John Harwood - The Asylum

I emerged from my reverie to find that Felix had vanished from sight. I had locked the front door behind him, but what of the others? The house was surrounded on three sides by trees, which until then had looked peaceful and sheltering, but now seemed alive with shadows. The front windows looked over a low stone wall, beyond which was an expanse of meadow, then a long curving line of pale sand, and the sea stretching toward the horizon. If you went out by the kitchen door at the back, you could pick your way through the trees—the copse was very much overgrown, and choked in places with nettles—past the collapsed remains of another wall, and scramble down onto the Edinburgh road, in clear view of the village. We had never gone that way to Dunbar, having always taken the path along the coast.

I went around the ground floor, making sure that all the windows were latched and the kitchen door bolted. Fear prickled at my spine. I went on upstairs, forcing myself not to look back, and into our bedroom. Not a soul was in sight; only the ragged meadow, and an iron grey sea fading into mist. My head ached dully, and there was a griping in the pit of my stomach, which might have been apprehension, or simply the discomfort I had felt all day. I was shivering, too, but reluctant to light the fire, telling myself it was not really cold enough and trying to suppress the voice that whispered,

The smoke will give you away.

In the end, I got into bed fully dressed, wrapping the chill bedclothes tightly around me until the shivering diminished, and I began to drift in and out of uneasy dreams, starting awake whenever the hall clock chimed, or a bird’s claws scrabbled on the sill. Two o’clock struck, and then the half hour, and then three. And then I must have fallen into a deeper sleep, from which I woke with the impression that someone had been knocking at the door below.

I threw off the bedclothes in a panic, wondering how long Felix had been waiting, and was halfway to the landing before I came fully awake and realised that it might not be Felix at all.

The sound was not repeated. I crept back to the bedroom, knelt down beside the bed so that I could not be seen, and crawled toward the window. My skirts chafed against the carpet—or was that footsteps on the gravel beneath? Very slowly, I raised my head.

A man was standing just inside the front wall, no more than ten yards away, looking up at the house; he seemed to be staring directly at me. A stocky, powerfully built man in a dun-coloured suit like a uniform, with a cap of some sort protruding from his side pocket. His head was completely bald, lumpish and irregular in shape, the skin so transparent that it gleamed like polished bone. Down the left side of his face, a livid scar ran from temple to jaw, narrowly missing the eye.

I dared not move. He stood as though he had a right to be there, his eyes flicking back and forth over the house, but always, it seemed, returning to me, with a chill as palpable as the draught from the casement. At last he turned and walked away, pausing for one more glance at the window before he disappeared behind the trees.

Had he seen me? He had turned to the left, as if to go around the outside of the copse and rejoin the Edinburgh road, but there was no way of telling. He could be lurking amongst the trees, waiting for me to emerge. Any minute now, Felix might be approaching from the other direction, oblivious of danger.

Unless they had captured him already.

The hall clock began to strike, startling me to my feet before I realised what the sound was. If the man was still watching, he had certainly seen me now. Five o’clock. Felix had been gone nearly four hours.

If he

had

seen me, and Felix was already in their hands, they would have broken down the door by now. Which meant . . . The thought was lost in a wave of panic, but I knew well enough what it meant. My only hope of escape was to slip out by the kitchen door, seek another way through the coppice, and pray that I could find Felix before they did.

There was no one in sight. I went over to the closet, pulled on my walking-shoes and cloak with trembling hands, and went downstairs as quickly and quietly as I could.

Was there anything I could use as a weapon? I could think of nothing more formidable than the poker, and one thought of the scar-faced man was enough to dissuade me. I crept into the kitchen and sidled up to the window. Misty grey cloud hung low over the treetops; again there was no one to be seen, but any number of men might have been lurking amongst the trees.

No help for it. I drew back the bolt and lifted the latch. Silence, except for the terrible pounding of my heart. Inch by inch, I eased the door open, willing the hinges not to creak, and looked out through the gap. Nobody sprang at me, but the floor beneath my feet felt very strange. It began to sway, and then to revolve; the door slid through my hand, and darkness engulfed me.

I came to my senses with my cheek pressed against cold stone and a throbbing in my temple. For a moment I had no idea where I was, only that I was lying sprawled across a doorway with something digging into my shins. How long had I been lying here? Shivering, I rose stiffly to my feet and looked around.

The overgrown garden was deserted; nothing stirred in the shadows beyond. Keeping close to the wall, I moved toward the far corner of the house and peeped around. Still there was no one; only the low front wall and a glimpse of meadow. Twenty paces away, across a stretch of ragged grass, loomed the edge of the coppice.

The ground was uneven and littered with dead foliage, so I had to watch where I trod. Five paces; ten; I was almost there, when a voice on my left cried, “I seen her!”

I began to run, tripped over my cloak, and fell. Footsteps pounded toward me; I picked myself up and turned, hopelessly, to face my pursuer—and realised that he was Felix, calling my name.

“Rosina! What on earth . . . ?”

I gabbled out my story, but he seemed strangely unperturbed.

“One man alone, you say? No one you recognised?”

“No, but—”

“Well, then, he couldn’t have known who you were. You see—I was thinking about it on the way back—they would have to send someone who could identify you: Naylor, for instance. Even your father wouldn’t risk kidnapping the wrong woman. And now we must get you indoors, my darling; you are shivering, and white as a sheet.”

“Felix, you don’t understand; they will be back any minute—”

“No, dearest, they won’t, because they don’t know where we are. We haven’t been followed on any of our walks; I’m certain of it. You were anxious—all my fault; I shouldn’t have alarmed you so—and out of sorts. Your scar-faced man, however menacing he seemed to you, was most likely an innocent wayfarer in need of sustenance. And remember, you were fast asleep; you might very well have dreamt the knocking, and even your sinister visitant himself.”

Calmly ignoring my protests, he led me back to the house and put me to bed as tenderly and efficiently as Lily would have done. Only after he had got a good fire going, and mixed me a glass of hot spiced wine, did I think to ask how he had fared in Dunbar.

“All is well, my darling. The physician I consulted was a little nonplussed by my request, but after fifteen minutes’ conversation he agreed readily enough. And then, while I was looking for a notary, I remembered my will—the one Carburton persuaded me to sign a few days after my father died, leaving everything to Edmund as the next in line—poor Horace isn’t allowed to manage his own affairs. So I found a solicitor instead—a Mr. McIntyre, in Castle Street, well away from the post office—and had him draw up a new one, leaving the entire estate to you. It is drawn ‘in anticipation of marriage,’ as the lawyers say, so it will still be valid after we are married.”