Let it be said, Reader, I have never lacked courage. The kick in the ribs merely added fury to the equation.
I came up spitting.
My third mistake.
That was when Rochester took the broom and a poker from the fireplace and summarily swept and goaded me into the hall, barking, “Jane! The door!”
She did as he bade and swung it open while he continued sweeping and poking me right outside. Were it not for the pain in my ribs, the heat of the poker singeing my fur, I surely could have evaded this fate, but alas.
I sat yowling on the doorstep for some minutes. I would let them know of my displeasure—which only seemed to grow and in proportion my yowling did too. I was full of displeasure these days—ever since Antoinetta, the only one who knew just when to stop petting, mid-stroke, and leave me be, the only one who spoke to me in a manner befitting my intelligence, the only one who shared with me the comfort of her bed, the only one who fed me—had disappeared.
She would not have left me here, alone. Of that I could not be more certain. After all, it was she who had begged and pleaded and cajoled and, eventually, done other things— things I had watched from the foot of the bed—in order to garner my place on the foul, interminable voyage that had brought us to this forsaken place. She had insisted she would go nowhere “without my Dandy.” She had promised I would be “no trouble” and up until now I had honored that vow.
No more.
She was here. Or if not, she was somewhere. I was certain the master knew where. And I had laid in vain every night upon the old lady’s feet—the old lady who knitted by the fire and liked to exclaim, “look at this! He’s taken to me!” I hadn’t taken to the old lady at all. I just liked her proximity to both the fire and to the master. If I were to hear something of Antoinetta, it was certain I would hear it there, at her feet. And I had been fastidious in my behavior toward her. I had purred and stretched and allowed her to pet me. I had even refrained from batting at the yarn she so often trailed across me, waking me from my naps.
Just as I had been certain I would learn something of Antoinetta from her, I was certain that surely, even she in her deafness would hear my cries and come to my aid. I had been so good to her. But in both these I was deceived. Mrs. Fairfax—for that is what everyone called her—did not come.
If I had any loyalty to anyone in that household, to anyone at all besides Antoinetta, it would have been Mrs. Fairfax. But she was utterly useless—in helping me learn exactly where Antoinetta was, in coming to my aid now. She was a disappointment, just as every other human besides Antoinetta had ever been.
My attack upon the master had been an act borne of desperation. Of frustration. Of love, too. But I could no longer pretend to contentedly sit upon Mrs. Fairfax’s feet, I would no longer purr while the master paced and grumbled about “that savage beast” or “that fearful hag.” Not now that he had proclaimed this very night: “woe to such that is my wife!” It was Antoinetta he meant to describe with each of those epithets. I knew that now. But he was wrong about her—she was a tigress, she was a queen. And I would not rest until I learned exactly where she was. Until I found her. And then we would flee this dank and damp hellhole and go back to the place we belonged. I could tolerate another voyage if it meant returning home. Home. Where the coldest day was warmer than the warmest day at Thornfield. Where there was no shortage of sunbeams to lounge in, or when it grew too hot, no scarcity of ferns and orchids to shelter under. Where the air smelled of spices and the sea. Where Antoinetta would untie the string that held her braids and dangle it for me and if my claws accidentally snagged in her hem as I batted the string she would only laugh and unhook them.
I let out a wild yowl. It hurt my ribs, it was true, but it felt right, too. I poured every ounce of my passion into that yowl, and kept right on, past when I heard the master yell, “That cat is as demon-possessed as his mistress, I swear it!” I kept up my noise, until I heard Mrs. Fairfax—the one whose feet I had warmed!—say, “Rochester—he must be injured to carry on so—perhaps someone should…end his misery?” And I had thought her kindly.
“The damned animal can die out there for all I care and go straight to hell with his mistress,” was the answer. “I will not be made a fool again!” It was said in a voice not altogether unlike my yowling, and knowing I’d had some effect gave me a spark of just enough perverse pleasure to allow me to slink from the wide entryway, and into the darkness. The spark was enough to set my new course.
Reader, it is not so hard as one might imagine to discover a way back inside a rather large manor, even—nay, especially—one so imposing as Thornfield was. In this instance, all it took was finding the servant’s entrance and waiting for the moment the hidden sun gave slightest relief to the gloom, the dew studding the tips of my fur with crystalline globes. The sight of a damp cat, however large, was enough to inspire sympathy. I merely widened my eyes and let out a kittenish mewl and the scullery maid, another of the new ones that had come after Rochester had fired the rest, the very day after Antoinetta had disappeared—said, “Och, you poor thing. I daresay we have some cream for a cat who proves its worth...”
The girl made the sort of small, sly grin my own mother would make, just after her teeth had sunk into the fur at the base of a mouse’s skull. “Is it you who clawed at the master?” the maid asked, her voice pitched high in that way humans love to speak to babies and other lowly creatures. I forced myself to mewl at her again. Antoinetta never spoke to me in such tones. She saw me for what I was. Not so the scullery maid. “Well, then,” she said, her smile blooming at my feigned sweetness. “There’s proof enough of your worth until you bring your first mouse.”
And so the fact that the master was not well-liked, even by his new staff, and I had attacked him did the rest to gain me re-admittance to the house—and better yet, access to the back stairs, where I would have no chance of encountering him. As hungry as I was to slink up those stairs, I needed allies, if I were to succeed in my plan of finding—and freeing—my Antoinetta. So it was I followed the maid into the larder, purring all the while she poured out a saucer of cream for me, purring louder as she set it upon the tiles and said, “There’s a good boy, now. Drink up and then we’ll get to work, won’t we?”
But I misjudged her, too.
For while I was enjoying the last of the cream, she slipped out of the larder as canny as any feline and before I could even get off my haunches and leap at the door, she had shut it.
“Get to work, cat!” she said, and set about humming some tuneless work song.
Get to work.
All the demon noises I had unleashed the night before, when Rochester had kicked me out the door, rose from the very core of me. I wanted to launch myself, hissing and scratching, upon the door.
I did no such thing.
Allies, I told myself. I could not afford to alienate the household staff. Not if I hoped to find Antoinetta. Not if I hoped to gain access to the back stairs. For it was Antoinetta’s bedchamber where my search must start, I had decided during my night out of doors.
Get to work I did.
My mother, when she had caught some prey—a mouse, a lizard, a snake—would trot with the half-dead thing flopping in her mouth and deposit it at her mistress’s feet with a trilling meow.
It was that meow I summoned now. I had found a mouse—a half-drunk thing, glutted on some sort of fermented dough—and I had dispatched it in quick order, remembering well the shrieks my mother would earn, did her prey she gifted her mistress revive enough to scurry about, across the pretty little toes of her slippers. It was not the shrieking I wanted.
“Ah kitty,” said the scullery maid when she cracked open the door, “have you got a wee tidbit for me?”
I gave another trilling meow and batted at the thing. It did not reanimate.
“What a clever—”
The girl opened the door a smidge more and I took my chance. I may be large, but I am half fur. I can slip through an alarmin
gly slender gap.
I bolted for the stairs, past the thick ankles of the woman who was surely the cook, ignoring entirely the scullery maid’s cries for help. “Mary! Oh no! Catch him Lizbeth! We can’t have him upstairs! The master—”
But Mary was too busy with her pie, her hands floured and Lizbeth was a bungler, or else a dunce, for as she whirled to watch as I bounded around her, she dropped some gauzy white thing from the basket she was carrying. It floated down, down, down and as I could not spare the time to dodge it, it landed direct atop me, covering the whole of me.
“Oh ach!” Lizbeth cried, a loud thudding noise coming from behind me as she likely dropped the laundry basket in her arms, the noise spurring me on to the back stairs.
“Get him!” the scullery maid cried, but by the time I heard any footsteps behind me on the stairs, I had made it past the first landing. The pounding on the stairs could not keep time with my feet, nor match the pounding of my heart, and I easily outpaced the girl, even despite the awkwardness of the cloth atop me, which had caught upon my fur and tangled up in my legs and would not come loose. I had not time to fuss with it—I had to get to the third floor—quickly. That was my only objective as I wended my way up the steep and narrow back staircase. I welcomed its close air, its dark, windowless passage, praying it would help keep me hid. I did not like to think what the master would do, did he find me back inside the house, did he discover me in Antoinetta’s chamber, where I aimed to go. Even worse would be our fate if he discovered us taking leave of this place by the servants’ stairs.
But as I rounded the turn to the next landing, still trailing whatever it was Lizbeth had dropped upon me, I found my way blocked. There upon the landing were a man and a woman, embracing—I took only the time required, the space of half a blink, to ascertain neither was Antoinetta nor Rochester. Then I dashed between them, wondering how the new staff could already find themselves in each other’s arms after only a few days’ employment. It had taken me half a lifetime to find Antoinetta.
The scream that erupted behind me was so high-pitched, so terror-filled it shrieked of murder that it made me leap into the air, my fur bristling, and sent me bursting forward even faster.
I sped nearly to the third-floor landing, frantic to get out of the staircase away from the noise that could only draw attention in my direction. The door to the hall I wanted was open just above me, a rectangle of light in the gloom, so close—I leapt to clear the remaining few stairs and—
Whatever Lizbeth had dropped upon me snagged upon the scarred and scuffed woodwork. It yanked me to a halt, pulled me to the ground. I tore frantically at the cloth, my claws catching in the delicate, open weave of it. But the more I fought it, the more I rolled and leapt at it, the more tangled I became, and a yowl escaped my throat before I could stop it.
Behind me, the hysterical sounds of screaming increased and a male voice called out, “Who goes there!”
“Oh, what was that thing? What is it makes that terrible sound?” cried a female voice. In the silence after, for of course I would not answer such questions, the pounding of Lizbeth’s feet reached me, coming harder and faster now, so near, just a twist of stairs below me.
I scrabbled madly at the cloth but in my frenzy I still made out Lizbeth panting, gasping, “Was it the cat?” and the emphatic answer coming back, “No! ‘twas a ghost, was it!” before giving way to nervous laughter. It was then, as Lizbeth huffed, “Heavens! ‘Tis no ghost! ‘Tis only a cat dashing about with the new miss’s veil upon it—” when I at last managed to rip the cloth from the splintered woodwork, rending it near in half. I did not give a single glance backward, but leapt for the doorway and into the hall, what was left of the veil fluttering behind me.
I sprinted for the fainting couch that rested in the center of the hall, where the main stairs spilled out into the third floor. I had so oft sat upon that couch, waiting for Antoinetta to return from dinner. Now I darted beneath it, wild to conceal myself. But the veil—what was left of it was stretched out behind me, giving my location away. I scratched at it furiously to draw it all into my hiding place. I had only just managed to crouch upon the bright white of the veil, pressed as close to the wall as possible, where the shadows might hide me, when Lizbeth poked her head into the corridor. “Kitty?” she called weakly.
I went stalking-still. I could not be discovered now. If Lizbeth caught me, I would be remanded back to the larder, or worse, if Rochester had heard the ruckus and came to investigate, I would be turned out, put out of my misery. I could not let that happen. Just as I could not allow anyone to lay hands on me, lest I do something terrible in desperation.
“Here kitty,” she whisper-called again. “Puss, puss, puss!”
A door opened from the end of the hall—Rochester?
“Is there some problem?” came a woman’s voice. Not Rochester’s graveled, haughty voice, nor the robust, powerful one Antoinetta commanded, but the raspy, feathery one. Jane—she who had opened the door to allow Rochester to sweep me outside.
“Oh no, Miss. All is well. Just— the kitchen cat has gotten upstairs and—” Lizbeth stammered.
The kitchen cat? I belonged to no room—only to one person.
“I will keep watch for it,” the woman said.
It.
I hated the woman even more.
“It’s something of a hellcat,” Lizbeth said. “Clawed the master last night, I expect you heard. And kilt a mouse this morning after finishing a saucer of cream.”
“I am not afeared.” The new miss laughed, a derisive edge to her voice. “It sounds like a cat is all.”
As if I were any cat. As if all cats are the same. I could have spat at her then.
I thought I could not hate her more than I had when she shoo’ed me from Antoinetta’s room every time I had tried to gain admittance. Who was this changeling commanding the place Antoinetta should occupy? Hate her more, I did.
As I had laid in wait, ribs aching, while the mouse finished its gorging and went sluggish, I had played over and over the last time I’d seen Antoinetta, slipping into that very same room Jane now entered. Crouched there beneath the fainting couch, I raged that Jane could enter where I could not, and I thought of the last time I had heard Antoinetta. I played that night over again in my memory while I waited an eternity, longer than I had ever waited at any mouse-hole, until feather-voice slipped into the hall again and glided down the stairs, in another of her plain gray dresses, nothing like the vibrant reds and purples and yellows Antoinetta so loved. So soon as she descended out of my vision, I slow-walked to the door, deliberate, exuding confidence, despite the fact I still dragged the half-veil behind me. In my struggles to get free of it, it seemed I had broken half through the cloth and now I wore it about my neck. But it did not matter—I would go inside, I would find some trace of Antoinetta, I would find the lady herself, and so soon as we were gone from this place, she would free me from my ridiculous costume.
The door was closed.
Always with the doors, I thought in disgust.
Just as I was about to give in to despair, a gust of wind wafted under the door. The hasp clicked upon the jamb and the door sighed open a crack.
I was caught. There was some person yet inside the room—Rochester, perchance. Mrs. Fairfax who wanted me put from my misery. Even that deaf woman must’ve heard the servants screaming of ghosts. All I knew was it was some person not Antoinetta, who would have come searching for me were she there, so soon as she heard feather-voice speak of a cat. I froze for a terrible moment, then another. But it was silent in the hallway, silent behind the door, which did not open any further as I sat there watching it. It was my first stroke of luck—feather-voice had been alone in the room, and she not the strength, it seemed, to properly close the door.
The door had been properly closed the last time I sat here. And there had been noises behind it. Crying for quite awhile, punctuated with a keening “please please please.” Then sobbing and caterwauling. Antoine
tta had nightmares like that sometimes, back home. But this was different. I had been shut out this time—the master had long since forbid me from passing the night with my mistress, not being overfond of my purring interruptions at midnight, not finding my warmth upon Antoinetta’s pillow pleasing, saying it was I who was making her nightmares come with greater frequency. Of Rochester’s dislike for me, I had been made most aware—having been shoved off the bed repeatedly.
Antoinetta had taken to leaving a cushion for me outside her bedchamber, and though it was not so comfortable as I might have wished, I preferred its proximity to her over the vast, wide beds available in the cold, empty bedrooms of the manor’s fourth floor. The cushion was gone now, but I sat where it had been and remembered the last time I had heard Antoinetta’s voice. I thought her begging then was on my behalf. “There is a storm coming,” she had said, and I knew it to be true from the change in the air. “It is so cold,” she said, her voice as a ship climbing a wave, cresting it, then plunging down. It was cold in that hallway, and I hated hearing her distressed on my behalf, and so I had made myself known with the friendliest of sounding meows, of the sort I shared only with my Antoinetta. There had been a rustling of the bedclothes, a “I must let my familiar in!” My familiar, she had always called me, a laugh in her throat, but Rochester was never amused. My heart had leapt—I had been so cold out there in the hall, I had been so much alone—and then…nothing. No one came to admit me into the room. There had been whispering—the kind that was different from the soft, giggling sort that made me want to leap upon beds, purring loudly, walking across legs and backs and arms. This whispering was the kind that reminded me of arched backs and whipping tails, the sinister undertones of snarled warnings. Since our arrival at Thornfield, I had witnessed more and more episodes like this between Rochester and Antionetta—the crying and slapping, the angry replies she made that sounded sometimes more like growling than like words, the incidences when the master pinned her arms and bade her not to be so wild, not so loud. The dinners when he barked at her to “hush!” even in front of company. Always before, I had watched these interactions from a safe vantage point under the bed, under the sideboard, waiting for the moment Antoinetta needed me to spring to her aid, to diffuse the situation with a well-timed arrival upon the bed or table.
Hellcats: Anthology Page 51
