The Secret Adventures of Charlotte Bronte tsaocb-1

by Laura Joh Rowland

  “For your friend to be mysteriously sent to you can be no harmless coincidence,” Mr. Slade said. “Where is the letter he brought?”

  “Here,” I said, producing it from my pocket. Mr. Slade sat on the bench beside me as I opened the envelope and removed two sheets of white paper exuding an unfamiliar sweet, exotic fragrance. They were covered with elegant handwriting in black ink. I read aloud:

  My dear Miss Bronte,

  Please forgive me for addressing you before we have established a formal acquaintance. Although we have yet to be introduced, you certainly know of me. Indeed, you ventured to Bradford, and to the Reverend Grimshaw’s Charity School, in search of information regarding myself. Perhaps our mutual friend Isabel White mentioned me when you traveled to London together, or in the book she gave you. Therefore, you cannot regard me as a stranger. And I, who have closely studied you in recent weeks, have learned much about you.

  I know that your father is vicar of St. Michael’s Church in Haworth and that he was widowed upon the death of your mother in 1821. Your brother is the village wastrel. You were educated at the Clergy Daughters’ School in Cowan Bridge, Miss Wooler’s School in Roe Head, and the Pensionnat Heger in Brussels. You and your sisters have eked out a meager living as governesses.

  I am intrigued that you, with your humble history and impoverished circumstances, should involve yourself in world affairs far beyond the realm of your existence. That you have followed my trail, and come so close to me, indicates that you are a woman of rare character. My interest in you, and yours in me, have induced me to take the liberty of sending you this message by way of M. Heger, the Belgian gentleman to whom you once sent many letters.

  It is with regret that I confess to a previous attempt at contacting you. That was, as you might surmise, the incident at Leeds Station. My two colleagues disobeyed my orders to treat you with proper courtesy. Please accept my apologies for their rudeness. Now let us make our acquaintance under more civilized conditions.

  Will you do me the honor of dining with me tomorrow evening? I wish to discuss with you a proposal to serve our common interests. I will send a carriage to your hotel at six o’clock. Should you decide to accept my invitation, all you need do is enter the carriage, and you shall be brought to me.

  Much as I would like to include your cousin who is traveling with you, I must ask that you come alone.

  I hope that tomorrow will mark the onset of a mutually rewarding association.

  “There’s no signature,” I told Mr. Slade. “But can there be any question about who wrote this letter?” Horror filled me. “It was Isabel White’s master!”

  “How extraordinary that he should communicate with you, just when we thought we would never find him,” Mr. Slade said.

  I hurled away the letter as though it carried the plague. “He knows so much about me. Your true identity seems one of the few things he hasn’t learned from spies he sent to loiter in Haworth and question the villagers.”

  He must have heard from the gossipy postmistress about my letters to M. Heger. My revulsion immediately turned to terror. “He’s been following me all along, waiting for his moment to approach me,” I cried. “He knows where I am. He’s here in Brussels.” I jumped up, and my frantic gaze roamed the garden, the roofs of the buildings surrounding the hotel, and the darkening sky.

  “If he wanted to attack you, he would have done so already,” Mr. Slade said. “He means to lure you with this.” Mr. Slade retrieved the letter, which had fallen to the ground.

  “I can’t go,” I said, aghast at the thought of delivering myself to the man whose minions had murdered Isabel White and Isaiah Fearon and who had almost killed my brother.

  “And you won’t,” declared Mr. Slade. He examined the letter and envelope. “These give no clue to who or where the criminal is, but when the carriage comes for you tomorrow, the police and I shall follow it.”

  “Will the carriage go to him even if I’m not inside?” I said doubtfully.

  “If it doesn’t, we’ll arrest the driver and force him to reveal who his master is.”

  I hated to find fault with Mr. Slade’s plan, but I said, “The criminal keeps his identity a secret even from his henchmen. What if the driver knows as little about him as M. LeDuc did?”

  “He should at least know where he was ordered to take you,” Mr. Slade said.

  “By the time you find out, the criminal might have already vanished,” I said. “We’ll have lost what may be our only chance to catch him. He’ll realize that I have tried to trap him, and he’ll go to ground.” Another possibility frightened me: “He may retaliate against me by attacking my family again.”

  Mr. Slade regarded me with exasperation. “Then tell me what you think we should do.”

  Despite my terror, I didn’t wanted to go home empty-handed, to face my family’s disappointment and admit that I was neither as brave nor capable as I had purported to be. I confess that I hoped to impress Mr. Slade, for what else did I have to offer him beyond my willingness to risk my life in his service?

  “I must accept the invitation,” I said. Mr. Slade exclaimed in protest, but I told him, “When the carriage arrives, I will go where it takes me. You and the police can follow. I will lead you to the criminal.”

  26

  Dusk descended upon Brussels as I stood waiting outside the Hotel Central. Lights shone from streetlamps and crowded cafes along the boulevard. People strolled; carriages escorted by liveried footmen sped past me. The sky glowed lavender; the mild air sparkled. Lively orchestral music drifted from the park, while I shivered in my plain cloak and bonnet. The evening ahead of me spread like a black abyss from which I might never emerge. How I regretted persuading Mr. Slade that I should accept this invitation! Too soon would I venture within reach of the hands that had instigated murder. I longed to dash into the hotel and hide, but the church bells rang the hour of six o’clock. A black carriage drawn by black horses stopped at the hotel. The driver stepped down and approached me.

  “Mademoiselle Bronte?” he said.

  He wore a black cape, and a black hat obscured his face. I nodded. The presence of Mr. Slade and the police, waiting in carriages parked along the street, did not ease my trepidation. The driver opened the carriage door. Compelled by the momentum of the events that had led up to this instant, I stepped into the carriage and sat. The driver shut the door, enclosing me in darkness. His whip cracked. The carriage began to move amidst such racketing wheels and clattering hooves that I couldn’t determine whether Mr. Slade and the police were following. I tried to open the windows to look, but I found them fastened shut. I rattled the door; it was locked. I was trapped in the vehicle, which gathered speed and bore me towards an unknown fate.

  The carriage veered sharply around corners. The driver seemed determined to evade pursuit. Our route comprised many twists and turns through the city. Motion and fear engendered nausea as I braced myself for a collision. I heard water flowing and felt the carriage rise, then descend, crossing a bridge over the river. I smelled rotting fish in the quayside market. But I soon lost all sense of direction. I prayed that Mr. Slade and the police would be able to keep up with me.

  On and on we sped. The city noises faded; clattering cobblestones gave way to rutted earth; I smelled damp soil and fetid marsh. Perhaps two hours passed before the carriage abruptly stopped. Silence rang in my ears. My fear congealed into a cold sickness. I heard the driver climb down from his perch, and his footsteps approaching. The door opened, and lantern light diffused around his figure, which blocked my view of what was outside. He handed me a soft, dark cloth.

  “ Bandezvous les yeux,” he said.

  I recalled that M. LeDuc had gone blindfolded to meet his master. Now I must do the same. With unsteady fingers I tied the cloth over my eyes. The driver pulled me from the carriage into the night. Through the utter darkness that shrouded me I heard wind whispering through trees and insects shrilling. Hands grasped me and propelled me forward. Two
pairs of footsteps accompanied mine as I stumbled on broken flagstones. My unseen escorts never spoke. I gasped with terror, on the brink of fainting.

  Was Mr. Slade near? I almost called out his name. Would the criminal guess we meant to trap him? If so, would Mr. Slade rescue me, or would this journey end in catastrophe? Death had become a clear, immediate danger rather than a vague threat in the distant future.

  My escorts led me up a flight of stairs. A door creaked open, and the hush of an interior space surrounded me. I breathed stale, musty air. Our footsteps rang on a stone floor. The door closed behind us with a heavy, echoing thud, and my heart sank, for I feared I was locked in a place where Mr. Slade could not reach me. Finally my escorts and I halted. I smelled savory food odors and the same exotic scent that had perfumed the invitation. My escorts seated me in a chair, and their footsteps receded.

  “Good evening, Miss Bronte,” said a man’s voice that was quiet, low-pitched, suave, and foreign. “You may remove your blindfold now.” He blurred his consonants in an odd, musical accent that I could not place.

  I pulled off the blindfold. I was sitting at the end of a long table lit by candles. Before me lay a meal of soup, roast fowl, potatoes, vegetables, bread, cheese, and a tart, served on flowered china and accompanied by ornate silver, wine in a crystal goblet, and a linen napkin. The room was large, the windows covered in tattered red velvet, the walls hung with faded tapestries that depicted mounted hunters pursuing stag in a forest. The coffered ceiling was festooned with spiderwebs. But where was the man who had just spoken?

  “Your presence does me an honor,” he said. “A thousand thanks for accepting my invitation.”

  His voice emanated from behind a lattice screen at the far end of the table. He could see me through the lattice, but I could not see him.

  “Who are you?” I said in a quavering voice. “Why did you bring me here?”

  He laughed-a hushed, silvery sound that prickled my skin. “All in good time, my dear Miss Bronte. First you must please eat.”

  Fear clenched my stomach into a knot that spurned food. None was set before him: He intended to remain hidden while watching me. I fought an urge to run. If Mr. Slade and the police were near, I must wait for them to capture my host and rescue me. If they had lost track of me during that wild ride, then I was on my own, I knew not where, at the mercy of a criminal. I lifted my spoon, dipped it into the soup, and pretended to sip the steaming liquid.

  “The philosophers of my kingdom believe that one’s fortune can be read in the face,” said my invisible host. “Will you allow me to tell you what I see in yours, Miss Bronte?”

  His voice possessed a strange quality that calmed me as though I’d drunk a soporific, and it inclined me to let him lead the talk where he wished. I nodded.

  “I see intelligence, courage, and honesty,” he said. “I see kindness, loyalty, faith, and a struggle between fear and will, desire and caution, in your beautiful eyes. The ravages of suffering accompany the strength of spirit. The future promises you danger, adventure, sorrow, and happiness.”

  Perhaps I shouldn’t have been susceptible to flattery at such a time, but the power of the fortuneteller strengthened his hold over me. However, I was not yet so beguiled that I forgot my own purposes. “Now that you have appraised me, might I see you and read your character and fortune?” Now that I was almost face to face with evil, I wanted to look it in the eye.

  Again he laughed, as though pleased by my wits even while he mocked me. “Ah, Miss Bronte, you must earn the privilege.”

  “How?” I set down my spoon, abandoning any pretense of eating.

  “You must describe for me the events in your life that shaped you into the woman who has traveled across land and ocean in search of me,” he said. “Where shall we begin?” There was a suspenseful, anticipatory pause. “Tell me about the death of your mother.”

  My mother’s death was a wound that still caused pain. My defenses bristled that this arrogant stranger would dare to probe that wound. “I would rather not,” I said coldly.

  His shadow stirred behind his screen; I heard the silken rustle of his garments. “Come now, Miss Bronte. Your honorable mother deserves a better tribute than your silence.” His tone was reproachful. “And I wish to hear the story.”

  I realized that if Mr. Slade were able to save me, he would have by now. I was alone, and I must obey my host or risk provoking his wrath. And strangely, I felt a need to talk: It was as if he had unlocked some door inside me. I recalled a passage from Isabel White’s book: His voice was like velvet and steel, probing the recesses of my mind. Many questions did He ask me, and many secrets did He elicit.

  “She took ill when I was five,” I said, halting and nervous. “She went to her bed and was unable to get up. Papa insisted that my sisters and brother and I play outside because she couldn’t bear our noise.”

  Memory showed me Papa’s careworn face, the closed door behind which Mama lay wasting, and Maria, Elizabeth, Emily, Anne, Branwell, and myself walking the moors together. My childhood feelings of woe and confusion now returned “When we went home in the evening, we could hear her moaning. Papa sat and prayed by her all night.” I remembered his prayers rising above the terrible sounds of Mama’s anguish, and experienced anew the fear I had felt. “She grew weaker, until one day Papa called us into her room.”

  The image of my mother, so thin, pale, and still, rose up before me. Papa sat beside her while we children stood at the foot of the bed. “We stayed with her until she died.”

  As Mama drew her last breath, Branwell slipped his hand into mine. I had forgotten that, and telling the story had restored this lost detail of Mama’s passing. Tears streamed down my cheeks.

  “How sad that the untimely death of your mother was not your only childhood misfortune,” said my host. “Did you not also lose your two elder sisters?”

  Though his voice exuded sympathy, his words compounded my pain. I could not bear to think of Maria and Elizabeth now, let alone submit to interrogation about them.

  “Did you stand by their deathbeds?” my host pressed. “Did you pray for their spirits as they departed this world?”

  “I did for Elizabeth,” I said, compelled to answer in spite of myself. From Him I could hide nothing, Isabel had written. “But I didn’t know Maria was dying until it was too late. She and Elizabeth took ill at our boarding school. They were sent home, while I stayed at school. Papa brought me home in time to see Elizabeth again.” The candle flames quivered and reflected in my tears. “But I never got to say goodbye to Maria.”

  “Your story causes me sorrow beyond words,” my host said. Indeed, he sounded sincerely grieved. As I wept, his compassion soothed me, and I quite forgot that it was he who had dredged up my worst memories. After my tears subsided, he said, “We shall dwell no longer upon tragedy. Let us next discuss your experiences in the noble profession of teaching. How admirable that you once attempted to found your own school.”

  Alas, the school was another painful episode of my life that his spies had uncovered. “I obtained a Continental education so that I could offer lessons in French,” I said. “I sent prospectuses to everyone I knew, but not a single pupil could I get. Haworth is too remote and dreary a location.”

  “The school was doomed despite all your effort,” said my host. “It is not your fault that you were unable to assure independent means for your sisters and yourself.”

  This I believed; but there persisted a nagging suspicion that my dislike of teaching, and a secret wish to fail, had undone my best efforts. And though my host’s voice conveyed no criticism, I thought I deserved the blame. I felt like a pathetic wretch, despite my literary success, which he seemed unaware of; at the time, even I could almost believe it had never happened.

  “A woman in your position can secure her future by marrying,” my host said. “Why did you not?”

  He seemed to know my every sensitive spot, and now he had touched the sorest. “I didn’t want to marry
either of the two men who wanted to marry me,” I answered, driven to justify myself. “They were as ill suited to me as I to them.”

  “Perhaps your unique character has destined you for solitude.”

  He spoke this as a compliment, yet with a ring of prophecy that discouraged my lingering hope that I would find love. That Mr. Slade did not come to my rescue seemed incontrovertible proof that he was not meant for me.

  “But do not despair, Miss Bronte,” my host said. His voice breathed comfort through his screen towards me. “I appreciate you as other men cannot. You have in me a friend who values the rare qualities that everyone else overlooks. I shall reward you for your many hardships and failures.”

  I felt so lost, hopeless, and alone that I could almost believe him to be the only person in the world who cared for me. I dimly realized that he had worked this same spell on Isabel White. He seemed the one person in the world who knew me and accepted me with all my faults. Every piece of myself that I gave Him purchased His favor in some inexplicable way, and I desired His favor above all else. He must have shown her the futility of her life, then drawn her to into his treacherous web.

  “Now has come the time to discuss the proposal that I mentioned in my letter,” he said. “I offer you a position in my employ.”

  How he worked his spell had been amply demonstrated to me; his motives concerning myself remained obscure. I said, “Why would you wish to employ me? Why go to such lengths to bring me here?”

  With sly amusement he replied, “Perhaps you have heard the saying, ‘An intelligent enemy is preferable to a stupid friend.’ However, I believe that an intelligent friend is most desirable.”

  He thought he could turn me into a confederate and use my cleverness to his advantage. Then he needn’t fear that I would report him to the authorities. He was clearly trying to master me by demolishing my self-pride.

  “What is the position you are offering?” I asked.