Amelia went on Promenade three times more over the following week. Each time, the faint presence near the north end of the island tugged at her, though it never revealed itself. Possibly the group simply never went near enough for it to do so. For that small blessing, Amelia was profoundly grateful.
Life in the ward remained a constant trial. The nurses came and went, each enforcing her own particular set of rules. Sometimes movement and quiet conversation were allowed. Sometimes stillness and silence were required. Minor infractions might be ignored, or they might invite violent rebuke. Slaps and pinches were common. Restraints and doses of chloral hydrate served for those patients who required further correction. Mrs. Brennan especially was quick with the needle. Patients unwise or unlucky enough to cross her often spent the remainder of the day drooling on their cots. Several had been dragged from the ward, one by her hair. None of them returned. Amelia did her best to be invisible whenever the matron appeared.
Ward two was intended for those whose madness was of a manageable kind. Patients who shouted at invisible antagonists or flew into fits of rage didn’t stay; instead, they were quickly removed to other quarters. Those who suffered subtler afflictions, only appreciable under closer observation, might last longer. A great many, as far as Amelia could tell, were not mad at all—they were simply too old, or too feeble, or too damaged by poverty or drink to survive anywhere else.
There were a few who seemed entirely out of place. One girl, Janey, could not have been more than sixteen, though her mind was more like a child of three. Many of the ward’s residents doted on her, seeing in the girl, perhaps, their own lost children.
It was Elizabeth who remained the greatest puzzle. She and Amelia were friendly, after a fashion, sitting together in the ward and arranging to be paired on their outings. The other woman carried herself with quiet dignity. Her speech marked her as educated. Her tone, when she spoke to the nurses, was polite without being deferential. Amelia might have asked how she had come to be here. But there was an unvoiced taboo among the patients against speaking of their lives outside the asylum, and Amelia was loath to explain her own presence, wanting neither to lie nor to be judged insane for telling the truth.
Amelia was chatting with Elizabeth on a Friday afternoon as the other woman brushed and braided young Janey’s hair. The girl sat with her back to them, playing with a bit of string and humming under her breath. All three looked up as a pair of nurses entered. One carried a clipboard.
“Attention!” she shouted. “The ward is to receive a visit today from a group of Christian ladies. If I call your name, you are to come forward so they may speak with you. The rest of you will sit quietly on your cots while they are here.” The glare she gave them conveyed the guarantee of consequences for disobedience.
Elizabeth sighed and patted the girl on the shoulder. “Janey, be a dear and stay right here. I’ll come to you directly. If you’re good, I’ll bring you a sweet.”
Janey smiled at the promise and went back to playing with her string.
Elizabeth stood, pulling Amelia with her.
“What’s happening?” Amelia asked.
“Charity.” Elizabeth’s expression was resigned. “The Women’s Christian Benevolent Association sends visitors every other month or so. They bring pamphlets and sugar buns and lecture us about the evils of drink and loose ways. I’m not certain what good they think they’re doing,” she added. “We’re all safe from fornication and demon rum in here, and half the women can’t read anyway. But they mean well, I suppose, and the buns are welcome.” She glanced at Janey with a fond smile.
The nurse began calling names. Patients stepped forward—all of them women capable of coherent conversation and not prone to outbursts.
“Casey, Carolina!”
There was a second’s pause before Amelia remembered this was supposed to be her. She moved across the room with a grimace. Elizabeth would certainly ask.
A second later, however, Amelia had questions of her own as the nurse called, “Fox, Anne!” and Elizabeth started toward her.
“Carolina?” Elizabeth asked under her breath.
“Anne?” Amelia countered.
The ward door opened before Elizabeth could reply. Mrs. Brennan strode in, leading a cluster of elegantly dressed women. The selected patients straightened and went quiet.
The visitors spread out from the doorway, their bright, velvet-trimmed gowns and feathered hats shocking against the gray of the ward. They looked like a flock of exotic birds fluttering among the chickens in a tenement yard. They tittered and cooed like birds, too, as they exclaimed over the patients. Amelia tried to maintain a pleasant expression in the face of their condescension.
One of the women—younger, pink-cheeked, and earnest—turned toward Amelia and Elizabeth. She flipped the cloth off the top of the basket on her arm, and a waft of yeasty, sugar-scented air puffed out. Amelia’s mouth watered. The woman thrust a hand into the hamper and emerged not with the promised sugar bun but with a folded booklet. An improving tract, from the looks of it, doubtless full of essays on the virtues of temperance and chastity. Perhaps a few paragraphs on the importance of feminine modesty.
The woman offered it to Amelia, who clenched her teeth into a hard little smile and accepted with as much grace as she could muster. She could hardly do anything else, not with Mrs. Brennan watching. The woman pressed a second tract on Elizabeth before reaching into the basket again and offering them each a pastry. Elizabeth accepted with a murmured thanks. Amelia reached for hers, and her fingers brushed against the young woman’s.
Smoke. Choking, billowing clouds of it abruptly enveloped them, blanking out the room and everyone in it. It stung Amelia’s throat, burned her eyes. She gasped, then doubled over, coughing, as the soot and fumes poured into her lungs.
A sheet of flame danced across her vision. For an instant she could feel it licking her skin, and she lurched back with a wheezing shudder, turning her face away and closing her eyes against the searing heat. She heard the windows shattering, one by one. They would die, all of them. They had to get out.
Someone was pulling her away. “Amelia?”
Elizabeth. Elizabeth had her. Good.
“The fire,” Amelia said, her voice rough and low. “We’ll burn. We have to get out—”
Another step back and the heat and smoke were gone. Amelia shivered in the sudden chill and dragged in a lungful of blessedly clear air. She blinked, her eyes still tearing. Her throat felt scratched and raw as her eyes darted around the ward, seeking the blaze that had been there only an instant before. There was nothing.
Elizabeth was still holding her by the arm, leading her back to the cots, her face worried. The woman who’d given her the bun—now crushed into a doughy mass in her hand—appeared momentarily alarmed before seemingly deciding such behavior was to be overlooked in a madhouse. She turned to another patient and dipped her hand back into the basket. Mrs. Brennan’s eyes followed Amelia and Elizabeth as they retreated, but when they made no further disturbance, she seemed to dismiss them.
Elizabeth led her to the cot beside Janey. “Here.” Elizabeth handed the girl the bun before turning to Amelia. “Lie down for a moment.”
“I’m fine,” Amelia said, shaking and embarrassed. She tried to pull away, but Elizabeth held firm.
“You’re not fine. You’ve gone white. Lie down. What was that about a fire?”
Weak at the knees and abruptly exhausted, Amelia submitted. “It’s nothing,” she lied as tears slipped from her eyes. She brushed them away with the back of the hand holding her own mangled bun. “I don’t know what happened. I…” She forced herself to stop talking before she said more. Before she blurted out what she’d seen and what she feared it might mean. Perhaps she should speak. Probably she should. But the warning of a madwoman would mean nothing. Mrs. Brennan would punish her for it. Elizabeth would believe her no better than any of the others who raved and shouted. They all would. And perhaps she was wrong. She had to be wrong.
She lay on the cot until the visitors left, unable to look at them again. Elizabeth sat with her. Amelia fell asleep with the destroyed bun in one hand and Elizabeth’s hand in the other.
Two days later, Amelia and Elizabeth reentered the ward after Promenade to find a pair of nurses poring over a newspaper.
“It was the whole family?” one asked as they neared.
“Yes. I can hardly believe it,” the other replied. “That pretty young girl, here just two days ago, then gone like that.”
“How did it start?”
“The furnace, they think. It was in the basement. Whole house went up in the middle of the night.”
Amelia stopped in her tracks, her blood gone cold.
An angry shriek at the other end of the ward attracted the nurses’ attention, and they left their paper on the desk. Almost against her will, Amelia picked it up, the blaring headline leaping out at her: OVERNIGHT BLAZE KILLS FAMILY OF SIX.
Amelia tore her eyes away from the words, sickened. She had known. Not exactly what was going to happen, but enough. She should have said something. Tears pricked at her eyelids.
She lifted her gaze to find Elizabeth frowning at the newspaper. After a moment, she looked at Amelia, her expression thoughtful.
“You saw it,” Elizabeth said. “You knew.”
Amelia hesitated. “Some of it.”
“Is that why you’re here?”
Amelia nodded. Elizabeth said nothing, plainly waiting for more. Amelia swallowed. Here was what she’d been trying to avoid. She put down the paper and made her way to a relatively quiet spot along the wall. Elizabeth followed. When they’d seated themselves on the bench, Amelia related her story. How she and Jonas had always used her modest abilities, how things changed after her injury, and how she’d come to be in the asylum. It was a relief to finally tell someone.
Elizabeth was silent as she finished.
“I’m not mad,” Amelia insisted after a moment. “You have to believe me.”
“I do,” Elizabeth said finally. “I wouldn’t if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. But I did see it. So no, I don’t believe you’re mad.”
Amelia sagged in relief.
“Why do they call you Carolina?”
Amelia explained about the cloak. “I tried to tell the nurses that first day, but my head ached so, and I decided it didn’t matter. So I stopped trying.”
Elizabeth laughed, and the sound was bitter. “It wouldn’t have mattered even if you’d kept on.”
“Anne Fox?”
Elizabeth nodded. “My name is Elizabeth Miner, but I gave up arguing about it months ago.”
“How long have you been here?”
“More than a year.”
“A year,” Amelia repeated, dizzy with horror at the idea. “Why? How did it happen?”
“It happened because I am a very great fool.” Elizabeth looked away for a moment before she continued. “A bit over two years ago, I met Daniel Miner at a dinner party. He was very charming. Very polished. He began courting me. Around that same time, my father became ill. My mother died when I was a child, so it was just the pair of us. I used to go to his law office to help him. He called me his best assistant.” A smile flickered across her face at the memory before her expression sobered.
Janey wandered over and sat on the floor, leaning against Elizabeth’s legs. Elizabeth stroked the girl’s hair.
“Looking back, I think he’d been ill for some time and had been hiding it,” she continued. “He’d seemed tired for several months, but he brushed it off whenever I mentioned it. He never wanted me to worry. But whatever the truth of it, the doctors said there was nothing to be done. Father had a few months at most.”
“I’m sorry,” Amelia said.
Elizabeth gave her a small smile. “Thank you. It was a horrible time.” She shook her head. “I could blame the circumstances for what happened next, but it’s my own fault. I confided in Daniel, and he shocked me by proposing marriage. He said he knew it was sudden, but he’d already made up his mind and had only been waiting to speak for propriety’s sake. He suggested we marry as soon as possible—it would give my father comfort to know I was taken care of, and if we waited, it would be a year or more before we could marry, since I would be in mourning.
“And, Daniel pointed out, once my father was gone, I wouldn’t be able to live in the house without a chaperone. I’d have to find an older woman to come stay with me. I couldn’t bear the thought of having some stranger in my home. It hadn’t occurred to me yet,” she added in a sardonic tone, “that Daniel was still essentially a stranger.
“I should have seen what he was,” Elizabeth said, “but I was grieving, and lonely, and so tired with caring for Father. Father gave his permission, and we married at once.” She paused and looked away for a moment before continuing. “Father died only a few weeks later. He’d left everything to me. Not a fortune, but a comfortable estate, and all in my name. I let Daniel manage things. I’d been accustomed to Father looking after the money for me, so it felt natural for Daniel to do it. But only a few months in, Daniel suggested we sell the house. I refused. I’d lived there my whole life. He argued. It worried me, his insistence. It woke me up. I looked at our accounts.”
Amelia grimaced, already knowing what was coming.
Elizabeth caught the look. “Yes. He’d gone through the money like water. He’d presented himself as well-off, but he brought in almost nothing. Everything was purchased on credit. There were bills from the tailor, the wine merchant. We didn’t even own my wedding ring outright. The house was the only thing left. I confronted him, and we quarreled.
“He insisted we sell the house. I told him he could insist all he liked, but it was in my name, and I would never consent to selling my home to dig him out of a mess of his own making. He alternated between railing at me and sulking for weeks, but I didn’t budge.”
“Good for you,” Amelia said.
“Perhaps not, given what happened next. Daniel came home one evening acting as if nothing had ever happened. Kissed me on the cheek and said not to worry, he’d handled everything. The next week was the nicest since we were first married. He was so thoughtful. He brought me tea in bed every morning.” The next words were precise, almost bitten off. “The last morning, it was quite bitter. He apologized for making it so strong and brought more sugar. I drank it. I fell asleep. And I woke up here, with everyone calling me Anne. I didn’t have any idea what had happened. I thought at first there had been some terrible mistake. I hadn’t realized what Daniel had done.”
“The tea?”
Elizabeth nodded. “He’d laced it with laudanum. I realized it the first time they dosed me here. We’d never kept it at home—my father didn’t like it—so I didn’t recognize the taste. I was here for a week before I saw a doctor. I thought when I explained—”
“That they’d let you go home.”
Elizabeth nodded. “But Dr. Klafft—he was the doctor I saw—said my file stated I was unmarried. He said my insistence that it was wrong was a sign of my illness. He said I was suffering from the Old Maid’s Disease. That I wanted to be married so much I imagined I was. It had disordered my mind.”
“Of course,” Amelia said with a disgusted roll of her eyes. “And so you stopped trying?”
“Not completely. There was another doctor—Dr. Blounton—who I think might have tried to help me. But he died only a short time after we’d begun speaking. None of the others seemed likely to listen. For a time, I hoped Daniel meant to teach me a lesson, that he’d come for me after a few weeks. I’d have agreed to sell the house by then. I would have agreed to anything he wanted. But he never came.”
Amelia opened her mouth to say something comforting, though she had no idea what.
Before she could speak, a nurse entered, holding a list and pushing a cart full of files. Mrs. Brennan followed, a scowl already creasing her wide face.
“Patients will move to the left side of the room!” the nurse shouted. “When your name has been called, you will sit and wait until the head count is finished.”
The weekly head count was a tedious exercise at the best of times, and Mrs. Brennan’s malevolent presence would hardly improve it. Amelia stood. Elizabeth tried, but Janey, still on the floor beside her, flung her arms around Elizabeth’s legs.
“Janey dear, it’s time to get up.” Elizabeth untangled the girl’s arms with some effort.
Janey resisted, a mulish expression on her face.
“Please? For me?” Elizabeth tried again.
Amelia cast a quick glance at Mrs. Brennan and found the woman looking at them through narrowed eyes. Her mood seemed even more sour than usual. Amelia tried to help Elizabeth pull Janey to her feet, but the girl remained obstinate.
Mrs. Brennan strode toward them. Janey went still, her face blank and her mouth dropping open in a wide O of fear. Mrs. Brennan took the girl by the arm and yanked her to her feet.
Janey went wild, struggling to pull away and making fearful, wordless noises. One of her flailing hands caught Mrs. Brennan with a glancing blow on the cheek.
The matron’s reaction was immediate. She fisted one hand in Janey’s hair and swung her around, clouting her about the face and shoulders with the other. The girl cowered and tried to cover her head with her hands. A wet patch spread on the front of her dress, and the sharp smell of urine wafted through the air. With a noise of disgust, Mrs. Brennan threw her to the floor. Janey landed at Elizabeth’s and Amelia’s feet.
Elizabeth bent to help her as Mrs. Brennan aimed a sharp kick at the girl. Her foot connected with Elizabeth’s ribs instead, and Elizabeth let out a surprised oof of pain.
Amelia helped her friend to her feet, then looked at Mrs. Brennan. Something of her feelings must have shown on her face. Mrs. Brennan casually raised her arm and dealt Amelia a backhanded slap.
She spun and fell, and the side of her face struck the edge of the wooden bench where they’d been sitting. Agony flared white-hot across her cheek. She thought she cried out, but perhaps it was only in her mind. She heard the nurse’s voice from somewhere far away, garbled words Amelia heard only as an echo, understood only after they ended.
“I’ve no time for any more nonsense. Get them out of here and get on with it.”