The Pierced Heart: A Novel (15 page)

“Look at me,” he said softly. “Look at me.”

I raised my head at last and looked into those eyes, lit now only by the embers of the dying fire, and so pale there seemed scarcely an iris at all, only the deep black of the pupils, drawing me forwards, as if down a tunnel leading to the dark. And all the while the push, push, push of his thumbs in my palms.

And then he began to question me, and I heard my own voice answer as if it were not my own. A voice distant and slumberous, and as dull in tone as of one deeply drugged. I told him things I had forgotten, or did not even know I knew. I told him of the sleepwalking, and how it afflicts me always at the fullness of the moon, when my bleeds come. I told him, as I had told my father, of the Influencing Machine and the colours that rise from my fingers, so beautiful and cold. But I did not speak of the nightmare, and of that he did not ask.

And when it was over and he released me and let in the light, I sat shivering by the cold hearth, my body burning and my senses so heightened that I could hear my father talking with him in the vestibule, even though they spoke in whispers and the door was pulled shut.

“So what have you concluded? What is it that ails my daughter?”

“It is early to make a definitive diagnosis. But I do not believe her to be afflicted by some mental defect, such as I know you have feared.”

“But what other explanation is there for such delusions—those colours she says she saw? Only the mad see things that are not there.”

“It is one explanation, certainly, but not, I believe, the correct one in this case. It will be necessary for me to treat your daughter further—to enquire more profoundly into the deeper past. Questions such as the circumstances of the onset of her somnambulism. From what she has just told me it was exactly coincidental with the commencement of her first bleeds—is this true?”

“Both events occurred within weeks of her mother’s death. It affected her deeply. Too deeply.”

“Indeed. And your observation is apposite. There is something—some profound distress connected with her mother which is more than mere grief, and which I have not yet fathomed. But I do not believe it was the cause of her sleepwalking, or these new colours that she now sees.”

“So what
is
the cause? Forgive me, Excellency, but you must appreciate the strain all this has placed upon me. I have even considered placing her in an institution—there were doctors in Vienna who advised it, not only lately but some years ago, when I found her one night in the street, half-dressed and acting like some common whore—”

“You may be assured that I will do my utmost to penetrate to the heart of the mystery. All may soon be elucidated. Good day to you.”

14 A
PRIL

And that has been my life, this last week. I have spent my mornings in the air and the light with Dora, and my afternoons shut away, hour after hour alone in the dark, and with this man. Each time it is the same, the same questions, the same sense of departing from myself, and yet each time I have the sensation that he is drawing me deeper, probing me more intimately, laying me bare. And now when I dream, I dream of him, of those strange eyes, and those dry pressing hands, and the electric energy that seems to flow between us. And three times now, to my shame—I have dreamed so vividly it is more real to me than memory, of his body above me, and his face closing against mine, and that cold mouth sharp upon my neck, and I have woken to the sound of my own voice moaning, and a tingling wetness between my legs that has me twisting into my fevered pillow, with my own hand at my thighs.

I know it is wrong. I know that normal people do not dream such disgusting dreams, or find such pleasure in vileness, and when I walk in the bright breeze with Dora, talking of innocent daylight things, I
have to turn my burning face away when the memories come unbidden of what I have done in the dark. And I understand, now, and for the first time, that abhorrent painting we brought to life in our lantern, and the girl who gasps with pleasure at the grinning demon’s touch.

M
IDNIGHT

Eight o’clock it was when he left me, saying I was almost ready—that the first phase of my treatment was nearly over, and within a few days he might consider me advanced sufficiently for the next to begin. Though he would not, despite my pleading, tell me what that entailed. I closed the door at length behind him and went to the window, watching him away down the street until he disappeared. My father was absent, having explained there were further possessions of ours that had not yet arrived and he wished to make enquiries at the custom-house. With nothing to do but await his return, I lingered there at the window, restless and dissatisfied, as the rising moon made the town into a tessellation of black and slate and grey. And then as I gazed I thought I saw something amid the abbey walls. It was so far away I could not be sure, but I thought I glimpsed a flicker of white, and I wondered at once about the tale they told of the woman who was said to haunt that place. The night was so beautiful, and the moon so near the full, I felt a sudden urge to drench myself in that bathing light, and I took my shawl and left the house as the church clock struck the half hour. There was hardly anybody abroad, and I crossed the bridge and climbed the steps towards the graveyard and the turn in the path where the abbey first lifts into view. I looked up towards it, but there was nothing, just the empty cloisters black against the sky and the clouds running over the moon. I stopped for a moment to catch my breath and caught a movement on the far side of the graveyard. My eyes had not deceived me. There was a woman all in white sitting on the bench, looking out to sea. And bending over her, the figure of a man. A tall man, in a long dark coat.

I hastened forwards as fast as I could, my heart beating against my ribs, and for several minutes the graveyard was hidden from my sight. And when I gained the gate at last and looked across, the moon slipped from behind the last cloud and flooded the graveyard in a sudden dazzling light. The man had gone. The woman was alone, and it was Dora.

I have sworn to tell the truth in these pages, and so I will confess it. All I felt that moment was a terrible overwhelming jealousy. I had thought myself his only charge—his only care—and now I found they had both been deceiving me. Was he treating her, as he was treating me? Why had she not told me that they were acquainted? And what had the two of them been doing here, alone, in the darkness, and without a chaperone? My heart was now pounding so hard I could scarcely breathe, though whether from the effort of the climb or from bitter rage I could not have told. I strode towards her through the gravestones, but as I approached my pace slowed. Her head was thrown back against the bench, and her lips were parted. Her handkerchief was in her lap, and on linen, breast, and skin there was a trail of blood.

“Dora!” I cried, kneeling before her, and taking her in my arms, all my jealousy forgotten in remorse, “
Dora!
”

She stirred then and opened her eyes, looking at me confusedly, saying that she had been dreaming.

“Where is he?” I demanded, grasping her frozen hand, terrified, because she could not walk, and I could not carry her. “He cannot be far away. He must help us.”

She frowned at me, as if still half-dazed. “Who are you talking of? There is no-one here. No-one but me and Jip.”

But when I looked about me I could not see the little dog anywhere.

“Wait here,” I said urgently, taking my shawl from my shoulders and wrapping it tightly about her. “I will find help.”

It was ten agonising minutes before I returned with the landlord
of the lodging-house at the foot of the steps. I feared that when he opened the door to see my wild face and bloodied hands he must have thought me the victim, or even the perpetrator, of some violent misadventure. But he proved, once reassured, to be both kind and capable and went immediately back into the house to fetch blankets and a small flask of brandy before following me up to the burial-ground. We chafed Dora’s cheeks and gave her sips of the liquid, but nothing seemed to warm her, so the man wrapped her in the blankets and carried her down the stairs to the town, saying as he lifted her that she was so light she seemed hardly heavier than his little grand-daughter of eleven. When we reached Bourne House at last we found that Mr Holman had already sent the servants looking for Dora in the streets thereabouts, and had been on the point of going himself to the graveyard, but only in a last desperation, as it was impossible she could have managed that climb alone. But manage it she had, for the Holmans’ donkey-cart was in its accustomed place. Nor could anyone account for why Dora should have left the house alone, and in the dark. I thought I might know the answer to that question, but when I hinted I may have seen someone with her, it was clear that none of them recognised the man whom I described. The doctor then arriving, I took the opportunity to slip away, reaching home only a few minutes before my father. I told him I felt unwell and retired at once to my own chamber. And tonight, for the first time since we came here, I woke in the dark shivering at my window, and there are scratches on the glass that look like the marks of claws.

15 A
PRIL
,
NOON

I have just returned from Bourne House. My Dora slept badly, they tell me, complaining of the noise of some great bird battering at the shutters, though neither her sister nor the nurse heard anything untoward. They told me I could not see her, but when Mr Holman saw my distress he relented, saying only that she had at last fallen into a fitful slumber and I must promise not to wake her. And so I crept softly to her bedside, and stood watching with her sister Emily, as
Dora shifted and moaned in her sleep, murmuring once or twice, but in no words I could understand. I have never seen her so pale; her lips were almost white and the hand resting on the coverlet hardly darker than the sheet.

“Where is Jip?” I whispered as we left, seeing the little basket empty at the foot of the bed.

“No-one has seen him since yesterday. Tom has gone out to find him—Dora would be distraught to wake and find him missing.”

We closed the door quietly and went slowly down the stairs, and as we reached the hall the front door opened and young Mr Holman appeared in the doorway, with a bundle wrapped in sacking in his arms. But when he saw the two of us, his eyes widened in horror.

“No,” he said quickly, backing away, “no.”

But it was too late. Emily had already seen a small brown paw hanging down and rushed forwards. “But Tom, you have found him!”

And before he could stop her she had lifted the sacking and seen what lay beneath.

“Oh!” she cried, her hand to her mouth. “Who could do such a wicked thing to a defenceless little creature—it is horrible,
horrible
!”

I put my arm about her and turned away. But I had seen—and I still see now—the raw and gaping wound where some beast many times its size had torn open the poor dog’s throat, and it had lain unseen and undiscovered until it had bled its life away.

18 A
PRIL

The morning after they found Jip, Mr Holman came to tell me Dora was dying. That the doctor could not understand why her condition should have worsened so suddenly, but no treatment he had attempted seemed to have made any difference and it was doubtful she would live past nightfall. I wept then, in my father’s arms, and begged him to let me go to her. He was reluctant, at first, fearing I had not yet recovered my own strength, but at length he agreed.

I was horrified at the change in so few hours. If she had been pale before, I had no word for how she appeared to me now. Even her hair seemed ashen, and her face so translucent above the ruffled neck of her nightgown that I could see the thin blue veins beneath. Blue, not red, for there seemed no blood left in her, and the spots about the pillow were too vivid to have come from her exhausted frame. I could barely hear her breathing, but as the afternoon drew on and the light faded, her breath came in low heaving gasps, and her breast rose and fell as if in pain. And at the moment she passed from us I saw wings beating against the window, and heard that humming in my ears that has always been a harbinger of woe, and I was overwhelmed and knew no more.