Phoenix Rising (8 page)

CHAPTER SIX
In Which Our Lovely Miss Eliza Braun
Dares the Halls of Bedlam and Tries Her Best
To Make Amends to a Ghost from Her Past

F
or the second time in two weeks, Eliza D. Braun faced the possibility she was a right coward. Standing at the entrance to Bethlehem Royal Hospital, commonly known as Bedlam, she found her feet unwilling to carry her any farther. Looking up, the ornate gate could have been mistaken for some grand country estate—if you could ignore the writhing figures of madness above the ironwork. And from the outside it looked tidy and innocent enough, but the place was redolent with lost possibilities. It was in short, the kind of place that any sane person would avoid.

The locket in her hand felt as weighty as lead, and yet she couldn't merely ignore its message. For three days she had come here and been turned away by the nurses. He was always too ill, too lost in madness for them to let her see him.

Usually that sort of obstacle would only have fired her desire to break in—most likely with the assistance of dynamite—but this was different. Eliza was afraid to face Harrison Thorne. He'd been her partner in the Ministry and in idle moments she'd entertained the idea of his being something more. That was in the past now, and it still stung.

But it was this or find a way to be happy rotting away with Wellington Books in the Archives. It was simply not acceptable.

Tilting her chin upward at a defiant angle, Eliza set off up the path. She joined a thin trail of other visitors: mothers herding reluctant children, teary-eyed parents, and grey-faced lovers.

Not many really, for the size of the hospital; and Eliza grew suddenly aware this was about more than the locket. People's lives dried up and blew away in places like this. They had them in New Zealand too, and she knew from familial experience what to expect. That was half the problem. If she paused and allowed herself to recollect, she would see her brother Herbert's face, dirty, strained, mad, the last time she had visited him. She would then hear the wails, the screams; and she would remember how her beloved elder brother could no longer recognise her.

It was easy for Eliza to imagine that they would take one look at her and lock her up—just like him.

She shook her head. That was ridiculous. She was as sane as the next agent—so long as the next agent wasn't Harry. She had to raise a gloved hand to her mouth and stifle a light giggle at that. He would have appreciated the dark humour.

At least the Harry she remembered.

Bethlehem presented a surprisingly clean face at first, though the decorator certainly had a sense of the macabre. Tortured sculptures of Melancholy and Raving Madness stood to each side of the atrium, providing instant soberness to any fool who might try to smuggle in hope. They were more than art. These twisted, inspired visions were designed to serve as warnings to those who dared to enter the Hospital.

The competent nurse who had seen her before smiled widely on seeing Eliza approach the front window. “Miss Braun”—her starched cap bobbed in atop her curly hair—“I am so glad you came in. Mr. Thorne is actually lucid today, so you can see him.”

Eliza tried to smile back, though her stomach did a little, uncomfortable dance. “Thank you. I will need to see him in private.”

The nurse's mouth pursed a little, and so Eliza slid her Ministry credentials across the counter. The response was most satisfactory.

She did feel compelled, however, to cast nervous glances along the corridors. Naturally no one from the Ministry was watching her; but that assurance did not alter the risk she was taking. Not by a jot. If Doctor Sound ever found out about her using Ministry credentials for preferential treatment, she wouldn't have to worry about rotting down in the Archives. That she knew was for certain.

The nurse called over a male warden. “Thomas here will take you up and stay just outside the door.”

That said it all.
Gods, Harry!
Her hand tightened on the strange shape of the locket.

With a nod of thanks to the nurse, Eliza followed the silent, hunch-shouldered guard to the men's wing. The stories of Bedlam were legendary—legendary and horrific, so Eliza was relieved to find things had obviously changed. True, there were locked doors that her guardian ushered her through, but they led to large airy galleries with rooms running off them. These were the “curable” men's quarters, where inmates sat in small groups mending clothing, painting small figurines, and doing other menial tasks. One large gap-toothed man looked up from his tiny toy soldier at Eliza as she passed, and grinned.

“Pretty lady,” he called in a singsong voice. He then giggled and added, “Pretty lady go boom.”

With a start of alarm she stopped mid-stride and turned back, but the patient was once more at his task, any interest in her he might have shown now gone. Unnerved, Eliza hurried on, catching up with her guide.

A huge geared door stood before them, a veritable edifice of brass and cogs that suggested something on the other side was well worth keeping locked down. Thomas put his thick hand on a space in the doorjamb. Clockwork whirred and chugged, and the brass contracted around his palm with a bang that made Eliza jump. After a second the door rattled, and she took a step back as the door slid on tracks back into the wall.

This then must be the incurables ward
, she thought, a chill passing through her as she crossed the threshold.

The difference was immediately obvious. The smell hit her in the face like a brick, and she paused to catch her breath quickly through her mouth.

Try as they might, the caretakers of Bedlam couldn't keep the rank odor of bodily function from permeating the air. This was the Bedlam that knew no visitors, the Bedlam no one could stomach. This was the Bedlam best forgotten, unless you were a regular patron of the “show of Bethlehem.” Her warden led the way down the row of locked doors, and Eliza tried to shut out the wails and screams of those around them, but even her training was useless in this environment.

As she continued deeper into Bedlam, it haunted her that this place had more than one agent from the Ministry confined within its walls. Eliza promised herself a stiff drink once she got home.

Halfway down Thomas unlocked a cell and waited. Eliza paused at the door. “Thank you,” she told him, and then looking into his eyes realised they were in fact a soft brown, filled with unexpected compassion.

“I'll wait outside, miss.” His voice was light like a lad's, strange to hear out of such a hulking brute of a body.

With a nod, Eliza entered, the cell door softly, gently closing behind her.

Harrison Thorne was huddled in the corner, his face averted. All she saw was his head of shaggy golden blond hair and her breath jammed in her throat. It seemed perhaps nothing had changed.

Then the man she once knew as her partner and friend looked over his shoulder, and the ruin of it was all too apparent.

Eliza squeezed shut her eyes, recalling Harrison as he had been: tall, full of energy and enthusiasm, a damn fine card player, and hard to resist kissing. When she opened them again, it was to the reality she had been avoiding for so long.

He'd gone missing for a whole week before the Ministry had found him and whisked him to Bedlam. This was the first time Eliza had seen him.

“Harrison?” Her voice sounded foreign to her. Hollow. Overwhelmed with sorrow. Why had she not defied the Ministry, as she had before, and just come to see him? She knew the answer—fear. Fear of this.

Harrison's eyes, which had been hazel green, remained, but they were darting, constantly shifting to the corners of the room. They had let his beard grow wild and woolly—probably because he was incessantly moving and impossible to shave. He had his long, strong fingers in his mouth, and they were bloody where he had been chewing them. Without thinking, Eliza stumbled over and wrapped her arms around him. Highly unprofessional, but there was no one around to take note of it.
I'm sorry, Harry
, her embrace told him, or at least she hoped it did
. I'm so sorry, Harry.

Gods, Harrison was so thin his bones poked her, and he'd been the epitome of strapping masculinity only a mere eight months ago. He let her hold him for only a second, and then jerked away, his wild beard scratching against her cheek. The Harrison she'd known had always been most particular about everything, especially his appearance. He'd always kept a carefully waxed moustache and well-starched collar. “
The clothes may make the man
,” he'd once told her in response to her jibes about his incessant vanity, “
but a touch of dashing with a good peppering of debonair serves you well in the field, Lizzie.
” When he winked at her, as he did in this memory, it reminded her of her femininity. It reminded her of how much Harry took advantage of his God-granted assets. “
People open their doors, hearts, and minds for princes before paupers. Try to remember that, dear Lizzie.
”

That Harrison would have been horrified at his present state.

The stranger leaned back in the corner and began examining the ceiling intently. He made a curious mewling noise in his throat, like a lost kitten. It was nearly imperceptible, at first, but grew in volume when Harrison began to rock back and forth. Eliza found herself comforting him as she would a small animal. If this was his best, Eliza had no desire to see what his worst was.

“Harry?” She whispered, stroking his hand. “It's Lizzie.” She had always hated the variations of her name, but when he had called her that it seemed to lose its sting. “Gods, Harry, don't you remember me?”

At the catch in her voice her former partner frowned slightly. “Lizzie . . . Lizzie?” He looked to be trying very hard to remember scattered details.

Desperate, she pressed her lips to the back of his hand, something she'd never dared before. His flesh was rough and scarred, but still his.

Harrison touched her hair, his gesture hesitant and soft. “Lizzie. I knew a Lizzie. Such a pretty girl. I could have kissed her in Paris, you know.”

Eliza looked up and smiled.

“I had many chances to kiss her, that Pretty Lizzie,” he told her, his tenor mimicking a child's telling a grown-up of their latest achievement. “There was Uganda. There was Casablanca. Oh yes, I had many, many chances, but Paris . . . yes, Paris. And I think Pretty Lizzie would have let me kiss her.”

“Would she now?” An invisible hand choked her. She was swallowing back sobs, and talking somehow helped her keep the emotional tide back. “So, why didn't you, you rogue?”

He shook his head violently. The child had been caught. “Wouldn't be right. Wouldn't be right. She was special, Pretty Lizzie. She was pretty, but special. Not like the others. She was very, very, very special.”

Eliza took in a deep breath, hoping her smile brought him a hint of peace. “Yes, Harry, I think Lizzie would have let you kiss her.”

“But I didn't and the chance passed,” Harrison whispered with a little sigh. It was as he said: the moment was gone for both of them.

But perhaps there could still be justice if not love. Perhaps their loss could still have meaning.

With extreme care, Eliza turned over his hand, and gently slid the locket she had found in the Archives into his palm. “Harrison, do you remember this?”

It wasn't her imagination, he did shoot her a look out of his watering eyes, so she went on hurriedly. “Remember, those people that died—the ones you wouldn't give up on?”

His voice was a croak, forced past chapped lips. “Bone, skin, and blood!”

Eliza pressed her hands over his, stilling them before they could reach his mouth. “Yes, it was awful. The Ministry may have given up on those cases, but not you.”

“Bone . . . skin . . . blood.” Harrison shook his head, jerking away from her, repeating the three horrific facts of those cases, which had haunted him then and, so it would seem, in his current state of madness.

He was falling back into whatever fractured thoughts had brought him to Bedlam. Eliza touched her forehead to his, trying to bring him back to her.

Ever so gently, she turned her head towards the locket. He followed suit. “You found this on the last victim, Harrison,” she whispered, tracing the outline of the strange locket, its odd asymmetrical shape, its queer etchings of the cat staring up at them both. “Remember? You found it and you wouldn't give up.”

“Did I?” His voice was faint, but in it she heard an echo of her old friend.

A tear leaked out of the corner of her eye—a weak, foolish tear. “Did you leave this for me? Did you leave it in the files for me to find?”

His mouth worked a couple of times, “You . . . you . . . see her, right, Lizzie?”

Eliza sat back on her heels. “
Her
, Harrison?” A quick scan of the room showed they were quite alone.

Harrison laughed, short and bitter—something that she had never heard pass his lips. It echoed in the room, and his head lolled alarmingly. Eliza might have, if it was anyone else, slapped him or at least given him a damn good shake.