Page 22 of Blood on Her Tongue

Chapter 22

Lucy was still gently cleaning the blood from her sister’s body when the knock at the door came.

Please, no , she thought, closing her eyes briefly. She had hoped there would be more time for her to think of something, anything. At the very least, she had hoped she would be allowed to clean her sister in peace, but they would not even give her that.

When she opened her eyes again, Not-Sarah was staring at her, her eye large with fright. Her mouth was trembling so much, her chin wrinkled like a prune.

Magda came to her feet with a grunt. “Stay over there where I can see you,” she told Not-Sarah. She spoke in that loud, rough way again, the sort of voice some people used on the very old or the very young, those they did not expect to understand.

This, more than anything, made Lucy’s determination reassert itself. “That’s no way to speak to your mistress!” she snapped.

Magda stared at Lucy for a moment, then just shrugged and went to unlock the door, letting both Arthur and Michael in. There had been no time for them to clean themselves up, and they stank of sweat, of carbolic soap, of blood. The stuff had begun to dry, leaving hard brown stains on their sleeves, their shirtfronts, and their collars. Despite the gore that had soaked into their clothes and despite the horror they had just witnessed, they came in wearing placating smiles.

Lucy’s stomach sank.

They wouldn’t be smiling if they didn’t mean to disarm her, and what did they need to disarm her for, if not to leave her vulnerable for whatever came next? Instinctively, she moved in front of her sister to shield her.

Arthur opened his mouth, no doubt to utter something meant to soothe. Lucy spoke before he could. “Please don’t send my sister away. I know what she has done is terrible, but it isn’t her fault. She can’t help being what she is, and it shan’t happen again. I’ll make sure of that.”

Because next time Not-Sarah got hungry and decided to eat someone, Lucy would make sure they’d leave no witnesses.

“Lucy, dear…” Arthur began.

She ignored him, looking at Michael instead. His face, always bloodless, always strange, was unreadable to her now, like a mask carved from marble. She couldn’t allow herself to be frightened by that, though, not now, not when everything depended on what she said and did next.

“Katje and I can look after her. You must concede that we will do so with infinitely more care and love than some nurse or alienist who has a dozen other patients to tend to, and such love and care will be beneficial to her recovery. We shall watch her every minute of every day. You wouldn’t even have to know she was there, if that would please you. No one else need know either. It could be our secret.”

Michael gave Arthur a look, and now she could read him very well again. Did he think she wouldn’t notice, that she wouldn’t understand the significance of that look? Every woman did. It was the kind of look men gave each other when they thought a woman was overreacting, the sort of look that meant to say, Can you believe how silly she’s being?

She felt the words die in her throat as it locked in anger. Not-Sarah clasped Lucy’s wrist with the strength of a snare snapping shut, though whether from fear or in warning, she didn’t know.

In response to Michael’s look, which Arthur acknowledged with a smile and a soft shake of the head, Arthur turned to Lucy and used that horrible voice of his she knew he used on his patients, the ones who couldn’t think straight because of the pain or the fever or the sickness eating through their brain: “Dear Lucy, whoever said anything about sending your sister to an asylum?”

For a moment, she didn’t know what to say. Her throat was still locked tight, and when she tried to speak, the words came out a little mangled, as if the speech impediment that had plagued her in childhood had returned. “Then you don’t mean to send her there?”

“Of course not. We know how that prospect terrifies the two of you, don’t we? And terror is the last thing we need Sarah to experience right now.”

Not-Sarah’s hand, which still clutched Lucy’s wrist like a vise, tightened even further, causing a shooting pain in her hand. Without looking, Lucy pried her sister’s fingers away, then held her hand gently, begging the familiar feel of their fingers slotting together to soothe her. But Lucy’s hand was numb from the blood flow being restricted by her sister’s tight grip, so it felt like nothing much at all.

“What do you plan to do, then?” she asked cautiously.

“I plan to prescribe a rest cure for Sarah. Rest and relaxation restore the mind like nothing else can, especially the female mind.”

“What does a rest cure entail, concretely?”

“Six to eight weeks of bed rest supplemented by a hearty diet of milk and meat to allow the body and the brain to heal.”

From her place by the door, Magda said, “That doesn’t sound at all bad, now does it, Mrs. Schatteleyn? If I had the chance to spend a few weeks in a little cottage by the sea doing nothing but sleeping and eating, why, I’d take it in a heartbeat.”

Arthur motioned for her to be quiet, but the harm had already been done.

“What do you mean, ‘a cottage by the sea’?” Lucy asked. “Do you mean she can’t stay here?”

Arthur laughed in an effort to diffuse the tension. “A change of scene would do anyone good, wouldn’t it?”

“He lies ,” Not-Sarah hissed in her ear. “He means to trick us. He won’t take me to some quaint fucking cottage but to an asylum!’

Arthur laughed again. It sounded pained, pathetic. “Of course not, Sarah! Why would we do that? You’re not thinking straight. It’s not your fault. You’re very ill. But that’s why you must trust those around you who love you and want nothing but the best for you! Now come to me.”

“So you can take me away? I don’t think so,” she snarled.

“To look at you and make sure you haven’t hurt yourself. I believe you’ve lost a tooth,” Arthur said. He was still smiling, but it was forced now, this tight baring of the teeth that in any other animal would be a clear sign of aggression.

When Not-Sarah didn’t move from her spot, he turned to Lucy. “Come, Lucy, bring your sister to me,” he said, then held out his hand, beckoning her.

“No.”

Arthur blinked. “Excuse me?”

“I said no.”

“For God’s sake Lucy, stop being difficult, and do as the doctor says,” Michael barked.

She let out a snort of laughter. It sounded more like a scream. “‘The doctor’? I’ve known Arthur my entire life, and I’ve never called him that, and neither have you!”

“Come!” Michael barked, then snapped his fingers at her.

Anger churned in her stomach, made her tremble like a reed. “I’m not a dog!”

Behind her, Not-Sarah began to pant. Her hand had turned slick. Lucy resisted the urge to let go and scrub her hand on her skirt. If she let go, she feared the unseen force that tethered her to her sister would snap, and they would take her away, and then they’d never meet again.

Arthur said, “We are also doing this for you, Lucy. You don’t want to see what comes next, I promise you.”

“Then you are taking her away from me!” she exclaimed. She could not help that her voice was high and frantic with sudden panic.

“They lie, they lie! All they do is lie!” Not-Sarah wailed.

“Lucy, you’re not helping!” Michael snapped.

Not-Sarah began to back away, dragging Lucy with her. “Please,” she begged, “please, please, please …”

“Where do you want to go? There’s no way out of this room!” Arthur said.

“For God’s sake!” Michael advanced, reaching for them with those spidery hands.

“Touch her, and I’ll scratch out your eyes, see if I don’t!” Lucy hissed.

“You’re acting like a goddamn lunatic!” Michael shouted. He rubbed his eyes harshly, then turned to Arthur. “Do something, will you?”

“Nobody do anything, or I… I’ll do myself an injury!” Lucy screamed desperately.

For a moment, they all stood glaring at one another.

Then Magda lunged.

Lucy had been so busy following Arthur and Michael’s every move, she had completely forgotten about her sister’s lady’s maid, who must have been creeping up on her all this time. Magda was a heavy woman, made strong by years of manual labor. It wasn’t hard for her to wrestle Lucy to the ground, no matter that Lucy spat and fought.

“Please,” Arthur begged as he bent over her and tenderly brushed some hair out of her face, “please don’t struggle, darling.”

“Fuck you!” she snarled.

For a moment, he looked appalled. Then he simply sighed. “You don’t know what you’re saying. Folie à deux, I think. Poor thing. No matter. You’ll be right as rain again as soon as we remove you from your sister’s influence.”

He pressed a cloth against her face. It was drenched with something chemical. She tried to twist her face away, but he had grabbed the back of her head with his free hand, making it impossible to move. She held her breath until the blood pounded in her head and her lungs felt like they had caught fire, but it was no use.

She had to breathe.

Foul fumes filled her lungs. Instantly, her limbs turned heavy, and her thoughts began to drift.

Distantly, she heard Not-Sarah scream.

***

Lucy woke lying in bed with a chemical taste in her mouth. Her head felt stuffed with cotton wool. She had rested her head on one of her arms, and it had gone to sleep. She sat up, then had to hold her head in her hands, she felt so dizzy and sick.

Magda rushed to her side and clasped her shoulders to keep her from falling.

When the nausea abated, she tried to rub her eyes and found her fingers wouldn’t bend. Someone, most likely Arthur, had swaddled them in bandages. Her other arm was all pins and needles. She shook her hand to get the blood back into it again, then looked around.

The curtains had been drawn but not all the way, leaving a little gap through which the sun was visible. It hung low in the sky like a peach ready to be plucked, its warm light turning the pools of rain to liquid gold.

That wasn’t right.

Or was it?

Her thoughts moved through her skull slowly, like treacle. She shook her head to get them to flow a little faster, but that only made her dizzy again.

“Magda, why am I here?” It hurt to talk. Her throat felt scraped raw. She winced against the pain.

Magda gave her a glass of water to drink. The liquid was lovely against the tortured flesh inside her throat, cool and clear. “You didn’t feel well. The doctor gave you something to help you sleep, miss.”

To sleep? But it was day, wasn’t it? She scraped her tongue with her teeth, then swallowed. The chemical taste still lingered, foul and potent. “How long did I sleep?”

“A few hours.”

Then it had been morning when Arthur had administered the drug. Maybe she’d had an accident. That would explain her fingers, the rug burns on her knees, and the general soreness of her body, though not why her wrist was bruised and the bruises held the shape of fingers.

If only she could think clearly! She shook her head again to rid it of that dazed feeling that made her thoughts crawl instead of run. She forced herself to concentrate, to follow her memories like beads on a chain.

Not-Sarah had eaten three (technically, two and a half) of Mrs. van Dijk’s fingers. That was too awful not to remember but not awful enough to repress to the point of forgetting. After, Lucy and Not-Sarah had been locked into the Silver Room together with Magda. Lucy had washed her sister’s face, then poured perfumed water from a porcelain pitcher into a white bowl, the rim painted with little flowers, and made Sarah soak her hands in it to allow the crusts of dried blood to stop adhering to her fingers and dissolve, but they had been interrupted…

It all came back to her now.

She grabbed Magda’s arm. “Where’s my sister?”

Magda sighed. “You mustn’t worry about that, Miss Lucy. The doctor said…”

“To hell with the doctor! Where is she?”

“You are hurting me, miss,” she said, her voice still sweet, but now sugarcoated steel.

“I’m sorry for that, but I need to know where Sarah is, or I’ll…I’ll have to hurt you.”

“There’s no need to threaten me, miss.” A slow smile crept over her face. “You and I both know I can easily take you in a fight, now, don’t we?”

Lucy remembered how easy it had been for the maid to overpower her, how horrible the weight of her had been, pressing the breath out of her. “Please, Magda,” she begged, “can’t you see I’m desperate? I must know where she is!”

“All right, no need to make such a fuss. They’ve taken Mrs. Schatteleyn to Doctor Hoefnagel’s house.”

“Why?”

“To treat her.”

None of that made sense. Arthur’s house lay in the middle of town. If they had been honest about the rest cure, his house was the last place to take her. Lucy rubbed her eyes hard to get rid of the cobwebs in her head. “What does the doctor’s house have that Zwartwater can’t provide?” she asked.

Magda shrugged. “It’s closer to the madhouse.”