The Edge

When I read those words, it was as if the world suddenly stopped. All I could hear was my own heartbeat. I read and reread those words and they didn't make any more sense. I picked up the papers and leafed through them.

They were all dated between the Autumn of 1772 and the Summer of 1774. Letters between Lord Richard Llewellyn and the doctors at Saint John's hospital who cared for his wife until she was taken home in 1774. They detailed various medical problems, mania being the key one for them and apparently treated with something called water treatment. This continued until finally Lady Llewellyn was taken home with the doctors saying she might be more tractable in a familiar surrounding. They had succeeded in making her a quieter and more natural person, gave praise to her improved state of mind. But they offered no more details than that, no reason for her illness, no specifics. The only other thing I could glean from this was that she had already built the doll's house itself.

Dr Young, who seemed to be head of the hospital, said that she now talked often of her pet project, wished to finish it, had spoken of making the dolls for it and so on. The doctor looked on this as a good omen, one which showed a return to her previous good state of health.

I felt sick. Never had I been given the slightest hint that Elizabeth had been incarcerated nor any that spoke of her having a weak head. Michael had said nothing and my father in law had clearly lied! He had spoken of her in such different terms that my discovery shocked me to the core. To conceal this so carefully that no one had spoken a word to me of it, there was clearly a serious reason for doing so. I got up and walked about the room. I paced back and forth a while until my head stopped spinning. I was able to think more rationally. Perhaps it had merely been an unfortunate interlude. I had heard strange story's of madhouses but never been in one, mahaps they were untrue. Elizabeth had probably been cured or made well and so had been allowed home and so my father in law would only have remembered the elderly lady she had become, only being a little boy at the time. Yes, yes, that must be it. He had known nothing when young and probably continued to know nothing until his fathers death. Then he had found these papers and, wanting to preserve the memory of his beloved grandmother- for had he not said that he had loved her dearly?- he had hidden the truth.

I felt calmer now. I would replace the papers that evening when the men were in the library after dinner. And I would make sure to talk to my father in law and ask him if he were happy with what I had done to the doll's house so far. It couldn't be easy for him, having his grandmothers pet project worked on by another.

I gathered the letters and the portrait together and replaced them in the envelope. I placed this on the bedside table, since my bedroom had already been tided, there was no reason for anyone even to come in. I let myself out and went to my sons room. I had decided to bring him to have tea with Lady Rhiannon and myself, and he laughed with delight at being taken out twice in the same day.

Lady Rhiannon was in a quiet mood, had been all day according to her nurse, but on our entrance she seemed to become more alive in a moment. My happy little boy rushed over to her on his unsteady legs and the nurse lifted him onto her daybed. He babbled in his nonsense tongue to her as the nurse and I arranged the tea things while Rhiannon stroked his copper curls and smiled to him and paid him every attention. He settled after a while and seemed content to sit beside his grandmother and eat little titbits which she fed him, or to drink at his milk carefully from his bottle. I spoke to my mother in law about the weather's seeming improvement, the progress on the doll's house, on James's developments- he could say a few proper words now, had gained a real love of animals and how I had ordered a selection of stuffed toys for him from one of the craftsmen in Cardiff. She smiled, answered a few questions then turned her attention back to James and asked him seriously which animal he liked best.

My little boy looked at her, sucked his thumb for a moment then said “os!”, meaning, I suppose, horse. At any rate this must be what Lady Rhiannon thought he said because she beamed from ear to ear and started to tell him about horses, how they galloped and ran, how to groom them and how fast they could go. Little James smiled up at her, then clapped his hands and bounced at her side, mimicking the movement of a rider. I took him on my knee and bounced him up and down calling out “giddy up!” while Rhiannon smiled and smiled and cheered him and James laughed and waved his arms.

I spent longer with them than I had thought because it seemed to have made her, and him, so happy. When at last she seemed to be tired, we took our leave and I carried James back to his room. I then made my way up to my craft room. I wanted to apply the first wall papers to the dolls house, this would allow Stephen and I to begin placing furniture and see what was missing.

When I got there however, he was already there and pacing back and forth, waiting for me. He looked troubled. I went across to him and he drew me down into a chair, sitting next to me at our work bench. I asked if he had learned much from the village. He looked grim and nodded. I decided that perhaps he was worried that the shock of knowing about my late relative might be too much so forestalled him by telling him of my venture into my father in laws study, my discovery of the notes and how I planned to put them back later on. His face relaxed somewhat but not enough. Clearly there was more to discover.

“I had worried over what I must tell you today but since you have learned so much, I must tell you the rest. I got all this out of the old woman who runs the post office. She and her family have kept it for some time and she remembers her mother telling her about the case when she was young. It is known about the village in some houses but not spoken of, with all that knew the business at the time being dead.”

I interrupted. “Is it hidden, a secret?” He smiled fully now.

“No, not at all. But not many remember, or care. It doesn't signify in the lives of the common folk! But at the time it would have meant a great deal. Lady Elizabeth was well known in the area and was renowned for her beauty and her kindness. She was a very rich young woman and she donated much of her fortune to the village school and to assisting the widows of men killed in a pit explosion.

She was from a wealthy family in Bristol. Her father ran a shipping company and she was given all she could want. Her mother was Italian, her father met her on one of his trips abroad and they married, having four children, three of them girls. The mother supervised their education herself, she had been well educated and so too were her children. When Elizabeth was 16 she was introduced to Lord Richard Llewellyn. He was thirty nine and a grim man. He was deeply religious, had actually studied to become a priest until the death of his older brother which meant he needed to look after the family business. Elizabeth's parents thought he would be a devoted husband and their daughter would be raised higher into society. Instead he was a cold man who married to gain an heir, and have a woman to look after his home and nothing more.

Elizabeth was very young but she was book learned and intelligent. She ran her husbands home well, brought honour to the family by her charitable works and bore Lord Richard four children, all boys. She was beautiful, accomplished and kind. And, from what my talkative source told me, deeply unhappy. She felt imprisoned in her home. Her husband would not allow her to take trips to see her family more than once a year, at her father's birthday. He gave few party's and so Elizabeth grew lonely. That was when she began work on the doll's house. She took her time, as we have seen, the detail on it is so exquisite. Then one winter she stopped. She ordered many books from London, from France and Italy- she was fluent in several languages and her husband became concerned that she was overstimulating herself. He ordered her to stop reading so much and focus more on her household.

That was the turning point. She defied him by continuing to read. He locked her into her bedchamber and burned the books in the coach yard. He forbade her to do anything on the doll's house, calling it a needless hobby. She was to do needlework and flower arrangement and not much else. She rebelled. My source said that she was found repeatedly talking to the priest about divorce! She was also deeply religious and asked permission from her husband to take a pilgrimage to Lourdes to cleanse herself. He allowed this but when she came home she refused him his connubial rights, read more and more- books which she had brought on her pilgrimage- and told him she wished to leave him.”

I gasped. She had actually wanted a divorce!

“No, no divorce, mearly a separation. She would take the children and live at a house she owned in Cornwall. Lord Richard took this very ill. He accused her of many things, of having a lover, of too much reading. She countered by telling him he was an ignorant man who knew nothing of the world but coal and slavery, and that she would have used his advantages to better herself and humanity. Then she cut off her hair! In front of him, she took up the scissors from his desk and cut off her long hair. That was when he had her taken to the hospital. She was there two years, until the Act of 1774 which meant they could no longer hold her in detention.”

He took my hands and clutched them tightly, looking deeply into my face.

“Imogen, Elizabeth was not mad! Not for a moment! Unhappy she may have been, lonely and angry and in her husband's power she was. But never mad! He had her locked up in that place and tortured to break her spirit and he would have left her there for life except for that the Madhouse act came in and so she couldn't be held without two doctors declaring her insane. He thought he had broken her spirit. He had certainly broken her body.”

He took a deep breath and cupped my face.

“Can you hear more? I fear this will over excite you. It doesn't make easy hearing.”

I assured him I was well ready to hear more. He tenderly lent forward and kissed my forehead.

“You are stronger than even I gave you credit for. Elizabeth returned from the madhouse a changed woman. Her hair had grown long again- she never cut it short after that one moment of defiance. But after her treatment in that place, she was weak and frail. She could not walk without help. She grew tired easily. She could not eat much. I am afraid that they used a process known as plunging on her.”

I shuddered. I had heard the horror stories of treatment in asylums. People chained to walls, beaten and starved and given no blanket or means of washing or going to the lavatory. Of surgical procedures which often killed the patient. Of burning or bleeding in order to 'leech the evil or madness' out of the unfortunate soul. And of plunging. The patient was attached for a plank of wood and strapped down then the wood was lowered into a deep pool of freezing water. The patient would be underneath the water for some time then raised then dropped back in again, and again and again, until they were subdued and frozen and half dead from drowning. And this Elizabeth, the proud, clever woman who resembled myself, this she had endured at the hands of her husband. Any sane person would have struggled but with such treatment, how could her spirit have survived?

“Her body was weak but she was allowed home. She was confined to the upper floor. To this very room in which we sit actually. Here she worked once more on the doll's house. Her husband was advised by her doctors that giving her a hobby would keep her well. And she did beautiful needlework. There are several alter cloths of hers in the church in the village, I have seen them. She was never allowed books again but she was given a journal and a bible. She was carried to the family chapel on Sundays. After a while she was allowed to join the family at dinner once again. She lived to see her children grow up. She saw her eldest son, also called Richard, marry and have children. The oldest of those would be your father in law, Lord Robert. She lived to see her husband die. Lord Richard died some years before she did and so she then asked to be taken to that house in Cornwall. Her family refused, because she was so frail but in the end, they took her. That was where she died. They had been there only a few days when she died in her sleep. When she died, she left all her money to charitable concerns. Her property she gifted to her grandchildren. And she had the dolls buried with her. All except one. Apparently, as we can deduce, she didn't want her husband with her in death, even in effergy. And once she was buried, the doll's house was put away.”

I was silent. I was utterly struck by this story. By the sadness I felt. I wished I could have known her. This woman whose bravery and spirit was as boundless as the sea. The sea which she had waited her whole life to see and which she had finally been allowed, in the last days of her life. I had no idea that I was crying until Stephen brushed the tears from my cheeks. I suddenly wanted comfort more than I ever had before and I grasped his face and pushed my lips against his.

He responded with equal passion, I felt his hot tongue between my lips and against mine. It felt unnervingly wonderful! Our tongues met and entwined and then he began to thrust his hot tongue in and out of my mouth, which his hands went to my breasts, covered by my bodice. He rubbed at them through the cloth until I felt a tingeing and pulsing that ran through my breasts, down the axis of my body and into my womanly parts. I rubbed my body shamelessly up against him, and felt his manhood through his trousers. H e took hold of my hand and put it down to that area, and I took hold of the outline and rubbed my fingers up and down until he gasped and gripped my hand, stopping my movements and we broke apart, panting. Our eyes mirrored each other. Wild, aroused, dark with passion.

He spoke first. “I wish to come to your room tonight. With your permission, I want to see your form without clothes, without barriers. I want......I need you. I need you Imogen. Imogen. Imagine.”

I nodded and stepped towards him, intending to carry on kissing him but he stopped me.

“No, not now! The hour grows late and we must both appear calmly in public together. If we continue now, I cannot.....I cannot promise that I will be able to stop in time for dinner!”

I laughed, I suddenly felt like a girl again! He blew me a kiss from the doorway and I heard him go downstairs. I smiled, rearranging my dress. I didn't want to change. I would go down as I was. And later, I would return the documents to my fathers study and then I would admit Stephen Bruce into my bed chamber again. I felt the return of the pulsing in my cunt. That word, which I had learned from my brothers, fitted my mood. I looked forward to using it in a few hours time!