Bedlam: The Further Secret Adventures of Charlotte Brontë
Page 28
“I don’t believe you.” Stieber shouted, “Tell me!”
“All right, I do know,” Slade said in a startling about-face. “But you’ll have to torture the information out of me. Wouldn’t you like to finish what you started in Bedlam?”
He wanted Stieber to open the cage, I deduced; he wanted to lure Stieber within fighting reach.
“It would be my pleasure,” Stieber said. “You have sixty seconds to tell me where Kavanagh went. If you don’t, then my comrade will begin firing bullets into your wife. You will watch her die slowly and painfully. Then we’ll do the same to you.”
He began counting in a measured, ominous cadence. I was mute, paralyzed by terror. That Slade and I would die together was little comfort.
“Go ahead. Kill us if you like.” Slade’s brazenness didn’t hide his desperation. “But you’ll be making a fatal mistake. You need us to find Kavanagh.”
Stieber stopped counting. He regarded Slade with sudden, disappointed comprehension. “You really don’t know where Kavanagh is. In that case, you’re just wasting my time. You and your wife have outlived your usefulness.”
“You’re wrong,” Slade hurried to say. “Haven’t you noticed that we’ve always been one step ahead of you, one step closer to Kavanagh? Let us out, and we’ll help you catch him before he demonstrates his invention.”
Stieber laughed, a short burst of anger and hatred. “How? When you don’t have any more notion as to his whereabouts than I do?” He ordered, “Shoot the woman.”
The soldier cocked the pistol. Slade jumped between me and the gun and shouted, “No!” I looked around to see the other soldier take aim at my back. Slade wrapped me in his arms and held me against him as we stumbled about the cage, like dancers trapped in a shooting gallery. Now that all his ploys had failed, I tried desperately to think of a way to save us.
Our situation was akin to one I’d encountered while writing novels. I would reach an impasse where I’d created problems with the plot that I couldn’t resolve. I’d learned that the only solution was to relinquish logic and conscious rumination and let my mind float free. I had also learned to attain this state under circumstances not conducive to rational thought. I’d begun writing Jane Eyre in rented quarters while my father lay recuperating from delicate, painful eye surgery and I had a toothache. I had finished it at the parsonage while Branwell raved drunkenly. Those distractions had barely impinged on me. Now I closed my eyes. The sounds of Stieber’s threats and Slade’s protests faded. My mind spun backward through memories of the house in Whitechapel and the laboratory in Tonbridge. They swam around an image of Niall Kavanagh’s face. Time seemed to stop, my fate suspended.
Sometimes the solution to my problem strikes me like a stingray harpooning a whale. It did now, with such speed that I couldn’t reconstruct the line of intuition that snapped my eyes open and my mind back to the present. I blurted, “Mr. Stieber! What does Niall Kavanagh look like?”
Stieber glanced at me in surprise. I felt Slade inhale a sharp breath. Confusion spread across Stieber’s gaze. Slade laughed softly as he exhaled. He knew that I had found the coin with which to buy our lives.
“Describe Dr. Kavanagh,” Slade said.
Stieber glared instead of replying.
“You can’t, can you?” Slade said. “Because you don’t know what he looks like. You’ve never laid eyes on him. Or his invention.”
It was true; I could tell from the frustrated rage in Stieber’s eyes, the compression of his mouth. The fearful, suspicious, unbalanced Kavanagh had completely managed to evade Stieber.
“You couldn’t pick him out of a crowd,” Slade mocked Stieber.
“No matter,” Stieber said. “You’ve seen Kavanagh. You will describe him and his invention for me before you die.”
“Certainly. Niall Kavanagh is about forty years old, not very tall, with spectacles. His invention is a bomb.” Slade said, “Of course there are many men who fit his description. And the bomb is small enough to hide in a box.”
Stieber was silent. He regained his machine-like aspect, cold and calculating. His men stood immobile, their fingers on the triggers while he weighed his need to find Kavanagh against the likelihood that Slade and I would foil him. I knew he longed to kill us as punishment for Slade’s trickery and betrayal of the Tsar. All the air seemed to leak from the dungeon, leaving us in a vacuum that reeked of decay and nerves. My heart thudded against Slade’s while our suspense mounted to agonizing heights and our fate hinged on Stieber’s decision.
At last Stieber motioned to his men. They lowered their guns. He said, “I only need one of you to identify Kavanagh. Mr. Slade, you are coming with me. Your wife will stay behind. If you cooperate, she won’t die.”
As I stammered in horrified protest, Slade said, “Two pairs of eyes are better than one. If something happens to one of us, you’ll have the other. Either we both go, or you can kill us now.”
Either Stieber didn’t want to waste time arguing, or he saw the wisdom of Slade’s words. “All right. You both shall accompany me.”
My breath came in rapid, dizzying gasps. Slade held me up, but his knees buckled under his own relief.
“Be warned,” Stieber said. “If you should attempt any tricks, I will kill you. If we do not find Niall Kavanagh, I will kill you.”
He didn’t say that he would kill us even if we did find Kavanagh for him. We all knew that after we had served our purpose, he couldn’t let us live because he didn’t want to gamble on the outcome of another round with Slade. But neither Slade nor I objected. We’d been granted a chance to save ourselves, catch Niall Kavanagh, and confiscate his bombs and his cultures before he set off a plague that would kill millions of innocent people.
“Fair enough,” Slade said, and I nodded.
Our adventure had taken a turn that I could not have predicted: we were now in league with the devil.
38
“THE KEY IS OVER THERE,” SLADE SAID, POINTING AT THE FLOOR where it had fallen.
Stieber turned to the handsome soldier. “Get it, Friedrich.”
Friedrich fetched the key. Stieber ordered Slade and me to move away from the lock. “Wagner, cover them,” he said to the ugly soldier.
Wagner trained his pistol on us while Friedrich opened the cage. “Mrs. Slade, you’ ll come out first,” Stieber said. “Stand over there.” He pointed at a spot some ten feet from the cage. I complied. “Wagner, guard Mrs. Slade. Friedrich, cover Mr. Slade.”
Wagner shambled up to me. He stood too close, his gun almost touching my bosom.
“Behave yourself, or your wife dies,” Stieber told Slade. “Put your hands up and walk out of the cage. Slowly.”
Slade raised his hands and moved toward the door. As he crossed the threshold, Stieber said, “Stop.” Slade obeyed, his face set in wary lines. “Friedrich, search him.”
Friedrich ran his hand over Slade. He discovered the file that had found its way inside Slade’s coat. Stieber said, “We’d better search Mrs. Slade for hidden weapons, too. Wagner, you may do the honors.”
Wagner’s hands touched every part of my body and lingered upon the most intimate places. I cringed. A lewd smile curved his thick lips. Slade seethed, but there was nothing else he could do. When Wagner finished, I felt as dirty as if I’d been smeared with excrement.
“We are ready now.” Stieber took up the lantern. “Friedrich, you escort Mr. Slade and go first. Keep your hands up, Mr. Slade. Wagner, you’ll follow me, with Mrs. Slade.” He glanced at me and added, “I will give you the same warning I gave your husband: Be on your best behavior, or I will have him shot.”
Friedrich marched Slade across the dungeon. Stieber went next, lighting the way. Wagner poked the gun against my back as he and I followed the others along a passage that had stone walls and a low, arched stone ceiling. When we ascended an uneven stone staircase, I felt as if I were Eurydice climbing up from the depths of hell. When we emerged into daylight at the top of the stairs, I was over
come by relief and gratitude. I exulted in the sun shining in a corridor with a tiled floor and tapestries hanging on the walls. I had been resurrected, by Hades incarnate. Stieber moved toward a door at the end of the corridor, but Slade said, “Wait.”
“Why?” Stieber said, brusque with impatience. “We must hurry to catch up with Dr. Kavanagh.”
“That will be difficult without knowing his destination,” Slade said. “He’s been gone more than twenty-four hours. He’ll have traveled quite far already.”
“You said he’d just left.”
Slade shrugged. “I lied.”
“Do not lie to me again,” Stieber said. “Locate Dr. Kavanagh.”
Although I had faith in Slade, he was not a magician who could pull a rabbit out of a hat that contained no rabbit. How could he locate Kavanagh, who’d breathed not a word of his destination to us?
“I will,” Slade said, “if you’ll let Charlotte and me search this house.”
“We have already searched it,” Friedrich said. It was the first time I’d heard him speak. His English was stilted, his voice reedy for a man of such masculine appearance.
“We found nothing.” Wagner’s voice had a guttural, growling quality.
“We may recognize a clue that you missed,” Slade said.
“Very well,” Stieber said, “but be quick about it.”
Guarded by the soldiers, Slade and I explored the château. The first-floor rooms contained furniture covered with dust sheets. The ancient kitchen was cluttered with dirty dishes and stank of rotten food. I feared that Dr. Kavanagh had left traces of his cultures and we would be infected; but we found none, and no scientific equipment. We proceeded upstairs.
“The only room he used up here is that one,” Stieber said, pointing to a door.
Slade and I stepped into a rat’s nest similar to the one in Tonbridge. Here, too, were the unmade bed, the liquor bottles, and the soiled chamber pot. Kavanagh had left his clothes strewn around the room; with only a few days to live, he didn’t need them. He’d also left canisters of different shapes and sizes, rolled twine, wire, and copper tubing, and jars dusted with chemicals.
“You mentioned that Dr. Kavanagh’s invention is a bomb,” Stieber said as Slade opened the drawers of the dresser and I looked in the cupboard for papers. “What kind of new bomb can kill more people than the bombs already in use?”
Slade had no choice but to share Kavanagh’s dangerous secrets with Stieber. The cupboard was empty; I turned to the desk. My fingers trembled with urgency. We couldn’t afford to vex Stieber by taking too long at our task, and we must catch Dr. Kavanagh before he staged his demonstration. I desperately hoped that whatever I found would give us some advantage over Stieber, some idea of how to keep him from Kavanagh and the weapon.
“Ach, mein Gott!” Stieber exclaimed in response to what Slade had said about woolsorter’s disease, animalcules, and cultures. “Kavanagh is right. Whoever possesses his knowledge and his cultures will rule the world!” He sounded gratified by the news, rather than horror-stricken as Slade and I had been. “The Tsar will be very pleased.”
The desk drawers contained crumpled scraps of paper that bore Niall Kavanagh’s familiar, incomprehensible scribblings. Then I came upon a neat ink drawing of a thick, crooked, elongated cross with one arm shorter than the other. The space inside it was filled with lines, squares, and illegible notations. Arrows and X’s marked various spots. Kavanagh had drawn a little picture—a tapered column arising from an oval, with lines flowing down like hair from the top—at the center of the cross. A strange sense of familiarity gripped me. This drawing represented no figment of Kavanagh’s fevered imagination, but something real, a place I knew. But where?
A shadow fell across the page. Stieber looked over my shoulder. “What is that?”
“I think it’s a map,” I said.
Slade joined me. “A map of what?”
“I don’t know.” But I was suddenly certain that Kavanagh had fantasized about demonstrating his weapon long before he’d sprung the idea on us. This map was proof, and a clue to his destination.
Studying my face, Slade read my thoughts. His eyes sharpened. “You do know.” He tapped his finger against the paper. “What is this?”
The shock of meeting Niall Kavanagh, the fatigue from my ordeal in the dungeon, and my terror of Wilhelm Stieber all impaired my mental faculties. “I can’t remember!” I said in frustration.
“Think!” Slade pleaded.
I let my vision blur; the map went hazy before my eyes. From deep in my memory came the roar of voices, the tinkle of water falling, and George Smith’s voice: The transept was offset to accommodate the trees that were on the site. The building isn’t completely symmetrical. As I refocused my gaze on the lopsided cross drawn on the paper, I saw the lines turn into corridors and the squares into fantastic displays of art and machinery surrounded by chattering crowds. The column set on an oval became a glass fountain that weighed four tons.
“It’s the Crystal Palace!” I cried. “The Great Exhibition. In London. That’s where Niall Kavanagh plans to demonstrate his weapon!”
39
“THE GREAT EXHIBITION IS THE IDEAL SITE FOR KAVANAGH’S demonstration,” Slade said.
“Thousands of people attend every day,” I said, “and many prominent citizens.”
“Politicians, courtiers, foreign royalty and dignitaries. Kavanagh couldn’t hope to find a bigger or more illustrious audience anywhere else.”
I felt sick as I contemplated the scope of the impending disaster. “They’ll scatter to their homes all over England, Europe, and America. They’ll spread the disease everywhere.”
“Kavanagh must have visited the Great Exhibition before he left England,” Slade said. “These spots he marked on the floor plan must be the places he’s decided to plant his bombs.”
Stieber snatched the map of the Crystal Palace from my hand, folded it, and tucked it in his pocket. “We must hurry to London. Friedrich, escort our prisoners outside.”
Friedrich hesitated. “What if they are wrong? What if the Great Exhibition is not where Dr. Kavanagh is going?”
“It has to be,” Slade said. I nodded, convinced by my intuition as well as by the fact that we’d found no evidence to indicate otherwise.
We hastened out of the château in single file, Slade leading, Friedrich close behind with the pistol aimed at his back, Stieber next, and Wagner guarding me. Outside the gates, a carriage, horses, and driver waited. Stieber said, “Take us to the ferry dock as fast as you can.”
The journey back to England was frightful, the ocean rough. Despite my state of starvation, I ate and drank little because I was seasick. The next morning we reached Portsmouth. As Friedrich and Wagner walked Slade and me down the gangplank, my sickness abated, but I trembled with anxiety. If we found Niall Kavanagh before he staged his demonstration, what further purpose would we serve for Stieber? If we didn’t, the Crystal Palace would become the starting point of the worst catastrophe in history. Either way, Slade and I hadn’t long to live.
At the railway station, we found a huge, noisy crowd in the waiting area. Trains stood motionless by the platforms. People sat on benches, trunks, bundles, and boxes. Women rocked crying babies and scolded fractious children. Men flocked around the ticket booths; they shouted questions, argued, and threw up their hands in vexation. Stieber elbowed his way toward a ticket booth while his men watched Slade and me. A railway guard stood near us, and Slade called to him, “Excuse me—what’s the problem?”
“There’s been a wreck on the track,” the guard said. “There won’t be any trains moving from here toward London until it’s cleared.”
A little boy ran about the room, spinning a toy top. He bumped into Friedrich’s leg. Friedrich lost his balance and staggered, away from Slade. Wagner turned from me to catch his comrade. While the two Prussians were distracted, Slade grabbed my hand and we ran.
Friedrich and Wagner yelled, “Stop!”
He’d deduced what I hadn’t realized until now—that Slade had fled for another reason besides escaping Stieber. Slade had a destination in mind, a plan for getting us to London. Stieber had read Slade’s thoughts even though I hadn’t. Perhaps enemies were even more attuned to one another than lovers were.
Slade hesitated, torn between his reluctance to tip his hand and the knowledge that Stieber wouldn’t let us get away again and we could go nowhere without the man. He said reluctantly, “I’ve a friend who can take us to London. He lives nearby.”
Friedrich and Wagner looked skeptical. Stieber considered: he suspected a trick, but he had a choice between cooling his heels in Portsmouth or gambling on Slade. He said, “Take us there.”
We traveled in a hired carriage a few miles to the countryside, and arrived at a gray-brick mansion three stories high, capped by a mansard roof, that stood amid spacious grounds. When we disembarked on the driveway, the sound of voices and laughter and the roar of machinery greeted us, although I saw no one. Black smoke wafted over the treetops, from the back of the house. Slade led the way there. We came upon a crowd gathered on a lawn that extended toward open fields. The women were dressed in long smocks and hats with veils, the men in coveralls. Chattering and excited, they faced the end of the lawn. At first I thought we’d interrupted a strange sort of garden party. Then my gaze followed theirs, and I realized what Slade’s plan was.