Free Victorian Maiden by Gary Dolman

and tasted its bitter, acrid tang. It was medicine for naughty girls, she knew. One of Uncle Alfie’s gentleman friends had made her drink some so that she wouldn’t remember him properly. But she did remember; she remembered he was a vicar and that he had come to punish her for the sake of her soul. Then she realised with a sudden wave of panic that she was going to be punished again, here, by this woman. But how could a woman punish her? She could still feel the stinging and still feel the hurt deep in her belly, where first Uncle Alfie and then his two gentlemen friends had punished her already. How could a woman do that? 
    Mrs Eire was holding up a tiny sewing needle. Her thin lips were moving as she tried to thread it, but now she couldn’t hear the words she was saying. The room was beginning to float and she was only vaguely aware of her dress being pushed up, of her knees being pulled roughly apart and of the sudden, sharp pains; pains that pierced her even through the fog of the medicine, stabbing and stabbing and stabbing.
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    Lucie Fox waited until she heard the door of the Annexe’s bathroom click shut behind the nurse and her shambling charge.
    Then she asked: “Dr Roberts, what could have caused Elizabeth to commit such a violent act? She’s senile, but she’s not mad as such, is she?”
    â€œNo, Mrs Fox, Elizabeth is certainly not mad, not in the true and proper sense of the word anyway, nor is she really an imbecile as the Master of the Union Workhouse would have us believe. She simply presents the classic symptoms of senile dementia; the loss of the memory of recent events, an inability to perform even simple tasks, a loss of continence, and so on.”
    His eyes darted along the hall towards the sudden sound of running water behind the locked bathroom door.
    â€œSometimes, it can also cause sufferers to be unmannerly, hostile and even downright violent, although until last night, we’d never observed anything like that in my aunt. I can tell you both in confidence that Aunt Elizabeth didn’t have a happy childhood with my grandfather. Although he carefully cultivated this reputation he had of being a good, benevolent old fellow and a great philanthropist, he was impossibly cruel to her, and that, coupled with the death of her father when she was very young, and then that of her mother as well, has left her with deep emotional scars. I can see clearly now that my judgement was flawed. Those scars must have been ripped open again by the sight of her childhood tormentor, and I’m afraid that her emotions must simply have overwhelmed her. She already had a knife in her hand, which as you say, she had taken from the workhouse, and I suppose that the result was… inevitable.”
    Lucie frowned.
    â€œBut if she has senile dementia, she couldn’t possibly have planned the attack with malice aforethought, so why did she steal a knife?”
    â€œHave you seen Aunt Elizabeth’s arms by any chance, Mrs Fox?” Roberts sounded suddenly weary.
    Lucie shook her head, puzzled.
    â€œWell, if you had, you would have seen that she barely has a patch of skin left on them that isn’t covered in cicatrices – in old scars – and in new scars for that matter. Mary tells me that she has a fresh set of wounds that must have been made only yesterday, probably as you were talking in Liddle’s office or even as you were bringing her across here. She cuts herself on her arms and on her breasts; she cuts herself with knives, scissors, broken glass, anything she can get her hands on, so that the pain of the wounds can shut out the pain of her memories. Mary tells me that she could never really be trusted with a knife for fear of her taking it away to cut herself. It’s the memories, you see; it’s her awful, awful memories.”
    â€œMy wife remarked only this morning that Miss Elizabeth seemed to be suffering from a form of battle