Chapter One Hundred Two: Freely Bleeding

“We should do some blood letting,” he said grimly.

“Why?” I asked.

“It is the only thing that will help.” The white haired doctor lifted Nathaniel’s eyelids, one at a time, noting with a grunt the jaundice, a sickly yellow where white should be. He wearily sat back down in the worn wooden chair I had placed by the bedside.

“But how will it help?” I had not seen blood letting benefit anyone. Not ever.

“Madame, leave this sort of thing to the professionals. You should not have to worry yourself with the why’s and wherefore’s…”

He reached into his valise and pulled out a brass encased fleam. The blade clicked open with a fling of the wrist. He held it at the ready.

“I need a bowl.”

“Wait. I…..”

“Bring me a bowl!” he said sharply as he dug into Nathaniel’s forearm. “I don’t have all day. There are other patients to see.” He clamped a hand over the oozing blood then looked over at me expectantly. 

Nathaniel groaned and shifted. 

“Please be quick or this will stain….” he warned.

I shook off the shock and grabbed the basin off of the dresser, the one used for washing up. I felt numb.

“Here.”

“Thank you.” He said it deliberately in mock gratitude. “Now I need some fresh linen and clean water.”

I stood watching the blood flow down the arm in a weak rivulet, forming a deep scarlet pool in the creamy porcelain bowl below. 

“Now?” the doctor prompted.

I left to grab the required items, placing the wash pitcher with the clean water on the floor next to him, then handing over a few strips of clean linen. He put down the fleam and took the linen, draping it over his dark brown pants leg. 

“Just a few minutes more…”

Eventually he took a strip of linen and wrapped it tightly about the wound. Blood quickly oozed through as he wrapped another strip around that one.

“Come.” He motioned me over. “Apply pressure here.” I placed my hand over the indicated spot as he tied the bandage tightly. “He is a free bleeder, as most people in this situation are. It will take time for the oozing to stop. If it bleeds further, apply more pressure until it stops.”

I kept my hand on the bandage, holding tight.

The doctor quickly washed the blade and then his hands using the pitcher and bloody wash basin. Standing up, he dried them both on the towel on the dresser.

“I will see myself out, Madame…?”

“Brierly. Madame Brierly.” I sat down in the chair he had vacated.  “I am his wife,” I added by way of explanation.

“I gathered,” he said dryly. He looked at me pityingly. “I will be back tomorrow to check on you both.” With that, he nodded his head and left. I heard the door close softly behind him.

I moved my hand from the bandage and watched as the red spot on the white bandage widened. I clamped my hand back over it quickly, holding tighter this time. 

It felt as if I was holding on for dear life, holding on to a dream long past. Hope was oozing away beneath my fingers…

But there was no other choice. 

Or was there?

I relaxed my grip, then let go. Blood soaked the bandage, then dripped to the floor. 

Chapter Ninety: Setting Sail

  
“Pssst! Hedwig!” 

I heard the coarse whisper. It registered somewhere in my head but I was too numb to process it properly. I did not move in the darkness. 

Why bother?

There was impatient tapping of a fingertip on the heavy metal door. “Are you in there, Hedwig?” Knuckles rapping, louder. “It’s me, Zenobia. You have a visitor!”

A key turned in the lock and the door creaked open slowly, banging against the wall. I started.

Too bright!

I shielded my face from the light of the two oil lamps.

“Evelyn?” The voice. I knew the voice. A man. 

Oh, God. 

A man.

Who?

The Reverend. 

No! Not like this!

My shift was stained with urine and feces. My hair had been cut short to combat the lice and what was left was matted about my head. I reeked of foul pestilence. I could hear his steps inching forward tentatively only to stop suddenly a few feet away. I could feel him recoil.

“Oh, God!” 

I had seen no light for…. how long? Days? Weeks? Assigned again to the “tank” for some minor infraction I could no longer remember. The dark had become a comforting companion, a warm blanket of sorts. Now they were taking it away.

No, no light! Please…

My eyes hurt. I squinted through the pain and looked up at his face. Only, it was not his face that I saw. It was horribly disfigured, unrecognizable. 

Who was this man?!?!

Surely, it was another hallucination. The moorings of my mind had been set loose and I was not sure that I had ever been completely sane.

He spoke again, more softly as he squatted down beside me. “Evelyn…” It was indeed the Reverend. 

The smallpox!

I hazarded a glimpse again at his face. Scars. He must have suffered terribly.

More footsteps advancing in the hallway, raised voices saying angry words that I could not quite make out.

“How dare you!” Dr. Jenkins shouted as he entered the cell. “Explain yourself.” I whimpered at the sound of his voice.

The Reverend stood.

“Who are you?” The Reverend demanded.

“I am the director of this asylum, Dr. Stuart Jenkins. Who are you?” He replied, haughtily.

“The Reverend Drummond. I am here to collect Mrs. Aspern.”

“She is a patient here and as such, is under my jurisdiction.”

“She is no longer yours to torment.” Papers rustling. “Here. This is an order from the magistrate. I am to assume custody.”

The papers changed hands. 

Someone knelt beside me again, took my hand. Only it was not Reverend Drummond’s hand. It was that other hand. The hand that caused all of this pain. The burns. The lashings. The slaps. All of the pain that hand had delivered with impunity. 

I recoiled and tried to pull away but the grip was too tight.

There was a foul breath hot on my cheek. “We are not done, you and I,” the doctor snarled. I could not see but I spit at him anyway.

“Enough!” The Reverend bellowed in his Sunday morning pulpit voice. He commanded attention. 

I felt my body lifted and carried out into the bright sunlight. I shielded my face from the sun against the rough fabric of his coat. Every movement and shift seemed to bring up new terrible odors and served to deepen my shame.

I was free? 

“Anne..,” I whispered. 

“Shhhh. Not now. Soon.”

Chapter Eighty-Eight: Crumbling

I wept bitterly that night and every night after…

The days were spent in a stained jacket of sorts that wrapped my arms around the torso and held them tight. I was placed in a chair and then tied down, only to be wheeled out to the veranda to take in the air twice a day. I was fed by the orderlies as apparently I could not be trusted with utensils. 

They were probably right.

Time passed slowly. 

I thought about all of the ways I could hurt that man with a spoon: evisceration would be difficult but if he held still long enough maybe with some chloroform or ether, I could ram the handle up a nostril and do some damage to his brain, I could scoop out each eyeball or maybe even his testicles, I could shove the handle into each ear and render him deaf, I could use that same handle at his jugular and maybe make him bleed to death….

I asked everyone I came across about my daughter but was only met with blank stares or shrugs. I begged for answers, news, any bit of information. 

None came.

Dr. Jenkins himself was a specter, flitting in and out around my periphery. How lucky he must have felt when I fell into his lap here. Had it been orchestrated, his little charade? Or purely chance? What were the odds anyway? 

I had no uterus. No ovaries. No child. He had robbed me of everything I had left.

Everything but my hate.

It was not a strong enough word, really…

After a week I was pinned down for an exam by him, my legs spread wide and held in place by two male orderlies as he painfully probed with his fingers. All the while he watched my face with a grin, clearly enjoying himself.

I held his gaze until he looked away.

If I could only kick him.

But I could not. I had already tried. 

Hence the male orderlies.

They leaned heavily on my legs, forcing them still. I could no longer feel my feet, the circulation had been disrupted for so long.

I wiped away all outward emotion. I resolved that I would not give him the satisfaction of having control of me in that way any longer. There were places in my mind where he could not touch me. I escaped there until he was done. 

A female attendant stood silently to my right, shifting her weight uncomfortably from one foot to the other. She had little to do besides serve as an observer, a witness to my humiliation. I wondered what she must be thinking. Whenever I looked at her she looked away.

He moved up to my abdomen and removed the sutures. They had been terribly itchy. Restrained all day and all night, I could not reach the area to scratch. That fact alone was enough to drive me mad…

He was rough but the removal was a kindness, after all. My quality of life would be vastly improved. I hated him all the more for making me feel even this small amount of gratitude toward him.

Soon enough it was all over. 

I should have killed you when I had the chance, you bastard.

My legs were released as he stepped back, my chemise pulled back down to my ankles. The blood rushed back into my toes, a wave of prickly pain that excruciatingly crescendoed and then died away. He walked up to the basin and pitcher placed on the table next to the head of the bed. He washed. 

As he dried off his hands and rolled his sleeves back down he leaned in close to my ear and spoke softly. “I hear your daughter will be adopted out by a nice family. They needed extra hands to labor around the farm. They have adopted six other children from other unfit mothers already. I hope the girl does not mind cow shit…”

I closed my eyes and let the hate wash through me. I could feel it in every hair of my body, every pore, every fiber.

For now hate was my hope.

Chapter Eighty-Seven: Tethered

  

There were voices: a man and a woman, speaking in hushed tones. I tried to focus, to listen to their conversation through the fog in my head.

“The incision seems to be healing well now, Doctor.” The woman, whispered.

A man’s voice responded, softly, “Excellent. Maybe now she will not endanger herself by moving around.” 

“Shall we remove the restraints?” 

Were they referring to me?

“No. Not yet.”

I could hear the nod of the crisply starched cap, even though I could not see it.

Did I dare open my eyes?

It was then that I realized they were moving away. My opportunity to ask questions…

“Where am I?” I blurted out, looking about.

The man had turned away and was walking toward the bed across the ward, his back to me.

“You are at The Royal Asylum For Women.” The nurse spoke kindly, brushing hair back from my forehead.

“Why?”

“You had an acute attack of abdominal dropsy brought on by a neurosis.”

“Where is my daughter?” 

“Safe.”

“What does that mean?” I demanded.

“She is being cared for elsewhere.”

“By whom?” 

“I do not know.”

“Bring her to me!” Anger crept into my voice.

“I cannot. You are not able to care for her in your condition,” she said sternly.

“My condition.” Fear suddenly replaced anger. “What is my condition?”

“You have had a surgery.”

“What kind of surgery?”

“Dr. Jenkins performed a hysterectomy.” She looked at me pityingly. 

Oh, God.

Surely not. Why? And not the Dr. Jenkins I had known from another life… Stuart Jenkins? Surely there were plenty of other Dr. Jenkins in this world. 

Please… 

At the sound of his name the man turned around and began to walk back to my bedside.

His face.

It WAS him!

He smiled pleasantly as he approached.

My mouth filled with bile.

“Ah, Mrs. Aspern. Awake are we?”

“You had no right!” I screamed at him. Others in the ward shifted in their beds uncomfortably, taking notice. I tried to sit up but my arms were tied down to the bed. I jerked at the leather wrist restraints so hard that the bed frame rattled. 

“Oh, yes, I did. I have every right as your treating physician.”

“You hack!”

“I have removed hundreds of uteri in my career. In fact, every woman in this ward right now, has had this same procedure by me. I think I am able to judge well enough when one is causing problems.” He stared down at me haughtily. “And yours most certainly was causing all manner of infirmary.”

He reached a hand into his pocket and pulled out the old pessary, dropping it onto my abdomen. It hurt greatly as the heavy, metallic weight hit the incision. The padding from the bandages was not enough to break the fall.

I winced.

“It was probably simply pinching the vaginal mucosa, causing your pain, but it was easy to see that your uterus and ovaries were sitting too low in your pelvis, causing you fits of hysteria. You should feel much better from now on.” Another smile spread across his face.

“You did not ask my opinion!” I hissed through clenched teeth. 

It was rape. It was worse than rape. This man had had his hands inside of me, stolen from me without my consent.

A glint appeared in his eye as he leaned in close to my ear. He whispered slowly, threateningly, “The feeble minded are never able to make their own decisions.” 

Chapter Seventy-One: A Pox Upon You

The waiting room was cold. I shivered, pulling the wrap around me tighter.

Anne played with her fingers in her mouth. I pulled the blanket over her better in case she was also catching a draft. She looked up at my face and giggled.

Was I truly cold or was the shaking merely nerves?

The day before I had run into Reverend Drummond again outside the meat market. He nodded, touching the brim of his hat as he passed. I grabbed him by the arm and pulled him aside. At first his eyes registered shock that I had touched him.

“So sorry,” I mumbled. “Why didn’t you tell me that I needed to vaccinate and register?”

“I assumed you already knew.” I could tell that was a lie, his fingers tapped across his lips. A clergyman lying. I wanted to laugh. He paused for a moment, as if weighing whether or not to give voice to his remaining thoughts. Deciding to continue on, he lowered his voice. “I am not sure we should be trying to change God’s will. If God wills someone to have smallpox, who are we to try to step in and change that path? We are not God.”

Mrs. Finueil had not been helpful, either. She had lost a first husband and two children to smallpox but she did not look favorably upon the issues of vaccination.

“There is mixing of the blood of the races.” She gripped the sides of her armchair, her knuckles turning whiter than they already were. “The lymph used is mixed across races. Do you want colored blood being given to your child? It is deplorable.” She had scowled at me. “Don’t you do that to your precious baby!”

And when I had sent for two physicians to come to the house to vaccinate, they had both refused. They refused to vaccinate. Could they do that?

I shivered again.

A door opened and I looked up. A woman was ushered out, drying her eyes with a delicate lace handkerchief. She sniffled and avoided eye contact. I felt that I needed to hug her, offer a condolence of some sort. I wrestled with the urge.

It was not my place, was it?

Then she was gone. The bell at the door tinkled merrily as the door opened and closed behind her.

A throat was cleared. I turned.

The doctor was staring at me. He beckoned silently with his hand, indicating I was to follow him.

I settled myself onto a hard wooden bench in the exam room, propping the cooing Anne up against my chest.

“What brings you in today, Madame?”

Anne squirmed in my lap, drool gurgling from around her fingers. “I understand that my child is required by law to be vaccinated.”

“Ah, yes. You are a bit late on that point, aren’t you?” He looked at Anne and then smiled at me. “We can remedy that in a jiffy.”

“Wait. First, I have questions.”

“No need for questions. This is the best for the infant. You want to be a good mother, don’t you?”

He did not wait for an answer.

You don’t understand, do you? She is my everything. If I lose her, I lose myself…

He began rummaging through a drawer, gray head bent. Not finding what he was looking for, he moved on to another, and then another.

“Ah, wait. I remember.” He stood and walked over to a cabinet against the far wall. He returned with a long ivory instrument with four sharp prongs on one end and a blade on the other. There was dried blood on the prongs.

“Just hold her bare arm out straight for me.” He sat down on a stool opposite me and held up the instrument.

“Shouldn’t that be cleaned?”

He looked down at it, puzzled. “Oh, no. That is the lymph we will be using on him.”

“Her.”

“Her. I beg your pardon.” He reached for her hand and pulled it from her mouth, shoving the sleeve of her little gown up high, exposing a bare forearm. She tried to pull it back but he held tight. She looked up at me, startled.

“This will just take a second.”

I watched in horror as he drew X’s on her arm, the blood welling up and then smeared as he rubbed it in. Ann’s screams of pain and terror were deafening and tears streamed down her face. The doctor tied a bit of cotton bandage to her arm and instructed me to not disturb it for a few days.

“She’ll be fine. It doesn’t really hurt all that much.” He patted her on the head and let out a great belly laugh. “You will have to bring her back so that I can measure the pustule. If it is not big enough we will have to repeat the inoculation before I can give you the required certificate.”

I tried to console her by rocking my body back and forth gently, her snotty face pressed against my chest as I fought back the urge to slap the man before me.

How dare he treat this in such a cold, calloused manner!

We were ushered out through the waiting room as I fought back tears myself.

Another woman sat on a chair with her son, a boy of about five years of age, sitting on her lap. His feverish eyes were wide as they followed the wailing baby in my arms out the door. He was no doubt terrified of what horrors lurked in that place.

As the door jingled closed I could hear a wet cough that clearly belonged to the boy. I prayed silently that he would recover.

Chapter Seventy: Innoculation

“Haven’t you registered her birth?”

The shopkeeper at the millinery shop was a middle aged woman with greying black hair and an extra wide double chin peeking out from the tightly wrapped black shawl about her neck. She stared at me with a single eyebrow raised.

“Registered?” Confusion and some degree of panic washed over me. Was there a rule or law I had broken? “How?”

The woman rolled her eyes. Yes. I saw her do it! She had not been terribly friendly to me and I had wondered about her…

It had not occurred to me, though, that I was required to register. Surely they would just know? From the midwife? From the Reverend after the christening?

No. I suppose not.

“How?” I asked again.

“At the registrars. You register at the registrars.” She spoke slowly, enunciating carefully. “That will be two pounds twenty.” As I dug for the correct change, she added, “You probably don’t know then that you will have to show proof of vaccination.”

“Vaccination?” I lost count of the money and sighed, starting again.

“Smallpox.”

Oh, smallpox.

I paid for my purchase, a new dark blue silk bonnet trimmed in velvet, and travelled home as quickly as I could. My breasts felt heavy, I knew it was time to feed.

On my arrival at the cottage I was greeted by a cooing, giggling baby girl who was obviously delighted to see her mother. I took her from the maid and sniffed her white capped head. Heaven.

Three months old, today.

I put little Anne to my breast. I winced as the sudden sensation of pins and needles signified the let down of milk. Fists balled tight, she slurped greedily, her eyes blinking as they watched me closely.

Smallpox vaccination. I had not even entertained the idea of her ever contracting smallpox. She could, though, couldn’t she? She would be forever disfigured, scarred for life with pockmarks over her face and entire body… if she lived through it.

The vaccination was required? Since when? Was it safe?

By the time Anne was finished with the second breast, she was dozing peacefully. I placed her in the cradle by the fire and went in search of the housekeeper.

I found her in the kitchen head bowed over a chicken carcass, readying it for roasting for dinner. She was deftly wrapping the legs with twine but looked up when I entered.

“Did you know that I needed to vaccinate Anne and register her?”

“Yes, ma’am.” She waited silently, not sure if she should keep working.

“I will need to see a doctor to vaccinate her?”

“Well, you could see one of the public vaccinators but I wouldn’t go and do that.” She went back to the twine and whispered, “They kill people.”

“What? They kill people?”

She tied off the knot. “Oh, miss, I knew of a baby whose arm rotted off when they took him to the public vaccinator and another who died with convulsions eight days later.”

“What do they do?” All of my medical training had been on the battlefields of the Crimea. I had no knowledge of smallpox vaccination practices.

“Oh, ma’am, it’s terrible! They cut the arm and inject lymph from another person into it. Such screaming.” She shook her head disapprovingly.

She tossed the bird into a roasting pan after rubbing it with salt and pepper and sprigs of rosemary and slid it into the oven. The heavy metal door slammed loudly.

Wiping her hands on her apron, she turned back to me.

“It’s the law, though. Bless those fools who think they know better than us folks.”

At that precise moment Anne began wailing.

“Here, you should give her another dose of this.” The maid handed over a large brown bottle. It read:

Atkinson & Barker’s Royal Infants’ Preservative

It is no misnomer Cordial! —no stupefactive, deadly narcotic! —but a veritable preservative of Infants!

I turned the bottle of dark liquid to read the ingredients. None were listed.

“How long have you been giving this to her?”

“Almost a month now, three times a day.” She grinned proudly then busied herself with some potatoes in a pail.

I left the bottle on the table as I left to console the sobbing child, resolving to ask the druggist about the ingredients next time I was in his shop. If that was why she stopped fussing so suddenly back then, I just might be a believer.

Chapter Sixty-Nine: A Need

“…the love of the Father. In that line, grace is sufficient. It by definition must cover all manner of….”

My mind was elsewhere, bathed in joy of an irreverent kind. My heart sang. It had worked!

I had taken the risk to keep from becoming a prisoner to my own body and it had worked.

Baby Anne was at home with the maid and the cook. It felt good to be out and about, even if it was only to church.

A cough from Mrs. Fenuiel beside me brought the elaborately carved pulpit back into focus. The Reverend Drummond smiled benevolently upon his congregation from his lofty perch. He paused as he turned another page of his sermon notes.

When only his head is visible above his robes, he makes quite the pleasant visage.

I shifted in my seat, testing. I could not feel it inside, even when sitting for long periods of time on a hard wooden pew.

Each day that passed the pessary was less noticeable until I lost track of its presence entirely.

Well, maybe not entirely.

I had inserted a finger to feel its shape while lying on the bed in my shift that night and every night thereafter. It was a solid metal pillow with a central hole. I was not certain what exactly it was constructed of, as I was too afraid to pull it out. There was no telling if I would be able to get it back in properly and having to explain to the good doctor how it had “fallen” out would be too mortifying.

Furthermore, I had no intention of keeping my appointment to follow up with the doctor on Tuesday next. Looking him in the face after he had examined and felt of me down there was too much. The device was working. That should be sufficient.

“Let us pray.” The Reverend’s eyes fixed on mine for a moment. Did I look distracted? Surely he was used to distraction. I bowed my head dutifully.

What would it be like to be naked, body entwined with his in a passionate embrace?

My cheeks reddened. Why did that pop into my head? Here? In God’s house? Was what the doctor warned true? Was I becoming a whore? And then a new reality dawned on me. With a pessary occupying space, I could not make love to any man even if I wanted to.

I must not allow myself to want it.

I focused on the rise and fall of his voice, eloquent words masking their own intent.

Reality. I could never be a vicar’s wife. That was not me. I lacked the faith and fortitude. I lacked the innocence and capacity for love of humankind. I could not be his lover.

But protection. I longed to feel loved, safe, protected. God alone could not provide me with these very carnal, human things. Bernini had been wrong. I was fairly sure that even Saint Teresa in her ecstasy probably still felt unfulfilled. I felt the rocking of a ship in the dark. My face on his chest. His heartbeat. I could remember the intense pleasure of the very moment Anne had been wrought, but his features, the details, were lost to me already. Sadness stuck in my throat.

A hand touched the cold, hard oval pinned to my bodice.

There you are.

“Amen.”

No. I did not want to leave this darkness…

Swells of organ music.

I must remain faithful to his memory.

Dutifully, I filed out of the pew, into the aisle, and out the door with Mrs. Finueil on my arm to exchange brief pleasantries with the Reverend Drummond. As we set foot on the steps the sun caught in my nostril and I sneezed.

I smiled.

Chapter Sixty-Eight: The Object

He lifted the edge of my chemise. Cold, bare fingers pried apart the lips and probed deep inside.

Relying on the digits, rather than his eyes, he proceeded to examine every nook and cranny of my nether regions.

“Bear down,” he said tersely.

I complied.

I looked up at the ceiling overhead rather than make eye contact with him. The whole process was terribly humiliating. A strange man’s hand doing things that brought back memories of prior lovers, long gone. These hands, however, were not loving or gentle.

“Relax.”

Easier said than done. I felt like I needed to break wind, but there was a doctor’s face down there…

His fingers dug deep and high again, painfully this time, pressing toward my back.

The fingers were slowly withdrawn. In their place a cold, rigid metallic device was inserted and I felt myself pried open, wide. The instrument was shifted around. Finally, the prying sensation relaxed only to be traded for a sharp pinch that made me jump involuntarily.

“Almost done.”

A fullness then as something else was inserted. Hard. Metal. But this was smooth, almost pleasant, and weighty. It was shoved higher inside with fingers and held there with constant pressure for a minute or two.

“That is fine.” He stood up. His shirtsleeves were rolled above his elbows, leaving his hairy forearms exposed. “You may dress now.” He indicated the screen behind me.

I rose up, gingerly, gauging the fullness still left in place as it shifted inside. Shame hung in the air between us.

Wouldn’t it slide out?

I kept my thighs closed tightly as I walked to the corner. My dress hung across the back of the chair, with the crinoline and petty coats piled in the floor. How many other women had stood in this room, violated and yet hopeful of a cure?

I could hear him bustling about, instruments tossed into a pail, washing his hands in the basin, papers rustling, an uneasy cough.

Mrs. Finuiel had patted me on the hand as she exited the carriage at the house for the christening luncheon. “You should go see Dr. Peevy, my dear. He helped me with my…. issues.” She had given me a knowing wink.

And here I was.

Reasonably confident by now that the pessary would not escape its new home, I stepped out.

He was shrugging back into his waistcoat, his sleeves now rolled down and secured about his wrists.

“This should help to move your uterus back into place. The exam I just performed and the pessary itself can cause an… er… an hysteria of sorts. If you find yourself craving some uh…. shall we say excessive stimulation, please return post haste. Otherwise I will plan to see you back in two weeks and we will make sure this is fitted to the right size.”

He pushed the wire framed lenses that framed his gray eyes further back up his nose then ran his hand through his longish gray hair as he showed me the door.

The walk down the dusty steps to the street and the carriage waiting below was brief but I could feel the object inside of me shift with every movement, acutely aware of it even as I sat down on the leather seat.

Does one get used to this presence with time, then?

I was not so sure.