CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER NINE

It was bound to happen, of course. Linette had expected it the moment she brought her downstairs, that some small obscure occurrence (for it was never entirely clear what would prompt it) was like to send her mother into a dreadful fit.

Yet.

She had been so desperate to attempt normality – to see her mother dressed in something other than a nightgown, her hair clean and combed, smelling sweetly of orange blossom and fir; so desperate that mother and daughter should dine together, as if there were nothing wrong at all. But there was nothing normal about Gwenllian Tresilian when she started to tear at her throat, her nails – cut short, always – scoring ugly red lines down her neck. There was nothing normal about her when she fought off Henry’s attempt to help and, in her terror, collapsed upon the floor. No indeed, there was nothing normal about seeing her thin body twist under the physician’s grasp, those terrific screams shifting into a mournful wail, eyes dark and wide with fear, long hair spread out beneath her like a white avenging flame.

Linette plays it back in her mind: Merlin crawling beneath the table with his tail between his legs; apples escaping their bowl in the commotion, rolling onto the floor, rosy skins bruising. The bell toppled, the wine glasses fell, their unfinished meals spilt gravy from their plates. And all the while her mother screaming, screaming, screaming …

She clenches her jaw. Never will she get used to it. Never will she grow accustomed to such a horrific sight. To see her mother so paralysed with frenzy week after week, to see her suffer so cruelly year on year, it is more than Linette can bear. Foolish, she scolds herself now as she accompanies Henry to her mother’s room the next morning. Foolish to think it could have been any different from all the other times before.

He had been kind, all things considered. He did not treat her mother like an inconvenience, did not pretend she was a body with no soul attached to it. Yes, his grip on her mother’s thin wrists was forceful but when the laudanum he administered took effect and her eyes fluttered closed, Henry pulled her long sleeves down to cover them, cradled her head gently on his knees. Yes, Linette thinks, opening the door to her mother’s chambers, the new physician treated her with respect, compassion. He carried her upstairs, laid her down gently on the bed without one word of censure or scorn. Not like all those doctors Julian brought from London who denounced her mother a hopeless case, not like Dr Beddoe with his sneering looks and false pity …

As it did the night before, the smell of vanilla hits them like a wave as soon as Linette opens the heavy panelled door. Unlike last night, however, Henry does not reel back from the sight of it, but she can still see in his dark eyes that he does not quite know what to think. She understands why. Draped over pictures and poking from vases and pots are the spindly branches of Penhelyg’s local fauna and flora: the dark mottle-limbs of rowan, the lobe-leaves of oak, the variegated-pattern trails of ivy and, of course, the vanilla-scented flowers of gorse.

Yes, it must look very strange indeed.

They pass through the small sitting room, past Enaid’s truckle bed – already made, despite the early hour – and into Lady Gwen’s bedroom, with more foliage of the same suspended from the ceiling. Linette marks that the yellow blossom of the gorse is beginning to wilt. Soon, she must send Geraint out for more.

Enaid rises from the chair at her mother’s bedside, closes the small Bible she had been reading, presses it hard to her chest.

‘’Tis bare past eight, sir.’ She shifts her gaze to Linette. ‘Your mother’s not long woken – surely the doctor does not mean to examine her now? I’ve not even rung the bell for breakfast.’

Linette frowns at the defensive tone in Enaid’s voice, but before she can reprimand her Henry cuts in.

‘As I could not conduct an examination last night, madam, now seems the perfect opportunity. The laudanum should have worn off some hours ago.’

‘But, sir—’

Linette presses Enaid’s arm.

‘Enaid, come now. Henry will not keep Mamma long.’

The housekeeper blinks at the new doctor’s Christian name on her lips. She seems to want to challenge this informality (Linette is sure she will, later), but Enaid keeps her mouth clamped shut. Keeps too her position by the bed, stubbornness imprinted on her wrinkled features like ink.

Henry levels an annoyed look at her, pointedly clears his throat.

‘This is what I’ve been employed for, Mrs Evans. Would you have me neglect my charge?’

Enaid presses the Bible closer to her heart, as if she might find comfort there. She swallows so hard the lace at her collar jumps.

‘Very well,’ she says quietly, not looking at either of them. ‘But I’ll not have my mistress upset again.’

‘Believe me, nor would I.’

They look to the woman in question. Linette’s mother lies pale and dazed in the bed , a mound of pillows propped up behind her bony shoulders, and a knot tightens in Linette’s chest like a snakestone. If it were not for her steady breathing and slow-blinking eyes – focused now at the window from where only a slit of light escapes the half-drawn curtains – Linette would think her an effigy or a porcelain doll, no life in her at all. She exists, rather than lives. Sometimes, when Linette feels particularly melancholy, she wonders if perhaps it would be better if her mother was dead. Would it not be a release? For both of them? All Linette’s life she has wished for a mother who knew her, who recognised her face and voice, the touch of a hand, a kiss on her cheek. A mother who did not scream like a cyhyraeth and keep to her bed like the invalid she so clearly is.

‘Good morning, my lady. May I sit down?’

Henry has moved to the other side of the bed, and in answer to his question her mother’s gaze shifts from the window. She looks at him with childlike interest, eyes wide, pupils deep black pools.

No answer, of course. Henry sits, places his medical bag on the bed between them.

‘Please open the curtains.’

He could have been speaking to either one of them, but it is Enaid who answers.

‘No.’

Henry blinks at the curt reply.

Linette stares in astonishment.

‘Enaid!’

But the old woman stands firm, Bible still clasped to her bosom.

‘No,’ she says again. ‘The light hurts her eyes.’

Henry regards her with barely laced patience.

‘Even so. I should like you to open them all the same.’

Still, Enaid does not move.

‘Enaid,’ Linette says, still staring. ‘Do as he says.’

The housekeeper bites her lip. Then, with as much reluctance as a cat pushed to water Enaid crosses to the window, slips behind the harp that stands there gathering dust and violently pulls the curtains open, flooding the room with bright sunlight.

The change is instant. With a loud cry Lady Gwen flings an arm over her eyes, twists her body away from the light, thin legs thrashing beneath the sheets.

‘ Na! ’ she moans. ‘ Na! ’ and Linette rushes to the bed, helps Henry keep her still.

Shadows return almost instantly; Enaid has shut the curtains again, leaving only a small fraction open in the middle with which to see by. The white strip of light cuts the room in two like a blade, and within it dust motes spot the air brightly like tiny fireflies before gliding out of sight into the gloom of the chamber.

‘See,’ the housekeeper says quietly. Triumphant, almost. ‘It hurts her eyes. She prefers the darkness. Always has.’

Beneath her hands, Linette feels her mother relax. Slowly she lowers her arm from her face and Linette looks into it, marks her paleness, her trembling lip.

‘Forgive me, my lady,’ Henry murmurs. ‘Forgive me.’ Then, to Linette, ‘Has she always suffered from an affliction to light?’

Linette takes a moment to catch her breath.

‘It comes and goes. Dr Evans could never discover why.’

‘So it’s easier,’ Enaid cuts in, ‘to keep the curtains closed.’

The old woman is standing now at the bottom of the bed, silhouetted against the blade of daylight. Henry straightens to address her.

‘Sunlight would do her good,’ he returns. ‘Your mistress is far too pale, and keeping to the dark will not help her in the long run.’

Enaid ducks her chin in assent. ‘I quite agree, but since it pains her I can hardly force the issue.’

Linette heaves an inward sigh. It is not like Enaid to be so difficult.

‘Mamma does take a turn about the garden every so often,’ Linette tells him, ‘though she wears a veil.’

‘Hmm.’

Gently he lifts her mother’s chin, looks at her eyes more closely. They are still wide, pupils expanded so only a thin ring of grey circles the black. For a long moment Henry keeps her chin in his grasp before, finally, releasing it. He turns to his medical bag, pulls open the clasps.

‘The dimness of the room is an inconvenience. Still, I shall do my best under the circumstances.’

Enaid sighs heavily and retreats to her chair where she begins to slowly leaf through the Bible’s pages with fingers that seem to tremble. Linette shakes her head in dismay.

What is the matter with her?

Henry begins. As with Tomas he is gentle, and her mother submits to him with delicate sweetness and childlike trust that belies last night’s outburst. At his command she lifts her arms, clasps his hands, sits forward in the bed, does everything he asks of her. It is the blood-taking that makes Linette’s stomach turn. To ascertain its consistency, Henry tells her, and Linette must look away when he draws it from her mother’s arm into a small glass cylinder. Enaid too cannot bear it, for the pages of her Bible rest still. It is a relief when Henry finally removes a pocketwatch to take her mother’s pulse and silently counts the beating blood within her thin wrist. With interest Linette looks at its intricate filigree swirls.

‘That’s a fine watch,’ she remarks.

Henry finishes counting before gathering the watch back into his palm, lets the round weight of the dial sit in his hand briefly before slipping it back into his waistcoat pocket.

‘It was given to me when I graduated from university,’ he answers, brusque. ‘A present from the Foundling. My token.’

‘Token?’ Linette echoes.

He replaces the coverlet. Lady Gwen – looking vacantly now toward the covered window once more – kneads its hem between slender fingers.

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Kept back from me until I came of an age to appreciate it.’

‘Oh.’

Before Linette can ask more, her mother begins to hum. Henry touches his finger to the back of her hand, still plucking at the coverlet. Her eyes snap back into focus and she looks up at him as if she has forgotten he was even there.

‘I will see you tomorrow, unless you have need of me before then.’

She only stares. Henry frowns.

‘Does she speak English?’

It is Enaid who answers.

‘My mistress always spoke it when Lord Hugh was alive. She comprehends you perfectly.’

‘I see.’

He rises to his feet. Linette’s mother watches him, fascinated, until – as Henry turns to leave – she reaches out.

‘What is it, my lady?’

‘ Berith ,’ she whispers.

It is one of the words she spoke last night.

‘ Berith ?’

Her mother simply stares up at him, wretched, sad. Then she drops Henry’s sleeve, starts once more to hum. He shoots a questioning look at Linette, and all she can do is shake her head.

They leave Enaid to her Bible, her mother to that strange infernal humming, but on the other side of the door Linette marks the downward lilt of the young physician’s mouth, the troubled look in his dark brown eyes.

‘What is it?’

Henry hesitates. Linette’s chest clamps, though she cannot rightly say why.

‘In terms of her general health,’ he says, very carefully it seems, ‘your mother appears as well in her person as you or I. A little too thin and pale, but her blood is strong and I see no other cause for concern.’

‘But?’

He hesitates again. ‘She is sensitive to light, yet I cannot fathom a reason for it. Can you?’

She shakes her head. ‘Mamma has always been that way, I’m afraid. Why?’

‘Sensitivity to light is not a common complaint, and I cannot recall an illness that would not present itself in an obvious way.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Only that such a condition would show in the eyes as inflammation, dryness, lack of pigment, none of which your mother possesses.’

Linette lifts a shoulder. ‘I do not find that so surprising. We’ve already established that my mother’s ailments stem from a malady of the mind. Perhaps she merely imagines it.’

Still, Henry looks thoughtful. Chews his bottom lip. Then, ‘You said your mother sometimes leaves her room to walk the grounds?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you ever mark an improvement in her then? Does she appear calmer?’

Linette frowns. ‘I’m not sure.’

‘You see,’ he says, switching his satchel from one hand to the other, ‘I wonder if by escaping her room for a spell the fresh air tires her. When someone with a mentality such as your mother is subjected to confinement for long periods, the body becomes weak. You,’ he adds, gaze flicking up then down (Linette knows he is once again marking her masculine attire), ‘are robust, healthy. Your mother, on the other hand, has decreased muscular integrity, evidently eats like a bird—’

‘So you think that affects her outbursts?’

‘Possibly, yes.’

‘You believe, then, more fresh air would be beneficial?’

‘It can certainly do no harm.’

Linette frowns. Nothing can exercise the mind like the outdoors; has she not found comfort in nature and its gifts, the rolling fields, the snow-capped hills? For years Linette has been taunted with the idea that if her mother is mad then it must surely run in the family and she has – as Henry observed – kept her mind and body active to prevent it. Just in case . But now, the more she thinks of it, the more Linette cannot understand why this was not suggested by Dr Evans himself. Neither did any of those other doctors, Dr Beddoe included, have the inclination to propose such a remedy. No, each one suggested only restraints, leeches, bodily purges. Failing that, an institution. A place where Linette might pretend her mother does not exist.

Thanks to Julian’s refusal, she was spared that, at least.

Henry touches her arm, pulling her from her morbid train of thought.

‘I think I shall go into Penhelyg today, visit as many of the villagers as I can.’

Linette blinks. ‘Oh?’

‘Considering how they may well be disinclined at present to ask for my help I feel it would be better I go to them instead. It’s the best way, under the circumstances.’

She hesitates. Linette knows more than anyone the grievances of her tenants. She should tell him, of course, meant to last night before her mother submitted to her inner demons. And yet, now, here in the shadowed corridor … well, what use would it be? It is, after all, unsubstantiated village gossip, and would only serve to prejudice Henry against them even further.

‘I would not,’ she says carefully now, ‘presume to tell you what to do. But remember what I told you last night – they will not take kindly to the intrusion of an Englishman. Are you sure you won’t allow me to accompany you?’

‘I am absolutely sure.’

‘But how will you manage the language?’

‘I have my dictionary.’

He really is trying stubborn, and Linette must repress a frustrated sigh.

‘You have to understand,’ Henry says, clearly marking her irritation. ‘I must command respect. If I cannot do that then I shall be of no use here at all.’

There is no arguing, it seems. Still, she attempts one final plea.

‘What of the shot? Are you not afraid someone will try again?’

Henry’s gaze darkens, and again Linette is struck with an odd sense of familiarity.

‘Somehow,’ he murmurs, before the idea of it can take hold, ‘I don’t think they will. Besides, what use am I if I hide here day by day? No,’ Henry says, firm. ‘I will not be frightened off.’