by Rigel, LK
The drugs were as illegal in Jefferson as they were in Idaho, and Jefferson was notoriously fervent about the EDLs. I couldn’t throw them away—they could be found and traced to me. I had to hide them where they wouldn’t be discovered during cleaning.
Someone ran through the hallway outside my door, and I froze in place until all was silent again. My gaze landed on the bed, and I thrust the contraband between the mattresses, as far in as I could. I crawled in under the covers and hoped they’d be safe until I came up with a better plan.
The bed was heavenly. Firm and soft at the same time. I had an abundance of pillows, a down comforter and a lovely quilted coverlet. I leaned over and blew out my candle. The crackle and pop of the dying fire serenaded me to deep sleep, and I dreamed.
In my dream I heard an insistent pounding, pounding, of an approaching monster. A magnificent black horse burst into my presence, ridden by a cloaked stranger. Horse and rider passed me by and metamorphosed into a thundering train. Its whistle blasted, and the train’s scream became a woman’s tortured wail.
« Chapter 12 »
Thornfield Righteous Estate
I awoke nearer to lunch than breakfast time. Someone had lit a fire on the grate and opened the chintz curtains. I sat up in the oh-so-comfortable bed with a smile on my face. My little chamber was the picture of coziness.
Late autumn sunshine poured in over the floral pattern on the papered walls and the thick Persian carpet on the buffed cherry wood floor. I wasn’t in Lowood anymore!
I rose and dressed, eager for the day. I felt my life was embarking upon a new and better epoch, one with flowers among the thorns. Thank you, I said silently to my guardian angel.
To meet my new employer and pupil, I chose one of my navy teacher’s dresses and a medium-sized linen collar with lace trim that covered my shoulders. Georgiana had called me plain, and the description fit.
I am no martyr, titillated by a hair shirt. I wish I were pretty, with rosy cheeks and a pert nose. That my lips were full and dark—or at least more than a mere horizontal line above my chin. I’d like to be tall and stately. It was a mistake of my genes that I’m so little and so plain. A sparrow without, a cockatiel within.
No. That is waxing on.
In truth I’m comfortable as a little bird, as Georgiana called me, a sparrow. I only resent being unremarkable when I’m not marked and wish to be. A contradiction in my nature I have never resolved.
The hall, the gallery, the staircase—all of Thornfield looked different in the daytime—less foreboding. Everywhere parted curtains let in the late October sun. There were good pictures on the walls, serigraphs and giclees as well as signed paintings and prints.
As I reached the bottom of the stairs, a grandfather clock tolled the hour. Ten in the morning! No wonder I felt so rested. The front door I’d come through the night before was in the foyer to my right. I turned left into a parlor. The furniture wasn’t new or stylish, but all was made of good quality woods and fabrics and well cared for.
A horde of maidservants went at the carpets, curtains, and windows with dusters and cleaning rags. A relieving sign. Antibiotics hadn’t been effective in a generation, and prevention was the best weapon against infection. I always believed Mrs. Reed employed so many maids not to provide work for the local people but out of fear for her own health.
I continued on through the open pocket door at the end of the room into a larger, more cheerful room. “Where can I find Mrs. Fairfax?” I asked a maid dusting a Steinway grand piano.
“In the garden, miss. Past the lilacs.” She curtsied and indicated a glass-paned French door.
I straightened my collar and went outside. I found myself on a broad and wide pressed concrete veranda surrounded by a marble stone half wall. Ceramic pots as high as my waist were scattered in the corners, empty now. I imagined them bursting with flowers in summer, a quartet playing at one end of the veranda and fine people dancing under the stars. I took the marble steps, crossed the cobblestone drive that came around from the front of the house, and walked through a set of spindly lilac bushes holding onto the last of this year’s leaves.
On the lawn I found a lady in her fifties or sixties wearing a black dress and a white widow’s cap. She stood up from one of two wicker chairs. A tuxedo cat meowed in protest at losing her lap. It arched its back, examining me resentfully.
“Miss Eyre, it’s so good to meet you,” the lady said. She had the very look I’d hoped for: relaxed and efficient with an air of kindness. “I’m afraid I don’t stay awake as late as I used to. I hope you didn’t have a tedious ride from the halt. John drives so slowly.”
“Mrs. Fairfax?” It felt odd being treated so graciously by my employer. I felt she didn’t expect a curtsy, so I nodded my head to show respect. “Everything is more comfortable than I could have wished. My room is lovely.”
“I’m glad you like it.” She asked me to take the other wicker chair and offered coffee and teacakes from the little table between us. “I put you near my room in the west wing. Mr. Rochester’s room is also in that corridor, but don’t concern yourself about that. He’s hardly ever in residence. The servants sleep in the east wing. The front rooms do have finer furnishings, but they’re so solitary. I didn’t want you to feel set apart.”
“Who is Mr. Rochester?” I said.
“Why, Mr. Rochester is the owner of Thornfield Righteous Estate.”
“Then you aren’t my employer?”
“Heavens, what a thought!” Mrs. Fairfax said. “Although I am related to the family. Mr. Rochester’s mother was a Fairfax, you see. Second cousin to my husband. But I never presume upon the relationship. I’m so glad you’ve come. I’ve felt lonely here without an equal to talk to.”
I found out that the men at Thornfield worked in the gardens and fields. The inmates of the house were female, all but John who served as a handyman and driver. He was married to Martha, the cook, and they had an apartment in the servants’ wing where the unmarried females, such as Leah who showed me to my room, slept. The other married employees lived in little cottages on the estate.
“Mr. Rochester seems an extravagant employer.”
“In some ways, I suppose,” Mrs. Fairfax said. She patted her lap, and the cat jumped up again. She scratched under its chin and repeated, “We see him so rarely.”
“When was he here last?”
“About two months ago, when he brought Adele. He was here for the day, long enough to give the order to hire a governess for her. Then he was gone again. The child speaks more French than English. I hardly know a thing about her.”
How curious. Was Adele Mr. Rochester’s bastard? Or perhaps a charity case, as I had been.
Mrs. Fairfax proposed to show me over the rest of the house. I followed, admiring all as we went.
“Before Adele came,” I said, “how long had Mr. Rochester been away?”
“Before? Oh. Let me think. I believe before this last time he hadn’t been to Thornfield in more than a year. He travels all over the world, you see. Once he was gone for four years. When he returned, I’d closed half the house and let most of the servants go, thinking to economize. He was furious.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Exactly! I thought I’d be praised for good management. Mr. Rochester ordered everyone hired back and their relatives too if they needed work. He said Thornfield must be kept spotless and ready. That he might descend upon us at any moment with a party of Anointed Elders and their ladies and retinue of politicians and vicars and bishops, and wouldn’t we be ashamed if all wasn’t as it should be.”
I smiled and said nothing but held to my first opinion. Mr. Rochester was an extravagant master. And an eccentric one if he took his duty to provide good employment so seriously.
“But do you know? He’s never once done as he threatened.” She looked at me with wonder. We live quite alone at Thornfield. It’s a world unto itself.”
Indeed it felt different than any place I’d live
d. Thornfield Hall seemed a living thing with its own personality, kept in a state of suspended animation.
“Is Mr. Rochester an Anointed Elder then?” I said.
“No, he isn’t married. The Righteous designation came when his grandfather built Thornfield just after the Great Secession. Mr. Rochester’s older brother inherited, but that poor man and his wife died in a measles outbreak.”
“Horrible disease,” I muttered. “Were you here then?”
“Not yet. My husband was living then, but the measles took him too. Our Mr. Rochester heard of my loss not long after he inherited and asked me to come run Thornfield for him. It will be ten years next spring, and I believe he still grieves for his brother and sister-in-law. You’ll understand how relieved I was to read in your qualifications that you’ve been vaccinated. Mr. Rochester insists on it for everyone on the estate. No, Mr. Rochester may appear peculiar, but allowances must be made for his sorrows. He’s a good master, for all that we so rarely see him.”
We’d reached the wing where she and I had our rooms. My door was the first we came to on the left. “I’m here,” Mrs. Fairfax said at a second door on the left. We started back, and she pointed out the only door across the corridor, an equal distance between her room and mine. “Mr. Rochester sleeps here when he’s at Thornfield.”
We’d passed my room again and were near the end of the corridor when Mrs. Fairfax looked at me sideways. She hesitated, and with an impish smile pushed against the wood-panels on Mr. Rochester’s side of the wall.
A door popped open. Mrs. Fairfax opened it further, a twinkle in her eye. For an instant I saw the playful child she once must have been. “I’ll show you my favorite view.”
I followed her into the dark small space and up a narrow stairway.
“Mrs. Fairfax, this is wonderful!” I stood at the parapet at the edge of the roof. I could see Millcote in the distance to the east, the gryphon gates at the end of the drive, and the road that led away from Thornfield up the hill to the west.
Mrs. Fairfax said, “I always think if there were a ghost at Thornfield Hall, this would be its haunt.”
“Then you have no ghost,” I said. “How sad is that?” My words recalled Georgiana’s. You might encounter no man at Thornfield—how sad would that be?
“None that I know of.” Mrs. Fairfax chuckled.
“Is that Thornfield’s church?” Near the top of the hill, the hour tolled from the white-washed belfry of a small church.
“It is. Mr. Wood gives very nice, very short sermons.”
I was going to like Mrs. Fairfax.
A servant must have closed the secret door at the bottom of the stairs, for coming down again there was no light. We descended the stairway carefully with only the feel of the wall for a guide. A few treads down, I caught my breath. The woman’s wail from my dream sounded from somewhere in the house.
The sound of Mrs. Fairfax’s footsteps continued unaltered, as if she’d heard nothing. When she opened the door to the corridor, the cry changed to loud and coarse laughter. The light of day streamed in, and I easily found my way down to her.
“Didn’t you hear that?” I asked.
“What is it?” she said. “What did you hear?”
“Someone crying. Or laughing, I think.” Now I felt foolish, and I was grateful Mrs. Fairfax didn’t ridicule me.
“Oh, I’m a little hard of hearing, my dear,” she said. “I suppose it’s a blessing in this old house. I’m sure it makes plenty of noises. You heard one of the servants,” she answered. “Most likely Grace Poole.”
“You didn’t hear her at all?”
“No, but I’m sure you did. She’s a special hire, another of Mr. Rochester’s projects.”
I felt sure she wanted to add like Adele but thought better of it.
“Grace Poole was here when I first came to Thornfield. She does odd work for Leah, sewing and such. She doesn’t mix with the others. Leah usually brings up her meals, and sometimes they’re noisy about it.”
The laugh repeated, louder this time, preternatural and tragic. I still couldn’t tell where it came from. Then all was silent again, and I wondered if Mrs. Fairfax had been mistaken. That Thornfield did indeed have a ghost.
“Grace!” Mrs. Fairfax said, speaking to the secret door.
The door opened, and a servant came out, a woman between thirty and forty, robust-looking, with a hard, plain face. Surely no one less romantic or ghostly ever lived—or died. But where had she come from? There must be another room in there, hidden in the dark, perhaps behind the stairs.
“Too much noise, Grace,” said Mrs. Fairfax. “Remember your orders!”
Grace curtsied, with a tinge of insolence, and went back in.
“Now, Miss Eyre,” Mrs. Fairfax returned to me pleasantly, as if nothing odd had just happened. “Adele is with her nurse in the library. There must be no lessons on your first day, but would you like to meet your pupil?”
Adele Varens was ten years old, not at all clever, and she’d been taught badly. Her education before Thornfield seemed to have consisted of mimicking her errant flirtatious mother, now deceased. Communicating in French, I learned she was an orphan. On that account, she won my affection straightaway.
“See what you can find out about her,” Mrs. Fairfax said. “Mr. Rochester told me nothing of her origins.”
I asked the girl how she knew the master.
“Adele says only that Mr. Rochester is the best man in the world who always brought her a cadeau—a gift when he came to visit her maman. I don’t believe she understands anything more than that.”
Mrs. Fairfax and I established a satisfying routine. She rightly held herself above the household staff in rank, but she treated me as her equal and often joined me during Adele’s lessons then stayed for coffee and conversation when they were over.
My days were idyllic, though I’d never associated that state with winter. All was peaceful and congenial. I worked with Adele. I conversed with Mrs. Fairfax. I had time to draw and to read what books I liked from the unlocked shelves in the library which served as Adele’s schoolroom.
My new epoch was well underway, and I was happy.
« Chapter 13 »
Dusk
Anno Domini 2086
When I first came to Thornfield, a carpet of pink and yellow roses covered the fence outside Mr. Wood’s little church on the hill. The season was turning then from autumn to winter, and a closer look showed blooms fading and the last of the fat lush blackberries running underneath the roses.
Now four months later, winter refuses to give way to spring. Halfway to Hayton, I stop a moment in the lane. The wood fence stands lonely, as naked as the winding sticks of wisteria crawling over the rectory door. The dirt shoulders of the lane are as hard with cold as the cobblestones. Clouds hang low and darken the sky, but there’s no rain.
The bell in the whitewashed belfry tolls the hour: four o’clock. A chilly gust of wind rushes up the lane and through the bare branches of the willow at the edge of the church graveyard. I pull my cloak closer and watch the dissipating mist of my breath.
Past the church there’s a stile accessing the field I like to cut through. I sit down to rest and look back the mile I’ve walked. In the vale below I can see Thornfield Hall, like a citadel at the center of its working farm. Sometimes when Adele plays with her nurse and Mrs. Fairfax busies herself with household matters, I climb the secret staircase—which does have a locked door behind it. The view is more expansive from Thornfield’s roof than from the top of this hill, but from both places the view is as serene as my current days. Peaceful, at times dull.
Not the nights.
I have the train dream several times a week. Sometimes it drives me from sleep. I think I hear a woman’s cries in waking life, but they never repeat once my head is clear. I once followed the noise into the corridor, but all was still.
Mrs. Fairfax promised to again admonish Grace Poole to be quieter in her work, but I wonder why she has t
o work at all so late in the night.
From my place here in the stile I see Millcote. Millcote fancies itself a village, I’ve learned, but the imagined metropolis contains only five buildings: the local mill and the miller’s cottage, the Jefferson Inn with ten rooms to let, and attached to the inn a public garage and stables.
It’s more hamlet than village. My Hamlet 1-3-78, I think fondly.
My goal today is Hayton, an actual village yet another mile on the other side of this hill. Mrs. Fairfax missed the morning post, and I agreed to carry the letter to the post office, not merely for the exercise but for the solitude.
Today I long for something different. I’m impossible. Only four months into my entirely satisfactory new life, I’m restless with it. I leapt at the chance to get away.
Something inside me will not be quiet, still, tranquil. I can’t be happy with my most outrageous good fortune. Would I go back to the sterile austerity of Lowood or the cruel luxury of Gateshead?
Never.
I have so much. I want something more—but what it is, I don’t know. Fire where there is a chill? Feeling where there is composure? I feel I’m going crazy with ingratitude, but I don’t know how to stop myself.
What would I alter? I’ve exchanged discomfort for comfort, tolerance for appreciation, endless chatter for a mix of quiet and conversation. Mrs. Fairfax treats me as her equal, and teaching fills my need for creative occupation.
In truth these months at Thornfield have been the most tranquil and secure epoch of my nineteen years. And yet I jinx it. Today I’m antsy for a temporary escape. I’ve grown complacent in my comfort. I long for something out of the ordinary, something different—something interesting—to happen.
I don’t know if the clouds sank into the earth during my reverie on the stile, but they’re gone. A freakish mist swarms at my feet. Above the hilltop the flat disk of the moon rises, full and eerily brightening against the late afternoon sky, while the wispy mist snakes like a living thing about the hedges and rocks and trees.
