John Harwood - The Asylum

Throughout my incarceration in Women’s Ward B, I had assumed that if only I could discover what I had done in those missing weeks, the fog would lift from my mind. Yet even after I had read through my journal for a third time, there was no answering chord. I could half convince myself that I remembered walking with Lucia in Regent’s Park, or confronting Uncle Josiah and demanding that she be allowed to stay with us. But it was like sifting through my earliest recollections, and trying to distinguish actual memories from things Mama had simply told me I had done. The fog remained as impenetrable as before.

I felt, indeed, as if I had lost a whole existence, rather than a few weeks of my life. Lucia had stolen my name, my money, my heart, and left me here to rot. Everything she had told me—even the name Lucia Ardent—had been a lie, carefully woven to draw me in. And I could not remember so much as a syllable she had uttered, or recover the smallest glimpse of her face, except for that hallucinatory moment on the doorstep in Gresham’s Yard, on the evening of my escape.

Had she deceived Dr. Straker, too? The shock of finding Rosina’s grave, and reading her last letters, and realising (even as I fought to deny it) that Felix Mordaunt had been my father as well as Lucia’s, and that Rosina had died within days of giving birth to me—the shock of all that had brought on the seizure, just as Dr. Straker had said.

Calling myself Lucy Ashton, and coming here on that deluded, foolhardy quest: I might as well have been acting on Lucia’s instructions.

As perhaps I had been. I looked again at my description of Mrs. Fairfax; of how she had been singing Dr. Straker’s praises; how much she seemed to know about Tregannon Asylum. I had, indeed, heard that voice somewhere before. She had reminded me of Lucia. And if I had left those wills with Henry Lovell, as any sensible person would have done, instead of bringing them with me, Lucia could have retrieved them, and, in the person of Georgina Ferrars, laid claim to the Mordaunt estate.

When I heard the clock strike ten, I hid everything away again and put out the light, so that Bella would not come tapping at the door. Stars glittered above the rooftop; I wrapped myself in the coverlet and went over to the window, gazing down into the moonlit courtyard.

I knew that I ought to be consumed with rage and mortification, but I seemed to have lost the power of feeling. I might as well have been reading about someone else; someone for whom I felt a degree of sympathy, but whose fate did not directly concern me. I wondered if I would ever feel anything again. My childhood with Mama and Aunt Vida seemed quite untouched, only now immensely distant, as if seen through the wrong end of a telescope. The numbness seemed vaguely familiar.

But I still had to decide what I should do.

I could hand over the papers—except for the most intimate passages about Lucia (though was that not most of the journal?), which I would tear out—to Dr. Straker. That would surely persuade him that I had been telling the truth.

But unless Felix had made a later will, I would be presenting Dr. Straker with proof that I was the rightful owner of Tregannon House. Edmund Mordaunt would be disgraced; Frederic would lose his inheritance, and Dr. Straker his kingdom. I could say that I did not want the estate, only my freedom, my name, and my own modest income; but why should he believe me? It would be safer by far to burn the papers—“Miss Ferrars” in London could do nothing without them—and lock me away in the darkest corner of the asylum.

I could show the papers to Frederic, but again I would be gambling with my life.

Or I could try to escape again. But with no money, no name, and no one to help me—Lucia would surely have made a conquest of Henry Lovell by now—all roads led back to Women’s Ward B. Or worse.

Perhaps there was another way.

I stood at the window for a long time, watching the shadows climb slowly up the opposite wall, thinking how it might be done.

At ten o’clock the next morning, I was seated on a bench near the entrance to the voluntary wing. I had told Bella that if she should happen to see Mr. Mordaunt, I would be grateful if she could mention that I wished to speak to him. Now all I could do was wait.

The air was chill, but I could feel the sun’s warmth on my back. Through the woodland to my left, I could see a patch of red brickwork: the ruin of the old stable, perhaps, where Frederic had heard the mysterious tapping sounds. Away beneath the wall, men were tilling the fields, just as they had been the evening before. I felt strangely, almost unnervingly calm.

At least I know I am not mad. The thought had come to me upon waking: I might have Mordaunt blood in my veins, but I had endured five months in the family asylum without succumbing. It came to me again, like a current of warm air, as I sat gazing across the fields. I realised, too, that I did not greatly mind about being Rosina’s child and not Mama’s. No one could have loved me more dearly; if Rosina had lived, I should have had two loving mothers, as well as an aunt .I thought of the game I had played with the mirror, and the look on Mama’s face when she heard me shouting “Rosina” at my reflection, and I understood that in her place I should have done exactly the same. Her anxious, haunted expression when she thought no one was watching . . . I could well imagine her being possessed by a superstitious dread that if she made no provision, I would choose, of all the men in the kingdom, to marry a Mordaunt because she had not done so.

And indeed she had been right to fear it. Of all places in the kingdom, I had come to Tregannon Asylum, and might, in different circumstances, have fallen in love with Frederic Mordaunt, never imagining that he was my cousin. Only I had not come here by chance, but because of Lucia—Mordaunt blood calling to Mordaunt blood?—and if I had loved her so passionately, could I really have loved Frederic with the same—?

“Miss Ashton?”

I sprang to my feet. Frederic Mordaunt was standing two paces behind the bench.

“I am very sorry; I did not mean to alarm you.”

“Yes—I mean, no, I was just—shall we walk a little?” I said.

“By all means,” he said, falling into step as I set off, at random, toward the trees. He was bareheaded, and dressed much as I had seen him on that first morning, in brown corduroy and a white stock. The shadows beneath his eyes were darker than ever.

“You—er—mentioned that you wished to speak to me.”

“Yes, Mr. Mordaunt, I did. I feel—I have come to realise that I owe you an apology. I have been—unjustly harsh, and ungrateful—”

“Miss Ashton, Miss Ashton, it is I who should apologise—”

“But you have done so already, Mr. Mordaunt, and I ought to have accepted your apology with more grace. It is not your fault that I am here.”

His hands unclenched; he took a deep breath, almost a sob, and turned away to hide his emotion.

“Your generosity, Miss Ashton, means more than I can say; especially when—”

“Especially?” I prompted.

“Well—especially since you still believe you are Miss Ferrars.”

“I have been thinking about that,” I said. “Now that I am more at liberty, thanks to your kindness, it is easier for me to consider the possibility that—that I may have been ill, as Dr. Straker has always maintained. As I say, it is not your fault. I must not keep you from your work, Mr. Mordaunt; I only wanted to express my gratitude.”

“I see.” He sounded surprised, almost startled.

“But,” I continued, “I need time to reflect, before I speak to him, and so, if you are willing—”

“Upon my honour, Miss Ashton, I shall not breathe a word to him.”