Sara had passed the police court a dozen or so times. It resembled a fortress, with thick gray stones and a chunky parapet across the roofline. The policemen escorted her there by foot but refused to answer any of her questions about what was going to happen to her. To them, she was a thief, and an addled one at that. She stumbled once or twice on the way and swore she heard the older man mumble “drunkard” under his breath.
Inside the courtroom, dozens of people milled about, some shouting, others slumped on benches. Sara was taken into a back room and placed on a wooden chair outside a door marked JUDGE’S CHAMBERS. After ten minutes of waiting, the door swung open and she was brought forth into a gloomy room filled with books and papers. The judge looked on her kindly over his spectacles. He shooed away the policemen.
“Now, tell me what’s happened, Mrs. Smythe.”
She was about to plead her case, to attempt to explain the preposterous circumstances she’d found herself in, but before she could get a word out, Mr. Douglas and a man carrying a medical bag entered. Her heart began to pound. How had they gotten a doctor here so quickly? If she was subjected to an exam, would he know that she was pregnant? She hadn’t even begun to show yet; her belly didn’t look much different than it had before.
“Judge Harrington, I’m Mr. Douglas, the agent for the Dakota.”
“I see. Next time, please do me the courtesy of knocking.” He leaned forward and looked at Sara. “Where are you from, my dear?”
“Fishbourne, England, sir. I arrived in the country last fall.”
“Fishbourne! I visited the village a number of times, summering in Portsmouth last year. Delightful place. You work at the Dakota Apartment House?”
“As resident managerette, yes.”
“How long have you worked there?”
“I began the day I arrived.” No. That wasn’t the right answer.
The judge frowned.
“Thank you, Mrs. Smythe.” He took off his spectacles and lowered the timbre of his voice. “Tell me what’s happened, Mr. Douglas. You must have a good reason to request a private appearance.”
Mr. Douglas cleared his throat. “Your Honor, Mrs. Smythe has been acting strangely the past few weeks. She’s been found wandering the hallways, seemingly confused. There have been complaints. Then today we found a valuable necklace belonging to a tenant in her desk drawer.”
“Mrs. Smythe, did you take the jewels?”
She shook her head. “No, sir.” Her voice caught in her throat, and tears burned her eyes. “I’ve had a difficult time of it lately. I’ve been ill. But I swear I didn’t take them. I assure you. Someone else did and placed them in my desk.”
“Why don’t you conduct your exam, Dr. Wilde.” The judge waved a hand in her direction. The evidence was against her; she’d lost her early momentum.
“Have you been drinking, Mrs. Smythe?” asked the doctor.
“No. I haven’t.”
“Have you been taking any laudanum or such drugs?”
“No. Of course not.”
“Yet Mr. Douglas says you passed out while being questioned at the Dakota, and that you appeared disoriented.”
“I was, but I think that’s just because I’ve been unwell.”
Mr. Douglas interrupted. “Look, Your Honor, it’s important that this not make the papers. The building just opened and we can’t have current or prospective tenants knowing that there was a thief in our midst. The Clark family and I request that this be taken care of swiftly and quietly.”
“What do you propose, Mr. Douglas? Being that you seem ready to take over my job for me.”
She saw her chance. “Ask Mr. Camden to vouch for me. He’ll say that I didn’t steal the jewels, that someone else did and made it look like it was me.”
“How would he know that?” The judge looked at her from under his bushy eyebrows.
“He knows I wouldn’t do such a thing. We are friends, you see.”
Mr. Douglas shook his head. “She’s deluded, clearly. Mr. Camden is a tenant of the Dakota. He lives there with his wife and family. As a matter of fact, it was the wife’s jewelry that went missing.”
She had no hope. No hope at all.
Mr. Douglas shot Sara a hard look. “Nothing the girl says explains who took the property, if she didn’t. But we don’t want to send her to jail.”
“You don’t?”
“No, sir. As I mentioned before, that would attract unnecessary attention.”
“Then where would you like me to send her?”
“Somewhere she can get help, for whatever is causing her confusion.”
Perhaps she’d misjudged Mr. Douglas. Indeed, he laid a hand on her shoulder, like a father might. She certainly needed to find out what was wrong with her, if it was the baby causing her befuddlement or something else. If she could avoid going to jail, she could straighten herself out, get well, and then figure out what exactly had happened. Without meaning to, she began to weep.
“She is certainly fragile,” offered the doctor.
“So you agree that she should be sent off?”
“I do, Your Honor.”
The judge sighed. “Very well. She can leave for the island this afternoon. They will determine if she can be rehabilitated.”
Rehabilitated?
Mr. Douglas gestured to the doctor, who pulled out a piece of paper from his bag and placed it on the judge’s desk. The judge glanced at it for only a second before signing it at the bottom.
“To the island, then, Mrs. Smythe. And may God help you.”
“What island?”
The policeman practically shoved her up into the wagon, ignoring her question.
“I have a right to know. Where am I being sent?”
After the judge had made his pronouncement, Sara was shuttled out a side door and into a transport where a worn-looking woman sat shivering in the corner, wrapped in a dingy gray blanket. The policeman shut the door, and Sara tried to ask the woman if she knew anything about where they were headed, but she looked back at her blankly. Another girl, wearing garish face paint over a blackened eye, lay against the backboard, mouth open, asleep.
The wagon stopped three times, and each time a new mixture of women climbed on board. Two were seriously confused and babbled to themselves. Several had terrible coughs that made Sara worry about her health, but at least it did seem that they were all going to a hospital of some sort.
Finally, the wagon stopped. Outside, the East River ran fast and cold, fierce waves dodged every which way with the turn of the tide. Across the river, a half dozen enormous buildings emerged through the sleet, spaced out in wide intervals on a thin strip of land.
If she got on this island, how would she get off? Panic built up in her throat, but there was nowhere to run, no means of escape. The women—they now numbered about a dozen or so—lumbered onto a boat that strained wildly in its moorings like a chained, rabid dog. On the other side of the dock, twenty men were being herded onto a separate ferry. A disheveled drunk called them all whores before being clocked by a guard’s baton.
She stared out the grimy window as the boat chugged away from the city. Several stocky officers and two nurses met them on the other side. A list of names was called out. Sara’s was not among them.
“I’m sorry, but what is this? Where are we?” she asked the woman holding the list.
“This is the Charity Hospital. If I didn’t call your name, stay put.”
She sat back as the boat headed off to the next stop, another pier several hundred yards north of the first one. A large sign indicated it was a workhouse for petty criminals and the like. Again, her name wasn’t called.
Sara looked at the four companions who were left with her. Two of them were the babblers.
Finally, near the northern tip of the island, Sara and the other women disembarked. “Out you go. Move along.”
Several orderlies herded them toward a five-story octagonal building of white stone with two wings flanking it at right angles. A windowed cupola on top of the octagon stuck out like an insect’s eye. “What is this?” Sara spoke softly, almost to herself. The woman walking next to her took her hand.
“Do you not know where you’ve been put away?”
Sara looked at her. The woman was young, with kind brown eyes. She didn’t wear a hat, and snowflakes dotted the waves of her hair. “A private hospital?”
“No. We’re going to Blackwell’s Island Insane Asylum.”
A madhouse.
They thought she was insane.
“But I’m not mad.”