The genius of their treatment is this: there is no trial to determine sanity. Why bother keeping one’s prisoners in prison, when the asylum has room?
Miss Havisham remembers crying six months ago at some unkind words from a romantic interest; how much, she thinks, I have aged. My students are training for a war, and I am a casualty. The memory of school makes her almost smile.
Then the attendants force a bar between her teeth and lever them open, tube of milk and eggs at the ready. Six days of hunger. She isn’t crying. She’s too weak to fight.
Proserpina doesn’t have to make a rousing speech; she doesn’t have to draw a line in the sawdust. “Iala, you owe me,” she says. “Radiane. Ernestine. The rest of you can join us or not. I wouldn’t.”
And in fact, of the core group, four decline. But lumpy, awkward Euphrania Dowell volunteers, as does Emily-Jane Northup, their only third-year. So, to some surprise, does Georgette. Two glances between her and Radiane tell Proserpina everything.
“I don’t suppose we’re waiting for a moonless night to go skulking into the horrid place,” says Iala dryly.
“No,” says Proserpina, “for visiting hours.”
“This is a sanitarium,” says the man in white, “and you don’t look deviant or retarded, and anyway if you were you’d already be inside, so piss off.”
“But I only want to visit my dear auntie,” she says, and her long dark eyes say: in return for which, all things are possible.
Sixteen is not, in this particular time and place, a young age for a girl. The orderly lets the hunger in his fingers twitch a smile from his face. “Well. Maybe. What was her name again?”
“Bend down here a moment,” says Radiane sweetly, “and I’ll tell you.”
Radiane’s read the books about asylums, too.
Her wrist aches a little: sparring and bag work didn’t really prepare her for laying out a grown man, even one with a glass jaw. It’s cold in here. There have been no howls or rattling chains yet. She has noticed that the doors on these rooms are heavily secured, though, and the man at the entrance had no convenient ring of keys.
Georgette is shivering, but following; Iala is pale. “You do have a plan,” she murmurs, “as to what to do when we find her?”
Proserpina says nothing, just strides grimly on.
#9430, from the orderly’s sloppy logbook. Proserpina tiptoes to slide open the viewing slot, and inside, Madeleine Havisham twitches back in reflexive fear.
“Ma’am,” she whispers, “it’s us.”
Miss Havisham says nothing–this isn’t her first hallucination, in here–but leans closer.
From down the corridor, Emily-Jane gives a pigeon’s whistle: at school, it would mean a teacher approaching. Radiane’s throat is pounding. “Can we circle back?” she hisses.
The door is double-bolted and bound with steel. Proserpina looks at it, thinking of filmstrips, of her father, of six boards placed in a stack.
She draws back her fist.
“You’re a deus ex machina,” Miss Havisham whispers.
“We are not yet,” says Proserpina tightly, “out of the machine.”
They can’t get out the way they came in. Emily-Jane’s already had to break an orderly’s nose; more must be coming soon–
And then, suddenly, Elijah is standing in a delivery door. “Come on,” he says. The world outside is surprisingly sunlit.
“I’m taking her into town,” says Proserpina. “Elijah?”
He nods.
“I have to get back to school,” says Radiane. “Georgette, Euphrania, you can help me cover–”
“I’m going to tell my father,” says Iala, pale and sick and furious.
“She smells like the shade of death,” says the hotelier. He jerks his head at Elijah. “We won’t have them here either. Try the flophouse at Oaks.”
“This woman is ill,” Proserpina says again. “If you’ll give her a meal, a bath and a room you’ll be compensated tomorrow.”
“You should get back, dear,” mumbles Miss Havisham, barely standing. “It’s time for class.”
“Didn’t think we even had any opium dens here,” the hotelier sniffs. “Much less with trollops.”
“I will ask once more.” Her fist tightens, and–
“Proserpina,” says her mother, in the doorway. “What on earth are you doing?”
“Mrs. Macnair!” says the hotelier smoothly. “Do you require assistance?”
“I want to know what my daughter is doing here with these–people.”
“Mother!” says Proserpina.
“I thought I’d ride the train out early and take you shopping for summer clothes,” says Mrs. Macnair. “Now I find you not only out of school, but in disreputable company!”
“This is important!” says Proserpina. “My teacher–”
Her mother’s grip on her shoulder is sudden and tight. “That’s enough, young lady.”
“Proserpina?” says Elijah.
Proserpina has frozen, face white, just a fourteen-year-old girl remembering: this is the woman who broke my arm.
“I want to be clear that I take full responsibility for my daughter’s behavior.” The widow Macnair is quiet but firm.
“Not at all. I’m sure it was all the Havisham woman’s doing; she had an unnatural influence on the girls when she taught here.” The headmaster is just hoping she won’t ask too many questions about that. “We’ll inform the police, have her rounded up and taken back where she belongs—this Chinese accomplice you mentioned as well.”
“Thank you for being so understanding. Proserpina? Aren’t you going to apologize and thank the headmaster?”
Proserpina’s tongue is stiff and cold.