The Medea Complex (24 page)

Beatrix

March 6
^th
, 1886

A small cottage...somewhere

"Of course we did the right thing, Beatrix. Really, I
can't believe you're even questioning it now," Anne says, lifting a cup of
beef tea daintily and carefully; ever mindful of the babe in her arms.
"You know what it is like to want a child and I, what it is to be without
a mother. We provided that for one another, and for that I am ever grateful to
you. Yet..." She shifts her gaze to John with a smile of love. "A
child needs its mother, above and beyond anyone else. Nothing can replace that,
I'm afraid. Here, could you make me another? I'm loathe to move in case this
one wakes up."

"Of course." Taking the cup from her, I glance at
John. His tiny hands are curled up in front of his face, poking out of the
blanket swaddling him; almost as if in his sleep, he is already trying to hide
from the world into which he has been borne. A horrid world where young women
sell their babies for pennies, and baby farmers murder them for a price.

 I walk the five steps it takes to transport me into the
kitchen, a tiny space. The entire home is tiny; not much larger than that I
grew up in. But this house is indeed a home; warmth blankets every corner of
the air, the glow from the log-fire sends a dusky, orange glow over everything.
I can't help but compare my current comfort to the girl I left to freeze on the
road; no less than I can compare her child to the one Anne cradles to her
breast.

Three women pinned me to a dirty mattress, and ripped my
baby from my womb before it even had a chance to grow. I was no use to them with-child,
and so of course, that was the most logical solution.

Except it wasn't logical. They didn't have an ounce of
intelligence in their heads when they stuck a piece of wire into me. They
didn't stop to imagine for one moment that they might end up killing not only
their maids unwanted child, but their maid as well.

That's how Anne's mother found me. Bleeding to death by the
side of a road.

"Beatrix? You've been in there an age!" Anne calls
to me, authorial, sure of herself. I adopt the same tone as I pick up the two
steaming cups, and carry them back into...what? The drawing room? The parlour?
This is the only room besides the kitchen on the ground level.

"I'm quite alright, Anne. Here." I put the tea on
the small, round table beside her.

"Thank you." She raises herself up in the chair,
and starts to rock it back and forth. "Sends him into a deeper
sleep," she says, answering my unasked question. She stops after a few
minutes.

"Would you like to hold him for awhile?"

No. No, I can't. Not now. I look at him, and now, all I see
is an innocent baby, split into the same amount of pieces as the one they
scrambled inside of my belly. Except it was on the outside, and this baby was
fully grown, alive. I took part in an innocent child's murder, and then I murdered
it's mother as surely as if I had raised a knife against her when she came to
claim him.

"Beatrix, I can see the worry etched into those
ever-deepening frown lines of yours. Will you stop it? At least, tell me what
you are thinking."

"I'm thinking of a baby, Anne; killed, butchered, by
us." I've always been open and honest with Anne, but this time she
flinches as if I have pinched her.

"My God, Beatrix. Do you know what I have been through?
I cut a child into tiny, unidentifiable pieces. I risked the gallows in doing
so, and then risked my sanity by acting insane. Do you have any idea how
difficult that was for me?"

"Yet you will sit back, and watch another innocent die.
Edgar is going to hang."

She sighs.

"That wasn't the plan Beatrix, and you know it. Who was
I to know about the 'no body, no murder' rule? Why, I took it as writ! At the
very most I expected him to go back to his hovel with his tail between his
legs, and forget all about this nasty episode of his life. Unfortunately, the
law appears to be a bit vague in books. Mr Tumsbridge is better than I
expected."

"'Better'?" For the first time in her life, I no
longer adore her. Love her, yes. Stand by her? Forever. Lie for her? As deep as
hell runs black. But sit here, and be unable to judge her? I cannot.

"I can't help but judge you, Anne. I left that child's
mother to die by the side of the road."

A small, sneaky look of slyness crosses her face.

"Well in that case, who are you to judge?" She
stands slowly, pulling John tighter into her breast. "You were fighting
for your child, just as I was for mine. Now," she says, crossing the room
and leaning into my cheek, "you're just as bad as me."

Her kiss is ice.

"The only truth in this world is a mother's love for
her child, and I don't regret a thing." She turns from me, taking her son
to bed.

We all enter this world covered in blood. Some of us survive
the brutal entry. Yet only a few of us exit it without any still on our hands.

Dr Savage

March 6
^th
, 1886

Royal Bethlem Hospital

 “Wait for me here!”

I don’t give the coachman time to reply and can only hope
that he heeds my request, as I run up the stairs into my hospital and sprint
into my office.

Everything is just how I left it.

A mess.

I search the papers on my desk frantically, swiping each
useless one onto the floor quickly until moving onto the one underneath. When I
get to the wood, the floor is littered with notes and medical files and yet
none of them are what I am looking for.

What did I do with the transcript?

I start emptying drawers.

I did it because I love my child. Wouldn't any mother care
to do the same? I didn't feel guilty when the blood ran over my hands, yet
neither did I feel vindicated. I just felt I had protected my child in the only
way I knew how.

There it is!

As I move to tear off the page, a previous entry catches my
eye.

Anne was clearly distressed following the
miscarriage she suffered. This grievance left Anne extremely susceptible to
future mental problems. I do not believe that she fully mourned the loss of her
first child, and when faced with her second pregnancy, she thereupon read any
and all literature she could lay her hands on with regards to midwifery and
childbirth in a misguided attempt to keep the second baby safe. This in turn
filled her mind with apprehensions at to the horrors that might be in store for
her, and she thus developed a cerebral disturbance.

It is noteworthy here that Anne gained
access to advice books, medical literature and periodicals, and, having an
intellect great enough to both understand and digest this information, Anne was
open to terror and anxiousness regarding the impending birth of her second
child.

My legs become weak, and I my stomach drops even further.
How could I have missed this? How could I have missed everything? She didn't
read to keep the baby 'safe' as I previously assumed: she read to learn the
symptoms of puerperal mania!

'She always was an avid reader, Doctor. It helped more
than you know.
'

Everything has been a lie, everything!

Swiping the entire file, I make it to the office door in two
strides,  when I bump into someone coming in the other way.

“Oh, Doctor, sorry, I...”

“Agnus?”

Nurse Agnus, coming into my office.

An office that she knew was empty, until now.

“Doctor, I-”

I grab her by the arm, and push her up against the wall.

“Doctor! What are you-”

“Tell me what you know! You knew Lady Stanbury wasn't
insane, didn't you?”

She blinks at me, her face inches away from my own, but it
is Miss Fortier's' face and words I hear inside my head.

She was gifted in the art of reading.

Gifted in the art of reading.

Reading.

By Lord, Nurse Ruth was right!

“Well, did you? Child, if this be the case, an innocent man
is about to be sentenced to death in,” I look at my watch, “half an hour, or
thereabouts! Tell me!”

“Doctor, I...what do you mean she wasn't insane? Who’s about
to be sentenced to death...surely not that Mr Stanbury? I remember him well, he
was such a lovely looking young man. I read about him in the newspaper
recently, but I don’t understand what you're asking me...” Her blonde hair
loosens from its bonds and wisps around her face, making her look every inch
the child that she is.

I resist the urge to shake her, and let go. I don’t know if
she knows anything or not, for sure, but I don’t have the time to interrogate
her. It’s at least a ten minute cab ride back to the courthouse, and I need to
be there before the jury decides Mr Stanbury's fate...

“Sir?” A tugging at my arm, a gentle voice. I realize I am
bent over on the floor. This burden is too much; too heavy upon me. All I ever
wanted was to make people well, and my good intentions have been made a mockery
of.

“Sir, alls I know is that Miss Fortier approached me a few
months ago, she said that I was to get myself employed here as Lady Stanbury
would be admitted here. She said that it was important she had a friend on the
inside, as they'd heard awful things about asylums, and it was my job to make
sure she was alright, and that nothing happened to her. But that’s all I know,
I wasn’t told anything about her not being crazy or anything like that...She
said-”

Lord. I want to break out of my own skin, I want to scream
and howl and break things.

“How did she know of you, child?” I believe her when she
says she didn't know anything. She is too sweet, too innocent. She is, at
least, thankfully, one person whom I have judged correctly.

“She said my mother used to work in Asquith House as a
scullery maid, but she was sacked...I don’t know what for. Beatrix felt badly
for her, and all she told me was that she used to send her money on a regular
basis so's she could survive. I believed her, Sir, because I don’t remember my
mother working after that, and it was only me and her like, but we were okay
for money. We never starved or nothin'.”

“So she asked you to secure a job here as some sort of
favour, is that correct?”

She shrugs. “I guess so, Sir. There was no reason for me to
question her motives. I always quite fancied doing my nursing exam anyway, and
it’s nice to have a bit of extra money to buy some nice things for me and me'
mother. An' I’ve really enjoyed working here Sir; I hope you don’t think I’ve
done anything wrong...”

Doctor, it has come to my attention that you have adopted a
regime of mechanical restraint since the retirement of your eminent
predecessor, Dr William Reece Williams.

I never questioned it. I never questioned how he knew such a
thing. Oh, how could I have been so idiotic?

A clock starts to toll, and I realise we've been talking for
five minutes.

“Good Lord, child! Move out of the way! I must get to the
courthouse!” I sweep past her, bumping her accidentally on the way and I hear
her gasp, but I don’t stop...I don’t look back as I leap down the steps, I
don’t look up until I get to the gates and rise myself up to get into the
coach.

It’s gone.

The cab has left without me.

Edgar

March 6
^th
, 1886

Defence Table

It takes the jury twenty minutes to make their decision.

They bring in closing speeches, whereupon Mr Tumsbridge
brings tears to the jury's eyes. Mr Smithingson seems merely outraged, and
resorts to slander of the prosecution. “They speak words not as evidence, but
as a barely concealed, narratively-loaded pile of rubbish!” But the jury have
already made up their minds Listening to the obviously inexperienced defence lawyer
is akin to a mosquito buzzing around their ears on a midsummer’s evening.

The Judge stands.

“Mr Foreman, have you agreed upon a verdict?”

“Yes, we have. We find Mr Stanbury guilty of murdering his
wife.”

The world turns hazy.

The Judge passes his sentence.

I don’t hear or see anything after, ‘hanged by your neck
until you are dead’. 

Edgar

March 14
^th
, 1886

Newgate Prison

Condemned Cell

“Hey, do ye' 'ear tha' sound? They're out there testin'
t'drop wi' bags o'cement. Do ye know yer' less than fifteen feet away from t'
gallows right now?” The prison warden pokes me through the blanket, taunting
me. When I refuse to answer, he continues. "I 'ope they tested ye' weight
properly like; ye got t' same executioner who as decapitated sum' poor fella'
last year, ye' want t' know 'ow? T' rope was too long, like, and 'is 'ead
popped right off his shoulders. I saw it 'meself, made a right mess, it did.
'Eee...but 'ye might just get lucky; the year befoor 'e failed 't 'ang a man,
cos t' trapdoor wouldn' open. Again, and again, the funniest sight 'ye ever did
see. In t' end, the lucky mans sentence was commuted. Think the angels were
smilin' on 'im that day.”

“Go away,” I tell him, huddling further into the mattress.
They weighed and measured me yesterday. Now I know why. I wish the other warden
would come back. Although I’m not interested in playing cards or dominoes right
now, his gently pressing attitude for me to engage on some level is preferable
to this evil idiot, whom is perfectly nice whilst in the others company but a
demon by himself. He leans in close to me.

“But what I want t' know 'is, will t' angels be smilin' on
ye today, Stanbury? Or d' 'ye reckon t' ropes gonna' be t' long like, and pop
ye' head off just like a conker?”

I ignore him, thinking of my son. His face, his tiny hands,
his wisps of hair-

“Ye' know, I 'ope they've got a good rope; strong, fine an'
soft. I 'ear Mr Berry uses rope made out o' fine Italian Hemp. Such a waste.
It's a pity though....tha' the woman’s family can't come an' see ye hanged.
Stupid law.” He pokes me again. “Hey, I 'eard durin' your sentencin' 'ye wept
like a baby and screamed for mercy. Did ye' wife scream fer mercy, when ye'
killed 'er? Did ye' think she knew she was goin' t' die?  How does it feel now
like, t' know you're gonna die in,” he pauses. “fifteen minutes? Eight in the
mornin'...wha' a time t' 'ang a fellow. Think they'd let ye' 'ave a lie in,
wouldn't ye?” A knock on the door resounds around the cell. “Aye up, no doubt
that's t' Chaplain. Ready t' confess ye sins? Not tha' it'll do ye much good.”
The door unlocks with a click. “Bu' I suppose ye know you're goin t' 'ell,
don't ye?”

“Brutus, find Grover please, would you?” asks the Chaplain,
as he passes the warden. He is old, and I weep at the sight of the wrinkles and
grooves I will never get the chance to wear. He comes and sits on the edge of
the bed, and lays a hand upon my cheek, turning my face towards his.

“Child, don't cry...”

“Has the reprieve come?” I say the words quietly, barely
daring to ask them for fear of the answer that has come many times before.

The Chaplain remains silent, and rummages around in his
robes.

“I have come to pray with you, my Child, and ask once again
for your confession and repentance. I have also brought you some wine.” His
hands shake, and a droplet of water appears on the back of one of them.

A tear.

I sit up, and grasp his leathery hands in mine.

“Father, the reprieve?”

He shakes his head, sadly. He has two tear-tracks down his
face, and in that moment, I understand.

Nothing more can be done.

“Child, the transcript was inadmissible. Your wife was
classed as insane when she made that ‘confession’. Anything said under hypnosis
cannot be taken as fact. There is too much evidence against you, and nobody is
willing to go up against an Earl. Especially when a sentence has been passed. I
tried. I spoke with Dr Savage and he wholeheartedly believes you innocent. So
much in fact, he resigned. He doesn’t feel himself worthy of the title of
‘doctor’ anymore. I believe he is outside, protesting in your name.”

I get out of bed, stand up shakily, and walk the ten steps
towards the barred windows. The sky is clear, blue. How can they kill me on
such a beautiful day? I turn to the Chaplain, and swallow. “Someone told me that
one out of twenty men hanged are innocent. How many is that a year, Father?”

He stutters.

“I don’t know child, I don’t know. But perhaps its better
you atone-“

 “What for? For the crowd? For you? In a few hours, I shall
pay the penalty for a crime I did not commit with that of my life. I do not
need nor want to make a false confession to appease the conscience of those
that will stand idly by and watch me executed.”

The Chaplain looks pale, and brings a hand to his mouth.
Just as he is about to say something, we are interrupted by another knock on
the door.

“Good Morning, Sir.” A large, blonde-haired man approaches
me, and bows respectfully. He holds a long leather strap in his hands, and in
that instant my legs fail me. Just as I am about to drop upon the floor, he
reaches forward and grabs me under my arms, helping me over to the bed.  “My
name is Mr James Berry, and I have been appointed as your executioner.” Behind
him stand a large group of men: Brutus, Grover and the prison Governor the only
people I recognise amongst the fourteen or so men.

“I am innocent,” I whisper. “I am innocent, you must believe
me. Oh God, oh god...”

This time, when he grabs hold of my arms it is not to help
me, but to condemn me. He silently works the strap around my upper arms,
securing them to the sides of my body.

Oh my god, it’s happening, they're going to kill me...

“I am innocent, I am innocent, I am innocent, oh God please,
do not let them hang an innocent man...”

The Chaplain begins to recite some sort of sermon as hands
gently lift me, and I recognise some words and phrases from the burial service
yesterday.  My mind shifts, and I am half-carried, half-dragged across the
cell, surrounded by men whose names I do not know to a song of everlasting
love, forgiveness, and repentance. Somewhere close by, a baby is crying. One of
the warders pushes on the side of the wardrobe, and I barely have time to
wonder at his action before the world goes white. There is something upon my
face, and now I am blind, I can’t see, where are they taking me...

 The sound underneath my feet becomes hollow, and I am
stopped.

Someone wraps something around my legs, and a coarse, itchy
ring lowers itself around my neck.

“Make sure you pinion him tight now, there’s a good lad.”

Hemp. The hangman’s rope is made of hemp.

Anne. My love, my heart. Wrapping her arms around me,
passing over our son. Tears of joy upon an innocents face, a finger the length
of my fingernail curling itself around my heart. Two blue eyes blinking at the
wonder of a new world, the smell of soft skin. I will love you forever, my son,
and I will always be there for you. Your mother and I together, we will watch
you grow and fill your life with love until the day we die. For I have found
peace and happiness in a place I never expected. My wife, a woman whom I set
out to deceive, and yet never would have; a woman who found the words in all
the wrong places and believed that I would take her son away from her, never
seeing the true letter that is still left, unsent, telling my father the truth
of the situation; a woman married to a coward who has signed his own death
warrant by never revealing the truth to her. A crunching noise, and agonising
pain shoots through my neck, and I can’t breathe, it hurts, my ears are
ringing, and I can smell my child, I can breathe his essence.

You bitch.

I go to heaven with the scent of my son's hair on my breast
and the curve of his smile in my eyes.