutherford was in complete agreement.’ His gaze was fixed upon me – not upon my hideous birthmark, but upon my eyes, so that I had the feeling that the man was peering into my heart and soul. ‘Dr Hawkins says that you are one of us, but I don’t think so. I don’t believe that you have any place here – unless it is in one of our war
ds. I am minded to look up the origins of your birth, and your history, so that I might be sure before I act. And when I do act—’ he snapped his fingers in my face, the sound as sharp and sudden as a mousetrap. I flinched. ‘Well, then we will see what you are really made of.’
We walked across the stretch of muddy grass that lay between the women’s criminal wards and the main asylum building. I moved quickly, filling my lungs with what passed for fresh air. Compared to the close stench of Susan’s cell, the smell of effluent and coal smoke was the sweetest of zephyrs. At length we could no longer hear the sounds of the place either, and I took solace from the movement of my limbs and the easy rhythm of my feet across the grass. It was hard to believe that I might one day be similarly confined, my arms bound to my sides by long canvas sleeves, my stride measuring no more than a single pace from one side of my cell to the other. Would I still be able to recognise Will? Would I recognise myself? But I would not think of it now. I would not think of it ever. I walked faster, Will at my side. I could feel his hand brush against mine and was glad he was there. Had we been alone I would have stopped and put my arms around him. But we were not alone.
‘What is it, Pole?’ I said without turning my head. He had not made a sound, and yet I knew he was there. ‘We can make our way perfectly well without you.’
‘I’m to help you, sir,’ muttered Pole. ‘Dr Christie said—’
‘We don’t need help,’ I said. I increased my pace. Behind us there was silence, though when I turned Pole was still at our back. ‘Allow me, Mr Flockhart, sir,’ he said, plunging forward to open the door. I stalked past him. I wanted to talk to Will, but I could not do so with Pole hanging about. Susan Chance had said little; we could not act upon what she had said – not yet, at any rate. And yet we had other mysteries still to deal with, and I was not quite ready to leave Angel Meadow.
Dr Hawkins was standing in the doorway to the dispensary, a ledger open in his hands. ‘Sir,’ I said, more relieved than I cared to admit at finding him there, ‘we have just seen Susan Chance.’
Dark Asylum Page 19
