Laura Rowland - Bedlam - The Further Secret Adventures of Charlotte Bronte

Memory and anger suffused Slade’s expression, all the while he watched me, trying to predict what I might do next. “Stieber found me out. I don’t know how. He must have tipped the police onto me. One minute I was asleep in bed; the next, I was locked up in Bedlam for the murders of three women I’d never heard of, that I didn’t commit. Two nurses in the criminal lunatics’ ward were in Stieber’s pay. So was the doctor. He and Stieber tortured me in an attempt to learn what I was up to and what I knew about Niall Kavanagh.”

This was the scene I had witnessed. Wilhelm Stieber was the sinister, foreign-looking man who’d presided over Slade’s torture. Or so Slade said. “Did you kill the nurses?”

“I had to.” Slade spoke with a combination of guilt and defiance. “Stieber was going to kill me. It was the only way I could escape.”

He’d explained everything logically, but not to my satisfaction. “I don’t believe you.” I was all the angrier because he’d tried to dupe me.

“Why not? It’s the truth.” His gaze steadfastly held mine.

I fired the shot that would pierce his tissue of lies: “Because you’re not on a mission for the Foreign Office. You’re no longer in their employ. You’re a traitor!”

He blinked. “Where did you get that idea?”

“From Lord Eastbourne.”

“You spoke with Lord Eastbourne?” Alarm resonated in Slade’s voice.

“This very morning. After I saw you last night.” With Katerina. I bit my tongue before I could utter the words. My pride refused to let Slade know his that unfaithfulness had hurt me more than his betrayal of our country.

“What else did Lord Eastbourne tell you?” Slade asked.

“That you were executed for treason. He thinks you’re dead.”

“Well, that’s obviously not the case.” Slade spread his hands. “Here I am.”

“Are you?” My voice and my heart filled with raw anguish. “Are you the John Slade I used to know?”

He brushed off my words with an impatient gesture. “I am not a traitor. The fact that I’m not dead should convince you that Lord Eastbourne is wrong.” He began to pace, and I sensed his thoughts speeding through his mind. “Did you tell Lord Eastbourne you saw me?”

“Yes,” I admitted.

Slade grimaced in displeasure. He ran his hand through his unruly black hair. I remembered the feel of its silky tangles. My heart clenched painfully. “What did Lord Eastbourne say?” Slade asked.

“He didn’t believe me. He said I was mistaken. He advised me to forget you.”

“Have you told anyone else anything about me?”

“I told Dr. Forbes, my acquaintance who showed me round Bedlam the day I saw you. And George Smith, my publisher. He accompanied me to Whitechapel to look for you. Your landlady gave us a tour of your lodgings. I found a playbill for the Royal Pavilion Theater. That’s how I happened to be there last night.”

“Damnation!” Slade said. “You always were an obstinate, inquisitive woman who went places where she had no business!”

This was the first sign of personal emotion Slade had expressed toward me. These were his first words that revealed he knew me better than he purported. Although they weren’t flattering, my heart leapt. “So you do remember me! You haven’t forgotten!”

I was too proud to beg him to say he recalled wanting to marry me. Instead, I willed him to remember what we’d once been to each other. I extended my hand in a mute plea.

Slade backed away as if my touch were poison. His hands went up, perhaps in denial, perhaps in self-defense. “Lord Eastbourne was right. You must forget you ever saw me, ever knew me. Never think of me again.”

Then he turned, ran into the forest, and vanished.

“Where were you?” George Smith said when I met him at the pond. He was flushed with sunburn and annoyance. “I’ve been waiting half an hour.”

I swayed, on the verge of fainting. The bright scene of children, ducks, geese, and water shimmered before my eyes. George’s annoyance turned to alarm. “What’s wrong?”

I began to cry so hard I couldn’t speak.

“Come on,” George said, “I’ll take you home.”

After escorting me out of the zoo, he bundled me into a carriage. I tried to calm myself but could not. I had finally seen Slade, but even if I could have believed his story, the happy reunion I’d desired was never to be. How disappointed, broken, and wretched was I!

“Please tell me what the matter is,” George said anxiously. “I want to help.”

Nothing could relieve my sorrow; not even God could change what had happened. I offered the first excuse I could think of: “I’ve a terrible headache.”

The excuse immediately came true. A crushing pain gripped my head. The illness that emotional strain invariably causes me now struck with full force. Almost insensible from the pain, wracked by nausea, I shut my eyes and hoped I wouldn’t be sick.

George hesitantly stroked my hair. “I do wish you would confide in me. It hurts me to see you in such distress.” He added, in a tone much less self-assured than usual, “You have become very dear to me, Charlotte.”

Here was a hint of what I’d feared to hear from him. Once, during my brief infatuation with George, I’d hoped we could be more than friends, but now I wept harder and felt worse. If only he were Slade!

Fortunately, he realized that I was too upset to talk, and he said no more. Back at Gloucester Terrace, I lay in bed, tormented by physical and mental agony. I’d forgotten that George had arranged a dinner party of famous literary critics for me to meet. When the doorbell rang, it was too late to cancel the party, and I had the further discomfort of listening to the guests talking and laughing, probably about me. After some hours my headache and nausea lessened enough that I thought I should make an appearance at the party. I got up and tidied myself, but facing a pack of critics was the last thing I wanted to do.

What I wanted, in spite of all that had happened, was to see Slade again. If he didn’t love me anymore, I needed him to tell me so. Maybe then could I forget him, pick up the pieces of my heart, and go on with my life.

I sneaked down the back stairs. George and his guests in the parlor didn’t notice. The clock struck ten o’clock as I slipped out the door. The night was warm; smoke and clouds in the sky glowed like brimstone in the light from the city below. I walked to Bayswater Road and hired a carriage. I alit outside the Royal Pavilion Theater, only to find it dark and quiet, as was the whole Whitechapel high street. The only person I saw was a beggar seated in the doorway.

His body looked oddly truncated. Eyes as bright and unblinking as an owl’s gleamed in his bearded, grimy face. “Lookin’ for some-thin’, mum?”

“I wanted to see Katerina the Great.” I noticed with a shock that he had no legs. His trousers were pinned up, covering the stumps. “Do you know where she lives?”

“Maybe.” The beggar held out his tin cup. I tossed in a coin. “Come on. I’ll show you.”

We made an odd pair-he racing along the pavement on his hands, I trotting to keep up. The streets along which he led me were devoid of gas lamps. Tenements rose into the sky’s acid-yellow glow. Most of the buildings were dark except for the cellars, through whose windows I could see people sewing, making baskets, or doing other piecework. The beggar turned so many corners so fast that I lost my sense of direction. I felt like a lost soul being led through Purgatory by a guide not quite human.

We stopped in an enclave of tall, thin, terraced houses built of brick, crowned by steeply pitched slate roofs. My guide jerked his chin at the one in front of us. “There.”