Grace’s new dress was yanked over her head, the undergarments she’d been allowed for the evening rudely pulled off. Her hands snaked after them into the air, modesty still a convention she clung to. Instead, her hands met Marie’s midgrab.
“I’m sorry, girl. Truly, I am. But I have a job, and it’s the job I do.” Then Grace’s wrists were pinned to the cold floor above her head and an envelope of heat closed around her feet.
She kicked out instinctively, her heel hooking the sheet and sending it arcing over Croomes’s face before the woman could react. The nurse snagged her foot and turned her ankle inward until Grace quieted and the wrapping began.
Croomes spared her not an inch, and her practiced hands bound Grace’s legs together so tightly that her kneecaps dug against each other while the heat pressed in. Steam rose from the sheet as Croomes worked, covering Grace up to her belly before calling for another sheet, hot from the steamer.
Sweat sprang from every pore, rolling down her face as her body tried desperately to shed heat anywhere it could. A fresh sheet, even hotter than the one before, draped over her belly and was pulled ruthlessly tight against the flushed skin. Marie moved Grace’s arms to her sides, and they too were pinned to her ribs. Croomes worked toward her neck, wrapping Grace’s hair, now wet with sweat, into the sheet. Fingers worked between the folds near her mouth, pulling apart an opening for her to breathe through.
“It’s a fine mess you’ve got yourself in, little lady,” Croomes said. “You’ve had better treatment than most up till now, but stabbing a man will rouse his temper.”
The gas lamps were extinguished, one by one, the pale haloes of light disappearing from her shrouded eyes as the women’s voices receded. The darkness was complete when the first contraction came. The shock of it squeezed the first word she’d uttered in a long while past her lips as the excruciating wave rippled through her.
“No.”
I’m going to die.
She had denied language for so long, shutting down not only her tongue but her mind as well so that no thoughts could form. Her life had become a fog, one that would end soon if she found a way, yet as she writhed on the edge of true madness, her brain rejected the safety she’d made for herself, patching together a sentence to shock her into action.
I’m going to die.
The voice of her own thought was oddly familiar, like seeing an old friend on the street after some time apart. Grace stilled, listening to her consciousness, and found herself rebelling against the conclusion it had come to.
I’m going to die, and my baby with me.
Grace screamed in agony, against fate and futility, against the life she should have lived versus the one she’d been delivered into. Her cries rolled down the darkened hallways, only to dissipate before reaching anyone’s ears.
SIX
When they pulled the sheets from her, the shock of the cool air was almost painful. Grace heard Mrs. Clay saying her name, but she could only moan. Her hands fell away from her sides and her fingers went instinctively to her belly, digging into the loose skin that hung there.
“Grace,” Mrs. Clay said. “Can you hear me?”
She nodded, fingertips still buried deeply in her malleable belly. “B-b—” She tried to speak, but the word she needed most wouldn’t come.
Mrs. Clay pulled her hands into her own. “The baby’s lost, dear, I’m so sorry. Listen to me—listen!” she said, clamping Grace’s fingers together as the girl’s mouth contorted into a soundless cry. “Heedson has to make sure you’re going to be all right after losing the baby. I’ve seen a few women on the farms get sick after, and I can tell you it’s not the way you want to go.”
Grace barely nodded, her dilated pupils fixed firmly on Mrs. Clay’s. “I . . .”
“You’re doing brilliantly, dear,” Mrs. Clay encouraged her, wiping cold sweat from her brow. “To hear your voice is a lovely thing. Keep trying. You what?”
Heedson came through the door, rolling his shirtsleeves up to his elbows. Grace cried out, whatever hard-earned word she’d been trying to form lost entirely as she scraped the sheets into a pile to cover her nakedness.
“Spare me, girl,” he said. “My only interest in you now is seeing that you don’t die on my watch. Your father would have my head.”
“A fine thought,” Mrs. Clay said through clenched teeth. “After what she’s been through on your orders.”
Croomes and Marie filed into the room behind him. Marie’s eyes were swollen from crying, and she wiped them with her apron as she set instruments on the table next to the bed, their metal edges banging against each other.
“What—” Grace’s panicked eyes shot toward the noise.
“Ah, talking now, are you?” Croomes asked. She pulled Grace’s wrists above her head and pinned her arms back in a meaty grip. “You’d best sit quiet while the doctor looks after your welfare. I’m happy to put you back in the sheets.”
Mrs. Clay cradled Grace’s face in her hands. “Listen to me, Grace. This needs to happen. You can die if you’re not looked after properly.”
“Enough,” Heedson said. “Grace, the less you squirm, the quicker I can be,” he said as he worked a hand between her knees. She lashed out instinctively, the sheet sailing with her movements as she kicked. Marie yelped and slipped sideways, sending the instrument tray to the ground amid a clattering of metal. Croomes’s grip bit down on her wrists, and Grace’s hands tingled as the nerves sang, but she didn’t stop fighting. Her blood-smeared feet scissored in the air, striking the doctor’s hands and knocking Mrs. Clay aside.
“God damn it,” Heedson yelled. “Have it your way, then, idiot girl. Let her go, Croomes. Let her rot from the inside out if that’s what she wants.”
The second the pressure released her wrists Grace lunged for the doctor, humiliation fueling her past the bounds of energy. She dove for a metal instrument and lashed it across his face in a vicious arc, sending his spectacles flying.
Then Croomes was on her, throwing her to the ground and grinding her face against the cold rock as if she would make flour out of her cheeks. Mrs. Clay struggled to her knees, picking her way over strewn instruments to Grace’s side.
“Grace,” she whispered. “What have you done?”
“What’s she done?” Heedson said, his voice towering over the women huddled on the ground. “She’s earned herself a place in the cellar.”
“Oooh.” Croomes leaned over to crow in Grace’s ear. “That’ll be a treat. Not quite the European tour, but a sight you’ve not seen yet, nonetheless.”
“Dr. Heedson, please.” Mrs. Clay struggled to her feet. “In her state . . . it’ll kill her.”
Heedson wiped the blood from his cheek, fingering his swelling lower lip. “The Board is coming for inspection tomorrow, Mrs. Clay. I’ve been attacked by a demented patient who’s been given every chance to show that she can behave better. One look at this exhausted, bleeding slip of a girl and they’ll have my certificate. She’s going with the worst, down to the cellar, where the Board won’t think to look for patients.”
Grace lay flat on the floor, all of her fire spent on the attack. Croomes didn’t bother to help her to her feet, simply dragged her into the hall. Grace watched dispassionately as her toes trailed through her own blood and the sound of Mrs. Clay’s crying dissipated in the dark.
“Nobody’s gonna look after the welfare of people in a place where ain’t no person able to live,” Croomes said, when they came to the cellar door. “You done sealed your fate. He don’t care who your daddy is now.”
The door yawned open with a creak, its black shadow creeping over Grace. She was a chasm, her baby gone, her revenge spent. Croomes would take her to the darkness and it would match her insides. She would blend with it, absorbed into nothing.
“Good-bye then, highfalutin lady,” Croomes said. She took Grace’s wrists again, and they passed into the blackness.
SEVEN
There was a voice in the darkness. It slip
ped through the shadows to find her ears.
“Get up, love. Get up or the rains will kill you.”
Grace opened her mouth and cold water flowed in. It slipped over her parched tongue, leaving behind a gritty aftertaste. She gagged, the convulsion pulling her into a sitting position as she struggled for air, water pooling around her.
“That’s something, anyway,” the voice continued. “I’ve listened to more than a few unconscious drown slow, not even knowing they’re dying. The rains slip through the walls down here and the reaper comes quiet with them.”
Grace’s hands sank into the floor, mud squeezing between her fingers as she pushed herself against the wet stone walls, panicked breaths wheezing into the pitch-black.
“It’s all right, it’s all right,” the voice said again, low and smooth. “I’m not going to hurt you. Even if I should want to, there’s bars between us, love, and more than that. My conscience is stronger than they, and you’ve got the smell of young flesh about you.”
In the darkness all she could tell was that his voice came from the right. She pushed herself away from it, her feet digging into the muck for traction.
“Shhhh, shhhh,” her fellow prisoner went on. “Don’t get yourself out of sorts. Lose your breath and you’re likely to go over into the wet again. Calm yourself. Sit still and let me learn from the air you’ve brought with you.”
Shivering and streaked with mud, Grace found the corner of her cell. Pressing herself against it until her shoulder blades dug into the rock, she heard a deep breath from his direction, then silence. Seconds later, an exhalation, followed by another audible intake.
“Now then.” His voice reached for her again across the black, drawing her head up from her chest, where it had begun to sag in weariness. “Yours is a story whose events happen more often than are told. Tales like these belong to the black, do they not? Where they can’t be seen or heard. But I can smell it out quick like the devil.
“You’ve got the smell of man on you, faded but there, a scent still strong enough to tell that it matches your own, like to like. Fresh blood—I imagine even you can smell that, all coppery in the back of your throat—but I can say where it’s come from and know the harm done to you. And the babe . . .”
Another sniff, this one soft and delicate.
“Gone to the permanent darkness now. Sorry, love.”
A fought-for breath stuck in her chest, and Grace forced it outward, then another in, to keep herself going. Her arms crossed in front of her empty belly, their duty failed, nothing left to protect. A sob stuck in her throat, lodging itself halfway on its path to the dank air.
“There’s the blood of another on you, though. I smell a spatter or two, underneath your own. You didn’t come down here without a fight, did you? And who was your tormenter?” An inhalation, this one drawn deep inside of him as if his lungs were digesting the air.
“Ahhhh . . . Heedson, you are a vile thing.”
Grace rested her head against the stone wall, letting the cool fingers of the stone sink into her temple as his words flowed over her, drawing her into a deep calm.
“There’s your voice, love. It’s small and cold, tucked down under all else. I can smell it, like a river stone it is. Smoothed out and polished into a nothing it’s jammed down under something else . . . something hot. There’s a touch of brimstone in you, there is. And it’s putting up the smoke that’s got your voice trapped underneath.
“And the smoke and the—” Another sniff. “The sweat. Your anger sweated you out. It’s gone and opened up all your pores, and I can smell that dainty lavender soap you used to use, though I imagine it was a good long while ago.
“What a shock you’ve had. Taken from that world into this. You used to move about in light and lavender, with the laughter pouring from you, and now it’s all blood and darkness, with your throat closed so tight your own breath is choking you.”
The truth of his words wrapped around her, and Grace gasped for air, letting it out in a deep rush as if to release the smoke he spoke of and give her voice freedom.
“That’s right, keep doing it. The in and the out of the air. Your lungs know the job, know it well enough to do it without being told, and likely won’t stop even if you want them to. You’re alive, girl. And it’s been a good long while since I’ve had an interesting person in the darkness with me. And you’ll stay alive, for Falsteed is not about to let those that have the brimstone in them die while he’s near. No, not me.”
There was a scraping noise of wood against rock and something nudged against her foot in the filth. “Grab the end of that, and feel about on the wall in the corner. There’s a bit of rock that sticks out just enough to rest the board against. I’ll put the other end on my knees and take the weight of you on myself, for the night. You’ve got to get out of the muck, your lower parts anyway. There’s dirt and filth ankle-deep everywhere down here. The last fellow that had that cell was none too gracious about using his bucket. That’s not only mud you’re wallowing in.”
Grace felt around for the board poking at her toes and found the ridge in the wall easily. She felt the other end of the board lift along with her as she put it in place, rain trickling over her fingers. Her hands came away with the sweet smell of outdoors, only slightly fouled by the cellar walls. She pressed her hands against her face, the rainwater cooling her swollen eyes.
She sat on her makeshift bench and felt it settle on Falsteed’s end as he adjusted for taking her weight on his knees. Grace curled into the corner of her cold darkness, resting against the wall and feeling the rain seep through the rocks. Her eyelids sank and she felt her jaw fall slack right before sleep brought the darkness from outside into her mind.
As she settled into its comfortable grip she heard Falsteed’s voice once more. “Dear child, do you even know all the rage that is inside you?”
EIGHT
Whether her eyes were open or closed, she could not tell. Sleep and reality melted together until she saw a streak of light in the darkness, a cascade of blond hair that flowed over a white linen pillowcase leading to a pair of bright blue eyes. Grace’s memory provided the details, down to the pattern of broken blood vessels in the whites of her little sister’s eyes, red from crying.
“Alice,” Grace said, the name slipping through the slit between her teeth. “Alice. You can’t be here. You don’t belong in the darkness.”
Her sister smiled, the pearly white of her childish teeth bright against the pinkness of her lips. But it was Falsteed’s baritone that came from her mouth, bringing with it a swirl of black that pulled her to consciousness.
“Wake up, love. Reed’s brought you clean clothing. Heedson fancies that Reed’s our jailer, and though he may collect an asylum paycheck, I’ve given him something more than money in the past. You can trust him.”
A flicker of light caused her to cover her eyes, the anonymity of the dark lost.
“S’all right, then, girl.” A new voice came from behind the lantern. “I’ve not come to look upon ya. Come and take the clothes I’ve snatched up, and you can toss the old once yer decent.”
Grace stretched her legs hesitantly, feet sinking ankle-deep into muck before finding the stone beneath. She heard Falsteed shift in the cell next to hers as her weight came off the board, both knees popping audibly. A hand beckoned to her from behind the lantern, and she approached cautiously, eyes still shaded against the light.
“C’mere then, and back to the shadows with you for the dressing part.”
Grace’s fingers closed over the clothing, the dryness of the fabric drawing a sigh from her as she took it. Back to the darkness of the corner, she let the filthy sheet fall away, wadding it into a pile at her feet. The clean clothes fell over her shoulders, fitting awkwardly around the new laxness of her belly, empty without the life she’d come to know.
“Step out into Reed’s light, love,” Falsteed’s voice directed her from his cell. “Let me see your color.”
Grace did so,
though Falsteed remained anonymous in the dark, light flickering off the iron bars that separated them. “Well enough, then,” he grunted. “You’ve not got a fever. Reed, take the filthy clothes out and come back with a stool, if you can pilfer one. I don’t think a bite of food would come amiss to the girl, either.”
“Grace,” she said, her name bubbling up from her mouth into the dimly cast rays of Reed’s light. She spoke toward Falsteed’s voice, her own stretching out wearily toward his to bridge the gap. “My name is Grace.”
“Hello, Grace,” Falsteed said, a smile evident in the twist of his words. “And welcome to my asylum.”
Silence hung in the air while she reasserted her grip on the smoothly polished river rock that he had called her voice. She found it, the words tripping over it roughly as they scratched their way upward. “Your asylum?”
“Yes, love. You’ll find that Reed here keeps me well apprised of the comings and goings above our heads, the matters that happen in the light. Meanwhile, I pull little strings like a cunning spider and wait for the throbs to come back and let me know what’s about. And speaking of what’s about, Reed, how goes the convalescent in the men’s ward?”
“Still not so much of a flicker of his eyelids, sir.”
“And there was no fall, no injury to the head?”
“Not that anyone knows.”
“Next time you get a chance, bring me a clipping of his hair. I’ll give it a whiff. If something’s gone amiss inside his skull, that’ll tell me all I need to know.”
“Yes, sir. And I’ve brought you the pillowcase of the newest, a girl what claims there’s spiders in her blood.”
“Give it here, then.” Falsteed’s hand appeared between the bars, and Reed handed over the linen, his features briefly in the light. Reed wasn’t much older than Grace, but his face was already lined with the weight of life. The sound of Falsteed breathing deeply filled the air, and Grace listened intently for his recommendation, intrigued after he’d learned so much from her scents.
A Madness So Discreet Page 3
