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Isabelle cleared her throat. “Well, I’m pleased to meet you, Madog. Do you think you could rustle up some tea and biscuits for us, please?”
“I… I…” The footman’s eyes widened to dinner plates. “I’m not sure, Miss.” He gulped. “Mrs P might still be there but… She’s been a bit…harassed of late. What with all the guests and goings-on. But… But I’ll try. For the young miss.” And off he dashed.
“Mari, ma petite.” Isabelle held the weeping girl, unsure how to comfort. She had nursed bruises and grazes many a time but naught of this nature. “Do… Do you remember anything?”
A shake of head. “I never do.” She stuttered. “I just wake and… Sometimes I’m in the corridor in my robe. And… And before the gate was fitted, I once woke with mud on my feet. One governess said…” Her voice broke on a sob.
“Said what, dearest?” Isabelle stroked her arm, desperate to offer what assurance she could for something she understood not.
“Said I-I was insane! That I belonged in…an asylum.”
“No,” cried Isabelle, drawing back, resting her hands to Mari’s shoulders. “You are not insane.”
Yet Mari shook her head, the keen vibrant girl of the day reduced to a sobbing wreck.
Isabelle fretted. How was she to lift Mari’s unfathomable burden?
Everyone expected a governess to have all the answers yet at this moment, Isabelle was as helpless as her charge.
She had nothing.
But then… The past reached out its chill fingers as if in apparition and she drew Mari close, tucked the shivering girl beneath her chin.
“I too… I used to have nightmares as a young girl, Mari.” She stroked her hair. “Dreadful ones. I would wake in terror screaming and reaching out.”
Mari stared up, eyes awash. No longer so vitreous but feverish and wretched. “Did you truly?”
She nodded. “My guardian likewise called me insane, for no one could soothe me, my mind beset with horror.”
“W-what did you do?”
“The housekeeper tried everything – warmed milk and cheerful books, but nothing worked, so in the end, I’d…I’d just stay awake all night. Reading poetry.”
She remembered the fear of sleep, the fear that the dream might repeat itself over and over.
She remembered the exhaustion, unable to keep her lids open, mind so befuddled.
Rubbing her nose, Mari pulled away. “I’ve tried to stay awake but I became so tired and… Well, sometimes I don’t walk for weeks but then…” She scrubbed at her eyes. “My last governess found me in the corridor. She thought I was ignoring her on purpose and shook me, and I… Apparently I screamed and screamed. Uncle had to pay her not to spread word of my…madness. I’m such a burden to them.”
“Oh, Mari, no. Not madness. And your uncle cares for you, loves you.”
“I… I believe so, but I saw a letter, you see, addressed to a doctor, and I worry… I overheard that other governess tell Uncle I should be shut away, sent to Bedlam. That my mind is diseased and I could be a danger to them all.”
Tears now streamed and Isabelle felt her own eyes smart.
She hugged her tightly and then returned her hands to Mari’s shoulders.
“Look at me, ma petite. That is not true. I refuse to believe it. But I understand your fears. It is not something one can control and so we feel…helpless. My own dreams would begin well enough. I would dream of my parents, alive and laughing, then they’d…” She blinked back her own tears. “Their skin would rot, leaving their bones and nothing else. Light was swallowed to be replaced by a pitch-black and no longer could I breathe. Suffocating in the dark together with their bones.”
Mari hiccupped. “That’s so awful. You poor thing.”
“But… In time, they lessened. And I am sure this will be the same.”
“You don’t consider me i-insane?”
“No. Not at all. Just… Did you walk before your father died?”
She shook her head.
