The Farm Ch. 07

And Gordy thought of the under kitchen girl as she struck at the footman and said the same words.

"No, it's just a bed. You're very ill. You have to go to the bed."

Nanny Grey stood in the door. "What's here?" She pushed white hair under her cap.

And the resisting Prize was eased back to the sheets and the covers pulled up. He tried to sit and failed. Nanny sat on the edge of the mattress and placed her hand on Prize's forehead she pushed the short black hair back. She looked into the blue eyes. "Do you know where you are?"

"Yes." Prize reached for her hand. He closed his eyes. Tears wet his lashes. He coughed and shook.

Gordy glowered at the foot of the bed.

***

Nanny Grey brought food on trays to the locked room above the maids' rooms. She forced George to eat a few bites. She brought him clean nightshirts and bathed him in lavender to calm him. At night George paced the room and rattled the door knob. He called for his brother. He screamed his Latin conjugations and Caesar crossed the Rubicon. The maids grew irritable and hollow-eyed from lack of sleep. They whispered "mad" in their narrow beds and clucked and shook their heads.

Dr. Fellows came with his packets and potions. The opiates silenced George for a time. But rumors ran from the lips of the servants at the great house of Leeshore to the ears of the servants at other great houses and were carried upstairs on eager lips to the ears of the rich. Mad.

Lord Downcliff sighed and his shoulders drooped in resignation when Dr. Fellows suggested a discreet school in the north where George could recover his senses and the family recover their good name. A strict school, a firm hand, no coddling, an egress to more prestigious education institutions. A place were wild or troubled sons of the rich remade their lives. Where bastards were hid. Where those who didn't conform were kept from society and gossip. For Lady Downcliff he suggested an extended stay in Italy.

And George was bathed and dressed and dosed with powders and wrapped in a buffalo robe and in the predawn hour bundled into a coach with Dr. Fellows and Nanny Grey to be driven north. His parents turned in their beds each in their own room as the boy was brought down the servants' stairs. On the estate, dry leaves crawled across the grave and buffeted the spread-winged butterfly and the inscription "Anthony, Most Beloved Son" and two dates on the headstone.

Sedgefall School stood firm as a prison in the Cheviot Hills near the border of Scotland. It contained five buildings behind its high walls and iron gate. The barred windows of the most isolated of the buildings marked the failures housed for life or until the money dried up. The others were dormitories, school house, kitchen, and faculty suites. Outside the walls stood the headmaster and owner's home. Through that iron gate George was admitted to Sedgefall.

Nanny Grey shivered at the sight and pulled George close. George looked out the coach window, his pupils pinpoints. Dr. Fellows met with Headmaster Bartleby and reinforced his diagnosis outlined in his letter requesting admission for George. He left a good supply of powders and received assurances of the reclamation of George.

They assigned him a bed at the far end of dormitory for older boys near the window where cold air leaked in. One change of clothes, one nightshirt, books, Bible, pens, and one blanket. The matron dissolved the contents of one packet from Dr. Fellows in water, watched George drink, pulled the blanket over him, returned to her screened sleeping room, and pulled out her bottle of gin.

George waited for sleep to pull him down where Tom and Anthony and a green meadow waited. Where Anthony ran without an iron brace.

Strong hands pulled him from his dream and cruel whispers assaulted his ears. He didn't know where he was. His head struck the floor. He tried to fight and his arms were pinioned at the small of his back. He tried to yell but a filthy rag stuffed in his mouth muffled his cries. He bucked and kicked. He cried in fear and pain.

In the morning, he woke with a blackened eye and blood on this thighs and ass. He fought them every night and lost. He drank his powders. He learned his school lessons. He learned to avoid beatings at night. He learned to avoid beatings in the classrooms. He learned to hide the pain, and when there was blood, he hid that too. He learned to swallow.

***

Prize tried three more times to escape the bed; the last attempt brought back the fever. Gordy and Nanny Grey tended him and William carried water and sheets and heated bricks. They talked about binding him to the bed, but Gordy knew it would terrify him. They talked about laudanum, but they both knew it was wrong. Gordy wanted to sleep on the bed. Nanny said she would do it.

William stopped on his way out of the room and looked at them both. "Put a pallet on the floor." He left the room.

The pallet lay before the fire on the Persian carpet in the main room and Prize slept. Dr. Fellows never returned and Nanny Grey took care of Prize. Gordy hovered out of Prize's view, but when the dreams came, good or bad, he sat by Prize's side to wake him if he cried, to see him smile when he dreamed of Rahim. He became guardian and voyeur.

One afternoon as Prize slept a dreamless sleep Nanny Grey guided Gordy to the back garden. "What will you do with him when he recovers?"