Alias Grace

AND THE TRIALS OF GRACE MARKS AND JAMES MCDERMOTT

AND THE HANGING OF JAMES MCDERMOTT

AT THE NEW GAOL IN TORONTO, NOVEMBER 21st, 1843.

Grace Marks she was a serving maid,

Her age was sixteen years,

McDermott was the stable hand,

They worked at Thomas Kinnear’s.

Now Thomas Kinnear was a gentleman,

And a life of ease led he,

And he did love his housekeeper,

Called Nancy Montgomery.

O Nancy dear, do not despair,

To town I now must go,

To bring some money home for you,

From the Bank in Toronto.

O Nancy’s no well-born lady,

O Nancy she is no queen,

And yet she goes in satin and silk,

The finest was ever seen.

O Nancy’s no well-born lady,

Yet she treats me like a slave,

She works me so hard from dawn to dark,

She’ll work me into my grave.

Now Grace, she loved good Thomas Kinnear,

McDermott he loved Grace,

And ‘twas these loves as I do tell

That brought them to disgrace.

O Grace, please be my own true love,

O no it cannot be,

Unless you kill for my dear sake,

Nancy Montgomery.

He struck a blow all with his axe,

On the head of Nancy fair,

He dragged her to the cellar door

And threw her down the stairs.

O spare my life McDermott,

O spare my life, said she,

O spare my life, Grace Marks she said,

And I’ll give you my dresses three.

O ‘tis not for my own sake,

Nor yet my babe unborn,

But for my true love, Thomas Kinnear,

I’d live to see the morn.

McDermott held her by the hair,

And Grace Marks by the head,

And these two monstrous criminals,

They strangled her till dead.

What have I done, my soul is lost,

And for my life I fear!

Then to save ourselves, when he returns.

We must murder Thomas Kinnear.

O no, O no, I beg not so,

I plead for his life full sore!

No he must die, for you have sworn

You’d be my paramour.

Now Thomas Kinnear came riding home,

And on the kitchen floor

McDermott shot him through the heart

And he weltered in his gore.

The peddler came up to the house,

Will you buy a dress of me;

O go away Mr. Peddler,

I’ve dresses enough for three.

The butcher came up to the house,

He came there every week;

O go away Mr. Butcher,

We’ve got enough fresh meat!

They robbed Kinnear of his silver,

They robbed him of his gold,

They stole his horse and wagon,

And to Toronto they rode.

All in the middle of the night,

To Toronto they did flee,

Then across the Lake to the United States,

Thinking they would scape free.

She took McDermott by the hand,

As bold as bold could be,

And stopped at the Lewiston Hotel,

Under the name of Mary Whitney.

The corpses were found in the cellar,

Her face it was all black,

And she was under the washtub,

And he was laid out on his back.

Then Bailiff Kingsmill in pursuit,

A Charter he did take,

Which sailed as fast as it could go

To Lewiston, across the Lake.

They had not been in bed six hours,

Six hours or maybe more,

When to the Lewiston Hotel he came,

And knocked upon the door.

O who is there, said Grace so fair,

What business have you with me?

O you have murdered good Thomas Kinnear,

And Nancy Montgomery.

Grace Marks she stood up in the dock,

And she denied it all.

I did not see her strangled,

I did not hear him fall.

He forced me to accompany him,

He said if I did tell,

That with one shot of his trusty gun,

He’d send me straight to H_l.

McDermott stood up in the dock,

I did not do it alone,

But for the sake of her person fair,

Grace Marks, she led me on.

Young Jamie Walsh stood up in court,

The truth he swore to tell;

O Grace is wearing Nancy‘s dress,

And Nancy’s bonnet as well!

McDermott by the neck they hanged,

Upon the Gallows high,

And Grace in Prison drear they cast,

Where she must pine and sigh.

They hanged him for an hour or two,

Then took down the body,

And cut it into pieces

At the University.

From Nancy‘s grave there grew a rose,

And from Thomas Kinnear’s a vine,

They grew so high they intertwined,

And thus these two were joined.

But all her weary life Grace Marks

Must in Prison locked up be,

Because of her foul sin and crime,

In the Kingston Penitentiary.

But if Grace Marks repent at last,

And for her sins atone,

Then when she comes to die, she’ll stand

At her Redeemer’s throne.

At her Redeemer’s throne she’ll stand,

And she’ll be cured of woe,

And He her bloodied hands will wash,

And she’ll be white as snow.

And she will be as white as snow,

And into Heaven will pass,

And she will dwell in Paradise,

In Paradise at last.

Three - Puss in the Corner

Chapter3

1859.

I am sitting on the purple velvet settee in the Governor’s parlour, the Governor’s wife’s parlour; it has always been the Governor’s wife’s parlour although it is not always the same wife, as they change them around according to the politics. I have my hands folded in my lap the proper way although I have no gloves. The gloves I would wish to have would be smooth and white, and would fit without a wrinkle. I am often in this parlour, clearing away the tea things and dusting the small tables and the long mirror with the frame of grapes and leaves around it, and the pianoforte; and the tall clock that came from Europe, with the orange-gold sun and the silver moon, that go in and out according to the time of day and the week of the month. I like the clock best of anything in the parlour, although it measures time and I have too much of that on my hands already.

But I have never sat down on the settee before, as it is for the guests. Mrs. Alderman Parkinson said a lady must never sit in a chair a gentleman has just vacated, though she would not say why; but Mary Whitney said, Because, you silly goose, it’s still warm from his bum; which was a coarse thing to say. So I cannot sit here without thinking of the ladylike bums that have sat on this very settee, all delicate and white, like wobbly soft-boiled eggs.

The visitors wear afternoon dresses with rows of buttons up their fronts, and stiff wire crinolines beneath. It’s a wonder they can sit down at all, and when they walk, nothing touches their legs under the billowing skirts, except their shifts and stockings. They are like swans, drifting along on unseen feet; or else like the jellyfish in the waters of the rocky harbour near our house, when I was little, before I ever made the long sad journey across the ocean. They were bell-shaped and ruffled, gracefully waving and lovely under the sea; but if they washed up on the beach and dried out in the sun there was nothing left of them. And that is what the ladies are like: mostly water.

There were no wire crinolines when I was first brought here. They were horsehair then, as the wire ones were not thought of. I have looked at them hanging in the wardrobes, when I go in to tidy and empty the slops. They are like birdcages; but what is being caged in? Legs, the legs of ladies; legs penned in so they cannot get out and go rubbing up against the gentlemen’s trousers. The Governor’s wife never says legs, although the newspapers said legs when they were talking about Nancy, with her dead legs sticking out from under the washtub.

It isn’t only the jellyfish ladies that come. On Tuesdays we have the Woman Question, and the emancipation of this or that, with reform-minded persons of both sexes; and on Thursdays the Spiritualist Circle, for tea and conversing with the dead, which is a comfort to the Governor’s wife because of her departed infant son. But mainly it is the ladies. They sit sipping from the thin cups, and the Governor’s wife rings a little china bell. She does not like being the Governor’s wife, she would prefer the Governor to be the governor of something other than a prison. The Governor had good enough friends to get him made the Governor, but not for anything else.

So here she is, and she must make the most of her social position and accomplishments, and although an object of fear, like a spider, and of charity as well, I am also one of the accomplishments. I come into the room and curtsy and move about, mouth straight, head bent, and I pick up the cups or set them down, depending; and they stare without appearing to, out from under their bonnets. The reason they want to see me is that I am a celebrated murderess. Or that is what has been written down. When I first saw it I was surprised, because they say Celebrated Singer and Celebrated Poetess and Celebrated Spiritualist and Celebrated Actress, but what is there to celebrate about murder? All the same, Murderess is a strong word to have attached to you. It has a smell to it, that word — musky and oppressive, like dead flowers in a vase. Sometimes at night I whisper it over to myself: Murderess, Murderess. It rustles, like a taffeta skirt across the floor. Murderer is merely brutal. It’s like a hammer, or a lump of metal. I would rather be a murderess than a murderer, if those are the only choices.

Sometimes when I am dusting the mirror with the grapes I look at myself in it, although I know it is vanity. In the afternoon light of the parlour my skin is a pale mauve, like a faded bruise, and my teeth are greenish. I think of all the things that have been written about me — that I am an inhuman female demon, that I am an innocent victim of a blackguard forced against my will and in danger of my own life, that I was too ignorant to know how to act and that to hang me would be judicial murder, that I am fond of animals, that I am very handsome with a brilliant complexion, that I have blue eyes, that I have green eyes, that I have auburn and also brown hair, that I am tall and also not above the average height, that I am well and decently dressed, that I robbed a dead woman to appear so, that I am brisk and smart about my work, that I am of a sullen disposition with a quarrelsome temper, that I have the appearance of a person rather above my humble station, that I am a good girl with a pliable nature and no harm is told of me, that I am cunning and devious, that I am soft in the head and little better than an idiot. And I wonder, how can I be all of these different things at once?

It was my own lawyer, Mr. Kenneth MacKenzie, Esq., who told them I was next door to an idiot. I was angry with him over that, but he said it was by far my best chance and I should not appear to be too intelligent. He said he would plead my case to the utmost of his ability, because whatever the truth of the matter I was little more than a child at the time, and he supposed it came down to free will and whether or not one held with it. He was a kind gentleman although I could not make head nor tail of much of what he said, but it must have been good pleading. The newspapers wrote that he performed heroically against overwhelming odds. Though I don’t know why they called it pleading, as he was not pleading but trying to make all of the witnesses appear immoral or malicious, or else mistaken. I wonder if he ever believed a word I said.

When I have gone out of the room with the tray, the ladies look at the Governor’s wife’s scrapbook. Oh imagine, I feel quite faint, they say, and You let that woman walk around loose in your house, you must have nerves of iron, my own would never stand it. Oh well one must get used to such things in our situation, we are virtually prisoners ourselves you know, although one must feel pity for these poor benighted creatures, and after all she was trained as a servant, and it’s as well to keep them employed, she is a wonderful seamstress, quite deft and accomplished, she is a great help in that way especially with the girls’ frocks, she has an eye for trimmings, and under happier circumstances she could have made an excellent milliner’s assistant.

Although naturally she can be here only during the day, I would not have her in the house at night. You are aware that she has spent time in the Lunatic Asylum in Toronto, seven or eight years ago it was, and although she appears to be perfectly recovered you never know when they may get carried away again, sometimes she talks to herself and sings out loud in a most peculiar manner. One cannot take chances, the keepers conduct her back in the evenings and lock her up properly, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to sleep a wink. Oh I don’t blame you, there is only so far one can go in Christian charity, a leopard cannot change its spots and no one could say you have not done your duty and shown a proper feeling. The Governor’s wife’s scrapbook is kept on the round table with the silk shawl covering it, branches like vines intertwined, with flowers and red fruit and blue birds, it is really one large tree and if you stare at it long enough the vines begin to twist as if a wind is blowing them. It was sent from India by her eldest daughter who is married to a missionary, which is not a thing I would care to do myself. You would be sure to die early, if not from the rioting natives as at Cawnpore with horrid outrages committed on the persons of respectable gentlewomen, and a mercy they were all slaughtered and put out of their misery, for only think of the shame; then from the malaria, which turns you entirely yellow, and you expire in raving fits; in any case before you could turn around, there you would be, buried under a palm tree in a foreign clime. I have seen pictures of them in the book of Eastern engravings the Governor’s wife takes out when she wishes to shed a tear.

On the same round table is the stack of Godey’s Ladies’ Books with the fashions that come up from the States, and also the Keepsake Albums of the two younger daughters. Miss Lydia tells me I am a romantic figure; but then, the two of them are so young they hardly know what they are saying. Sometimes they pry and tease; they say, Grace, why don’t you ever smile or laugh, we never see you smiling, and I say I suppose Miss I have gotten out of the way of it, my face won’t bend in that direction any more. But if I laughed out loud I might not be able to stop; and also it would spoil their romantic notion of me. Romantic people are not supposed to laugh, I know that much from looking at the pictures. The daughters put all kinds of things into their albums, little scraps of cloth from their dresses, little snippets of ribbon, pictures cut from magazines — the Ruins of Ancient Rome, the Picturesque Monasteries of the French Alps, Old London Bridge, Niagara Falls in summer and in winter, which is a thing I would like to see as all say it is very impressive, and portraits of Lady This and Lord That from England. And their friends write things in their graceful handwriting, To Dearest Lydia from your Eternal Friend, Clara Richards; To Dearest Marianne In Memory of Our Splendid Picnic on the Shores of Bluest Lake Ontario. And also poems:

As round about the sturdy Oak

Entwines the loving Ivy Vine,

My Faith so true, I pledge to You,

‘Twill evermore be none but Thine, Your Faithful Laura.

Or else:

Although from you I far must roam,

Do not be broken hearted,

We two who in the Soul are One

Are never truly parted. Your Lucy.

This young lady was shortly afterwards drowned in the Lake when her ship went down in a gale, and nothing was ever found but her box with her initials done in silver nails; it was still locked, so although damp, nothing spilt out, and Miss Lydia was given a scarf out of it as a keepsake. When I am dead and in my grave

And all my bones are rotten,

When this you see, remember me,

Lest I should be forgotten.

That one is signed, I will always be with you in Spirit, Your loving “Nancy,” Hannah Edmonds, and I must say the first time I saw that, it gave me a fright, although of course it was a different Nancy. Still, the rotten bones. They would be, by now. Her face was all black by the time they found her, there must have been a dreadful smell. It was so hot then, it was July, still she went off surprisingly soon, you’d think she would have kept longer in the dairy, it is usually cool down there. I am certainly glad I was not present, as it would have been very distressing.

I don’t know why they are all so eager to be remembered. What good will it do them? There are some things that should be forgotten by everyone, and never spoken of again. The Governor’s wife’s scrapbook is quite different. Of course she is a grown woman and not a young girl, so although she is just as fond of remembering, what she wants to remember is not violets or a picnic. No Dearest and Love and Beauty, no Eternal Friends, none of those things for her; what it has instead is all the famous criminals in it — the ones that have been hanged, or else brought here to be penitent, because this is a Penitentiary and you are supposed to repent while in it, and you will do better if you say you have done so, whether you have anything to repent of or not. The Governor’s wife cuts these crimes out of the newspapers and pastes them in; she will even write away for old newspapers with crimes that were done before her time. It is her collection, she is a lady and they are all collecting things these days, and so she must collect something, and she does this instead of pulling up ferns or pressing flowers, and in any case she likes to horrify her acquaintances. So I have read what they put in about me. She showed the scrapbook to me herself, I suppose she wanted to see what I would do; but I’ve learnt how to keep my face still, I made my eyes wide and flat, like an owl’s in torchlight, and I said I had repented in bitter tears, and was now a changed person, and would she wish me to remove the tea things now; but I’ve looked in there since, many times, when I’ve been in the parlour by myself.

A lot of it is lies. They said in the newspaper that I was illiterate, but I could read some even then. I was taught early by my mother, before she got too tired for it, and I did my sampler with leftover thread, A is for Apple, B is for Bee; and also Mary Whitney used to read with me, at Mrs. Alderman Parkinson’s, when we were doing the mending; and I’ve learnt a lot more since being here, as they teach you on purpose. They want you to be able to read the Bible, and also tracts, as religion and thrashing are the only remedies for a depraved nature and our immortal souls must be considered. It is shocking how many crimes the Bible contains. The Governor’s wife should cut them all out and paste them into her scrapbook.

They did say some true things. They said I had a good character; and that was so, because nobody had ever taken advantage of me, although they tried. But they called James McDermott my paramour. They wrote it down, right in the newspaper. I think it is disgusting to write such things down. That is what really interests them — the gentlemen and the ladies both. They don’t care if I killed anyone, I could have cut dozens of throats, it’s only what they admire in a soldier, they’d scarcely blink. No: was I really a paramour, is their chief concern, and they don’t even know themselves whether they want the answer to be no or yes.

I’m not looking at the scrapbook now, because they may come in at any moment. I sit with my rough hands folded, eyes down, staring at the flowers in the Turkey carpet. Or they are supposed to be flowers. They have petals the shape of the diamonds on a playing card; like the cards spread out on the table at Mr. Kinnear’s, after the gentlemen had been playing the night before. Hard and angular. But red, a deep thick red. Thick strangled tongues.

It’s not the ladies expected today, it’s a doctor. He’s writing a book; the Governor’s wife likes to know people who are writing books, books with forward-looking aims, it shows that she is a liberal-minded person with advanced views, and science is making such progress, and what with modern inventions and the Crystal Palace and world knowledge assembled, who knows where we will all be in a hundred years. Where there’s a doctor it’s always a bad sign. Even when they are not doing the killing themselves it means a death is close, and in that way they are like ravens or crows. But this doctor will not hurt me, the Governor’s wife promised it. All he wants is to measure my head. He is measuring the heads of all the criminals in the Penitentiary, to see if he can tell from the bumps on their skulls what sort of criminals they are, whether they are pickpockets or swindlers or embezzlers or criminal lunatics or murderers, she did not say Like you, Grace. And then they could lock those people up before they had a chance to commit any crimes, and think how that would improve the world.

After James McDermott was hanged they made a plaster cast of his head. I read that in the scrapbook too. I suppose that’s what they wanted it for — to improve the world. Also his body was dissected. When I first read that I did not know what dissected was, but I found it out soon enough. It was done by the doctors. They cut him into pieces like a pig to be salted down, he might as well have been bacon as far as they were concerned. His body that I listened to breathing, and the heart beating, the knife slicing through it — I can’t bear to think of it. I wonder what they did with his shirt. Was it one of the four sold to him by Jeremiah the peddler? It should have been three, or else five, as odd numbers are luckier. Jeremiah always wished me luck, but he did not wish any to James McDermott.

I did not see the hanging. They hanged him in front of the jail in Toronto, and You should have been there Grace, say the keepers, it would have been a lesson to you. I’ve pictured it many times, poor James standing with his hands tied and his neck bare, while they put the hood over his head like a kitten to be drowned. At least he had a priest with him, he was not all alone. If it had not been for Grace Marks, he told them, none of it would have happened.

It was raining, and a huge crowd standing in the mud, some of them come from miles away. If my own death sentence had not been commuted at the last minute, they would have watched me hang with the same greedy pleasure. There were many women and ladies there; everyone wanted to stare, they wanted to breathe death in like fine perfume, and when I read of it I thought, If this is a lesson to me, what is it I am supposed to be learning?

I can hear their footsteps now, and I stand up quickly and brush my apron smooth. Then there’s the voice of a strange man, This is most kind of you Ma’am, and the Governor’s wife saying I am so happy to be of help, and he says again, Most kind.

Then he comes through the doorway, big stomach, black coat, tight waistcoat, silver buttons, precisely tied stock, I am only looking up as far as the chin, and he says This will not take long but I’d appreciate it Ma’am if you’d remain in the room, one must not only be virtuous, one must give the appearance of virtue. He laughs as if it is a joke, and I can hear in his voice that he is afraid of me. A woman like me is always a temptation, if possible to arrange it unobserved; as whatever we may say about it later, we will not be believed.

And then I see his hand, a hand like a glove, a glove stuffed with raw meat, his hand plunging into the open mouth of his leather bag. It comes out glinting, and I know I have seen a hand like that before; and then I lift my head and stare him straight in the eye, and my heart clenches and kicks out inside me, and then I begin to scream.

Because it’s the same doctor, the same one, the very same black-coated doctor with his bagful of shining knives.

Chapter 4

I was brought round with a glass of cold water dashed in the face, but continued screaming, although the doctor was no longer in sight; so was restrained by two kitchen maids and the gardener’s boy, who sat on my legs. The Governor’s wife had sent for the Matron from the Penitentiary, who arrived with two of the keepers; and she gave me a brisk slap across the face, at which I stopped. It was not the same doctor in any case, it only looked like him. The same cold and greedy look, and the hate. It’s the only way with the hysterics, you may be sure Ma’am, said the Matron, we have had a great deal of experience with that kind of a fit, this one used to be prone to them but we never indulged her, we worked to correct it and we thought she had given it up, it might be her old trouble coming back, for despite what they said about it up there at Toronto she was a raving lunatic that time seven years ago, and you are lucky there was no scissors nor sharp things lying about. Then the keepers half-dragged me back to the main prison building, and locked me into this room, until I was myself again is what they said, even though I told them I was better now that the doctor was no longer there with his knives. I said I had a fear of doctors, that was all; of being cut open by them, as some might have a fear of snakes; but they said, That’s enough of your tricks Grace, you just wanted the attention, he was not going to cut you open, he had no knives at all, it was only a callipers you saw, to measure the heads with. You’ve given the Governor’s wife a real fright now but it serves her right, she’s been spoiling you too much for your own good, she’s made quite a pet out of you hasn’t she, our company is hardly good enough for you any more. Well so much the worse, you will have to endure it because now you will have a different sort of attention for a time. Until they have decided what is to be done with you.

This room has only a little window high up with bars on the inside, and a straw-filled mattress. There’s a crust of bread on a tin plate, and a stone crock of water, and a wooden bucket with nothing in it which is there for a chamber pot. I was put in a room like this before they sent me away to the Asylum. I told them I wasn’t mad, that I wasn’t the one, but they wouldn’t listen.

They wouldn’t know mad when they saw it in any case, because a good portion of the women in the Asylum were no madder than the Queen of England. Many were sane enough when sober, as their madness came out of a bottle, which is a kind I knew very well. One of them was in there to get away from her husband, who beat her black and blue, he was the mad one but nobody would lock him up; and another said she went mad in the autumns, as she had no house and it was warm in the Asylum, and if she didn’t do a fair job of running mad she would freeze to death; but then in the spring she would become sane again because it was good weather and she could go off and tramp in the woods and fish, and as she was part Red Indian she was handy at such things. I would like to do that myself if I knew how, and if not afraid of the bears.

But some were not pretending. One poor Irishwoman had all her family dead, half of them of starving in the great famine and the other half of the cholera on the boat coming over; and she would wander about calling their names. I am glad I left Ireland before that time, as the sufferings she told of were dreadful, and the corpses piled everywhere with none to bury them. Another woman had killed her child, and it followed her around everywhere, tugging at her skirt; and sometimes she would pick it up and hug and kiss it, and at other times she would shriek at it, and hit it away with her hands. I was afraid of that one. Another was very religious, always praying and singing, and when she found out what they said I had done, she would plague me whenever she could. Down on your knees, she would say, Thou shalt not kill, but there is always God’s grace for sinners, repent, repent while there is yet time or damnation awaits. She was just like a preacher in church, and once she tried to baptize me with soup, thin soup it was and with cabbage in it, and she poured a spoonful of it over my head. When I complained of it, the Matron gave me a dry look with her mouth all tight and straight across like a box lid, and she said, Well Grace perhaps you should listen to her, I have never heard of you doing any true repenting, much though your hard heart stands in need of it; and then I was suddenly very angry and I screamed, I did nothing, I did nothing! It was her, it was her fault!

Who do you mean, Grace, she said, compose yourself or it’s the cold baths and the strait-waistcoat for you, and she gave the other matron a glance: There. What did I tell you. Mad as a snake. The matrons at the Asylum were all fat and strong, with big thick arms and chins that went straight down into their necks and prim white collars, and their hair twisted up like faded rope. You have to be strong to be a matron there in case some madwoman jumps on your back and starts to tear out your hair, but none of it improved their tempers any. Sometimes they would provoke us, especially right before the visitors were to come. They wanted to show how dangerous we were, but also how well they could control us, as it made them appear more valuable and skilled.

So I stopped telling them anything. Not Dr. Bannerling, who would come into the room when I was tied up in the dark with mufflers on my hands, Keep still I am here to examine you, it is no use lying to me. Nor the other doctors who would visit there, Oh indeed, what a fascinating case, as if I was a two-headed calf. At last I stopped talking altogether, except very civilly when spoken to, Yes Ma’am No Ma’am, Yes and No Sir. And then I was sent back to the Penitentiary, after they had all met together in their black coats, Ahem, aha, in my opinion, and My respected colleague, Sir I beg to differ. Of course they could not admit for an instant that they had been mistaken when they first put me in. People dressed in a certain kind of clothing are never wrong. Also they never fart. What Mary Whitney used to say was, If there’s farting in a room where they are, you may be sure you done it yourself. And even if you never did, you better not say so or it’s all Damn your insolence, and a boot in the backside and out on the street with you.

She often had a crude way of speaking. She said You done and not You did. No one had taught her otherwise. I used to speak that way as well, but I have learnt better manners in prison. I sit down on the straw mattress. It makes a sound like shushing. Like water on the shore. I shift from side to side, to listen to it. I could close my eyes and think I’m by the sea, on a dry day without much wind. Outside the window far away there’s someone chopping wood, the axe coming down, the unseen flash and then the dull sound, but how do I know it’s even wood?

It’s chilly in this room. I have no shawl, I hug my arms around myself because who else is there to do it?

When I was younger I used to think that if I could hug myself tight enough I could make myself smaller, because there was never enough room for me, at home or anywhere, but if I was smaller then I would fit in.

My hair is coming out from under my cap. Red hair of an ogre. A wild beast, the newspaper said. A monster. When they come with my dinner I will put the slop bucket over my head and hide behind the door, and that will give them a fright. If they want a monster so badly they ought to be provided with one. I never do such things, however. I only consider them. If I did them, they would be sure I had gone mad again. Gone mad is what they say, and sometimes Run mad, as if mad is a direction, like west; as if mad is a different house you could step into, or a separate country entirely. But when you go mad you don’t go any other place, you stay where you are. And somebody else comes in. I don’t want to be left by myself in this room. The walls are too empty, there are no pictures on them nor curtains on the little high-up window, nothing to look at and so you look at the wall, and after you do that for a time, there are pictures on it after all, and red flowers growing. I think I sleep.

It’s morning now, but which one? The second or the third. There’s fresh light outside the window, that’s what woke me. I struggle upright, pinch myself and blink my eyes, and get up stiff-limbed from the rustling mattress. Then I sing a song, just to hear a voice and keep myself company: Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty,

Early in the morning our song shall rise to thee,

Holy, holy, holy, merciful and mighty,

God in three persons, Blessed Trinity.

They can hardly object if it’s a hymn. A hymn to the morning. I have always been fond of sunrise. Then I drink the last of the water; then I walk around the room; then I lift my petticoats and piss in the bucket. A few more hours and it will reek in here like a cesspool.

Sleeping in your clothes makes you tired. The clothes are crumpled, and also your body underneath them. I feel as if I’ve been rolled into a bundle and thrown on the floor. I wish I had a clean apron.

Nobody comes. I’m being left to reflect on my sins and misdemeanours, and one does that best in solitude, or such is our expert and considered opinion, Grace, after long experience with these matters. In solitary confinement, and sometimes in the dark. There are prisons where they keep you in there for years, without a glimpse of a tree or horse or human face. Some say it refines the complexion. I’ve been shut up alone before. Incorrigible, said Dr. Bannerling, a devious dissembler. Remain quiet, I am here to examine your cerebral configuration, and first I shall measure your heartbeat and respiration, but I knew what he was up to. Take your hand off my tit, you filthy bastard, Mary Whitney would have said, but all I could say was Oh no, oh no, and no way to twist and turn, not how they’d fixed me, trussed up to the chair with the sleeves crossed over in front and tied behind; so nothing to do but sink my teeth into his fingers, and then over we went, backwards onto the floor, yowling together like two cats in a sack. He tasted of raw sausages and damp woollen underclothes. He’d of been much better for a good scalding, and then put in the sun to bleach.

No supper last night or the night before that, nothing except the bread, not even a bit of cabbage; well that is to be expected. Starvation is calming to the nerves. Today it will be more bread and water, as meat is exciting to criminals and maniacs, they get the smell of it in their nostrils just like wolves and then you have only yourself to blame. But yesterday’s water is all gone and I’m very thirsty, I am dying of thirst, my mouth tastes bruised, my tongue is swelling. That’s what happens to castaways, I’ve read about them in legal trials, lost at sea and drinking each other’s blood. They draw straws for it. Cannibal atrocities pasted into the scrapbook. I’m sure I would never do such a thing, however hungry. Have they forgotten I’m in here? They’ll have to bring more food, or at least more water, or else I will starve, I will shrivel, my skin will dry out, all yellow like old linen; I will turn into a skeleton, I will be found months, years, centuries from now, and they will say Who is this, she must have slipped our mind, Well sweep all those bones and rubbish into the corner, but save the buttons, no sense in having them go to waste, there’s no help for it now.

Once you start feeling sorry for yourself they’ve got you where they want you. Then they send for the Chaplain.

Oh come to my arms, poor wandering soul. There is more joy in Heaven over the one lost lamb. Ease your troubled mind. Kneel at my feet. Wring your hands in anguish. Describe how conscience tortures you day and night, and how the eyes of your victims follow you around the room, burning like red-hot coals. Shed tears of remorse. Confess, confess. Let me forgive and pity. Let me get up a Petition for you. Tell me all.

And then what did he do? Oh shocking. And then what?

The left hand or the right?

How far up, exactly?

Show me where.

Possibly I hear a whispering. Now there’s an eye, looking in at me through the slit cut in the door. I can’t see it but I know it’s there. Then a knocking.

And I think, Who could that be? The Matron? The Warden, come to give me a scolding? But it can’t be any of them, because nobody here does you the courtesy of knocking, they look at you through the little slit and then they just walk in. Always knock first, said Mary Whitney. Then wait until they give you leave. You never know what they may be up to, and half of it’s nothing they want you to see, they could have their fingers up their nose or some other place, as even a gentlewoman feels the need to scratch where it itches, and if you see a pair of heels sticking out from under the bed it’s best to take no notice. They may be silk purses in the daytime, but they’re all sows’ ears at night. Mary was a person of democratic views.

The knock again. As if I have a choice.

I push my hair back under my cap, and get up off the straw mattress and smooth down my dress and apron, and then I move as far back into the corner of the room as I can, and then I say, quite firmly because it’s as well to keep hold of your dignity if at all possible, Please come in.

Chapter 5

The door opens and a man enters. He’s a young man, my own age or a little older, which is young for a man although not for a woman, as at my age a woman is an old maid but a man is not an old bachelor until he’s fifty, and even then there’s still hope for the ladies, as Mary Whitney used to say. He’s tall, with long legs and arms, but not what the Governor’s daughters would call handsome; they incline to the languid ones in the magazines, very elegant and butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths, with narrow feet in pointed boots. This man has a briskness about him which is not fashionable, and also rather large feet, although he is a gentleman, or next door to it. I don’t think he is English, and so it is hard to tell. His hair is brown, and wavy by nature — unruly it might be called, as if he can’t make it lie flat by brushing. His coat is good, a good cut; but not new, as there are shiny patches on the elbows. He has a tartan vest, tartan has been popular ever since the Queen took up with Scotland and built a castle there, full of deer’s heads or so they say; but now I see it isn’t real tartan, only checked. Yellow and brown. He has a gold watch-chain, so although rumpled and untended, he is not poor. He doesn’t have the side-whiskers, as they have begun to wear them now; I don’t much like them myself, give me a moustache or a beard, or else nothing at all. James McDermott and Mr. Kinnear were both clean-shaven, and Jamie Walsh too, not that he had anything much to shave; except that Mr. Kinnear had a moustache. When I used to empty his shaving basin in the mornings, I would take some of the wet soap — he used a good soap, from London — and I would rub it on my skin, on the skin of my wrists, and then I would have the smell of it with me all day, at least until it was time to scrub the floors. The young man closes the door behind him. He doesn’t lock it, but someone else locks it from the outside. We are locked into this room together.

Good morning, Grace, he says. I understand that you are afraid of doctors. I must tell you right away that I myself am a doctor. My name is Dr. Jordan, Dr. Simon Jordan.

I look at him quickly, then look down. I say, Is the other doctor coming back?

The one that frightened you? he says. No, he is not.

I say, Then I suppose you are here to measure my head.

I would not dream of it, he says, smiling; but still, he glances at my head with a measuring look. However I have my cap on, so there’s nothing he can see. Now that he has spoken I think he must be an American. He has white teeth and is not missing any of them, at least at the front, and his face is quite long and bony. I like his smile, although it is higher on one side than the other, which gives him the air of joking.

I look at his hands. They are empty. There’s nothing at all in them. No rings on his fingers. Do you have a bag with knives in it? I say. A leather satchel.

No, he says, I am not the usual kind of doctor. I do no cutting open. Are you afraid of me, Grace?

I can’t say that I am afraid of him yet. It’s too early to tell; too early to tell what he wants. No one comes to see me here unless they want something.

I would like him to say what kind of a doctor he is if he’s not the usual kind, but instead he says, I am from Massachusetts. Or that is where I was born. I have travelled a good deal since then. I have been going to and fro in the earth, and walking up and down in it. And he looks at me, to see if I understand. I know it is the Book of Job, before Job gets the boils and running sores, and the whirlwinds. It’s what Satan says to God. He must mean that he has come to test me, although he’s too late for that, as God has done a great deal of testing of me already, and you would think he would be tired of it by now. But I don’t say this. I look at him stupidly. I have a good stupid look which I have practised. I say, Have you been to France? That is where all the fashions come from. I see I have disappointed him. Yes, he says. And to England, and also to Italy, and to Germany and Switzerland as well.

It is very odd to be standing in a locked room in the Penitentiary, speaking with a strange man about France and Italy and Germany. A travelling man. He must be a wanderer, like Jeremiah the peddler. But Jeremiah travelled to earn his bread, and these other sorts of men are rich enough already. They go on voyages because they are curious. They amble around the world and stare at things, they sail across the ocean as if there’s nothing to it at all, and if it goes ill with them in one place they simply pick up and move along to another.

But now it’s my turn to say something. I say, I don’t know how you manage, Sir, amongst all the foreigners, you never know what they are saying. When the poor things first come here they gabble away like geese, although the children can soon speak well enough.

This is true, as children of any kind are very quick to learn.

He smiles, and then he does a strange thing. He puts his left hand into his pocket and pulls out an apple. He walks over to me slowly, holding the apple out in front of him like someone holding out a bone to a dangerous dog, in order to win it over.

This is for you, he says.

I am so thirsty the apple looks to me like a big round drop of water, cool and red. I could drink it down in one gulp. I hesitate; but then I think, There’s nothing bad in an apple, and so I take it. I haven’t had an apple of my own for a long time. This apple must be from last autumn, kept in a barrel in the cellar, but it seems fresh enough.

I am not a dog, I say to him.

Most people would ask me what I mean by saying that, but he laughs. His laugh is just one breath, Hah, as if he’s found a thing he has lost; and he says, No, Grace, I can see you are not a dog. What is he thinking? I stand holding the apple in both hands. It feels precious, like a heavy treasure. I lift it up and smell it. It has such an odour of outdoors on it I want to cry. Aren’t you going to eat it, he says.

No, not yet, I say.

Why not, he says.

Because then it would be gone, I say.

The truth is I don’t want him watching me while I eat. I don’t want him to see my hunger. If you have a need and they find it out, they will use it against you. The best way is to stop from wanting anything. He gives his one laugh. Can you tell me what it is, he says.

I look at him, then look away. An apple, I say. He must think I am simple; or else it’s a trick of some sort; or else he is mad and that is why they locked the door — they’ve locked me into this room with a madman. But men who are dressed in clothes like his cannot be mad, especially the gold watch-chain —

his relatives or else his keepers would have it off him in a trice if so. He smiles his lopsided smile. What does Apple make you think of? he says. I beg your pardon, Sir, I say. I do not understand you.

It must be a riddle. I think of Mary Whitney, and the apple peelings we threw over our shoulders that night, to see who we would marry. But I will not tell him that.

I think you understand well enough, he says.

My sampler, I say.

Now it is his turn to know nothing. Your what? he says.

My sampler that I stitched as a child, I say. A is for Apple, B is for Bee. Oh yes, he says. But what else?

I give my stupid look. Apple pie, I say.

Ah, he says. Something you eat.

Well I should hope you would, Sir, I say. That’s what an apple pie is for. And is there any kind of apple you should not eat? he says.

A rotten one, I suppose, I say.

He’s playing a guessing game, like Dr. Bannerling at the Asylum. There is always a right answer, which is right because it is the one they want, and you can tell by their faces whether you have guessed what it is; although with Dr. Bannerling all of the answers were wrong. Or perhaps he is a Doctor of Divinity; they are the other ones prone to this kind of questioning. I have had enough of them to last me for a long while.

The apple of the Tree of Knowledge, is what he means. Good and evil. Any child could guess it. But I will not oblige.

I go back to my stupid look. Are you a preacher? I say.

No, he says, I am not a preacher. I am a doctor who works not with bodies, but with minds. Diseases of the mind and brain, and the nerves.

I put my hands with the apple behind my back. I do not trust him at all. No, I say. I won’t go back there. Not to the Asylum. Flesh and blood cannot stand it.

Don’t be afraid, he says. You aren’t mad, really, are you Grace?

No Sir I am not, I say.

Then there is no reason for you to go back to the Asylum, is there?

They don’t listen to reason there, Sir, I say.

Well that is what I am here for, he says. I am here to listen to reason. But if I am to listen to you, you will have to talk to me.

I see what he’s after. He is a collector. He thinks all he has to do is give me an apple, and then he can collect me. Perhaps he is from a newspaper. Or else he is a travelling man, making a tour. They come in and they stare, and when they look at you, you feel as small as an ant, and they pick you up between finger and thumb and turn you around. And then they set you down and go away. You won’t believe me, Sir, I say. Anyway it’s all been decided, the trial is long over and done with and what I say will not change anything. You should ask the lawyers and the judges, and the newspaper men, they seem to know my story better than I do myself. In any case I can’t remember, I can remember other things but I have lost that part of my memory entirely. They must have told you that. I would like to help you, Grace, he says.

That is how they get in through the door. Help is what they offer but gratitude is what they want, they roll around in it like cats in the catnip. He wishes to go home and say to himself, I stuck in my thumb and pulled out the plum, what a good boy am I. But I will not be anybody’s plum. I say nothing. If you will try to talk, he continues, I will try to listen. My interest is purely scientific. It is not only the murders that should concern us. He’s using a kind voice, kind on the surface but with other desires hidden beneath it.

Perhaps I will tell you lies, I say.

He doesn’t say, Grace what a wicked suggestion, you have a sinful imagination. He says, Perhaps you will. Perhaps you will tell lies without meaning to, and perhaps you will also tell them deliberately. Perhaps you are a liar.

I look at him. There are those who have said I am one, I say.

We will just have to take that chance, he says.

I look down at the floor. Will they take me back to the Asylum? I say. Or will they put me in solitary confinement, with nothing to eat but bread?

He says, I give you my word that as long as you continue to talk with me, and do not lose control of yourself and become violent, you shall remain as you were. I have the Governor’s promise. I look at him. I look away. I look at him again. I hold the apple in my two hands. He waits. Finally I lift the apple up and press it to my forehead.

Four - Young Man’s Fancy

Chapter 6

To Dr. Simon Jordan, M.D., Laburnum House, Loomisville, Massachusetts, The United States of America; from Dr. Joseph Workman, Medical Superintendent, The Provincial Lunatic Asylum, Toronto, Canada West.

April 15th, 1859.

Dear Dr. Jordan:

I beg to acknowledge receipt of your letter of 2nd Inst. and to thank you for the Letter of Introduction from my esteemed colleague, Dr. Binswanger of Switzerland; the establishment of whose new Clinic I have followed with great interest. Permit me to say, that as an acquaintance of Dr. Binswanger, you would be most welcome to inspect the Institution of which I am the Superintendent, at any time. I would be most pleased to show you over the premises myself, and to explain our methods to you.

As you intend to establish an institution of your own, I should emphasize that sanitation and good drainage are of the first importance, as it is of no use to attempt to minister to a mind diseased, whilst the body is afflicted by infections. This side of things is too often neglected. At the time of my advent here, we had many Cholera outbreaks, perforating Dysentries, intractable Diarrhoeas, and the whole deadly Typhoid family, which were plaguing the Asylum. In the course of my investigations as to their source, I discovered a large and exceedingly noxious cesspool underlying every part of the cellars, in some places the consistency of a strong infusion of black tea, and in others like viscid soft soap, which was undrained due to the failure of the builders to connect the drains to the main sewer; in addition to which, the water supply for both drinking and washing was drawn through an intake pipe from the lake, in a stagnant bay, close by the pipe through which the main sewer discharged its putrid flow. It is no wonder that the inmates often complained that their drinking water tasted of a substance which few among them had ever experienced any great longing to consume!

The inmates here are pretty evenly divided as to sex; as to symptoms, there is a great variety. Religious fanaticism I find to be fully as prolific an exciting cause of insanity as intemperance —

but I am inclined to believe that neither religion nor intemperance will induce insanity in a truly sound mind — I think there is always a predisposing cause which renders the individual liable to the malady, when exposed to any disturbing agency, whether mental or physical. However, for information regarding the chief object of your enquiry, I regret that you must seek elsewhere. The female prisoner, Grace Marks, whose crime was murder, was returned to the Penitentiary at Kingston in August of 1853, after a stay of fifteen months. As I myself was appointed only some three weeks prior to her departure, I had little chance of making a thorough study of her case. I have therefore referred your letter to Dr. Samuel Bannerling, who attended her under my predecessor. As to the degree of insanity by which she was primarily affected, I am unable to speak. It was my impression that for a considerable time past she had been sufficiently sane to warrant her removal from the Asylum. I strongly recommended that in her discipline, gentle treatment should be adopted; and I believe she presently spends a part of each day as a servant in the Governor’s family. She had, towards the latter end of her stay, conducted herself with much propriety; whilst by her industry and general kindness towards the patients, she was found a profitable and useful inmate of the house. She suffers occasionally under nervous excitement, and a painful overaction of the heart.

One of the chief problems facing the superintendent of a publicly funded institution such as this, is the tendency on the part of prison authorities to refer to us many troublesome criminals, among them atrocious murderers, burglars and thieves, who do not belong among the innocent and uncontaminated insane, simply to have them out of the prison. It is impossible that a building constructed with a proper reference to the comfort and the recovery of the insane, can be a place of confinement for criminal lunatics; and certainly much less so for criminal impostors; and I am strongly inclined to suspect that the latter class are more numerous than may generally be supposed. Besides the evil consequences inevitably resulting to the patients from the commingling of innocent with criminal lunatics, there is reason to apprehend a deteriorating influence on the tempers and habits of the Keepers and Officers of the Asylum, unfitting them for the humane and proper treatment of the former.

But as you propose to establish a private institution, you will, I trust, incur fewer difficulties of this nature, and will suffer less from the irritating political interference that frequently prevents their rectification; and in this, as in general matters, I wish you every success in your endeavours. Enterprises such as yours are unfortunately much required at present, both in our own country and in yours, as, due to the increased anxieties of modern life and the consequent stresses upon the nerves, the rate of construction can scarcely keep pace with the numbers of applicants; and I beg to proffer any small assistance, which it may lie within my power to bestow. Yours very truly,

Joseph Workman, M.D.

From Mrs. William P. Jordan, Laburnum House, Loomisville, Massachusetts, The United States of America; to Dr. Simon Jordan, care of Major C.D. Humphrey, Lower Union Street, Kingston, Canada West.

April 29th, 1859.

My Dearest Son:

Your long-awaited note containing your present address and the instructions for the Rheumatism Salve arrived today. It was a joy to see your dear handwriting again, even so little of it, and it is good of you to take an interest in your poor Mother’s failing constitution. I take this opportunity to write you a few lines, while enclosing the letter which arrived here for you the day after your departure. Your recent visit to us was all too brief — when may we expect to see you among your family and friends once more? So much travelling cannot be salutary, either for your peace of mind, or for your health. I long for the day when you choose to settle down among us, and to establish yourself properly, in a manner fitting to you. I could not help but observe, that the enclosed letter is from the Lunatic Asylum in Toronto. I suppose you intend to visit it, although surely you must have seen every such establishment in the world by now and cannot possibly benefit from seeing another. Your description of those in France and England, and even of the one in Switzerland, which is so much cleaner, filled me with horror. We must all pray to have our sanity preserved; but I have grave doubts concerning your future prospects, should your proposed course of action be pursued. You must forgive me for saying, dear Son, that I have never been able to understand the interest you take in such things. No one in the Family has ever concerned himself with Lunatics before, although your Grandfather was a Quaker clergyman. It is commendable to wish to relieve human suffering, but surely the insane, like idiots and cripples, owe their state to Almighty Providence, and one should not attempt to reverse decisions which are certainly just, although inscrutable to us. In addition, I cannot believe a private Asylum could possibly be made to pay, as the relatives of Lunatics are notoriously neglectful once the afflicted person has been put away, and wish to hear or see nothing more of them; and this neglect extends to the settlement of their bills; and then there is the cost of food and fuel, and of the persons who must be put in charge of them. There are so many considerations to attend to, and surely the daily consorting with the insane would be far from conductive to a tranquil existence. You must think too of your future wife and children, who ought not to be placed in such close proximity to a pack of dangerous madmen. I know it is not my place to determine your path in life, but I strongly urge that a manufactury would be far preferable, and although the textile mills are not what they were, due to the mismanagement of the politicians, who abuse the public trust unmercifully and become worse with every passing year; yet there are many other opportunities at present, and some men have done very well at them, as you hear of new fortunes being made every day; and I am sure you have as much energy and sagacity as they. There is talk of a new Sewing Machine for use in the home, which would do exceedingly well if it might be cheaply produced; for every woman would wish to own such an item, which would save many hours of monotonous toil and unceasing drudgery, and would also be of great assistance to the poor seam-stresses. Could you not invest the small inheritance remaining to you after the sale of your poor Father’s business, in some such admirable but dependable venture? I am certain that a Sewing Machine would relieve as much human suffering as a hundred Lunatic Asylums, and possibly a good deal more. Of course you have always been an idealist, and filled with optimistic dreams; but reality must at some time obtrude, and you are now turned thirty.

I say these things, not from any wish to meddle or interfere, but out of a Mother’s anxious care for the future of her only and beloved Son. I do so hope to see you well-established before I die —

it would have been your dear Father’s wish, as well — you know I live only for your welfare. My health took a turn for the worse after your departure — your presence always has an improving effect upon my spirits. I was coughing so much yesterday that my faithful Maureen could scarcely get me up the stairs — she is almost as old and feeble as I am, and we must have looked like two old witches hobbling up a hill. Despite the concoctions I am dosed with several times a day, brewed by my good Samantha in the kitchen — which taste as vile as all medicines ought to, and which she swears cured her own Mother — I continue much the same; although I was well enough today to receive as usual in the parlour. I had several visitors, who had heard of my indisposition, among them Mrs. Henry Cartwright, who has a good heart although not always a very polished manner, as is often the case with those whose fortunes have been of recent acquisition; but that will come in time. Accompanying her was her daughter Faith, whom you will recall as an awkward girl of thirteen, but who is now grown up and recently returned from Boston, where she was staying with her Aunt, to broaden her education. She has turned out a charming young woman, everything one might wish for, and displayed a courtesy and gentle kindness many would admire, and which is worth so much more than flamboyant good looks. They brought with them a basket of delicacies — I am thoroughly spoiled by dear Mrs. Cartwright

— for which I expressed much gratitude, although I could barely taste anything, as I have no appetite at present.

It is a sad thing to be an invalid, and I pray every night that you may be spared, and will take care not to overtire yourself with too much study and nervous strain, and with staying up all night by lamplight, ruining your eyes and puzzling your brain to pieces, and to wear wool next the skin until the warm weather is fully here. Our first lettuces have appeared, and the apple tree is budded; I suppose where you are it is still covered with snow. I do not think that Kingston, being so far north and on the lakeshore, can be at all good for the lungs, as it must be very chill and damp. Are your rooms well-heated? I do hope you are eating strengthening food, and that they have a good butcher there.

I send you all my love, dear Son, and Maureen and Samantha beg to be remembered to you; and all of us await the news, which we hope will come very soon, of your next Visit to us, until which I remain as always,

Your very loving,

Mother.

From Dr. Simon Jordan, care of Major C. D. Humphrey, Lower Union Street, Kingston, Canada West; to Dr. Edward Murchie, Dorchester, Massachusetts, The United States of America. May 1st, 1859.

My dear Edward:

I was sorry not to have been able to make a visit to Dorchester, to see how you are getting on, now that you have hung your shingle up, and have been busy ministering to the local halt and the blind, while I have been gypsying about Europe, seeking how to cast out devils; which, between us, I have not learned the secret of as yet; but as you may suppose, the time between my arrival at Loomisville, and my departure from it, was much taken up with preparations, and the afternoons were perforce consecrated to my mother. But upon my return, we must arrange to meet, and to lift a glass or two together “for auld lang syne”; and to talk over past adventures, and current prospects.

After a moderately smooth journey across the Lake, I have arrived safely at my destination. I have not yet met my correspondent and, as it were, employer, the Reverend Verringer, as he is away on a visit to Toronto, and so I still have that pleasure to anticipate; although if his letters to me are any indication, he suffers like many clergymen from a punishable lack of wit and a desire to treat us all as straying sheep, of which he is to be the shepherd. However, it is to him — and to the good Dr. Binswanger, who proposed me to him as the best man for the purpose on the western side of the Atlantic — for the price, which is not high, the Methodists being notoriously frugal —

that I owe this splendid opportunity; an opportunity which I hope to be able to exploit in the interests of the advancement of knowledge, the mind and its workings being still, despite considerable progress, a terra incognita.

As to my situation — Kingston is not a very prepossessing town, as it was burned to the ground some two decades ago and has been rebuilt with charmless dispatch. The new buildings are of stone or brick, which will, one hopes, make them less prone to conflagrations. The Penitentiary itself is in the style of a Greek temple, and they are very proud of it here; though which pagan god is intended to be worshipped therein, I have yet to discover.

I have secured rooms in the residence of a Major C. D. Humphrey, which although not luxurious, will be commodious enough for my purposes. I fear however that my landlord is a dipsomaniac; on the two occasions upon which I have encountered him, he was having difficulty putting on his gloves, or else taking them off, he seemed uncertain which; and gave me a red-eyed glare, as if to demand what the Devil I was doing in his house. I predict that he will end as an inhabitant of the private Asylum I still dream of establishing; although I must curb my propensity to view each new acquaintance as a future paying inmate. It is remarkable how frequently military men, when retired on half-pay, go to the bad; it is as if, having become habituated to strong excitements and violent emotions, they must duplicate them in civilian life. However, my arrangements were made, not with the Major — who would doubtless not have been able to recall having made them — but with his long-suffering wife.

I take my meals — with the exception of the breakfasts, which have thus far been even more deplorable than the breakfasts we shared as medical students in London — at a squalid inn located in the vicinity, where every meal is a burnt offering, and nothing is thought the worse for the addition of a little dirt and grime, and a seasoning of insects. That I remain here despite these travesties of the culinary art, I trust you will recognize as a measure of my true devotion to the cause of science.

As for society, I must report that there are pretty girls here as elsewhere, albeit dressed in the Paris fashions of three years ago, which is to say the New York fashions of two. Despite the reforming tendencies of the country’s present government, the town abounds both in disgruntled Tories, and also in petty provincial snobberies; and I anticipate that your bearish and carelessly dressed, and what is more to the purpose, your Yankee democrat friend, will be viewed with some suspicion by its more partisan inhabitants.

Nonetheless, the Governor — art the urging of Reverend Verringer, I suppose — has gone out of his way to be accommodating, and has arranged to have Grace Marks placed at my disposal for several hours every afternoon. She appears to act in the household as a sort of unpaid servant, though whether this service is viewed by her as a favour or a penance, I have yet to ascertain; nor will it be an easy task, as the gentle Grace, having been hardened in the fire now for some fifteen years, will be a very hard nut to crack. Enquiries such as mine are ineffective, unless the trust of the subject may be gained; but judging from my knowledge of penal institutions, I suspect Grace has had scant reason to trust anyone at all for a very long period of time. I have had only one opportunity thus far of viewing the object of my investigations, and so it is too soon to convey my impressions. Let me say only that I am hopeful; and, as you have so kindly expressed a desire to have news of my progress, I will take pains to keep you informed of it; and until then, I remain, my dear Edward,

Your old friend and erstwhile companion,

Simon.

Chapter 7

Simon sits at his writing table, gnawing the end of his pen and looking out the window at the grey and choppy waters of Lake Ontario. Across the bay is Wolfe Island, named after the famous poetic general, he supposes. It’s a view he does not admire — it is so relentlessly horizontal — but visual monotony can sometimes be conducive to thought.

A gust of rain patters against the windowpane; low tattered clouds are scudding above the lake. The lake itself heaves and surges; waves are pulled in against the shore, recoil, are pulled in again; and the willow trees below him toss themselves like heads of long green hair, and bend and thrash. Something pale blows past: it looks like a woman’s white scarf or veil, but then he sees it is only a gull, fighting the wind. The mindless turmoil of Nature, he thinks; Tennyson’s teeth and claws. He feels none of the jaunty hopefulness he has just expressed. Instead he is uneasy, and more than a little dispirited. His reason for being here seems precarious; but it’s his best chance at the moment. When he entered upon his medical studies, it was out of a young man’s perversity. His father was a wealthy mill owner then, and fully expected Simon to take over the business in time; and Simon himself expected the same thing. First, however, he would rebel a little; he would slip the traces, travel, study, test himself in the world, and also in the world of science and medicine, which had always appealed to him. Then he would return home with a hobby-horse to ride, and the comfortable assurance that he need not ride it for money. Most of the best scientists, he knows, have private incomes, which allows them the possibility of disinterested research.

He hadn’t expected the collapse of his father, and also of his father’s textile mills — which came first he’s never been sure. Instead of an amusing row down a quiet stream, he’s been overtaken by a catastrophe at sea, and has been left clinging to a broken spar. In other words he has been thrown back on his own resources; which was what, during his adolescent arguments with his father, he claimed to most desire. The mills were sold, and the imposing house of his childhood, with its large staff of domestics — the chambermaids, the kitchen maids, the parlour maids, that ever-changing chorus of smiling girls or women with names like Alice and Effie, who cosseted and also dominated his childhood and youth, and whom he thinks of as having somehow been sold along with the house. They smelled like strawberries and salt; they had long rippling hair, when it was down, or one of them did; it was Effie, perhaps. As for his inheritance, it’s smaller than his mother thinks, and much of the income from it goes to her. She sees herself as living in reduced circumstances, which is true, considering what they have been reduced from. She believes she is making sacrifices for Simon, and he doesn’t want to disillusion her. His father was self-made, but his mother was constructed by others, and such edifices are notoriously fragile. Thus the private asylum is far beyond his reach at present. In order to raise the money for it he would have to be able to offer something novel, some new discovery or cure, in a field that is already crowded and also very contentious. Perhaps, when he has established his name, he will be able to sell shares in it. But without losing control: he must be free, absolutely free, to follow his own methods, once he has decided exactly what they are to be. He will write a prospectus: large and cheerful rooms, proper ventilation and drainage, and extensive grounds, with a river flowing through them, as the sound of water is soothing to the nerves. He’ll draw the line at machinery and fads, however: no electrical devices, nothing with magnets. It’s true that the American public is unduly impressed by such notions — they favour cures that can be had by pulling a lever or pressing a button — but Simon has no belief in their efficacy. Despite the temptation, he must refuse to compromise his integrity. It’s all a pipe dream at present. But he has to have a project of some sort, to wave in front of his mother. She needs to believe that he’s working towards some goal or other, however much she may disapprove of it. Of course he could always marry money, as she herself did. She traded her family name and connections for a heap of coin fresh from the mint, and she is more than willing to arrange something of the sort for him: the horse-trading that’s becoming increasingly common between impoverished European aristocrats and upstart American millionaires is not unknown, on a much smaller scale, in Loomisville, Massachusetts. He thinks of the prominent front teeth and duck-like neck of Miss Faith Cartwright, and shivers.

He consults his watch: his breakfast is late again. He takes it in his rooms, where it arrives every morning, carried in on a wooden tray by Dora, his landlady’s maid-of-all-work. She sets the tray with a thump and a rattle on the small table at the far end of the sitting room, where, once she has gone, he seats himself to devour it, or whatever parts of it he guesses to be edible. He has adopted the habit of writing before breakfast at the other and larger table so he may be seen bent over his work, and will not have to look at her.

Dora is stout and pudding-faced, with a small downturned mouth like that of a disappointed baby. Her large black eyebrows meet over her nose, giving her a permanent scowl that expresses a sense of disapproving outrage. It’s obvious that she detests being a maid-of-all-work; he wonders if there is anything else she might prefer. He has tried imagining her as a prostitute — he often plays this private mental game with various women he encounters — but he can’t picture any man actually paying for her services. It would be like paying to be run over by a wagon, and would be, like that experience, a distinct threat to the health. Dora is a hefty creature, and could snap a man’s spine in two with her thighs, which Simon envisions as greyish, like boiled sausages, and stubbled like a singed turkey; and enormous, each one as large as a piglet.

Dora returns his lack of esteem. She appears to feel that he has rented these rooms with the sole object of causing trouble for her. She fricassees his handkerchiefs and overstarches his shirts, and loses the buttons from them, which she no doubt pulls off routinely. He’s even suspected her of burning his toast and overcooking his egg on purpose. After plumping down his tray, she bellows, “Here’s your food,” as if calling a hog; then she stumps out, closing the door behind her just one note short of a slam. Simon has been spoiled by European servants, who are born knowing their places; he has not yet reaccustomed himself to the resentful demonstrations of equality so frequently practised on this side of the ocean. Except in the South, of course; but he does not go there.

There are better lodgings than these to be had in Kingston, but he doesn’t wish to pay for them. These are suitable enough for the short time he intends to stay. Also there are no other lodgers, and he values his privacy, and the quiet in which to think. The house is a stone one, and chilly and damp; but by temperament — it must be the old New Englander in him — Simon feels a certain contempt for material self-indulgence; and as a medical student he became habituated to a monkish austerity, and to working long hours under difficult conditions.

He turns again to his desk. Dearest Mother, he begins. Thank you for your long and informative letter. I am very well, and making considerable headway here, in my study of nervous and cerebral diseases among the criminal element, which, if the key to them may be found, would go a long way towards alleviating…

He can’t go on; he feels too fraudulent. But he has to write something, or she will assume he has drowned, or died suddenly of consumption, or been waylaid by thieves. The weather is always a good subject; but he can’t write about the weather on an empty stomach.

From the drawer of his desk he takes out a small pamphlet that dates from the time of the murders, and which was sent to him by Reverend Verringer. It contains the confessions of Grace Marks and James McDermott, as well as an abridged version of the trial. At the front is an engraved portrait of Grace, which could easily pass for the heroine of a sentimental novel; she’d been just sixteen at the time, but the woman pictured looks a good five years older. Her shoulders are swathed in a tippet; the brim of a bonnet encircles her head like a dark aureole. The nose is straight, the mouth dainty, the expression conventionally soulful — the vapid pensiveness of a Magdalene, with the large eyes gazing at nothing. Beside this is a matching engraving of James McDermott, shown in the overblown collar of those days, with his hair in a forward-swept arrangement reminiscent of Napoleon’s, and meant to suggest tempestuousness. He is scowling in a brooding, Byronic way; the artist must have admired him. Beneath the double portrait is written, in copperplate: Grace Marks, alias Mary Whitney; James McDermott. As they appeared at the Court House. Accused of Murdering Mr. Thos. Kinnear & Nancy Montgomery. The whole thing bears a disturbing resemblance to a wedding invitation; or it would, without the pictures.

Preparing himself for his first interview with Grace, Simon had disregarded this portrait entirely. She must be quite different by now, he’d thought; more dishevelled; less self-contained; more like a suppliant; quite possibly insane. He was conducted to her temporary cell by a keeper, who’d locked him in with her, after warning him that she was stronger than she looked and could give a man a devilish bite, and advising him to call for help if she became violent.

As soon as he saw her, he knew that this wouldn’t happen. The morning light fell slantingly in through the small window high up on the wall, illuminating the corner where she stood. It was an image almost mediaeval in its plain lines, its angular clarity: a nun in a cloister, a maiden in a towered dungeon, awaiting the next day’s burning at the stake, or else the last-minute champion come to rescue her. The cornered woman; the penitential dress falling straight down, concealing feet that were surely bare; the straw mattress on the floor; the timorous hunch of the shoulders; the arms hugged close to the thin body, the long wisps of auburn hair escaping from what appeared at first glance to be a chaplet of white flowers —

especially the eyes, enormous in the pale face and dilated with fear, or with mute pleading — all was as it should be. He’d seen many hysterics at the Salpêtrière in Paris who’d looked very much like this. He approached her with a calm and smiling face, presenting an image of goodwill — which was a true image, after all, because goodwill was what he felt. It was important to convince such patients that you, at least, did not believe them to be mad, since they never believed it themselves. But then Grace stepped forward, out of the light, and the woman he’d seen the instant before was suddenly no longer there. Instead there was a different woman — straighter, taller, more self-possessed, wearing the conventional dress of the Penitentiary, with a striped blue and white skirt beneath which were two feet, not naked at all but enclosed in ordinary shoes. There was even less escaped hair than he’d thought: most of it was tucked up under a white cap.

Her eyes were unusually large, it was true, but they were far from insane. Instead they were frankly assessing him. It was as if she were contemplating the subject of some unexplained experiment; as if it were he, and not she, who was under scrutiny.

Remembering the scene, Simon winces. I was indulging myself, he thinks. Imagination and fancy. I must stick to observation, I must proceed with caution. A valid experiment must have verifiable results. I must resist melodrama, and an overheated brain.

There’s a scuffling outside the door, then a thumping. It must be his breakfast. He turns his back, and can feel his neck retracting down into his collar like a turtle’s into its shell. “Come in,” he calls, and the door flies open.

“Here’s your food,” bawls Dora. The tray bumps down; she marches out, and the door bangs shut behind her. Simon has a fleeting and unbidden image of her, strung up by the ankles in a butcher-shop window, with cloves stuck into her and a rind on her like a sugared ham. The association of ideas is truly remarkable, he thinks, once one begins to observe its operations in one’s own mind. Dora — Pig —

Ham, for instance. In order to get from the first term to the third, the second term is essential; though from the first to the second, and from the second to the third, is no great leap. He must make a note of it: Middle term essential. Perhaps a maniac is simply one for whom these associative tricks of the brain cross the line that separates the literal from the merely fanciful, as may happen under the influence of fevers, and of somnambulistic trances, and of certain drugs. But what is the mechanism? For there must be one. Is the clue to be found in the nerves, or in the brain itself? To produce insanity, what must first be damaged, and how?

His breakfast must be getting cold, if Dora has not deliberately chilled it in advance. He levers himself out of his chair, disentangling his long legs, stretches himself and yawns, and goes over to the other table, the one with the tray on it. Yesterday his egg was like india-rubber; he’d mentioned it to his landlady, the wan Mrs. Humphrey, and she must have admonished Dora, because today the egg is so undercooked as to be scarcely jellied, with a blueish tinge to it like an eyeball.

Curse the woman, he thinks. Sullen, brutish, vengeful; a mind that exists at a sub-rational level, yet cunning, slippery and evasive. There’s no way to corner her. She’s a greased pig. A piece of toast cracks like slate between his teeth. Dearest Mother, he composes in his head. The weather here is very good; the snow is almost gone, spring is in the air, the sun is warming the lake, and already the vigorous green tips of —

Of what? He has never known much about flowers.

Chapter 8

I am sitting in the sewing room, at the head of the stairs in the Governor’s wife’s house, in the usual chair at the usual table with the sewing things in the basket as usual, except for the scissors. They insist on removing those from within my reach, so if I want to cut a thread or trim a seam I have to ask Dr. Jordan, who takes them out of his vest pocket and returns them to it when I have finished. He says he does not feel any such rigmarole is necessary, as he considers me to be entirely harmless and in control of myself. He appears to be a trusting man.

Although sometimes I just bite the thread off with my teeth.

Dr. Jordan has told them that what he wishes is an atmosphere of relaxation and calm, it is more conducive to his purposes whatever they may be, and so he recommended that I was to be kept in the same daily routine as much as possible. I continue to sleep in my allotted cell, and I wear the same clothing and eat the same breakfast, in silence if you can call it silence, forty women, most of them in here for nothing worse than stealing, who sit chewing their bread with their mouths open and slurping their tea in order to make a noise of some sort even if not speech, with an edifying Bible passage read out loud. You can have your own thoughts then, but if you laugh you must pretend you are coughing or choking; choking is better, if choking they hit you on the back, but if coughing they have the doctor. A hunk of bread, a mug of weak tea, meat at dinner but not much of it, because overfeeding on rich foods stimulates the criminal organs of the brain, or so say the doctors, and the guards and keepers then repeat it to us. In that case, why are their own criminal organs not more stimulated, as they eat meat and chickens and bacon and eggs and cheese, and as much as they can get. That is why they are so fat. It is my opinion that they sometimes take what is intended for us, which would not surprise me in the least, as it is dog eat dog around here and they are the bigger dogs.

After breakfast I am brought over to the Governor’s mansion as usual, by two of the keepers who are men and not above making a joke amongst themselves when out of hearing of the higher authorities. Well Grace says the one, I see you have a new sweetheart, a doctor no less, has he gone down on his knees yet or have you lifted your own up for him, he’d better keep a sharp eye out or you’ll have him flat on his back. Yes says the other, flat on his back in the cellar with his boots off and a bullet through his heart. Then they laugh; they consider this very comical.

I try to think of what Mary Whitney would say, and sometimes I can say it. If you really thought that of me you should hold your dirty tongues, I said to them, or one dark night I’ll have them out of your mouths roots and all, I won’t need a knife, I’ll just take hold with my teeth and pull, and not only that I’ll thank you to keep your filthy screw’s hands to yourself.

Now can’t you take a bit of fun, I’d welcome it if I was you says the one, we’re the only men that’s ever going to lay a hand on you for the rest of your life, you’re shut up in there like a nun, come now, confess you’re longing for a tumble, you was ready enough with that runty little James McDermott before they stretched his crooked neck for him, the murdering bastard, and That’s the way Grace, says the other, up on your high horse, just like a spotless maiden, no legs on you at all, you’re as pure as an angel you are, in a pig’s ear as if you’d never seen the inside of a man’s bedroom in the tavern in Lewiston, we heard about that, putting on your stays and stockings you was when you was nabbed, but I’m glad to see there’s still a touch of the old hellfire left, they ain’t worked it out of you yet. I like a bit of spirit in a woman, says the one, Or a whole bottleful says the other, gin leads to sin, God bless it, there’s nothing like a little fuel to make the fire burn. Drunker the better says the one, and out stone cold is the best, then you don’t have to listen to them, there’s nothing worse than a squalling whore. Were you noisy Grace, says the other, Did you squeal and moan, did you wiggle underneath that swarthy little rat, looking at me to see what I’ll say. Sometimes I say I won’t have that kind of talk, which makes them laugh heartily; but as a rule I say nothing.

And that is the way we pass the time, out to the prison gateway, Who goes there oh it’s only you, Good day Grace, got your two young men with you have you, tied to your apron strings, a wink and a nod and then along the street, each holding fast to an arm, they don’t need to do that but they like it, they lean in on me closer and closer until I am squeezed between them, through the mud, over the puddles, around the piles of horse dung, past the trees in bloom in the fenced yards, their tassels, their flowers like pale yellow-green caterpillars dangling, and the dogs barking and the carriages and wagons passing, splashing through the water in the road, and the people staring because it’s obvious where we have come from, they can tell by my clothing, until we go up the long drive with herbaceous borders and around to the servants’ entrance, and Here she is all safe and sound, she tried to escape didn’t you Grace, tried to give us the slip, she’s a cunning one for all her big blue eyes, well better luck next time my girl, you should’ve hitched up your petticoats higher and shown a clean pair of heels and some ankle while you was at it, says the one. Oh no, higher still, says the other, hoisted them up around your neck, you should’ve gone off like a ship in full sail, arse to the wind, we would’ve been smitten by your dazzling charms, knocked on the head like lambs at slaughter, struck by lightning we would’ve been, you would’ve got clean away. They grin at each other and laugh, they have been showing off. They have been talking to each other all this time, and not to me.

They are a low class of person.

I do not have the run of the house as before. The Governor’s wife is still frightened of me; she’s afraid I will have another fit, and she doesn’t want any of her best teacups broken; you would think she never heard anyone scream before. So I do not dust these days, or carry in the tea tray or empty the chamber pots or make up the beds. Instead I am set to work in the back kitchen, cleaning the pots and pans in the scullery, or else I work in the laundry. I do not mind that so much as I always liked doing the laundry, it is hard work and roughens the hands, but I like the clean smell afterwards. I help the regular laundress, old Clarrie, who is part coloured and used to be a slave once, before they did away with it here. She is not afraid of me, she doesn’t mind me or care what I may have done, even if I killed a gentleman; she only nods, as if to say, So that’s one less of them. She says I am a steady worker and pull my share and don’t waste the soap, and I know the treatment of fine linen, I have the way of it, and also how to get out the stains, even from the blonde lace, which is not easy to come by; and a good clear starcher too, and can be trusted not to burn the things in ironing, and that is enough for her.

At noon we go into the kitchen and Cook gives us what is left over, from the larder; at the very least some bread and cheese and meat broth but usually something more, as Clarrie is a favourite of hers and is known to have a temper if crossed, and the Governor’s wife swears by her, especially for laces and ruffles, and says she is a treasure and has no equal, and would be annoyed to lose her, so she is not stinted; and because I am with her neither am I.

It’s better food than I’d get on the inside of the walls. Yesterday we had the chicken carcass and all that was on it. There we sat at the table like two foxes in the henhouse gnawing the bones. They make such a fuss about the scissors upstairs, but the whole kitchen is bristling with knives and skewers all over like a porcupine, I could slip one into my apron pocket as easy as rolling off a log, but of course they never even think about that. Out of sight out of mind is their motto, and below stairs is like below ground as far as they are concerned, and little do they know that the servants carry away more out the back door with a spoon than the master can bring in the front door with a shovel; the trick of it is to do it little by little. One small knife would never be missed, and the best place to hide it would be in my hair, under my cap, well pinned in, as it would be a nasty surprise if it fell out at the wrong time. We cut up the chicken carcass with one of the knives, and Clarrie ate the two little oysters off the bottom, near the stomach you might say, she likes to get those if they are left, and she being the senior has first choice. We did not say much to each other but we grinned, because eating this chicken was so good. I ate the fat off the back and the skin, I sucked the rib bones, then I licked my fingers like a cat; and after we were done, Clarrie had a quick smoke of her pipe on the step, and then it was back to work. Miss Lydia and Miss Marianne between them dirty a lot of washing, although much of it is not what I would call dirty at all; I believe they try things on in the morning and change their minds, and then take the things off and drop them carelessly on the floor and step on them, and then into the wash they must go.

After the hours have gone by and the sun on the clock upstairs has moved around to the middle of the afternoon, Dr. Jordan arrives at the front door. I listen for the knocking and the ringing and the clatter of the maid’s footsteps, and then I am taken up the back stairs, my hands washed as white as snow with the soap from the laundry and my fingers all wrinkled from the hot water like someone newly drowned, but red and rough all the same, and then it is time to sew.

Dr. Jordan sits down in the chair across from me; he has a notebook which he puts on the table. He always brings something with him; the first day it was a dried flower of some sort, blue it was, the second day a winter pear, the third an onion, you never know what he will bring, although he inclines to the fruits and vegetables; and at the beginning of each talk he asks me what I think about this thing he has brought, and I say something about it just to keep him happy, and he writes it down. The door must be kept open at all times because there cannot be even a suspicion, no impropriety behind closed doors; how comical if they only knew what goes on every day during my walk here. Miss Lydia and Miss Marianne pass by on the stairs and peep in, they want to have a look at the Doctor, they are as curious as birds. Oh I believe I left my thimble in here, Good day Grace, I hope you are feeling yourself again, Do excuse us please Dr. Jordan, we do not mean to disturb you. They give him ravishing smiles, the word has gone around that he is unmarried and with money of his own, although I do not think either of them would settle for a Yankee doctor if they could get something better; however they like to practise their charms and attractions on him. But after he has smiled at them with his uneven smile, he frowns. He doesn’t pay much attention to them, they are only silly young girls and not the reason he is here. I am the reason. So he does not wish our talk to be interrupted.

On the first two days there was not much talk to interrupt. I kept my head down, I did not look at him, I worked away at my quilt blocks, for the quilt I am making for the Governor’s wife, there are only five blocks left to be finished. I watched my needle go in and out, although I believe I could sew in my sleep, I’ve been doing it since I was four years old, small stitches as if made by mice. You need to start very young to be able to do that, otherwise you can never get the hang of it. The main colours are a double-pink print with a branch and flower in the lighter pink, and an indigo with white doves and grapes. Or else I looked over the top of Dr. Jordan‘s head, at the wall behind him. There’s a framed picture there, flowers in a vase, fruits in a bowl, in cross-stitch, done by the Governor’s wife, clumsily too as the apples and peaches look square and hard, as if they’re carved out of wood. Not one of her best efforts, which must be why she’s hung it in here and not in a spare bedchamber. I could do better myself with my eyes closed.

It was difficult to begin talking. I had not talked very much for the past fifteen years, not really talking the way I once talked with Mary Whitney, and Jeremiah the peddler, and with Jamie Walsh too before he became so treacherous towards me; and in a way I had forgotten how. I told Dr. Jordan that I did not know what he wanted me to say. He said it wasn’t what he wanted me to say, but what I wanted to say myself, that was of interest to him. I said I had no wants of that kind, as it was not my place to want to say anything.

Now Grace, he said, you must do better than that, we made a bargain.

Yes Sir, I said. But I cannot think of anything.

Then let us discuss the weather, he said; you must have some observations to make on it, since that is the way everyone else begins.

I smiled at that, but I was just as shy. I was not used to having my opinions asked, even about the weather and especially by a man with a notebook. The only men of that kind I ever encountered were Mr. Kenneth MacKenzie, Esq., the lawyer, and I was afraid of him; and those in the courtroom at the trial, and in the jail; and they were from the newspapers, and made up lies about me. Since I could not talk at first, Dr. Jordan talked himself. He told me about how they were building railroads everywhere now, and how they laid down the tracks, and how the engines worked, with the boiler and the steam. This had the effect of setting me more at my ease, and I said I would like to ride in a railway train like that; and he said that perhaps someday I would. I said I did not think so, being sentenced to be here for life, but then you never can tell what time will have in store for you. Then he told me about the town where he lives, which is called Loomisville, in the United States of America, and he said it was a mill town although not as prosperous as before the cheap cloth from India came in. He said his father once owned a mill, and the girls who worked in it came from the country, and were kept very tidy and lived in boarding houses provided, with respectable and sober landladies and no drink allowed and sometimes a parlour piano, and only twelve hours of work per day and Sunday mornings off for church; and by the moist and reminiscing look in his eye, I would not be surprised to learn that he once had a sweetheart among them.

Then he said these girls were taught to read, and had their own magazine which they published, with literary offerings. And I said what did he mean by literary offerings, and he said they wrote stories and poems which they put into it, and I said under their own names? He said yes, which I said was bold of them, and didn’t it scare away the young men, as who would want a wife like that, writing things down for everyone to see, and made-up things at that, and I would never be so brazen. And he smiled, and said it did not appear to trouble the young men, as the girls saved up their wages for their dowries, and a dowry was always acceptable. And I said that at least after they got married, they would be too busy to make up any more stories, because of all the children.

Then I was sad, as I remembered that I would never be married now, or have any babies of my own; though there can be too much of a good thing you could say, and I would not like to have nine or ten and then die of it, as happens to many. But still it is a regret.

When you are sad it is best to change the subject. I asked if he had a mother living, and he said yes, although her health was not good; and I said that he was fortunate to have a mother living, as mine was not. And then I changed the subject again, and said I was very fond of horses, and he told me about his horse Bess, that he had as a boy. And after a time, I don’t know how it was, but little by little I found I could talk to him more easily, and think up things to say.

And that is how we go on. He asks a question, and I say an answer, and he writes it down. In the courtroom, every word that came out of my mouth was as if burnt into the paper they were writing it on, and once I said a thing I knew I could never get the words back; only they were the wrong words, because whatever I said would be twisted around, even if it was the plain truth in the first place. And it was the same with Dr. Bannerling at the Asylum. But now I feel as if everything I say is right. As long as I say something, anything at all, Dr. Jordan smiles and writes it down, and tells me I am doing well. While he writes, I feel as if he is drawing me; or not drawing me, drawing on me — drawing on my skin

— not with the pencil he is using, but with an old-fashioned goose pen, and not with the quill end but with the feather end. As if hundreds of butterflies have settled all over my face, and are softly opening and closing their wings.

But underneath that is another feeling, a feeling of being wide-eyed awake and watchful. It’s like being wakened suddenly in the middle of the night, by a hand over your face, and you sit up with your heart going fast, and no one is there. And underneath that is another feeling still, a feeling like being torn open; not like a body of flesh, it is not painful as such, but like a peach; and not even torn open, but too ripe and splitting open of its own accord.

And inside the peach there’s a stone.

Chapter 9

From Dr. Samuel Bannerling, M.D., The Maples, Front Street, Toronto, Canada West; to Dr. Simon Jordan, M.D., care of Mrs. William P. Jordan, Laburnum House, Loomisville, Massachusetts, The United States of America. Redirected, care of Major C.D. Humphrey, Lower Union Street, Kingston, Canada West.

April 20th, 1859.

Dear Dr. Jordan:

I am in receipt of your request to Dr. Workman of April 2nd, concerning the convict Grace Marks, and of a note from him asking that I supply you with any further information at my disposal. I must inform you at once that Dr. Workman and I have not always seen eye to eye. In my estimation — and I was at the Asylum for more years than he has yet been there — his policies of leniency have led him to undertake a fool’s errand, namely the transforming of sows’ ears into silk purses. Most who suffer from the more severe nervous and cerebral disorders cannot be cured, but merely controlled; for which purposes, physical restraint and correction, a restricted diet, and cupping and bleeding to reduce excessive animal spirits, have in the past proven efficacious enough. Although Dr. Workman claims to have obtained positive results in several cases previously considered hopeless, these supposed cures will no doubt in time prove to have been superficial and temporary. The taint of insanity is in the blood, and cannot be removed with a little soft soap and flannel.

Dr. Workman had the opportunity of examining Grace Marks for a few weeks only, whereas I had her under my care for over a year; and therefore his opinions on the subject of her character cannot be worth a great deal. He was, however, perspicacious enough to discover one pertinent fact — namely that, as a lunatic, Grace Marks was a sham — a view previously arrived at by myself, although the authorities of that time refused to act upon it. Continuous observation of her, and of her contrived antics, led me to deduce that she was not in fact insane, as she pretended, but was attempting to pull the wool over my eyes in a studied and flagrant manner. To speak plainly, her madness was a fraud and an imposture, adopted by her in order that she might indulge herself and be indulged, the strict regimen of the Penitentiary, where she had been placed as a just punishment for her atrocious crimes, not having been to her liking. She is an accomplished actress and a most practised liar. While among us, she amused herself with a number of supposed fits, hallucinations, caperings, warblings and the like, nothing being lacking to the impersonation but Ophelia’s wildflowers entwined in her hair; but she did well enough without them, as she managed to deceive, not only the worthy Mrs. Moodie, who like many high-minded females of her type, is inclined to believe any piece of theatrical twaddle served up to her, provided it is pathetic enough, and whose inaccurate and hysterical account of the whole sad affair you have no doubt read; but also several of my own colleagues, this latter being an outstanding example of the old rule of thumb, that when a handsome woman walks in through the door, good judgment flies out through the window.

Should you nonetheless decide to examine Grace Marks at her current place of abode, be pleased to consider yourself amply warned. Many older and wiser heads have been enmeshed in her toils, and you would do well to stop your ears with wax, as Ulysses made his sailors do, to escape the Sirens. She is as devoid of morals as she is of scruples, and will use any unwitting tool that comes to hand.

I should alert you also to the possibility that, once having involved yourself in her case, you will be besieged by a crowd of well-meaning but feeble-minded persons of both sexes, as well as clergymen, who have busied themselves on her behalf. They pester the Government with petitions for her release, and will attempt in the name of charity to waylay and conscript you. I have had repeatedly to beat them away from my door, whilst informing them that Grace Marks has been incarcerated for a very good reason, namely the vicious acts which she has committed, and which were inspired by her degenerate character and morbid imagination. To let her loose upon an unsuspecting public would be irresponsible to the last degree, as it would merely afford her the opportunity of gratifying her bloodthirsty tastes.

I am confident that, should you choose to explore the matter further, you will arrive at the same conclusions as have already been arrived at, by,

Your obedient servant,

(Dr.) Samuel Bannerling, M.D.

Chapter 10

This morning Simon is to meet with Reverend Verringer. He’s not looking forward to it: the man has studied in England, and is bound to give himself airs. There is no fool like an educated fool, and Simon will have to trot out his own European credentials, and flourish his erudition, and justify himself. It will be a trying interview, and Simon will be tempted to start drawling, and saying I reckon, and acting the British Colonial version of the wooden-nutmeg-peddling Yankee, just to annoy. He must restrain himself, however; too much depends on his good behaviour. He keeps forgetting he is no longer rich, and therefore no longer entirely his own man.

He stands in front of his looking glass, attempting to tie his stock. He hates cravats and stocks, and wishes them at the Devil; he resents his trousers as well, and all stiff and proper clothing generally. Why does civilized man see fit to torture his body by cramming it into the strait-jacket of gentlemanly dress?

Perhaps it is a mortification of the flesh, like a hair shirt. Men ought to be born in little woollen suits which would grow with them over the years, thus avoiding the whole business of tailors, with their endless fussing and snobberies.

At least he isn’t a woman, and thus not obliged to wear corsets, and to deform himself with tight lacing. For the widely held view that women are weak-spined and jelly-like by nature, and would slump to the floor like melted cheese if not roped in, he has nothing but contempt. While a medical student, he dissected a good many women — from the labouring classes, naturally — and their spines and musculature were on the average no feebler than those of men, although many suffered from rickets. He’s wrestled his stock into the semblance of a bow. It’s lopsided, but the best he can do; he can no longer afford a valet. He brushes down his unruly hair, which rebounds instantly. Then he takes up his topcoat, and on second thought his umbrella. There’s weak sunlight making its way in through the windows, but it’s too much to hope that it won’t rain. Kingston in the spring is a watery place. He makes his way stealthily down the front stairs, but not stealthily enough: his landlady has taken to waylaying him on some trivial matter or another, and she glides out from the parlour now, in her faded black silk and lace collar, clutching her customary handkerchief in one thin hand, as if tears are never far off. She was obviously a beauty not so long ago, and could still be one if she would take the trouble to be so, and if the centre parting in her fair hair were not quite so severe. Her face is heart-shaped, her skin milky, her eyes large and compelling; but although her waist is slender, there is something metallic about it, as if she is using a short length of stove-pipe instead of stays. Today she wears her habitual expression of strained anxiety; she smells of violets, and also of camphor — she is doubtless prone to headaches —

and of something else he can’t quite place. A hot dry smell. A white linen sheet being ironed?

As a rule, Simon avoids her type of attenuated and quietly distraught female, although doctors attract such women like magnets. Still, there’s a severe and unadorned elegance about her — like a Quaker meeting house — which has its appeal; an appeal which, for him, is aesthetic only. One does not make love to a minor religious edifice.

“Dr. Jordan,” she says. “I wanted to ask you…” She hesitates. Simon smiles, prompting her to get on with it. “Your egg this morning — was it satisfactory? This time I cooked it myself.”

Simon lies. To do otherwise would be unpardonably rude. “Delicious, thank you,” he says. In reality the egg had the consistency of the excised tumour a fellow medical student once slipped into his pocket for a joke — both hard and spongy at the same time. It takes a perverse talent to maltreat an egg so completely.

“I am so glad,” she says. “It is so difficult to get good help. You are going out?”

The fact is so obvious that Simon merely inclines his head.

“There is another letter for you,” she says. “The servant mislaid it, but I have found it again. I have placed it on the hall table.” She says this tremulously, as if any letter for Simon must be tragic in content. Her lips are full, but fragile, like a rose on the verge of collapse.

Simon thanks her, says goodbye, picks up his letter — it’s from his mother — and leaves. He doesn’t wish to encourage long conversations with Mrs. Humphrey. She’s lonely — as well she might be, married to the sodden and straying Major — and loneliness in a woman is like hunger in a dog. He has no wish to be the recipient of dolorous afternoon confidences, behind drawn curtains, in the parlour. Nonetheless she’s an interesting study. Her idea of herself, for instance, is much more exalted than her present circumstances warrant. Surely there was a governess in her childhood: the set of her shoulders proclaims it. So fastidious and stern was she when he was arranging for the rooms, that he’d found it embarrassing to ask whether washing was included. Her manner had implied that she was not in the habit of discussing the state of men’s personal items with them, such painful matters being best left to the servants.

She’d made it clear, although indirectly, that it was much against her will that she’d been forced to let lodgings. This was the first time she’d done so; it was due to an encumbrance which would surely prove temporary. Moreover, she was very particular — A gentleman of quiet habits, if willing to take meals elsewhere, her notice had read. When, after an inspection of the rooms, Simon had said he wished to take them, she’d hesitated, and then asked for two months’ rent in advance. Simon had seen the other lodgings on offer, which were either too expensive for him or much dirtier, so he’d agreed. He’d had the sum with him in ready cash. He’d noted with interest the blend of reluctance and eagerness she’d displayed, and the nervous flush this conflict had brought to her cheeks. The subject was distasteful to her, almost indecent; she hadn’t wanted to touch his money in a naked state, and would have preferred it to be enclosed in an envelope; yet she’d had to restrain herself from snatching at it. It was much the same attitude — the coyness about fiscal exchange, the pretence that it hadn’t really taken place, the underlying avidity — that characterized the better class of French whore, although the whores were less gauche about it. Simon doesn’t consider himself an authority in this area, but he would have failed in his duty to his vocation if he’d refused to profit by the opportunities Europe afforded —

opportunities which were by no means so available, nor so various, in New England. To heal humanity one must know it, and one cannot know it from a distance; one must rub elbows with it, so to speak. He considers it the duty of those in his profession to probe life’s uttermost depths, and although he has not probed very many of them as yet, he has at least made a beginning. He’d taken, of course, all proper precautions against disease.

Outside the house he encounters the Major, who stares at him as if through a dense fog. His eyes are pink, his stock is askew, and he is missing a glove. Simon tries to imagine what sort of debauch he’s been on, and how long it has lasted. There must be a certain freedom in not having a good name to lose. He nods, and lifts his hat. The Major looks affronted.

Simon sets out to walk to Reverend Verringer’s residence, which is on Sydenham Street. He hasn’t hired a carriage or even a horse; the expense would not be not justified, as Kingston is not a large place. The streets are muddy and cluttered with horse dung, but he has good boots. The door of Reverend Verringer’s impressive manse is opened by an elderly female with a face like a pine plank; the Reverend is unmarried, and has need of an irreproachable housekeeper. Simon is ushered into the library. It is so self-consciously the right sort of library that he has an urge to set fire to it. Reverend Verringer rises from a leather-covered wing chair, and offers him a hand to shake. Although his hair and his skin are equally thin and pallid, his handshake is surprisingly firm; and despite his unfortunately small and pouting mouth — like a tadpole’s, thinks Simon — his Roman nose indicates a strong character, his high-domed forehead a developed intellect, and his somewhat bulging eyes are bright and keen. He cannot be over thirty-five; he must be well connected, thinks Simon, to have risen so fast in the Methodist establishment, and to have procured such an affluent congregation. Considering the books, he must have money of his own. Simon’s father used to have books like that.

“I am glad you could come, Dr. Jordan,” he says; his voice is less affected than Simon has feared. “It is kind of you to oblige us. Your time must be valuable indeed.” They sit, and coffee appears, brought in by the slab-faced housekeeper on a tray which is plain in design, but nonetheless of silver. A Methodist tray: not flamboyant, but quietly affirmative of its own worth.

“It is a matter of great professional interest to me,” says Simon. “It is not often that such a case presents itself, with so many intriguing features.” He speaks as if he personally has treated hundreds of cases. The thing is to look interested, but not too eager, as if the favour is being conferred by him. He hopes he’s not blushing.

“A report from you would be a considerable help to our Committee,” says Reverend Verringer, “should such a report favour the theory of innocence. We would attach it to our Petition; Government authorities are much more inclined nowadays to take expert opinion into consideration. Of course,” he adds, with a shrewd glance, “you will be paid the sum agreed on, no matter what your conclusions.”

“I fully understand,” says Simon with what he hopes is an urbane smile. “You studied in England, I think?”

“I began the pursuit of my vocation as a member of the Established Church,” says Reverend Verringer,

“but then had a crisis of conscience. Surely the light of God’s word and grace is available to those outside the Church of England, and through more direct means than the Liturgy.”

“I would certainly hope so,” says Simon politely.

“The eminent Reverend Egerton Ryerson, of Toronto, followed much the same course. He is a leader in the crusade for free schooling, and for the abolition of alcoholic beverages. You have heard of him, naturally.”

Simon has not; he emits an ambiguous h’m, which he hopes will pass for agreement.

“You yourself are…?”

Simon dodges. “My father’s family was Quaker,” he says. “For many years. My mother is a Unitarian.”

“Ah yes,” says Reverend Verringer. “Of course, everything is so different in the United States.” There is a pause, while they both consider this. “But you do believe in the immortality of the soul?”

This is the trick question; this is the trap that might put paid to his chances. “Oh yes, of course,” says Simon. “It is not to be doubted.”

Verringer seems relieved. “So many scientific men are casting doubts. Leave the body to the doctors, I say, and the soul to God. Render unto Caesar, you might say.”

“Of course, of course.”

“Dr. Binswanger spoke very highly of you. I had the pleasure of meeting him while travelling on the Continent — Switzerland is of great interest to me, for historical reasons — and I talked with him of his work; and therefore it was natural for me to consult him, when seeking an authority on this side of the Atlantic. An authority” — he hesitates — “who would be within our means. He said you are well up on cerebral diseases and nervous afflictions, and that in matters concerning amnesia you are on your way to becoming a leading expert. He claims you are one of the up-and-coming men.”

“It is kind of him to say so,” Simon murmurs. “It is a baffling area. But I have published two or three little papers.”

“Let us hope that, at the conclusion of your investigations, you will be able to add to their number, and to shed light on a puzzling obscurity; for which society will give you due recognition, I am sure. Especially in such a famous case.”

Simon notes to himself that, although tadpole-mouthed, Reverend Verringer is no fool. Certainly he has a sharp nose for other men’s ambitions. Could it be that his switch from the Church of England to the Methodists had coincided with the falling political star of the former in this country, and the rising one of the latter?

“You have read the accounts I sent you?”

Simon nods. “I can see your dilemma,” he says. “It is difficult to know what to believe. Grace appears to have told one story at the inquest, another one at the trial, and, after her death sentence had been commuted, yet a third. In all three, however, she denied ever having laid a finger on Nancy Montgomery. But then, some years later, we have Mrs. Moodie’s account, which amounts to a confession by Grace, of having actually done the deed; and this story is in accordance with James McDermott’s dying words, just before he was hanged. Since her return from the Asylum, however, you say she denies it.”

Reverend Verringer sips at his coffee. “She denies the memory of it,” he says.

“Ah yes. The memory of it,” says Simon. “A proper distinction.”

“She could well have been convinced by others that she had done something of which she is innocent,”

says Reverend Verringer. “It has happened before. The so-called confession in the Penitentiary, of which Mrs. Moodie has given such a colourful description, took place after several years of incarceration, and during the long regime of Warden Smith. The man was notoriously corrupt, and most unfit for his position. He was accused of behaviour of the most shocking and brutal kind; his son, for instance, was permitted to use the convicts for target practice, and on one occasion actually put out an eye. There was talk of his abusing the female prisoners also, in ways you may well imagine, and I am afraid there is no doubt about it; a full enquiry was held. It is to Grace Marks’ mistreatment at his hands that I attribute her interlude of insanity.”

“There are some who deny that she was in fact insane,” says Simon.

Reverend Verringer smiles. “You have heard from Dr. Bannerling, I suppose. He has been against her from the beginning. We on the Committee have appealed to him — a favourable report from him would have been invaluable to our cause — but he is intransigent. A Tory, of course, of the deepest dye — he would have all the poor lunatics chained up in straw, if he had his way; and all hanged who look sideways. I am sorry to say that I consider him to have been a part of the same corrupt system that was responsible for the appointment of a coarse and profane man such as Warden Smith. I understand that there were irregularities at the Asylum as well — so much so that Grace Marks, upon her return from it, was suspected of being in a delicate condition. Happily these rumours were unfounded; but how craven

— how callous! — to attempt to take advantage of those who are not in control of themselves! I have spent much time in prayer with Grace Marks, attempting to heal the wounds caused to her by these unfaithful and blameworthy betrayers of the public trust.”

“Deplorable,” says Simon. It might be considered prurient to ask for more details. A sudden and illuminating thought strikes him — Reverend Verringer is in love with Grace Marks! Hence his indignation, his fervour, his assiduousness, his laborious petitions and committees; and above all, his desire to believe her innocent. Does he wish to winkle her out of jail, vindicated as a spotless innocent, and then marry her himself? She’s still a good-looking woman, and would no doubt be touchingly grateful to her rescuer. Abjectly grateful; abject gratitude in a wife being, no doubt, a prime commodity on Verringer’s spiritual exchange.

“Fortunately there was a change of government,” says Reverend Verringer. “But even so, we do not wish to proceed with our present Petition, until we know ourselves to be on absolutely firm ground; which is why we have taken the step of calling upon you. I must tell you frankly that not all the members of our Committee were in favour of it, but I succeeded in convincing them of the need for an informed and objective viewpoint. A diagnosis of latent insanity at the time of the murders, for instance — however, the utmost caution and rectitude must be observed. There is still a widespread feeling against Grace Marks; and this is a most partisan country. The Tories appear to have confused Grace with the Irish Question, although she is a Protestant; and to consider the murder of a single Tory gentleman — however worthy the gentleman, and however regrettable the murder — to be the same thing as the insurrection of an entire race.”

“Every country is plagued by factionalism,” says Simon tactfully.

“Even apart from that,” says Reverend Verringer, “we are caught between the notion of a possibly innocent woman, whom many believe to be guilty, and a possibly guilty woman, whom some believe to be innocent. We would not want the opponents of reform to be given an opportunity of crowing over us. But, as our Lord says, ”The truth shall make you free.“”

“The truth may well turn out to be stranger than we think,” says Simon. “It may be that much of what we are accustomed to describe as evil, and evil freely chosen, is instead an illness due to some lesion of the nervous system, and that the Devil himself is simply a malformation of the cerebrum.”

Reverend Verringer smiles. “Oh, I doubt it will go so far as that,” he says. “No matter what science may accomplish in the future, the Devil will always be at large. I believe you have been invited to the Governor’s house on Sunday afternoon?”

“I have had that honour,” says Simon politely. He has been intending to make his excuses.

“I look forward to seeing you there,” says Reverend Verringer. “I myself arranged the invitation for you. The Governor’s excellent wife is an invaluable member of our Committee.”

Chapter 11

At the Governor’s residence, Simon is directed to the parlour, which is almost large enough to be called a drawing room. All possible surfaces of it are upholstered; the colours are those of the inside of the body — the maroon of kidneys, the reddish purple of hearts, the opaque blue of veins, the ivory of teeth and bones. He imagines the sensation it would produce if he were to announce this aperçu out loud. He is greeted by the Governor’s wife. She is a handsome woman of forty-five or so, of an obvious respectability, but dressed in the hectic manner of the provinces, where the ladies appear to feel that if one row of lace and ruching is good, three must be better. She has the alarmed, slightly pop-eyed look that signals either an overly nervous disposition or a disease of the thyroid.

“I am so glad you could honour us,” she says. She tells him that the Governor is regrettably away on business, but that she herself is deeply interested in the work he is doing; she has such a respect for modern science, and especially for modern medicine; such a number of advances have been made. Especially the ether, which has spared so much distress. She fixes him with a deep and meaningful gaze, and Simon sighs inwardly. He is familiar with that expression: she is about to make him an unsolicited gift of her symptoms.

When he first received his medical degree, he was unprepared for the effect it would have on women; women of the better classes, married ladies especially, with blameless reputations. They seemed drawn to him as if he possessed some priceless but infernal treasure. Their interest was innocent enough — they had no intention of sacrificing their virtue to him — yet they longed to entice him into shadowy corners, to converse with him in lowered voices, to confide in him — timorously, and with quavers, because he also inspired fear. What was the secret of his allure? The face he saw in the mirror, which was neither ugly nor handsome, could scarcely account for it.

After a time he thought he knew. It was knowledge they craved; yet they could not admit to craving it, because it was forbidden knowledge — knowledge with a lurid glare to it; knowledge gained through a descent into the pit. He has been where they could never go, seen what they could never see; he has opened up women’s bodies, and peered inside. In his hand, which has just raised their own hands towards his lips, he may once have held a beating female heart.

Thus he is one of the dark trio — the doctor, the judge, the executioner — and shares with them the powers of life and death. To be rendered unconscious; to lie exposed, without shame, at the mercy of others; to be touched, incised, plundered, remade — this is what they are thinking of when they look at him, with their widening eyes and slightly parted lips.

“I suffer so terribly,” the Governor’s wife’s voice begins. Coyly, as if displaying an ankle, she relates a symptom — agitated breathing, a constriction around the ribs — with a hint of more and richer ones to follow. She has a pain — well, she doesn’t like to say exactly where. Whatever could be the cause of it?

Simon smiles, and says he is no longer practising general medicine.

After a momentary thwarted frown, the Governor’s wife smiles too, and says she would like him to meet Mrs. Quennell, the celebrated Spiritualist and advocate of an enlarged sphere for women, and the leading light of our Tuesday discussion circle, as well as of the spiritual Thursdays; such an accomplished person, and so widely travelled, in Boston and elsewhere. Mrs. Quennell, in her huge crinoline-supported skirt, resembles a lavender-coloured Bavarian cream; her head appears to be topped with a small grey poodle. In her turn she presents Simon to Dr. Jerome DuPont, of New York, who is visiting just now, and who has promised to give a demonstration of his remarkable powers. He is well known, says Mrs. Quennell, and has stayed with Royalty in England. Or not exactly Royalty; but aristocratic families, all the same.

“Remarkable powers?” says Simon politely. He would like to know what they are. Possibly the fellow claims to levitate, or personifies a dead Indian, or produces spirit rappings, like the celebrated Fox sisters. Spiritualism is the craze of the middle classes, the women especially; they gather in darkened rooms and play at table-tilting the way their grandmothers played at whist, or they emit voluminous automatic writings, dictated to them by Mozart or Shakespeare; in which case being dead, thinks Simon, has a remarkably debilitating effect on one’s prose style. If these people were not so well-to-do, their behaviour would get them committed. Worse, they populate their drawing rooms with fakirs and mountebanks, all of them swathed in the grubby vestments of a self-proclaimed quasi-holiness, and the rules of society dictate that one must be polite to them.

Dr. Jerome DuPont has the deep liquid eyes and intense gaze of a professional charlatan; but he smiles ruefully, and gives a dismissive shrug. “Not very remarkable, I’m afraid,” he says. He has a trace of a foreign accent. “Such things are merely another language; if one speaks it, one takes it simply for granted. It is others who find it remarkable.”

“You converse with the dead?” asks Simon, his mouth twitching.

Dr. DuPont smiles. “Not I,” he says. “I am what you might call a medical practitioner. Or an investigative scientist, like yourself. I am a trained Neuro-hypnotist, of the school of James Braid.”

“I have heard of him,” says Simon. “A Scotsman, isn’t he? A noted authority on clubfoot and strabismus, I believe. But surely professional medicine does not recognize these other claims of his. Is not this Neuro-hypnotism simply the reanimated corpse of Mesmer’s discredited Animal Magnetism?”

“Mesmer posited a magnetic fluid encircling the body, which was certainly erroneous,” says Dr. DuPont.

“Braid’s procedures involve the nervous system alone. I might add that those who dispute his methods have not tried them. They are more accepted in France, where the doctors are less prone to craven orthodoxies. They are more useful in hysterical cases, than in others, of course; they cannot do much for a broken leg. But in cases of amnesia” — he gives a faint smile — “they have frequently produced astounding, and, I may say, very rapid results.”

Simon feels at a disadvantage, and changes the subject. “DuPont — is it a French name?”

“The family was French Protestant,” says Dr. DuPont. “But only on the father’s side. He was an amateur of chemistry. I myself am an American. I have visited France professionally, of course.”

“Perhaps Dr. Jordan would like to make one of our party,” says Mrs. Quennell, breaking in. “On our spiritual Thursdays. Our dear Governor’s wife finds them such a comfort, to know that her little one, now on the other side, is so well and happy. I am sure Dr. Jordan is a sceptic — but we always welcome sceptics!” The tiny bright eyes beneath the doggy coiffure twinkle roguishly at him.

“Not a sceptic,” says Simon, “only a medical doctor.” He has no intention of being lured into some compromising and preposterous rigmarole. He wonders what Verringer is thinking of, to include such a woman on his Committee. But evidently she is wealthy.

“Physician, heal thyself,” says Dr. DuPont. He seems to be making a joke.

“Where do you stand on the Abolitionist question, Dr. Jordan?” says Mrs. Quennell. Now the woman is turning intellectual, and will insist on a belligerent discussion of politics, and will doubtless order him to abolish slavery in the South at once. Simon finds it tiresome to be constantly accused, in his individual person, of all the sins of his country, and especially by these Britishers, who seem to think that a conscience recently discovered excuses them for not having had any conscience at all at an earlier period. On what was their present wealth founded, but on the slave trade; and where would their great mill towns be without Southern cotton?

“My grandfather was a Quaker,” he says. “As a boy, I was taught never to open cupboard doors, in case some poor fugitive might be concealed within. He always felt that to put his own safety at risk was worth a good deal more than barking at others from behind the protection of a fence.”

“Stone walls do not a prison make,” says Mrs. Quennell gaily.

“But all scientists must keep an open mind,” says Dr. DuPont. He appears to be back in their previous conversation.

“I am sure Dr. Jordan‘s mind is as open as a book,” says Mrs. Quennell. “You are looking into our Grace, we are told. From the spiritual point of view.”

Simon can see that if he tries to explain the difference between the spirit, in her sense of the word, and the unconscious mind, in his, he will get hopelessly tangled; so he merely smiles and nods.

“What approach are you taking?” says Dr. DuPont. “To restore her vanished memory.”

“I have begun,” says Simon, “with a method based on suggestion, and the association of ideas. I am attempting, gently and by degrees, to reestablish the chain of thought, which was broken, perhaps, by the shock of the violent events in which she was involved.”

“Ah,” says Dr. DuPont, with a superior smile. “Slow but steady wins the race!” Simon would like to kick him.

“We are sure she is innocent,” says Mrs. Quennell. “All of us on the Committee! We are convinced of it!

Reverend Verringer is getting up a Petition. It is not the first, but we are in hopes that this time we will be successful. ”Once more unto the breach‘ is our motto.“ She gives a girlish wiggle. ”Do say you are on our side!“

“If at first you don’t succeed,” says Dr. DuPont solemnly.

“I have not drawn any conclusions, as yet,” says Simon. “In any case, I am less interested in her guilt or innocence, than in…”

“Than in the mechanisms at work,” says Dr. DuPont.

“That is not quite how I would put it,” says Simon.

“It is not the tune played by the musical box, but the little cogs and wheels within it, that concern you.”

“And you?” says Simon, who is beginning to find Dr. DuPont more interesting.

“Ah,” says DuPont. “For me it is not even the box, with its pretty pictures on the outside. For me, it is only the music. The music is played by a physical object; and yet the music is not that object. As Scripture says, ”The wind bloweth where it listeth.“”

“St. John,” says Mrs. Quennell. “”That which is born of the Spirit is spirit.“”

“”And that which is born of the flesh is flesh,“” says DuPont. The two of them peer at him with an air of gentle but unanswerable triumph, and Simon feels as if he is suffocating under a mattress.

“Dr. Jordan,” says a soft voice at his elbow. It is Miss Lydia, one of the Governor’s wife’s two daughters. “Mama sent me to ask if you have yet seen her scrapbook.”

Simon inwardly blesses his hostess, and says he has not had that pleasure. The prospect of murky engravings of the beauty spots of Europe, their borders decorated with paper fern fronds, is not usually alluring to him, but at the moment it beckons like an escape. He smiles and nods, and is led away. Miss Lydia places him on a tongue-coloured settee, then fetches a heavy book from the adjacent table and arranges herself beside him. “She thought you might find it of interest, because of whatever it is you are doing with Grace.”

“Oh?” says Simon.

“It has got all of the famous murders in it,” Miss Lydia explains. “My mother cuts them out and pastes them in, and the hangings, too.”

“Does she indeed?” asks Simon. The woman must be a ghoul as well as a hypochondriac.

“It helps her to make up her mind, as to which among the prisoners may be worthy objects of charity,”

says Miss Lydia. “Here is Grace.” She opens the book across their knees and leans in his direction, gravely instructive. “I take an interest in her; she has remarkable abilities.”

“Like Dr. DuPont?” Simon says.

Miss Lydia stares. “Oh, no. I do not go in for any of that. I would never let myself be hypnotized, it is so immodest! I mean that Grace has remarkable abilities as a dressmaker.”

There is a subdued recklessness about her, thinks Simon; when she smiles, both bottom and top teeth show. But at least she is healthy-minded, unlike the mother. A healthy young animal. Simon is conscious of her white throat, encircled with a modest ribbon ornamented with a rosebud, as befits an unmarried girl. Through layers of delicate fabric, her arm presses against his. He is not an insensible block, and although Miss Lydia‘s character, like that of all such girls, must be unformed and childish, she has a very small waist. A cloud of scent rises from her, lily of the valley, enveloping him in olfactory gauze. But Miss Lydia must be unconscious of the effect she is producing on him, being necessarily ignorant of the nature of such effects. He crosses his legs.

“Here is the execution,” says Miss Lydia. “Of James McDermott. It was in several of the newspapers. This one is The Examiner. ”

Simon reads:

What a morbid appetite for such sights, must exist in society, when so large an assemblage, in the present state of our roads, had collected, to witness the dying agony, of an unfortunate but criminal fellow being!

Can it be supposed that public morals are improved, or the tendency to the commission of flagrant crimes repressed, by such public sights as these.

“I am inclined to agree,” says Simon.

“I would have attended it if I had been there,” says Miss Lydia. “Wouldn’t you?”

Simon is taken aback by such directness. He disapproves of public executions, which are unhealthily exciting and produce bloodthirsty fancies in the weaker-minded part of the population. But he knows himself; and, given the opportunity, his curiosity would have overcome his scruples. “In my professional capacity, perhaps,” he says cautiously. “But I wouldn’t have allowed my sister to attend, supposing I had one.”

Miss Lydia widens her eyes. “But why not?” she says.

“Women should not attend such grisly spectacles,” he says. “They pose a danger to their refined natures.” He’s conscious of sounding pompous.

In the course of his travels, he’s encountered many women who could scarcely be accused of refined natures. He has seen madwomen tearing off their clothes and displaying their naked bodies; he has seen prostitutes of the lowest sort do the same. He’s seen women drunk and swearing, struggling together like wrestlers, pulling the hair from each other’s heads. The streets of Paris and London swarm with them; he’s known them to make away with their own infants, and to sell their young daughters to wealthy men who hope that by raping children they will avoid disease. So he is under no illusions as to the innate refinement of women; but all the more reason to safeguard the purity of those still pure. In such a cause, hypocrisy is surely justified: one must present what ought to be true as if it really is.

“Do you think I have a refined nature?” says Miss Lydia.

“I am certain of it,” says Simon. He wonders if that is her thigh he can feel against his, or only part of her dress.

“I am sometimes not so sure,” says Miss Lydia. “There are people who say that Miss Florence Nightingale does not have a refined nature, or she would not have been able to witness such degrading spectacles without impairing her health. But she is a heroine.”

“There is no doubt of that,” says Simon.

He suspects she’s flirting with him. It’s far from disagreeable, but, perversely, it makes him think of his mother. How many acceptable young girls has she trailed discreetly before him, like feathered fishing lures? She arranges them, always, next to a vase of white flowers. Their morals have been irreproachable, their manners candid as spring water; their minds have been presented to him as unbaked pieces of dough which it would be his prerogative to mould and form. As one season’s crop of girls proceeds into engagement and marriage, younger ones keep sprouting up, like tulips in May. They are now so young in relation to Simon that he has trouble conversing with them; it’s like talking to a basketful of kittens.

But his mother has always confused youth with malleability. What she really wants is a daughter-in-law who can be moulded, not by Simon, but by herself; and so the girls continue to be floated past him, and he continues to turn away indifferently, and to be gently accused by his mother of laziness and ingratitude. He rebukes himself for it — he’s a sad dog and a cold fish — and takes care to thank his mother for her pains, and to reassure her: he will marry eventually, but he isn’t ready for it yet. First he must pursue his researches; he must accomplish something of value, discover something of note; he has his name to make.

He already has a name, she sighs reproachfully; a perfectly good name, which he seems determined to exterminate by refusing to pass it on. At this point she always coughs a little, to signify that his was a difficult birth, which almost killed her, and fatally weakened her lungs — a medically implausible effect which, during his boyhood, used to reduce him to a jelly of guilt. If he would only produce a son, she continues — having, of course, married first — she would die happy. He teases her by saying that in that case it would be sinful of him to marry at all, since to do so would amount to matricide; and he adds —

to soften the acerbity — that he can do much better without a wife than without a mother, and especially such a perfect mother as herself; at which she gives him a sharp look which tells him she knows several tricks worth two of that, and is not deceived. He’s too clever for his own good, she says; he needn’t think he can get round her by flattery. But she’s mollified.

Sometimes he’s tempted to succumb. He could choose one of her proffered young ladies, the richest one. His daily life would be orderly, his breakfasts would be edible, his children would be respectful. The act of procreation would be undergone unseen, prudently veiled in white cotton — she, dutiful but properly averse, he within his rights — but need never be mentioned. His home would have all the modern comforts, and he himself would be sheltered in velvet. There are worse fates.

“Do you think that Grace has one?” says Miss Lydia. “A refined nature. I am sure she did not do the murders; although she is sorry for not having told anyone about them, afterwards. James McDermott must have been lying about her. But they say she was his paramour. Is it true?”

Simon feels himself blushing. If she’s flirting, she isn’t conscious of it. She is too innocent to understand her lack of innocence. “I couldn’t say,” he murmurs.

“Perhaps she was abducted,” says Miss Lydia dreamily. “In books, woman are always being abducted. But I have not personally known anyone that was. Have you?”

Simon says he has never had such an experience.

“They cut off his head,” says Miss Lydia in a lower voice. “McDermott’s. They have it in a bottle, at the University in Toronto.”

“Surely not,” says Simon, disconcerted afresh. “The skull may have been preserved, but surely not the entire head!”

“Like a big pickle,” says Miss Lydia with satisfaction. “Oh, look, Mama wants me to go and talk to Reverend Verringer. I would rather talk to you — he is so pedagogical. She thinks he is good for my moral improvement.”

Reverend Verringer has indeed just come into the room, and is smiling at Simon with annoying benevolence, as if Simon is his protégé. Or perhaps he is smiling at Lydia. Simon watches Lydia as she glides across the room; she has that oiled walk they cultivate. Left to himself on the settee, he finds himself thinking of Grace, as he sees her every weekday, seated opposite him in the sewing room. In her portrait she looks older than she was, but now she looks younger. Her complexion is pale, the skin smooth and unwrinkled and remarkably fine in texture, perhaps because she’s been kept indoors; or it may be the sparse prison diet. She’s thinner now, less full in the face; and whereas the picture shows a pretty woman, she is now more than pretty. Or other than pretty. The line of her cheek has a marble, a classic, simplicity; to look at her is to believe that suffering does indeed purify. But in the closeness of the sewing room, Simon can smell her as well as look at her. He tries to pay no attention, but her scent is a distracting undercurrent. She smells like smoke; smoke, and laundry soap, and the salt from her skin; and she smells of the skin itself, with its undertone of dampness, fullness, ripeness — what? Ferns and mushrooms; fruits crushed and fermenting. He wonders how often the female prisoners are allowed to bathe. Although her hair is braided and coiled up under her cap, it too gives off an odour, a strong musky odour of scalp. He is in the presence of a female animal; something fox-like and alert. He senses an answering alertness along his own skin, a sensation as of bristles lifting. Sometimes he feels as if he’s walking on quicksand.

Every day he has set some small object in front of her, and has asked her to tell him what it causes her to imagine. This week he’s attempted various root vegetables, hoping for a connection that will lead downwards: Beet — Root Cellar — Corpses, for instance; or even Turnip — Underground — Grave. According to his theories, the right object ought to evoke a chain of disturbing associations in her; although so far she’s treated his offerings simply at their face value, and all he’s got out of her has been a series of cookery methods.

On Friday he tried a more direct approach. “You may be perfectly frank with me, Grace,” he had said.

“You need hold nothing back.”

“I have no reason not to be frank with you, Sir,” she said. “A lady might conceal things, as she has her reputation to lose; but I am beyond that.”

“What do you mean, Grace?” he said.

“Only, I was never a lady, Sir, and I’ve already lost whatever reputation I ever had. I can say anything I like; or if I don’t wish to, I needn’t say anything at all.”

“You don’t care about my good opinion of you, Grace?”

She gave him a quick sharp look, then continued her stitching. “I have already been judged, Sir. Whatever you may think of me, it’s all the same.”

“Judged rightly, Grace?” He could not resist asking.

“Rightly or wrongly does not matter,” she said. “People want a guilty person. If there has been a crime, they want to know who did it. They don’t like not knowing.”

“Then you have given up hope?”

“Hope of what, Sir?” she asked mildly.

Simon felt foolish, as if he’d committed a breach of etiquette. “Well — hope of being set free.”

“Now why would they want to do that, Sir?” she said. “A murderess is not an everyday thing. As for my hopes, I save that for smaller matters. I live in hopes of having a better breakfast tomorrow than I had today.” She smiled a little. “They said at the time that they were making an example of me. That’s why it was the death sentence, and then the life sentence.”

But what does an example do, afterwards? thought Simon. Her story is over. The main story, that is; the thing that has defined her. How is she supposed to fill in the rest of the time? “Do you not feel you have been treated unjustly?” he said.

“I don’t know what you mean, Sir.” She was threading the needle now; she wet the end of the thread in her mouth, to make it easier, and this gesture seemed to him all at once both completely natural and unbearably intimate. He felt as if he was watching her undress, through a chink in the wall; as if she was washing herself with her tongue, like a cat.

Five - Broken Dishes

Chapter 12

This is the ninth day I have sat with Dr. Jordan in this room. The days haven’t been all in a row, as there are the Sundays, and on some other days he did not come. I used to count from my birthdays, and then I counted from my first day in this country, and then from Mary Whitney’s last day on earth, and after that from the day in July when the worst things happened, and after that I counted from my first day in prison. But now I am counting from the first day I spent in the sewing room with Dr. Jordan, because you can’t always count from the same thing, it gets too tedious and the time stretches out longer and longer, and you can scarcely bear it.

Dr. Jordan sits across from me. He smells of shaving soap, the English kind, and of ears; and of the leather of his boots. It is a reassuring smell and I always look forward to it, men that wash being preferable in this respect to those that do not. What he has put on the table today is a potato, but he has not yet asked me about it, so it is just sitting there between us. I don’t know what he expects me to say about it, except that I have peeled a good many of them in my time, and eaten them too, a fresh new potato is a joy with a little butter and salt, and parsley if available, and even the big old ones can bake up very beautiful; but they are nothing to have a long conversation about. Some potatoes look like babies’

faces, or else like animals, and I once saw one that looked like a cat. But this one looks just like a potato, no more and no less. Sometimes I think that Dr. Jordan is a little off in the head. But I would rather talk with him about potatoes, if that is what he fancies, than not talk to him at all. He has a different cravat on today, it is red with blue spots or blue with red spots, a little bit loud for my taste but I cannot look at him steady enough to tell. I need the scissors and so I ask for them, and then he wants me to begin talking, so I say, Today I will finish the last block for this quilt, after this the blocks will all be sewn together and it will be quilted, it is meant for one of the Governor’s young ladies. It is a Log Cabin.

A Log Cabin quilt is a thing every young woman should have before marriage, as it means the home; and there is always a red square at the centre, which means the hearth fire. Mary Whitney told me that. But I don’t say this, as I don’t think it will interest him, being too common. Though no more common than a potato.

And he says, What will you sew after this? And I say, I don’t know, I suppose I will be told, they don’t use me for the quilting, only for the blocks because it is such fine work, and the Governor’s wife said I was thrown away on the plain sewing such as they do at the Penitentiary, the postbags and uniforms and so forth; but in any case the quilting is in the evening, and it is a party, and I am not invited to parties. And he says, If you could make a quilt all for yourself, which pattern would you make?

Well there is no doubt about that, I know the answer. It would be a Tree of Paradise like the one in the quilt chest at Mrs. Alderman Parkinson’s, I used to get it out on the pretence of seeing if it needed mending, just to admire it, it was a lovely thing, made all of triangles, dark for the leaves and light for the apples, the work very fine, the stitches almost as small as I can do myself, only on mine I would make the border different. Hers is a Wild Goose Chase border, but mine would be an intertwined border, one light colour, one dark, the vine border they call it, vines twisted together like the vines on the mirror in the parlour. It would be a great deal of work and would take a long time, but if it were mine and just for me to have, I would be willing to do it.

But what I say to him is different. I say, I don’t know, Sir. Perhaps it would be a Job’s Tears, or a Tree of Paradise, or a Snake Fence; or else an Old Maid’s Puzzle, because I am an old maid, wouldn’t you say, Sir, and I have certainly been very puzzled. I said this last thing to be mischievous. I did not give him a straight answer, because saying what you really want out loud brings bad luck, and then the good thing will never happen. It might not happen anyway, but just to make sure, you should be careful about saying what you want or even wanting anything, as you may be punished for it. This is what happened to Mary Whitney.

He writes down the names of the quilts. He says, Trees of Paradise, or Tree?

Tree, Sir, I say. You can have a quilt with more than one of them on it, I have seen four with their tops pointed into the middle, but it is still called Tree.

Why is that, do you suppose, Grace? he says. Sometimes he is like a child, he is always asking why. Because that is the name of the pattern, Sir, I say. There is also the Tree of Life, but that is a different pattern. You can also have a Tree of Temptation, and there is the Pine Tree, that is very nice as well. He writes that down. Then he picks up the potato and looks at it. He says, Is it not wonderful that such a thing grows under the ground, you might say it is growing in its sleep, out of sight in the darkness, hidden from view.

Well, I don’t know where he expects a potato to grow, I have never seen them dangling about on the bushes. I say nothing, and he says, What else is underground, Grace?

There would be the beets, I say. And the carrots are the same way, Sir, I say. It is their nature. He seems disappointed in this answer, and does not write it down. He looks at me and thinks. Then he says, Have you had any dreams, Grace?