"She's doing that thing again, Mama," observed the young woman with the pert nose and wide-set green eyes. A simple headscarf held her unremarkable brown tresses back from her face while she bent over the wooden tub and cautiously dipped a washcloth into the steaming water. The light from a solitary candle wobbled and shook as the night wind howled restlessly behind the shuttered windowpane.
On the other side of the bathing tub, an older version of the same sort of woman knelt on arthritic knees. A similar headscarf gently restrained silver-streaked locks, making her cheeks appear pudgy in contrast to her slender daughters'. "Aye," she murmured in answer. "She's gone again." She too, carefully dunked a bunched-up fistful of rags into the floating suds.
Between them, a third figure was settled in the dark grey water. Bits of soap froth clung to the ghostly pale skin of her shoulders and back, where the train of her spine poked through with frightening clarity. Her coppery hair stuck out in stiff knots around her scalp and neck. This woman did not participate in the conversation that drifted back and forth over her head, but stared at a vague point somewhere on the wall.
"What are we going to do with her?" The daughter eyed the silent, naked creature warily, holding out the dripping cloth hesitantly before gingerly wiping it along a thin arm.
A reply did not come at once. The older woman turned her time-creased eyes to the pitiful sight before her. She brought the washcloth to the sunken, freckled cheek and tenderly scrubbed at what seemed to be a smudge of dirt. "We'll look after her, Annie" she finally said in a low voice, adding as an afterthought, "...if we can."
Annie pursed her lips and scrunched her nose. "What do you think's wrong with her?" she whispered, as if the gaunt, wild-eyed woman in the tub might not hear her. The rag dipped into the foamy suds and slid down the sharp edge of a shoulder blade.
Annie's mother gave up on trying to remove the smudge. She passed a bare fingertip over the spot and deemed it to be a bruise instead. She lifted a limp hand from the murky water and began to work the ground-in dirt from the creases of skin. "Something happened to her. She's not all gone. You can see it in her face when she comes to herself. She's still in there." The matron paused to study the blank features of the red-haired woman. "I've seen something like it before. Tom, the sweep's boy." She talked as she returned to diligently scrubbing the fingers and their grimy nails. "When he were just a lad, he walked in on someone attacking his sister. He didn't talk for half a year after that, but eventually he came back to his head."
"Tom!" cried Annie, and the raised tone of her voice drew a tiny flinch from the naked figure in the tub. "I never knew that. All the years we've known him, and I never knew this? What happened to his sister?"
"It's not polite to speak of such things," her mother said sharply, and there was a finality to her words. Her wizened eyes slid over the freckled woman again. "She wouldn't follow your Papa or the other fellow. Not more than a few steps." Her voice faded softly into a thoughtful silence, and she took up a low, melodic humming as she placed the clean hand down into the water, and picked up a small pitcher to attend to the matted head of hair.
Annie watched quietly, still half-heartedly washing the same arm and shoulder as before, reluctant to touch a stranger any more intimately than that. Her green eyes were puzzled and compassionate, but there was none of the maternal affect of her mother; that universal, unspoken rule that you cared for whoever needed caring, without hesitation. "But she followed you?" she ventured to ask.
"Aye," said her mother, crouching up on her knees so that she could pour the warm water slowly over the woman's scalp.
But as soon as the stream of water struck, the formerly lifeless figure exploded into animation all at once. A wordless wail of dismay tore from her throat and bounced around the walls of the small room. She recoiled from the cascade and threw her hands up protectively, spraying water haphazardly about the area. Annie stared in wide-eyed shock while her mother swiftly put the pitcher aside and reached for the womans' arms.
"It's all right, love!" the old woman cried, striving to get her voice above the commotion of splashing limbs and howling. Fingers that were aged yet strong from a lifetime of work wrapped around the thin, slippery wrists and held them firmly. "It's all right," she repeated more quietly, leaning over the tub, putting her face closer to the squirming woman's. "Shhhhh...no one's hurting you."
The copper-haired woman turned to stare at her captor with blue-green eyes that bulged from their sockets with terror. She looked at the old woman and whimpered, shivering uncontrollably.
"Mama," whispered Annie fearfully, and her mother nodded a silent answer, but did not take her attention away from the waif in her hands.
"You're all right," the matron murmured gently, drawing the words out, long and soothing. "We're not hurting you. Shhh, now..." She held the turquoise gaze steadily, sensing that the younger woman's consciousness was trembling just beneath the surface.
Annie swallowed tightly, darting her eyes from one face to the other and back again. Specks of dampness darkened the bodice of her dress and droplets of the splashed water glimmered on her chin. Desperate to help somehow, she took the cue from her mother and said softly, "It's all right!"
The woman in the tub searched the unfamiliar, lined visage of the goodwife looming over her. She blinked repeatedly, almost violently, squeezing her eyes shut again and again. After a few minutes, the corners of her mouth drew down, her brow pinched, and tears of panic began to seep over the drawn contours of her cheeks.
"That's enough for tonight," said the old woman, without letting go of her ward, and without moving her gaze. "Fetch the towel, Annie."
Annie let out a shaking breath through puffed lips as she turned away from the sight to obey her mother. "Sure hope you know what you're doing, Mama," she sighed.
