Bedlam: The Further Secret Adventures of Charlotte Bronte tsaocb-2

by Laura Joh Rowland

  The kitchen was furnished like none I’d ever seen before. The worktops along the walls were black stone slabs. Below them were metal drawers and cabinets; above, a network of copper pipes. On their surfaces stood glassware such as I’d found in the Whitechapel house. Slade fiddled with lamps mounted on the walls. I heard a hissing sound and smelled gas.

  Slade said, “Let there be light.” He lit the lamps. “I’m surprised there’s gas in a house this old. It must have been recently installed.”

  We explored the laboratory. The drawers contained rubber gloves, cloth masks and caps, steel knives, unidentifiable implements, and glassware: magnifying lenses; syringes like the ones used by the doctor in Bedlam; round, flat dishes with lids; long, tapered tubes connected to rubber bulbs. Cabinets held jars of powdered substances, labeled with numbers. The copper pipes were attached to spigots. When Slade turned them, water gushed from some and poured into sinks; others fed gas into burners that looked like metal candles. Glass flasks sat on stands above the burners. There were scales, and basins of water with thermometers mounted inside, an empty icebox, and a strange, clear glass case. The case had a lid sealed with a rubber gasket and two holes into which protruded a pair of rubber gloves. Beside it lay a small device comprised of two brass plates riveted together, a circle of glass set in a hole in them, a clamp holding a long, threaded bolt with a metal crosspiece, and various tiny screws.

  “It’s a microscope,” Slade said.

  I examined the stove, a cast-iron monstrosity with eight gas burners. A large pot sat on top. I lifted the lid. A horrible stench burst out from a rotten stew of meat and bones. I hastily clapped down the lid. Inspecting the pantry, we covered our noses to keep out the odor of more spoiled food. Shelves were stacked with the sort of glass dishes we’d found in the drawers. These held brown, moldy residue. Glass bell jars contained more of the same, plus burnt-out candles. On other shelves sat racks of glass tubes with cork stoppers, filled with murky liquid. Some corks had exploded out of the tubes, and the liquid had spattered the walls. On the floor stood several braziers, as if Niall Kavanagh had wanted to keep the pantry warm instead of cool.

  “If this is food, Dr. Kavanagh eats a very strange diet,” I said.

  “It must be his experiments,” Slade said, “although I can’t imagine the purpose of them. I don’t see any evidence that he was building a weapon.”

  In the dining room we did find mechanical devices-fans with blades like pinwheels, operated by cranks; a bellows attached to a bicycle. When Slade rode the bicycle around the room, the bellows pumped.

  “I’m beginning to wonder if Kavanagh was a fraud,” I said. “Perhaps he led the British government to believe he’d invented a new kind of gun but he really hadn’t. Perhaps he fooled Wilhelm Stieber, too.”

  “I had the same thoughts,” Slade said, “but I’m not ready to believe I’ve been chasing after a gun that doesn’t exist.”

  He stalked from the room. Although I should have been relieved to think that Britain might be safe from the weapon, I couldn’t forget that Katerina had been murdered because of it. Stieber believed the gun existed, and perhaps it really did. We had to keep searching.

  The kitchen was the only room supplied with gas. Slade lit an oil lamp he found there, while I extinguished the gaslights. He carried the lamp and we mounted the broad staircase. The rooms on the second story were empty except one in a round tower. Here Niall Kavanagh had lived. An unmade bed with dirty linens stood amid stained clothing, empty liquor bottles, and a chamber pot that contained dried urine and feces. Dishes on the bedside table held moldy cheese and bread crusts.

  I think I need not describe the smell.

  Slade flung open the window. We glanced at a bookcase filled with scientific texts, then examined the desk, on which were strewn ink pots, pens, journals, and papers. The papers were covered with Niall Kavanagh’s drawings and script. I riffled them while Slade perused a journal. I couldn’t help being conscious of his nearness. Glancing at him, I discovered that he was looking at me. He quickly dropped his gaze. Despite the fact that we were working together and nothing more, we were bonded by love-his confessed, mine undeclared and forbidden.

  He handed the journal to me. “I can’t read this aloud. Words like these shouldn’t be spoken to a lady.” I read to myself: I found a whore who was sick with gonorrhea. I paid her to let me scrape effluvium from her puss. I prepared a medium from sheep’s blood and mutton broth boiled with horse’s hooves, poured it in dishes, and let it set. I spread the effluvium on the surface of the medium, then placed the dishes in a bell jar with a lit candle. The candle burned away the air. I incubated the dishes for 3 days. A luxuriant growth of molds, slimes, and scum resulted. I separated the various kinds of growth, repeated the procedure, and obtained cultures of reasonable purity. Now I must find clean women on whom to test the cultures.

  “That explains the dishes in the pantry and the sheep, but what was Kavanagh thinking?” Slade shook his head in disgust. “I’m not an expert at science, but I know that what he describes isn’t accepted practice.”

  I barely heard Slade; I was too stunned, for I remembered the journal from the Whitechapel house. “He found them.”

  “What?” Slade said.

  “The clean women.” I told Slade about the journal, summarized the entries for him, then interpreted them. “Kavanagh picked up Mary Chandler, Catherine Meadows, and Jane Anderson on the streets of Whitechapel. He examined them to ascertain that they were clean; then he applied the ‘cultures’ to them.” I pictured hands smearing slime on a woman’s private parts, and bile rose in my throat. “He let a few weeks pass, then reexamined them to see if they had the disease. And he killed them so he could dissect them.” The horror of it choked my voice. “He even made drawings.”

  Slade stared. “That’s what you discovered in his house in Whitechapel?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Niall Kavanagh is the Whitechapel Ripper. The murder victims were subjects in his experiments.”

  “Good Lord.” Slade was awed by the truth about Kavanagh and the fact that I’d discovered it. “Kavanagh wasn’t inventing a gun; his work involved determining the cause of diseases. He thought it was a substance that could be taken from a sick person, grown in a laboratory, and passed to other people.”

  Slade leafed through the journal, frowning at the illegible, ink-blotted script. “Kavanagh must have been drunk when he wrote this. Look, there’s wine spilled on these pages. ‘Dutch scientists have studied samples of water, soil, and vegetable and animal material under the microscope. They have observed tiny animalcules moving therein. I have repeated the experiments and seen the animalcules myself.’” We beheld drawings of spherical, ovoid, and wormlike creatures. “‘I have a theory that it is some species of these animalcules that are the cause of all contagious diseases.’”

  “My friend Dr. Forbes mentioned Kavanagh’s theory,” I recalled. “He said it was met with ridicule and contributed to Kavanagh being expelled from the Royal Society.”

  “Kavanagh deserved it,” Slade said. “His theory goes against hundreds of years of learning, the judgment of the best minds in the world, and all common sense. If Kavanagh believes it, he isn’t just a fraud; he’s mad!”

  “Madman or not, he’s still dangerous. He’s a murderer even if he can’t help Russia win a war against England.” I was jarred by a sudden idea. “Perhaps we’ve misinterpreted Niall Kavanagh’s work. Perhaps he really has invented a weapon.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  My idea sprang full-fledged into my mind while I spoke. “We assumed the weapon was a gun. But what if it’s some completely new kind of device for killing?” Slade looked puzzled, and I rushed on: “No matter that his theory is ridiculous, Niall Kavanagh demonstrated that he could cultivate a substance that causes disease and use it to make people sick. Maybe he discovered how to do those things on a larger scale, how to affect more than one person at a time.”

  “One cou
ldn’t apply his animalcules to enough people to make a difference in the outcome of a war. Besides, the disease he gave those women isn’t fatal.”

  “Other diseases are,” I said, convinced by my own logic. “Fevers, cholera, typhoid, consumption-they kill thousands of people. And what if Kavanagh invented another way to spread the agents that cause those diseases?”

  “That’s preposterous. You’ve been writing fiction for so long that you’ve started to believe-” Sudden, dismayed recollection and enlightenment stopped Slade. “The fans. The bicycle with the bellows. That’s what they’re for-to spread diseases through the air. Damnation. You’re right.” Horror filled Slade’s eyes. “If Niall Kavanagh has perfected a weapon of that sort, it could start a plague!”

  It hardly bore imagining. “What should we do?”

  “ We aren’t going to do anything. You’re going home. I-” Slade paused.

  “What?”

  He put his finger to his lips. Now I heard the sound of footsteps approaching the house, and the gate creaking. Slade blew out the lamp. We hastened to the window and saw, far below us, three men coming up the front walk.

  “Who in the devil?” Slade muttered.

  They carried lanterns, but we couldn’t see their faces. They mounted the stairs and disappeared under the roof of the porch. A moment later there came a loud knocking.

  “Kavanagh!” one of the men called. “If you’re in there, open up!”

  “It’s Lord Eastbourne,” I whispered. “I recognize his voice.”

  “Lord Eastbourne!” Slade’s profile, illuminated by the moonlight, showed surprise. “What is he doing here?”

  Now was the time to fill Slade in on the remainder of what I’d learned in Whitechapel. I told him about the letter written by Lord Eastbourne. “He furnished the laboratory. Dr. Kavanagh is working for him.”

  “My, my, you’re just full of surprises.” Slade regarded me with amusement.

  “But I still don’t understand why, if Kavanagh is working for the British government, Lord Palmerston didn’t know about him and the invention.”

  “Lord Eastbourne is an ambitious man,” Slade said. “He must have learned about the invention and gone behind Palmerston’s back to hire Kavanagh.”

  “But why?” I heard shuffling and muttered conversation from Lord Eastbourne and his men on the porch.

  “Maybe he didn’t know whether the weapon would work, and he wanted to wait until Kavanagh came up with a successful model, and then reveal it to Lord Palmerston and the Queen. That would have done wonders for his career.” Slade thought a moment. “He may even be planning to encourage a war between Britain and Russia. That would give him a chance to demonstrate Kavanagh’s weapon, and a victory for Britain would make him a hero.”

  “Now I understand why he left me in Newgate Prison. He didn’t want me to tell anyone about Dr. Kavanagh and the invention and have it come out that he’d hired Kavanagh without official sanction.”

  “Now I understand what became of the letter I wrote to Palmerston,” Slade said grimly. “Lord Eastbourne must have intercepted it. When he read it, he had a choice: show it to Palmerston, warn him about Wilhelm Stieber, and come to my defense; or protect his secret.”

  Outside, Lord Eastbourne called, “Kavanagh!” and pounded on the door. I heard a key rattling in the lock, and the door opening.

  “They’re coming in!” I whispered.

  Footsteps clattered in the entryway. Lord Eastbourne said, “Search the house.” I heard him and his companions mounting the stairs.

  “We can’t let him find us,” Slade whispered.

  He urged me under Niall Kavanagh’s bed and slid in after me. We lay facedown, side by side, while the footsteps marched through the house. Despite my terror, I was intensely attuned to Slade-his breathing, his scent, the warmth of his body. I felt an almost overpowering impulse to touch his hand. He lay still and rigid. Light spread across the floor of the tower as one of the men entered. Slade and I held our breath. The man muttered, “Filthy pig,” then left. His footsteps hurried down the stairs, and he called, “Kavanagh’s not here. The house is empty.”

  Slade and I exhaled.

  “Then we’ll proceed,” Lord Eastbourne said.

  His voice came from the direction of the kitchen. I heard him moving around, and splashing noises; then he and his men exited the house. Slade scrambled out from under the bed. I followed. As we peered out the window, we heard rustling noises in the bushes alongside the house, then more splashes. Through the window drifted a sharp, pungent, oily odor.

  “I smell kerosene,” I whispered.

  Slade turned to face the door and sniffed. “I smell gas. Lord Eastbourne must have opened the taps.”

  We looked at each other in sudden, appalled realization. A loud whump came from outside the house; then a roaring, crackling noise. An orange glow of flames lit the night. Slade grabbed my hand. We ran for the stairs, only to find them blocked by flames that coiled along the floor like a dragon and leaped up the walls where Lord Eastbourne and his men had poured kerosene. Slade said, “We’ll have to climb out a window.”

  “Why would Lord Eastbourne want to burn down the house?” I asked as we sped from room to room. Flames licked at all the windows; the outside of the building was on fire.

  “To destroy the evidence of Niall Kavanagh’s work and anything that could tie it to him,” Slade said.

  “Maybe he knows Kavanagh killed those women in Whitechapel. If his relationship with Kavanagh became public, what a scandal there would be!”

  “Here’s another possible reason,” Slade said, hurrying me up the stairs. “What if Lord Eastbourne realized that the weapon was too dangerous to use? He wouldn’t want to be associated with it.”

  “If he knew that he’d managed to trap two witnesses in the fire, he would be delighted.”

  “This is what you get for refusing to leave when you had the chance!”

  Smoke pervaded the house; we coughed and choked. We reached an attic, and Slade threw open a window. The air that poured in was hot and smoky, and I could hear the flames roaring louder. Slade climbed out the window and dropped some ten feet to the roof of a cupola. “Jump!” he shouted, arms raised.

  I offered up a silent prayer and jumped. For a brief, terrifying moment I fell, my skirts ballooning, my heart in my mouth. Then Slade’s arms were tight around me. He set me on the roof. We looked down, in dismay. The ground was more than thirty feet beneath us, and there were no trees near enough to climb down. The entire main story of the house was ablaze. I heard bells ringing in the distance, calling out the fire brigades, but they surely wouldn’t arrive soon enough. We were doomed.

  “Miss Bronte!” a voice called from below.

  I had heard that voice too often for my liking. Astonished, I peered down. “Mr. Heald?”

  “Yes, it’s me!”

  “Who?” Slade said.

  “Oliver Heald,” I said. “An acquaintance of mine.”

  Accompanied by scraping, bumping sounds, Mr. Heald appeared amid the trees and smoke. “At your service, Miss Bronte.” He looked up at me with his usual, cheery smile. He was dragging a ladder.

  “What’s he doing here?” Slade asked.

  “He must have followed me. Again.” Once again I hadn’t spotted him, even though he must have trailed me all the way from Haworth to the Lake District to London to Tonbridge, as unlikely as it sounds. And Slade had been too distracted to notice Mr. Heald lurking in our vicinity. I laughed, because once I could have smacked Mr. Heald for his nerve, but now I could have kissed him.

  “Is there anything else you want to tell me?” Slade said.

  Mr. Heald positioned the ladder against the cupola. Slade made me go first. Mr. Heald held the ladder steady while I descended. Its base was so close to the flaming wall of the house that my skirts were singed. But I landed safely, and so did Slade, a moment later.

  “Thank you,” I said to Mr. Heald.

  “Anything for m
y favorite author,” he said with a little bow.

  “Run!” shouted Slade.

  He hurried us away from the house. As we ran across the weedy grass, the gas ignited and the house exploded. The boom was louder than the loudest thunder. A great wave of force rose up under me, lifted me off my feet, and slammed against my back. We crashed flat on the ground. I looked over my shoulder. The house was a mass of flames. They roared and spewed; they stained the night sky orange. Black smoke writhed around the chimneys, which toppled as the roof caved in. Windows shattered. Glass fragments blew out. Flying debris pelted us.

  Slade was on his feet, pulling Mr. Heald and me to ours. “Come on!”

  We hastened toward the edge of the property. My right knee had hit the ground hard when I fell. Supported by Slade and Mr. Heald, I limped. Trees loomed between us and the wall that enclosed the workhouse. I heard a series of smaller booms. At first I thought they were more explosions inside the house. Then something hit the ground in front of me. Dirt flew up.

  “Gunfire!” Slade said. “Take cover!”

  “Who’s shooting?” Mr. Heald said as we raced toward the trees. He looked terrified. I felt sorry for him because all he’d wanted was to be near me, and he hadn’t bargained on this.

  “It’s Lord Eastbourne and his men,” I said. “They must have stayed to make sure the house was destroyed. They saw us. They can’t allow us to live.”

  “Who is Lord Eastbourne?” Mr. Heald said.

  “I’ll explain later.”

  The trees seemed miles away. I hobbled as fast as I could. More shots boomed, kicking up more dirt around us. They came from our left. I looked that way, and so did Slade. He said, “It’s not Lord Eastbourne.”

  A man was running toward us, a pistol raised in his hand. His blond hair gleamed in the firelight. He was Wilhelm Stieber’s minion, the athletic one. Just before we reached the trees, he fired again. Slade knocked me down on the ground. The bullet hissed over us. Another shot blared from our right. Mr. Heald shrieked, spun in a circle, and stumbled.