Jane Slayre

by Sherri Browning Erwin

I thanked her for the food, took a bite of the bread, and a healthy swallow of coffee.

  "That's better," she said, her soft voice soothing.

  "Helen, why are you being kind to one whom everybody regards as a liar?"

  "Everybody, Jane? Why, there are only eighty people who have heard you called so, and the world contains hundreds of millions."

  "But what have I to do with millions? The eighty are sure to think badly after Mr. Bokorhurst's discourse."

  "Jane, you are mistaken. Probably not one in the school either despises or dislikes you. Many, I am sure, pity you much."

  "How can they pity me after what Mr. Bokorhurst has said?"

  "Mr. Bokorhurst is not a great and admired man. He is little liked here. Had he treated you as a favourite, you would have found enemies all around you. As it is, the greater number would offer you sympathy if they dared. Besides, Jane ..." She paused.

  "Well, Helen?" I put my hand into hers.

  She chafed my fingers gently to warm them and went on, "If all the world hated you, and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved you and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends."

  I adored Helen for saying so. "As long as I believe I've acted in the right, I can't be wrong?"

  "Not to those who know and love you, Jane."

  Helen had calmed me. I was about to ask if she was truly one of the heavenly beings sent to keep watch over me when she started breathing fast and began to cough. Angels did not struggle with such mortal afflictions.

  Resting my head on Helen's shoulder, I put my arms around her waist. Her spasm waned. She drew me to her and we reposed in silence.

  I finally said, "Perhaps it's better not to be one of Mr. Bokorhurst's special students, then."

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  "Special students?" Helen started a little. "Who told you this term?"

  "I overheard Mr. Bokorhurst and Miss Temple speaking of them. Do you know of them? What makes them special?"

  She paused. "There are a few students who don't seem quite right to me."

  "The ones who don't eat?"

  She nodded, leaned closer, and whispered, "Eight of them in all. They took sick last year. We had a case of scarlet fever spread amongst us. Most of the afflicted recovered. The few who had prolonged symptoms were taken away in the night. Many of us supposed them to be dead. We were never told one way or another. But they came back days later, and here they are still well and living amongst us. All except for Ginny Canham. Something happened. She attacked Miss Brockway, tore her to shreds."

  "Shreds?"

  "Bloody shreds. Miss Temple intervened, but it was too late. There was nothing to be done. Miss Smith was hired to replace her."

  "Nothing to be done? But what became of Ginny?"

  "Oh, no one knows exactly. Miss Temple subdued her with a sharp blow to the head. Then she was escorted away. Back home perhaps, or--"

  "Or?"

  "Or she was killed, no hope for it. Do you know what a bokor is?"

  "As in Bokorhurst?"

  "Indeed," she said. "In Deepden, we had a maid, a lovely woman with dark skin and fire-bright eyes. We took her in and gave her a home after she'd been thoroughly abandoned by the sea captain who had brought her here from the West Indies. She knew things of a strange religion called voodoo. A bokor is a voodoo priest, a type of sorcerer."

  "A sorcerer! Of course." Helen seemed surprised at how readily I accepted her tale. "And how does he enchant his victims?"

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  "He makes them into zombies."

  "Zombies?" This word, like bokor, I hadn't heard.

  "A reanimated corpse. A bokor brings the dead back to life, but not the sort of life we know, more of an indentured servitude."

  I gasped. Like Abbot! But I didn't want to interrupt Helen's further explanation.

  "Zombies serve their master in all things. It's an unnatural way to exist, most against God's will. As long as the zombified remains roam the earth, the spirit of the deceased cannot ascend to heaven. They're most calm, nearly lifeless in demeanor unless--

  "Unless they're fed. Feeding encourages them to eat more and crave meat. And once they've tasted flesh, oh dear. I believe it's what happened to Ginny. Only teachers are allowed meat at meals, but somehow Ginny must have got hold of some. It sent her to a frenzied quest for human flesh. Oh, the blood! There was so much blood. I believe she ate a fair amount of Miss Brockway before Miss Temple subdued her, judging from the state of the corpse and the entrails dripping down Ginny's chin. I wish I could forget the sight of it. There's only one way to stop them permanently."

  "A stake through the heart?" I ventured, more convinced than ever that Helen Burns was an angel sent to point me on my path.

  Helen shook her head and looked at me strangely. "A stake? No. One must remove the heart or head to release the zombie from the curse. They return to death and their spirits are free."

  "Remove the heart or head?" I wondered at what strength must be required to entirely sever a head or scoop out a heart. "But if one is not sure ... if I struck one that was not truly a zombie, I could kill her."

  "To be certain," Helen agreed, then started coughing.

  I patted her back. "Don't speak of it now. We'll talk more later."

  Mr. Bokorhurst, a bokor? It made sense. I reflected on his conversation with Mrs. Reed, trying to recall the full extent. He made mention of new harvests, replacing Abbot. Had Miss Abbot been

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  at Lowood? Was he harvesting dead students to be trained as future domestics? Diabolical!

  I had so much more to say to Helen, but we sat silently while she caught her breath. I most certainly did not want Helen, my only friend, to go away and come back not quite right. We had not sat long thus when Miss Temple came in.

  "I came on purpose to find you, Jane Slayre," said she. "I want you in my room; and as Helen Burns is with you, she may come, too."

  We went. Miss Temple might be in Mr. Bokorhurst's employ, or even under a spell, but I trusted her completely. Whatever reason she had to take part in Lowood's secrets, I would soon find out. For now, we followed the superintendent's guidance through some intricate passages and mounted a staircase to reach her private apartment. It contained a good fire and looked cheerful. Miss Temple told Helen Burns to be seated in a low armchair on one side of the hearth, and, herself taking another, she called me to her side.

  "Is it all over?" she asked, looking down at my face. "Are you feeling better now?"

  "Indeed. Helen has quite brought me to my senses." I debated how much I could press Miss Temple about the special students and opted to wait before bringing it up. "My mood has much improved. Still, I'm reeling inside from having been wrongly accused. You, ma'am, and everybody else, will now think me wicked."

  "We shall think you what you prove yourself to be, my child. Continue to act as a good girl, and you will satisfy us."

  "Shall I, Miss Temple?" Was it good to want to kill zombies? I felt somehow it must be. I noticed a sword, like the ones in the parlour, hanging over the mantel and wondered if it had a more necessary purpose than decoration. Dared I ask?

  "You will," said she, passing her arm around me. "I have every faith in you, Jane Slayre. And now tell me, who is the lady whom Mr. Bokorhurst called your benefactress?"

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  "Mrs. Reed, my uncle's wife. My uncle is dead, and he left me to her care." I stuck to the simple facts, leaving out that Mrs. Reed was also dead in her way.

  "Did she not, then, adopt you of her own accord?"

  "No, ma'am. She was sorry to have to do it, but my uncle, as I have often heard the servants say, got her to promise before he died that she would always keep me."

  "Well now, Jane, you know, or at least I will tell you, that when a criminal is accused, he is always allowed to speak in his own defence. You have been charged with falsehood. Defend yourself to me as well as you can. Say whatever your memory suggests is true; but add nothing and exaggerate nothing."
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  I resolved, in the depth of my heart, that I would be most moderate--most correct without revealing the complete truth of the Reeds' conditions. Having reflected a few minutes to arrange coherently what I had to say, I told her nearly all the story of my sad childhood. Exhausted by emotion, I used language more subdued than it generally was in my repeating the tale of my upbringing. Thus restrained and simplified, without any mention of vampyres, it sounded more credible. I felt as I went on that Miss Temple fully believed me.

  I mentioned Mr. Lloyd's coming to see me after what I described as an attack by John Reed that resulted in a knock of the head and not the biting of my neck. I did not spare Mrs. Reed the mercy of leaving off that she'd left me to potentially bleed to death in the red room, though I did not mention the ghostly visitation of my uncle and the path he'd tasked me to follow.

  "I know something of Mr. Lloyd," Miss Temple said, after regarding me some moments in silence once I'd finished. "I shall write to him; if his reply agrees with your statement, you shall be publicly cleared from every imputation. To me, Jane, you are clear now."

  She kissed my cheek and still kept me at her side. I was a child unused to affection, and I liked Miss Temple showing me some care. She then addressed Helen Burns.

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  "How are you tonight, Helen? Have you coughed much today?"

  "Not quite so much, I think, ma'am."

  "And the pain in your chest?"

  "It is a little better."

  Miss Temple got up, took Helen's hand, examined her pulse, then returned to her seat. As she resumed it, I heard her sigh low. She was pensive a few minutes before rousing herself cheerfully.

  "But you two are my visitors tonight. I must treat you as such." She rang her bell.

  "Barbara," she said to the servant who answered it, "I have not yet had tea. Bring the tray and place cups for these two young ladies."

  When the tray arrived, I delighted in the sight. How pretty, to my eyes, did the china cups and bright teapot look, placed on the little round table near the fire! How fragrant was the steam of the beverage, and the scent of the toast! Tonight was for celebration, not accusations.

  "Barbara," Miss Temple called her servant back. "Can you not bring a little more bread and butter? There is not enough for three."

  Barbara went out, but she returned soon. "Madam, Mrs. Harden says she has sent up the usual quantity."

  Mrs. Harden, be it observed, was the housekeeper, a woman after Mr. Bokorhurst's own heart, made up of equal parts of whalebone and iron. Perhaps literally. She might have been held together by such.

  "Oh, very well!" returned Miss Temple. "We must make it do, Barbara, I suppose." As the girl withdrew, Miss Temple added, smiling, "Fortunately, I have it in my power to supply deficiencies for this once."

  Having invited Helen and me to approach the table, she placed before each of us a cup of tea with one delicious but thin morsel of toast. She got up, unlocked a drawer, and, taking from it a parcel wrapped in paper, disclosed presently to our eyes a good-size seed-cake.

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  "I meant to give each of you some of this to take with you, but as there is so little toast, you must have it now." She cut slices with a generous hand.

  We feasted that evening as on nectar and ambrosia, and not the least delight of the entertainment was our hostess's smile of gratification as we satisfied our famished appetites on the delicate fare she liberally supplied. Miss Temple and Helen conversed on so many things, books I'd never heard of, world events, and languages unknown. Helen recited some Latin as well as any true scholar, I supposed.

  "Miss Temple, I must ask why you have a sword in your room?" I said at length as the evening drew to a close.

  "It is a fine saber, is it not? My father was a swordsman," Miss Temple said, taking the weapon down. The blade was safely ensconced in a sheath. "A pirate on the Barbary Coast, to tell the truth, before he retired to Cornwall to marry and raise children. He taught me a few tricks."

  She posed like a true fighter, feet planted firmly apart, one arm in the air, the other holding out the sword and waving it boldly. I stood transfixed, filled with admiration as she danced a little circle around us, swishing her sword at imaginary foes. At zombies? I felt more secure knowing of Miss Temple's secret talent.

  "Oh, Miss Temple!" I said. "I wish you could teach me your few tricks."

  "Perhaps I shall." She smiled, gazing at the weapon as if lost in a memory. After a moment, she placed it back on the hooks over the mantel and embraced us both. "But for now, it's time for bed. God bless you, my children!"

  Helen she held a little longer than me. Miss Temple let her go more reluctantly. For her, she a second time breathed a sad sigh; for her, she wiped a tear from her cheek.

  On reaching the bedroom, we heard the voice of Miss Scatcherd. She was examining drawers. She had just pulled out Helen Burns's, and when we entered, Helen was greeted with a sharp reprimand.

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  Next morning, Miss Scatcherd wrote in conspicuous characters on a piece of pasteboard the word SLATTERN and bound it crownlike around Helen's forehead. She wore it until evening, patient, unresentful, and regarding it as a deserved punishment. The moment Miss Scatcherd withdrew after school, I ran to Helen, tore it off, and thrust it into the fire. The fury of which she was incapable had been burning in my soul all day, and tears, hot and large, had continually been scalding my cheek. The spectacle of Helen's sad resignation gave me an intolerable pain at the heart.

  CHAPTER 9

  ABOUT A WEEK LATER, Miss Temple received a reply from Mr. Lloyd regarding her inquiries. He apparently corroborated my account. Miss Temple had enough faith in me, and Mr. Lloyd's verification of events, that she assembled the whole school, announced that inquiry had been made into the charges against Jane Slayre, and that she was "most happy to be able to pronounce her completely cleared from every imputation." The teachers then shook hands with me and kissed me, and a murmur of pleasure ran through the ranks of my companions.

  I felt joy in the sisterhood and affection of my fellow Lowood inmates. For the time, I was able to put the special students and Mr. Bokorhurst to the back of my mind and throw myself wholeheartedly into my studies. I toiled hard, and my success was proportionate to my efforts. My memory, not naturally tenacious, improved with practise. Exercise sharpened my wits. In a few weeks I was promoted to a higher class. In less than two months, I was allowed to commence French and drawing. Miss Temple had also taken me

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  aside to show me how to hold a sword with proper posture, and how to lunge and parry. I returned for a second lesson late in the evening after classes.

  "Mr. Lloyd wrote that he suspects you were being raised amongst vampyres," Miss Temple revealed as she showed me how to keep the blade steady while sweeping it through the air. "Speak the truth. I will not fault you."

  I lowered the weapon. "Indeed. I wasn't sure anyone would believe me. It sounds so fantastical to say aloud."

  "Oh, I believe you. I've known worse things than vampyres, dear child."

  I was about to ask her about zombies, but she ended the conversation before I could bring it up.

  That night on going to bed, I forgot to prepare the imaginary supper of hot roast potatoes and spinach that had got me through many a night of burnt porridge and meager portions of bread. I feasted instead on the spectacle of ideal drawings that I planned in my head, in the dark, all the work of my own hands: freely penciled rocks and ruins overrun with elves, a blue-eyed angel floating over a peaceful ocean, a Grecian goddess draped in voluminous folds. The angel would of course resemble Helen Burns, the goddess Miss Temple. I imagined, too, my lunging and parrying, thrusting, and hacking a bloodthirsty zombie's head clean off. I was sure I could do it. I tingled at the very thought!

  For all of Gateshead's luxuries, I would not trade Lowood, where the riches of opportunity and friendship more than made up for the deprivation of physical comforts such as food and warmth. I fell asleep thinkin
g of it.

  But the privations, or rather the hardships, of Lowood lessened with the coming of spring. Sometimes, on a sunny day, it began even to be pleasant and genial, and a greenness grew over those brown beds. Flowers peeped out amongst the leaves. On Thursday afternoons

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  (half holidays) we now took walks and found still sweeter flowers opening by the wayside, under the hedges.

  One day, in my wandering, I got carried away following a butterfly through fields and flowers and ended up mindlessly stepping over stones in the little graveyard. I came across one marked for Martha Blake Abbot, and my thoughts turned back to the evil at the heart of Lowood, my new happy place. Would it not be easier to forget such ugliness? What business had I, a mere girl, to investigate matters and attempt to right grievous wrongs? Was it not enough that I had progressed in my studies, made friends, and established myself as a serious student and a good sort of girl?

  Miss Martha Abbot, indeed. So she had been part of Lowood, more proof against Mr. Bokorhurst. The grave, no doubt, was empty. Mrs. Reed deserved a zombie maid, after all, did she not? Who better to serve a vampyre mistress? I'd been able to avoid the "Odd Eight" as I'd begun to call the special students, and it made no difference that they were at Lowood with me--as long as they didn't eat. Still, I enjoyed my sword training. I worked with Miss Temple at any opportunity, and lately more often on my own, practicing the moves she taught and improvising some of my own. Once, I asked if she'd ever killed anyone, and she seemed genuinely shocked by the question. But she never actually answered. Curious, that.

  April advanced to May. A bright, serene May it was, days of blue sky, placid sunshine, and soft western or southern breezes filling up its duration. Vegetation matured with vigour. Lowood shook loose its tresses; it became all green, all flowery. All this I enjoyed often and fully, free, unwatched, and almost alone. I felt I was still catching up for time lost under Mrs. Reed's rigid rule, stuck inside to sleep during the glorious day and forced to hide in darkness during waking hours. I would have full rejoiced in it if not for the dark reason behind my delightful solitude.