The Secret Adventures of Charlotte Brontë

by Laura Joh Rowland

  “I wanted a drink,” said Ogden. I perceived that he was the ring-leader. He said belligerently to Mr. Slade, “This is an outrage. You’ve no right to keep me here. I’m going.”

  He rose, as did the other men. Mr. Slade blocked the door. “Try if you like.” As the men hesitated, a disdainful smile twisted Mr. Slade’s mouth. “Ah. You beat helpless women, but you’d prefer to avoid a fight with me. What a coward you are.”

  Ogden clenched his fists. I saw how much he disliked being mocked in front of his friends. I sat on the edge of the chair, my face close to the grating.

  “And you’re a fool to obey a master who leaves you to take the consequences of the crimes he orders,” Mr. Slade added provocatively.

  Angered beyond prudence and forced to assert his masculine courage, Ogden charged at Mr. Slade, who dodged his blows and struck Ogden in the stomach. Ogden bellowed in pain, doubled over, then rammed his head into Mr. Slade’s chest. They crashed against the door and grappled with each other. I feared that Mr. Slade would be harmed; yet I trembled with exultation to see his face and muscles strain. I thought of his days as a soldier in the East and as a spy on the Continent. The same hands that had touched me must have done harm, even killed. I did not care.

  As Mr. Slade and Ogden fought, Jakes rushed towards the door. A constable grabbed him, and a storm of flying fists engulfed the pair. Mr. Slade flung Ogden at the other constable. The constable caught Ogden, and they struggled together. My heart beat wildly; gasps parted my lips. Now I understood why men in Haworth flocked to the boxing matches at the Black Bull Inn. Mr. Slade advanced on Crowe, who backed fearfully away.

  “Please don’t ’urt me!” Mr. Crowe said.

  The constables wrestled Ogden and Jakes facedown on the floor and straddled their backs. “I’ll spare you if you’ll talk,” Mr. Slade said to Crowe.

  I realized that Mr. Slade had marked Crowe as the weakest member of the group. By overpowering the others, he’d aimed to win a turncoat. Crowe exclaimed, “All right! It’s true! Charlie attacked them women. Sid took the guns.”

  “Shut up!” yelled Ogden, pinned under the constable. His nose bled; his ginger hair dripped with sweat.

  Jakes, lying limp and defeated, said to Crowe, “Bloody traitor, you’ll pay for ratting on me.” In retaliation he addressed Mr. Slade: “He killed that yellow-haired bitch who was governess at Mr. Lock’s house.”

  I stared dumbstruck at Crowe. He was the man I’d seen stabbing Isabel White! Mr. Slade momentarily froze in astonishment that his hunt had netted the murderer. I could scarcely believe that Anne, my little sister, had led us to this revelation. Mr. Slade glanced at me, and we shared satisfaction that one mystery had been solved.

  “It was ’im said to do it,” Crowe babbled, desperate to excuse himself. “It was ’im told Charlie to kidnap the Brontë woman, and Sid to get the guns.”

  “Who?” Mr. Slade asked, looming over the cowering man.

  “He’ll kill us if you tell, you fool!” Ogden shouted.

  “Don’t say nothin’ else!” said Jakes.

  They obviously feared their master more than they did the law. Mr. Slade’s eyes glinted, registering this fact. “Mr. Crowe, you’ve confessed to murder. You’ll hang for it.” Crowe sat on a bench, huddled in dejection. Mr. Slade turned to Ogden and Jakes. “I have witnesses to the blackmail of Henry Lock and the attack on the Misses Brontë. Ordinarily, you would go to prison. But your employer leads a conspiracy to destroy civil order in Europe and undermine the British government. The crimes you have all committed for him make you accomplices to treason, and the penalty for treason is death.”

  Ogden and Jakes scowled; I could feel panicked thoughts racing through their heads.

  “But if you cooperate with me, I’ll reduce your sentences,” Mr. Slade said. “Give me the name and whereabouts of the man who ordered your crimes, and I’ll protect you from him.”

  I was horrified that these criminals might not be punished to the fullest extent of the law, but I understood Crowe, Ogden, and Jakes were but small game, and Mr. Slade wanted larger prey. Leniency towards them was the price he must pay to capture their master.

  Jakes uttered a scornful laugh. “There’s nowhere safe from him, and none what can protect us. Betray him, and we’re dead.”

  “Betraying him is your only chance to survive,” Mr. Slade said. “When he learns of your arrest, he’ll assume you talked whether you did or not. Here are your choices: Help me catch him so that he can’t harm you, and you’ll go free. Refuse my offer, and either you’ll hang or he’ll kill you.”

  A short eternity passed. Jakes and Crowe looked to Ogden, who heaved a breath of resignation and nodded. I admired Mr. Slade because although his strength had gained him an advantage over the men, his cleverness had won him victory. The constables returned Ogden and Jakes to their seats. There the men slumped, diminished by defeat.

  Mr. Slade walked to the head of the table. “Who is your employer?”

  “He’s a Frenchman named LeDuc,” Ogden said reluctantly.

  At last we could put a name to Isabel White’s mysterious master.

  “Where can I find him?” Mr. Slade’s manner was quiet; only his intense gaze bespoke his eagerness for the information.

  “He lives in Brussels,” said Ogden.

  At Mr. Slade’s prompting, Ogden gave an address I did not catch because such emotion besieged me. The mention of Brussels inevitably recalls the torment I experienced there.

  “Who is LeDuc?” Mr. Slade said.

  “He belongs to the Society of the Seasons.” This, I later learned, was a radical French secret society. Ogden revealed that LeDuc was wanted for fomenting insurrections in Paris and had gone into exile in Belgium.

  “How did you meet him?” Mr. Slade asked the prisoners.

  “We never did,” said Ogden, and the other men echoed him.

  “He hired us through the Birmingham Political Union.” I recognized the name of a local Chartist organization. “He and those union men wanted to spread the revolution to England. He gave them money to pay people to stir up the townsfolk and start riots.”

  Evidently, a faction within the union had chosen violence as a means to social reform, with the support of the radical Frenchman who must have employed Isabel White as a courier between himself and secret societies around the world. The riots were easy money for Jakes, Ogden, and Crowe, and when the Chartist movement died down, LeDuc found other work for them. Mr. Slade pressed the men for details about the nature of their work.

  “’E paid me to snoop around Yorkshire and find out about the Brontë woman,” Crowe mumbled, fidgeting. “I broke into the parsonage to steal a book ’e wanted, but someone almost caught me. I ’ad to run.” He had been the stranger who’d questioned the Haworth folk and nearly killed Branwell!

  And with more pressure, it came forth that Ogden had been the man who chased me at the opera and searched our room at the Chapter Coffee House.

  “What did you plan to do with Miss Brontë after you kidnapped her?” Anger tinged Mr. Slade’s calm voice, and I liked to think it signified more than ordinary concern on my behalf.

  “I was supposed to drive her to Kirkstall Abbey,” said Ogden. “Someone was to meet us and take her someplace. I don’t know who nor where.”

  A shiver passed through me. Had Mr. Slade not rescued me, would I have been transported across the ocean into the hands of the evil LeDuc? Did he want me yet?

  Mr. Slade interrogated the prisoners for quite some time, but they appeared to have no further information about LeDuc. “What’s going to happen to us?” Jakes demanded.

  “For now, you’ll stay in prison, under constant guard,” Mr. Slade said.

  The men sullenly accepted their fate. Mr. Slade exited the room; I met him in the corridor. We walked from the prison, both of us rendered uncomfortable by what I’d seen him do. It was not until we were riding in the carriage that Mr. Slade spoke.

  “I’m sorry,” he said
, looking out the window. “Know that the requisites of my work are as disturbing to me as they must be to you.” His profile was strained. “Will you forgive me?”

  I said, “I forgive you.” But I couldn’t forgive myself for the thrill I had felt watching him.

  Mr. Slade turned to me. Our gazes met, and I saw that he discerned what I’d felt while he’d coerced the criminals. I burned with shame—what a perverse, unnatural woman he must think me! But his face relaxed, and from him eased a breath that was part mirth, part relief. A strange sweetness warmed me. He would not condemn me for the guilty pleasure I had felt because he’d felt it, too. The episode at the prison had been a kind of intimacy we had shared. As the carriage sped through the streets of Birmingham, I waited to hear what Mr. Slade would say.

  “It seems that M. LeDuc is the criminal we’re looking for,” Mr. Slade said. Although he spoke of our investigation and not ourselves, his voice was unsteady. “Perhaps the solution to the mystery lies in Belgium.”

  23

  HERE I MUST PAUSE IN MY OWN NARRATIVE TO RELATE IMPORTANT events that concerned my sister Emily. On the evening of the day we encountered the Birmingham criminals, Anne and Mr. Slade and I returned to Haworth. I treated Anne with a newfound respect that she seemed to appreciate. Emily was oddly preoccupied. When I asked her what had happened at the Charity School, she was reluctant to tell me. I never knew the whole story until after I read in her journal the following account:

  The Journal of Emily Brontë

  11 July 1848.

  At dawn, I emerged gradually from sleep to find Mrs. Grimshaw at my bedside. She whispered, “Get dressed, then meet me in the school hall.”

  Her stealthy mien lent a sinister air to her command, but I obeyed. Inside the silent, deserted school, Mrs. Grimshaw lit candles for us both, unlocked the cellar door, and led me down the stairway to a dungeon of passages with dirt floors and damp, rank stone walls. I shuddered, for I sensed the place to be evil. We entered a cell carved out of the earth. A little girl stood tied to a wooden pillar by ropes that bound her wrists and ankles. It was Frances Cullen, my shy pupil. She wore a thin white shift, and her feet were bare. Her hair was disheveled, her face tearstained. She cringed from us and whimpered. I stared in shock.

  “Frances has been naughty,” Mrs. Grimshaw said, “and naughty girls must be punished.” She handed me a leather strap. “Whip her twenty lashes. Do it hard enough to hurt, but not to leave permanent scars.”

  This was how I must pay her for excusing my theft! Dumbstruck with horror, I stood frozen. Mrs. Grimshaw walked out of the room and shut the door; her footsteps mounted the stairs. I turned to Frances. She was watching me, her eyes huge with terror. I flung away the strap, set down my candle, knelt beside Frances, and put my arms around her.

  “Don’t be afraid,” I said. “I won’t hurt you.” Frances’s rigid, quaking body went limp against me, and she sobbed. Her misery tore my heart. “Why does Mrs. Grimshaw want you punished so harshly?”

  “I made the Reverend Grimshaw angry,” Frances whispered.

  “How?” I asked, wondering what wrongs this meek, gentle child could have done. She gulped, as if choking on the recollection. “What happened, Frances?” I said urgently.

  “I’m not supposed to tell!” she cried.

  “I won’t tell anyone you did,” I promised.

  This seemed to reassure Frances. “He bade me accompany him to the windmill,” she said in a quavering voice that was so low I could barely hear. “He . . . he ordered me to take off my clothes and lie on the floor and—oh, I’m ashamed to say any more!”

  She underwent a spate of trembling, and I felt sick with dismay. It now seemed certain that the Reverend Grimshaw used the windmill for immoral relations with pupils, including Jane Fell and now Frances. I then noticed the blood that trickled down her bare legs, and fresh horror assailed me. Such blasphemy!

  “I started to cry,” Frances continued in a whisper. “He told me to stop. He said he’d sheltered me and fed me, and I should be glad to repay him.” She began to weep. “He hit me and held me down. He said I must learn how to please men and not complain. He hurt me so much.” Frances’s sobs rose to a hysterical pitch. “He . . . he told Mrs. Grimshaw I’d been bad. She brought me here and tied me up. I’ve been alone in the dark for hours.”

  Rage at the Grimshaws burned in me as I unknotted the ropes. “Fear no more,” I said. “I won’t whip you.”

  “But you must!” Frances protested, to my surprise. “If you don’t, Mrs. Grimshaw will, and she’ll do it harder.”

  We heard footsteps on the stairs: Mrs. Grimshaw was coming to see how the punishment progressed. “Please!” Frances cried.

  I took up the strap, raised my skirt, and said, “Scream and cry as loudly as you can.”

  Twenty times I lashed the strap hard against my own leg and endured the pain, while Frances screamed as though I struck her. After it was done, I felt sore but virtuous for having spared Frances. She later appeared at breakfast looking chastened, and Mrs. Grimshaw gave me a nod of approval. My hatred for the school burgeoned. I could not bear to stay in this place where children were tortured; yet I didn’t want to abandon Frances. Though I yearned for home, I couldn’t forsake my mission. It seemed likely that Isabel White had suffered the same evils as Frances, but perhaps the school harbored more secrets that I must learn for the sake of Charlotte and our family. Hence, I resolved to stay and persevere.

  But after the pupils retired to the dormitory, Mrs. Grimshaw waylaid me. “I saw Frances undressing, and there’s not a mark on her,” she said, bristling with anger. “You didn’t whip her. Next time, do as you’re told, or I’ll ’ave the police on you.”

  She left me shaking with dread. I realized I must leave the school, no matter my regrets. That midnight, I quietly dressed, then packed my satchel. I crept outside, intending to walk to town and board the earliest train home. A cool, restless wind blew clouds across the stars and the full moon. The trees in the garden tossed their boughs; shadows stirred. As I sped down the path, I noticed a light. It came from the forbidden windmill.

  Curiosity delayed my flight. I crept up to the windmill. Its door was closed, but the lighted window was open. Through it I heard men’s voices inside the mill. I peered through the window and saw the Reverend Grimshaw standing in the light from a lantern he held. I had a clear view of his face, but the two men opposite him stood with their backs to me.

  “Gentlemen, I no longer wish to do business with you,” the Reverend Grimshaw said, his manner at once pompous and fearful.

  “It’s too late for you to terminate our association,” one of the other men said in a high, cultured voice.

  “But this has become too dangerous. Rumors about the school are circulating in town. The Church has sent officials to inspect the premises. And the more girls who pass through the school, the greater the chance that one will talk.” The Reverend Grimshaw seemed on the verge of weeping. “Please, good sirs—if you don’t release me, I shall be ruined!”

  “If you renege on your promise, you’ll have worse to fear than that the Church will discover the fate of the girls in your charge,” said the other man. His voice was deeper, and menacing. “Would you like everyone to know that you satisfy your carnal desires with your pupils?”

  Even in the meager light I could see the Reverend Grimshaw’s complexion turn pale.

  “You can either fulfill your obligations to us,” his adversary said, “or be exposed as a foul sinner.”

  The Reverend Grimshaw cast his gaze upward, as though he expected the heavens to rain fire. Defeat settled upon him. His pomposity deflated, he seemed aged and shrunken. I pitied him not. “I’ll fetch her,” he said.

  He and his companions left the windmill; I followed, undetected. The Reverend Grimshaw entered the house. The two men walked to the front of the school. I hastened after them, my heart beating fast, my blood racing. In the road stood a carriage and horses. The two men waited beside the
carriage, while I hid in the moonlit woods. Presently, down the lane from the school came the Reverend Grimshaw with his lantern. Beside him walked Abigail Weston, once friend to the now-absent Jane Fell. They halted at the carriage. The driver opened its door.

  “Where are you taking me?” Abigail asked the men.

  Giddy excitement, tinged with fear, inflected her voice. One of the men said, “You’re going to London, to live in Paradise.”

  Was she following in the footsteps of Isabel White? I felt certain that both young women had been mistreated in the same manner as had Frances, and both schooled for some evil purpose. Isabel White’s path had led to the criminal she called her master, and a life of sordid intrigue. Alas, I believed that Abigail, Jane, Frances, and other girls at the school were destined for the same.

  Abigail and the men rode away in the carriage. The Reverend Grimshaw returned to the school. I trudged along the road until I reached the village.

  I write this account as the train carries me homeward. Morning sun now gilds the countryside, but my thoughts dwell in the dark realms of uncertainty. Will my discoveries be of any use to Charlotte and Mr. Slade?

  I regret that Emily underwent such distress for my sake. All she told us when Mr. Slade, Anne, and I arrived home was how the girls in the school were beaten and that one had been taken to London by men who promised she would live in Paradise. Mr. Slade received this meager news with profound appreciation.

  “Paradise is the name of a London gaming club and house of ill repute,” he told Emily. “Its clients are English and foreign politicians, businessmen, diplomats, and nobility. Your observations suggest that Monsieur LeDuc employs girls from the school to draw prominent men into his schemes. He must have discovered Isabel at the school, used her as a courier between himself and the radical societies, and put her to work in the Paradise, where she met the prime minister. You have done well by giving us a place to investigate his doings. I’ll put the club under surveillance at once.”