by Mary Hooper
“I was but a child, you see, and they hadn’t let me see her for days; they made excuses to prevent it. But the more they stopped me from seeing her, the more I yearned to do so. In the middle of the night, therefore, I rose and went to seek her.” He paused. “But when I found her, she was in a coffin, ready to be buried on the morrow. And then . . . then I can remember climbing onto the table, looking at her lying there in her nightdress, and wanting to touch her . . .” He frowned, screwing up his face with the effort of trying to remember. “And I did touch her—but don’t recall what happened after.”
There was movement behind him. “You were discovered with her body by one of the household, I should think,” came a voice, and Robert turned in alarm to see Dr. Willis standing in the doorway, the shadow thrown by his candle shivering on the wall behind him. “And then you were picked up and carried off to your nurse, and in the morning they told you it had all been nothing but a bad dream and you must forget about it.”
Robert got to his feet. “F . . . f . . . f . . . for . . . g . . . give m . . .” he began.
Dr. Willis raised a hand. “Please,” he said. “It’s I who should ask your forgiveness for startling you. I decided to check on our patient and, hearing a voice, crept along here in order to discover what was afoot.”
“I . . . I . . . I . . .” Robert began.
“And strangely, found you speaking to her quite lucidly,” Dr. Willis continued. “Although, if I may be so bold, you normally have difficulty even saying your name, do you not?”
Robert nodded.
“This is a very curious phenomenon,” Dr. Willis said thoughtfully. “I myself have recently observed several children who, although stammering so badly that others could not make sense of them, were able to speak easily to their cat or dog.”
Robert smiled. “Ch . . . ch . . . chicken!” he said, pointing at himself and then close to the ground at a chicken’s height.
Dr. Willis nodded. “So,” he said, “one day I may be able to investigate which part of the brain could cause such an anomaly. One day such mysteries may be revealed.” He stared at Anne. “One day . . .”
Robert sat down again as Dr. Willis put his candlestick on the windowsill, then positioned himself comfortably on the end of the bed. “I struggle to understand certain disorders of the brain,” he confided. “How some patients become terrified of cats or frogs for no particular reason, or feel compelled to carry out the same task over and over again. Why a man should of a sudden lapse into melancholy, or a woman fall to the ground in a fit and beat her hands upon the ground until they are bloody. All these seem to me to be disorders of the brain. And that may be to say, the soul.”
Robert stared at him, wishing he had his notebook.
“And as for our patient,” the doctor went on, indicating Anne Green, “she may survive, but we must pray to God that her soul is not lost.”
Robert looked at him questioningly.
“If she died, even for an instant, her spirit may have left her body and be unable to find its way back.”
Remembering what had been said at lectures, Robert looked at Dr. Willis inquiringly and pointed to his head.
“Is the soul in the brain, you ask?” Dr. Willis shrugged. “I wonder sometimes if it’s not either in the brain or the heart, but is fluttering around outside us. We don’t know, cannot tell. My great fear is that this girl’s soul has flown and will not come back . . . that if and when she awakes, she’ll be but a specter. A living form without a soul.”
Robert shook his head. Such a thought was unbearable, almost incomprehensible.
Dr. Willis reached over and gripped his arm. “But as to you,” he said, “I heard what you were saying to our wench here, and have to tell you that I believe I know the cause of your impediment.”
Robert looked at him, startled.
“I believe that severe trauma in a child’s life can cause him to develop a stammer. I don’t begin to understand why, but sometimes a shock makes us internalize our feelings—we swallow them, in other words, and develop a reluctance to articulate anything. Do you know if you spoke normally at one time?”
Robert nodded, greatly intrigued.
“Perhaps, then, you began your wretched speech patterning after the shock of seeing your mother in her coffin.”
“P . . . per . . . per . . .” Robert began.
“And if you can now come to terms with what you saw all those years ago, perhaps discover the truth of it from your father, it may improve. It won’t happen in a day, but . . .”
Robert’s eyes gleamed with excitement. “Th . . . th . . .” He took another breath. “Th . . . th . . . thank you.”
Dr. Willis smiled at him. “So, to our charge here,” he said, indicating Anne. “Shall we try and warm her a little more, seeing as Martha has proved less than reliable?”
Robert nodded. He wanted to say how elated he felt; how immensely grateful he was to Dr. Willis for his advice; how he wouldn’t rest now until he’d overcome his disability. But of course he could not say any of that. Or not yet.
Charged up by his memories and his enthusiasm over the task in hand, Robert still sat at Anne’s bedside, awake and alert, as dawn broke the next morning. Dr. Willis had gone home two hours before, leaving instructions for the patient’s pulse to be taken regularly and, if anything untoward occurred, to wake Martha immediately and send her to him with a message. “Keep talking to our patient, if you will,” he’d said to Robert, “and, toward dawn, mix a little of the geneva in the flask with rainwater and try to get her to swallow it. One of us should be with you by eight o’clock.” He paused, and a wry smile crossed his lips. “If only to make sure that Sir Thomas Reade doesn’t get in and endeavor to steal her away.”
By dawn, Robert had told Anne of every incident in his life and had hardly a thing left to say. He stood up, went to the window, and stretched, trying—and failing—to make out the dark shape of the cart outside the gate. No streaks of light could yet be seen in the sky, but, feeling that the morning was not far off, he decided to give Anne the cordial specified by Dr. Willis. Accordingly, after rubbing her arms to stimulate and warm her blood, he prepared the drink, poured a little of it into a beaker, and gently lifted up her head. He remembered Dr. Willis’s fears about Anne lacking a soul and suffered a moment’s alarm, which made him falter, disturbed. What would someone without a soul be like? Dumb, dull, and unresponsive? A foul fiend? A lunatic?
He forgot his fears as soon as he touched the beaker to Anne’s mouth, however, for her lips parted slightly on contact. This had not happened any time before and was astonishing and significant. “Here’s something for you to drink,” he murmured, startled, “and you may take more later, if you wish.” Her lips again moved, and he stared at them, transfixed. “Perhaps . . . perhaps you’d like a warming posset with butter and spices, or a chicken off the spit, or some syllabub,” he babbled. “I dare say your fare in prison has been truly foul—I hear tell that prisoners are reduced to eating week-old bread.”
His hand shaking slightly, he tipped a little more of the cordial into Anne’s mouth and saw, to his excitement, that her throat moved with the swallowing reflex. This also had not been encountered the previous day.
“‘Twas well done, Anne!” he encouraged her. “A little more?”
On these commonplace words her lids fluttered, then suddenly rose to reveal sea-blue eyes, which fixed on Robert. He gasped with shock and, staring at her with a mixture of alarm and delight, let her head fall back on the pillow and stepped away from the bed.
Anne’s lips parted again, and she whispered, her voice sounding faint, old, and cracked, “May God convey me swiftly to paradise . . .”
Part ~ 2
Chapter ~ 23
I feel my eyelids flutter up and then my eyes move slowly around the room several times, as if they can’t remember how to focus or where to direct themselves. After a short moment, however, they alight on a figure in the room sitting beside me, who, when
I look with keener eye, turns out to be the fair-headed young fellow I’d briefly seen in the crowd at my hanging, close by to the gibbet. He’d looked at me then with great concern in his eyes, and I’d tried to smile at him. But why can I still see him? Am I still suspended, my head in the hangman’s noose—or am I somehow viewing him from heaven? And why is he staring at me, too, with something like awe and disbelief writ across his face?
My eyes move around to take in my surroundings, and I discover that I’m in a small room with pale walls that are stained and blotched with damp in several places. The roof slopes, and there are shutters at the window, their green paint peeling to reveal the bare wood beneath. The stub of a candle burns on the windowsill, and a faint light comes from outside, telling me ‘tis either dawn or dusk. There’s little in the way of furnishings apart from the bed I’m lying on, a nightstand, coffer, and several hooks from which hang a few tousled clothes. To my mind it’s a servant’s room. But not the room in Dun’s Tew that I share with Susan, nor any room I’ve been in before. If this is heaven, I think, then ‘tis passing strange that it should be so similar to Earth. Am I still to be a servant, then, in the nether life? Should I not be an angel or a spirit creature?
When I think on this, something in my mind makes a connection. “May God convey me swiftly to paradise,” I try to say, but though my lips move I hardly make a sound, for my throat feels thick and parched.
The youth beside me gasps. He takes my hand, seemingly to comfort me. “I . . . I . . . it . . . it’s . . .” he begins, and then he stops and takes a deep breath. He tries to speak again, fails, then pounds his fist into his palm as if he’s angry with himself. He sits for another moment staring at me with disbelief, as if I might vanish like a street huckster’s monkey, and then stands up and takes three steps across the floor. He immediately retraces these and sits down again, shaking his head. “C . . . c . . . can’t,” he mutters. “Can’t go.”
I wonder if he’s mad, or if he’s part of heaven or hell. Or—I have a sudden new thought—maybe I’m not in either of those places, a last-minute reprieve having arrived and prevented my hanging. No, that cannot be. I can remember my last moments: Ma’s face, the scream from Jane, my final words, and the hard thump on my back as I was pushed off the ladder. Am I in limbo? Is limbo, then, a servant’s bedroom?
My head begins to swim as if I’ve imbibed too much ale. “May God convey me swiftly to paradise,” I mouth again, for this seems like a charm against the darkness and, besides, is all I can think of to say.
There is a sudden scream from someone lying on the floor of the bedroom, and when I look down there’s a girl there, all wrapped around in fabric. Her hair is tousled and frizzy, her face puffy from sleep. “She’s alive!” she screams. “The corpse speaks!” Still wrapped up, she moves on her backside toward the door as if she wants to get as far away from us as she can. “Oh Lord, she spoke!”
I look at her in some surprise, thinking that if anyone should be frightened, it should be I, waking from a night fright in this unfamiliar place among strangers and all unknowing about how I came to be here.
“I . . . it . . . it . . .” the youth begins, and he is talking to her now.
She darts a look at him. “I stayed with her some of the night, sir!” she says. “Most of it, I should say—till just before you came in. I went on the floor to give her more room. Oh, you won’t tell the other gents, will you?”
He shakes his head.
“Shall I go for Mr. Clarke?” she asks, not taking her eyes off me as she unwraps herself.
He nods and makes some strange forward looping movements with his hands.
“And the other doctors?” she asks.
He nods emphatically and vigorously, as much as to say that yes, everyone must come, and she disappears harum-scarum down the corridor.
He stares back at me, draws a breath, closes his eyes an instant. “D . . . d . . . don’t . . . don’t . . . be frightened,” he says, and he takes my hand in his. “‘Twill . . . b . . . be . . . all right.” There is another pause, and after a further deep breath he goes on, “Y . . . you . . . you . . .” He speaks carefully, pointing to me as he says the word. “You h . . . h . . . have been saved.”
I consider this. I have been saved. But from what, exactly? You can’t be saved from heaven, so it must be that I’ve been saved from hell.
“You did not die,” he says, and then frowns and repeats, “You did not die. Or . . . or perhaps you did. B . . . but now, certainly, you are not dead.”
What am I, then? I ask silently.
“You . . . you are still in the world of the living. D . . . d . . . do you understand?”
I continue to stare at him and discover I am shivering all over with cold. I look down at myself and find that I’m wrapped in a coarse blanket, and looking underneath this, discover a horrid and soiled undersmock. No, I think, I do not understand. I remember the long dream I’d had where I’d been alive but trapped in the ghastly darkness of my grave. What had come of that?
As I lie staring at him, my mind a perfect turmoil of wondering, he takes off his cloak and tucks it around me. I am suddenly conscious of an overwhelming thirst but, strangely, can’t think of the right words to ask for what I want. I open my mouth and point inside, and then, exhausted with the effort of that, I feel my lids flutter down. Every part of me aches, I realize. My limbs, my breasts, my belly, my back—my throat and neck most of all.
“Y . . . you . . . you’re thirsty,” he says. “You want water? Some beer? Milk?”
I open my eyes and nod to any of these, and he gets up, and then sits down again. “I . . . I can’t leave yet,” he says. “Your grasp on life is too tenuous. W . . . will you take a little more of this geneva?” I shake my head, for the spirit is coarse and fiery, and what I long for is something soothing and warm.
“The doctors will be here soon, and then I’ll go and mix you something else. S . . . something hot against the day, perhaps.” He opens the window shutter a little wider, and a morning light falls into the room. “’Tis snowing again, and monstrous cold.” He smiles at me. “B . . . but I should tell you that my name is Robert Matthews and I am a scholar of New College, Oxford. And I . . . I’m very pleased to make your acquaintance, Anne Green.”
I want to smile a little, for he sounds so strange and formal, and besides, a gentleman of his standing is out of place in a servant’s room.
“W . . . we are in Oxford at the house of Mr. Clarke, the apothecary,” he says. He glances outside. “Your mother,” he begins, and I feel a jolt of shock that he should speak of my ma. “Your mother and others of your family, I believe, are waiting just a little way off.”
I close my eyes again and feel tears seep from under my lids. Although I can’t say what has happened to me, I do know that I long to see my ma.
“As soon as the doctors arrive, we’ll send a message to your family to let them know that you live.”
I live! I wriggle my fingers and open and close my eyes several times, just to ensure that I can. Just to prove to myself that I am not under the ground.
How strange it all is. My head swims, and I struggle to understand. Did it all happen? Did the jail and the trial and the hanging really occur, or have I imagined the whole episode in a dream? I put my hand up to my neck and fit the open span of my fingers around it. No, I believe it really happened, for I can feel bruising there, and some swelling and pain. I move my fingers higher and feel the sore patch on my face, which seems grazed with blood.
“All . . . all the damage to your face comes from where the rope bruised you,” Robert says. “I . . . is it sore? When Mr. Clarke comes he’ll let us have some wintergreen.”
I nod, satisfied, and, feeling myself drifting toward sleep, strain to stay awake, for if I sleep then I might return to that dark and drear place I was in before, that mysterious place where the shadow of death lingered.
I feel Robert’s fingers at my neck, pressing gently. After a moment he says, “Y
our pulse is regular and strong. Dr. Willis will be very pleased with you; as will the others.”
He says something more, and his words fade and fall into my head, drifting along like twigs in a brook as sleep advances and retreats by turn.
In spite of my endeavors, I believe that I sleep for a while, for when I open my eyes the light in the room is pinker. I hear voices, and two gowned gentlemen come into the room side by side, both looking toward me eagerly. I want to get up and curtsy to them, but I know that I would fall down in a heap if I tried to do such a thing, for I have scarce the strength to open and close my eyes, let alone bend my legs in obeisance.
“Is this true?” one of them asks as he enters the room.
“She has opened her eyes? Spoken?” asks the other.
“Sh . . . sh . . . she . . .” Robert begins several times, and then sighs impatiently.
“’Tis no matter,” the first says to him, very kindly. He approaches the bed and takes up my wrist. “Now, don’t be afeared, my dear,” he says to me. “I’m Doctor Willis, and I’m just going to count your heartbeats.”
“We can see from her color alone how she’s improved!” says the other, who is a handsome man and strong of feature. He peers at me and smiles. “I’m Doctor Petty. Now, don’t be frightened. You’re doing very well.”
Dr. Willis counts under his breath, looking at the watch he holds in his other hand. “Excellent!” he says. He puts his hand into mine. “Now, my dear young lady,” he asks, “can you wriggle your toes and squeeze my fingers?”
Obediently, I do both these things—and I can’t help smiling as I do them, for he looks so very amazed as he watches me.
“Merciful Lord!” he says, and of a sudden he slips down onto his knees beside the bed, his hands folded together and his head bowed. I’m surprised at this, for I’d thought him to be a physician and not a cleric—but perhaps he’s both. “Our prayers have been answered,” he says. “Thank you, Lord, for sparing her life and for allowing us, your servants, to act through you. And thank you for restoring her soul to her.”
