Doctor Who_ The Sleep of Reason - Martin Day [56]
I feel it is important to note Miss Thorne’s discourse here; she will return to our tale before long, and my reasoning may be become clear. In any event, what she told me was tragically illuminating of many poor souls who came to Mausolus before my tenure.
While Torby and I were speaking with Miss Thorne, a great disaster was playing out in another part of the house. I now understand that when Mr Fern returned to Mausolus he was angry with both himself and with his God. I also understand that a terrifying fearlessness pulsed through his veins, and that he found himself in Mary Jones’s room as if his legs were under the control of some foul demon. (Normally I would have held Fern personally – and eternally – responsible for what happened; subsequent events have given me, for the first time, something of an understanding of the man.) In any event, I can see the picture that was painted in my mind’s eye: he now stood in the doorway of the room, laughing at poor Jones shuffling a pack of cards and beating that stick against his leg.
He taunted her, I am sure. Perhaps he even resented the attention that Mr Torby and I lavish on certain patients, such as Mary Jones. I do not know whether Jones spoke to him, or was merely mute before him. Whatever she did, or said, was not enough to stem his anger.
Far from it.
Fern told me that he dragged her to her feet, pulled the dress from her shoulders. I dare say that he made much use of coarse language (he has often said that all cats seem grey in the dark) and perhaps even compared her shivering form to that of some wench he was intimate with. Certainly I have heard him joking, with me men, that he would rather catch the clap off
“Lizbeth Harper’ than spend a week on his own with Jones.
Moments later – Fern claimed – something hit him bodily. He described the sensation of being bowled over, as if by a physical presence – but the pain was 97
internal, his mind ‘exploding into flames’. This only made his anger swell, like a bull lashing out at a swarm of bees.
I imagine he hit her first at that moment.
He says that a nameless, wordless power coursed into him, which in turn broke whatever dam had previously existed within his dark mind, already so full of shadows. He felt a certain sense of strength, just for a moment in control of what was happening. He was, for the first and last time, a great man, filled to overflowing with absolute power, as Lord Acton has termed it.
‘I am your god!’ he bellowed to Jones. ‘I can love you, or I can hurt you, and the choice is mine alone. My choice is perfect! And I decide.’
By now he was kicking her in the stomach.
‘And I decide. . . to punish you. You are my scapegoat, my sacrificial lamb.’
He also said he used stick and belt.
‘This is for my mother, who was ripped open to let me out. . . This is for my father and his drink. . . This is for the first woman who betrayed me. . . This is for this place and what it’s done to me. . . This is for Macksey and his cursed God!’
(As he told his tale, Fern punctuated his exclamations with a fist pounding into his other hand. I winced at the image my mind painted.) He says Jones was only able to murmur now. I hope that she was truly unconscious before the end.
Fern – I can hardly bear to use his name – said that the room suddenly seemed to explode with fire. He was aware only of himself and the dark, broken figure of Jones.
He picked up a large piece of cracked flagstone from the floor, held it over her face. He pinned her body to the floor with a dirty boot stamped between her breasts. As he described events to me, his voice deepened, and his face almost seemed