Bride of a Distant Isle (36 page)

He stopped in front of marker 256. I stood there for a moment, uneasy, not knowing where to step. Was I stepping on her? Stepping on someone else?

The priest seemed to understand. “Do not worry, daughter. You do no disrespect standing on the field and, as you know, your mother is not there in the truest sense of the word. No one can see you. You can cry if you like.”

I shook my head no. Perhaps later, perhaps alone. Not here. I had always wanted to know how her life had ended, but no one would say. Had I not come to Medstone, had the priest not brought me here, I'd never have truly understood.

My face began to freeze. My heart began to bleed. “I just . . . I suppose I'd hoped until now that she really hadn't died. That she was waiting somewhere for me. I knew she'd find me if she could, but still, one hopes.”

He smiled softly. “She did die. The notes state that she was given the last rites, died in peace with her priest and a friend by her side, and mentioned Annabel and an Alessandru Bellini.”

“Bellini! Alessandru Bellini!” He looked at me rather firmly, and I quieted down. I did not want to give the wrong impression to any who might be about.

My father's name was Bellini. Perhaps I could locate him. Had Judith known his name? Certainly. And yet she'd erased all trace. Had Edward known, too?

I looked down at the ground, which gave no indication of ever having been disturbed. The grass grew as an unbroken blanket over her final resting place. She'd died in peace, which quieted a tremor my heart had always known, and with a friend. “Why was she buried here? Not returned to her family?”

“That was their request,” he said. “That was allowed many years ago, but now, not as often. We have run out of room in the ground, so the earthly remains are always returned to families unless they refuse to take them. Then, as often as not, their final resting place is in a pauper's field.”

I was relieved that had not happened to my mother.

“I wish I'd have been old enough to help. I wish I would have known more, and sooner. I wish there was something I could do to honor her.”

“Do what you think you should do,” he said. “Be who you hope and pray you could be. Be kind. Be courageous. That is what will honor her. Any good mother.”

He nodded toward Medstone. “Ready?”

I nodded. “Will you come back?” I asked.

“I shall visit when I can. But an outbreak of influenza has just taken hold in one of the attendants' cottages and visitors are not likely to be allowed soon, I'm sorry to say. The risk . . .”

I nodded. I understood the risk. I saw, I heard, I feared it all afternoon, every afternoon, at the infirmary. It spread like flame to pitch. There were no quarantine rooms here.

Late that night, after a dinner of mutton stew, I returned to my room and sat thinking in the silence while the night grew quiet but for the coughs of the newly ill.

My mother, Julianna. My father, Alessandru Bellini. My mother's name was Julianna Bellini, and she had named me, I'd just realized, for the contraction and conjoining of their names. The last portion of her Christian name and the first portion of her surname.

Annabel.

My mother had risked all for my father—and had paid the final, permanent price for their love and for bearing me. And yet as I looked back on the few memories I had of her, I could not imagine that she would have foregone those risks. The pictures of her and my father glowed with love and affection. They had risked; they had lost, that was true, but they had also gained.

I had already grieved the loss of my mother, so that was not a fresh wound. It brought me comfort to have her remains nearby. Instead, I sought to think carefully about what I might do to help reclaim her life, her name, and if in any way achievable, my fortune.

It would not be easy, if it were even possible. And I had so little time before being permanently admitted.

L
ate that night, Mrs. Strange came to visit and to see if I needed some sleeping medication after my difficult day. I had always foregone her suggestion of it, not trusting much in substances after my recent encounters with the poison-stirred honey at Highcliffe.

But wait! Perhaps it had not been poisoned. It was foreign. Greek honey.

Mad honey!

She must have seen my startled, agitated expression. I sat upright, and then back again. “Would you like a draught?” she asked again. “It may help. You won't hear the nighttime . . . screams.”

The screams. I hated them. Were they due to illness? Or was someone harming someone else? I shuddered, and was tempted. “No, thank you,” I finally said. “But can you stay and sit with me for a moment?”

“Of course,” she said, plumping herself on the small chair in the corner of the room.

“You say you are here to help me, and the priest said you were trustworthy. But I must know: Are you here working on Edward's behalf?”

“No,” she said. “Certainly not.”

“And yet you were sent in response to his letter to the specialist.”

“Yes.” She looked at her hands for a moment. “I know Father Gregory at the Earl of Somerford's as well.”

Understanding expanded from the center of my being outward. I now understood. Father Gregory had somehow been involved, perhaps even sent her to me. I decided to take a chance.

“I suspect that my cousin's wife saw my reaction to her absinthe, told her husband, and then my cousin arranged for his import partners to provide me with foreign honey, and began to dose me with it in my tea; my cousin's wife had heard the Maltese captain speak of such a thing when she was with me. It was within his means.”

“
His
meaning the captain?”

I nodded slowly. “That is possible. But my family also imports many goods from Turkey and Greece. So Edward could have acquired some of their ‘mad' honey quite easily, given prompting from Clementine as a way to solve their problems. If I were found mad, even though I might be legitimate, I could not inherit our property or resources. My cousin would not have wanted me married—and bearing a child.”

A thought occurred to me. Mr. Morgan could also have acquired the crazy honey, to bend me to his will. The stone he'd given me was from Turkey, certainly acquired through those same importers.

“That would certainly explain things,” Mrs. Strange said.

“You cannot liberate me from here?”

She shook her head. “I'm sorry, Miss Ashton. I do not have leave to do that. There are limits on what I may do.”

Money again. It always bought, or denied, power.

She bid me good night and took the lamp with her, as always. A light impression of sweet, ashy incense remained in the room as she left. Most probably from church, which is how she must know the priests.

I did not hear Josephine cry that night, which was happy news, but the coughs up and down the corridor, which had started out as an occasional punctuation of the silence, had now grown to an insistent chorus. I found myself in the awkward, somewhat shameful position of hoping that the woman who screamed almost every night had been taken ill, temporarily, so we would not be subject to her shrieking.

T
he next evening, oddly, none of my tablemates were present for the evening meal. Mrs. Strange came to help me ready for bed that night and her face soon showed concern.

“What is it?” I slipped into my nightgown.

“The lieutenant passed away.”

I sat on the bed. “Oh no.”

She nodded. “And yet, in a way . . .”

“It's a comfort for him.”

“I think it is,” she said. “He no longer suffers.”

I said nothing for a long moment. “I do not want to look forward to death as a blessing and a comfort,” I said. “I am young, and I am not insane. I want to live.”

A long silence. What more could be said? “I shall leave a candle tonight if you promise not to share the secret, so you may read and take pleasure in that if you like.”

“Thank you,” I answered. Mr. Poe's melancholic musings were unlikely to bring me cheer, but perhaps they would help pass the long evening hours.

She shut the door behind her, and in boredom I began to turn his pages. I quickly passed “Annabel Lee”; I was tempted to tear out the pages but imagined what kind of hullabaloo that would cause should the discarded pages be found. Defacing a book would no doubt be seen as another symptom of madness. There were other short selections in the volume.

I came to his story of premature burial.

Like many of my own countrymen, Mr. Poe shared a fear of being interred into the ground before he was fully dead. Stories had gone round my school about crypts being opened many years later only to find someone previously thought dead leaning against the doorway, outside of her coffin. Poe had, apparently, made a pact with his friends that they would ensure he was not buried alive. Friends of my own had, indeed, joined the Winchester Society for the Prevention of People Being Buried Alive. Yes, they'd told me, one could have a bell attached to a coffin, but what if no one is around to hear it being rung after it's been interred? Yes, it was true that coffins no longer were screwed shut, but what if one did not possess the strength to push the lid open?

I had scoffed at that, but they had not. Several had spent their few pennies to join, and one assumed that Mr. Poe would have gladly joined them. I opened his story again and read, but one phrase stuck in my mind, and I could not push beyond it.

The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?

I blew out the candle and lay back. A thought came to me, a wisp at first, like the smoke curling away in the dark.

Would it be possible for me to be prematurely buried? Sent home as dead? Could I feign death as an escape, and then remain free for those necessary fourteen days? It was possible. To stay here was to die—that much was certain. Perhaps soon.

I thought back to my discussion with Lady Somerford about the rooms in which priests had once held secret divine services. She'd told me,
“There is no gain without risk, my dear, and it made rather good sport to outfox the authorities.”
I'd smiled and laughed with her before affirming,
“Much was risked, and everything gained.”

Yes. It was possible.

So much must be risked. So much might be gained.

LATE NOVEMBER, 1851

T
he next day marked nearly a month since my arrival; Mrs. Strange came to sit with me as she did each morning. I firmly shut the door behind her. “I need to take you into my confidence. Can I trust you?”

“I've said that you can,” she replied. What choice did I have? There was nothing she could do to me, nothing even she could relay to Edward, that would make my situation any more precarious than it currently was. If I did not leave the asylum soon I would be permanently admitted.

“What I'm wondering is . . . are the bodies of those dying of influenza subject to a postmortem?”