X. I Am Going to a Madhouse

Annie was at the tallow chandler’s shop the next Tuesday morning, sent by the mistress for a pair of red candles. Red for Revolution, instructed Miss Mary, who had invited two men and a lady for tea. The lady’s lover had been captured by a highwayman. Annie imagined the man coming to capture the lady as well, the lady falling in love with him and then having to choose between her old lover and the more handsome highwayman. Except that the lady would try to reform him so he wouldn’t rob people anymore and that would be hard. And dull.

Some people, she thought, while the chandler waited on a large lady in a snug pink bonnet, you can’t reform: like the head cook in the orphanage kitchen who didn’t care if you were ill to the death but you still had to scrub the floor until you could see your sweaty face in it. Or a stuck-on-himself artist like Mr Fuseli, who let his wife shut the door on Miss Mary and did nothing to stop her. Though personally, Annie didn’t think she should have gone there in the first place.

But the chandler had no red candles. “I can only dye one colour at a time,” he grunted, “and today I did blue. So your mistress will have to take blue or white.”

“I am her ward, not her servant, and she said they’re meant to be red. Only red.”

“Aye, young miss, you explained that, but then I explained I got no red, but only white and blue. So is it white or blue today? Or blue or white? Only two shillings, ten pence a pound. You won’t find ’em cheaper anywhere in town.”

“Neither,” said Annie. “Miss Mary said to get red candles and that’s what I’ll do if I have to walk all over London to find them.”

“That’s what you’ll have to do then, miss.” The tallow chandler, a middle-aged man with wax in his thick black hair, winked at her, and turned back to his work. She saw his young apprentice laughing at her in the workroom beyond the counter. She thumbed her nose at him.

Anyway, she wanted to explore the town. The girls rarely got out of the Foundling Hospital except to walk in pairs under the big stick of one of the nurse-aides. Even then, if she dared to look around, a stick would smack her shoulder and make her stare straight ahead again.

She ran out into the warm spring air. The clatter of horses’ hooves and the rumble of carts and carriages excited her. A group of ballad singers gathered on a corner, and though she didn’t know the words, she joined in. Each new square was a symphony of bell-ringing collectors for the penny post, vendors of flowers and fish and quack medicines. She was thrilled with it all. London was a smelly romance of alleys, lanes, courts, and byways. She imagined her highwayman living in one of them, counting his stolen coins and timepieces, writing poems to his lady fair.

Annie had never seen London Bridge; she stopped a woman to ask the way. There had once been houses and shops on the bridge, torn down now she’d heard, but there might be vendors’ stalls. Surely she’d find someone there selling red candles.

The woman didn’t answer; she was going somewhere in a hurry. Next Annie came upon a young girl, hardly older than herself, sitting with her crippled legs stretched out, and between them, a basket for coins. “Point the way to the river, please,” Annie said, and dropped a shiny pebble into the basket.

“You can smell it, can’t you?” said the girl.

“No,” said Annie. “Just tell me where it is,” and the girl stuck out a thumb in a westerly direction.

Annie couldn’t smell the river. There were too many other competing smells: onions, fish, horse dung, roasting chestnuts, rotting dogs—she took a wide berth around a terrier on its back with its four rigid legs straight up like it’d been trying to rise but couldn’t. She took the direction of the thumb and moved on down the street, turned left, and when the next street ended in a cul-de-sac, she broke through a hedge and landed in someone’s courtyard. She was still moving, she hoped, in the same direction.

“Out of my garden, young scamp!” a woman’s voice cried out.

She started to run but a hand held her fast. “I’m looking for London Bridge,” she said. “I been sent for red candles. If I come back without ’em Miss Mary’ll be angry.”

“And who, pray, is this angry Miss Mary?” the voice said. A pair of round raisin-coloured eyes set on top of a bulbous red nose stared her in the face.

“Why, the famous writer, Miss Mary Wollstonecraft. She’s writing for you,” Annie confided. “To give your rights back.”

The woman gave a belly laugh. The fingers pinched her arm. “Well, I got my rights right here. And they don’t include insolent girls tramping on me garden where young tulip shoots be coming up. Now get out afore I call a constable.”

“How far to the bridge?” Annie yelled as she ran out of the yard and back to the street. But the woman only called after her with a curse.

After a time she found herself in Fleet Street. There, she knew from Miss Mary, was where the printers worked. One of them would have printed the romance her mother, Isobel, wrote. Her mother said she would give Annie a copy to read when she got bigger. But Annie had taught herself to read while she was still small, and when she got bigger her mother was killed. Her eyes filled with an overwhelming sense of loss. She pulled her locket to her lips and kissed it. She whispered the first lines of the hand-scrawled verse inside the locket. Swallowed the lump in her throat.

On impulse she turned into a print shop, and there was the man who had come to leave Miss Mary’s manuscript. He was leaning over a table and laying paper on black type. “Whose book is that?” she asked. One day he might print her own book. She smiled at him, but he only grunted and went on with his work.

“I saw you at Miss Wollstonecraft’s house. I’m looking for Mrs Frothingham’s book.” She tapped him on the shoulder. “It was called Scarlette. Did you print it or did you not?”

“If I did I’ve no copies of it here,” he said without looking up. “Now leave and don’t bother me again. If I was to tell Miss Wollstonecraft you were here, she’d give you a good hiding.”

“She doesn’t give hidings. She’s kind, and patient. That is, she’s patient when she has time and she’s not writing or thinking.”

This was true. If Annie interrupted her thoughts, Miss Mary would turn and look at her like she had no idea who this intruder was. She could be like that. Writers were an odd lot. Maybe Annie wouldn’t be a writer after all.

On the way out of the shop she trailed her fingers along a shelf of books that had been published and sewn together. She saw a copy of Vindication, but not of Scarlette. It might have been another printer who did it. Or someone else in this place—for she spied a second man hunched over a table, and behind him a starved-looking apprentice. The older man looked like a teakettle, ready to spout boiling water, the way his bent neck was quivering as he set the type. She wouldn’t want to be a printer either—too dirty. She passed a table strewn with papers. One of them caught her eye: Life of a Bluestocking, A Portrait in Poems. “By a Lady,” it said. She peered at the first poem.

My mother was always nursing

Her angers, my father away

At his club, home late and cursing...

Annie liked the way the lines looked on the page—not regular like a story but broken up in different lengths. Already this poem was telling a story. She flipped through the pages. A poem about a birdcage the poet kept in her chamber; a poem about her dog Jack.

’Tis with sad heart I leave you, child.

She gave a shout. “It’s my poem. Mine! The one my mother wrote for me!”

The teakettle printer swiveled his head. “Don’t touch,” he said.

“I just want to borrow it to read. I’ll bring it back.” She opened her locket, unfolded the poem, and took it to the first printer. “See? These are my mother’s words. I can prove it. Look.”

The printer’s head swiveled towards her. He glanced at the tiny script, then stared her in the eye. It was as if he were swallowing her whole. “Mrs Frothingham had no child,” he said. “Now put that down. It’s not yet in print. It’s not yours to take. She paid me to print it, were she dead or alive. And I do what I’m paid for.” His face was turning crimson. He was angry. She would come here again with Miss Mary. The printer wouldn’t dare glower at the authoress.

“I might be a poet myself one day,” she said, stroking the poems.

The man came roaring down on her. A hairy hand picked her up by the collar like she was some mewling cat, carried her to the door, and dropped her in the street.

“And do not—do not, I repeat, let me see you in this shop again!” he croaked.

She had landed on her backside. She pounded the pavement with her fists. “You won’t do that when I’m a famous poet! And don’t think you’ll be my printer. Oh no, not you! I’ll see nobody takes their work to you!”

But the door of the print shop was shut tight. She was howling to the skies. A woman in a scarlet gown helped her up. “You be naughty, be you? Got no place to live? Well, I know a nice place you can live, oh ’deed I do. Come along, dearie, you can earn money for us, too; you got a pocky face, but a bit of powder—”

“I’m looking for London Bridge,” Annie said. “Tell me where to find it, please. I need to buy red candles.” What passed for sunlight in London was already on the wane. She had to get on or Miss Mary would have her revolutionary tea with no candles at all.

“Ah, we got candles in my establishment,” the woman said, grasping her arm, pulling her along. “Come and see now. We do our work, dearie, by candlelight. You’ll like that.”

“No, I won’t. I only read by candlelight, I don’t work by it. I won’t do your work!” She pulled loose and ran on; the cook at the orphanage had warned of such people. The woman called after her: “You’ll not find London Bridge that way. That’s Blackfriars Bridge.”

She ran down the street anyway, and then left into another street, and right into another called Fish Street and suddenly there it was: the river. This time she could smell it. The Thames, teeming with boats and fish and people. And down in the fog: a bridge. She raced towards it, her heels kicking up like they weren’t attached to her legs but had a life of their own. She was turning into a swift-moving cloud. She was free; she was near the river. One hot day the orphans had been taken to a pond, and an older girl taught her how to paddle her hands and churn her legs. She could jump in right now and she would stay afloat.

Or she could take a boat somewhere—she could go to China! She had read about China in a book at the hospital library. She would just visit though, she didn’t want to be like those Chinese girls, their feet bound and shrunk. She sat a while on a grassy bank, and then lay back and closed her eyes to dream of China, and how she would go to free the Chinese females, and let them grow their feet so they could run.

In her dream she was fighting a Chinaman, telling him to unbind his woman’s feet. He was trying to overpower her, grabbing her shoulders. “Open your eyes,” he told her in her dream. “A female can’t be telling men what to do. So don’t interfere.”

She yelled out her protest and a pair of rough hands were on her shoulder. “Quiet,” a voice barked. “Come along quiet and you won’t get hurt.” The man yanked her up off her feet. Where was the dream now? Lost in the fog.

“I want to go home—let me go! I want—” And a hand clapped over her mouth.

When her knock at the Store Street door was answered by the pouting maid, Lillian Guilfoy was greeted with a shout from the room above, and then the sound of running feet on the stairs. “Annie? Where’ve you been, Annie? I’ve guests coming for tea and only the nubs of white candles when I want red. You should be—”

The tall, robust figure of Mary Wollstonecraft came into view, the tousled, unpowdered hair. “Oh, it’s you, Mrs Guilfoy. I’m so sorry. I thought—you see, the girl hasn’t yet come home and it’s almost four o’clock.”

Lillian was sorry, too. She had come early before the other guests. She had important news for her new friend and wanted it savoured. “If you would rather I didn’t stay...” She felt hurt. She was always close to tears these days, it seemed.

“No, no, I want you here. Pray sit down, I’m happy to see you. But forgive us, we’ve only a few candle stubs left.”

Now Lillian had to sit down on one of the two uncomfortable parlour chairs—the cat was sprawled full-length on the sofa. Lillian had to listen to the story of how Mary had brought an orphan girl on loan, so to speak, from the Foundling Hospital. And how contrary the child was, yet bright and literate—though overly fond of sugar. “She’s reading Samuel Johnson’s dictionary now. She’s already through C.”

“How clever of her,” Lillian said, “but—”

“I can’t imagine where that girl is,” an abstracted Mary went on. “She doesn’t know London at all. They kept her so confined in that hospital. It’s like having a dog on a chain and when it breaks loose it runs—but who knows what will happen to it? I’m such a worrier, I’m afraid. ” She stared at the window as though that Annie person would suddenly climb through, red-faced and bleeding.

“I’ve news—about my fiancé,” Lillian said—she had to speak out. “That’s why I came early. I didn’t want to say it in front of the others. To tell you we know where he is.” Her voice shrank to a whisper. “He is in a madhouse.”

“Oh!” Mary was sitting upright now. She had discovered her visitor. “A madhouse, you said? How dreadful!”

“A madhouse, yes. Where they put the insane. When my Roger is not mad at all, of course not! It’s preposterous. Monstrous! It’s Henry Fuseli put him there. Oh, I know you’re friends, you and he. But you promised to help.”

“And so I have been—at least trying. And Mr Fuseli is no longer my friend. But he wants your Roger in prison—not a madhouse! I’m told he has men out looking. Would he have men looking if he knew Mr Peale was in a madhouse?”

Lillian took a bite of the almond teacake Mary offered; she was confused. “Then why is he there?”

“That’s what I’m asking,” said Mary, with her mouth full of cake. “I want to help you find him, I truly do. Now tell me the story of this madhouse. What makes you think he’s in one? What evidence have you?”

“Why, the cherries,” cried Lillian, throwing up her hands, and she went on to tell the story, all in a breath. “And now Jacques St Pierre plans to go to this madhouse to find him. To try and free him. Slinfold—it’s three or four hours south of here, they say.” Lillian bunched her white kid gloves where they lay in her lap. She saw Mary watching her, then smoothed out the glove fingers, one by one.

“Madam?” Now it was the maidservant back in the room with two candle stubs. “Won’t these green ones do?”

“No, Dulcie, no! Just go now, and gather up any red candle stubs you can find.” She turned back to her guest. “Talleyrand will be here for tea, you see, and he prefers red. Red for revolution. He plans to leave England in two weeks—the king has quite ignored him. Your St Pierre will remain in England, I gather? To be of service to you?”

Lillian searched her friend’s face for an opinion about Jacques, but finding none, went on. “Yes, who else can I count on? Monsieur St Pierre helped Roger escape Newgate, you know—this is our secret, remember—but then the pair met misfortune. The highwaymen are rife, they terrorize us.”

“There you are then. It was the highwayman who put him in that madhouse. The proprietors would have paid him—I’ve heard of such horrors. Yet St Pierre managed to escape them, did he?”

What did that remark imply? Poor Jacques had had a terrible experience. But Mary was calmly munching her teacake—she was merely stating a fact. “Yes,” Lillian said. “Fortunately. But he was hurt. We tried to call in a doctor, but he wouldn’t have it.”

“Ah,” said Mary, “a stoic. But you don’t want to go to that madhouse with him?” Mary was peering closely into her face as she spoke; it was disconcerting.

“With Jacques?”

“With your Jacques, yes. To find your fiancé? If it were my fiancé—though I’ve no use for one—surely I’d want to see him at once.”

Now she was peering straight into Lillian’s brain, it seemed, as though trying to sort out her guest’s thoughts. Lillian supposed that Mary would go to the madhouse, and demand to see her lover, if she had one. Lillian had heard, well, things that Mary had said and done. That she had been dismissed as governess in Ireland for instilling revolutionary thoughts in her pupils’ heads. That she had been intimate—only rumour no doubt—with her employer, Lord Kingsborough. And now, some said, with Henry Fuseli. A story was spreading about a demand to live with him and his wife. A ménage à trois? Lillian couldn’t imagine such a thing!

Oh dear, how did one know what was true and what was false these days? She must not make assumptions. She was not wholly innocent herself, was she? She was shunned by certain ladies of society because of her natural child.

“We were speaking of St Pierre,” Mary said.

“But he doesn’t want me to come. It would be dangerous, he said. There are dogs, vicious ones, according to the girl who came with the cherries. Jacques was badly bitten one time, but he’s going to brave them. Besides, he can’t go at once. It might be as much as five days. Poor, dear Roger! Even then Jacques said he would need reinforcements to break down the madhouse walls, so to speak.”

“If it were I,” Mary began, and took a second cake; chewed it thoughtfully.

“Yes? You would go, see for yourself. But I want to go, you see. I do. I want my Roger freed. Though he won’t be free, will he? With your Henry looking for his head?”

“He is not my Henry, I told you.” Two spots of red appeared in Mary’s cheeks.

“Oh. But at least out of that madhouse. Monsieur St Pierre has an acquaintance in the country who would hide him. But I can’t go now, unprotected.”

“Unprotected?” Mary said. “Oh dear. Then I’ll go with you, yes. Surely the owners won’t let the dogs loose on a pair of females. I’ve not been to Slinfold. It’s in the Cotswolds, I believe? Shakespeare country?”

“South of here, I said. The Cotswolds are north.”

“Ah. Right,” said Mary. “But a madhouse! Where our own mad king might be headed, poor fellow. They say he recently mistook Queen Charlotte for a laundry maid.” She smiled. She was looking quite handsome today in a new green muslin, with her brownish-auburn hair curling about her face.

Lillian bothered little with news of kings and queens. Now and then they rode about in carriages and people fell to their knees. To her, the monarchy was as remote as the stars. And might be doomed altogether, if the French had their way. Poor, dear Jacques.

One of her gloves dropped off her lap; she leaned down to pick it up, and wagged it bravely at the author. “When, then, shall we go?”

“Soon. This Thursday, or Friday. But first I must see to my Annie. I must know that she is home, safe. Though the girl might have gone to the Foundling Hospital to see an old friend—it’s entirely possible. I’ll walk out with you after we have our tea party. Though I’ve promised Joseph that I won’t go out alone after dark—they say the watchmen are full of drink by then. But if we females sit at home all our lives out of fear, we might as well be dead. Don’t you think?”

Lillian could not think at all at this point. “I am going to a madhouse” was the refrain running through her head. “I am going to the madhouse. I am going to find my true love and nothing can stop me.” Her stomach heaved, she felt quite ill. And now she had pulled a hole in her glove. Her best pair of kid gloves.

It occurred to her that one did not need gloves to enter a madhouse. Who would care? Yet she had worn them on her one visit to Bedlam. And then was sorry when an inmate reached for her hand and almost pulled off her finger.

Lillian was waving away the offer of another cake when the door flew open and something in white burst past like a streak of lightning and raced through the sitting room. “Don’t you never send me out after red candles again,” the white streak squealed, “not ever, never!” and she dove onto the sofa. The sofa skidded across the wooden floor with her weight and rumpled the rug. The cat scampered upstairs, tripping the maidservant as she dashed into the room.

“What happened, Annie?” Mary cried, leaping up at once. “I only asked you to go to the tallow chandler’s in Bedford Square. That was four hours ago,” and the maidservant echoed, “You heard what Miss Mary said. Now stop that noise, Annie, and answer.”

Lillian was too involved with her own thoughts to want to know what had happened to the girl. She was not feeling at all well. Black dogs growled in her head. She couldn’t possibly stay to greet the other guests. “Pray excuse me, I am unwell,” she shouted above the cacophony. “You can send me a note about you-know-what.”

Mary wasn’t listening; she was bent over the girl who was shouting about a “monster” who had “bruised” her shoulders, and feeding the girl cake to calm her. In fact, they were all shouting now: girl, maid, and mistress.

Lillian pulled open the door: the rasping noise struck a nerve. She had only wanted to ask Mary’s advice; she had not expected Mary to offer to go to the madhouse with her. She did not have the courage that Mary had. She did not have the foolhardiness.

Yet she knew she must go. For her fiancé’s sake.

“I am going to a madhouse,” she repeated to herself as she moved out into the twilight. Her eyes were suddenly blinded, as if she were stepping over the edge of the world. “I am going to a madhouse. I am going to a madhouse. I am going to a mad—”

“Quite daft, poor thing,” she heard one passerby say to another as she went to flag down a sedan chair.

Gracious heavens! Were they talking about her?

Thursday morning, and the girl was in the sugar again. It was infuriating; there was scarce enough for Dulcie’s tea, and Dulcie was so looking forward to a leisurely dish of tea while the mistress was away. Miss Mary might be gone for a few hours or a few days, she’d said, when she went flying off at dawn that morning with Mrs Guilfoy, the pair play-acting like they were going to visit a friend in the country when Dulcie knew they were not. She had heard the discussion. They were going to a madhouse to find Mrs Guilfoy’s fiancé. If they weren’t careful, they’d be locked up in it themselves.

She tiptoed up behind the girl and clapped a hand on her shoulder. Annie cried out and the sugar sprayed the kitchen table. At least the girl didn’t try to lie. She was caught in the act. “So?” the girl said, and glared at Dulcie. “I’m entitled. I could’ve been killed by that man. Or worse.”

“We can all be killed at any time in this lawless town. Today, tomorrow, next year,” Dulcie said. “Now go fold those clothes. That’s what you were told to do. You don’t see the mistress sitting lazily around just because she was pounced upon, do you?”

Nevertheless, Dulcie did not like what was going on. Miss Mary twice attacked and now, maybe, the girl. Though she had heard two different stories from Annie, and each time things got blacker. First, the man who accosted her wore a grey coat and black breeches and silver-buckled shoes. In the next version he wore black boots and a black hooded cloak that went down to his knees. When Dulcie confronted her with the contradictions, Annie said, “I misremembered. It was a black cloak, aye—with a dragging hem. His black boots had yellow tassels on top. And he hurt me something fierce when he grabbed me. He looked like a killer, all right. I’ll find him. I want him caught!”

Frankly, Dulcie didn’t believe a word the girl said. All that part about how she threw grit in his eyes and then knocked him backwards and ran, screaming for help, and a passerby looked for the man but he’d vanished. It was all too much. How could a half-grown girl knock down a full-grown man? No, no, the girl just wanted an excuse for not getting the red candles. “And where is the money she gave you to buy them? Tell me that now,” Dulcie said. But the girl just walked away with her pitted chin in the air.

Dulcie hoped Miss Mary would come home soon. The mistress had given instructions for the girl to stay indoors while she was gone, and that meant misery for Dulcie.

In any event, she planned to look through those papers she’d taken from Mrs Frothingham’s desk. They might shed light on what was going on. Dulcie couldn’t sleep with a murderer loose in town. Especially after reading that note about Bluestockings Beware. Dulcie wanted the man caught and hanged.

First, though, she would have to move the bowl of sugar, and sweep up before the ants came crawling. She would put it on the highest shelf where the girl couldn’t see it, much less get into it. It was a terrible thing to steal costly sugar, never mind what the girl had or hadn’t been through. Dulcie had been sent by Mr Johnson to care for Miss Mary, and that much she was going to do. Dulcie had a conscience.

“There now,” the girl said, looking cross. “The clothes are folded.” (More or less, Dulcie thought.) “I’m going upstairs to read. My mother wouldn’t have made me do all this hard work. My mother wanted me to learn to be a lady.”

“Is that why your mother put you in that Foundling Hospital? So you could learn to be a lady?” Dulcie said.

Then was sorry she’d said it when the girl exploded into tears.

“Here,” Dulcie said, thumping up the stairs behind her, her own eyes blinking. A plague on the girl, for making her feel bad. “Here’s a lump of sugar. But it’s the last one. I’m hiding the bowl where you won’t find it. Just stop feeling sorry for yourself. Or Miss Mary will hear about it when she gets back from her madhouse.”

“When will we get there?” young Tommy asked. They had been journeying no longer than twenty minutes and already, Mary saw, the boy was bored. Lillian had objected to the idea of her child coming along, but Mary persisted. A child would lessen suspicion, she had argued. There was nothing like a mother-father-son embrace to melt even the stubbornest of madhouse hearts.

“We’ll get there when we get there,” Mary told the boy. “Don’t you want to see your mama’s Mr Peale? He’ll soon be your daddy, you know.”

“Yes, but when?” the child asked. “He was going to take me boating on the river.” Mary drew a deep breath. Did she ever want to be a mother? Lillian had dressed him in a royal blue waistcoat and breeches; he looked like a miniature adult. Children, Mary felt—and had indeed, written—ought to wear simple smocks and shifts so they could better exercise their limbs.

They were halfway to Slinfold, following the old Roman road, when Lillian began to complain. The coach seat was uncomfortable: “I’ll not sit down again for days after this,” she moaned. She was dressed all in yellow: ruffled, laced, and feathered, her hair tortured into a beehive—she had paid for a hairdresser. To go to a madhouse? Mary asked herself.

Then the young woman began to have doubts. “Are we doing the right thing? What about those dogs? Oh, I knew we shouldn’t have brought Tommy.” She pulled the boy close; he stared at Mary out of large, moist eyes, and then, let loose, ran the iron wheels of his toy carriage over her foot.

“How much longer?” he asked, and Mary sighed.

“Just a bit, not far now,” Lillian said. She raised a questioning eyebrow at Mary.

“What will we do when we get there? Have you thought of what we’ll say to the owners? Where we will take Roger afterward?”

“I told you, I have a plan. Just let me do the talking.” Although Mary’s plan, if anything, was no plan. She would simply meet the owners, and do and say what seemed appropriate. Mary had confidence in her ability to meet confusion head-on and still remain (more or less) rational. Had she not successfully rescued her sister Eliza? Well, no, not if you considered the baby left behind in the mêlée. The baby named after herself: Eliza Mary Frances. She would like to have known that child.

But she had fended off Alfred de Charpentier and arrived safely home by using her wits. She had sent Dulcie with the money for the lace she’d taken from the fabric shop; the purse she had left in the coach had mysteriously reappeared on her doorstep—at least the impecunious Frenchman was honest. She was pleased with the way she had handled the situation: fighting off the count, then bringing the shopwoman to trust her. The list of her shortcomings was a bit shorter, perhaps.

Though she had to admit: a small voice inside was always undermining her confidence. In truth, she was apprehensive about this madhouse.

They were riding through a wood about an hour and a half out of London, when Lillian shuddered and drew the window curtain. “I hope we won’t meet a highwayman,”she whispered.

“Highwayman?” the boy said, looking thrilled and worried at the same time.

“Of course, we won’t meet a highwayman,” Mary said. “It’s much too early in the day.” Although she was relieved when another coach came rattling past, the coachmen cheerfully hailing one another. Be brave, she told herself, already sorry she had taken on the adventure, what with the impatient child and the madhouse ahead. She hoped this place would be “civilized,” like Bedlam, where the attendants were ready to rescue visitors from the clutches of the insane.

The rest of the four-hour journey was long and cramped, chilly and uncomfortable. But when they reached their destination, life seemed quite ordinary. Slinfold was simply a quaint little place with a village green, a public house called Niblett’s Red Lyon, and a small stone church from which a group of chattering women was departing. Lillian was cheered by the sight; Tommy was already standing up in the coach, pushing on the door.

They alighted, rearranging their dress, Mary fumbling in her purse for a coin to give the coachman for the public house. They would have a late breakfast and then take the carriage to the madhouse. If indeed there were big dogs there, why horses were bigger. And they had the coach to retreat to.

“Madhouse?” the waiting girl said when Mary made her enquiries. “Bludgeon’s Madhouse?” she repeated, her pencilled eyebrows set in a frown.

“Is there more than one?” Mary asked, alarmed. Her plan now was to explain that there had been a mistake, that Roger was as sane as herself; then, after an impassioned embrace between man and fiancée, she would whisk him away.

“Depends, miss, on how you look at it,” the waiting girl said, and flounced off to attend another customer.

Lillian was quite gay as the driver handed her back into the coach and they jolted off in the direction of Bludgeon’s Madhouse. Tommy had filled his belly with pigeon pie and promptly fallen asleep. Mary alone was left to worry.

When the coach jolted to a stop in front of a grey three-storey house with three black dogs squatting on the front steps, she regretted the whole adventure. Lillian squealed with fright. “I want to go home,” Tommy wailed. “Take me home.”

“Wait here in the coach, both of you,” Mary ordered, as she climbed out. An earsplitting scream issued from an upper-storey window and she stood still; then moved cautiously forward. She heard low growls from the porch steps, then a deep-throated barking. As she inched ahead she saw that the barks were coming from a single dog, crouching between two dogs made of black marble. The one live dog was chained.

Courage rose again in her throat. She mounted the steps, staying well to the right. The chained dog lunged at her; she almost slipped sideways off the steps to avoid it. The front door opened and a large woman stood there, filling it with her bulk. She was dressed in black, with a pair of black feathers in the ruin of her hair—Mary pictured a giant raven, ready to swoop down on its prey.

“State your purpose and if I don’t like it, be off with ye. Stop that noise, Tiger.” The dog gave two more woofs; then, cowed by the woman’s eye, lay mute.

“I am Mary Wollstonecraft,” Mary began, “an authoress, from London. You might be acquainted with my publisher, Joseph Johnson. I’m looking for—”

“Speak plain,” the woman interrupted. “Or I unleash the dog.”

Mary began again, telling the story of Roger Peale, but omitting the fact that he was a fugitive. When she had done, she waved to Lillian and Tommy to emerge from the coach. “Those are Mr Peale’s loved ones—his fiancée’s little boy who has no other father. You can see, can you not, that it has all been a terrible mistake? A painter, a young artist on the verge of public acclaim. Would you inhibit a young man’s creativity?”

The woman held up her hands and grinned through her blackened front teeth. “Why, you’re too late then, dears. Just yesterday they come and took Mr Peale away for a visit. We was sorry to see him go just then. We was going to have him repaint our house, we was. Make it look more respecable-like.”

“What are you saying?” Lillian ran forward to confront the woman. “Who took him away? It was Henry Fuseli, I know it!” she cried, and covered her face with her hands.

Mary had come too far to be thwarted now. “Let us in, please. We would see for ourselves. Mr Peale has no one else who would come for him. He has only his fiancée. Now open up, I said.”

“Come on in then, dearie, and see for yourself. No, not you,” she said to Lillian and the boy. “You’re too well dressed. There might be a speck of dirt on the floor. My charwoman don’t see so good.” The matron gave a nervous laugh.

“Mr Peale, can you hear me?” Lillian shouted. “Answer me, love!” But the door slammed in her face. Mary heard it latch.

The front room was furnished with a single hard chair, a small table, a wooden bench painted a dull green. On the table was a pottery vase with paper roses—so dusty their colour was not discernible. A square grated window hung in the wall above the table.

“Who brought Mr Peale here?” Mary asked.

“Why, his brother, that’s who,” the woman said. “Looked just like the patient, he did.”

“Mr Peale has no brother.”

“Ooh, you don’t say? How was I to know? I can’t go crawling inside folks’ heads, can I now? He had papers with him. This way, dearie, you’ll want to see for yourself he’s gone.” She pointed at a set of crooked stairs. Mary heard voices; a man and woman came tramping down, the man leading the woman, and she pulling back.

“I don’t want to go with you, sir! Better this madhouse than living with you.”

“But Joanie,” the man said, “Joanie. I signed the papers, I did. You’re free to come wi’ me. Come on then, girl.” He was a short, densely pockmarked man of middle age with a broad chest and arms. Grey hairs grew like withered weeds on his neck and jaw.

The woman held on to the banister. “And you’ll just bring me back here again, you know that. Now go and leave me!” The man yanked on her arm and the woman came tumbling down the stairs. Just in time he righted her again.

Seeing Mary, he said, “Mad as hops, she be. Try to help her out and no thanks from her.” He gave his wife another yank. This time she gave in. Mary thought of a rag doll she’d had as a child: you made it sing and dance, stand up and lift its arms—but then it fell slack, limp on the ground, just a rag after all.

“Leave her,” Mary said. “She doesn’t want to go with you. I’ll find you a home,” she told the woman, who was gazing up with huge liquid eyes.

“Who be you?” the woman whispered.

“Why, an authoress, she say,” said the matron. “Curtsy, dear, to the authoress. She come to take away our dear Mr Peale. But too late, oh my, he’s already gone. Took hisself off with relations, he did. Not to return, mayhap. Who knows?”

“Joanie’s me wife,” the man growled at Mary. “She belongs to me.”

“Belongs to you!” Mary said hotly. “Why—”

“Sure she does, sure,” the matron interrupted, and patted him on the back. “All nice and legal. We’ll go in now and sign the papers. You,” she told Mary, speaking harshly, “upstairs and first room to the left. Go see for yourself, your man’s not there.” She scurried to a door off to the right, ushered the husband into it and ordered the woman to “wait there.” Mary saw a desk strewn with papers; a second black dog, chained to the leg of a table.

“You’re Mr Peale’s sweetheart,” the wife whispered when her husband went through the door. She clutched Mary’s arm. “He’s gone all right, I don’t know where. The matron was angry, she said it was him broke a hole between our rooms—when it was already there! I tried to tell her that but she wouldn’t listen.”

“Who? Who took Mr Peale?”

“I can’t tell you that, miss. I only knew they took him from the room. I did hear the matron say he had to learn his lesson. Who knows the truth? They always lie to us. But maybe he’s in a better place—he wanted out of here so bad. I was to help him but my husband didn’t come. Not till today and now I don’t care. I just don’t care.” She slumped down on the single chair and dropped her chin in her hands.

“Papers all signed and proper,” the matron said, coming back into the room. Mary was reminded of a large sack on legs, filled with rubbish. “Go along now, missus. Your husband be good to ye, he promised, eh, sir?” She winked at Mary and Mary scowled.

The man took his wife’s arm. “We’ll have a good supper, Joanie. I got peas and rabbit pie. I shot the rabbit meself.” He looked meaningfully at his wife. “Come on now, I got the waggon waiting back o’ the house.”

“Come with me, madam. You can,” Mary called after the wife. Yet the woman only shook her head helplessly, and allowed herself to be hustled off. The matron gave Mary a nudge toward the door, but Mary eluded her and bounded up the stairs.

She would see for herself.