The Daughters of Eden Trilogy: The Shadow Catcher, Fever Hill & the Serpent's Tooth (41 page)

Don’t know about that, thinks Ben, shifting uneasily on his footstool. And sure enough, what she says next only goes to show. Barmy idea she’s got, barmy, about him, Ben Kelly, padding the hoof all the way to this Burntwood, and ‘rescuing’ Sophie; all on his lonesome – or maybe with that brother of the parson’s, Miss Clemmy’s not too clear on the details.

In fact she’s not too clear about nothing, except that they’ve got to get Sophie out sharpish, cos she’s been in there since Saturday, and it’s Monday now, and it’s no good waiting till grandpa gets back in two weeks’ time, cos by then it’ll be too late.

He thinks about Sophie in the san. Lung jobs all around her: coughing; catting up rubies. It’s a shame, and that. Sophie’s all right.

But what’s he supposed to do about it? Spring her from the san on his own? How’s that going to work? Apples to ashes he’ll just end up in the clink. Besides, he can’t let hisself get distracted. He’s got Robbie to think of.

So he picks up his hat and gets to his feet and tells Miss Clemmy he can’t do nothing about it.

She’s not expecting that. Hands start going all a-flutter, big blue eyes all staring. ‘B-but – Sophie
said
– she said you were her
friend
.’

Sophie, he thinks angrily, should of never told nobody nothing.

He looks about him at the golden chairs and the silver brushes – too late to click one now – and he thinks, see sense, Ben Kelly. Sophie don’t need you. You try anything, and
you’re
the one that gets into chancery.

Besides, it’ll all get sorted without you sticking your nose in, you wait and see. Either this barmy young-old bint will come to her senses and get the grandpa back sharpish from Kingston, or else that brother of the parson’s will get it sorted, or else Madeleine will.

Come to think of it, Madeleine’s the best bet of all. Bloody tiger she is, when it comes to Sophie. Yeh, Madeleine’ll get it sorted. No doubt about it.

Excerpt from
A Discourse on the Treatment of Nervous Exhaustion (Neurasthenia) through a Variant Form of the Weir Mitchell Isolation or Rest Cure
by E. St John Burrowes.

As we have seen, the elements of the isolation cure are seclusion, sedation, inactivity, massage, overfeeding on a milk diet and, where available, the administration of electrical shock. The patient is confined to bed for at least two months, and forbidden to sit up, read, write, sew or use her hands in any way. No visits, books or letters are permitted, and the sickroom is rendered devoid of stimuli by the use of whitewash, plain white bedclothes and blinds.

It is impossible to overstate the importance of enforcing the patient’s complete obedience to, and dependence upon, her supervising physician. Indeed, this is the critical element of the cure, for it effectively suppresses the patient’s personality and makes her a child again, thereby allowing the physician to ‘re-create’ her anew. Moreover, as the cure approaches its conclusion, this dependence may gradually be transferred to the patient’s husband, father, brother, or other appropriate guardian, to lasting and beneficial effect.

The above is the cure in its standard form. However, over the past two decades it has become apparent that a sub-population of patients often proves resistant, and requires such lengthy periods of isolation that psychosis may result. It is with such patients in mind that this physician has, over many years, developed a variant regimen, which he has employed in numerous cases with almost consistently positive results.

In accordance with this variant regimen, the patient is kept comatose for an initial period of a day or two, by means of laudanum, veronal, or a similar soporific. This suspends the cognitive faculties, allowing regeneration of the nerve power to commence apace. After this initial period of profound rest, the patient is allowed gradually to recover consciousness, and tends to awaken in a highly confused but peaceable state. She may then be kept sedated but conscious, in order to facilitate feeding and handling . . .

She is at Cairngowrie House, curled up on the window seat, watching the snow covering the garden. Smooth white garden. Soft white sky. White surf glowing on the beach. Everything peaceful and soft.

The window seat begins gently to rock. A man’s voice says,
Mrs Lawe. Mrs Lawe. Wake up. Open your eyes.

She doesn’t want to open her eyes. She wants to stay on the window seat, where it’s peaceful and safe.

‘Still unconscious,’ the man’s voice says.

No I’m not, she thinks drowsily. I can hear you perfectly well. It’s just that I don’t feel like opening my eyes.

The door shuts, and the footsteps fall away. She drifts back into the snow.

When she wakes again, it is to a nagging sense that something is missing. All is soft and peaceful, so peaceful that her eyelids are too heavy to lift; but she’s hungry and thirsty, and something is missing.

She doesn’t know what it is, except that it has something to do with parrots. If only she could smooth out her thoughts; but they’re tangled up, and she can’t remember. What was it about parrots?

The next time she awakens, it’s with a start, as if she’s fallen off a step; and this time she knows exactly what’s missing. But it’s not ‘what’. It’s ‘who’.

Sophie is in Burntwood. Oh dear oh dear oh dear. Burntwood is a bad place.
Naughty
Sophie. Come out of there at once.

Sophie is in Burntwood. But where are you?

She opens her eyes and sees only white: a perfectly white room. No looking-glass, no pictures on the walls, no furniture except for this bed.

Fragments of memory return. Sinclair sitting at his desk: his cobalt necktie exactly matching the colour of his eyes.
You are ill. I have taken medical advice. I know I am right.

Cameron looking down at her with that distant expression.
I feel as though I don’t know you any more. But I suppose the truth is, I never did.

But Sophie’s in Burntwood, and that’s a bad place.
Bad
place. And there’s no-one to get her out. Oh dearie me.

And you’re not helping, are you, Maddy? Everyone’s so cross with you. Cameron. Sinclair. Even Mrs Herapath; Sinclair saw to her too.
I regret
, she had said in her curt, shaky little note,
that in view of what your husband has told me about your extraordinary deception, I must decline all further communication.

So everyone is cross with you and no-one will help, and it’s all down to you, Maddy, oh yes it is. You shall just have to sort it out on your own.

Don’t want to sort it out. Don’t know
how
to get to Burntwood. Don’t know
how
to get away from Sinclair.

What about killing him? Now there’s an idea. Lettice always said you were bad. And remember, you’ve still got Ben’s gun. It’s in the bottom of the trunk, rolled up in a pair of combinations. The eau-de-nil ones with the rosebuds round the hem. Heigh-ho.

The door opens. She shuts her eyes and pretends to be asleep, and listens as someone comes in and stands by the bed. It must be a man, for its tread is heavy, and she can hear it breathing noisily through its nose.

She opens her eyes a fraction, then shuts them again.

It’s that Dr Valentine. She doesn’t like him. He was waiting for her when they got to Providence. And he’s so
vain
. He brushes his silver hair forward to cover his bald spot, and he deepens his voice to make it more commanding, and he obviously believes that he has a penetrating stare.

He reminds her of a vampire. Dr Valentine Vampire, with his brushed-forward hair and his deep voice which he thinks is so commanding. But he doesn’t frighten her. She can handle him with her eyes shut. In fact she’s doing it right now, by making him think that she’s fast asleep.

Everyone calls her a liar, and of course they’re right. She’s an expert at lying. She jolly well ought to be, she’s had enough practice. So just watch her now.

‘Mrs Lawe,’ says Dr Valentine in his deep, firm voice. ‘Mrs Lawe. Wake up.’

Slowly, hazily, she opens her eyes.

The doctor is leaning over her – commandingly, of course – and his face is so close that she can count the pores on his nose.

She gives him a drowsy little frown, as if she has indeed just woken up.

He pats her hand. ‘There’s a good girl. Now tell Dr Valentine how you feel.’

Slowly, dazedly, she blinks at him. Then she gives him a weak, scared, tremulous little smile. A sort of Clemency-smile. Yes, that’s it. Let’s pretend to be Clemency.

Out loud she whispers in a soft, trembly Clemency-voice, ‘Th-thirsty, doctor . . . Very thirsty . . . Where am I?’

He gives a satisfied nod. ‘To be sure, to be sure, of course you are thirsty. And no doubt hungry as well. You shall have a bowl of semolina directly, and a large glass of goat’s milk.’

How perfectly horrid, she thinks. Out loud she murmurs, ‘Thank you, doctor,’ in a grateful Clemency-whisper.

‘Excellent,’ he says. ‘Now you must be very good and lie here quietly, and do exactly as I say. And by and by, you shall begin to feel a great deal better.’

‘Yes, doctor,’ she whispers, and snuggles into the pillow and shuts her eyes. Your little Clemency-patient is so sleepy, doctor, and so confused. All this talking has tired out her poor weak brain.

He takes her pulse and feels beneath her jaw, and she restrains an urge to bite him on the wrist. Finally, with a satisfied ‘Capital, capital,’ he leaves the room, and a moment later she hears the key turn in the lock.

Yes, doctor, she thinks as she opens her eyes, I shall do exactly as you say. I shall drink my horrid goat’s milk, and eat my horrid semolina. And then when I’m strong again, and it’s night-time and you and Sinclair and the housekeeper are asleep, I shall clamber out of that window over there, the one with the louvres coming loose, and I shall sneak round behind the croton bushes and find my trunk and my clothes and my gun, and steal Sinclair’s horse – or maybe the carriage-horse, or maybe yours, doctor, if I like the look of it – and that’s the last you’ll be seeing of me, Dr Valentine Vampire, with the commanding voice and the penetrating stare.

She stifles a spurt of laughter.

Is that the laudanum, making her silly? Oh well. It’s really rather nice. But watch out, Sinclair. Your wife has become a drug fiend.

‘Drug fiend,’ she giggles helplessly into her pillow.

Eliphalet Tait is just about full up to the neck with wife trouble. All damn week that Phoebe’s been lip-lashing and calling him spineless salt water nigger, just because they got nothing fancy to take for Free Come party over at Disappointment.

Well all
right
, he blazes into her, I go
get
you some fancy damn thing, woman!

Which is why he’s been stumbling round all night long in this damn dark Providence Wood, chewing on bissy nut to keep himself awake, and trying to poach little something to sweeten her up.

Lord God, but it
dark
in here! All tangle-up with hogmeat and wiss and wild pine, he near to break his damn leg! Still, his luck’s starting to sugar, for he’s just caught himself three little bald-pates, all nice and fat.

And now he’s at the edge of the wood, looking down on buckra house in the moonshine. And he’s just deciding to go and rest up in the stables till Cousin Sukey and old Aaron come awake and he can visit with them awhile, when he walks slap into spider-web, right slap across his face.

Now Eliphalet’s not no fool. He knows this a warning sign: that little Master Anancy spider-man trying to tell him to stay back. So Eliphalet apologizes to spider-man for messing with his place, and thanks him for the warning. And he’s just about to turn and go, when down below, out the buckra house, he sees a woman in white come creeping soft, soft, towards the stable door.

Eliphalet near to chokes on his bissy nut. Lord Master God! Is what all this now?
Buckra
woman creeping about at three o’clock in the night?

He gets down behind rockstone at edge of the trees, and peers over the top.

Even for buckra woman, she’s walking strange: like she’s all liquored up or dizzy or took sick. He wonders if maybe she’s the wife of that pinch-mouth parson over at Fever Hill who maintains she’s gone moonshine mad.

Hn, thinks Eliphalet. Mad, I don’t know. But she wants bad to get away from her man.

He sees her go into the stable, then come out again riding horse – and she’s not riding it sideways like up-class buckra women always do, but just like a man.

Peculiar strange, he tells himself. And he sits down in the deep darkness behind the rockstone to consider awhile.

He must a fell in sleep, for when he comes awake, Brother Sun’s starting up into the big blue, and crac-cracs are buzzing roundabout, and jabbering crows are jabbering away in the thatch-palm above his head. And down at the buckra house there’s a lot, lot a trouble.

Cousin Sukey’s outside the cook-house wringing her hands, and old Aaron’s running fast as he can for the stables, and that parson’s pacing, pacing in the yard, looking angrified and yelling for his horse.

Eliphalet swallows hard, and stays careful still. Eliphalet, he tells himself, don’t you get tangle-up in this. You stand up soft now, and take foot and run like black ant back to your own self yard. And you give Phoebe those bald-pates to make her sweet, and have nice little party over at Disappointment, and swallow your damn spit.

And you keep one careful fact in that head you got. Far as you concern, you never was here at all.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

The dew had been heavy overnight, so his wife’s trail was easy to follow.

For an hour he had tracked her, and despite the heat and the discomfort he had almost enjoyed the ride, for with every passing moment he felt more certain that he would find her. She was no match for him. Instead of going north towards Fever Hill she had headed east, in a transparent attempt to throw him off the scent. Did she take him for a fool? Or did she think that he lacked his brother’s woodsmanship?