TWENTY-FIVE: Lunacy

"How are we feeling today, Cutler?"

Beckett pursed his lips. He was sitting on a soft and round chair, inside a soft and round room, with soft and round walls and soft and round furniture. On the soft and round table in front of him was a teacup—though not the sort that he was used to. It was made of wood, large and chunky, like a three-year-old's plaything, with every edge smoothed down, and it was painted a cream colour.

Everything in his little cell—er, 'room'—was an excruciatingly boring off-white. It was so that he wouldn't become 'overexcited' at any bright colour. Gosh, even purple would be drawing it thin; and orange... ooh, orange would be living dangerously.

The doctors all called him 'Cutler' like they were his best buddy, and talked to him as if he were seven years old, with the mental capacity of a Burmese Mountain dog. It was hell. He picked up the chunky, off-white, smoothed-down teacup from the soft and round table and took a sip of the lukewarm liquid inside before replying.

"I feel... defiled," he said wryly.

Doctor Dalton Weaver chuckled. In truth, he liked Beckett—he thought that he was a funny man. However, he knew that Beckett was a patient, and so he could not form any real personal bonds to him, as it may affect his judgement. It was an odd thing; he himself thought that Beckett seemed perfectly sane; but if so many famous doctors had signed against that fact... well, who was he to argue?

You may be thinking that this was a little bit of a nice way to treat a lunatic in the seventeenth century. People might think of bedlam—dark cages underground, whips and cruel laughter, crazy people screaming and whimpering and trying to hide in the corners of their cells...

Well, yes, certainly that sort of thing may have happened elsewhere. But even though Beckett was a lunatic, he was... a rich lunatic. And that made a lot of difference.

Of course, a certain Company had ruled that Beckett was mentally unstable and so unable to spend his money in a responsible way, but after Beckett made a 'generous donation' to them, they seemed fine with him spending his money; which was a win for Beckett, but... well, what was there to buy?

He had gotten himself quite a nice asylum—well, alright, there was no such thing in those days, but they had made a room especially for him on account of another strategic 'generous donation'—so that he had furniture, food, even tea; albeit lukewarm tea in a toy mug, but it was tea nonetheless. The entire front end of his cell was nothing but bars, so that people walking by could all stop and stare at him, which was demoralizing, but he supposed that it was better then nothing.

The 'doctors' here all kept a close eye on him, and there were always guards outside the stretch of corridor that went past his little cell, and now they charged extra admission for people to come by his cell; which at least stemmed the tidal wave of filthy, armpit-scratching poor folk who had stampeded into place and stood gaping at him for hours at a time.

Famous—or, more like, infamous—he was like a celebrity in this place, for all that it mattered. Reporters slipped in to try and question him, though they were led out firmly by the guards once discovered. Beckett warily realized that the papers must be full of little hand-drawn sketched of him sitting buckle-kneed in a cell, twanging a lip with his eyes crossed.

Perfect.

Since he had arrived here, it had become like fashion to have someone in the asylum. They had to build an entire other wing to accommodate the rush of mad people who had accompanied Beckett's arrival—every high-up family in Jamaica dug up their mad Aunt Claudia from the attic and paid to have her housed in the very same asylum. It was a talking point. It was gossip. It was Big News.

Beckett nursed his lukewarm tea as another rabble of people clattered past his cell, a few of them pointing at him; more then one trying to catch his attention. He used to respond to them—usually in a rather rude manner—but now he barely reacted; he didn't even look at them.

Every single scrap of dignity had been taken away from him. He was humiliated beyond compensation; and he knew that this was what Leonard wanted. Lord Leonard had decided that, no matter how much of a 'generous donation' Beckett made, the asylum were not allowed under any circumstances whatsoever to allow Beckett a cell without people tramping past all of the time, pointing and talking loudly. Beckett decided this could be seen as a good thing—after all, who knew who could come and visit...?

He wasn't even allowed to bathe or shave by himself; he had to be 'helped', like some incompetent four-year-old being looked after by a nanny. It felt good to be clean and shaven again, but it was still terrible, having someone looking after him like that. In case he managed to drown himself in the shallow pail of lukewarm water that they called a bath, or in case he slit his throat open with the razor. (Alright, so back when he'd been a lord, he'd had people to bathe and dress him—put it was the principle of the thing!)

Actually, he felt that wasn't too far from throat-slitting. He swished the tea around in the mug, it was going to be stone cold soon, but he couldn't bring himself to care. And this was a man who used to believe that wasting tea was a shootable offence. The stuff was disgusting anyway; tepid and without any sugar. It seemed that a rule of the asylum was that patients were not allowed anything at all nice, in any way, shape or form.

Beckett had, once, pulled up a sheet from his soft and round bed, and fastened it like a curtain around a small area where he could perhaps get some peace—and the doctors had all seemed impressed, as if he was a young child who had just learned to tie his bootlace; a monkey in a zoo that had fashioned a hammock out of some overalls, perhaps.

Even that little haven had been taken away from him in the end, though; apparently, it had been ordered that he had to have someone watching him every minute of every day. He'd been rather annoyed as Doctor Weaver took down the sheet, and tucked it back onto his bed.

"What did Leonard think I was doing behind there?" Beckett had asked, rolling his eyes, "Digging my way out?"

Right now, he sat perfectly still, looking into his tea. The people outside were beginning to become restless, wanting him to do something. Mummy! I want to see the wolf-man! Please can we see the wolf-man? This one's boring! From time to time, someone would throw something at him, and though the guards would scold for it, it didn't make any difference. The terrible shame of everything that was happening to him was unbearable.

He felt degraded in every way possible.

"This place is terrible, isn't it?" he murmured to his reflection in the teacup. He noticed Doctor Weaver, who had just been leaving, shooting him an odd look.

If I'm not crazy now, Beckett thought, I certainly will be after a few months of this.

The thought left him cold with dread. This was going to drive him insane. This place was going to kill him. Oh, Leonard may have found it funny, and others may have tittered when hearing of his position—oh, poor Beckett, he has peanuts thrown at him, tee hee!—but to him, this was no joke.

He worried about his mother, too. Was she going to hang? Wasn't she? Had the keys been discovered on her? Had she escaped? He had no news of the outside world—another case of it possibly 'overexciting' him. If anything, he needed some stimulation for his mind, not avoidance of it; some way to stop his mind being wasted away to nothing. His brain may be big, but it was fragile at the moment.

Every day, he looked out across the waves of people that went past the outside of his cage.

Every day, he thought the same thing; is anyone going to come? Does anyone care? Elizabeth? Anyone? Are you coming? Elizabeth? He wasn't sure if she would or not. He didn't even know if she was alive. He'd thought that being sentenced to an asylum would be an easy way out of death. How hard could it be? Oh, it was much harder then he'd first thought. Perhaps—perhaps one day, he would be able to prove himself sane and get out of here... 'healed', as it were.

Yes, right. Like there was a chance in hell of that happening.

He stared down at the table, his chin resting on his hands, his mind buzzing with a million thoughts—none of which he could act on. His independence was gone. His dignity, his pride... everything. There was only one hope left for him, and as much as he loathed to rely on such a silly, improbable event, there was nothing else he could do. Are you even alive, Elizabeth? Are you coming? Hello, I saved your life! I tried to save your life.

I tried my best... so... so you're coming, aren't you? Elizabeth?

Anyone?

NB: He has no friends. It's almost sad... or does he, perhaps, have a friend to rely on? Even though it was sad in it's own way, this was one of my favourite chapters to write--I did have to research on methods of treating the insane in the 17th century, though!

Extract from the next chapter: Audrey was beginning to get very worried. Her son had told her that he would make sure she was alright—but was he even alive now?