Flowers From The Storm (7 page)

And in another case,
Violent epileptic
—
restraint required at all times
.

And another:
Dementia
—
confused speech
—
hallucinatory
—
incontinent
—
atrophy of the emotions
.

Yet even with these patients, Cousin Edward spoke personally, and repeated to Maddy the advantage of strict daily routine, plain, wholesome food and habits of discipline in reestablishing self-control and diverting weakened minds from unhealthy preoccupations.

Maddy tried to believe him. She tried to absorb his matter-of-fact and optimistic humor, but mostly she wished she might curl up in her own bed in Chelsea and weep for these poor creatures. She’d thought herself strong-minded, an experienced sickroom nurse, but the accumulated introductions of the day made Blythedale Hall seem a very comfortable and ghastly sort of purgatory.

“Ah—we’re having ourselves shaved,” Cousin Edward said, looking through a set of the open bars that replaced doors on the rooms of the most violent patients. He paused before unlocking the door, and leaned over to murmur to Maddy, “This is one of our most tragic cases, I fear. An example of moral insanity which has blossomed into mania.”

She bit her lip, wishing that he hadn’t told her. It made her even more reluctant than before to lift her face and look at the next unfortunate inmate of the asylum.

“Good afternoon,” the doctor said warmly as he moved inside. “How do you do today, sir?”

The patient made no answer, and the attendant said, “Not a bad day, Doctor. Not too bad.”

Maddy finally forced herself to step into the doorway and lift her head. The burly attendant stropped a razor; he looked like a prizefighter, with his hair cut close as fuzz to his head. A few feet away, in pale breeches and white shirtsleeves, manacled by one arm to the bedstead, another man stood silhouetted, staring away from them out the window.

“Friend,” she compelled herself to say in greeting, in as normal a tone as she could muster.

He turned around suddenly, the motion caught halfway with a sharp steel clangor, his dark hair falling wildly over his forehead, the deep blue eyes intense, frozen cobalt rage: a caged and bound pirate, a brute at bay.

Maddy lost her voice.

He stared at her, silent. No flicker of recognition. Nothing.

“Thou!” Maddy whispered.

He lowered his face a little, looking at her from beneath his eyelashes. Wariness, anger, a deep and powerful passion— they were all in his face, in his stance, in the concentrated and uneven exhalation with his jaw shut hard and his unbound hand flexing open wide and closed, over and over again.

“Dost thou—not remember?” she asked hesitantly. “I’m Maddy Timms. Archimedea Timms.”

“Why, are you acquainted?” her cousin asked in surprise.

Maddy looked away from the barbaric figure at the window. “Well, yes, Papa and I… it is the Duke of Jervaulx, is it not?”

The words would hardly come out.

“Well, well. Indeed, it is. Master Christian has come to visit us for a spell.”

Master Christian stared at Cousin Edward as if he would like to tear out the doctor’s throat with his bare hands.

Her cousin smiled benignly at his patient. “This is a cheerful coincidence.” He gestured toward Maddy.

“Do you remember Miss Timms, Master Christian?”

Jervaulx’s glance nicked from Cousin Edward to her and back again. Then he leaned on the windowsill, resting his head back against the barred panes.

“His understanding is limited,” Cousin Edward said. “In the scope of a two-year-old child’s. As I say, it appears that he has a history of moral insanity, with a sudden onset of degeneration into dementia. And mania, most particularly when crossed. The apoplexy left him in a state of unconsciousness for two days, and early in the coma his vital signs were depressed to the degree that he was thought lifeless.”

“Yes,” Maddy said in a constricted voice. “That is—we had understood that he had—been killed.”

“It’s an interesting story. This is entirely confidential, of course; you must not speak of it abroad, but the event that excited this state in him was an engagement of honor, fought with pistols. He wasn’t injured, but the sensation of the moment appears to have precipitated the seizure. The doctor had literally declared him deceased and ordered the body to be laid out, but the duke’s dogs created such a frenzy that the mortuary attendants couldn’t touch him.” Cousin Edward shook his head. “One shudders to think, if those animals hadn’t acted as they did. But the noise seems to have reached him in some way—produced enough movement and pulse that life was seen to be preserved. And of course, over time he regained consciousness and the motion of his limbs. But he was left in this state of maniacal idiocy.” Cousin Edward made a note in his book, looked up at Jervaulx consideringly, and wrote again.

He closed the casebook with a snap and handed it to Maddy. “Of course, you know that indulgence and a lack of moral discipline predisposes the mind to irrationality. He doesn’t speak, and his primitive emotions rule him. This is very common in such cases, where the prior foundation is laid in vice and perversity: there’s a breakdown, a loss of moral sense that gives free rein to instinctive appetites and desires, in utter violation of former refined habits. Physically, he’s quite strong—am I right, Larkin?”

The attendant gave an assenting snort. “Aye, that he is. Barring the right hand. You see I’ve only got the left tied up—that’s the one you have to watch for.” He laid down the razor.

“Minimal restraint,” Cousin Edward said, nodding in approval. “Physically he’s vigorous, but otherwise reduced to the animal nature.”

Larkin went to pull the bell. “We’ll see how he feels about shaving today. Yesterday we had to go to the waistcoat and a cradle both.”

Maddy lowered her gaze, unable to bear it. To meet those potent, silent eyes. She felt flung down, beaten, miserable. That he would be
here
…

He would rather be dead. She could look at him and know it.

She held the book against her skirt. “Will he be cured?”

“Ah—” Her cousin drew his lower lip over the upper. He raised his eyebrows. “I won’t pretend the case isn’t grave. His mother is a very good, benevolent Christian woman, active with great zeal in charities and evangelism in her church. She has suggested to me that her son has a long history of unsubdued self-indulgence and rebelliousness. With such passionate and ill-regulated habits…” He sighed. “Well, what I’ll say is—that if we cannot cure him at Blythedale, it cannot be done.”

Maddy clutched the book. “And what treatments dost— do you follow?”

“The regulated schedule is the most important, of course, to instill a habit of self-discipline and evenness of mind. Complete quiet, frequent exercise to calm him, a progression of therapeutic baths, a course of reading aloud, the subject matter selected to stimulate the sluggish intellect and inspire temperance. No drawing. Pens and writing instruments seem to provoke him to the most violent excitations. Nerve tonics he’ll ingest only by force. I’m afraid we haven’t seen any progression toward the point at which he can be trusted in the drawing room with the orderly patients, but he is soon to take walks with the other maniacs in order to prevent him from feeling isolated.”

Jervaulx crossed his arms, the chain rattling upward. Maddy lifted her face and looked at him. His expression had relaxed, gone from suppressed savagery to a hint of cynicism. He looked back at her with a half-smile, tilted up on one side.

It was startling. He appeared himself again, the self-possessed aristocrat; she almost expected him to speak or nod, but he did neither. He only smiled at her, with an interest that reminded her of the roguish way he’d observed her that night he’d described her to her father. She felt suddenly certain that he did remember her.

“Jervaulx,” she said, taking a step forward. “My Papa is here also. John Timms. Thou—you worked together with him on the new geometry.”

His smile faded slightly. He looked at her very intently, his head tilted a little to one side, the way a dog would look as it tried to penetrate the mystery of some human behavior. She noticed that he watched her mouth as she spoke—but he wasn’t deaf; he’d turned instantly toward the sound of a voice.

“Wouldst thou like Papa to come and call on thee?” she asked.

He inclined his head politely in assent.

Maddy felt a spurt of excitement. He had responded with perfect intelligence to that, certainly. She glanced at Cousin Edward. The doctor only shook his head. “He’s trying to please you. Maniacs can be rather sly, at times. Ask him, in that same tone, if he’s the king of Spain.”

She would not do that; it seemed too cheap a trick. She could not believe there was only a two-year-old’s mind left behind those eyes. Instead, she said, “Thou never looked to discover me here, didst thou?”

The chain rattled faintly as he shifted. He considered her—and shook his head.

As he did it, she realized that she’d put a negative tone in her question, and cued him to answer no.

“Thou dost not understand me,” she said in disappointment.

He hesitated, with a penetrating look, and then only stood silent, his mouth a sullen curve.

“I’m sorry,” she said impulsively. “I’m so sorry this affliction hast come to thee.”

He gave her that cynical, one-sided smile. Standing straight, he reached out his chained hand, as if to lift hers and bow. Maddy automatically took it. He bent over—and suddenly jerked her up toward him, whirling her into his chest, his chained hand at her throat, his other arm crushing her back into his chest.

“The razor!” her cousin shouted. “Good God—
Larkin
!”

The attendant spun around, holding the water he’d just taken from the maid at the door. He dropped the pail, cascading liquid over the woven rug, and lunged toward them. But Jervaulx made a bloodchilling sound, a guttural snarl, as he held the razor blade at Maddy’s jaw.

Larkin stopped short. Maddy could see Jervaulx’s thumb against the blade from the corner of her eye, see Larkin and Cousin Edward and the maid at the door, all in a suspended moment. Jervaulx held her, his arm pressing into her waist, ruthless, his breathing a hiss through his teeth at her ear.

“Don’t struggle,” Cousin Edward said evenly. “Don’t do anything.”

Maddy had no idea of struggle. It hurt, the way he held her; she could feel herself no match for the strength of his grip. He was tense, a hard, hot, shifting wall against her back, his wrist digging into her as he forced her with him as far as the chain reached and hooked his foot around the shaving table.

He drew it toward them, maneuvering carefully, pausing when it threatened to topple and then nudging it closer again. Cousin Edward began talking in a soothing voice, but Jervaulx ignored it. He took the razor from Maddy’s throat; in one wide swing he sent the copper shaving bowl clattering to the floor with his fist. The chain babbled along the edge of the table as he dragged the razor blade in a straight slash up the center of the varnished top, creating a pale incision.

He held Maddy tightly. She felt his muscles move and work as he inverted his wrist and crossed the first line with another. When Larkin took a step toward them, the blade came up instantly to her throat.

She listened to the harsh breath at her ear, felt the heat of it on her skin and the pump of her own heart and his.

“Let him,” Cousin Edward murmured. “Let him finish.”

Jervaulx waited, holding the razor just touching her skin. Cousin Edward nodded toward him.

“You may go on, Master Christian.”

After a moment, Jervaulx’s fist curled harder on the razor handle, and he placed the end of the blade at the intersection of the cross. With an effort that Maddy felt all through his body, he drew an even, sinuous S-curve along the axis of the line.

He dropped the razor. It made a loud clump as it hit the table. He put his hand behind her head, forcing her to look down at the carved figure.

His arm loosened. He let her go. Maddy stood still, gazing at the table.

She turned. The intensity of expectation in his face, the concentration… he depended on
her
to understand; he wasn’t looking at anyone else.

She didn’t know the figure. But she knew it was mathematical.

“Wait here!” She gripped both of his hands. “Wait!” She turned to Larkin and Cousin Edward. “Don’t punish him; don’t do anything to hurt him!” she exclaimed as she rushed from the room.

She found her father in the family parlor, being read to by his aide. “Papa!” She ran to him and caught up his hand. “What is this?”

Guiding his forefinger, she made the cross on the parlor table’s polished surface, and then the sinuous line along it.

“It’s a periodic function,” her father said.

Maddy released a breath and grabbed up pen and paper. “What’s the definition?”

“The infinite series, dost thou mean?”

“Anything! Anything about it. If it were given to thee, thou wouldst answer back what answer?”