Aether Spirit (15 page)

“Don’t worry about it,” Claire said. “I mean, about being rude. All I need is a place to sleep. I don’t expect anything.”

Then she wondered if
she
was being rude. She’d always been kind to her family’s servants, but she’d learned early on not to try to have a conversation with them or her aunt would scold her. This woman obviously held some authority, but could they talk as equals?

Lacey led Claire to a room at the end of the hall. “This is one of our guest rooms. Bathroom’s shared, but no one’s staying at this end, so you should have it to yourself. Sheets and towels are on the bed.”

“Thank you.”

“If you need anything, just holler.”

“I will.”

Lacey shuffled out of the room, and Claire took in her surroundings. The walls were stained from long-ago water damage but clean. She quickly made up the small bed, attended to her bodily needs in the bathroom next door, and returned to her room to find her nightgown and robe clean and laid out on the bed. The familiar items almost made her cry. She dressed for the nighttime and, after dousing the lamp, she slipped between the sheets.

“Well, that was exciting.” The girl’s voice startled Claire just as she was about to fall into a deep sleep.

“Can’t you leave me alone for once?” Claire asked. “I’m exhausted.”

“Oh, well excuse me, Miss. Finally someone can see me, and I’m supposed to let you do stupid alive things like sleep?”

The general’s daughter had been fifteen when she died. Claire reminded herself what she was like at that age. Or tried to. She could remember fifteen, but something about trying to remember sixteen brought her up against a sharp stabbing pain in her right temple.

“Ouch,” she hissed.

“What is it? You can’t die. I need someone to help me, but they need to be alive.”

“Help you with what?”

“I’m not sure. Something happened before the attack, and it has something to do with why you can see me when no one could before you got here. Except for Mrs. Soper.”

“How about you let me sleep, and we can figure it out tomorrow night?”

“Fine.” A very alive-sounding huff followed the word, but Claire sensed she was alone again.

How had she gotten mixed up in that strange situation? She wished she could ask Mrs. Soper more about the ghost, but then she remembered the kind old woman might be well on her way to becoming one herself.

That wasn’t a good thought.

Claire flipped to her other side and looked out of the window at the moon. She’d enjoyed the walk with Doctor Radcliffe, although she felt guilty for taking him away from the hospital for so long. She only wished she could figure out why he went hot and cold on her. He was so kind one moment and then curt the next. Was it something about her? It wouldn’t be so bad if she didn’t find herself thinking of him so often. She admitted to herself that she’d gone to his office not only to review charts, but also in the hope she’d see him and be able to offer him…what? Some sort of comfort? Conversation? She had an odd need to take care of him. But her aunt, who held the family purse strings, wouldn’t approve of her being interested in a black man.

“Augh!” The spike of pain that flashed through her skull was stronger than any she’d had yet, and although it only lasted an instant, it left her panting. She clamped her lips shut, hoping that she hadn’t actually cried out.

A knock at the door made her sit up and then collapse back on to the bed.

Drat, someone heard me.

“Are you all right, Doctor?” It was Lacey.

“I think so.” Claire covered her eyes against the beam of light that speared them when the door opened. Shuffling footsteps approached the bed.

“You didn’t sound all right,” Lacey said. She smoothed Claire’s hair back from her temple with a cool hand. “You’re not the only one havin’ nightmares tonight. Let me get something to help you sleep.”

“I don’t mean to be any trouble,” Claire said. “I’ll be fine. I just get headaches sometimes.”

“That sounded like more than a regular headache.”

“I’ll be fine, I promise.”
I just hope I don’t have nightmares.

“Do you get these headaches often?”

“Sometimes. Something is making them happen more here.”

“Hang on. I’ll get you something.”

Claire was too tired to argue. Soon Lacey returned with a mug of something warm, liquid, and smelling of honey and spirits.

“What is it?” Claire asked. “It smells really strong. I’m not a drinker.”

“The rum’s to mask the herbs and help you sleep,” Lacey replied. “Now drink it all down. I put a little something extra in there for the pain.”

Claire did as she was told. Warmth spread from her stomach to her limbs, and she relaxed into the mattress and pillow.

“Good night, now.” Lacey said and left.

What had caused the headache? It was another clue to the past. Claire tried to chase after the thought, but there was a barrier between her and what she tried to think, and the medicine wasn’t helping. Instead of controlling her mind, she floated into a dream with tantalizing hints of memory.

Chapter Fifteen

Boston, 3 April 1864

Claire was walking down Beacon Hill when she saw him. It was only from the back, dark hair and a light suit with a dapper light blue hat. It must be Sunday, and they were going to walk through the park. She knew how it would end and that she was dreaming, but she was going to enjoy it. It had been so long since she’d been kissed. Truly, she knew she had been, but not by whom, and she always woke before it happened.

This time it would—she would stay asleep long enough to see his face and enjoy his lips.

Before she could reach him, the dream changed, and she was in Paris.

Now her heart hammered in her throat. Dreams of Paris never ended well. She struggled to open her eyes, but each lift of her heavy eyelids only brought her to the same scene. She walked down a boulevard at what she hoped appeared to be a relaxed pace, but she was alert for the men who followed her. Serious young men in hats that seemed nice enough at first glance, but a second look revealed their shabbiness. Medical students studying under the famous Doctor Charcot couldn’t afford the best but hoped to eventually once they graduated and brought their pedigree to different places hoping for the same cures Charcot worked on hysterical women.

Someone had decided the hysterics might benefit from a trip to the theatre, and Claire had decided to take the opportunity to escape and return to her family in Boston. Her mind wasn’t quite working right, and she didn’t have a plan beyond the initial step. She accomplished that, slipping out during the second act after having observed and felt that their chaperon was becoming very engrossed in the story. She told the top hats—her name for the students—she was going to visit the ladies’ water closet and found a door leading to a servants’ exit. Without really thinking about it, she left through the door.

Once outside, she wasn’t sure what to do. This wasn’t a familiar part of the city, but she thought she could find a rail station or some other means of getting home. All she had to do was appear natural and ignore the bombardment of emotions from the people around her.

Damn, I was hoping that was just an effect of being in the hospital with the hysterics and their loud feelings.

The shabby hats were getting closer, surrounding her. She ducked into a building with small shops on the ground floor. The aromas of cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, and others assailed her nose, and the lumps in the dim space resolved into barrels. A dark-skinned man with a pointed beard and a turban stood and put down his book when she entered.

“Ah, Mademoiselle,” the proprietor said. “What can I interest you in today? We just got a lovely shipment of cloves from our vendor who has access to the finest in the east.”

Claire smiled but feared it came out as more of a grimace. “Do you have something to settle the stomach?” she asked. She scooted back so she was wedged between two windows and pretended to lean back on one hand with the other across her lower abdomen. Without her body blocking the sunlight, she could see the play of light and shadow from outside. So far the undulations in light and gray were consistent with normal street traffic. She’d certainly had enough time at the hospital to study the different patterns of shadow movement.

Like Plato,
she thought, and stifled a giggle behind a cough.

The man’s smile vanished. She mentally kicked herself—now he was concerned she’d vomit in his shop, perhaps into a barrel of his expensive spices, and he’d guessed she didn’t have the funds to pay for an entire shipment. People with money flashed it as soon as they entered places like this so they’d be shown into a private room and given the hoity-toity treatment.

She’d learned that somewhere, from someone with an Irish accent, but she couldn’t chase the wisp of a memory now.

“I have some ginger root in the back where it’s cooler,” he said. “Let me get you some. Or my wife can brew you some tea.”

“That would be lovely,” Claire said. “Is there a place in the back where I could sit down? I fear I might have gotten overheated.”

The shadows on the wall moved in a frenetic pattern, and echoes of the desire to find her came through the windows. She tightened herself against the wall as much as she could lest the top hats peek in and see her. A multicolored flash caught her attention and was then gone.

Wake up, wake up,
she chanted to herself, but she couldn’t. She could only play along with the dream and hope she woke at some point soon, before—

The bell over the door jingled, and Claire squeezed her eyes shut like it would help.

“Farouq, my good man, have you seen—? Ah, there she is. In here, boys!”

“What are you doing with that young lady?” the spice shop proprietor asked. “Is she a criminal?”

“No, just one of our hysterics. This one’s an American, so she decided to take the idea of liberty into her own hands.”

The others laughed at his joke, but Claire stiffened. Just one of their hysterics? Like the patients at the Salpêtrière had no names or identities, just their illnesses? No wonder so many of them didn’t improve. It was difficult to heal when one was treated as a disease, not a person. She would be a better healer than this useless lot. That gave her an idea…

She lifted her chin and straightened her shoulders. She’d known someone who could project confidence in the face of prejudice, she just didn’t remember exactly who. Regardless, she drew on the vague memory of that person’s example.

“And you can see how they treat not just their patients, but one of their colleagues. I am not hysterical, I am Doctor Claire McPhee, and this is all a very sorry joke.”

Her ruse didn’t work, of course. Perhaps if she’d had money to pay the spice shop owner when she came in, he would have brought her to the back, and they would have had tea, and she would have been able to convince him she wasn’t a hysterical woman, but rather a woman of means who had gotten in some trouble and needed help.

The top hats bundled her out and back to the hospital, but rather than returning her to the ward, they put her in an office. Claire frantically tried to escape in her dream, while her sleeping self put almost as much effort into waking. But it was to no avail—the moment she’d dreaded arrived with the person of Doctor Pierre Maurice, Charcot’s right-hand man, and the dream turned into a true nightmare. Where Charcot had a grandfatherly air about him, Maurice was known to be cold and to only see what he felt was important, not what was actually in front of him. The patients feared him only slightly more than they hated him.

“So you tried to run, my little American,” he said.

“I am not your little anything. I want to go home. You’re not doing anything for me here!”

“That is the self-destructive part of your mind speaking. If you were to go home now without further treatment, you would only be prompted to hysteria by even the littlest thing that reminds you of your experience.”

“You’ve taken enough of my memory,” she said. “I am not an object or animal to experiment on.”

“
Au contraire
, it is the animal part of your mind that is speaking now. We must try further to bury it lest it lead you into further damage.” He backed her into a corner and grabbed her wrists. “You can make this easy, or I shall call in my assistants to restrain you.”

Claire knew she’d lost. His assistants were never careful about how they touched the women. She could at least avoid the indignity of being groped. She allowed herself to be led to the reclining couch with the leather straps and to be restrained.

“Now, my dear, focus on this object and allow yourself to drift away into sleep…”

* * * * *

Instead of sleeping in her dream, Claire woke in a cold sweat in the present, in her comfortable but narrow bed in the Negroes’ quarters. She hadn’t remembered her escape attempt before now—only that she woke very upset from dreams about Paris. Had it really happened like that? Had she really been the victim of a monster hypnotist who was convinced that the only way to save her was to take away a large swath of memory?

At least she now remembered her father had taught her how to approach shop owners. She relaxed into the recollection of his lilting voice and wondered where he was, if he was in a fort nearby or across the country. Or if what she suspected was true and that her mother and aunt were keeping his death from her in an attempt not to upset her. She wouldn’t think of that now. She imagined what it would be like to be at home, back in her childhood, with her father smoothing her hair back from her face and telling her stories.

“Once upon a time, there was a princess, and she had a golden ball…”

* * * * *

Chad blinked at the light on the horizon. At least he thought it was light. The morning fog obscured the sky, but it seemed brighter than when he’d walked out for a break and to wake himself up fifteen minutes before. He’d been awake most of the night in his office, only catching a little sleep here and there between rounding. He’d given Perkins the night to go and recover. They really needed another physician to help, but resources were stretched thin. Rumors of negotiations with the Confederate States had caused a lot of doctors to retire from their military obligations, leaving those who remained covering crazy shifts. It wasn’t so bad when the front was quiet, but on days like today…