“Frances,” he said, recovering as best he could. “Aren’t you the strong one?”
Releasing his hand, she stood up, crossed the room, and closed the bedroom door. Then she moved back to sit on the bed beside him.
“We must have a serious talk about Robert,” she said.
“Why? Is something wrong?”
“No,” she said. “Nothing’s wrong. Doctor Percival thinks highly of him. He asked if we had considered what steps might be taken toward giving Robert his independence.”
“Independence?” Sebastian said. “I know he has a strong and capable mind, but he thrives with the support of those who love him.”
“Don’t mistake me,” she said, “I love Robert as much as you, but we need to face the fact that he’ll outlive us both. And when we’re gone, what then? An institution, Sebastian, to see out his days. He has no other family here.” She glanced down at the revolver. “You spend your days in pursuit of lunatics, some of them dangerous,” she said. “He’s lost one parent. If he loses the other, how will I support him alone?”
Sebastian was lost for a reply. The challenges surrounding Robert had always been immediate ones. Questions of the longer term had never arisen.
He said, “What do you propose?”
Frances said, “Doctor Percival has observed Robert’s phenomenal powers of analysis. He says that in the matter of employment you’ve set your sights far too low. With your permission he wishes to explore the possibility of finding Robert a placement in one of our scientific institutions.”
Sebastian could not quite believe it. “When was this discussed?” he said.
“This afternoon. At the museum. It was one of the purposes of the visit. Imagine it, Sebastian. He might even progress to an income and rooms of his own. With a housekeeper to take care of his needs, of course.”
“Does that mean you would leave me too?”
“No, Sebastian,” she said. “But I’ve been Robert’s faithful keeper for long enough. I can hope someday to be his loving aunt. I would not leave you. Unless I understood that you wanted me to.”
For Sebastian it was as if doors were opening and his life, after hurtling along blindly in the wake of Elisabeth’s death, were being pushed to make a necessary turn.
“Can we discuss this again?” he said.
“We will,” Frances said, and rose to her feet. She steadied herself with a touch on his arm, and he responded with a supporting hand. There was a surprising solidity to her; her looks had always been so delicate that he’d imagined her to be almost without substance.
“Thank you,” she said, and squeezed his hand before she stepped around him to leave.
FORTY-THREE
On her way home that evening, Evangeline stopped at a post office and spent a penny-farthing on a letter card to inform her employers of a continuing indisposition. If they suspected her, let them dismiss her. She might forgo their good references, but she had wits enough to get around the problem without resorting to forgery.
The next day, she met Sebastian Becker at Waterloo Station and they made their second journey out to Broadmoor.
The same deputy superintendent met them in the carriage yard between the gates, and from there they passed on into the asylum proper. The enclosing wall was topped with spikes and broken glass. Within it stood a central hall with residential wings to either side of it, and a terrace walk for fresh air and exercise. One wing contained a women’s prison, where it was said that most of the inmates had been committed for the murder of their children.
Somerville was waiting in his cell with the door open. This time he seemed pleased to see them. The tale that he had begun in reluctance had become his unburdening.
Sebastian said, “Are you ready for us, Doctor?”
“I believe I am,” Somerville said.
He began-
I can’t say what it was-grief, fever, some parasitic invasion from her dousing in the river-but before long both mother and son were dying together. I was tempted to believe that the boy was dead already, rotting and breathing in some collapse of the natural order. Neither could be moved. The woman threw convulsions, and screamed if anyone touched her.
Since Sir Owain never speaks of his wife now, I shall.
I cannot say I knew her. No one on the expedition did. Most thought her aloof, and some were critical of her for bringing a child into a hostile wilderness without any grasp of what life in a wilderness entailed. But to my mind, her only crime had been to obey her husband, whose determination to treat this far-off place as but a distant corner of his own domain had led to all their sufferings.
He had to know it. When a man who demands his own way in all things is faced with the disastrous consequences of his actions, he has to know who brought them on. But can a man’s mind bear up under such knowledge? I don’t believe that it can. I stand before you as a living example. I may present myself in a rational manner, but I have found myself capable of acts outside my own control. Sir Owain is no different. And I believe we saw the proof of this in the days that followed.
At night, we heard those animal sounds outside the camp again. Sir Owain took his hunting rifle, and with no thought of personal danger he struck out into the darkness.
“Show yourself!” he’d call out. “You won’t have them! Don’t think you can hide from me!” And we heard him for some time after that, as he stumbled deeper and deeper into the jungle.
That became a routine for the next few days. I don’t believe that Sir Owain slept at all. By day he sat in the tent between his dying wife and child. At night he was out there at the first sound, blaming all of his ills on that which he could not see, seeking to confront and defy it, but never being given the chance. The rifle was always in his hand, and all of us stayed out of his way; no one wanted to be mistaken and shot.
He came back to the camp on the second morning, after roaming abroad all night, and tried to tell me a tale.
“Somerville,” he said. “You must listen. You must. It was a revelation. I’ve had a revelation.”
He was wild-eyed, and close to the brink of madness. He spoke of a confrontation with the beast that had been following us and that threatened all our lives. But the details kept changing, as if he were speaking of a dream and did not realize it.
He saw it now, he said. We had ventured into the midst of a land where creatures roamed unseen, where all the things that threatened us had forms and names but stayed beyond human perception.
“So …,” I said. “What exactly did you see?”
“Nothing!” he said excitedly. “Because they’re only there when you don’t look!”
I told him that he was making no sense.
“They’re waiting,” he insisted. “When my guard’s down, that’s when they’ll strike.”
His wife and child slipped away that afternoon, within half an hour of each other. The first I knew of it was when Sir Owain closed up the tent and went to sit by the river. His hunting rifle was in his hand. He stood it upright with the stock against the ground and the barrel pointing up at the sky.
Everyone looked to me. I entered the tent and checked both bodies for life. When I came out, the others were watching and the news must have been written on my face. I sensed a ripple pass through the camp. Not of sorrow, but of relief. It was done. Now we could leave.
I walked over and sat by Sir Owain. I eyed the gun and tried to judge his mood. He was gazing out at the spot where the two rivers met, where turbulence had capsized his vessel. I said nothing. It was minutes before he spoke.
He said, “Were they in any pain? Do you think?”
“You saw them,” I said. “They were sleeping.” And then: “We need to think about moving on.”
“One of the boats can serve as a funeral barge,” he said. “This must be done with all possible dignity.”
It took me a moment to register what he was saying.
