by Lena Coakley
“No.”
Part of her longed to tell her father that she was in trouble, that she’d been a fool—she even took a breath to do so—but for some reason the words died on her lips. Her father seemed to see this. Charlotte shifted in her seat, reading the disappointment on his face.
“I have made many mistakes in the raising of you children, I’m sure, but I hope I have always been . . . approachable.” He smiled. “You have a way of peering at a person that can be very disconcerting, my dear.”
“Forgive me, but I’ve never heard you admit to a mistake before.”
He gave a wave of his hand. “You are grown now. A child should always believe that his father is all-knowing.”
Charlotte wasn’t certain she agreed with this. “Papa,” she asked, “why did you allow Anne and Emily and me to read whatever we wanted, to expand our minds, when in the end there is nothing for a woman to do? No suitable employment to challenge such a mind?”
She surprised herself with this question, and she could see that her father was surprised as well. “Should I have raised my daughters to be stupid?”
“No. Perhaps. I don’t know.” She could hardly express what she was trying to say. “If I’d never known there was more to life, it would be easier to be content with what I have.”
The chair creaked as he sat back to consider her words. “It was Maria who guided my ideas on education, I suppose,” he said finally. “I saw that it would be a travesty not to nourish such an intellect, regardless of her sex.”
“Maria?”
“She was an extraordinary girl, you know. A shining girl.”
“Yes.”
He smiled thoughtfully. “By the time she was eight she was reading the newspaper cover to cover and could talk like a grown man on all the topics of the day.”
In truth Charlotte remembered Maria’s sweetness more than her intelligence. She was one of those people who seemed never to be cross or impatient. A shining girl indeed.
“She would be married now,” Papa said.
Charlotte smiled thinly. Her father never mentioned marriage in regard to his living daughters—perhaps he didn’t wish to raise their hopes—but on the rare occasions that he spoke about Maria, it was a matter of course. She would be married. She would be happy.
Papa took off his spectacles and rubbed the bridge of his nose. When he looked up at Charlotte, there was a vulnerability in his face that she had never seen before. “You would tell me, wouldn’t you, if there was anything I should know?” The quaver in his voice embarrassed her.
“Of course.” She said it quickly, wanting to placate him.
“Perhaps I am a fool to think there is something wrong, but when a man has lost his wife and two of his children, he begins to feel that everything he loves might slip through his fingers.” He so rarely spoke of these losses that to bring them up seemed to break a long-standing taboo. “This feeling that all is not well in my house—I’ve had it before, you see. I don’t believe in premonitions, but when you were small and the four of you girls were at that terrible school, I had a powerful presentiment that my family was in danger.”
And yet you ignored it, she said to herself, and was surprised by the anger behind that thought.
He looked up at her. “I was so proud of you for going back. But Roe Head School wasn’t like . . . that place, was it? I made quite sure it wasn’t before I let you go.”
That place. The Clergy Daughters’ School at Cowan Bridge. The Brontës might say Maria’s and Elizabeth’s names only rarely, but that name was never mentioned.
Why didn’t you make quite sure that Clergy Daughters’ was a good school before you sent your children off to die there?
“Are you certain there is nothing you wish to tell me?” There was a pleading tone to his voice that she could no longer bear.
“Nothing, Papa.” She stood up abruptly. “And now I must be off to bed.” She leaned over and gave him a kiss.
It occurred to her that she had never believed, even as a child, that her father was all-knowing. She had never really forgiven him for what happened to Maria and Elizabeth. None of them had. And so a gulf had grown between them.
What hard and wicked children we’ve become, she thought as she softly closed his door.
CHARLOTTE
THE SOUND OF LAUGHTER WOKE CHARLOTTE from a deep sleep. “Ha . . . ha . . . ha.” She sat up, gripped by an unnameable fear. Next to her in the bed, Emily was sleeping soundly. I’m imagining things, Charlotte told herself. But she lit a candle from the rushlight that was still burning on the table and carried it out into the hall.
She went to each door and listened carefully: Anne and Aunt Branwell’s, Papa’s, Tabby’s. She stayed outside Branwell’s door for a long time, but all was quiet except for the low sound of the wind sobbing and moaning around the house.
She was about to turn back to her room when a sound from downstairs made her stop. Was someone there? A robber? Surely everyone in Haworth knew that the parsonage had nothing to steal. Swallowing her fear, Charlotte cupped her flame to keep it from going out and started down.
On the stairs she stopped again, listening. The dream she’d been having came back to her, adding to her growing unease. In it her dead sisters had returned, but only Charlotte seemed to think this was remarkable. They sat on the sofa in the dining room, drinking tea like honored guests, looking exactly as she remembered them, and yet as the conversation wore on, she saw that they were changed. Their hair was elaborately curled and their dresses were too fine, as if they belonged to a different family now. Their talk was vain and shallow. They had forgotten what they once cared for.
In life they had been Charlotte’s older sisters, but she was older than they were now, while they remained eleven and ten, just little girls. But no little girls should wear such wicked smirks upon their faces. There was no warmth in their eyes.
Charlotte shuddered as she got to the bottom of the steps. Quickly she strode down the corridor, but when she got to the dining room door, she hesitated, her hand on the knob, half believing that she would see them there, sitting on the sofa, drinking tea from the best cups. She felt her heartbeat quicken. Don’t be foolish, she chastised herself. She opened the door. Inside all was dark, but there was something . . .
“Branwell!” she cried, nearly dropping her candle. “You gave me such a start.” She lit a candle that was sitting on the dining room table and brought her own over to him. “What are you doing here in the dark?”
Branwell was in his nightshirt, the red blanket wrapped around his shoulders. His bare feet were up on the sofa, something never allowed. In his arms he cradled a large brown bottle. “What do I appear to be doing?” he said, and he took a drink.
Charlotte noticed that a second, empty bottle lay on the floor beside him. “You’re drinking the beer!” Aunt Branwell made her own beer and kept it under lock and key in the storeroom.
“Very observant.”
“But why?”
“Because we have no gin.”
“Oh, Banny.” She sat next to him on a cane chair, setting the candleholder on her knee. “Where will we hide the bottles? How did you get Aunt Branwell’s key?”
“Stole it from her reticule.”
“Oh!” She put her hand to her mouth. “What will Papa say?”
Branwell started to laugh. “What will Papa say? That seems to me to be the least of our worries.” His laughter petered out, and Charlotte saw that his face in the dim light was tense and careworn. “You understand, don’t you? I couldn’t sleep with all their . . . What I mean is . . . Are you seeing things yet?”
Charlotte took a moment to answer. “Seeing and hearing.”
Branwell nodded. “It will grow worse.”
She wasn’t alone, then—there was some relief in that, at least—but she was vexed he hadn’t confided in her. “Is it because we’ve stopped crossing over? You warned me there would be consequences for abandoning our worlds, but I didn’t know . .
.”
“That we would go mad?”
Charlotte’s grip tightened around the candleholder. “I am being plagued by illusions of some sort—I am not going mad.”
Branwell shrugged. “Is there a difference?”
“Yes!” Outside, the wind whipped rain at the windowpanes. “Because he is sending them. It’s not fair. We never said we would cross over forever. That wasn’t the bargain.”
“I don’t think Old Tom cares.”
“Hush,” she warned, although she knew perfectly well that her younger sisters were fast asleep.
“Afraid he’ll appear if we say his name? Old Tom, Old Tom, Old Tom.” Branwell took another drink, grimacing at the taste. “He never does. That’s part of his cleverness. If he doesn’t show himself, it makes the bargain seem less real. But it is, it is real.”
“So he plans to harass us until we break down and cross over to Verdopolis again?”
Branwell nodded. “I think so.”
Charlotte sat back in her chair. Branwell said nothing more, so for a while she sat in the semidarkness, watching him drink. The wind was like a dissonant kind of music, made with flutes or organ pipes.
“We won’t do it,” she said finally, straightening up. “We won’t cross over. We’ll simply go about our lives and ignore whatever minions he cares to send our way.”
“Charlotte,” Branwell said quietly, almost sadly, “it’s only a matter of time. The voices. The apparitions. I cannot hold on forever.”
She felt a lump coming to her throat. “If we continue to pay the price for crossing over, we’ll die young. It’s as simple as that.”
“I know.”
“For God’s sake, Branwell. Ignore them. We have our whole lives ahead of us.”
“Lives of torment.”
“Oh, stop whining!” she shouted. She jogged her candleholder as she said this, spilling wax onto her knee, which she struggled to brush away. She lowered her voice. “I cannot bear to hear you complain about your poor life. At least you’ll be an artist. You’ll be doing something fulfilling. If I had your advantages and expectations . . .”
“They come at a cost, you know, my advantages and expectations.”
“Yes, I do know,” she snapped. She was thinking of his paints, of Mr. Robinson’s two guineas a lesson.
Branwell crossed his arms protectively around his bottle, looking wearied by her anger. “You are so lucky that no one will ever ask you to be anything.”
“What in heaven’s name does that mean?”
“It means that I see,” he said. “I see that you are as good as I am or better at everything I do. I see that it is unfair that you will probably never be a painter or a writer or anything else you want to be because you are a woman. But what would you like me to do about it, exactly?” He turned his head away from her, still hugging the bottle.
Charlotte had never heard such an admission from her brother. She was on the verge of putting her hand on his shoulder, but a moment later, his tone turned petulant.
“And why have you never tried to see things from my perspective? You do understand, don’t you, that if Father died tomorrow, we would be homeless? The parsonage belongs to the church, not to us. It would fall to me to support you girls.”
“God help us, then,” she muttered.
“Yes!” he cried. “Now you understand. God help you indeed.” He sat up on the sofa, shifting so that he and she were facing each other. “Charlotte, do you know why Father and I chose painting as my profession? Do you?” He shook his bottle at her to emphasize his words, and she could hear the beer sloshing inside. “Because we quite simply could not think of anything else. Oh, I can write Greek with my left hand and Latin with my right, but I haven’t been to school as you have. I haven’t learned anything systematically. Do you know how difficult it is to make a living as a portrait painter? Mr. Robinson is a great artist, and for God’s sake, the poor man is reduced to teaching me!”
He sat back again, slouching sulkily. Charlotte went through a hundred arguments in her mind, but could think of nothing that would rouse her brother from his despondency. The wind didn’t sound like music to her now, or even like laughter. It sounded like the low cries of something truly damned, something that suffered endlessly with no prospect of God or salvation.
“What exactly do you see in your visions?” she asked quietly. “What could be so terrible?”
“It’s wrong to call them visions,” Branwell said. “They’re as solid as you or I.”
“Fine, but what do you see?”
Branwell looked at her with pain in his eyes but didn’t answer. In her stories, Tabby always said it was the see-er who chose what form Old Tom’s minions would take. What could plague Branwell so?
A thought occurred to her. “Is that why you walked such a long way to visit me that time? Because you were seeing things then, too? Because you were being hounded by visions—or whatever you’d like me to call them—and wanted to confide in me?”
Papa had mentioned the incident just that evening. Branwell hadn’t written to her; he had simply arrived at her school one day, dirty and perspiring, rudely demanding to see her. When Miss Wooler pulled her out of class, her first thought had been that someone must have died, but all he did was accuse her of breaking her promise to quit Verdopolis.
“I thought . . . I hoped . . . that you were seeing things, too,” he said. “But I could tell that you weren’t, simply by looking at you.”
“Because I was writing and crossing over and you were not.”
“Yes.”
She winced, understanding now why he still held a grudge about it. The truth was, she had broken her promise before she even arrived at the new school. She’d been in the public coach on her way from Keighley to Roe Head. The farther she’d traveled from home, the more fearful she’d become. It was as if she were reverting back to the terrified child she had once been, and the more she tried to tell herself that Roe Head School would be nothing like that other place, the more she shook with dread. Then she thought of Zamorna. She didn’t cross over to him then, of course—there was an elderly lady sleeping across from her, and the coachmen might have noticed her absence as well—but she scribbled the beginning of a story in the margins of a book. It had soothed her. It had made her feel that Zamorna was there with her, keeping her safe.
At school she crossed over briefly whenever she felt lonely or homesick, telling herself that since she wasn’t crossing to Verdopolis, she wasn’t really breaking her promise. The story was a romance about Zamorna and his mistress Lady Helen Victorine, and it took place on the Scottish highlands. Charlotte didn’t use Rogue or any of their other characters. Branwell arrived at the school around the time the poor Lady Helen was dying in childbirth.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I wish you’d told me what was happening to you.”
Her brother only shrugged and took another drink. Suddenly she felt that his hopeless mood would infect her if she stayed another minute. She stood abruptly.
“I’m going to bed. Take the empty bottles to your room when you’re finished. We don’t want Tabby to find them in the morning.”
BRANWELL
SHE WAS WAITING FOR HIM WHEN HE GOT BACK to his room. Elizabeth. She was sitting on his bed, hair and nightdress drenched in sweat. Her cheeks were hollow, but they were pink and rosy, and he remembered how this had fooled him when he was young. Consumption often gave its victims a deceptively healthy glow. Elizabeth had the glow to the end.
Branwell stood in the doorway for a moment, candle held aloft. Then he shuffled in, shutting the door behind him. He had his two empty bottles under his arm, and he put them carefully at the bottom of the wardrobe before coming to stand in front of her.
“Have you something to say to me?” he demanded, trying to sound brave.
His dead sister took a breath, but instead of speaking, she quickly pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve and began to cough into it. Branwell’s whole body tensed. A con
sumptive’s cough was wet and deep and painful, and it never seemed to end. It came back to him now, the days and nights of listening to that sound. He remembered thinking he’d almost rather strangle his sisters in their beds than hear it a second longer—and he remembered the weight of guilt that had fallen on him for having such thoughts.
“God help me,” he said, and he sat down at his desk, setting his candle in front of him. He was dizzy and queasy and the beer in his stomach felt like lead, but he hadn’t managed to get drunk, which had been his intention.
After a while the coughing stopped, but the exertion of it seemed to have left his sister tired, because for a while she bent panting over the handkerchief. Then she wiped her mouth and sat up, looking over at him. There was a smear of blood on her chin.
“Maria is the one everyone talks about,” Branwell said. “‘Maria loved to read the newspaper and spoke fluent French. Maria was like a mother to us.’ If I remember you for anything at all, it is for being her sister—so why are you the one who haunts me?”
Elizabeth stared at him but didn’t answer. The smear of blood on her chin made him want to look away. He wished she would wipe it off, but he couldn’t bear the idea of asking her to. She slid off his bed, padding toward him on bare feet. He shrank away, but she only took the candle from his desk and brought it to the various paintings on easels around the room, examining each one in turn.
“Please. Won’t you leave me alone?” he asked. He wanted nothing more than to go to sleep, though the thought of lying in the dark listening for his sister’s wheezing breath was intolerable.
Elizabeth turned to him, frowning, her large eyes sunken in hollow cheeks. Still she didn’t speak. She might have been pretty before her illness, but Branwell couldn’t remember. He tried to think what she had been like, but she’d been so quiet and shy. Nothing came to him. In life she had followed behind Maria like a shadow, and when Maria died she had followed then, too. He did remember that when the girls went away to Clergy Daughters’ School, Papa hadn’t paid the extra few pounds to have her educated as a governess. He’d paid for the others, even Emily, and she was only six, but Elizabeth hadn’t been clever. She hadn’t been anything. At least, she hadn’t been anything that anyone would ever know now.