The Gilded Cage Read online

  I’m shocked to silence by the sudden blackness and the pungent stench of unwashed bodies that hits my nose with a slap. Slowly, my eyes adjust to the faint light coming from under the door. I can make out the shapes of three bunks arrayed against the walls in a U shape, and the faint wet glow of eyes watching me from the beds. Turning in fright, I bang my fists against the wood, calling out for help. I scream George’s name; I scream Mr. Simpson’s. When my skin begins to slip with blood, I start to kick.

  Nobody comes, and the silence behind me is watchful and weary, all through my tantrum. Finally, a woman’s voice comes from the nearest bunk. “Shut up, you. The bed beneath mine is empty, and you can consider yourself lucky for that. Lie down and stop your crying. Nobody’s coming back for you tonight.”

  Her voice sounds calm in the darkness, a beacon of clarity. “What is this place?” I whimper, ashamed.

  She laughs, the tone suddenly colored with dark humor. “You truly don’t know? It’s Temperley’s House of Lunatics, stupid girl. Welcome home!”

  CHAPTER 22

  DESPITE THE AWFUL smell and the watery moaning and dry snores of the women around me, I try to sleep a little on my hard cot, wrapped in a blanket that does nothing to keep unseen bugs from biting my skin.

  Between drifting into nightmares I cannot remember and waking to the real horror of my surroundings, my mind turns and turns. Why has Henry done this to me? Was it my refusal? The fact that I found out his secret? But why an asylum, of all places? I’m not mad, just grieving. Then I remember the day I found the bloody paintbrush, and the way my cousins looked at me as I raved. But still Henry professed to wanting my hand. He knows I am as sane as him. Saner.

  When the answer comes to me, it’s so obvious I could cry. I’m not mad, just fatally thoughtless: with George dead, I am the sole heir of Walthingham. And with me locked up, my sanity in question, Henry has become the Lord of Walthingham Hall—with all of the estate’s vast wealth at his fingertips. No doubt he will summon his lawyers the moment the sun rises, to transfer over to him everything that was in my name.

  Grace’s face as I last saw it, stiff and uncaring, passes before my eyes. Did my cousins plot this together? My selling of the estate would have left them dependent on my charity, and on the small income of Henry’s quarries. I was a fool to think they would not fight my decision and to underestimate the cruelties they’re capable of. The Beast of Walthingham does exist, and there are two, beastly with greed and obsessed with maintaining a veneer of empty propriety.

  My hands curl into fists as I think of Henry, cool and pressed, visiting the offices of Mr. Simpson’s firm, sadly relaying the news of my mental breakdown.

  It was inevitable, he’ll say. The loss of her parents, then her poor, dear brother—how much can a woman handle?

  But will Mr. Simpson believe me mad? My behavior at his lodgings was less than calm, but he could not have thought me truly broken. The memory of our closeness hits me with fresh pain. Why, oh, why did I pull away from his touch? I could so easily have fallen into his embrace, and now I may never see him again. It was pride, I think, or stubbornness. An unwillingness to take the easy route, to allow myself to be happy. Perhaps he was right. I have changed. I’ve let this place infect me, bind me with its strictures and rules, with its foolish clothes and modes of behavior. I wish, oh, I wish I had kissed him.

  Or perhaps Henry will simply tell Mr. Simpson I’m gone, on my way back to America without saying good-bye. Yes, it will be easier that way. Mr. Dowling will not think of me again, and even Jane will forget my imagined treachery. When I think of her warm sitting room, where I sat less than one day ago, I can hardly believe that such a place exists. My last thought before sleeping is a wish for a cup of Mr. Dowling’s tea, hot in my palms and sweet with honey.

  * * *

  Waking in a cell is harder than waking the morning after George’s death. The room does not improve by daylight, what little of it manages to trickle through the window. The five women turning in their beds are of various ages, each clothed in a dress of plain gray. The walls of our prison are papered over in peeling blue-and-white stripes, like something an Englishwoman might choose for the walls of her child’s nursery. Of the five women sharing the room, three still lie quiet under blankets no nicer than mine. A woman of about forty rocks back and forth in her bed; it takes me long minutes to realize that the airless hiss I’m hearing is a stream of whispered words issuing from her lips, without meaning or pause. An older woman with a stony face stands next to a curtain, behind which is the room’s single convenience. She does not speak or smile, but raps the wall beside her with her fist in an endless cadence that I think will drive me mad, until she stops and retreats behind the curtain. The smell that fills the room soon after is worse than the tapping, and I bury my face in my hands, finally allowing myself to cry.

  The bed overhead creaks, and the woman I spoke to last night drops her head over the edge, watching me through a curtain of lank, whitish hair. “I’m Margaret,” she says. “I met you.”

  “Yes,” I choke, swiping at my damp eyes. Even now, I’m unwilling to let strangers see me sob. “And you told me this place was a madhouse. I don’t belong here—I’m not mad in the least; I’ve been betrayed.”

  Her eyes go wide with concern. She disappears for a moment, and then climbs down to sit beside me. “Tell me what’s been done to you, poor child,” she says in a soothing voice. My heart leaps in hope as I tell her of my predicament, from Henry’s proposal at Walthingham Hall to my late-night transport to this horrible place. She nods in recognition as I speak, her eyes growing bright.

  Her voice is sad when she replies. “Your story is much like mine. You see”—she looks about, as if to see who is listening to us—“I, too, have been locked up because of a great injustice.”

  I grab her hand impulsively. “Did your husband send you away?”

  She shakes her head. “Not my husband, my father. I was never allowed to marry—were I to have children, I would become even more dangerous to my enemies.”

  “Your enemies?” I ask, my neck prickling.

  She nods. “I have a great many. You see, I am the illegitimate daughter of the king!”

  I gape at her, unsure whether to laugh or to cry. The wretched woman is at least as old as King George himself.

  “Nobody believes your lies, you old fool,” says a voice from across the room, raw and low. “You’re no more a princess than I am the Pope.”

  Margaret jerks to her feet. “And you’re a rotten trollop!” she snarls, her eyes wet and wild.

  The girl who spoke is lying on the top bunk just across from us, and she swings her legs down and jumps to the floor, her dark eyes trained on Margaret. “What am I, now?”

  The old woman whimpers, scurrying back to her bunk. The girl ignores her and turns her gaze on me. I try not to squirm beneath its intensity.

  “Did I hear you right?” she asks. “Did you say you come from Walthingham?”

  “Yes, I did. I am the heir of Walthingham Hall.”

  She rushes to my side and kneels before me. Her teeth are browned, her skin dull, but I can see that she might once have been pretty. “Have you seen my baby?” she asks.

  “Your baby?” I repeat dumbly.

  “My child, my baby! Have you seen her? A sweet little thing, she’d be. Not yet two. Eyes dark, like mine. Please, have you seen her?”

  She’s snaked her fingers around my upper arm, digging her nails into tender skin. “Stop!” I hiss. “I don’t know who you are or what you’re talking about. Get off me!”

  The girl slaps me, not hard. Her voice is quieter now, desperate. “Quiet, or you’ll bring them. I don’t mean you any harm; just answer my question and I’ll let you alone. Have you seen my child?”

  I hear the clatter of feet from the hall, then the bolt on the door is thrown back with a hollow clang. Mr. Cosley and another man, both in shirtsleeves, hurry in. The girl pays them no mind, gripping me harder. “Just te
ll me if she lives,” she whispers. “Too many nights, I fear she does not. I only saw her the once, just for a minute.…”

  I scratch at her fingers, managing to pry one hand away as the guards close in. “I tell you, I don’t know!” I cry.

  “This one again,” says Cosley disgustedly. He and the other men drag her back as easily as if she were a stuffed doll. “She needs more letting. We’ve neglected this too long—the bad blood is showing itself.”

  The worst part is not the way she does not fight as they pull her to her feet. The worst part is the sudden vacancy in her eyes, as if all that she is, all that she thinks, has retreated to a space deep inside her, leaving her body a pliant shell.

  I throw out a hand before the men can lead her away. “Sirs, wait. I need to see whoever is in charge. There’s been a mistake—I’m not meant to be here. I’m not meant to be here!”

  The men smirk at me as I plead. “You’ll get your turn with the man in charge,” Mr. Cosley sneers. “Eventually.”

  CHAPTER 23

  AN HOUR OR so after the woman is taken away, I hear the sound of doors being unbarred all along the hall. I can’t stop staring at our door, longing for even the finite freedom beyond—anything that will take me from the stench of this terrible room. Finally we, too, are let free and led downstairs to a dingy dining hall: two long plank tables flanked by rough-hewn benches, with a single window set high in the whitewashed wall. I gaze hungrily at the square of sky I can see beyond it, longing for the sight of a bird, a frill of cloud, any proof that life beyond this place is not a dream.

  There are around thirty of us, all women, everyone but me in matching gray. The oldest among us is bent and pale, and the youngest younger than me. As she shifts in her seat, moving a hand to her back, I see with a start the telling swell of stomach beneath her dress. I’ve heard of girls in trouble being sent away, but I could not have conceived of them being sent to a place like this. It’s no place for a mother, much less a child.

  When a bowl is set down before me, I find I cannot eat. Though the women around me set to with a kind of desperate gusto, the grayish porridge in my bowl looks nothing like any food I’ve ever eaten.

  The woman serving us, a sturdy figure in dowdy blue, sees me pick up my spoon, then discard it without managing a bite of gruel. “The food’s not good enough for the little lady?” she says.

  “Calling this ‘food’ is an act of great imagination,” I reply.

  The woman’s eyes flash as she charges toward me, her arms flexing below the thin cotton of her work dress. She grabs my hand before I can snatch it away, and wraps my fingers around the spoon, crushing them into the metal.

  “There, now, Your Highness. Eat and be grateful.” Her breath is sharp in my nose as she bends my unyielding hand toward the bowl. “And don’t go thinking you’ll always get the royal treatment.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Withers; that will be enough. The master wants to speak to this one.” The woman I met last night stands in the doorway, her coloring even more severe by daylight.

  Mrs. Withers steps back, letting my hand drop. “She won’t get to eat again till supper,” she says grudgingly. “But why that should be my concern, I don’t know.”

  “It isn’t, and it won’t be. Miss Randolph, follow me at once. You’re to speak with Mr. Temperley.”

  I stand up quickly, trying to look confident and very, very sane, but I’m still wearing the nightdress I went to bed in. It seems days ago that I put it on, in my warm, firelit room at Walthingham Hall, and the starched white cotton has grown limp and grimy in the hours since.

  The woman leads me through austere white halls, badly lit, to a room with its door half-open. “I see you there,” a man calls. “Bring in the patient, please.”

  The room we enter is colder than the rest of the house, with a large picture window overlooking the wild patch of land this place clings to. I drink in the watery light until Mr. Temperley turns, and his odd appearance distracts me completely.

  Long, straight furrows run along either side of his mouth, cut clean and deep as if into stone, and three more lines score his high forehead, under a crop of hair the color of old ivory. His eyes, while not cruel, have a look of indifferent vacancy that gives me little hope.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Temperley. You may leave us now,” he says briefly, his eyes raking over me. Is that woman his wife, then? Or his sister-in-law? He watches her go, then folds himself into the chair behind his great, dark-wood desk. There is nowhere else to sit in the room, so I continue standing.

  “I’m told you are a troublemaker,” he says without inflection.

  I sputter a moment before regaining my poise. “No, I couldn’t be. I mean, I’m not. I only got here last night, and I haven’t done anything. But, sir, I’m really not meant to be here at all.”

  “I, I, I. The earmarks of a common narcissist, at the least.” He pulls a ledger from atop a teetering stack of books, and makes a notation that I cannot see. Then he looks back up at me, still without expression. “All over England—all over the world, I imagine—there are hospitals like mine, populated solely by those who believe they ‘aren’t meant to be here.’ Your opinion on the matter holds little weight, Lady Katherine.”

  I don’t trust his use of my title—it seems designed to placate me. “My opinion is the only one that can be valid, sir. I stand before you, sane. I will submit to any level of questioning to prove my point. I ask only that you allow me to leave this place at once, and send for a carriage for my transport.”

  His fair eyebrows rise so high they nearly disappear into his yellowing hair. “And just how does a young woman, sound of mind and body, get herself committed to a rest facility such as this one?”

  I take a deep breath and look into his eyes, attempting to keep my voice steady and strong. “I believe I was placed here at the behest of my cousin Henry Campion, who wishes to gain control of my estate. When I would not marry him, he took this more expedient path toward my fortune. He needs it to pay off his debts, which I learned about when the men he borrowed from accosted me in Bath. Not only this, but my brother was recently…” I trail off, feeling I may have said too much. “Recently deceased,” I finish lamely.

  Mr. Temperley has steepled his long hands together and watches me raptly over discolored fingertips. “Fascinating,” he says. “Your hysterical behavior should have been recognized much earlier than this. As it is, your lunatic fantasies are more fully developed than any I’ve encountered. It is a good thing, Lady Katherine, that you’ve found your way into my care. We will make great strides toward your recovery, I’m sure.”

  “Blast it,” I cry, slamming my palms down on his desk. “Everything I’ve told you is true. My cousin is the insane one—insane with greed. You’ll be committing a crime, holding a healthy person here against her will.”

  “You might want to brush up on the finer points of law, my lady,” he says, rummaging through his desk. “And this is all the proof I need of your regrettable illness: its confirmation by two of my most respected colleagues in the medical profession.”

  The piece of paper he slaps onto the desk reads Certificate of Insanity in plain script. Below it are scrawled the name of the traitorous Dr. Ebner, and the corroborating signature of a man whose name is familiar to me: Lieutenant Reginald Hastings. At last, it clicks into place: The third man, the stranger who helped Henry and Dr. Ebner drag me from my bed, was also my first dancing partner the night of the ball.

  I want to scream this new bit of proof into Mr. Temperley’s face, but it will only strengthen his opinion of me as a seeker of conspiracies. I keep my voice low. “Sir, the two names here belong to intimates of Henry: his family doctor, his fellow serviceman. This is nothing but proof that I have not been properly examined by a doctor unconnected with my cousin’s terrible plan.”

  “Your cousin served our country in the war. He is a serviceman and a hero. The lieutenant, also a hero and an upstanding young medical professional. And Dr. Ebner, wh
y, he treated my own fevers when I was a younger man. Am I to question the opinions of these men in favor of the fantastic claims of a sixteen-year-old girl, far from home and clearly grieving the untimely loss of a sibling?

  “I tell you again, and this is my final word on the matter: Your stay here will be valuable to us both. In a few months’ time, your treatment may well have resolved the worst of your issues, but that remains to be seen.…”

  “A few months?” I cry. “I need to leave this awful place at once!”

  “You know that is impossible,” he says with dry patience. “I’m only speaking to you now as a courtesy to your family; really, patients respond best when they are left out of the conversation as regards their treatment.”

  “May I have writing paper, at least, so that I might post a letter? My family will wonder what’s become of me.” I think of my foster parents, and of Mr. Simpson.

  His brow furrows even more deeply as he frowns at me. “I don’t think you quite understand your situation here. You are to be kept, as all our patients are, in isolation from your usual situation of life. We find that is most conducive to our patients’ mental rehabilitation. And now I believe I have indulged your questioning long enough. It is my hope that we do not meet again soon, as the treatments I supervise are generally needed only for our more recalcitrant patients.…”

  I stand silent a moment, letting him speak, while retracing in my mind’s eye the path I took to get to his office. I think I can find the front door from here. I tilt my head slightly to the right and see that the door behind me stands ajar. Before I can overthink it, I push a teetering stack of books forward onto Temperley and dart toward the door. He shouts with surprise as I pound out of the office and down the hall. I dodge what looks like a wandering patient, a woman in gray who claps happily as I pass her. When I glimpse the front door at the end of a creaking corridor, my heart leaps. I run toward it, my fingers grasping forward.