Emily's Secret

by Jill Jones

  Most of her waking hours, she labored in the small, paint-spattered back room of the studio, and most of her sleeping ones she spent on the battered but comfortable sofa in the larger front room. She had installed a freestanding fireplace for warmth, a kitchenette with a small sink and a hot plate to make tea, and a tiny bath.

  It was sufficient.

  Someday, she hoped she would be able to restore the whole place, but that would have to wait until the remodeling loan for the studio was paid off. And that would only come with her continued success as an artist. And that would only come, she thought with growing trepidation, if she could successfully defuse Tom Perkins’s amorous interests in her while maintaining his professional regard.

  And, she knew, she had to grow as an artist, expand her work into other media, other subject matter.

  She had to start painting something besides the Gypsy riders and campfires and pieces of some crazy letter that permeated this series.

  The series from hell.

  Selena lifted the unwieldy crate and carried it into the front room, leaning it against the wall. Then she reached down and picked up the large orange tabby cat that brushed against her legs.

  “Hello, Peaches. Where’s Hizzonor? Did you fellows miss me?” She checked out their food dishes and decided both felines were probably on the verge of a nervous breakdown. She could actually see the bottom of both bowls, although there was enough dry food remaining to sustain even their greedy appetites for another day or so. Hizzonor showed his gray and white presence then, materializing from nowhere to stand next to his bowl and issue a loud protest at having been left overnight.

  “You poor, mistreated things,” she said dryly, reaching for the box of cat food from the cupboard. “Here. This’ll tide you over until supper.” She topped off their dishes, then turned her attention to the fireplace.

  Outside, the afternoon was warm and spring-like, but a chill always seemed to cling to the damp stone walls of the building. Selena built a small fire, and Domino curled up on his blanket nearby. The cats munched noisily in the corner. She put a kettle of water on for tea. All should have been right once again in her world.

  But all was far from being right.

  As long as her paintings were on exhibit in London, Selena had been able to avoid thinking about the future. For a time she’d allowed herself to bask in the glow of her success—the positive reviews and the four canvases she’d sold from the show.

  But standing now in the silence of her studio, the strong summer light pouring starkly in through the high northern windows, she was filled with apprehension.

  Would she ever be able to paint something else? Something besides the insistent repetitive figures that seemed to jump of their own volition from her paintbrush? She shuddered at the thought of starting work on a new canvas, knowing from experience what it was like to have some terrifying and powerful force take command of her, sending her into a trancelike state and painting what it willed, not what she desired. She had fought it in many ways over the past year. Once, she’d deliberately consumed five cups of strong coffee before starting work, hoping the overdose of caffeine would hold the trance at bay. But all it did was make her work that day perceptibly shaky.

  Other times she had used a projector to cast images from photos and negatives onto the white canvas, then drawn their outlines in pencil, giving her a preconceived and conscious subject from which to work. But when she’d picked up her brush and palette, the force had simply painted over the lines of her drawing with easy strokes of mauve and gray and prepared the canvas to receive its haunting images in spite of her.

  Selena closed her eyes and crossed her arms over her chest, grasping her shoulders and dropping her head. What force was this, what obsession drove her to paint these images? And more importantly, she thought desperately, how could she break free of it?

  She had insisted on bringing all of her paintings back from the gallery, thinking that if she hung them all together, surrounded herself with them and studied them closely, perhaps she would be able to discern and understand what was driving her to paint them.

  And then maybe she could stop.

  With a heavy sigh, she returned to the truck and began unloading the rest of the crates.

  Later that afternoon, Selena stood in the center of the studio, surrounded by eleven of the paintings in the series, which, in spite of her personal anxiety concerning them, had generated the first serious recognition she’d received as an artist—not to mention almost two thousand pounds that she desperately needed.

  The sunlight suddenly gave way to threatening clouds, as it so often did in this wild, rugged country, and she heard the roar of the wind spilling down the slopes and whipping past the corner of the barn. Large drops of rain began to spatter intermittently against the windows.

  Around her the canvases hung on the walls like unanswered questions. The images beckoned, leered at her, dared her to challenge them and the authority they held over her. Stepping closer to one of the larger paintings, Selena stared at the rider on the black horse.

  Who are you? she demanded silently. Where did you come from? She’d never been around horses in her entire life. Or campfires or monkeys or organ grinders. She knew those things only from Matka’s tales.

  She supposed her fertile imagination could have fleshed out these impressions from those childhood stories. But why did they have such a hold on her now, at this point in her life? They were, after all, only figments of her imagination. The only images that might have come from reality were the red roses.

  Those, and the fragments of the letter.

  She paused, considering…It had to be the letter. Something about the letter. That cursed letter.

  The curse…

  Nonsense!

  A sick feeling rose in her throat, and she turned away from the painting. Perhaps the source of the images didn’t matter after all.

  What mattered was getting them to go away.

  She had to change directions. Stretch her creativity. Advance as an artist. She had to, if she was to survive.

  With no small effort, Selena forced herself to explore the first canvas she had painted when the madness started almost a year ago. It was tame compared to the others. In it, the bit of the letter was larger, easier to read. The monkey’s face was comical. The Gypsy rider looked like he belonged on the cover of a paperback romance novel.

  She smiled slightly, then compelled herself to move on to the next painting, and then the next, surveying them one by one, slowly moving in a circle. Chronologically, they developed from the almost humorous to the uncomfortably threatening.

  They were her fortune.

  Her fame.

  But they were not her friends.

  After one complete circumnavigation of the paintings, anxiety swept over her with such intensity that Selena felt suddenly as if she couldn’t catch her breath. Her chest constricted and her heart began to pound. A sheen of perspiration dampened her skin, chilling her to the marrow. “Let me go!” she gasped, staring at the figures in her earliest painting. “For God’s sake, let me go!”

  Slowly, her heart racing, she began a second turn around the studio. Facing the paintings, she lifted her arms and held her palms face out in front of her.

  She addressed each painting as if it were an evil entity laying claim to her soul.

  “Let me go!”

  She repeated her demand over and over, louder and louder, until the words became a chant and her conscious mind seemed to disappear, melting into a fog of mauve and gray. Faster and faster she moved around the room until she was whirling dervish-like, out of control. The words echoed off the walls and thundered inside her own ears until she heard herself screaming them at the top of her lungs, “Let me go! Let me go! Let me go!”

  Then, with a sharp cry, she collapsed into a heap on the floor, dizzy and breathless. Tears streamed down her cheeks and she was wracked by uncontrollable sobs.

  Around her, fire burned, horses reared, m
onkeys laughed.

  And Selena knew they had not let her go.

  Chapter 4

  Alex settled into a shabbier, less comfortable seat on a smaller train to cover the final leg of his journey, unexpectedly disturbed by his encounter with the old woman. It was inconceivable that he would run into a total stranger who not only knew about the debate, but was familiar with his name as well. In the United States such an event might draw a few dozen interested parties, mostly from among the academically obsessed, like himself. Certainly not from the general public.

  The train chugged along the valley, and Alex stared out of the smudged window, watching farmland replace the smoky factories of Leeds. Overhead, the sky was an indeterminate gray, matching his mood since his conversation with “Ms.” Bates.

  Maybe Eleanor Bates wasn’t from the general public, he considered. Maybe she was also one of the academically obsessed. She had mentioned she was a longtime member of the Brontë Society. She had certainly pegged Emily’s Wuthering Heights precisely. And she knew Maggie Flynn. Maybe she was a retired professor or some such.

  Alex frowned, wishing the old woman hadn’t introduced the specter of Maggie Flynn into his thoughts once again. He’d promised himself to forget about her until the debate, and resolutely he forced himself now to keep that promise. With an effort, Alex shoved Maggie, Eleanor Bates, and the debate solidly to the nether reaches of his mind and focused instead on the scenery unfolding in front of him.

  Stands of trees were sporadically interrupted by villages and farms on the lower slopes of the hills. Higher up, the crests were hidden from view by a heavy mist that subtly shifted shapes and changed colors. Sunlight strained through the vapors, casting rays of mauve and gray over the faint contours of the trees and houses in the distance.

  Misty mauve and gray.

  Like the background in the paintings he’d seen last night. The paintings by the woman with the ebony hair and infinite eyes who had breezed into the gallery and drawn his attention like a magnet.

  Alex rummaged in his briefcase and found the brochure he’d picked up, hoping the artist might have an address listed, but it carried only the location of the Perkins Galleries. He turned it over and stared at the photo on the back. Even in black and white, Selena’s dark beauty beguiled him, filling him with surprising and disturbing fantasies.

  He read the copy beneath the photo. “Although working in a remote moorland studio, Selena is recognized as a rising star on the international art scene, and there is a growing demand in London and abroad for her work. Her style is considered by many to be comparable to the great surrealists of the earlier twentieth century…”

  Alex stared at the photo, spellbound. Then he glanced out of the window again.

  Remote moorland studio.

  Was it possible Selena was from Yorkshire?

  The train pulled into Keighley Station, and Alex caught a taxi to the Black Bull Inn in Haworth, where he planned to stay until he could locate a small flat for the summer. The old soot-stained tavern perched atop a steep hill on Main Street, next to the church.

  According to history and legend, which often intermingle in Brontë lore, the Black Bull was the scene of the nightly degradation of Branwell Brontë, the only son of the Reverend Patrick Brontë. Branwell, Alex recalled as the taxi wheezed up the steep incline, was supposed to have been his father’s shining star. Brilliant and talented in both art and writing, Branwell could have, should have, been successful enough at something to provide security for his three surviving sisters, as was the custom of his day.

  Instead he lived most of his life in a fantasy world. He never entered the London Academy of Art, as his father had so carefully arranged. He had trouble holding a job, preferring the company of drinking companions to that of coworkers.

  The taxi reached its destination, and the driver set the emergency brake. Alex paid the fare and unloaded his bag. Despite the fact that it was early summer, a brisk, chill wind whipped his hair into his eyes, and Alex pulled the collar of the mackintosh closer to his neck. He watched as the cab disappeared down another steep incline, then turned and surveyed the Black Bull.

  Poor Branii, he thought morosely, recalling Branwell’s childhood nickname. Too bad you couldn’t magically save yourself the way you once did old Napoleon and Alexander Percy and all your other imaginary heroes.

  But Alex was not entirely without sympathy for Branwell. The story went that the cause of Branwell’s final emotional collapse was the betrayal of a woman whom he loved deeply, a woman who ultimately chose financial security over Branwell’s charms. Her name was Lydia Robinson—Mrs. Lydia Robinson. She was the wife of his employer, and mother of the two boys he was hired to tutor.

  When Branwell was abruptly dismissed from his job in the summer of 1846, he let it be known, especially around the Bull, that Mrs. Robinson was madly in love with him but wouldn’t leave her husband because she couldn’t stand the shame of divorce.

  Scandalous as the idea was, everyone, including his family, believed his story, at least for a while. A short time later, however, Mr. Robinson died, leaving Lydia free to join her true love. Instead, she immediately dispatched an agent to Branwell, who bore the message that she never wanted to see him again.

  Branwell met the messenger in a private parlor in the Black Bull, and after the man left, Branwell’s friends found him writhing on the floor in a terrible fit. When he recovered, he told everyone that Mr. Robinson had changed his will, stipulating that if Lydia had anything to do with Branwell Brontë, she would be cut off without a penny. Since Branwell was in no position to support her, she had no choice but to opt for money over love.

  Or so went his face-saving story.

  Alex opened the door and stepped inside the pub. Whether Lydia Robinson loved Branwell, or whether he’d been dismissed for making a pass at his employer’s wife, Alex didn’t know. There was much conjecture among his colleagues on the matter, and it remained just one more unanswered question about this peculiar family. He did know that Branwell went into a tailspin after receiving this news, drinking heavily here in the Bull every night and taking laudanum to kill the pain of this and the many other failures in his life.

  In less than two years he was dead.

  Alex knew about that kind of pain. It was dark and deep and hopeless. It called for a drug to deaden all feeling just to make it possible to get through the day. His own drug had been called Jack Daniels, and for a time after his wife had taken off with her new lover, he’d gone to bed with Jack, awakened with Jack, taken Jack to lunch, until not only his career but his very health was at stake. At that time, his health had seemed unimportant, but the risk of losing his career finally brought him to his senses. His career was all he had left. With little more to sustain him than an angry determination not to allow the only other thing in life he cared about slip away, Alex forced himself back into the real world. It was, he’d learned later from a colleague, just in the nick of time, for the dean of Arts and Sciences had already drawn up his walking papers and was watching Alex closely for one more screw-up.

  Alex had managed to clean up his act, but the pain remained, only a few shades lighter than before. He’d looked around for another anesthetic, and found it in the stream of one-nighters, which served to numb the pain but left no hangover or telltale whiskey breath to offend his students the morning after.

  Bringing his attention back to the moment, Alex surveyed the ancient inn. The warmth of incandescent lighting reflecting on polished copper and brass filled the room with a cozy glow, dispelling the gloom of his melancholy thoughts. The manager appeared from the cellar.

  “Hello!” He greeted Alex in a hearty voice, wiping his hands on a dingy white towel. “I’m David. What’ll you have?”

  Alex introduced himself and allowed the man to draw him a half pint of lager while he registered for his room.

  “How many days will you be staying?” David asked.

  “I don’t know for sure. Two or three at least.
I need to find an apartment as soon as I can. I plan to be in Haworth all summer.”

  “Is that so? You working on the Brontës?”

  Alex supposed the innkeeper was used to visitors interested in the Brontës. Why else would anyone make the trek to this remote village, isolated as it was on the edge of the vast and looming moors?

  “Yes. Yes, I am.”

  “Remarkable family, that,” David commented, picking up Alex’s heavy bag and heading for the stairway. Reaching the landing, he pointed to an old chair that sat next to a grandfather clock. “That there’s Branwell’s chair,” he said. “He used to sit in that chair by the fireplace and drink ale and tell stories. A merry one he was.”

  Alex studied the chair for a moment. The seat, instead of fitting squarely between the four legs as most chair seats were positioned, was turned so that the corner was right in the middle, requiring the occupant to straddle it. Definitely a man’s chair, he thought, amused, as he followed the manager to his room.

  A stray shaft of late afternoon sunlight managed to pierce the clouds and stream through the shining windowpane in the tiny hotel room. Alex pulled the curtain back, and his eyes widened at the sight before him.

  An ancient, overpopulated graveyard stretched from the rear wall of the Black Bull uphill to the edge of the Parsonage garden. Literally hundreds of moss-covered tombstones, as tall or taller than the human remains that lay beneath them, stood or leaned in row upon row like tired old soldiers. Other stones lay flat, covering graves that entombed entire families. Large trees that had grown up in the churchyard since the days when Patrick Brontë was curate here were home to a chorus of rooks, whose harsh cacophony added to the macabre atmosphere.

  No wonder Emily was obsessed with death, Alex thought grimly. It had surrounded her.

  Cold in the earth, and the deep snow piled above thee!