Page 3 of Lady for a Season (Regency Outsiders)

“PLEASE!”

Eliza sighed. “He’s having a nightmare. You must go to him.”

Fumbling in the unaccustomed space, Maggie grabbed at the lamp and made her way along the corridor into Edward’s room.

“PLEASE NO! DON’T!”

“Edward!” she whispered, scared by the fear in his voice. “Edward, it’s me, Maggie.”

“NO!”

It was hard to make out much in the dim light, but Maggie crept forward until a flailing arm caught her about the waist. She grabbed hold of it, felt for his hand, clasped it. “Edward. Edward, be calm. All is well.”

He did not shout again, only gasped, panting for breath. His eyes opened and he stared wildly about the room.

“Edward? Are you awake?”

“Yes.” His voice was tiny after the shouting and her shoulders relaxed, relieved that the crisis had passed.

“All is well, I think you must have had a nightmare.”

“Yes. I am sorry to have troubled you.” He sounded fearful.

Maggie knelt by his bed and touched his cheek, which was wet with sweat. She used the sheet to wipe his face, still clasping his hand. “What did you dream of?”

“I do not recall.”

She did not believe him, his shouts had been too intense for that to be true, but she did not ask further questions, only stroked his hand for a few moments.

“Are you well now?” she whispered.

“Yes,” he murmured, and she left the room and returned to her bed.

Eliza and Agnes were asleep again; evidently they were accustomed to Edward’s nightmares, but Maggie was shaken by how frightened he had sounded, caught up in some dark horror in his mind. What fears plagued him, what had happened in his young life to lead to such shouts of terror in his dreams? She lay tensely for some time, wondering if he might scream again, but there was no further sound from him and at last she fell asleep, to unsettling dreams of her own, in which hands reached out to her in the darkness and yet she could not see whose hands they were.

In the morning, she washed and dressed and came down to the kitchen, where Eliza was chopping vegetables.

“He’s already up. He wakes early,” she said, nodding towards the parlour. “Agnes’ll bring your breakfast.”

“Does he have nightmares often?” Maggie asked.

Eliza nodded. “Most nights.”

“ Most nights? Why?”

Eliza shrugged. “He is a lunatic,” she said, matter-of-factly. “It’s part of his affliction. I’ll send in breakfast directly.”

Maggie found Edward buried in a book again and wondered if this had been his life, a silent solitary world of books, perhaps taking him through their pages into other worlds and places, providing companionship and something to occupy his mind during the day, dark nightmares haunting him at night.

“Good morning, Edward.”

“Good morning, Maggie. I am sorry to have frightened you last night.” He swallowed. “I do not sleep well.”

She gave him a bright smile. “You did not frighten me, but I am sorry you do not sleep well. We must try to remedy that.”

He stared down at his book again, as though what she was saying was not possible, but he did not wish to argue the point with her.

Agnes brought a tray of sliced bread, a toasting fork, butter, preserves and a pot of tea. Maggie poured tea for them both and sat before the fire to toast the bread. It was good bread, and the preserves were well made, but Edward ate only a single slice of unbuttered toast before returning to his book. She resolved to keep him better occupied than he had been so far. That might tire him out for the nights.

“Shall we go into the garden?”

He followed her to the back door, holding it open again for her. They stood for a moment in the cold morning air, the frosted grass before them.

“We should build a bench so we can watch the animals without sitting on the cold ground,” she said.

He stared at her as though she had suggested something very odd.

Maggie had seen an old, rotted tree trunk lying half in the stream the day before and headed there at once. “Help me pull this up,” she called and soon they were struggling up the bank with it.

“We can borrow a few logs from the woodpile,” she said, and set off back towards the house at a brisk stride. Edward, with his longer legs, quickly caught up with her.

Arms filled with logs, they returned and built a lopsided structure that bore a passing resemblance to a bench. Once on a wet day at the Hospital they had used such logs for a walkway across a courtyard, though they had been scolded for it and made to take the muddy logs back to the woodpile where they belonged, but here there was no-one to scold.

This seat became part of their morning routine in the following days. Wrapped in their coats and carrying hot tea, they spent hours each day perched on the bench, sometimes speaking of something, such as parts of the stream icing over, sometimes in silence. Many days passed before they were rewarded by a flash of orange as a fox passed. The next day, they marvelled at the careful cautious approach of a group of deer, come to drink at the stream. Once, as the sky grew dark, they caught sight of a badger, waddling through the undergrowth, and Maggie, eyes alight with excitement, nudged Edward to look. Her wide smile brought a smile to his face. Her excitement was contagious.

The nightmares still came every night without fail, so punctually that Maggie would sometimes wake a moment before Edward cried out. She accepted them as part of her life here, even though she hoped over time they might lessen, if Edward were to be better distracted.

Each Sunday, the vicar, Mr Robertson, visited and insisted on reading them the entire day’s sermon, then praying with them. He was a kindly man, but treated Edward as though he were a child, going so far as to pat him on the head when leaving. Then again, he had known him since he was fourteen, so perhaps in his aging mind Edward was still only a boy. He made up for it by bringing books with him, which Edward devoured and shared with Maggie.

They took turns reading to one another, poring over books together. Their favourites were those on botany and agriculture. The illustrations were beautiful, and they tried to identify everything in the garden and patch of woodland over the stream, sometimes carrying the books with them to their bench and reading them there until they were called for meals.

Eliza was a good cook. Maggie, for the first time in her life, knew what it was to be full at every meal. The Hospital had not starved the children, but there had never been second portions, and the food had been tediously monotonous and often watery. Breakfast and supper had mostly been bread and butter or gruel. In the middle of the day, dinner was generally cheap cuts of meat such as stewed shins of beef with root vegetables, or boiled mutton. At Ivy Cottage porridge was common at breakfast, but it was thick and usually served with cream and honey. Dinner was often a stew, with rabbit, beef or mutton, potatoes and greens, but thicker and better flavoured than any Maggie had previously known. For supper they might have bread and cheese with a hot broth and there might be a treat such as pound cake or biscuits during the day, for both Eliza and Agnes had a sweet tooth.

“The doctor don’t stint us,” Eliza said to Maggie, when Maggie expressed surprise at being offered cream and honey in her porridge. “He ain’t stingy, says we must eat good wholesome food and dress warm in the winter.”

Maggie and Edward ate together in the parlour, while the other two women ate in the kitchen, preferring to chatter together, for they regarded Edward as a patient and treated him as such. They were kindly enough but treated him with a pitying air.

“’Tis a shame he’s a lunatic,” Eliza said, one day after Maggie had been there two weeks. “He’s handsome enough, if he had a little meat on him, but he can’t help being afflicted, I s’pose. Poor lad.”

“Has he got better or worse since you’ve known him?”

“Quieter,” was Eliza’s considered response. “More docile-like. When he were a little boy he’d try and run off, but the doctor weren’t happy about that, gave him a whipping and more treatments till he calmed down. You’d hear him crying when he were first brought here of a night, made your heart hurt to hear him, but he wouldn’t take comfort from anyone. These days, he’s quiet enough, apart from his nightmares. Watches his animals down the garden, reads his books, eats and sleeps and lets Doctor Morrison treat him without fighting back. So I suppose you could say he’s improved.”

Maggie soon found out why Edward was so thin, for he barely touched his food. He would sit and stare at it, eat a few mouthfuls as though they might harm him, with a fearful air, each mouthful chewed for a long time before swallowing as though it were painful to do so.

“Do you not like the food? Would you prefer something else? Eliza is a good cook, I am sure she could make something to tempt you,” Maggie tried once but he only shook his head as though she did not understand. He took his porridge plain and refused any of Eliza’s tempting treats.

Once a week, Walter would come to the cottage. He was a taciturn man from the village whom Doctor Morrison had employed to travel once a week to Leamington Priors and return with a bottle of the sulphur-smelling spa waters, of which Edward was to take a small cup each day. Walter also brought food supplies as ordered by Eliza and did the heavy chores, cutting and stacking wood, pumping several buckets of fresh water each day for Eliza’s kitchen, and more for Agnes to do the laundry once a week. He had a dappled grey pony named Daisy with a small cart for errands and Maggie would sometimes offer Daisy a wizened apple from storage, still sweet but wrinkly, which the horse accepted with much snuffling and good-natured nudges of her velvet nose against Maggie’s hand.

“Walter is at the door,” Maggie said to Edward one day. “Do you want to give Daisy an apple with me? She does love them so.”

“No,” he said, from the depths of his book on astronomy, but there was an odd crack to his voice and his shoulders tightened. She was reminded of the first time she had seen him, the impression of fear which had receded since they had come to know one another.

“Does Edward not like Daisy?” she asked Agnes, who was sweeping the hallway as she passed.

Agnes’s eyes widened. “Why? What has he done this time?”

Maggie stopped, confused. “Done? He has done nothing. I only asked him if he wanted to feed Daisy an apple, but he seemed vexed.”

Agnes glanced both ways and dropped her voice to a whisper. “He’s afraid of horses.”

“Afraid of them? Why?”

“I don’t know. But when he first come here, Walter brought Daisy round to the door, like he always does, and Edward was coming out of the parlour and Daisy whinnied at him and he screamed, not just a bit surprised like but terrified. He went back into the parlour and slammed the door shut and he won’t never go near the door if there’s the sound of hooves or he knows Walter’s about. I expect it is the lunacy,” she pronounced. “Being afraid of things one ought not to be. You’ve heard his nightmares. They ain’t normal for a grown man, neither is fearing horses. It’s all part of his affliction. That’s why the doctor must come and treat him, in the third room.”

“The third room?”

“Upstairs.”

Of course. The third room. Maggie had dismissed it in her mind, thought it was perhaps a storeroom. Curious, she climbed the stairs and opened the door.

Nothing. A chair in the shadowy corner of the room. Another chair. A small table with a drawer to one side. A large ceiling hook, perhaps from usage as a storeroom in the past. Otherwise, it was clean and empty. Edward had spoken of a male companion before Bridget, who might have been put to sleep in this room, for it would not have been appropriate for him to share a room with two women. Just a disused bedroom, nothing more interesting.

In February it snowed. Maggie woke to a blueish light and saw the garden changed to a white blanket. Eliza muttered about delays to Walter’s deliveries and Agnes tutted about trying to bring in water and wood, but Maggie hurried out in the garden without even waiting for breakfast or Edward to open the door. He followed her.

“At the Hospital, if it snowed, they’d let us out to play in the snow if we were good,” she said, turning to him with a smile.

“To play?”

Her face was bright with excitement. Those days were her happiest memories, the short but glorious wild freedom of being allowed out to play in the snow, let loose from the monotonous routine of each day. Snapping icicles from low-hanging rooftops, throwing snowballs, sledging on whatever they could find, including broken shovels or old sacks.

He shivered. “It is very cold, would you not prefer –” He broke off as she scooped up a handful of snow and threw it at him, hitting him squarely in the chest.

Edward gasped and stepped back, then tentatively scooped up a handful himself, at which she picked up her skirts and ran down the garden, his first attempt missing her by inches. “You will have to try harder than that!” she called to him, still running.

For a moment he stood, the cold snow in his hands, staring at her, then laughed and ran after her, stumbling over hidden molehills and fallen branches, but gaining on her, his second shot catching her shoulder.

She turned to face him, laughing, a ball already flying towards his face, but he ducked just in time, and it sailed over his shoulder. “So you do know how to play,” she called, both of them quickly stooping for more snow, aiming, both missiles landing at the same time, on her skirts and his arm.

By the time they returned to the house, their clothes were wet through and both of them had to change before returning to the parlour. Maggie took longer and Edward found himself alone in the parlour, before the roaring fire Agnes had set when she had seen the state of them, and the hot tea and ginger-cakes Eliza had made. He needed none of them. There was a warmth inside that did not come from fires or tea, but from running, which he had not done for many years, from hurling snowballs and making them as fast as he could, from ducking and chasing. From laughing. His heart still beat fast, as though he had suddenly been brought back to life from the dead, life itself racing through his body. How many years had it been since he had laughed so much? Since he had been so happy? Had he ever? He could not recall.

Maggie returned to the parlour, hair still damp but in dry clothes and smiled at the sight of Edward’s face. He greeted her with a warm smile, but his cheeks, always so pale, were flushed with a rosy glow.

“I have not laughed so much in years,” he told her and there was wonderment in his voice.

She chuckled as she poured the tea. “Then prepare yourself to laugh a great deal more over the coming days, for Eliza says the cold is staying and there may be more snow tomorrow.”

The days that followed were some of the happiest either of them had ever known, for the snow fell again and again, until they were almost up to their knees in the garden, their change of clothes always hanging up in the kitchen to dry, despite Eliza’s tutting at the space they took up and Agnes’ amazement that they should enjoy being out in the cold so much. Maggie worried that their play might make Edward’s spirits what Doctor Morrison had called “recklessly high,” but he was so much happier, running and laughing, more animated than she had seen him thus far. It must surely be good for him.

When the sparkling snowy weather turned wet and muddy by the end of February, forcing them to stay indoors on most days or risk Agnes’ wrath at their muddy footprints, Maggie sought other entertainment. She found a pack of cards in the drawer of the table and Edward asked her if she knew how to play a game called vingt-un.

“No, will you teach me?”

“You must get to twenty-one points with the cards you are dealt, one card at a time. No higher, or you lose.”

They played for hours, exclaiming over wins and losses, but other distractions were needed for the long, wet days.

“Can you play?” asked Maggie, looking at the pianoforte.

He shrugged. “A little.”

“I have never heard you play.”

“I was not encouraged to do so.”

“Will you play for me?”

“What would you like me to play?”

“Do you know Silent Worship ?”

He rose without answering and sat at the pianoforte and began to play. With no hesitation, he played from memory, and played well.

Midway through the piece, she said, “Start again.”

He frowned. “Why?”

“Please?”

He began again but this time Maggie stood to sing.

“Did you not hear my lady

Go down the garden singing

Blackbird and thrush were silent

To hear the alleys ringing.”

He stopped playing and stared at her. “Where did you learn to sing like that?”

“We all sang in the choir. Some of the great composers played concerts to raise funds for the Hospital. Handel was one of its most ardent supporters, he wrote a piece called the Foundling Hospital Anthem. You play well, will you not continue?”

He played and, by the third verse, he joined in with her and she was surprised to hear a strong, deep voice from him, not what she would have expected from his slender frame.

“Oh, saw you not my lady

Out in the garden there

Shaming the rose and lily

For she is twice as fair

Though I am nothing to her

Though she must rarely look at me

Though I can never woo her

I’ll love her ‘till I die

Did you not hear my lady

Go down the garden singing

Silencing all the songbirds

And setting the alleys ringing

Surely you heard my lady

Out in the garden there

Rivalling the glittering sunshine

With the glory of golden hair.”

They finished, grinning at one another.

“You have kept secrets from me,” Maggie said. “Now that I know you can play and sing so well, we must do so more often.” She wanted to ask when he had been taught to play, but mindful of not bringing up his past, she refrained.

“ I have kept secrets? When you sing like a… a nightingale?”

When Maggie awoke the next morning, she could hear a familiar man’s voice and when she made her way into the parlour, she found Doctor Morrison eating breakfast.

“Ah Maggie, good morning to you. I have arrived for Edward’s treatments. We will spend most of the day on them, and I will return to Leamington Priors this evening when we are done.”

She made a curtsey. “Yes, sir. He is better than when last you saw him, I think. He still has nightmares, but he has been taking more exercise in the garden and I believe –”

Doctor Morrison interrupted. “There is no need for changes to his routine, Maggie,” he said. “Today, he will receive his regular treatments.”

“Yes, sir. Shall I fetch Edward?” She was still unsure of what the treatments might be.

“No, we shall prepare the treatment room first. Let us go there now.”

He rose from the table and strode up the stairs, carrying a leather bag, Maggie following.

“Now,” he said, once they were in the third room. “Let us set up the chair.”

He stepped briskly to the corner and pulled the chair into the centre of the room. It seemed ordinary enough, a solidly built wooden chair with arms, but now that it was out of the shadows Maggie saw that it had large metal rings secured to the sides and back, and leather straps with buckles attached to the arms. She frowned but the doctor was already opening the drawer of the table, from which he removed sturdy chains, which he proceeded to fasten to the chair’s rings. The chains rose to a single large metal ring connecting all three of them.

“Wind down the ceiling hook, Maggie.”

Maggie stared at where he was indicating. Behind the second chair in the far corner of the room was a large handle, which connected to a windlass on one of the ceiling beams. Tentatively, she turned it.

“The other way,” instructed the doctor, engaged in taking several items out of his bag, including a bleeding bowl and various glass bottles.

Maggie tried the other way and the ceiling hook slowly lowered.

The doctor nodded approvingly and attached the hook to the metal circle. “Now wind it back up to tighten the chains.”

She did so.

“Excellent. You may fetch Edward now. And call down to Agnes, tell her to come up.”