Mark Dunn - Under the Harrow

“It seems these days that friendship exists only for the purpose of commiseration. Every former purpose for platonic union appears to have been subverted by circumstances that can only be met by impotency and ineffectuality. We cannot go after Gus. There are a great many other things that we are unable to do for our friends. Is Charlotte alone?”

Muntle shook his head.“By luck, Miss Bocker chanced upon her on her return from Hungerford and accompanied her the rest of the way to her cottage. Knowing what Charlotte would discover when she arrived home, Antonia held her hand and explained in as dulcet tones as that woman’s gruff demeanour generally allows the reason for Gus’s absence. Your sisterin-law is taking the news quite badly, Trimmers. It is best that we hurry so you can be with her.”

Gus was right. When we arrived at the cottage, Charlotte lay distraught and moaning in her bed, although according to Ruth Wolf, who sat nearby, she was just beginning to yield to the sedative she’d been given. Antonia paced the floor, waiting as well for Charlotte to drift off.

Seeing me, Charlotte struggled with drowsiness to ask me if it were true about Gus, for she still could not bring herself to fully believe it. I could do nothing but agree to that which had already been said, but I added that I still held out hope for his return. Charlotte had scarcely made a feeble nod in response when a hard and fast sleep overtook her, and her two female attendants, Muntle and I were given leave by circumstances to withdraw from the bedchamber.

“She was quite upset when I arrived,” said Miss Wolf, snapping her medical bag shut. “But I have put her under the influence of a strong sleep agent. It was good that I was passing by at just the time that I was most needed.”

“Given her fragile and nearly demented state,” added Antonia, “I know not what Charlotte was capable of doing to herself once she realised the true reason for Gus not being home to greet her return.”

I devoted the next hour to informing my companions of everything I had learnt over the last two days, and Antonia in turn discussed with us the invitation that Mrs. Gargery (or rather her pug dog) had taken from the hand of Mrs. Pyegrave as she lay crumpled and bleeding upon the cobblestones of Park Lane. Ruth Wolf had sat and listened as if she too had every need to hear all that was said, taking especial notice when I voiced the name “Michelena Martin.” Ruth’s presence seemed a natural thing, as if there were no doubt that she should be in this room, that she should be a part of everything discussed here.

But eventually the time came for Ruth to reciprocate. We had questions for her —a good many questions. Would she indulge us? That was the top question on the list.

Her answer was a most welcome one; not only would she indulge us, but she had, in fact, been hoping for an opportunity to address us, to put herself before the Fortnightly Poetry League, about which she had heard a thing or two. “I know not what your true purpose is, but I should like to bring you into my confidence nonetheless. It is time that some of you who have been marching for so long in the darkness should be given a little light to see where that path has been taking you.”

And so Messrs. Graham and Upwitch were summoned, and within the hour an ad hoc meeting of the Fortnightly Poetry League was figuratively gavelled to order with all members present.

Ruth Wolf waited patiently for the librarian and vicar to be fully apprised of all things pertaining to miniature calculating devices and riverside corpses, a miraculous cure for Rokesmith’s rigoritis, and a cellar filled and then suddenly made bereft of merchandise from the Terra Incognita.

“There is this as well,” said Antonia Bocker, handing Upwitch the card of invitation that had come from Janet Pyegrave.

The vicar responded by asking Antonia,“Just what is to be celebrated on July 15? The fact that another crate of expensive champagne has been hauled up to the Summit for the exclusive relishment of the Petit-Parliament?”

“Perhaps I should defer to our Outlander guest to tell it,” said Antonia with a nod to Miss Wolf.

Ruth Wolf beheld the faces that stared in rapt attendance within the close room — beheld them as if from some great height, for was it not true that the nurse had situated herself upon quite the lofty precipice in this engagement? For a moment I began to fear that she intended to go back on her word — that gathering us together was merely a ploy by which to receive as much intelligence as we were willing to give her and then renege on her promise to be equally forthcoming with us .

Muntle was thinking along the very same lines: “There are five people in this room, Miss Wolf, who have put a good deal of the puzzle together, but we cannot finish it without your help. We pose no danger to you, should you withhold the fact of our society and all that we know from those who could do us harm. But mark me, madam, we may do great harm to you if you decide to change your mind about cooperating with us. We could tell every man, woman, and child in this valley the details of your clandestine activities here. I wager that you wouldn’t be sitting within this room entertaining our suppositions and receiving our facts, if you did not yourself nurse terrible qualms in your own breast about what you have been asked to do in the name of this mysterious ‘Project’ that manages our lives, exploits us, and preys upon our ignorance. Something is afoot. We know it now and we know that we have been put in the way of some great veiled peril. You are the link between that which threatens us and the means by which we may save ourselves. Do you wish to help us, madam, or do you wish to doom us all — yourself included — to whatever destruction these people are capable of inflicting?”

Ruth Wolf looked to me. Then she took a measure of the other anxious faces within the room. Finally she drew breath to say, “While I wish to help you in whatever way that I can, I cannot bring back your brother, Muntle, nor yours, Trimmers. Nor do I know what has happened to your nephew.”

“You know nothing of Newman?” I asked, quite astonished to hear the words, given what I now knew of her rather circuitous efforts to inform me of Newman’s present involuntary tenancy in Bedlam.

“I assure you I do not.”

“I don’t believe you, and you know why I do not believe you.”

“How on earth could I have knowledge of the boy’s whereabouts?”

“Because you work in Bedlam and because I found proof that he is being kept there and because you are the very one who led me to that proof.”

“I can’t possibly apprehend your meaning, Mr. Trimmers.” Ruth Wolf turned away so I could not scrutinise her face for the sincerity I should certainly find lacking there.

I was set to offer the theory put to me by my friend Sir Dabber — delivering it, if circumstances required it, to her very back and shoulders, but was deterred by the staying hand of my friend Muntle. “Leave it to rest for now, Trimmers.”

“Yet how can I trust anything else that this woman now says?” I rejoined in an undertone and with a hard look at that person whom I now believed, in spite of her earlier efforts to put a balm upon my mind with regard to my nephew, was now working against the release of that same cruelly sequestered child.

Antonia answered my rhetorical question with a concrete answer: “She will tell us what she wishes us to know, and we will have to decide what is true and what is not. For all we know, Trimmers, the woman will prevaricate when necessary to keep us in check — to prevent our storming the walls of Bedlam as if it be our own Bastille. We cannot have that, now can we, Miss Wolf? The five of us, dashing about, forming militias, creating havoc, ruining your plans to get away with Bevan Dabber and make a life for yourself far, far from this doomed place. Am I close to your ultimate purpose here, Miss Wolf — a purpose that would be compromised, perhaps altogether obliterated, should we all go about half-cocked and disturb the peace of this valley in such a way as to cause all your selfish schemes to go awry?”