Chapter Eleven
16 October 1890
We drove toward Lindenwood as the sun was setting. The desolation along the Thames at Purfleet, downriver from London, was broken up by industrial buildings-bone mills, gristmills, soap factories, tanneries-whose chimneys shot great clouds of smoke into the sky. The rays of the setting sun infiltrated the black atmosphere, burnishing the sky. As we drove along the road that followed the river, I saw pockets of scum and debris floating on its surface. The water, an unsavory grayish brown, rushed past as if in a hurry to leave this grim landscape.
Lindenwood itself was protected from these views. The grounds were secluded by thick stone walls made black with soot and age, and by the growth of ancient trees twisting together, locking out the modern world of manufacturing and machinery that had sprung up along the river. The old mansion, with its grand façade of limestone bricks, narrow lancets, and four colossal turrets at its corners, sat at the end of a long drive. Dr. Seward had told me that the eccentric aristocrat who had built it in the latter part of the last century had donated it to serve as an asylum at the time of his death. It looked more castle than manor house, what with its feudal architecture. Over the clatter of the carriage wheels, I heard the tall, wrought-iron gates creak as they closed behind us, and I looked back to see two men fastening them shut with thick chains. I did not like the idea of being locked inside, but I calmed myself by remembering that within this walled environment, I would find help for my husband; the truth of what happened to my best friend; and, if I was lucky, relief from the strange things that had been happening to me. Little did I suspect that I would soon discover so much more.
Jonathan had been more than amenable to the visit, even excited at the prospect. “You deserve a strong husband, Mina,” he had said. “I am determined to be that man for you. Besides, I am fascinated by the new theories on the complexities of the unconscious. I welcome an opportunity to become acquainted with experts who will discuss the subject with me.”
A hospitable woman in a bright blue apron and cap greeted us at Lindenwood’s massive and foreboding door, introducing herself as Mrs. Snead. She appeared to be somewhere in her forties with a crooked smile and a strange way of looking just to the side of whomever she was speaking to. Thick, dark-stained paneling covered the walls of the reception hall that was hung with portraits of old gentlemen, each seeming to follow us with his sober gaze. The atmosphere was elegant but heavy-with what, I did not know.
“Dinner will be served at seven,” Mrs. Snead said. “Would you like to have tea in the parlor, or would you like to be escorted to your quarters?”
We opted for tea in the parlor, sitting in chairs with serpentine legs and tall backs that reflected the shape of the pointed-arched windows. A young woman wearing the same blue uniform rolled in a tea cart and served us piping-hot tea with fresh cream and slices of ginger cake. Another member of the staff stacked logs in the great stone fireplace and lit lamps, illuminating the opulent surroundings.
But as the light infiltrated the room, I saw that the upholstery was frayed and the stuffing of the divan opposite us sagged almost to the floor.
“This is not what I expected,” Jonathan said, relaxing in his chair. “One feels more guest than patient.”
“I agree,” I said. But unlike him, I found the discrepancy disquieting.
The bedroom was no less ornate. Carved hooded medieval monks supported the heavy wooden ceiling, again giving me the feeling that I was being watched. The bed’s canopy of sharp spires reached almost to the ceiling. Panels of blood-scarlet brocade threaded with gold curtained the thick velour-covered mattress. I sat on it to test its comfort, wondering if Jonathan would at last consummate our marriage on its soft, inviting plane. He gave no indication that he was thinking any such thoughts. He took off his coat, splashed water on his face, and sank into an armchair, instantly engrossed in an old book he had picked up on the side table.
At six forty-five in the evening, Mrs. Snead fetched us for dinner and escorted us to the candlelit dining room, where we sat like children dwarfed by the high ceiling. John Seward arrived a few minutes later with a stout older man whose wild gray beard eventually came to a point at chest level. Grizzly eyebrows sat like mats of twisted yarn above his dark eyes. He wore a rumpled suit that was probably expensive when it was purchased in some other decade. He bowed to me in the old-fashioned way and kissed my hand. He gripped Jonathan’s hand and did not let it go as he said his name. “Herr Harker. Yes, Herr Harker. Yes, I see. I do see.” He studied Jonathan as if he were a specimen under a microscope until Seward said, “Dr. Von Helsinger, you have met our other guests?”
So this was the famous doctor. I had thought that we might have had our first glimpse of a patient, what with his disheveled clothes and hawkish stare. He wore a monocle on a tarnished, diamond-cut silver chain around his neck. His protruding eye sockets wrapped so far around his face that they looked as if they might slide right off.
The dining table seated fifteen, and some nearby residents of Essex had joined us. “An institution such as this must keep good relations with its neighbors,” Seward whispered in my ear as everyone was seated. Two serving girls poured wine as the doctor and his neighbors made polite conversation about local politics. Jonathan sipped the wine and proclaimed it to be as fine a claret as he had ever tasted. When the first course, turtle soup, was served, I noticed that Von Helsinger examined it with his monocle before he tasted it, but I found it to be sublime. I said as much to Dr. Seward.
“The recipe was brought to us by a former patient. She was a friend of the lord mayor, and this is from his very kitchen. It takes the cooks two days to prepare and it is made, I assure you, from real turtle meat.”
Seward, away from the more illustrious shadow of Arthur Holmwood, was a changed man. The lids over his gray eyes did not seem so heavy, and his fraught look was gone. This was clearly his kingdom, and it seemed that he ruled it well.
“Is it common for a patient to bring recipes to your kitchen, Dr. Seward?” I asked.
“This was a very special case, Mrs. Harker,” he said, addressing me by my married name for the first time. “The patient in question came to us after months of neglecting all domestic duties. She had a kitchen staff, but she refused to plan menus or to attend to any household concerns whatsoever. She left her children in the care of a governess, while she shut herself in her study, reading books and writing letters to politicians in the Liberal party with whom she was obsessed.”
Dr. Von Helsinger picked up his bowl, drained the last of the turtle soup, and released a heavy sigh of contentment. “It stands to reason that in these times of ladies infiltrating the masculine domains of thought and intellectual inquiry, they become victims of brain strain. If left untreated, the result is melancholia or, in worse cases, hysteria. This lady was fortunate. She came to us in time for us to help her.”
“I hypothesized that if she were made to do domestic labor as treatment, she would recover her natural propensity toward it,” Seward said. “She worked in the kitchen, preparing food and serving it. At first, she was rebellious, but gradually she came to enjoy it, even introducing her favorite recipes to our humble kitchen.”
Dr. Seward rang a bell, and the serving girls brought in platters of beefsteak and winter vegetables, which they held for each guest to take a portion. Jonathan complimented Seward on the politeness and efficiency of his staff. My husband’s handsome features, softened by the candlelight, had returned, and he looked like the affable man I had wanted to marry. He was enough changed that I worried that the doctors were wondering why I had brought him to the asylum.
One of the lady guests agreed with Jonathan’s assessment of the staff. “I declare, Dr. Seward, I must have you interview servants for me.”
“My wife’s taste in servants tends toward the lazy and the dishonest,” said her husband, and everyone laughed.
“Thank you for the compliments,” said Dr. Seward. “Most everyone on our staff is also a patient, or a former patient.”
This news stunned me. I wanted to turn around and look at the girls who had served the food to see if I could detect any traces of mental illness on their faces.
“Work has been the cure for so many of our patients,” Seward said. “And it is good economy too. We provide the most advanced modern treatments, but they take time and are administered at great cost, especially the labor.”
I saw a way into my purpose and spoke up. “Dr. Seward, before my husband and I married, we agreed that I would devote a goodly amount of my time to charitable works. While Jonathan and I are your guests, I would very much like to volunteer my time to help you in any way that I can.”
The doctor did not seem receptive to my idea. “That is a very noble wish, Mrs. Harker. Ladies often have the best intentions, but patients do not exactly mind their social graces. I would not want you to suffer any insults at their hands.”
I wondered if he had something to hide and I became more determined.
“I doubt that your patients could be any worse than some of the little girls I have taught.” Everyone laughed at that.
“What do you think, Dr. Von Helsinger?” I asked.
The gentleman turned his wide, insect stare on me. His mouth was set in a smile, but the rest of his face remained sober. “If Herr Harker would postpone our meeting tomorrow, I would be happy to spend the day escorting the beautiful lady through the asylum. It would be a pleasure greater than any I expect at my age.”
Something about the way he looked at me made me shrink back in my chair, though I tried to maintain my smile. Jonathan must have seen it too.
“I cannot postpone our business together, sir. I have important matters in both London and Exeter that must be attended to,” he said sternly, which gave me a little thrill. I had not seen him play the protector since before he left for Styria.
“Then it is up to me to satisfy you, Mrs. Harker,” said Dr. Seward, smiling.
All night long, I heard moaning sounds. I slept fitfully, awaking several times and sitting up in bed. But then, the noise would stop. I must have been having nightmares, but I could not recall their substance. I woke with a headache.
At an early hour, an attendant delivered a breakfast tray to our room, and then, at eight o’clock, as no one was allowed to wander the asylum unescorted, a man came to take Jonathan to see Dr. Von Helsinger. Fifteen minutes later, Mrs. Snead came for me. I wondered if she too had once been a patient. She spoke clearly, but her face twitched almost imperceptibly, as if she intended to wink but could not complete the action. We walked down the wide staircase together, and as we reached the set of stairs nearest the ground floor, I heard the same voices I had heard in my sleep. I stopped to listen. It sounded as if the very walls were moaning.
The sounds escalated as we walked across the reception hall. Mrs. Snead took a ring of keys out of her apron pocket and opened a pair of tall double doors. The groaning assaulted my ears-grunts, whimpers, cries, moans-and came together in a cacophonous song of collective misery. Some sounded guttural, others were high-pitched. All sounded female, and I inquired as to why this might be so. “This is the women’s ward,” Mrs. Snead explained. “The men’s ward is separate.”
Mrs. Snead paid no mind to the din and walked ahead of me down a corridor with many doors, some with peepholes and some with bars. Whereas the private part of the mansion where we were quartered had a faint scent of dry wood and dust common to old houses, this wing smelled of iron and rust, and the air itself was damp. We climbed another stairwell, narrower and darker than the one that served the main house, and arrived at the door of Dr. Seward’s attic office.
He was sitting at a desk in a room with a pitched ceiling and tiny windows, speaking into a phonograph in an oak box on a little wrought-iron stand. He heard us enter and turned around. “Good morning, Mrs. Harker,” he said. “I was just recording my physician’s notes into the phonograph. Such a convenient contraption. You are familiar with them?”
“Why, no,” I said. I remembered Kate’s admonition to feign ignorance. “Do you record everything that happens here in the asylum?”
“Everything important,” he replied. “It is a superb record-keeping tool.” He tried to interest me in a cup of tea, but I assured him that I was all too eager to begin our tour of the facility.
“Very well, then.” He picked up a stack of charts and led me back down the stairs and into the hall, where we passed two women in blue aprons who nodded politely. “A moment, please,” he said. “This is Mrs. Harker, who is visiting us and will be volunteering her time.” He introduced the two severe-looking women as Mrs. Kranz and Mrs. Vogt, hall supervisors. “Most of our patients are quite peaceful, but these ladies are on duty in case of an incident,” he said before dismissing them.
“I wish you would dispense with these formalities,” I said, smiling at him. “I would be delighted if you would simply call me Mina.”
“Then you must call me John,” he said. “But we mustn’t let the patients-and others-know of this little intimacy.”
“Of course not, Doctor Seward,” I said. I knew that it was wrong to flirt with him, but I sensed great longing in him, and I was not above exploiting that to gather information.
He opened double doors to a small library with a tall paneled ceiling and a lazy fire in the fireplace. Two elderly women playing cards occupied a game table, while a young girl lay on the divan, mumbling to herself and rubbing her breasts. The two old women paid her no attention but wordlessly flipped cards onto the table.
The doctor and I stood in the doorway. No one looked up. “That is Mary,” he said, gesturing to the girl. “I admitted her three months ago. She is fifteen. Her parents brought her to us when the commencement of puberty incited a mental illness. Would you like to see her chart?” He handed it to me.
Written in thick blue ink and a scratchy penmanship, I read it with some difficulty:
Facts Indicating Insanity: Causeless laughter alternating with obstinate silence. She is wicked and excitable in the company of gentlemen. Her parents were alerted to the disturbance when she turned cartwheels on the lawn in full view of observers of both sexes. The family doctor was brought in to examine her, but she refused to comply with him and would not stick out her tongue for the examination.
I scanned the page to read what Seward had written after his last visit with her a few days prior:
She takes but little food and sits for hours with her eyes closed, patting her breasts. Water cure, isolation, etc. completely ineffective. Vaginal lavage with potassium bromide to calm the excited tissue give only temporary relief. She is particularly excitable in the menstrual state, but at other times can be made docile with medication.
“I am not going to interrupt her,” he said, taking the chart from me and making a note on it. “She appears to be calm enough.”
One of the older ladies slapped the last card in her hand on the table. Her shock of long hair was like marble, stiff and white with caramel streaks. She might have been sixty or eighty-I could not tell. She caught me looking at her, and I was struck by the color and vivacity of her eyes-vivid green and as bright as a baby’s. Her eyes looked as if they belonged on another face, a face that still had many years left in this lifetime. Her body, however, looked brittle with age.
“That woman is staring at me,” I whispered to Seward.
“Vivienne has been here for many years. I cannot introduce you to her in front of her card partner, Lady Grayson. She thinks that Vivienne is the queen, and it upsets her terribly to hear otherwise.”
We walked down the hall, with him at a faster pace and me trying to keep up, to a door with a small opening slashed by two iron bars. I could not see inside because the doctor blocked my view. The asylum’s ambient moaning filled the hall, but none seemed to be coming from inside this particular room. He put a large key in the lock and left it there as he spoke.
“Jemima, who you are about to meet, suffers from an emotional insanity.” He opened Jemima’s chart and read: “‘She is lively, cheerful, and very talkative, but at times becomes insensible and will take no nourishment. At these times, force-feeding is recommended.’”
“Force-feeding?” Lucy said she had been force-fed.
“Yes, the tube is put down the throat and a healthful concoction of milk, eggs, and cod-liver oil goes through the tube to nourish the patient.”
“I see.” I tried to imagine a tube being pushed down my throat.
“I know what you are thinking, Mina, but when a patient tries to destroy herself by not taking in food, what else can we do to save her? And it is so common with young women to refuse to eat.” He continued to read from the chart. “‘She has irregular menstrual periods and a peculiar nervous system, but her flow of animal spirits is abundant. If the menstrual cycle could be regulated, she would be able to be sent home.’ I do apologize for the indelicate nature of these details.”
A perfunctory apology, if I have ever heard one. I believe he was enjoying subjecting me to topics that in a social situation would have been strictly forbidden.
“Please don’t apologize, John,” I replied. “If I am to volunteer here, I want a complete picture of the patients. It will help me to interact with them.”
“Jemima came to us with fluttering, nervous hands, which aggravate the confused mind even more. The first step was to settle the hands.” He turned the key and opened the door, leading us into a long room, where about a dozen women of different ages sat at tables doing embroidery, needlepoint, knitting, and sewing at machines. All hands were busy making scarves, draperies, pillow slips, doilies, caps, and mittens. The colors of the fabrics and yarns were a jumble of brightness against the plain white walls and the gray asylum uniform worn by the patients.
A woman in the blue apron indicating that she was on the staff sat in the corner. Seward nodded to her. No one else looked up.
“The patients come to us distracted, their minds dizzy with all sorts of worries, phobias, and concerns, and we settle them by having them work with their hands,” the doctor said. “In turn, we sell the goods they make to raise funds for the asylum. We even fulfill personal orders from our neighbors. And the uniforms of the staff and the patients are all made in this room from donated cloth.”
“Impressive,” I said. “Very efficient.”
“Jemima?”
A young raven-haired woman looked up. When she saw Seward, she put down her embroidery frame and ran to him. Her creamy skin and bright eyes distracted from the drab gray dress hanging loosely around her frame and the fact that her nails were bitten to nothing, the surrounding cuticles and skin gnawed red. She tried to put her arms around the doctor for an embrace, but he held her at a distance. “There now, that will do,” he said, embarrassed, taking her by the wrist and placing her arm by her side. “Jemima, how are you feeling today? Well, from the looks of it.”
“Yes, Doctor, I am well. Very, very well.”
“Your chart says that you have been eating your meals. This is Mrs. Harker,” he said. “She might be bringing you your lunch tomorrow.”
The girl gave a little curtsy, though she was just a few years younger than I.
“If you continue to take your food and work steadily, you will be able to go home soon,” he said.
The girl took two steps back, firmly planting her feet in a show of protest. “No! I don’t want to go home,” she shrieked. “I’m not well at all. Not well, I tell you!”
The outburst was so sudden that I took a few steps back, in case she tried to attack us. The attendant rose from her seat, but the doctor motioned for her to sit back down. “There, there, Jemima. I did not mean to upset you. Of course, you won’t be sent home until you are ready.”
That seemed to settle her down. “Be a good girl and go back to your sewing.” She thrust her shoulder forward and rolled her head back in a sort of dance hall girl pose, and Seward escorted me out of the room.
“Do you see how changeable they are, Mina?” His eyes drooped at the corners. I knew that he wanted me to feel pity for him, but it occurred to me that the girl Jemima was probably in love with him, and that is why she wanted to remain in the institution. I even wondered if something might be going on between them.
“She has been with us for six months.” He fumbled through the charts and produced one with her name. He put the others in my hand while he read from hers.
“‘Facts Indicating Insanity: The patient left the family house for three days and nights during which time she claims that she married a railway policeman, though she cannot say where it was or recall his name. She ran away repeatedly to try to return to the policeman, whom the family says does not exist. At home, she displays herself in a window wearing a dressing gown without modesty.’
“The family physician committing her wrote: ‘She has lost all mental control in consequence of morbid sensual desires.’ She has attempted to escape Lindenwood by shattering windows and has subsequently been restrained.”
“Restrained?” I asked, smiling pleasantly, remembering Lucy’s letter and Kate’s instructions.
“In the most humane manner, I assure you,” Seward said. “Would you like to see the restraining instruments?”
“Oh yes!” I said with the enthusiasm of a child who had been offered candy.
Seward led me further down the hall to a mezzanine area, where we turned a corner. With a key, he opened a door, and we entered a room. Light streamed in through the single source of a small arched window. The room smelled of chemicals. He must have heard my little sniff. “It’s the ammonia used to clean the leathers. We sterilize them after every use. We are very modern here.”
Leather cuffs and straps of many sizes hung in bundles on hooks on the wall. He opened a closet, taking out a heavy linen garment with long sleeves that ended in mitts and a complex system of tie strings that dangled chaotically.
“Whatever is that used for?” I asked.
“We use the jackets in the more difficult cases to prevent the patients from harming themselves and others. In less severe cases, we use them to pacify.”
I cocked my head. “Pacify?”
“With male patients, we use them to control violent behavior. But with female patients, we have found that confinement of the arms and hands soothes the nerves. So many things cause ladies to become overexcited. You are such sensitive creatures. Prayer, which settles the male conscience and soothes his soul, has the opposite effect on ladies. We do not know why this is. Reading novels can have the same effect. We call these jackets camisoles because they calm a lady’s nerves in the same way that putting on a lovely garment might.”
“How does it accomplish that?” I asked, assuming a guileless face. I wished that Kate could be there to see me.
“I will show you,” he said. He walked behind me, reaching around and holding the jacket in front of me. I could feel his body, or some kind of kinetic energy, coming from it, though inches separated us. “Hold out your arms.”
I reached forward, and he slipped the sleeves over my arms. “It’s a bit too large for you,” he said. He tugged on the sleeves, pulling me backward so that I rested my back on his chest. He took a deep breath, and I felt his chest expanding against my shoulders. He worked the sleeves all the way up my arms, first one and then the other, until my hands were in the mitts. “There we are,” he said. “All snug.” He crossed my arms over my chest turning me into a mummy, and for a moment-just a moment-he stopped, wrapping me into his embrace. I shivered. If the garment was meant to settle nerves, it was having the opposite effect on me. I felt a stretch across my shoulders and forearms as he laced the strings hanging from the mitts of the garment behind my back, imprisoning my hands and arms and making me immobile. I thought I might panic, but I fought the urge. He rubbed his hands on my upper arms. “How does that feel?”
Though I was ashamed of the thought, I did not want him to stop touching me through the coarse linen. I was afraid, and yet I did not want the moment to end. I wanted to feel him, but not see him.
“Mina.” He said my name softly, letting the sound float past my ear and into the dark, damp room. I faced the wall of restraints, a jungle of buckles and straps.
“I feel helpless,” I said. “The more that I know I cannot move, the more I want to move. It’s a little frightening.”
“There is nothing to be frightened of,” he whispered in my ear. “Would I ever let anything happen to you?”
He guided me to a straight-backed chair and sat me down, kneeling in front of me. “Doesn’t that make you feel at peace?” he asked, his gray eyes looking up into mine, questioning me. To have said no would have shattered him.
“The goal is to make the patient feel secure,” he said. He reached around and tugged at something on the back of the jacket. “Feel these loops?”
His cheek was so close to mine. I had not taken a breath in some time. My throat and lungs seemed to have shut down. Unable to make myself speak, I nodded. He stood, walking over to the wall and returned with a long leather strap.
“If the patient continues to struggle, we attach the strap to the jacket and hook it to the wall. That way we may calm the patient without confining her to a bed. I want you to know how humane our treatments are. No one is hurt in our care.”
He took another leather strap off the wall, and then came behind me, and I felt two little tugs at my shoulders as he clipped the straps to the jacket. My arms were going numb inside the garment, but the beating of my heart overrode the feeling. He yanked the straps tight, pulling my back straight against the chair, correcting my already impeccable posture. I had the image of using this contraption on my pupils; they would never complain about the backboards again. He hooked the straps to the wall and came round to look at me and admire his work. I was rigid and completely imprisoned.
“Now that doesn’t hurt a bit, does it?” he asked, his voice as smooth as warm butter. “It can’t be any worse than a corset. In fact, my theory is that women are accustomed to submitting to the corset, so it predisposes them to the straitjacket.”
Still struggling to take more than the shallowest of breaths, I could not quite speak. Nothing was smothering me, or physically hindering my breathing, but the feeling of being helpless overwhelmed me. He could do anything he liked to me, and I would be powerless to stop him.
Seward knelt in front of me again. “You are struggling, Mina, but in reality, you are swaddled like a baby in the safety of its cradle. Struggle heightens the very hysteria we try to cure. Don’t struggle, Mina. Submit.”
Submit. Where had I heard that command before?
“I-I want to submit, John, but my body wants to struggle.”
“It’s not the body that is struggling but the mind.” He put his finger under my chin. “Relax, Mina. Relax. Let the sound of my voice relax you.”
He went back to the wall, returning with two black leather cuffs. “When the jacket is not enough-which is rare-we confine the feet. It helps, as you will see.” He knelt, buckling a cuff around each of my ankles, and then hooked them together. He scooped a chain from under the chair and attached it to the buckle that united the cuffs. I could barely move my feet at all.
Seward was on his knees now, staring up at me like a suppliant praying to a saint. He looked at me with the sort of adoration and excitement that he claimed prayer aroused in women. I was afraid, desperate at being denied the use of my hands, arms, feet, legs, but at the same time, I suddenly felt powerful, as if I could demand anything and not be refused.
“How beautiful you are, Mina,” he said, his eyes grazing every inch of my face. “How your skin glows. And your eyes, well, they are devastating.” He let out a loud sigh and moved closer to me. His eyes were focused on my lips, and I was sure he was about to kiss me. I was afraid of what he would do if I tried to stop him, but I knew that I must.
“Was Lucy confined this way?” I blurted it out on hot, fast breath, and he jumped back as if he had been kicked in the stomach, bending over so that I saw the top of his head, and the funny way that his hair was parted on a diagonal, like an incision across the scalp.
“Lucy.” He said her name, looking at me with emotions I could not identify-pride? loss? humiliation? weariness? anger? “No, not like this.”
He did not meet my eye but began to unfasten the buckles and ties that bound me. Once loosened, I slipped the jacket off and handed it to him. “Rub your arms to bring back the circulation,” he said.
I did as he instructed, and the blood flowed back into my arms.
“I do not think it wise to speak on a subject that will undoubtedly cause pain,” he said.
I did not know if he meant to me or to himself.
“She was my dearest friend. I thought that knowing about her final days would help. I need some satisfaction, John, or my grief will go on and on.” My eyes began to well up with tears.
He handed me a monogrammed handkerchief, but he did not look at me. “I must finish my morning rounds with the patients. I think it best if you rest before lunch.”
Sniffling, I followed him out of the room, where he handed me over to a hall supervisor, who escorted me back to my quarters, where Jonathan was in good spirits after his first examination by Dr. Von Helsinger. “I believe he can help, Mina. I believe he can get to the bottom of what happened to me, and why the experience has left me in this weakened and melancholic condition. He uses the method called hypnosis to lull the patient into a relaxed condition where memories return and are easily related.”
“Has he given you any medication?” I asked. “Or any treatments?”
“Nothing of the sort,” he replied. “We talk, that is all. Unburdening myself to him leaves me feeling uplifted and more hopeful, though when it is all over, I barely recall what I have said.”
I satisfied myself with this offer of hope, remaining confident that I had done the right thing in bringing him to the asylum. At least Von Helsinger did not seem to be harming him.
I sent a note to John Seward asking him again to allow me to volunteer in some way, and he sent a note back suggesting that I might read to the more lucid, calm patients. I was happy with this idea; I thought that if I could be alone with some of the patients, I could question them about Lucy.
The following morning, Mrs. Snead came to fetch me, and I accompanied her on her rounds to deliver breakfast trays to the patients. The wealthier patients, I had learned, had private rooms, while the others slept in dormitories, “where they fight like dogs, madam, sometimes tearing the hair out of each other’s heads. The medicines calm them, though, so most sleep like babes.”
I tried to inure myself to the pervasive moans, screams, and shrieks filling the atmosphere, but each loud cry released a fresh burst of pain or anger into the air, rattling my nerves. “Why are they screaming?” I asked.
She looked at me as if I were the crazy one. “Because they are out of their heads, madam. The worst ones are shackled to the beds and they do not like it.” Yet Seward declared that he calmed patients without strapping them to their beds. What else was he lying about?
“Do you remember the patient Lucy Westenra?” I asked.
“I do, indeed. The poor thing was as thin as a rail and refused to eat. They did what they could for her, madam. Tended to her day and night. The doctors did it all themselves. No, none of us was good enough to touch Miss Lucy. Broke the young doctor’s heart when she passed. The old doctor’s too. And the young gentleman who was her husband, all of them sat up with her for so long. Didn’t want to give up the body. ’Twere all so sad.”
I wanted to ask her more questions, but she was fumbling with her great ring of keys. She found the right one and opened a door, gesturing for me to go into the room where a lone woman sat, face upturned and lips moving, talking into the air. I had seen this lady, Vivienne, playing cards the day before, and something about the way that she had held my gaze with her deep green eyes had intrigued me.
“Mrs. Harker is going to visit you and read to you, Vivienne,” Mrs. Snead said. “Be a good girl, now.”
“You finished your porridge, I see,” I said, looking at the empty bowl on her tray as Mrs. Snead whisked it away. She shut the door, locking it behind us. The openings with bars on them ensured that a cry for help would be heard immediately. Nonetheless, I did not like the sound of the key twisting in the lock. But looking at the elderly lady wrapped in an old shawl with moth holes, I could not see a reason to be afraid.
Vivienne waited until she heard Mrs. Snead’s footsteps recede. “I always take every scrap of my meal,” she replied. “I must be strong when he comes for me. He is going to take me away.” She smiled like a little girl with a secret.
Seward had said that Vivienne had been in the asylum for many years. Was she actually being released? “Who is coming for you?”
She motioned for me to come closer. She whispered. “I am Vivienne.”
“Yes, I know. Vivienne is a beautiful name,” I said. Something in her voice triggered a memory in me. “You’re Irish!” I said. “I am Irish too, but I have lived in England for a long time.”
“Irish, you say? Well then, kinswoman, you are familiar with their ways.” She sat back, assessing me, a brick of silence.
“Whose ‘ways’ are you talking about?” I asked.
She retreated from me even more. “Oh no. I know your tricks. They sent you to run him off when he comes.”
“No one sent me, Vivienne. I came here to help the patients. I had a friend who was here for a little while. Her name was Lucy. She was very pretty with long golden hair. Did you see her?”
She sat up a little straighter. “Maybe I did,” she said. She looked as if she was reaching back in her memory, and my heart began to race, thinking that I might have another witness to Lucy’s last days. I patiently told Vivienne a little more about Lucy.
“Was she one of them?”
“Who are they?” I asked very quietly, trying to look profoundly curious. I thought that if I imitated her secretive tone, she would be more receptive to me.
“Who are they? They are listening to us right now, so we best be careful what we say and do not insult them. They are the Sidhe.” She pronounced it shee. “They are also called the Gentry. They go by many names when they walk among us.”
“I have heard of the Sidhe,” I said. It must have existed somewhere latent in my memory because it did sound familiar. “They are the fairies. Is that right?”
She looked at me with disdain. “Yes, the fairies, but not the little sprites and sylphs that live in the forest. The Sidhe are royalty. They are the windborne spirits who can make their bodies as solid as yours or mine if they want to have truck with us. I have been among them. I have seen their queen,” she said, her voice and body animating with a new energy. “She sits on a throne, surrounded by a fire of shining light, the light from which they all emerge and to which they return to rejuvenate themselves!”
I sat back discouraged. I was not going to get any information about Lucy; I was going to once again be the captive of an elderly person’s fanciful stories.
“I think I may have heard these legends when I was a child,” I said.
“It is no legend. They are the elder race, child, the original people, the dreamers who dreamt up the world. They formed themselves out of the swirl of life that flows through all things.”
With her remarkable eyes that locked tight on mine as she spoke, her long still-beautiful hands that gesticulated with her words, and her singsong Celtic voice, she began to captivate me. Perhaps it was my destiny to be a companion to half-mad elders. “How do you know these things?” I asked.
“It started on midsummer’s eve, when I was just a girl of seventeen. I had joined the followers of Áine, the fairy goddess who still walks among us in disguise.”
I knew that superstitious women in Ireland still called upon the old goddesses.
“I heard others tell the stories of her power and her magic. Áine can turn herself into whatever form she would like to take-a mare, a dog, a wolf, or a bird. She can help a woman to get with child or make a bad crop grow strong. She is irresistible to men, and has her way with kings and gods alike. If she desires a man, she will turn herself into an animal of prey to make him chase after her, and the hunter soon finds himself in her lair. She mates and bears children, but she tires of men and she abandons them. She once bit off the ear of a king when he tried to overpower her and left him lying in his blood. You can hear her discarded lovers howling in the woods after she has had them and disappeared.”
At this, Vivienne cackled, and I thought of Jonathan, wandering the fields of Styria after his affair. I supposed that these old tales were metaphors for what happened when men succumbed to lust.
“Áine’s followers imitated her ways, and it was whispered that she gifted some of them with her powers, so I sought to join their circle. Midsummer’s eve is her holiest day, the day of the year when the veil that separates the two worlds is thinnest. I slipped out of my bedroom window at the eleventh hour and met my sisters in the woods. They had already lit a fire, and we decorated our hair with roses and began to chant her name, Áine, Áine, Áine. The moon was as pregnant a one as I had ever seen, and the light of it illuminated our young faces. Our skin was shimmering like we were creatures of heaven as we danced around the fire, and our voices sounded like a choir of angels. It is no small wonder we attracted them to us.”
Vivienne’s eyes radiated with a peculiar light as she spoke. I did not want to interrupt this reverie, which, as with the old whaler, brought the poor aged thing so much pleasure in the telling. “Now remember, the Sidhe can take whatever form suits them, and if they fancy you, they will turn themselves into whatever will seduce you. On that eve, they came to us as men. It was the most remarkable thing. We heard winds rupture upon winds as they broke through the veil. The atmosphere cracked open, letting through beams of light, brighter than the sun. The thunderous noise died down, and we heard their music, tinkling silver bells and celestial harps. Then we saw them riding out of the light, skin shining with the electrical fires of the Great Cosmos.
“So here they were, a small army of them, some marching, some on horse, straight from heaven-tall, stately, magical creatures with luminous hair of gold. They bore the features of mortal men, only more beautiful, more radiant. Some of the sisters passed out cold on the ground, while others screamed as the Sidhe warriors swept alongside them and carried them off on their horses. In spite of all the chaos around us, he and I locked eyes as he rode toward me on his steed, with his flowing hair and red cape and his enormous dog bigger than a wolf at his side.”
“What color was his dog?” I asked, ever more drawn into her tale.
“Silver!” she said. “And feral!”
I had to wonder if I had been in the company of one of these creatures at Whitby Abbey.
“Soon he whisked me upon the back of his horse, and he took me to his kingdom. It was just a leap to the other side of the veil, child. I am telling you, no sooner had the horse jumped a fence than we were in a place not of this earth.”
“You were in the fairy kingdom?” I asked. “But where is it?”
“It is right here,” Vivienne replied, opening her arms out to encompass the space around us. “It exists alongside us, though we cannot see it. If you are ever lying in your bed late at night when all the lights are extinguished, just reach up into the darkness, and a creature from the other side of the veil will take your hand. The Sidhe can break the veil wherever they desire. For mortals, there are access points everywhere. I have seen them, hidden at the bottom of lakes, where so many have drowned trying to find them, or buried deep inside mountain caves.”
“Tell me about your captor, Vivienne,” I said. As she told her story, it became as vivid in my mind as if I had lived it myself.
“Oh, he was tall and grand, a warrior from an ancient military aristocracy. His mother was a fairy who had mated with a human warrior centuries ago. I loved him and wanted to stay with him forever.”
“Even after he kidnapped you and took you away from your home?”
“I had called him forth by the ritual. I went to him willingly, and, even if I had not, he was not to be resisted. Even if it had cost me my life, I would have been happy to sacrifice it.”
I wondered what it was that had actually cost Vivienne her sanity. Had she gone mad and then began to fabricate that the fairy prince had kidnapped her? Or had she invented the story, and her growing belief in it had turned her mad?
“What was it that enthralled you so?” I asked.
“They drive mortals mad with pleasure, out of our minds with ecstasy,” she said with an asp hiss. “Sometimes, they kill us! Not because they wish to, but because their bodies are fire and electricity, and mortals cannot tolerate it! The Sidhe love all that we love-feasting, fighting, warring, making love, music, and they love to seduce us into these pursuits. Humans go among them and return with their toes danced off, with their bodies drained of their very blood, with their minds a blank. The fairies do love us, but too often we cannot survive their intensity. When we die, they send their banshees to mourn our passing. Their cries fill the vault of heaven and shake the earth!”
“But you did survive,” I said.
Leaning ever closer to me and looking around the room, Vivienne whispered, “I had a baby by him, a girl, I think, but I do not know what became of her.”
I waited for her to elaborate, wondering if the insane were subject to Kate’s method of letting information flow from the discomfort of silence. Vivienne went blank, as if something had wiped clean her mind. Her eyes rolled to the corners like lazy green marbles.
“Vivienne!” The sound of my voice snapped back her attention. “Please finish your story. Why did they take your baby?”
She began to play with her long hair, gathering it to one side and twisting it into a white swirl that hung down her shoulder. She looked like an elderly mermaid, if ever there was such a creature. “I offended the goddess. I was beautiful, and she was jealous. She told my lover to forsake me and she stole my baby away!”
She was quiet for a moment, but something begin to seethe inside her. She raised her arms and began scratching at the air in front of her. “He is right here, right here with me but he won’t show himself. His world is all around us, I tell you. It is invisible to our eyes and silent to our ears, but it is right here!”
She looked at me with great desperation, and then grabbed my arms. “You can bring him to me! You must call to him and tell him where I am!” She let me go and paddled at the air, each stroke of her old arms more violent. I stood up, moving away from her. I did not think she could hurt me, but the sight of her was so pitiful. “I know you are here!” She screamed loudly, beating at the thin air with her hands.
Hurried footsteps came toward us. The two hall supervisors rushed in, each taking one of Vivienne’s arms. She flailed, trying to get out of their grip. “I want my baby!” she yelled. “What have they done with my baby?”
“You had better leave now, madam,” Mrs. Kranz said to me. Her voice was firm. “Shut the door and wait outside.”
Vivienne’s shawl had fallen off and I could see the old spotted flesh of her arms hanging off the bone. Her head was thrown back and she stared at the ceiling, limp in the arms of the two women, a trickle of tears sliding from the corner of each eye. “Good-bye Vivienne,” I said timidly.
Her head snapped forward and she looked straight at me, fixing her eerie green stare upon me. “They will come for you and they will know you by your eyes.”