Pious Hyde and the Mad Women #3
Researching nerves and the mind in this medieval age was no easy task.
Discussion of Tourette’s syndrome—the condition that produces tics—only began around the nineteenth century.
In a world that still lacked even proper cannons, Tourette’s would have felt like nothing more than the work of demons or ghosts.
“Sex! Cock!”
The pink-haired girl, Lucy Emma.
She was spitting vulgar words past her lips that clashed violently with her delicate features.
The nuns watched, trembling, and crossed themselves while whispering, “She’s possessed!”
Was this truly the work of a ghost?
I did not think so.
“It is merely a problem of the brain. Compare it to hiccups. Once hiccups begin, you cannot hold them back no matter how hard you try—they simply come out on their own, do they not?”
Tourette’s was nothing more than a permanent mental hiccup. Abbess Midnar, however, seemed to take my words in an entirely different light; her grip tightened around the whip in her hand with a long, deliberate squeeze.
“So hiccups are the work of demons and ghosts as well?”
No.
Stop pinning everything on demons, for heaven’s sake.
In the long life of a priest, one was bound to meet a “possessed” person at least once.
A priest needed the discernment to distinguish between someone suffering a mental affliction and someone truly possessed.
Fortunately I—more devout and more learned than anyone—possessed that discernment. The nuns of this rocky island, however, appeared to have no such luxury.
“Sex! Copulation! Hnnngh….”
It was a dreadful sight.
I still could not believe a person could spit out such words so casually.
Yet the one who suffered most had to be the girl herself.
Swish—.
Someone seized my arm.
It was Psyche.
“Isn’t Miss Lucy so pitiful? Hyde, if what you say is true, she is forced to utter those words even though she does not want to…! It completely tramples her dignity…!”
She was right.
Among the sisters at my orphanage there had been one with Tourette’s—strikingly beautiful and kind-hearted.
Her symptoms had been severe, and the constant stress had worn her down; I still remembered how hard it had been for her.
Even twenty-first-century medicine had struggled to improve Tourette’s, so I fell silent, turning over in my mind what little I might be able to do.
Then Milione spoke.
“This is a curse! Rust’s curse! That horrible, vicious Great Sin Seat Rust used Lucy Emma as a sacrifice to spread a lewd demon through this nunnery!”
Milione, you insane woman!
This time I am truly innocent!
Yet the story sounded so plausible that the watching nuns began to tremble or freeze in terror.
“Rust’s curse?”
“…I heard he’s an unbelievably terrible man.”
So Rust’s notoriety had reached even this nunnery, which had almost no contact with the secular world. Abbess Midnar turned to Milione at once.
“Who is Rust?”
“You don’t know Rust? The most famous man in the Allied Kingdom right now? The man who murdered Archbishop Coramdeo and burned the Grand Cathedral? The one who raped me—Milione—is also Rust!”
When exactly did I murder Archbishop Coramdeo?
I did not burn the Grand Cathedral either.
And I have never raped Milione!
I was going to lose my mind.
Still, the tale clearly shook Nun Midnar. She furrowed those strict, stubborn brows and muttered under her breath, “To think such a man exists—”
Ding-ding-ding-ding—.
Someone rang a bell.
Abbess Midnar and the nuns heard it and began moving off somewhere; the sudden departure left me thoroughly flustered.
I asked Psyche,
“Where are they going?”
“From five until six in the afternoon is the hour of silent prayer. For the next hour no one inside this nunnery is permitted to speak.”
Silent prayer, then.
The nuns filed into the great chapel.
It looked as though it had been carved from the massive rock of the island itself—solemn, dark, faintly eerie, and possessed of an atmosphere that crushed the assembly beneath its weight.
They knelt on the stone floor, clasped their hands, and began to pray.
Swish-.
Psyche knelt beside me.
Milione muttered, “Boring,” but the sharp glances from the other women forced her mouth shut.
“Fuck!”
There was a problem.
The word Lucy Emma produced rang out nakedly across the silence of the chapel.
Could we not simply take Lucy somewhere else?
I was thinking exactly that when Psyche began writing swiftly across my palm.
It is a prayer hour everyone must attend, so we cannot leave Miss Lucy alone.
I see.
In more ways than one, it was a prayer hour that only deepened my worries.
When the hour of prayer ended we went to supper.
There was a large dining hall, yet because I was a man I was required to eat alone in my room. My beloved wife, Psyche Agarpe, brought the meal to me herself.
Bread and soup.
A truly austere supper.
I accepted the tray and asked,
“It seems His Holiness Gregory sent me to this rocky island because of Miss Lucy Emma. Psyche, do you know anything about her?”
Tourette’s could be hereditary.
Knowing her family history and the environment in which she had grown up might help with even the most basic treatment.
Psyche made a soft nasal sound as though turning the matter over, then answered,
“Miss Lucy has lived on this rocky island since the day she was born. She must have been an orphan abandoned young. The kingdom has seen so many wars, after all.”
I see.
Clues were beginning to appear.
A complete cure was impossible, yet the symptoms might still be eased.
“Psyche, I believe we must take Miss Lucy off this island.”
“What? Take her away?”
“The symptoms of a brain disorder—and their severity—are intimately tied to one’s psychological state. The closed, rigid environment of this island is truly driving Miss Lucy Emma mad.”
To live from birth until death on a rock island, treated as a possessed creature because of an unwanted syndrome, and whipped for it besides…
Any ordinary person would go insane under such a life.
The only person I knew who could endure that kind of austerity was myself—Hyde, the perfect ascetic.
I could truly endure it. For Lucy, who had only just turned eighteen, it was far too cruel.
Psyche’s body trembled.
“My master would never permit it. She has strictly ordered the nuns that Miss Lucy must never set foot on the mainland!”
“Must never leave? Why? Is there a reason?”
“I do not know that either—”
Knock knock-.
Someone rapped on my door.
A moment later it clicked open and a woman whose face bore severe burn scars thrust her head inside, addressing both Psyche and me.
“Psyche, you lewd creature…! Do you not know that conversation with a man after six o’clock is forbidden on this rock island…!? You will be whipped…! Five lashes…!”
“Ah—Sister Anemone…!”
So conversation with men after six was forbidden.
The burn-scarred woman Anemone seemed to be the real power in this nunnery—something like a discipline officer.
She seized Psyche by the nape of the neck and dragged her away, muttering loudly,
“This island is no place for men! You would do well to get the hell out!”
Conversation with men is forbidden…
Yet muttering to oneself is allowed?
What absurd rules.
I was alone once more.
In a windowless room with nothing to occupy me, I offered a rough prayer and slept.
The trouble arrived with the morning.
“Kyaaaaak!”
A woman’s scream has a remarkable power to seize attention. Startled awake, I soon beheld a dreadful sight.
Sex is the meeting of cock and pussy.
Someone had scrawled those words in red letters across the nunnery garden! Blood? The coppery reek certainly smelled like it.
It was already hardening, so the deed must have been done at dawn.
“Lucy! You little bitch! How dare you do this!”
Discipline officer Anemone exploded in fury. Lucy, watching the scene, shook her head violently.
“I-I didn’t! I didn’t do it!”
No one seemed inclined to believe her.
I did.
“This was not Miss Lucy’s work. It was Milione!”
Only Milione would commit such madness.
Milione, however, stopped mid-yawn and stared at me with an expression of pure incredulity.
“It wasn’t me either? Still, this is entertaining first thing in the morning. Since when did Grande Nunnery become such an amusing place?”
She smirked as though she truly found it delightful.
So it was not her doing either.
Then who?
Abbess Midnar spoke at once.
“Lock Lucy in solitary!”
“W-Wait, Mother Superior! I really didn’t do it! I really didn’t! I hate solitary! Hiii! I really didn’t do it! Hiiii—! It wasn’t me! I saw it! I saw the culprit! Last night…!”
Lucy Emma thrashed as though solitary confinement were her worst nightmare. The nuns dragged her away regardless, and only silence remained.
Swish—.
Abbess Midnar pressed a hand to her forehead.
“The Gwichukdo discovered yesterday as well. Problems began the moment you arrived.”
Her ash-gray eyes settled on me as she spoke—exactly the look that said, The real culprit of every incident is you, is it not?
Of course I was innocent of this particular crime.
Yet I was beginning to understand what sort of place Grande Nunnery truly was.
And that a loach was hiding somewhere inside it.
“Abbess, it appears a heretic has mixed among us. From this moment forward, everyone except myself—the most devout priest of all, Hyde—and my wife Psyche is a suspect.”
The culprit was here.
Milione, however, frowned.
“I was locked in my room all day yesterday doing penance. Why am I not removed from the list of suspects?”
Why would I remove you!
There is at least a seventy-percent chance this is your work!
Of course I did not forget the remaining thirty percent.
“Miss Lucy said earlier that she saw the culprit, did she not? We should hear her out. Where is the solitary cell?”
Swish-.
I started toward the place where Lucy was confined.
Midnar watched me with a mocking smile.
“Lucy—most of the words that child spews are nonsense, mere hiccups she utters without memory. Yes, hiccups. A fine expression. What do you expect to learn by questioning her?”
“The truth.”
Swish-.
I went to the solitary cell that held Lucy Emma.
Sniffling, broken sobs drifted from within; the sound was heartbreaking.
Knock knock-.
I rapped on the door and called,
“I am Priest Hyde. Miss Lucy Emma, you said you saw the culprit. Can you describe the situation in detail? If we find the culprit quickly, we may be able to release you from solitary.”
The sniffling quieted. Someone seemed to rise and stand just beyond the iron door.
“I… on nights when the full moon is out, I always walk the beach…! Even after lights-out, on full-moon nights the lights of Veneto across the sea shine so clearly… so I slip out without the Mother Superior or the other nuns knowing….”
“I see.”
“But when I was about to return, I saw someone doing something on the wall! At the time I couldn’t tell whether they were writing letters… yet that person was clearly… that person….”
“Sister Anemone, by any chance?”
“I-I couldn’t see the face, but there was a smell. The smell of the burn ointment Sister Anemone always applies…!”
The voice that came through the bars was thick with astonishment—as though asking how on earth I had guessed.
Discipline officer Anemone.
People who recite laws and rules with such rigid severity and scold everyone else are often the worst of the lot.
Only yesterday she had given five lashes to the completely blameless Psyche.
Already guilty.
Then it was time to… pass judgment, was it not?
“This is the ointment! Smell it!”
Swish-.
The hand that stretched out through the iron bars looked unusually white.