The Gilded Cage (21 page)

She flutters her arms out and does a spin, closing her old eyes against the sun. I look from face to muttering face, then down at my own gray dress, and the horror of my new life threatens to pull me completely under. Beyond caring, beyond pride, I run to the garden wall, beating my scabbed fists against it and falling to my knees. Before the indifferent eyes of thirty broken women, I weep.

 

CHAPTER 24

A
FTER A TIME,
I'm pulled roughly to my feet.

“That's enough of that, now. You're setting off the other ones,” the guard says. He points his chin toward a sobbing woman, her unfocused eyes trained loosely on me. I swipe at my streaming eyes, and he retreats back to his bench, pulling out a tin of tobacco and shoving a plug into his mouth. As I survey the yard, my eyes fall on a second-story window. Mrs. Temperley is looking down at me, and for a moment my eyes meet hers.

Steel comes into my spine, and for a moment I feel myself again. The guard is right. That's enough of that. It was foolish of me to try running this morning, and I should not have let myself break down in front of everyone.

But there must be a way out of here
. I scan the tops of the walls, vowing that I won't draw attention to myself again. Even in these shoes, even in this dress, I could run far and fast away from here, if I could just get over these walls. They're steep, impossible to climb, but there will be other doors and windows. All I need to do is learn the routines of this place and find a weakness. I think of the raccoons back at the ranch—the way they scampered over the roof waiting for a moment when the door was open and they could pillage our stores. We learned not to underestimate them, but still they'd catch us out from time to time. And sometimes it wasn't even clear how they managed it. If a raccoon could find a way, then so can I.

I look at the women around me, bedraggled gray birds, and wonder how many were truly mad when they came to this place—and how many were driven to madness by unfair imprisonment and by the Temperleys' “treatments.” I try to judge whether any of them could prove an ally. The pregnant girl's companion gives me a hard, fierce look, but the others avoid eye contact. I notice that the bright-haired girl and the guard have disappeared, and dig my nails into my palm to keep myself from speculating where. No, there won't be any help from these poor souls, I think. They've been here too long, and their hopes have been ground to dust.

Just then, the wild woman from the morning, my cell mate, is escorted into the yard. Her sleeve is rolled up, revealing a new white bandage just below her elbow. She walks with the tentative, searching steps of a person with seasickness. Her eyes scan the yard, finally resting on me.

I stiffen as she approaches, her face looking resolute and quite sane. She stops a little way away from me and puts up her palms. “I'm begging your pardon, miss. I know that I frightened you today. Please, may I sit beside you?” When I nod my head slightly, she feels her way toward a bench and sits. “I couldn't help myself. Hearing the name of Walthingham … it puts bad things into my mind.” For a moment she pulls at her dark hair fiercely, as if to ease the hot anger in her head.

“Tell me what happened to you at Walthingham,” I say quietly, not wishing to upset her, or to bring the attention of the guards. Perhaps I can gain some helpful information from this woman, in time.

“You came from there, didn't you? Is it true, what they said—that you're the heir of Walthingham Hall?”

“It is.”

“My name is Dorothy—perhaps you knew my sister there. She would be seventeen now. Her name is Elsie. She was on her way to being a lady's maid when I left.…” Her voice is touched with desperation, and she tugs again at her hair. The pain of it seems to calm her.

“Elsie was my dressing maid!” Just saying her name brings unexpected lightness to my heart. “She said she had a sister once—does she know that you're here? The way she spoke, I thought that you had died.”

“They likely told her I was dead, and I might as well be,” she says starkly. “I wish I had died, rather than have my child taken away.”

“Who took your child?” I breathe. “What happened?”

She starts speaking fast, in a near monotone, and I crane my head toward hers to hear. “I was the lady's maid to Grace Campion when I got pregnant. I hid it. For a very long time, I hid it. Elsie knew, of course—we let out my dresses together. She helped me with my duties when I was struggling. My poor little sister, she barely slept that last month. I was often ill from the child, always cross with Elsie. I regret it now. I wish that our last weeks together had been happy ones.

“The baby came early, before I was discovered. I gave birth to her in a china cupboard. Such a little thing! And eager to come, too. She came out squalling, smart as can be.” A smile touched her face then was gone, like a flash of blue weather.

“But there was no hiding it then, of course. I thought Miss Campion would make me go that very day, but she didn't. She hid her feelings well; I know that now.” My heart climbs into my throat, waiting to hear of Grace's treachery.

Dorothy continues, still looking down. “She told me another woman would watch after my child, someone with a wet nurse. I didn't believe that anyone rich enough to have a wet nurse would want an unmarried maid's child, but she promised me they would.” She looks shyly up at me. “I named her Violet. Just for myself—nobody else ever heard the name. I never even got to nurse her.”

“I'm sorry,” I whisper.

She shrugs. “I cried for days, though I still did my work like before. I just cried when nobody could hear me, and a lot at night. Elsie tried to help me, but the sadness felt like quicksand. I couldn't pull myself free of it. Finally, Miss Campion told me I could visit my child. When she said that, I fell to my knees in front of her. I kissed her hand, so grateful. It makes me sick to think of it now. She rode with me in the carriage, right through the gates of this horrible place. I knew right away that something was wrong—two men had to pull me from the carriage, screaming. Miss Campion just looked at me like I was already invisible, like I was already dead. I've wished I was, every day since. I've grown old in this place, waiting for it.”

She falls silent, her hands kneading the ragged ends of her hair. Grace's face the day of the hunt, half in sun and half in shade, comes back to me. And her words:
Though it was never proven, the baby Elsie's sister carried was believed by many of the servants to be John's.

“The baby's father,” I say. “Did he try to find you?”

She looks at me, uncomprehending. “Try to find me? He's the one who had me sent away.”

“B-but,” I say. “How could a footman have you sent away?”

“A footman?”

“John,” I say. “He's still … he was still at Walthingham.”

She laughs, a small and bitter sound. “That young pup? No, it wasn't him. The father was Lord Walthingham's nephew. Henry Campion.”

After a stunned moment, I laugh. A real laugh, at my own small-mindedness, my cursed lack of imagination. How can I continually be shocked by the cruel hypocrisy my cousin has again and again proven himself capable of? So this is where he disposes of any who encumber him. I look across the yard, and my stomach sinks. I wonder how many others here are his victims, or victims of men like him.

“My cousin,” I say. “He's the one who has imprisoned me here. Are you not surprised?” I laugh again, loud enough to draw the attention of Margaret, who has been sitting in a regal pose on a nearby bench, no doubt preparing herself for the imminent attentions of the king.

“He would've married me if he could,” I tell her. “But only after he ruined my friend, the girl he'd promised himself to. Perhaps he'll marry her still, now that he has my fortune in his hands.” I'm frightened at the hysterical pitch of my voice. A quick glance around assures me that it's gone unnoticed. “I underestimated him,” I whisper to Dorothy, who watches me with wide eyes. “But I will not make that mistake again.”

 

CHAPTER 25

E
VEN IN OUR
windowless cell, we can hear the storm. It makes the other women restless—I hear Margaret above me, whimpering in her sleep—but it makes me feel less alone. The rage I've kept tamped tight for the past five days seems to find its vent in the whipping wind. It whistles in through hidden crevices and freshens the fetid air.

Less welcome is the dampness. The rains began the day before yesterday, and they haven't let up. Instead of forcing us to take our rest in the sodden yard, the guards make us sit at meals for an extra hour, before sending the healthiest among us to work. Yesterday I dipped stained sheets in and out of huge vats of soapy gray water, squeezing them dry until my hands could no longer hold a fist. Mrs. Temperley oversees the laundry, her great raw knuckles standing out as she twists her hands together and issues brusque orders. She is far younger than Mr. Temperley, but I've learned that they're not siblings but married. It's rumored that she was a patient once, but I don't put much stock into what the others tell me.

My hopes at finding a weakness in the guards' routine has been disappointed. All the windows I have seen in the patients' areas are reinforced with bars. As far as I can tell, there are only three ways into the secure areas of the building: the front door; the gate that leads to the exercise yard; and there must be a back door, where deliveries of coal and food are made, though I haven't seen it. That passage offers the only chance of escape that I can see, but I would bet the door leading to the staff area is always locked and each of the guards carries a key. I have little faith in my pickpocketing skills. If I am to obtain a key, I fear it will have to be through violence.

Though we're kept under guard, we find ways to communicate. Even in this terrible company, alliances are quickly formed. I have five roommates, including Margaret and Dorothy. One is a German woman named Ilse, who does not speak, but passes her time in a haze of strange compulsions: moans, rhythmic rapping. She's the maddest among us. Elizabeth is the protective companion of the pregnant girl. She's strongly built and the daughter of a prominent barrister; I think she's here because she refused to marry. I feel sorriest for Anne, a woman of at least sixty who looks perpetually confused. She was placed here by her son, and though she won't speak against him, I think his motives were like Henry's: based in greed. Anne prays often, her fingers reaching to the place at her neck where I'm sure a cross once hung. We're not allowed any ornament here. Her fingers grasp empty air.

None of us sleeps through the night, it seems, and barely an hour goes by that my sleep isn't broken by nightmare cries from another bunk, or by a woman's rush to the chamber pot. But I haven't complained since that first day in the yard. I eat their food when it is served to me, I suffer the indignity of the shared privy, and I do not act as though I think it's all below me. Since the day I broke down in the yard, I have been a model inmate.

It's so easy, easier than I ever would have imagined, to lose yourself in a place like this. My hands are the hands of a madwoman already—roughened by harsh soap, scabbed over from the night I pounded on the doors of our cell. My hair is a madwoman's hair, so ratted up in back that it will not lie flat past the neck of my dress. Though we're allowed to wash, they don't give us anything for it but a stinking cake of black soap. The sickest among us have their hair shorn short and bristling. They're the ones with haunted eyes, the ones whose blood is let so often it's a wonder that the veins showing under their papery skin still hold color.

I struggle to comb out my hair with my fingers, and pray they will not see fit to cut it off. Though I make my face blank, thoughts of Henry animate my waking hours and dog my sleep. He must have been planning all along to get his hands on Walthingham. My fears of harmless old McAllister, the foolish fancies of a beast stalking the woods—all distractions from the stark truth of my cousin's greed. I can expect no help from outside this place. Mr. Simpson must believe that I'm on my way to America; Jane never wants to see me again. And Grace, who might have saved me, simply turned her face away.

But I can still help myself. And tonight, I've finally managed to pry loose one of the wooden slats beneath my pitifully thin mattress. My fingertips are rough with splinters, but the feel of the sturdy wood in my palm calms me.

I look across the room and catch the flash of Dorothy's open eyes. Though we haven't had the privacy of the yard, we've still taken advantage of every moment we found ourselves unwatched. She's told me all she can about how this place is run. I know that there are four guards on duty at all times, and that they change shifts twice a day, at the peal of a bell. I know that the two silent maids in drab caps are not our allies, that they've informed on past patients who have been foolish enough to beg them for aid. I know that the windows are all barred, with the exception of the one in Mr. Temperley's office.

And I know that the only time we're not watched is when we're locked into our dorms at night. The weapon in my hand is proof of that one small privacy.

Dorothy is still looking at me from across the room, and I give her a sharp nod. At my signal, she gets up from her bed, then drops onto the middle of the floor, moaning.

Quickly I move to the grille of the door and put my mouth to it.

“Please come, quick! One of the women is ill!” My voice sounds tenuous, unused. I've barely spoken above a whisper for days.

After a long moment, a pane of light appears on the wall outside, as from an unseen door being thrown open. Within it I see a guard's unresponsive shadow.

“Hurry, please!” I repeat. “She's not well!”