Incarnation (29 page)

“Was the heart ever found?” I asked, even though I was already certain of the answer.

“It was not,” Marco replied. “Suspicion remains to this day that de Vere stole it so that he could use it for his own purposes outside the scrutiny of our council. I would say that we now have confirmation of that.”

“Bloody hell,” Gladstone muttered. He slumped in his chair, suddenly looking his age and more.

“He has to be stopped,” Stoker said, rather more resolutely. The Irishman had pluck, I gave him that. “Where is de Vere likely to be?” he demanded.

The prime minister shook his head as though by that action he could drive out the miasma of dread that threatened to overwhelm reason. Thinking aloud, he said, “His residence is in Belgrave. He belongs to various clubs. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society. He has privileges at the Royal London Hospital, St. Bartholomew’s, Bethlem—”

“Bethlem?” Marco and I spoke as one. Bethlem hospital—or Bedlam, as it was more commonly known—had a particularly dark reputation that all the recent efforts at reform had scarcely managed to lessen. For centuries, it had housed those unfortunates deemed to be mentally unstable—or cursed, depending on the prevailing view of the time. While treatment was said to have improved of late, it was not a place where anyone would want to be.

Softly, Marco said, “People screaming.”

Perplexed, Gladstone looked at us. “What’s that you say?”

“Mordred doesn’t know where he is,” I explained. “But he says that he can hear people screaming.”

I got to my feet. Marco rose as well, as did Stoker. Together, we headed for the door.

Behind us, Gladstone murmured, “Extraordinary . . . he seemed like such a rational chap . . .”

I hardly heard him. Even as I wanted to believe that we had discovered Mordred’s location at last, I sensed that the connection between us was growing weaker by the moment. Hastening down the stairs and back out into the leaden London day, I could only hope that we were not too late.

CHAPTER 22

S
moke from the still unextinguished fires at the foundry stained the sky to the west as we crossed Blackfriar’s Bridge. A little farther on through streets where Watchers lurked at every corner our hackney drew up in front of the sprawling three-story stone building that housed the Bethlem Royal Hospital. Since its founding in the thirteenth century, the hospital had occupied several locations around London, but none as large or grandiose as its current residence in St. George’s Fields near Southwark. A stranger to the place could be pardoned for assuming that it was the home of a wealthy duke or, even more likely, one of the new men of business and technology who were remaking our world.

Passersby strolling by the wide wrought iron gates paused to glance into grounds where chestnut trees were in full leaf. Here and there, inmates in the company of their custodians could be seen availing themselves of the relatively fresh air. The setting appeared as close to idyllic as it was possible to come within the city. Until, that is, I noticed the high stone wall that began on either side of the gate and continued around the entire expanse of several acres. Iron spikes were
planted at intervals along the top of the wall, but they were not as ominous as the signs facing outward that read Warning: Electrified Barrier.

“How are we to get in?” I asked as we descended from the hackney. In the previous century, a penny had bought admission for the purpose of viewing the inmates and their “antics,” but such callous practices were frowned upon in our more enlightened age.

“Leave that to me,” Stoker replied. Visiting hours had begun and people were walking alone, in couples, or in small groups up the cobblestone drive to the columned main entrance. We joined them. I had just begun to hope that my concerns might be unfounded when we stepped into the cavernous central hall adorned with murals depicting the progress of medicine through the ages. A line was forming up in front of the admitting desk, where names were being checked against a list of those approved for entrance.

As Marco and I waited at a discreet distance, Stoker joined the queue. When his turn came, he had a few quick words with the attendant at the desk. The man, whose frown appeared so habitual as to be etched into his mouth, suddenly smiled. Several moments of voluble conversation followed at the conclusion of which Stoker waved us forward.

We made haste past the desk as the Irishman explained, “I told him I was here to research a new book. He thinks it a splendid place to set a story.”

“That easily he let you in?” Stoker had achieved a kind of celebrity since the publication of
Dracula,
but even so the readiness with which we were admitted surprised me.

“He’s writing a novel. But then, apparently, so are most
people, if only in their own minds. Unfortunately, that fellow has actually committed some of his to paper.” With a grimace, he added, “I believe I agreed to take a look at his efforts.”

Marco stifled a laugh that would have been out of keeping with our surroundings. I took a closer look around. Having never been in a hospital of any sort before, my curiosity was natural. Bethlem’s peculiar history only served to accentuate it. Yet I had to admit nothing in the appearance of the building inside or out hinted at the tormented state of the patients there. To the contrary, my first impression was of an almost sanctified air of calm. Having turned its back on its brutal past—or so was the claim—Bethlem appeared to be nothing less than a temple of healing.

A man of middle years with the air of a busy professional walked briskly across the hall trailed by an eager group of students. An unbuttoned white lab coat flapped behind him. He was lecturing as he went. At first glance, I thought he might be Sebastian de Vere, but he was inches shorter and of far less formidable appearance. I wondered what he thought of the admittedly shocking theories coming out of Austria, the results of work done by a certain Sigmund Freud who was developing something he called “psychoanalysis.” Could the human psyche be subjected to the same sort of rigorous scientific investigation as, for example, the genetics of a plant? Perhaps the new, improved variety of the species that Marco said some wanted to create would be susceptible to such efforts, but I doubted it. Certainly, the current, more primitive form could never be so neatly catalogued.

From the main hall, corridors lined by oak and glass doors led off to both the left and the right. Brass plaques gave directions to various offices, examining rooms, laboratories,
libraries, and an auditorium. I surmised that patients were housed on the upper two stories, and indeed, visitors were streaming up a broad staircase. Mordred had said that he was underground.

“We must find a way to the basement,” I said. A small door behind a pillar appeared promising but when we approached, it turned out to lead to nothing more than a supply closet. Frustrated, I was looking around again when Marco touched my arm.

“We are attracting attention.”

At a glance, I saw that he was right. A burly attendant with the face of a footballer who has led too often with his head was moving in our direction. His intent may have been to offer help to visitors who appeared uncertain as to where to go, or he may have meant to question our purpose in being there and perhaps even summon help to evict us. I was not interested in finding out which it was, nor was Marco or Stoker. Together, we mounted the staircase with the rest of the civilians and climbed swiftly. I had no real idea of what to expect when we reached the first upper floor, but even so, the scene we walked into took me by surprise.

The stairs gave way directly onto a broad landing beneath a high dome. Tall windows looked out over the chestnut trees. The wicker furniture, potted palms, and gently revolving wooden ceiling fans were reminiscent of an elegant seaside resort. Several dozen well-dressed men and women were taking tea.

A violinist strolled among the potted palms while playing Debussy’s “Clair de Lune.” Waiters in white jackets offered trays of finger sandwiches and pastries. The air carried the scents of tuberose and honeysuckle blooming on trellises near the
windows. The only discordant note was the presence of several attendants keeping watch along the edges of the room, but they could be easily overlooked in such pleasant surroundings.

Everyone, whether visitor or patient, seemed to be if not happy at least content. Whatever torments they suffered—and I did not presume that only the patients themselves were so afflicted—they showed no sign of them. Their behavior was of such unblemished banality that a mad notion occurred to me: Perhaps Bethlem was no more than a sham, an elaborate hoax to conceal its true purpose, whatever that might be.

Stoker may have sensed the direction of my thoughts. Leaning close enough so that he could not be overheard, he said, “These are among the ‘Curables,’ as they have been declared by their esteemed physicians. People of good breeding in need of a little rest, a bit of bucking up, an electric shock or two, nothing more.”

“Is that really enough to cure them?” I asked. Beneath the smiling civility, I began to notice the odd twitch here and there, the strain around the eyes, the nervous laughter. It struck me that more than a few found the pretense of normality to be an ordeal.

He shrugged. “Some perhaps, as for the rest, if they act out, opium works well enough to quiet them. And there are other measures. Ice baths are effective, I hear. Sensory isolation chambers are even more so.”

I wondered how he was so well informed but did not ask. It was beginning to sound as though Bethlem had not changed that much after all.

“This hospital is supposed to serve everyone in London who has need of it,” Marco said. “They can’t possibly all be as well off as these people appear.”

“They aren’t,” Stoker said. He inclined his head toward the second floor. “It’s rather like first and second class on an ocean liner. Upstairs the rooms are smaller, the tea plainer, and there is no violinist, but the patients there are still considered curable.”

Marco and I exchanged a glance. “In that case,” he said, “we must be looking for steerage.”

Somewhere there had to be a staircase used by servants to transit the various floors, including into the basement. I was glancing around, trying to find it, when I noticed a slender young woman looking at me. She wore a day dress in creamy silk trimmed with lace. Her dark hair was swept up in a chignon with soft wisps framing her face. A pearl choker adorned her throat. At a guess, I would have said that she was about the same age as myself, twenty years, and that she was a visitor, not a patient. But on that last score, I was quickly proven wrong.

The moment our eyes met she wrenched hers away, only to turn back again with so fierce a stare that her face, placid moments before, was transformed into a mask of fear and loathing. Abruptly, she screamed, “Monster! Monster!” Rising from the chair in which she sat, she stretched out a slim arm and pointed a trembling finger at me. “Monster!”

Several attendants pushed away from the wall and started for her. Some of the people closest to where she sat tried to soothe her while others shrank back, hiding their faces in their hands. One or two others began to wail. In an instant, the ordered scene was shattered.

“Damn,” Marco muttered under his breath. “A sensitive.” He grabbed my arm and half dragged, half propelled me around to the other side of the stairs. Stoker kept pace as we hurried
down a corridor that led to a small service kitchen at the back of the building. Behind us, I could still hear screaming.

“What happened?” I asked when we finally stopped next to a dumbwaiter used for hoisting supplies up from below. I was more shaken that I wanted to admit. Even as I told myself that the young woman was ill and could have behaved the same way toward anyone, I sensed otherwise.

“The girl is a sensitive,” Marco said. When I looked at him without comprehending, he explained. “People like her can recognize vampires, werewolves, and others of the hidden world even when they look human.”

I thought of what she had called me. “She sees monsters.”

“She doesn’t know what she’s seeing,” he insisted. “Or understand it in the least. In all likelihood, she really thinks that she is mad as does everyone around her.”

The girl had been condemned to a mental hospital because she saw the world as it really was, not as those less gifted than herself believed it to be. I wondered if Gladstone or any other of the powerful men who had kept the truth hidden for so long considered the cost to people like her. Or if they were regarded as no more than unfortunate casualties of the need to preserve what passed for peace.