The Gray Chamber

by Grace Hitchcock

  Edyth stumbled into the hallway of the asylum’s general ward behind Nurse Madison, rubbing her wrists where the nurses working in the Lodge had tied her to the bedposts overnight to keep her calm … or so they had claimed. Edyth had never felt so powerless. For the entirety of her life up until now, all she had to do was say her name and doors would open before her, but now, any mention of her past earned her blank stares and a blow to the cheek. Her fingers traced her temple, wincing at a surfacing bruise. Whimpers bubbled in her throat, and she was tempted to give in to her pain and weep, but after their cruelty last night, she was afraid that if she revealed any weakness, the nurses would say she was becoming hysterical and return her to her bonds.

  She had precious little sleep due to the ropes holding her in place and the constant flow of nurses coming and going from her cell in the violent ward every hour to check on her. What did they expect to find with her secured so firmly she could hardly move? Instead of trying in vain to sleep after the second nurse’s appearance, Edyth attempted to convince the nurses of her sanity. And time after time, the nurses condescendingly smiled at her or, worse, struck her before bidding her to curb her wild imagination.

  One would think I’d have learned by now not to attempt to reason with the night-shift nurses. Edyth crossed her arms and rubbed her hands over her icy skin, desperately trying to regain an ounce of warmth, her toes aching in her thin slippers that never felt dry with the cool floor beneath her feet. Will they never find me a decent pair of shoes? She shivered again. In the Lodge, which she now even more firmly believed was a ridiculous name for the violent ward, she hadn’t even been given a blanket to stave off the cold. She was thankful to return to the general ward in the main asylum, and she knew that if she wished to stay in Hall Six and have a chance of escape, she would have to find a different means of finding that escape rather than a sympathetic nurse.

  Her stomach growled as she rounded the corner and joined the women in the long hall for what she hoped was the line for breakfast. She took her place behind Nellie.

  “Edyth! I was so worried they would not let you return,” her friend whispered.

  “I was too.”

  “To the benches. No dawdling. Sit down.” The nurses herded everyone toward the bench-lined walls.

  Edyth’s heart sank, her knees weakening. The nurses had purposefully waited to release her, forcing her to miss breakfast. As disgusting and tasteless as the fare was, at least it would coat her gnawing belly. The women slowly plodded toward the yellow, straight-back hardwood benches. Edyth eyed them, not wishing to sit after a night of being tied down. “What about cleaning? Isn’t there something we can—”

  “It is Hall Four’s turn to clean. You clean when we say to clean. Shut your mouth and sit. No stretching,” came a command from her right, and Edyth flinched as the nurse pinched her arm to get her moving toward the wall. It was a small offense compared to what she had already suffered in the time she had spent under the asylum’s care, but Edyth sent her a glare anyway, wishing above all for retribution.

  If only I had my rapier, we’d see who would be cowering. She struggled with the growing hatred in her heart that was so consuming it frightened her. She dipped her head and swallowed, clenching her fists and drawing in a long breath, standing a moment longer in rebellion. She looked down the row and didn’t see Poppy. She had hoped to sit with her for a chance to read the scriptures to calm her soul. At mealtimes Poppy had kept her Bible open on the table between them, and she had missed that chance this morning. “Where’s Poppy?” she whispered to Nellie out of the corner of her mouth.

  “They took her during breakfast.”

  “Took her? Where? Why?” She tried to picture sweet, gentle Poppy doing anything amiss.

  “Nurse Sweeney reprimanded her for reading her Bible at breakfast, and Poppy would not close it. Most of the staff, of course, don’t dare take issue with it because of her parents and all, but Nurse Sweeney doesn’t much care for the Lord and—” Her voice caught, and she swiped her hand over her eyes and drew a ragged breath. “The nurse told her that her father was dead, which sent her into a fit. She kept pointing and saying that he was standing directly behind her. Nurse Sweeney wouldn’t stop laughing, so I tried to distract Poppy, and when I finally got her settled, the nurse whispered something so foul to her.” She shook her head. “I hesitate to repeat it, but she told her something that sent her into a fit of hysteria far worse than I had ever seen and they dragged her into that room.”

  Edyth grunted with suppressed fury, not hungry anymore. “The gray one?” She had heard the murmurings about that horrible room.

  Nellie nodded, twisting her hands in her lap. “In the chaos, the Bible was forgotten. I hid it inside my bodice to return to her. When they dragged her back from the chamber right before you returned from the Lodge, I saw that she was soaked through, and I … I saw bruises on her neck before they locked her away in her room.”

  Edyth squeezed Nellie’s hand and nodded to the nurse marching down the hallway, willing Nellie to be silent. If they were caught chatting, she didn’t think she could suffer another blow after what she had heard. She exhaled as the nurse passed them without a second glance. “Was she conscious?”

  “Yes, but only just,” Nellie whispered.

  For the next eight hours, Edyth sat with her back straight lest she was met with Nurse Sweeney’s heavy hand, her prayers centered on the poor girl lying somewhere in the asylum, and then Bane, always Bane. She watched as the shadows cast by the sun moved across the walls, willing the time to pass to each meal for eating at the tables gave them the chance to move their stiff limbs.

  Taking her seat for her last tasteless meal of the day, Edyth gasped when Poppy took the seat next to her. “They released you!” She touched her arm. “Are you well?”

  “I feel much better after a day in bed, and the nice nurse is on staff this evening. Nurse Jenny let me out for dinner if I promised not to cry again,” she whispered, her voice hoarse.

  Nellie slid the Bible out of her bodice and handed it under the table to Poppy.

  “Oh! Thank you.” Her voice cracked. She clasped the book on her lap with both hands and rocked back and forth, her gaze flitting across the room to where Nurse Sweeney stood with her hands behind her back. Using her thumb, she flipped the Bible open on her lap and read while she ate.

  Edyth’s soul was aching for nourishment as much as her body. She squinted and read the small print of Psalm twenty-seven along with Poppy, repeating the last three verses over and over, desperate to memorize them. “Deliver me not over unto the will of mine enemies: for false witnesses are risen up against me, and such as breathe out cruelty. I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the Lord.”

  She had never been very good at waiting, but in this human rat trap, as Nellie so fondly called it, what else was there to do but wait? For once in her life, she was being forced to confront her past, her deep-rooted hurts, for there was nowhere to run or forge ahead on her own. I will wait, Lord. I will trust You.

  “You best eat because it looks like we are about to be finished with dinner.” Nellie’s warning broke her from her prayer.

  With shaking hands, she dipped the blackened slice of bread into her tea and shoved it whole into her mouth. She managed to take a single draft of the weak tea before Nurse Madison rose.

  “Everyone up! It’s your hall’s bath night.” Nurse Madison’s shout jarred Edyth into standing with the others as the matron appeared in the doorway, hands clasped in front of her immaculate black skirts while she perused the group.

  Women rose about her and stretched. Edyth groaned and pressed her hands to the small of her back. She had inadvertently managed to avoid bathing night so far with being locked away in solitary confinement upon her arrival and in the violent ward after her escape attempt. Now a new dread seized her. “Are
uh, there only female attendants, or …?” She hated to even utter her question, but if the answer wasn’t favorable, she would claw the attendants’ eyes until they were blinded or she was locked away. Whatever came first. “Are we to be—”

  Nellie patted her hand. “It’s only females beyond this door. But such degradation, I have never before dreamt of until my first night here. I keep forgetting how much you haven’t seen yet.”

  Edyth twisted her lips, chewing the inside of her cheek and picking at her cuticles. “I was taken to my cell right off even though it is apparently customary to bathe the incoming patients straightaway.”

  The matron clapped her hands and traipsed down the line. “Now, ladies, I expect amenability from you all this evening. We must get you all scrubbed for the ball tomorrow night.”

  “Ball?” Some women murmured while a few squealed with glee, others simply rocking back and forth either not caring or unaware of the announcement.

  “Yes, the annual lunatic ball.” The matron’s voice lifted so the whole of the group could hear. “We’ve been having it since we opened to raise the spirits within these walls. Tomorrow, instead of taking your afternoon promenade, you will be prepared for the ball by your very own lady’s maids.”

  Edyth scowled, wondering what kind of twisted plan the matron had up her sleeve.

  The matron turned on her heels, her skirt fanning. “Now, I don’t want any problems. Everyone must be bathed to enjoy dancing tomorrow. The doctors and male attendants will be joining us to act as dancing partners, so we must look our best.”

  The women giggled again, eagerly moving as one to the bathing room, but Nellie’s dumbfounded expression mirrored her own feeling of disbelief at this unexpected piece of frivolity.

  Poppy clapped her hands. “Oh, I do love the ball! I had nearly forgotten about it. I cannot wait to dance with you, Papa.” She beamed over her shoulder, catching Edyth off guard.

  She had forgotten again about Poppy’s peculiar affliction … if one could call it that. It did not seem to be an affliction, since she was so happy with her father at her side.

  When it was Edyth’s turn to step into the room with all females, her breath seized at the sight before her. The two patients in front of her were busy stripping out of their worn gowns as another was getting out of a filthy tub that had obviously not been changed since the first person had stepped inside. Bits of refuse floated in the now murky water, and she cringed at the realization that she was to be plunged under the same water. The duck pond in Central Park was far more favorable.

  “Strip down,” came the call from Nurse Madison, who was already unbuttoning Edyth’s dress.

  Edyth stepped back, refraining from slapping the woman’s hand away. “I can manage just fine.”

  The nurse glowered at her and ignored her wishes until Edyth stood shivering from the cool air against her skin. She looked to her right. The nurses had left the windows open. She sighed. What else could she expect from a group of tormenters? With a grimace, Edyth stepped into the freezing water and endured a harsh scrubbing with a filthy rag that reeked of the previous bodies. Three buckets of icy water drenched her one after the other, leaving her senses reeling as she attempted to gasp for air. The nurses dragged her out of the tub and, without even drying her, threw a thin, short nightgown over her soaked body.

  Edyth peeled the fabric from her drenched skin and read the large black lettering. “‘Lunatic Asylum, B.I.H.6.’ What does the end mean?” she asked the nearest nurse.

  “Blackwell’s Island and where you are kept, Hall Six.” The nurse checked her notes and pushed Edyth toward the door. “Take her to room twenty-eight with Brown.”

  Edyth’s bare feet padded the cold floor that was slippery from the trail of inmates before her, and she struggled to keep her balance on the wet surface as the nurse prodded her forward into the dark hallway to follow Nellie to room twenty-eight. Shivering, she stood dripping on the floor as the door slammed behind her, biting into the back of her ankles. Nellie immediately withdrew a broken pencil and small notebook from under her mattress and sank onto her own cot, soaking wet as well, scribbling away. That was one of the good things about being responsible for cleaning the asylum. The nurses would never check under the mattresses, for fear of the fleas.

  A guttural scream in the hallway made them start, but Nellie kept her focus on the page, knowing the nurses would call for bed soon and extinguish the lights in the hall that provided a dim sliver of light through the cracks in the door. Afterward, they would only have the moon for light.

  Steeling herself against the piercing wail from the poor soul in the hall, Edyth twisted her hair, the water splattering onto the floor and joining the puddle forming beneath her feet, which were growing numb. Shivering, she eyed Nellie’s pencil and paper, longing for some of her own to distract her from her present horror.

  Noticing her gawking at the paper, Nellie sent her a tentative smile as if she feared Edyth would attempt to take it. “Do you write?” she asked.

  Edyth began plaiting her hair in an attempt to gather it off her shoulders and give her thin nightdress a chance at drying before bed, but it would be another bone-chilling night in any event. “No, but I do love to paint and draw.” She wrapped herself in her blanket and nodded to the blank wall of their cell. “I’ve been longing to turn that hideous reminder of our predicament into something else.”

  Nellie looked at her notebook and then again at the wall before flipping her pages to the back of the book and pulling out something hidden in the cover.

  “What are you doing?”

  Nellie handed a red wax pencil to her. “I keep this for helping me edit my notes, but I don’t care for the blank wall either. Show me what you can do.”

  “But the nurses will see. They might confiscate it.”

  “I have the other half.” Nellie shrugged and grinned. “We can give them this stub and say that was it and no one will be the wiser.”

  Too excited to query about the oddity of editing a journal or even how Nellie had kept this red pencil hidden, Edyth held the stubby wax pencil in both hands as if it were a treasure and stepped toward the wall. Reaching up, she began to draw what she always did, three hands reaching for one another, but this time, set in a field of budding wildflowers.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things.

  ~ Edgar Degas

  Bane mopped his forehead and slumped into the leather chair behind his desk, breathing hard after a series of extreme bouts with his top students in a desperate attempt to keep his mind off Edyth while Doctor Hawkins searched. His gaze landed on a telegram newly arrived atop a pile of papers. The leather groaned as he jumped up and snatched it, breaking the envelope’s seal.

  RAOUL.

  He scowled. Edyth never called him by his first name unless she was teasing him.

  IN NEW ORLEANS AT COMMERCIAL. WILL RETURN IN A WEEK. SORRY FOR LEAVING SUDDENLY, BUT WANTED TO GET AWAY AFTER THE SPECTACLE AT THE PARTY. E.

  He stepped toward the window, scowling up at the moon. Even though her message did not make any sense, he could not wait a moment longer, doing nothing. He shoved the paper into his pocket and determined to go to New Orleans himself on the last train out tonight to see for himself if she was at this Commercial Hotel and, if so, hear from her lips that she was safe.

  With purposeful strides, he trotted to his room that was directly above the fencing club to pack his trunk. He could not ignore this sliver of news. Had his hinting of an impending proposal been too much? Maybe his declaration had frightened her away after all. She did turn down multiple offers the year of her debut, but he never thought she would do the same to him as her other would-be suitors.

  “What are you doing?” Bertram appeared in the doorway, tossing his medical bag onto his bed before stripping off his jacket. “You can’t be thinking of leaving me in charge when we have classes to teach all day tomorrow?”

&
nbsp; Bane sank onto his own bed, running a hand through his hair before releasing a grunt. “I don’t know what I’m about! I’m not a detective, so how on earth am I supposed to find a woman who is not meant to be found?”

  “Then what are you waiting for? Hire one,” Bertram replied, rolling up his sleeves and crossing the room to the porcelain basin atop their shared dresser and pouring fresh water into it.

  “The thought has crossed my mind on several occasions, but what if she is hiding from me and I come across as obsessed with her?”

  “She has always been obsessed with you and that never seemed to bother you,” Bertram mumbled. He soaped his arms, scrubbing his skin to a lather. “You feel in your bones that something is wrong?”

  I did before this message, yes. But the knot in his stomach was still there. The message didn’t sound like Edyth. Bane wadded up his shirt and pitched it into the open drawer across the room. “Yes.”

  “Then it is your duty to do everything you can for Edyth. Because if you don’t, who will? If you can’t go to the police and involve the law, I suggest that you hire a private detective.” Bertram rinsed his hands and dried them against his shirt.

  If Bertram agreed, perhaps Bane wasn’t all that off. Maybe his gut was right, and she was on that infernal island.

  “I’m sure Mother and Father could help you with the expense,” Bertram continued. “I know you already asked for your share of the inheritance to purchase this place, but this is about Edyth. You know they would move heaven and earth to help that girl if she was in need.”

  Bane’s gaze landed on his prize rapier hanging above the fireplace mantel. He crossed the room and removed it from the wall, stroking the ornate pommel and cross-guard and remembering the victory that had catapulted his career in France before he decided to purchase the fencing club from the previous owner who was retiring, his old instructor. “I will if I need to, but for now, I have another means of obtaining the cash.” He gently placed the rapier in a narrow box that he kept for transporting weapons and shoved his arms into his coat, calling a farewell over his shoulder to Bertram before he summoned a carriage and gave the driver the address for the Wentworth household. Jasper had offered to purchase the weapon on multiple occasions over the years, even though Bane had sworn time and again he would never relinquish it. But that did not matter now. He had to find Edyth, no matter the cost.