Chapter Four #2
Seven days. Seven days with no word about her darling girl’s safety.
This was always the hardest part of her week.
The waiting. She would make it through like she always did, but they would be awful days.
Dreadful days. Anything could happen between now and then, and she could do nothing to stop it.
Winston and Ursula could steal Eleonora away again.
Beat her. Torture her. Kill her. And yet Eleonora and Marcellus dismissed the danger.
Constanza saw the signs of their dulled vigilance.
In their naivete, they thought twelve years without an attack meant Eleonora was safe.
But they didn’t know Ursula and Winston like Constanza did.
They were cunning, and they hunted with the patience of Job.
When they kidnapped Eleonora, it had been thirteen years since Constanza had fled England.
What was another twelve when the presence of a husband and daughter in Constanza’s life gave her enemies the power to punish her betrayal in ways killing her would never achieve?
Why did no one understand? If Winston caught Eleonora again, there would be no ransom note.
No keeping her alive until Constanza complied with their demands.
Death would be certain, but only after a lengthy torture.
If only Constanza had fled England instead of turning herself in to make that deal with Scotland Yard.
If only she’d never joined Winston and Ursula in the first place.
But she had, and now her family would suffer. It was only a matter of time.
The all-too-familiar flutter in her chest signaled her growing panic.
Not again. She had to control it. If the nurses saw it, they would decide to help calm her.
Last time it had taken two of the male orderlies to hold her still enough for Nurse Ingram to inject the vile stuff that crawled through her veins and stole all her warmth.
Warnings had abounded. If she had another episode like that after a visit with Eleonora, there would not be another until she proved herself of reasonable mind.
That feat would be impossible given it was the truth that kept her bound here.
A truth she could easily prove if Dr. Chalfant would just go sniff his nose about the opera world for one minute.
Then he’d know Josephine Davis was the alias and Constanza the truth. Or at least part of the truth.
“Here we are. Behave yourself, Mrs. Davis. I don’t want to hear you caused trouble again.” Nurse Abbott ushered her into what the attendants called the dayroom.
What a laughable notion.
A room named for the brightest hours should actually have daylight reach its interior.
Not so with this depressing place. Oh, the “dayroom” held a window .
. . coated so thickly in a grimy film any light passing through became as dull and gray as the bare walls.
Constanza had been in many grand houses with finely appointed dayrooms, but Longview put on airs to claim this dismal place one.
The Canterbury Arms Music Hall in Lambeth, as derelict and rowdy as it was, had more elegance and appeal than this place.
Constanza entered with the regal dignity of a woman who’d made her own choice to partake of the dayroom rather than the fearful slink of a prisoner who knew she would be threatened and slapped if she did not obey.
The ever-present male attendant stood in the corner of the room watching each of his half dozen inmates, ready to step in if necessary.
Most wards did not have the added staff in their dayroom, only the necessary female attendants, but this ward was for volatile residents.
The ones who might need to be dragged down the hall to a strong room and locked away after a thorough sedation.
Isolation was touted as a place to calm oneself and regain one’s equilibrium.
What poppycock. Call it what it was—a stringent punishment for not being quiet and cooperative.
She’d been there several times. Granted, each time had been the result of overwhelming panic and the need to reach Eleonora, but it was still punishment.
Her head ached and chills raced along her arms at the memory of those horrific days.
In that tiny room with only a chamber pot and a wooden bench for a bed, she’d endured a combination of medicines that kept her unconscious or so ill she couldn’t move.
Then there were the retributive beatings from the staff she’d injured in her fight to get free and days of solitude with her food and water delivered through a slat.
It had been two years since her last visit, and she never wanted to return.
The attendant in the corner pushed from the wall and angled toward her.
What had she done now?
A slap stung her face, but not from him.
Constanza blinked at the fierce scowl of Nurse Ingram.
The harsh voice finally penetrated Constanza’s thoughts. “I told you to sit down.”
Nurse Ingram pointed a finger at the nearby desk, already prepared with pen, ink, and paper for Constanza’s required daily ritual of denying who she was.
The male attendant waited to intervene. There was no point in resisting.
Not if she wished to sleep in her own bed with the other women of the ward and eat a tepid meal that might or might not pass as palatable.
She dropped into the chair, as cold and hard as her arrival to America during a New York blizzard.
“You are to copy those lines until you believe them. Am I understood?”
Two lines marched across the top of a blank page. I am not Constanza Brisbane, the opera singer. I am Josephine Davis, wife of Mark Davis, an accountant.
Two of her lives written plainly before her.
One believed to be a lie and the other truth, but neither were true.
Not really. She was one woman with three distinct lives and three distinct personalities.
The one created by her husband: Josephine Davis, the meek, fearful, and unstable.
The one she loved most: Constanza Brisbane, the bold, vibrant, and fearless singer.
And then there was the one she was most ashamed of.
The one whose past she’d foolishly thought she’d locked in a trunk and buried.
She should have known guilt never stayed buried.
Nothing could contain it. Guilt was an apparition that endlessly haunted one with the clinking chains of shame, fear, disgust, and isolation.
She didn’t need Winston’s or Ursula’s continued machinations to suffer.
The memories of what she’d done, who she’d been, and her lack of strength to do what she ought punished sufficiently well.
Although the knowledge that Winston and Ursula continued to seek their revenge did add significantly to her troubles.
A second slap ensured a bruise would form. “Do you understand what I said?”
“Yes.” The sting lingered, but Constanza would not give Nurse Ingram the satisfaction of rubbing it away.
Nurse Ingram nodded and strode to the next victim of her authority.
Constanza picked up the pen and rolled it between her fingers.
She’d heard confession was supposed to free one of their guilt, but telling the police everything and then being acquitted hadn’t worked.
Oddly, it made her feel guiltier. She deserved punishment, and apparently God concurred.
Why else would her family be so ruthlessly hunted?
In a way, her agreeing with Marcellus to come here had partially been in hopes of satisfying God and saving her family from her choices.
But she hadn’t come here as Constanza. She’d come here as Josephine Davis.
No one here knew her full past. Even the ones who believed she was Constanza Brisbane.
Cincinnati might have a reputation of bringing the arts to the masses, but opera was still beyond the reach or interest of the common laborer.
Longview’s staff wouldn’t know the scandal tied to her.
Perhaps that was part of her problem. God would not be satisfied until she confessed her past to those here.
Maybe then He’d protect her family and truly free her of guilt.
It couldn’t hurt to try. With a prayer that it would bring God’s forgiveness, she plied her pen to paper.
I am Josephine Davis, wife of Marcellus Brisbane Davis, an accountant and my former manager. I am also the famous American coloratura soprano, Constanza Brisbane. And I am Katherine Yates, the English soprano and thief.