The Gates of Sleep

“Yes, mum,” replied a male voice, equally dispassionate. One of the Trinity. Not the person who was carrying her, who remained silent.

“Good. Come, James, follow me.”

The sound of light footsteps preceding them. Another set of stairs, a landing, more stairs. Another door.

She might not even be able to open her eyes, but there was nothing wrong with her nose. And by the scent of a fire with fircones in it, of beeswax candles and lavender, she was in a bedchamber now. “This is the young Miss Roeswood, Mary Anne,” said the female voice. “She’s ill with grief, and she’s drunk medicine that will make her sleep. Undress her and put her to bed.”

The man carrying her stooped—her head lolled back—and laid her on a soft, but very large bed, with a muffled grunt.

The light footsteps and the heavy went away; the door opened and closed again. Someone began taking off her clothing, as if she was an over-large doll, and redressed her in a nightgown. The same someone—who must have been very strong—rolled her to one side, pulled the covers back, rolled her back in place, and covered her over.

Then, more footsteps receding. The door opening and closing again. Silence.

The state she drifted into then was not exactly sleep, and not precisely waking. She seemed to drift in a fog in which she could see and hear nothing, and nothing she did affected it. There were others in this fog—she could hear them in the distance, but she could never find them, and when she called out to them, her voice was swallowed up by the endless mist.

It was, to be truthful, a horrible experience. Not at all restful. A deadly fatigue weighed her down, a malaise invaded her spirit, and despair filled her heart.

Finally, true sleep came, bringing oblivion, and with it, relief from her aching heart, at least for a time.

She woke with a start, the very feel of the bed telling her that yesterday’s nightmare had been no thing of dreams, but of reality, even before she opened her eyes. And when she did open them, it was to find that she was staring up into the ochre velvet canopy of a huge, curtained bed. She sat up.

The room in which she found herself was as large as any four of the bedrooms in Blackbird Cottage put together. It had been furnished in the French style of a King Louis—she couldn’t think of which one—all ornate baroque curlicues and spindly-legged chairs. The paper on the wall was watered silk in yellow, the cushions and coverlet more of the ochre velvet. There was a fireplace with a yellow marble mantle and hearth directly across from the foot of the bed, and a woman with brown hair tucked under a lace cap, a thin-faced creature in a crisp black-and-white maid’s uniform and a cool manner, sitting in a chair beside it, reading. When Marina sat up, she put her book down, and stood up.

“Awake, miss?” she asked, with no inflection whatsoever.

No, I’m sleepwalking, Marina thought with irritation. The headache of yesterday in her temples had been joined by one at the back of her head, and whatever vile nastiness had been in the tea had left her with a foul taste in her mouth. But she answered the question civilly enough. “Yes, I am now. How long have I been asleep?”

The maid allowed a superior smile to cross her lips. “You’ve slept the clock around, miss. It’s midmorning, two days after Boxing Day. But it’s just as well you were asleep,” the woman continued, turning and going to a wardrobe painted dark ochre, and ornamented with gilded scrollwork. “Madam has had her modiste here to make you some clothing fit to wear, and she only finished the first few items and delivered them an hour ago. You’re in mourning, after all, and you need mourning frocks. And those things you brought with you—well, they weren’t suitable.” A sniff relegated her entire wardrobe to something not worth using as rags, much less being fit to wear.

But the maid’s words could only lead Marina to one horrified conclusion. “You didn’t throw them out!” she exclaimed. “Not my clothes!”

The maid did not trouble to answer. Out of the wardrobe came a black velvet skirt, severely cut with a slight train, and a heavy black silk blouse, high-necked, and trimmed at wrists and neck with narrow black lace. Out of the drawers of a chest next to it came white silk underthings, black stockings, a corset, black satin slippers. All these were laid out at the end of the bed, and no sooner had Marina turned back the coverlet and stood up, then the maid pounced on her.

There could be no other description. Before Marina could make a move to reach for anything herself, the nightdress was whisked over her head, leaving her naked and shivering, and the maid was holding up the drawers for her to step into.

Marina had always wondered what it was like to be dressed by a lady’s maid, and now she was finding out with a vengeance. It was exactly like being a doll, and the maid was just as impersonal about the job as a woman in a toy-shop clothing one of the toys for display. In fact, the maid was ruthlessly efficient; before Marina had time to blink, the corset was on her, she had been turned to face the bed, and the woman was pulling at the laces with her knee in the small of Marina’s back! And she was pulling tightly, much more tightly than the dressmaker in Holsworthy.

“Stop!” Marina protested, as her waist was squeezed into a circumference two sizes smaller than it had ever endured before. “I can’t breathe!”

“You’ve never been properly corseted, miss,” sniffed the maid, tugging harder. “Or you’d know that a lady doesn’t need to puff and wheeze like a farm wench in a field. Shallow breaths, miss. A lady looks as if she isn’t breathing at all.”

Giving a final tug, the maid allowed Marina to stand straight up again—indeed, the corset hardly allowed any other posture. The laces were tied; three stiff petticoats, the last one of rustling black silk, came next. Then a chemise. And finally, the shirtwaist and skirt.

Feeling faint from lack of air, Marina was steered to a chair beside a dressing table with a mirror above it, both painted in dark ocher and ornamented with those baroque gold curlicues. The maid deftly unbraided her hair, brushed it out just as ruthlessly as she had done everything else and with a fine disregard for any pain caused when she encountered tangles, and proceeded to put it up in one of the pompadour hair styles that Marina had seen only in newspaper sketches. She had always longed to see her own hair like this—the arrangements looked so soft, and so very smart.

She’d had no idea that getting her hair done up in the fashionable style would involve being stuck so full of sharp-pointed hairpins that she thought her scalp was bleeding from a dozen places before the maid was through.

The maid fastened a jet cameo at her throat, and a matching jet locket on a slender chain around her neck. “There,” she said at last, implying now you’re fit to be seen.

The person staring back at Marina from the mirror was no one she recognized. The face was drawn and very white, and huge violet eyes stared back at her, with faint blue rings beneath them. Her pallor was only accentuated by the black silk of her blouse. Her hair had been arranged in the upswept style most favored by the PBs, with their delicate heart-shaped faces. It didn’t suit Marina Roeswood.

“I’ll take you down to meet your aunt now, miss,” said the maid. “I am Mary Anne, and I will be your personal servant here from now on.”

Giving her no choice in the matter, apparently. Personal maid—or watchdog for her aunt?

My own personal maid. Why does it seem as if she’s higher in consequence than I am?

Perhaps, in this household, Mary Anne was.

“What happened to my things?” she asked, in a small voice, cowed by the icy correctness of the maid’s manner. “My clothing—my books, my instruments, and my music—”

Another of those superior sniffs, and the maid looked down her long nose at Marina. “Miss could not possibly expect to wear those—frocks—in public,” Mary Anne replied. “Madam said explicitly that they would not do, they would not do at all. Not the sort of thing miss would wish to encounter Madam’s friends while wearing. However, the rest of your things have been put away in your private parlor.” She waved her hand vaguely in the direction of the door. “Now, if you will please follow me, Madam wishes to speak with you.”

As if she had a choice.

She followed the maid, who led her through that door and into a sitting room furnished in opulent reds, with a Turkey carpet on the floor, the whole done up in the style of the early part of Queen Victoria’s reign. Quite frankly,