The Asylum (17 page)

“I will leave you here,” he said reluctantly, with a look—or so, again, I would have sworn—of hopeless yearning. “If you simply retrace your steps at mealtimes, the attendant will let you through.”

He opened the door for me, bowed, and departed, and there was Bella, calmly putting away the last of my things.

“Very pleased to see you again, Miss Ashton, I’m sure. Will there be anything else?”

Her smooth, childish face now seemed a mask of deceit.

“No, thank you, Bella.”

She bobbed her head and withdrew, leaving me to my new surroundings.

The room, papered in a blue floral print, which, though faded, was distinctly more cheerful, was furnished in much the same fashion as the one in the infirmary, with a small oak chest beside the wardrobe and a writing table by the window. The paved courtyard below was enclosed by the other three sides of the building, with row after row of windows overlooking mine; I was glad to see that there were curtains. Four metal bars were set into the stonework, but outside the glass, making it seem less like a prison cell. The door had no observation slot; there was even a flimsy bolt for privacy, but no key in the lock.

I had not removed my cloak, and since there was still plenty of daylight left, I decided to test my newly acquired freedom at once to see if I really would be allowed out into the grounds. Two fashionably dressed women—visitors? voluntary patients? spies?—were conversing at the foot of the staircase; they glanced at me curiously but did not speak. My heart beat faster as I approached the door, but no one leapt from the shadows to seize me, and a moment later I was standing on the gravel path.

To my left was dense woodland, extending westward to the boundary wall, which looked at least a hundred yards off. A pale sun was sinking toward the treetops. Ahead and to my right, men were working in a patchwork of fields. Cattle grazed beneath the wall, which ran in a great curve round to the north and east, in the direction of the entrance. But for the great bulk of the asylum at my back, I might have been standing in the fields near Brighstone Forest, where my aunt and I had sometimes walked.

I turned right, as I had done before, and followed the path toward the gate. Freedom seemed tantalizingly close; my heart was thumping and my mouth was very dry as I passed beneath the branches of the copper beech, now coming into bud, and onto the forecourt.

The gates were closed. Further proof, if any was needed, that my escape had been contrived. I should have realised that no lunatic asylum would ever leave its main entrance open and unguarded.

You will be closely watched.
Imagining Dr. Straker’s cool, sardonic gaze fixed upon me from above, I fought down a wave of panic and kept on walking around to the right, across the entrance to the stable yard, and round behind the stable buildings, out of sight of the house.

On this side of the estate, the ground sloped up toward the outer wall, which looked even farther away. To the east were open fields and meadows; to the south, more woodland. I came around the back of the stables into a large kitchen garden, bounded on my right by a very high brick wall. An hour earlier, I had been sitting on the other side of it. Two kitchenmaids were pulling up carrots from a bed nearby; they glanced at me curiously, but without any sign of alarm.

I went on through the opening at the far end. Red brick gave way to the grey stone of the middle wing; ahead of me loomed a squat, rectangular tower, built of much older stone, so dark and pitted it was almost black. The windows on the upper levels were no more than vertical slots; the ones on the ground level had been bricked up altogether, along with the doorway.

As I came closer, I saw that the tower was part of a long, rambling building made of the same blackened stone, plainly the original house. It stood about twenty paces from the main building; the two were connected by a flagged path, roofed in stone like a cloister. No smoke rose from any of the chimneys; the flagstones were strewn with rotting leaves, and weeds had grown up through the surrounding gravel.

The walls of the two buildings, the grey and the black, seemed to lean toward each other, forming a lopsided chasm. If I walked to the far end, and turned right, I should be back where I started. High above me, the uppermost windows caught the rays of the sinking sun, but the ground where I stood was already in shadow.
You were found unconscious on the path . 
.
 .
Was this where I had suffered the seizure? What had I been doing here, in the middle of the night? And what had caused it? Something I had seen? Or heard?

My feet began to move of their own accord, faster and faster until I was running over the gravel, around the last corner to the door from which I had set out, along the hall—which seemed to have grown much darker in my absence—and up the stairs, pursued by my frantically echoing footsteps all the way to my room, where I closed and bolted the door behind me and leant against it, shaking from head to foot.

Whether Frederic was simply in thrall to his master, or in league with him, Dr. Straker would never have agreed to move me unless it served his purpose.
Was
he tempting me to escape again? I could think of no other reason. If so, he would surely expect me to make for Gresham’s Yard.

Where something even more terrifying might be waiting for me. Or, at the very least, my arrest as an escaped lunatic claiming to be Miss Ferrars.

Without money, I could go no farther than Liskeard. So if he meant to lure me back to Gresham’s Yard, there ought to be another purse conveniently hidden somewhere in this room. And then, when the trap had been baited, I would find the gates open again.

So my one hope of escape was to find the money—if there was any to find—and flee, not to Gresham’s Yard, but . . . to Mr. Wetherell, the solicitor in Plymouth. I did not think—no, I felt sure—I had not mentioned him either to Frederic or Dr. Straker. I had never met him myself, but that might be just as well; my signature, at least, would match.

The last rays of the sun were fading from the roof opposite, but there was still enough daylight left. Might they be watching me at this very moment? I glanced around the walls and ceiling, looking for spy-holes. Impossible to tell; I remembered my aunt showing me that you could see a whole coastline through a hole no bigger than the point of a pencil. If they
were
watching, they would be expecting—indeed hoping—that I would search the room.

The hatbox and valise were placed exactly as they had been in the infirmary. I went through them both very carefully, and felt all around the linings, without success. There was no money concealed amongst my clothes, or underneath the mattress, or in the oak chest: the bottom drawer opened an inch and stuck fast, but when I removed the other two I saw that it was empty, and there was nothing attached to the inside of the cabinet except dust and grimy remnants of cobweb. I examined every piece of furniture in the room, even removing the drawer from the writing desk to look into the cavity, without finding a single farthing.

Defeated, I knelt down beside the oak chest, intending to replace the drawers, but instead began to fiddle with the one that had stuck, rocking it diagonally back and forth until it began to emerge in tiny increments. I braced one hand against the cabinet for leverage. As I did so, I had a sudden vision of a serpent coiled in the darkness beneath, waiting to strike.

I shuddered violently, and the drawer shot out, colliding painfully with my shin. Something gleamed faintly in the dusty recess: not a serpent, but a gold clasp—the two gold clasps of my writing case. Kneeling closer, I saw that it was covered in a fine layer of dust, floating up around me as I lifted it out with unbelieving hands. The impression left in the dust was plainly visible.

Part Two

Rosina Wentworth to Emily Ferrars

Portland Place,
Marylebone
10 August 1859

Dearest Emily,

You will scarcely believe what has happened. Clarissa has eloped! With a young man called George Harrington, the one I told you about. She was flirting quite shamelessly with him at the Beauchamps’, but I never dreamt that anything would come of it—I thought she had resigned herself to marrying that horrid dried-up Mr. Ingram—but I must try to tell you everything in order.

On Monday, my father took the early train to Manchester. He was to be away two days, and that same afternoon Clarissa left—as I believed—to spend a week with the Fletchers in Brighton. She took an immense quantity of luggage, even for her, but I was looking forward to having the house to myself, and thought no more of it until my father returned on Friday evening. I was playing the piano in the drawing room when I heard him berating one of the maids; as usual, he did not even look in but went straight to his study.

A few moments later I heard him tramping along the hall; I assumed that he was going out again, but he burst into the room, seized me by the arm, and lifted me right off my feet, waving a letter in my face and shouting, “Where is your sister?” All I could reply was, “In Brighton, with the Fletchers,” which only enraged him more, until I understood that the letter was from Clarissa, telling him that she had run away. He ordered me up to my room to await his summons. By the time Lily brought me my supper, the news was all around the servants’ hall, but she knew no more than I did.

When he called me into his study the next morning, he was his usual cold, implacable self. “Your sister’s name is never to be spoken in this house again,” he said. “Henceforth it will be as if she never existed. And be warned: I will not be embarrassed a second time.” He told me that he had dismissed Miss Woodcroft—did you ever meet her?—without a reference. “I will have no more paid chaperones,” he said. “I have written to your aunt; she will be coming to live here, and you will be in her charge until I find a suitable husband for you. In the meantime, you are not to leave the house: if I hear that you have disobeyed me, you will be confined to your room.”

He did not even raise his voice, but I have never been so afraid of him. I had always assumed—perhaps I mean hoped—that beneath that cold exterior must be
some
feeling for me, but I saw in his eyes that there is none. I am a piece of property, a negotiable security, as he would say, and that is all. It is what poor Mama must have realised, and I am sure it is what she died of. She was a failure as an investment, because she gave him daughters when he wanted sons. And now that Clarissa has run away, he is all the more determined that I, at least, will yield a profit.

He went out soon afterward, and I retreated to the drawing room, too shaken even to open the piano. I still knew nothing of where Clarissa had gone, or why, but a little later I heard the doorbell, and Mrs. Harkness came barging in, with Betsy trailing helplessly behind her. She took great pleasure in telling me that Clarissa had fled to Rome with George Harrington—“
quite
the rake, my dear, and
so
untrustworthy, and
fancy
you not knowing,
all
of London is agog”—until I could bear it no more, and showed her out myself. When I went upstairs, I found the entire contents of Clarissa’s room—clothes, ornaments, bedding, curtains, furniture, even the carpets—heaped in a great jumble on the landing, and the footmen stripping the paper off the walls—“master’s orders, miss”—because she had chosen it, I suppose. Everything was carried off in a cart, to be burnt, for all I know.

I hope that Godfrey is not overworking himself again. I should so love to see you, but I am forbidden all visitors until my aunt arrives. I shall write again as soon as I can.

All my love to you, and to dear Godfrey,

Your loving cousin,

Rosina

Portland Place
19 August 1859

Dearest Emily,

It is even worse than I thought: I am to be a prisoner, and I may not receive visitors or leave the house unless I am manacled, in all but name, to Aunt Harriet—of whom I shall write when I can. She will open all letters addressed to me, and I am not allowed to send anything she has not seen. I shall write you dutiful letters to ward off suspicion—do not believe a word of them, but tell me all your news.

It is Lily’s afternoon off, and she is going to smuggle this to the post. I shall write in earnest when I can.

Your loving cousin,

Rosina

Portland Place
7 October 1859

Dearest Emily,

I have not dared to write candidly before this, for fear that Lily would be searched on her way to the post, and then I should be altogether cut off from you. But writing to you with Aunt Harriet peering—sometimes literally—over my shoulder has become intolerable.

All joy withers in her presence; not that there was ever much of it in this house, which seems more than ever like a mausoleum. You would not know to look at her that she is my father’s sister, but they are alike in that regard at least. She is gaunt and boney, and wears her hair, which is the colour of cold ashes—indeed, she
smells
of cold ashes—drawn back so tightly that it makes her look even more like a death’s head. And she dresses only in black: the dullest, drabbest, most funereal shade that money can buy. She has spent her life as companion to Grandmother Wentworth in Norfolk—a fate that would make me feel sorry for anyone else—and reminds me frequently of the sacrifice her mother is making in “sparing” her.

I tried, at first, to placate her, but she would have none of it. I have come to realise that she hates me, simply for being young, and—if I could only escape her—capable of delight. I fear that I am growing to hate
her,
though the worst I have done thus far is to practise Beethoven very loudly, knowing that she dislikes it, but she cannot say so beyond complaining that it gives her a headache, because to ask anything of me would mean that I might ask something in return.