Mortal Love (18 page)

Radborne grinned, in surprise and relief. “Yes—quite safely, thank you! I don't have much, just the one valise, and my paints and—”

He turned to see Kervissey setting his bag and easel upon the granite entryway. “Wait, please, let me—”

Radborne ran back to the cart and retrieved his color box. When he returned, Learmont was counting out a few coins for the farmer. “Many thanks,” he said.

“
Nos da dheugh why.”
The farmer yanked at his cap and trudged back to his wagon.

“
Nos da dheugh why,”
replied Dr. Learmont. He was dressed as when Radborne first saw him, in bright-blue waistcoat and yellow shirt, though his tie was green, not purple. From his waistcoat pocket dangled a silver chain, attached to a pair of long, shining shears. “Good day to you, Kervissey.”

Kervissey whistled at his horse; the wagon swung about and clattered off. Radborne watched its silhouette disappear into the shadows receding from the east. “What language was that he spoke?”

“Why, Cornish.”

Radborne frowned, thinking of his mother, the few unintelligible verses he could recall her murmuring to him as a child when she sang him to sleep at night. “Are they like the Irish, then? They have their own language?”

“Cornish is more like Welsh. But the last person who spoke Cornish died over a hundred years ago—Dolly Pentreath, and a very old woman she was.”

“But ...” Radborne rubbed his forehead. “Forgive me, I am exhausted. The journey was much longer than I anticipated—”

“Please, by all means come in, come in!”

Learmont darted back through the door. Radborne followed with his color box and easel and finally his valise, thinking it strange that there were no servants around.

He set his bag down inside. The large, airy foyer showed signs of recent renovation, its curving oak stairway and gallery evoking the mode for all things medieval. He could glimpse a dining room at the end of the central corridor, and beyond that a door opening onto the kitchen, something that would have horrified Mrs. Beale—the English middle class had a positively morbid aversion to signs or smells of cooking. Radborne gazed at it all in a sort of stupefied pleasure.

“Are you always awake at this hour?” he asked.

“Why, I was waiting for you.” Learmont smiled; his cheeks glowed as though he had been pinched. “And yes, I sometimes receive at odd times—the Great Western locomotives keep an erratic schedule in these parts, and I depend more than I would like upon Kervissey to meet my few visitors in Padwithiel.”

Radborne looked back at the open front door. Outside, the dark sky was streaked with viridian, as though someone had scored a knife across the horizon to reveal another sky beneath. The wind had died, but beneath his feet the flagstones quivered like blanket bog.

“We passed another village, back there.” Radborne pointed to the mainland. “Closer than Padwithiel.”

“Ah, that's Trevenna,” said Learmont. “No train there, I'm afraid. A backwater, really, though you might find it interesting. Painters visit sometimes—they think it romantic, because of the ruins. Swinburne has spent time there with Inchbold.”

He dug into his pocket and produced a pair of blue conservative spectacles. He put them on, closed the door, then peered down the long corridor.

“Where
is
the girl?” he muttered. “Excuse me.”

He stepped over to an Annunciator set into the wall, stabbed at a button. A bell clanged, and he shook his head. “Let's hope she's not gone down for more coal, or we'll be here all morning.”

“Do you have no other staff, then?”

“Well, it is always difficult to find reliable attendants. Which is why I was so delighted to make your acquaintance. The fishermen here don't care to labor indoors, and the miners don't care for work in a dark, cold place so reminiscent of the mines.”

He gave a barking laugh. “You'll find the folk here very superstitious, Mr. Comstock. The men won't let their women work for me. They never come up here, unless it's to seek better medical advice than they get from the fool who calls himself an apothecary down village.
That
they're willing enough to pay for. I daresay if you visit the public house, you'll hear enough winter's tales about me to fill one of your illustrated magazines.”

Radborne smiled. “No, the pub didn't look very welcoming. I was lucky to find your man Kervissey there. Not that he was too happy to oblige me.”

“No, he wouldn't be. Ah, here's Breaghan.”

Radborne turned to see a figure hurrying toward them. A woman, fair-haired. She wore a faded but well-cut dress of black bombazine; her carriage was erect save for the odd sideways manner in which she held her head, twisted so that she seemed to stare fixedly at the floor. Frayed gloves covered her hands; where the wool had unraveled on one, he could glimpse a finger tinged leaden blue. As she drew beside him, Radborne caught a powerful whiff of chloride of lime and lye soap and an underlying smell of soft rot.

“I'll take your bags, sir.” Her voice was an old woman's voice, its soft West Country burr nearly scorched away. Yet her profile showed a girl's features sharpened by toil, her eyes coldly blue as moonlit snow. Radborne watched her lift his valise with no apparent effort; she seemed as strong as Kervissey.

“Put him in the spare room above mine, Breaghan,” said Dr. Learmont. “And lay the fire there, if you haven't already.”

“Yes, sir.”

As she turned, Radborne finally caught a clear glimpse of the rest of her face. He gasped in dismay: her lower jaw had been eaten away to the bone, leaving a ridge of yellowing teeth and ulcerated flesh beneath a frayed cotton bandage.

“I ... I beg your pardon—” he said, but she was already lugging his valise upstairs. Learmont turned back to Radborne.

“Phosphorous necrosis—‘phossy jaw,' they call it,” he said. “In the city poor children make matches at home to sell. Breaghan said she produced four gross in a day since she was six years old. The poisonous vapor works its way through their teeth and into the bone. Like lime through flesh.”

“God help her! Is there nothing that can be done?”

“Not a bit. Eventually the necrosis spreads to the brain. A terrible thing. I'm glad to be able to give her shelter. She found me in the village one day not long ago—God knows how she came here—and begged for work.”

He gestured for Radborne to follow him upstairs. “She does what she can in the way of cooking and tending to the rooms here. I've had no luck finding a chambermaid, so Breaghan is a godsend.”

They reached the second-floor landing. Dr. Learmont paused to lean against the balustrade. “She seems capable enough, but you can see why I was pleased to discover you.”

Radborne glanced around but saw no sign of patients. The place was sparsely though fashionably furnished—Morris & Company rugs, a worn tapestry, a few rush-seated Sussex chairs—rustic things that suited a gentleman's West Country folly more than a madhouse. “You trust her, then?”

“I do,” said Dr. Learmont, but he looked weary as he said it. “The hardest work I take upon myself at any rate. Come.”

He started down a wide hallway with oil lamps on the walls, a floor grate from which a thread of warmth expired in a breath of coal smoke. They passed dayrooms, one with a billiards table; the apothecary; a white-painted door with the word
REFRACTORY
on it.

Then the corridor turned, and Radborne followed Learmont into another wing, older than the first and smelling of lye and lime and chloroform. If it were not for Dr. Learmont's eccentric dress, the glint of shears in his back pocket, Radborne would have imagined himself back at Garrison Asylum. The same clerestory windows, with small panes that would be cheap to replace when broken. The same furnishings, plain deal tables and mismatched chairs, metal buckets tucked into alcoves. Locked doors with small square windows covered by thick wire mesh. There would be patients behind the doors, though he heard no sound but Learmont's footsteps and his own.

“Here we are,” said Learmont. “I think Breaghan's made it ready for you.”

He opened a door into a small room with a high ceiling and scrubbed wooden floor. Sunlight streamed through the windows, painfully bright, and made the yellow-papered walls shine like brass. There was a wardrobe, a small oak table with washbasin, a chamber pot, a handbell for summoning Breaghan; on the floor a new, luridly colored Axminister rug still smelling strongly of aniline dye; a narrow iron bed with mattresses.

Radborne tried to hide his dismay. Save for the fact that the window was open and had no bars or grille, it was little different from the room a patient might occupy.

“Thank you,” he said. He set down his color box and crossed to the window. The light at least was excellent. He leaned out, immediately took a quick step backward.

“Yes,” said Dr. Learmont. He joined Radborne, placing his hands upon the sill. “It's rather a shock the first time you see it.”

The window looked down upon a sheer cliff. Hundreds of feet below, blue-black water smashed against granite crags. Sunlit mist charged the air an iridescent silver-green.

“The other rooms have grates on them,” explained Learmont. “This one did as well, but I thought it made it too dark. For your work.”

He indicated Radborne's easel and color box. “Now then, Mr. Comstock. Shall I have Breaghan bring you up something to eat?”

“No thank you. I . . . I think I'd like to rest first. The trip was longer than I thought. Perhaps I could join you for lunch?”

“Of course, of course. A visitor journeying here from London for the first time doesn't realize what a different world it is—a different world. The last aboriginals of Britain lived here—like your red men, driven into the West.”

He looked at Radborne. “It's what drew me to form the Folk-Lore Society. We are losing the old ways, Mr. Comstock. Little of that other world remains now. A very few of us would like to do what we can to preserve it.

“But now I must leave you, Mr. Comstock. I have only two patients at the moment, but they both demand my attentions. Please ring for Breaghan if you need anything.”

After he left, Radborne closed the door and latched it. He removed his shoes, his overcoat and trousers, and fell into bed. It smelled of horsehair and urine. He turned to face the open window, felt the cold wind on his face. In minutes he was asleep.

He woke suddenly, sitting bolt upright with no idea where he was. The light in the room had deepened; outside, the sky was a hard vitreous blue. Not until he saw his clothes thrown over a chair did he remember. He had come to an asylum in West Cornwall to work.

He ran a hand across his face. He was unshaven, and hot despite the chill sea air. With a groan he stood, and heard a sound above the susurrus of waves and wind.

“Where is he? Where is he?”
It was a woman's voice, nearly drowned by a man's wordless shout. “
No, Ned, I will
not!”

“You must!”

Then there was a third voice, high-pitched, familiar. “
Oh, don't, don't—”

Before he knew what he was about, Radborne had his cheek pressed against his door, listening.

“
Where is Fancy?”
cried the woman. “
You have not hurt him?”

“
—don't I say—”

“
—you doing here?”

That was the first man's voice, nearly frantic with despair. Quickly Radborne pulled on clothes and shoes and slipped into the hall.

He went only a few steps before finding a stairwell that ascended to where the voices came from. Radborne hurried up, then peered out into a corridor. Just yards away a tall man stood within an open doorframe, his back to Radborne and his arms outstretched as though he were pinioned.

“You
must
let me be alone with her! Now!”

His was the deep, despairing voice—but there was rage in it, too. With a cry he tried to push his way into the room but was stopped.

“You cannot do this, Ned! Learmont will come—you
must
leave her!”

Radborne shrank back. There was the impact of a body shoved against a wall, the muffled sound of a door being forced shut. The first man shouted in anguish; with a shrill whisper, the second man hushed him.

Silence. Radborne heard two pairs of footsteps hastening away from him, through the corridor, then down another flight of stairs. He listened, his heart pounding.

Would Learmont come?

Minutes passed. Radborne took a deep breath and stepped into the hall. He glanced around to make sure he was alone, walked briskly to the door, and opened it.

Immediately warmth engulfed him, a thick, musky odor like a fox's den. His foot nudged something; he looked down and saw a long-handled sable paintbrush that had been snapped in half.

“Who are you?” a voice demanded. “You are not of my people. Tell me!” He lifted his head and froze.

It was the woman on the bridge. She was enveloped within the same cloud of soft grays and blues, though now her clothes were not tatters but liquid folds of heavy Chinese silk, pigeon gray shot with mauve and indigo, the trailing sleeves edged with violet. A crimson scarf was wrapped about her neck, so that for an instant Radborne imagined that her throat had been cut.

“I ... I beg your pardon. I thought ... I heard an argument. My name is Radborne Comstock. I have just taken a position here, as . . . as . . .”

The woman stared at him. She was very tall, her legs hidden by the folds of her kimono, her long arms extending from the sleeves so that he could see her wrists, strangely thin and delicate, and her big hands, their ragged nails daubed with red. Her neck was long and columnar, her face heart-shaped, with a pointed chin and smooth white forehead, deep-set dark-green eyes and a wide, delicately curved mouth. She was not young—at least ten years older than Radborne, her mass of loose, flowing hair the color of oak, a deep reddish brown, and falling to her shoulders.