The Gilded Cage (19 page)

Dr. Ebner looks away, uncomfortable, but says nothing. The other man only laughs. “She really is a wildcat, Henry, as you said. A pity she won't be your wife.”

Between them they carry me into the hall, my struggles causing my limbs to chafe against the rough rope binding them. We pass Elsie, rubbing her eyes sleepily and holding a candle. “Lady Katherine?” she says in a tiny voice, then, eyes widening, she rushes forward. Holding her light in one hand like a ward, she clutches at Henry's hand on my thigh. He pushes her against the wall, and her candle clatters into darkness.

The men stink from their exertions, all sweat and smoke and sourness. A few servants have emerged from their quarters to see what's happening; when they catch sight of me, strung between the men, they avert their eyes and disappear back into the shadows of the hallway. Mrs. Whiting's eyes meet mine, and I think she'll say something, but she doesn't. My throat is raw from screaming around my gag, and my head sings with pain and confusion.

The last thing I see before I'm carried out the front door is Grace. She holds a lantern that illuminates the prim circle of her face. I can't speak, but try pleading for her aid with my gaze. She stares back at me coldly—as if she's never seen me before. It so chills my heart that for a moment I stop struggling.

Grunting, the men hoist me onto the bench of an unfamiliar carriage. I sit lopsided, my muscles screaming, as Dr. Ebner slips a black hood over my head. For a moment I go still. Catching sharp breaths through the rough fabric makes me so light-headed I nearly swoon.

“The hood quiets the patient, as you can see. Much like a horse in blinders.” The cool, pedantic voice must be Dr. Ebner's, but the hood has the effect of flattening sound, and I can't be sure.

The man I cannot recognize is in higher spirits than the others, whooping and laughing as though this were just a moonlit lark. I hear him offering around a bottle of something that stinks sharper than whiskey. “She is a wildcat!” he keeps saying in satisfaction. But Henry's answering silence must wear him out, and soon the carriage rattling over the road is the only sound. Hunched on the seat in just my nightdress and bonds, I shiver and burn in turns, in the grip of a fever of fear and rage.

I wriggle my wrists in their ropes, but it seems only to make them tighter. Blind and mute, I find that I can't even squeeze out tears. For a time I try to keep track of our path, but fear disorients me and I soon give it up.

Then I start listening to the horses. Their hoofbeats are steady, and focusing on them makes my body stop shaking. After many, many minutes—an hour, at least—the carriage stops with a jerk.

“Heave ho,” says the third man, his voice slurring as he pulls me upright and out of the carriage. I teeter like a drunk, cringing in the frigid air. Gravel digs into the soft undersides of my feet, and the hood is scraped from my face. We've halted on a patch of misty ground, beside wrought-iron gates furred with rust.

I blink in the half-light as the drunk man unties the ropes binding my feet and Dr. Ebner unlooses my gag. “You'll keep quiet now, won't you, Katherine? This will go better if you're calm.” He smiles at me, almost kindly, then steps forward to the gates and sharply tugs the rope that hangs there. A bell rings harshly into the dim beyond.

I don't want to go through those gates. With everything that I am, everything that I know and can sense about this place, I do not want it. “Please,” I say.

“What's that?” Henry is at my side, smelling strongly of liquor but perfectly upright, ever military in his bearing.

“Please,” I say again. “Don't make me go in there.”

His eyes are hard and bright, triumphant. “You're a willful girl, Katherine. Draw on that strength over these next weeks. Or years. You're going to need it.”

Men's shapes appear in the gloom ahead of us, followed by the slight form of a woman. They open the gates, and, joining the three men who've brought me here, form a phalanx to usher me across the grounds.

The woman leads us, calling back to Henry as she walks. “She will be quite comfortable here, Mr. Campion,” she says. “We appreciate your donation, and you needn't worry about your young cousin now that she's passed into our care.”

It is then that I truly understand that Henry means to leave me here, friendless and lost. “This is mad!” I shout. “Where are you taking me? I haven't done anything wrong—I only refused to marry you!” For all the reaction I get, I might as well have remained silent.

“Dr. Ebner!” I try to get the old man to look at me. “You know this is wrong! Where have you taken me? What have I done to deserve punishment?” He looks straight ahead, trouble straining his brow.

Through the fog I see an imposing structure of dark-stained wood, looming nearly as large as Walthingham. Though ghostly lights flicker in some of the upper windows, the house keeps its secrets.

We pass through a pair of heavy wooden doors, thick as a fairy-tale castle's. Inside, the air smells of old dust and something sharp and medicinal. I stumble over a warped board in the near-dark. “Hello, Katherine,” says the woman, finally looking at me. She's slender and stands as tall as a man. Her hair, scraped back from her spare face, is as black as mine.

“I am
Lady
Katherine,” I say, shivering and ridiculous in my nightdress.

She turns fierce eyes toward Henry, then back on me. “I recommend you not overestimate your place in this world, girl. It will only lead to unhappiness. We don't value arrogance here, but peaceable tongues and docile manners. Remember that, and your lot won't be a miserable one. Mr. Cosley, take her to the third floor. There should be an open bed in the third cell.”

“The third
cell
?” I cry. “Henry, where have you brought me? I tell you, I've done nothing wrong!” My voice trails off into a scream as a man with a thick mustache and meaty arms below rolled sleeves takes my two wrists in hand, squeezing them tight behind me. The strength in the gesture is enough to warn me that fighting against him will have no purpose.

As he marches me up the twisting stairs, I turn long enough to see Henry's face—a blank mask. Shuddering, I look away.

“Where am I?”

The man pays me no mind.

“My name is Lady Katherine Randolph,” I try again. “And I am very rich.”

A snort from him, and he yanks my wrists back, sending a sharp sizzle of pain through my shoulders. I yelp without meaning to as we reach a threadbare landing.

A hallway lined in faded carpet stretches to either side of us, and the man veers left. To my horror, the doors we pass are bolted from the outside.
I know what kind of place this is
. I try to refuse the thought, but my sickness grows as we reach the third door, which he stops to unbolt. Then a dark cavity is yawning in front of me. Before I have time even to scream, my brutish escort shoves me on. I stumble into the room, and the door is bolted behind me.

I'm shocked to silence by the sudden blackness and the pungent stench of unwashed bodies that hits my nose with a slap. Slowly, my eyes adjust to the faint light coming from under the door. I can make out the shapes of three bunks arrayed against the walls in a U shape, and the faint wet glow of eyes watching me from the beds. Turning in fright, I bang my fists against the wood, calling out for help. I scream George's name; I scream Mr. Simpson's. When my skin begins to slip with blood, I start to kick.

Nobody comes, and the silence behind me is watchful and weary, all through my tantrum. Finally, a woman's voice comes from the nearest bunk. “Shut up, you. The bed beneath mine is empty, and you can consider yourself lucky for that. Lie down and stop your crying. Nobody's coming back for you tonight.”

Her voice sounds calm in the darkness, a beacon of clarity. “What is this place?” I whimper, ashamed.

She laughs, the tone suddenly colored with dark humor. “You truly don't know? It's Temperley's House of Lunatics, stupid girl. Welcome home!”

 

CHAPTER 22

D
ESPITE THE AWFUL
smell and the watery moaning and dry snores of the women around me, I try to sleep a little on my hard cot, wrapped in a blanket that does nothing to keep unseen bugs from biting my skin.

Between drifting into nightmares I cannot remember and waking to the real horror of my surroundings, my mind turns and turns. Why has Henry done this to me? Was it my refusal? The fact that I found out his secret? But why an asylum, of all places? I'm not mad, just grieving. Then I remember the day I found the bloody paintbrush, and the way my cousins looked at me as I raved. But still Henry professed to wanting my hand. He
knows
I am as sane as him. Saner.

When the answer comes to me, it's so obvious I could cry. I'm not mad, just fatally thoughtless: with George dead, I am the sole heir of Walthingham. And with me locked up, my sanity in question,
Henry
has become the Lord of Walthingham Hall—with all of the estate's vast wealth at his fingertips. No doubt he will summon his lawyers the moment the sun rises, to transfer over to him everything that was in my name.

Grace's face as I last saw it, stiff and uncaring, passes before my eyes. Did my cousins plot this together? My selling of the estate would have left them dependent on my charity, and on the small income of Henry's quarries. I was a fool to think they would not fight my decision and to underestimate the cruelties they're capable of. The Beast of Walthingham does exist, and there are two, beastly with greed and obsessed with maintaining a veneer of empty propriety.

My hands curl into fists as I think of Henry, cool and pressed, visiting the offices of Mr. Simpson's firm, sadly relaying the news of my mental breakdown.

It was inevitable
, he'll say.
The loss of her parents, then her poor, dear brother—how much can a woman handle?

But will Mr. Simpson believe me mad? My behavior at his lodgings was less than calm, but he could not have thought me truly broken. The memory of our closeness hits me with fresh pain. Why, oh, why did I pull away from his touch? I could so easily have fallen into his embrace, and now I may never see him again. It was pride, I think, or stubbornness. An unwillingness to take the easy route, to allow myself to be happy. Perhaps he was right. I
have
changed. I've let this place infect me, bind me with its strictures and rules, with its foolish clothes and modes of behavior. I wish, oh, I wish I had kissed him
.

Or perhaps Henry will simply tell Mr. Simpson I'm gone, on my way back to America without saying good-bye. Yes, it will be easier that way. Mr. Dowling will not think of me again, and even Jane will forget my imagined treachery. When I think of her warm sitting room, where I sat less than one day ago, I can hardly believe that such a place exists. My last thought before sleeping is a wish for a cup of Mr. Dowling's tea, hot in my palms and sweet with honey.

*   *   *

Waking in a cell is harder than waking the morning after George's death. The room does not improve by daylight, what little of it manages to trickle through the window. The five women turning in their beds are of various ages, each clothed in a dress of plain gray. The walls of our prison are papered over in peeling blue-and-white stripes, like something an Englishwoman might choose for the walls of her child's nursery. Of the five women sharing the room, three still lie quiet under blankets no nicer than mine. A woman of about forty rocks back and forth in her bed; it takes me long minutes to realize that the airless hiss I'm hearing is a stream of whispered words issuing from her lips, without meaning or pause. An older woman with a stony face stands next to a curtain, behind which is the room's single convenience. She does not speak or smile, but raps the wall beside her with her fist in an endless cadence that I think will drive me mad, until she stops and retreats behind the curtain. The smell that fills the room soon after is worse than the tapping, and I bury my face in my hands, finally allowing myself to cry.

The bed overhead creaks, and the woman I spoke to last night drops her head over the edge, watching me through a curtain of lank, whitish hair. “I'm Margaret,” she says. “I met you.”

“Yes,” I choke, swiping at my damp eyes. Even now, I'm unwilling to let strangers see me sob. “And you told me this place was a madhouse. I don't belong here—I'm not mad in the least; I've been betrayed.”

Her eyes go wide with concern. She disappears for a moment, and then climbs down to sit beside me. “Tell me what's been done to you, poor child,” she says in a soothing voice. My heart leaps in hope as I tell her of my predicament, from Henry's proposal at Walthingham Hall to my late-night transport to this horrible place. She nods in recognition as I speak, her eyes growing bright.

Her voice is sad when she replies. “Your story is much like mine. You see”—she looks about, as if to see who is listening to us—“I, too, have been locked up because of a great injustice.”

I grab her hand impulsively. “Did your husband send you away?”

She shakes her head. “Not my husband, my father. I was never allowed to marry—were I to have children, I would become even more dangerous to my enemies.”

“Your enemies?” I ask, my neck prickling.

She nods. “I have a great many. You see, I am the illegitimate daughter of the king!”

I gape at her, unsure whether to laugh or to cry. The wretched woman is at least as old as King George himself.

“Nobody believes your lies, you old fool,” says a voice from across the room, raw and low. “You're no more a princess than I am the Pope.”

Margaret jerks to her feet. “And you're a rotten trollop!” she snarls, her eyes wet and wild.

The girl who spoke is lying on the top bunk just across from us, and she swings her legs down and jumps to the floor, her dark eyes trained on Margaret. “What am I, now?”