The Linnet Bird: A Novel (74 page)

On the fourth evening of his illness Somers sent for me. He was propped up on pillows, alone in the room. He had lost his fevered color, and his skin had a sticky look in the glow of the lamps lit in his bedroom. The smell of sickness lingered, its stale miasma almost overpowering, but I knew Somers was through the worst, and his eyes glared at me with clear disgust. I felt that he was destined to rise from each attack with renewed strength and venom.

“As soon as this bout is completely past I shall put together preparations for you to leave here,” he said.

“Leave?”

He flapped a hand, weakly. “You’ve become too much of a burden. That last episode, with you ready to run out into the streets of Calcutta behaving like a madwoman, ready to do who knows what, made up my mind. Do you really think anyone would be surprised—or even care—if you simply disappeared? Who would even notice, Linny, apart from the servants?”

I tried to swallow, but I had no saliva. I knew my future depended on the next few minutes. “Will you send us back to England, then?”

He stared blankly. When he didn’t answer, I thought it was due to his illness. Then he spoke and his voice was clear and firm. “Do you realize you’re using Hindi, Linny? Are you even aware that you’re no longer speaking English?”

“I’m sorry.” I repeated my question. “I asked if you would send us back to England.”

“Us? What do you mean by us?”

I spoke slowly, carefully. “Why, David and myself, of course. As you said not long ago, soon it will be time for him to begin his education. I could live with him wherever you choose—in London, perhaps. He could attend your old school.”

He gave a dry cough, then attempted a smile. “You really think I’d trust you to bring up my son? You’re an addict, Linny. Among other things, of course.”

The floor tilted, and I put out one hand, holding on to the bedpost so I wouldn’t fall, lowering myself into a chair beside the bed.

“I would stop, Somers. I can stop if I choose.”

“Everybody knows you’re nothing but a wasted ruin. I sense that most think you quite mad already, you know. They don’t even ask about you or seem the least curious that you no longer accompany me to social events. So my plan is to find a pleasant place for you to . . . rest, shall we call it? Someplace—perhaps an isolated post in the Indian plains—where you would be cared for properly, and couldn’t hurt anybody—or yourself. Or maybe I could consider another option, if you would really like to go home.”

I nodded vigorously, standing, my head still light. “Yes, yes, Somers. That’s what I’d really like. To go home.” If I could only get back to England, I would find a way to be near David. Shaker would help me.

“Yes. I agree that’s the best plan. There are a number of places in London that could keep you restrained for—well, for an indefinite period of time.”

“Restrained?” It took thirty seconds for his meaning to become clear. “A . . . a lunatic asylum?”

“A lunatic asylum, my dear? Is it necessary to use such a harsh term?” He actually managed a smile this time. “Let’s just say you’ll be under care. Having a nice long rest. It’s well known that India has the ability to do this to some, you know. You wouldn’t be the first memsahib who proved unable to bear the strain. Everyone would understand, and not a soul would question my motives. In fact,” he went on, as if very pleased with himself now, “who, besides David and perhaps Malti, would even care what becomes of you? And David is a child; he’ll quickly forget. Malti will be dismissed. She’s of no importance anyway.”

My dizziness returned, and I felt behind me for the chair and sat on its edge. I needed my pipe. I shivered, and sweat rolled from my hairline down my face, onto my neck, giving the unpleasant sensation of minuscule insects scurrying under my skin. Without thinking, I pulled the gauzy scarf I wore tucked into the bodice of my frock, and swabbed at my cheeks and neck.

There was silence, and then an odd, strangled cry from the bed. Somers was sitting up, pointing a shaking finger at my chest as he had days earlier when he’d torn my dress.

I looked down at my scar. “Once again, I’m surprised at your reaction, husband dear,” I whispered with sarcasm. I cleared my throat, finding my voice. “Surely you aren’t concerned over an old injury. I didn’t think my body would be of any interest to you after all this time.”

He slumped back, his mouth opening and closing as he struggled to breathe. “I know,” he croaked. “I know now. When I first saw that,” he said hoarsely, his eyes fixed on the scar, “there was something . . . something. I didn’t know what. But yes, I think . . .”

I hardly listened to his raving. I thought of never seeing my son again, of him growing up learning his mother lived out her life huddled on a pile of putrid straw in a darkened stone cell in some Bedlam. Of Somers distorting any memories of me David might retain from his childhood, and, worse than all of that, of trying to impart his own twisted values on him.

The fierce need to protect David from this future gave me a strength I hadn’t felt in a long time. I threw the scarf onto the ground, pulling my bodice lower as I leaned toward the bed, so that Somers would see the whole of the destruction. “Done by one of my old customers in Liverpool,” I said. “Quite the picture, isn’t it? And yet I survived. I survived a madman’s blade once, and I’ll survive whatever you think you can do to me, Somers. You will not win.”

He made a retching sound, putting his fist to his mouth.

“Will you be sick?” I asked, no concern in my voice. “Surely the sight of my ruined flesh would bring you pleasure, not discomfort. After all, my pain is the only thing that
has
brought you any joy in our miserable marriage.”

“I know,” he said again, speaking through his fist, that same strange agitation in his voice. “I know now why I recognized the fish.”

I sat back, letting go of the front of my dress, trying to understand. The fish? And then I remembered that time in his bachelor’s quarters, and how his seeing my birthmark had been the reason he knew me to be a whore.

He put his hand down, his fist still clenched. “I’d almost managed to forget my last sojourn to that black spot on the Mersey,” he said. He spoke slowly, as if thinking out loud. He struggled to sit up again. “And you’re right. You did survive. How, I can never guess. You should be nothing but softened bones by now, the crabs using your eye sockets as a home.”

I put my own fist to my mouth as Somers had done seconds before. In the quiet that followed his strange statement, a terrible, shocking sense of knowledge began to form. An understanding too horrific, too unbelievable, dawning slowly at his words. I shivered uncontrollably in the stifling room, my teeth clenched so tightly that my jaw ached.

“Didn’t I instruct my man to dump your body in the Mersey?” Somers had regained some of his composure; his voice was low but strong as he stared at me. “And didn’t Pompey swear to me that he did it, and assure me there was no one left to speak of what happened that night on Rodney Street?”

And suddenly I heard it, the same cold, rational voice that had ordered my death as I lay, a thirteen-year-old girl made blind and helpless, on a thick rug in front of a trunk of glass jars filled with floating hair. The hair of dead girls. The old man with the shears planted in his eye beside me. The stench of rot coming from him, and then that of burning hair. I gagged, my mouth filling with acrid saliva.

This was not what I had expected. Ever. Rodney Street. The old nightmare came to life, reared up huge and even more terrifying when fed by the light of the glowing lamps in this room. I felt a spinning, a flying apart; the fearful old vision flooded back: my body, with its broken neck, tossed into the murderers’ pit of quicklime. I leaned forward, choking as I spat out what my stomach heaved. It splattered the toes of my slippers. I lowered my head to my knees.

Young Master, Pompey had called him.

“I had to relieve Pompey of his services not too long after the incident in Liverpool. Too many slipups. But I suppose it can’t all be blamed on Pompey. I saw you, too, that night, and believed you to be dead. You were torn open, right down your left breast. I saw muscle; I swear I even saw your heart, lying unbeating, but of course that couldn’t be.”

Wiping my mouth with the back of my hand, I raised my head and looked at him.

He licked his lips, then smiled, as if reliving a fond memory. And that smile chilled me even more than his calm words. “If I remember correctly you were little more than a child, your hair gone. Totally unlike the self-possessed woman I first met in Calcutta—but for that telling fish on your arm. No wonder I couldn’t remember where I’d seen it. I put that night and its troublesome mess out of my head as quickly as I could.”

I kept my mouth open now, sucking in the muggy air, trying to draw it into my lungs, envisioning the illustrations from Shaker’s medical books, all those years ago, Albinus’s drawings of the two sacks situated behind the breastbone. I knew my lungs weren’t plump and full but flat and deflated, shriveled. They wouldn’t pump, wouldn’t fill with the drenched air. My mouth gaped as a fish out of water. I knew I was drowning. The image of that ravaged face, the horror of the flickering tongue, the senseless eyes, stood in the front of my mind as if lit by rows of candles.

Somers was the son of the man I had killed.

“It’s too late,” I whispered, finally finding the strength to speak. “You could never prove it. It’s too late to have me tried for murder.” I must protect David from a future with Somers, and from the knowledge of my past.

A sound like laughter came from Somers’s throat, a ghastly crackling noise. “Tried? For murder? I hardly think so. There was no record of murder, after all. Simply the death of a man riddled with syphilis and driven to insanity. It seemed he would never die; I imagined him living on for years and years. In fact, you did the job I wish I’d had the nerve to do much, much earlier. Even before he grew so ill he was a bastard, a cruel, heartless bastard. I left England shortly after you killed him, Linny. I wanted to leave it all behind, to forget.”

Silence grew in the room. I took short, shallow breaths as if just learning to breathe.

“Nobody was happier than I to see him buried at long last,” Somers finally continued, when I knew we had both gone through the details in our minds—the ones each of us knew—of that night, “where the worms could do their final job on what was left of his stinking body. As for his soul—I don’t believe he had one.

“From the time I was twelve—”

“No. I don’t want to hear any more,” I whispered, but he ignored me.

“—he took me with him on his prowls. At first he just had me watch while he mounted each bitch. He had a penchant for lower-class women. Like you, Linny. After a while I came to enjoy watching the humiliations to which he subjected them.”

I kept shaking my head, wanting him to stop. But it was as if he were enjoying it all, seeing my misery as he recounted the ugly details. I put my hands over my ears, closing my eyes and lowering my head.

“Eventually he tried to force me to join in.” He spoke loudly and clearly; it was impossible to shut out his words. “My father kept me at his bidding like a pet monkey, stroked occasionally, thrown a tasty morsel now and then, but impossibly shackled. And he wouldn’t, even in death, allow me to live as I wished. He knew from an early age I had little interest in women. In fact, he first supplied me with the boys I grew to hunger for. But he stipulated in his will that I must be married in order to receive my rightful inheritance. Quite like him in every way to have a final laugh from the grave.

“And so it appears that you really have had a remarkable impact on my life, Linny. First you killed my father, and then you made it possible for me to receive my inheritance. In reality you allowed me freedom. Twice.” With that word he stopped, and was silent.

I removed my hands and opened my eyes. Now mosquitoes buzzed around my ears and sweating hairline. Somers was looking at me in a manner that was almost jaunty, his head tilted and eyes bright, as if surprised at his good fortune.

I dropped to my knees at the side of the bed. “Then repay me, Somers. Set me free, in turn. Let me take David and disappear.” I grabbed his hands. They were icy. “You’ll never hear from us again. I’ll ask for nothing.”

He shook his head gently, as if I were a naughty child caught stealing sweets. “You don’t understand, do you, Linny? And yet you’ve always been such a clever girl.” He pulled his hands away from mine. “You can’t be trusted to leave me, and you can’t be trusted with our son. There is no other way but for you to be put away, properly, lawfully, so there can never be any future questions about you.” His eyes were unblinking now, like a snake’s. “I’ll have the papers drawn up by Dr. Haverlock as soon as possible. He won’t need any convincing, of course. One look at you would be assurance enough that you need caring for. As for David . . . I’ll bring him up as I see fit. It won’t take me long to have him trained into the shape he should be.” He attempted another of his horrible laughs, but it brought on a fit of coughing, and a chill suddenly came over him.

As I stared at him, his body trembling, his mustache sprayed with cloudy beads of saliva, I imagined his face settling into the leering specter of his dead father. I rubbed my eyes, trying to clear away that old and horrific vision, but the haunting wouldn’t leave. It seemed that in the most terrible twist of fate, the evil hand that had brought me to Rodney Street had led me to this room. I got to my feet, stumbling away from the bedside. I looked, in absolute horror, at the man who was my husband. Knowing the power he wielded. Knowing that his twisted hatred, his lecherous ways, and his truly vile nature would continue to grow with each passing year.