The winter of 1860 was one of the coldest I can remember. Snow piled four feet deep, and the wind weaseled its way into my lodgings, past scraps of newspaper I had stuffed round the window cracks to combat drafts. A killing frost had finished off the plants covered with sacking in my tiny yard, and my room was so chilly I could see my own breath.

Then, one evening in early April, the wind off the river changed direction and the rains came, turning the streets to manure tea. I scoured the apothecary and the stalls, searching for nettles. The fishmonger’s wife had a raw throat, and I intended to mash the root before cooking it with sugar and sweet violet syrup.

I should have come back directly, but I walked along the Thames instead. The mud-larks were out, old women and children waist-deep in filthy water, searching for trinkets or wood to sell. Street-sellers had returned to their posts, hawking boot laces, dog-collars, and newspapers offering the dying speeches of prisoners hung from the gallows at Newgate. Along the docks, ships’ riggings swayed like gigantic brown spider webs. Tarts hiked up their skirts to show a bit of leg. They smoked and laughed, as if life were frothier than a mug of warm beer. And I kept thinking, Is she here? Is that her? Unlikely. My mother would be too old for the bawdy life now. She could be anywhere. She could be dead.

“Rose,” a voice called out.

My gaze drifted back to the dollymops, where Harriet Dart, my bosom friend, was waving me over. We’d known each other since we were children, and we were as raggedy now as we’d been then, Harriet in her torn gown and faded wrapper, me in a dress that should have landed in the dustbin years ago. Still, I’d managed to avoid ending up like Harriet and all the other girls we knew, standing in grimy back alleys while grunting johns pressed against them, swearing.

“You all right?” I asked.

“Never better.”

I didn’t believe her. Harriet was looking peaked, the circles under her eyes deepening towards her cheekbones. She was my age, twenty-two, with limp brown hair that barely reached her shoulders and a frame that seemed to get thinner each week.

“What’s this?” I said, taking her hand gently. A nasty cut sliced across her right palm, blood hardening around the edges.

Harriet flinched. “’S nothing.”

“Come by later. I’ll put comfrey on it.”

“All right. Me and the girls were thinking ’bout going to Hampstead Heath on Sunday. You want to—” Her expression changed, and she tensed up. “Rose,” she said, warning me.

Before I could react, someone grabbed my elbow and yanked it so hard I nearly toppled over. I whirled around to see my landlady, Mrs. Dorney, a bantam of a woman with vulture eyes.

“Can’t you read?” she demanded angrily.

“What?”

“I’ve put so many notices under your door, I’m running out of ink.”

I was four months behind on my rent. Nothing new there.

“If you keep treating these whores for free, I’ll never get my money, now will I?”

I straightened up and tried to look dignified. “I’ll pay you as soon as my customers are paid.”

“Time’s up, missy. Pay me or I’ll call the constable. See if I don’t.”

The dollymops, bless them, had gathered round Mrs. Dorney, snickering and teasing, pretending to admire her ridiculous feathered hat, and this gave me a chance to escape, clattering down the street as fast as my pattens would allow.

I reached home at about seven o’clock. True to her word, Mrs. Dorney had stuffed another notice under my door, giving me three days to come up with the rent before she tossed me and my scant belongings onto the curb.

I had just ripped up the note when I heard a quiet knock. It was a Sunday; I remember because the shop, which doubles as my bedroom, kitchen, and parlor, was officially closed. My visitor must have been waiting across the street, shrouded in fog, with the lamps yet to be lit.

Normally I would not have answered. My hours were clearly marked on the door: Monday to Saturday, 10 to 4. But, desperate as I was, I couldn’t afford to turn anyone away.

“Be ye the herbalist, miss?” a woman’s voice called, barely rising above a whisper.

That too was written on the door: Rose Eaton, Powders and Potions for the Benefit of Women. Perhaps she couldn’t read.

“Yes,” I called back.

“Can I have a word?”

I was soaked to the skin and bone-tired from traipsing about London. But even aside from the rent, my cupboard held just a stale heel of bread, and I had drunk the last of my tea the day before. A sale was a sale, no matter how small.

I let the woman in and bid her sit on the one unbroken chair. She was about my age, short and buxom, with a shapely figure, thick brown tresses coiled in a bun, and pockmarked skin. She wore no cloak to shield her from the cold, only a shawl over a grey cotton dress and a starched white apron—her maid’s uniform.

“What can I help you with?” I said, my heart going out to her. She looked even more desperate than I was.

“I be wantin’ a potion.”

A skin poultice, I was guessing, to help subdue the pimples she’d been battling, but she continued, blushing, “A love potion. I heard how ye can fix one in a trice.”

Her request caught me by surprise, although I’d concocted my share of remedies for the tumult of unrequited passion. “Certainly,” I replied. I was out of mandrake, but bishop’s cap would do. I fetched several glass vials filled with colourful liquids and dried herbs from the cupboard. I didn’t need all of them; some were just for show. “It’ll cost a shilling,” I added, hoping the poor spooney had managed to save up some money.

She pulled a drawstring purse from her pocket and handed it to me. “Here ’tis.”

With my mortar and pestle I ground three dried leaves into powder, then tipped the result into a pouch. “Put five drops of this in warm water, and drink it after you’ve supped in the morning and again at night, right before you go to sleep.”

“Wotever is it?” she asked, eyes widening.

“Epimedium grandiflorum. Otherwise known as fairy wings. It’s from the Orient.”

“Wot!”

“There’s something else you might want,” I continued, giving her another pouch. “This contains dried yarrow. Place it under your pillow, but only on a Tuesday when the moon is waxing.” I took a bill from the grocer’s and wrote on the back, “Thou pretty herb of Venus tree, thy true name it is yarrow. Now who my lover he must be will come to me tomorrow.” I read the verse out to her and said, “Recite these words before going to sleep. If you do, your fellow is sure to come round.”

She put out a hesitant hand for the spell, as if it might leap up and bite her, and gave me another sixpence. “G’bye, miss,” she said, standing up. “Thank ’ee.”

I ushered her out, already thinking about what I might buy with her money, assuming I continued to neglect the rent. Currant buns and a wedge of cheese. Or some mutton. Tea. A packet of sugar.

Of course, if I had known then what I do now, I’d have slammed the door in her face. As it was, I didn’t think about her again. Why would I?

In the days that followed, the chandler’s wife came down with a bad cough, the mill worker two floors up sprained her finger, and the lass round the corner had a cat with an inflamed tooth, so all at once I was busy as the London Bridge. I treated everything from easing the pains of childbirth to helping wet-nurses let down their milk. Back pains, digestive troubles, colds, even the many afflictions of animals. Doctors are expensive, hospitals more so, and the “miracle” cures sold in the streets are usually just quack concoctions. My customers trusted me not to make matters worse. Because most of them couldn’t afford my services, I often ended up bartering with them—an herbal remedy for a few potatoes or a rat-nibbled blanket.

The money I had received from the lovesick maid didn’t go towards food after all. I gave it to Mrs. Dorney as a good-faith payment, which meant that in the days afterward I went with no more than a slice or two of stale bread in my stomach.

One morning I was sitting by my fireplace, pretending there was coal in it, when I heard someone knock. I assumed it was the milliner, whose dog had mange, but instead it was the love-potion girl, and on the street behind her was a posh coach—gold, with green trim and a black cover that looked like silk. The driver wore matching gold livery.

“Me name’s Mary White,” said the girl, rather shyly. “I was here two weeks back.”

It didn’t seem possible that she belonged to the coach. I peered along the street, but all I saw were the familiar rundown shops and cheap lodging houses, with the usual smells wafting out of them.

“I was sent to fetch ye,” she went on. She wore the same shawl but a pert grey bonnet.

“Fetch me where?”

“Wolf Lake. Will ye come? I told my mistress about you, and she said to tell you that you must come quick because Araby’s taken ill, and my Lady is terrible upset.”

“Who’s Araby?”

“’Er Ladyship’s horse.”

“I’m not a vet.”

“Don’t matter. Yer wanted at the manor. We’ve no time fer jawing.” When I hesitated, she drew out a purse and shook it. “Yer to be handsomely paid.”

I peered into the bag and saw notes amid the coins, and my heart quickened. “All right.”

I went inside and she followed, watching as I filled my case with bottles and a spoon. I angled the utensil to catch a glimpse of myself in its metal surface. Same wide brown eyes, same unruly brown ringlets. Tired and disheveled. Maybe no one would notice.

“It’s workin’,” she said.

“What?”

“Them charms ye gave me are workin’ good.”

Another satisfied customer.

“How did you come to seek me out?” I asked.

“A friend of my cousin asked ye fer a potion to help with ’er headaches. Ye fixed ’er right up. An’ I hear yer good with animals too.”

Why didn’t I hesitate to enter a carriage with a woman I barely knew, bound for parts unknown? Well, I needed the money, and I hoped there might be a free meal at the end of it. Besides, I had never traveled in such a luxurious vehicle. The seats were upholstered in gold silk, and straw was piled on the floor to warm our feet.

After the driver climbed up on the box, off we went, clippety-clop down Dorset Street. The world looks different from inside a coach. I saw familiar sights—Frying Pan Alley, Artillery Lane, Christ Church, Hammersmith Bridge—but they all went by in a flash. I had been lifted clean out of my life and dropped into a dream.

I wanted nothing more than to enjoy the ride, but Mary peppered me with questions: How old are ye? Where were ye born? Do ye have a fella? How d’ ye know so much about potions? The answer to that last one was a long story. I merely shrugged and looked out the window.

We headed north. After a while, we left London behind and drove into the countryside, rolling hills dotted with farms and sheep cropping the new spring grass. Anemones were starting to bloom, along with violets. There were shy clumps of tiny cyclamen hiding in plain sight. Wild crocuses blanketed the meadows, and snowdrops lined our route, creating a lacy white carpet. I had forgotten how the country looks. The sky flattens out, and you can see in all directions. The air no longer has that bitter taste of soot. Colours are brighter, not beaten down and subdued the way they are in the city.

I fell asleep, and when I woke there were no more farms. Around a bend in the road, we came upon a wrought-iron gate flanked by large columns, atop which were sculptures of wolves. “Wolf Lake Manor,” Mary announced, drawing in her breath as if she too were impressed by the sight. Whoever had sculpted the wolves had possessed a good eye. Their faces looked ferocious.

The coachman hollered something, and a man came out and opened the gate. We entered a broad avenue with lime trees guarding either side. Beyond them lay wide lawns and, past them, dense woods. Ahead was the biggest house I had ever seen, with turrets and a tower and long, thin spires that looked like candle snuffers. Built from red brick, it had huge windows, fancy scrollwork, and sloping gables. To the left was a broad terrace, to the right a large glasshouse with a gilded copper dome. Beyond the terrace were a series of formal gardens, dotted with stone fountains. On the front lawn, the bushes had been trimmed to resemble birds—hawks from the look of it, some with their wings outstretched in flight. I used to see hawks all the time at Thirsk, soaring overhead in search of squirrels and mice to scoop up in their talons.

The carriage veered left, and we headed towards a low cluster of buildings painted red—the stables. I smelled hay and manure. When we rolled to a stop, a man yanked open the door. He was about fifty years old and wore brown trousers, a white shirt with sleeves rolled to his elbows, and a checked cap. His face had the windburned tint of someone who spent his days outdoors.

“Well, lassie,” he said crossly to Mary. “Yer late.”

We followed him into the nearest stable, past rows of horses in identical stalls. In the very last one was a chestnut mare with a white diamond under her forelock. She was covered in sweat and kept tossing her head fretfully, grunting in pain. A group of stable boys stood around looking worried, kicking at the hay.

“She’s been lying down every few minutes and then trying to sit on her haunches, like a dog,” said the man with the cap.

“Mr. Joseph,” Mary said, “is anyone askin’ fer me at the house?”

He shrugged. “If ye ain’t wanted now, ye will be soon. Run along.”

“No. Wait,” I said to her.

As I approached the horse, the mare knelt and attempted to roll on her back, kicking her legs towards her belly. “Easy now,” I crooned, stroking her wet flanks. “Good girl.”

Turning to Mary, I directed her to run to the house and fix up a thin oatmeal gruel. “Mix it with half a cup of milk, three eggs, and six lumps of sugar. Understand?”

“Aye,” she said, racing off.

“What on earth is wrong with this animal?” Joseph demanded.

“Colic, probably. My guess is she’s eaten some type of plant that inflamed her stomach. But she can’t vomit it up without injuring herself.” In fact she might die in the process—a fact I did not voice aloud. No one who has heard a poisoned horse scream in its piteous attempts to retch will ever forget it.

“Poison!” Joseph exclaimed. “There’s no poison here.”

“Where’s her hay?”

Joseph led me to a trough, and I poked through it with my fingers.

“Let me see that,” Joseph said. He inspected a dried weed, smelled it, then spat in disgust. To the stable boys he said, “Which one of ye gathered that hay?”

No one answered, but the shortest boy turned red as a cranberry.

“You lot go through all the hay and pick out anything that looks like a weed,” Joseph commanded. When they hesitated, he barked, “Double time or ye’ll catch it!” and they scurried off. “Stinkin’ willie,” he exclaimed. “I’ll be damned. How much do ye reckon she’s ate?”

“Hard to say. Hopefully not much.”

Araby continued groaning and thrashing. I threw a blanket over her and whispered nonsense words, stroking the tender place between her ears.

When Mary returned with the oatmeal mash, I mixed in some bran and fed Araby several spoonfuls. Normally the horse would have resisted the medicine, but now she was too weak to do more than roll her head. Eventually a pungent smell filled the stall as a thin brown stream appeared behind her on the straw.

“There we go,” I said. “It’s a start.”

I repeated the dose every thirty minutes, with Joseph hovering over us. It grew dark. A bat flew into the stables, disappearing under the eaves. The other horses quieted, finally settling down for the night.

“I can take over now,” Joseph said. “I don’ mind sitting up with her.”

“All right. But I think she should take a bit of boiled milk, after it’s cooled. She needs sustenance.”

“Ye hear that, lass?” Joseph asked Mary.

“Yessir.” To me she said, “Yer to spend the night.”

I looked round the stall, thinking I could sleep on the straw next to Araby.

“Up at the manor,” Mary added.

“But come straight back here in the morning,” said Joseph, as if he expected me to bolt and leave the horse unattended.

A pasty moon hovered in the sky when we left the barn, but I was too tired to look about. Inside the manorhouse, Mary directed me to a small room in what I assumed was the servants’ quarters. I collapsed onto the lumpy bed, and fell asleep with my boots on.

I recently received a Ph.D. in English from the CUNY Graduate Center. The title of my dissertation is “Beyond the Madwoman in the Attic: Female Madness in Victorian Popular Literature.” While researching it, I became fascinated with how the Victorians envisioned insanity and the many ways they thought it affected the minds of women. My previous exposure to nineteenth-century asylums had been through novels and films, which usually depict madwomen as raving lunatics. As I dug deeper into the historical record, however, I discovered a field of study known as moral management. Alienists of the time believed that the brains of the insane were divided into two parts, one diseased and the other still capable of logical thought. The diseased part caused people—statistically more women than men—to act in ways that were self-destructive and harmful to others.

As I became immersed in my research, the germs of a historical novel suggested itself. I envisioned a young woman falsely accused of poisoning someone (poison was thought to be the weapon of choice for female murderers) and sent to a private asylum steeped in the practices of moral management. During my seven years of research, I had become familiar with the era’s practice of mesmerism, drug use, workhouses, and prostitution (and the attendant physical problems for women), all of which I included in the novel. The challenge was to create a fictional story, set in London and the surrounding countryside in 1860, incorporating all I know about Victorian food, gardening, décor, politics, etc., while still developing strong relationships between the many characters who inhabit its pages. The result is WOLF LAKE ELEGY.

Here’s the plot: Twenty-two-year-old Rose Eaton is an impoverished herbalist living in London. She is summoned to Wolf Lake Manor to treat a horse that is gravely ill, and then stays on at the manor to become an in-house herbalist for Lady Amelia Kendrick, who suffers from nerves. She soon meets Lady Amelia’s husband, Sir Charles, a mercurial man whose fortunes derive from the colonial guano trade, and also finds herself drawn to Charles’s brother, Jax, a disabled veteran of the second Opium War in China. The manor is reputed to be haunted, and after a séance, a maid, Mary White, dies from poison under mysterious circumstances. Rose is accused of murder, convicted of willful insanity, and sent to the Ebbing Tide Lunatic Asylum, run by Dr. Archibald Kingsley, who practices moral management.

Each member of the Kendrick family harbors a secret: illicit love, opium addiction, jealous passion. But Rose has secrets of her own: she is not who she seems to be. Throughout the novel, I am interested in delving beneath familiar tropes to explore the dark underside of the Victorian age.