Veritas

by Quinn Coleridge

  What will I carve during my time here?

  I wander about the cell, left hand pressing against the lucky stones in my pocket. The space is round, no more than fifty feet in diameter, and I continue to walk until I weave and sway with exhaustion. How many times did I circle it? A hundred? Two hundred? Then I climb the stairs to the iron door in the ceiling and touch the metal. A brittle substance breaks off in my hand. Rust, probably. I wipe my fingers on my skirt and take the stairs back to the cell floor. Up and down them I go. My legs burn with fatigue, and my belly aches. I will go mad if I remain in the Pit much longer.

  Recognizing my own desperation, I force the panic aside. Stop thinking that way, Hester. Get warm. Go back to the table.

  Atop the table once more—pressed against the heated stones—I recline on my less-bruised side and tune out the anguish of the others in the asylum. Their suffering is no longer palpable, clinging to me like a filmy sweat. I sleep for a time, how long I’m unsure, but I awaken feeling weak and tired. I extend my hearing by slow degrees and find that the cover is being removed from the ceiling of the Pit. Someone comes half-way down the stairs, boot heel squeaking. “Here’s your meal,” a familiar voice says. “Eat up, Your Majesty.”

  Titus.

  He drops something at the bottom of the stairs, but mercifully, does not stay. Titus leaves the cell and shuts the lid in the ceiling. I cough several times, chilled to the bone, and clutch the wool blanket around my shoulders. Influenza must be common at Ironwood, with freezing temperatures, inadequate clothing, and impure air. Many patients probably die because of it. But what can I do to keep warm? Light exercise, sporadically walking around the Pit, perhaps. Keeping my body against the heated stones. I have little knowledge of how to care for myself, but I will have to learn quickly. I cannot afford to get sick.

  The straw on the floor is damp, and I slip on it, jarring my already stiff joints. I stretch for a few moments, but hunger becomes more important than sore limbs. After reaching the stairs, I grope around them until I find a small pan and a canteen of water. I pick up the canteen and drink until it is empty. Afterward, I dry my hands on the blanket around my shoulders, wishing, not for the first time since this ordeal began, that I could wash myself.

  The substance inside the pan feels cold and lumpy. I take a handful of the mixture and smell it—just oats, no milk or honey. I place a small amount in my mouth and chew. Crunchy bits scrape against my tongue. It doesn’t require more than a quick touch of my finger to know the pan holds as many dead weevils as it does oats. Horrible! I will not eat this! After spitting the cereal out, I return to the table. The warm stones feel good against my back, and I push my spine into the heat. My fingers land upon some sort of indentation hidden behind the table lip. I stick three fingers inside the hollow space.

  Dominus providebit! The gods do provide.

  Taking Mama’s jewelry from the pockets in my drawers, I slide it into the groove under the tabletop. Hopefully, this hiding place will protect the treasure. I doubt there’s a single person in the asylum I could trust to keep it safe. Although, given my situation, maybe greed trumps trust. Surely somebody here will accept a bribe.

  For I must escape, and soon. I sense the Reaper upstairs, reaching from the shadows for another lost soul.

  I am only twenty-two. I don’t wish to die alone, hidden away in a cell. Yet, conditions as they are, it is only a matter of time before Sir Death pays a call to the Pit.

  22

  Pulvis et umbra sumus.

  We are dust and shadow.

  Ironwood Lunatic Asylum

  January 1892

  The guards come for me on a madman’s whim.

  Over and over again.

  Faust knows just how long to chill a body without killing it, giving me time between therapy sessions to recover. Either that or the Reaper was right when He kissed my brow, and His brothers have seen that I am marked and are allowing me to live a while longer. Two of my toes are numb though, and it worries me that they will require amputation. Not so terrible, if you consider how much worse it would be to lose a whole foot or a leg. I’m also quite fond of having arms and hands.

  It seems that Faust is bored with water therapy, however, and we are trying something different at our next visit. What this new treatment is I have no idea. It could be hypnotism, but that would be too kind for a sadist like Faust. Part of his strategy is to let me stew in the Pit, giving me time to imagine the terrors ahead.

  Titus brings me a meal, and under his watchful eye, I eat it all. I do not spare the energy to think upon how far I have fallen that I grovel like an animal and eat slop with my fingers. My past life is over. I left it beneath the freezing water in Faust’s therapy room, and those days are as dead to me as my mother.

  To keep myself sane, I summon the details of Tom’s face—the hard angles and smooth planes that I’ve seen in dreams. I obsess over his image. Are his eyes really so dark? His teeth so white? Using telepathy, I’ve chanted his name for hours, but he never responds. What did Heathcliff say in Wuthering Heights?

  Be with me always—take any form—drive me mad!

  Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you!

  I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!

  Exactly right, Tom. Precisely so. Howl at me, haunt me, drive me to distraction. Do anything you like, except nothing. It’s the lack of you I can’t abide.

  But Titus does not care about me and Tom—or Heathcliff and Cathy. Nor anyone else for that matter. Heedless of his cruelty, he leads me upstairs to the main floor. But why? Our sessions are always held in the basement.

  Of course, I understand now. There’s a cemetery in the grove of trees behind this building. I heard a nurse saying that it’s a pity there are no markers to identify the dead. She sighed afterward, her point moot. If no one cared enough to claim the deceased, they wouldn’t bother to purchase a tombstone. Is Titus taking me to the grove? I conjure the image of my body tumbling into a dark hole without a casket, swallowed within the earth’s gaping maw, soil filling my nose and ears.

  But Titus turns down a different hallway, bringing me to the front of the asylum. He opens a door and pushes me forward. The room’s warm temperature reminds me of how cold I’ve been. I move toward the hearth, hands extended, absorbing the fire’s snapping heat. The scent of verbena enters before Faust. He shakes himself, snow sliding from him to the floor like a small-scale avalanche. “Thank you for joining me in my office, Miss Grayson.”

  There was a choice?

  “Move along,” Titus says.

  He propels me over to a cot—narrow and hard—unlocks the handcuffs, and pushes me down. Titus fastens the left cuff to a rod of some kind and drapes my right arm over a pillow. Dr. Faust draws up a chair beside me and sits. He caresses my hair lightly. “I think we’ll bleed you this afternoon, my dear. It could be just the thing to dispel your ill humors.”

  My ill humors? Perhaps you need a good bleeding, Doctor.

  “I prefer using a scarificator when perforating the skin. It’s an ingenious device—far better, in my opinion, than the fleam. Who wants a single blade when one can have many?”

  Who, indeed?

  The smell of burning cotton. “I must warm the glass cups,” the doctor says. “They are applied to the incisions, forming a vacuum of sorts with enough suction to draw out the blood. Leeches can be so unreliable and inconvenient to deal with.”

  I hear the doctor take something from a bookshelf, then walk to the desk and unlock a drawer inside it. He removes an object, and by the fluttering of paper, I would say it is the Book. Faust must document his research, after all.

  “Come, Titus. I’ll have you apply the cups, but be sure to check the temperature of the glass first.”

  I turn on my side, away from the doctor, and try like mad to pull my hand out of the left cuff. I yank against the metal as Faust primes the scarificator, winding the gadget to the desired level of tension. He grabs my sho
ulder, repositioning me on the cot, and pushes the scarificator against my upper arm. At first, the metal is just very cold, and then there is a loud snap, an intense stinging, and the sensation of fluid trickling across my flesh. A hungry predator, Faust goes into a frenzy and barks orders at Titus.

  “Bring the cups!”

  The guard shuffles to my side and presses the hot glass over the wound. Ahh, take it off! How it burns! I kick my legs wildly, dislodging the cup and sending it to shatter on the floor.

  “Much too hot!” Faust says. “Try again, Titus.”

  Although I continue to struggle, the scarificator is used on my other arm, and another cup is applied. I do not know if it is real or imagined, but I feel myself fading, becoming less with the loss of blood. The doctor touches my throat, presumably to check my pulse. My body goes rigid against the restraints as images of the Book fill my psyche. It rises up, suspended in the air, and opens. The pages turn, revealing identities, giving me specific dates for those Faust has treated at Ironwood. They are etched in my memory, and I could spout them off like a catechism twenty years from now. Yet all the information in the world will not help if it isn’t recorded in Faust’s hand—only then will it condemn him. Ghosts circle about me, impatient and angry. There are so many of them that they blur into a scarlet mosaic.

  My own blood spurts and pools in the shallow glass, as I realize what I’ve learned today. I now know where the doctor keeps the key to his desk. The key which protects the Book.

  “Remove the cups,” Faust cries, bringing me wholly back from the vision. “Bind her incisions. Hurry!”

  Davis is wiping my forehead with a cool cloth when I awaken in the Pit. The guard puts a thick wedge of jerky in my hand and helps me sit up and lean against the wall. I tear into the dried beef like an animal. It tastes salty and abrades the sides of my tongue. I chew so hard my back molars ache.

  The young guard gives me a cloth-wrapped bundle once I’m finished with the jerky. “Here’s the sorghum cake from my lunch, too.”

  He fills my canteen with clean drinking water and then returns to his post upstairs.

  Bless you, Davis. You won’t last long here.

  The other guards will make the boy brutal like them. Inevitable, I suppose, but it feels like the fall of Adam repeating itself to think of this kind, soft-spoken lad becoming hardened and cruel. Another mark added to the tally of sins hanging over Faust’s head.

  I lean against the warm bricks, despairing, but the glimmer of a memory flits through my mind. Closing my eyes, I surrender to the past, to my thirteenth year. When a woman of regal bearing appeared to me on my birthday in a vision. I could not guess her age, for she looked neither old nor young nor in between. Her eyes were a color that I still cannot name, having never seen their like before or since. They mirrored unfathomable wisdom and sadness, and the garments she wore were Roman in style.

  The voice in my mind was quiet but powerful enough to shake the world. Do not be afraid, Hester. I am Veritas, daughter of Saturn. Mother of Virtue.

  She shared the history of our cursed line. Rome loved truth once, in ancient times, but the people were led away by false voices. Their hearts grew cold.

  A name formed in my psyche. Archimendax?

  Veritas nodded. The Father of Lies. He convinced them to spill innocent blood, commit vice, usurp without mercy. As a result, Rome decayed from the inside and fell to ruin. Resting her hand on my shoulder, the immortal smiled at me. You must succeed as I did not, filiola. Bring truth to the world.

  But I’m blind outside of the visions. I have no voice. How can I do what you ask?

  All Visionaries have challenges to overcome, and you will be given an Interpreter.

  My chin dropped in surprise as I thought of my dark haired friend. Tom?

  Yes. He is the first.

  Will there be others?

  If you require them. Her smile held the mysteries of the universe. Have faith, little one. The good will find you beautiful—the bad, fearsome. All is as it should be.

  She visited several times throughout my youth, and then no more, allowing me to fulfill my destiny in my own way.

  Mulling over the memory, I remove my lucky pebbles from their secret place within the table. They feel good in my hand, and I shake them as I circle the Pit, ending up at the bottom of the stairs. I lift my face toward the iron lid in the ceiling. It taunts me, a symbol of the many things blocking my escape. Maybe there is a little magic in these stones because I suddenly feel hopeful when there’s no reason for it. I extend my hearing out into the asylum and the doleful sounds of the inmates enter the Pit and settle on my shoulders. Pierce my heart.

  They’re my people now, my family. Times haven’t changed so very much since ancient Rome, I suppose—even the fight between Veritas and Archimendax continues today. Except I will not neglect my duty as the great Lady did.

  I will not let the world fall to ruin.

  23

  Socius. Patronus.

  Comrade. Protector.

  Everyone works at Ironwood asylum. If they’re lucid and able-bodied, that is. The cuts from the bloodletting are now scabbed over so there’s no excuse for me to lounge about in the Pit. Not when I could haul wood. Wearing a heavy wool shift, knit stockings, winter gloves, and a moth-eaten shawl, I wait for orders in the courtyard at the rear of the asylum. Matron gave me an old pair of men’s work boots yesterday. Despite the fact they slap about my ankles when I walk, the footwear is certain to create a barrier between my extremities and the snow. Surprisingly, I am not as cold as I imagined I would be. Perhaps physical tolerance develops with regular exposure to low temperatures. Or I could just have nerve damage.

  “There’s dry kindling across the way,” Titus says. “Bring the wood in and fill the storage bins on the main floor. Needs to be finished by sunset or you’ll lose your rations. Get started.”

  Extending my arms, hands splayed, I begin walking in the same direction as the other inmates. A path has been cut through the drifts, and I follow it as carefully as I can before slipping on the ice. The sharp point of a tree branch gouges my cheek an inch below my eye. Criminy! That’s all I need! I wipe the blood away and reach up to the branch, snapping it off and tossing it aside.

  “Here,” a female inmate says. “I’ll guide you.”

  She has a smell of old age about her but it isn’t unpleasant—rather comforting instead, like the tapioca I always liked the idea of but never actually ate. I grasp the woman’s arm and we crunch along over the ice for several minutes and then she introduces herself. “My name’s Anna. Anna Loveridge.”

  Pointing to my throat, I mouth two words. Cannot. Speak.

  Anna faces north again, shakes her head, and begins walking. “Mute and blind both,” she grumbles. “Better stick close to me.”

  After reaching the shed that houses the firewood, my new acquaintance takes the two front ends of my triangular shawl and wraps them about my waist and back, knotting the remaining material above my navel.

  “Frees your hands for work,” she says. “And you can use this scarf. It’ll warm your ears.”

  We wait in line as those ahead of us get their wood—the smell of sap penetrating the air. Anna makes conversation with the person to her left.

  “Good day, Isabelle.”

  “And to you,” a timid voice replies.

  “Feeling all right?” Anna asks. “You look pale.”

  Isabelle groans softly. “The babe has a foot in my rib.”

  “Sorry, dear. Stretch a bit, why don’t you? That always worked for me.” Anna coos and clucks over Isabelle like a mother hen. “They shouldn’t give you chores like this. Got to carry that child a month yet.”

  Why, they’re completely rational, I think to myself. Not the least bit insane.

  I feel Anna stiffen when she turns around. Surprise must be evident on my face. “What? You think Ironwood’s just for crazy people? There’s nothing wrong with me. I’m paying off my debts working here.”
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br />   She hunches closer, forced to whisper so Titus won’t hear. “My man got sick, and doctors are real expensive. Died anyway, but I had to try, didn’t I?” Her bony knuckles brush against me as she gestures toward Isabelle. “Izzie’s family threw her out.”

  “Never guessed Ma and Pa would do it…”

  I feel the young woman’s anxiety and heartbreak as though they are my own. She seems so fragile for the burden of motherhood. I shiver and pull Anna’s scarf tighter around my neck. This is a debtor’s prison, and a home for social outcasts? Are there petty criminals here, too? The asylum must be the human dumping ground for three counties.

  Titus shouts at us, and we go to work hauling wood. I am very slow at this, but Anna fills my arms—then does the same for the struggling Isabelle. We begin the long journey back to the asylum. The women flank me and describe the rough terrain ahead so I won’t fall. After making at least two-dozen trips to the shed, Anna, Isabelle, and I fill a quarter of the bins on the main floor, and then take our dinner break. Isabelle rests on a chair inside the building, but I stand on the covered porch with Anna, drinking soup from a tin cup.

  “You need this more than I do.” She shoves a piece of bread and chunk of cheese into my hand. “They give bigger portions if you’re a hard worker—to increase productivity. Lost a stone of fat since coming to Ironwood, but I’m stronger than I’ve ever been.”

  I nibble on the stale rye as Anna eats her meal.

  “Sit down on the steps, girl. Take off your shoes and socks and use that scarf to dry your feet. Warm them with your hands as best you can.”

  My two toes are still numb, but I heat up the rest of them as I follow her instructions. I hear Anna doing the same.

  “Wish I knew who you were and why you’re here,” she says. “It’s obvious you aren’t defective, apart from sight and speech.”