The Asylum (33 page)

“Miss Ashton?—I fear I have distressed you.”

“No, no, it is only—” I took a step forward, and realised I was quite unsteady on my feet. “I should like to sit down for a little.”

I made my way over to a fallen tree, anxiously attended by Frederic, and sat down on the trunk. A few paces to my left, a path led back into the wood; I saw Frederic glance over his shoulder, and wondered if it went to the ruined stable.

“You must understand,” he said, “that, bleak as it must sound, these sad histories are part of the furniture of my mind. They have lost their power to hurt.”

A brief silence followed.

“Miss Ashton,” he said hesitantly, “what you said to me, before, has lifted a great weight from my mind. I hope you will not take it amiss if I remind you that, when you leave here, my purse will be at your disposal.”

In fact, sir, I imagined myself replying, it is
my
purse, and I have documents to prove it. But only if I could prove that I was Georgina Ferrars.

“You are very kind, Mr. Mordaunt,” I murmured, hoping I was not overplaying my part. “I should have been more gracious when you first made the offer.”

He gave me another of his heartfelt looks, in which a sort of incredulous hope was dawning. No one, I thought, could counterfeit such transparent emotion, those rapid changes of colour . . . I felt a wild impulse to confide in him, to trust in his sense of honour and his evident feeling for me; but then I thought of my journal, of how I had trusted just those signs in Lucia (if only I could
remember
trusting her). I reminded myself, too, of how much he idolised Dr. Straker, and resolved to stick to my plan.

“You spoke, Mr. Mordaunt, of
when
I am released. Are you confident, then, that Dr. Straker will let me go?”

“Yes, Miss Ashton, I am—though I cannot, as you know, force his hand.”

“But why is it, may I ask, that he will not release me now? I am not a danger to myself, or anyone else; I accept that I cannot be Georgina Ferrars, and I am prepared to wait patiently for my actual memory to return: what, then, is the obstacle?”

“I am afraid there are several. He fears that if he releases you prematurely—his word, not mine—your actual memory, as you call it, may
never
return. And he still hopes that by combing through records of missing persons—which he spends a good deal of his time doing—he will discover who you really are, and restore you to your friends and family, assuming, of course . . .” He trailed off awkwardly.

“But do
you
think it fair, Mr. Mordaunt, that he should keep me here, as a certified lunatic? If I am capable of living in the world, should I not be allowed to?”

“I—speaking for myself, I agree with you. I find it impossible to think of you as a lunatic, or to imagine . . .” He shook his head, as if to clear it. “The difficulty, according to Dr. Straker, is that yours is such a rare condition—he knows of only four comparable instances, all reported from France—that he simply can’t predict how, or how soon, it will resolve. My own belief, as I said to you only yesterday, is that if you could—I hesitate to say converse with, but speak to Miss Ferrars, in a setting acceptable to you both, the spell might be broken. But Dr. Straker, as I told you yesterday, is vehemently opposed to it: he fears the shock might kill you.”

“I cannot see why, Mr. Mordaunt. I agree with you; I am convinced that it would help me. In fact—of course I have no right to ask,” I said, meeting his eyes with all the appeal I could muster, “but would
you
be prepared to call upon Miss Ferrars at Gresham’s Yard, and try to persuade her to see me?”

“Nothing would give me greater pleasure, Miss Ashton; but Dr. Straker would never agree.”

“But supposing he is wrong? Should you not trust your own instinct? If it helps me recover my memory, and leads to my release, will he not forgive you? And have the largeness of heart to acknowledge that you were right and he was wrong? I should be eternally grateful,” I added, with another beseeching look.

“Miss Ashton, I only wish . . . The thing is, even if I were to defy him, Miss Ferrars has said that
she
won’t agree to it unless we can return her writing case.”

“But, as you said yourself, Mr. Mordaunt, if it helps me to remember what I did with it . . .”

He was plainly torn; his hands, clasped in his lap, were trembling.

“Something has just come to me,” I said, playing my last card. “About that writing case.”

“Yes, Miss Ashton?”

“‘Aunt Rosina’s will’: I don’t know what it means—the words just came into my head, but my heart insists that Miss Ferrars will understand them.”

My heart, in fact, was beating very fast, and my mouth was dry. I had gambled on his not recognising the name.

“I see. Do you think, Miss Ashton, that your memory is already returning? Dr. Straker will be most—”

“Please, Fre—Mr. Mordaunt; you promised you would not breathe a word of this conversation to him, until I have had time to reflect.”

“Of course not, if you wish it,” he said, regarding me with a sort of troubled adoration. “I shall do my utmost to persuade him—about Miss Ferrars—as if it were solely my own idea.”

My heart sank at “do my utmost.”

“But he will never agree; you said so yourself.” I had no need to exaggerate my disappointment.

“You are right,” he said, after a pause. “It is time I . . . I will not go behind his back, but I shall write to Miss Ferrars—I had better make sure she is at home—regardless of his response. And I shall certainly mention Aunt—Rosina, is it?—Aunt Rosina’s will.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I am very much in your debt. And now, I think, if you do not mind, I should like to return to my room, and rest for a while.”

He rose and held out his hand to help me up, and we stood for a moment facing each other, my hand still in his. He took a deep breath, as if about to make a declaration.

“You must know that I—this time I shall not fail you,” he said, restraining himself with palpable effort.

I smiled and thanked him again, and let my fingers brush across the palm of his hand as I released it, sternly repressing the thought that perhaps I was no better than Lucia.

I had intimated to Frederic that he might find me any day at about three o’clock, so long as the weather kept fine, reading by the fallen tree. He appeared that same afternoon, looking even paler than before.

“I cannot stay long,” he said, “but I wanted to tell you that my letter to Miss Ferrars will be in tomorrow morning’s post.”

“You have spoken to Dr. Straker, then?”

“Yes, and he was most displeased; even more so when he realised that I meant to write to Miss Ferrars, with or without his consent. He again accused me of—well, it does not matter. ‘I cannot prevent you from inviting Miss Ferrars to Tregannon House,’ he said, ‘but if any harm comes to Miss Ashton because of this, it will be upon your head. I have a good mind to move Miss Ashton back to the closed ward, for her own safety, but doubtless you will object to that, too. Very well; in the unlikely event that Miss Ferrars accepts, we will bring them together, under the most careful supervision. I repeat: upon your own head be it.’

“Neither of us alluded to it, but the implication was clear: he agreed only because Uncle Edmund could die at any time, and as the owner, I could make things very difficult for him—I hope I am not distressing you, Miss Ashton.”

“No, no, it is—only the thought of being confined again; I could not bear it.”

“I would not allow that, I assure you, unless you were to become—so violently agitated that there was no alternative. Indeed, I went further: I pressed him once more to lift the certificate. But there he is adamant. ‘If I did that,’ he said, ‘Miss Ashton would be off to London on the next train. She would go straight to Gresham’s Yard and make a scene. Miss Ferrars would summon a constable, and Miss Ashton would be hauled off to Bethlem. I hardly think she would consider that an improvement, do you?’”

“But I accept that I cannot be—” I stopped, realising that I had tied his hands by pledging him to secrecy.

“Yes,” said Frederic, “but
he
will not accept that, unless he is certain that your memory has returned.”

I had considered that possibility during the night: to tell Dr. Straker that I had remembered I was Lucia Ardent, exactly as she had presented herself to me. But he would want to check; he had already dismissed Lucia’s story as an obvious fabrication (as it surely was), and if he caught me in a lie, I would lose Frederic’s regard, and find myself back in Women’s Ward B.

Again I was tempted to present him with the wills and Rosina’s letters and say, here is the truth, you must decide. But would he—would any man—meekly hand over a lucrative private asylum to a certified lunatic, wholly within his power? Even if he was infatuated with her? The idea that I was the lawful owner of this vast estate was too much for me to hold in my mind; I could grasp it only in bewildering flashes. Regardless of what the law might say, did I really want to deprive Frederic of his inheritance? The question was unanswerable. I could not think beyond escaping, and recovering my own name and fortune from Lucia.

“—Miss Ashton?”

I realised that Frederic had been speaking.

“I beg your pardon,” I said. “There is—so much to take in.”

He gave me a searching glance, as if hoping to detect some personal meaning, and looked hastily away. In the fields by the wall, work continued as usual. A light breeze blew from the west, stirring the leaves overhead and carrying fragments of song from the workmen. Patches of sunlight drifted across the hills. I thought of all the anguished souls incarcerated a mere hundred yards away, and shivered.

“I must go,” he said. “And perhaps you should not stay too long; you must be getting cold. I shall let you know as soon as there is any news.”

I thanked him once more. He did not offer me his hand this time, but he stood for a moment gazing down at me. Then he squared his shoulders and walked away without looking back.

The following morning after breakfast, Mrs. Pearce, the matron, stopped me on my way out with the words I least wanted to hear: Dr. Straker wished to see me in my room. There I waited, imagining worse and worse consequences as the minutes ticked past. By the time he appeared in the doorway, I had resigned myself to being dragged away in chains, to the deepest, darkest cell in the asylum. But all he did was take my pulse—he seemed not to notice my agitation—and ask his routine questions about whether I had remembered anything more, to which I thought it safest to reply that I had not. I thanked him for moving me to the voluntary wing, and said that I felt better already for being able to walk amongst trees and open fields; he heard me out with his ironic smile and a faint inclination of his head, said he would look in again soon, and departed.

My relief, however, was tempered by—I could not tell exactly what—an atmosphere, an undercurrent, an uneasy feeling that his manner had been a little
too
casual, his habitual detachment too studied. Frederic, after all, had confronted him twice in the last few days. Did he really believe that I had not the faintest inkling of this? Or was he trying to lull me into a false sense of security?

Or was it simply my overwrought imagination running away with me? How could I be certain, for that matter, that Frederic
had
confronted him? Perhaps the only person I had succeeded in deceiving was myself.

Three days passed without my seeing Frederic; I told myself that it might be weeks before Lucia replied—if she ever did—but my spirits sank lower nonetheless. The voluntary patients—there seemed to be about a dozen of them, all much older than I—avoided me whenever possible; I wondered who had told them that I was still certified.

On the fourth morning, I resolved to visit the old stable, to see if it would suit my purpose. A fine, misty rain was falling, which made it more natural that I should hug my cloak around me and draw the hood close around my face as I set off along the path I had taken every afternoon. When I had gone about halfway to the wood, I knelt and pretended to remove a stone from my shoe, glancing behind me as I did so. There was no one following, but every window seemed alive with watchful eyes; the pressure on my spine did not relent until the path had carried me out of sight of the asylum.

Grey, drifting vapour hung low overhead, curling amongst the treetops. Sheep wandered in and out of patches of mist, their cries muffled by the damp. Beneath the wall, indistinct figures hunched over their spades.

You will be closely watched.
Beyond the fearful promptings of my imagination, I had seen no sign of it. Could Dr. Straker really have stationed watchers all around the estate? How could he know which direction I would take?

I had only to imagine what I would have done in your place, Miss Ashton, to anticipate your every movement.

There was the fallen tree, and the path leading into the wood. Except for the distant labourers, there was still no one in sight as I passed beneath the canopy.

The trees grew even closer on this side. Some had been felled many years ago, and new ones had grown up around the stumps. I could not help leaving a distinct trail as I hurried along the path, flinching every time a twig snapped beneath my foot. Sooner than I expected, I emerged into a clearing in which stood a dark, ivy-covered mass, dripping with moisture. Frederic had described the stable as it had appeared on a sunlit afternoon; in that grey, murky light it was scarcely recognisable as a building. There was the broken lintel, with rubble heaped around a narrow opening.

I held my breath, listening. Though the asylum was no more than fifty yards away, I could hear only the dripping of water and the muted calls of birds. I moved reluctantly closer.

Frederic had said that the tapping sound came only when he was not listening for it. I knelt by the opening and tried to peer into the darkness within. A dank, chthonic smell wafted out at me—followed by a metallic clang.