yourself’. On both occasions he’d picked up a small, beautifully polished scarificator, the tiny blades of which emerged from its metal surface like the teeth of some artificial beast. Once her vein was opened, Abigail watched as her blood dripped into a pewter bowl with numbers marked up the side, until Bryson barked an order to stop and the surgeon covered her new wound with a bandage.
She has also been purged, immediately before each bleeding, forcing down a herbal concoction of Dr Bryson’s own devising which, within seconds, caused her to vomit up the contents of her stomach into a different bowl. Each time, Bryson would avidly investigate the contents, like an ancient alchemist discerning the combination of humours from the belly of a duke.
On a half-dozen occasions, Bryson has come into her cell and made her sit on the bed, facing him. Then he has stared at her, his bloodshot brown eyes peering at her as if she were a botanical specimen under investigation by a Kew gardener, and while he stares he has asked her provocative questions about her condition and even about her relationship with Charles. She has answered the questions when she can, and grown angry at the more impertinent of them, but something about her anger seemed to excite Bryson, and he had leaned in and furrowed his brow deeply, never taking his gaze from her, never blinking, nostrils flaring as if he could cast a spell upon her through the space between them.
Each of these strange episodes has ended the same way: Bryson has sighed and looked down at the floor, shaking his head as if she had failed some unspoken examination, then patting her hand and standing. Each time, she has immediately been given some form of intervention: a purging, or a bleeding, or a dose of something-or-other. Some days it is oil, some days opium, some days the juice of an orange.
Otherwise, the only other element of the Brooke House regimen has been seclusion. On this point Bryson is adamant. Abigail cannot write to Charles, nor can she receive any of the letters she is certain he must have sent. She imagines him outside the front of the house, standing under a tree, desperate to catch a glimpse of her. She speaks to other patients of this, and they all confirm it: Brooke House allows no intercourse between patients and their families.
But the Pacific woman endures. The kindly idiot who mans the gate, whose name she has learned is John, may have shut it behind her when she first arrived, but he did not shut out the princess. She came in with her, and most nights she whispers to Abigail, whispers of strange plants and unquenchable thirsts.
The princess has been with her since last year, when the sea captain appeared at her door with a gift of tea for her husband. Tea made from the leaves of an Otaheite tree, a substance full of strange potencies. The Otaheite princess had leaped into Abigail’s dreams from the drink she made from that tea, and then she had leaped from her dreams into her waking hours, and now she is a constant dark-haired companion, whispering baleful tales of the crimes of Englishmen and the vengeance of women.
But this is not the only voice Abigail hears. When the old building finally settles into sleep – a fitful sleep, full of creaks and murmurs and audible memories – Abigail listens for the woman in the cell beside hers. And, more often than not, the woman speaks.
Abigail has not seen her since the day she was first brought in, but she has asked Bryson and the attendants about her, and one of them has at least provided her with a name: Maria. For the first few nights, this girl did not so much speak as sob, quite gently compared with the terrible screams she had aimed at the attendants who had tried to calm her on her arrival. The sobs were full of a single name –
Joshua
– and were possessed of the longing of a hundred sonnets.
But sometimes she spoke to herself – spoke of men who’d done things to her, terrible things, of livid
She has also been purged, immediately before each bleeding, forcing down a herbal concoction of Dr Bryson’s own devising which, within seconds, caused her to vomit up the contents of her stomach into a different bowl. Each time, Bryson would avidly investigate the contents, like an ancient alchemist discerning the combination of humours from the belly of a duke.
On a half-dozen occasions, Bryson has come into her cell and made her sit on the bed, facing him. Then he has stared at her, his bloodshot brown eyes peering at her as if she were a botanical specimen under investigation by a Kew gardener, and while he stares he has asked her provocative questions about her condition and even about her relationship with Charles. She has answered the questions when she can, and grown angry at the more impertinent of them, but something about her anger seemed to excite Bryson, and he had leaned in and furrowed his brow deeply, never taking his gaze from her, never blinking, nostrils flaring as if he could cast a spell upon her through the space between them.
Each of these strange episodes has ended the same way: Bryson has sighed and looked down at the floor, shaking his head as if she had failed some unspoken examination, then patting her hand and standing. Each time, she has immediately been given some form of intervention: a purging, or a bleeding, or a dose of something-or-other. Some days it is oil, some days opium, some days the juice of an orange.
Otherwise, the only other element of the Brooke House regimen has been seclusion. On this point Bryson is adamant. Abigail cannot write to Charles, nor can she receive any of the letters she is certain he must have sent. She imagines him outside the front of the house, standing under a tree, desperate to catch a glimpse of her. She speaks to other patients of this, and they all confirm it: Brooke House allows no intercourse between patients and their families.
But the Pacific woman endures. The kindly idiot who mans the gate, whose name she has learned is John, may have shut it behind her when she first arrived, but he did not shut out the princess. She came in with her, and most nights she whispers to Abigail, whispers of strange plants and unquenchable thirsts.
The princess has been with her since last year, when the sea captain appeared at her door with a gift of tea for her husband. Tea made from the leaves of an Otaheite tree, a substance full of strange potencies. The Otaheite princess had leaped into Abigail’s dreams from the drink she made from that tea, and then she had leaped from her dreams into her waking hours, and now she is a constant dark-haired companion, whispering baleful tales of the crimes of Englishmen and the vengeance of women.
But this is not the only voice Abigail hears. When the old building finally settles into sleep – a fitful sleep, full of creaks and murmurs and audible memories – Abigail listens for the woman in the cell beside hers. And, more often than not, the woman speaks.
Abigail has not seen her since the day she was first brought in, but she has asked Bryson and the attendants about her, and one of them has at least provided her with a name: Maria. For the first few nights, this girl did not so much speak as sob, quite gently compared with the terrible screams she had aimed at the attendants who had tried to calm her on her arrival. The sobs were full of a single name –
Joshua
– and were possessed of the longing of a hundred sonnets.
But sometimes she spoke to herself – spoke of men who’d done things to her, terrible things, of livid
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