Chapter Twenty-Two

Nora skittered after the doctor, testing the limits of her narrow column dress with each stride. Even so, she wished the tour would move along faster. She held a scented handkerchief to her nose in an attempt to mask the foul odor, but the perfumed cloth was woefully inadequate to the task.

“I shall have to burn this dress,” Vesta muttered under her breath.

Nora was of similar mind, but she couldn’t be bothered about her wardrobe at the moment, not when every turn in the corridor brought a new horror to her eyes. Mr. LeGrand, disguised as a footman in elegant livery that could not be identified with any particular noble house, followed the women at a respectful couple of steps behind. He wasn’t a large man, but his misshapen nose pointed to a bout of fisticuffs or two in his past. Though he was the quiet sort, Nora felt better for his presence as her rear guard.

They encountered a number of inmates wandering the halls who shrieked at first sight of them or blasted them with obscenities. When they crossed an open door, a chamber pot came rolling toward them, spilling its contents over the already dirty-looking floor.

“Why aren’t the patients in their rooms?” Nora asked the doctor who’d taken her handful of sovereigns quickly enough when she and Vesta had arrived asking to see over the place.

“Those who are deemed not to be a danger to themselves or others—careful there, my lady, mind your skirts—are allowed free run of the place, up to the barred gate, of course. Since we have determined that further treatment will not be of use in their cases, we strive merely to make them comfortable.”

“If comfortable means allowing them to wallow in their own filth, the policy is a staggering success,” Vesta whispered.

The doctor seemed not to hear her, for he continued to lead them up a flight of stairs. A beefy-armed orderly stood guard at the top step. “On this level, you’ll find the patients who are confined to their rooms by night. During the day, they may take their exercise in the corridors, but must remain on this floor. We can’t allow them to mingle with the general population.”

“Why not?” Nora asked.

“Because they’ve shown a propensity for unexpected violence. Don’t get too close to Violet there.” He hurried them past a seemingly feeble scarecrow of a woman with cottony tufts of hair sprouting on her head. “She’s here because she has a nasty habit of shoving hatpins between people’s ribs.”

“Why on earth do you allow her access to pins?” Vesta demanded.

“Oh, she doesn’t use pins now, but she has been known to sharpen spoons and anything else she can get her hands on,” the doctor said as another orderly approached.

“The machine is ready for Mrs. Mounsey,” the hulking servant said. Nora wondered if they employed anyone who didn’t look as if they’d be more at home in a pugilists’ ring.

“Very good.” The doctor turned to the women. “You know, I usually don’t include ongoing treatments as part of the tour, but this sad woman’s malady should be of particular interest to you ladies.”

“And why is that?” Vesta asked

“You’ll see. This way, if you please.” He led them down several flights of stairs to the sub-basement level. The air was ripe with toadstools and unwholesome earth and mold. Nora decided if misery had a smell, they had discovered it. They stopped before a metal door which the doctor opened using a heavy key.

“Your footman will have to wait here,” he said.

“Why?” Nora was loath to give up LeGrand’s comforting presence.

“It will become self-evident.”

Nora tossed a look at the footman. He stepped to the side of the door and assumed the bland mask of a servant waiting at table. The doctor ushered them into a large chamber that was dominated by a single wooden chair in the center of the space. A nude woman was strapped to it. When she lifted her head to eye the doctor, Nora thought she’d never seen such naked hate on a human face.

“As you can see, we are ever mindful of the dignity of our patients.” The doctor seemed oblivious to the woman’s expression as he strode forward to check the tightness of her bonds. “Since Mrs. Mounsey’s treatment must be administered without benefit of clothing, it wouldn’t have been seemly for your footman to view the proceedings.”

“I’m not certain it’s seemly for us to view it, either,” Nora said as an aside to Vesta.

“This water chair is a device of my own design,” the doctor began, preening his mustache with the back of his hand. “You see, the goal of the treatment is—”

“What is Mrs. Mounsey’s ailment, if I may ask?” Vesta said.

“Oh, that. She refuses her husband’s bed.”

Nora was sure she’d misheard him. “She what?”

“I know. It’s a sad case.” The doctor shook his head. “She completely shuns her wifely duty. Such unwomanly rebellion defies understanding, does it not?”

“You’d understand it right enough if you was the one Mr. Mounsey was poking,” the woman in the chair said, her voice thick with loathing. “The man is a pig.”

The doctor tut-tutted and pulled a small book from his pocket to make a note. “Patient believes husband is an animal. Obviously, more treatments are needed to clear up this delusion.”

Nora had been shocked when her family disowned her, but her outrage over that indignity paled when compared to the plight of poor Mrs. Mounsey. She was about to launch into a blistering setdown that would have the doctor reeling. She’d unstrap the unhappy patient and spirit her away from this awful place, but just as she took a step forward, Vesta stopped her with a hand to her forearm.

“Remember where you are, my dear,” she whispered urgently. “If you interfere, the good doctor may decide you’re a bit touched yourself and need a treatment or two. And they might elect to keep LeGrand and me, as well, based solely on our decision to keep company with you.”

That brought her up short. Nora hadn’t thought her actions through. If she tried to intervene, she might well be endangering Vesta and her erstwhile “footman.”

Then the door behind them opened with a sinister creak.

“Ah! Dr. Falco, I’m so gratified you could join us. Ladies, may I introduce my Italian colleague?”

Falco? Benedick’s Falco? Nora turned to discover a darkly handsome man of medium height advancing toward her. He had the chiseled features Benedick favored in his lovers, a strong chin and aquiline nose. His hooded eyes swept over her and Vesta while the other doctor made the introductions.

So this was the man Benedick had befriended. He had supported him and made his career as a doctor possible. How could Falco turn on his old lover like that? Nora’s outrage over Mrs. Mounsey’s situation now transferred to the turncoat Dr. Falco, but she was in no better position to act at the moment.

“Lady Nora,” Dr. Falco bowed over her gloved hand. “Who has not heard of your beauty? How pleased I am to finally meet you.”

She thought she detected the hard edge of jealousy in his tone. If he knew of her, he undoubtedly knew she was Benedick’s mistress. Did he see her as a rival? Was that why he was siding with Benedick’s enemies?

Love spurned was a powerful motivator, but to hear Benedick tell it, Falco was the one who’d bowed out of their relationship years ago. She’d have to find a way to wheedle more information from Benedick about his old love.

But then the doctor pulled a lever, and all thoughts of her patron and his problems fled away. In the center of the room, the ceiling appeared to open and poor Mrs. Mounsey was caught in a downpour. She sputtered. She coughed. She made pitiful strangled noises, but the water kept falling.

My God, they did this to Pierce.

Mrs. Mounsey’s head drooped to her chest, and she sagged against her bonds. She was clearly unconscious, but the water continued to fall.

“Stop,” Nora chanted under her breath. “Oh, please stop.”

“I would, since the patient is insensible, but the machine is calibrated to deliver so many gallons per minute for a certain duration,” the doctor explained. “If we end treatment prematurely, we will not be able to assess how much water was used to create the desired result.”

“And the desired result is for her to want to return to her husband’s bed?” Vesta said dryly. “I can’t imagine why this wouldn’t send her screaming back to him.”

“Indeed, but in the interest of future patients, we need accurate records,” Dr. Falco said. “Science which cannot be quantified is not worthy of the name.”

Mrs. Mounsey began to rouse, moaning and snuffling. She was going to drown in that chair before Nora’s eyes, and there was no way to stop it. Her belly roiled. Watching without intervening made her part of this horror. The back of her throat spasmed. She feared she’d retch, so she turned and threw all her weight against the heavy metal door.

She pushed through the opening. Heedless of whether Vesta or LeGrand joined her, she lifted her skirts and fled to the staircase leading out of the watery hell. But as she ran by countless closed and locked doors, she heard something.

Her name.

When she’d first lost Lewis, she’d often wake with a start in the dark watches of the night, certain she’d heard him call her. His voice wasn’t its usual full-timbred sound at those times. It was hollow. Bloodless. But somehow, she’d known it was her dead husband. Knew he’d spoken to her.

This voice was like that, a shadow of itself, not of this world. But it didn’t belong to Lewis. This deathly summons came from someone else.

The only man who’d ever called her Honora.

A sob tore from her throat as she kept running.

…

A swirl of mint undulated over Mycroft’s head. It was joined by an explosion of lavender leaves and splashed with the tart freshness of apple. The smells coalesced into a woman’s face floating above him, translucent, shimmering, and far larger than life.

“Honora,” he whispered.

Mycroft could make out the mold-stained walls through the apparition, but somehow this slightly see-through woman seemed more real to him than the cold stone. Her skin glowed. Her eyes glistened down on him with love.

If she wasn’t real, he didn’t want to return to reality.

“Honora,” he called, louder this time.

The flurry of footfalls past his door seemed to tramp through his head, leaving prints in the brain pudding between his ears. They slowed for half a heartbeat, then tripped on.

The woman above him began to fade.

A tear streaked his cheek. She wasn’t real, after all. Mycroft supposed he should have known that, since all he’d seen of her was her face, floating disembodied there. It took more than a face to make a person. Then he remembered that Dr. Falco and a couple of orderlies had forced more of the mushroom down him. The woman was only a bit of digesting fungus.

Mycroft wasn’t losing his mind. It was being systematically taken from him. But maybe hallucinating Honora was his way of taking it back.

“She was Honora,” he said to himself stubbornly. “And Honora is real.”

But she hadn’t really been hovering in his cell. He was glad of that. As he came more to himself, he was certain he didn’t want her there with him.

But if she wasn’t with him and yet she was real—dear God, she must be real or there was no reason to keep breathing—that meant there was a world beyond these gray walls. He had a life somewhere else. He had a purpose…

As the effects of the mushroom continued to fade, that life came back to him in flashes and starts. He was part of something larger than himself. He had meaningful work to do. And in the doing of it, he would be serving the woman he loved, as well.

He sat up straight. The next time Dr. Falco came with his Myconia Fantasma, he’d take it without a qualm. He’d chew it up and pretend to swallow. Then as soon as the doctor left the cell, he’d spit out the poison and stick a finger down his throat to bring up anything he might have inadvertently let slide into his gullet.

“I am not Mr. Mycroft,” he said to the walls. “I am Viscount Westfall, a peer of the realm.”

The words tasted a little grandiose, even to his own tongue, and he wondered if he were still under the fungus’s influence. So he amended his proclamation and ticked off the things he knew for certain about himself on his fingers.

“My name is Pierce Langdon. I love Lady Honora Claremont. I can hear the thoughts of others as easily as if they’d been given voice. I can shield my mind if I need to, but if I choose, I can strip another person’s secrets from them before the introductions are finished.”

He decided the next time Dr. Falco came into his cell, his shield would definitely be down.