The White Queen Read online

  He slid his fingers from my mouth, smearing spittle down my chin, gloating like he’d already won some prize.

  I had to know if I was right. If there was a way to outwit the Hatter, then there was a way to outwit them all. “I will not kiss you.”

  Jaw unhinged and head thrown back in a roar, the sound of a thousand beasts let loose to shake my walls. As the Hatter raged, I was plunged into darkness, and in that darkness I had dwelt all the years since.

  The old man sitting on the couch in my mother’s dayroom room, spouting diagnoses, and asking uncomfortable questions would not be able to change that.

  In fact, he would only make my torment unbearable. Where before my days had been lonely, in the care of Sir Rothfield, sunlight hours would grow to hold a fresh agony.

  The Hatter had been right. I would beg for his help. And he had also been honest. He would make me suffer.

  Chapter 6

  While standing before my parents, I was told that I should appreciate how gentle my care would be. I was told that modern medicine and carefully applied practice would cure me. But, all progress hinged on trust; Sir Rothfield said so. I was to trust him. I was to obey.

  I promised faithfully, Mama and Papa as witness, to do just that.

  Be a good girl; be faithful to the family name. Be quiet.

  My banishment had all been prepared ahead of time, a new cloak of soft blue wool ready for my shoulders. It hid my sorry garments. It fell all the way past my stockinged ankles. My mother fastened it under my throat and would not meet my questioning gaze.

  Sir Rothfield led me from my house; my parents did not even see me to the door.

  My nanny, her shape I did see standing at my nursery window, looking down as I made my way. Whether it was because she would miss me, or because she longed to see me gone, I could not tell.

  The whole arrangement stirred a nagging sense of betrayal in my breast: the cloak, a case prepared, a carriage waiting... their only child cast into the power of a stranger.

  Soon my feelings were forgotten, for you see, the ride from London gave me a view of the world I’d never known before. I’d had only the nursery window overlooking our street. My universe had been dotted in gas lamps and cobblestones, brownstone houses and the random pedestrian. I could not even recall how long it had been since I’d seen a park. An hour in the carriage and the world became new. Outside the city limits there were green things, grass, cows, different smells. Glued to the window, I watched it all, my fingers clinging to the casement so the rocking of the coach might not upset the show.

  There was little conversation. Sir Rothfield only spoke at me, not to me.

  “That door is barred from the outside, Alice. It cannot be pried open.” He sounded more like my stern father and less like the contemplative stranger I had met only this morning. “Now, sit back in your seat like a lady.”

  Unfolding from my awkward perch was harder to manage than I’d thought. My fingers rebelled, and it felt strange to make them uncurl. As always, I obeyed. Wrapped warmly in my cloak, I let the seat bounce me, and did my best to take in the now obstructed view.

  For the next several hours, I sat still as one of the few unbroken china dolls on the highest shelf of my nursery. I am not even sure I blinked, as there was so much to see. In hindsight, I wish I had been disobedient and clung to that window. I wish I might have looked more at the world.

  Soon enough it would all be taken from me.

  Once we cleared the gates of Rothfield Asylum, there was no more green, no cows, no landscape. There was a yard of gravel and a manor larger by far than the house I had grown up in. A robust man dressed in white unbarred the door of the carriage and I was pulled out by my arm without so much as a hello.

  Outside of my nightly visitors, I had never been handled with such roughness... not even by my father when he was in a temper. Yanked through the courtyard, Sir Rothfield at my heels, I was dragged inside that house, down halls, upstairs, around corners, and past muttering patients until standing in an office bright with electric lamps.

  Polished mahogany dominated the room’s center position, a desk of huge proportions bearing stacks of books, papers, a tray of letters.

  With the huge man still holding me above the elbow, Sir Rothfield circled, taking the desk’s overstuffed leather chair and scrutinizing me as if we had not previously met or spoken.

  He looked less the grandfather with his brows drawn down and more the cold academic. Setting a pipe between his teeth, he struck a match, puffed to ignite the tobacco, and blew out a great cloud of smoke. “What you have, Alice, is a disease of the mind. It is my sacred duty to cure it.”

  I nodded, swallowing nervously, my arm aching where it hung trapped by the grip of a man Sir Rothfield introduced as head-orderly Calvin. He was to be mainly charged with my care. He was to be treated with the utmost respect.

  “This is a hospital for the privileged, Alice. Our techniques are cutting edge. Aggressive treatment, medication, and practice, will end your mania. There will be no child’s indulgences, starting with your manner of dress. There will be no toys like those kept in your room. Should you show adequate progress, I may allow you to play the harp.”

  I hated playing the harp and had long ago outgrown toys.

  “I have yet to decide whether or not to cut your hair.” He glared at the freefalling locks, eyeing the golden waves with contempt. “Like all attractive young woman, you reek of a bloated sense of vanity.”

  He could not touch my hair. My mother would never forgive me if it were shorn. Alarm made my eyes go wide, a chirp struck from my mouth when the orderly’s fingers went to the frogs of my cloak. “Please sir, you mustn’t. I’ll be good.”

  “And I give you an opportunity to prove it now.” Leaning back in the chair, puffing on the pipe, Sir Rothfield explained, “It is best to conduct initial examination immediately upon arrival. Behave, and you may keep your locks.”

  I had promised Mama and Papa devotedly to behave. There was nothing I could do but stand still, and quake while in full view of them both, head-orderly Calvin stripped me down to my shabby underthings. Left cold, trying to make myself smaller than a mouse, I cried silent tears but said nothing.

  Measurements were taken as if I stood before the dressmaker. Foreign hands touched me, turned my chin this way and that. I was ordered to stick out my tongue, to cough, to touch my toes. Every last mark on my body was catalogued, questions asked about each scratch, scar, or bruise. They even bent me forward, tugged down my drawers, and spread my buttocks.

  I thought that was the worst of it. I thought there could be no greater degradation than to be pinned down by a man’s forearm to my back, a cold desk under my elbows and chest. It was Sir Rothfield himself who took the trouble of parting the flesh of my thighs and looking upon a place I had been taught was unclean.

  Where downy blonde hair grew, I was spread, the old man making note. “Her hymen is visibly intact. Direct stimulation produces no immediate arousal. Cauterization of the clitoris may be unnecessary.”

  Unsure when I had started screaming, I found it was my voice bouncing a banshee’s screech off the walls. “Please!”

  “Do you touch yourself here, Alice? While locked in your room do you rub against things?”

  A fit came upon me as I struggled against the elbow digging into my spine. I could feel the blood rush to my head and knew it would not be long before I slumped into a full faint. The boys, the Red Queen, the laughing Madman of Cheshire, I would take them all night after night. Anything but this. “NO!”

  “Chronic masturbation may not be the cause of her nervous disorder. Let her up, Calvin. An ice soak will calm her agitation.” I could hear the old man retreat, circling the desk as if nothing untoward had just happened. “She is to be restrained and left in the padded cell to curb any urges to self-harm. I want her brought here in the morning for further diagnosis.”

  In all the years the twins had pinned me, when they’d sat on my chest and
legs to scratch and bite to their heart's content, never had they touched me in this way. The Red Queen may have been shamelessly nude, but never had she drawn attention to that part of her. Even the laughing madman of Cheshire never looked me anywhere but in the eye.

  My shift was allowed to cover twitching buttocks, I was released to slide down the front of the desk.

  Crouching, I wept.

  Calvin reached down to tug me up. Without thought, I sprung to my feet and tried to evade the human wall. There was no escape. My cheek hit the carpet and the weight of a horse fell upon my body, twisting me into submission until I was certain my bones would splinter.

  Well-polished shoes came into my line of sight, and Sir Rothfield voiced his disapproval. “Her parents assured me she was meek. I wonder how many other falsehoods we shall uncover.”

  I was going to pop under that great weight; I was going to squish like an overripe blueberry. And then I was up, dragged by an arm round my neck, made to stumble out of the room where more would be done to me than the jabbing of my lady parts.

  In a room tiled from floor to ceiling, the last vestments of my modesty were torn away. Naked, my wrists were strapped to a wall and I was hosed down with water so cold it crystallized near the drain. By the time Calvin shut off the hose, I was limp, muscles cramping, and quiet as a church mouse. Chilled to the bone, even my nipples had gone a shade of blue.

  When my wrists were released, I was caught before my knees might smash against the floor.

  Like a noodle, I was flopped about, each arm shoved through a strange garment that tied at the back and did nothing but stick to my wet skin. Over that went something more bizarre, a coat of unbleached linen with sleeves twice the length of my reach. It was buckled around me, the sleeves wrapping around my middle and fastened in some manner behind my back.

  There was no getting out of it.

  Lacking the strength to try, even the will to think clearly, I was sat on a pot and ordered to relieve my water.

  I did.

  I was sat in a chair and told to open my mouth.

  I did.

  Stew served as dinner. Rabbit stew.

  A door opened, soft floor connecting with my dangling legs. Everything was white, like a quilt, walls fluffed and ground padded.

  I was left alone, the cell door’s bolt thrown, the room’s electric light twinkling to chase away all shadows.

  In the hours I lay there, some feeling returned to my toes, my shoulders began to smart, and I grew thirsty. There had been no drink since breakfast. The stew had been salty, and there had been no tea.

  Tears came anew when my thoughts turned to those who had allowed this.

  Did my mama miss me?

  Had my father known what lay in store at this terrible place?

  Could they really hate me so much?

  Buzzing electricity snapped the solitary bulb’s filament, but the endless light meant nothing. Darkness was not required to keep my demons at bay. In fact, I welcomed them. They would never leave me... ever. How sad to find comfort in horrors.

  Somewhere in the hospital’s many rooms a clock began to tick.

  As always, I knew if I turned my head I’d see the white rabbit had found its way into the room, propped up, waiting. I knew that it would be watching me.

  Safest with my back to the wall, I pushed my weakened legs against the floor and inched like a worm for the corner.

  There was some mercy when the crash of the ticking clock ceased. Across from me, mirroring the way I huddled to soft walls, rocked the laughing Madman of Cheshire.

  All night he pointed, peals of giggles turning my stomach, because now I knew why he laughed so hard.

  My life was a joke.

  Chapter 7

  “Melancholia... it’s not abnormal to grow mildly depressed upon beginning treatment. It is common for new patients to feel overwhelmed, and I happily assure you, Alice, that with your continued willingness, remedy shortly follows.”

  ‘Mildly depressed’ was not the term to describe what I was. I was miserable. In my tenure at Rothfield Asylum I had grown to despise the day far more than I’d once feared the night.

  Every morning I found myself dumped into the chair before Sir Rothfield’s desk, folded to sit upright when my trapped arms could not steady my upper body from toppling forward. Day after day I was blessed with the attention of the most imminent psychiatrist in the entirety of the empire. Sir Rothfield’s smiles seemed kind, but they were no more real than the toothy, manic grin of the twins who’d taken to chewing my ankles now that they could no longer get at my bound arms.

  My bruises, according to head orderly Calvin, had come from struggling when I had tried to climb from the ice bath or refused to sit in the rotary machine. The bite marks, he claimed, I had given myself once locked away at night.

  A straightjacket had not been enough in their estimation to properly constrain me. For weeks I had been strapped down to rings embedded in the padded floor of my cell. Once I was perfectly unable to move, stuck under the flicker of my cells blinding light, there was nothing I could do to defend myself from whatever visitor the white rabbit conjured up to haunt me.

  The old doctor’s kind smiles meant nothing, stood for nothing. Every morning he had the same questions. “Tell me more about the white rabbit.”

  I knew that to remain silent would get me dunked in a tub filled with ice, or injected with something that made foam gather at my lips. “It sat on the shelf with my dolls. I didn’t like it.”

  “While in the rotary machine yesterday, you began to scream that it was in the room. Is it in the room now?”

  Of course it was. They had it on the doctor’s massive wooden desk between us. Just as they kept it in my cell. Just as it was in every last room I was tortured in.

  My eyes twitched in the toy’s direction. “It’s...”

  “Is it here, Alice?”

  “It’s... not here.”

  “Then why are you looking at the desk?”

  I had never developed a talent for subterfuge, but in the growing tenure of my time at Rothfield Asylum I’d quickly recognized that lies led to progressive treatment just as much as truths.

  Had I learned to conceal all I felt long ago, had I not pled with my parents for respite from the white rabbit, I might not have ended up strapped to a table my third day at the hospital, my legs caught in stirrups, while head orderly Calvin, dressed in a smock, put something cold against a part of me I was taught never to speak of. It had vibrated... to relieve my hysteria. Sir Rothfield explained it all when I panicked, but his explanation was not for me. It was for his fellow observing doctors.

  I had wanted to die.

  That thing had buzzed until I’d gone numb, long after a piece of rubber had been fit between my teeth to silence my complaints, long after most of the observing physicians had left to tend other patients.

  After I finally stopped struggling, Calvin had pulled the whirring machine away and dipped down to stare between my spread legs. “The skin is pink, but there is no sign of dampness or shortness of breath. Manual stimulation may have greater effect.”

  Sir Rothfield had cleared his throat and came to take a closer look himself. “No penetration, outer pelvic massage only.”

  The pig-faced orderly, with his fleshy chin, and pug nose had stood between my legs. The same man who wiped me each morning after I was done on the pot, used his fingers in another manner.

  He’d held my eyes while he did it, and I’d found myself powerless to look away.

  Those special examinations took place almost every day, just like these morning meetings.

  At my hesitation, Sir Rothfield’s voice chirped louder across the desk. “Is the rabbit in the room, Alice?”

  Last night I had tolerated the companionship of the bloody woman, the night before the twins had giggled in the dark, bouncing off the walls and barreling over where I was tied to the floor. They were honest about their evil; they did not hoodwink themselves like the docto
r and the asylum staff with their delusions of grandeur.

  I was so tired. “On your desk, sir, crouched back on its hind legs, it’s a stuffed white rabbit. It’s looking right at me.”

  The old man reached forward, and swept his hand over the desk. “There is no white rabbit, Alice. There never was.”

  Not true. A white rabbit was right there. But the eyes weren’t glass... they were buttons. And the fur wasn’t white, not pure white, but a pale shade that leaned grey. The doctor was trying to trick me into lying.

  Getting caught in a lie led to things I did not want to consider. I committed to my previous statement. “There is a toy rabbit on your desk, sir.”

  “What if it were a real rabbit? A living thing? What would you do with it?”

  This was another one of his lessons. Weeks ago I had watched him dip his fingers into a small cage and pinch a bunny by the scruff. I’d flinched when he’d broken its neck. Never had I seen something die, and it had shocked me to tears when the doctor set the dead animal on my lap.

  That first time he’d killed the bunny with his bare hands. A week later, he’d used a cleaver to sever the poor things skull from its shoulders. Today was to be a new lesson. With an approving smile, the toy rabbit was taken from the desk and replaced with a small, helpless animal.

  Beside it Sir Rothfield laid a carpenter’s hammer.

  “Now, Alice, you have power over your mind. Destroy the rabbit.”

  Even while I shook my head no, head orderly Calvin unlatched the workings of my straightjacket. My arm was set free. After so little use, and so many injections, the muscles were hard to control. Calvin put the hammer in my fist, his meaty palm wrapped around my grip. He guided my arm to draw back. Under his steam, our joined hands smashed down. It took three hits to kill the fluffy beast that would serve as my dinner.