Bedlam: The Further Secret Adventures of Charlotte Brontë

by Laura Joh Rowland

  I had never been to Ireland; I believed I was English to the core. But when the ship docked at Kingstown, I felt an affinity for Ireland, even though my first sight of it was less than pleasing. The afternoon was gray, the piers deserted, the amusement park drab in the rain. The only Irish I saw were laborers offloading cargo from ships. But their shouts rang with inflections that sounded like Papa, who’d never entirely lost his accent. When we reached the railway station and I negotiated for tickets to Dublin, Slade turned to me in surprise.

  “I do believe I hear Ireland in your voice.” His own brogue was perfect; adept at languages and disguises, he seemed the quintessential Irishman.

  “When I was a child I spoke with an Irish accent,” I recalled. “I picked it up from Papa. It’s coming back.”

  While riding the five miles north to Dublin, past the rain-soaked tenements on the outskirts of the city, I reflected that there was a third Ireland—the world shaped by the English. In 1541, Henry VIII declared himself King of Ireland and seized lands from the Irish lords. Elizabeth I and James I completed the conquest. Protestant Englishmen colonized Ireland and formed a new ruling class. In 1641, Irish Catholics rebelled. The Catholic gentry briefly regained control of the country until Oliver Cromwell reconquered Ireland in 1653. There followed the bloodiest period in Irish history. A third of Catholic Irish were killed. Much of their land was given to British settlers. The Penal Laws banned Catholics from public office, excluded them from many professions, deprived them of the right to own property and vote, and restricted the practice of the Catholic religion.

  The French Revolution fueled the spirit of revolt in Ireland. In 1791, the Society of United Irishmen rose up against the English. Papa’s brother fought with the rebels. But the rebellion was crushed, rebels and civilians tortured, massacred, burned alive, and hanged. Some fifty thousand people died in the Irish Rebellion of 1798. The result was the Act of Union, which in 1801 abolished Ireland’s parliament and made Ireland a part of the United Kingdom. In July of 1848, the year that revolution swept through Europe, a nationalist group called Young Ireland attempted an uprising at Tipperary. The rebellion was easily put down by police. England still held Ireland firmly under its thumb.

  I am a staunch English patriot, but I couldn’t help sympathizing with Ireland, the underdog. Half of my heritage originated from this wet, misty landscape that I saw passing by the carriage window. Here on Irish soil, two bloodlines warred within me.

  At the station in Dublin, I said, “It’s too late to go to Niall Kavanagh’s family home tonight. We must find lodgings.”

  “I have friends here,” Slade said. Indeed, he had friends in all corners of the world, people he’d met during his espionage-related travels. “They’ll lend me a bed. And I know the perfect place for you.”

  Although I didn’t want to be separated from him, I didn’t object. I didn’t think he would abandon me now that we’d come so far. I also doubted that Wilhelm Stieber could have tracked us here yet. Moreover, staying together posed greater dangers than spending the night apart.

  Slade hired a carriage, and we traveled through the old city. The evening was thick with peat smoke that immersed the gray stone buildings and cloaked the spires of cathedrals. My first impression of Dublin was one of emptiness, quiet, and desolation. Gas lamps burned along the main thoroughfares, in public houses, and in elegant mansions on fashionable squares; but all around were waste-lands of darkness. When I remarked upon my observations, Slade said, “It’s because of the famine.”

  The Great Famine had started in 1845, when Ireland’s potato crop had failed. A recurring blight turned acres upon acres of potatoes into foul black mush. The potato was Ireland’s staple food, and people all across the country suffered. I had seen nothing about this in the press, but Papa had gleaned shocking accounts from correspondence with Irish clergymen. People crawled along the highways, begging for food, their mouths stained green from eating grass. They died in ditches. Mothers ate the flesh of their dead children. Every town was overrun by walking skeletons. An outcry went up because vast quantities of grain and livestock were shipped out, for the benefit of Irish landlords and English consumers, while the Irish starved, and the English government had provided little relief. Now, six years later, the blight had passed and good harvests resumed, but too late for the million people who had died of starvation and disease. A million others had emigrated, leaving towns half vacant. Dark shapes huddled in the alleys, homeless families sleeping outdoors. Beggars dressed in rags accosted our carriage. I heard glass shatter and saw three men breaking into a shop. Whistles shrilled, and constables raced to stop the looting.

  We stopped at a small building with whitewashed walls, in a cobbled courtyard where a statue of the Virgin Mary stood. Slade helped me out of the carriage, lifted down my bag, and told the driver to wait. He escorted me to the door and knocked. A panel in the door slid open, revealing an iron grille, behind which appeared an old woman’s face, framed in a starched white wimple.

  “Good evening, Mother Agnes,” Slade said with a smile and bow.

  “Why, if it isn’t John Slade as I live!” Glad surprise brightened her stern visage. “What in heaven brings ye here?”

  “I’ve a guest for you.” Slade introduced me. “Could you put her up for the night?”

  “With pleasure.” The nun opened the door, smiled at me, and beckoned.

  Slade was installing me in a Roman Catholic convent!

  “I’ll see you in the morning,” he said.

  32

  MOTHER AGNES PUT ME IN A VACANT CELL WHERE A FIGURE of Jesus on the cross hung over an iron cot. I felt as if I had entered forbidden territory; yet I slept well. In the morning I breakfasted with the nuns. They were kind and asked no questions. The soda bread, black pudding, and stewed coffee restored my energy. When Slade came to fetch me, I felt strong enough to face the day.

  “Good morning, Miss Brontë.” He was clean-shaven, and his color had turned healthier. “Are you ready to tell me where we’re going?”

  He didn’t say where he’d been, and I didn’t ask. “To Clare House, in County Wicklow. It belongs to Sir William Kavanagh, Niall’s father, head of the family’s whiskey brewery.”

  “Ah. Let us hope our man has gone to ground there.”

  We boarded yet another hired carriage. As it took us out of the city, Slade cleared his throat. “There are matters we need to discuss.”

  Apprehension clenched my hands in my lap. “I suppose so.”

  “We can’t just gad about like this together.”

  Embarrassment warmed my cheeks. I knew how improper it was for a single woman to travel with a single man not related to her. That I’d done so before with Slade didn’t excuse my behavior. Then he had posed as my cousin. Then I’d been certain that nothing regrettable would happen, but now things were dangerously different. Furthermore, I had to protect Currer Bell’s reputation as well as Charlotte Brontë’s.

  But I said, “I can’t afford to care what people will think. To save Britain from Niall Kavanagh, Wilhelm Stieber, and Russia, I must risk my respectability.”

  Although Slade nodded in resignation, he frowned. “Someone is bound to wonder what our relationship is. The Kavanagh family, for example. How will we introduce ourselves?”

  That was a good question. I knew the only answer. “We must say that I am your wife.”

  “My wife.” Slade sounded sobered and chastened. I could tell what he was thinking: if things had been different, I would be his wife now. The same knowledge saddened me. He didn’t like the idea of the pretense, which made a mockery of our past; nor did I. “Well, I suppose there’s no alternative.”

  I took from my pocket the cheap, imitation-gold band I’d bought in London, and I put it on my ring finger. “There. That makes it official.”

  We looked at the ring on my hand, then away from each other. Instead of speaking, we looked out the window as the carriage rattled through Dublin. The city was filled with co
aches and omnibuses. I studied the people on the streets. Rich and poor, some were red-haired and freckled; others blond and Norse; others dark-haired with pale skin and eyes. Some chatted and laughed as they went about their business; others brooded darkly. Yet they all seemed to share a stalwart endurance of misfortune and suffering.

  We drove along a rural highway south into County Wicklow. The air was fresh, mild, and spring-like, the sky a bright blue filled with billowy white clouds over a landscape colored every shade of green—emerald, chartreuse, jade, moss, and viridian. Ancient stone towers and pillars studded fields divided by walls, hedgerows, and patches of woodland. Sheep and cattle grazed. Thatched cottages sported flowers in window boxes. We passed farmers in long-tailed jackets and tall hats, smoking pipes and driving carts pulled by shaggy-maned ponies. The Wicklow Mountains faded into azure in the distance. But even this natural beauty was scarred by the Great Famine. Villages lay in ruins, abandoned by peasants who’d left Ireland in search of food and work. Many fields were rocky and barren, the churches surrounded by gravestones. We passed wagons overloaded with grim, shabbily dressed families headed to ships bound for the New World. I felt a terrible pity for these people forced to leave their homes, and a burning anger toward those who had not helped them or had worsened their plight.

  My first glimpse of Clare House predisposed me to hate the Kavanagh family.

  Their estate had a vast park with lawns and woods, terraces and gardens. We drove along a formal avenue lined with beeches, to a huge eighteenth-century Palladian mansion built of silvery gray granite. Its hundreds of windows surely kept an army of maids occupied.

  “That one family should live in such luxury in a country so poor! It’s outrageous!” I exclaimed. “Have the Kavanaghs no shame?”

  “Probably none,” Slade said, “but take care not to show what you think of them. We need their cooperation.”

  We got out of the carriage on the driveway that circled a fountain, near the bottom of the wide front steps where twin stone lions displayed the family crests. The main door opened. Three men met us. The one in the middle was white-haired, dignified, dressed in black. His comrades wore country tweeds, and each carried a rifle. He looked down his haughty nose at us. “Good morning. May I be of service?”

  I took him for the Kavanagh’s butler and his companions the groundskeepers, protecting the house from the outlaws that the famine had created. Slade introduced himself, then said, “I’m a commissioner of the Metropolitan Police in London.” He produced a badge that identified him as such. “My wife and I are here to see Sir William Kavanagh.”

  The butler studied Slade. I could see his distrust battling his fear of angering a representative of English officialdom. “I’m afraid Sir William is busy.”

  “Tell him it’s about his son Niall,” Slade said.

  “Ah. Just a moment.” The butler marched into the mansion, while the groundskeepers stood guard over us. In a moment he returned. “Sir William is in the ballroom. Come with me, please.”

  The lord of the manor was merrymaking while the commoners suffered! Slade and I followed the butler into an enormous room whose high, white ceiling was encrusted with plaster rosettes and ivy borders; gold-framed mirrors reflected enormous crystal chandeliers. French doors overlooked a terrace, a fountain in which stone dolphins spouted, and a sweep of lawn and gardens. But except for these features, the scene in the ballroom was not what I’d expected.

  Rows of cots contained pale, haggard, emaciated people. A physician ministered to them. Three women in white aprons distributed food. The two young ones pushed a trolley laden with a tureen and served bowls of soup to the patients. The older woman was small and delicate, the dark hair under her cap streaked with gray. She sat down by the bed of a child and spooned soup into his mouth. A man was unloading stacks of clean linens from a cart. When he saw Slade and me, he stopped his work and approached us.

  “My apologies for the informal reception, Commissioner.” He extended his hand to Slade. “William Kavanagh, at your service.”

  He was in his sixties, broad across the shoulders, with thick, bowed legs and unruly red hair turning white. His genial face was rosy and sweating from exertion. With his shirtsleeves rolled up, he hardly matched the elegance of his manor, but he had confidence grounded in wealth and status. He indicated the older woman. “This is my wife Kathleen.”

  She came to his side and curtseyed, shyly polite. Her immense, clear blue eyes were fringed by black lashes. She must have been a beauty in her youth, and she was lovely still.

  “Since the famine started, the county’s been rife with consumption, cholera, and typhoid,” Sir William said. “We’ve set up a sick ward here.”

  “I see,” Slade said. I could tell from his tone of voice that he, too, had changed his prejudiced ill opinion of the Kavanaghs.

  Sir William noted our chagrin; he smiled. “Life’s been good to us. Helping others less fortunate is the least we can do. But you came to talk about Niall. What’s he done this time?”

  His tone bespoke a long history of hearing bad news about his son. So did the worry that creased Lady Kathleen’s forehead. Slade said, “Is he here?”

  “No,” Sir William said.

  I detected no hesitation or falseness in his reply.

  “When was the last time you saw him?” Slade asked.

  “Three, four years ago,” Sir William said. “He’s our black sheep.”

  I heard a soft sound from Lady Kathleen. When I looked at her, she averted her gaze.

  “What’s he done?” Sir William repeated. “It must be serious if you came all the way from London.”

  Slade glanced at the patients in the beds; those awake were listening avidly. “We should discuss this elsewhere.”

  It was obvious that although Sir William knew about Niall’s bad character, blood was blood and he saw Slade as a threat to his family. But he said, “All right.” He stalked toward the French doors, beckoning Slade. I went, too. Lady Kathleen started after us, but Sir William told her, “Stay here, I’ll handle this.”

  Outside on the terrace, Sir William bade us sit in wrought-iron chairs at a table under a striped umbrella, but he remained standing. His unfriendly gaze commanded Slade to state his business.

  Slade spoke gently, and I remembered that he’d been ordained as a clergyman before he’d become a spy. He must have been schooled on how best to deliver upsetting news, but his manner couldn’t lessen the horror of what he said: Niall Kavanagh had formulated the theory that diseases are caused by animalcules, then tested his theory on women of the streets and killed and dissected them; he’d been hired by Lord Eastbourne to build a weapon based on his theory; and his work had come to the attention of Wilhelm Stieber, the Tsar’s chief spy. After Slade reported that Niall had disappeared and Stieber was hunting him, Sir William shook his head violently.

  “I won’t listen to any more of this!” The ruddy color had drained from his face. “Niall’s always been a troublemaker, to be sure, but he’s not the monster you’ve made him out to be!”

  I heard a strangled cry, from Lady Kathleen. She stood partially hidden by a potted shrub, her hand clapped over her mouth, appalled by what she’d overheard.

  “Damn you for coming here and telling awful lies about my son to his mother!” Sir Kavanagh burst out at Slade.

  Lady Kathleen stumbled blindly down the steps to the lawn. I followed her. The lawn was uncut and weed-choked, probably due to the servants fleeing the famine. The rose garden into which Lady Kathleen hurried was similarly ill-maintained, the bushes overgrown, the dead blossoms left shriveled alongside the new blooms, the odor funereal. Lady Kathleen wandered aimlessly, wringing her hands. I pitied her, but I couldn’t pass up a chance to further Slade’s and my investigation.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, ashamed of my readiness to take advantage of her. “I wish you hadn’t had to hear that.”

  “It’s all right.” Lady Kathleen’s voice was quiet, with a melodious Iri
sh lilt. “I’ve been dreading this day. Now that it’s come, it’s a relief.”

  “You knew what Niall has done?”

  “Not the specifics. Nor how bad they were. But Niall is my son.” Lady Kathleen stopped wandering and turned to me. “Do you have children, Mrs. Slade?”

  This was the first time anyone had addressed me by my fraudulent name and title. Disconcerted, I said, “No.”

  “Maybe you will someday,” Lady Kathleen said kindly. “Then you’ll understand. I carried Niall, I gave birth to him. I know him better than anyone else can. And I knew, from the start, that he was . . . different.”

  I resisted the urge to force the issue of Niall’s whereabouts. “Different in what way?”

  “I have five children. None of the others were as curious about the world as Niall was. As soon as he could walk, he would go into the fields and dig holes to find out what was under the ground, and rip plants up by their roots to look at them. One day he tore open all the rosebuds in this garden to see how the flowers looked before they bloomed. He would climb trees, take baby birds out of their nests, and handle them so much they died.” Her face showed alarm at his ignorant destruction of beauty and life. “When he was seven, he killed a cat that was expecting kittens, and he cut open her stomach to see what was inside!”

  I felt the horror that I heard in her voice. I began to understand how his curiosity had compelled Niall Kavanagh to do the terrible things he’d done.

  “Niall was just as careless with people,” Lady Kathleen said. “He drowned a shepherd’s little girl because he wanted to see how long she could stay under water.” Lady Kavanagh shook her head, unable to fathom how her child could have behaved so cruelly. “He held her head down until she stopped breathing.”