Madness (3 page)

(
for their story, see
The Miss Matched
)

Much madness is divinest sense

To a discerning eye;

Much sense the starkest madness.

Emily Dickinson, ‘Much madness is divinest sense’ (l. 1-3)

Madness is the jail we could all end up in. And we know it. And watch our step. For a lifetime. We behave. A fantastic and entire system of social control, by the threat of example as effective over the general population as detention centers in dictatorships, the image of the madhouse floats through every mind for the course of its lifetime.

Kate Millett,
The Loony-Bin Trip,
Conclusion.

Prologue

“Let her go! Damn it! Let her go!” Gabrielle thumped impotently on the huge man’s shoulders as he writhed between her battered sister’s legs, hauling at her skirts.

A dreadful choking sound came from the back of Lucinda’s throat as Gabrielle feebly tried to haul the degenerate away. Loud though it was, the gagging was scarcely audible amid the cacophony of cackles, shrieks and howls throughout the common ward.

Well, hadn’t the name Bedlam become synonymous with uproar and confusion? Gabrielle could understand why as she tried to drown out the noise thrumming in her ears to concentrate on rescuing her poor sister from the violent fiend who had suddenly attacked her without warning or provocation.

“Help me! For God’s sake, someone! Nurse! Warder! Please! Help me!”

Gabrielle grabbed the man around his throat with one slender forearm as he continued to try to mount her sister. Her other hand shot between his thighs. She found his most fleshy orbs, and squeezed hard, then yanked and twisted desperately.

The man roared his fury, lashing out at her with his left arm.

Gabrielle sailed across the room like a paper kite. Pain daggered her left side, tearing the breath from her. She was almost sure one of her shoulders dislocated as she crashed into the wall and slid down it in an ignominious heap.

She clutched her aching side convulsively as she tried to heave in a single blessed breath. Her heart hammered in her breast, and the pounding of the blood in her veins nearly deafened her.

At last Gabrielle gasped and filled her lungs. But if she had hoped her most immediate problem was over, the sight of the stocky man with wildly rolling eyes looming above her now was enough to have her praying to the Almighty anew.

“No, oh God, no!”

He yanked her up by her hair with his left hand. The fingers of his right insinuated themselves into the high-necked collar of her demure hunter green gown. With one huge rent he shredded the frock from her body, baring her to the waist as he shook her like a puppet, her feet suspended several inches off the floor as she struggled against the scorching pain of her scalp.

One meaty paw clamped down upon a bare breast fiercely, wrenching the breath from her once more. Gabrielle tried to kick his groin or elbow him in the throat. Her scalp was searing agony as she continued to struggle, her movements rending even more hair from her head.

The man flung her up against the wall, and caught her around the throat before she fell. His other hand was already hauling up her skirts.

“No, oh God, no. Help me! Please! Someone! Help me! Help us!”

Her air was choked off by a meaty fist. After a few moments floundering for air under the heavy weight of the man’s body, she could feel herself relinquishing the unequal struggle. Falling. The swirling black void of oblivion rushed up to meet her.

Then the weight was lifted, and Gabrielle could breathe again at last. A warm hand reached out to take hers gently. A deep voice came through the darkness, warm, soft, as loving as a caress.

“I’ve got you. I’ve got you, love. You’ll be safe with me.”

“I’m not mad. I’m
not
mad. I know all my sums, I know the days of the week, if only someone could give me a calendar. I’m not mad. It was Brumaire when they brought me here. But no. The revolution is over and even the Emperor is no more. Gone to St. Helena. Thank God. Thought he was Julius Caesar, revising the months of the year on the calendar. But he failed. Just like Caesar was assassinated, his own generals turned upon him in the end.

“You see, I’m not mad. Won’t you help me, please? I can hear you. I know you’re a good kind loving soul. You can’t possibly want me to stay here when I’m not mad. When I’ve done nothing wrong. I admit I’m not always very well, but I’m not mad. Please help me, darling. I know it’s you. I can smell you, hear your voice. Please help me, Gabrielle."

Gabrielle wanted to scream at the man to stop trying to get around her with his insidious whispering, his words sense in madness, madness in sense. But still he pressed on.

“I can hear you moving around the room through the wall. Please, you have to help me., Look, I’ve made the hole bigger so I can see your lovely face if you come over here. You don’t have to touch me if you don’t wish to, but please talk to me at least.”

She listened for the tenth time that day to the soliloquy coming from the other side of the wall. The harsh rasp would cease for a short time, only to be renewed a short time later.

It had been thus every day for the past week, ever since her sister had finally been given a private chamber of her own.

She knew what she had been told about the inmate known only as Simon by her cousin and employer Dr. Antony Herriot. The trouble was, she simply couldn’t believe it.

Yet to do otherwise was sheer madness, not to be contemplated.

Except that Gabrielle
had
contemplated it. More and more. And come up with the most incredible plan...

She shook her head to try to dispel the audacious thoughts racing through her mind, and wrung out the cloth with which she was mopping her sister’s brow. No, she was
not
going to think about it now. Not when her sister needed her. Yet she could scarcely think about anything else.

As Gabrielle did every day, she had risen early to come to the infamous St. Mary of Bethlehem Hospital, otherwise known as Bedlam, to tend to her poor sister.

Now in the sixth month of her pregnancy, Lucinda was for the most part lost to all reason, scarcely able to feed, wash or dress herself after the dreadful attack upon her.

Even before that fateful day, she had been seriously deranged, completely immersed in a bizarre world she had created for herself, peopled by all sort of faeries, goblins and sprites. Ghosts coming back to haunt her because she had not helped them.

Or so she said the few occasions she had ever made a sound in the time that Gabrielle had seen her.

Lucinda’s husband Geoffrey Bassett, the Earl of Oxnard, had demanded she come to Dorset to witness her sister’s dreadful state for herself and choose a course of action.

As if Gabrielle had ever had any choice….

She had remained for several weeks, seeing Lucinda becoming more and more weak and hysterical. Finally she had felt she had no other option but to bow to Oxnard’s endless pressure. She had signed the papers certifying her sister. It was a decision she knew would haunt her for the rest of her life.

Gabrielle damned herself for a fool for ever having put her name to the order without understanding all the implications of what committing her sister meant.

But she had been naïve, had led a sheltered life, been at the mercy of the whims of her elder sister’s husband once her brother had died, her sister had married, and their family home had been broken up.

She had her own small inheritance, of course. But it had not been enough to maintain the house and establishment she had been accustomed to once Oxnard had taken his share. He had claimed everything had to be sold in order to gain Lucinda’s dowry and promised wedding portion.

To this day Gabrielle still wasn’t sure of all she had had to sign. Her brother Chauncey’s solicitor, the oily Mr. Sprat, had told her that she was after all a mere woman, and as such likely to be confused by such legal jargon. Everyone had been treated fairly, that was the main thing.

But now, as she mopped her sister’s fevered brow, she was not so sure. Her brother-in-law had not been interested in fairness when he had consigned the poor woman to this living hell.

Even now Gabrielle wondered, since Lucinda was now simply catatonic, why she couldn’t simply be taken care of in her own home?

She had not had any hallucinations for several days. It was true that she had been silent and withdrawn since the attack, but before that Gabrielle had been sure she’d been seeing signs of progress. The strange lurid visions had been dwindling in duration, severity and frequency ever since she had arrived in London.

It wasn’t as if Lucinda were violent or dangerous. Nor as if she were being helped by most of the so-called doctors here. They were either earnest but interested only in their own experimentation, or quacks who cupped and purged the patients until they were so weak that the least little infection could carry them off.

Nor could Gabrielle say that the improvement had been solely though her offices. She had learned a great deal working at her cousin Antony’s clinic, but she knew there were no such things as miracle cures.

They had done the best they could for her, and Gabrielle was using all the skills she had acquired as a nurse to tend to Lucinda’s needs. She came twice each day to make sure Lucinda ate, and was clean and tidy.

The rest of her spare time was spent in Bethnal Green looking after the many fallen women who were the lion’s share of the patrons of Antony’s clinic. Well, really Dr. Blake Sanderson’s, founded by their friends the Rakehells and run on charitable donations.

Antony had originally hired her to look after the paperwork required for the huge three-storey medical establishment, which treated more patients in one night than most doctors did in a month.

But she had been interested in learning more about the sick, most especially about childbirth once she had found out that her sister was not only married, but expecting.