Be a good girl; be faithful to the family name. Be quiet.
My banishment had all been prepared ahead of time, a new cloak of soft blue wool ready for my shoulders. It hid my sorry garments. It fell all the way past my stockinged ankles. My mother fastened it under my throat and would not meet my questioning gaze.
Sir Rothfield led me from my house; my parents did not even see me to the door.
My nanny, her shape I did see standing at my nursery window, looking down as I made my way. Whether it was because she would miss me, or because she longed to see me gone, I could not tell.
The whole arrangement stirred a nagging sense of betrayal in my breast: the cloak, a case prepared, a carriage waiting... their only child cast into the power of a stranger.
Soon my feelings were forgotten, for you see, the ride from London gave me a view of the world I’d never known before. I’d had only the nursery window overlooking our street. My universe had been dotted in gas lamps and cobblestones, brownstone houses and the random pedestrian. I could not even recall how long it had been since I’d seen a park. An hour in the carriage and the world became new. Outside the city limits there were green things, grass, cows, different smells. Glued to the window, I watched it all, my fingers clinging to the casement so the rocking of the coach might not upset the show.
There was little conversation. Sir Rothfield only spoke at me, not to me.
“That door is barred from the outside, Alice. It cannot be pried open.” He sounded more like my stern father and less like the contemplative stranger I had met only this morning. “Now, sit back in your seat like a lady.”
Unfolding from my awkward perch was harder to manage than I’d thought. My fingers rebelled, and it felt strange to make them uncurl. As always, I obeyed. Wrapped warmly in my cloak, I let the seat bounce me, and did my best to take in the now obstructed view.
For the next several hours, I sat still as one of the few unbroken china dolls on the highest shelf of my nursery. I am not even sure I blinked, as there was so much to see. In hindsight, I wish I had been disobedient and clung to that window. I wish I might have looked more at the world.
Soon enough it would all be taken from me.
Once we cleared the gates of Rothfield Asylum, there was no more green, no cows, no landscape. There was a yard of gravel and a manor larger by far than the house I had grown up in. A robust man dressed in white unbarred the door of the carriage and I was pulled out by my arm without so much as a hello.
Outside of my nightly visitors, I had never been handled with such roughness... not even by my father when he was in a temper. Yanked through the courtyard, Sir Rothfield at my heels, I was dragged inside that house, down halls, upstairs, around corners, and past muttering patients until standing in an office bright with electric lamps.
Polished mahogany dominated the room’s center position, a desk of huge proportions bearing stacks of books, papers, a tray of letters.
With the huge man still holding me above the elbow, Sir Rothfield circled, taking the desk’s overstuffed leather chair and scrutinizing me as if we had not previously met or spoken.
He looked less the grandfather with his brows drawn down and more the cold academic. Setting a pipe between his teeth, he struck a match, puffed to ignite the tobacco, and blew out a great cloud of smoke. “What you have, Alice, is a disease of the mind. It is my sacred duty to cure it.”
I nodded, swallowing nervously, my arm aching where it hung trapped by the grip of a man Sir Rothfield introduced as head-orderly Calvin. He was to be mainly charged with my care. He was to be treated with the utmost respect.
“This is a hospital for the privileged, Alice. Our techniques are cutting edge. Aggressive treatment, medication, and practice, will end your mania. There will be no child’s indulgences, starting with your manner of dress. There will be no toys like those kept in your room. Should you show adequate progress, I may allow you to play the harp.”
I hated playing the harp and had long ago outgrown toys.
“I have yet to decide whether or not to cut your hair.” He glared at the freefalling locks, eyeing the golden waves with contempt. “Like all attractive young woman, you reek of a bloated sense of vanity.”
He could not touch my hair. My mother would never forgive me if it were shorn. Alarm made my eyes go wide, a chirp struck from my mouth when the orderly’s fingers went to the frogs of my cloak. “Please sir, you mustn’t. I’ll be good.”
“And I give you an opportunity to prove it now.” Leaning back in the chair, puffing on the pipe, Sir Rothfield explained, “It is best to conduct initial examination immediately upon arrival. Behave, and you may keep your locks.”
I had promised Mama and Papa devotedly to behave. There was nothing I could do but stand still, and quake while in full view of them both, head-orderly Calvin stripped me down to my shabby underthings. Left cold, trying to make myself smaller than a mouse, I cried silent tears but said nothing.
Measurements were taken as if I stood before the dressmaker. Foreign hands touched me, turned my chin this way and that. I was ordered to stick out my tongue, to cough, to touch my toes. Every last mark on my body was catalogued, questions asked about each scratch, scar, or bruise. They even bent me forward, tugged down my drawers, and spread my buttocks.
I thought that was the worst of it. I thought there could be no greater degradation than to be pinned down by a man’s forearm to my back, a cold desk under my elbows and chest. It was Sir Rothfield himself who took the trouble of parting the flesh of my thighs and looking upon a place I had been taught was unclean.
Where downy blonde hair grew, I was spread, the old man making note. “Her hymen is visibly intact. Direct stimulation produces no immediate arousal. Cauterization of the clitoris may be unnecessary.”
Unsure when I had started screaming, I found it was my voice bouncing a banshee’s screech off the walls. “Please!”
“Do you touch yourself here, Alice? While locked in your room do you rub against things?”
A fit came upon me as I struggled against the elbow digging into my spine. I could feel the blood rush to my head and knew it would not be long before I slumped into a full faint. The boys, the Red Queen, the laughing Madman of Cheshire, I would take them all night after night. Anything but this. “NO!”
“Chronic masturbation may not be the cause of her nervous disorder. Let her up, Calvin. An ice soak will calm her agitation.” I could hear the old man retreat, circling the desk as if nothing untoward had just happened. “She is to be restrained and left in the padded cell to curb any urges to self-harm. I want her brought here in the morning for further diagnosis.”