Mad Maudlin: A Tor.Com Original

by Marie Brennan

Overview

For to see mad Tom o'Bedlam, ten thousand miles she's traveled.

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781466863545
Publisher:	Tor Publishing Group
Publication date:	02/05/2014
Series:	Tor.Com Original Series
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	32
File size:	524 KB

About the Author

MARIE BRENNAN habitually pillages her background in anthropology, archaeology, and folklore for fictional purposes. She is the author of the Onyx Court series, the Doppelganger duology of Warrior and Witch, and the urban fantasy Lies and Prophecy, as well as more than forty short stories.

Marie Brennan is Professor of Education at Victoria University, Australia, and a former Dean of Education at the University of South Australia. She is currently leading the final year of a major Australian Research Council grant (LP100200499) Renewing the teaching profession in regional areas through community partnerships and participating in the Australian study of the Work of Teacher Educators (WOTE).

Read an Excerpt

Mad Maudlin

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By Marie Brennan, Iain McCaig

Tom Doherty Associates

Copyright © 2014 Bryn Neuenschwander
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4668-6354-5

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CHAPTER 1

Peter found her slippers just inside his office door. Standard white hospital issue, placed with exquisite care in the small gap between the bookcase and the doorframe, perfectly aligned, heels against the wall.

The police officer just shrugged at Peter's questioning glance. The man was standing a few feet inside the office, thumbs in his belt and elbows tucked against his body, failing to hide his discomfort. He went out quickly when Peter nodded, to take up station in the hall.

Known facts, Peter thought, preparing himself. Female patient, Jane Doe. Age between thirty and fifty. Unnerving manner.

Good sense of pitch.

The humming stopped when he drew near, before Peter could identify the tune. He said in a friendly voice, "I found your slippers by the door. Aren't your feet cold, without shoes?"

From beneath his desk came a cockney accent, rough but not hostile. "'Ave to take care of them. Not wear them out. Got a long way to go yet, lovey."

"I see. Where are you headed?" No answer; he hadn't expected one. Peter stepped back to a simpler tactic. "Why are you under my desk?"

He could see her bare feet through the gap where the modesty panel didn't quite reach the floor. Hard feet, armored with calluses, and profoundly filthy. The nurses hadn't wanted to bathe her. Hadn't wanted to spend any more time with her than necessary. Downtown hospital, veteran staff that had seen absolutely everything three times over, and they didn't want to be in the same room as this woman.

After a long enough pause to establish that the patient wasn't going to answer that question, either, Peter tried a third time. "Is there something I can call you?"

"Been called a lot of things, duck. Mad, Maud, Mad Maudlin."

Maudlin. He couldn't tell if she meant it as an adjective — a play on her name — or a name in its own right, the English variant of Magdalene. Or perhaps she was just playing with sounds. But at least he'd gotten an answer, which was more than the nurses had managed. She mostly just swore at them, called them whores. "May I call you Maud?"

Silence, that somehow carried the quality of a shrug.

"My name is Peter, Maud. I'd like to talk to you. It would be easier if I could see you, though. I don't suppose you might be willing to help? Maybe come sit in a chair, so we can talk?"

Another pause, this one considering. He'd never met someone so able to express herself through a desk. Just as he began pondering his next move, knees dragged against carpet and the feet disappeared. And Maud stood up.

He barely stopped the Jesus that wanted to burst from his mouth. Tangled, matted hair, hanging in stringy ropes, its original color impossible to tell. Pointed, thrusting chin, bearing a slash-thin mouth. Strong arch of a nose, and on either side of it, two eyes that could have driven nails into a concrete wall.

Mad Maudlin grinned at him, revealing a disastrous set of teeth. Never taking her eyes off Peter, she rounded the desk, walking on the toes of her filthy feet, and took one of the two chairs.

No wonder the nurses avoid her.

He'd been on the psychiatric ward of this hospital for eleven years, practicing psychology longer than that. He'd seen a lot of homeless people, many of them mentally ill or implicated in a violent crime. But nobody like this woman.

Peter swallowed, even though he knew she'd spot that sign of weakness. There was no reason to be afraid. The police had taken the weapons she'd carried into the emergency room. Her hands might be skin over tendon and bone, strong as iron, but both the officer and an orderly were just outside, watching through the window in the door; one threatening move — even a hint of a threat — and she would be sedated, bundled into restraints, and dealt with more cautiously. But she hadn't offered violence to anyone.

Not since admission, anyway. The question was whether she'd done so beforehand. And whether Peter could find any hint of where this woman had come from. Mad Maudlin.

He pushed the name away. Delusional behavior, the nurses said; well, he wouldn't help that by calling her "mad." Or overly sentimental, for that matter. Not that she looked sentimental in the least. Peter swallowed again. Not since his first encounter with a violent psychotic had he felt so unsafe in his own office. No, not unsafe — out of control. Whether Maud attacked him or not, the simple act of standing up from beneath his desk had somehow put the reins of this encounter into her hands.

So take them back. "Thank you, Maud," he said. "Would you like some water?"

She nodded. He filled a paper cup from the cooler next to his desk, then pushed it across to her, refusing to let himself retreat in a hurry when that was done. Instead he took the other seat. "If you're hungry, I can get you some food, too."

"Not 'ungry."

She'd come in at seven fifteen; it was now a little after ten. "Did you have breakfast, Maud?" A wobble of her head that looked affirmative. "What did you eat?"

"Souls."

He'd expected that. Not the specific answer, but something in that vein; the transfer orders from the emergency room cited her incoherent and frightening speech. Schizophrenia likely. "Where was that, Maud?"

Again she displayed those appalling teeth. They lay at all angles in her gums, and some had broken off. If they hurt, she gave no sign. In a dreadful accent he thought was supposed to be southern, she said, "The Good Lord don't keep his kitchens in the attic."

Hell, then. Delusions show a religious sensibility, Peter noted. Then underlined it mentally when Maud went on, "Down by the fires, and a big cauldron over them, with all the whores inside. But fire don't bother me. I drank a toast of them, the boiled bitches." She spat on the carpet. "Don't like whores. They wants my Tom, and shan't get 'im."

The name caught Peter's ear. "Who is Tom?"

Maud's attention was on the cup in her hand. "Shouldn't drink this," she mused, holding it up so the morning sunlight glowed through the thin paper. "I'm quarrelsome when I'm drunk. Saltwater does that to me, salt and gall, bitter, bitter. Like betrayal."

"I'd like to hear about Tom," Peter said, wondering if this was a clue. The clothes on her when she stumbled into the ER had someone's blood on them — a prostitute's? Or Tom's? No alcohol in her system, but she said she was quarrelsome, and if she believed herself drunk it could be almost as bad as the real thing.

She frowned and twisted a quarter-turn away, presenting her right shoulder. "Not much good to be sorry for it now. 'Ow long 'as it been? Ten thousand years? Or ten thousand miles. I confuse the two, I know it. Come such a long way, and 'ave so much farther to go."

"Can we talk about Tom, Maud?"

Paper crumpled in her grip, the remaining water sloshing out to soak the carpet. Droplets fell from her trembling fist, and her gaze struck Peter like a spear, freezing the cry in his throat. For a few breathless beats, he thought she would attack him.

Then Maud's lips twisted in pain, and she looked away.

When he could breathe again, Peter thought, Paranoid schizophrenia. He relaxed his stiff hands, signaled "all's well" to the orderly watching through the window, and said, "Maud, I'm not sure how much you understand of what's happened, so let me explain a few things. You came into the emergency room this morning, hallucinating and covered in blood. We're concerned that someone may have been hurt, and that you might be able to tell us who." Even if Maud confessed to a crime, he couldn't share that with the police, unless she gave him permission — not likely. But she might let him point them to the victim. Or at least give him something that could lead him to her family, or someone else who knew her. "In return, I'd like to help you. I'm a doctor, you see."

With a bitter laugh, Maud dropped the ruined cup and held her wrists out to Peter, still not looking at him. "Chains and whips. I knows the song. You'll cage me and starve me, three times fifteen years, but I'll not die before Doomsday."

His heart gave an unpleasant jolt. Prior hospitalizations? Entirely possible; schizophrenics often cycled in and out of treatment. There was no curing them, only drugging them into a semblance of normalcy. And that left them very vulnerable to abuse. Had she been mistreated at another facility, or was this simply more paranoid delusion? "No one's going to hurt you," Peter promised. "There are medicines that doctors sometimes use, in cases like this — do you know if anyone has ever given you olanzapine? Or aripiprazole?" No answer. Maybe the hypothetical other doctors had discovered what the ER had, that none of the usual antipsychotics made a dent in this woman's behavior. "I'd like to help you, but that's hard when I don't know your medical history. I'm hoping we can just talk. You can tell me what you know, however much you like. Does that sound okay?"

One eye appeared, staring at him through the ragged curtain of her hair. Then the hair moved, and Peter realized it was a nod. He added, "We don't have to talk about anything you don't want to."

Maud still hunched sideways in the chair, curled around herself, weight on her left hip. Not encouraging. He searched for a question specific enough to be useful, neutral enough not to upset her. "I noticed your accent sounds like it's from London, Maud. Do you remember when you came to the States? It must have been a long trip."

Maud scoffed at him. Still behind the concealing hair, but her posture relaxed, feet touching the carpet once more. "Long? That's nothing. I can do it in my sleep. Fifteen thousand miles in a night, one time, guided by the sun." She paused to consider her math, counting on her fingers. "Ten thousand, fifteen thousand — but if it takes only a night walking, then does it count as so much?"

"I would say it does," Peter said. "An airplane goes fast, but it still goes the whole distance. Did you fly here, Maud? Do you remember when that was?" If he could just get one solid detail, he might be able to figure out who she was, and from there have a better idea of what she'd been doing. The police had fingerprinted her while she was strapped to a bed in the ER, screaming profane rhymes at the nurses. But if that had turned up any results, no one had told Peter yet.

He shouldn't have let speculation distract him. He almost missed her hesitant answer. "A long time ago," she whispered, staring vacantly past the arm of Peter's chair. "I used to say the conquest, but I don't remember no more which one it was. People keep conquering places. Wars. The stars fight each other, but them's afraid of me. And the moon ..."

"The stars are afraid of the moon?"

She looked at Peter again, but this time the threat in her eyes wasn't for him. "Of me," she said, in a low, animal growl. "I'll murder the bastard. Shake 'is dog till 'e howls, and the dragon and the crow will sing victory instead of dirges. I done it before."

The reference to murder chilled Peter. "You've killed someone?"

"Drank 'is wine at St. Pancras." She grinned, curving one hand as if it held something — a glass, maybe. "Claret, I think. Or 'ippocras? After I 'ad Tom back."

Tom again. "How did you lose him?"

Maud got up, restlessly, pacing as if she were trapped in the cage she'd spoken of. "It 'appens every time. Over and over again. I don't know 'ow old I am. Last time 'e woke me up — stripped off me clothes — my red-cheeked lad. I 'asn't slept since then."

She halted midpace, feet planted apart like an Egyptian statue, shoulders hunched. "Maud," Peter said quietly, knowing it was a risk, "there was blood on your clothes when you came in. Not yours. Who did that come from? The moon? Or Tom?"

The ropes of hair swung, rhythmically, as she shook her head.

"What about the knife in your bag? And your staff? What were those for?"

The laugh was more of a kack-kack-kack sound. "Giants. Wouldn't think it to look at me, but I cracks them over the 'ead and they falls. The knife ain't for them, though. 'Ad to feed the fairies. Needed their 'elp. To take me when it's time."

"Feed them what?" Peter asked, not wanting the answer. Or rather, wanting it to have changed, from when the nurses asked.

"Mince pies," Maud said. "They likes children, the fairies do."

The faint smile on her face made him wish he'd never asked. It had happened to him once before, that a patient confessed to a crime; the ethical burden of silence had nearly driven Peter to despair. He still didn't know what had become of that man. But the images still haunted Peter's dreams, and now they would be joined by the bodies of children.

If there were bodies. Sometimes schizophrenics did violent things, obeying their delusions. Sometimes they just imagined they did them. Either way, it didn't change Peter's duty: he was a doctor, and he had to help Maud.

Most psychiatrists would pump her full of antipsychotics and stop there. Even if they found a drug that would work on her, though ... Maud appeared to be homeless, and certainly lacked health insurance. Soon she'd run out, or forget to take the medication in the first place, and without any family to help her she'd cycle right back down into illness. It happens every time, she'd said. It would happen again. Peter had seen it before.

Unless she really had committed a crime, and they convicted her of it. Then they'd fill her with enough sedatives to put her down for a decade, and leave her to rot.

At least she would stay here tonight. The hospital could manage that much, even for patients like her. It wasn't enough time, but it was all he could give her.

She was staring at him again, pale unblinking eyes. Their desperation cut him like a knife, when his mind was already full of thoughts about how the system was going to fail her. And then her words took him by surprise.

"You don't 'ave to be afraid of me," she said. Her voice held a softness, a resonance, that hadn't been there before, turning the roughness into something much gentler. "All I wants is to find my Tom."

It wasn't the tone of a mother. The possibility that Tom was her son had crossed Peter's mind, but this sounded more like a woman speaking of her lover. "The more you tell me about him," Peter said, "the more I can do to help you find him."

Maud shook her head, lips pressing together so hard they disappeared, leaving her mouth only a slash in her face. Tears lined her eyes, refusing to fall. "I don't remember," she whispered, the admission agonized. "My wits all went when 'e did."

* * *

That statement stayed in Peter's mind, caught like a fishhook, long after Maud was taken to her own locked room and Peter went on to other patients.

Microwaving his dinner that night, he played the recording of their session and let the fishhook pull him where it would. Stress could trigger schizophrenic episodes. Perhaps Tom had left her; perhaps more than once, a cycle of stability and disruption that was both cause and effect of her illness. He'd asked one of the nurses to call other psychiatric hospitals, asking if they'd ever had a patient fitting her description.

He realized he was humming that tune, the one she'd been crooning to herself when he came in, and again when they took her away. Peter grimaced and made himself stop. Tomorrow they'd have a list of missing persons in the area: children, men by the name of Tom, anyone who might be the source of that blood. The police were pushing for a fast analysis from the lab, but that could still take weeks; all they knew right now was that it hadn't come from Mad Maudlin. He shouldn't think of her by that name, he knew, but —

The "but" hung suspended in his mind, like the coyote in the cartoons. Just after he realizes the ground is gone, just before he falls.

Peter whispered, "Mad Maudlin." And the tune, the one she'd been humming, resolved itself in his mind. Into one of the English folksongs his mother had loved so much.

The microwave pinged and went dark. Staring at its glossy surface, Peter sang,

"For to see mad Tom o' Bedlam
Ten thousand miles I've traveled
Mad Maudlin goes on dirty toes
For to save her shoes from gravel."

Bedlam. Bethlehem, the old lunatic asylum in London. And Magdalene societies — Maudlin — for degenerate women. Archetypal figures of lunacy ... but "Tom" was so common a name, and Peter so determined to avoid thinking of his patient as "Mad Maudlin," he'd missed the connection. Whether his patient's name really was Maud or not, clearly she identified with the figure in the song.

Peter turned with sudden energy toward his CD collection, but stopped with a frustrated noise. Those songs had all been on LP; if they were anywhere now, it was in his sister's basement. But there was the Internet, and a quick search produced a variety of lyrics, YouTube videos of Steeleye Span, Heather Alexander, more. Peter scribbled notes furiously, watched one video after another, scribbled some more. Mince pies — the man in the moon — Satan's kitchen —

Tom o' Bedlam. I now repent that ever / Poor Tom was so disdained, one version of the lyrics went. My wits are lost since him I crossed / Which makes me thus go chained.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Mad Maudlin by Marie Brennan, Iain McCaig. Copyright © 2014 Bryn Neuenschwander. Excerpted by permission of Tom Doherty Associates.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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