The Ghosts of Heaven (14 page)

The room tensed, and a terrible silence descended.

No one moved.

Escrove pointed at Elizabeth Smith, Anne Sutton.

“Strip her. Find the marks.”

So it was that Anne Sutton stepped forward eagerly, and Elizabeth Smith less so, and with the help of the men, they began to silently wrestle Anna from her dress, in a soft dumb silent theatrical of a fight, in which hands groped and feet scuffled on the wide floorboards of the hall.

They had the dress ripped at the back and pulled down, and Anna stood covered only by her shift, and suddenly Samuel Hamill stood, pointing, and said one word.

“Stop!”

The dumb dance stopped and Anna stood hunched over, breathing hard, Swinging from her neck was a silver locket in the shape of a heart.

Father Escrove turned to Samuel.

“What is it?”

“My mother's locket. That is my mother's locket.”

Sir George sat up, leaning forward, peering.

“Bring that here,” he said, and Adam Dolen wasted no time wrenching it from Anna's neck with a fat fist and brought it to Sir George.

He looked at the locket in his hand, and then lifted his head to the room.

“It is,” he said. “It is.”

Anna cried out to Robert, one last time.

“You have to tell them. Tell them you gave that me! Tell them!”

“Ridiculous!” roared Father Escrove, who rounded on Robert with eyes ablaze.

“You would have done no such thing, would you? To give your mother's jewel to this vile slattern! Ridiculous.”

And it was all that Robert Hamill could do, as his father, his stepmother, his brother, his sister, the minister, and all the villagers of Welden stared at him, to mouth the words that killed Anna.

“No … Ridiculous.”

Anna collapsed on the floor. Falling to her knees with her dress rent about her waist, her hair hanging in ringlets around her, and she knew without question that she was lost.

“Anna Tunstall,” the minister said. “You have been brought before this court and found guilty. Of practicing treason against your masters. Of overlooking Robert Hamill. Of inducing the possession by devils of your brother. Of the murder of the Dolen baby by means of witchcraft. The sentence is death. You shall now be taken from this place and be hung by your neck until you are dead. And may God have mercy upon your wretched soul.”

 

22
ROPE

The way that Father Escrove liked to hang people was simple.

The usual method, of course, was to give the condemned a long drop, enough to snap the neck, which would result in a few moments of jerking, and then stillness from the body while the crowd vented their fervor and delight.

The minister did not favor this approach. It was too easy, and too quick and did not make the best use of the death to strike fear into those who had witnessed the execution.

*   *   *

Anna's hair was shorn from her head. It fell to the floor in turning coils of red, and lay still, all movement from it gone for good.

She was stripped of the remains of her dress.

Escrove watched all this. He looked at his witch, and hate crawled within him, and twitched.

In her white shift, they carried Anna from the manor across the field to the tall single oak that stood beyond the main road—a sentinel high above the dales.

The world was burning that day, as hot as any day yet. The earlier breeze had fallen away, and the air was thick and smelled of scorched grass. Grasshoppers called to each other and the sound of grunting came from the men who swung a length of rope over a high branch of the oak—Jack Smith, the Byatts, Adam Dolen.

Anna Tunstall was forced to climb a ladder that led to the branch, and there, from another ladder, Jack Smith slipped the noose over her neck. Already, she found breath hard to come by.

“Not too long!” called Father Escrove from the ground, and Jack Smith grunted in satisfaction, shortening the length of rope that hung free from the branch.

He climbed quickly down, and Anna stood on a high rung, her hands tied behind her back, trying not to fall, though it would have only sped matters along if she had.

She looked up.

The tree arched over her, and the sky over the tree.

She saw closer things.

She saw the rope round her neck, and its short journey to the branch.

She noted how it twisted, round and round, that same shape.

The spiral dance.

The spinning top in her brother's hands.

The waterwheel.

The carving under the water.

The rope at her neck.

It was all the same thing; the same sign, and now she knew what it meant.

*   *   *

A little way away, in Tunstall cottage, Helen Fuller sat with Tom Tunstall, and wondered if he truly understood what she'd told him, what was happening to his sister.

She held him, though he seemed not to be crying, and she held him as tight as she could, as, over the windless air, she heard the voice of the minister call out, and a second later a muted cheer rose up above Welden Valley.

Helen Fuller held young Tom Tunstall tight.

“You're going to come with me, now, Thomas. With me, and John. You'll be with us now. You'd like that, wouldn't you?”

But there would be time later to explain that.

For now, she held the silent boy tighter still, and wondered when she'd ever stop crying.

 

 

QUARTER THREE

THE EASIEST ROOM IN HELL

 

Saturday, March 26

My room overlooks the sea, to the north and the east.

Verity's, to the south and the east. Between our two rooms is a third smaller bedroom with an easterly view, which I will use as my study, and where I am writing now. I will put my desk in here when it arrives from New York. Otherwise all we have is a pair of suitcases each that made the journey with us. The Long Island Rail Road sped us as far as Greenport so that after these weeks of planning and letters to and fro, it is strange to arrive here so suddenly. Of course, from Greenport we still had some few miles out here, but Doctor Phillips had sent a man to meet us with a horse and buggy. Verity loved that, and I couldn't help smiling seeing her so happy. In New York we might just have climbed into a taxi, and though we are only a few hours away, it was a good reminder that things here are somewhat different.

Greenport, the end of the line, proved to be a bustling little town with a fine station, and I even saw a turntable on which the locomotives can be turned around before their trip back to the city. There is a ferry terminal, too, with boats to New York and the Connecticut coast. But even the short ride, eight miles or so, from there to Orient Point, showed our destination to be even further removed from modern society.

At one point, the land of the North Fork tapers, so there is sea but a stone's throw away on either side, and our driver showed us how the land is so low-lying that it is no wonder that floods across it are not uncommon.

Then the land widens once more and climbs a little, forming the headland. A road to our right leads to Orient itself, but our driver took us straight on, to the place that is to be our new home.

The building itself is as remarkable as I had been told. While all around are various outbuildings: the sheds connected to the farm and gardens, workshops, the crematorium with its tall chimney, and so on, the landscape is otherwise somewhat bleak and windswept, aside from the Kirkbride building; so ornate, majestic and, I truly believe, inspiring. Six full floors with their tiered wings tower over the grounds.

Here we sit in our rooms, with a bathroom of our own and even a small kitchen, at the eastern end of the seventh floor. This floor is shorter than the others, and covers only the central block of the building so that we have a view over the roofs of the sixth floor.

It is a fine view. Each of our three rooms has a door leading out to a balcony of all things! With a finely wrought white wooden railing safe enough for me to allow Verity to sit outside if she wishes. The balcony runs right round the building, so that I could stroll along to Doctor Phillips' rooms in the center if I wished, and there I might converse with him as two gentlemen on the deck of a liner, not as newly arrived employee talking to venerable employer.

All in all, it is a place that would suit the Vanderbilts, or the Astors, or the Du Ponts, were it on the South Fork of the island. From my vantage point up here, and close to the gods I fancy, it takes some little effort to remind myself why I have come, what my work will be, and that in the building beneath and behind me are some three thousand insane, all sent here because society has no more hope for them.

I must end. Verity is calling for her father. I record in this journal only the brief hope that I may do well enough to send one or two of the insane back to the society that rejected them.

 

Sunday, March 27

I slept well. I woke to find Verity awake before me and dressed, standing looking out at the sea from the balcony.

I told her it was too cold to stand there in the stiff breeze, but she laughed at that, and only the idea of breakfast would bring her inside.

Breakfast appeared in a hatch in the hallway. This “dumb waiter” connects to the kitchens seven floors below. Verity laughed at that, too. She wanted to climb in, saying it was like a tiny elevator, and that she wanted to surprise the cooks.

I smiled but there was in me half a belief that she actually meant to do it. This place is vast; there are all sorts of mischiefs she might run into. I wonder if I have ever lived in such luxury and style. I know that Verity has not, with food appearing like magic, as if a genie made it happen, and with soft beds and views that a billionaire would not be able to fault.

“This morning you must entertain yourself,” I said as we ate. I told her that I had to meet with Doctor Phillips, because tomorrow I start work, properly. And tomorrow Verity will go to the schoolhouse in Orient and we can settle down into a normal life.

*   *   *

After breakfast, I left Verity to play in her room. I paused in the doorway.

“Perhaps you could read awhile,” I said.

“Perhaps, Father,” she said.

I started to leave and then I paused again.

“Don't climb in the dumb waiter,” I said.

She smiled at me and I left her to playing with her dolls while I went along the corridor to find Doctor Phillips, in his rooms at the west end of our floor.

*   *   *

In the center of the building is a most remarkable thing.

From the ground floor, all the way up to the seventh, is a giant curved stairwell. Therefore from the entrance hall, up to us, here, is a vast open cylinder, with a staircase that winds up and up, each elegant turn bringing you to the floor above.

It forms an enormous spiral staircase, though with interruptions at each landing. On the seventh floor however, on the landing at the midpoint of the corridor between Doctor Phillips' rooms and our own, the architect's idea of the spiral is allowed its true form, for here a beautiful free-standing wooden spiral ascends from the floor, thrusting up into a glass domed cupola, from which light floods down.

I haven't been up these steps as yet, but even from the landing I can see another place from which one could view the surrounding landscape: a circular walkway inside the cupola, with no other purpose than to admire the view.

*   *   *

I found Doctor Phillips hard at work at his desk, despite the day and the hour. His rooms are of course the mirror image of ours; except that he uses the room equivalent to Verity's as his office, a larger space in which to work.

He greeted me warmly, I felt, and asked after our travel and other matters in a sincere way.

“I trust,” he said, “that all the arrangements were suited to your needs?”

I told him they were.

“Good,” he said. “I like for things to be done well. And it is right that you are well cared for here. At the end of each day you will find that you have earned it. You enjoyed your breakfast, I hope.”

I told him it had been excellent.

“If a little cold after its journey up seven floors,” he said. “I generally eat in any one of the dining rooms. However at the weekends I take the chance for some privacy over breakfast. You may choose where you eat, although there is the matter of your daughter.”

I nodded. It is a remarkable part of the system here, that I was to invite my family to live with me, and of course, with no mother at home to care for Verity, that was a major consideration in my acceptance of the position. I want her close at hand.

“I have no family,” said Doctor Phillips, and a moment's reflection showed the truth of that to me. There were no photographs of wife or children either on his desk or on the walls. His rooms had the air of a college man—nothing feminine was in evidence, nothing was there that did not need to be there, save for an engraving on the wall of an antique map of Long Island and another of the North Fork of the island.

Doctor Phillips saw me looking at the maps.

“Oyster Ponds,” he said, and I must have looked confused. “The former name of Orient Point. And before that, Poquatuck, to the Indians. And before that…”

He smiled. “Who knows?”

Doctor Phillips is a tall man, as tall as me I think, though he stoops a little from age. He is perhaps sixty. He has a tired look about him, and his eyes are circled underneath in dark blue.

“As I was saying,” he went on, “I have no family, and so these things are unimportant to me. But such are the demands of the work here, that for those that do, it seems only well and proper that the family comes and abides here, too. Besides that, it is part of our grand plan that the insane are reminded of the normalities of the world outside. It will be helpful for them to see a father and daughter living happily, help them to remember such simple, honest structures, help them to strive in their return to mental well-being.”