Jane Steele

by Lyndsay Faye

  A strong wind seemed to blow, a strangely silent one, and I was a leaf floating upon it.

  “Oh, Miss Steele, please don’t take on so!” To my shock, I opened my eyes to find Sam Quillfeather’s beaked nose inches away, his dry, calloused hands grasping mine. “Listen here, my girl—take a few deep breaths, if you can? Very good. I must say the words now, and you can hear them bravely, can you not?”

  A faint nod was all I could manage at this point.

  “I know that your cousin, Edwin, attacked you, and the nature of that attack.”

  I waited; I continued to wait. When he said nothing further, I heaved a breath as if I had been drowning. Inspector Quillfeather nodded, squeezing my limp fingers. He continued to say nothing of murder, and I continued to gape at him, utterly speechless.

  “There, I knew that would be difficult. Shall I go on?”

  Shaking my head in disbelief, I managed to husk, “Yes,” after which contradictory signals Sam Quillfeather smiled paternally.

  “I cannot help but feel that I have done you an … injustice? There was evidence, so much evidence, but how can one conscience putting a mere child through such trials? Had I to do it over, I think that I should have acted differently? I can only claim misplaced propriety, though I hope you lived the better for my choice, I truly do.”

  “Evidence,” I echoed.

  “Oh, evidence in spades!” he cried. “The torn button upon your cousin’s clothing might have been explained as you suggested, by the idea that you were playing. However! Though I do not claim to be the world’s finest policeman, I can assure you that I aspire to be, and the tear in your dress sleeve combined with the bruising beneath? Shaped, even what little I could see of it, like a handprint?” Inspector Quillfeather’s already clifflike brows surged into bolder protrusions. “Miss Steele, you never got that injury playing a game, that was as plain as the nose on my face!”

  “Very plain indeed, then,” I accidentally said aloud.

  “Ha!” exclaimed the policeman. “Oh, may I state how gratified am I that even after such unspeakable liberties being visited upon your person, you retain your sense of humour?”

  Pressing my hands a final time, he released them and sat back, though between the hair and the brows and the nose and the chin, this did nothing to diminish the impression that he was a train hurtling towards me. “If you could know the nights I’ve kept vigil over this affair, would you wish to? No, don’t answer that; I think not. But your very attitude that day, Miss Steele—your ramrod posture, your obvious terror, your inexplicable distress which, like a puzzle piece which is the right colour but the wrong shape, did not match grief over the death of your cousin … The truth was obvious. I asked myself so often, What can I do? Such cases of unspeakable violence, particularly against the young, are impossible to prosecute.”

  “I see.” I pressed my still-shaking hands into my skirts.

  “Yours would have been, I assure you. And with the perpetrator of the assault, who was likewise the second principle witness, dead by tragic accident? Imagine! A nine-year-old girl dragged through the assizes, pointed at, questioned, shamed, her reputation forever soiled, her heart broken, her mind subjected to not merely a single gross indignity but multiple others? No, I said—not when the guilty party could not be punished by a mortal court.”

  “I didn’t scream,” I blurted out.

  “I beg your pardon, Miss Steele?”

  “I didn’t scream.” Suddenly the tears were an ugly waterfall, hot and gushing, and someone has to know after all this time, I had to tell someone. “He … Edwin made a mistake, you see, because I was so shocked that I stayed quiet, which misled him, so it was entirely my fault, you understand, that he … that he … because I didn’t scream.”

  If a man can look simultaneously exquisitely gentle and boiling with rage, that man is Sam Quillfeather. He pursed his lips and curved towards me.

  “You listen to me, Miss Steele, and you listen ardently,” he grated. “That a lady’s succumbing to shock at exposure to such villainy could ever be considered a black mark against her—put the thought from your mind this very instant, do you hear?”

  Opening my mouth, I was prevented by a sharply upraised hand.

  “Mark me now!” Inspector Quillfeather ordered. “It is a gentleman’s greatest privilege to protect the fair sex, and when he abandons that privilege, when he casts it aside in favour of lechery, why then he is no longer a gentleman, and therefore the lady in question owes him nothing, because he is a coward and a blackguard, and for a lady to doubt her own behaviour in the presence of a coward and a blackguard is lunacy, I tell you, from stone silence to violent caterwauling, because she owes him no interaction whatsoever from the instant he discards his honour, and I won’t have it. Promise me something?”

  “Um,” I said. He was handing me his pocket handkerchief, I realised, and I took it, though the flow of tears had dried under the blast of his vehemence. “If I can.”

  “Promise me,” he urged, eyes shining, “that you will put this aborted scream from your mind forever?”

  “I … well …”

  “You owe your attacker no debt, Miss Steele. It is, as I have proven, a logical impossibility? Promise to try?

  “Yes,” I whispered. For the second time in as many hours, I felt as if I had been blown apart and put back together again. “I promise to try.”

  “I can ask no more of you than that.” He stood to his full scarecrow’s height, setting his hands against his scrawny hips as if satisfied that a hard task had been seen to. “Well, I think we can both agree I have taxed you enough, yes, Miss Steele? Please forgive me for any harm I may have caused you inadvertently. Now I must return to work, for there are several urgent matters which require my attention, and I have neglected them in favour of finding you. You have eased my mind, Miss Steele.”

  “Here is your handkerchief,” I said, offering it.

  “Handkerchiefs should remain where they are needed, don’t you agree?”

  Weakly, I laughed at this, and Inspector Quillfeather beamed at me as he retrieved his hat and gloves from the table.

  “I hope you will trust my complete sincerity in vowing never to reveal your secret to Thornfield?” he pressed. “I ought to say, however, that should you elect to reveal your true name to my friend, I believe he would treat you honourably.”

  I haven’t any true name, I thought in despair, and he treats me too honourably by half.

  “Forgive me—my words pain you. Here is my card, should you wish to contact me for any reason, great or small? You are looking well, very well indeed, Miss Steele, and I see by your attire that you have no need of governess work. But in any case, don’t stay away from Highgate House on my account?” he added kindly.

  “I won’t.” Mr. Thornfield’s likeness appeared in my mind’s eye, deep-blue eyes and pure-white hair, and I banished the image. “I promise.”

  He turned to go. We had not finished yet, however—nothing could be this simple. Though the thought of deliberately broaching the subject sent leeches slithering through my belly, I could not allow him to exit without truly mapping the miracle of my safety.

  “Mr. Quillfeather, did you know that I was at Lowan Bridge School when …” I forced myself to look at him. “When Mr. Vesalius Munt was murdered?”

  He lifted his overhanging brows, and the neat set of horizontal lines appeared along his forehead. “Miss Steele, I regret to say that I did, for you were included in the roster of some thirty missing girls? I always wished you well, you know, and I did seek you for a time.”

  My heart slammed against my rib cage as if attempting escape. “Did you ever suspect anyone in particular?”

  “Ah, that would be telling, wouldn’t it?” he mused. “But between us, yes, there was a clear suspect.”

  “You cannot mean it!”

  “I must assure you I do.”

  “For my own peace of mind, then, I beg you to inform me who the culprit was.”
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br />   “It won’t upset you to hear the truth?”

  “Not after that … other truth,” I replied in a hushed tone, and he smiled at me.

  “Quite so. Do you recall Miss Amy Lilyvale?”

  “Very clearly.”

  “Yes, she gave me testimony that every single girl without exception had been present at chapel that fateful day, which quite clinched the matter.”

  “Did it?” I questioned, feeling sick again.

  “Oh, I should think decisively?” He began ticking people off on cadaverous fingers. “Miss Rebecca Clarke was not present—ill-usage, I gather, was the cause; you were not present, doubtless comforting your friend; and Miss Davies was laid up with a bad case of the croup. Therefore, Miss Lilyvale was not actually at chapel to check, and wished not to falsely throw any students under suspicion. Other teachers claimed she was there, but the inaccuracy of her attendance report convinced me they were lying in order to shield her.” Scowling, Mr. Quillfeather passed his hand forward over his head, a familiar gesture that made him resemble a ruffled bird of prey. “Your headmaster, Miss Steele, was no saint. He kept a diary? Oh, yes, I found it! In it he recorded, in the foulest language, the most disgusting perversions he could conjure, planning to visit all upon Miss Lilyvale. He wrote that he had been sharing such filth with her for years, the villain … One is not gladdened by any death, but some touch the heart rather less than others, do they not?”

  “Undoubtedly.”

  “Miss Lilyvale it was, that is certain, but I make a habit of never pursuing an unwinnable case, you see? I cannot find the good in it? And the evidence was so circumstantial! Nothing could be done.”

  “Surely the diary counted for something?”

  “Oh, the diary.” He made a subtle bow of acknowledgement. “Yes, that would have gone a very long way indeed, but sadly it was lost.”

  “However did that happen?” I marvelled.

  “I fear that I lost it, Miss Steele,” he declared, eyes twinkling. “In a lit fireplace. Clumsy of me, I know—can you imagine? And they call me a steady policeman!”

  So saying, he donned his hat, tipped it, and walked straight out the door.

  • • •

  I had planned to pay a call upon Augustus Sack that evening regardless of the outcome of my meeting with my solicitor; however, the reader will likely empathise when I confess I was too prostrate with nerves following my identity exploding in multiple fashions to infiltrate the East India Company. A message dispatched via the boots conveyed my intention to call upon the morrow. Moving as if in a dream, I unfastened my fine jewellery, brushed and hung my clothing, donned my soft new nightdress, and crawled into bed with a wineglass full of whiskey and Jane Eyre within arm’s reach.

  I was a rich woman now, even without Mr. Thornfield’s assistance. Time drifted sluggishly, distorted by the whiskey and the warmth. Everything about me had changed, and yet I could see the slender bend of my wrist at the end of a white forearm, looking the same as it always had, could see the tiny mole between my left thumb and index finger, assuring me that I was still myself.

  I was not myself, however. I was a Jane with an imaginary surname, one who apparently was not to blame for failing to scream. It was too mad to comprehend in an instant, or even an hour, so I burrowed farther into the bedclothes to puzzle over it all. My life’s sole mission had once been a simple one: to carve out a tiny sliver of human affection, having none of the commodity for myself. For all that I so thoroughly disapproved of my own character, however, Mr. Sneeves and Mr. Quillfeather had proven that day I was capable of grievous errors upon the subject of Jane Steele.

  I rolled clumsily onto my belly, reaching, and flipped to a passage from my new copy of my favourite book:

  To this crib I always took my doll; human beings must love something, and, in the dearth of worthier objects of affection, I contrived to find a pleasure in loving and cherishing a faded graven image, shabby as a miniature scarecrow. It puzzles me now to remember with what absurd sincerity I doted on this little toy; half-fancying it alive and capable of sensation. I could not sleep unless it was folded in my nightgown; and when it lay there safe and warm, I was comparatively happy, believing it to be happy likewise.

  Upon first reading, I had found it bizarre that the adult Jane Eyre regarded this exercise as either puzzling or absurd; upon subsequent readings, I marvel still more at her derision. Lacking interest in dolls, I had once—not unlike my poor, sweet Sahjara—gathered crumbs of pleasure by spoiling horses. This seemed to me neither worship of a false idol nor a quirk of an infantile mind; it did no one any harm if I treated a horse well, and made my days less miserable.

  Did I deserve misery for the things I had done?

  Yes, of course I did. Even apart from being the tainted bastard offspring of a suicidal mother and a lying father, I was a murderess five times over.

  As I seemed incapable of turning myself in, however, would any harm come to the world if for the moment I thought of this newly reborn Jane—Jane without legitimate parentage, Jane without legitimate surname—as a creature worth treating gently?

  There was no one else volunteering for the task, after all.

  • • •

  Brisk footfalls outside my bedroom door woke me at eleven the next morning; the anonymous movement dragged me from a weirdly sweet slumber. The sun was high, however, and breakfast long concluded, and the whiskey’s solace had left me with an empty belly, so I clambered from bed and washed. Then I donned another of my fashionable frocks, a floral silk with a dramatic shawl collar, all save the white lace sleeves emerging from fabric printed in grey and silver and a blue which reminded me of Mr. Thornfield’s eyes.

  Today is for you, I thought, wherever you are and however you fare, and was seized with such a longing that my breath caught.

  My set of modest Punjabi diamonds completed the picture, and I deftly swallowed the remainder of last night’s whiskey, fortifying myself as I quit the Weathercock.

  Noontide bells rang as my soles struck the cobbles. I had been too disoriented to give Mr. Sack a specific time the day before, so I did not feel rushed. Luncheon was the first order of business, and I knew of a beautiful tearoom Clarke and I had used to frequent mere blocks away from East India House; I was seized with a longing to see it again, its gliding servers and polished brass rails, so I hailed a hansom and directed the driver to the City.

  Cox’s Tearoom was just as I recalled it when we pulled up before its door, and by the time I had paid the driver, both the wind and my stomach bit sharply. A liveried gentleman led me to a table, where I was soon equipped with Darjeeling and a tower of sandwiches. After a few sips and bites, however, I thought I should be more comfortable with a newspaper; I visited the rack and selected a late-morning edition, glancing at the headlines as I returned to my table. Nearly colliding with a waiter, I looked up, murmuring an apology.

  I stopped dead, staring in astonishment.

  Rebecca Clarke sat at a table by the window, shafts of illumination waltzing through the golden corkscrews of her pinned-up hair.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  But I ought to forgive you, for you knew not what you did: while rending my heartstrings, you thought you were only uprooting my bad propensities.

  My heart, so egregiously taxed of late, rung in my breast like a great gong—I thought it must have been audible, so painfully glad was I to see my schoolmate, my companion, nay, my sister, again after so long a time.

  Once the initial shock had worn off, I ceased marvelling and allowed happiness to spread like a virus through my chest. We had shared the same tastes once, Clarke and I, moved in twin orbits like binary stars. It was not very surprising, therefore, that in this labyrinth of a town I should stumble upon my lost great friend, particularly considering I had sought the place out because it reminded me of her.

  Clarke was twenty-one years old, and where once she had been thin and ethereal, now she was beautiful—as freckled as ever, with the tiny mouth of an
inquisitive porcelain doll. So many times had I pictured her starving that the sight of her hale was a gift, the unlooked-for sort which pierce deeper than the expected. Her clothing was fine but eccentric: a long bronze skirt, a close-fitted ivory waistcoat, a dark copper jacket with tails and lapels to it, a golden cravat. This elegant but oddly mannish ensemble was completed by a miniature top hat, and she peered through a pair of half-moon pince-nez at the afternoon edition of the Times.

  My feet had carried me farther than I realised during this reconnaissance, and I found myself before her, my eager shadow brushing the hem of her skirt.

  “Just put it on my account, if you—oh!” Clarke exclaimed, her cup clattering into its saucer as she glanced up.

  Say something, I thought.

  Nothing emerged.

  I’ve missed you terribly and deeply regret the fact you learnt I am a homicidal maniac.

  I hesitated.

  Not that.

  “It’s good to …” I swallowed, for Clarke had turned as pale as the milk brought for her coffee. “That is—we needn’t speak, only I saw you, and …” I battled the urge to prove myself the pinnacle of urbanity by throwing myself in her lap and sobbing. “You look well, and I’m glad.”

  At this juncture, I considered that a sound from Clarke—any sound—would be taken as a boon. Instead, she stared at me with wide green eyes, her hands vibrating hummingbird-fast.

  “I’m upsetting you.” The admission stung. “I can’t tell you what it meant to see you again. I’ll just—”

  “No.” Clarke trapped my wrist with the strength of a steel manacle. “Sit down.” She blinked, hard. “I mean, won’t you sit down?”

  Slowly, she released me.

  I sat down.

  Clarke folded the newspaper with care; then she took a long breath and sat back, nodding at the silver coffeepot. “Would you like a cup?”

  “Please.”

  A waiter came with an additional service and poured, a civilised piece of pageantry which enabled us both to pretend we were friends meeting for coffee to discuss our summering plans, rather than friends meeting for coffee to discuss whatever we were going to discuss. My teapot and sandwiches appeared, and I gestured for her to help herself; Clarke shook her head, eyes wide under pale lashes, and I looked away.