The Edge

I came back to reality in the bath. The jumps where my conscious mind slips away and I go into my own head act like a wrong frame in a roll of film. I remember the parked car, my good Samaritan, the taxi driving past but then nothing until I became aware of the bath water growing cold. I know I was doing something during this time but not what it was.

The bath water has truly grown cold and the bubbles have all disappeared so I rise from the tub and dry myself. Pyjamas waiting on the towel rail. Black.

In the kitchen, my sister Amy. Amy is only eleven months younger than I am, my parents “lucky surprise”. Currently doing her physio training, having already completed excellent A levels, a degree and somehow juggling her own social life with looking after me. Fairer than I am, like an opposite. Light hair, spray tanned skin, light eyes, taller and more athletic. I am still soft from years of sitting or lying in chairs and sofas and beds in hospital.

She is making two cups of tea for her and Greg, the lovely Greg, her boyfriend who shares her with me. He doesn’t understand our bond but he try s hard to accept it. He even hugs me as if we are friends. Its sweet.

“Feeling better? I did wonder if you would end up leaving early but you seemed quite enthusiastic at the thought of meeting new people so I let it slide.” I have no memory of being enthusiastic about the party but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. I nod and ask if she has had a nice evening. Amy isn’t fooled.

“That man who brought you home, was everything alright? You seemed rather...out of it when you got back. Who was he anyway?”

I explain about the leaving, the saga of the wrong bag and then gashing my leg. Amy bends to inspect my knee, freshly dressed and looking less gory than previously.

“Bloody old tarmac roads, but you'll live. So he turned out to be a lecturer, did he? Weird that you hadn’t met him before.”

I explain the sabbatical and different area of literature. Amy nodded and completed her tea making task, making for the door with the two large mugs in her hands. Me alone in the dark kitchen wondering what I should do next. Bed wins.

Around five in the morning Kelly re enters the house, hitting every wall like a dodgem car as she weaves to her room, pausing to fling my forgotten bag into my room as she passes, along with a slurred message about returning the one I stole to Danni. Later on, around lunch time, she surfaces to find a glass of water and tells me she will return the bag to the girl herself, I'm in no trouble, easy mistake. Eyes lowered, looking at Amy every so often. I guess this situation has already been discussed and Amy has smoothed the waters. I nod, give Amy a squeeze and go back to my room to enjoy a night of reading accompanied by a glass of cola and medication.

My room is my sanctuary. The house is a rental, of course, but in a decent part of the city and well insulated walls. I am sensitive to the cold after years of institutionalisation and so Amy deliberately found somewhere which would feel comfortable to me. Comfortable, in a quiet neighbourhood, with a corner shop nearby so if I am having a bad day I can still stock up on toast, tea and cola.

My room in on the ground floor, at the back of the house, and is always slightly dark which makes me feel like a little mole. I eschew the overhead light normally, unless I am cleaning, because it's bright white makes me feel unsettled. The usual white walls have been made better by hanging some framed posters of my favourite paintings, a task which took Amy and I the better part of our first weekend here. I have collected lamps and torches since I was a small child with a night light and so I have arranged some of my favourites, each with different coloured bulbs, so I can enjoy true mood lighting.

An IKEA wardrobe in pale wood with my clothes neatly folded or hung, a desk with my work on top, my laptop and ipod dock- a gift from Amy when I got my degree- and the last wall dominated by an enormous bookshelf complete the room. The bed is my own, since I refuse to sleep on a mattress used by anyone else, and is just starting to have that pleasing hollow when I habitually sleep. Curtains in a duck egg blue, backed with blackout fabric so that my sleep in uninterrupted. Beside the bed my night stand with my newest acquisition, a dawn simulator alarm clock which I take a true pleasure in waking up to.

In the night stand drawer, my meds. I have one of those plastic compartmentalised organisers which I fill each week. The boxes of pills stacked underneath. A memo book for recording any unusual behaviour and my black spells. Under these, the file where I store my medical correspondence.

Medication is a way of life for me. I cannot live without it. Literally. Without pills, I cannot sleep, forget to eat, hallucinate, panic and am reduced to a foetal ball on the floor. I suffer terrible migraines, find it hard to keep my balance and often vomit from the pain and disorientation. With pills, I can study, I can write, I can remember to eat and drink, I can try to maintain a life. I never think about life without pills. They control my moods, what I see, what I hear, they allow me to penetrate the upside-down vision that is the world around me. Borderline Personality Disorder is the medical term. It has kept me permanently resident in a mental hospital for the past decade until my sister stepped in to champion me so that, with medical observation and support, I am allowed out into the world to study for my MA and try to adjust to life outside.

For ten years I kept company with the people that society distrusts. With good reason. Over my “stay” I had four different room mates. One cut herself and the staff checked on her every 15 minutes to ensure she wasn’t enjoying a midnight bleed. Another had terrible arrested development due to serious sexual abuse and insisted on me telling her bedtime stories over and over until she slept. The third had a habit of rearranging my things, helping herself to items which she found interesting or alluring. Fortunately for me she was moved quickly. My favourite and longest room mate was Heather, another borderline who was also a horrific insomniac. Once I had gone to sleep, she would amuse herself by reading or doing tapestry work by night light. She exercised beside her bed, wrote in her diary and made friendship bracelets when staff took away her needles after a mild “incident”. I have very little tolerance for most people as they feel utterly remote from me. Only crazy people seem safe.

Before the hospital, I was an isolated and odd child who became an isolated and obsessive teenager. One way and another I continue to have few friends. I enjoy correspondence with some who are still in treatment, I have a couple of people on my MA course who I meet for coffee and study groups and I have Amy. Since leaving treatment I have not chosen to acquaint myself with others and certainly not men. This was one of my treatment teams rules. I should not attempt to date for some time to come as it could either allow me to bury my feelings in mindless sex or provoke another “episode” of psychosis. I have no wish to break this rule. I don’t know how good my self control is and leaving a trail of dead men in my wake isn’t a good way to test myself. One is enough.

My bed has only ever had me in it. My old room in my parents house, that bed too was innocent. I have never been with a man or a woman because the only one I desired I killed.

The year I turned 15, the voices in my head grew too loud. I had always heard them whispering, waiting in the shadows or just around the corner out of sight but at 15, in history class, they just grew too damn loud. It sounded like the bodies of birds hitting a window at speed. I had to run to the toilets to be sick. I began to fear company. Even in a hushed classroom, I felt overwhelmed. Alone, I could try to shut everything out. I played my music so loud that I thought I would go deaf. Always on the headphones and then I would walk and walk, begin to run then slow down if someone saw me. I sought the quiet places, the lonely places. Dark places.

Nights, I took to walking, I never had been much of a sleeper with panic driving me awake by five am. Now I couldn’t sleep at all. I had long before perfected the talent of eating dinner with my sister in front of the TV then purging it back up. Now I escalated that so my body was driven by starvation to mania. I stayed up writing until the house was quiet then I snuck out and wandered the streets like a lost animal. Deliberately walked into dark places where no one should have been, secretly hoping that the trouble I sought would be there. Back to my home by four am, cram food into my mouth like a starving beast then purging until I felt empty enough to sleep.

I started watching Matt Hawkins. He was just a guy in my school, a year or two above me, nothing out of the ordinary. I cannot even picture his face now. I know he had brown hair. I know I used to look round the school displays for photos of him to steal and take home but I burned them on the last night.

He caught my eye when he ran for school captain. A silly made up office which meant he did the readings in assembly or at speech day, gave speeches to visiting parents and dignitary and was in charge of the prefects. And the Sixth form bar. I used alcohol to blunt the fear during the hours at school. He caught me sneaking into the bar one morning when I should have been in class. I never stayed a whole lesson in class. A trip to the bathroom, a trip to the nurse, an excuse that I had left a book in my locker. All just to get away and run or walk fast to go with the thoughts speeding through my head. And of course, to smoke an illicit cigarette, or a swift drink. No one ever noticed. I sat with my head over my books, pen in hand or doodling. Or reading a novel under my desk. The teachers never stopped me, I suppose because I had mastered hearing the last sentences they said before picking me up on my inattention. Parroting back their words, they decided I could listen and read at the same time so I was left free to escape reality and my dream-world into a written world. I carried a hip flask in my bra- had large breasts, developed early, decided my bra was better than my knickers as the flask couldn’t slip. Thanks to the schools baggy blouse, jumper and blazer, it was easy to disguise. I filled it with whiskey or vodka or brandy from my father's drinks cupboard.

That day in March I had drank too much at break time. It was freezing, a scalding cold wind made my hands blue while I smoked behind the music block. I had drank to stay warm, the blazer giving no protection. Now I needed to refill. It was only 11 am. I asked to go see the matron during physics and snaked quickly to the building where the common rooms, the matrons office and the student bar were. The bar was on the top floor, with the prefects rooms opposite. I snuck up there, listening carefully and found that the bar was open. Some one was restocking it. I saw a prefects blazered back come out carrying an empty box and go towards the locked cupboard where the supply’s for the bar and snack machines were kept. Once he was inside I slipped into the bar and grabbed at the nearest bottle. I remember it was peach schnapps. I pushed it into my inside pocket and turned to leave. Matt Hawkins was in the doorway holding a box of beer cans. He demanded a reason for my presence, said I had been going to sneak a drink but he had come back too quickly. He put the beers on the counter top and grabbed at the schnapps bottle in my blazer. He asked if my tits were usually shaped like that. I said he should find out. He took me at my word and for a swift grope, I got away with my prize.

After that, he swapped me alcohol for favours. I had grown tired of watering down my dad's Scotch and would meet him when he was refilling the bar. Locked in, with no one to disturb us, I learned to please him with kisses, with letting him touch me, with touching him. I found his penis both velvet soft and strangely solid the first time, like an alien thing. After that I learned to like it, to crave it. I grew to crave the illicitness of what we were doing, to want the feigned closeness of what we were doing to change into real care for each other. I started to see significance in what was simply lust and experimentation. I started to think he loved me, that I loved him, that he liked our having a secret. I liked that when I was with him, the voices became quiet and I actually had peace.

I never let him inside me, I never let him lick me but all else I allowed. I wandered around school manic with sleepless nights and hunger and the thoughts and voices in my head, I wandered around drunk on Matt and alcohol. I thought it- he- was grounding me, making the voices stop. Making the fear stop. The never ending fear. So my obsession grew. I followed him like an invisible puppy, he never saw me but I saw him. I spied on him and dreamed about how it would be when he came out and confessed our love to our fellow students, how it would be when we finally made love or got married or a million other stupid pathetic fantasy’s. The night of the strictly supervised party to celebrate GCSE exams, in May, I was high as a kite on no sleep and purging the dinner we had been given. I drank scotch from my flask in the loo’s then danced a storm in intoxicated haze. And saw Matt kissing a girl in my class. He and some of the other prefects were “chaperoning” us. He was kissing one of the many blonde, loud, popular girls in front of the entire year. She was wearing electric blue, tight and shiny with silver heels. I was wearing a black dress and flat shoes and felt like my world had collapsed. I should have gone home. I should have cried or slapped him or just kept dancing. Instead.....

Instead I wound up in a mental hospital and my sister had to change schools and my parents moved away and any chance evidence that I existed has been erased from the house of education where I was an inmate. Matt has a framed picture in the school chapel and a dedicational merit cup that is given out on speech days to the head boy.

Last night I went to Manderly again. Or some place very like it. Wonderland perhaps. When ever I have the dream I wake exhausted and my limbs feel heavy as though I have slept in cement and it is still clinging to my skin in little clumps.

At first it is always dark and then the light goes on, click, no gradual transition into brightness but a glaring shock of comfortable black and navy shapes into stark artificial light. A voice calls out that t is time for morning showers. I hear groans from my room mate’s bed and the blast of white from the overhead bulbs turns my vision red behind my stinging eyelids.

I always get up right away, if I don’t then the panic catches in my chest and my heart speeds up and so there is little point in staying in bed because I feel too dam worried to lie still. Fear needs movement, I have discovered. I sit up and swing my feet to the floor. Bare feet, short toes with short nails, no nail varnish. Legs in pyjama bottoms, either black or cream depending on my mood. Black if I am myself, cream or some light shade if I am feeling what my therapist calls ‘regressive’, meaning that I feel week and scared and in need of care and protection. Light colours make me feel protected, clean in some way that has nothing to do with dirt. Always a matching t shirt, no bra. My room mate wears a bra to bed. She told me she thinks it will keep her breasts uplifted. As she sleeps sat up, I can see her logic but it makes no difference as it is an unwired bra. They confiscated her pretty under wired bras because she could use them as a weapon, the wire anyway.

I hate feeling restrained so I revel in not needing to wear a bra in bed and in being about to roll and lounge and curl up as I please. My bed is like a little island that I own, it is clean and pure and I make it myself each day so it is untouched. Perfect.

Cold carpeted floor, a dull blue. Pick up my wash bag and towel, leave the room and out into the corridor. Nurse Angela stands about ten metres away from me, by the bathroom door. She calls to me to hurry up. Three people walking ahead of me, unsure footsteps like zombies. I look down and then I realise that I am treading on brambles.

The thorns bite my naked feet and the smell of wet vegetation fills up my nose. I tread another step and the briar’s catch and move with my feet as though they are joined in some way. I hear Nurse call at me to hurry, impatient, and I want to tell her that I am stuck but the words freeze in my throat because I can taste iron and salt and the air is too cold to breathe deeply. I look up to get her attention and I realise that somehow the distance has grown longer and farther and the walls are now thick tall bushes and overgrown walls and the brambles are wrapping around my legs so I know I must fall.

The hard ground jars my bones, my face in the brambles and that green taste has somehow got into my mouth, my nose, my ears are full of rushing rain and leaves. I can no longer get up or pull away from the ground, which is the only thing anchoring me to myself. The light from above is bright, bright, stark and white. No where to hide and no where to go. I hear Nurse calling for help, know she must be tugging my arm but she is not with me, in this bramble walk, and there is nothing to do but wrap myself in the brambles and hope that dark comes...

When I wake from the dream I feel as though it were the real world and I am now in my fantasy. I pick things up, I feel clothes on my body as if they belonged to someone else, as if a plate of glass lay between me and the world.

In this case, I come back to hear people laughing and yelling and the constant hum and thump of conversation and bad techno music. The room is too full, the beer is warm and sour to my stomach and I have been leaning against this wall for too long, hoping that people will think I am napping in a drunken happy haze and not trying to avoid being talked to. Sweaty boys maul scantily dressed girls, mascara smudges and clashing perfumes, cheap clothes from Primark with seams already splitting and arms, legs nudging mine as their owners sprawl over each other.

Someone has spilled beer on my bag, the air is thick with smoke and stale alcohol smell and hash. I feel violated by association. I feel angry at being touched so carelessly and I shove hard at the girl on my left, to free my bags strap and she glares at me then resumes kissing a blank faced blond man from my Monday seminar.

Pushing through the party to the front door, I don’t bother to look for my friend. My ride home is too drunk to drive and not ready to leave anyway. She invited me to be nice, to get me out of the house, as a favour to my sister. Amy wanted an evening in with Greg and so I agreed to go along. I piled into the untidy car which smelt of pot smoke and stale cigarettes beside my house mate, her boyfriend and some girl who’s name I forgot right after she said it because the radio went on and I found myself listening to the words of a particularly overplayed song rather than to her. Now this girl is underneath some boy playing a drunken game of Twister that someone has dug out, Kelly is in a corner with Rob and I have fought my way out of the body forest into the clean night air.

It is cool and clear and the night sky looks like a giant bowl. I wander down the street looking at the sky until I feel sick from motion sickness and have to perch on a garden wall to avoid vomiting. Looking up, looking down, both hazardous. I walk to the cross roads and chose the left turn as I am sure I saw a pub on that road. I can call a taxi and go home. A shower would be perfect, then a bath. Scrub myself clean then relax. I hate the European tradition of just bathing, lying in your own filth then getting up as if you are clean. After that I will go to my room, put on one of my DVDs and lose myself in another world again.

Brambles. These are in some one else garden and they over lie the path slightly. I cannot just side step them. I have to touch, to feel if they exist or if I exist. I find a particularly large throne and push my thumb into it, the cushion of flesh spotting dark blood in the lamplight. I bleed, therefore I am. I push each finger in turn into the thorn and make a perfect dot of proof on each, then break off a prickly branch of the bush to play with as I walk.

I dimple my palms with stigmata points as I walk, fixating on the pain and the shape of the dots. The bramble branch is more real than I am. I get fed up with this task after a while and plant it into the earth in someone’s small patch of flower bed so it wont feel useless or unwanted now that I am done with it. I always feel bad about leaving this behind or throwing things away, I have never learned to ignore the fact that inanimate objects don’t have feelings.

I wander on and think I will check my phone to check my location. Opening my bag, the wallet and other objects inside are unfamiliar. Picking out the wallet- cheap purple glitter vinyl instead of rough woven blue fair-trade cloth - I open it to discover a stranger’s cards, student ID and a photo of her and a dog. No money. I look through the rest of the bag, make up, used bus tickets and flyers for events at the Union. I clearly have picked up the wrong bag in my hurry to escape and I took that of the girl who I shoved over. An innocent mistake as they were both soft black and white squared leather to look like a chess board but an irritating one as it means mine is still at the party.

I have two choices. Walk back to the party to get my bag or walk back into Bath along the empty roads and streets. It will take at least an hour, probably more. It is still a better option than going back to that house and then having to explain my taking a strangers bag. I decide to walk. At least it isn’t raining.

I continue down towards the pub. I remember the route going out. In the dark rushing beside the car windows I saw the pub, a long dark road with trees overcrowding the sides and then clear lanes beside the main road into the city. I focus on the floor again. Each crack in the pavement makes me feel like I am crossing a vast continent. I nearly trip over a number of irregular levels in the unkempt pavements. I feel sorry for ants.

The dream creeps up on me again, the smell of vegetation fills my nose again and I look up to see the road ahead walled in by high heavy hedges and the ground is grass and weeds. The smell of rain and wet leaves and disturbed wilderness. I tread carefully, fearing brambles but these are all gone, all gone and now there is just a long walk, no turns, hedges either side. From experience I know that even if I run I will never get any further on. I am always stuck here.

The ground when I hit it is harder than usual. Gritty road is beneath me and it presses diamond shapes into my outstretched hands and I feel the splitting of skin over my knee. Rolling over, I see my jeans torn open and a gash four inches wide has opened in my leg. The road is of that rough old surface that causes terrible wounds if you fall on it. The pavement has stopped some time ago as I am now in a dark lane, the sides filled with trees and hedges. For a second I wonder if I am still dreaming but the pain in my scuffed hands and bleeding knee warns me I am not.

Stuck in my own head, I have wandered in the wrong direction. I am lying on the uncomfortable road, holding a strangers bag, with no phone, no money and no one knows where I am. A limbo right here on earth. Getting to my feet makes my knee ache and sting afresh. I seem to have ripped open the soft skin beneath the kneecap and blood has stained the fabric of my jeans.

Looking around I figure I shall carry on up the hill. Once at the top I might be able to see where I am and work from there. Limping, the useless bag over my shoulder, I reach the summit and see the city of Bath a few miles distance. Around 100 years ahead, down the hill, I can see light from a house which is set back from the road.

When I reach the gate I take stock. Big houses like this tend to have big dogs or worse yet, yappy dogs. I do not like dogs. The gate is a full barn gate, with a massive catch. Inside, closing it behind me, a shining Volvo sits on the driveway, tended flower beds outside the house and neat gravel walk paving it. To my left a path leading round into the garden, framed by high green hedges, neatly trimmed. To my right a large old garage in 20’s style, open.

The door’s knocker is polished and looks like a lion. I feel worried it will eat my hand when I raise the knocker. The door is blue. There is a light on in the hall and lights on upstairs. I wait for the owner to answer the door, probably an old woman and her husband.

When it opens I see an older man, not elderly but in his late forties, dressed in crisp white shirt, waistcoat and black trousers. Little beard, dark twinkly eyes. Enquiring. Right away he looks at my damaged knee.

“Bit of accident?” He asks, shifting his gaze to my face. I consider him, older, slight paunch, dignified looking. I put him down as a possible bottom pincher but nothing else. A safe enough man to trust for now.

I explain about taking the wrong bag then taking a wrong turn. Can I come in to ring a taxi? He smiles and opens the door a little wider, inviting me in. I step over the threshold and he leads the way into a cosy living room where he tells me his telephone is.

Looking around, I decide I like this room. One large velvet sofa along the back wall with several framed photographs of beautifully architectured buildings above it. Cream walls with an old fashioned, low beamed ceiling. A fireplace neatly made up but not lit and candles on the mantle. One window to the left of the fireplace then another at the far end of the room. All the other walls are lined with bookshelves, heaving with books and there are some more books on the coffee table. All told, it is a neat scholarly haven. On a small side table beside the sofa there is an old fashioned bell telephone and a pad beside it.

My host has looked out his copy of the phone book and is leafing through it to find me taxi numbers. He hands me the book and I stop by the telephone because it puzzles me. I have to ask him to dial for me. The first three numbers are busy, the fourth has no driver available and the fifth can only come in two hours. At this point my host suggests driving me home himself.

I guess that it must speak volumes about me that I say yes. In my defence, I am usually a pretty good judge of people with regard to if they are dangerous. This man radiated old fashioned charm but no malice. I knew where his house was, his name- Simon Carmichael, I saw it on a little stack of torn open envelopes beside the phone, plenty of details so if he were going to abduct or rape me then he would need to kill me afterwards. I saw nothing of a killer in him. Plenty of people will say that I couldn’t possibly know anything about him, that he could kill me and get away with it and that I was being really stupid not to keep trying taxi numbers. Hopefully people will understand when I say that my overpowering desire to get home overrode any other desire.

He stood up and then glanced again at my knee. It was a bloody mess and looked dreadful. Would I care to use his bathroom? He could find me cotton wool and something to clean it and perhaps some dressing? I wanted to leave it but he insisted that I clean it, for the sake of the cleanliness of his car if not for myself.

He found me cotton wool pads, he found me a bottle of antiseptic wash and while he hunted down dressings, I went to the bathroom and ran water into the sink. When I opened the bottle, the smell of antiseptic flooded the room and my mind with images and other places. My old wounds, now healed, whiter than white on my pale skin, the daily careful cleaning. The smell of the hospital corridor after Clare Angel had tried to slash her wrists with a staple dug from the wall, after Nelly had bashed her head into the security door, after I had tried to throw myself down the fire exit and gashed my shoulder on the railing. I felt sick and had to breathe through my nose in order to stay in the moment. I felt that I could not go into my mind while in a stranger's house.

Wound cleaned, dressing applied and hands washed, my host led me over to the shining green Volvo. The radio came on as the engine started, a strange clattering language emitting from the tinny car speakers. He looked at me and smiled, turning it off.

“I had this on earlier to hear a particular programme. I shall assume you know little of Celtic languages? No, they are a dying part of a forgotten society. Their speakers have been amalgamated into Great Britain and so, with the exception of a few devotees and proud nationalists, we are losing even the story’s that were once so well known.” I asked if he were a scholar, it seemed to fit with his house. Another smile, accompanied with an eye twinkle.

“I am, in part. I have the honour of being a professor of literature at the University of Bath, and I specialise in Celtic literature and languages. The languages and dialects themselves were originally just a medium to learn the literature but over time, I have developed some degree of fluency and enjoyment of them for languages sake as well. I officially took a sabbatical this year in order to finish writing a book on the subject but I continue to privately teach and to lecture of the decline of the fallen Celt's and the culture that we have lost. Shall I assume that you are a student?”

I nodded. He was waiting for a response as we sped at an easy pace through the twisting dark country roads so I expanded.

“I'm doing a master's in Literature, focusing on how Bram Stoker placed women in a highly sexualised world yet insisted on their being angelic and almost sexless as characters.”

He laughed and just then we broke free of the tangled lanes and reached the bright neon orange of the main road. He knew the street my house was on and as we drove towards it, he asked if I had preceded my MA with a degree in Literature and had it also been at Bath. Despite knowing that there was no reason, I hesitated before beginning the lie about having done an Open University course as I was working full time after collage. I had never actually done any job and I did not want to lie to this rather sweet man who was playing good Samaritan. He noticed and said gently “ You need not feel that you should tell me anything you don’t want. I just thought you would prefer some conversation to the radio. More reassuring.”

I shook my head. We had turned into the narrow street where I lived and he pulled in outside the house. I knew I should simply thank him, offer to pay for his petrol, get out and leave but I felt frozen in my seat. The stained orange light streaming into the car felt oppressive and I felt trapped by some unspecific force I couldn’t identify. I could hear some unspecified noise that kept my attention like a rabbit in a hedgerow. I realised I was drifting away again and pulled myself together. I made myself smile, thank him, my face a brittle mask that was slipping second by second. A taxi drove past, occupants loudly drunk.

Chapter 40

It was two days later when the Constable came back, this time without Magistrate Phillips. With Father John and Nurse Ruth in the room, he sat at the end of my bed and removed his helmet. He took out his little note pad but not his pencil, smiled reassuringly and consulted his pad.

“Your Ladyship, I have returned with some news. After our last meeting I decided to follow the line of enquiry myself to save time and trouble. I have spoken to several trustworthy persons and then with the magistrate. It appears that there are witnesses to your accident who are prepared to come forward to testify as to how you came by them and so now I must consult with you on how to proceed. ”

I looked askance at him and Father John undertook to explain.

“The constable and myself have spoken with Mrs Levin. That good woman came to me and said that she was uneasy about the way you had been treated and she has made a formal statement detailing your injury’s and how you came by them. We have also the testimony of your maid and Ruth Riley, also of Sarah Bates, the housemaid at the Hall. All of them have told the same sad tale, that you were kept under guard, that you have been treated cruelly and that they have repeatedly seen examples of this.” The constable began to talk.

“They have given their testimonials secretly, as they did not wish to publicly go against Lord Llewellyn. I have let no one save the magistrate know of this and he has given his oath to say nothing of this to anyone. However the servants will be useful. With this evidence, I believe that there is good reason to charge your husband with the crime of....” I broke in. two days of thinking about everything, two days without seeing Daniel or my husband, two days without fear had allowed me to decide on what I wished to happen next.

“Constable James, I am grateful to you for taking such an interest in this case. I am grateful to all who have undertaken to speak out on my behalf but the truth of the matter is, I do not wish to have my husband charged with any offence.”

Every soul in the room stared at me. Only Father John's eyes seemed to show understanding, the rest looked dumbfounded. Constable James tried to understand for all of them.

“Your Ladyship, your injury’s....the way in which you have been treated....you must understand that this is a very serious matter, a legal matter and not one in which you can have much say.”

“I do understand that, but hear me on this first. I do not wish to challenge my husband because I know what his reaction would be. I do not wish to challenge him because I do not want my private life, and his, and all who know us, to be talked of. I do not want the servants who have agreed to speak to lose their situations. This is a family matter and should be handled privately.”

The constable scratched his head with his pencil and licked his lips.

“I can understand your reasoning but even so....” I pushed my point home.

“Constable James, you have lived in this area some years. You knew the late Lord Robert. You knew of his wife. They are gathered to God now. My husband has lost both his parents as well as his heir, all within a few months. I do not wish him or me or anyone to lose more. Please. Let me at least speak with a solicitor, or with Magistrate Phillips. Let me seek advice before anything is taken further. I beg you, wait a little. I know I am perhaps unworldly but I simply want to avoid unpleasantness. Can you understand that and make allowances for me?”

The constable glanced at Father John and then nodded. He stood up, gave assurances that he would pass on my message to Magistrate Phillips and left. Nurse Ruth sat back next to me and quietly began to knit. I took up my own work again; I had been allowed to knit since it gave me occupation and kept my hands busy. Also the stitches were not too small so I would not strain my eye. I had started to knit a new shawl; the one I had been making was left up at the hall. Nurse Ruth said nothing about my actions but I could tell she somehow approved. I wondered if she would speak of it but when she did speak, it was of a completely different topic.

“What shall you do for collecting your belongings, my lady? You have left all except that bundle which you brought with you. Think you that His Lordship may allow you to have then brought away?”

“It is in my thoughts that he might if I am discreet and forgiving, yes. I am sorry to see so much lost.”

The possessions I had brought were in the chest beyond my bed. The jewels Rhiannon had given me. The dolls representing my son and Bess and myself. The warm Shetland shawl that had been Bess's. My prayer book, a gift from my mother on my first communion. A few trinkets that had been hers. Nothing more. I would indeed be glad to get my other treasures back. And the doll’s house? Who knew?

Constable James was as good as his word, the magistrate arrived the next morning. I had been pronounced well enough to sit up and be dressed so was on a chair beside the fire. The magistrate was announced and Nurse Ruth stated that she would sit outside the door while we talked, to be in call if she were wanted. Once she had gone, Phillips sat down and smiled at me. He seemed less put off by my appearance and slightly less anxious.

“I wanted to be advised by you, sir, and also to explain myself a little. I hope I can trust to your discretion in this?” He bowed and waited.

“I know that Constable James will have told you of my unwillingness to charge my husband with any criminal offence? My desire to do this is probably not clear to you, in its reasoning. I wish to speak candidly with you about my reasons and I hope that you will be able to advise me better because of my candor.

The truth is that, aside from not wishing to have this sad affair talked of or to smear the good name of the Llewellyn family, I wish to barter for my own freedom. He may no longer care for me but he is still my husband and we are bound to each other in this lifetime unless some way can be found to part us lawfully. I know that he will agree to this if I agree to not press any charge.”

The magistrate raised his hand.

“Your Ladyship, I believe I must explain something to you. Divorce, as you know, is unthinkable. Even if it were not, there is no precedence for a wife divorcing her husband without a substantial amount of publicity involved. In this case, it would be an absolute scandal. This leaves an annulment. An annulment can only be obtained in certain circumstances. Since you have had a child together, there is no precedence for the marriage not being consummated. You are neither of you insane nor have either of you been married before. You are both respectable and therefore can never be accused of falling victim to poisons or drugs of some sort. That only leaves adultery, in some form, as a reason that could be used to obtain your legal break from his Lordship.”

Magistrate Phillips paused and looked at me meaningfully. Gone was the kind and slightly fawning man who I knew, in his place was the stern advocate of the law. I decided to be candid. I had nothing left to lose.

“Sir, I place in you a great trust by speaking out but I confess to you that I have been guilty of this crime. My husband knows this, it is the reason why he lost his head and wounded me thus. I have told so to Father John and he has absolved me of this sin in the eyes of the church. I ask you to use it to dissolve my marriage. If Michael will consent to an annulment, if you will do your best to procure one as quietly as may be, then I shall leave this area and not return nor will I publicly denounce Michael to the law or hold his accountable for anything. I have my own income which is mine to live on for life. I have a place to go to and a servant to go with me. I will not trouble the family more. All I ask is that I be allowed my annulment, that I be allowed to collect my belongings and that no public scandal be raised against me.”

Phillips stared at me, hard and with serious shock. He took some time to think over what I had said.

“If I am able to get Michael to agree to this, then you will sign a document to the effect you have just mentioned? Do you wish for nothing else? You speak of your crime and of his coolly. May I ask why you are so honest, and why you are so set on this?”

“I want to raise my child away from this place. I want to be away from this place. I am tired of anger and misery and cruelty. I am tired of secrets and spy’s and on looking over my shoulder. I want nothing more than to move to the country, to raise my child and to forget, as best I can.”

I spoke simply. I had no energy left. I looked at the magistrate and gave no look of shame or elation or pride, I simply looked.

He glanced at my belly and seemed to find a solution there because his face expressed contempt.

He nodded. He rose and said that he would d what he could. He went out without kissing my hand as usual. I was not sorry to see him go. I was tired of having to account to men for my actions. They were private and they were done with. I had been punished enough. Damn them all with their reasons and their views on me! I wanted to just live my life without their censure.

The magistrate was as good as his word. Two days later he came back, accompanied by the lawyer and Father John. Apparently Michael had agreed to an annulment on the grounds stated and if I signed a document giving him assurance of my silence then he would sign our annulment himself that very evening. From there it could be obtained privately by the lawyer and Magistrate Phillips, and I would be free to go where I please, taking care to inform them of my address.

The statement was signed quickly. I gave up any rights to any possession of my husbands, I undertook to keep silent and I was to leave within the week. I would be escorted by Father John and Nurse Ruth to the hall to have my possessions boxed up and then I could leave. The lawyer handed me the keys and deeds to my Cornish house, the one which had belonged to Bess. He also handed me a sealed letter which apparently gave details of my bank. He had undertaken to write to a fellow solicitor in the area I was moving to who would take control of my monitory and legal affairs.

Once this was done, Magistrate Phillips left, followed by the lawyer. I never saw either one of them again.

The next day I was taken to the hall. Dressed in quiet grey with a veil over my bandaged face, I was driven up the drive and saw again the house which I had last seen through pain and flames when I ran from the doll’s house to find myself outside on the path. Admitted to the house, the servants did not look me in the eye. Only Mrs Levin and Sarah still greeted me. Sarah escorted myself and Ruth Riley about the house.

In my old bedroom, I had the furniture and my dresses, my ornaments and books marked as being needed. These would be taken by wagon down to Cornwall. Sarah took advantage of the freedom in that lonely region to tell me of what had happened since I escaped.

“That old witch who was your keeper, she was sent off with a flea in her ear for letting you get out! I never saw a face so grim in my life! And Mrs Eveleigh, she was utterly undone by your accident, I swear that she had Master stay away from you, she is quite the mistress of the house now!”

I did not blame Victoria. She had what she wanted now. I wished her joy of it. For my part, I was only too happy to be gone. I asked to be let into my workroom.

Inside, the tables and benches were all gone. My work basket, my tools and brushed and easel, all were gone. All that was left was the portrait of Bess. Sarah saw my look.

“Master had everything taken down and burned in the stable yard that very night. He was like a man in thrall. Oh, my lady, that beautiful doll's house! As it burned I swear it was like seeing a vision of what could be, if some accident were to happen to this building.” She looked at me closely and then stepped up close.

“How ever did you do it? However did you escape? No one can figure it, not even Master!” I shook my head.

“If I told you, you would think me mad. Suffice to say, a friend helped me. A friend I will never see again. Ask me nothing more, Sarah, not now. And if ever you want a new situation, come and see me. I shall always have a place for you, if you care to take one.”

She nodded, disappointed but then smiling when I pressed a slip of paper with my address on it into her hand.

As I descended the stairs into the hall, I looked towards the library door. I had been informed that Michael was within with his sister and her husband. Mrs Levin came out to see me off and asked if I wanted to step in to speak with him? I shook my head.

“No. I have nothing to say. Nor does he.” I turned to that good woman who had been almost a friend to me. I held out my hand.

“Thank you Mrs Levin. Thank you for your loyal service, your kindness and your advice. If ever I can repay you, I will do so. May God bless you until we meet again.” She shook my hand with a hearty frankness.

“God bless you, my lady. May his grace give you the strength to rise once again.”

As I left the house I looked out to the left and saw the chapel with its quiet graveyard. I took a walk, aided by Father John, to visit my son’s grave for the last time.

I had expected that I should cry but my tears seemed died up. I knew that I could never again visit my son’s graveside and yet I felt nothing. I think in my heart that I had finally said goodbye to my James and I knew only his bones lay in that dark tomb. I could carry him with me in my memory instead, a better place altogether.

I asked Father John if I might take a last walk about the garden alone. I wished to say good bye to it. While he waited by the carriage I walked up towards the pond. I made a small stop at the greenhouse to say a polite farewell to the gardeners and asked if I might take a favorite plant of two with me? They hurried to obey and I took a trowel and a small box to put the plants into, refusing the help they readily offered. At the still pond I placed the box on the ground and looked about me. I found the small stone that covered the grave of Bess’s infant daughter. It was covered with leaves and I took care to leave it clean.

It did not take long to find the tiny wooden box in which the infant had been buried. It was too big to fit into the box I had been given so I cracked it open using the tip of the trowel. Inside the body had been wrapped in a shawl so I took it out still wrapped and placed it into the new box. I packed earth around it and then replaced the tomb stone where that little girl’s siblings had left it. I would place some plants in the earth about the bones as so transport her with me to my new home.

Around me the trees were full of the noise from the wind. The surface of the water was all dead leaves and debris. I peered into the depths of the pool, a fancy striking me that I might see a reflection of Bess but no, the water held no ghosts.

After digging up a rose plant and putting it into my box I bad goodbye to the gardeners and climbed into the carriage.

I had first arrived at the Hall after my wedding to see all the staff on the estate standing at the front door. I left with them peering through the windows at me, with my damaged face veiled. I left behind me the image that I had copied in wood and cloth. I never saw it again, except in my dreams.

The Tale of Father John

I was born in a small hamlet not far from this very village. My father was a miner, as was his father, and my mother was the daughter and granddaughter of miners. My parents married young and have eight children, three girls and five boys. The first two children died in infancy. The third, my sister Mary, lived and set the pattern for the following five. We all survived our babyhood and this became a problem. My father had seven mouths to feed and four of those were boys. Boys eat more than girls but are more useful as they can do heavier work. I was the third son, and expected to follow my father and two brothers into the mines. My two sisters helped my mother and took in sewing to help put food on the table.

I was seven when I started working as a trapper boy in the mines. My duty was to open and close the trap doors for the carts of coal and stone. To you know much about mining? Well, then you should know that little wheeled carts run on tracks about the mine to carry coal and stones up to the top. The miners fill these, boys push or pull them about with chains and smaller boys guard the traps to let them through. In a mine, air must be carefully allotted and so the doors are kept closed until a truck needs to pass through. Trapper boys sit still in the dark, still because they are next to the tracks and must mind they don’t lose a foot, dark because no candles can be permitted lest a fire start and candles are expensive besides.

I did not mind the work until an accident killed my older brother. He was helping on one of the mining teams which were trying to hollow out a new seam and it collapsed on top of them all. Five good men and three boys lost their lives. The mine paid out an allowance to my family for the loss of my brother and life went on. I grew a year older and was too big to be a trapper any more. I moved on to helping fill the trucks and my younger brother Tom took my place as trapper. He fell asleep after three weeks of work, fell asleep and fell across the tracks. A cart came past and killed him. Another allowance was paid by the mine for his death but my mother refused to allow me to continue working there. She would not lose another son!

She went to the priest of this very church and asked him if he would take me as an alter boy. That good man agreed and when I was not assisting in the church, I was digging his garden, looking after his horse and helping him in his parish work. It was cleaner than the mine and I had fresh air and better food. I also had access to education and I learned to read, to write and to look after the poor and sick. I wanted to get away, I had the child's vision of being a solider and yet I always wished to help others. My benefactor, Father David, suggested to my family that I go into the priesthood. He offered to sponsor me to be trained, an offer my father accepted. My oldest sister was married, my younger sister was only a child and my two remaining brothers worked for a local farmer. It was great thing to be sent away to the priesthood, I escaped the lush green hills and mountains of this district and found spires and streets and cobblestones.

In the seminary I was inspired to be a missionary and work with people abroad. Once I was priested, I left my ship to travel through Europe and down into Africa. I wandered with two fellow priests and we taught the word of God to tribes and peoples whose traditions were incomprehensible to us, as incomprehensible as we were to them.

We were led by an older priest, Father Anthony, who lectured us nightly on remembering the true God and in praying for blindness to the faults of others. The main fault in his eyes was that these tribal people wore little or no clothing, in the great heat of that climate. We had all been shocked at first but we all made efforts not to notice, especially with the women. We all prayed diligently but we were men after all and we covertly looked at these strange beings, these coloured women with skins as black as teak and smooth as marble. They stood without shame in front of us, nursing their young, talking or working or eating and we noticed their shapes and their forms. I was a young man and was filled with lust. I had been training for priesthood my whole life and never thought of taking a wife. The women I knew were all village women, dressed in wool and with their hair covered, they were modestly dressed and behaved modestly too, for the most part. Those that did not were what I was taught to preach against, sinners and whores to tempt virtuous people away from the Light. I was true to God until I saw those African women, with their fine bodies and bright eyes and their necklaces or bright fibres and stones.

We stopped to help a party of our Brothers in Christ who were building a small church in a large settlement. They had been accepted there and were teaching the young about God, amongst other things, so they wanted a proper church built. Out there in the wide landscape of Africa, I finally found peace as I laboured under that hot sun, I felt as thought I were finally doing good.

We did not keep ourselves apart from the tribe there, who were friendly to us, and we took food with them, grew to know their family’s and their young, their ways and their small farms. We taught them about Western medicine and they taught us about their natural remedies for things like the sun stroke and how to harvest herbs and plants which would save us from scorpion venom and snakes or spiders. We helped them build a proper well and irrigate their crops, they worked us a beautiful cross in bronze for our alter, their women helped to feed us and their children ran by us to try their few words of English.

In the seventh week there I began to watch a young girl who I thought more beautiful than any other. It was not that she were prettier but something about her manner, her essence, it was sublime to me. She had a wide mouth and bright eyes like her sisters, with dark hair cropped short to her skull. She wore bracelets and a neck lace of metal rings, a tunic of bright woven threads and when she passed near me I could smell her body, a musky scent that seemed as much a part of the land as the scent of the food or the plants or the earth beneath us. I covertly observed her when she was near, I watched her when she served us food or sat to listen to us preach. I thought my attention was noticed until one day when I went to rest from the heat in my hut.

My brother priests were not inside and I welcomed the quiet and the shade. I removed my clothes to my under garments and prepared to lie down and rest when a hand touched my shoulder.

The girl had followed me into the hut and was standing before me. I had never before been alone with any woman excepting my mother or sisters and this was enough to shock me dreadfully. That both of us were nearly naked was also a shock. That she touched me was a third. It was just my bare shoulder but it felt as though I were being burned by her warm fingers. I tried to stay calm, to ask what she wanted but my voice failed me and my knowledge of the language was gone. I just looked at her. She looked at me fearlessly and gently touched my face, then took my hands and examined them. Roughened by heavy work, they were, but she seemed to approve the,. She examined the lines on my palms and the muscles in my arms. She looked up at my face and smiled, showing white teeth in the dark of her face.

When one of my fellow priests came in, she quickly ran out. Nothing had happened but to my brothers and myself that did not matter. There was a solemn meeting that evening and it was decided to send me to work with another party of missioners further north. The next day I set out at dawn carrying a letter to the man in charge there. I never knew what it said but he welcomed me kindly, heard my confession and placed me to work with others teaching young boys about the gospel. After a month of this I was sent to a new country to the East, a mountain region which was cold and so everyone was well wrapped up. I taught the word of God there diligently, I never returned to Africa or did I ever see that woman again. After my indiscretion I redoubled my efforts to trust in the Lord and do his work. I pressed the memory of her deep down inside myself and thought I had forgotten. That is, until one winter, years later, when I was travelling through a rocky pass to reach a strong hold and I was caught by a blizzard. I was one of a party of travellers, the others were villagers and we were forced to take refuge from the storm in a cave. We stayed there for a full day and a night. I moved among the other, praying with them and assisting those that were frightened. I came at last to one man who sat by himself from the group, seemingly deep in silent prayer. I sat near him and looked about the cave, watching for anyone who might need my guidance when the man spoke.

This man was apparently a seasoned traveller, who had taken this road many times and he was not frightened by the storm. He was an Italian by birth but he spoke English to me. He asked me why I was so restless. I was surprised, I explained I was simply watching for distress in any of the others but the Italian shook his head and said that I was just trying to escape my own thoughts. I was a priest, did I believe in divine providence? Well, then this break in my journey was providence. God wanted me to sit a while and think.

I considered this and asked his meaning. He explained that he had observed me and that I was always moving, always looking after others but that there was something in me which he recognised from his own experience as a young man. He saw that I was running from something. I denied this, I told him I was a missionary but he shook his head again and insisted that I was surely running from something if I could not sit and use a few hours for quiet meditation. He did mean I should pray but that I should use this God given moment, this time away from the world, to meditate on all that occurred to me.

I was silent. I had been so careful to be busy, to not think of that woman or of my shame at being sent away from Africa that I had constantly worked, day and night. I had not let myself sleep more than four hours a night, I had prayed early and late, I had fasted at times to make myself obedient. I finally allowed my mind to go blank and let my thoughts travel across my mind. I allowed myself to think of that woman, in her beauty. I let myself feel the shame of disgrace and the sadness at leaving my family and the distance I had gone from home. In that little cave in the middle of nowhere, with the wind and snow whirling around outside while we puny creatures cowered inside, in that cave I finally shed my petty ways and my shame. I let myself feel and then asked what harm had it done. In each category except one, I had done no harm so I offered a prayer to God and gave up my sins.

When we left the cave and got to our destination I asked the Italian who he was and how he had known me. His response was that I should learn a little from the natives, as well as giving our my own religion. He turned me to face the mountains. There you see what your God has made. It can unmake a man with ease. It will not be unmade because you take a little time for yourself, if you eat a good supper or take a woman. The mountains and the skies will not fall if you commit a sin. It is your own perception of what you have done that makes it seem as if the world is undone. You look upon the world and want to change it. I say, look upon the world and try to work with it and understand it. Only then can you see what truly needs changing and what truly is a sin.

As he walked away, his last words told me to always remember to take a little time to think. I took time over the next weeks. I took time to watch and learn from the natives as well as teaching them the gospel. I noticed how they looked after animals and crops even high in the mountains. I noticed how they worked together and helped each other. I grew to love their rough rocky land as they did and in doing so, I became home sick.

I travelled back across the continent until I entered Europe. I travelled across Europe and boarded a boat that took me home to England. I had written to the diocese of my home parish and they had offered me to take the role of Deacon in this church. I had been working for the Lord for so long that my service would be useful, my reputation was good and my home land welcomed me. I travelled to this place and went to the little house where my family had lived.

My father had been killed in a cave in, my mother was dead of tuberculosis. My older sister had five children, my younger had two. My brother had left many years before to work as a farmer and he still lives down near the coast. I had missed so much while I was away but I was resolved not to feel sad. I told tales of Africa and India, of my travels but all the while I delighted in green grass and mountains, in rain and in the quiet parish work. I worked with the resident priest and used my knowledge of other mountain dwellers to help the people here to better themselves. Now I am the priest, I enjoy a good dinner, I enjoy a cup of tea and a welsh cake by the fireside. I enjoy my garden and my vegetable patch and my church. I am comfortable and at home. I enjoy life. I do not judge others harshly, I caution them rarely. Mistakes are how you find the true desire of your heart and how you temper your soul to be pure.

Not a day has gone by that I do not remember that beautiful woman, that emblem of Africa that still I see in my dreams. I am sure I shall see her in my mind every day until I die. Yet I do not regret meeting her. I do not feel torment in not kissing her or for not taking her to wife. I thank God for her, for she showed me the path to true knowledge. She was no demon sent to tempt me, she was a beacon on my road to light. She was a girl and I am a man. I have had tender feelings for her, yes, very tender. My feelings for my work are more so and my feelings for the people here are infinitely greater. I love my countrymen best, my country of green and stone. She belongs in Africa, the wide hot sands. So she stands in my mind, my private treasure. In my Welsh parlour by the fire side I remember her and say a quiet prayer to God, of thanks for showing me the way.

The priest paused and looked back at me, while he told his story he had been staring at the fire.

“What I think I am trying to tell you is, see things for the good in them rather than the bad. If you are here it is because this is what you have to do in order to find your peace. I know that for a priest to say that sin is a good thing may sound strange but we cannot learn, unless we sin, what we should really do with our lives.”

I was silent. For all my life I had tried to do good yet when I did wrong, I had started a chain of events which had taken me away from my old stagnation and brought me away from my torpor. I was wounded but alive. I had my child inside me and I was alive. I was no longer trapped in a beautiful cage.

Father John took my hand kindly and then placed his other hand on my head.

“Do you truly repent of any harm you may have caused to others? Do you understand what you have done wrong and vow to learn from these mistakes? Then I forgive you and absolve you of these sins. Now, sleep. Your mind is weary and your body needs its rest. I shall come again tomorrow. Bless you, daughter.” And so he rose and left me.

Father John was well liked in the parish, he was kind, educated and friendly yet he was also a local man. He had gone away to train as a priest and had served as a missionary for ten years before coming back to take up the position of deacon at the same church where he had been an alter boy. He had lived in the priest's house with the then Father Peter who was in his sixtieth year. The priests house had a small but pretty flower garden in front, a kitchen garden behind and he often could be found, when off duty, hoeing the potato patch or seeing to the produce. When Father Peter had suffered a slight stroke and decided to retire, Father John had taken his place as Priest in our parish. His first act had been to buy, with the diocese’s money, a large plot of land for the poorer family’s to use as a kitchen garden of their own. The land had come with an old barn which Father John had renovated to use as a small alms house for the least fortunate of the community, which also served as a charitable hospital facility. He went twice a week to the small school to teach and was regarded as a true benefit to the area. My late father in law had enjoyed his company and he had often been invited up to the Hall for dinner and to talk with Lord Robert after the meal. Father John was forty, with a short frame and rather round, though not fat. His face, with its full cheeks and his smile which was that of a choir boy, made him seem young and added to the illusion of roundness. His dark hair was always kept neatly brushed and his dark eyes were kept covered by little round spectacles. Because of these and his priests robes I had often thought he looked rather like a kindly mole.

He now came in quietly, shut the door and sat beside my bed. He took my hand gently and felt my pulse. Once assured that it was steady he asked me what he could do for me. As a member of the clergy who was used to visiting the sick, he did not flinch from looking at my face. I asked if he would hear confession from me. He nodded and sat waiting.

“Bless me Father, for I have sinned. I have been guilty of the sin of vanity. I looked in the glass for the first time not half an hour ago and I could only think of how hideous I am now and how people will think of me.”

“I think that no sin in a woman who has been suddenly wounded as you have been. It is only natural to mourn the loss of your eye, I would say it is healthy too. It would be more unnatural for you to be unmoved by the change.” His voice was quiet and soothing. It made me want to have him hold me, to comfort me further thought I knew he never would. I was silent and he spoke again.

“I do not think you have committed the sin of vanity. However I do think that you feel you ave committed some other sin, more shameful than that, which you wish to tell me of and which troubles you much. Speak of it, I pray you, relieve your soul. We will be undisturbed.”

His kindness and perception made me feel even more ashamed of myself. This quiet, good man, a former missionary and a priest who had dedicated his life to doing good. How could he possibly forgive my crimes? He seemed to read my thoughts.

“You think I will not understand, that your sins have been too great? My daughter, I have travelled far from this green land and heard many hundred sins from all people. I assure you that I will not judge you. That is between you and the Holy Father above. As his advocate here, I again ask that you give up your sins to me. It will ease your mind of the burden it carries.”

These words softened my pride. I finally managed to begin.

“Father I think that my punishment, my loss of looks is punishment from God. I have been guilty of...of many things and at last I have been struck down in a way that I shall carry my whole life. This past year a man entered our family circle as a trusted servant and was treated with equality by all of us at the Hall. He showed interest in me beyond that of friendship, I was a silly girl and flattered by his interest in me. I succumbed to lust and not once but many times. We used the trust and time alone to have carnal knowledge of each other and though his interest waned the deed was done.” I stopped, out of breath, tears stinging my cheeks. The priest gently wiped away my tears with a handkerchief. His bright eyes looked into my dark one.

“My lady, let me ask a question of you. Is that child in your womb begot of your husband or of this other man? No, do not answer. I see that it is so. Let me ask another question then. Did your husband know of this affair and was this what lead to your injury’s?”

I nodded.

“He did not know until that night when he beat me. Before then he had just suspected and had kept me upstairs for months because I displeased him. He did not like me doing work in the community, he did not like how I had become so close to his mother in place of his sister and he seemed to change in his perception of me when our son died. It was that which made him keep me out of sight but the man, Michael, he wrote to me and begged my forgiveness because he is to marry, will have married by now and he wanted to apologise. My husband read the letter and then he.....he came to my room and sent everyone away. He beat me and then he....he whipped me. He was like a man possessed. He.....he....he was.....” I could not carry on, the memory of that day, the pain and the fear were too much. Father John leaned forward.

“And had he behaved like that before? Had he, at any time, shown violence towards you?” I remembered that night when he had raped me, months ago. The way his eyes had been wild and how he had seemed like a stranger. I told the priest of this and he shook his head.

“The actions of a very disturbed soul. Some times a man can be calm and reasonable in all things but a sudden loss of control and he behaves like a beast. It is in his blood sometimes. Your husband's great grandfather was also such a man. He had a lot of the beast in him. He was a soul in torment, may the Father judge him justly. I think that your husband may have a touch of it too. Might I ask, how did he come to read your letter?” I considered this and realised I did not know. It had been addressed to me, how had Michael come to open it? Father John shook his head again.

“I fancy that someone must have opened your letter and shown it to him. It was not in his habits to open your letters was it? No, I see not. So someone else must have been opening your letters, waiting for this chance. It was not God who has punished you but another. Put thoughts of that out of your head. My daughter, you have committed sins against your husband. He has punished you himself rather than turn to the law. The law is changing. In the past hundred years it has changed much and I think it will continue to do so. The law can now protect you against violence. I will not pretend to understand the law. I will ask only that you tell me the truth so that I can advise you in a spiritual way.” I nodded. I felt like a child before this man.

“My daughter, do you repent of the sin of adultery? Do you truly repent and wish to redeem yourself? Then tell it true. Why did you break with your marriage vow and turn to another man?”

For the first time I let my head go blank. I let my words free. I was tired of keeping everything hidden.

“Because I was lonely. Because I was bored. Because I did not love my husband and because I knew I could not have the life with him that I wanted.” The priest's voice was gentle.

“What life did you want?”

“One of love and companionship. One where I would love and be loved truly for who I am. One where I knew my husband inside and out, as he knew me. One where I was no longer alone.”

The priest shook his head.

“So many marry for those reasons. What did you find when you were his wife?”

“That life was the same as before yet now I had a ring on my finger. It did not change me. I was still alone. I was just expected to obey my husband instead of my father.”

The priest was silent for a while. He stared into the middle distance, looking at nothing. He seemed to shake himself and turn to me again.

“Freedom seems to be the thought which reigns uppermost in your mind. I think you are like a caged bird that tears at its own plumage and breaks its wings on the bars of its cage rather than resign itself to captivity. I ask myself, how much would you sacrifice to be free? Your beauty? Your rank? Your life?”

I looked at him, with my remaining eye and could only whisper that I would give all of this and more. It was the truth. I would give anything to be free. He did not turn away again. He kept my gaze and imprisoned me in his honest dark orbs.

“Your life, then. There are some birds that do this too, did you know this? Some birds can never be caged because they will dash themselves against the bars or starve to death rather than stay a prisoner. The type known as a Red Cardinal, for example. Freedom is a powerful elixir and one can chase it all one's life but never find it. Only a slight taste can be obtained.”

I had to interject.

“By men. Only men can taste this elixir, it seems. Women can never reach it.” The priest held up a hand.

“Not so. We can all chase after what we want, if we choose. Most find that they prefer their prisons, however. The prison of marriage or society or etiquette or class. Instead they find a way to feel freedom, by finding happiness in other things. In family, in children, in drink or travel or food. Most of these seem sinful but then we are selfish creatures and created imperfect.”

“I had those things. I had money and rank, I had a husband and a fine home. I had a beautiful son and should have been happy. Now my son is dead, my husband despises me, I will be cast out of society if any know my sins and my face is ruined forever.” I spoke bitterly, I felt the injustice of life pressing on me. I could never feel freedom as a man could, even as a priest could, who was created to serve!

“You are a priest and have spent your life serving the Lord yet you have travelled far and wide, you have tasted freedom and now have elected to be here in this remote place. How can you understand my feelings?” The sad look was back in his eyes as he held mine.

“Is that what you think? That I am free? Well, it may be that you are right but not for the reasons you think. Do you like story’s, Imogen?” His question surprised me as did the use of my name. I could only nod my head like a dumb animal. Father John considered me for a moment and then poured me a glass of the spiced wine which was before the fire. He took a glass himself and settled himself again in the chair beside my bed.

“Let me tell you a story then. It is one which has never been told before except in part to my own confessor. Listen and consider it.”