Mistress of My Fate

by Hallie Rubenhold

  I watched his eyes take in the scratches upon my face. He pursed his lips, but did not venture to ask as to their cause.

  “This medicine is to be given twice daily,” said he sternly, “once upon rising in the morning, then again in the late evening.” He unfolded the packet of gritty powder. “Each measure should be no more than a pinch. Observe…” Then he dug his fat thumb and forefinger into the substance and held out what looked to me like an amount far greater than any pinch my little fingers could produce. “Like so.”

  I nodded.

  “It is to be brewed as a tea, or diluted in some form of drink, such as watered wine or small beer. Do you hear me, miss?”

  I nodded again. “Yes, sir.”

  “In large doses, it is a strong medicine…” said he, glancing at my aunt, “but be assured, my lady, it is a good one. I do believe your daughter will shortly be returned to health,” he concluded, offering a brief bow.

  I recall those words most clearly, Lord Dennington. I have listened to them in my mind for these many years now, echoing without end. “In large doses, it is a strong medicine,” he had said. A strong medicine, but perhaps not a good one, my lord. Not at all a good one.

  You have seen the treatises written recently by Dr. Josiah Kipp at the medical school in Edinburgh? Digitalis, or foxglove, is now no longer employed in the cure of respiratory illness, it being (to quote that learned gentleman) “in some cases more harmful to the patient than beneficial.” You cannot suppose I knew that, my lord. To suggest so is pure lunacy.

  Upon Dr. Stirling’s direction, Sally was relieved of her duties and sent to bed. Her place at Lady Catherine’s bedside was then assumed by my aunt and her maid, and when Lady Stavourley wished to retire, I was called upon to fill her position.

  Speaking in hushed tones, she instructed me that a kettle of water and a teapot had been ordered in which to brew the foxglove. “Do make certain she takes the full dose, Hetty,” she commanded me.

  It would be somewhat dishonest if I did not confess that the prospect of entering my cousin’s bedchamber filled me with the greatest apprehension. We had neither spoken nor laid eyes upon one another since our terrible altercation. Although I knew her to be greatly weakened by her illness and incapable of causing me harm, I still trembled at the thought of an encounter.

  Hesitantly, I pushed open the door and stepped into the still, thick air of the sickroom. On either side of the bed sat two candles, while a low fire guttered in the grate. Although Lady Catherine lay in what appeared to be a deep sleep, each breath came with a wheeze as she struggled to draw it.

  Frightened of disturbing her, I crept near to the large bed hung with fashionable Indian chintz, and assumed my place in a nearby chair. At first I was too shy, too ashamed to look upon her, and then, gradually, I permitted myself to glance at her still features. In spite of our unfortunate circumstances, my heart heaved nonetheless to see her so unwell. Unbeknownst to myself, I emitted a short sigh.

  “Hetty,” she said suddenly, but in a subdued and raspy voice. “Where is Sally?”

  “Sally is taken ill.”

  Just then, one of the housemaids came through the door with the kettle and teapot.

  “Why cannot another of the maids tend to me? Where is my mother’s woman?”

  “Dorothy is here,” said I cheerfully, gesturing to the girl, not much older than me, who was now pouring hot water into the teapot. “Dr. Stirling and Lady Stavourley have both directed me to wait upon you.”

  She rumpled her face at this. I could sense her indignation and it disquieted me. The packet of foxglove sat next to a candle by the bed; I took hold of both of these items, my hands trembling.

  “Well,” pronounced my cousin, “I do not wish you here.”

  By the low cast of the candle, my fingers worked quickly, and I measured out what I believed to be the precise dosage shown to me by Dr. Stirling. I weighed that pinch of snuff-like powder between my fingers before releasing it into the water, where it fell to the bottom of the teapot and began to dissolve.

  “At your request, I shall leave you, cousin, but not before the directions of your mother and your physician are carried out,” and with that, I poured the brew into a dish.

  She began to draw herself upright, but was too gravely ill to manage it unassisted. I reached over to lend my hand, but she batted me away and instead motioned to Dorothy. I then offered her the dish of foxglove tea. As she took it from me, her gaze danced over the marks upon my cheeks. A hint of a smirk passed along her mouth.

  “I have made pretty work of your face,” she commented before taking a draught of her medicine and wincing at its bitterness. “I am only sorry I did not manage to gouge out your eyes.” She regarded me with an unmoving stare. “But there is time still for that, I think.”

  I moved away from her, my skin prickling with cold fear.

  “Leave me,” she commanded in her strained tone. This I did, without any further hesitation.

  This, dear reader, is my true and honest account of events. I have recalled every movement, every word and every action. What occurred between the late hours of the night and the early morning was no doing of mine. I have always made it known to my persecutors that I would swear an affidavit to this, but, as you see, they have found no means of supporting their accusations against me. There is no evidence, because there was no crime.

  Where this matter is concerned, I will confess to you but one thing: it will forever torment me that my cousin’s last words were spoken in malice. Whatever cruelty she inflicted upon me has long since been forgotten. I bear no ill will, nor would I ever have wished such a fate upon my own kinswoman.

  At her insistence, it was little Dorothy who remained with Lady Catherine that night, dozing in the chair at her bedside. In the morning, it was she who found her; her fingers like ice, her lips blue as periwinkles.

  I awoke to frenzied noises, to the sounds that follow on from the discovery of an accident: quick feet, gasps and shouts. Upon opening the door to the drawing room, I found the servants flying about like frightened wasps and Dorothy doubled over with sobs. Lewis, the butler, saw my terrified expression.

  “Miss,” said he with disbelief, “your cousin… Lady Catherine, she has died.”

  At first I could hardly take it in. “That cannot be,” said I, but no one heard, nor were they listening. In a daze I stumbled, still in a state of undress, across to her chamber.

  But for an awkwardly outstretched arm, she lay much in the way I had last seen her. I approached the bed incredulously. I had only ever seen death from afar—the bodies of beggars by the road, criminals hanging by the neck from the gallows—but never, never the empty vessel of a loved one, one whose warm hand I had once felt in my own. What drew me near to her, I cannot say; perhaps it was a desire to know that I did not dream this in some nightmare, that I was indeed awake and alive. I moved my fingers to her motionless mouth, but felt no heat, no air. I half expected my cousin to unfurl her lips and bite me, but the sure recognition of death did that instead.

  Chapter 10

  What came over me at that instant, I cannot describe. Horror, like some dark vapour, rose up from within me. It filled my mouth, until I began to low like a beast in distress. As I did, I sensed the tips of my fingers, that part of me which had touched death, throb along my hand. I began to rub them vigorously against my night shift, before crying out in revulsion and then fleeing from that most terrible of sights.

  Dear Lord, to this day I still recall it.

  I shut myself behind the door of my bedchamber and wailed, gripping on to the bolster for fear that death might swoop in and spirit me away too. “Oh my beloved cousin,” I sobbed, “oh my dearest companion, my only true friend.”

  As I cried, so I heard the echoes of my sorrow in the rooms beyond, the dismayed whispers and weeping of the household. The shock of this dreadful tragedy plunged all of Melmouth into the deepest of mourning.

  As you might imagine, no one person su
ffered more greatly than did my aunt. Upon hearing the news, she collapsed into a fit of hysterics from which she never recovered. She was carried into her apartments where she lay for several weeks lifeless upon her bed, much like her daughter.

  Save one unfortunate encounter, we never again spoke. It was a terrible incident. I came upon her at the foot of the dining table, a weary skeletal figure shrouded in black, so gaunt and wasted that she required assistance even to sit. Grief had ploughed furrows into her now limp face. I thought her unearthly appearance overwhelming, but she seemed to find my presence more alarming by far. Upon locking her eyes on to me, she froze and then, beginning to shake with fury or madness, cried out like a lunatic, until she was taken from the room and dosed with laudanum.

  My uncle bore the tragedy with greater fortitude. In the midst of these distressing circumstances, he assumed the role of a ship’s captain in a storm, a stoic who lifted his head towards adversity and who tightened his hands upon the wheel. The day following his daughter’s death, he appeared, perfectly turned out in mourning, marching through the corridors of Melmouth, with the steward at his heels.

  Arrangements for Lady Catherine’s funeral were made and executed without the knowledge of any of the female members of the family. This was the manner in which these things were performed in my day. My poor, sweet cousin was conveyed from Melmouth and laid to rest in the very church in which she had been due to wed. I knew not even when they removed her from the house, or who, beyond Lord Stavourley and his sons, was present to witness her interment in the family vault.

  To be sure, my uncle was masterful at placing a lid of silence over the entire matter. How precisely he managed to contain the gossip, I do not know. He is certain to have paid the London newspapermen each a hefty purse for never laying in type one word of the affair. His friends and relations would have held their tongues likewise. It remains a marvel to me how few in society heard the full story of Lady Catherine’s death, and then only a great while after the event.

  As for Lord Allenham, I cannot say for certain what came to pass in the days and weeks that followed the death of his fiancée. I overheard two servants recounting that his lordship had been notified the day before he was due to set out for Melmouth. Whether this is true, I cannot say. All correspondence between us had, quite wisely, ceased. Indeed, I do not even know if he was present at Lady Catherine’s funeral. It is possible that he may have been, but refused Lord Stavourley’s hospitality through a sense of shame. He would never have dared stay at Melmouth, for fear of meeting with me.

  Dear reader, if you knew what distress descended upon me in that period. I not only bore the loss of my adored relation, but the painful knowledge that I was unlikely ever again to lay eyes upon Lord Allenham. How bitterly I wept, how remorseful I felt at all that had come to pass.

  I dare say that grief can cause one to view matters in a mistaken light. So may have been the case with me. I do believe I was left too long to mourn unaccompanied. I saw my uncle only at meals. Lord Dennington and his brother had returned to school, and so Melmouth, without either Lady Catherine or the active presence of her mother, wallowed in silence. I remained for long spells in our apartments, attempting, as I had always done, to amuse myself. Gradually, I took up my paints, my sketching and embroidery. When my heart began to yearn for company, for the sound of Lady Catherine’s familiar voice, I took myself to the library or out into the grounds of Melmouth, where I contemplated the browning flora and the rows of winter vegetables newly laid down in the kitchen garden. Yet no matter where I roamed, or how I attempted to distract my thoughts, I could not entirely calm my mind. More than anything, it was The Sorrows of Young Werther that haunted me. I thought of how I had dreamed of Allenham. In entertaining these fantasies, had I called down the hand of Fate to intercede?

  One of us three must die!

  Oh dear Lord! I paced and wrung my hands; I cried and gripped my head. My mind could not release this notion. I recalled that other occasion when my prayers had been answered, when as a child I had begged so fervently for the friendship of my cousin. This indeed had come to pass. The more I contemplated the possibility that somehow my desperate wishing may have inadvertently been to blame, the more I trembled. I feared it would drive me to madness! Whenever my eyes alighted upon the spine of Mr. Goethe’s book, I was thrown into a panic, and reminded of my anxieties.

  Soon it was too much for my young, foolish mind to bear. I decided the only thing to be done was to part with the book, to bury it in my uncle’s library where I should never look upon it again. In doing this, so too would I bury my shame, and the misguided belief that my will had played some part in this disaster.

  I stole away to the library and there tucked it behind some other volumes. Upon turning my back to the shelves, I issued a great sigh. “I shall never again permit that thought to enter my brain,” I swore to myself. “I am a creature of reason. I am made of rational thought.” I shook my head, and then, fearing the idea might steal up behind me, I fled the room. From that moment, I resolved quite firmly to banish such absurd notions and, remarkably, I remained untroubled by them for some time.

  It must be said that while I am entirely blameless for the misfortune which befell our house, there have always been others who believed—and still believe—to the contrary. That, at the tender age of sixteen, I had fallen in love with Lord Allenham, and he in love with me, I cannot deny. That dear Lady Catherine came upon a trove of letters which broke her heart is a matter of terrible sadness to me. But neither of these regretful circumstances renders me a murderess. All that you have heard from Lord Dennington and his friends are lies, drawn from the poison well of Sally Pickering.

  I knew not what Sally intended when she carried away my handful of treasured letters. I own that the matter consumed my thoughts entirely until my cousin fell ill. Following her death, I assumed they had been thrown upon the fire. But this was not what happened.

  Reader, you have seen the monstrous behaviour of which Sally Pickering was capable. A more vicious and untrustworthy slut I have never met. Indeed, when she had recovered from the illness that stole her beloved mistress’s life, she returned to tend me, but chose for herself how she might perform her duties. The role she had played in my beating had emboldened her. She now wore insolence upon her face when I called for her, and was slow to come when I rang.

  I had waited for nearly an hour for her one morning. She came through the jib door carrying Lady Catherine’s mourning attire, the skirts of which had been shortened and the bodice altered to fit me. She regarded me disdainfully as she entered, as if I had paid her an insult.

  “You did not come when I rang,” I scolded. “I have waited almost an hour.”

  She answered with nothing more than a sneer.

  I might have checked her for her impertinence, but I was far too cowed to raise my voice. With her big hands and broad shoulders, she frightened me terribly.

  She began to tug at the strings of my wrapper and then pull off my night clothes and cap. Once I was in my chemise and stockings, she took to tightening the laces of my stays, though with such violence that I cried out.

  “Sally!” I exclaimed. “You mean to kill me!”

  Again, she offered no response, but haughtily continued to dress me, tying on my underskirts and Lady Catherine’s hemmed black petticoat. I regarded myself in the looking glass, wearing her mourning apparel, the clothing that had been designed for her to wear should death come unexpectedly to one among our family. The sight of this caused me to sigh with sadness. I smoothed the skirts and adjusted myself within the bodice.

  “Poor, dear Cathy,” I said wistfully, “she has no need of these now.”

  “As she has no need for Lord Allenham, eh, miss?” came a wicked voice from behind me.

  I was so taken aback by this comment that I spun around and glared at her.

  “How dare you?” I shot. “How… How dare you speak in such a way!” I was shaking a good deal, and Sally could
see this.

  She smirked, unmoved by my outburst, her lip curled in amusement.

  “I read the letters, miss,” she announced with pride. Slowly she slid her hand into her pocket and drew out the three wretched packets. In places, my cousin’s tears had smeared away Allenham’s handwriting. My expression fell.

  “I wonder,” she taunted, “what would Lord Stavourley make of these? Or her ladyship?”

  “How dare you?”

  “How dare you, you murderous bitch?” she roared. “I reckon there be enough in these to have you hanged!”

  I opened my mouth, horrified at her suggestion. What if she was correct? Tears came flooding into my eyes.

  “My silence demands a price.” She folded her arms over her round chest. “What have you to pay me with?”

  So shocked was I by her proposal that I did not react, unable to move or speak.

  She studied me for a moment, before deciding that she would take matters into her own hands. She felt at her waist for the keys to my clothes press and then began to unlock it. She opened each of the drawers and cabinets until she came upon a roll of French lace my uncle had given to me. She swiftly slipped this into her thief’s pocket, and then, quick as lightning, locked the drawers and cupboard once more.

  “Now see here, little jade, I shall take from you what I will, when I will it, or you shall know my wrath,” she announced in a hiss.

  The tears rolled freely down my face.

  “Murderess!” she spat at me, before disappearing down the back stairs.

  The matter did not conclude there. No indeed, Sally’s game had only just commenced. In the weeks that followed the funeral, I lived in a constant state of fear. Each night I locked myself into my bedchamber, dreading that she might find me in my sleep and seek to avenge her mistress’s death. In my nightmares she held a knife to my throat, or smothered me with her wide, flat hands. I slept poorly or not at all, and I awakened each morning to find that the daylight offered no more comfort than the darkness.